Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  I covered my ears. “Softer, please.”

  Karen kicked me in the chest and sent me sprawling toward the fireplace. “Stay away from me!” She scooted backward across the flokati.

  I pulled myself up onto the hearth. My cummerbund cut into my waist. The coppery taste in my mouth told me I’d bitten my tongue.

  She stopped and stared. “Trip?”

  “Hey, Dizz.”

  She pulled back her hair. The large diamond studs in her ears caught the firelight. “What am I doing here?”

  “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  Karen gave me a suspicious glare.

  “Believe what you want.” I rubbed my temples. “Just keep your voice down. My brain’s about to explode.”

  “Okay.” Her words softened to a whisper. “I feel like I’ve been hit in the head with a baseball bat.” Karen looked around and said, “This place is familiar. We used to come here in high school.”

  I nodded. “It’s my family’s old cabin.”

  “How did we get here?”

  “No clue. The last thing I remember is leaving the party with that dark-headed girl in the shiny green dress.”

  Karen tilted her head to the side. “Wasn’t she a bit young for you, Trip?”

  “That’s not really the point right now.” I paused. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “The car service had just picked me up at the mansion.”

  “Car service? I thought billionaires’ wives had chauffeur-driven time machines.”

  “My husband’s selective cheapness is also not the point right now.” Karen ran her fingertips over her lips. “I took a drink from the bottle of Evian they always leave for you in the backseat. We turned onto Turtle Creek. Everything went black. The water must have been drugged.”

  I stood and reached into my pants pocket. I was relieved—then horrified—to find my car key there. Chloe hadn’t driven. I must have. I hoped no one got injured in the process. I walked over and offered Karen my hand.

  She held my wrist and looked at my watch. “I’ve lost over five hours.”

  “Me, too.” I pulled her to her feet. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to leave.” I tried to guide her to the front door.

  Karen stood her ground. “I’m barefooted… and I need my mink.”

  I looked for her shoes and coat, but the fire’s glimmer faded as it reached the corners of the cabin’s great room. I headed for the archway that led into the kitchen.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Lights.” I flipped one switch after another. Nothing happened. I looked back at Karen and said, “They must have shut off the electricity.”

  “‘They’? Didn’t you inherit this place from your father?”

  “I lost it. I lost everything.” Thinking I might be able to see by the glow of its screen, I pulled my cell phone from the breast pocket of my dinner jacket and hit the power button. It was dead. “Bring your phone?”

  “It’s in my evening bag, wherever that is.” Karen looked around.

  I cut across the flokati. “I’ll go warm up the car. There’s a flashlight in the glove compartment. I’ll bring it back, and we’ll find your things.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me to a stop. “You’re not leaving me alone.”

  “Fine.” I slipped out of my alligator tux shoes and nudged them over in front of her. “These’ll be a little tight, but they should get you to the car.”

  She gave a frown that on any other woman would have been a pout. Coming from Karen, it was a warning, a look of “Don’t you dare say another word.”

  I winked at her. “It’s not that you have big feet, Dizz. Mine are just small.”

  Karen rolled her eyes, then she held on to my shoulder as she slipped on my shoes. I caught a whiff of Caron’s Poivre. My second wife had worn it back in the days of charity balls and exclusive islands and flying private. It seemed a million years ago. I wanted to go back in time. I wanted to go back to being the guy who gave away money, not one who needed it.

  We hurried onto the front porch. The cedar planks felt rough beneath my socks. Wood smoke tinged the cold, dry Texas air. A crescent moon shone down from a dome of stars. Flat, bluish light covered the scrub oak–covered slope that ran from the high ridge on which the cabin sat to the highway far below. Halfway between here and there, the old limestone quarry loomed like a black hole in the center of what had been my grandfather’s thousand acres. Its void threatened to gobble up the land the way it devoured our caretaker when I was eight. A serpentine break in the trees delineated the driveway as it curved far around the quarry and down the hill.

  Karen shivered in her little black dress. I draped my jacket over her shoulders, then we hurried down the steps and through a copse of trees to the parking area. I was horrified—then relieved—to see the ancient Mercedes sedan sitting undamaged in the pea gravel–paved clearing. At least I hadn’t smashed into another car. Walking gingerly across the tiny stones, I pulled the key from my pocket and hit the remote unlock button.

  The interior of the car filled with light too pale for comfort. Karen opened the back door as I slid into the driver’s seat. I turned the key in the ignition. The interior went from softly lit to dark. The engine didn’t make a sound. I released the key. The lights glowed again. I tried again with the same result. I stepped out of the car.

  Karen stood before me in her fur coat and a pair of black satin pumps. “My things were in the back.” She handed me my jacket, pointed at my shoes on the ground, then said, “Car won’t start?”

  “Battery’s dead. Find your purse?”

  She shook her head.

  I put on my jacket and my shoes. “Cell phone in your coat?”

  She slid her hands into her pockets. “No.”

  “If there’s not a power pack in the emergency kit, we’re going to have to hoof it to Dinosaur Valley. Let’s hope there’s a park ranger on duty.” I opened the trunk. The compartment filled with anemic light. A large crocodile handbag sat in the center of the floorboard. I picked it up. The thing must have weighed over ten pounds. It didn’t seem appropriate for evening wear. “You took this to the party?”

  “Of course not. I carried my Devi Kroell clutch, but…” Karen looked at it carefully. “I think that’s my Birkin.”

  I handed her the purse.

  “It’s so heavy.” She ran her fingers along one of the handles. “It is mine—I can feel my nephew’s bite marks. I can’t imagine what I could have left in it that weighs so much.”

  “I hope your phone’s in there.”

  She opened the bag.

  “Well?”

  Karen looked at me; then she looked past me. Her voice a whisper, she said, “There’s something behind you.”

  I turned to see only shadows. “There’s nothing—”

  Footsteps on gravel moved swiftly away. I looked back to see Karen disappearing into the trees. I started after her, but I tripped and fell palms-first onto the pea gravel. I brushed off the pebbles imprinted in my hands, then I looked inside the handbag Karen had left on the ground. The stones inside sparkled so intensely, they seemed to amplify the moonlight. I didn’t know how a handbag full of diamonds had ended up in my trunk, and I wasn’t sure why the sight of them prompted Karen to run away, but if I knew her—and I’d known her almost all her life—she would head straight downhill toward the highway… and the quarry.

  I dove into the woods. The moon’s light dimmed to near darkness. A branch snagged my bow tie and pulled it from my neck. Limbs clawed at my hands, neck, and face. It didn’t matter. I had to keep moving. The trees grew right up to the edge of the quarry. Karen would have hardscrabble ground beneath her feet one moment, sixty-five feet of nothing the next.

  I yelled, “Dizzy! Wait!”

  When I was eight, my dad and I spent Thanksgiving at the cabin. Our caretaker joined us for lunch. He brought a bottle of Jack Daniel’s; he drank more than he ate, then he wandered off. When
he didn’t come back, Dad and I went looking for him. We found our caretaker at the bottom of the quarry. I didn’t want to find Karen there, too.

  My tux shoes’ smooth soles were made for dancing; they weren’t good when it came to keeping traction on a rocky hillside. I snagged my ear on a branch. Blood dribbled down my neck and under the collar of my shirt. It didn’t matter. I had to catch Karen before she stepped out into thin air.

  As I scrambled down the slope, I heard something moving through the trees off to my right. “Dizzy?” There was no answer. I came to a halt. Fast footsteps—it sounded like a heavy man in heavy boots—hurried past just out of sight on my right. A moment later, another set of substantial footsteps passed on the left. Karen and I had company. I had a feeling they weren’t there to help us.

  None of this made sense. I hadn’t spoken to Karen in twenty years. In that time, her welfare boyfriend had become her billionaire husband, and me the playboy philanthropist had deteriorated into a pathetic charity case. Tonight, after seeing each other across the room at my cousin’s wedding, Karen and I woke up together in the cabin I’d lost a month earlier. The trunk of my car was full of diamonds. The sight of them caused Karen to run. I chased her. Now, other people were chasing us.

  The situation was surreal, but it wasn’t a dream. Karen was drawing ever closer to the quarry. I knew I wasn’t going to catch her in time. Even if it tipped off the men in the boots, I had to warn her before she plunged into oblivion. “Dizzy! Stop right now! There’s a cliff in front of you!”

  A breaking branch jolted the still air. The Doppler fade of a man’s scream in free fall ended in an abrupt whump. Whoever the guy was, he’d fallen into the quarry. He was surely dead.

  “Dizz? Are you all right?”

  There was no answer. The second man had probably already gotten to her. I was nearing the void, but I couldn’t slow down. There might still be a chance to save Karen.

  Feet skidding over limestone chaff, I pushed through the closely spaced limbs. There was another scream nearby, but it was cut short by a gun blast. Moments later, I heard a sound like a sack of potatoes hitting solid ground.

  “Dizzy…”

  I didn’t know if I’d end up dead, but if Karen was alive, I had to help her. I hurried down the embankment. I broke through the trees. I stepped into a void. I grabbed a limb. I swung out over nothingness.

  Heart racing, adrenaline pumping, I struggled to regain my footing. Once back on solid ground, I held to the tree and looked out over the pallid quarry floor. In the muted light, it looked as if it might have been only a couple of yards to the bottom. The distance amounted to death. Dreading what I might see, I looked straight down. Two figures lay at the base of the cliff. Both appeared to be men in camouflage pants and jackets.

  “Dizzy?”

  A weak voice called out from my right. “Trip.”

  A white figure in a black dress dangled over the precipice a few yards away. Karen glanced at me and said, “Help.”

  I rushed through the trees to where she hung to the base of a small oak that itself clung to the brink.

  She looked up at me, her face scratched and bleeding. “Please don’t let me fall.”

  I flopped down on my stomach, arms hanging over the edge, and hooked my feet around the bases of two small trees. I was going to tell her to kick off her shoes, but she was already barefoot. “Swing your legs up to me.”

  “If I die, Keith will hunt you down.”

  “Stop talking and swing your legs!”

  She twisted her body and raised her knees. I reached for her. Her left leg came within inches from my grasp. My watchband’s safety clasp snapped open.

  “I’m slipping!”

  “You have to hang on.” I took a deep breath and gave thought to trying to refasten my watch. There wasn’t time. “Try again.”

  She swung one leg up. I reached for it and missed. The Rolex slid down around my hand. I couldn’t extend my thumb, which meant I had no grasp. I bunched my fingers and let the watch slip free. As the last tangible piece of my old life fell away toward the limestone floor, I said, “Give it all you’ve got.” The watch crashed to the ground. Karen swung her left leg toward me again. I grabbed her at the knee and pulled her to safety.

  A few steps from the rim, I noticed a camouflage canvas backpack and a mink coat near a large oak. I lowered Karen to a seated position against the tree’s trunk, then I covered her with the fur and sat beside her. The backpack contained a black ski mask, a matte-finish handgun, an ammunition magazine, a cylinder I assumed to be a silencer, and something that looked like a bulky cell phone.

  “Satellite phone?” Karen was staring up at it.

  “Yeah.” I pulled out the sidearm. It looked like a SIG Sauer Pro, except it had a manual safety. The weapon was cold, and it didn’t smell as if it had been fired recently. “There must have been another gun.”

  She nodded. “It went over with the second man.”

  I inserted the magazine, checked the safety, and placed the firearm on my lap in case the dead men in camouflage had brought reinforcements. “What happened?”

  “They tried to throw me into the quarry.” Her voice was steady. She didn’t cry.

  “How did you…?”

  “Survival defense training, in case someone tried to… do what those guys tried to do. I’ve been taking classes for the past year. I planned to surprise Keith with a demonstration on our fifteenth anniversary.” She drew a quivering breath. “Next week.”

  “Why did you run when you saw the diamonds?”

  “Keith kept them in the safe in case one of us got held for ransom.” She drew in a slow breath. “Your cousin brokered the deal for the lot of them.”

  “So you thought I knew about the diamonds? And I kidnapped you?”

  Karen looked down.

  “I didn’t, and I didn’t.”

  “I realize that now.” She gave me a hard stare, then her face softened. “Someone abducted us both and brought us here. Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but…” I paused. “Remember how I told you I’d lost this place? The bank foreclosed on it last month. The property wasn’t even mortgaged.”

  Karen shot me a confused look. “Which bank?”

  “Dinosaur Valley National.”

  Her jaw went slack. “Keith bought it three months ago.”

  “His name doesn’t show up in any of the records.”

  “His name never shows up when he doesn’t want it to.” She shook her head. “Keith has hated you ever since high school.”

  “I never understood that. What did I ever do to the guy?”

  “It wasn’t what you did—you were consistently kind. It was what you represented. Keith was a scholarship student with bad teeth and a worse home life. You, William Harrison Gilford III, were the smiling prince who’d had the world served to him on a platinum platter.”

  “And you dumped me for him.” I gave a sarcastic chuckle.

  Karen placed her hand on my arm. “You were going to Princeton. Keith and I were headed to Austin. And…”

  “What?”

  “He had something you didn’t.”

  I dreaded to hear what she might say, but I had to know. “Say it.”

  “Ambition. He wanted it all. You lacked for nothing. You’d had everything given to you. Speaking of…” She pulled up my sleeve and said, “Where’s your watch?”

  I motioned toward the drop-off.

  “Oh, Trip. I’m sorry. I’ll buy you another.” She paused a moment. “When you got that Rolex for your eighteenth birthday and Keith found out it cost more than the Porsche you’d gotten for your seventeenth birthday, his hatred went into overdrive.”

  “I didn’t even know it was valuable.”

  “Because you didn’t care, Trip. You were wonderfully oblivious. The watch was a gift from your father, and that was all that mattered to you. Keith has one like it now, except his is encrusted with diamonds. It was the first thing he bought when he m
ade his first million. He never takes it off.”

  I looked at Karen and said, “Back to the question of why…”

  “There’s only one way to get to the bottom of this.” Karen stood. “And that’s to get to the bottom of the quarry.”

  I thought back to when I was eight. When we found our caretaker, my dad shielded my eyes, but not before I’d already taken in the horror. He’d landed so that one leg was folded underneath him. His eyes were wide-open. Blood oozed from every orifice. The most gruesome thing was that his fly was wide-open, leaving him exposed. In his inebriated state, he had apparently thought it was a good idea to urinate into the quarry from the top of the cliff.

  I rose to my feet and said, “It’s not going to be pretty.”

  “I don’t care. Besides, my pumps are down there.”

  I gave Karen my shoes, and I helped her on with her coat. Gun in hand, backpack over my shoulder, I led her along the rim, then down the slope. The limestone chaff gnawed at my feet, but I had a lot more traction in my socks than I had had in my tux shoes.

  When I’d put on my tuxedo ten hours earlier, I was looking forward to one final hurrah, an evening of dining and dancing and drinking and having the tab picked up by my still-wealthy cousin. The Gilford name had already been written in the Book of the Risen and the Fallen. My cousin’s wedding was the last big affair I’d ever be invited to, and I intended to enjoy it before I faded away. I had no idea the night would end with someone trying to make me fade away permanently.

  We reached the point downslope where the quarry had been gouged into the hillside. The bottoms of my feet were raw. I looked across the expanse of limestone floor toward two dark masses near the sheer face. “Stay here, Dizz. I’ll get your shoes and see what I can find.” As I limped away, I noticed her beside me. “Have you ever not been the most stubborn girl on the planet?”

  “I’m not a girl anymore, Trip.”

  “Yeah. I noticed.”

  The first man lay flat on his back; he had a dark hole in his chest. The other was faceup as well, but he was bowed by the backpack on top of which he’d landed. Their arms and legs were strewn in directions that were horrible and cartoonish at the same time. The tang of feces cut into my nostrils. Both men stared unblinking at the night sky. Their blood looked like oil in the moonlight. Their flies were zipped. I slipped the gun into the backpack and said, “Recognize either of these guys?”