When Sadie parked the van in her garage, she felt disconcerted and annoyed by her trip to Cedar House. Frankly, she didn’t care if Carole Brant took the boxes and Paula helped. She wanted to be done with the whole damn place and was seriously considering telling Louise to cancel their meeting.
Slipping her key in the dead bolt, Sadie stepped into the laundry room that doubled as her shower area. She still felt grimy from her earlier visit to the decomposition scene. Stripping down, she immediately tossed the clothes she’d been wearing into the washing machine and then gratefully stepped into the shower stall. Cranking the temperature up on the water, Sadie turned to the wall and allowed the hot spray to hit between her shoulder blades and obliterate the stress that had built up there.
When the shower door was ripped open, Sadie barely had time to scream before Paula Wicks jabbed her in the scalp with a hypodermic needle.
Sadie’s mouth formed the word “why” as she slid down the wall of the shower and her world faded to black.
20
Sadie tried to coax her eyelids open but they were too heavy. Finally, with monumental effort, she was able to open them to mere slits. She was naked, her hands and feet were bound, and she was in the back of her rental van. The road they were driving on was rough and her body bounced hard against the metal floor. The van took an abrupt turn, and Sadie rolled sharply against the wall. She could make out the sound of two voices: Paula’s and Carole’s.
“It’s too early,” Paula was saying. “We shouldn’t be in the park before dark.”
“But you said yourself the drugs will wear off soon,” Carole pointed out. “What if she wakes up and starts freaking out?”
“She’s bound and gagged,” Paula said with a laugh. “What will she do, kill us with a dirty look?”
If I could, I would, Sadie thought, but even trying to stay awake was a huge task. She tried to wiggle her fingers but the plastic ties that bound her wrists together cut painfully into her flesh. When she fought against the restraints, it made breathing through her nose that much more difficult and caused her to panic until she sobbed against the duct tape that covered her mouth.
Easy, she told herself. Calmly think this through.
Carole was complaining bitterly to Paula about something but Sadie was having a hard time focusing until she heard something about Stephen Brant. Then she forced herself to pay attention.
“How the hell am I supposed to know exactly how my mom did it?” Paula demanded. “I only found out that she killed him when she started mixing up her past and present because of the Alzheimer’s.”
Wait a second. Mimi Wicks killed Stephen Brant? Sadie craned her ears to hear and begged the dark fog not to envelope her.
“I knew all along he didn’t kill himself,” Carole said glumly. “He was enjoying himself too much. Deep down I always hoped my mom had finally stood up to him.”
“At least your mom told you about all the missing boxed videotapes so we could get them out of the house before Nancy Drew back there found them and turned them over to police,” Paula pointed out.
Videos? Sadie thought, and then she lost her battle against the blanket of unconsciousness that covered her.
Sadie had no idea how much time had elapsed when her eyes dared to open again. The van was dark, chilly, and deadly silent. She rolled from her side onto her back, and pain shot through her ankles. After a moment she forced her knees to bend so that she could scoot toward the van doors. If she could somehow get to her feet, she hoped to open the latch and hop outside. If she found herself in the middle of nowhere, she knew she’d be out of luck. There was no way she could get far with her ankles and wrists tied. She remembered something about a park, but they could’ve just left the van in an alley somewhere. She sure as hell wasn’t about to lie around waiting to find out.
Scooching down along the hard metal floor, Sadie made her way to the rear doors. She managed to wriggle and writhe her way to a crouched position. A film of exhaustive perspiration covered her body as she attempted to get to her feet. It took multiple tries to stand but she was successful after levering herself against the rear doors and squirming upward. Sadie took only a brief moment to gather air into her lungs and calm herself. Then her fingers groped until they found the latch for the rear door. She attempted to work her numb fingers to pull it upward and open the door.
Locked!
A sob broke against the duct tape on her mouth just as the van was illuminated by headlights.
Oh, God, let it be help!
Footsteps rushed to the back of the van and a key went into the lock. The doors were tugged open, and Sadie tumbled out onto the cold, damp ground.
“Fuck!” shrieked Carole.
“I told you we waited too long to give her another shot,” Paula said. “Help me get her back inside.”
The two women roughly yanked Sadie upward by her armpits, and Sadie got a look at her surroundings. She appeared to be in a secluded wooded area with nothing but trees and brush as far as her eyes could see. Deadly reality clutched painfully in her chest. Even if she could somehow get the tape off her mouth, nobody would hear her scream.
Still, if they were going to kill her, Sadie had no reason to make it easy.
Carole climbed backward inside the van to heave Sadie from behind, and Paula was in front of her. When the two finally lifted Sadie and had her rear propped up inside the floor of the van, they roughly pushed and pulled her to the center of the van.
“Get her clothes,” Paula ordered. She sneered in Sadie’s face. “Not feeling so high-and-mighty now, are you? It’s your own fault, you know. All you had to do was butt out, but no-o-o-o, the Queen of Clean always gets the job done, saves the day, and gets her man.” She leaned in to whisper in Sadie’s face. “Well, today the queen is dethroned.”
Her words were harsh but Sadie looked into Paula’s face and had a moment of satisfaction. The massive hives and blisters all over Paula’s face said the spell powder Sadie had sprinkled in the car had worked. Her eyes must’ve been smiling because Paula’s face grew serious.
“And Zack’s mine too. After you’re dead, he’ll need some serious consoling.”
Abruptly, Sadie drew back her head then slammed it forward, connecting her forehead with Paula’s nose. There was a loud crack and a spurt of blood.
“You bitch!” Paula shrieked. She raised a fist above her head but before she could lower it, Carole clamped her hand on Paula’s wrist and stopped her.
“Get out of here before you bleed all over,” Carole instructed.
Cursing all the way, Paula climbed to the front of the van and exited the driver’s door, one hand cupping her sore nose all the while.
Carole opened a canvas bag and pulled out Sadie’s clothes: panties, bra, jeans, and a T-shirt, as well as socks and Nikes. Sadie glanced at her clothes on the floor of the van with delight. If they planned to dress her, they’d have to untie her.
The driver’s door opened.
“I’ll get the hose hooked up,” Paula said. Her voice sounded nasally because she’d packed her nostrils with tissue. “Once she’s out of it, we’ll dress her. Just keep an eye on her in the meantime.”
Hose? Sadie thought. What the hell?
Paula closed the driver’s door, and Sadie heard her footsteps sound softly on the earth between the van and the other vehicle.
Sadie’s eyes searched Carole’s for answers. She noticed the woman’s black eye had gone from deep purple to layered green, and she wondered absently whether Mr. Ugly had clobbered her with a box of goods.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Carole begged. “It won’t hurt at all. After a few minutes you’ll just go to sleep.”
Sleep? Somehow Sadie doubted she meant a solid eight hours of bed rest.
Now Sadie heard fumbling around at the back of the van and she began to realize what was happening. They were going to attach a hose to the tailpipe and funnel the exhaust in through the window until she was dead. Then they’d dress
her and put her at the wheel like it was a suicide.
A vision of the Mr. Ugly’s ghost at Sunnyside Avenue sprang to her mind. Red lips. A sign he’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Why didn’t she figure it out before? Stephen Brant was the vicious ghost at the Wickses’ house!
Sadie closed her eyes as realization overtook her. She must be in Discovery Park, where the police had discovered the body of Stephen Brant. They said he’d committed suicide at the park by swallowing a handful of pills and then running a hose from his exhaust pipe into his car to be sure. Paula and Carole obviously knew the truth courtesy of Mimi’s forgetful slipup. But there was another truth they didn’t know. Stephen Brant didn’t die here in the park. If he had, this was where his spirit would be haunting. Nope, Mimi Wicks killed Stephen Brant inside her own home and then drove him out here to make it look like a suicide.
Paula opened the driver’s door, rolled the window down a crack, and then fed the end of a hose through the window. She climbed into the van, closed the door, and then tugged a good length of the hose inside. She raised the window enough that it gripped the hose slightly and it wouldn’t slip out. She bent over to climb into the back of the van, and Sadie noticed a twinkle of starlight catch the silver S pendant Paula wore around her neck.
“C’mon,” Paula said, nodding to Carole. “It’s time to go, Mouse.”
21
Within a few seconds the noxious carbon monoxide fumes began filling the van. Paula wasn’t taking any chances; she took a needle from her pocket and plunged it into Sadie’s scalp. Sadie had two thoughts before she drifted off. The first was that Paula knew the scalp was a more difficult place for a coroner to locate a needle prick. The second was that her own father wouldn’t be able to greet her on the other side because she hadn’t yet helped him go over.
The next thing she knew her backside was scraping roughly against the cold metal of the van floor. Sadie moaned in protest. If Paula and Carole planned to dress her and prop her up in the van, she prayed God would give her enough energy to at least fight them, but her arms were as limp as a rag doll’s.
“Gentle with her,” growled a voice.
A male voice.
Someone she recognized.
Gratitude and immense relief washed over her as Sadie forced one eye open to look up into Dean Petrovich’s grumpy face. She was never so happy to see his miserable scowl. He snagged the blanket that had slipped from her naked body and carefully covered Sadie all the way up to her shoulders.
Sadie thought she murmured, “Thanks,” but was unsure whether her lips actually formed words.
Petrovich barked orders as he helped the paramedics lift and slide Sadie out of the back of the van and onto a stretcher, all the while helping her maintain her hold on the blanket and also her dignity.
The world around her was a tilting, swirling blur.
Bed spins without the drinking fun, Sadie thought. A hysterical giggle bubbled out of her throat, sounding more like a sob.
“Hurry,” Petrovich shouted, and the stretcher was bumped quickly away from the van.
Sadie glanced around the shadowed woods. The site illuminated by the glow of emergency vehicle headlights, she could make out Carole Brant and Paula Wicks cuffed and being pressed into the rear of a Seattle PD vehicle. Another car pulled onto the dirt road and came to a stop just behind the ambulance. Two men quickly jumped out and came running over. Petrovich stopped them both with a raise of his hand and a dirty look.
“You know, you’re real lucky this time,” Petrovich said to Sadie, laying a warm hand to cover hers as the stretcher paused before she was lifted into the back of the ambulance.
Sadie’s fuzzy head agreed but still her tongue could not move to say the words. She watched in dazed fascination as both Zack and Floyd elbowed past Petrovich. They were each shouting words to her that sounded at once concerned and panicked. Sadie watched their images dissolve into a murky haze behind her closed lids as her stretcher was hoisted into the ambulance.
Sadie didn’t remember much of what happened after that. She vaguely recalled the clean, cool sheets of the hospital bed. There were faces that floated into her line of vision whenever she opened her eyes: Dawn, Mom, Maeva, Petrovich, and even Floyd. But not Zack.
It seemed easier to sleep instead of talk, so she did.
For days.
Eventually the hospital had no reason to hold her. When the time came to leave, Sadie called Maeva. Her friend tucked Sadie into the passenger seat of her car, buckling her seat belt and murmuring words of comfort as if she were a small child in need of reassurance. Sadie wondered absently whether Maeva was practicing for her upcoming role as a mother. They rode to Sadie’s house in silence. Actually, Sadie had yet to speak to anyone about the incident. She’d overheard the doctor warning family and friends not to bring it up until she was ready.
Once Sadie was on her own sofa in her own house and holding dear ol’ Hairy in her lap, she let out a long, slow breath as if she’d been holding it forever.
“How did they know?” she asked Maeva.
Maeva had been about to lower herself into the chair next to Sadie and now she paused with her butt still halfway down.
“She speaks,” Maeva said, and smiled a tentative and relieved smile as she sat. “How did who know what?”
“How did the cops know where I was? How did they find me in time?”
“Zack put it all together,” Maeva said. “Paula freaked out when he moved out of her place and went to stay at a hotel. He returned to her apartment to pick up his things and found some sort of agenda. She was a list maker.”
“Lists will get you every time,” Sadie said with a halfhearted chuckle before her face got serious. Her eyes on the rabbit in her lap, she asked, “I didn’t see him. Did Zack come to the hospital?”
“No. He checked back into the recovery center on the night they brought you to the hospital. Floyd drove him. You can visit him whenever you feel up to it.”
Relief washed over her and Sadie blinked back tears.
Maeva said, “Your mom and sister would really like to check in on you. . . .”
“Maybe later,” Sadie said. Though it was only afternoon, she was suddenly exhausted. “I want to sleep in my own bed.”
When Sadie woke up the next day at the crack of noon she was surprised to find that Maeva had stayed the night and that Petrovich was sitting next to the psychic on Sadie’s sofa. At first Sadie was self-conscious in the oversized tee she wore to bed, but then she remembered Dean had seen more than a little bare leg the night he’d come to rescue her.
“Hi,” Sadie said softly as she walked into the living room.
“I’ll get you some coffee,” Maeva said, excusing herself from the living room and leaving them alone.
“Just checking in,” Petrovich said. “Thought you might want an update but if you’re not up to it, I understand.”
So much for the good doc telling everyone not to bring it up.
Sadie smiled. Petrovich knew he’d want closure if the shoe was on the other foot.
“Fill me in,” Sadie said, bracing herself. “Paula and Carole?” she prodded.
“Behind bars.”
“And covering for the fact that Mimi Wicks killed Stephen Brant, right? I’m guessing all those years ago Mimi came home and found Mr. Ugly messing with Paula like he’d messed with Carole, and Mimi took justice into her own hands. Somehow she incapacitated him, probably sleeping pills in booze or something, and then she pulled his vehicle into her garage and ran the hose from the exhaust in his window. Next, she drove his vehicle with him in it out to a secluded area in Discovery Park, where she rehooked up the hose to make it look like he’d done it to himself there.”
“Wow, you’re good.” Petrovich smiled, obviously impressed.
“I’ve had a few days to think about it.”
“How’d you know it didn’t happen in the park?”
“Because the Mr. Ugly ghost at Sunnyside Avenue is Stephen Bra
nt. If he’d died in the park, his spirit would be there. As it was, he stayed at Sunnyside Avenue. Maybe he haunted Mimi. Maybe he didn’t. It’s not like she was about to admit stuff was flying around, since everyone already thought she was crazy.”
“Yeah, Mimi hasn’t been able to confirm anything. She hasn’t had a good day since I started questioning her,” Petrovich said. “But after a little pressure, Paula and Carole squealed like pigs. According to Paula the reason Stephen Brant was killed at Mimi’s house was because Mimi caught him not with Paula but trying to steal back some boxes she bought from Bertrude.”
“Mimi killed him because of boxes?”
He shrugged. “She’s pretty protective of her stuff.”
“What about the mummified baby? It was Carole’s, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. The sick puppy impregnated his own daughter. She gave birth at home quietly and without anyone’s help but Paula’s.”
“Geez, that must’ve been rough for a couple of teens. Bertrude didn’t notice her own daughter was pregnant?”
“I imagine she closed her eyes to a lot,” Petrovich stated. “Paula and Carole both claim the baby was stillborn. Coroner believes that’s a possibility. The girls wrapped the baby in newspaper and hid it in a box, not knowing Bertrude would try to sell off everything at a garage sale. When they realized most of the boxed items were bought by Mimi, they figured they were safe again, since she rarely even looked inside the boxes at the treasures she bought.”
“But wasn’t Paula worried when Zack came in to clean that he would find what was in the boxes?”
“She figured Zack and even you would just chuck the works in the big trash bins in the driveway, and she was right because that’s what you had been doing,” Petrovich said. “Paula knew nobody could be bothered to go through all the debris inside that house. And her goal was always to clean out the upper bedroom herself, since that’s where she knew Mimi had stashed the boxes long ago. Then when she did get worried about whether you’d found what was in the boxes, Paula used Zack’s key to your house and made a copy for herself. She checked your garage because she figured that’s where you’d store the videotapes if you found them.”
Dead and Kicking Page 26