Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise Book 1)

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  Rashidi imparted one last nugget of information. “I see a blue Silverado truck earlier parked over in the old Rasta village ‘cross the road, right before you and Ava got here. I went to check it out and it drove away fast.” Rashidi grimaced. “You and Ava need to get on home now, soon as you can. Junior not happy with you.”

  A ball of nerves formed in my stomach. “Thanks, Rashidi. We’re leaving right behind you.”

  We walked the men back around to Rashidi’s Jeep, into which he somehow loaded six dogs and two men. Rashidi saluted us, then he and Crazy drove off, calling out more farewells and waving from their cramped quarters as they drove away.

  The wind had picked up. Ava pushed her hair back and held it out of her face. “Walker still coming?”

  Damn. I had forgotten about him. “Yes, any time now.”

  I sagged against the outside side wall of the house, taking care not to scrape the backs of my sunburned arms against the stucco. I was tired to the bone.

  I read an incoming text. “Could I make you my world famous Chilean sea bass tonight?” Bart.

  I had been keeping Bart at bay for two days. I wanted nothing more than to go back to Ava’s place and sleep round the clock. But I’d made more than just a resolution not to drink out on that beach this morning. I had resolved to let this happen with Bart, whatever this was. Starting now. I could drink a Red Bull. Or three.

  “I’d love it,” I sent.

  I calculated the time it would take to finish with Walker, get home, shower, beautify, and drive to Bart’s place, which he’d said was in Town.

  I sent another text. “Can we make it 7:30?”

  Ava spoke. “How it go with Crazy?”

  “Good, thank God. I’m so grateful to Rashidi right now, and ready to see the last of that damn Junior.”

  “Me, too.”

  Ava reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope of pictures we’d printed at the Packin’ Male in between eyeballing the two cute young Puerto Rican guys that ran it. They wore Levi’s and white t-shirts with their sleeves rolled up in a 50s style. The store had been hopping, and conspicuously absent of straight men.

  I followed Ava around the house to the garage, where I’d parked the truck earlier. Normally, the garage was full of dogs, who liked to watch the road from their spots on the cool cement floor and beg at the door for food, but not now. The truck’s back end was sticking out of the garage a few feet. OK, maybe I hadn’t parked it in the garage, more like in and out of the garage.

  Ava lowered the tailgate, then put her hands flat on it as she jumped and spun, planting her rump solidly. I joined her on her perch, repeating her move but less gracefully. I angled my face up to the sky and let the fingers of the breeze caress my face.

  “It’s five minutes until six. If Walker doesn’t come by ten minutes after, let’s head out,” I said.

  Ava didn’t answer. She was rifling through the pictures and muttering to herself as she stared at each one. I leaned in so I could see, too.

  “I don’t think Guy had any idea Lisa was cheating on him,” Ava said as she flipped through the pictures. “He pretty self-important. He sweet, but he saw himself as the one that could, and everyone else those that couldn’t.”

  She locked in on a picture, rapt.

  I took in the picture that had Ava’s attention. Lisa getting out of the car at Gregory’s place. I adopted a terrible accent and said, “I guess that make her the wutliss one.”

  Ava snorted. “Don’t try that accent out in public. People laugh at you. But what make you say that?”

  I concentrated for a moment. Nothing came to me. I relaxed my mind and closed my eyes. The answer floated in, soft as dandelion fluff blown by a child. “Walker told me that Guy was as worthless as the shirt he was wearing when he died. Except he said wutliss, just a lot better than I did.”

  Ava squinted at me in the late afternoon sun. “He say exactly that?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “It strange, that all. When I find Guy in his hotel room,” she paused, “dead, he wearing a t-shirt from a local band popular years ago. They called Wutliss. His shirt literally say ‘Wutliss Crue’ on it.”

  “I thought it was an odd thing for him to say, too, but I guess that explains what Walker meant.”

  But it didn’t, really. Not completely anyway. My scalp started to tingle like it did when my brain was wrestling with a problem.

  Ava shook her head slowly, then faster. “I don’t think so. I see all the news. All of it. There no pictures of Guy from the room, where he die, I mean.”

  She shuffled through more pictures, then stopped shuffling to talk again. “The police knew, though. And I think he tight with someone up there. I mean, otherwise, why the assistant chief refer you to him in the first place. Right?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was looking at the picture in her lap. It was one I took of the brown Continental. A good photo, one that showed its ridiculous vanity license plate, NYPD BLEW. The picture was so good, in fact, that it left no doubt that it was the same car as the one pulling in the drive of Annalise right that second.

  I grabbed the pictures from Ava. “Look at the car,” I hissed. “It’s here, right now. Come on.”

  Ava looked at the picture, then the car, and jumped to her feet. I did, too, and ran around to the driver’s side of my truck and opened it. My hands shook so violently that I fumbled the door before I could get it open. I leaned into the cab and shoved the pictures into my purse and hugged it to me. You must calm down, I coached myself. I willed my heart to slow its pace, for the heat in my face to cool, for the red splotches I knew were there to disappear.

  Ava was right behind me. “What we gonna to do?” she whispered.

  “Let’s go in the house. Just act naturally. Don’t say a word about any of this, about our day, nothing, OK?”

  I put my hand on her shoulder to give her a twist and push in the right direction. I could hear the car now as it pulled up the driveway to the house. The engine shut off. The door opened. Feet hit the ground. By then, we were in the kitchen. “Into the great room,” I said in Ava’s ear. “Let me see who it is.”

  “Anyone home?” a voice called out. A familiar voice. Whoever it was, he was headed our way.

  Chapter Forty-six

  “I’m coming. Who is it?” I called out.

  His shoes crunched the dirt and pebbles on the concrete floor as he entered the house. Every nerve ending in my body tingled now, and I heard a humming sound in my ears. I swallowed and rubbed my hands on my sundress, the same dress I’d been wearing when I went to walk myself out of drinking, only a few hours ago.

  Paul Walker entered the kitchen, his long legs in blue jeans and his protruding gut encased in a white Guys and Dolls Fishing Tournament t-shirt. He was even taller than I remembered. “There you are,” he said.

  My mind spun. Walker? He was due to meet me out here, but that was his car? The car Lisa had ridden in for the drive to Bonds’ house?

  I forced my words out. “Right this way. It’s not much, but at least we’ll have good light and some camp chairs to sit in, in the great room.” Oh my Lord, out of sheer force of habit I had invited this horrible man into the parlor like I was some damn Southern belle. I might as well offer him some sweet tea, too, while I was at it. Too late to change course now, though.

  He followed me in. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, surprised to see Ava.

  Ava was sitting in one of the two red-and-blue-striped folding chairs. She lifted a hand in a tepid wave. Rally, Ava, I thought. You can do it.

  Walker picked his way across the remains of the scaffolding to sit on the stone hearth. I followed him to the other camp chair. When Ava and I turned our chairs to face him, our eyes met. Her pupils were the size of dimes.

  “So, you have the final report for me?” I asked.

  He waved a green file folder in the air. He opened it and pulled out a stapled sheath of papers.

  “The report,” he said.
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  He added a single sheet to the hand that held the report. “Your invoice.”

  He lifted the green folder again. “A copy of the file. My notes, documents, photographs, etcetera.”

  “Great.” I stood up and held out my hand.

  He didn’t pass the documents to me. “If you could pay me for the balance first.” He put the report back in the folder, then held up the invoice, forcing me to walk all the way over to him to see it. Every cell in me shrank away from him.

  I took the sheet and read the number: $1,274.32. In addition to the five hundred I’d already paid him. The man was a thief as well as a . . . whatever else he was. A person who knew the clothes that Guy was wearing when he died. Who drove Lisa Nesbitt to Gregory Bonds’ house. My scalp tingled. Tiny Lisa Nesbitt. Big blond Gregory Bonds.

  Wait.

  I’d seen his picture in the newspaper, an article about one of his company’s acquisitions, hadn’t I? The face flashed into my mind, replaced by another face, the same face. A bear of a man with a blond afro sitting at Toes in the Water with Walker. A man who stared daggers at me, a woman he didn’t even know. Now my forearms tingled like they were falling asleep. I heard a ringing in my ears. My brain was in serious overdrive. What reason did Bonds have to know who I was, much less to dislike me?

  “Ms. Connell, are you going to pay me?” Walker asked.

  “Oh! I’m sorry. We’ve had a tiring last few days. I’m the walking dead.”

  A crocodile smiled back at me. I had to get him out of here. I propped my purse against my hip and reached in for my checkbook. I dug. And dug. Surely I had it in there?

  And that’s when it happened.

  My purse fell to the floor with a thud, spilling all of its contents out in a tumbling river to Walker’s feet. Well, there was my checkbook—along with all the pictures we’d taken at the Pelican’s Nest and Bond’s house. I buckled to my knees and started gathering them up as fast as I could, blathering, “Sorry, so sorry, what a klutz I am.”

  Ava bounded across the floor in one step and crouched down to help.

  Walker’s big hand reached down and picked up a picture that had landed on his shoe. He looked at it, but I leaned toward him and grabbed the other edge of it. I tugged. “Thanks, but I’ve got it.”

  He let me win, and I fell backward onto my tush.

  Walker stood up. The ringing in my ears reached a crescendo. Above us, there was a loud pop, then a wrenching of metal. Walker peered up into the scaffolding as metal poles rained down on him. Behind him stood the young woman I’d know anywhere, standing tall in her long skirt. Her arms looked ghostly in her loose white blouse as she pointed toward the garage. I could take a hint.

  I stuck my arm through my purse handles and scooched backward as fast as I could. “Run, Ava,” I screamed, as metal and boards continued to fall. Walker crouched with his hands over his head. Ava sprang into motion, and the two of us scrambled to our feet and ran to my truck.

  “Hurry, hurry,” I urged her.

  I dumped my purse into the seat and grabbed for my keys. I jammed the key into the ignition and turned it so hard I almost snapped it. The Silverado roared to life. I threw it in reverse and mashed the pedal as I put my arm on the back edge of the seat and turned to see my path.

  The crunch of my bumper into Walker’s rear driver’s side door was sickening. We’d only gone five feet, but the impact threw both of us forward into the dash. We were stuck.

  “Come on, we’ll run,” I said.

  I grabbed my door handle and wrenched it upwards as I shoved outward. My door slammed into the frame of the garage where someday a door would be, but I didn’t care. I leaped out and spun away from the truck—and into Walker’s chest. He grabbed me by my neck in his left hand and threw me up against the inside of my truck door. In his right hand, he held a gun. He pressed the cold tip of its barrel against my forehead.

  “Stop, Ava,” he commanded. “Stop, or I’ll pull the trigger and Katie’s brains will end up on the inside of her new truck.”

  “I stop,” Ava said. “Don’t shoot.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  “Good decision, Ava,” Walker said. “Get in the driver’s seat.”

  Ava stared at him like she was deaf.

  “Now, Ava.”

  The business end of the gun was digging into my forehead. It hurt, but not nearly as bad as his big hand pressing my windpipe closed and his fingers digging into the back of my sunburned neck. I couldn’t breathe.

  Ava got back in the truck and crawled across to the driver’s side.

  Walker eased off some, and I gasped for breath. He paid me no attention. To Ava, he said, “You’re going to drive this truck to Baptiste’s Bluff. Katie’s going to drive my car, and I’ll ride with her. We’ll be right behind you. You and I both know there’s no place for you to run, and if you try, first I’ll shoot Katie, and then I’ll come find you. And I will find you. I won’t shoot you, though. We’ll have some fun and see where it takes us.”

  My mind couldn’t wrap itself around what was happening. Baptiste’s Bluff. He was taking us to Baptiste’s Bluff? I could see Ava in my peripheral vision. My keys were still in the ignition. Ava turned on the truck. She put her hands on the wheel. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound.

  “Do you have a phone with you, Ava?” Walker asked.

  She shook her head.

  “It wouldn’t matter anyway. There’s no cell reception up on these roads.”

  I did, though. I had a phone. Or did I? Was it in the truck along with everything else I’d dumped from my purse? I tried to think when I’d last used it. We’d plugged it into the USB connector at the Packin’ Male to upload our pictures to their desktop so we could print them. I had disconnected my phone when we were done. And I had . . .

  “Move it, Katie. You’re driving my car.”

  He released my throat and pulled the gun away from my forehead, but kept it pointed at me as he stepped back. “Get in.”

  As I slipped into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind me, I put my hands down, ostensibly to adjust my body, but really to slip my cell phone out of the loose side pocket sewn into the right hip of my sundress. My mother always told me to avoid unflattering hip pockets, and I was glad I hadn’t listened. I lay the iPhone on the seat between my thigh and the door. I thought about calling 911 or Rashidi or even Bart, but I knew I’d lose connection when we were a hundred feet away from Annalise. Rashidi was ten miles away by now, Bart and the police were further than that, and what help could I expect from the St. Marcos police, even if the call went through? But then another thought hit me. Sherry. She had taped Zane McMillan with her phone.

  Walker’s hand was on the door latch now. I quickly tapped the screen to pull up a voice recording app that I used to use to record witnesses. I pressed Record and the timer scrolled forward. One second, two seconds, three seconds it read, confirming that it was recording. The door opened. I slid the recording volume to max and returned to the home screen, leaving the phone recording, a record for posterity or whoever found my body.

  Walker lowered himself into his seat. I put both of my hands on the steering wheel and fought to act normal. When he handed me the keys, I noticed a rivulet of blood running from his temple to his cheek, a souvenir from the scaffolding trick my jumbie friend had played. I pretended to try to insert them in the ignition with my right hand, fumbling them as much as I could, while I dropped the phone back into my hip pocket with my left hand. I did the fumbling so well that I managed to drop the keys.

  “Come on,” Walker snapped.

  I tried again, and this time I turned the car on. Walker was holding his gun in his right hand. He turned his body slightly toward me. He rested his elbow on the dashboard with the gun’s muzzle pointed at me. “Make room for Ava to back out. Follow her to Baptiste’s Bluff.”

  I did as he said, trying not to think of the implications of our destination, all the people that had met thei
r death off that cliff, people like my mother and father. Bart was expecting me to show up at 7:30, a full hour away from now. No one would miss us in time to come to our rescue. I didn’t want to die.

  Ava pulled out, and I fell in behind her. I swallowed hard. My father’s coaching returned to me, the times he had earnestly explained to Mom, Collin, and me how to lull an attacker into a false sense of security while you stalled and looked for his weakness. I could get him talking, distract him while I waited for my chance, and maybe even learn something to use to our advantage, anything. Except my brain was having a hard time communicating with my tongue.

  “Why’d you kill the senator?” I asked, finally.

  “Haven’t you figured that out by now?” he responded.

  I hesitated. The man had just confessed to killing Guy Edwards. I didn’t know for sure why he’d done it, but I’d developed a decent theory in the last few hours. “Because of the bank records that Guy found?”

  Walker snorted. “That stupid bitch left them out where Guy could see them. He may not be a rocket scientist, but he was smart enough to know there was only one reason Lisa would keep a rich client’s files off bank premises.”

  “So she kept a phony set of books at the bank, and the real set at home? What, was she helping Bonds launder money?”

  “She thought she was helping herself, that Gregory loved her, and that she was securing their future together.” Walker drew out the word “loved,” turning it into something absurd. “Little mami called big daddy to tell him she’d blown it, and I’ve never seen him so mad. I think he’ll take that bitch out next.”

  Lisa was a criminal, but she didn’t deserve to die anymore than Guy did. Neither did Ava and I, for that matter.

  “Who set Ava up?” I asked.

  “Nobody. I followed Guy. I knew he was heading to meet some skank because that’s what he always did. I didn’t know it was Ava, though. I got lucky.” He twirled the gun on his finger. “You better hope she’s as steady up there as your dad was, otherwise I’ll have to shoot you.”