I shivered. Was it possible? It was. Means, opportunity, and now, here was the motive, clear and basic as water: her father’s cruel codicil, the will naming her alternate executive, after Jerry Jeff. It was all falling into place. But I wasn’t sure that I trusted myself to draw valid conclusions. No, scratch that. I didn’t trust myself. I had already behaved like a blithering idiot more than once tonight. I’d made a veiy good case against Lulu Burkhart, and an equally strong case against Roxanne and Pokey. In fact, I’d been so sure that the two of them were guilty that I’d thought they were attempting escape. Even though the evidence seemed to point clearly to Edna Lund, I felt uneasy about it.
I got hurriedly to my feet and stuck the Lund file under my arm. Forget Miss Velma’s will. It had waited this long, it could wait another twelve hours. I picked up the flashlight and turned toward the door. I would drive to the Manor right now and get McQuaid's opinion. He’d been a cop, He’d know if my suspicions were way off base. He could check through all my what-ifs and tell me whether I had overstated some of them. He’d —
I felt the broken board snap. My right leg crashed through the floor midway up the thigh, my left knee smashed against the floor, and I pitched forward, so suddenly and unexpectedly that I didn’t have time to fling out my arms to take the shock. My chest and face slammed against wood. My nose snapped, my teeth sliced into my upper lip and I tasted sudden blood. There was a sickening pain in my legs. I knew one of them was broken, but both hurt so much I couldn’t tell which. I heard somebody making foolish yelping whimpers, wondered who and why, then realized that they were mine.
Seconds later, a brick wall fell on me.
It isn’t a brick wall, I realize uncountable moments later, as I swim groggily upward out of the heavy darkness. It’s a ton of cardboard boxes, and it has landed on me with the full weight of the law. The full weight of the law—get it? I hear somebody giggling hysterically, a little-girl giggle, punctuated by gurgling hiccups.
“Stop that,” I command sternly, and the giggling stops. But my lip is as mushy as an overripe banana, my nose is spouting blood, and my face hurts like hell. I feel as if I’ve gone twelve rounds with Mohammed Ali, eveiy round ending in a KO, with me flat on my bloody face on the canvas and my manager yelling at me to get up before Ali kills me. “No more talking,” I tell my manager, and the talking stops.
No moving, either, or not much. Laboriously, I inch my left arm out from under a box as big as the Astrodome. Only one arm, only an inch or three, but even this minus-
cule movement makes me gulp for air, and I can't gulp. My head is twisted to the left, a box is balanced on my shoulder blades, and the cartons that have crashed like the Empire State Building across my back must have cracked about a hundred ribs. They are flattening me like bricks flattening a sponge, pressing the breath out of me like air bubbles pressed out of bread dough. It is entirely possible that they have shattered my spine. My right arm is fastened to the floor with giant staples, pinned under a couple of ten-ton boxes filled with the granite they used to build the Capitol building in Austin. My legs feel like —
Scratch that. My legs have no feeling. Mercifully, I can only imagine what’s going on with them, because I am numb from the waist down. If I were to guess what has happened, I would say that I have stepped into a saber- toothed dinosaur trap, cleverly rigged to seize my right leg twelve inches above the knee and bite through the flesh to the femur. Since I remember having gone down like a 7A7 belly-flopping on a concrete runway, and I can picture my left kneecap, smashed in a trillion pieces. I wonder vaguely when I had my last tentanus booster, but rational thought hurts almost as bad as breathing. "Stop thinking,” I admonish myself thickly, and close my eyes.
But the thoughts don’t stop coming, and after a moment my eyes open again. I am nailed to the floor of a forgotten storeroom in a derelict bam on an abandoned farm that won’t see another human until Lester's cousin Arlie comes out to scatter deer corn the first of September. This is June. After that comes July, then August. September comes later. Much later.
But surely I won’t have to hold out quite that long. When I don’t show up to open the shop tomorrow morning, Ruby will start woriying. She’ll call McQuaid, who will remember that the last time he heard from me, I was headed for MaeBelle’s house. He will reach MaeBelle when she gets off duty at five, and when she goes home to supper, she will ask Lester, who will—
Nope, wrong. MaeBelle hits gone to see to Jamie, and won’t be home for a couple of days. And Lester was embarking on a glorious drunk when he talked to me. He may not recall giving me directions to the lease. In fact, he may not remember me at all. It may be days before they— I shudder. Even if they find me tomorrow night, it won’t matter a whole hell of a lot. My right leg will be the size of a bloated rhinoceros, my lungs will be as flat as Eeyore’s balloon, and after my rescuers have removed the boxes, they can scrape my torso off the floor with that antique grain scoop out there in the bam. They won't have to bother with EMS. They can call Maude Porterfield, she can sign my death certificate on the spot, and they can ship me straight off to the medical examiner for autopsy.
Two large tears of pain and self-pity—at this point, it’s hard to know the difference—squeeze out of my eyes. But I can’t cry, because that will stop up my nose and then I won’t be able to breathe at all.
"Don’t cry,” I tell myself. "Be calm.” I think of Ruby, meditating for hours on end, legs crossed in the lotus position. Can I do that? Not the legs-crossed part, of course. I try meditating, anyway. Face down, eyes closed, I listen to the breath moving in and out. I feel the beat of the pulse in my throat, concentrating on the breath, in-out, in-out. I listen to the rustle of rats in the corners, the flurry of bat wings, the raspy footsteps of the scorpion—
Scorpion! My eyes pop open, my breath flutters like a flag, my heart seizes up. Then, just as 1 am about to give in to panic, I hear the sound of an engine, tires on gravel, a car door slamming, hurried footsteps.
Somebody is out there! Rescue is on the way. I’ll be saved. I am suddenly weak with relief. But then it dawns on me that I have to be found before I can be rescued, and I open my mouth to yell.
"Help!” I shout. The word comes out as an embarrassing mousey squeak. I suck in my breath, summon all my available strength, and tiy again. "Help! Help, please!” More squeaks, a cageful of mice.
"China Bayles?” It is a woman’s voice. "China! Where
nt>
are you:
My mouth is open to shout again. I close it.
That voice belongs to Edna Lund.
The silence seemed to stretch on forever. I was caught in an internal dispute, tom between wanting like hell to get out of there and hoping Edna would go away without finding me. It was dark by this time. She might not notice the wooden door, or if she pushed it open, she might see only a jumble of old cardboard boxes. Maybe she’d go away. I sighed. Fat chance. My car was out there. And if she went away, where would that leave me? Dead, that’s where. I opened my mouth to call, but nothing came out.
"China?” she cried. She was standing just outside the door. "Where are you?” A second or two later, the heavy wooden door creaked open. "China? Are you in here!"
A flashlight shone down on me, bright as a spotlight from a prison wall. I couldn’t lift my head to look at the beam but the light hurt anyway. I shut my eyes, tiying to think. If I acted cool, played dumb, didn’t give her any reason to suspect that I had found that incriminating file, she would call for help—wouldn't she? Of course she would. Anything else was unthinkable.
The beam seized me. “China!” Edna cried, sounding frantic. “China, my God, what’s happened to you? Are you all right?”
Was I all right? What a stupid question. But I was buoyed by the concern in her voice. “I'm super,” I said. My tongue was funy, my lips as dry as old saddle leather. "My leg isn’t so good, though. It’s ... I stepped through the floor. It’s probably broken. My leg, I mean. The floor is broken to
o, obviously.” I was babbling, but I couldn't stop. "That’s how my leg got—”
“Broken?” She moved, and I could see her feet, stepping into the pool of light. She was wearing black pants and sneakers. She came around behind me, picking her way through spilled boxes.
“Yeah. Right.” I tried to laugh, but didn’t quite bring it off. “Half of me is down there in the basement, with a bunch of old cedar posts and barbed wire.” And rattlesnakes. “The other half is under these boxes. Maybe you could move—"
She bent over and picked up the box that was balanced on my butt. "How in the world did this happenV’ she asked sharply. The implication was unmistakable: if I’d been smarter or more cautious or just plain quicker, it wouldn’t have happened at all.
Unfortunately, I agreed with her. "Carelessness,” I said. “Not paying attention. I zigged when I should have zagged.” I giggled again. The laugh ended in a gurgle, and I felt something hot and salty in my mouth. Was it blood? “Listen, Edna,” I whispered, “canyou do something about these boxes? I think I’ve got a couple of... cracked ribs.”
She took a box off my back and set it on the floor, and I sucked in a deep breath. But breathing brought pain, thick, throbbing waves of pain surfing through me, and a spiraling vortex of dizziness. A dozen or so of those cracked ribs, sharp as knives, must be poking into my lungs.
Edna shone the light on my lower torso and knelt down to assess the situation. After a moment she stood. "I don’t think I ought to tiy to get you out of here by myself, China,” she said. “That broken floorboard is clamped on your leg like a vise, and your left leg is twisted at an odd angle. I hate to leave you, but I’d better go for help.”
“There’s a cell phone in my car,” I said.
“Oh, good,” she said, relief strong in her voice. She knelt over and patted my shoulder. There was a smear of dust on her black pants, and a small spider was making its way across the toe of her sneaker. "I’ve got a bottle of Scotch in my car, dear. I’m sure you can use a drink while we wait for help to come.”
“Wonderful,” I said, meaning it. Thank God, I was going to get out of this in one piece. And sooner than the first week of September. "Please hurry.”
She turned to go, but the edge of her light caught the label on one of the cartons and she stopped, studying it. After a moment, she swung the light around the litter of fallen cartons, reading more labels. When she spoke, it was more to herself than to me. "These boxes . . . they’re from Perry’s law office.”
Among the needles of pain, I suddenly found a clear voice. “I was looking for Miss Velma’s will,” I said. “McQuaid sent me out here to find it. He seemed to think it was urgent that I locate it tonight.” I took a breath, coughed, and said, "When you call EMS, would you mind calling him, too? He knows I’m out here, Edna. He's going to worry if I don’t check in with him and let him know that I’ve—”
But it was too late. Her light had found the file. She went down on her knees to look at it, and I heard the rustle of turning pages. The silence stretched out. A mouse scratched in the corner. Somewhere startlingly close, a great horned owl called, once, twice, three times.
Edna let the file slip to the floor. “You’ve read this, I suppose." Her voice was heavy, sad, old. “You know?” She waited a minute for me to confirm her suspicion, then sighed and answered her own question. "But of course you do. You’re- a lawyer.” The words trailed off in another sigh.
I lay still, trying to think. A long time ago, in another life, I learned to lie professionally. In my heyday, I was among the very best—maybe not in the same category as Johnny Cochran and F. Lee Bailey, but pretty damn close. But lying took more energy than I could spare, and I probably wouldn’t be convincing. I only had strength for the truth.
"Did you kill him?” I asked.
“Kill who?” she asked, almost absently. She stood. "My father?”
This opened up a line of inquiry that I hadn't even considered. But that would have to come later—if there was a later. She held the best hand, and I couldn't know how she was going to play it.
"Jerry Jeff,” I said. "He was the executor of your father’s estate. With him gone, you could do as you liked with the will.”
“I didn’t intend to kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said, almost testily. “I knew he was allergic, but I had no idea—” She stopped, reflecting, choosing her words with some care. "I don’t think I really believed, at that moment, that a few chopped peanuts could actually kill him. The nuts were loose, on some cookies somebody had entered. All I did was shake them off the cookie and into the chili.” She shook her head sadly. "I was as surprised as everybody else when he died. At first, I thought of trying to get help—but then I realized that this was the way out of my problem, and I just . . . well, 1 just let it happen.”
“You could plead temporary insanity,” I said. “You’d probably get off with a light sentence.”
Her mouth was bitter. "And after prison, then what? Jimmy would have made off with the money, and I’d have nothing. Nothing worth living for.” She shook her head regretfully. “I wish you hadn’t gotten mixed up in this, China.”
“It’s too late now,” I said.
She sighed. "Yes. Well, since you know the most important part, I suppose I might as well tell you everything, so you'll understand and not blame me too much. I tried to get Jerry Jeff to be reasonable about the estate. I told him I would give him half the ranch. He could keep it or sell it, whatever he decided to do with it. All I wanted was the oil royalties, sixty thousand or so a year after taxes.” Her mouth hardened and her voice rose angrily. "That was my money! It wasn’t fair that Dad gave it all to Jimmy, and the ranch, too. Jimmy didn’t give a damn whether Dad was alive or dead. I was the one who took care of him for all those years! ”
"Why did your father do it?” I asked.
"Why?” Her laugh grated. "Why did that crazy old man do anything? He didn’t need a real reason—only to belittle me, hurt me, make me suffer. All those years, all those petty little punishments, all of them adding up to misery. He was a hateful, terrible old man, and I despised him. Living with him was sheer hell."
This was no doubt all very true, and I wondered briefly whether it was a motive for bid murder, as well. But we were getting sidetracked. “I'm curious,” I said. "Why didn’t you come looking for the codicil before tonight?"
She paused, appearing to give this serious thought. “I didn’t know for sure there was a copy. I found the original when I was going through Dad’s papers after he died, and I burned it. After a while, I began to wonder whether there might be a copy, but by that time, Perry was dead and Velma’s mind had deteriorated to the point where she only made sense in snatches. I spent as much time with her as I could, hoping to catch her in a lucid moment. But I figured that if she couldn’t tell me, she couldn’t tell anybody else, either. And if there was a copy, it had to be lost among all the other records. I was willing to take my chances.”
It all seemed very complicated, and I was almost too tired to care. "How much did Jerry Jeff know?” I asked blurrily.
“With the original, I found a copy of a note Dad had written to Jerry Jeff, telling him that he was planning to change his beneficiary. After Dad died, Jerry Jeff came looking for the codicil. But I told him I didn’t know anything about it, and of course he couldn’t find it. So the note was all he had to go on.”
"And that was enough for him to hold up probate?” I asked, vaguely surprised. "Why would he bother? Why not just get on with it?”
Her chuckle was corrosive. "Apparently, Dad hinted to him that there was something in it for him. It was a lie, of course. That was one of the old man’s tricks. He’d promise you anything, dangle any sort of carrot, and then when you did what he wanted, he’d jerk it away. Like Opal Hogge. She gave him all kinds of special treatment in return for his promise to leave a big bundle of money to the
Manor. That was one of the ways Dad manipulated people and got them
to do what he wanted."
“But Jerry Jeff couldn’t know that.”
A smile ghosted across her mouth. “He did what Opal did. He tried to get Velma to tell him where the original was—only I don’t think he was as rough with Velma as Opal was.”
Well, that explained Bunny’s treatment of Miss Velma. But as for the rest of it—it was terribly confusing, and pain was wrapping me like a choking fog. But I was thinking of something else, and after a minute I managed to get the words out.
“I suppose you also wrote to Jerry Jeff, threatening to turn him in to the IRS if he didn’t probate the original will.”
“The let — ” She seemed momentarily taken aback. "How did you find out about—” And then, with a steely edge, "Who else knows?”
Ah. "Who else knows?” I asked, and answered myself, cheerily. "Why, lotj of people. McQuaid knows, Charlie Lipman knows, Roxanne Cody—”
"You’re lying,” she snapped. "Alike McQuaid doesn’t know. I was in his room tonight. If he knew, he would have given some hint.”
"He was a cop for a lot of years,” I said. "He wouldn’t let you know he knew. And Charlie knows about the codicil. Jerry Jeff told him.” I was covering, of course. Edna had to be wondering what to do with me. The more people that seemed to know, the less likely it was that she’d try something lethal.
She considered this for a moment. "You’re lying,” she said. "Alike doesn’t know anything. If he had, he would’ve realized that Velma was talking about my father’s codicil, not her will. The poor old thing probably doesn’t even have a will. And I saw Charlie Lip man just this afternoon—he doesn’t know, either. He couldn’t have kept it from me if he had.”
Chile Death Page 25
