“Yes,” she said clearly. “It is.”
He grinned, kissed her, and let her go, patting the pockets of his cutoffs.
“Here it is.” He fished the key out of a pocket and inserted it into the lock.
“Why not just break in?” Summer asked sardonically as he stood back to let her precede him into the room.
“And waste a perfectly good key?” He shook his head at her as he followed her inside. Summer was already groping for the light switch as he closed the door.
She caught just a glimpse, the merest hint, of a man in the shadows leaping forward before Steve was felled with a mighty blow to the back of the neck.
He collapsed without making a sound.
Summer was too shocked even to scream.
42
It was a beautiful night. A warm breeze caressed Summer’s face, swirling tendrils of hair across her cheeks. Thousands of stars twinkled down from a midnight blue velvet sky. The moon was a mere sliver, a silvery crescent that would have been right at home in a nursery rhyme. Frogs croaked in the nearby lake. The cicadas were once again in full chorus.
Summer lay on her side in the dirt, gagged and trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey, watching as Mitch dug a shallow hole to bury her and Steve in.
Steve, still out cold, lay nearby. Like her, he was bound and gagged. Though that precaution seemed almost wasteful, as it appeared likely that he would die without ever regaining consciousness.
Lying there on the cool ground, listening to the hypnotic rhythm of the shovel digging into the earth, Summer thought that Steve had the better of it. She wished she were unconscious, so that she would not have to experience this.
Not far away, the headlights of a car cut through the darkness. She lay in the construction site she had noticed each time she had passed through Cedar Lake, and the road was tantalizingly near. If only the big earth-moving machines weren’t in the way.…
Then Summer realized something: Even if the Caterpillars weren’t there, no one could see this far into the field. It was so dark that she, only a dozen feet away, could see Mitch only in silhouette. Aside from the sounds that reached her ears, she had only known he was digging when an errant moonbeam struck silver on the shovel blade.
Steve was stirring. Like her, he was bound hand and foot, and wrapped like a mummy in nylon rope for insurance. His feet moved, and his shoulders moved. Summer thought his eyes opened, because she saw a faint gleam through the darkness. But she couldn’t be sure. With all her heart she longed to go to him—she tried rolling on her back. Steve was only a foot or so away.
Suddenly Mitch was there. Instinctively Summer lay very still, like a rodent in the flight path of a hawk. But it was to Steve’s side Mitch went.
“You’re awake.” Mitch’s voice was a soft murmur as he dropped down on one knee beside Steve. “Damn it, Steve, why didn’t you stay away?”
Steve made a sound that was rendered unintelligible by the duct tape that bound his mouth.
“You think I want to do this? Hell, I’d rather cut off my right arm. But you’ve left me no choice.”
Steve made another sound.
“All right, buddy, I’m gonna take the gag off for a minute. You ask me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. You deserve to know why this is happening to you. But if you yell, or even talk above a whisper, I’m going to have to kill you with this.” Mitch touched the shovel that lay beside him. He bent over Steve, and removed the duct tape gag. Summer knew that was what he must have done, because she heard a low ripping sound, followed by Steve’s voice, hoarse and low but unmistakably Steve’s:
“When I started sleeping with Deedee, you were already having an affair with Elaine.”
Mitch was silent for an instant. Then he said, “Elaine told you, didn’t she? I was afraid she would, sooner or later.”
“She told me tonight, I think because I was temporarily in her good graces because both she and Corey survived the day.” Steve paused, then added with harsh accusation, “Is that why you killed Deedee? To get free so you could have Elaine?”
Mitch sounded surprised: “Hell, no, I wouldn’t kill Deedee for Elaine. I killed her for … Shit. How’d you know?”
“Elaine told me that you used to come to the house a lot while I was at work. She told me that you came on to her a good eight months before Deedee died, and she was bored and unhappy and she did it. She told me that you asked her for the key to my office, not just on the night Deedee died but other times, too, so you could keep tabs on what I was doing. She suspected you were dirty. But she didn’t care. Not until Deedee died. When Deedee turned up dead in my office, she guessed you were involved. But after that she was too scared of you to talk. What just happened with Corey made her realize that the only way she and Corey would ever be safe again was if you, and your buddies, were behind bars.
“I’ve been dirty for years, Steve.” His tone was confessional.
“Hell, do you think I don’t know that? I finally figured it out. I would have caught on sooner, except I hated to face the truth when it stared me in the face. But why, Mitch? Just tell me why.”
“It was so much money,” Mitch said. “They offered me so much damn money. Not to do anything, just to look the other way while they ran drugs through here. It was the easiest money I’ve ever made in my life. Thousands and thousands of dollars at a time, just to look the other way.”
“You took the van, didn’t you?”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Mitch gave a little bark of laughter. “You always were a good detective. How did you figure that out?”
“Who else would have checked in the boat warehouse but you? On the phone today, just in case I didn’t make it alive out of my encounter with your friends, I told Larry Kendrick that the van was in the warehouse. He got there as fast as he could. The van was already gone. Somebody—somebody who knew what was in it—had to have found it between the time I left it Sunday morning and this afternoon. Who could that have been but you? Only you and I knew about the damned boat warehouse. Where’s the van, Mitch?”
“In a place where it will never be found.” Mitch’s voice hardened suddenly. “Just like you and your girlfriend there will never be found. They’re going to pave this field tomorrow. It’s going to be a parking lot for a new marina they’re building down at the lake, and you’re going to be buried under it.”
“Why do you have to kill us? We’re helpless—and you have the money. Why not just take it and run?”
“Do you think I wouldn’t if I could?” Mitch asked fiercely. “But if I do that, they’ll be after me. Not just the police, or even the FBI or the DEA, but the cartel. They’d find me, sooner or later. They’d hunt me to the ends of the earth. I’d never know a second’s peace.”
“How is killing us going to keep the cartel from coming after you?”
Mitch chuckled. “They’re going to blame it on you, buddy. They’re going to think you and your little girl friend stole their fifteen million dollars and took off into the night. See, you’re going to vanish without a trace. Nobody’s even going to know you’re dead.”
Summer felt a shiver run down her spine. To be murdered was a hideous fate to contemplate, but to be murdered and have no one know it—her mother and sisters would search the world for her for the rest of their lives.
“Steve, old buddy, old pal, if there was any way I could not do this I would. But don’t worry. I’m going to knock you over the head before I do it, so you won’t feel a thing. It’s not going to hurt.” Mitch reached for the shovel.
Summer’s heart leaped.
“Wait!” There was an edge of desperation to Steve’s voice. “You still haven’t told me why you killed Deedee.”
Mitch paused and turned back to Steve. “Remember how you were investigating us, Steve? Les Carter lent you to Rosencrans and you were investigating dirty cops right and left. And you were getting mighty close, too. We were starting to feel you breathing down our necks. The cartel was getting wo
rried. They told me to stop the investigation. To stop you. They gave me two choices: I could buy you or kill you. Hell, you were always such a damned Boy Scout, I knew you couldn’t be bought. And I couldn’t bring myself to kill you. We were tight, buddy, remember? With Elaine’s help, I was able to keep tabs on what you were up to. I had time to come up with a solution. And then you started that thing with Deedee. It was perfect. I knew if you got caught having an affair with her in a way that made a public scandal, you’d be fired. Bye-bye investigation. So I set it up. Don’t you see, man? I killed Deedee to save you.” Mitch’s voice broke. “You dumb fuck.”
He bent over Steve. Summer watched, dumbfounded, as Mitch kissed Steve with unmistakable passion full on the mouth.
“I always loved you, you stupid damn Boy Scout, and you never even had a fucking clue. But now it’s down to you or me. Winner take all, babe.”
With that Mitch leaped to his feet and picked up the shovel, all in a single swift movement. Steve was just starting to say something, or perhaps make some sort of outcry, when the blow fell.
Summer heard that thunk like it was her own death sentence. As Mitch turned to her she saw the moonlight glitter on the tears that were running down his cheeks.
43
“He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it is a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil.”
—Thomas Fuller
Deedee was having trouble with her atoms again. She seemed to be growing weaker. She’d been following Steve about like a kite on a string, but he hadn’t seen her for a while. Which was just as well. She didn’t want to cause trouble for him with his new girl.
She couldn’t materialize, but she could see, and she could hear. She heard what Mitch said to Steve, there in the dark in that muddy field, she saw what he did and was intending to do, and suddenly everything was crystal clear: the past and the future, too.
On the night she died, Mitch had confronted her with the evidence of her and Steve’s affair, reducing her to whimpering, sobbing guilt because, after all, Mitch was the one she loved. Then he told her he’d forgive her only if she’d help him teach Steve a lesson he’d never forget.
She’d thought Mitch was jealous. The notion thrilled her. Sleeping with Steve had finally turned the tables. Now Mitch knew what it felt like. Throughout their years together, he had been the ever-elusive object of desire, not she. Now, finally, thanks to her affair with Steve, it was her turn. Mitch was obsessing over her. She should have known better. But then, the reality was almost unbelievable. How could she have guessed Mitch was obsessed, not with her, but with Steve? Had she been blind, not to have suspected what Mitch was? Not to have seen?
But, like Steve, she hadn’t had a clue. She had been so crazy in love with Mitch that she would have agreed to anything he asked of her, and she did. First Mitch had gotten her to read a joke “suicide” statement into a video camera. Then he’d taken her to Steve’s new office, rigged a nylon rope from a plant hook, of all the stupid things, dragged Steve’s desk beneath it, and told her to get up there and put the noose around her neck so that it would look as though she was about to hang herself.
Steve was on the way up, he’d said, and they were going to give his old buddy the fright of his life.
Steve would never lay a hand on his wife again, Mitch told her with a glint in his eyes that made her heart beat faster. In all their years together, she’d never seen him so worked up. All because he was jealous of her and Steve. She’d been excited, unsuspecting, stupid. She’d kicked off her shoes, climbed up on that desk, and put the noose around her neck, just like Mitch told her. And tried not to grin at the thought of what Steve was going to say.
Then Mitch jerked the desk out from under her and left her there to choke and kick and die.
The son of a bitch. He’d murdered her in cold blood, and now he was going to kill Steve and his new girlfriend as well and it couldn’t be allowed.
It wasn’t going to be allowed.
This was her mission, Deedee realized: to keep Mitch from killing again.
But how?
She watched as Mitch dragged Steve’s bound, inert body over to the shallow pit he had dug and rolled him inside, then carried the woman over and dumped her in after Steve. She saw Mitch cover them in a thin layer of dirt, then climb aboard a big yellow steamroller, produce a key from his pocket and start the engine.
The steamroller started to move. With a rumbling growl it headed straight down the field toward the soon-to-be grave.
What could she do?
Deedee tried, with all her might. She willed herself into the cabin of that steamroller, willed herself into the seat beside Mitch, willed herself to materialize.
The steamroller moved inexorably toward the grave, leaving a road’s width of flat, hard-packed earth in its wake. It was drawing closer to its target with every passing second. Deedee thought she could detect the darker shadows of bodies lying in the shallow depression Mitch had made.
She felt the tingling. Suddenly she was there, sitting beside him. As if he sensed that he was no longer alone, Mitch glanced her way.
And saw her. He turned white as milk, staring. Deedee waggled her fingers at him. He screamed—and leaped from the cab of the steamroller.
He landed on his hands and knees in the soft earth. The steamroller kept moving. Deedee tried, but she couldn’t turn off the key. Her fingers were as ethereal as mist—she couldn’t grip a thing.
She flew out of the cab after Mitch. He would have to do it. He was on his feet, looking shaken but okay. Okay, that is, until he saw her.
Mitch took one look, screamed, and ran as if she were the devil himself. Deedee flew after him, skimming the earth, fingers outstretched as she tried to grab his shirt.
He had to get back into that cab and turn off the key.
Mitch fled across the field, blubbering with terror as he scrambled up the slope toward the road with her plucking at his shoulder.
Deedee saw what was going to happen seconds before it did, but she was powerless to change a thing. Mitch darted out onto the road right into the path of an oncoming truck.
The force of the collision was unbelievable. Blood was already trickling out of Mitch’s nose and mouth before he ever hit the pavement forty feet down the road.
44
Summer saw Mitch jump from the cab and run, screaming, away. But she didn’t have time to think about it, to ponder the whys and wherefores. Her attention was riveted on the giant gray wheel of the steamroller as it drew nearer and nearer to the depression where she and Steve lay. Fortunately, moving her head had kept it free of dirt. Mitch, anxious to be done with his task, had not buried them very efficiently. And she had brushed the dirt away from Steve’s face with frantic movements of her head.
Steve was still unconscious. She kicked him, desperately, fiercely. With Mitch gone from the cab, they had a chance—but he had to wake up.
With her mouth taped, she couldn’t say a word. Screams emerged from her throat only to be muffled by the suffocating gag. They were barely audible to her own ears.
The steamroller was perhaps twenty feet away.
Steve’s eyes blinked open. Summer could see them gleaming at her through the darkness. She kicked him, hard, convulsing her body so that her feet came in jarring contact with his knee.
“Ow!” he said, looking at her. Summer, beckoning frantically with her head, rolled away.
Whether he realized how close they were to death she didn’t know. But he followed her, both of them tumbling like rolling pins over the soft, cool earth.
The steamroller went by with scant feet to spare, and kept going until it plunged into the lake.
45
It was Saturday. Mitch’s funeral had been held in Nashville the previous day. Steve had attended, and Summer had gone with him, holding his hand tightly throughout the service. Steve had been stoic, his face grim, his eyes shadowed. No matter what Mitch had done, or why he had done it, there were still lifelong bonds
of friendship between them that neither logic nor death had entirely managed to break.
Steve, simply, was not ready to talk about Mitch, and Summer was wise enough to let it alone.
At the funeral, she had met Elaine.
Steve’s ex-wife was a petite, attractive blonde, and Summer’s first thought on meeting her was to wonder if Steve had married her because she reminded him of Deedee.
But that was all water over the dam, Summer told herself. Elaine didn’t have Steve. Deedee didn’t have Steve. She had Steve.
And Steve was hers. She knew that as surely as she knew the sun would come up in the morning. Sometimes, in life, one was lucky enough to meet the person that God or fate or whatever higher power was in charge of these things had fashioned to be the yin to one’s yang. That had happened for her, and for Steve.
The details—marriage, children, incorporating Corey into their lives—had still to be worked out. As yet, they had had no time.
But the certainty of forever was there, for both of them. Summer knew it every night when she slept in Steve’s arms, every morning when she awoke and gazed into his eyes.
They’d been staying in the Holiday Inn in Murfreesboro. Police investigation or no police investigation, Summer had a business to run.
She had returned to her house only long enough to pack her clothes. For her, the home she had loved was ruined, indelibly stained by the murders of Linda Miller and Betty Kern.
She hadn’t had time to start thinking about hunting for a house or an apartment yet, either. Monday would be soon enough for that.
At the moment, Summer was with her sisters and mother having breakfast in the coffee shop of the Murfreesboro Holiday Inn. Muffy was in her mother’s room upstairs enjoying what must have been her dozenth can of Kal Kan. The other three McAfee women would be returning home the next morning, and Summer knew she would miss them. But right then, she could cheerfully have done without their presence.
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