Don

by Carlene Thompson

  Finding the gun could spark a violent reaction, and Paige's life was at stake. No, she'd face this without police, without a weapon. She had no choice.

  Darkness shrouded The Blue Lady dance pavilion. Over the years, owners of the hotel had hauled in truckloads of sand to create a beach along the lakefront. No one had bothered since the fire in the seventies, though, and now the narrow, eroding strip of sand looked desolate bathed in weak moonlight and cool drizzle. It was almost impossible to imagine this dismal place as a scene of fun and glamour. Natalie had the sudden, chilling impression it had sat brooding here all these years, waiting for something awful to happen inside its rotting walls.

  She got out of the car and glanced around. Tattered clouds floated across the moon. Off to the side of the building sat a car mostly hidden by shadows. She could tell that it was blue, but she didn't make an effort to identify it. What was the point? Yellowish light from the sodium vapor lights of the nearby convenience store drifted dimly over the portico of the pavilion. Business was slow at the 7-Eleven tonight. Two cars and nobody entering or leaving. No one to see her go into The Blue Lady. No one to call the police. Maybe that was good.

  Natalie had forgotten to put on a sweater or windbreaker. The cool, damp air clung to her bare arms; mist coated her face. She trembled, but she didn't know if it was from the sixty-degree temperature or from fear.

  She had no idea what she would do when she entered the pavilion. Maybe her mere presence would be enough and the killer would let Paige go because her purpose as bait had been fulfilled.

  But Paige could identify her captor. The chance of the killer letting her go was zero. And what could Natalie do about it? She was unarmed and help was not on the way. The killer had been playing games with her for days. Tragically, Paige had been drawn into the game.

  The padlock hung loose. Natalie drew a deep breath and pushed open the door. "Paige?" Nothing. What had she ex pected? That the child would run into her arms and they could return to the safety of the car? She took two more steps into the cavernous room. Three candles burned on the dais. A voice floated out of the near-darkness. "Close the door behind you."

  Natalie stepped back, never taking her eyes from the candles, and pushed shut the door. "Now what?"

  "Come to the dais."

  The dais with its three candles looked far away. She walked slowly, glancing up at the mirrored ball throwing glittering reflections from the candle flames onto the empty tables and walls. A faint scent of roses floated from the candles. The night she had followed Blaine to The Blue Lady and heard the voice so like Tamara's threatening to kill her, she had smelled roses. But tonight not even the sweet floral aroma could hide the smell of mildew and decay hovering in the abandoned pavilion.

  Natalie reached the dais. "All right. I'm here. Why don't you show yourself?"

  A low snicker. "I'll be happy to." A figure stepped from the shadows, dragging along a whimpering, terrified Paige. "Good evening, Natalie," Ruth Meadows said.

  20

  Natalie stood stunned, her mouth so dry she couldn't swallow. She thought she'd been stupefied to come home from school to find her mother missing. She thought she'd been flabbergasted to walk in on Kenny making love to another woman. None of those things compared to finding the bodies of Tamara and Jeff. And even those grisly discoveries didn't cause the immediate, profound shock of realizing Ruth Meadows was a murderer.

  "I don't understand," Natalie said stupidly.

  Ruth smiled. "Then I did a good job." She wore a dark poncho with the hood down. Her short, silver hair shone in the candlelight. She held Paige close. The child's lower arms disappeared behind her back. Her wrists were tied or handcuffed. "You never guessed who I really am," Ruth said.

  Natalie stared at her, images and phrases flashing in her mind. Their gazes met and held, one aqua and glinting, the other dark and steady. "You told me to have golden dreams," Natalie said slowly. "Viveca said Eugene Farley told Alison to have golden dreams. You're Constance Farley."

  The silver-haired woman nodded. "Right you are, dear. It's a shame you didn't realize it sooner."

  "You can't be Constance Farley. Nick talked to her in Knoxville."

  "The sheriff talked to a woman who claimed to be Constance Farley."

  "But the police questioned her neighbors."

  "Natalie, you're a bright girl. Use your head. How long has this woman lived in Knoxville? Six months. She intro duced herself to her neighbors as Constance Farley. They had no reason to doubt her."

  Her voice was so cold, her grip on the child so tight. "Why don't you let Paige go, Constance? I'm the one you want, not her."

  "Now you know I can't let her go," the woman who was Constance Farley said in a patronizing voice. "Besides, there's something I want you to do." She nodded at an object on the floor near Natalie. "My cell phone. I want you to call your father and tell him to come here."

  "Here? Why?"

  "Because he's going to watch me kill you."

  Paige whimpered. Natalie stiffened. "I will not call my father."

  Constance 's hand raised to Paige's head. She held a gun. "You will call him or I'll shoot her."

  "You won't," Natalie said desperately.

  "Won't I? Don't forget Warren and Charlotte and Alison and Jeff. And of course your dear friend Tamara." Constance paused. "You know, I actually liked Tamara, but I still slit her throat and left her to bleed to death on a dirt road. So don't tell me what I won't do."

  Natalie glared into the unflinching aqua eyes. Had they looked so hard all along and she simply hadn't noticed? Or was the difference that Constance Farley gazed openly at her now, not disguised behind the mask of sweet Ruth Meadows?

  Natalie picked up the cell phone and punched in her home number. What if her father was still at the hospital, perhaps in surgery? Would Constance hold her and Paige prisoners until he finished? If so, would Natalie get a chance to overpower her? Doubtful. Constance had a gun to the child's head. Natalie had nothing except her wits, which at the moment seemed paralyzed.

  On the eighth ring her father picked up, sounding breathless. "Dad."

  "Just walked in the door." He paused. "What's wrong? You sound strange."

  She swallowed. "I'm in trouble. Actually, Paige and I are in trouble."

  "Trouble?" Andrew repeated. She heard the dread in his voice. "Just tell me."

  "First of all, you must promise me you won't call the police. If you do, Paige and I will die."

  "Die? Die? What in God's name are you talking about?"

  "Dad, don't shout. Listen. Do not, under any circumstances, call the police."

  He took a deep, shaking breath. "All right. No police. I swear. Now what is this about?"

  "The murderer kidnapped Paige. She used her as bait to get me to come to The Blue Lady."

  "The Blue Lady!"

  "Yes. She wants you to come here, too."

  "She?"

  Natalie's eyes flicked to Constance 's. "Dad, it's Ruth."

  "Ruth?" he said blankly. "Ruth Meadows?"

  "Yes."

  He emitted a little gust of air. "Natalie, this isn't funny."

  "She isn't really Ruth Meadows, Dad, she's Constance Farley."

  "Constance Farley? Eugene Farley's mother? Someone is pulling a stupid joke on you. I have seen Constance Farley."

  Natalie lowered the phone and looked at the woman holding Paige. "My father says he's seen Constance Farley."

  "Two years ago. I weighed seventy pounds more. I had long, dark hair pulled into a bun and I wore glasses. And he saw me for exactly three minutes when he came to tell my husband and me how very sorry he was that my son had not survived the surgery."

  Natalie raised the phone again. "Dad-"

  "I heard her," he said thinly.

  "She's standing here in front of me with a gun to Paige Meredith's head. Please get here as soon as possible. I repeat, do not call the police." She paused. "And do not bring a gun-"

  "A gun! I don't own a g
un!"

  "I know you don't." Please pick up the emphasis on you, she implored silently.

  "That's enough," Constance said. "Hang up."

  "Dad-"

  "Hang up!" Constance shouted. Andrew must have heard her. Natalie clicked off the phone. "Lay it down." Natalie placed the instrument on the floor. "Now we wait."

  Natalie looked at Paige's chalky face. "Please take the gun away from Paige's head." Natalie made her voice gentle and respectful. "You're frightening her terribly, and I'm sure she's not going to run away, are you, Paige?"

  "I won't move. I swear" Paige said fervently.

  Constance hesitated. "If I take the gun away, I know you won't make a run for it," she said to Natalie. "You're far too noble."

  "I'd never make it to the door."

  Constance smiled. "That, too. I said you were a bright girl."

  The cool drizzle had turned into a lonely rain spattering against the dirty windows of The Blue Lady. Rose-scented smoke drifted out from the candles on the dais. The flames danced and flickered in the musty darkness. "While we wait for my father to come and watch my execution, why don't you tell me what this is all about?" Natalie said.

  "You know that it's all about Eugene."

  "Vaguely. But I didn't even know Eugene. He must have been quite the son to warrant all this wanton slaughter."

  Natalie had meant the statement to be a taunt and it worked. Constance 's eyes narrowed. "My son was worth everything. And what I've done isn't wanton slaughter. It's justice."

  "Pardon me if I don't understand what in the name of God Tamara and Alison had to do with your son's death."

  "They had nothing to do with it directly. But their parents did."

  "Innocent children paying for the skis of the father and all that nonsense?"

  "It isn't nonsense!" Constance flared.

  "Then explain. Dad can't get here for at least ten minutes. We have time for you to describe your brilliant plan. How did you pull all this off, Constance?"

  "You're trying to stall me. It won't work."

  "Stall you from what? Killing me as soon as my father gets here? I don't think it would work." She shrugged nonchalantly although everything inside her quivered. "You can talk or we can stand here staring at each other with me thinking you are an absolute lunatic for trying to avenge your criminal, suicidal son. It's up to you."

  "My son was not responsible for what happened to him," Constance said with quiet venom. "His problems started a long time ago. With his father."

  "I thought his problems only started in Port Ariel."

  "They culminated in Port Ariel. They started with Hugh."

  "I thought your husband's name was Walter and he had a government job in Washington."

  "That was all a lie, the fictitious background of Ruth Meadows."

  "Is Ruth Meadows a complete fantasy?"

  "Of course not. None of this would have worked if she'd been a complete fantasy." Constance sighed and looked slightly beyond Natalie, seeing another world. "My father was a professor of anatomy at Ohio State University," she said. "If you're wondering where the skull on your bed came from, it belonged to a skeleton he used in class. I kept it after he died."

  "Only now it's missing a head."

  "No matter." Slowly Constance lowered the gun from Paige's head. Relief flickered in the child's dark blue eyes, but she didn't move. For an eleven-year-old, Paige was showing remarkable presence of mind.

  "So your father was a professor of anatomy," Natalie prodded.

  "Yes. He was a brilliant man, and everyone thought he was kind and quite refined." She sneered. "In reality he was brutal. He beat my mother and me. And he made us do horrible things. The worst for me was the pigs." The pigs? Nat alie wondered, keeping her gaze steady as Constance dredged up memories. "We had a farm outside of Columbus. My father knew I loved animals, so he made me slaughter pigs. Wrestle them down and slash their throats. Pigs can be quite vicious, you know. It takes great skill and strength to kill one quickly and cleanly, but he made me do it, over and over, until I became a master at it. All that slaughtering later came in quite handy."

  It also traumatized you, Natalie thought in horror. How awful-a young girl who loved animals forced to struggle with pigs emitting high-pitched, terrified squeals as they fought for their lives. Had it been so different for a young Constance than killing humans so many years later?

  "I married Hugh when I was twenty," she went on. "He was an accountant, ten years older than I, very conservative, especially where money was concerned. Believed in living on a shoestring. We did have a lovely honeymoon, though. We spent it here, at The Blue Lady. It was before the fire. I thought the hotel was fabulous-my father had never taken us anywhere. I didn't see how shabby The Blue Lady had become by the late sixties. I didn't realize Hugh had chosen it because it was cheap." She glanced around the musty, cavernous room. "We danced in this pavilion. There was a perfect red rosebud on our table. The mirrored ball sparked so beautifully."

  "You've been coming in here and polishing that ball," Natalie said.

  "Oh, yes. Such hard work. At first I thought it was ruined, but I was determined to restore it as best as I could."

  "Why was it so important?"

  Constance looked directly at her and smiled beatifically. "I told you we danced here. I wore pink silk. Blue lanterns hung around the outside, making the place look like a fairyland. The light from the lanterns and the flames from the candles on the tables reflected over and over in those hundreds of tiny mirrors. It was magical. And after we danced beneath that glittering ball, Hugh and I went back to our room and made love." She sighed. "That was the night I conceived Eugene."

  Oh, God, Natalie thought. No wonder The Blue Lady held such significance for Constance. How many nights had she spent in here, polishing that damned ball, recalling, no doubt romanticizing, the night she thought her precious Eugene had been created?

  "You did tell me you'd been here before," Natalie said. "That part was true."

  "Yes. Unfortunately I told Eugene so much about The Blue Lady and Port Ariel, he decided he might like it here, so he applied to Bishop Corporation. He was hired and he met that bitch."

  "Viveca Cosgrove."

  "Yes. You should have read his letters about her. I knew from the start she was trouble. Older than he was. An executive. Prosperous. He kept saying she'd been all over the world, she was used to the best. I encouraged him to find someone younger, certainly someone without an adult, disturbed daughter. I was worried. Hugh made fun of him. The boy was so much brighter than his father, so much better looking, and Hugh was jealous. He always downgraded Eugene. He told him a woman like Viveca was only toying with him, that she'd only truly be interested in a man with money. Hugh had great influence over Eugene." She looked meaningfully at Natalie. "He planted the seed."

  "What seed?"

  "Why, to embezzle the money, of course."

  "You don't mean he encouraged Eugene to steal from Bishop Corporation!" Natalie exclaimed.

  "No, his influence was much more insidious than that. He just kept mentioning how he'd heard rumors about what a slipshod operation Bishop was, how loosely it was run, especially the accounting department. And then he'd talk about Viveca and how interested she is in money."

  Natalie stared at her blankly. "That's it? You think those comments were encouragement for Eugene to embezzle?"

  "Hugh planted the seed," Constance said stubbornly. "He knew how impressionable Eugene was."

  No normal, adult man could be that impressionable, Natalie thought. Viveca made plenty of money as an executive at Bishop, and no one but she knew why she'd broken off with Eugene. He had stolen, plain and simple, but Constance didn't want to blame him. "Did you kill your husband?" she asked quietly.

  Constance 's gaze grew distant again. "I didn't cut his throat. I didn't poison him. I just reminded him, day after day, that his son was dead. That his son had blown off his head with a.38 revolver. That his son had still been al
ive after losing half his brain, and on some level had been aware of what was happening to him on that operating table where your father butchered him."

  Tears had been welling in Paige's eyes. The child was frightened of Constance and horrified by what she was hearing. Natalie didn't know how much longer the remarkable control she'd shown so far could hold. Enough of grisly details. "What did you do after your husband died?" Natalie asked quickly.

  "Hugh had a heart attack. I could have called the emergency squad and probably saved him, but I didn't. I watched him writhe and moan until he was gone." She shook her head. "Then I had a nervous breakdown. I spent nearly a year in a psychiatric ward. At first my sister and her son Jeff came to see me, but only out of curiosity. They thought it was just a temporary little 'spell.' That's what my sister called it. When she realized it was much more serious, the visits stopped. Insanity in the family was embarrassing.

  "When I was released, my family would have nothing to do with me. I had to hire a woman to stay with me because I wasn't up to being on my own. That woman was Ruth Meadows. She'd been an aide at the hospital. Her husband had died and left her with a pile of debts. My stingy Hugh, however, had made us live like poor people while he tucked money away. So much money that could have made life so much happier for Eugene and me. And there was a large life insurance policy." She gave a brittle laugh. "There I was, all alone, crazy, and wealthy. At least wealthy by my standards. And Ruth's. She was desperate and not burdened with any high moral sense. So I made a deal with her."

  "To trade identities."

  "Yes. When I first dreamed up the plan I thought it could never work. But the more time I spent thinking about it, working out every detail, planning for every contingency, the more convinced I was that it would work." She frowned. "Where is your father, Natalie? You don't suppose he's gone to the police, do you?"

  "No. He knows you're serious about killing us if any police show up. He's probably just rattled, running around looking for his car keys or something, but he'll be here soon. Tell me how you pulled off the identity switch, how you became Ruth Meadows."

  Constance smiled. "It didn't take a genius to come up with the plan. I didn't have a driver's license, but Ruth did. It was the only picture I.D. we had between us. I'd already lost seventy pounds during my illness. I had my hair cut short, had it colored silver, and got aqua contacts so I'd look as much as possible like Ruth. You know how bad those license photos are, anyway. It was a pretty good match."