“So did he see the murderer?”
He probably hadn’t. It was hard to believe he wouldn’t have mentioned that to someone if he had. Maybe he’d been too late. The code-in at the gate had come very close to midnight. By then, Julia might already have left the building and gone to the pavilion.
Or maybe he had known. Maybe his remark at the funeral, about things coming out, was a veiled threat to the Hammonds. Maybe he’d been trying to blackmail them.
“Sorry,” Rafe said. “I sidetracked you. Go back to the night Beverly Bristol died. They come by boat. One of’em—maybe Chet, maybe Les—meets Julia in the pavilion. The other—maybe Les, maybe Chet’s wife—goes inside, snaps Beverly’s neck while she’s sleeping, and then throws her and her walker down the stairs to make it look like she was out walking around, and fell.”
I nodded. “Then Julia realizes what has happened—or more likely, she thinks Beverly fell because she, Julia, was neglecting her work by dilly-dallying in the pavilion while she should have been on duty.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She feels guilty, and she threatens to tell Fesmire the truth. Or she gets suspicious and wonders whether maybe Beverly’s accident wasn’t an accident after all. Either way, Lester and Chester can’t let her live. So they arrange to meet her in the pavilion one more time, and—”
I raised my hand to my throat, but before I could make the cutting sound, Rafe stomped on the brakes.
“Hold that thought,” he said. “We’re here.”
Nineteen
We were. The road had ended in a small parking lot at the edge of the river.
It was deserted, which wasn’t a surprise on Thanksgiving afternoon. Most of Sweetwater—most of the country—was at home, either preparing or already eating the turkey and dressing.
Except for this small group of us. We slid sideways into the parking lot, and saw the car parked at the far end—not too far away at all, given the size of the lot—by the boat ramp.
Yes, there was a boat ramp here, too. For most of its length, and it’s the longest river located entirely inside the state of Tennessee, the Duck is a pretty narrow and shallow river, but it’s home to more freshwater mussels and fish than any other river in North America. And if you follow it far enough, you end up at Land Between the Lakes, where you can transfer to the Tennessee River or the Cumberland, if you’d like.
This little park was the public access to the Duck River here in Sweetwater. But the car was not local. I recognized it.
“That’s Fesmire’s BMW.”
Rafe nodded, his jaw tight as he fought to keep the SUV going in the right direction.
We’d made good time getting here. (I wasn’t surprised. The tires of Dix’s car had barely touched the ground.) The guy in the camouflage was still over by the car, trying to wrestle the bag with Mrs. Jenkins out of the trunk.
I don’t know whether he was having a problem because she was fighting or because she was limp. Limp can sometimes be harder to deal with. But either way, he was hauling and not making much progress.
When we screeched into the parking lot, he glanced over his shoulder.
If it were me, I would have left Mrs. Jenkins where she was, and run. He didn’t. He made one final herculean effort, and got her out of the trunk. And while Rafe stood on the brake and the SUV skidded across the parking lot on screaming tires, the guy in the camouflage ran to the edge of the river and jumped, still with Mrs. Jenkins in his arms.
Rafe let loose with string of expletives I won’t repeat. Audrey threw her door open and jumped. The car was still moving, albeit not very fast, but she wasn’t able to stay on her feet. Instead, she fell and rolled.
Beside me, Darcy screamed. She yanked on her door, but it wouldn’t budge. Mine wouldn’t, either.
“Child locks,” I said, as Darcy launched herself forward instead, slithering through the gap between the front seats and out the door her mother had opened.
By now, Audrey was back on her feet and limping as fast as she could toward the water. Darcy caught up within just a second or two, blew past her mother, and over the edge. A second later, Audrey followed.
Rafe was still cursing fluently. But the car had come to a quivering stop, and he pushed his door open.
“Let me out!” I screamed. Unlike Darcy, slithering between the seats was not an option for me.
He shook his head. “You’re not getting in that water. Stay here.”
He was gone before I could tell him that I wasn’t going to go in the water. I just wanted out of the car. When—if was not an option—when they came back with Mrs. Jenkins, I wanted to be able to do something to help. Not be stuck in here.
And anyway, what if the bad guy doubled back around and decided that Dix’s SUV, sitting here with the key in the ignition and the engine running would make a good getaway vehicle? I’d be stuck here, like a rat in a barrel, with no way out.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, than the worst happened. Rafe had disappeared over the edge of the river, and was nowhere in sight. Audrey and Darcy were gone, probably floating downstream after Mrs. Jenkins. Hopefully they’d gotten to her by now. Hopefully Rafe would get to them, and they’d all make it out of the water.
But they could probably use a little help. I pulled out my phone and called Dix, since I’d promised to update him anyway. “I’m at the Oak Street boat access ramp. Everyone but me is in the river. The bad guy threw Mrs. Jenkins in, and Audrey and Darcy and Rafe jumped in after her. You need to call 911 and— shit!”
I mean... shoot.
“What?” Dix said.
I peered out from behind the seat. “The bad guy just crawled up the ramp. He’s going to take your car. And me. I gotta go.”
I cut the connection, in the middle of an exclamation from Dix. Hopefully he’d call 911 instead of trying to call back. If the bad guy decided to take the SUV rather than the BMW, I’d like to pretend I wasn’t here. And if my phone was quacking, I couldn’t.
The bad guy stood for a second at the top of the ramp, breathing hard, with water sluicing off his coveralls and running back down the ramp to the river. He was breathing hard. I could see his chest heaving under the camouflage. It couldn’t have been easy, fighting against the current to make it back up the ramp.
He looked from the BMW to the SUV. And like I would have done, he made the decision that taking the SUV, which was already running, with the door open, would leave Rafe and the others with no vehicle, if they made it back to the parking lot at all.
The thought that they might not—or that one or more of them wouldn’t—was terrifying. But the bad guy had to be hoping for that. And he probably had good reason. It was November. The water was cold. The current was strong. And they’d keep looking for Mrs. Jenkins, maybe past the point when they really should stop and save themselves instead.
And on that note, as the bad guy came limping toward the SUV, maybe I should take my own advice and try to save myself, as well. Or at least do what I could so he wouldn’t notice me.
I squeezed myself as far behind the seat as I could and tried to imagine myself very, very small. And it must have worked, because when he stuck his head in and surveyed the car, he didn’t seem to notice me. He just got behind the wheel and shut the door behind him. I heard the locks catch. And then he engaged the gear shift, and we started moving.
And it occurred to me that I might have miscalculated. What if he actually had noticed me back here? And what if he’d decided to do me the way he’d done Julia Poole and Mrs. Jenkins last Saturday night? By rolling the SUV down the ramp and into the river, with me stuck in the backseat, unable to get out? Even if I rolled the windows all the way down, I didn’t think I could squeeze through. I’d be stuck here, while the water slowly filled the car.
And while I was dealing with that, and while Rafe and the others had been swept away by the current, the bad guy could get in the BMW and make his leisurely way back to Nashville.
The concern was stron
g enough that I popped my head over the back of the seat to see which way we were going. And the bad guy really mustn’t have realized I was here, because he jumped, and his foot slipped off the gas for a second. “Shit!”
A pair of gray eyes met mine in the mirror.
“I’m nine months pregnant,” I told him. “If you dump the car in the river, I won’t be able to make it out.”
He hesitated. I’m pretty sure he did. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. If I was right, he’d already killed three people. Or conspired with his brother or wife to kill them. Aunt Beverly, Julia Poole, and Alton Fesmire. And maybe Mrs. Jenkins. She might have been dead by the time she went in the water. Black plastic bags aren’t known for helping people to breathe. And if one or more of the others didn’t make it out of the river alive, he was certainly responsible for that, too.
What was another murder or two at this point?
I wasn’t surprised when he turned the nose of the SUV toward the boat ramp. If he hadn’t been planning it all along, my comment, and my presence here, had given him the idea to do it now. And I could see his reasoning. If the car had been empty, he’d have had a good shot at getting away. With me in it... well, there was a chance that someone might track me down. By my cell phone signal, if nothing else. And while I was alive, and back here, there was a chance I could do something to stop the car. Or get someone’s attention.
No, much safer to leave me and the SUV behind, and make his escape in the BMW. If the SUV—and I—were in the river, the coast was clear for him to get away.
I braced myself when the SUV started rolling down the ramp. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like the impact with the water was rough. We just slid right in, with very little resistance. Floated on the surface for a second, it seemed, and then started to sink.
The bad guy lowered the window by his seat and started to wiggle his way out. So far the interior of the car was dry, but his gyrations made the car rock—he was a big guy—and a little water splashed over the edge of the window. The SUV rolled a few feet farther into the river, and more water started coming in. My feet were getting cold, and when I looked down, I saw that the bottom of the car was starting to fill up. I guess the doors and joints and whatever weren’t water tight.
The back windows didn’t open either, of course. Another feature of the child safety package, probably. Dix wouldn’t want Abigail or Hannah to open the window and—in a hissy fit—throw their backpacks or whatever out of the car.
I’d never get to see Abigail and Hannah again. I’d never get to see Dix again. Or my mother. Or Catherine or Jonathan or their kids.
Or Rafe.
The bad guy kicked his boots free from the front window, and used the roof rack to pull himself through the water back to the boat ramp. I saw the legs of his coveralls and his boots go by on the other side of the car. Then he let go and kicked off, and disappeared through the water toward the ramp.
I was alone. In a car that was slowly sinking into the Duck River with me in it.
I didn’t think about Rafe. Or Audrey or Darcy or Mrs. J. I couldn’t think about them. If I did, I’d probably just sit here and drown.
If the worst happened, and I never saw Rafe, or Mrs. Jenkins or Audrey or Darcy again, but I could get out of here and save myself and the baby, I’d have a piece of Rafe I could keep forever. It wouldn’t be the same as having Rafe, but he could live on through our baby.
I couldn’t let our baby die.
In water up to my ankles now, I stood up and started to maneuver my way to the front seat. But as I’d realized earlier, it was impossible. I couldn’t fit between the seats the way Darcy and her skinny body had done, and with this unwieldy baby bump, it was hard to navigate over the tops of the seats, too. Not only were they tall, but I couldn’t slide on my stomach over the seatbacks. I had to try to climb, and it wasn’t easy.
And moving around inside made the car rock and shift. One of the tires slipped off of something that might have been a rock on the bottom of the river, and the front passenger side of the car did a nosedive.
I shrieked, and clung to the back of the seat and tried to stay very, very still so the car wouldn’t move anymore. When it looked like it had settled back in, with water lapping at the front window, I turned my head, slowly.
The good thing was that now, the rear end of the car was higher than it had been before. I couldn’t make it across to the front seat, but maybe I could make my way into the back of the SUV. And maybe there was a way to open the hatch. That probably didn’t have a child lock on it. Abigail and Hannah weren’t supposed to be back there.
I shifted my weight, very slowly and carefully. The car twitched, but stayed in the same position. I maneuvered onto the backseat, and contemplated the space between the seat and the ceiling, and calculated my chances for making it across.
They were fair to middling. There were two headrests, but they were spaced far apart. Same as the front. But unlike the front, where there was a long, narrow gap between the two seats, the backseat was one long seat all the way across, and the middle part was lower than the headrests. If I could haul me and my stomach across that, I stood a good chance of making it into the backseat.
I’ll spare you a detailed description of the gyrations I made, but if someone had had a camera on me, we could have won a lot of money on America’s Funniest Home Videos. I was sweating and cursing and crying a little, and the baby didn’t seem to like the activity, because it kept kicking me in the ribs and elbowing me in the stomach. And in the middle of everything, I had another contraction that put me out of commission for a minute or so while I breathed and sniffed and cursed through it.
But I made it into the back of the SUV. It was neither easy nor graceful, and at one point my skirt was up around my waist—or at least above my hips, since I don’t have a waist anymore—but I got there. I landed on my back with every intention of staying there long enough to catch my breath. Instead, I had to roll over immediately when it became clear that I’d landed on top of Abigail and Hannah’s booster seats. Darcy must have shoved them over the seatback into the rear when she got into the car. Or when she saw me thundering down the hill in the cemetery, and realized she’d have to share the backseat with me.
I stayed on my side for a minute and breathed instead. Side-sleeping is supposed to be better for the baby anyway.
Once I’d caught my breath, I moved over onto my hands and knees and crawled the foot or two over to the hatch. And tried to open it.
And came quite close to tears again when I couldn’t. It felt like it moved a little, but we’re talking fractions of inches here, not inches. Certainly not feet. Or the yards I’d need to fit myself and the stomach through.
I sat back on my heels, panting. If nothing else, it was dry here. The floor of the rear was higher than the floor of the SUV. And the front of the SUV was deeper in the water than the back of the SUV. Unless the SUV moved again, I had a little time to figure this out.
There was a window across the back. What were the chances that the window opened independently of the door? I’d seen cars—or SUVs—with that feature.
Hadn’t I?
I examined it more closely. And yes, there was a button. I pushed it. The window glass popped open, and I could push it out.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be big enough for me to fit through. In my normal state, I could have managed. I’ve never been skinny, but I could have sucked my stomach in and slithered through.
Now, that wasn’t an option. I had to go through sideways, if I were to have any chance at all. And I didn’t see any way I’d get my hips though that way. I could slide my shoulders through the regular way, then twist to get the stomach through sideways, but the rest was going to be a problem. I could perhaps hold onto the roof of the car and twist my body, as long as my posterior didn’t get stuck...
“Savannah!”
My heart skipped a beat. That sounded like...
But no, it couldn’t be. Maybe i
t was Dix. Maybe he’d driven here and had come to save me.
“Savannah!”
It didn’t sound like Dix. I turned, in time to see my husband come running down the boat ramp. Two seconds later, he was in water up to his waist, wading toward me.
He was soaked to the skin. The leather jacket he’d put on as we ran out of the mansion was gone—he’d probably ditched it in the river, so the weight of it wouldn’t drag him down—and the pale blue dress shirt he’d worn for Thanksgiving dinner was plastered to his body.
Under other circumstances, that would have given me a little thrill. But I was already as thrilled as I could possibly be that he was here at all, and alive and seemingly well, that the shirt passed mostly unnoticed.
“Savannah!” He wrapped his fingers around the top of the hatchback and peered in at me. “You all right?”
I nodded. And I’m not ashamed to admit I had tears streaming down my face. “I thought you drowned.”
“I ain’t that easy to kill,” Rafe said. “Can you make it outta there?”
I sniffed. “I was just trying to figure out how. I think I’m too big.”
“It ain’t you. It’s the window. It’s too small.”
It was nice of him to say so.
“Either way,” I said, “I don’t think I can fit through. And I can’t get the door open.”
“Is it unlocked?”
I told him I’d thought it was, but I still couldn’t get the damn—darn—thing to budge.
“There’s a lotta water in front of it,” Rafe said, and he should know, standing in it up to his chest now. “I’ll give it a try.”
He dropped his arms into the water and fumbled around. “Gimme a hand. Push when I tell you.”
I put my palms against the back of the door and prepared to push.
“Now.”
He pulled. I pushed. I could see the muscles in his arms straining against the weight of the water. I put my shoulder against the door and leaned as hard as I could. Slowly but surely, the hatchback opened. Water started pouring into the back of the car.
Home Stretch Page 23