Paige, dig!
She dropped the trowel to the ground. Wrapping both hands around the sides of the anchor, she breathed a prayer to the fates of the universe and pulled. The surrounding ground shifted, then split as if assaulted by an earthquake. Paige rocked again, harder — and the anchor gave way.
The force sent her tumbling onto her side.
No time to celebrate. She scrambled back to her knees, grabbed the flashlight. What to do with the trowel? She only had two hands. She awkwardly threw the trowel near the opening. It thumped somewhere in the darkness. She would find it on her way out.
She clutched the flashlight in one fist and dragged the anchor with the other, grunting at the heavy burden. Paige scuffled toward the garage and Edna San, seconds clickety-clacking in her head. As she neared the door, the flashlight beam hit the trowel. She grabbed it and threw it out of the crawl space. It landed on the garage floor with a loud clatter. Head down, Paige birthed like a frenzied woman-baby from the black chamber into the dim garage. She sprang to her feet and dragged the anchor and chain across the cement, wincing at the clanging it made.
At the gaping hatchback she set the flashlight on the garage floor, picked up the anchor and thunked it inside the car beside Edna’s body. Gathered up the snaking chain and rattled it inside as well.
Paige glanced at her watch: 3:45.
She banged the hatchback door closed. Snatched up her flashlight with gloved hands. Ran to the driver’s seat, slid inside, and hit the garage door button. No time for anything now. No time for second thoughts or fears or meticulous planning. The waning minutes of night mocked her, dared her to falter. She would not.
Paige started the car, memories of The Promise jumping into her mind. Was it less than two hours ago she’d believed some sugar-sweet premonition that she would soon find a sister? What a laugh. She’d found something all right — a dead woman in her hot tub.
The garage door stopped rolling. Paige set her jaw and drove into the diminishing darkness.
NINE
She has spilled sugar on the floor.
Seven-year-old Rachel Brandt stares at the white mess. What’s she going to do? Her mommy’s down the hall asleep on her bed. It’s the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday. She stayed up with those people all Friday night, laughing and drinking and sniffing white powder stuff up her nose. The noise kept Rachel awake. She cleaned up the messes from the party this morning, but she’s just hit the bag of sugar when she went to put away a plate and now the bag is on the floor, and sugar’s everywhere, and her mommy will be mad. Mommy will hit her for sure. And in three days, on February 24, it’s Rachel’s birthday. What if Mommy won’t buy her a present like she promised?
Well. So what?
Rachel shakes her head, making her long bangs bounce against her eyes. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. So what if Mommy hits her? It’s nothing new.
Rachel puts a hand on her hip, fingers sticking into her flesh.
Maybe if she pushes them deep enough, she’ll make a little hole through her skin, right to her bones. And maybe that will hurt enough so if Mommy beats her, she can think about her hip and won’t feel the slaps as much.
She pushes her fingers in harder. Her hip begins to hurt. Too much. Rachel pulls her fingers away.
She stares at the spilled sugar. After a minute she puts the look on her face that her mommy calls “defiant.” She’s not sure what defiant means, but it must have something to do with her mouth feeling tight and her eyes getting slitty. Her muscles go hard, like to protect her body and her heart. Then suddenly all the hardness goes away, and she feels empty and cold and caring again. Caring that Mommy’s blue eyes will look at Rachel with hate, and her cheekbones will stick out even more, and she’ll hiss like a cat. Then she’ll raise her arm and start slapping . . .
Rachel bites her lip and looks at the sugar mess. She needs to fix this — quick.
Bending over, she yanks up the pink sugar bag. Plops it on the counter, far back from the edge. Then turns toward the sink and grabs the sponge. She wets it and gets down on her hands and knees, picking up sugar. When the sponge is full, she rinses it and pulls it across the floor again. She does this two more times.
She hears a sound from down the hall. A squeak from Mommy’s bed.
Rachel’s heart beats harder. There’s a lot of sugar to clean, and she better get it all. Stay asleep, Mommy, stay asleep. She works faster, her mouth open so she can breathe all the air she needs, because suddenly she’s feeling like she needs a lot.
More squeaks.
Rachel hears a bad word. Feet hitting bare floor.
Please.
Maybe her mommy will lie down again. Fall over on the bed like she does after she takes the drugs. Then Rachel will have time to clean up the mess, and Mommy will never know. Maybe she’ll even have time to do something else for Mommy, like throw away old food in the refrigerator and clean the stove . . .
A moan.
Uh-oh. Mommy has one of her “after party” headaches.
And the headaches make her mean.
Go, Rachel, go! She tries to work faster. But her eyes burn and the world goes blurry and she can’t see. The floor feels hard on her knees, and the smell of dirty sponge makes her feel kind of sick. Her breath comes in little puffs as she wipes the floor, shoves to her feet and rinses the sponge. Back down again. Clean more sugar . . . back on her feet to rinse . . . down again.
The feet are walking. Down the hall, toward the kitchen.
No, no, no.
Rachel starts to make noises in her throat — noises she doesn’t want to make but can’t help. Hearing them only makes her more scared. Because now she knows what’s going to happen, and she’s caring so very much that she can’t even find her defiant face. Her hand shakes, and she shoves the sponge back and forth, trying to find every little piece of sugar, knowing she’ll never get it all.
“What are you doing?” Mommy spits the words.
Rachel’s skin goes burning cold, like when you put a wet finger on ice and can’t let go. She opens her mouth but can’t make a sound.
“Rachel! I’m talking to you!”
Rachel’s chest gets tight. She wants to keep her back toward Mommy to hide what she’s doing, but then she won’t know if a hand’s coming down . . .
She moves around on her knees, her fingers tight on the icky, smelly sponge. Mommy’s hands are at the sides of her head. Her T-shirt has a purple stain on it. Her white-blonde hair sticks out like straw, and her cheeks look gray. She makes a bad face at Rachel.
Rachel wishes she were small like an ant so she could run away. “I’m just cleaning the floor.”
Her mommy makes a noise like that dog did last year when it bit Rachel, and Mommy’s boyfriend with the ponytail laughed because Rachel cried so hard, and she vowed she’d never cry again. “Why’d you pour sugar on it?”
Rachel pulls back, her heart going real hard. “I – I didn’t pour it. It just spilled.”
“All by itself?”
“No, it — ”
“Don’t lie to me, girl. Ever. You know what I have to do when you lie to me.”
“But — ”
“Nobody in this world loves you but your mommy.” She points a finger at Rachel, the red nail polish chipped mostly off. Her voice gets louder. “I won’t let you be a bad kid. I have to teach you right in this world.”
“I already — ”
Mommy moves so fast, Rachel doesn’t have time to run. Her arm is yanked up — hard. Her head jerks back and her teeth hit together. Mommy pulls Rachel to her feet, the nails biting into her skin. Mommy’s arm goes back, her fingers spread.
The slaps come. They hurt . Rachel wants to cry but she won’t. She looks down inside herself, real deep, and pulls up her defiant face. The hard mouth and the slitty eyes. She will not cry.
Mommy hits again. And again. Pain rips at Rachel. But she doesn’t care. She doesn’t.
Not caring takes the hurt away.
Just a little.
TEN
Gravel popped beneath the tires as the SUV surged down the driveway toward Lakeshore Road. Paige remembered she hadn’t closed the garage door, and had to stop abruptly and back up for the remote to work.
A precious minute lost.
Having explored the whole of Lakeshore Road, she knew where she was headed. Four miles winding south, then a left turn onto an old and rutted logging road — a curved, descending path through forest down close to the water’s edge. There the lake was shallow for the first ten feet from shore, and then the bottom dropped away to a depth of about thirty feet. Locals had once used the area for a swimming hole, Paige had been told, but that was long ago, before a child stepped off that cliff and drowned.
On the road, the car’s headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating flexuous asphalt with woods on either side. She bent over the wheel, shoulders taut, riding the accelerator and hard-braking for curves. Her wheels could not eat the pavement fast enough.
Questions and fears swirled through her brain. What if someone passed her, recognized the car? If pressed in the days to come, what reason could she possibly give for being out at this hour — on the night Edna San disappeared? Or what if she had an accident — rolled the car or couldn’t restart the engine?
Paige slowed down.
Her eyes cut to the odometer. She’d gone one mile.
She pictured herself behind the counter of Simple Pleasures in just a few hours. Dead on her feet, scanning faces with paranoia. Trying to appear normal. Who out there would be watching her . . . waiting . . . wondering when Edna’s body would be found? He — or maybe even she — wouldn’t know Paige had been to the hot tub in the middle of the night. How many days before he began to suspect the truth?
Maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe the mysterious disappearance of Edna’s body would serve him just as well.
But he would know what Paige had done. Surely he’d be amazed, shocked. And he’d wonder why. What would he do?
What could he do? He’d trapped himself in his own fatal game.
A second mile gone.
Paige tight-rounded a curve in her Explorer-turned-hearse. In the hatchback the anchor’s chain slinked and rattled. The sound sent shudders up her spine. She still had to drive another mile and a half. By the time she got down the logging road, did what she had to do, surely the sky would be lighting. She would have to make up some story in case someone saw her —
Headlights.
Paige braked, squinted through the trees to her left. Up ahead, where the road curved back on itself — hadn’t she seen a wash of illumination?
Her pulse skidded. Paige clutched the steering wheel, jaw clenched. There, again, through the trees.
A car was coming.
Paige had no time to think, nowhere to go. The car would be around the bend in thirty seconds. She could only drive on, heart pounding in her ears. If she did anything else, it would look suspicious. The Explorer hit the top of the hairpin curve and she rotated the wheel, wishing, wishing she could turn her head away. The car approached, for a split second its headlights angled through her window into her eyes. Instinctively she drew back, squinting. The second stretched out, Paige imagining the stare of the other driver — a stare filled with the subliminal sense that something wasn’t right.
The moment strained, then whipped by, Paige’s death vehicle hurtling on into night.
Her throat constricted. What was she doing? What had she been thinking? In a day or two, when the town talked of nothing but Edna San’s disappearance, when this night and this hour soared in significance, the driver she had just passed would not fail to remember this moment.
Still, Lakeshore Road wound around the entire lake, a twenty-six-mile route, with many homes set back from it on this side of the water. If the person hadn’t seen her face or noticed her make or color of car, police should find the lead of little worth.
The turnoff approached. Paige slowed, afraid to miss it. The logging road’s entrance was overgrown and easy to overlook, even in daylight. She spotted it almost too late, braked hard, and cranked the steering wheel to the left. The car bounced over rough terrain, the anchor chain rattling . . . and something thumping. Edna’s body, shifting? Paige’s nerves pricked with the bites of a thousand fire ants. A horror movie scene materialized in her mind: Edna’s limbs jerking alive, her eyeballs darting. Up, up she rises, sitting straight, turning about, seeking a target for vengeance. She drags her zombie limbs over the back of the rear seat, clawlike hands reaching for her captor . . .
Paige checked the rearview mirror, seeking movement —
The Explorer’s wheels hit a deep rut. Paige jounced, hit her left elbow on the door. She cursed at the pain through clenched teeth. Pushing the brake harder, she eased around a curve. One more bend and she would reach the lake. She had to stop now, unwilling to chance some early riser across the water noticing her headlights.
Paige halted the car. Cut the engine and the lights. The world fell into darkness.
She could hear her own heartbeat.
Paige felt for the flashlight on the passenger seat. Before exiting the car, she hit the switch to the dome light so it wouldn’t turn on. She slid out quickly and shut the door. Turning on the flashlight, she aimed it at the ground and picked her way to the rear of the car. Opened the hatchback.
Seconds ticked away. She could feel them slipping, slipping through her fingers. Get moving!
Still she hesitated. She would have to drag Edna around the bend and down to the water. Should she wrap the anchor up with the body, try to move it all at once? Or make two trips?
Paige bit her lip, forcing her frenetic mind to think clearly.
No time for two trips. She would have to take care of the chaining here.
And no time for any slipups. Or fear or disgust at what she must do.
Paige set the flashlight down on its side in the car, aimed at the body. First she hauled the anchor onto the packed and rocky dirt at her feet, followed by the length of its chain. She tried desperately to be quiet, but the anchor and chain clanked in the still night. She froze a moment, listening.
Nothing. No cicadas even. The noises had frightened them into anxious silence.
Gathering the end of the bedsheet in both hands, Paige set her jaw, dug her heels into the ground, and pulled backward. Edna’s body slid over the edge of the hatchback and thumped in a white mummified slash upon the grayed road. Paige snatched up the flashlight and set it on the ground. Its illumination caught a slivered opening in the sheet around Edna’s face. An accusing eye gleamed at her.
“Ah!” Paige jerked backed, every nerve tingling. Fighting the irrational terror that any moment Edna’s hands would reach for her throat.
She swallowed hard. Don’t think. Just do.
She reached up to shut the hatchback door.
Paige pulled the sheet folds away from the corpse. She rolled the body on its side, then pulled the anchor and chain up close.
Sweat slid into her eyes, and she wiped it away with the back of a gloved hand.
Only then did the difficulty of the task hit her. How to weight the body so it wouldn’t work loose from the chain underwater?
Fresh panic surged up her throat. She couldn’t do this. How many murder trials had been built upon the stubborn rising of a body from a watery grave? Edna San needed to stay at the bottom of the lake. If she was pulled up a day, a week, even months later, wouldn’t they find evidence? What if the police sent divers down and they discovered the anchor? Could they trace it to Paige’s rented home? Would Mr. Ryskie recognize it?
Paige let out a strangled cry. She hadn’t thought this through. Not at all. And now she was running out of time.
She glanced up at the sky — and saw the first blush of light.
ELEVEN
Draped upon his couch, Black Mamba’s hooded eyes gazed out the window at the first streak of light across dark water. He’d pulled a throw blanket
over himself for warmth. Even in summer weather he despised the predawn chill. True brother to his cold-blooded namesake, he preferred basking in the sun at noon.
But he’d been given the title for far different reasons.
Black mamba — one of the world’s deadliest snakes. Even its head is coffin-shaped. Its neurotoxic bite is one hundred percent fatal without antivenin. It’s also the world’s swiftest snake, reaching up to seven miles an hour in short bursts. Fast enough to catch a fleeing child.
The snake plays with its prey. It bites with the longest of fangs, then waits. Confident. Silent. Watching the slowly paralyzed squirrel or rat stagger away, hide in a burrow. Then, uncurling its sleek body — up to fourteen feet long — it smugly slides after the animal. Drags it out. And swallows it whole.
Mamba approved of this name.
He reveled in the deed finally done. His slim body felt almost fat and slothful with satiety, as would a snake engorged after its meal. For the next hour he wanted nothing but to coil up and watch the coming dawn.
A pretty town, Kanner Lake. An innocent place. Open and welcoming, unaware of his stealthy slither among its denizens. Idly he wondered what would become of Kanner Lake once the news hit. People were scurrilously fickle. One black mark against a delightful retreat, and visitors could melt away like snails in the sun.
Even cautious Edna San had fallen prey to the area’s laid-back ways. Her driveway was gated, but the surrounding forest was not. Her house was equipped with an alarm, yet it remained deactivated while she was home during the day. Mamba lifted his head, stretching his neck muscles from side to side. Actually, he shouldn’t be surprised at that. Even avid night users didn’t turn on a system during the day, when a warning chime would sound every time someone opened a door or window. This had worked in his favor on many an occasion. What good is an alarm if an intruder has already breached the house before it’s set?
Violet Dawn Page 4
