LOW PRESSURE

by BROWN SANDRA

  He paused and let that sink in. “If you saw her lying there facedown holding on to it, you were at the scene of where she died. And you were there ahead of the tornado.”

  Chapter 19

  The silence inside the cabin was so prolonged and absolute that Dent imagined he could hear the dust motes spinning in the stifling air.

  Bellamy stood frozen, her gaze fixed on Moody as he hauled himself up out of his chair, wove his way over to the screened door, pushed it open, and stepped out onto his sorry excuse for a porch.

  Tilting his face skyward, he remarked, “Looks like we finally may get some rain.”

  Dent glanced out the nearest window and noticed that clouds had gathered in the west, blocking out the setting sun. The atmosphere inside the cabin was gloomy, but due less to the weather than to Moody’s disturbing disclosure.

  When he came back inside, the screened door shut behind him with a loud clap that caused Bellamy to jump. As though there had been no suspension of conversation, she asked gruffly, “You think I killed her?”

  Moody halted and, swaying on his feet, eyed her up and down. “You? No.”

  “But you said . . . you said . . .”

  “I said that if you saw her with her purse in her hand, you had to have seen her before the tornado struck.”

  “Maybe you got it wrong,” Dent said. “Maybe the purse was found at the scene, and you’re too drunk now to remember where you got it and when.”

  Moody glowered at him. “My crime scene was compromised, but I know when I came by the fucking purse. It’s in my notes,” he said, gesturing to the file lying on the bed. “Dated.”

  Bellamy returned to the bed and sat down beside Dent. In a haunted, breathy voice, she asked, “I had to have seen her purse there, in her hand. Why else would I have said that?”

  “You only imagined it because you’d seen her carrying the purse,” Dent said. “Within days, everyone knew the position her body was in when she was found. It was all over the news.”

  She looked deeply into his eyes as though desperate to believe his explanation. But he didn’t think she did.

  Moody settled back into his chair. “The bruise on the front of her neck was a band.” He ran his finger across his throat in an even line. “The ME’s opinion—which I shared—was that she’d been strangled by a garrote of some kind. Typically that happens from behind. She was overpowered and didn’t put up a struggle.”

  Dent felt a slight tremor go through Bellamy. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “We didn’t get any skin or blood from beneath her fingernails.” Addressing Dent, he said, “First thing I looked for when I questioned you was scratch marks on your hands and arms.”

  “I didn’t have any. Did Strickland?”

  “None that couldn’t be explained by him crawling under his Mustang to escape the tornado.”

  “That should’ve eliminated us as suspects.”

  “Not necessarily. She also had a knot on the back of her head, which she’d got before she died. What we figured is that she was struck from behind. By what, we were never able to determine. She fell facedown and was rendered unconscious, or at least too stunned to defend herself while the perp finished her off.”

  “With her panties,” Bellamy said quietly.

  “According to you, your stepmother, and the housekeeper who did the family laundry, she wore only one kind. Made of stretchy lace. Strong enough to choke someone to death. Rupe demonstrated in court how it could have been done. That was another of his shining moments.”

  “Didn’t his courtroom shenanigans irk Strickland’s defense attorney?” Dent asked. “Did he ever file an appeal?”

  “Right away, but before the appellate court had time to consider his case and make a ruling, Strickland was killed.”

  “How did the lawyer react to his client’s murder?” Dent asked.

  Moody snorted a mirthless laugh. “He moved over to the DA’s office. At Rupe’s urging. He’s still there, far as I know.”

  Bellamy said, “Allen died for nothing.”

  “Far as I know.”

  Later, when he thought back on it, Dent figured it was Moody’s smirk that had set him off. He saw it, and the next thing he knew, he had closed the distance between the bed and Moody’s chair, and he was bearing down on the former detective.

  “You and Rupe made quite a team. He was the brains and you were his bitch boy. It was working so well, why’d you quit?”

  “Back off.”

  “Not till I hear from you what I want to hear. You’ve admitted you knew Strickland was innocent from the get-go. How did you know?”

  “I told you. He said that Susan had laughed at him. Guys don’t—”

  “Give me a break, Moody. Guys don’t admit it and then whine about it. If she turned him down, he would have been steamed. He would have been cursing her, calling her names. Which would have been implicating, not exonerating. So sell that rationale somewhere else, because to me it smells like bullshit.”

  “His brother—”

  “Who you said could have been lying. You had to have had something else that cleared Allen. What was it, Moody?”

  The former detective looked at Bellamy where she still sat on the end of the bed. When his bleary gaze came back to Dent he said, “When I’m ready.”

  “When you’re ready? What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means, I’ve said all I’m gonna say to you.”

  “You lousy sot. She needs to know what you know,” Dent shouted. “Like fucking now.”

  “Watch yourself, boy.” Moody struggled to stand up, but when he stood face-to-face with Dent, Dent didn’t back down, not even when Moody picked up his pistol from off the TV tray.

  “What?” Dent scoffed. “You’re going to shoot me?”

  “Just keep pushing me and see.”

  “I don’t think so. You’re too chicken-livered.” Dent leaned closer until the barrel of the pistol was touching his shirt.

  Bellamy gave a strangled cry.

  “It’s all right,” Dent said. Holding Moody’s hostile stare, he said, “He’s not going to pull the trigger.”

  “Don’t be so goddamn sure.”

  “The only thing I’m sure about is what a coward you are. You didn’t have the guts to stand up to Rupe Collier, and you don’t have the guts to blow your own brains out now.”

  “Dent!”

  Bellamy sounded anguished and frightened, but neither he nor Moody heeded her.

  Moody’s face was congested with anger. He was breathing hard. Dent felt the barrel of the pistol wavering as though the hand holding it was trembling.

  “At least only one man died on account of me,” he snarled. “I gotta live with that. You gotta live with nearly killing a whole airplane full of people.”

  Dent hit him. Hard. Moody took the blow on the chin and it sent him reeling backward, arms windmilling, until he broke his fall against the kitchen bar. He sank to the floor and landed in a heap.

  Dent walked over to him, took a handful of his hair, and forced his head up. Moody looked at him through glazed and bloodshot eyes. “Don’t measure me by your yardstick, you miserable turd.” He bent down close. “You would’ve framed me for murder if you could’ve. You’ve had almost twenty years to set the record straight about your dirty dealings with Rupe Collier. You haven’t. Instead, you’ve been skulking in this hellhole, trying to drown your guilt in whiskey. Bellamy and I gave you a chance to atone, and you still can’t own up to what you did. You’re a god-damn coward.”

  Making his disgust plain, he released Moody’s hair, went back to the bed, took Bellamy by the hand, and pulled her up. On their way to the door, he paused. “You know, Moody, Rupe Collier is so dazzled by his own image, so far up his own ass, he no longer knows right from wrong. What makes you worse than him, you do.”

  “I can’t fly in this.”

  Neither Dent or Bellamy had said a word since Dent had retrieved his pistol from the wobbly TV tray
, shoved open the screened door, then stood aside and brusquely motioned her through it.

  She had left the case file on the bed. As Dent dragged her past Moody, she’d paused, feeling she should say something. But the truth of it was, her revulsion matched Dent’s. Her eyes met the detective’s briefly before his head dropped forward. Without another word, she and Dent had left the dreary cabin.

  For twenty minutes, he’d been speeding down the state highway in the direction of Marshall, pushing the rented sedan as though expecting it to respond with the velocity of his Corvette and cursing when it didn’t.

  The sky had grown increasingly dark. Raindrops had begun to land hard on the windshield. Without music from the radio, or conversation between them, each splat sounded loud and ominous.

  A jagged fork of lightning and the sequential crack of thunder emboldened her enough to speak. “I can’t fly in this,” she repeated, since Dent hadn’t responded the first time.

  Now, he jerked his head around toward her. “Do you think I would?”

  “Then . . .” She gestured at the airport signpost as they whizzed past it.

  “I’ve got to secure that airplane. Anything happens to it, it’s my ass.” Snidely, he added, “Unless you’re good for it. You’ve got a lot of money. Maybe your daddy would buy it for you.”

  “Shut up, Dent. You’re only mad at yourself.”

  “Myself?”

  “For being so hard on Moody.”

  “Wrong. If I’d been as hard on him as I wanted to be, I would have killed him.”

  When they reached the airport, he whipped into a parking space, his motions conveying his short temper as he shut down the car, got out, and slammed the door. Braving the elements, he ran toward the entrance to the airport terminal.

  Bellamy cringed when another drumroll of thunder vibrated through the car. She didn’t want to be stranded inside it with nothing to protect her from the storm except for the window glass and a few panels of thin metal. But leaving the car and exposing herself to lightning and thunder was out of the question, even for the short time it would take her to run into the terminal.

  Talking herself through her rising panic, she reached for her cell phone and placed a call to Olivia, who answered immediately. “Where are you? What’s that racket?”

  “It’s thunder.” But she didn’t say where she was. “How’s Daddy?”

  “Doing better, actually.” Judging by the unnatural brightness in Olivia’s voice, Bellamy suspected that she was at his bedside and putting up a false front. “He’s eager to talk to you.”

  “I’d like that. But first, tell me how you’re holding up.”

  “Hanging in there. I talked to Steven earlier today. That helped.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “And, in spite of everything, he was happy to see you yesterday.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, too.”

  “I’ll hand the phone to Howard now.”

  Through the phone, Bellamy could hear her father urging Olivia to use this time to get something to eat. Seconds later, his weak voice whispered, “Hey, good-lookin’.”

  “Whacha got cookin’?”

  “Olivia won’t be gone long. She knows something’s up, and it’s scaring her.”

  “Maybe you should tell her.”

  “It would only cause her to fret, and she’s got more than enough to worry about. I tried to talk to her today about my funeral service. She wept so hard I didn’t have the heart to continue.”

  Bellamy made a murmur of regret. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “I told you what you could do for me. Any progress?”

  It wasn’t exactly progress that Dent had been attacked with a knife. Or that Van Durbin and his photographer had captured compromising pictures of them at the airport and outside Dent’s apartment. But the tabloid exploitation of her circumstances now seemed of little or no importance compared to the seriousness of the circumstances themselves.

  “Do you remember Allen Strickland’s brother, Ray?”

  “Yes,” her father replied. “He was mouthy with us at the trial, and after Allen was killed, he came to the corporate offices and tried to bluster his way past the guards. He was subdued and escorted off the property. That’s the last I’ve heard of him. Why?”

  “He was mentioned in a conversation I had today with Dale Moody.”

  “So you saw him? So soon?”

  She didn’t waste her father’s time explaining how the meeting with the former detective had come about. “He’s a chain-smoking alcoholic living alone in squalor. He admitted that he never thought Allen Strickland was guilty, but he stopped short of confessing exactly how he and Rupe Collier engineered his conviction.”

  “I’m surprised he would admit even that much.”

  “He’s a broken man. This case ruined his career and his life. He claims still not to know who killed Susan.” She hesitated to tell him more, but then remembered the importance this held for him. “There’s something else, Daddy.” She told him how she’d come to describe the crime scene.

  “But you were never at the crime scene,” he said.

  “It seems I was. I just don’t remember being there.”

  There was much to explain and only a brief time in which to cover it. Cringing each time lightning struck, she talked her father through it as quickly as possible.

  “When I mentioned Susan’s purse, Moody jumped on it immediately. Is it true that he brought it to you days later?”

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “We were told it had been found in a tree.”

  She sighed. “Then it seems certain that I either witnessed the crime or came upon Susan’s body soon after she was killed. In any case, I saw it before the tornado ravaged the area.”

  “Jesus, Bellamy. Oh, Jesus.”

  She’d expected a swift and firm denial that she’d been anywhere near the crime scene. Instead, he sounded as though his worst fear had been realized.

  “Daddy, what?” When he said nothing, she pressed him, “Do you think that I intentionally withheld information?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then did it ever occur to you that I had memory lapses?”

  “No. I would have gotten help for you.”

  “Would you?”

  Instead of answering, he said, “Ah, Olivia’s back and she’s brought with her . . . What is that? Vegetable beef soup. I’d better go now, sweetheart, and make sure she eats all of it. Thank you for calling.”

  Then he was gone, and his sudden disconnect left her stunned.

  The entire conversation seemed surreal. She needed to think it through and determine what it meant. But just then Dent returned. He got in and quickly pulled the door shut against the gusting wind.

  “Damn, it’s blowing.”

  “What about the airplane?”

  “The hangar manager figured it must belong to somebody important, so he’d already moved it inside. I tipped him twenty bucks.” He took a longer look at her. “You okay?”

  Lying, she nodded.

  “I also checked the weather radar,” he continued. “This is only the leading edge of a wide band of storms that isn’t predicted to move out until after midnight or better, so I stopped by the rental office and told them we’d be keeping the car overnight.” He turned the ignition key. “I made note of a hotel a few miles back.”

  It was a short drive, but by the time he pulled the car under the hotel’s porte cochere, he could tell that Bellamy was holding herself together by sheer force of will. She’d kept her eyes closed and hadn’t uttered a sound. She was drawn up as taut as a bowstring, and her lips were so tightly compressed they were rimmed with white.

  He parked the car where it wouldn’t block the through lane, got out, and went around to open Bellamy’s door. With a hand beneath her right elbow, he gently eased her out and placed his arm around her shoulders as he guided her through the entrance.

  It was a moderately priced chain hotel, having
a typical lobby with a navy and burgundy color scheme, polished brass lamps, and silk plants. Since Bellamy seemed incapable of moving, he secured a room with his own credit card, which he was reasonably sure would clear.

  Within minutes of entering the lobby, he was unlocking the door to a room on the third floor and shepherding Bellamy inside. He went straight to the wide windows and closed the drapes, then used the remote on the nightstand to turn on the TV, which would help to muffle the noise of the storm. He switched on all the lamps.

  Bellamy hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d left her. He went to her and chafed her upper arms. “Do you get like this every time it storms?”

  “Since the tornado.”

  “Have you seen somebody about it?”

  Through chattering teeth, she laughed, but not because what he’d said was funny. “Thousands of dollars’ worth of somebodies. I’ve tried every form of therapy imaginable. None has helped.”

  “Do you have something to take?”

  “I stopped getting the prescription filled.”

  “How come?”

  “The medication didn’t help, either. It only made me woozy in addition to being petrified.”

  “Maybe you should try the Dr. Denton Carter remedy.” His arms went around her and pulled her close.

  But when he bent his head down to nuzzle the side of her neck, she pushed him away. “That’s your remedy for everything.”

  “It works for everything.”

  Although she’d squirmed out of his embrace, it hadn’t been altogether unsuccessful. A smile was tugging at the corner of her lips, which had regained some of their color.

  “I’ve got to go move the car,” he said. “Are you going to be all right if I leave you alone?”

  “I’m usually alone when this happens. I’ve learned to panic quite well in private.”

  He bent his knees to bring himself eye level with her and tilted his head. “Will you be all right?”