Dead Giveaway

by Joanne Fluke

  While Rachael rushed through her prescribed dental hygiene program, she thought about the passports again. Now she wished she’d taken the time to open the other suitcases. Were there more passports inside? Or did they contain something even more interesting, like smuggled jewels or contraband drugs? If Clayton was still in the shower when she got through, she’d slip on a robe and run down to the gardener’s shed to check.

  Clayton was waiting for her when she emerged from her bathroom. He was wearing nothing but a towel and it was obvious that he’d been thinking about her. When he switched out the lights and put his arms around her, Rachael decided that the suitcases could definitely wait.

  Betty smiled at her secret friend and took another piece of candy. She was getting very sleepy, but that was all right. Her friend had told her to go to sleep anytime she wanted and he’d even covered her with her favorite blanket. She felt warm and happy, just knowing that he was taking care of her. He was much nicer than Nurse.

  They were watching a movie on forbidden channel five, but it wasn’t very interesting. The actor and the actress were in bed and the man had just switched on the light. He was reaching for a glass of water when Betty’s secret friend began to smile. Perhaps this was a comedy and she’d missed something. She thought she’d nodded off a few minutes ago, but she wasn’t sure. Her head felt as light as the pink fluff from the carnival. What was it called? Cotton candy, those were the words.

  Betty was proud of herself. She’d remembered something. She wished she could tell the man called Jack, but he had gone to the hospital. She’d try to remember to tell him when he came back all about the comedy that wasn’t very funny and the candy cotton and how her secret friend had smiled.

  Clayton woke up to reach for the water glass and poured in the packet of bromo he kept by his side of the bed. Despite Rachael’s warning, he’d eaten some of her hot salsa. His stomach was still on fire and the corn chips had made him terribly thirsty.

  He glanced over at Rachael’s side of the bed and noticed that her water glass was empty. She must have been thirsty, too.

  “Rachael? Do you want me to get you more water?” Clayton waited for a moment, but Rachael was sound asleep. He knew that filling her glass would be the gentlemanly thing to do, but he was so tired, he couldn’t face the thought of walking all the way to the bathroom and back. If Rachael wanted more water in the middle of the night, she’d just have to get it herself. Wasn’t that what women’s lib had been all about?

  He frowned as he settled back against the pillow. The water had a bitter aftertaste. Perhaps the avalanche had loosened some rust in the pipes.

  There was a burning sensation in Clayton’s chest and he wished the bromo would work faster. He was utterly exhausted, and it had nothing to do with the packing they’d done for Johnny or repotting Darby’s Marshall Golds. He was a middle-aged man, in good shape of course, but he’d acted like a randy teenager today. He’d made love to Rachael twice, once before the avalanche and again tonight.

  A smile spread across Clayton’s face as he remembered what they’d done. He considered rolling over, waking Rachael, and doing it again, but he didn’t have the energy. He was so tired that he had no feeling at all in his legs and when he tried to reach out to adjust his covers, he could barely manage to wiggle his finger. His entire body felt numb and there was a horrible taste in his mouth. His last waking thought before the deep night closed in was that they really ought to order bottled water. Just as soon as their phone was working again, he’d call to find out how much it cost.

  Betty was awake again and the television was still on. The movie on the forbidden channel five was still running. She glanced at the chair, but her secret friend was gone. The clock by the side of the bed had the big hand on the six and the little hand halfway between the two and the three. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she knew it was nighttime outside. Her friend had left before the movie was over. Betty reached out to slip a blank disk in the machine. She would record the ending and if he wanted to watch it, she could play it for him. She’d try to remember to tell him the next time he came.

  At last the movie was getting exciting. Another man had appeared in the bedroom. The actor and actress were dead. Betty could tell by the way he wrapped them in blankets that covered their faces. He wasn’t a doctor because he didn’t have a black bag. And if he wasn’t a doctor, he must be playing an undertaker. She remembered that word. The man who took you under was the undertaker. There was another word now, a new modern one. She couldn’t remember it, but that was all right. One word for one man was perfectly adequate.

  Betty watched the screen intently, but she couldn’t quite make out the undertaker’s face in the dim light. He lifted one bundle and carried it out the door. She wasn’t sure how she knew, since there was nothing on the screen to tell her, but she was sure the door led to a garden. Red and yellow and pink roses. Betty remembered them so vividly, she could almost smell their lovely perfume. Someone had grown roses in this garden. Had she seen this movie before?

  There was a way to switch cameras and Betty pushed the proper button. The scene shifted to the garden, where the undertaker was digging a hole. This must be a funeral, but there were no mourners. That was the name for the people who came to watch someone buried. There were no flowers, either, at least not many. The rosebushes looked sad and neglected. Perhaps the woman who’d taken care of them had been in another movie on a different channel.

  The undertaker was very strong. Betty watched him dig until the hole was deep, then roll one blanket-wrapped bundle into the grave and go back inside for the other. Betty winced as he rolled the second body right in on top of the first. There was no casket. That must be why this scene was taking place in the middle of the might. The family was ashamed that they couldn’t afford a proper funeral.

  As soon as he’d finished with the dead people, the undertaker went to the garden building and came back with a package to throw in the hole. It had a flag on the front, something to do with the men who sailed ships and wore gold hoops in their ears. Then he went inside to bring out three suitcases and the type of bag that was designed to fit under seats in an airplane. Betty laughed as she recognized the bag. The blue folders were inside and they were from the movie she’d watched with her secret friend on forbidden channel zero. This movie must be a sequel, like Rocky II.

  The undertaker threw the suitcases into the hole and went back inside to get two parkas and two pairs of boots. These were very strange things to bury. But when the undertaker added two water glasses to the pile in the grave, Betty began to understand. The dead people were playing ancient Egyptians. The pharaohs had buried things for the afterlife in their tombs.

  It took a long time for the undertaker to fill in the grave and level the earth next to the sad rosebushes. At last he was finished and he disappeared from the screen. Betty watched for a long time, but nothing else happened. This movie must be over. Since she was wide-awake now, she switched through the forbidden channels to see what else was playing.

  Channel nine was showing a movie with two people in bed. All the movies this time of night seemed to star people in bed. Betty smiled as she recognized the cowgirl who shared her in-between name. The foreign actor was sleeping next to her and they were nestled together like two spoons in a drawer. Something about the scene made Betty feel happy and she watched for a long time before she tried another channel.

  On eight the doll-lady sat in a living room chair, huddled in a blanket. There were two fuzzy white rabbits wrapped around her feet and she looked as if she’d been crying. She was silent and the rabbits didn’t move a whisker, so Betty turned on the camera in the dollhouse.

  Betty gasped as the camera scanned the room. Pieces from the dolls were scattered all over the floor and it was a terrible mess. They must have shot a disaster movie and she’d missed it. Betty loved disaster movies, and she was very disappointed. She’d have to remember to check this channel again in case they reran it.

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nbsp; The forbidden channels weren’t very interesting tonight. Betty had to switch all the way down to three before she found another movie to watch. This one was a detective show. The young actress was searching through a drawer in a desk. She was looking for something, and she was very careful not to make any noise. Betty watched for several minutes, but the actress never found what she was looking for.

  Forbidden two was Betty’s favorite channel. She liked the animals and she knew some of their names. One was giraffe and another was bear. There was also a big animal with horns and she frowned as she tried to think of what it was called. Moose, that was it. Alces Americanus, and this one had its head stuck right through the wall. She watched it for a long time, but it never moved at all and since she couldn’t seem to figure out how they’d trained it to do that, she switched to channel one. It was more of the same old thing. Two people sleeping. They didn’t make movies the way they used to. Betty couldn’t find any action at all until she pressed the button for forbidden channel zero.

  As soon as she saw the picture on the screen, her face lit up in a smile. She’d finally found something interesting! The actor who’d played the undertaker was pushing the machine on skis across the snow. Betty followed him with the outside camera as he moved it up the steep hill and hid it behind a big pine tree. He stood on top of the hill with a kind of black box for a long time and then he walked back to the garage and came inside.

  Betty felt her eyelids droop. There were no interesting movies this time of night. Perhaps there would be better television tomorrow, she thought, as she clicked off the monitor and went back to sleep.

  The Caretaker was frowning as he hid the compact shortwave radio under the bed in Jack’s apartment. He’d tried to call the Old Man twice, once from the spa right after they’d found the suitcases and again from the top of the hill where he’d hidden the snowmobile. There must have been some sort of atmospheric disturbance because he’d failed to make contact either time.

  Naturally, the Old Man would hit the roof, but this had been an emergency situation. There was no way his soldiers could get through to do the dirty work and they hadn’t done such a great job with Johnny, anyway. Too many loose ends.

  The Caretaker’s mouth tightened into a straight line as he thought about Johnny. No loyalty, that was the problem. The Old Man had taken him out of a two-bit lounge in North Vegas and made him into a star as a favor to his father, a pal from the old country. And when Johnny had blown all his money and begged for another chance, the Old Man had set him up in the candy business. Johnny had known that holding out on the Old Man was a capital offense, but he’d tried it anyway and the Caretaker had caught him red-handed.

  That was the one and only time the Caretaker had wanted to take care of a contract himself. Looking back on it, he knew he could have done a better job. It was definitely time for the Old Man to recruit some new soldiers. Perhaps they ought to contact the guys they’d hired down in New Orleans two years ago. The Marshalls had been a neat piece of work, especially since the police had written it off as a mugging with no suspects. It was unfortunate that they’d been forced to hit Charlotte Marshall, but she’d come a little too close researching her genealogy of the building and the Old Man hadn’t wanted the chain of ownership to be scrutinized. The land where Deer Creek Condos now stood had been in the Old Man’s hands for years. They’d used the old mine tunnels for storage of booze during the prohibition years and then arms and dope and the bodies of the rats who’d crossed the Old Man. Of course, everything had been cleared out when the condos were built, but the Old Man didn’t want anyone sniffing around.

  Lyle Marshall had been the hard luck story of a guy who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’d tried several times to get Charlotte alone, but she’d stuck to her husband like a second skin and there had been no choice but to hit him, too.

  Tonight there hadn’t been time to make any arrangements from the outside, or even to ask the Old Man’s advice. He couldn’t stand by twiddling his thumbs and waiting for orders while Clayton and Rachael told the others about the suitcases. Like it or not, he was on his own up here and he’d been forced to make the decision. The Old Man ought to be grateful that he’d handled the problem so competently. Perhaps it would get him that long-overdue promotion.

  The Caretaker was smiling as he checked the gardening shed to make sure everything was in order, then relocked it. It was a lucky break for him that Darby hadn’t believed in natural gardening and even luckier that she’d stocked up on insecticides before her death. The skull and crossbones on the package of rose dust had given him the method, and the execution had gone off by the numbers. Poison was a quiet, hands-off solution, a way of accomplishing his task with a minimum of personal involvement. Unlike the Old Man’s soldiers, he had never been a violent man and the obvious enjoyment they took from their work had always struck him as the sign of an aberrant personality.

  ELEVEN

  Ellen glanced at the clock on the living room wall. It was past three in the morning and Walker was gone. But where was he? She was beginning to worry.

  The wine had relaxed her, just as Walker had promised, and she’d fallen asleep the minute her head had touched the pillow. Then, almost an hour ago, a nightmare had jolted her from her sleep. Ellen remembered the dream vividly, even though she tried not to dwell on it.

  She was all alone, walking down a path through a graveyard late at night. The moonlight cast dark black shadows on the path. She was wearing her favorite pajamas, the pink flannel ones with white elephants that her mother had given her when she was a child, but the sandals she’d bought last summer were on her feet.

  Her footsteps were loud in the quiet night, a crunching of gravel beneath her feet. Frightened, she glanced behind her to make sure no one was following. She wasn’t certain why she was in this graveyard, but she knew that she had to follow the path, and that it was leading her deeper and deeper among the towering headstones.

  The night breeze was cold and she wrapped her arms around her chest, unsure whether she was shivering from the chill wind or from fear. Then, as she passed a carved marble headstone with angels surrounding a name she couldn’t quite read, the earth below her feet trembled and split apart. A bony hand reached up from the yawning black abyss to fasten around her ankle. As it began to drag her down, Ellen woke up with a scream.

  Of course, she’d known it was a dream, a perfectly natural reaction to everything that had happened today. The avalanche. Being trapped under the workbench. Finding that hand in the pool. She’d switched on the light and gone to the guest room, hoping to find Walker still awake, but he was gone.

  Ellen shivered. The terror of the dream was still with her. Even though she’d turned on every light in the living room, vestiges of terror were difficult to dispel at this time of the night. Familiar objects like the mirror over the fireplace and her denim doll in the corner took on an eerie quality when the darkness closed in and there was nothing but the yellow glare of incandescent bulbs to vanquish it.

  Ellen despised the night. It was the loneliest time and she’d always been lonely, even as a child, set apart at birth, the misfit in a long line of beautiful people. Her mother had wanted a golden-haired doll to dress up and show off to her friends. Instead, she’d ended up with a baby ostrich, too shy to curtsy and sing a song for the grown-ups, too clumsy to dance in patent leather shoes and a frilly dress, and too tall to cuddle on a lap and chuck under the chin. Ellen had been a misfit all her life and she was a misfit here, too. If there had been any doubt in her mind, Johnny had proven it.

  Even though she tried not to think about it, Ellen’s mind turned back to the night, six months ago, when all her dreams had been shattered. And as she remembered everything in detail, it was exactly as if it were happening all over again.

  Johnny arrived at eight with a bottle of champagne to celebrate Vegas Dolls’ new contract with Knock-offs, an upscale clothing chain with over two thousand shops. While Johnny opened t
he wine, Ellen went to get the lovely champagne glasses that had belonged to Aunt Charlotte. They were Waterford crystal and Ellen held her breath every time she washed them.

  Johnny filled both glasses and lifted his in a toast. “You look different tonight, Babe. New dress?”

  “Yes. Vanessa helped me pick it out.” Spots of color appeared in Ellen’s cheeks as Johnny looked at her appraisingly. She knew the dress was perfect, a pale blue designer silk that draped softly over her shoulders and transformed her sharp angles into an oriental mystery of curves. The saleswoman had sighed when she’d taken Ellen’s measurements. Her waist curved in as a woman’s should, but her hips were slim and boyish, and her bustline wasn’t really there at all. The designer had relied on quite a bit of padding.

  “We’re a great team, Ellen.” Johnny touched the rim of his glass to hers and took a sip of champagne. “Getting excited about designing those new punk mannequins?”

  Ellen nodded. Ecstatic was more like it. And just being with Johnny made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. Perhaps she could compete with all those gorgeous showgirls after all, as long as she always dressed like this.

  Johnny led her over to the couch, and draped his arm around her shoulders. Ellen shivered in anticipation and tried not to look impossibly eager. He’d been a perfect gentleman, escorting her to dinner or a show at least once a week and then bringing her back home after a friendly good night kiss. Ellen had heard enough rumors around town to know that the time would come when Johnny would want more than a kiss. Would it happen tonight?

  “Your hair looks different, too.” Johnny reached out to touch it. “I like it this way. I never noticed those gold highlights before.”

  As Ellen opened her mouth, she remembered Vanessa’s advice. “Thank you, Johnny,” she said. She was doing her best to learn what everyone called feminine wiles. There was no need for Johnny to know that she’d treated herself to gold highlights at the most expensive salon in town.