A Lamentation of Swans

by Valerie Bronwen

  Kayla—Kayla hadn’t been sure who it was who’d gone up to the roof. She’d just seen a hat and jeans and a long coat. It could have been a woman.

  It could have been Peggy.

  Could Peggy be the one who was behind everything?

  She was humming to herself as she arranged the covers around me, and she gave me a little smile when she noticed me looking at her. “You shouldn’t have come back, Ariel,” she said softly. “You’re not safe here at Sea Oats, you know.”

  I could feel my mind starting to go, starting to wander off. What had she given me? And Kayla?

  Peggy would do anything for Bast.

  I needed to get away from her. I needed to get away from here.

  I tried to talk but my mouth didn’t seem to want to work.

  Peggy kissed my forehead and went back out of the room.

  I forced myself to sit up in the bed. My head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.

  The coffee.

  Had she drugged me and Kayla both? I somehow managed to pour out another cup. Maybe it was the pain pill, maybe it was the combination of being hurt and sore and not sleeping much and taking a pain pill, maybe I was making the whole thing up in my tired mind. Peggy wouldn’t hurt me, she wouldn’t do anything to hurt Charlotte, even to help Bast she wouldn’t chose between the two of them that way, would she, she never had before.

  I sniffed the coffee and it smelled like coffee, it tasted like coffee, so I took another drink and finished the cup and poured out another as I continued to get loopier.

  Peggy wouldn’t have drugged me, she wouldn’t—

  When I woke up it was dark.

  I sat up in bed, sore and tired and thirsty. Thunder roared outside as I reached for the lamp on the nightstand and switched it on. It was after six—I’d slept the whole day away and it was pitch black outside and I could tell it was going to rain any moment.

  The breakfast tray was gone.

  I put on my shoes.

  Someone in the house was trying to kill me.

  But why, Peggy? Why me?

  I needed to get out of the house.

  I grabbed my jacket and pulled it around me. I crept down the back stairs and ran into Bast coming out of the kitchen. He grabbed at me and I pulled away.

  “Hey, I need to talk to you!”

  “Stay away from me!” I shouted at him, holding up my hands to ward him off.

  Bast. And Peggy. It had to be.

  Bast was the only person Peggy would do anything criminal for. It made sense.

  He grabbed hold of me but I pulled away from him. “I said stay away from me!”

  “Ariel, please, you don’t understand—”

  I pulled away from him and went out the back door and down the back stairs. I heard the back door slam—he was coming behind me. I ran, slipping and sliding on the wet pavement as the thunder roared overhead and lightning lit up the sky. It was dark, very dark, and it was going to pour and I didn’t know where I was going but I needed to get away. Bast was calling after me. I looked back over my shoulder and saw he was carrying a gun.

  “Ariel! Ariel!” I could hear him calling but all I could think about was the gun in his hand.

  A gun.

  He had a gun.

  And he was coming after me.

  Terror gave me a rush of adrenaline and I ran the wrong way, thinking crazily I would duck around the maze and head for the road on the other side. Why Bast wanted to kill me, why Peggy was helping him, I didn’t know—

  “Ariel!”

  It was Roger, and he was standing in the entrance to the maze. He beckoned to me, and I ran over to the maze and, panting, ducked inside.

  “Go inside,” he whispered to me. “You’ll be safe from him inside.”

  My legs turned to water as I looked at the hedge towering above me on every side.

  “Ariel!” Bast was calling me still, and Roger pushed me behind him.

  And pulled a gun of his own out of his pocket.

  I was such a fool.

  It all made sense, finally.

  Roger. It had been Roger all along.

  Roger, who had helped engineer the sale of Swann’s stock when the company went public.

  Roger, who’d asked Peggy to marry him.

  It had been Roger I’d seen out there on the lawn with Lindsay. Lindsay wanted to see the pictures to see if she could recognize Roger.

  “Why, Roger?” I asked. “I thought you were my friend.”

  He smiled at me, and shoved the gun into my side. “You know who my mother was, Ariel? Her last name was Malone.”

  Malone. The Malone Group, Brigid Malone.

  “You hate them as much as I do, don’t you, Ariel?” he whispered. “Bast ruined your life, didn’t he? I’ll just shoot him, and you’ll play along, won’t you? Everyone will believe he wanted to kill you, won’t they?”

  I could hear the madness in his voice, see the way his eyes glittered. He’d hated the Swanns for years, wanted vengeance on the family because of the way his ancestress had been treated…But he was just as much a Swann as the rest of them.

  He hated them so much. He wanted to take the company away from them, Peggy away from Charlotte and Bast.

  And me. He wanted to take me away from Charlotte.

  He wanted them to suffer. That was why he’d lured me to the roof.

  “Bast! He has a gun!” I shoved Roger as hard as I could and his gun went off as he crashed into the side of the hedge. I couldn’t get past him, so I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes and ran deeper into the maze.

  I went around a corner and it was dark, too dark to see. I heard another gunshot and hoped Bast was all right as I felt my way along inside the hedge maze. I’d never been more terrified in my life.

  The only time I’d ever been in the hedge before was when, ironically, Bast had dared me to face my fears and go inside to find my way around. The maze wasn’t difficult to solve, but there were a lot of wrong turns and dead ends, and it was cropped so close to the ground you couldn’t escape from underneath it. I’d gotten lost, of course, unable to find my way out, and had lost control, screaming and crying, and then old Angus had appeared out of nowhere, taken my hand, and led me to the center of the maze.

  “Always remember, Miss Ariel, that if you get lost in the maze you just come to the center,” he’d said, pointing at the ground. On the ground was a design of the maze with an arrow showing the quickest way out. “Just find the center and you can always find your way out.”

  The truth’s in the center of the maze.

  And then I remembered, and I knew what Angus had been trying so hard to tell me, to warn me about.

  Roger was the one who’d put the key there in the center, after a child had gotten lost in the maze and she’d panicked and there were worries about insurance liabilities. Roger had suggested that a map be put in the direct center, so anyone who got lost just had to come to the center and find their way back out again.

  Angus was telling me it was Roger, that Roger was the one I had to beware of, who was out to ruin the family.

  Roger, who’d engineered the breaking of the trust and the sale of stock.

  Roger, engaged now to Peggy, who could have easily drugged the coffee Peggy had brought me and Kayla.

  I groped my way along as it started to rain, the cold wetness saturating my clothes quickly, wishing I’d brought my phone with me. I heard another gunshot, frighteningly close, and tried to rein in my emotions, tried to not lose my head. I just had to find the center and I could find my way out.

  If Roger wasn’t waiting for me there.

  “Ariel!” I heard Charlotte calling over the sound of the storm as I went around another corner, and there before me was a dark form facing the other way.

  Lightning flashed and I saw it was Roger.

  Charlotte was at the end of the row.

  He was aiming at her.

  I jumped on him, knocking his arm up, and the gun went off again as we both went do
wn in a tangle of arms and legs and he slapped me hard and I clawed at his face and we rolled over into the hedge, the branches clawing at my arms and my hands and my face, and he was on top of me and he was putting his hands around my throat and I couldn’t breathe and my ears were ringing and I heard another gunshot.

  And the pressure on my throat went slack.

  Sobbing, I shoved him off me and scrabbled to my feet just as sunlight broke through the clouds again.

  Bast was standing there, holding a gun, and Charlotte rushed over to me, taking me in her arms. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “You saved my life,” Bast said.

  “And mine,” Charlotte added.

  I just nodded. “Is he…?”

  Bast knelt down beside him. “Yes, he’s dead.”

  “Poor Peggy.” I buried my face in Charlotte’s shoulder.

  “Better she finds out now than after she married him,” Charlotte said grimly. “I suspected Roger was behind the stock takeover, but this…”

  “Angus must have seen him break into your office and confronted him”—I shook my head—“and got killed for his trouble. And he thought I had pictures of him with Angus, so I had to be killed, too.”

  “Let’s get into the house and call the police,” Charlotte put her arm around me. “Come on, Bast.”

  And we headed back up the walk to the house, and to our future.

  I would never walk out on Charlotte again.

  About the Author

  Valerie Bronwen is a retired journalist and former writing instructor from New Orleans. Her first published short story, “The Other Side of the Mirror,” appeared in the anthology Women of the Dark Streets. Valerie is a long-time fan of the mystery genre. Her first novel, Slash and Burn, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and she is working on her third novel in her home on Coliseum Square in New Orleans.

  Books Available From Bold Strokes Books

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