Lemon Tart

by Josi S. Kilpack

  And then another voice sounded from the speaker still on the floor. This one she recognized and with that recognition the last hour of her life came back to her recollection with startling clarity that caused her newly rediscovered breathing to come fast and erratic.

  “Mrs. Hoffmiller!” Cunningham screamed from the floor mat, his voice draining away into static then rising again. “Where are you? Where did he take you?”

  “I’m in the mountains,” she said in a gasping voice, still fighting for air. “Off the Grass Valley exit. Jack’s cabin is around here somewhere and Trevor’s there.” Then she realized she’d have to pick up that speaker and push a button in order for him to hear her. She reached for the speaker again, this time catching the cord with the chain of the handcuff still swinging from her hand. The handcuff reminded her of Madsen. The reminder of Madsen made her realize she likely hadn’t made it half a mile before hitting the tree.

  He would have heard the crash, which meant . . . she had to get out of there. Now!

  Chapter 36

  Her chest still felt as if it were strapped down in duct tape, but her legs seemed to work well enough. She grabbed the keys out of the ignition and ran for the trees instead of the road, only realizing twenty yards later that she never told her position to Cunningham. Her brain wasn’t working very well. She found a large tree—an oak she thought, due to the fact that there was no growth underneath the branches and the trunk was wide and thick. She leaned against it, leaning forward slightly as she tried to catch her breath. She was nauseated and dizzy, two things that did not help her come up with a plan.

  As she stared at the ground, her eyes moved beyond the tree and she saw the thin layer of fresh snow. She didn’t dare look behind her but knew she’d left tracks. Luckily, it was a very thin layer and patchy beneath the thick trees, but still, it wouldn’t take Madsen long to follow her trail. She looked around and began picking her way deeper into the trees, stepping on the bare patches of ground to hide her tracks, moving away from the car until she found another oak tree, a good fifty yards from the first. The wide trunk was on the edge of a copse of aspens and scrub oak, making it a good hiding spot for the moment. “Think,” she said to herself, just as she heard Madsen’s first call.

  “I know you’re here,” he yelled in the distance. She assumed he was at the car. “And I know you couldn’t have gone far, not with that air bag having gone off in your face. I’ll outlast you, old woman, I swear to you I will. But if you come out now, I’ll leave the rest of your family alone. If I have to chase you, I’ll take it out on the people you love. I swear I will.”

  You’re already taking things out on the people I love, Sadie thought, trying to keep her breathing slow and quiet. He was allowing Jack to take the fall for Anne’s murder. . . . Her thoughts came to a stop. Why was Jack taking the fall for Madsen? But she instantly knew he wasn’t. Jack must think he was taking the fall for Carrie—and Carrie had let him believe it. Shame for her sister-in-law, sympathy for her brother, and fear for her circumstance dog-piled inside her head. She had to get out of here, she had to get to the cabin.

  “Your nosy nature is going to get them killed. Maybe I’ll start with your daughter—Trina told me all about her.”

  There was no time to sift through the details that were finally making sense—though a twisted kind of sense for sure. A single word came to mind, keeping her in the moment, keeping her focused on getting out of here. Trevor. She was the only one who knew where he was, and who had killed his mother. Her heart rate increased and she swallowed. Oh, why didn’t she pay more attention to her driving? How could she have hit that tree?

  “Ah,” Madsen yelled, his voice a bit closer. “Look at this, tracks in the snow.”

  She looked down to make sure she hadn’t left tracks in the last few dozen yards. Her shoes caught her attention and she had an idea. Bending ever so carefully, she began undoing her laces. The handcuff on her right wrist clanged against itself and she quickly quieted it, then removed the keys from her pocket and undid the cuff. She stowed the handcuffs in her pocket; they might come in handy. She went back to work taking her laces out of her tennis shoes, barely able to see them through her burning eyes. She was well hidden and the wind in the trees and his steps in the leaves seemed to mask the sounds she made.

  When both laces were free, she tied them together with a square knot and scanned the area, finally finding two scrub oaks close enough together to anchor her self-made trip wire, but far enough apart to make sense as an escape route. As she carefully made her way to the trees she questioned her ingenuity but silenced her own doubts with the fact that she hadn’t been able to come up with anything else.

  By the time she finished setting the tripwire, Madsen had been silent for several seconds and she wondered if he’d gone another direction after her tracks had disappeared. She was terrified to move for fear he was sneaking up on her, but she managed to turn around slowly, checking every direction. All she could see through her still-foggy vision were the trees around her. Her swollen face burned in the cold and the wind.

  Should she stay? Should she run?

  What she wanted to do was make it back to the car and call Cunningham to let him know where she was, but did she dare? What if Madsen was waiting for her at the car? She bit her lip and peered around the tree once more, screaming when Madsen suddenly appeared, ten feet ahead of her.

  His face was pale, his dark eyes standing out on the sallow skin and the cut on his right cheek still oozing blood. There was another patch of blood at his hairline, presumably made by the car door. He looked positively gruesome. His hand was wrapped in what looked like the suit jacket he’d been wearing earlier and was cradled across his stomach.

  “Told you I’d outlast you,” he said, advancing slowly. The expression on his face was one of sheer hatred. She’d never seen anyone look at her that way and it was frightening. He took another step and she carefully stepped over the shoelaces she’d tied between the two trees. If he’d follow her just right . . .

  “How will you explain my disappearance?” she asked, stepping over the laces with her other foot, walking backward, keeping her eyes locked with his. She didn’t want him looking too closely at the ground. “People know me, they’ll wonder where I went.”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Madsen replied gruffly. “But maybe I’ll get rid of Trevor and tell them you took off with him.”

  Sadie was horrified and felt her eyes widen. “He’s a child!”

  “He’s another complication!” Madsen roared back, the veins standing out on his neck. “Just like you are. I’m tired of complications.”

  “Is that why you killed Anne? Because she complicated your plan?”

  “If she hadn’t betrayed me, she’d be alive, but she knew in those final moments that I am not a man to be crossed. You’ll learn the same lesson.”

  “That’s awful,” Sadie said, moving backward at the same pace he moved toward her. “And you cleaned up the basement?”

  “I had to. My fingerprints were everywhere. How would I explain that?”

  “I find it odd that you feel so justified, and yet you know you have to hide it. Quite a contradiction.”

  “Do you even know who I am?” he suddenly shouted and started moving forward faster. It was all she could do not to look down at the trip wire. She’d kept it low to the ground and piled pine needles and leaves to conceal it. He was only a few feet away from her now. “My father runs this state, my father is the law.”

  He took another step and she couldn’t help but look down, holding her breath and already picturing him falling on his face. He followed her eyes and then kicked at the pile of leaves. They fell away from the laces, exposing her pathetic attempt at stopping him. Her heart sank. They made stuff like this look so easy on TV.

  He lifted one foot over the trip wire and then the other. He stood there, half a dozen feet from her, looking smug. “I wasn’t about to let some whore like Anne ruin everything for me.
Not after she used me to try to make things work with your pathetic brother.”

  Sadie didn’t know she had it in her, didn’t know that there was that much anger and that much aggression inside her—she’d always been such a gentle soul—but at the sound of such angry and foul words, she suddenly lunged forward, dropping her head and running straight for his chest the way she used to when she and Shawn played football in the backyard, only she’d never put so much power behind her tackles back then. She’d never wanted to hurt her son, but she very much wanted to hurt this man. She saw him, in the moments before impact, brace himself and reach out his good arm, a look of excitement on his face, as if this was what he wanted—hand-to-hand combat with a woman twice his age.

  But he took one instinctive step backward—the one step she needed him to take. His foot hit the trip wire after all and he fell back, twisting in the air and putting both hands in front of him in hopes of breaking his fall, the suit coat falling away. Right before his mangled hand hit the ground, he cried out, realizing what the impact would do to it, but it was too late. Sadie veered right, away from him, as his crushed hand slammed into the ground. He howled as the rest of him fell on top of it. She had too much momentum by then and couldn’t stop until she was a few feet past him.

  He rolled on the ground, his feet already scrambling for leverage to help him up. She didn’t give him a chance. Instead she pulled the handcuffs from her pocket, grabbed his good arm and managed to slap the ring on his wrist despite his clawing and kicking at her. Then, as if she too had been officially trained in this, she hooked the other cuff to a scrub oak, a type of brush that though small, was excessively strong. Above where the cuff linked to the tree, hundreds of smaller branches shot out in every direction. He’d have a hard time breaking his way free from the tree. For a moment he stopped struggling, staring at the handcuffs as if not understanding what she’d done. Then he started fighting again, cursing and kicking up leaves like a trapped cat.

  She didn’t stay long enough to even look at him, instead she ran for the car as fast as she could, accidentally—of course—stepping on his injured hand amid her flight. She felt the shattered bones slide beneath the skin as he howled in pain once more. It was really quite gross. When she got to the car, she picked up the speaker and pushed the button, her eyes trained on the section of woods where she’d left Madsen.

  “This is Sadie Hoffmiller. Is anyone there, er, does anyone copy?”

  What did copy mean anyway?

  Her heart was thumping like a bongo drum in her chest. She kept waiting to see Madsen come out of those trees. She could hear him yelling, and that gave her confidence that he wasn’t free yet.

  “This is Sadie Hoffmiller,” she said, and noticed her breathing was becoming even more shallow than before. Maybe the shock was catching up to her. “Please answer me!”

  She waited. The wind blew through the trees and she noticed lazy snowflakes falling from the sky. She looked up at the gray sky above her and sent a silent thanks toward heaven. God had spared her that moment she’d asked for. Would he spare her another one?

  The speaker continued in its silence and she wondered if perhaps the damage to the car had rendered it useless, though it had worked earlier. But there wasn’t even the sound of static now. Just in case they could hear her, she gave her location before turning away from the car. Her face was swollen, her eyes still burned, and her chest was difficult to inflate, but she had to get back. She had to get Trevor, clear Jack, confront Carrie, tattle on Madsen, and . . . find someone to teach her Sunday School class on Sunday. Surely the kids would be terrified if they saw her like this.

  Then she remembered her cell phone. She opened the back door of the car and found it on the floor. She immediately tried to call Breanna. The words “No Service” blinked back at her and she wanted to scream; she would have if her throat wasn’t still burning. After pausing for a moment, she went into her messaging program and typed out a text message telling her daughter where she was. She sent it to her outbox where it would wait for cell phone service to return.

  Chapter 37

  Sadie followed a bend in the road, walking as fast as she could manage, trying to estimate how far in they’d driven—she feared it was several miles—when she heard a car coming toward her. She stopped in the middle of the road, unable to react before a white minivan came into view, slamming on its brakes to avoid hitting her. She lifted her arms up to block her face from the rocks and dirt thrown up as the van skidded sideways to a stop ten feet away.

  “Sadie!”

  Sadie lowered her arms and blinked as Mindy Bailey jumped out of her van and ran over to her. She was dressed in pink scrubs with little purple panda bears on the shirt. The panda bears were eating lollipops. Sadie felt as if her thoughts were moving in slow motion. Why was Mindy here?

  “Are you okay?” Mindy asked in her usual hyper tone, the words all pushed together to allow as many as possible to follow after them. “You don’t look okay, in fact you need to get to the hospital. We can be there in fifteen minutes. Oh, I’m so glad I found you, I got lost, see, and I’ve been driving around trying to—”

  “What are you doing here?” Sadie interrupted, still staring at her neighbor.

  Mindy looked confused, then seemed to realize she hadn’t explained. She took a breath. “I came home for lunch.” That was it. She’d use a thousand words to say something that only needed ten, but all she said now was that she’d come home for lunch. Sadie blinked again, unable to figure out what lunch had to do with Mindy being in the mountains right now. A gust of wind blew and both women shivered.

  “Um, can we get in the van?” Mindy asked. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  That sounded fine to Sadie and she headed toward the passenger door, reminded of her urgency once her feet were moving again. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Madsen wasn’t sneaking up on her, but the road was empty except for some autumn leaves blowing across the ground. It was lovely to sit in the plush seat of the minivan and relax for a moment. It would have been even better if there weren’t two feet worth of fast-food wrappers, Dr. Pepper bottles, school papers, and crayons on the floor. For some reason the van smelled like cat litter, but Sadie was in no mind to be picky.

  Mindy put the van into reverse and turned around to head back the way she’d come.

  “So how did you find me?” Sadie asked again. “You came home for lunch?”

  Mindy began nodding vigorously. “I did, I had the last of the Alfredo you brought last night—it was delicious, by the way. I usually make that kind that comes in the packet, you know the kind, right? But homemade is so much better, the kids noticed the difference right away.”

  Sadie was always glad to have her cooking complimented, but she didn’t have the presence of mind to thank Mindy right now. She didn’t need to worry, though, Mindy was still talking and it was all Sadie could do to keep up.

  “I also just wanted to check on the house, ya know, I thought I might have left the basement door unlocked and kept thinking about what happened to Anne, wondering if maybe she’d left her basement door unlocked and that’s how the murderer got in. I saw that in a movie once, where he came in and lived in the house for weeks, learning all about the family. He actually fell in love with the woman and decided to kill the husband, so one day he—”

  “What happened when you came home from lunch?” Sadie interrupted.

  A momentary look of confusion crossed Mindy’s face, but she found the original train of thought and pushed forward again. “Oh, right, so I ate the Alfredo and was double-checking the windows and doors before I left again when I heard Jack’s truck squeal out of the circle. I saw it go around the corner just as you got in your car and chased after it. I couldn’t figure out what was happening, but then the detective—he was on your porch talking to someone—jumps down, runs for his car, and takes off too. Well, I just didn’t even have time to think, so I ran downstairs to the garage and jumped into the van. I worried
that something had happened to someone else in the circle, that you and Jack were rushing to the hospital or something, so I took off, but I was way behind the rest of you so I thought I’d lost you guys altogether, until I passed you getting handcuffed by that cute cop.”

  “Cute cop?” Sadie said, picturing Madsen’s face the last time she’d seen him. He’d been swearing and kicking, his face contorted with such anger and hatred that he looked demonic. The words he was using were anything but cute.

  “Don’t you think he looks a little like Val Kilmer?” Mindy continued. “I love Val Kilmer, in fact I was watching Willow a few days ago—remember that movie? And there’s this part where he takes his shirt off. Whoa. I’m a married woman and all, but Val Kilmer without a shirt on is about as good as—”

  “You saw me getting arrested?”

  Mindy came back to the present again. “Well, that’s the thing, there was something funny about what he was doing. See, first of all he was alone and cops aren’t supposed to do stuff alone, and second, he looked so mad—like weird mad—ya know? But there was nowhere to pull over so I drove through the intersection and turned around to come back. By then he had just parked your car. Now why would he do that? I wondered. So I drove past again and then turned around just as he was pulling back into traffic. I thought I’d follow for a minute, but when he started heading out of town I really freaked. I didn’t know what to do, so I tried to call the police, but we have really spotty service once you get past Mountain View Road and my call wouldn’t go through and so I thought the best thing to do would be to follow you until I got service. I had to stay back though, ’cause I didn’t want him to recognize my van or anything. Then I saw him take the Green Valley exit and I thought, ‘Mindy, this is so bad.’ But there were no other cars on the off-ramp and I just knew he’d see me, so I pulled over on the freeway—the shoulder, ya know—and waited until he went into the trees before I followed.” She looked over at Sadie with a sympathetic smile. “That was a mistake ’cause once I got to the trees I didn’t know where you’d gone. The snow had melted on the road and I couldn’t see any tire tracks. So I drove around for what seemed like forever, taking different roads looking for you, and then I found you.”