The Beginning

by Catherine Coulter

  “I’m going to get even braver soon,” Quinlan said, his voice a bit slurred from the morphine. He was feeling fine now. In fact, if he weren’t tied to this damned bed with all these hookups in every orifice of his body, he’d want to dance, maybe even play his saxophone. He’d like to call Ms. Lilly, maybe even tell Marvin the Bouncer a joke. He realized his mind wasn’t quite on track. He had to remember to ask Fuzz the Bartender to get some decent white wine in stock for Sally.

  “Why is that, Agent Quinlan?” the nurse asked.

  “Why is what?”

  “Why are you going to get even braver?”

  He frowned, then smiled as he remembered. He said, his voice as proud and happy as a man’s could ever get, “I’m going to marry Sally.”

  He turned his head and gave her the silliest smile she’d ever seen. “We’re going to spend our honeymoon at my cabin in Maryland. On Louise Lynn Lake. It’s a beautiful place, with smells that make your senses melt and—”

  He was out.

  “Good,” Dr. Wiggs said. “He needs lots of sleep. Don’t worry, Ms. Brainerd. He’ll be fine. I was a bit worried for a while in surgery, but he’s young and strong and he’s got a will to survive that’s rare.

  “Now, let me just check him over. Why don’t you go outside? Agent Shredder and Agent Harper are in the waiting room. Oh, yes, there’s a Mr. Marvin Brammer there too and a man who’s sitting on the sofa with a computer on his lap.”

  “Mr. Brammer is James’s boss. The guy with the computer—”

  “The sexy one.”

  “Yes, that’s Agent Savich. He’s also FBI.”

  “Mr. Brammer’s got quite a twinkle in those eyes of his,” Dr. Wiggs said. “As for Agent Savich, no matter how gorgeous he is, I don’t know if he’s even aware of where he is. I heard him say, to no one in particular, ‘Eureka!’ but nothing else. Go out now, Ms. Brainerd, and leave me alone with my patient.”

  The waiting room was down the hall. Sally ran into Marvin Brammer’s arms. “He’s all right,” she said over and over. “He’ll be fine. He’s already complaining. He was talking about his Boy Scout leader telling him that men never whine or moan except when they’re alone. He’ll be fine. We’re going to get married, and I’ll make sure he never gets shot again.”

  “Good,” Marvin Brammer said, hugged her tightly, then turned her over to Savich, who gave her a distracted hug and kiss on the cheek. “I’ve found them, Sally,” he said. “I’ve found that monster who isn’t your father.”

  Marvin Brammer said, “Eureka?”

  “That’s it. I’ve got to call the FBI office in Seattle. They’re at Sea-Tac Airport. Yeah, the idiot bought two tickets to Budapest, via New York. He used a phony credit card and a phony passport.”

  “Then how did you get him?” Thomas Shredder said, walking over. His arm was in a sling. He had good color in his cheeks again. “He doesn’t look like Amory St. John anymore.”

  “Not hard,” Savich said, patting his laptop. “Me and MAX here and our modem can do anything. Sally’s aunt used her own passport. Ain’t that a kick? She had to, I guess. I suppose they prayed she’d get through. They should have laid low until they got a phony one for her too. Corey, you and Thomas must have really scared them. They couldn’t wait to get out of the country.”

  “So,” Sally said slowly, as Savich phoned the Seattle FBI office, “it’s nearly over. What’s going to happen to the town, Mr. Brammer?”

  “Agents are all over the cemetery. Like the old folk said, they buried all the people they murdered with their identification, so there’s been no problem determining who anybody is.

  “Mass murder, nothing else to call it, all by a bunch of senior citizens.” He shook his head. “I thought I’d seen everything, but this takes the cake.

  “Evil,” he added, stroking his chin. “Evil can sprout up anyplace. None of the seniors is saying a word. They’re loyal to each other, I’ll say that for them, even though it doesn’t matter. That Martha Crittlan, she’ll pull through, although I’ll bet she’ll wish she hadn’t. Imagine, that seemingly sweet lady was the brains and resolution behind the town.”

  “She’s the most wonderful cook,” Corey Harper said and sighed. “That last dinner was the most delicious meal I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

  “Yeah,” Thomas Shredder said, “and it could have been our last meal, since she drugged us.”

  “You’ll survive,” Marvin Brammer said. “Oh, yes, one of the agents found a slew of diaries that old Thelma Nettro kept throughout all her time in The Cove.”

  Sally said, “She always had one with her. Do you know that she had a black circle on her tongue from licking the end of the fountain pen before she wrote?”

  “Knowing our people, they’ll probably check for that. Old Thelma was very specific about how everything came about. It’s probably the best proof and history anyone could have of the entire episode. I mean, she wrote everything, beginning back in the 1950s five or so years after she and her husband came to The Cove.

  “It’s all the attorney general’s problem now. I’ll wager they’re hating every minute of it. You can’t begin to imagine what the media are doing with all this. Well, maybe you can. It’s nuts. At least Sheriff Mountebank came out of the coma this morning, that’s one good thing. His three deputies are pulling through as well. They were drugged and tied up in that shed where you guys were.”

  “Amory St. John and my aunt Amabel,” Sally said. “Mr. Brammer, what will happen to them when you nab them?”

  “He’ll be in jail three lifetimes. As for your aunt, Sally, I don’t know if they’ll toss her in with the other seniors or if they’ll add kidnapping charges and conspiracy charges. We’ll have to see.”

  “Eureka again!”

  Everyone turned to Savich. He looked up, grinning a bit sheepishly. “I wanted all of you to know that Sally’s divorce will be final in six months. Let’s make it the middle of October. I’ve booked Elm Street Presbyterian in D.C. for the fourteenth. Everything’s set.”

  “Will you marry me, Corey?” Thomas Shredder said.

  She gave him a sharp look. “You have to prove to me you’re no longer a sexist. That could take a good year, even if you try really hard. Don’t forget, a condition is that I become the SAC of the Portland office.”

  “You could always shoot him in the other arm if he backslides,” Brammer said. “As to special agent in charge, why, Ms. Harper, I’ll do a great deal of thinking about that.”

  Sally smiled at them all—all of them lifelong friends now—and walked back to James’s room.

  He would live. As to all the rest of it, well, she wasn’t going to think about it until she had to.

  Life was all in your perspective, she’d decided during that helicopter ride to Portland, James white as death lying on that stretcher beside her, tubes sticking out of him. She was going to keep her perspective on James’s face. A nice face, a sexy face. She couldn’t wait for him to get well so they could go to the Bonhomie Club and he could play his saxophone.

  THE next morning, Quinlan opened the Oregonian that a nurse had brought him. The headline was:

  ARMORY ST. JOHN KILLED

  WHILE FLEEING FBI

  Like he didn’t deserve it, he thought. “Yeah, poor bugger,” he said aloud, and read on. Evidently Amory St. John had tried to run, but he hadn’t made it. He’d left Amabel in a flash, jumped onto a baggage truck, knocked out the driver, and driven off, the FBI right behind him. He hadn’t gotten far. He’d even been stupid enough to fire on the agents, refusing orders to stop and throw down his weapon.

  He was dead. The bastard was finally dead. Sally wouldn’t have to go through a trial. She wouldn’t ever have to face him again.

  What about Amabel?

  Apparently the Oregonian hadn’t known which headline to splash—The Cove murders or Amory St. John. Since The Cove had gotten the big print the day before, he supposed they decided it was Amory’s turn.

  Amabel Pe
rdy, he read, had pleaded innocent of all charges, both with regard to Amory St. John and with regard to The Cove, saying she had no idea what was going on in either case. She was an artist, she maintained. She helped sell the World’s Greatest Ice Cream. That was all she did.

  Wait until the media found out about Thelma’s diaries, he thought. That would nail her hide but good. All of the seniors’ hides. He was tired, his chest hurt real bad, and so he pumped a small dose of morphine into his arm.

  Soon, he knew, he would be sleeping like a baby, his mind free of all this crap. He just wished he could see Sally before he went under again.

  When she appeared at his bedside, smiling down at him, he knew he must be dreaming.

  “You look like an angel.”

  He heard a laugh and felt her mouth on his, all warm and soft.

  “Nice,” he said. “More.”

  “Go to sleep, buster,” she said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  “Every morning?”

  “Yes. Always.”

  EPILOGUE

  Sally St. John Brainerd and James Railey Quinlan were married on the date Dillon Savich had set for them—October 14. Dillon Savich was Quinlan’s best man and Sally’s mother was her matron of honor. She attended her daughter’s wedding with Senator Matt Montgomery from Iowa, a widower who’d taken one look at Noelle and fallen hard. She had worn a two-piece bathing suit that summer.

  There were one hundred and fifty special agents from the FBI, including two special agents from the Portland field office, one of them the newly appointed SAC, or special agent in charge. Every Railey and Quinlan within striking distance arrived at the Elm Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Sally was simply enfolded into her new family.

  Ms. Lilly, Marvin the Bouncer, and Fuzz the Bartender were in attendance, Ms. Lilly wearing white satin and Marvin announcing to everyone that the chicky looked gorgeous in her wedding dress. Fuzz brought a bottle of Chardonnay for a wedding present. It had a cork.

  The media mobbed the wedding, which was expected since the trial of Dr. Beadermeyer—aka Norman Lipsy—had ended the previous week and Sally had been one of the major prosecution witnesses. He’d been found guilty of conspiracy, murder, kidnapping, extortion, and income tax evasion, which, a TV news anchorwoman said, was the most serious of all the charges and would keep him in jail until the twenty-second century.

  Scott Brainerd had plea-bargained to a charge of kidnapping and conspiracy, which the government finally agreed to, since the feds could find no solid proof of his activity in arms dealing. He was sentenced to ten years in jail. But Sally knew, she told Quinlan, that Scott would have the best behavior in the entire prison system. She’d bet the little worm would be out in three years, curse him. Quinlan rubbed his hands together and said he couldn’t wait.

  In the previous June, Sally had become the senior aide to Senator Bob McCain. She had begun showing Quinlan a glitzy Washington, D.C., that was sleazy in a very different way from what he was used to. He said he wasn’t certain which Washington was more fascinating. Sally was running every day, usually with James, and in July she began to sing in the shower again.

  Amabel Perdy, it had been agreed to in late July, was going to be treated differently from the other fifty members of The Cove. Besides committing eight murders—four by stabbing—she’d also shot a special agent, kidnapped her niece, and aided and abetted the escape of a murder suspect, thus becoming an accessory. Her trial would be held at the end of the year. Neither Quinlan nor Sally was looking forward to it.

  All the murders were detailed in Thelma Nettro’s diaries—how they had been done, when, and by whom. Thelma Nettro wrote that there was little or no remorse among the townspeople after the twentieth victim had been dispatched. Poison was the favored method, she wrote, because Ralph Keaton didn’t like mess when he laid the people out for burial.

  She herself had murdered two people, an old couple from Arkansas, she wrote, who’d died quickly, smiling, because they’d eaten slices of Martha’s New Jersey cheesecake and hadn’t tasted the poison.

  It came out that the last two murders of old people who’d had the misfortune to want to try the World’s Greatest Ice Cream had occurred two months before Sally Quinlan had arrived for the first time in The Cove to hide at her aunt Amabel’s cottage. Reverend Hal Vorhees had drawn the highest number. He’d persuaded an affluent old couple to remain for a special evening spiritual revival service that had been organized that very afternoon.

  Thelma had written in her diary that it had been a very pleasant service, with many people rising to give thanks to God for what He’d done for them. There were punch and cookies after the service. Revered Hal hadn’t put enough arsenic in the cookies, and the old couple had had to be poisoned again, which distressed everyone, particularly Doc Spiver.

  Three books were being written on The Cove, all with a different slant, the biggest best-seller presenting Reverend Hal Vorhees as a crazed messiah who had murdered children in Arizona, then come to The Cove and converted all the townspeople to a form of Satanism.

  Since it was obvious that the murders would have continued until either all the townspeople died off or were caught, as was the case, the Justice Department and the lawyers agreed that the old people would be separated, each one sent to a different mental institution in a different state. The attorney general said simply in an interview after the formal sentencing, “We can’t trust any two of them together. Look what happened before.”

  The ACLU objected, but not very strenuously, contending that the ingredients in the World’s Greatest Ice Cream (the recipe remained a secret) had induced an irresponsible hysteria in the old people that led them to lose their sense of moral value and judgment. Thus they shouldn’t be held answerable for their deeds. When the ACLU lawyer was asked if she would go to The Cove to buy ice cream, she allowed that she would only if she was wearing tattered blue jeans and driving a very old Volkswagen Beetle. Perhaps, one newspaper editorial said, it was a collective sugar high that drove them all to do it.

  Thelma Nettro died peacefully in her sleep before the final disposition of her friends. Martha hanged herself in her cell when she was told by a matron in mid-July that young Ed had died of prostate cancer.

  As for The Cove and the World’s Greatest Ice Cream, both ceased to exist. The sign at the junction of highways 101 and 101A fell down some two years later and lay there until a memorabilia buff hauled it away to treasure it in his basement.

  Hikers still visit The Cove now and again. Not much there now, but the view from the cliffs at sunset—with or without a martini—is spectacular.

  THE MAZE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Whenever I hear writers brag about how their editors don’t require any changes to their manuscripts, I’m honestly floored. It’s an editor’s job to be the reader’s representative and thus make the manuscript better. And believe me, a manuscript can always be made better.

  I’ve got to be the luckiest writer ever. I don’t have just one editor, I have a three-person hack-and-maim team, and all three of them give me very timely feedback, all with an eye to making my novels the best they can be. My ongoing thanks to Stacy Creamer, Leslie Gelbman, and Phyllis Grann.

  I’d also like to thank my husband, Anton, for getting back into the editing saddle after a ten-year hiatus. He’s the Editor from Hell (in the good sense).

  And finally, my continuing thanks to Karen Evans with the red Babylonian harlot hair. Without her incredible mental energy, enthusiasm, and support, I would soon find myself in a sorry state.

  Life is good.

  ONE

  San Francisco, California

  May 15

  It wouldn’t stop, ever.

  She couldn’t breathe. She was dying. She sat upright in her bed wheezing, trying to control the terror. She turned on the lamp beside her bed. There was nothing there. No, there were shadows that kept the corners dark and frightening. But the door was closed. She always clos
ed her bedroom door at night and locked it, then tilted a chair against it so that its back was snug against the doorknob, for good measure.

  She stared at that door. It didn’t move. It didn’t so much as rattle in its frame. The knob did not turn. No one was on the other side trying to get in.

  No one this time.

  She made herself look over toward the window. She’d wanted to put bars on all the windows when she moved in seven months before, but at the last minute she decided that if she did she would have made herself a prisoner forever. Instead she’d switched to the fourth-floor apartment. There were two floors above her and no balconies. No one could come in through the window. And no one would think she was crazy because she lived on the fourth floor. It was a good move. There was no way she could continue living at home, where Belinda had lived. Where Douglas had lived.

  The images were in her mind, always faded, always blurred, but still there and still menacing: bloody, but just beyond her ability to put them in focus. She was in a large dark space, huge; she couldn’t see the beginning or the end of it. But there was a light, a narrow focused light, and she heard a voice. And the screams. Loud, right there on her. And there was Belinda, always Belinda.

  She was still choking on the fear. She didn’t want to get up, but she made herself. She had to go to the bathroom. Thank God the bathroom was off the bedroom. Thank God she didn’t have to unlock the bedroom door, pull the chair back from beneath the knob, and open it onto the dark hallway.

  She flipped the bathroom light on before she went into the room, then blinked rapidly at the harsh light. She saw movement from the corner of her eye. Her throat clogged with terror. She whirled around: It was only herself in the mirror.

  She stared at her reflection. She didn’t recognize the wild woman before her. All she saw was fear: the twitching eyes, the sheen of sweat on her forehead, her hair ratty, her sleep shirt damp with perspiration.