Blue Sage (Anne Stuart's Greatest Hits Book 3)

by Anne Stuart

  Lonnie smiled sweetly. “You know those plastic flowers and wreaths people use to decorate cemeteries? Davidson’s Market does a big business in them right before Memorial Day. Well, every single bit of fake flowers was taken from the graves and piled on your daddy’s corner. It looks like the gaudiest funeral this side of Salt Lake City. I imagine it’s the first time anyone’s ever put anything on your father’s grave. Apart from spit.”

  He could see the hostility now, just dancing in the back of Lonnie’s pale eyes. “Well, then,” Tanner drawled with just the right note of insolence, “I guess I owe someone a debt of gratitude now, don’t I?”

  Lonnie nodded, accepting the open warfare. “I wouldn’t be in any hurry to repay that debt if I were you,” he said. “People are a mite upset right now. They’re doing a good business in rope down at the hardware store. Heaven knows, there’s more than enough plastic flowers to go around.”

  Tanner looked down at Lonnie’s feet again. The running shoes were so clean they might have been freshly washed. They looked damp, but the streets of Morey’s Falls were still wet from last night’s downpour. While Tanner would have liked nothing more than to have pinned the latest occurrence on the man in front of him, he had no reason to. And Lonnie’s history of cowardice and ineptitude didn’t make him a likely possibility.

  He smiled then, and Lonnie took a nervous step backward. “I think the flowers will keep,” Tanner said softly. “Nice seeing you, Lonnie.”

  Ellie’s hands were empty when she finally reappeared from the grocery store. Her limp was more pronounced, and the sunlight had gone from her eyes. She slid into the driver’s seat without a word and started the engine, backing into the empty street with far more concentration than the simple act required.

  “I gather we’ve got more trouble,” he said, watching as she drove blindly out of town.

  She glanced at him, startled. “How’d you know?”

  “For one thing, you’re acting like you’ve seen a ghost. You went in to get some groceries, you came out a long time later without your purse.”

  “Damn.”

  “Apart from that,” Tanner continued, “I had a little visit from Lonnie Olafson while I was waiting for you.”

  “Double damn.”

  “Indeed. He says the townspeople are buying rope.”

  She cast him a quick, worried glance. “He’s probably lying. The only one who’s a little…irrational on occasion is Pete Forrester.”

  “Pete’s Fireside Cafe,” Tanner supplied.

  “Exactly. But while people like him and feel sorry for him, they’re not about to go out and form a lynch mob on his say-so.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he said. “You want to tell me where we’re going at sixty-seven miles an hour?”

  She looked startled, immediately slowing her pace. “I don’t know. I just wanted to get away.”

  So did he, damn it. But he couldn’t. Not yet. “I think the best place for you is your house,” he said after a moment. “You haven’t had anything to eat yet, you’re still looking tired, and driving around with me is asking for trouble. We’ll drive back to your house, I’ll check the place out and make sure it’s safe, and then I’ll leave you to have a nap.”

  “Where will you go?” she asked in a forlorn little voice, already slowing to turn the car around.

  “I want to go talk to Doc.”

  “You think he’ll have some idea who might be doing this?” Ellie questioned, and for a moment he wanted to kiss her. Not for an instant had she suspected that he might be the one who was doing these things. Or if she had, she’d clearly dismissed that suspicion the moment she’d had it.

  “He’ll probably have as good an idea as anyone. He’s just about everyone’s doctor around here, isn’t he? He should know who’s depressed, who’s been acting weird, who’d be capable of going off the deep end.”

  “Maybe,” she said, but the doubt was clear in her voice.

  “You don’t think he’d know?”

  “Well, people don’t, do they?” she countered. “Everyone thought Charles Tanner was just a little bit eccentric. When you read about other mass murderers you hear that they appeared perfectly normal. There just doesn’t seem to be a way to tell.”

  “There will be this time,” he said grimly.

  “You think there’ll be a ‘this time’?” she asked, her voice raw. “You think someone’s going to get a gun and do what Charles Tanner did?”

  He could hear the faint trace of panic in her voice. “I don’t know.” He wished he could comfort her, soothe her, but he didn’t want to lie. “All I know is the only way to be safe is to be careful.”

  She shivered in the hot June sunshine. “It can’t happen twice,” she said. “It just can’t.”

  He only wished he could be as certain.

  * * * * *

  The house felt cold and dark and empty without him but Ellie knew that it only seemed that way to her. It was unseasonably warm outside, in the eighties, and that heat penetrated even the sullen reaches of the Judge’s house. Bright sunlight poured in every available window, flooding the usually dark rooms, and the house wasn’t empty. There were ghosts all around her.

  He’d bullied her into eating some soup. She hadn’t wanted to, but he’d ignored her, heating the Campbell’s Turkey Noodle on the old gas range and standing over her until she finished it. She found herself enjoying the soup, enjoying him. No one had ever looked after her, harangued her into doing something that was good for her, prodded and pushed and browbeaten her into taking care of herself.

  She’d finally relaxed when he’d disappeared outside, only to come back a few minutes later with his handful of shredded cigarette butts and his eyes opaque.

  “These were outside your bathroom window,” he announced, dropping them on the scrubbed wood table in front of her. “Do you have any idea whose they are?”

  She had stared at them as if they were dehydrated cobras, waiting to come to life and strike. “Outside my bathroom?” she echoed, aghast.

  “I’m sure he would have preferred your bedroom,” Tanner said, offering cold comfort. “But you sleep on the second floor, don’t you?”

  She’d been hoping to show him her second-floor bedroom. Looking at the shredded paper in front of her, she suddenly lost her appetite for a romantic interlude. “Yes,” she said dully. She poked at the stuff. It was in varying degrees of decomposition. Clearly her watcher had spent more than one night peering in her bathroom window. She looked up into Tanner’s expressionless face. “Didn’t you find one of these at the base of the memorial?”

  “And outside my cabin. Whoever it was was there last night, while you slept.”

  “Weren’t you sleeping?”

  “Not all the time.” He seemed to hesitate. “Those cigarette butts are crumpled just the way my father used to crumple them.”

  She fought back the frisson of horror that swept down her backbone. “How do you know that?”

  “Doc mentioned it when he saw me do the same thing. It’s not uncommon. People are taught it in the army. People do it in the wilderness. It’s so they don’t leave a trace. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been looking for it.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t you? No, of course it wasn’t.” She answered the question the moment she asked it. She answered it too late.

  Tanner was looking at her strangely, the warmth gone from his eyes. “I’m not sure of anything,” he said. “Or anyone.” He turned and headed for the back door.

  “Take the car,” she offered, knowing right then he wasn’t going to take anything from her.

  “Lock your doors,” he said in response, and closed the kitchen door quietly behind him.

  She got up and watched him leave. He skirted the Buick parked in her driveway, heading north toward Doc’s end of town. The Barlow house was only a mile away; it wouldn’t take Tanner more than twenty minutes to walk there, if that. As long as no one pulled up beside him, as long as Pete Forr
ester kept his distance.

  She reached out to open the door, to follow him, then stopped. He wouldn’t thank her. She’d already been less than tactful, and right now he needed some fresh air and time alone. She’d do as he said, she’d go upstairs and take a shower and a nap. By the time she woke up he’d be back, maybe with information, at least in a better mood, and the two of them could figure out what to do.

  One thing she wasn’t going to do was lock her door. It would be giving in to cowardice and terrorism, and once she started, she doubted she could stop. It had taken everything she had in her to learn to walk without peering over her shoulder, listening for the sound of an M-l being readied, looking for snipers in every flowering bush and tree. But she’d triumphed, and she wasn’t going to let anyone drive her back into paranoia.

  Another thing she was never going to do again was use the downstairs bathroom. She didn’t have that much time left in this gloomy old house. For the days remaining she could just climb the extra flight of stairs to the second-floor bathroom. Her knee could use the exercise.

  In the meantime, for no reason whatsoever, she was going to change the sheets on the big double bed upstairs, even though she’d changed them two days earlier, and see if she could find that pretty eyelet and cotton nightgown Maude had given her. And maybe Tanner would return in a better mood.

  * * * * *

  “Son,” Doc said wearily, “I just don’t know.”

  They were sitting out on his back porch, each with a cold bottle of beer, staring out into the heat-soaked landscape that stretched in a flat plain up to the foothills. Wildflowers dotted the thick grasses, and for a moment Tanner remembered that hidden meadow up in the mountains, and a woman riding bareback in the hot summer sun. He wished to God he’d never come down that mountain.

  “What about Pete Forrester? It sounds like he’s not completely sane,” Tanner said, taking a deep gulp of the Coors.

  “Oh, Pete’s sane all right. He’s just violent and bitter. The one thing he wouldn’t do is sneak around. He might try to force a shoot-out on the main street, or get a crowd riled up enough for a lynching, but he wouldn’t go peering in windows and shooting animals. Neither would most of the people I know, people who took the massacre particularly hard.”

  “What about someone like Lonnie?”

  Doc shook his head. “I’d find that hard to believe. A boy like that, who’s never had the gumption to do more than sit in his father’s newspaper office, would hardly be the type to start terrorizing everybody. Besides, why now?”

  Tanner set his beer down. “What about you?”

  He had to give Doc credit—he took it well. He just turned and fastened those world-weary eyes on him. “Now why would I want to do a thing like that? These people are my friends and neighbors. I brought a goodly number of them into the world. Why would I want to hurt them?”

  “I don’t think these things are directed at the townspeople. They just started a couple of days ago, the moment I got into town. I think they’re directed at me.”

  “Your ego’s not hurting you much, is it?” Doc inquired kindly. “Must be kinda hard, carrying something that big around with you. What do you think I have against you?”

  “Ellie.”

  The name hung between them like a tangible thing. A dozen emotions swept over Doc’s face; anger, denial, embarrassment and eventually a reluctant resignation. “You see too damned much, Tanner,” he said finally. “Does she know?”

  “I don’t think she has any idea.”

  He sighed, draining his beer. “Keep it that way, will you, son? It’s just an old man’s foolishness. She’s my daughter’s best friend, and she thinks of me as the sort of father she never had. I’d hate for anything to hurt that.”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  “Thanks. And trust me, Tanner. There’s a part of me that’s jealous as hell of you, but there’s another part of me that’s grateful.”

  “Grateful?”

  “Ellie’s a fine woman. She’s wasted here, wasted in a town where people can’t stop looking backward. She needs someone like you to shake her up, get her out of here.”

  “I think you’re jumping to a lot of conclusions.”

  “Maybe I am,” Doc said. “Maybe that’s my right. All I know is, you’re good for her. And I wouldn’t do anything to interfere with that, no matter how jealous I am.”

  Tanner leaned back in the chair, reaching for a cigarette, then thinking better of it. If he had one, Doc would want one, and he’d already started taking part in Ginger and Ellie’s conspiracy to keep Doc’s blood pressure down. “If it’s not Pete or Lonnie or you,” he said, “who is it? Are you sure my father died that day?”

  A spasm of pain crossed the older man’s face. “I’m sure. I signed the death certificate.”

  “You signed a lot of death certificates that day,” Tanner said brutally. “You saw a lot of death. Are you absolutely certain?”

  Doc reached over, took the cigarettes out of Tanner’s breast pocket, and helped himself. “I told you, I’m certain. And I’ll tell you something else, something I’ve never told a living soul. You’re the only one who might understand. When I examined your father he had the strangest look on his face. For twenty years he’d been plagued by misery and despair, and for the first time since the war he looked almost happy. It wasn’t because he’d killed sixteen innocent people, either. It was because he was finally at rest.”

  Tanner took the pack back and lit Doc’s cigarette and his own. He noticed absently that his hands were shaking. “All right,” he said. “I believe you. He’s really dead. That leaves one other possibility.”

  Doc blew out a long, pleasurable stream of smoke. “Who?”

  Tanner grimaced. “Me.”

  * * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  * * *

  Ellie knew she’d been a fool to lend her neighbor the car. Mrs. Martinez would have been willing to wait until her teenage son came home—Ellie didn’t have to strand herself without transportation just to prove she was still a good person. She didn’t have a thing to eat in the house, and Tanner would be hungry when he finally returned. She could always make an omelet, but Tanner didn’t strike her as the sort of man who’d be content with an omelet.

  The market was only a few blocks away. She seldom walked there. While the distance wasn’t bad, carrying food back put too uncomfortable a strain on her leg. She preferred her walking to be recreational and therapeutic, rather than practical.

  Tonight she might have no choice. It was almost five. The heat had scarcely abated, and the soft breeze blowing through the open windows of the old house stirred up memories and longings that were better left buried.

  Of course, there was no guarantee that Tanner would be back that night. With Tanner there were no guarantees whatsoever, as she kept reminding herself. That lack of a safety net was beginning to matter less and less.

  She moved to the tall bank of cupboards that lined the back wall, staring into the uninspiring depths. Maybe the two-year-old box of Bisquick might provide something edible. She was busy perusing the back of the package when she heard the car drive up. Mrs. Martinez was back sooner than she’d expected. There might just be time to get to Davidson’s Market.

  It wasn’t Mrs. Martinez’s squat bulk on her back porch, nor the Buick in her driveway. It was Ginger Barlow, wearing too much makeup, too much perfume, with a defiant glitter in her pale-blue eyes. For an odd, irrational moment Ellie wanted to slam the door in her face, lock out whatever unpleasantness Ginger seemed determined to bring in. But of course she didn’t. Saint Ellie, she mocked herself, holding the door open for her friend.

  “Has Tanner got your car again?” Ginger asked abruptly, in lieu of a greeting.

  All Ellie’s misgivings were proving true. “Mrs. Martinez borrowed it,” she said gently. “You know the trouble she has with her old Vega…”

  “I’m not here to talk about Mrs. Martinez,” Ginger said, setting her am
ple hips down on a kitchen chair and fixing Ellie with a determined gaze.

  Ellie sighed. “I didn’t think you were. I don’t suppose it’ll do any good to tell you I don’t want to discuss it?”

  “No good at all.”

  “In that case, can I get you some coffee?”

  “All I want,” said Ginger sternly, “is your undivided attention. Sit down, Ellie, and I’ll tell you a few things you need to know about the man you’ve been spending all this time with.”

  And with a sense of deep foreboding, Ellie sat down to listen.

  * * * * *

  “Don’t be crazy, son,” Doc said. “Who’d know better than you whether or not you were out killing animals and peering in people’s windows?”

  “It just struck me,” he said slowly. “My father was crazy—you certainly can’t argue that.”

  “I suppose not,” Doc said reluctantly.

  “And I’m his son. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt about that, either. So what if I inherited his craziness? What if I’m going out at night, doing things and just not remembering? Maybe my father didn’t remember the things he did, maybe he just thought he was sleeping. Maybe…”

  “These are crazy fantasies. You didn’t strike me as the neurotic type.”

  “I come by it honestly.”

  “The hell you do,” Doc exploded. “Your daddy was crazy, and I don’t deny it. But it wasn’t hereditary, it wasn’t inbred, it wasn’t anything more than a sensitive man reacting to impossible circumstances. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to kill seventeen people, even in a war, and then live with the consequences, you might go a little crazy yourself. Then again, you might not. I’d be willing to bet you wouldn’t. You’ve got more resilience than your daddy ever had. He couldn’t bend, he couldn’t accept the way things were. And people who can’t bend, break.” He stubbed out his cigarette and looked wistfully at Tanner’s breast pocket.