Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake

by Sarah Graves

  Which brought me around to that tracking device on her boat again. But I didn’t want to tell her now: we were tired; George wasn’t even here so she couldn’t talk with him about it; and besides, we were on a mission.

  I’d tell her, I decided, before she went out on the Bayliner again. That way she could disconnect the thing if she wanted.

  “When we get there, just leave everything to me,” she said. And since following her lead had very often in the past led to a positive outcome, despite my misgivings I didn’t argue.

  “Okay,” I said instead, zooming uphill past the veterinary clinic on one side and the farm supply store on the other. After that came miles of widely separated barns, pastures, and woodlots. An owl swooped down into my headlights and out again as I ducked reflexively, relieved that we hadn’t hit it and hoping hard that we didn’t encounter a moose. But then:

  From the darkness behind me a pair of headlights materialized in my rearview mirror.

  “Meanwhile,” said Ellie, screwing the cup back onto the thermos bottle, “I’ve been thinking about that trapdoor in the shop. I mean, about who knows it’s there and who doesn’t.”

  It was so obvious, I’d have hit the heel of my hand to my forehead if my fingers weren’t just then extremely busy tightening around the steering wheel.

  “Because the thing is, it’s true, you can’t tell it’s there unless you look really hard.”

  The headlights in the rearview were catching up fast.

  “So whoever stuffed Muldoon down there,” Ellie continued, “already knew about it, I think.”

  Really fast. She looked over questioningly at me as the glare from the headlights lit our passenger compartment. “Jake?”

  I reached for my phone, then decided against it and gripped the wheel with both hands as the headlights behind us blazed in the rearview mirror.

  “Damn,” I said, stomping the accelerator.

  The dark road stretched vacantly ahead. Soon we’d reach the bridge stretching high over the cove at Red Beach, where a single bump from the side could send us flying over the guardrail.

  I thrust the phone at Ellie. The nearest cop was miles from here, but I figured she might as well be ready. Meanwhile, I held on to that steering wheel like our lives depended upon it.

  “Key in 911, but don’t press ‘call’ yet,” I told her. The S-curve ahead would be challenging, but not undoable.

  “And tighten up that seat belt of yours,” I added, pressing the gas down harder.

  Because maybe whoever was riding our bumper really would try knocking us over the rail, sending us into the cold salt water below. But first . . .

  First he’d have to catch us.

  * * *

  Careening downhill through the sharp curves and switchbacks before the bridge, I swiftly rehearsed everything I’d ever known about very fast driving.

  Which was nothing. “Uh, Jake?” Ellie said tentatively again, her eyes huge in the glow of the dashboard lights.

  Pulling away, I’d caught our pursuer by surprise, leaving him behind in a sudden burst of speed that startled even me.

  The sensation was . . . interesting. Ellie craned around over the seat back. “Jake, he’s catching up.”

  “Not for long.” I slammed the gas pedal the rest of the way to the floor and we leapt forward like something shot out of a cannon. Unfortunately, though, while the car’s engine supplied plenty of speed, the rest of the vehicle wasn’t sure what to do with it all.

  The slightest attempt at steering, for instance, produced a distinct floating sensation. It felt as if, at the slightest further encouragement, the car might achieve liftoff.

  “You sure you don’t want me to get help?” Her index finger poised over the cell phone’s CALL button.

  The road straightened. I thought very briefly that I might have a handle on all this. But then without warning a raccoon led a bunch of tiny baby raccoons out onto the roadway.

  “No,” I breathed. “No, no . . .”

  Picked out in our headlights’ glow, the small furry forms toddled adorably behind their mother. I am not going to hit them, I insisted to myself. I am not.

  But there was no avoiding it. If I swerved, I’d lose control of the car. Nightmarishly, we hurtled toward the tiny animals and their mom.

  Then, at the very last possible instant, she stopped suddenly. Turned lumberingly. Trundled bumblingly back to the road’s gravel shoulder and on down into the ditch, with the little ones all hustling after her.

  I zipped past the last one with mere inches to spare, just as our follower roared horrifyingly up behind us again, with a roar of the big engine in the muscle car he was driving.

  A familiar roar. But I had no time to think about it; I was too busy steering and reviewing my past life, now passing before me like a film clip on fast-forward.

  Ahead stretched the bridge. “Here we go.”

  I’d have glanced down at the speedometer, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road. We crested the last hill, caught air at the top of it, and started down the other side with those damned headlights, big round ones like angry eyes, still on our tail.

  “Faster,” Ellie whispered. The fact that she wasn’t shrieking it was vastly to her credit. “You’ve got to . . .”

  I couldn’t have agreed more; whoever this guy was—I assumed it was a guy, anyway—he’d never even heard the word “qualms.”

  But I had plenty. The car wasn’t airborne, but it was gearing up for takeoff again as we shot around the last curve before the bridge. One last little downslope and we’d be on the wide, high-over-the-water span, and have I mentioned the concrete abutments at either end?

  One of them being the one we were speeding toward now. Not that I liked playing daredevil this way, but we had no choice; if I slowed down, the guy behind us would rear-end us and I’d lose control.

  And at this speed I couldn’t pull over, either; one slip of the tires off the pavement’s edge down onto the gravel shoulder and we’d be scrap metal.

  The abutment flew toward us. Our attacker roared up fast and pulled alongside, engine howling. Then, just as I’d feared that he would, he swung sideways and slammed us the first time, jolting us hard toward the concrete pillar.

  The steering wheel lurched as if trying to shake my hands off. I held on, the straight-ahead forwardness of our momentum now the only thing keeping us on the road. Beside me, Ellie let out a squeak.

  Bang. He hit us again, harder and with an extra little weave-and-a-bobble swerve at the end of it this time. Our rear tires slid sideways and I fought the deadly urge to steer; instead, just as if we were slipping on ice, I eased off the gas gently and let the car’s rear end carry us out to the end of our skid.

  Only then did I steer into it, blessing the winter-driving lessons I’d learned in Maine. The car straightened, its weight and speed carrying us forward again; when it did, I slammed on the gas once more.

  It was all I could do not to roll down the window and flip our attacker the bird as we roared away from him. But keeping us on the road was still occupying my whole attention, and, besides, I wouldn’t do a rude thing like that.

  Sure I wouldn’t. “He’s still back there,” said Ellie as we sped through the village of Robbinston without flipping over or hitting a ditch. Only a few lights were still on in the houses as we zoomed out of the small seaside hamlet.

  Next came another long, straight stretch of road. “Uh-huh,” I said as I accelerated into it.

  I was feeling pretty good, actually. Mostly from the massive amounts of adrenaline fizzing in my bloodstream, but still.

  “Let’s lose him,” I said, eyeing the edge of the road for the driveway I knew would be there.

  Praying he didn’t know it, too. Almost . . . almost . . . now.

  Cutting the headlights, I slowed down as suddenly as I could without losing control, then turned hard right onto a narrow dirt track that opened up suddenly between big trees.

  There was a firing range ba
ck here. I’d visited it with Wade many times; he enjoyed target shooting on his days off. Huge tree trunks flew past us in the dark.

  At last when I figured we’d gone far enough, we rolled to a stop; I held my breath, but saw no lights in the rearview mirror, even after waiting for several minutes.

  So no one had followed us in. We’d turned before he crested the last hill, apparently, so he hadn’t seen us do it.

  “Whew,” said Ellie, leaning back in relief.

  “Uh-huh.” I buzzed down the car windows and the sweet scent of pines floated in, mixed with the smell of seawater; the bay’s northern reach was only a few hundred yards distant.

  “He’ll figure out what we did, though, if he hasn’t already. He’ll be back looking for us,” I said.

  And sure enough, in a few minutes more a pair of headlights appeared out on the paved road, moving slowly.

  The headlights paused. A flashlight beam strobed the edge of the pavement; looking for our tire tracks, I supposed. But the way in had been dry and hard-packed; and in the darkness, if you didn’t know the opening was here, it would be easy to miss the turnoff even if you were looking right at it.

  The flashlight beam went away; I let out my breath. Then the headlights did, too, whereupon I swung the car around, put our own headlights back on, and pulled out onto the empty pavement, and minutes later we reached the town of Calais with no more trouble. The hospital was a one-story yellow-brick building with a big sliding-glass front entrance. I parked in the visitors’ lot, empty except for one car, way at the back; not the car that had menaced us, I saw as we cruised slowly past it to make sure.

  “You think whoever chased us just now was the same person who shot at you and Wade?”

  We crossed the dark parking lot toward the hospital’s glass front doors, my twisted ankle flaring with each step.

  “Who else would it be?” That same person had fiddled with Wade’s truck somehow, too; I couldn’t prove it, but I was sure of it.

  “First it was a boat that was after us, then a car . . . What’s next, killer drones?” Ellie asked, trying for a light tone.

  But she couldn’t quite manage it, and neither could I. “Don’t know,” I said, “but if I tell you to run like hell at any time in the near future, just do it and ask questions later, okay?”

  The glass doors slid soundlessly open as we approached. At this hour no one was at the information desk. The silent lobby smelled like carpet-cleaning solution and fresh floor wax.

  Feeling like trespassers, we practically tiptoed toward a sign that read PATIENT AREA. The sign also said NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, but I figured that was a little detail we’d deal with later.

  “Can I help you?” a young woman in a hospital scrub uniform asked, looking up from the nurses’ desk at the far end of the ward we’d just entered without authorization.

  I let Ellie do the talking as I looked around: overhead fluorescent lights turned down low, heavy-duty industrial carpet, pale grass-cloth-covered walls. All up and down the corridor, doors to the darkened patient rooms stood half-open, and here and there a heart monitor beeped quietly.

  I turned back to where Ellie and the nurse were nodding to one another. Somehow, despite the late hour, Ellie had gotten us past the visiting-hour restrictions.

  “That way,” the nurse said, pointing, “about halfway down. It’s the one with the light on.”

  When we got there, I peeked in and saw that Ellie had been right about coming here. Maybe Marla Sykes had still been groggy from the beating she’d taken when Bob Arnold saw her earlier.

  But she was awake now, with the bedside light on just as the nurse had said. Awake . . . and terrified, until she saw who we were.

  “Jake, Ellie,” she whispered, lifting a hand with an IV taped to it, then letting it fall. “Thank goodness you’re here.”

  * * *

  She looked like hell, half her hair shaved and iodine stains on her stitched scalp. A black eye, more stitches in her lip, and a big scrape down the back of her right arm completed the unhappy picture.

  “Wow, Marla,” I said inadequately. “How are you?” Of course, I felt stupid the minute I’d said it, but she laughed.

  I mean, as well as she could. “Oh, just ducky. I mean, I hurt all over, but the whole not-being-dead thing is a big consolation. So there’s, you know, that.” Her tone turned anxious: “Is Maxie okay?”

  I sat in a bedside chair; Ellie pulled up another one. “Yeah. He’s fine. He’s keeping my dad company.”

  I figured I’d loosen her up with a little chitchat before asking her why the hell she’d been lying to us, and what was going on. But Ellie had other ideas.

  “Right, this is all great,” she interrupted. “I mean I’m glad you’re okay, and I’m really very sorry about all this.” Her gesture took in the room, the IV bag with clear liquid dripping from it, and Marla’s many injuries. “But we don’t have much time,” Ellie added. “I told the nurse out there that we’re your cousins, that we drove up here from New York when we heard you were hurt.”

  I must’ve looked taken aback at this; Ellie made a face at me.

  “Well,” she said, “I had to tell her something, didn’t I? But when I said it, I saw her face change. Like she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t know why.”

  “Damn,” I said as I realized what must’ve happened; downeast Maine’s a small world.

  “Right.” Ellie nodded. “She doesn’t quite remember it yet, but she lives around here, you know? And any minute she’s going to figure out she sold me a geranium at the school fair last May, and when she does . . .”

  Just then the nurse in question came in with some pills in a plastic cup. I got up and moved toward the window; Ellie made a show of busily rooting through her bag for something.

  The nurse glanced at each of us, but didn’t say anything. I looked out the window again at the deserted parking lot.

  Only it wasn’t deserted anymore. A car was just now pulling in, swinging into one of the angled parking spaces out front.

  The car’s big chrome grill, round-as-a-marble signal lights, and double-barrel headlamps were the same ones that had menaced us on the way here.

  The nurse went out again. Marla saw my expression. “What?” she demanded anxiously.

  I crossed the room in what felt like a single bound. “Where’s a good place to hide in this place, do you suppose?”

  Taking her cue from me, Ellie found Marla’s hospital robe and grabbed the wheeled IV pole.

  “Sit,” she ordered, positioning the wheelchair, and Marla obeyed.

  The nurse was out in the hall, writing something on Marla’s clipboard. Glimpsing us all coming out of the room together, she looked alarmed, as if she might decide to hit the emergency button on the wall a few feet away.

  Before she could, though, I grabbed her, hustled back into the room and over to the window.

  “See that car? Whoever’s in it is about to come in here to finish what they started on our . . . our cousin.” I waved at Marla. “To kill her, understand? Now where can we hide her?”

  Like most nurses in my experience, this one was no fool. She made no argument, only gestured for us to follow her.

  I glanced back across the room one more time; in the parking lot the big dark muscle car’s inside lights were still on, but the passenger compartment was empty.

  So was the parking lot itself. Which meant that whoever had been in the car was now probably crossing the hospital lobby at a sprint.

  Toward us. “Go, go, go,” I urged, catching up with the three women hurrying ahead of me: one rolling, the others hustling along on either side of Marla Sykes’s wheelchair.

  “He’s going to come in here. And you’re going to tell him,” I instructed the nurse as she opened a hallway door marked LINENS and pushed the wheelchair through it, “that Marla Sykes has been discharged.”

  “But you guys . . .” The nurse knew we weren’t who we said we were and now she wanted an explanat
ion, however brief.

  Ellie stuck her head back out of the linen closet. “Look at my face. That’s right, you do remember me. The school fair.”

  The nurse nodded in recognition as the door at the far end of the corridor began opening. “Yeah, I thought you looked—”

  “Hey, you two, can we talk about this later?” I implored. “Because we really don’t have much time here.”

  Ellie ignored me. “I think our daughters even went to the same preschool,” she added. “And listen, I know this all seems crazy, but we’re not. Honest.”

  The corridor’s entry door finished opening. A cleaning person came through, pushing a metal cart bearing a mop and bucket. The nurse met Ellie’s gaze and I saw her come to a decision.

  “Okay,” she whispered hastily just as the door at the end of the corridor began opening again.

  I didn’t see who came through it this time. The nurse closed the linen closet door on us instead.

  “Darn,” I said into the bleach-smelling darkness. Bella would have loved it in here. “I wish I’d told her to find out who that is, if she can.”

  “Never mind.” Marla’s voice was quiet and sad. “I can tell you. I know who it is.”

  I pulled the penlight from my purse, flicked it on. Marla’s face looked haunted, her eyes hollow and sad; whatever she’d been up to, it hadn’t worked out well for her.

  To put it mildly. “I know,” she repeated. Her voice strengthening with sudden resolve “I’m going to tell you, too. Both of you, right now. Only . . .”

  Her shoulders slumped under the thin hospital bathrobe. All bashed up and battered, she gazed from Ellie to me and back with a look of such naked appeal that I almost felt sorry for her.

  Almost. Because she’d lied to us, hadn’t she? Not just once, but many times. And by then I’d figured out at least a portion of why: Marla’s part of it all, anyway.

  “Only you have to promise not to hate me afterward,” she said.

  Nine

  “Hey,” said Ellie from the back of the hospital linen closet. “Hey, there’s a—”

  “Hold that thought.” I pressed the closet’s door handle lever down slowly. The door opened outward; I put my eye to the crack, then backed away and gestured for Marla to look, too.