“So what did she say?”
“She said that particular place wasn’t for sale, that the owner had plans for it, but she had other great coastal properties available and she’d be glad to come out and talk to us.” Carrying on a conversation with a soon-to-be-dead body slung over her shoulder apparently was no problem for Sheila.
“She’d really do that, drive all the way out here?” I asked.
“If enough bucks were involved, Renée would hike from here to Frisco and back. She couldn’t resist ‘price is no obstacle.’”
“Didn’t she recognize your voice?”
“I put crumpled-up toilet tissue over the phone.” She sounded gleeful, proud of her inventiveness.
I’ve heard of covering a phone to disguise your voice, of course. It’s on some old TV show every once in a while. Though it’s usually a handkerchief, so using crumpled toilet paper was rather creative. Well, maybe that’s what it takes to be an effective crook. Creative thinking.
“Of course, a little flattery, telling her she was the greatest real estate agent ever, probably helped. She rushed right out to meet ‘us.’”
Sheila might not recognize a bit of king-sized flattery used on herself, but she certainly knew how to use it.
“How’d you get her all the way out to the end cabin? Carry her like you’re doing me?”
“Of course not. I just pointed the gun at her and told her to walk.” Yes, elementary but effective. It had worked with me, at least for a while.
“Weren’t you concerned your phone number would show up on her phone after she was dead?”
“I used a cheap burner phone and threw it in the ocean a couple days later.” Triumphant now. The invincible killer. She’d thought of everything.
“So then she drove out to the Kabins to meet you. But her car wasn’t there when we found her body.”
“That turned out to be the hardest part.”
“Harder than killing her?”
“Well, you know, more complicated. I was hoping her body wouldn’t be found for a long time, but if her vehicle was there, I knew it would be. So, after she was—” She paused, apparently finding the straightforward word dead distasteful. “After she was gone, I drove my car home from the Kabins and rode my bicycle back out there. I put it in Renée’s SUV and drove to her office after dark. Wearing gloves, of course. No fingerprints! Then I parked the SUV there, got out my bicycle, and just rode it home.” Again, she sounded victorious and triumphant. “I had it all figured out ahead of time. Although it would have been better if you two hadn’t stumbled around out there and found her body so soon.”
Was I supposed to apologize for that? I didn’t. After all, even if I was hanging upside down across her shoulder, I still had my dignity. More or less.
Unexpectedly, she laughed. “You’re trying to keep me talking, aren’t you? Like something out of a mystery novel. Clever sleuth keeps villain talking until help arrives. Right?”
I didn’t respond. Unless help appeared in the form of an alien invasion or at least a lone flying saucer swooping in over the sea, I didn’t see how help could show up here. But the Lord had parted the Red Sea for the Israelites. Maybe he’d do a miracle for me here? Maybe a pair of wings, Lord? That would be nice. Although one small flaw in her perfectly planned murder, one point that might trip her up, suddenly occurred to me.
Too bad I was never going to get to tell anyone about it. But that didn’t stop my curiosity.
“So, how’d you get the sheriff’s department to get a search warrant on Brian and Kathy’s apartment? I don’t think they’ll get a search warrant on an anonymous call.”
“Oh, that was easy. I called them on my way down to Vegas and told them my name was Tiffany and I was sixteen years old—”
“They believed that?”
“I can sound sixteen if I want to!” At this point she also sounded indignant that I doubted her ability to sound so youthful. “I said I’d been Brian’s girlfriend for a while but I got scared when he threatened me with a gun and I was pretty sure he’d used it to kill his girlfriend at the old cabins, and I thought the gun was still there at his place.”
She shifted me on her shoulder and started walking again. We seemed to be out in the open now, beyond the trees, but the ground was rough. She stumbled a couple of times. Could I hope that would somehow work in my favor? We couldn’t be far from the edge of the cliff. Maybe she’d stumble and fall over. Although if that happened, she’d undoubtedly take me with her. Not exactly a win-win situation. She was probably trying to get up to the highest point where I’d have farther to fall when she flung me over.
Finally she stopped and took a deep breath. “You’re heavier than you look, you know?”
She’s grumbling about my weight? Wasn’t I the one who had a right to complain? After all, the worst she’d get out of this was a sore back. And I—
I yanked my mind away from the messy details. “Are we there yet? Wherever you’re headed?”
“Yes, I’m glad to say, we’re here. And such a spectacular view!” She shifted me on her shoulder again. “Have you ever been up here before? I should do it more often. It’s such an inspiring view, well worth the climb. The moonlight on the sea, the waves churning around the rocks beyond the cove. The stars like jewels in the sky. It’s almost like a glimpse into eternity.”
I wouldn’t know. While she was rhapsodizing about the view, all I could see was the ground and her backside. And yes, as Duke had once remarked, that backside was indeed, in spite of all her jogging and bicycling, quite generously sized. Definitely not a fat-free zone.
“And the scent of sea. Isn’t it fantastic, so fresh and sharp and clean?”
I wouldn’t know about fantastic scents either. Right now, the scent of Sheila’s usual perfume was overwhelmed by the smell of Sheila herself. She’d worked up quite a sweat lugging me up the hill.
But she’d be through enthusing about view and scent of sea any minute now. Think, Ivy, think!
The Lord didn’t send a UFO to help, but he did send me a smidgen of an idea. I still had the piece of dead branch in my hand. A spindly thing. Not more than a couple feet long. Dead leaves on the end. As a weapon, about as effective as a feather duster.
But the other end, the end where it had splintered off the bigger branch . . . I ran a fingertip across it. Not as sharp as the pocketknife I’d bought at her garage sale, which I wished I had now. But you make do with what you have.
I squirmed around, got a good grip on the stick, gritted my teeth, and closed my eyes.
No, no, my eyes had to be open, so I wouldn’t miss. I forced them open, carefully picked my target in the moonlight—and it was, blessedly, a good-sized target—and jabbed the sharp end of the stick at the target, jabbed as if I were trying to hit the center of the earth. Nothing vital in there. Maybe the stick wouldn’t even go through the sweater. But if it would just incapacitate her long enough for me to—
She howled and hopped and grabbed her backside. I tumbled to the ground. Maybe the jab went deeper than I expected? She shrieked and screamed and screeched. I was mere inches from the edge of the cliff. She wasn’t going to have to fling me over. I was going to do it for her and just fall over the edge—
I frantically tried to scramble away but I was all tangled up in her hopping feet. We floundered together. I grunted when a flailing foot slammed my hip. I couldn’t see the stick stuck in her backside now. Had it fallen out? Or maybe it had broken off and the broken end was still embedded, like a big sliver? She was howling as if I’d stuck a champagne saber in her backside. I scrabbled with fingernails and toes at the rocky ground, doing some shrieking myself. And then my toes were kicking in empty space—
She stomped me on the hand. Accidental, I think, but effective. Kneed me in the back when she fell.
And over she went. I scrambled back to safety. Her shriek didn’t fade away. The fall wasn’t that far. But then the shriek abruptly ended an
d, except for the roar of surf in the distance, there was only silence from below. Profound silence.
I just lay there for a moment, disbelieving. Then, flat on my stomach, I squirmed around and leaned my head over the edge. Moonlight hadn’t yet reached this side of the hill. Only a pit of darkness lay below me.
“Sheila?” I called tentatively.
Silence.
I raised the tentative call to a yell. “Sheila?”
Silence.
Was she unconscious down there? Injured? Dead?
I stumbled to my feet. I’d only wanted to incapacitate her and make my escape, not kill her!
I took one more look into the dark pit. Still silence. Still blackness. No way could I get to her, much less rescue her by myself.
There was no trail, and I fought my way through brush and blackberry vines and trees. I ran into a downed tree. I stumbled over a broken stump. A branch whapped me in the face. I passed Sammy the Saber-Toothed Tiger. He didn’t scare me now, but that hole Duke had dug was around here somewhere—
Lord, keep me from falling into it!
My own noisy descent obscured any other sounds, but just past the toothy tiger something moved—something live!
Cougar?
No, goats! A whole herd of them. Well, maybe not a herd, but at least three or four. They split to go around me, separating as if I were a rock in a stream. Not ghost goats. Live goats, noisy, smelly goats. A big, cranky billy goat swung his horns in my direction.
I was no goat-fighting toreador, and I just dodged him and kept going, lurching and floundering and stumbling.
Finally I slammed right into the picket fence. I took a breath to gather strength and then backed up a few steps and made a run at the fence. I didn’t think I had it in me, but this time I did it. I vaulted right over the pickets. Ivy, the late-blooming Superwoman?
On down the trail. Somewhere along in there I started yelling for help.
And when I reached the parking lot, a small crowd came running to meet me. Mac. Duke. Brian. Kathy. BoBandy danced around my feet.
Mac wrapped his arms around me. “Ivy, what’s wrong?”
“Sheila . . . she was trying to throw me over the cliff . . . but she fell over herself!”
“Why—” Mac broke off as if deciding an explanation wasn’t the most important need at the moment.
“I’m already calling nine-one-one,” Duke said. “I’ve got this new cell phone, if I can make it work—”
“Tell them we need search and rescue. An ambulance. And the police.”
Even in my breathless state, I sensed a certain irony in that. Sheila provides Duke with a new cell phone. He uses it to call the police on her.
“What do you mean, Sheila tried to throw you over the cliff? Why?” Brian demanded.
“Because she killed Renée! Because she planted the gun in your laundry room! And she realized that I’d figured it out!”
“Stop asking questions,” Mac commanded roughly. He picked me up in his arms. It felt a lot different than being hauled around by Sheila. Safe. Sheltered. Secure. I closed my eyes and let everything go limp.
Home is where the heart is, and I was home.
“Bring her over to the trailer,” Duke said.
“No, our place,” Kathy said. “Oh, poor Ivy. Her face is all scratched and her clothes torn. All because of that awful woman.”
She kept a hand on my arm as Mac carried me across the parking lot. My new BFF. Someone opened the door. I smelled cinnamon and vanilla. Kathy had been baking cookies again. I wasn’t exactly hungry, but the homey scent was reassuring. Mac set me on the sofa. Kathy draped a blanket over me.
“Ivy, honey, are you okay?” Mac ran his hands over everything from my arms and legs to my feet and head. “The ambulance is coming. Duke called for one.”
“I don’t need an ambulance. But Sheila does. If she isn’t already dead.”
“I’ll go try to find her—”
“She’s on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. I didn’t mean to kill her when I jabbed her with a stick. I didn’t think about her going over.” I tried to struggle to my feet. “I’ll have to show you—”
Mac pushed me back on the sofa. “You stay here. I’ll grab a flashlight out of the pickup.” He gave me a quick kiss on the forehead. “I’ll leave BoBandy with you. Brian, you got a rope we can take along?”
“There’s one hanging out in the carport.”
Then they were both gone. I gave Kathy a quick look. I’d just escaped one killer and now here I was, trapped with another. Except she didn’t know that I knew she was a killer too. She was, in fact, gushing thanks even as Duke grumbled about his bad knees that kept him from rushing up the hill with Mac and Brian. He dropped into a chair nearby.
“Ivy, you’re so brave. And I’m so grateful to you!” Kathy kept patting me appreciatively. “Now you can tell those deputies what really happened. That they were all wrong and Brian didn’t do anything to that woman. That it was Sheila who did everything. You’ve saved him, Ivy! You’ve saved us.”
Lying there flat on my back, BoBandy’s nose pressed into my hand, I wasn’t about to point out that she and Brian weren’t exactly saved, because some unpleasant facts about the past were very soon going to emerge.
Kathy gave my shoulder another pat. “I’ll go make some tea.”
I started to protest. I wasn’t inclined to eat cookies or drink tea or consume anything Kathy’s killer hands had touched. Then I reminded myself she didn’t know that I knew about a dead husband who wasn’t really a husband, so I surely hadn’t anything to worry about from her. Yet. “That would be nice. Thank you.”
Kathy bustled off to the kitchen, and Duke gave me a morose look. “You sure about Sheila?”
“I’m sure.”
“I knew Sheila had her . . . flaws. I didn’t want to marry her. But I never would have guessed she was a killer.” He didn’t sound doubtful, just a little forlorn.
“I’m sorry. She told me all about how she’d tricked Renée into coming out to the burned cabins and why she did it. She used your keys to get in here to plant the gun she killed Renée with.”
“But why did she do it?”
“It had to do with some pills she was secretly selling to a few people. A very serious crime, and Renée found out about it.”
I thought he might connect that with the pain pills she was giving him, but at the moment he didn’t seem to. “Did she blow up Brian’s Porsche too?”
“No, someone else did that.”
“Crooks everywhere,” Duke muttered gloomily. “The whole world’s full of crooks and outlaws.”
It was beginning to seem that way, and Duke didn’t know the full extent of the crook population. There was Killer Sheila, also illegally selling opioids. Somebody blowing up an expensive car. Killers Kathy and Brian, getting rid of an old man back in Missouri so they could collect on Brian’s life insurance. More crimes in the offing. Brian and Renée planning some scheme with the Kate’s Kabins and the dinosaur park properties, maybe eventually getting rid of Duke if he stood in the way.
Crooks and outlaws everywhere.
But I was, as always, comforted by the knowledge that, no matter what the situation or how many crooks gathered, God is in final control.
Kathy returned with a cup of fragrant tea and a cookie. At the same time, the first screaming siren arrived. I struggled to my feet and trooped outside with Kathy and Duke to direct the first responders up the hill to the cliff. A deputy leaped out of the driver’s side of the sheriff’s department vehicle and Deputy Hardishan jumped out the other side. He confronted me at the door.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
Kathy answered before I could. “Sheila Weekson! She killed Renée Echol and planted the gun here. She was trying to kill Ivy, but she fell over the cliff herself. Mac and Brian are up there looking for her!” She lifted her hand toward the hill in a dramatic, they-went-thataway
gesture.
I was impressed. Kathy had managed to capture the essence of this evening’s activities in a minimum of sentences.
More vehicles roared up, sirens screaming. An ambulance. Another police car. Another vehicle with Search and Rescue emblazoned on the side. Deputy Hardishan did not immediately head for the hill, however. He gave me a hard look, maybe even a suspicious look. He wasn’t necessarily accepting that Sheila had just fallen over the cliff, not with me here.
“I can give you all the details later.” I glanced at Kathy. Lots of details. “But it’s true. Sheila killed Renée and tried to kill me. But Mac and Brian are up there now, trying to rescue her.”
He hesitated momentarily, but apparently he decided they could sort all this out later. He and the other deputy headed for the gate, several guys from the search and rescue vehicle following. The men from the ambulance also followed with a folding stretcher.
Kathy, Duke, and I went back inside to wait. Nothing else we could do. I drank my tea and ate the cookie. Duke just sat there, still not disbelieving, just sad.
After an hour or so, maybe longer—time had gotten a bit muddled—we heard noise out in the parking lot. We all went outside and watched the EMTs load a stretcher into the ambulance. Two deputies and the search and rescue guys grouped together around their cars for some kind of discussion. I didn’t see Deputy Hardishan or the deputy who’d been with him. Mac and Brian crossed the parking lot.
“Is she—” I didn’t know how to end the question, so I put a positive spin on it. “Okay?”
“She has broken bones and a bad head injury,” Mac said. “But she’s alive. She was unconscious when they got her up to the top of the cliff, but she was mumbling something on the way down here on the stretcher.”
Yeah, Sheila might have a lot to mumble about. If she was up to thinking, she might even be concocting a story of how she was trying to rescue me in my disoriented mental state and I pushed her over.
Detour Page 26
