The Last Word bbtbm-3

by Ellery Adams

  It was Cora Vickers.

  She had a revolver in her hand, and as Olivia watched, she straightened her gun arm and brought her free hand up to steady her grip. Her right thumb pulled the hammer back, and an icy resolve surfaced on her features. This was no idle threat. Cora was not getting the answers she wanted and was prepared to silence Harris for good.

  The swirling thoughts in Olivia’s mind stilled, converging into one. She had to act before Cora’s ire exploded, giving her the push she needed to pull the trigger.

  Rushing to the front door, Olivia banged on the wood with both fists. She could hear Haviland’s agitated barking inside the car but did not turn around. Her intention was to distract Cora, giving Rawlings a chance to gain entry and draw his own weapon. She had no idea where Boyd was and whether he was armed, but there was no time to come up with a more complex plan.

  “I should have brought my Browning,” she muttered and returned to her place at the window. Cora was no longer in sight, but Harris had turned his head to the side, his terrified eyes meeting hers. He shook his head in warning and then raised two fingers behind his back. Olivia didn’t know what he meant. Had Boyd and Cora separated or were they coming her way together?

  She quickly climbed over the porch rail and crouched down between the azalea bushes, listening hard. There were no more voices, just the creaks and moans of boards underfoot, barely perceptible beneath the drone of insects.

  “Where are you, Rawlings?” Olivia whispered. And then, before she knew what was happening, Millay was at her side.

  “Don’t bother telling me to get back in the car because I won’t,” she hissed fiercely. “What’s happening in there?”

  Olivia began to creep around the corner as Rawlings had done a few moments ago. “Boyd and Cora Vickers have Harris tied to a chair. They must believe his house contains more Heinrich Kamler paintings. And Cora has a gun.”

  Most women would have let out a whimper or gone wide-eyed in fear. Not Millay. She clenched her jaw and nodded. Olivia recognized that her friend would not cower before danger, nor would she back off, leaving Harris alone in a house with the couple that had likely murdered Nick Plumley.

  Suddenly, like a cannon boom, Chief Rawlings shouted at someone inside. “DROP YOUR WEAPON!” he commanded.

  Olivia and Millay ran to the kitchen door and eased it open. Millay reached into her boot and drew forth a switchblade. She crept into the living room and, without a trace of caution, rushed to Harris and began cutting through the duct tape and rope binding him to the chair.

  Harris tore the rope from his chest and swung around to say something to Millay, reaching out his hand to shove the chair between them aside, but he never got the chance. Cora burst into the room, her gun aimed straight at Millay’s heart.

  “Nick said that Evelyn’s two treasures were HERE!” She cried wildly, her eyes glittering. “In Oyster Bay! Tell me where the other painting is or she dies! NOW!”

  And then Rawlings was in the doorway, his gun trained on Cora. She ignored him. Her eyes held a cold, predatory glimmer. Nothing existed for her other than the painting she believed was hidden somewhere in that house.

  “Don’t do it, Cora!” Boyd shouted from upstairs. “Just pick one of them to take with us and let’s go! There’s nothing here!”

  Cora didn’t respond. Boyd continued to repeat himself from the stairway until his wife’s eyes lost a fraction of their mad light and she gestured at Millay with the revolver. “You’re coming with us.” Cora darted a sideways glance at Rawlings and spoke in chilly calm. “If you or your men follow us, I will shoot her. I’ve got nothing to lose now.”

  “Sure you do,” Rawlings answered conversationally as he lowered his gun. “You’ve got a Heinrich Kamler original. And maybe some cash and an unpublished manuscript from a bestselling author. That’s got to be worth something to someone, right?”

  “Shut up, cop.” Cora gesticulated at Millay again, but Harris stepped in front of her.

  “If you want a hostage, you’re going to have to take me.”

  “Look at the little hero,” Cora sneered. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Chief. Yeah, we’ve got a painting that’ll be impossible to sell, but it should’ve been ours anyway. Nick screwed me out of the money he owed me, and he was supposed to get the damned thing himself and give it to me, but then he went and got himself killed. We didn’t do the deed and we don’t have his damned book. We just want what we’re owed, got it?”

  Rawlings nodded in understanding. “You had a hold over Nick. You chose to honeymoon in Beaufort because your ex-husband lived there and it was time for him to give you a regularly scheduled payment, wasn’t it? But he didn’t deliver.”

  “No, he didn’t ‘deliver,’” Cora mocked the chief. “But he would have eventually. He’s no good to us dead. His measly life insurance payout isn’t going to last us long. We need our regular payments. We’ve got plans. Big ones. But stupid Nick screwed everything up.” She was practically snarling. “Okay, that’s enough chitchat. Kick your gun to Boyd, Chief, and get the hell out of our way.”

  “Sure,” Rawlings said agreeably and gave his weapon a gentle shove with his shoe. Boyd, who had appeared at the foot of the stairs, picked it up and, after sending Cora a brief, nervous look, held the gun inexpertly in a wobbly grip. Olivia sensed that he wouldn’t even know to remove the safety before firing and that Rawlings could take him down in a matter of seconds if someone could neutralize the threat posed by Cora.

  Olivia was too far from the armed woman to be of any use. Her only option was to throw something at her, but Harris didn’t have a heavy bookend or paperweight or glass vase handy. His table surfaces were knickknack free, and Olivia doubted Cora would stand passively by as Olivia unplugged a lamp to use as a missile.

  Once again, time seemed to slow, the seconds extending and lengthening until Olivia had the sensation of being underwater. Sounds grew muted. The insect murmur died away, and even Haviland’s barking inside the car faded. And then, noise exploded like the roar of a hurricane gale.

  It began with Boyd shouting a warning to his wife that he’d spotted a cop outside the window. Rawlings tried to keep Cora calm by assuring her that the officers were the same pair sent to watch the house. He hastily explained that his men must have realized something was amiss and that she and Boyd would be better off setting the civilians free and accepting him as their sole hostage.

  “This is only going to escalate if you involve anyone else in this room,” Rawlings told her, sounding more like a nagging aunt than the chief of police.

  Cora’s eyes were charged with a frenzied light. They were open so wide that the whites showed, giving her the appearance of a spooked horse.

  Without warning, she lurched forward, intent on grabbing hold of Millay, but Harris put out his hand to stop her, as though his long elegant fingers could stop a bullet.

  His abrupt movement caused Cora to jerk, and she pulled back on the trigger. At the same time a woman, Laurel or Millay, Olivia couldn’t tell which, cried out with a shrill “NOOOOO!” The desperate scream sounded like a cave echo, distorted and too loud in the murky, underwater world that had once been Harris’s living room.

  What freed her inert limbs was the impact of the bullet hitting Harris. She only saw it from behind—the shiver of the muscles in his back as the metal seared into them. And then, a fraction of a second later, the forward fold of his shoulders; an innate, defensive gesture by his shocked and wounded body.

  Another scream. Harris tottered and his knees began to buckle.

  Olivia moved. She grabbed his left arm and fell with him, inviting his weight to come down hard on her, cushioning his limp form with her flesh.

  Cradling his head in her arms, she squirmed out from under him and saw the blood blooming through his gray T-shirt like a poppy opening its petals to the sun. A cacophony of sound erupted above her head, but she took no notice.

  Part of her mind registered the
fact that the other officers had entered the house. Multiple voices exchanged shouts and threats. A woman shrieked. There was a crash of glass shattering against the tiles in the kitchen.

  For Olivia, there was only the blood and Harris’s slack, ashen face. She didn’t remember stripping off her shirt, but there it was in her hand, pressed against the wound in Harris’s chest. The bullet had entered below the ridge of his collarbone and Olivia had no idea what damage it had done. All she knew was that there was too much blood pumping from his body, a spring of fresh crimson staining her pale blue shirt a deep and frightening indigo.

  At some point, she couldn’t say how long, a pair of gloved hands eased her own away from her friend’s chest. A soothing voice complimented her actions and then she was separated from Harris. Two paramedics, a bag of medical equipment, a breathing mask, and a gurney appeared. Olivia looked down at her red hands as though they belonged to another person.

  Laurel coaxed her into the kitchen. She filled the sink with warm water and soap and used a dishtowel to scrub Olivia’s hands. She did not speak but cried softly as she washed her friend’s fingers and palms with infinite tenderness and then dried them with paper towels, her tears speckling the countertop.

  Olivia gazed from her pink, clean hands to the freckled skin of her chest. She touched her bare flesh to the right of her bra strap, seeing the hole in Harris’s chest. Laurel left the room and came back moments later with one of his T-shirts. Olivia slipped it on, and the two women stared at his company logo until the thud of the ambulance doors closing startled them into movement.

  Outside, the dark yard was awash in flashing lights. Uniformed men and women milled about police cruisers, white noise emitting from their radios. They parted and fell silent when the gurney passed.

  Olivia looked down and saw that she was holding Laurel’s hand.

  Haviland barked again, plaintively, and the yearning in his call brought Olivia back to life. She pulled Laurel to Millay’s car as the ambulance rumbled down the driveway, the wail of its siren cutting through the humid night air, its red and white lights illuminating the pines lining the road.

  Olivia hurried to turn the key in the ignition, hoping to close the distance between their car and the ambulance, needing to catch up to the pulses of light before the shadows returned to claim their territory.

  Chapter 15

  He wishes that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.

  —STEPHEN CRANE

  As if to make up for its sluggish pace at Harris’s house, time rocketed forward, giving Olivia only a dizzying impression of hospital hallways and the scent of ammonia and an animalistic blend of sickness and fear. She ended up in a waiting room with blue chairs and beige walls. The area was so bland that the enormous vase of Matisse-bold daylilies on the counter of the nurses’ station seemed jarringly bright.

  At some point, Harris’s parents arrived—a nice-looking, tidy couple in cotton shirts and khaki pants. They gripped each other as Rawlings explained what had happened.

  Estelle showed up soon after, crying theatrically and cornering everyone in scrubs to demand an update on her boyfriend’s condition. Millay paced outside the swinging doors of the OR like a caged leopard. Laurel pushed cups of vending machine coffee into people’s hands. They all waited, glass-eyed, as the television relayed the day’s news and hospital personnel passed by with carts of food, medicine, or clean linen.

  No one said a word to Olivia about Haviland’s presence. Perhaps because she sat so upright and so still, her gaze fixed on the too-bold arrangement of lilies, they believed she was visually impaired.

  To escape the madness of waiting, of not knowing, Olivia had been thinking deeply about art. Influenced by the flowers, she visualized all the Matisse paintings she could call to mind. She repeated the exercise with Georgia O’Keefe. Then, trying to imagine what kinds of paintings would fit best on the waiting room’s walls, she sifted through a mental gallery of Rembrandt and Dürer and Caravaggio, thinking that their use of chiaroscuro was more suitable for the oppressive atmosphere than the lackluster botanicals lined up above Estelle’s head.

  A doctor in Carolina blue scrubs pushed open the doors to the OR, and the images of art vanished from Olivia’s mind like a snuffed candle flame. The physician scanned the room with quick, intelligent eyes and picked out Mr. and Mrs. Williams. He pushed his paper mask below his chin, and the smile of assurance he bestowed on the frightened parents caught everyone’s attention.

  Estelle sprang to her feet, peppering the man with questions until he put a hand on her shoulder and waited for her to calm down. Keeping his focus on Harris’s parents, he spoke in a deep, confident tone, and though Olivia couldn’t hear the specifics, she caught enough phrases such as “avoided major organs,” and “bullet intact,” and “in stable condition,” to know that Harris was out of danger.

  When Estelle demanded to see him, the doctor told her that the patient had had significant blood loss and he’d need to rest for now. The result of his gentle refusal was that Estelle burst into a fresh bout of tears. Looking pained, the doctor removed the paper cap from his head and scrunched it into a ball between his hands. “The moment he woke up, Harris asked to see Millay. Are you Millay?”

  Estelle’s pretty mouth curled into an angry sneer. “No. I’m his girlfriend. You must have misunderstood. Harris mumbles all the time. I’m always telling him to speak clearly, like I do on the phone. That’s an important part of my job, you know.” She sniffed and then dabbed at her eyes. “People notice you if you enunciate.”

  The surgeon sent Harris’s parents a glance of befuddlement, but they were staring at Estelle with distaste. Olivia wondered if Estelle was even aware that it was unwise to insult their only child, especially when Harris had come so close to losing his life.

  Millay, who had stopped pacing during this exchange, touched the surgeon lightly on the arm. “I’m the one he’s asking for,” she said softly, joy shining from her face like a lighthouse beacon. She then looked directly at Estelle, and Olivia was surprised to see sympathy in her friend’s dark eyes. “Harris doesn’t mumble. And unlike most people, he only talks when he’s got something to say. You should have listened more closely. I bet you missed out on some good stuff.” She paused. “I know I have.”

  The surgeon promised to return for Harris’s parents as soon as it was clear he was up to having more visitors and led Millay away, cautioning her that she’d only have a few minutes with the patient.

  “Don’t worry, Doc. I’ll make them count,” they heard her say before they rounded a corner and were gone.

  Olivia only hung around long enough to see Millay reemerge from the recovery area ten minutes later. Her skin, which had previously appeared jaundiced with shock and worry beneath the waiting room’s harsh flu-orescents, now glowed with relief and something else Olivia couldn’t identify. Gratitude? Devotion?

  Her friend shot her a brief, encouraging smile before heading straight for Harris’s parents. Millay put her hand on his mother’s arm and began to talk quickly and calmly. As Olivia watched, air seemed to rush from Mrs. Williams’ lungs and the tight cords of fear that had pushed her shoulders together relaxed. Murmuring her thanks, she and her husband went off to the nurses’ station to beg for a few moments with their son.

  Estelle had fallen mercifully silent, clutching her can of diet soda and watching Millay with venomous eyes.

  Having no wish to be around when the girl’s dramatics began again, Olivia touched Haviland on the collar and crossed the room to where Laurel sat. “We probably won’t be able to visit Harris until tomorrow, so why don’t I call us a cab?”

  Rawlings, who had left the waiting area to phone into the station, returned. His purposeful gait told her that his subordinates had given him good news and that he was impatient to join them. Once Millay informed him of Harris’s condition, it was clear that the chief wouldn’t hang around any longer.

  “I’d like to get statements from everyone
tonight. An officer will drop you ladies at home afterward.”

  Millay shook her head. “I’m not leaving.”

  Estelle slowly rose from her seat, chin held high like a queen, and said, “You don’t have to stay. I’ll make sure they treat Harris right. I’m his girlfriend, remember?”

  Olivia expected Millay to snap at her rival, but she didn’t. “Okay,” she agreed placidly. “You hold down the fort and I’ll be back as soon as I’m done helping the cops tie Cora up in a supertight bow.” Her lips thinned in anger and her voice grew cold as she turned to Rawlings. “I don’t want anything to get in the way of her being shipped to the roughest, dirtiest women’s prison in the state. I hope her cell mate has some major anger-management issues.”

  Rawlings slipped an arm around the girl’s tiny waist and gave her a fatherly squeeze. “Rest assured, Millay. Mr. and Mrs. Vickers won’t look back on their early days of marriage very fondly.”

  “And since those are the best ones, they don’t have much to look forward to,” Laurel mumbled but then hastily brightened. “But Harris is going to be all right and Oyster Bay is safe again. That’s what really matters.”

  Olivia was momentarily stunned by Laurel’s behavior but grinned and gave her a friendly nudge, buoyant with relief that she and her friends and her town could sleep soundly tonight. Not one of the Bayside Book Writers believed Cora’s claim that she hadn’t killed Nick. The woman had already been caught lying, but Rawlings would gently ease the truth from her. Olivia was certain of it. “Once again, you’re going to have the lead article in the paper,” she told Laurel. “Maybe you should consider writing a true-crime novel.”

  Laurel shook her head. “No way. I’m half done with my women’s fiction novel, and I need to see how The Wife ends up.”

  “Me too,” Olivia said quietly, looking her friend in the eye. “But wherever that is, she won’t be alone. She’s got us.”