Bride and Doom

by Deborah Donnelly

  I knew the answer, and it was a painful one: because I’d had a crush on him since I was a teenager. And also because Rob was retired now and couldn’t be fined or suspended from the game. But even retired, he still had a lot to lose. Once it got out that he’d used steroids to prolong his career, he’d be barred forever from the all-important Hall of Fame.

  Another pattern piece suddenly clicked into place. Gordo said Leroy Theroux had zero tolerance for drugs—but Rob had retired the year Leroy arrived. Leaving behind Nelly Tibbett, who knew his dark secret, and Digger Duvall, who guessed that Nelly knew and planned to run a sensational exposé about it before the Hall of Fame ballots went out…

  “Lot of pressure on the Cubs now,” Rob remarked. “Do or die.”

  “D-die? Oh, of course, they have to win tonight to stay in the Series, don’t they?” Only a little farther to the exit. I hastened my steps. “Should be quite a game.”

  Poor Nelly. When Digger forced the information out of him and confronted Rob with it, Rob used that laser control of his to make an instant decision: pick up the commemorative bat and eliminate the threat. Nelly must have been remorseful at betraying his friend—and then terrified that he would be next.

  And now maybe I am.

  “You know what?” I said, and my voice sounded stagy even to me. “I need to talk to Eugene about something. Don’t wait for me, I’ll be—hey!”

  Rob had seized my upper arm in a bruising grip—and in his other hand he held JD’s loaded gun.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “Where is it?” Rob demanded, and dug the muzzle of the gun into my ribs. “Just tell me.”

  I played dumb. “Are you crazy? Where’s what?”

  But it was too late for playing.

  “You know right well,” he drawled. “I want that tape recording. You told Gordo about it, and he told me.”

  “There isn’t any recording. I made it up.”

  “Sure you did.”

  The gun dug in harder, and I heard myself whimper.

  “Y-you can’t shoot,” I said, and wished I believed it. “People will hear, they’d see you running away.”

  “Why would I run from an accident?”

  The drowning blue eyes held mine in an unwavering stare, the stare that had unnerved so many batters—and that Digger Duvall had defied, to his cost.

  “Accident?” I echoed.

  “I was handing you the boy’s gun so you could take it to the police, and somehow it went off. Neither of us knew to check the safety. Terrible tragedy. Now where is it?”

  I swallowed, or tried to, and said the first thing I could think of. “In my van. Near the loading dock.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  We moved across the rotunda in tandem, Rob’s left arm around my shoulders, his right hand with the gun tight against my side. From a distance, I supposed, we might have been lovers. I walked as slowly as I dared, praying that Eugene would come back. Or would that panic Rob into shooting us both?

  In any case, I was unlikely to survive once we got to Vanna and my lie was revealed. That is, if Rob Harmon was capable of killing in cold blood, not just in the heat of anger. I slowed even more.

  “Rob, listen. I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill Digger. He was probably provoking you—”

  “Arrogant bastard.” The hatred in his voice was chilling. “This is all his fault. I just meant to scare him, but then he was—he was…”

  His voice dwindled as he descended once more into the bloody nightmare. Then he blinked rapidly and clutched my arm. “Keep moving.”

  As we walked, I tried again. “None of this is my fault, Rob. You don’t want to hurt me. That’s not who you are.”

  “You have no idea who I am,” he said bleakly. “No idea.”

  “But I do.” I groped for something that might pull him back from the edge, recall him to reason. “You’re Gordo’s friend. And Rose is so fond of you. You—you seemed fond of me, up at Snow Lake. At least I thought so.”

  Rob’s breathing changed. We had reached the gazebo by then. He stopped at its plywood side and swung me around to face him. His forehead bore a sheen of sweat, and his musky scent was strong and cloying.

  “Y’all thought I was going to kiss you up on that crag, didn’t you? And I wanted to! But what I needed to do was push you over. You’d seen that notebook, the same one Duvall waved in my face, and I couldn’t tell if you knew about me. I’ve been in hell, don’t you understand?” He clutched me tighter, and I gasped. “I’ve been in hell!”

  “Rob, this doesn’t have to go any further. Listen to—”

  “Hiya, Stretch! Whoa, Rob, am I interrupting something?”

  Aaron came trotting across the rotunda toward us, a big smile on his face. A big phony smile—I’d known him too long to be fooled. He’s figured it out, I thought. He knows. But Rob Harmon didn’t know Aaron at all—he was just some reporter. The gun disappeared, and though Rob’s voice sounded stilted, he had himself under control.

  “Hey, there. Aaron Gold, right? Just saying goodbye to Carnegie here.” Then, before Aaron reached us, he muttered to me, “Get rid of him.”

  My thought exactly. The only thing that frightened me more than harm to myself was any kind of threat to Aaron. And what could he do against a gun? If he even guessed that Rob still possessed it, which I certainly hadn’t. No, I had to persuade him to leave, to summon the police.

  “Aaron!” I called out brightly, and as he came closer, I widened my eyes in what I hoped was a meaningful manner. Where’s ESP when you need it? “I, ah, still have some things to talk over with Rob. About the wedding and, and things. So I’ll meet you back at the houseboat, OK? Maybe we can have dinner with Lily and Mike. I’d love to see Mike.”

  No good. Rob shifted impatiently, and Aaron planted himself in front of us and folded his arms.

  “I think I’ll stick around,” he said, and his smile became an icy calm. “Don’t mind me.”

  Incredibly—insanely—Aaron was calling Rob’s bluff. Don’t do this, I silently cried. For both our sakes, don’t do this.

  “Don’t be stupid, Gold.” The grip on my arm tightened. “Get out of my way.”

  Aaron didn’t move. “Oh, I’m not stopping you. But you have to go alone. Carnegie stays here.”

  Ever so faintly I heard Rob give a sigh, and the gun reappeared. “No.”

  “Two hostages, Harmon?” Aaron spoke quietly, almost hypnotically. “Now that’s going to be awkward. You’ll need one of us to drive the car, of course, but—Run!”

  I ran. Maybe I should have stayed to help Aaron as he dove for the gun, but my nerves were stretched to the breaking point and adrenaline took over. Adrenaline, but not a sense of direction. I ran blindly, thinking I was heading for the street exit, but fetched up against a small door near the escalators instead. I heard gasps and grunts behind me—and then a muffled shot.

  I looked back. Aaron was lying on the floor, while Rob stumbled to his feet and came after me, his face contorted, the gym bag still swinging from his shoulder. With a sob of terror, I pushed through the door, raced down a dim narrow hallway, around a corner—only to find another corridor, with rakes and other pieces of groundskeeping equipment lined up along the walls.

  I was in some kind of service tunnel. I had to turn back and find an exit—but there were footsteps pounding behind me, and they were getting closer. I had to summon an ambulance for Aaron, but first I had to survive.

  I flew along the corridor, squinting through the gloom for any sign of escape. Finally I spotted something up ahead, a wide set of double doors with a printed sign above it. I pushed myself faster, shoved through the right-hand door, and emerged onto a stretch of crumbly dirt with a huge grassy expanse stretching before me.

  I was on the baseball diamond, at the edge of the outfield beyond third base. And I only knew of one other door, the archway where I’d watched the wedding ceremony just a few hours ago. An eternity ago.

  Rabbits must feel like
I felt, exposed and panicky, scuttling to cross a meadow while a hawk comes diving in for the kill. The October afternoon was fading, and with the stadium lights turned off, the grass at my feet was dim and cool.

  I sprinted toward home plate, my lungs burning and my breath tearing at my throat. My bolt hole seemed impossibly far away, and though I didn’t dare look back, I heard the service door bang shut as Rob came through it.

  Zzzzt!

  Something hummed by my ear, so close that I cried out in alarm. But it wasn’t a bullet, it was a white blur, and then somewhere on the far side of the diamond, I heard an echoing crack.

  Startled and puzzled, I wasn’t watching my feet, and when the surface changed from grass to the dirt around third base, I stumbled and sprawled flat, skidding painfully on knees and palms. I began to haul myself up, but slowly, too slowly. Behind me in the outfield, beneath the empty stands, Rob Harmon was waving his arms.

  No, not waving. Winding up for a pitch.

  That’s when I knew for sure what the murder weapon had been. Not a baseball bat, though he used that afterward to disguise the death wound. The weapon had been a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball, launched with deadly accuracy down that hallway full of memorabilia. An autographed ball, like the ones in Rob’s gym bag today.

  These ideas flooded quickly into my mind, but I could barely move my body, barely breathe. I cowered there, eyes closed, but as I did I heard the service door bang again. My eyes flew open.

  Aaron! He reached into Rob’s discarded bag, he straightened up with something in his hand—and then both men moved. Another white blur came at me, and I saw only an explosion of stars and darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Someone had a terrible headache. I was yearning to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep because the person with the terrible headache kept moaning.

  “Stop it,” I moaned. “Please stop it…”

  The moaning came and went, but the headache stayed. Faces bobbed above me like balloons, blurred and then harshly focused and then blurred again. Bright lights, darkness, voices in the distance, voices in my ear, memories…

  “Aaron!”

  I struggled in panic, trying to get up, trying to run to him. Gentle hands pressed at my shoulders, and I fell back into the pillows.

  “Shhh, Carrie, it’s all right. Aaron is safe, dear. You’re both safe.”

  “Mom?”

  “Shhh.”

  Darkness again. My headache faded into a far, dim distance. I drifted after it, into the silence, and slept. When I awoke, it was to pale morning light that filtered thinly through the curtains of a hospital room. I lay motionless, unthinking, my gaze wandering from the windows to the vacant bed next to mine to the armchair in the corner, which had someone sleeping in it. Aaron, his head tilted to one side, snoring softly. I smiled and slept again.

  When I woke up next, I was alone and feeling remarkably normal except for a fair-sized lump over my right eye. In fact, I was attempting to get out of bed when a plump and ruddy woman, wearing a flowered smock and a name badge that read JANICE M., barged into the room and said, “Oh, no you don’t!”

  “But I’m thirsty,” I said meekly.

  “And what do you think that’s for?”

  She nodded at my bedside table, which indeed held a glass and pitcher, as well as a vase of yellow roses. Next to the vase lay a notepad with the hospital logo, and on the pad, within the penciled outline of a heart, was the ruby ring.

  “He’s just getting himself some lunch,” said the aide, making the shrewd assumption that I knew who “he” was. “And your mother will be back shortly. She just called.”

  “Lunch? What day is it?”

  “Sunday. You took quite a whack on the head. Mild concussion and shock, though you’re supposed to hear that from the doctor, not from me. But the way she’s backed up today, she won’t get to you for another hour, and you’d be asking me anyway, wouldn’t you? There now.”

  Bustling busily as she spoke, Janice had poured a glass of water, helped me sit up to drink it, fluffed my pillows, and twitched my sheets into order. She gave a quick brisk nod, satisfied with her handiwork.

  “Want some lunch yourself?”

  “Mm…no, thanks.”

  “I’m not surprised. Lots of fluids, though.” She pointed at the television set mounted at the ceiling. “Your remote control is there with your water if you get bored. I don’t think they’ll keep you tonight, but if they do, you can still watch the game.”

  “Game?”

  “The Cubbies tied the Series last night! Oh, of course, you wouldn’t know that, would you? I’m from Chicago, you see, so I can hardly think about anything else. My husband says it was a fluke, they’ll win the World Series when hell freezes over, but I think they’re going to do it tonight, I truly do. I tried to get off work early so I could see the first pitch, but I already swapped one shift this week already, so…”

  I must have dozed off again, because suddenly she was gone and Aaron was there gazing down at me. He looked the worse for wear—but then I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror yet.

  “What happened?” I asked, when I could bear to stop kissing him for a moment. I touched his right cheek gingerly. It was scraped and bruised, but otherwise he seemed intact. “I thought you were shot.”

  “Nope. The gun slid under the gazebo where Harmon couldn’t get it, and I crashed into the damn thing myself. Plywood is really hard.”

  “And Rob?”

  “He took off after you and—well, you know.”

  “No, I don’t. He was throwing at me, but then you threw a ball at him? I forgot, you were a pitcher too. Did that stop him?”

  “No way.” Aaron grinned, but there was a shadow in his eyes. “My glory days in college were a long time ago. I just bounced a ball near his feet, and it spoiled his aim.”

  I shuddered. “That was how he killed Digger, you know. With a pitch.”

  “Yeah, Mike Graham wants to talk to you about that. He’s outside there now, but if you’re not feeling up to questions—”

  “Ask him to come in, would you? I want to get this over with and then forget all about it. If I can.”

  Mike’s manner was a mix of his official and his private personas. He was doggedly thorough about learning exactly what had happened since the murder, with special attention to the contents of Digger’s notebook. But he was also considerate of my fragile condition.

  “That’s enough for now,” he said, putting his own notebook away. “I’ll save my lecture for another time.”

  “The one about interfering with police business?”

  “That’s the one.” He smiled. “Take care, now. Lily says she’ll be here soon.”

  “If I’m still here,” I retorted. “I want to go home. But Mike, wait. What’s Rob saying about all this? Has he confessed?”

  The same sort of shadow crossed Mike’s face. He glanced across the bed at Aaron, who shook his head slightly. That apparently meant I haven’t told her.

  “Robert Harmon fled the scene in his rental car,” Mike said, frowning at the wall behind me. “He almost collided with the ambulance that was coming for you. We pursued, but he drove to the state ferry dock and gunned his engine. Went right through a barrier and into the water. Rescue efforts were unsuccessful. It, um, appeared to be deliberate.”

  “Oh.”

  Mike left quietly, and Aaron held me for a long time.

  After that Mom came, to reassure herself all over again that her darling daughter was going to survive. Then Lily brought me some clean clothes to go home in, if the overbooked doctor would ever show up to set me free. And Owen, having parked the car after dropping Mom off, arrived with a cardboard cup of coffee for her and a two-pound box of chocolate creams from the gift shop for me.

  “I wasn’t sure what was appropriate,” he said, his hearty executive manner a bit subdued in these medical surroundings. “But Lou’s always telling me that chocolate cures all ills.”

  “She is so ri
ght!” Lily laughed her marvelous, contagious laugh. “You going to share, Carnegie?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, determined not to think about Rob Harmon. At least not today.

  I opened the box, and we had ourselves quite a little party. Owen went out for more coffees, and when he returned, he had more visitors in tow: Buck and Betty Buckmeister, who had somehow learned about the situation on the Navigator grapevine. After a round of introductions, Betty was full of tender solicitude about my injury, and Buck boomed with relief at my evident recovery.

  “’Cept for that goose egg on your noggin, you look just fine,” he said, tossing a chocolate toward his back teeth and chawing at it like tobacco. “Practically a picture of health.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. “Mom, have you got a comb and mirror? Thanks, I just need to—yikes!” My face was recognizable, but I almost wished it weren’t. The “goose egg” was a monumental bulge that contorted my expression grotesquely. “Why didn’t someone tell me? I look like a monster.”

  “I asked the doc,” said Aaron, “and she said the swelling will go down quickly. Don’t worry, you’re going to look fine for your wedding.”

  “My wedding?” As the chitchat continued around us, I looked up at him in dismay and whispered, “Aaron, it’s our wedding.”

  “Of course it is,” he blurted, with the horror-struck air of a well-meaning man who’s just said The Wrong Thing to a woman. “Of course it is. It’s just that all the fancy arrangements are more for you than for—Oh God, Stretch, don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying,” I said staunchly, through the tears, “and I would marry you tomorrow if I could.”

  This overdramatic announcement fell into a lull in the general conversation, and everyone’s eyes turned toward us. A startled pause, and then Betty Buckmeister piped up.

  “Honey, you can marry him right this minute if you got your heart set on it. I been a Universal Life minister since nineteen-seventy-nine.”