Veiled Threats

by Deborah Donnelly

  I stopped short at the bottom of the stairs and the bellboy nearly collided with me. I pulled my change purse from the other pocket and took out a ten-dollar bill.

  “Thanks,” I said, handing it to him. “Have Reception transfer the call to the kitchen phone, the one by the swinging doors. And then forget where I went. Got that?”

  He smirked, the same smirk I'd seen on Lily's face back at the houseboat. “Got it.”

  The Glacier View's kitchen stretched along the back of the first floor, facing the delivery driveway and the staff parking lot. Instead of vistas of rolling meadow and rising peaks, the few kitchen windows looked out on cars, trucks, and the steep slope of the wooded ridge behind the lodge. Tonight, as I entered from the lobby, the windows reflected back the brightly lit, barely controlled chaos of a banquet in preparation, with Joe Solveto's staff madly unloading coolers and garnishing plates, and the lodge's waiters loading up trays of salads for the first course.

  Stout, red-faced Casey Abbott, my liaison with Solveto's, waved at me as I rushed past, but I just waved back and kept rushing, toward the far end of the kitchen where a set of swinging doors led to the dining room. The wall telephone there rang as I reached it, barely audible above the clamor. I picked up the receiver and stepped to one side, stretching the cord away from the service doors to keep myself out of the traffic flow that would soon begin.

  “Carnegie Kincaid speaking. Aaron, can you hear me?”

  An operator's impersonal tone. “Go ahead, please.”

  And then a completely unexpected voice. “Carnegie? Speak up! Listen, sister, what the hell have you been playing at?”

  “Eddie!”

  I sagged against the wall, then pushed myself upright. Through the porthole windows of the swinging doors, I could see rows of white-linened tables, all order and serenity, each with its bouquet of pink heather. Guests were drifting in from the lounge, checking place cards for their names, chatting and laughing. I turned my back and cupped one hand over my ear.

  “Eddie, how did you know where I was?”

  His growl came through loud and clear. “Where else would you be? We've had it scheduled since Christmas. Listen, I'm calling from Morry's tavern. The police are at the office.”

  “The police? Wonderful!”

  “Yeah, wonderful. They searched the houseboat, too, and now they've got a warrant for your arrest. Kidnapping, for Christ's sake! What's going on?”

  My head was spinning. “My arrest? That's crazy! Why would they—”

  “Someone named Mariana claims you kidnapped the Parry girl,” he went on. “She showed up at the office this afternoon, half-hysterical, saying they were going to deport her but she didn't care, she just wanted Niccola back and that you had taken her. She must have called the police before she came, because they showed up right away and hustled her off, and they've been grilling me ever since. I just now got to a phone.”

  “But what were you doing at the office? No, never mind that now. Did you tell the police where I am?”

  “Are you kidding? I told them you were on the way to Boise to visit your mother.”

  “Oh, Eddie! You've got to go back there and tell them—”

  The line went dead.

  I turned, coldly certain of what I would see. Holt, shirt-tails hanging, wolfish grin still in place, had slipped in through the swinging doors. One hand was jammed on the wall phone, cutting the connection, and now the other hand was reaching for me. The charade was over.

  With a crazy surge of relief, I brought the receiver cracking down across Holt's knuckles. He swore and lunged at me, his hand catching at my sleeve. I pulled the silky fabric free and whirled to run, but instead I came smack up against Casey. He had a tray of dinner salads in each hand, and the impact of our collision launched them into the air and full into Holt's face. Both men shouted, Casey staggered forward, and as I scrambled out of harm's way on my rubber-soled shoes, the two of them went down in a whirlwind of shattered china and Roquefort dressing. I pushed past the gawking cooks and waiters, heading back for the door to the lobby. If I could just get to another phone—

  “Stop her! She's running from the police!”

  Holt's voice behind me was commanding, authoritative. Would they believe him? I didn't wait to find out. Pivoting in mid-stride, I rounded a bank of sinks and dove for the exit to the delivery dock. For the moment, no one followed. A small truck was parked there in the chilly twilight, and I took refuge in the shadows behind it to catch my breath. Holt couldn't hurt me with witnesses around, but he could prevent me from calling Eddie back, or alerting Aaron. I could take my case to Mrs. Schiraldi, the manager, but a quick check with the Seattle Police would tell her that Holt was the trusted family attorney, and that I was a fugitive with a grudge against the Parrys. Better to circle around to the front entrance, get to a phone in the lobby—

  The exit door swung open, spilling light along the asphalt at my feet. The shadow of a man—Holt's shadow—stretched long and narrow across the parking lot, framed in the oblong of brightness. I shrank back behind the truck, the blood pounding in my ears like surf. If I hid quietly, he might anticipate my next move and head for the lobby himself to cut me off.

  And then what? When I didn't appear, what would Holt do? He would call his henchman, Andreas, and tell him that their scheme had been exposed … and then Andreas would kill Nickie, and hide her corpse, and disappear. Douglas and Grace wouldn't even have a coffin to mourn over. And it would be my fault, my burden of guilt for interfering.

  There was only one thing to do. I had to stop Holt from calling anyone, just as he had to stop me. Once again we were trapped together, not in a hall of mirrors, but in an outright duel, each of us desperate to silence the other.

  I bolted from the shadows, sprinting away from the kitchen. I was clearly visible in the shaft of light from the kitchen door, the mouse daring the cat to follow. Holt's shadow didn't move, and for a dreadful moment I was afraid that he would simply watch me run and return inside. Then the shaft of light narrowed and disappeared, the door clanged shut, and I heard rapid footsteps close behind me.

  The charade was over, and the chase was on.

  IREACHED THE FAR EDGE OF THE PARKING LOT IN SECONDS. Once I hit the trees I tried to keep sprinting, but the steepness of the slope and the uneven ground made it impossible. Holt's footsteps, echoing mine, changed from distinct raps against the asphalt to a muffled crackling as he reached the carpet of fir needles. Then came a crashing and a string of curses. He had slipped, on those shiny new shoe soles, and yielded me a few vital moments. I didn't even glance back, but scrambled my way through the barely visible tree trunks at a long slant toward the top of the ridge.

  My lungs began to heave and burn. Branches like scrabbling hands snagged at my hair and my dress, and one of them, invisible against the dim background, cut painfully across my eyes. Blind and weeping, I pressed on, the noise of Holt's progress drowned out by my own, as the lodge fell farther behind and below us and the crest of the ridge loomed above.

  I had no rational plan, no plan at all. The cat was in pursuit, and all the mouse could do was run in terror. Suddenly I came to a break in the trees. A brushy meadow spread out ahead of me, fireweed and dwarf willow and huckleberry dissolving into a single blurred surface in the dying light. The meadow was an old avalanche chute, slicing down from the ridge crest high to my right to the ravine to my left, far below. The top of the chute made a clear gap in the trees silhouetted on the skyline. All the colors of the day were gone, everything was gray on black. But there was just enough light for Holt to see me, if I crossed the meadow.

  I moved uphill as quietly as I could, staying in the shadow of the trees. The sweat was cold on my face and down my spine and I knew, with a sickening certainty, that I'd made the wrong decision. I should have stayed in the lodge, confronted Holt in Casey's presence, made a fuss and called the police myself and somehow, somehow, prevented Holt from contacting Andreas. Instead, I'd put myself completely
in his power. I couldn't run forever, and once he caught up with me I wouldn't have a hope. The police, when they came, would hear a plausible story: Holt's suspicions, my confession and guilty flight, and then an accident, an ugly fall. No witnesses, except the grave and respectable Mr. Walker.

  I halted, breathless and dizzy. The wind had picked up, hissing through the trees and rustling the underbrush, but I could still hear Holt. He had almost reached the meadow's edge. I had to lengthen my lead somehow. The question of Nickie's safety had grown distant and abstract, compared to my own primitive desire to survive. I shoved both shaking hands into my pockets, and had an idea.

  Just up the slope from my resting place, a line of firs extended into the meadow like a peninsula into a lake. I crept out along it, using the trees as a screen and peering down between them toward the sound of Holt's advance. Suddenly he appeared, his shirt a soft white shape against the dim wall of the forest, his face turned away from me to scan the lower stretch of meadow.

  I pulled my change purse from my pocket and heaved it, with a wild windmilling motion, across the meadow and uphill. It made just the right noise, like the inadvertent slip of someone hiding in silence, and Holt spun around and took off toward it, climbing the open slope with the effortless speed of a born athlete. I waited until he had passed my peninsula and entered the woods across the meadow. Then I launched myself downhill, sliding and stumbling through the low, hummocky foliage, making no attempt at quiet or concealment, betting everything on gravity and speed.

  I was less than halfway down when Holt stepped out of the trees some ten yards ahead of me. He must have found an easier path downhill, just inside the opposite line of woods. Or perhaps he was a demon, springing out of the ground at will, pursuing me implacably through an endless night. I could never run fast enough to escape him. The nightmare would never end until he caught me, and ended everything.

  I fled uphill once more, moving slower and slower with each searing breath, and coldly aware that behind me Holt was keeping his distance, not even trying to close the gap, simply herding his prey up and over the ridge. Farther from witnesses, farther from Eddie and Aaron and Lily, from any lights except this dying twilight and any voices but his own.

  Once I stumbled and was still for a moment, crouched against the silvery trunk of a long-dead fir. He called softly to me.

  “Carnegie? Come down, darling, I won't hurt you.”

  I shook my head and continued upward in a trance of exhaustion and despair. The meadow growth gave way to patches of gravel, and then to larger rocks and boulders, pale as bones. The wind moaned fitfully around them, lifting and flapping my skirt, tugging at my sweat-soaked hair. A few more steps, another stumble, a few more, and then I was standing on the ridge top, gasping, staring at the sky. Giving up.

  A full moon glittered far and cold in the darkness, like a dropped dime on a tar-black road. Its light rimmed the racing clouds with silver, and illumined my little clouds of breath against the freezing air. Across the valley behind me, Mount Rainier was a brooding shadow. Holt was close behind, but I didn't look at him. Instead I dropped my gaze to the rocky, almost treeless landscape before me. Just below was a steeply tilted snowfield, a quarter-mile arc gleaming white in the moonlight, with jagged black outcrops rearing up like fangs at the bottom. The wind came howling up the snow, shaking me where I stood, and the clouds covered and uncovered the moon.

  But the moon wasn't a dime. It was a pearl. I turned my back to it. Glaring down the west slope at Holt, I reached in my pocket once more, and drew out Nickie's necklace.

  “Here it is!” I said. It came out as a shout. “Stop right there, or I'll throw it down the snowbank and you'll never find it!”

  “Find what?” Holt was breathing deeply, not in distress, but as if he'd had a brisk, pleasant walk. Even in the faltering moonlight I could see that he was smiling, and I had the sudden thought that he was in a dream of his own, a reverie of pursuit and power that would climax in death. Then he laughed up at me, at the thing I was holding out to him like a talisman to ward off evil. “Costume jewelry? Just what am I supposed to do with that, Carnegie?”

  “You were searching for it,” I said. “They're the real ones, aren't they?”

  He laughed again, smugly, hatefully, and he mimicked my quavering tone. “No, they aren't ‘the real ones.’ The real ones are hidden in a flour canister in your kitchen. Or at least they were, until the police found them there and decided to arrest you. You did mention the police on the telephone, didn't you?”

  I nodded. I was shivering now, not just with cold. “Mariana called them—”

  “I see.” He took a step uphill toward me, and I sidled away. “Well, she's a little premature, but we'll handle it. We'll have the ransom soon, anyway.”

  “The ransom!”

  “Signed, sealed, and delivered at midnight tonight. So you and I have to get moving.” He took another step, almost up to my level on the crest. One quick leap and he'd have me. I sidled farther, moving gingerly as the rock beneath my feet gave way to hard-packed snow.

  “What about Nickie?” I demanded. My voice was shrill, out of control. “What have they done to her?”

  “Nobody's done anything,” he said. “They're waiting for me to show up with you—”

  He leaped, but I whipped the necklace across his face, making him flinch away. He recovered at once and grabbed at the necklace with outstretched fingers. An unreasoning determination to yield nothing to Holt, not even this worthless bauble, made me hang on instead of letting go. For one endless moment the double loop of pearls linked us together in a crazy tug of war, our hands separated only by the fragile strands that glowed like living silver in a freakish ray of moonlight. Holt laughed again, his eyes wide with triumph.

  The necklace burst.

  Knotted fragments sprang into the air, pearls scattered onto the gravel, and we each fell back a step. But while my rubber-soled flats held fast, Holt's feet in his new loafers skidded on the snow and flew out from under him. He pitched backward and sideways, grabbing at the air, a shout rising into a scream as he teetered and went over.

  If he had fallen to his left, westward, a brief slide down the gravel would have brought him up against a fallen tree with no harm done. But Holt fell to the right. He plummeted down the icy eastern slope, and there was nothing to break his fall, nothing beneath his flailing arms except the steep, unyielding snow. He skidded and tumbled, faster and yet faster, until he hit bottom with sickening force and fetched up against the grinning black fangs of rock like a scrap of meat and rags.

  In the silence, it began to snow.

  “HOLT? HOLT!” I BRUSHED THE SNOWFLAKES FROM HIS CHEEK. My fingers, numb to the bone, came away with blood on them, and there was blood in moonlit red-black streaks on the cold white surface all around. There had been just enough moonlight to light my way down to him. The wind threw snow at us in gritty, stinging fistfuls, but Holt didn't move. I leaned over him, hesitating and fearful, as I would lean over a dog, hit by a car, that might still jump up to snarl and snap. He moaned, a less than human sound.

  “Holt, can you hear me?”

  “Carnegie … help me.”

  His eyelids fluttered closed. One hand clawed at the snow, seeking the comfort of a human touch. I took it, and tried to summon up the lessons from a first-aid class years before. Breathing, bleeding, what else was I supposed to look for? Holt's chest rose and fell with a feeble motion, like waves on an ebbing tide. I searched for a major wound but found none, only dozens of shallow gashes from his plunge down the slope. His left leg was clearly broken, and beyond the help of my empty hands. I thought vaguely about shock, and hypothermia, and cradled his head in my bloody palm.

  As I knelt there on the mountainside, I thought about making love to this man, and sleeping nestled against his back, and the way he held me as if I were something new and precious. Then I thought about Nickie Parry, brutalized and humiliated, and her frantic parents, and Ray Ishigura's tears.


  “Holt,” I said loudly, “listen to me. I'll get you a doctor, but only if you tell me where Nickie is.”

  “Help me!” he croaked.

  “Where's Nickie?”

  His eyes were wide open now, their sea-green bleached to silver in the half-light. “I'll tell you everything, but first get me back to the lodge….”

  He licked his lips. There was calculation in those silvery eyes. Someone I didn't recognize began to speak with my voice, and then to shout.

  “I'm going back to the lodge, all right. And if you tell me where Nickie is, Holt, I'll send the Mountain Rescue people up here to get you. If you don't, I promise you I won't say a word to anyone. Not one word. Nobody knows where you are, and if I don't tell them, then you're going to stay right here all night, and you're going to bleed to death or freeze to death or both, right here on this spot, and they won't even find your fucking corpse!”

  He stared at me, his mouth agape, and when he spoke again he was whimpering. “We didn't hurt Nickie … I wouldn't hurt you. Believe me. Yo u won't be convicted—”

  “Never mind that. Is Nickie still alive?”

  “Yes,” he said fervently, “yes, believe me.”

  “And what happens after what's-his-name, Andreas, gets the ransom?”

  His eyelids drooped. “Andreas … Andreas will let her go.” He looked up again, and I knew that this time he was lying. “Believe me.”

  “Sure, I believe you. But where is she?”

  He groaned again, and his voice choked and dwindled to a thread of sound, hardly louder than the scratch of snowflakes against the rocks. “Cabin … dirt road …”