“What dirt road, Holt? Where?”
“Café …”
“What café?” I shook him by the shoulder, desperate not to lose him. The wayward clouds had parted again, and his face was waxen in the sudden clear beams of the moon. “Tell me the name!”
“Trout Pond. Three miles to—”
His eyes rolled back. I could do nothing for him. Holt would have to take his chances, which were still better than Nickie's, and the faster I got going the better everyone's chances would be. Feeling like a grave robber, I fingered each of Holt's pockets until I discovered a smooth snakeskin key case.
“Only one solution,” I said out loud, as I began to trudge uphill through the snow. “I'll take the Alfa.”
By the time I reached the ridge crest, my world had narrowed to the moonlight, the keening wind, and the knives of pain that were stabbing upward through my sodden feet. When at last I stood panting at the crest, hugging myself in my thin, torn dress, the luminous face of my watch read nine forty-five.
Midnight. I sucked at the wintry air, regaining my strength for the downhill journey. Signed, sealed, and delivered at midnight … Andreas will let her go, I didn't believe that for a minute. But I did believe that Andreas was waiting for Holt, and that Holt was supposed to bring me along. Why?
“ To prove me guilty!” I murmured. What a perfect patsy I'd been. Holt had conned me into bringing him to Mount Rainier, conveniently close to the scene of my supposed crime. If Nickie had been kept in isolation all this time, how was she—or anyone else—to know that it wasn't her dear friend Carnegie who'd kidnapped her? Especially if her dear friend was there on the scene when she was released.
But that was beside the point. Andreas was expecting Holt and me tonight, and I had to arrive before the ransom did. I almost laughed, as I plunged down the slope in the moonlight. All this effort, this mad scramble to escape in the night, and in the end I was going to keep the rendezvous that Holt intended for me all along. But like a Cinderella reversed through the looking glass, I had to arrive before midnight.
The meadow was easy going, compared to the woods. By the time I reached the moonshadows of the fir trees, I was falling more than running, swinging from one rough, rasping trunk to the next, barely able to keep upright. Again and again I peered at the greenish glow of my watch face. Ten o'clock, ten-fifteen … I could make out the lights of the lodge, like clouded stars between the trees, always so far away. Ten-twenty … the angle of the slope relented, I ran faster, and at half past ten I was pounding across the parking lot. I came out of the woods near the front entrance with its semicircle drive and its grand, cross-beamed doors. Holt's car was parked here somewhere. As I searched for it I heard music pouring from the lodge along with the lamplight and I realized, with a kind of nightmare logic, that while one bride was dying, another would be dancing….
Someone stepped out from between the cars and grabbed me, a small, wiry man who smelled of cigarettes. I twisted and fought, until I heard him speak.
“Hey, it's me—”
“Aaron!”
“Keep your voice down! Everybody's looking for you; there's this one park ranger who's built like a sumo wrestler. You're in trouble, Wedding Lady.”
I fell against him like a shipwrecked sailor falling to kiss the dry land. It wasn't so bad after all, leaning down a little into an embrace. He was short, but he felt so warm, and so safe—
I pulled back. “Aaron, you have to go inside and get someone!”
“What? Who?” He frowned at me. He wore his ugly tan windbreaker, and he still hadn't shaved. He looked wonderful. “Sweetheart, you're hurt!”
“It doesn't matter, just get someone from the lodge. Not the ranger. Get a bellboy or the desk clerk. Don't tell him about me, just get him out here.”
“But—”
“Aaron, please, just do it.”
John Wayne would have asked for an explanation, but Aaron looked in my eyes, nodded, and loped down the line of cars to the lodge. He was back in two minutes with the evening receptionist, a giggling girl in stretch pants and a ski sweater. The snow had turned to rain, and she carried an umbrella with the Glacier View logo.
“But can't you interview me inside?” she was asking slyly. Then she squeaked in dismay. I must have looked pretty gruesome.
“Just listen to the lady, Charlene,” said Aaron reassuringly.
“There's been an accident, an emergency,” I rapped out. “You've been trained to handle emergencies?”
“Yes, ma'am.” Her eyes were huge.
“All right. There's a long meadow that leads up the ridge behind the lodge. Have you got that?”
“Yes, ma'am. The meadow.”
“ A t the top of the meadow, over the top of the ridge, there's a snowfield with rocks at the bottom. A guest from the lodge fell on the snow, and he's lying injured in the rocks.”
Aaron's head jerked up. “Walker?”
I didn't answer, but took the girl by the shoulders and aimed her toward the front door. “We're going back up there to help him. You go get the rangers and tell them what I just told you. They'll know what to do. Tell them that we're going back up the ridge, so we'll meet them up there. Now, move!”
She ran off without a backward glance. Maybe they'd find Holt in this darkness, and maybe they wouldn't, but at least I'd steered them away from us.
“We're going to help Holt Walker?” Aaron demanded.
I was already walking away, looking frantically for the Alfa Romeo.
“Aaron, how did you get here?”
“I borrowed a friend's station wagon.”
“Too slow. We have to hurry—Here it is!” The convertible's top was up, the doors locked. I pulled out the key case and then dropped it, noticing in an abstracted way that while my mind seemed to be working, I couldn't quite control my hands. Aaron picked up the keys and steered me to the passenger's side, wrapping his windbreaker around me as we went.
“I'll drive, you talk. What's going on?”
I told him, about Holt and Andreas and the Trout Pond Café, while he fumbled with the Alfa's gears. The lodge doors opened and a crowd poured out, but they were intent on their rescue plans and didn't notice us creeping away with our lights out. As he rounded the first bend, out of sight of the lodge, Aaron flicked on the headlights and speeded up. The beams cut a tunnel in the night, flashing past the rocky banks and columns of trees, snaking around the hairpin turns that switchbacked down the mountain. We had miles of highway ahead of us, and then an unfamiliar dirt road. What if we couldn't find the cabin, what if—
“Carnegie, you do understand why Walker needed a scapegoat?” His voice, like Holt's earlier in the day, was raised against the noise of the engine. At least now we were protected from the wind, wrapped in the small dim space under the canvas top.
“So he wouldn't be accused of kidnapping. It's obvious.”
Aaron shook his head. “No, it isn't. If the plan was to release Nickie safely, without her knowing who kidnapped her, there wouldn't be any accusation. She goes home, Douglas doesn't testify, Holt and Andreas get paid off by Guthridge, and nobody calls the police.”
“But then why—”
“I don't think that was the plan, Carnegie. I think they need a scapegoat for murder.”
I sank farther down in my seat and closed my eyes. He was right. The same idea had been hammering at my brain and I'd been trying to shut it out. With Nickie safe, Douglas Parry would do as he was bid. With Nickie dead, Douglas would move heaven and earth to find the woman who had cheated him and then stolen his daughter.
“But why—” My voice faltered, and I tried again. “Why kill her at all?”
His fist thumped softly against the steering wheel. “I don't know. I can't figure that part out.”
“But at least they won't hurt her until they have the money.”
“I hope to God you're right,” he muttered. “You said the ransom is due at midnight? What time is it now?”
“Twelve
minutes to eleven.”
Aaron floored it.
YOU CAN’T DRIVE FROM THE GLACIER VIEW LODGE TO THE Trout Pond Café and Gifts in one hour and twelve minutes. Not in the dark. Not on a twisting, rain-slicked road. Not unless you're Aaron Gold, hunched over the wheel of an Alfa Romeo and swearing softly but continuously at every curve. I braced myself against the bucket seat and held my breath each time the tires bit into a turn, skimmed a few sickening inches in a skid, and then bit again at Aaron's guidance. The glow from the dashboard lit his features from beneath, but it took a moment for me to register that he was smiling.
“You're enjoying this!”
The swearing stopped, but he waited for a straight stretch of road to reply. A wall of rock rose into the darkness on our left as we hurtled downhill. On our right was a gravel shoulder, then treetops and the vast black abyss of Stevens Canyon.
“It's a sweet machine. I used to test-drive them, but not”—the tires squealed as he fishtailed around a litter of fallen rock— “not this fast.”
“You were a test pilot? I mean a test driver?”
“A ctually, I was a cab driver, in Boston, summers and weekends during college. But I used to go to dealerships and pretend I was going to buy a sports car.”
“Oh. The way you kept mooching rides, I wasn't sure you even had a license.”
“No, I just didn't have a car. I keep meaning to buy one, but I've been busy. Yo u know how it is.”
An utterly bizarre conversation, under the circumstances, but what choice did we have? I checked my watch: eleven-thirteen. I spread my fingers, front and back, to the whistling heat vent, and then checked again. Still eleven-thirteen.
“We'll make it,” said Aaron. “Think about something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like what's-her-name.”
“Who?”
“Your other bride, up there at the lodge. Tell me about her. What's she like?”
“Anita,” I said vaguely. “She's … she's nice. She's—oh, for crying out loud, this is stupid! I'm not a child; you don't have to distract me.”
“I was trying to distract myself,” said Aaron. “I'm scared, too, you know.”
“I'm sorry, I just—what's that?”
An urgent wailing, then a whirling blue light that made sapphires of the rain. A state patrol car tore past us up the mountain, and I remembered Eddie's phone call.
“You're aiding and abetting a criminal,” I told Aaron, and explained about the police finding Nickie's pearls in my kitchen.
“I'll turn you in later,” he retorted. “So that's why Holt and Andreas broke in last night, to hide the necklace. But what about the first time, back in June?”
“I think they were setting me up to get fired. Stealing invoices, doctoring bills, whatever they had to do to make me look crooked to Grace and Douglas.”
“Which would give you a grudge and a reason to kidnap Nickie?”
I nodded. “And I blamed it all on Eddie. He'll never forgive me.”
“And of course they didn't use Eddie's copy of your house key,” he went on. “Walker must have taken a mold of your house and office keys both. It doesn't take long.”
Of course. My purse, with my keys in it, had lain in the Parrys’ living room all during the fund-raiser. Right there where I ran into Holt, and he was suddenly so charming to me. And I fell for it.
My chagrin was interrupted by a second siren, an ambulance this time, also speeding up the mountain as we were speeding down. Going for Holt, broken and bleeding in the snow. But what about Nickie? Would she need an ambulance? Would we? Aaron was silent beside me, clenching the steering wheel, and I could sense his thoughts moving parallel to mine. Up that dirt road, at the cabin, Andreas would surely be armed. If our plan failed we might disappear, along with Nickie and the ransom money, and never be heard from until some hunter came across a pile of bones in the woods….
“Anita,” I said loudly, and Aaron started. “Anita and Peter are getting married in the morning.”
Aaron actually laughed. “Tell me all about it. Every detail.”
So I told him all about it, and he egged me on with quips and questions while we raced down Stevens Canyon, shot past the Box Canyon waterfall, rounded the long wide switchback of Backbone Ridge, and finally hit the straightaway of the state highway. The Alfa's engine revved higher, a deer froze and then fled from our headlights, and the glowing hands of my watch hadn't quite clasped together on midnight when we saw the sign: Trout Pond Café and Gifts. The rain drummed on our canvas roof.
“Why are you stopping?” I demanded. “The road must be around back.”
But Aaron wasn't looking for the road. He was looking at me. “Carnegie, you should stay here. Call the cops, tell them what's going on—”
“Now you turn into John Wayne!” I sputtered.
“What?”
“Never mind. I'm going with you.”
“It's too dangerous—”
“Of course it's too dangerous! But they're expecting me and not you, so stop wasting time. I mean it, Aaron. Let's find the damn road and get this over with.”
“All right, but I want to ask you—”
“What?”
“Later. I'll ask you later.”
The dirt road wasn't hard to find but it was a bitch to drive, two weedy ruts twisting up the hillside, trading off bone-jarring washboard with slippery mud. Lightning flickered. One mile clicked off on the odometer. One point five. Point eight. Two miles. The thunder boomed and echoed, moving into the distance, and the rain slackened, hammered down again in one final burst, and then ceased altogether.
“He said three miles,” I muttered, as we rounded another tight curve. “But three miles to the cabin, or to a junction, or what? I should have stayed with him and tried to find out. Maybe—”
“Hang on!” said Aaron, and stood on the brakes.
Pinned in our headlights like another frightened deer was a silver SUV, its front wheels lodged in a ditch, one rear wheel spinning, the other one erupted into shreds. The driver, heading downhill, had kept control during the blowout, and wisely skidded nose-first into the ditch rather than risk the turn. A door swung open and the driver climbed out, sending up spurts of mud as he trotted toward us. A large man, with steel-rimmed glasses and a trim black beard.
“Valker!” he called. “Vere have you been?”
I think I shouted, but Aaron had already put the Alfa in gear. As it lurched forward, Andreas pulled something from his jacket. Aaron hauled at the steering wheel, there was a cry and a thud, and then we were past the SUV and climbing the next stretch of road at a dangerous speed. I wondered, as we passed, if Andreas had heard the same sounds when he aimed his stolen car at Crazy Mary.
“I had to do it,” Aaron said hoarsely. He yanked at the steering wheel as if he wanted to uproot it. The car bounced in and out of ruts, the transmission whining, as he drove faster and faster still. “I had to do it, he had a gun, I had to—”
“Aaron. Aaron! Stop the car.”
He stopped, and I put my hand over his on the gearshift. We were both shaking. We'd come two and nine tenths miles from the café.
“I had to do it. I'm sure he had a gun.”
“Of course he did,” I said. “If you hadn't hit him we'd both be—”
“Don't say it.” Aaron rubbed at his face with both hands, and when he took them away his voice was almost normal. “All right. I'm all right. Sorry.”
“For keeping me from being shot? I forgive you.”
He produced a smile. “Well, now we have to find the cabin.”
“I think we found it,” I said. “Look.”
Aaron cut the headlights and the engine. For a single, black-velvet moment the silence and darkness seemed absolute. Then we heard water dripping from the trees all around us, and the gurgle of a creek winding invisibly through the underbrush. As our eyes adjusted we could see, down the slope to our right, a closed door and a shuttered window outlined in splinter
s of lamplight.
We waited, sure that anyone inside the cabin would have heard our engine. A narrow driveway ran down the slope from our road but there was no other car in sight. We left the Alfa and picked our way down the edge of the drive, keeping to the cushioning earth and away from the telltale gravel, ready at any moment to slip deeper into the trees. I was still wearing Aaron's windbreaker, and the nylon rustle of the sleeves as I walked seemed fearfully loud. I hugged my arms to me and held my breath as we drew closer.
Still no sign of life. I could just make out the squat wooden cabin, its boxy shape broken by a propane tank on one side wall and a chimney pipe rising from the shallow tilt of the tin roof. Two or three rooms at most, but big enough to make a prison. Or a grave. We reached the enormous trunk of a cedar tree, our last cover before the muddy clearing by the front door. Aaron halted me with a touch on my shoulder.
“Wait here,” he whispered. “I'll try to get a look through the edge of the window. If anything happens, you run for the car.”
“But—”
“Promise me, Wedding Lady.”
I sighed. “Promise.”
I've never broken a promise faster than that one. Aaron stepped into the clearing, placing each foot carefully, silently. But he didn't get far. Someone leaped out from the other side of the cedar trunk, tackling Aaron between the shoulder blades and slamming him to the ground. Instead of running I stumbled forward, straining to see, while the two figures grappled and rolled like a single huge animal across the clearing toward the cabin. They crashed against the door and then lurched back into the yard, gasping and grunting. The door swung wide but no one emerged.
What did emerge was a flood of white light from a camping lantern, blinding me briefly and throwing up grotesque shadows that leaped and writhed among the trees. Then I saw Aaron's face, contorted almost past recognition with blood and fury as he tried to regain his feet and was knocked down, again and then again. His attacker's back was to me, but his white-blond hair and the overmuscled shoulders straining against his polo shirt were familiar enough.
Aaron, smaller and slighter and taken by surprise, was no match for his attacker. Theo hauled Aaron up by his shirt front and drew back his fist to strike a final blow. I jumped for his upraised arm, but he backhanded me with a casual swat that sent me spread-eagled against the cabin wall, knocking the wind from my lungs and snapping my skull against the splintery wood. I stayed conscious, but just barely. Aaron seized the chance to twist out of Theo's grip and took a pace backward, gasping, raising his fists unsteadily. Theo stood very still.
Veiled Threats Page 24