“Really?”
“Hell, yes. But I wasn’t the only one.”
“Who else?”
“Is Mason still working there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there you go.”
Michelle couldn’t hide her astonishment. “Mason was sleeping with Sally?”
“At least that’s what she said.” He added, “I never personally saw them doing it. But she’s a pretty girl. I probably shouldn’t be saying this to a woman, but you all live in the same house together, you know, things happen. You see her running around in something skimpy or coming out of the bathroom in a little towel, hey, we’re only human. I’m not apologizing for it.”
“I get the picture. Anyone else?”
“Probably, but I don’t have names for you.”
“Sally said that Bobby had just pulled in driving the Rolls-Royce when he and Remmy got into their argument.”
“The Rolls? It was a beauty. Only something like five in the whole world. Did he end up getting rid of it?”
“Apparently, he did so the very next day.”
“I thought he would.”
Michelle stiffened. “Why do you say that?”
“The morning I got canned I went to get my tools and stuff from the car barn. I always had a thing for that Rolls. That was one sweet machine. Anyway, this was the last time I was going to see it. Not like I’d be buying one of my own.” Edwards laughed.
Michelle, however, was as taut as a strung bow. “So what did you do?”
“I wanted to take one last look at it. Pulled the cover off and sat in it, pretending it was mine.”
“Right, right,” said Michelle impatiently. “But why did you think Battle was going to get rid of the car?”
“Because when I was covering it back up, I noticed that the left front fender was dented and one of the headlights had been cracked. It had to have happened the night before because I’d just checked the car that afternoon and it was fine. It wasn’t all that much damage really, but a car like that you’re talking thousands of dollars in repairs. And you can’t get parts for a vehicle like that anymore. It was a real shame. I guess Battle hit something and was pissed off. The guy hated anything to be out of sync. He used to come down to the barn and ream me if he found oil on the floor or a license plate hung crooked. It probably made him sick to see the damage on that Rolls. If he couldn’t fix it just right, he’d get rid of it. Just the way the man was.”
“Did you ever tell anyone the Rolls-Royce had been damaged?”
“No. It was his car; he could do what he wanted with it.”
“Do you remember the exact date it was damaged?”
“Well, it must’ve happened the night before I got fired. Like I said, I’d checked it that afternoon and there was no damage.”
“I understand that. But what date was that?”
Edwards was silent for a bit. “It was over three years ago, I know that. In the fall or thereabouts. I did some work for a company down in North Carolina until the job in Ohio came through. Maybe September. No, I think it was October or maybe November. At least I think,” he said with less confidence.
“You can’t be any more specific?”
“Look, I have a hard time remembering where I was last week, much less three years ago. I’ve moved around quite a bit since then.”
“Could you look up your payment stubs from when you worked at the Battles’? Or from the jobs in North Carolina or Ohio? That would narrow it down.”
“Lady, I live in a one-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood. I don’t have room to keep stuff like that. I barely have space for clothes.”
“Well, if you remember, will you please call me back?”
“Sure, if it’s important.”
“It’s very important.”
Michelle put down the phone and sat at her desk. Over three years ago in the fall. Yet if it had been the fall, it would be about three and a half years ago, since it was springtime right now. She sat bolt upright. Wait a minute, she said to herself. Sally Wainwright would probably remember the exact date. She checked her watch. It was too late to call her. They could do it in the morning. Right now, though, she wanted to get ahold of King and tell him what she’d learned.
She called his cell phone but there was no answer. She left a message. He didn’t have a hard-line number at his houseboat. He was probably asleep. She stared at her phone, mulling over what to do. Part of her said to call it a night and go home, yet as she looked down at her phone, she started to get a very strange feeling. Sean was a light sleeper. Why hadn’t he answered? His caller ID would have shown it was her. Unless he couldn’t answer the phone! She grabbed her keys and raced to her truck.
Chapter 68
Sean King moved around uncomfortably in his bed. As the boat rocked, a small moan escaped from his lips as a fire raged in his brain. He didn’t awaken, though. It was no nightmare that was assaulting him. His body was being drained of the ability to absorb oxygen. He was being slowly and quietly put to death.
Headlights cut through the darkness as Michelle pulled up in the Whale and climbed out. She made her way quickly down the stairway to the houseboat.
“Sean?” Michelle called out as she banged on the houseboat door. “Sean?” She looked around. His car was parked up there. He had to be here. “Sean?”
She tried the door latch. It was locked. She went around the walkway and peered in one of the side windows. She could see nothing. She pounded on the window of what she knew was the bedroom he slept in.
“Sean?” She thought she heard a sound. She listened more intently. It was a moan.
She raced back to the front door and put her shoulder against it, but it didn’t budge. She stepped back and then sprang forward with a powerful, thudding side kick and broke open the door where the lock met the doorjamb. She raced inside, her pistol out. She felt an immediate heaviness in her lungs, which increased her level of panic. There was a humming coming from somewhere, and even as she raced forward through the houseboat’s darkened interior, she felt cold tendrils of something clutching at her. She stumbled over things before hitting the light switch, and the darkened room became bright.
“Sean? Sean?” she screamed.
She reached him, tried to awaken him, but he wouldn’t come around. She dragged him out of his bed, through the cabin, out of the houseboat and into the open air, even as her own breath became more and more labored. He lay motionless on the deck, his face a very frightening cherry red. Carbon monoxide poisoning. She bent over him, pulled her hair out of her face and began mouth-to-mouth.
“Breathe, Sean, breathe, damn it. Breathe!”
She kept pumping air into him, giving him every ounce of hers she could until she started feeling sick and dizzy. And still she persisted.
“Breathe. Come on, Sean, please, please! Breathe for me, Sean, breathe for me, baby, please. Sean, don’t do this to me. Don’t you do this to me. Come on, you bastard, just breathe!”
She checked his pulse and then lifted up his T-shirt and listened to the beats of his heart. They were barely there. She pushed more air into his lungs and then took precious seconds to call 911. She kept going. She was ready to begin CPR if he went into cardiac arrest. But his heart was still beating, she could hear it. If only his lungs would start doing their damn job. She kept pushing air into him until Michelle thought she would pass out herself. He looks dead. He’s gone. I’ve failed.
“Please, Sean, please, don’t do this. Don’t give up. I’m here, I’m here, Sean. Come on, you can do it. You can do it.” She followed one enormous breath after another, willing each one down his throat with all possible speed, to impact with his lungs, expand them, scream at his brain, telling it the fight wasn’t over.
You can do this, Sean. It’s not your time, damn it, it’s not your time. Don’t leave me, Sean King. Don’t you do it.
She swore and puffed. Puffed and swore, screaming encouragement, trying to reach him wherever he might be, life
, death or in between.
Stay with me, Sean. Stay with me. It’s not your time. It’s not. Trust me.
And finally, it started to turn. His chest began to rise and fall with greater force and regularity; the bright red discoloration of his face began to lighten. She ran and got some water from the houseboat and spread it over his face. Where was the ambulance? They should have been here by now. He was doing better, but his condition could change any second. And if he’d been severely oxygen-deprived for a long time, might there be brain damage? She pushed this troubling thought from her mind and kept tending to him.
As Michelle poured the last of the water over King’s face and stood to get more, she glanced down and froze. The laser dot was right between her breasts, dead on her heart.
She didn’t hesitate, mainly because she was sick of playing catch-up to a killer always one step ahead of them. And she was furious for missing him the last time, when Junior had died. With dizzying quickness she leaped to one side and in the same motion pulled and fired her pistol. She emptied her entire mag, spreading the shots over a wide enough area to find—she hoped to God—this person who’d taken so much from so many.
She rolled, came up into a squat behind the houseboat’s solid rail, dropped the spent mag and slammed in a fresh one. She chambered a round with a quick pull of the slide and peered over the boat’s gunwale. Then she heard it, feet running away. She was about to go after her would-be assassin when King moaned very loudly. She was by his side in an instant, all thoughts of the fleeing killer gone. King was trying to sit up, his breath coming in large bursts. An instant later he was violently sick to his stomach. Michelle dipped a cloth in the lake and wiped his face clean and then held him as tightly as she could.
“Sit back, Sean, sit back, it’s okay. I’m here. Just lie back. I’ve got you.” She tried to fight back the tears, now tears of happiness. She finally decided to just let them pour down her cheeks. She felt like shrieking for joy as she hugged the man to her chest.
“What happened?” he said weakly. “What the hell happened?”
“Save your breath; the ambulance is on its way.”
He focused on her as she cradled his head in her lap. “Are you okay?”
It was only then that Michelle realized she’d been shot. It wasn’t the pain, at least not initially; it was the blood flowing down her arm. She felt the hole in her shirtsleeve where the slug had gone through. Just a graze, she thought. No bullet in there, at least she didn’t think so. She ripped off the bottom part of her sleeve and fashioned a bandage to stop the blood loss.
“Michelle, are you okay?” King said again, more urgently, though his eyes had closed.
“Never better,” she lied.
Chapter 69
“Somebody blocked up the vents on your heating system, Sean,” Todd Williams told King and Michelle at the hospital later. He was there along with two of his deputies and Sylvia. “All the fumes came back into the cabin. You’re lucky Michelle got there when she did.”
“I almost didn’t,” she said, rubbing her injured arm, which was now in a sling.
King scowled at her from the bed. “You said you were okay. I don’t believe getting shot qualifies as being okay,” he grumbled.
“It was just a nick.”
“Not quite, Michelle,” said Sylvia. “It’s on the inside of your arm. Another inch and it could have hit your torso and the damage would have been far worse.”
Michelle shrugged off this dire pronouncement and said, “Anyone find the bullet or the shooter?”
“No on both counts,” said Williams. “The slug’s probably in the lake. The shooter, who the hell knows?”
“Well, one good thing came of it,” said King. They all looked at him. “If the killer wanted to get rid of me, we must be getting closer.”
“Well, we’re not going to catch him while I’m sitting here,” said Williams.
After he had departed, Sylvia said to King, “You can’t go back to your houseboat. You can stay at my place; I’ve got plenty of room.”
Michelle stood and said firmly, “He’s bunking at my house. I’ll be able to keep an eye on him there.”
King looked awkwardly at the two women. “She’s right, Sylvia. You’ve got a lot going on. You can’t exactly sit around and babysit me, although I feel fine.”
Michelle shook her head. “You heard what the doctor said, Sean. You have to take it easy for a few days.”
“That’s right,” said Sylvia. “They’ve pumped you full of oxygen, and you might feel fine now, but your body’s undergone a shock, and if you overdo it, you’ll end up right back here.” She looked at Michelle. “Well, you take care of yourself too.”
“I’ll be fine, thanks.”
Sylvia gave King a hug, whispered something in his ear and then left.
“What’d she say?” asked Michelle.
“Don’t I have any secrets?”
“Not from me. I just saved your life. Not the first time either.”
King sighed. “Okay. She said not to scare her like that again.”
“That was it?”
“I’m sorry if you’re disappointed. What, did you expect her to profess her eternal love? A couple needs to work up to that. At least three meals, a movie and some heavy petting, or so I’ve heard.”
“Smart-ass. Shows you’re getting better.”
“Can we get out of here now?”
“They want to keep you for observation for a while longer.”
“Damn it, all I need is some fresh air, and you can’t get any of that in a hospital.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do. We can run by your place so you can pick up your things.”
“Can you drive with that arm?”
“Drive and shoot. The way things are going we’ll probably need both.”
As they pulled out of the parking lot an hour later in Michelle’s truck, King said grumpily, “Well, at least this time they didn’t blow up my house.”
“I admire a man who can find the silver lining in all situations.”
“Now I face only one more challenge.”
Michelle looked at him with a confused expression. “What’s that?”
“Surviving at your house.”
It was barely light outside when Sally Wainwright rose from her bed to start her work. Horses needed to be fed, ridden and groomed. Stalls needed to be mucked and bridles and saddle cinches mended, plus a host of other chores that would make the hours race by. Always the first one up, and usually the first in bed, she was moving more slowly this morning after her late night. She was scared of what might happen after her conversation with Sean King. Yet like he’d said, it was the right thing to do. At least now everyone would know Junior had been innocent.
She dressed and headed out into the crisp morning air, her quick strides carrying her rapidly to the stables. She approached the stall of the first horse, one she was dutifully trying to break in. She wondered how much longer she’d be working here. Only Savannah and Eddie rode, and with Savannah possibly leaving, would there be any need for horses and stables? Maybe it was time to move on anyway. Too much tragedy, too much death. She started shivering just thinking about it.
The serrated knife sliced cleanly through Sally’s neck, severing the carotid arteries and jugular veins, cutting so deeply, in fact, that it carved into her cervical spine on its jagged crescent path from her left to her right ear. She sputtered, tried to speak, felt the blood rushing down the front of her shirt, emptying far faster than it was possible for her body to replenish. She dropped first to her knees and then onto her face. Sally Wainwright’s stunned brain realized she’d been murdered an instant before she died.
Her killer used the rake to push Sally over on her back. She stared up but couldn’t see the person now, of course. The rake came down directly on her face, breaking her nose. Another blow caved in one of her cheeks; a third blow shattered her left eye socket. By the time the blows stopped raining down, Sally’s mother w
ould not have recognized her own daughter.
The rake and knife were dropped beside the body as the killer continued to hover. The face held an expression of fury, of hatred for the fallen woman. A moment later Sally was alone in her death, the straw all around soaked through with her blood. The only sound was that of the horse as it jostled the stable door, waiting impatiently for its morning ride; a ride that wouldn’t be coming.
Chapter 70
King settled himself in the bed in the tiny guest room of Michelle’s small cottage. As the sky lightened, he could hear Michelle in the kitchen clanking dishes and utensils, and he shuddered to think what inedible concoction she was making for him this time. She was forever trying to get him to drink power shakes and eat energy bars with low carbs, no carbs, or just the “right” carbs, promising him his body would feel the miraculous change overnight.
“I’m not really hungry,” he called out weakly. “Just fix yourself something, maybe some cardboard with a little tofu.”
The pots continued to clank and water ran and he distinctly heard the crack of eggs and then a blender starting up.
“Oh, God,” he groaned, and lay back against the pillows. Raw eggs in a blender with who knows what. He decided to start thinking about the case, to take his mind off the impending gustatory nightmare.
Seven deaths starting with Rhonda Tyler and ending, at least so far, with Kyle Montgomery. Five of the deaths he believed were by the same killer. Bobby Battle and Kyle were not, he thought. Whether they’d been killed by the same person, he didn’t know. And now his life had been almost taken, and Michelle’s as well. There seemed to be an abundance of potential suspects and a dearth of clues. At every stage the killer or killers seemed to be one step ahead. They’d gone to see Junior, but the killer had gotten there first. Sylvia had told him about Kyle and the thefts and the lady at the Aphrodisiac. By the time they’d started investigating that, Kyle too was dead. Sally had come to tell him about her sexual encounter with Junior, and an attempt had been made on his life shortly thereafter.
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