Keepsake

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Disappointed, Olivia seemed to collapse in place: she would not even have the small comfort of knowing he was the murderer.

  She closed her eyes, blinking back tears of defeat, and then forced herself to engage him again. Anything to stall for time.

  "It's ... not Quinn that you've had the grudge against all this time?"

  "Him, too, goddammit! Him more than your brother! Leaving me with my thumb up my ass just when scouts are swarming the field, when I've had my first interview, when we're that close to a championship. So yeah, Quinn, too! All of 'em! It's all their faults! Nobody's had the shitty breaks I've had! Nobody! My whole life ... one after another—"

  He stopped abruptly. "Ah, what the hell. I'm wasting my time here."

  He grabbed the fringed silk shawl that Olivia's mother had draped so artfully over a chair, and he tied it tightly around Olivia's mouth. She shook her head and tried to mumble a protest as Bronsky walked away; the scarf was making her gag. In seconds he was back, this time with a tieback tassel from one of the drapes. He bound her feet with it.

  "Okay, that should do it," he said, almost bemused as he looked down at her. "Sorry we don't have a railroad track handy to tie you to. You stay here, now. I'll be right back."

  ****

  When the rain came, it came suddenly and horizontally, raking Quinn's back like shotgun spray and plastering his clothes to his shoulders and legs. He sprinted toward the rental that he'd parked on Pine, confused for a second by an empty space where a van had been. The white Camry—that was his, right? Grateful that he hadn't locked it, he made a dive for the front seat and slammed the door after him. He slicked back his hair and started his engine, then turned on the lights and glanced in the rearview mirror as he got ready to pull out.

  His soul turned to ice.

  The car parked on the other side of the empty space behind Quinn—surely he'd seen it before. A pickup with a headlight bashed in; surely he'd seen it ....

  Parked in front of a chain-link fence that had a Beware of Dog sign half hanging on it. Jesus Christ. Oh, Jesus Christ.

  He swept every thought aside except one: get to the cottage now. His mind, his hands, the feet that pushed the pedals, all were locked on a single, imperative goal: Get to the cottage now! He peeled out of the parking space and turned down Main, bound for the cottage that was a block away in the next galaxy.

  Olivia shook her head at the coach so violently that she became dizzy. He misinterpreted her as he tipped the gas can and carefully trickled its foul-smelling contents on the rug, over the love seat, and across Olivia's black tights.

  "I know what you're thinking," he said, "and you don't have to worry. I'll knock you out before I light the match. What do you take me for, an animal?"

  But Olivia wasn't thinking as far ahead as the match. It was the smell she was focused on; the smell of gasoline made her sick, so sick that she always tried to breathe through her mouth when she filled up her car. And she didn't want to throw up—oh, God, not now, she couldn't. If she did, she would choke and die. And the baby—oh, she is a girl, she is, and her name will be Jessica—Jessica would die too. Don't throw up, don't throw up, don't.

  "Oh. One other thing. I need your key. I'm going to have to lock you in, naturally, to slow people down." He went out into the hall where she had dropped her handbag in the initial scuffle.

  In a profound state of disbelief, Olivia watched him fish out the keys and try several different ones in the deadlock before finding the one that fit.

  She continued to take shallow breaths. She was about to be immolated, and yet the number-one problem she faced was nausea. If she could beat the nausea, if she could just hold on...

  As it turned out, she got a little help in that regard. Coach Bronsky came back into the parlor, stood over her, and said, "Have to leave this lamp on, I'm afraid. I don't want to risk a spark, turning it off. I'd blow myself up—and how much fun would that be? 'Course, you won't know if the light's on or not," he said.

  And he was right. After the sharp blow to the back of her head, Olivia's world became all black, all white, all the time.

  The iron gates were still locked. Quinn turned wide and gunned the Camry, crashing through them and setting off a pompous alarm. Forget the element of surprise. If Bronsky was around, Quinn wanted him scared and running. He roared up to the house that once had been home and slammed on the brakes in front of it.

  The wind and most of the rain had eased off now, and he was able to make out the coach, standing outside in front of a single square of light—an open parlor window. Quinn jumped from the car and was instantly wrapped in the reek of gasoline, which solved the puzzle of why the coach was poised by the window.

  Jesus.

  Too late. Quinn saw the single, tiny flame erupt at the end of the matchstick ... saw the match arc, in seeming slow motion, through the open window ... and then the whoomp ... and then the horror of flames everywhere, reaching out and clawing at the coach, who let out a howl of pain and began slapping wildly at himself, then dropped shrieking and rolling onto the wet grass.

  Olivia! In the house or not? Quinn hardly had time to spare the coach a glance before lifting a huge pot of geraniums and smashing it through a second window in the back of the parlor, sending the inside shutters flying open. He climbed through the window, ignoring the shards stuck in the glazing, mentally thanking God that a lamp was lit in the room, making a search possible.

  He found Olivia unconscious behind the love seat, a few feet away from approaching flames. Holding his breath, he scooped her up and ran, desperately aware that she had been turned into a human wick by the psycho outside. He carried her through the dark bedroom that used to be his, stumbling into furnishings set in unaccustomed places, his mind reeling from the horrific possibility that Olivia could burst into flames in his arms.

  And then came heaven: The two big windows that used to look out at the grounds were now a pair of French doors. With one savage kick, Quinn sent them flying open and escaped with Olivia into the safe embrace of damp night air, far from the house. He laid her on the grass and undid her gag.

  Breathing? He lifted her chin and tilted her head back, then turned his head with his ear over her mouth and listened for the sound of her breath and tried to feel the warmth of it on his cheek as he watched her chest for movement. Please, please, breathe, Livvy. Convinced that she had broken ribs, knowing that she was pregnant, he dreaded the thought of CPR.

  Yes—breathing! She regained consciousness with a fit of coughing, and the sound was music to his ears. Reassuring her with motherly, mindless words, he cut through the cord around her ankles with his pocket knife and cursed the handcuffs; he hoped her captor suffered extra agony for those.

  "Sweetheart ... Liv... I've got to get you to a hospital," he said, lifting her in his arms. "Maybe I can get the key to the cuffs—"

  She said hoarsely, "No ... never mind ... only the baby ..."

  Her head fell forward and her shoulders hunched in sudden pain, and he knew, despite never having seen it before, that she was in labor.

  God in heaven—what more?

  He carried her around to the front of the cottage, astonished to see that it was still in flames; that three police cars, lights flashing and radios chattering, crowded the area; and that a hook and ladder was heading up the drive through the chaos to fight the fire. He hadn't been aware of anything except the injured bundle of life that he held in his arms.

  The first one to speak through the din was the police chief, and he had a gun drawn. Quinn looked around: they all had guns drawn. What were they, crazy?

  "Hand over the girl, Quinn. Nice and easy, now."

  "Don't be a fool, Vickers! We have to get her to the hospital. She's hurt!"

  "Fine, we'll do that," he said, cautiously holstering his gun. "Just... hand her over. I'll take care of it."

  "No, goddammit, let me through!" Quinn said, moving toward his car. "I'm not the one who did this—Coach is!"

  "Th
at's not what he said," Vickers answered. "We'll have to straighten this all out. But Olivia comes first. Hand her over to us, Quinn. You're wasting time!"

  Even as Vickers negotiated, Quinn was aware of the sound of a siren fading down Main. The coach was being hauled off in an ambulance! The coach, getting care before Liv!

  "Yes... all right," he said in a confusion of agony.

  "No, Quinn," Olivia moaned, pressing her cheek close to his chest. "Stay with me!"

  "Oh, sweetheart—" Quinn turned to the chief. "Which car, goddammit?" he said savagely.

  "Give her to me, Quinn."

  "No, Quinn, don't do it ... stay with me!" She buckled inward with another contraction, unable because of the handcuffs even to satisfy the instinct to clutch her belly.

  The scene bordered on the surreal. By the light of leaping, dancing flames, he scanned the faces of half a dozen hostile police officers and their chief, a lifelong friend of the psychotic villain who had been bent on destroying all that Quinn held dear.

  "We're going to the hospital now." he shouted. Turning, he began carrying Olivia toward one of the squad cars, ignoring Vickers, ignoring the guns. "Someone get in that car and drive; this woman is in labor," he shouted over his shoulder, throwing Olivia's ill-kept secret into the flames with everything else.

  The standoff dissolved altogether when Olivia's mother suddenly burst from the shadows behind the police officers. "Oh, my baby, oh my God, Livvy!" she shrieked, throwing the scene into even more chaos.

  After that, it became a blur. Everything happened in slow motion, or maybe it didn't happen at all; Quinn was never able to recall. Bits and pieces, those he remembered: someone freeing Olivia from the handcuffs; Olivia's urgent, anguished ramblings as she clung to Quinn, and Quinn's own fury at the unnerving noise of the sirens; her mother, a ghostly image in the rear window of the squad car riding ahead; a pair of latex gloves, but on whose hands? All of it was a jumble.

  In the hospital they took Olivia away from him and treated him for his cuts. He gave a terse statement to Vickers, bitterly aware that it was only because of Olivia's intercession that he hadn't been hauled off to jail. After that he went to the visitors' room, and there he sat like one of the stones in one of his walls, in a state of total inertia.

  Across the room, Olivia's mother waited with her head tipped back and leaning on the wall behind her, a trail of tears rolling out intermittently from under her closed eyelids.

  So far she and Quinn had exchanged no conversation. What could he say to her? "By the way, the baby that Olivia is in danger of losing—that's mine"? The chances were good that Teresa Bennett had figured that out. She had probably also figured out that Quinn was responsible for Olivia's self-imposed estrangement from the rest of her family. And finally, although it paled by comparison, she was probably chalking up the loss of her beloved guest cottage to him as well.

  All in all, it was hardly surprising that she was so quiet.

  Rand's arrival changed all that. His mother jumped up from her chair and flew to embrace him, and Quinn became aware, as he never had been before, of how instinctively families circled their wagons in times of crisis. With Quinn it had only been his father and him. It was hard to make a circle with just two wagons.

  He got up to leave, to make it easier for them to rail at him in his absence. He didn't care. He was too sick at heart to think of anything else but the woman who was fighting for their child's life in there.

  He was on his way out of the room when Rand grabbed him roughly by the arm. "Where do you get off playing God? Coming back the first time to demand justice, then coming back again—for what? She doesn't want any part of you. The whole town heard her say that today!"

  Quinn shook his head. "Cool it, Rand," he said, fighting an impulse to knock him down. "We're all wound up a little tight right now."

  "Rand, you don't know everything—" his mother began.

  "I know one thing: Livvy wouldn't be in there now if it weren't for him." He swung back to face Quinn and said, "Do you deny that?"

  Quinn got the word out through clenched teeth: "No."

  "Rand, stop ... I didn't tell you everything on the phone. I didn't—she's pregnant by him!"

  "What?" Again he turned back to Quinn. His face was flushed with a complex of emotions; Quinn couldn't begin to guess which ones.

  "Nice going, ace," Rand said in a voice tight with contempt. "Anything else that you'd like us to know?"

  "I'm not the one with the secrets."

  The cut drew blood, but not enough to bring Rand down.

  "Why can't we get it through your thick head that you and you alone are responsible for everything that's happened so far? We were all fine before you showed up. There was no problem before you showed up!"

  Quinn exploded. "Get real, Rand!" he said, fed up with his refusal to accept responsibility for himself. "Myra had your ring, your letter. She was moving to the other end of the country. She was ready to give them to someone else if I hadn't been around. Would you rather it were Vickers?"

  "What ring? What letter?" Teresa wanted to know. Her voice was high and shrill, the voice of a mother who's out of the loop.

  "Shut up, Quinn. Shut the hell up!" Rand growled.

  But Quinn had been pushed over the edge one time too many. He was tired of hanging by his fingernails and having to claw his way back to their level.

  "Listen to me, you fool," he said. "Some of what happened was because I came back, but not all of it. The coach has been planning bloody vengeance for years; Olivia told me that on the way here. It was your father's decision to move the plant to Mexico that pushed him over the edge. He had planned to burn the mill down; now it seemed pointless. So he decided to go after your mother tonight instead—your mother who once spured him. Would that have been any better?"

  "Bullshit! Why should we believe you?"

  "Ask your sister. God, you don't deserve her! Tonight she was dragged, beaten, doused with gas, in premature labor, and still all she could think about was that Coach didn't kill Alison. She desperately wanted him to be the one who did. How does that make you feel, pal? Your sister's fighting for her—and all she can worry about is you and whether you were the one who killed Alison to cover up your affair gone wrong."

  "Rand—then it was true!" Teresa cried. "You were the father! Oh, how I hoped that you weren't. All these years, I hoped, I prayed, I wanted it to be—God forgive me, I wanted it to be Rupert. Oh, Rand, Rand ... then it was true," she wailed.

  Rand, battered from both sides, said in a daze, "I'm sorry, Mom. I am. No one regrets it more. But I didn't kill Alison, you have to believe me." He whirled around on Quinn and said, "Don't you dare try to tell me I did!"

  Hotly, Quinn said, "If you didn't, who did? Your father? Your father, who's gone behind you your whole life long with a shovel and pan, cleaning up your messes?"

  "The answer to that is, yes," came a voice from behind Quinn.

  Quinn whirled around to see Owen Bennett, looking every one of his sixty-five years and carrying an overnighter in one hand. "So you can stop the shouting match right now. I was able to hear you all the way back at the nurses' station." He put down his bag and came over to his wife to embrace her. "How is she?" he asked Teresa softly.

  "Livvy will be all right. They don't know yet about the ... about the baby."

  He held his wife close and rocked her in his arms. "Shh ... everything's going to be fine, honey. Everything is going to be fine."

  Quinn stared at them in disbelief. "You're all living a fantasy, you know that? Everything's not going to be fine. It hasn't been fine! Understand this: When Vickers comes back to grill me again as he's promised to do, I'm not holding anything back. Not a thing!"

  "You don't know anything," Owen Bennett said calmly over his wife's head.

  "Maybe not enough to satisfy Vickers; nothing I tell him ever does. But I'm damned if I'm going to continue to be part of this conspiracy of secrets and lies. Christ! How can you live with yours
elves?"

  Teresa Bennett broke away from her husband's embrace and made an imploring dash for Quinn. "You can't do that, Quinn. You can't! Think of Olivia! Think of that child!"

  "That's exactly what I'm doing," he said coldly, disengaging himself from her grip. "Excuse me, will you?"

  He turned and began walking away, desperate to be breathing clean, rain-washed air. But he wasn't out of the room before he heard Teresa Bennett's voice, clear and surprisingly calm, say, "My husband didn't do it, Quinn. And neither did my son."

  Chapter 29

  Quinn stopped and turned to see husband and son with the same wary and baffled expression on their faces. As for the object of their stares, Teresa Bennett looked as convinced as they looked confused.

  "Please don't tell me that you're the one who killed Alison and then strung her up beside the quarry," Quinn said wearily, unwilling to suffer through some heroic attempt by her to shield either of the men standing beside her. He'd seen enough Bennett-style loyalty to last him a lifetime.

  Owen Bennett took a step closer to his wife. "Teresa, don't say another—"

  "I did not kill Alison, Owen," she told him with remarkable dignity.

  Owen looked relieved, but Quinn did a double take. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who a minute ago had been an emotional wreck. "But you know who did?" he asked her, almost politely.

  "No one killed Alison."

  "Ah, we're back to the old suicide theory," Quinn said with a sigh.

  "No. Alison died accidentally."

  Quinn snorted and said, "I wonder why the police didn't think of that. She was just playing around with a rope, practicing how to tie her bowlines, when something went terribly wrong?"

  "She fell," said Teresa, unimpressed by Quinn's dry wit.

  "She came to the house in the afternoon; no one was home except me. She told me that ... that Rand was in love with her," she explained, faltering for the first time. "And that she was pregnant. I was horrified, outraged; I went for her, I admit. I was going to, I guess, shove her or something. Maybe slap her. I don't know. She was quick, she jumped out of my reach. But she caught her foot on a table leg and fell backward. She hit her head on the marble hearth. I think she died instantly—certainly within seconds."