I never heard the shot. It must have sounded just as I hit my head, for there was utter silence as my vision cleared and the two men came into focus in the light spilling from the cabin door. Then Aaron coughed and staggered, gore spreading down his face and throat from his nose and a gash above one eye. Theo, his back still turned, lifted his head toward the driveway. I stared in groggy fascination as he peered into the darkness, his expression puzzled at first, then sorrowful and almost childlike as he sank to his knees. He swayed, and dropped facedown without even lifting a hand to break his fall.
And still I didn't understand what had happened, until I saw the blood. It seeped out from beneath Theo's chest, an ink black pool spreading to fill the angle between his left arm and his side. The graveled surface where he lay sloped a bit, and the blood swelled and then flowed in a sudden snaking trickle the length of his arm, to puddle around his still, curled fingers.
I wrenched my gaze away to look across him at Aaron. He had one wrist pressed to his face, trying to staunch the nosebleed with the cuff of his shirt. But he too was peering up the driveway, as out of the shadows came a small neat figure in black slacks and a dark suede jacket, the light flashing off her cornsilk hair.
Grace Parry, with a pistol in her hand.
Relief flowed through me like warm brandy. Grace knew about Theo, then, or at least had guessed at his betrayal of her husband. She hadn't dropped off the ransom and gone meekly home, leaving her stepdaughter to be murdered. I stepped around Theo's body, my eyes averted, and crossed the yard toward Aaron, stammering as I went.
“Thank God you followed him, Grace. Nickie's inside, at least we think she is, we think she's safe. Aaron, are you all right? Let's go in and—”
“Stop it!” Grace snapped, raising the pistol. “Stop right there.”
“You don't understand,” I said impatiently. Her suspicion was understandable, but I was freezing cold and desperate to find Nickie. “We came to rescue her—we didn't kidnap her! Theo and Andreas, he's the other one, they were working for Holt Walker. They planted Nickie's pearls at my houseboat, to make me look guilty. I'll explain it all later.”
“That won't be necessary,” said Grace. And she pointed the gun at me. “I know all about it.”
ONCE, ON A HIKING TRAIL IN THE NORTH CASCADES, I CAME face-to-face with a snarling bear. I'd seen bears before, on television and in zoos, so of course I recognized it. What I failed to recognize, for one eternal moment of paralyzing shock, was that I couldn't switch off the drama, that there was no cage, that in this reality the animal was the center of the universe and I might very soon cease to exist. Even after the bear had grumbled off into the bushes, I couldn't believe what I had seen.
I looked at Grace Parry with the same sense of disbelief. Theo had been alive, and now he was dead, and the tiny machine in Grace's hand, so familiar to every American from the thousands of make-believe gunfights that we watch, was now the center of the universe. If she moved her finger, just one tiny movement, Aaron or I or both of us would no longer exist. This could not be reality, but it was.
“I thought—” I began, and had to start again. “I thought Keith Guthridge—”
“I know you thought that,” said Grace. “So did Douglas, conveniently enough.”
“Two scapegoats,” I said slowly, as the pieces fell into place. Suddenly it made sense. First she had directed suspicion at Guthridge, because Douglas Parry would take an ultimatum from him seriously, and not call the police. And because Guthridge really was pressuring Douglas about the King County Savings investigation, with threatening letters and phone calls. Then she zeroed in on me, because I was so much easier to maneuver, and incriminate, than a well-guarded man like Keith Guthridge. “But why are you doing this at all? Yo u have money—”
Aaron interrupted me, his voice thick and his words bunching up between gulps for air. “She's been swindling her … her clients, but the stock market went against her. Now she's got to pay up … to cover her tracks. That's what the ransom is for…. She can't get it from Parry directly. He'd divorce her.”
Grace cocked her head and narrowed her mismatched eyes at him. “It's the little reporter, isn't it? So you've been working up an exposé on me as well as on my darling husband?”
“Aaron?” I said, astonished. “You knew it was her all along?”
He shook his head and winced at the movement, but his voice had steadied. “I've been turning up rumors about her investment consulting, about elderly windows who don't understand where their money went. And this prenuptial agreement with Parry that keeps her on such a short leash. But I thought it was just a side issue to King County Savings. I didn't know she was linked to Walker.”
“Linked,” said Grace thoughtfully. “What an interesting word. Yes, Holt and I have been ‘linked’ since he graduated from law school. The prettiest boy in the class.”
“Chicago,” I said, half to myself. “Lily said he worked in Chicago.”
She looked at me with contempt. “The light dawns. Too bad you didn't figure that out before you fell for him. It's been very entertaining to hear about. Where is he, by the way?”
But the light was still dawning. “Holt wasn't supposed to sleep with me, was he? Yo u told him just to romance me a little, and find out if I'd seen Andreas near the rose garden, or if I really believed Theo's story that I'd fallen instead of being attacked. You didn't like it when you found out we were lovers.”
Her laughter sounded forced. “Lovers! He likes his sex a lot rougher than you can manage. Now where is he?”
“Was that why you fired me, and made me look like a cheat, because Holt cared about me? Holt didn't fake those invoices, you did—that's why Holt was angry about it! Yo u told him I was only there to divert suspicion, that I'd be found innocent in the end, but then you tried to ruin my business just for spite, and you had Andreas kill Mary—”
“Where is he?”
“He's under arrest by now,” said Aaron sternly, and I knew he was warning me to hold myself together. “He's hurt, he had an accident up on the mountain, but we sent the police after him. And he'll send them after you.”
That shook her, but the gun never wavered. She licked her lips. “Holt won't talk. He knows I'll take care of him as long as he follows instructions.”
“Just like you took care of Theo,” I said.
I thought that would rattle her further, but she just glanced at the body with mild distaste, the way you'd look at a dead bird on your lawn. The cabin door creaked a little in the rising breeze. “He was losing his nerve. He would have given us away to Douglas in the end.”
“I thought he was so loyal to Douglas,” I said wonderingly. “I thought he was fond of Nickie.”
“Oh, he was. Quite the big brother. But he was on parole for assault and drug-dealing, and I had more than enough information tucked away to send him back to prison.” She laughed a little, quite naturally this time. “You know the funny thing about big, strong Theo? He had claustrophobia. He would have done anything to stay out of a cell.”
“Even kill Nickie?” Aaron demanded. “Or did you tell him the same story you told Walker, that she wouldn't be hurt?”
Grace ignored him. She straightened her shoulders, information assimilated, plans revised. “You, Gold, drag him into the cabin.”
Aaron said something odd. He said “No.”
She blinked. “Do you think I'm joking? I said get him inside!”
Aaron shook his head, slowly this time. “You're setting me up, aren't you, Mrs. Parry? First the necklace at Carnegie's houseboat, then me with Theo's blood all over me. The police will find us here, the kidnappers with their victim and the corpse of the heroic chauffeur. Why should I help you frame me?”
“Do what I say or I'll shoot!”
But Aaron kept shaking his head, and I could see that the longer he stalled, the more uncertain Grace was becoming. He moved slightly as he spoke, at an angle away from Theo's body, deliberately drawing her attention away fro
m me. His lamplit shadow crept across the trees and disappeared in the darkness beyond the cabin. Grace hesitated, and listened.
“I don't think you want all three of us shot with the same gun, do you, Mrs. Parry?” Aaron continued, his voice turning snide. “How's that going to look? Pretty bad, I promise you that. You'd need another patsy who supposedly fired the gun, but Andreas is dead in a ditch, and your boyfriend Walker is telling the cops about you right this minute, no matter what he promised. You've got to do the dirty work yourself, and then what's going to happen when the State Patrol picks you up with blood all over your nice clean clothes?”
“Andreas isn't dead,” she blurted out. “He's going to— never mind, just be quiet!”
But Aaron was getting to her, piling one unwelcome fact upon the next. He was also reminding me of my promise to escape to the car.
“You're running out of time, you know.” Another step, and the words poured relentlessly from his blood-smeared mouth. “You're supposed to be somewhere else ‘delivering’ the ransom, aren't you? Then what, Mrs. Parry? Yo u gonna go home and be satisfied with the two million, or is that just a down payment? Is your husband by any chance going to have another heart attack, a fatal one? First your stepdaughter, then your husband. Pretty suspicious, especially if Walker points the finger at you first.”
“Shut up!” The gun was aimed square at Aaron now. She'd almost forgotten about me. The wind had grown stronger, and now both their shadows were lost against the backdrop of tossing trees. If Aaron ran in one direction and I ran in the other, if we could only reach the trees …
“You were desperate to get rid of Nickie before her wedding,” he continued, “so that Ray couldn't inherit. At first you were just going to kill her, but after the plan with the Mustang didn't work you decided to get some cash up front first, with a ransom. But you knew all along that Nickie was never coming back. Jesus, what kind of woman could—run!”
And I started to, I really did. But like Lot's wife I looked back, arrested by the crack of the gun going off. Aaron had dodged to one side as he shouted, so Grace's first shot missed, but now as he sprinted for the woods he was moving much too slowly, undone by his fight with Theo. By creating a chance for me, he was giving Grace a clear shot at his back. She lifted the pistol and steadied it with both hands. I scooped up a handful of rough gravel and flung it at Grace, trying to spoil her aim before I ran. I nearly succeeded. A good-sized pebble bounced off her elbow and her hands jerked, but the pistol spat again and at the far edge of the clearing Aaron cried out and fell into the darkness.
Horrified, I watched him fall, but Grace didn't. She just whirled around and pointed the gun at me. No one would spoil her aim this time, and we both knew it.
“Inside,” she said.
I went inside, across the clearing and over the cement doorstep. She followed a few careful paces behind, but I had no fight left in me. The most I could do was listen, for a rustle of movement or a single footstep that would tell me Aaron was still alive, that he had faked being hit. But there was only the windy thrashing of evergreen branches, and even that was muted as Grace shut the door.
The cabin stank. The air in the front room was thick with the smells of stale food and unwashed dishes, and the sickeningly familiar scent of clove cigarettes. There was something else, too, faint but acrid: the odor of an open latrine. I looked around. To my right was a card table with a single chair and the lantern, casting its harsh yellow light, and beyond that a wooden counter where a camp stove and a plastic basin made a kitchen of sorts. A trash heap in one corner seemed to be chiefly beer bottles and tuna fish cans. To my left, an ancient propane heater breathed out warmth from beyond a once-green corduroy couch. The single window was shuttered tight, and one of the two interior doors was open, revealing another shuttered window, an unmade bed and a dusty floor scattered with cigarette butts.
The second door was shut and locked, with a big new brass deadbolt fixed solidly in the wood on the right-hand side above the doorknob. Above the deadbolt, too far above for an arm to reach down and unlock it, was a small sawed-out hatchway set with three steel bars. The latrine smell came from that hatchway. I began to cry. For Nickie, or perhaps for myself.
“Take off the jacket,” said Grace. “Drop it on the floor.”
I obeyed with exaggerated care. Grace was at the breaking point, I could feel it, and if I startled her now I might as well pull the trigger myself.
“Open the door,” she said. “Open it and go in.”
Her voice was hollow, haunted, and when I stole a look at her she didn't meet my eyes. She just stood there aiming the gun, her gaze fixed on my chest. I understood suddenly that she had never been in this room before, that the fetid air and the bolted door were just as horrible to her as they were to me. It was one thing to instruct Andreas to kill a dog or imprison a girl. It was something else to see the results. She had killed Theo without a qualm, but that was a thrill. This was disgusting.
I stepped to the door. The lock was new and stiff, and I had to strain my fingers against the lever to turn it all the way through its half-circle course. The door swung inward, then Grace shoved me in the small of the back and shot the bolt behind me as I stumbled inside.
“Oh, Nickie.”
She was lying unconscious on a cot in the tiny window-less room. There was no lantern in here, but a striped square of light from the front room came through the hatchway, and I could see that she was still wearing her Edwardian gown. It was filthy and torn, a mockery of festive elegance, and her dark hair, cut crudely short, was matted and greasy. But she was alive. Thinner and more sallow, but alive. I sat beside her and took her hand, touched her face. Her breathing was slow and uneven.
“Nickie! Nickie, can you hear me? Wake up, honey, come on, wake up.” I glanced around as I pleaded, hoping for a glass of water. There was nothing, just the cot and an empty bucket set down in the corner just a few feet away. This had been Nickie's whole world for the last seven days, the last room she would ever see.
I flew to the hatchway and wrenched at the slick, unyielding metal of the bars. “Goddamn you, Grace, look in here and see what they've done to your daughter!”
The opening was small, but by craning my neck I could see most of the front room. Grace was seated on the couch with her back to me, concentrating on something in her lap. I heard a clicking sound, and my heart clenched tight. She was reloading the gun. She slipped it into her jacket, then reached into a capacious inner pocket and withdrew a small tool of some kind and a bulky plastic bag.
“Grace!” Her head came up then, but still she didn't meet my eyes. “Grace, listen to me. Yo u don't really want to hurt Nickie, do you? You have the money; that's all you need. Yo u can take it and get away.”
She stood up, her perfect hair still shining, her stylish clothes unmussed, her face as set and rigid as a mannequin's. Shooting Theo had been a split-second decision, a sudden opportunity to rid herself of a dangerously unreliable underling. What she had to do now was much harder. She had to kill someone who loved her, and do it in very cold blood indeed. I tried for all I was worth to make it harder yet.
“Grace, please, she's your daughter. She loves you, you know. She—she admires you, she told me so. You have the money; just keep it and go. Yo u don't want this on your conscience, Grace, do you? Do you?” I tried to speak urgently but calmly, anything to slow her down, make her think. Or feel. And all the while I was wondering if she'd come close enough to the hatchway for me to grab at the gun, wondering if I'd have the guts to try.
Grace didn't come anywhere near the door. With slow, mechanical movements, she pulled on a pair of thin latex gloves and emptied the plastic bag onto the card table. A distinctive gold fountain pen rolled out, and I shut my eyes as I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising. It was my pen, a gift from Eddie that I hadn't been able to find recently … stolen by Andreas, of course. I looked again, to see Grace arranging the other things on the table. A Greek phrasebook that I'd
bought once in a fit of optimism and then forgotten about, forgotten so thoroughly that I hadn't noticed it was missing from the houseboat. Some cash, a passport, and a narrow, colorful folder that could only be an airplane ticket. To Athens, no doubt, and in my name.
“This isn't going to work,” I told her, wishing I could believe it. “You can't just shoot all of us. The police will never believe it! They'll keep investigating, and sooner or later they'll get back to you, even if Holt doesn't tell them. Grace, listen.”
Not a flicker of response. Satisfied with the table, Grace picked up Aaron's windbreaker from where I'd dropped it and took it into the bedroom, planting yet more evidence against us. Then she came out and walked carefully around the front room, double-checking the few objects Andreas had left behind. Finally, she went to the heater and turned it off. The wind outside seemed louder now, as the heater's shushing noise died away. Grace knelt on the floor by its base, where a length of jointed copper tubing came through the wall, feeding in propane from the tank outside. She was almost out of my line of vision. I pressed my left cheek hard against the edge of the hatchway and stood on tiptoe. Grace's shoulder and her shining hair hid the tool in her hands from my sight, but she was moving it somehow against the copper tube. Then she stood up. I thought I could hear, in the pauses between gusts of wind, the malicious little hiss of escaping gas.
Without a word, without even a glance at me, Grace Parry picked up a flashlight, turned out the lantern, and left the cabin. She couldn't lock the front door, which had been damaged in the fight, but she closed it firmly behind her, leaving me and her stepdaughter in the dark.
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