Deep Waters

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “That sounds like Charity.”

  Davis frowned. “Hell, I don’t think she even liked the department store business. She once told me that being responsible for so many people and their jobs kept her awake at nights. If it hadn’t been for her sense of duty, I think she would have sold Truitt after Dad died.”

  “Yes.”

  “Meredith and I, on the other hand, took to the business right away,” Davis mused. “We went to work for Truitt full-time right out of college. But Charity was still running things, naturally. The company needed her. Things were booming. And then Brett Loftus approached her with his idea for a merger.”

  “I know the rest of the story.”

  “Meredith and I thought the two of them were perfect for each other. Hell, everyone thought they were an ideal couple.”

  “Loftus was too big for her.”

  Davis scowled. “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Things seemed to be going along just fine until the night of the engagement party. That was a year ago.” Davis slanted him a quick, searching glance. “I suppose you heard about that?”

  “Yes.”

  Davis winced. “You had to know Charity well to understand what a bizarre scene that was. So unlike her. Completely out of character. She just sort of came unglued. Right there in front of everyone. The rest of us couldn’t believe it.”

  “She said she went bonkers.”

  “She had an anxiety attack of some kind.” Davis sighed. “I hate to say it, but that evening was the first time that Meredith and I fully understood what the pressure of running Truitt had done to Charity.”

  “You can stop worrying about her, Truitt. She’s okay now. She’s happy running her bookstore. She says being a small-businessperson is a calling.”

  “Well, it’s definitely not your calling.” Davis narrowed his eyes. “So why are you pretending to operate that stupid little curio shop?”

  “What you don’t seem to grasp here, Truitt, is that I’m not pretending.” Elias exhaled slowly. “There’s something else you should know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to marry Charity. If she’ll have me.”

  Shortly after seven-thirty, Charity abandoned any pretense of trying to concentrate on the order forms that she had intended to complete. With a groan, she threw down her pen and sagged against the back of her chair. She used her feet to push the seat around in a half circle so that she faced Otis.

  “I keep thinking about that chipped acrylic nail, Otis. Crimson Jennifer.”

  Otis, who had been dozing atop the coatrack, opened one eye and gave her a baleful look.

  “I’ll bet you any amount of sunflower seeds that Jennifer was having an affair with Rick Swinton.”

  Apparently realizing that he was not going to be allowed to nap, Otis opened his other eye and stretched his wings.

  “Everyone keeps saying that Leighton Pitt had the perfect motive to murder both Gwen and Swinton. He lost everything because of them. He even lost his trophy wife. But when you think about it, Jennifer lost everything, too.”

  “Heh, heh, heh.” Otis made his way from the branch of the coatrack on which he had been perching to the one where Charity had hung his feeding dish.

  “Everyone seems to agree that Jennifer married Leighton for his money. Even Leighton has come to that conclusion. And then Leighton’s ex-wife hits town with a plan to ruin him. Said plan, carried out with the able assistance of Rick Swinton, works. Result? Leighton Pitt is ruined. When Jennifer files for divorce, she’ll get nothing.”

  Otis thoughtfully cracked a seed with his powerful beak.

  Charity leaned forward and folded her arms on her knees. “If you want to compare motives, Jennifer’s are just as good as Leighton’s. When he lost everything, so did she. I’ll bet no one has checked her alibis for either murder.”

  Otis finished munching and hiked back to his original coatrack perch. He half-closed his eyes.

  “You know, Otis, I’m getting a weird feeling.” Charity rose and began to pace the room. “Look at the facts. Everyone who deprived Jennifer of whatever she hoped to get out of Leighton Pitt is either dead or in jail. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  Otis did not respond.

  “Don’t go to sleep on me. We need to work this out. If Leighton Pitt manages to prove his innocence, we’re going to have a problem on our hands. I just know that Tybern will start casting suspicious glances at Elias again.”

  Otis, apparently unconcerned by that possibility, started to close his eyes.

  “The more I think about this, the less I like it.” Charity came to a halt in front of the coatrack. “That does it, I need to talk to Hank Tybern. I want him at least to look into Jennifer’s alibis for the times of the murders. It’s a perfectly reasonable request from a concerned citizen.”

  Charity picked up the worn towel and wrapped it around her forearm. “Come on, Otis, there’s no telling how long Elias and Davis are going to talk. Let’s you and me go find Hank.”

  Otis muttered under his breath, but he stepped onto her towel-wrapped arm.

  Charity grimaced. “You’re really going to have to start watching the seed intake, Otis. Middle-age spread in a parrot is not an attractive sight.”

  With the bird on her arm, Charity turned off the lights and locked the doors. The fog had thickened considerably since she had brought Otis back to Whispers. The last light of dusk had been drowned by the heavy mist that had moved in to blanket the cove during the past couple of hours.

  The pier was isolated in an unnatural gloom. It was impossible to see beyond the nearest rail, but down below, the waters whispered darkly. To Charity it seemed as if she and Otis moved through a nightmarish landscape.

  “Hang tight, Otis.” It was not really cold, but there was a chill in the damp air. She held her jacket over Otis to protect him as she hurried toward the door of Charms & Virtues. “We’ll get you inside your cage and put a nice warm blanket around you. And then we’ll pop you into the car and turn on the heater. You’ll be fine.”

  Otis muttered. He sounded disgusted. Charity had the distinct impression that he was telling her he was no wimp and that a little fog didn’t bother him.

  “Typical male.” Charity came to a halt in front of the door of Elias’s shop and fished out the key ring he had given her. “Always trying to prove how macho you are.”

  She got the door open and stepped inside. The interior of Charms & Virtues, never bright even at high noon and with all the lights turned on, was shrouded in deep shadow tonight.

  Charity groped for the old light switch near the door. “If I’ve told Elias once, I’ve told him a dozen times to install better lighting.”

  “Heh, heh, heh.”

  “You always take his side.” She found the switch and flipped it. The few lamps above the long rows of display tables glowed weakly. They cast sullen yellow pools of light that did not reach beyond the edge of the cluttered counters.

  The effect was certainly atmospheric. Too much so for her taste. Charity shuddered as she carried Otis toward the far end of the shop. She could hardly make out the cash register counter.

  She caught a whiff of an acrid odor. “Otis, do you smell gasoline?”

  The strange chill of uneasiness that had gone through her a few minutes earlier when she had stepped out into the fog returned in a jolt just as she reached the counter. Another shiver went through her. Otis must have felt it. He stiffened on her arm.

  “Oh, damn.” Charity recognized the feeling with a sense of deep dismay. “Please don’t let this be the start of an anxiety attack. Please. I’ve been doing so well lately.”

  “I’m glad someone has.” Jennifer Pitt walked out of the darkened office. Light glinted evilly on the barrel of the gun in her hand. “Because I sure as hell haven’t been doing well at all.”

  Charity froze. So did Otis. They both had to look up to see Jennifer’s eyes.

  Tall, with a figure t
hat had been honed to perfection on her home gym, Jennifer looked as out of place as she always did here in Whispering Waters Cove. Her voluminous streaked hair was a mass of California-style blown-dry curls around her perfectly made-up face. She wore a snug red suede vest over a white silk shirt and silver-studded jeans. A pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head.

  The only thing that was different about her today was the raw fury in her eyes.

  “It’s all so goddamned unfair,” Jennifer whispered. “I worked so hard to make things come out right. I was going to leave this town with half a million dollars in my pocket. Half a million dollars. And they ruined everything. All my plans. Everything.”

  Charity had to swallow several times before she could speak. “Jennifer, it’s okay. Take it easy.”

  “That bitch Gwen wanted revenge, you see?” Jennifer’s eyes had a feverish glint. “Leighton kept telling me about the big deal he was going to pull off. I decided to stick around until he had the money. There would be so much of it, he said. The biggest deal of his life. I planned to leave him as soon as I knew I could count on the cash.”

  “Put the gun down. It’s over now, Jennifer.”

  “But Rick told me the truth toward the end. He warned me that Gwen had other plans. She had set a trap, lured Leighton into it, so that she could have her revenge.”

  “You confronted her the night the spaceships were supposed to arrive, didn’t you?” Charity asked softly. “You found her in her motor home and shot her.”

  “I didn’t intend to kill her. But she laughed at me. Called me a fool. Told me that I would never get a single dime out of Leighton. Then she slapped me. The gun went off.”

  “An accident,” Charity said quickly. “Not murder.”

  “I just wanted to scare her. Make her give me some of the money she had taken from Leighton. It was my money, you know. I sacrificed a year of my life to get it. You don’t know what it was like having to put up with his grubby hands on me. I hated it. I hated every minute of it, but I had to pretend to like it.”

  “Was Rick Swinton any better?”

  “Rick? That sleazy scumbag?” Jennifer bared her teeth in a feral smile. “I only went to bed with him because I had to find out what Gwen was doing here in Whispering Waters Cove. I knew when she arrived in town last month that she was up to something. Rick finally told me about the scam.”

  “But by then it was too late to stop her.”

  “Too late.” Jennifer raised the barrel of the gun. “It’s always too late in this damned town. All I wanted was to escape, but I was trapped.”

  “I understand,” Charity said gently. “I understand, Jennifer.” The arm on which she supported Otis was trembling. She could not tell whether it was she or the parrot who was shivering so violently. Maybe both of them were having anxiety attacks. It seemed reasonable, given the circumstances.

  “After she was dead, that prick, Swinton, tried to blackmail me.”

  “Blackmail? With what?” Something clicked in Charity’s memory. “Oh, God. The missing tape.”

  “Yes, the damned tape. That bitch, Gwen, had it running that night when I confronted her. I didn’t know it at the time. Everything is recorded on that tape. Anyone who listens to it will know that I shot her.”

  “And Rick found it when he found her body?”

  “He knew where to look. He grabbed it during the initial confusion. He knew she always taped everything that happened in that damn motor home.” Jennifer’s eyes narrowed. “At first he tried to make me think the demand for a payoff had come from Winters.”

  Charity stared. “From Elias?”

  “He said Winters must have found the tape when he checked to see if Gwen was still alive. After all, he was right there beside the body for several minutes. He had plenty of time to notice the tape player and slip the tape into his pocket.”

  “The only thing Elias noticed was that the tape player was empty. He mentioned it later.”

  “As soon as I got the blackmail threat, I realized that it had come from Rick. I knew Winters was not involved.”

  Charity cleared her throat. “I’m sure Elias would be flattered by your faith in his integrity.”

  “Not his integrity, you stupid woman. Yours.”

  “Mine?” Charity’s voice rose. “What does my integrity have to do with this?”

  “You’re having an affair with him. Everyone knows it. I realized that if you were willing to sleep with him, he couldn’t be the type to steal evidence and then blackmail someone with it.”

  Charity’s mouth opened and closed twice before she managed to say, “I see.”

  “On the other hand,” Jennifer continued, “blackmail was right up Rick Swinton’s alley. Just his style. He was a fool to think I wouldn’t know that he was the one behind the demand.”

  “So you killed him.”

  “I left the blackmail payment on the back porch of the old Rossiter cabin, just as I was instructed. I drove off, but I hid the car and doubled back to wait for Rick to show up. Which he did.”

  “You confronted him?”

  Jennifer gave her a twisted smile. “He kept screaming at me that I’d be sorry, that he had taken measures to avenge himself if anything happened to him, but I didn’t believe him.”

  “You shot him and pushed his body over the bluff into the water.”

  “I knew it would wash up in the cove, of course. That made it easy to frame Leighton for both deaths. But this morning I found out that Rick had meant it when he said that he had taken precautions. I got a sealed letter expressed from his lawyer in Seattle. In it Rick told me just what he had done. That bastard.”

  Another shock of fear swept through Charity. “What do you mean? What kind of measures could Rick have taken?”

  A frantic expression passed over Jennifer’s face. “He hid that damn tape somewhere here in Charms & Virtues. Said it was the perfect hiding place. He knew that if it was found, Winters would appear guilty of blackmail.”

  “This has gone too far,” Charity whispered. “Jennifer, listen to me.”

  “I came here tonight to search for the tape.” Jennifer glanced desperately around at the gloomy, cluttered interior of Charms & Virtues. “But I see now that it will be impossible to find it in this mess.”

  “That’s right. Impossible. Run, Jennifer. Run while you still can. Don’t wait.”

  “No. Everything’s under control.” Jennifer locked both hands around the gun. “I came prepared. I have a can of gasoline with me. I’m going to burn this damned shop to the ground and the whole pier with it. No one will ever find that tape.”

  The terrible panic threatened to swamp Charity. Otis’s claws were clenched so tightly around her arm that they threatened to puncture straight through the towel. She summoned her most authoritative CEO voice.

  “Jennifer, pay attention. If you leave now, you can escape. If you take time to set a fire, you’ll never make it out of town.”

  “Shut up. You have to die, you know. I really can’t leave any witnesses, now can I?” Jennifer’s hand tightened around the gun. Her eyes narrowed.

  Charity prepared to hurl herself to the side. She knew it was highly unlikely that she could dodge the shot, but it was the only option left for her.

  And then Otis screamed.

  It was a loud, terrible, piercing cry designed to be heard for vast distances in the jungles where his ancestors had lived.

  For the first time since Charity had known him, he uttered a clear, recognizable sentence.

  “It’s payback time,” Otis screeched in a voice that was chillingly reminiscent of Hayden Stone’s.

  He launched himself from Charity’s arm. Wings flapping wildly, fierce beak opened wide, he hurtled straight at Jennifer’s horrified face.

  19

  A clear reflection on the surface of the water holds a deep truth.

  —“On the Way of Water,” from the journal of Hayden Stone

  Charity watched Jennifer do what any reasonabl
e person would have done in the face of a ferocious attack by an animal possessed of a large beak and big claws. She yelled in panic, dropped the gun, and covered her eyes to protect her face. Twisting wildly, she reeled aside in an effort to avoid the bird.

  Otis’s clipped wings prevented him from altering course to follow her. He went into a long glide that carried him straight past Jennifer. With grand majesty, he sailed on through the office doorway.

  Charity heard an ominous crash from inside the small room, but there was no time to check on Otis. She leaped for the fallen gun, which had hit the floor behind the counter.

  “No. No, damn you.” Jennifer uncovered her face. She saw the gun and rushed madly forward to recover it.

  Charity realized that Jennifer was the one who was closest to the weapon. There was no time to make a dash for the door. She had to get to the gun before Jennifer did.

  Instead of circling the end of the counter, Charity planted both hands on top of it and propelled herself over in a mad dive.

  She crashed into Jennifer. They fell to the floor and rolled. Jennifer landed on top and immediately attempted to get her long-nailed fingers around Charity’s throat.

  She succeeded.

  Charity gasped for air and struggled desperately to pry Jennifer’s fingers away from her throat. She was hopelessly outclassed. Jennifer had the advantage of height, weight, and a longer reach.

  For an instant, everything went gray as panic welled up inside Charity. She could feel Jennifer’s fingers tightening and knew a terrible sense of impending doom.

  And then, as if he were standing beside her, giving instructions in a calm, dark voice that pierced the blinding fear, Charity recalled the simple self-defense moves Elias had begun to teach her.

  Do not seek to block the onrushing tide. Instead, create another path for the water.

  Charity stopped trying to pit her strength against Jennifer’s. Going against her own instincts, she released her opponent’s wrists. She shoved her hands straight up between her attacker’s arms, aiming for Jennifer’s eyes.