“On the contrary.” Gunhild glanced at her. “They’re all jealous. They can’t stand the happiness you find in your talent. They all try to take the wins away from you.”
Wins was an odd word for an artist.
From their position on the coastal road Vicky could from time to time catch a glimpse of the ocean below. The skies were full of heavy gray clouds, and a first drop of rain slipped down the windshield. The wind that was getting stronger grabbed at the car.
Gunhild said, “This area reminds me of the island on which I grew up. Rugged, full of rocks and hiding places. You always have to be careful not to get hurt.”
Vicky wet her lips. “I grew up here. I know it like the back of my hand.”
Gunhild seemed to smile to herself as she kept her eyes on the road. Vicky wished she had not gotten into the car with the woman. But so far her conjectures were just conjectures, nothing concrete to go on.
And she didn’t want to make a scene right here on a deserted road. Soon they’d stop at the exhibition room. There she would make up an excuse not to go with Gunhild to the airport to get her mother-in-law. She’d call Cash and tell him about the biathlete thing.
Would there be pictures of Gunhild Anderson, the biathlete-sculptress? Pictures that could prove that Gunhild sitting beside her was indeed the same woman?
But even then, it didn’t prove she had killed her husband. There was still no motive in sight.
A pattering sound of water beating glass, and the rain began to fall in heavy streams.
Gunhild turned the windshield wipers on. Sight was limited. In the rear-view mirror Vicky caught a glimpse of headlights. So they weren’t all alone on the road.
Not that it mattered. Nobody knew she had gone with Gunhild.
Nobody knew she had gone to Gunhild.
With goose bumps on her arms, she clenched the phone. “I forgot. I’m supposed to meet Michael and his new assistant at the Gazette for dinner. Can I just give them a quick call to say I’ll be a little late?”
“I told you, you have no reception here. Especially not in this weather.” Gunhild glanced at her. “How do you like Michael’s new assistant?”
“I barely met him,” Vicky said quickly.
It alarmed her that Gunhild had asked about this. Had Gunhild ever met the children of Goodridge’s former business partner? Could she have recognized Doug? Kyra?
The girl had stayed in hiding at the resort all of the time, right?
But no, Ms. Tennings had seen her with Doug. Could Gunhild have seen her also, the two of them together, and figured something out?
Vicky felt protective of Kyra, as if she had to keep her away from Gunhild somehow.
Gunhild turned away from the road.
Vicky squinted at the path ahead. “Where on earth are we going?” She had meant it to sound indignant, but it came out in a squeak.
“Not much further,” Gunhild said. Her expression was calm, relaxed.
Vicky checked the phone’s screen again. Still no reception.
Gunhild halted the car. There were trees ahead.
“The exhibition building is behind those trees.” Gunhild opened her door. “The rain is less now. We can carry the boxes over there.” She got out and stretched her long body.
Vicky suddenly saw the elegance in her movements, the careful balance, the …
Skill?
Nonsense, she was imagining things. All because of a single word on a small white card in a display case. Oslo, twenty years ago.
She opened her door and got out as well. It felt better not to be cooped up in the car with Gunhild anymore. She’d stay here and place the call to Cash.
Relieved, Vicky wanted to walk to the back of the car, but her right foot slipped away.
“Mud,” Gunhild called. “The rain really turned it into a mud bath here.”
Vicky moved toward her carefully. Gunhild had opened the back of the car and held the object she had placed in last in her hands. “You take that box.” She nodded at a brown one. “Careful with it, please.”
Vicky leaned in and picked up the box. It was heavy.
Balancing it carefully, she walked away from the car. One step, two, three.
It was so still in the air, as if the birds were still hiding from the sudden splash of rain.
She couldn’t hear anything. Just a soft smooth sound as if something was slipping off something else.
Instinctively Vicky looked over her shoulder.
Gunhild had taken the cloth off the object. It was a crossbow. She held it up, standing easily with her feet spread apart like an experienced archer. The arrow on the bow pointed right at Vicky.
Gunhild said, “I’m sorry. I had rather shot you in the back. You would never have known what hit you.”
Vicky had the box in front of her chest, but she wasn’t sure how good Gunhild’s aim was. The trees were right behind her. If she could just reach those.
Gunhild said, “You don’t seem surprised. Not at all like poor Archie when he saw me with the gun. I like to think that in those moments before he died he finally saw me for what I really am.”
“And what is that?” Vicky asked.
“A winner.” Gunhild’s face lit in a smile. “Archie thought I was a poor weak woman who needed a man to lean on. That’s why he married me. He wanted a frail little puppet, a nice Scandinavian model by his side. Not a strong woman who made her own money. He forbid me to sell my art. He never liked exhibitions. He humiliated me in front of his friends saying I wasn’t any good. He always tried to make other people smaller so he could come out on top. But that’s over now.”
Vicky held her gaze. Gunhild had earlier mentioned Archibald had always told her what he thought of each piece she made. Vicky had then imagined a loving husband praising his wife’s accomplishments. Now she realized Goodridge had belittled Gunhild’s talent and thereby fanned the fire of her need to get even. “You prepared it for a long time.”
“You have no idea for how long. You think you know everything, but you don’t know a thing.”
“I know you sent the piece to the newspaper.”
Gunhild laughed. “That’s not a really good bit of deduction, Miss Super Snoop. I guess even the sheriff doubts whether it was Trevor. But Trevor or Kaylee, or even poor Sam, what does it matter? As long as it isn’t me.”
“If you shoot me, they’ll come after you.”
Gunhild shrugged. “They would have found out I was gone soon enough. Do you really think there’s an exhibition? An exhibition room behind those trees? There’s nothing behind those trees. Just wild land.” She gave her a superior look. “You claimed to know this terrain like the back of your hand. But you don’t. Else you’d have known I was leading you astray.”
“What do you intend?”
“I’m leaving, with my art. My mother-in-law will arrive at the airport but find no one waiting for her. Well, she doesn’t need anybody. She has half of the money now. Old bitch. She never liked me. She should have been long dead.”
Vicky saw the change in Gunhild’s features as if she had come to a decision. Maybe the word ‘dead’ did it. Gunhild had made up her mind. Enough talking. Action time.
Vicky dropped the cardboard box, jumped to the left, turned and ran for the trees.
An arrow hissed past her.
Gunhild roared that she had dropped one of her best pieces. That she’d kill her if only for that.
Vicky was among the trees already. The ground was slippery from the rain, and she had to support herself against trees to stay upright. Her palms grated across rough bark and patches of moss.
Her phone dropped to the ground, and she didn’t dare take the time to retrieve it.
The photos on it, the proof …
No, the originals were with Diane. Safe.
Another arrow hissed through the air and stuck in a tree right behind her.
Vicky wanted to go faster, but it was impossible. The terrain
was too rough. This was like the nightmare where the horse was coming for her and she couldn’t get away because her feet were stuck in the sand. The horse Gunhild had made had tried to trample her.
But this here was no dream. It was real. The cold splatters of errant drops from the foliage above fell on her face, and her lungs burned with exertion. She knew the woman following her was like that nightmarish horse: strong and determined. Much fitter than Vicky was.
Gunhild had to have kept up her exercise regime, pretending to be suffering from a lung condition, while in reality she was still strong and fast as she was in those days when she had competed.Maybe even won medals.
She had said she was a winner, right?
“Give it up!” Gunhild’s voice resounded behind her. “I’ll last much longer than you.”
“And just let you shoot me?” Vicky called back. Wet hair stuck in her face.
Gunhild called, “I needn’t kill you. I can tie you up and leave you here until I’m out of the state. Out of the country even, on my way to a new life.”
“You tried to shoot me before. You won’t just let me live now.” Vicky yelped as her foot slipped away and her ankle took a nasty twinge. But she had to keep going.
“I don’t like you for sure,” Gunhild called. “But I’m no cold-blooded killer. Archie deserved to die.”
Vicky rushed on, zigzagging between trees, trying to figure out where she was. This forest was familiar to her. She had played hide-and-seek here as a kid. But she didn’t remember all the paths anymore. And her mind was slowly dying on her, as lack of oxygen made black spots dance in front of her eyes.
Her shoulder connected with a tree trunk, almost sending her off balance.
Gunhild cried triumphantly.
Then Vicky saw what the pursuing woman had already seen.
Before her the trees thinned. There was a clearing. If she had to cross it, she would give Gunhild a perfect target.
Vicky slowed down, knowing she was lost now.
If she waited for Gunhild, the woman would kill her.
If she went into the clearing, the woman would kill her as well.
Then she bumped into someone. A rock-solid chest. A voice overhead said, “Vicky, you OK?”
She grasped at his shoulders, struggling for breath. Michael pushed her behind his back and stood facing Gunhild, who was now a few feet away. “Stop this madness,” he said. “You can’t kill us both.”
Gunhild looked at them, her face impassive. “I can.”
“Can maybe, but do you really want to?” Michael’s voice was even, rational. “You never meant to kill anybody else but Archibald. Your gripe’s with him, not us.”
In a whisper he added to Vicky, “Run away. I’ll make sure she doesn’t get a clear shot at you.”
“Are you crazy?” Vicky hissed back. “She’ll kill you.”
Standing here in the cold wet landscape, crouching behind Michael’s solid form, the scent of his aftershave wafting toward her from his disheveled clothes, Vicky knew she would never forgive herself if she left Michael and he got killed. They had to get out of this together.
Gunhild said, “You have no idea how much Archie deserved to die. Not just for my sake. For everybody. Kaylee, who never had one bit of freedom. People he humiliated at the golf club. The charities he claimed to be supporting while he never gave them a dime. His former business partner whom he betrayed.”
“Not exactly true,” Michael said. His voice was firm. “You betrayed his former partner. All the money that Archibald Goodridge asked for that was allegedly for the firm went to you. He needed it to pay off debts that you had incurred. He didn’t want his partner to know his wife was spending money like water so he lied and said it was for the business.”
Gunhild’s expression was emotionless.
Michael said, “I know about the debts. I also know that that is why he cut you from his will. He thought he had already paid enough for you.”
Gunhild snarled. “How much is the price to pay for being married to him? He was a snake. He was evil.”
“Nobody forced you to marry him or to stay married to him. You could have left him.”
“Could I? I was with him, you know, one night in his study. He had just changed the will and he told me about it. He said that because I couldn’t handle money I wasn’t getting anything when he died. I said that then there was no point for me in waiting for him to die and I might as well get a divorce the next day. I meant it. I was done with him, his ways, his nagging little daughter. His constant criticism of my art, my decisions, my life.”
Gunhild spoke with total disgust for Goodridge. The disgust that had rung through in the serial installment in the Gazette. “Before I could blink, he had opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a gun, aiming it straight at me. ‘I’d sooner kill you than let you go,’ he said to me. I stood there and stared into the barrel of the gun. I thought he would really squeeze the trigger. I knew he was capable of it. He thought he owned me and the moment I said I was leaving him, he would rather destroy his possession than let it slip away from him.”
Gunhild swallowed as if she was reliving those tense moments, waiting for the shot to resound. “I didn’t know what to do, say, I didn’t even dare blink or breathe. Then he just laughed and threw the gun down on the desk. ‘Just remember this,’ he said, ‘and don’t ever get the idea of leaving me into your head again.’”
Gunhild’s eyes flashed with hatred. “What he did to me that night I’ll never forget. The endless moments when I believed he would really kill me. The fear, the despair. The utter powerlessness. That’s when I decided he had to die first. And he had to die in the exact way he had intended for me to die. Willing to beg for his life, but knowing he didn’t stand a chance, because I hated him enough to kill him regardless of how he groveled. Then he would know he should never ever have threatened me.”
“He was wrong there,” Michael said. “And you had a right to be angry. No husband should ever threaten his wife. No matter what the circumstances are. You should have gotten that divorce and left him. Maybe you should even have told the police about the threat to you so they could take his gun away and charge him. But you had no right to shoot him. Most of all you had no right to blame the whole thing on somebody else. You planned it, staged it, with every intent to incriminate other people.”
“Not just Trevor,” Vicky added. “You also took the money from the golf bag and claimed you had seen Sam near it. You wanted him to get fired so there would be a local with a grudge against your husband. You called the police to report on a car you had seen almost running down a cyclist. You reported the license plate number of your husband’s former business partner. You needed evidence that your husband had been under threat so the police would have ample suspects to choose from. You put all their lives in danger with your lies. Not caring one moment for how they felt or …”
“How they felt?” Gunhild’s voice pitched. “I know how they felt. They never failed to tell me. All the times Kaylee came to me to complain about her father and her allowance and wanting to model and not being allowed to. And Trevor with his petty ambitions of becoming a successful writer but never getting his big break. And Sam wanting to be a garden architect but just being a guy digging in the dirt. I was sick and tired of hearing about all of their problems.”
“Really? You understood very well though how to use their problems to set up your little murder.” Michael stood straight, facing Gunhild. “You wrote a nice scenario for it. Not just in the newspaper but in your head as well. You played the part to perfection. Even that little dive into my arms to explain how terribly upset you were over Archie’s death.”
Gunhild smiled, a slow satisfied smile. “Let’s face it, Michael. You didn’t come back to the house to talk about my art again because you hate me. You thought I was beautiful. You always liked blonde women.”
Gunhild studied him. “I even considered having an affair with you. I
wondered if I could ever convince you that Archie was maltreating me and I could let you kill him for me. But I was afraid you’d be too chicken to pull the trigger. When push came to shove.”
Michael scoffed. “That’s not being chicken, Gunhild. It’s about having a conscience.”
Gunhild snorted. “A conscience has never done anybody any good.”
During the conversation she had lowered her bow somewhat, probably to relax the strain on her arms. But the tension in her face betrayed she had not forgotten her purpose here. That she would finish what she had started once she had figured out how.
Michael suddenly flung his arm forward and threw something at her. Wet earth and moss hit her full in the face.
Gunhild half turned her face away, exclaiming in anger and frustration. Michael jumped at her, reaching out to grab her by the shoulders. He got in contact with the crossbow though and couldn’t get a good hold. They both fell to the ground.
Vicky staggered back into the clearing. She didn’t have her phone anymore; she couldn’t call for help. She looked around and saw a big branch lying in the wet grass. She picked it up. It felt pretty solid.
It had to be. If it was decaying and would burst apart, it would only make things worse.
Michael and Gunhild were still struggling, Michael using his weight to pin her down, while Gunhild tried to claw him in the face.
Vicky walked up to them in a semicircle, coming up from behind Gunhild just as she tried to sit up. Vicky’s arms felt like lead after her run, but her anger gave her strength. Gunhild had wanted to use Michael to kill her husband. She had wanted Michael to go to jail for her. She had wanted to destroy his entire life without ever having considered his feelings or his future. It had just been about her, her, all along.
Vicky raised the branch over her head and slammed it down on Gunhild as hard as she could. Pieces of bark and slivers of wood flew all around.
Gunhild sighed and sagged.
Michael grabbed her arms and pulled them together. He used his tie to bind her wrists, then his belt to secure her ankles. His breathing came out in irregular gulps.
At last he rose to his feet, covered in earth and decaying leaves, staggering on his feet, fighting for breath. There was blood on his cheek from a scratch across his jaw, and moss had stained his forehead.
Written into the Grave Page 21