by Lynn Bulock
Given her supreme position as queen busybody, I should have known Lillian would keep tabs on virtually everybody here. “How about Nicole’s dad?” I asked her, fairly sure she’d have the answer this time.
“He had quite a little talk with his other daughter about fifteen minutes ago, she stormed out of here, and he went to the bar.” Lillian’s lip curled to tell me what she’d thought of all that. “I expect he’s still there.”
Since Paul Barnes was the only person I wanted to find who seemed to be available, I looked into the bar. He sat there staring into a highball glass as if it held the secrets of the universe. “I’m looking for Paige,” I told him, not feeling like making small talk.
“Good luck. She’s probably past Calabasas by now,” he said, referring to a town about eight miles away on the 101 freeway. “We had an argument and she stormed out. I didn’t think much of it until I went back to the table to get my suit jacket. My keys are gone. The little twit better not wrap that Mercedes around a tree. It’s not paid for yet.”
I stood there openmouthed, unable to say anything in response to his awful remarks. “Does this mean you haven’t told the police that she’s gone and took your car?”
“How could I? The only officer present left before Paige did. It’s true, that saying. There’s never a cop around when you need one.”
There was never one on the phone, either, as I discovered shortly. Ray’s number put me straight to voice mail, and I gave him a brief message about where I was going and why. Still not finding Hal, I told his mother I was leaving, and left before she could argue with me. Paige had triggered my “mom radar” in a big way, and I drove as fast as I could north on the freeway, away from Calabasas but toward Paige, I believed.
*
I kept a running prayer going most of the time I drove north to Ventura. I didn’t know whether to hope I was wrong about all my assumptions or that I was right but in time to catch Paige before anything happened.
The beach parking lot wasn’t very full on a Tuesday afternoon. Some schools were still in session, so there weren’t tons of moms and kids there yet. This wasn’t the most popular of the beaches anyway; most families chose a more parklike stretch closer to the pier where lifeguards and concession stands dotted the landscape with regularity.
Here most of the beachgoers were seagulls and ground rats. I hadn’t known about the rats the first couple times I roamed the beach. Lexy took great glee one day in pointing them out, watching me almost levitate at the thought of sharing the sand with them.
A black Mercedes with the driver’s side door open told me my hunch had been right. Before I could get the car parked and find Paige my phone rang. “Where are you? And tell me that wherever it is, you’re not there alone.” Ray wasn’t yelling, but he sounded plenty upset.
“I’m at the beach parking lot at the end of Oak Street and I didn’t think I had time to wait for anybody else. I was right, too, because Paige is here. She took her father’s car and drove here to the beach where she and Nicole were the night Nicole died.”
“I’m not even going to ask how you put all that twisted logic together. At least promise me you’ll stay in the car until we get somebody there.”
“No way. I’m not going to sit here and watch that girl hurt herself.” I could see Paige now, huddled on a rock outcrop a little way down the beach. While I watched, there was a flash of metal. “Oh, no.”
“What? What’s happening? Gracie Lee “
“I’m going to hang up and go over there. Tell dispatch to send the closest officers you can. And paramedics, too.” Ignoring Ray’s protests I pushed the red button that ended the call, and then turned off my phone so Paige wouldn’t hear it ringing. The realization that Linnette’s dress didn’t have any pockets made me want to swear. I grabbed the car keys and my phone, launched myself out of the car and kicked off my sandals when I got to the place where the gravel parking lot met the sand sloping downward to the beach. Even barefoot I couldn’t run well in the sand, but at least this way I’d make a little more speed. And right now a few seconds might make a difference.
I slid a little on the incline, glad that it wasn’t any steeper. “Paige?” I called her name softly as I got closer to her, not wanting to startle her. “Paige, are you okay?” Of course she wasn’t okay, I chastised myself. A black leather messenger bag laid sprawled open next to her, various contents strewed on the sand. Looking at all of it I realized the gravity of Paige taking her father’s car. Even a plastic surgeon would carry a medical bag with him, and Paul Barnes might have been a lousy father but he seemed to be a well-prepared doctor. Several open pill bottles lay on their sides, and implements of various kinds were scattered with them.
Paige sobbed, not looking up even when I called her name. The flash of metal I’d seen was from a scalpel and a thin line of blood trailed down her left hand from a cut on the inside of her wrist. “I am such a pathetic loser,” she wailed, waving the blade for emphasis. “I can’t even kill myself. The pills made me barf and I can’t cut deep enough to bleed to death. I can kill my sister, but I can’t kill myself.”
Her right hand relaxed in her lap and she stopped jabbing at her wrist, but didn’t let go of the scalpel. I breathed a silent prayer and sat down about four feet from her rock perch, settling into the gritty sand as much as the slim skirt of the sheath would let me. Right now I was grateful for the back slit of the dress that I’d debated as being too daring earlier. “You didn’t kill your sister. At least you didn’t mean for her to die, did you?” Over the noise of the surf I could hear sirens and hoped that Paige wouldn’t panic even more because of them.
She finally looked up at me, eyes wild and makeup smeared in dark trails down her face. “What does that matter? She’s dead, and I did it. Just because I didn’t mean for her to die won’t bring her back.”
“No, I know it won’t. But why don’t you tell me about it? Maybe if you talk about what happened we can figure out a way to explain it to ” Only then did I see the corner I’d painted myself into.
“To who? The police who already nearly arrested her geeky fiancé for killing her? My mom, who is ready to kill somebody over all of this anyway? My dad, who looks at me and thinks the wrong kid died? Who would possibly listen if I tried to explain what happened?”
I took a deep breath, wanting to move closer but knowing it wasn’t right yet. “I’ll listen. And I’d go with you to any of those other people, because I think I know what must have happened already. You met Nicole here that night after her bachelorette party, didn’t you?”
She looked out onto the expanse of gray-green water in front of us. “Yeah, I did. Can you believe I didn’t go with them because I was out on a date? And the guy wasn’t worth it, either. I ditched him when Nic said she wanted to talk, and I met her here because she said she was too tired to drive any farther.”
“What happened when you got here?”
“She was a mess. She like, never drank, but she’d been drinking that night. And she was really upset. She was going on about how she hated her life and how she wanted to walk away from everything and just disappear or something. It made me so mad. I mean, Nic always got all the attention.” She wore a childish pout that made me wonder how long Paige had felt abandoned by her family.
“I heard your parents say she was valedictorian of her class in high school. That must have been hard to follow.”
“Everything Nic did was hard to follow.” Paige was jabbing the scalpel in the sand now as she talked. “Whether she was Miss ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ or ‘Most Likely to Die of Starvation’ I could have won an Academy award or got hit by a bus and nobody would notice.”
“Did she tell you she was being treated for her eating disorder?” The sirens were close now, and then stopped abruptly, making me will myself to keep my attention focused on Paige and not look toward the parking lot.
“No. Even I wouldn’t have given her some of my stuff to calm her down if I’d known. But she took
it! And washed it down with my Coke before I could tell her there was rum in it. I thought she was dead, honest!”
“Is that why you put her in the water?”
Paige nodded. “I really thought it would look better that way. If her car was found at home and her body in the ocean, somebody else would get blamed for her death.”
“Like Hal?”
“Maybe. He deserved it, the way he got her all upset. And she never moved again, even when I put her in the water,” she said, trying to convince me again that she was ‘only’ disposing of her sister’s body.
“I believe you,” I told her. Before I could say more a car door slammed and Paige looked up, startled. Eyes wide, I expected her to spring up and run, and got up on my knees to try to catch her. Instead she lunged for me and grabbed me in a surprisingly strong grip, pulling me even nearer.
“Don’t come any closer or I’ll kill her,” she screeched, making my ears ring. In this position on the sand I couldn’t pull away from her in time, and then her left arm slammed across my neck in a chokehold. The coppery smell of blood from her wrist almost made me gag. Two young uniformed officers stood ten feet from us, stilled by her threat.
The next few minutes stretched out to an incredible length. I could hear every noise, from Paige’s ragged breathing behind me to the gulls wheeling overhead. One of the officers spoke into a crackling radio, and then lowered his hand. “We won’t come closer. There’s an ambulance already on the way, but I’ll tell them to stay in the parking lot, okay?”
“Just keep them away. Keep them all away.” I could feel Paige’s body trembling, but her grip on my throat didn’t let up. I could breathe, just barely, but not talk without effort. On the right side of my neck I could feel that metal blade and I tried to stay as still as possible so that it didn’t slice into my skin.
On the parking lot the heavy crunch of gravel indicated the ambulance pulling up, and the pale young officer spoke into his handheld radio again, taking several steps back from Paige as he did so. His words were soft enough that I couldn’t hear what he said over the waves on the beach.
“A couple more officers are coming down. I can’t stop everybody,” the deputy warned as several car doors opened and closed just far enough away that we couldn’t see the vehicles. There was a flurry of activity down the slope to where he and his partner still stood and I could feel Paige’s grip tighten. Sweat was making my eyes sting by now and my leg muscles felt like they were on fire.
The sweat mixed with tears when I saw that Ray was one of the three people who’d come on the scene. I’d never seen him that pale beneath his olive complexion. I tried to communicate as much as I could to him without speaking, and it seemed as if he was doing the same thing.
Beside him was a woman I hadn’t ever seen before. I prayed she was a psychologist or a hostage negotiator, and I thanked God silently that Ray or someone had thought to bring a woman along. Paige wasn’t likely to respond well to a group made up only of men.
“Miss Barnes? Paige?” Ray’s voice was firm, but quiet. “I’m going to walk toward you, but only a couple more steps so that I’m sure you can hear me. And I’m bringing Jackie with me.” He motioned toward the woman on his right, who lowered her head slightly in greeting.
“Don’t come any closer!” Paige’s voice rose in fear and I could feel the scalpel press into the side of my throat with a sting.
Ray raised both of his hands, palms out toward her. The woman he’d introduced as Jackie stopped any forward motion, as well, and focused on Paige as though no one else was around. “You don’t want to hurt her, Paige. Right now we can straighten everything out, but not if you hurt anyone.”
“How about if I kill someone? Like her?” The pressure of her arm across my throat lifted me backward almost off my knees and I fought not to slide to my right where the blade would go deeper.
“Please, Paige, don’t do that.” Ray’s voice held a note I had never heard before and the look on Jackie’s face told me his outburst wasn’t in the script. “We don’t want anyone to end up dead today. If you hurt Gracie Lee, one of us will shoot you. And if that happens, your parents will lose their only daughter. And despite what you might think right now, that would destroy them.”
“They love you,” Jackie said, her eyes showing that she felt back on track again. “And they want to tell you that. Nobody wants any more pain or suffering for them, or for you, or for anybody today. We can help make everything all right if you’ll just let us a little closer.” Jackie’s words were almost pleading without sounding weak. She didn’t make any moves to come closer.
“I have another reason I don’t want you to hurt that woman you’ve taken hostage, Miss Barnes.” Ray’s voice drew my attention, and it seemed to draw Paige’s, as well, because her grip on me relaxed just a little bit and I was able to shift away from her right hand and the bite of the scalpel. “If you hurt her, I won’t get to tell her how much she means to me, just like your parents wouldn’t get a chance to tell you how much you mean to them. It would be so wrong if we’ve all waited too late to do something so important.”
He inched forward about a quarterstep. “Jackie is trained in negotiations. If you want her to, she could sit down with you and your parents and the sheriff’s department.”
Jackie nodded slightly, and I kept praying silently that Paige’s attention was drawn to her and not to Ray, moving ever so slightly closer while Jackie talked. “It’s my job. If you tell me what happened I can see that they understand that it was all a mistake. You really didn’t mean for any of it to happen, did you?”
“They’ll never believe that,” Paige said, voice flat and hollow. I felt her muscles tense and decided that my only chance to live was to do the unexpected. Trusting an instinct that had to be God-given, because it was against my better judgment, I went as limp as possible, dead weight against her body. My move unbalanced us both and Paige tumbled backward. The sand exploded with activity and in a flash someone dragged her away from me.
Noise erupted from officers, from radios and paramedics charging down the little hill from the parking lot. Ray knelt above me, his hand pressed on the side of my throat. After a moment I got my dry mouth to form words. “Did you mean what you said before, or was it just a distraction?”
“Every word. But don’t say any more and don’t move until we make sure that cut is taken care of.” It was only then that I felt the warmth of liquid under his fingers and the bright sky above me darkened. Whether I fainted or was just overwhelmed by the activity around me I’ll never know.
Some people say there are only two real prayers; “Please, please, please,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” As I slid into a fog, I felt the shift from the first to the second as the tide and my pulse roared in my ears.
SEVENTEEN
“Next time, somebody else is definitely going first,” I said, trying to make somebody smile Wednesday night. Our Christian Friends group had gotten much too serious as I told them everything about my encounter with Paige.
“I’ll second that motion,” Linnette said. “Can’t somebody else come up with a crisis so Gracie Lee doesn’t feel the need to have one every time?”
“Hey, I’m done with mine for the present, except that I owe you a new dress,” I told her. “Even the best cleaner in Rancho Conejo isn’t going to be able to get all the stains out of the one you lent me.” Not when the stains included blood, salty mud from the beach and other assorted stuff from the inside of an ambulance.
“Forget it. I’ll just borrow whatever you buy for the kids’ wedding,” Linnette told me, her smile looking a little forced.
“You’ll have to wait awhile, then. They decided to back off on the engagement for now.”
“Gee, I wonder why?” Lexy’s voice held a note of sarcasm. “You think it had anything to do with what they’ve seen in the last few weeks?”
She’d guessed it in one try. When I got home from the hospital, Ben and Cai Li had given me the ne
ws first thing. “Ben phrased it very bluntly. He said he had no desire to be planning a double wedding with his grandparents, and that focusing on school was looking better and better to both of them.”
“What’s going to happen to Paige?” Heather asked from the chair where she’d been grading papers and listening at the same time. Even with her toddler at home with Sandy, Heather felt the need to multitask.
“I’m not sure yet. I’m not about to ask Ray anything that he couldn’t tell the rest of the general public. Right now she’s being treated at Playa del Sol, along with Zoë.” The one thing I’d found out was that sheriff’s department prisoners who needed mental health care went to a locked part of the hospital there. “I imagine Paige’s father is trying to get her transferred to some private facility in Orange County.”
“Well, good luck to him on that one,” Lexy muttered. As a lawyer she’d have the most insight of any of us into that, even if she did specialize in entertainment. “So how long until you get those stitches out?”
My hand went to my neck self-consciously. “About a week. And there are only three of them.”
Linnette shuddered. “Only three. You do realize how lucky you are, don’t you?”
“Let’s call it blessed,” I told her. “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt God’s presence as strongly as I did on that beach.”
“Fine. Then maybe you can lead us in prayer tonight. It will give you practice for your trip to Las Vegas.”
I groaned, but nodded. I still couldn’t believe that Linnette had talked me into going through training to be a Christian Friends leader. Spending a week at a training session in Nevada’s “Sin City” wasn’t my idea of a great time, but I’d felt such an urging to agree to it that I couldn’t ignore the Call.
An hour later the cool night air felt welcome on my face. “Somebody ought to give you a ticket,” I told the driver of the silver sedan that met me at the red-painted curb in front of the church building.
“Yeah, I’ll issue myself one,” Ray said, rolling his eyes as I got into the front seat. “Right after I give you one for reckless endangerment.”
