There were gasps and cries, astonishment and outrage. Nate held up his hand and continued.
“The last thing I want is to cause a panic and I’m not suggesting there’s a maniac on the loose. All I’m saying is that there’s safety in numbers. This is a good time to pull together as a community and watch each other’s backs. Whether or not you decide to move to the clubhouse, I hope that you will form groups and stay together.
For those of you taking up the Newcombe’s kind offer, I suggest you move in teams to your various houses and pack what you need for a few days. We’ll settle in at the clubhouse and lock it down for the night. Let’s say, by midnight. Okay, folks, thanks for listening.”
Nate’s pronouncement about Rico’s murder left the neighbors in shock. He saw the varied reactions, the hugs and tears, clenched jaws and blank stares, that always go with a crowd of any size after such news. Jess glided over to express her concern over the situation, and to thank him for coming to their aid.
Nate gave her half his attention while he watched Riley and Millie organize the groups, dispensing comfort and encouragement, soothing fears and handing out practical advice on what to bring to the clubhouse. He was glad to have such competent help. He’d exaggerated when he’d told the assembly that deputies were on the way. He had managed to reach the Sheriff’s dispatch, but had no clear assurance that his distress call had been acknowledged. He’d heard only spurts of broken sound, interlaced with spurts of static. He’d repeated his message and request for assistance several times before coming in to address the gathering of neighbors.
He hoped he hadn’t lied to them.
CHAPTER 39
SOMEONE HAD SCORCHED THE COFFEE during their absence. The bitter odor hung like a pall over the assembly, a subtle summary on the events of the day. Riley was dog-tired and dangerously close to tears. She couldn’t scrub the image of Rico’s dead face from her mind, or the thunderous sound of the ruined road as it crumbled and fell into the inlet below.
While Nate spoke, she found herself examining shoes, looking for a pair of dark brown loafers. Skillet wore loafers the color of milk chocolate, no socks, but they sported pennies, rather than tassels. Sandy Dawson had on a pair of tasseled loafers, but they were black and both tassels were accounted for. She found it incredible that she could be scrutinizing her neighbors for signs of a killer, yet she couldn’t keep herself from peering around the room, looking at people from a new perspective. It made her feel vulgar and afraid.
She watched Jess work the room, spreading her touch, her scent, marking her territory. She ended up near Nate, biting her lip at the news of Rico’s death, her colorless eyes wide and seductive. Riley recalled how Jim had described Jess as a cobra. She draws the eye, fascinates and mesmerizes, while she readies her fangs. Cobras, he told her, are the only snake that can actually spit their venom, and do so with remarkable accuracy, able to kill from a distance. Riley had studied his face while he said this and he, understanding her concern, had assured her that he stayed well out of her sights.
Now, looking at Jess standing next to Nate, Riley was astonished at the little stab of jealousy she felt and chided herself. She listened as Nate wrapped up his instructions, rallying the group. As he finished speaking, Jess moved in, her voice warm and husky.
“Oh, Detective, I’m so glad you’re staying with us. I’m frightened.” She hugged herself, her eyes inviting Nate to join in.
Riley turned away. If Nate fell for that act, he deserved to get bit. She teamed up with Millie to organize the groups. Teren came and stood at her elbow.
“Good grief, Riley, that must have been horrible for you. Why did you go with Detective Quentin to Rico’s?”
“He wanted someone who knew Rico, to introduce them. I never thought we’d find…what we found.”
“Of course not. I guess I meant, why’d you go to Rico’s at all?”
A disquieting feather brushed down her spine and she found that she didn’t want to discuss her ideas about the crimes with anyone, not even Teren. She shrugged.
“He said he wanted to speak with Rico and asked if I’d go along to make the introduction.”
They were interrupted by Nate who asked Teren if he would join Skillet, Jess, and Brenda Marsh on an expedition to pack overnight bags before heading to the clubhouse.
“You’re really taking this “safety in numbers” thing to extremes,” remarked Teren.
“I see nothing extreme in this approach,” Nate said. “It’s common sense and the mundane nature of the task is calming. It takes a person from thinking about a monster to thinking about a toothbrush.”
“Ooh, clever,” Jess said.
Nearly everyone had decided to make the move to the clubhouse, craving the comfort of company in the face of disaster. After Teren’s group left, Nate pulled Riley to the sofa and lowered her onto it.
“Rest for a minute. I need some advice.”
Riley yawned and stretched, pulled her feet up under her and waited for him to continue.
“We can’t accommodate the entire neighborhood at the clubhouse and we’re not going to extend a general invitation, but is there anyone you recommend we should bring in? People who are particularly vulnerable? The elderly or the sick?”
“Now you’re making me feel like a bad neighbor. I don’t really know that many people outside of the ones you’ve already met.”
“That doesn’t make you a bad neighbor, it makes you a typical neighbor. I wouldn’t expect you to know everyone.”
“Millie invited a couple of families with small children and an elderly couple from around the corner.”
“Okay, good.” He paused. “We could use a doctor. Any doctors living in Mountain Vista?”
“Dr. Hunt. But he’s spending a couple weeks in Tahiti and Dr. Bradley passed away in June. Hmmm. We have a veterinarian, Dr. Summerton.”
“That’ll do. Let’s go get him.”
“Her. Dr. Debra Summerton.”
“Alright, let’s go persuade her to join our gathering.”
CHAPTER 40
THE JEEP WAS DOWN FOR the count.
Topper was dazed, marveling at how close he’d come to going airborne into the bay. The Jeep’s wheels had continued their sweep, skimming the yawning chasm formed by the broken road and pitching him into a steep ditch, embedding with the rear end raised like a stink bug’s.
He climbed around precariously within its slanting confines, gathering his pack and as many supplies as he could comfortably carry. He’d be hiking the rest of the way. But not tonight. He’d been bustling since early morning and he was beat. He had a sleeping bag. With rope and a tarp he could fashion a shelter for the night. He wanted solitude and hoped to avoid running into anyone as he climbed up the steep verge into the tree line.
It had been a banner day. A day for the great and terrible. It’s rare that a volcanologist gets to actually witness a history-making eruption and live to tell about it. He’d drink a toast to David, just as soon as he could get his hands on a beer.
He found a spot level enough for his purpose and went about clearing rocks and fallen branches. He constructed a simple tent, using a tarp and two trees, by the beam of his flashlight. He ate a can of cold pork and beans, relieved himself behind a clump of bushes, and crawled into the sleeping bag, listening to the breeze in the branches, smelling the pine. He smiled.
Drowsing under the rustling tarp, he thought about his day’s work, his ruse to activate evacuation procedures, the mad scramble it had engendered, the difference he had made.
Then he remembered Jack’s tale of the man who tried to escape death by running away. His last conscious thought as he drifted to sleep was that the angel of death had kept a full appointment schedule that day. How many, running away, had met him face to face?
CHAPTER 41
THE CLUBHOUSE, WITH ITS MANY windows, was lit like a beacon in the darkness of the neighborhood. The generator was cranking out power. By the time Riley and Nate arrived with Dr. D
eb, Frank and Millie Newcombe had things well under way. They’d set up cots in meeting rooms A and B, where most of the families were bedding down, and distributed pillows and blankets among the couches in the lounge. Before everyone went to bed, they gathered in the dining room so Frank could dispense some basic instruction as to drinking water, the use of the toilets and showers, power conservation, and meal arrangements. Riley was drooping, fighting the yawns, when the peace of the room was split by an abrupt and deafening siren, complete with revolving red lights.
“And that,” said Frank, “is just a fraction of what this baby can do. It is also a high-powered lantern, a flasher, and has a built-in bullhorn.” He demonstrated each feature. “We have four of them and I’ll place them throughout the clubhouse. If anyone needs to raise the alarm, you know how to do it.”
The crowd dispersed and Riley was relieved to see how well everyone was settling down. She was exhausted and wanted only to sink into something soft and go to sleep.
Overhead lights went off, giving way to cozier lamplight. Riley said goodnight to Nate, who was bedding down on a cot near the main door in the glassed-in lobby. She knew he would act as a sort of quasi-sentry. She moved quietly into the lounge and surveyed her options. One wall was glass and opened onto the wrap-around deck that backed the bistro and hung out over the trout pond. The adjacent wall was taken up by built-in bookshelves on either side of a fireplace. Centered along the third wall was a shiny, ebony-colored grand piano which Riley had used to accompany sessions of Christmas caroling and for her student recitals. The sight of it was like probing a wound and she avoided looking at it as she chose a sofa next to the glass. She saw that Brenda Marsh had claimed a spot in one corner and was propped against a pillow, reading glasses perched on her nose, a book open on her lap, but she was peering into the distance with a thoughtful expression on her face.
“What are you reading?” Riley asked.
Brenda roused from her reverie and glanced at the page. “A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the Lord their God. Jeremiah 3:21.”
Jess spoke up from her couch in the center of the room. “Jeremiah was always about the gloom and doom.” She pulled a brush through her long, silvery hair. Probably counting the strokes, Riley thought. One hundred every night, volcano or no.
“Jeremiah prophesied. He spoke truth. If there’s gloom and doom, it’s because we choose it.”
“Nobody chooses doom.”
Brenda uttered a cackle, her penciled eyebrows arching, her face looking sinister in the shadows of the room. “You deceive yourself. Every day you choose it.”
Jess’s hand stopped midstroke. “You self-righteous b—”
Riley broke in. “I think Brenda is making a general statement, saying that we all make mistakes, do things that bring unhappiness upon us.”
Brenda gave an elaborate shrug and Jess looked skeptical, but continued with the brushing in silence. Brenda switched off her lamp and settled down under a blanket, turning her back to the room. Soon, all the lights were off and Riley adjusted the pillow under her head, felt her muscles relaxing. Her thoughts drifted and she pushed them away from Rico’s house, directing them down a more pleasant avenue. She thought about Nate.
A light sleep overtook her and she drowsed for a time, but came out of it when something roused her. She propped herself on an elbow, listening. The night had become silent. A gentle, rhythmic snore came from Brenda’s corner but that shouldn’t have woken her. She laid back and tried to go under again but she simply couldn’t let go enough to fall asleep. A kaleidoscopic spinning started up in her left eye and she sat, groaning. She hadn’t brought her migraine medication. Hadn’t even thought about it. She got them so rarely, but when they came, if she didn’t dose up right away, she’d be incapacitated for an entire day, or longer, and this was not a good time to be laid low. She must get that medicine, and now.
She moved softly through the lounge, passing Jess’s couch, noting that it was occupied only by a crumpled blanket. Should she wake someone to accompany her? No, she hated to do that and she was a grown woman, independent and responsible for her own safety. As she tiptoed into the widening area near the staircase, she heard a furtive rustling, two murmuring voices, and realized she was passing two people involved in a passionate clinch. She guessed the woman was Jess, but the man could have been anyone. It seemed to Riley that she cast her lure out pretty indiscriminately. The couple seemed not to notice her passing and she crept on, into the lobby.
It was empty. Nate was nowhere in sight. A glaze of misery settled over Riley, hardening into a thin shell. So what if the man under the stairs was Nate? It shouldn’t have surprised her. Nate was free to do as he wished and she had no reason to doubt that he’d snap up the bait like any other man.
She slipped out the door and let it lock behind her, hoping someone would be there to let her in when she returned.
There was a half moon, but the sky was clouded, dimming the moonlight. Riley hadn’t stopped to find a flashlight, but her house was only two doors down and across the street. She knew the neighborhood well, even by moonlight, as she regularly jogged the three-mile route that circled the lake and, with her erratic schedule, had done it in the dark, aided by a headlamp, many times.
She found her front walk and let herself in the door, reflexively hitting the light switch. The house remained in sooty blackness as she felt her way to the stair-step drawers, counting three down and two over. Opening a drawer that contained butane wands, she lit one of the candles from the dining room table and carried it into the kitchen.
She found the box of Zomig and placed a lozenge on her tongue, letting the fast-acting medication dissolve, and tucked a blister pack with two more tablets into her pocket. She took a couple of deep breaths, willing the medicine to go to work, then blew out the candle. She thought about crawling into her own bed, but realized that would cause the others to worry when they found her missing.
Sighing, she returned to the front door and closed it gently behind her. Moving with instinctive stealthiness, she kept to the bushes, stopping frequently to survey the terrain. Now that her migraine had been allayed, her concern over the killer took the forefront once again. She had moved past her own front yard and into the trees across the street, when movement caught her eye. She froze, watching a shadowy figure down by the lake. The clouds had thinned and the moonlight intensified. A chill passed over her as she watched the man walk to the clubhouse and climb the stairs to a dining deck over the pond, an extension of the bistro.
An arm snaked around from behind her, pinioning her arms, and a hand covered her mouth, stifling the scream that shot from her throat.
“It’s me, don’t make a noise,” said Nate. He dropped his arms away from her and Riley whirled on him with a fierce whisper.
“Dang it, Nate! Way to scare a girl to death.”
“Sorry. You shouldn’t be out here, Riley. What are you doing?”
“I forgot my medication and it couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Who’s the creeper?” she asked, jerking a thumb toward the clubhouse.
“It’s Mr. Johanson. I’ve been following him, trying to decide what he’s up to.”
“Is he the killer?”
“I don’t know. Could be, or maybe he just forgot his medication.”
Riley stalked out into the moonlight and Nate caught up to her, took her elbow.
“I’ll walk you back.”
Riley jerked her arm free. “I can get there under my own power.”
“Sure, but you might need this.” He jingled the door keys.
“If Cappy can get in, so can I.”
“Good point,” said Nate. “Let’s go find out how he did it.”
She resigned herself to following him and they went up the stairs to the deck, which wrapped around three sides of the dining room and extended down one side of the lounge. There were three slider d
oors and all were locked.
“He probably left one of these open and locked it after him when he turned in for the night,” said Riley.
“Undoubtedly. Let’s go around through the front door.”
They entered and he secured the door behind them.
“Goodnight, Riley. Get some sleep.”
“I intend to. See you in the morning.”
This time, when she snuggled beneath the blanket, Riley barely had time for a single thought before winking into oblivion. Nate couldn’t have been the man under the stairs.
She slept like a baby.
CHAPTER 42
SUNDAY MORNING. BUT THERE WOULD be no sleeping in, no leisurely perusal of the morning paper, and no church today. Nate sighed. The truth is, he didn’t always make it to church, even on an ordinary Sunday. He’d have to repent. In the meantime, he turned his attention back to Cappy Johanson, determined to pin him down, but the man evaded his eyes and his queries.
“It’s a simple question,” Nate said. “What were you doing skulking around the neighborhood last night?”
“None of your damn business.” Cappy glowered at Nate and attempted to move past him into the dining room.
“Still, I’d like to know,” Nate persisted.
“I forgot something at home.”
“I didn’t see you carrying anything when you came back.”
“I wasn’t killing anyone, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Cappy snapped in an aggrieved voice. “Stop hassling me.”
Before he could pursue the matter, there was a bellow and a loud clattering from the kitchen. Alarmed, Nate ran past the tables, pushing open the kitchen door to find copper pots swaying on an overhead rack and Skillet waving a knife at a distinguished-looking older gentleman who was backing away with a look of surprised distaste.
“Whoa,” said Nate. “What’s the deal, Skillet?”
“Mr. Snowden says he’s hungry.” The chef hurled the words out, loaded with heat. “He wants some breakfast.”
Nocturne In Ashes: A Riley Forte Suspense Thriller, Book One Page 12