She started to inch out; her sleeve caught a twig and snapped it with a sharp crack. Dammit! In a half-crouch, she scuttled to the cleft, and a bullet thwacked into the dirt at the rim. Fighting for breath, she moved into the deep part of the ravine on shaky legs.
“He killed Lucille,” Jack yelled. “He swore he didn’t, but I know he did. She knew.”
If she’d had it in her, Susan might have felt some sympathy for Jack. He was a young man struggling in the shadow of a powerful father. He’d qualified in a profession of his own and should have achieved success and recognition, but he’d fallen under the sway of someone stronger and unprincipled. They had murdered Daniel and now he’d shot Parkhurst and meant to kill her. She felt no sympathy; all she wanted was to put a bullet through him.
Long before it gained her the advantage she needed, the ravine began to shallow out, the bottom rising easily to meet the lip covered with overhanging brush. She’d dropped into a neat little trap and all he had to do was pick her off when she poked out her head. Was he waiting at this end? Or at the other end, where she’d been careless enough to snap a twig?
The sun was higher in the sky and each passing moment gave him more daylight. She found a rock the size of a baseball and threw it as hard and as far as she could back down the ravine. It thunked into the frozen dirt.
The rifle cracked, deafeningly close.
Oh Christ, he was right above her. She went up, fast, over the lip and caught a glimpse of him, braced against a tree with the rifle pointed away from her. With incredible speed, the barrel swung toward her and he fired.
She plunged into brush, moving low and quick, with no thought for the branches snatching her clothing and scratching her face. When she broke through into the open, her foot landed on a rock. It rolled, and her ankle twisted. She fell hard and tumbled down a stream bank. The .38 was torn from her hand. She heard it plop into the stream. She came to a stop at the edge of the water, scrambled to her feet and pressed her back into the wall of the bank. She waited for Jack to appear. Nothing happened. Far above, a hawk, wings outstretched, floated on an air current, circled and then disappeared.
She sidled along the bank and her boots squished through partially frozen mud. The stream had chunks of ice floating in the grayish-white water. At a narrow section, she tried to leap across, splashed in the water and smashed painfully into the bank on the far side.
Scrabbling at the stunted growth, she managed to pull herself up the bank. She found a boulder surrounded by brush to hide in. Her heart hammered away at her ribs and the gulps of cold air hurt her lungs. She wasn’t very well hidden and the light might now be good enough for Jack to notice the damage she’d made crawling in.
The edge of the woods was near; through the trees she could see an open field, and Buttermilk, head down, nibbling at dead grasses. She felt a small ray of hope. When all else fails, turn tail and run. The only little problem was getting to the mare before Jack shot her. With great effort, she wriggled out of the brush and plodded through the sparse trees.
Her legs were leaden, her head light, and she was so beaten with exhaustion, she wanted to sink to her knees and wait for a bullet in the back. Her only consolation was that she’d at least led him a long distance from Parkhurst. With any luck, the smoke would be noticed and help would come before Jack could find him.
She heard a splash as Jack tried to clear the stream, then sounds of him climbing up the bank, and felt a rush of anger. She was sick and tired of being chased and shot at. She snatched a fallen tree limb, sturdy, three feet long, two inches thick with a forked end, and ran toward the stream.
When Jack came over the rim of the bank, he held the rifle, barrel pointed up, in front of him. She swung the limb with an explosion of all the fury and hatred and fear within her. The forked end tore into his ear, raked across his forehead, smashed against the barrel and wrenched it from his hands. He gave a startled cry of pain, and she snarled with satisfaction.
The rifle skittered across dead leaves and landed somewhere to her left. She swung the limb again, but the vicious arc was too wide and he had time to jump back. He turned and dodged through trees, headed for the empty field.
She spent precious seconds locating the rifle, hung it by the webbed sling across her back, then ran heavy-footed toward Buttermilk. The mare lifted her head, snorted and sidled away, but Susan grabbed the reins and smacked the bony forehead. She swung astride and dug in her heels. Buttermilk set off in a heavy gallop, pounding hooves throwing up mud and grass. Cold wind tore at Susan’s face.
Jack looked back over his shoulder, rubbed blood from his face and stumbled, then recovered and ran at an angle.
“Faster,” Susan yelled. Buttermilk, affected by her frenzy, lumbered straight at him. He zigzagged, but Susan kept the mare on his heels and gained ground with each stride. When she was almost on top of him, the mare tried to swerve, but Susan yanked her back and, unable to stop, Buttermilk crashed into him and knocked him down. She trampled his hand as she ran on.
Susan slid off, hit the ground with jarring impact and brought the rifle around. Jack, face bloody, sat with his knees bent, cradling his injured hand against his chest.
“You killed Daniel.” She felt quite calm as she pointed the barrel at his head.
“No.”
“You killed him.” Her finger curled around the trigger.
“I didn’t.”
“You bastard! You shot him.” Her finger tightened.
“Brenner shot him,” Jack said in a tired, distant voice.
She watched his eyes and saw in them the knowledge that she was going to kill him. A split instant before the rifle fired, she shifted the barrel and the shot went wide.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“SO you found who killed your man.” Sophie, propped up in the hospital bed, still looked white and frail, but the bandages, at a jaunty angle on her head, gave her the air of an aged rake. “An eye for an eye.”
The winter sun shone through the window, and outside the sky was a soft blue with masses of cottony clouds. Susan shifted slightly to avoid the glare; it should have been gray out there to match her mood. The street below was quiet with Sunday morning emptiness. The heavy scent of the blood-red roses on the bedside table made her slightly sick.
“Now what?” Sophie’s pale-blue eyes gazed into Susan’s darker-blue ones with the calm intent of poking through the murky corners of Susan’s soul, and Susan was reminded again of Frannyvan, that indominitable woman who’d had such an impact on her life.
One more thing to do; then I can go home. She’d accomplished her goal—found the answer to Daniel’s death—and the burning rage that had carried her had no further purpose. She felt flat and empty. Anger was a very single-minded emotion. It spread throughout the body, gripping every nerve with a killing passion, and the mind focused on only those things directly concerned with the rage and its resolution. No thought was spared for fear or pain or responsibility or consequences. With the purpose gone, the anger dissipating, there seemed nothing left; even home held no appeal.
“Are you going to tell me or not?” Sophie said. “Trussed up in this bed like a plucked chicken, I don’t know what-all’s going on. Easy for you to smile, young lady, but I’m not used to finding out secondhand. They were stealing, were they? Jack and Brenner, my own husband’s brother’s son.”
“Stealing bull semen, and selling it on the black market. Jack needed money to continue his experiments with plastic hay and Brenner wanted to save his housing development.”
“What’s going to happen to it now, Jack’s research?”
“I don’t know,” Susan said. “With Jack facing a murder charge, it’s unlikely he’ll see his plastic hay, which he invested so much in, developed as a commercial product. Unless he decides to turn the research over to someone else.”
“How was it Dan came to be shot?”
“He saw Jack give Brenner a canister and saw Brenner put it in his car. It puzzled him. I don’t
think he realized the implications, but it worried him enough that he meant to discuss it with Parkhurst. He never got the chance.”
“Did Jack shoot him?”
Susan hesitated. “No,” she said gently. “Brenner shot him.” She paused. “With your rifle.”
“My own nephew,” Sophie muttered. “Well, come on, come on. Are you going to make me pull it out of you? How come Otto didn’t miss it?”
“Jack replaced the canisters they stole with canisters containing straws filled simply with egg yolk.” Only Slater, Guthman’s fussy foreman, had noticed anything amiss—equipment not returned to its exact place—Slater and the man who had called Guthman to complain his cows weren’t pregnant.
“Weak, Jack might be. Otto was always too strong and Jack could never measure up. But nobody could ever say he wasn’t smart. I suppose you’re gonna tell me Brenner killed Lucille, too.”
“I’m afraid so. They had an argument late one night. Nat, the boy who works for Otto, saw them. I think Lucille accused Brenner of killing Daniel. She went to Kansas City to dig into Brenner’s affairs and see if she couldn’t find something to prove his guilt.”
“Lucille, poor thing, I always felt sorry for her.” With a shaky hand, Sophie poured water from a carafe into a glass. Susan started to help but Sophie shook her head.
“Did she know about Jack?” Sophie took a sip of water and frowned at the glass. “That would’ve almost killed her. Adored him, she did.”
“She was desperately afraid Jack had killed Daniel. She was present when Parkhurst found … him.” Even now, Susan couldn’t bring herself to say “Daniel’s body.” “There was heavy sleet that night, the road was icy with it, and she found some of the plastic pellets Jack was always carrying around in his pockets. In the dark, on the icy road, they looked just like sleet.” At least, Susan assumed that’s what the words meant on the scrap of paper she’d found in the hotel room.
She remembered Lucille in the corridor outside the autopsy room, asking questions of Parkhurst, on the night she’d seen Daniel’s body. Lucille had stuck her hand in her pocket and immediately pulled it out again. The pellets had probably been in her pocket, and later she’d put them in the small box in her desk drawer. In searching Lucille’s bedroom, Susan had seen the pellets, but they’d meant nothing to her then.
“She never told anybody,” Sophie said.
“I think she convinced herself Brenner shot Daniel and planted the pellets to implicate Jack. She wanted proof that Brenner was the killer before she said anything.”
“It got too much for him, did it? Jack? That why he killed my Brenner?” There was a shine of moisture in Sophie’s eyes, and she turned her head to stare out the window.
Susan felt sympathy. Sophie was fiercely pretending her nephew’s death didn’t affect her. “Yes. He started falling apart after Daniel was shot. He wasn’t cut out to be a killer. Then Lucille disappeared and he really came unglued. When I talked with him the afternoon Mrs. Guthman reported her missing, Brenner was waiting for him in the barn.”
“Jack knew that?”
Susan nodded. “He’d refused to steal any more bull semen, and Brenner had everything set up with a buyer for that very night. Brenner was there to exert pressure, but he couldn’t afford to be seen. When I bumbled into the barn, he unlatched the door of Fafner’s stall.”
“How’d you know Jack killed Brenner?”
Susan smiled ruefully. “I was slow on that.” And almost got myself and Parkhurst killed. “Jack mentioned you had baked a cherry pie. It wasn’t until later it occurred to me Jack couldn’t have known unless he’d been to your place.”
“That all of it?”
“Except what happened the night you were attacked.”
“Don’t remember much.” Sophie pulled at the sheets. “The trunk was open, Brenner’s car; he was inside. All crumpled up.” She paused and scowled. “All I can remember.”
Then Jack hit her, Susan thought, and left her to die in Buttermilk’s stall. “You talked about old sins.”
“Nonsense. I never have any truck with sins.” She clamped her mouth into a straight line.
“What old sins?”
The old woman took a breath and let it out with a deep sigh; the faded blue eyes dulled with sadness. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, you know about too many old sins. There was Arthur Wren hampering Helen like he did. And Helen killing Billy Kimmell so many years ago and causing Floyd to grow up all funny and feeling he was owed something and stealing steers. Otto, so concerned with his bulls, he didn’t have time for his family.”
“Was it you who called that night and told me where Floyd was slaughtering a steer?”
Sophie nodded, then closed her eyes. “Brenner. I always felt in my bones he set the fire killed his folks. Maybe that’s what I was thinking.” She opened her eyes and glared at Susan. “Or maybe I was thinking about my own sins. I might own up to one or two.”
“Like helping Lucille a few years ago?”
“Never you mind.”
“You gave her money.”
Sophie took a sip of water.
“For what?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“For an abortion?”
“If you knew, why’d you ask?” Sophie said belligerently, then sighed and set the glass back on the table. “It was the right thing to do, but still and all it worried me. I was afraid somehow, sometime, the punishment would come.”
“Brenner was the father?”
Sophie nodded. “I tried so hard to have one of my own and there was Lucille and—” She broke off, sniffed and then loudly cleared her throat. “You never answered my question.”
“Question?”
“Question was, Now what are you gonna do?”
“Now I can go home.”
“If you want to,” Sophie said slyly.
“It’s over.”
“No, child, it’s never over till you stop breathing. There’s your job. You gonna just walk away from the job? And the old Wren place. You gonna let Helen sell it?”
“Yes.” It was Daniel’s dream and Daniel was gone; his dream was finished. She hoped Helen would finally realize some of hers.
“And there’s Ben Parkhurst. You saved his life. That’s not over—just getting started, I’d say. You mark my words, child, there’s a lot more to come there.”
Susan smiled. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. You sound almost like your old self.”
“Ha. Takes more than a whack on the head and a few broken bones to kill me. I got work to do.”
Like stealing cats, Susan assumed, and rose to leave. Sophie refused to say good-bye; she only smiled a canny smile.
* * *
NOW I can grieve, Susan thought as she walked from the hospital. The only thing still to do. I can weep. I can cry. I can wail.
I loved you, Daniel.
THE WINTER WIDOW. Copyright © 1992 by Charlene Weir. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weir, Charlene.
The winter widow / Charlene Weir.
p. cm.
“A Thomas Dunne book.”
ISBN 0-312-07009-8
I. Title.
PS3573.E39744W56 1992
813'.54—dc20
91-33418
CIP
eISBN 9781466834514
First eBook edition: November 2012
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