Thicker Than Blood

by Penny Rudolph

  “Not to mention the dozens of fault lines—one little well-placed earthquake and the ground would liquefy. Imagine thousands of miles of levees tumbling down like a house of cards. Sea water would rush all the way to Sacramento. The state would bankrupt itself trying to repair things.”

  Alexandra’s eyes made it clear she would enjoy that scenario. “The public will see that it’s better to concede to Mother Nature what is hers before she takes it by force.”

  Rachel was shaking her head. The longer the woman talked, the more time the other part of her brain had to think. “It won’t work.”

  “When people see what the farmers have done to baby ducks, in living color.…” Alexandra’s face was sublimely enigmatic.

  “At the ponds,” Rachel said, her voice husky.

  “Yes. The ponds. You have to understand: nothing, and I mean nothing whips up fervor for the cause like failure.”

  “Failure of what?”

  Alexandra frowned as if Rachel was dim-witted. “Failure of the environmentalists to protect, of course. Donations have poured in since the news hit the press. Charlotte was one of the few who understood that.”

  “Was Charlotte in on all this?”

  Alexandra frowned again. This time there was impatience in it. “Of course not. Charlotte did try to stop Jason, so I delayed, just in case she succeeded. You see, Charlotte was afraid if water flowed too freely around the delta and south, developers would destroy her beloved Southern California, would turn it into one gigantic bumper-to-bumper city.”

  “But Charlotte lost.”

  “The rest of the board was backing Jason.” Alexandra gave an annoyed tap of her foot. “Charlotte didn’t give up easily. She mapped out a whole new approach. She called it the Delta Plan. She made sure the general manager who followed Jason was so weak he would do anything she wanted. Andrew Greer was a stroke of genius!” Alexandra fairly beamed.

  To Rachel, it looked like the grin of a hyena after a kill.

  “Did you kill her? That was no suicide.”

  Alexandra’s smile faded. “She knew I had driven back with Harry and if that was the car that had hit Jason, I had seen it. She never dreamed that Harry wasn’t driving. She called, wanted to know why I hadn’t said anything.”

  “And you said?”

  “I went out there. Told her we needed to sit down over a cup of tea and discuss it face to face.”

  “And then you murdered her.”

  “I should have known it would come to that. Like with you. I didn’t want to. I am not quite the monster you think me.” Alexandra’s voice was soft as feathers on a pit viper. “Charlotte was clever to the end. She told me how much you knew, but not that you would be joining our little chat.”

  “You were still there when I arrived.”

  “You gave me quite a fright.” Alexandra was leaning forward, eyes like black marbles that seemed to read Rachel’s expression with a special kind of Braille that could feel her thoughts.

  “So, that is the story.” Alexandra’s voice took on a faintly apologetic tone. “Now, I’m afraid we have to finish it.”

  The sky was showing the first pinkish hints of dusk. Eyes vying with Alexandra’s like arm wrestlers, Rachel willed the muscles in her face to blankness, not at all sure she could do what she must do.

  Slowly she shifted her right foot. Inside her boot, a long, thin shape against her ankle.

  She was not without a weapon. There was the dog Max, and there was Lonnie. Sodium selenate was obviously quite lethal.

  Before leaving the condo, she had unwrapped the syringe, dissolved some of the powder in a small amount of water, drawn the solution into the hypodermic, removed the eraser from a pencil, and stabbed the needle into the soft rubber. Then it was simply a matter of wrapping it in tissue paper, slipping it inside her sock and easing it into her hiking boot.

  The balloon was drifting very close to the ponds, which now looked like mirrors that had melted into one another.

  Alexandra was watching her. A strand of hair like a streak of coal dust fell across Alexandra’s face—a beautiful face, not marred, as it should have been, by the twisted mind, more like the face of a messiah.

  Half mesmerized by the sun bouncing off the ponds, Rachel tensed her right arm.

  “I hope,” Alexandra was saying, “that you won’t make this any more difficult for either of us than it has to be.” The gun in her hand was at full attention, a well-trained animal waiting to be unleashed. She stroked the side of it with her thumb. “Come over here. Trust me. It will be less painful if the placement is right.”

  “Even if you manage to hide my…my body, eventually, someone will put the pieces—and all the bodies—together.”

  Alexandra shook her head slowly. “Next spring, some farmer plowing his field will be somewhat astonished. But by then the forensics will be limited to guesswork.”

  Rachel tried to take a step forward, then crumpled to the floor with an anguished cry.

  She waited for the bullet. If it didn’t come now, there would be one very small chance.

  It didn’t come.

  “Ankle…I think it’s sprained.…” Slipping her fingers into her boot, Rachel grasped the syringe and flicked the eraser from the end of the needle.

  “Get up!” Alexandra blazed, eyes like chips of black diamond.

  Slowly, as if under water, Rachel staggered to her feet.

  “That’s better.” Alexandra’s voice was cajoling again. “Move over here. Now.”

  Rachel took a step, folded her ankle inward, lurched against Alexandra, and jabbed the needle through Alexandra’s sleeve into the upper arm. Breath coming in rasping gasps, Rachel pushed the plunger, praying the poison would be quick enough.

  The woman clutched her arm where the needle had entered. “What did you do?!”

  Rachel grabbed at the pistol. It went off, the bullet driving harmlessly through the side of the basket. She seized the derringer.

  As if with some blind, animal desire to maim with claws and teeth, Alexandra lunged, pinning Rachel against the basket railing. She wrested the gun from Rachel’s fingers.

  Inches away, the black eyes glittered as Alexandra jammed the muzzle of the little gun beneath Rachel’s chin.

  “Shoot,” Rachel said. “For God’s sake, get it over. Kill me.” The balloon wheezed.

  “In my own good time,” Alexandra spat. “Not yours.” Her head began to sway. Slowly, the glittering eyes faded to dull coal and she seemed to wilt, her elbow touching the floor, then her arm, finally the cloud of black hair.

  Rachel looked up at the huge yellow mouth that gaped above her. She had not the faintest idea how to land a balloon.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  The dials on the console told her little. What had Alexandra said?

  The air heats, the balloon rises. What else? Pull a rope—yes, there it was—a hole opens and the balloon descends.

  Over the suede rim of the basket, Rachel examined the landscape. The ponds were close. Very close. Did a balloon go straight down? How fast? How deep were the ponds? What about the poison-laced water?

  On the ground to the left, a light flashed. A road snaked toward the ponds. A black pickup truck sat beside it like a forgotten toy, sun glinting from its windshield. The ground crew. Alexandra had said the ground crew would follow in a truck.

  Rachel knew she must do it now: pull the rope before she drifted closer to the ponds and the truck.

  The cord was quite long. She looked up at the balloon’s circus-tent-like interior and, forbidding herself to think further, pulled the cord hard. High in the fabric, a hole opened and the balloon began to sink. Fast. Then faster. She eased the tension on the rope and the descent slowed. If she let go, the air would be trapped and the balloon would rise again.

  Still gripping the cord, Rachel dropped to a crouch, head to knees, arms protecting her head, trying to remember the in-case-of-crash diagrams in the seat pockets of commercial airplanes.

  An
air pocket bounced her against the side of the basket, wrapping the cord around her wrist and opening the hole wider. The balloon began to plummet like an out-of-control elevator. Rachel’s insides screamed, sending her stomach into her throat.

  The impact was hard and fast. The basket tipped, throwing her to the floor. For a horrifying moment, Alexandra’s body bounced toward her, then danced away.

  Pain pounded through Rachel’s shoulder, then her entire body blazed with it. Slowly she moved one arm, agonizing with the effort, then the other, then her legs.

  She had lost the cord. The hole in the fabric had closed.

  The envelope, brilliant yellow against the sky, began to rise.

  Struggling to unsteady feet, Rachel pitched herself over the basket wall. Her throbbing shoulder struck the ground.

  In the distance, a vehicle motor thrummed toward her. The ground crew? Did they know she was supposed to be dead?

  Staggering to her feet again, she demanded that her legs run.

  Every breath seared her lungs. A red-hot blade stabbed at her shoulder.

  Tall plants on the left. A sorghum field. If she could get to that.… Rachel lost her footing again. She crawled the last few feet and pitched herself among the stalks.

  Grayish-green leathery leaves rasped against her flesh, rustling like a Victorian skirt. She flattened herself and lay still. An acrid smell tilted her already queasy stomach toward severe nausea.

  A vehicle braked to a standstill close by, much too close by. A lizard ran over the fingers of her right hand. She jerked away, then lay still again.

  Footsteps scratched along the pavement, eight steps, then nineteen more, then a brushing sound. Then, for a long time, nothing. Finally, the unseen feet took eleven more steps and a door closed.

  A tiny albino worm inched its way up her arm, but Rachel lay utterly still. The sound of the motor dimmed to nothing. She compelled herself to remain motionless, for what seemed hours. When she began to crawl toward the road, it was almost full dark.

  In the dim light, the highway, when she found it, sliced the world into two farm fields.

  Headlights approached but the driver didn’t slow. It was many minutes before two more headlights appeared. Rachel stepped out onto the road. When the pickup stopped, she began to sway, unable to keep her feet.

  A door opened. Hands grabbed her shoulders. She cried out at the pain, tried to wrench away, flailing with her fists.

  “Stop. Stop dammit.” The voice was gruff, the face in the headlights obscured by an unruly bush of a beard.

  Her arms went weak. She could feel the sobs coming.

  Hands picked her up, thrust her through the open door of the truck, past the steering wheel to the passenger seat. He climbed in beside her and started the truck. In cowboy boots and faded, baggy jeans, he looked like a barrel with a beard.

  “Who are you?” she asked, voice quavering.

  “Lady, it don’t matter a red hot damn who I am, you are goin’ to the hospital.”

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Rachel, Hank, and Goldie sat strewn about the furniture in the condo’s living room like the dregs of an audience at an over-long play.

  Aside from a sprained shoulder and too many bruises and lacerations to count, the hospital staff had pronounced Rachel without serious injury.

  Now, huddled on the sofa, wrapped in bandages both elastic and tape, shoulder trussed in a sling, legs wrapped in a blanket, she was reciting everything she could remember.

  Hank swore softly when she stopped. “Jesus. You thought it was me?” He fed another log to the fire.

  Rachel pulled an apologetic face. “What can I say? It seemed to make sense. Who would think an environmentalist would kill? People, maybe, but wildlife?”

  Goldie had used her entire stock of expletives three times over, but for the moment she was speechless.

  “Will that balloon just float into outer space?” Rachel asked, her voice hoarse. Her head was beginning to throb as weariness flowed into the places vacated by fear.

  “I don’t think so. It probably didn’t go far,” Hank said. “But there’s a lot of farmland out there and not many roads. It may be a while before it’s found.”

  Rachel pulled her knees up to her chin. “With Alexandra’s body and a gun and my fingerprints.” On the street, a car sped by.

  Hank got to his feet and began to pace. “Self-defense is so obvious. I can’t imagine a DA would even charge you.” They all considered that.

  “You’re right,” Goldie agreed, then turned to Rachel. “You’ll never guess what Peter found under the Oriental rug in Charlotte’s office.”

  “Something called the Delta Plan.”

  The black woman stared at her. “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Amazing what you can learn when you’re trapped with a murderer.”

  “Why was that worth all this killing stuff?” Goldie wanted to know.

  “Three-quarters of the state’s population,” said Hank, “is dependent on water from the delta. More than twenty million Californians would have been at Alexandra’s mercy.…”

  Goldie shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it, but before all this froo-fra, I’d hardly heard of the delta.” The fire spat and flared. “Anyway,” she went on, “I’ve got everything together to give to the cops. We need to get hold of the border patrol, drug enforcement, LAPD, the San Bernardino Sheriff—”

  “I don’t see why we have to call any of them,” Rachel cut in. “Alexandra’s dead, Harry’s dead. We’d just be tying ourselves up in an investigation that probably wouldn’t prove much, especially about the poisoning of those ponds.”

  “You may be wrong,” Goldie said. “That Andrew Greer looked down the back of his shirt and seems like he found a spine.”

  Hank nodded. “Andrew can check the records on how much selenium the lab bought. I’ll bet they were buying as much as they figured they could without attracting attention. Smuggling alone is not exactly a reliable way to go. And there’s Charlotte’s Delta Plan.” He lowered his chin. “This time, Rachel, we have to.”

  Rachel squeezed her eyes tight, then nodded, as if giving something up after a long fight. “I guess so,” she said slowly. “But I’m almost as afraid of the cops as I was of Alexandra.”

  “I never understood why,” Hank said.

  She turned to face him. “Because for a very short, unpleasant time I was in jail. For drugs. I would have been there a lot longer if Bruno hadn’t got me a good attorney. I wasn’t a dealer, in case you’re wondering.” She paused and took a deep breath. “But I am an alcoholic. And I came so close to falling off the wagon this morning that I actually bought a bottle of wine.”

  Hank had not moved.

  Rachel stared at an empty chair across the room. Somewhere in the back of the house a timber creaked. The silence became heavy with its own weight.

  Goldie broke it. “Well. Think I’ll turn in. I’m beat. Seems like you could have hidden out closer to home. Took forever to get here.”

  The black woman started down the corridor to the spare room, then turned back. “Almost forgot. Irene said to tell you she owes you a fortune. That old gal is pretty sharp. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had one.”

  Rachel gave a half smile. “She doesn’t mean money, she means palm-reading, tarot, even a crystal ball for all I know. Maybe I’m ready to take her up on that offer.”

  Goldie shrugged and ambled back down the hall.

  Hank turned to Rachel. A slow, lopsided grin crept over his face. “Be right back. I left something in the car. Actually two things.” And he was out the door.

  When he returned, she could hear him wiping his feet much longer than necessary on the welcome mat.

  “I don’t know if this is the right time,” he muttered awkwardly, closing the door behind him.

  Avoiding her eyes, he sat down on the sofa next to her and held out a small, square jeweler’s box.

  Rachel stared at it, not knowing what to think. />
  “It’s not real,” he said. “I mean not an engagement thing or anything.”

  “Well, that’s good. I never believed in engagement things.”

  “When I got married last time,” Hank said, “I hardly thought about it. It was like we happened to be at the right place at the right time and marriage, well, that was just what one did.”

  “I guess it happens to a lot of people that way.”

  “I don’t think like that anymore. I think it has to be thought about. A lot.”

  She took the box and opened it. The ring was silver, an Indian design. It reminded her of Jason’s cuff link, except there was no tortoise. Blinking, she looked up at him.

  “It will be a while before it’s legal, but I sent the papers to a lawyer in Brazil a week ago. When it’s over, I’d like to think about…well, whatever….”

  With her good arm, Rachel drew him to her, pressing her cheek to his chest.

  “Careful,” he said as his mouth sought hers.

  Something squirmed inside his jacket. Rachel drew back, bewildered.

  Hank’s face split in a broad smile. “He turned up at the garage. Irene found him.” Clancy’s orange tiger-striped head emerged over his jacket zipper, licked Rachel’s chin, and began to purr.

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  Table of Contents

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