Dead Ringer

by Sarah Fox

  “So you killed Jeremy?” I directed the question at Cindy.

  “Of course I killed him,” she snarled.

  I decided to test out the rest of my theory. “Because he was blackmailing you? About your gambling addiction, or maybe the funds you stole from the church?”

  Cindy’s eyes narrowed. “I knew you’d been snooping. I saw you sneaking out of my office yesterday, you know. You weren’t as stealthy as you thought.”

  So she was the one watching me from the window as I left.

  I jumped back as she jabbed the point of the letter opener toward my stomach. My back hit the wall and I plastered myself against it as Cindy advanced a step toward me, her weapon only an inch away from me now.

  “You should have minded your own business. Now you have to pay for what you’ve done—­snooping into my private life, encouraging that little brat . . .” She waved the letter opener in Susannah’s direction before pointing it back at me. “ . . . to rat on my good-­for-­nothing husband.”

  Susannah whimpered, but I didn’t dare spare her more than a glance. I wanted to keep a close eye on the blade pointed at the spot just above my navel. I sucked in my stomach to put a little more room between myself and the weapon.

  “If he’s good for nothing,” I said, “then why do you care about the truth coming out about what he said about the bishop and his congregation?”

  “I am not good for nothing!” McAllister protested.

  Cindy and I ignored him.

  “Because if he goes down, I go down,” Cindy replied, the ferocity in her voice making me wish I could melt through the wall behind me to get away from her. “If the bishop found out about the video, Peter would be finished. He’d be replaced.”

  “Ah.” I thought I’d caught on. “And if that happened, his replacement—­or somebody at least—­would be bound to uncover the fact that you’d been helping yourself to church money.”

  Her nose twitched, and I knew I had it right.

  “So Jeremy was or wasn’t blackmailing you as well as your husband?” I wanted to know the answer as much as I wanted to buy myself some time. Even in my dire circumstances, I couldn’t quell my curiosity.

  “He wasn’t. He only blackmailed Peter.”

  “But you still killed him to protect yourself.”

  “To protect us both,” McAllister put in.

  Cindy shot him a derisive look out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t kid yourself. You could rot in hell for all I care. If it didn’t mean I’d do so right along with you.”

  McAllister’s mouth dropped open in shock, but I didn’t give him a chance to say anything more to his wife.

  “And you broke into Jeremy’s suite?” I asked Cindy.

  “I sent Peter to do that.” She sneered at her husband. “He was supposed to retrieve the check he’d given Ralston, but he couldn’t even do that right. Almost got caught by the police. What was he even thinking in the first place? Who gives a check to a blackmailer? Who?”

  She jabbed the letter opener at me again as if to emphasize her disbelief at her husband’s stupidity. I squeaked and sucked in my stomach even farther as the point of the blade met the fabric of my shirt. Another muffled sob escaped from Susannah, but I was in no position to comfort her. What comfort could I offer anyway? I still couldn’t see a way out of our quandary.

  “And what about the break-­in at my apartment?” My voice sounded higher than usual, fear upping its pitch. “Did you send him to do that too?”

  “So he could screw up again? Of course not. After the fire didn’t do its job, I knew I had to be more direct.”

  So I was right. The murderer and arsonist were one and the same.

  I gulped as her last words registered in my brain. “You went to my apartment to kill me?”

  “You had to be silenced. You were interfering. When I discovered you weren’t home, I decided to leave you a message in the meantime. Until I had a chance to try again.”

  I gulped again, not wanting to think about what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to stay with JT.

  “You overheard me talking to Susannah,” I guessed. “Right before the fire.”

  “That’s right. You think I don’t know everything that goes on in his church? Somebody needs to be aware of things.”

  McAllister frowned. He must have been as aware as I was that the verbal jab was aimed at him.

  I directed my next question at him. “Why did your sister tell me that Jeremy thought his fiancée was having an affair? She said that was what your supposed spiritual guidance conversation was about.”

  Mild surprise registered on the reverend’s face. “She told you that?” He thought for a second. “I suppose she was trying to protect me. Perhaps she thought you’d let the matter drop if she gave you some sort of explanation for my, ah, association with Ralston.”

  “So she knew about the video?”

  “Of course. I told her all about it. She’s my closest ally, after all.”

  Cindy snorted and raised the letter opener. She pointed it at my throat, snapping my thoughts back to my present situation. My eyes remained glued to the blade, willing it not to come any closer.

  The reverend’s wife jerked her head to the right. “Go sit down.”

  I forced my eyes away from the weapon and looked in the direction she’d indicated. A second wooden chair sat empty next to Susannah. I didn’t want to sit down, because I knew that an escape would only be more difficult if I let myself be tied up. At the same time, I still wasn’t in any position to take on Cindy or her husband. The proximity of the letter opener’s blade to my throat was far too precarious.

  “Move it!”

  The menace in her eyes would have been enough to make me obey even without the letter opener. I shuffled to the side to avoid the sharp blade and lowered myself into the chair. I reached a hand out to Susannah and gave her arm a squeeze. Fresh tears trickled out of her eyes. I tried to give her a reassuring smile but my mouth didn’t cooperate.

  “Make yourself useful for once,” Cindy snapped at her husband. “Tie her up.”

  I sent a pleading look in McAllister’s direction, hoping he wasn’t as crazy or cruel as his wife. If I could get him to turn on Cindy, Susannah and I might have a chance of surviving this fiasco. Unfortunately, he avoided my gaze.

  He grabbed a length of rope from a nearby shelf and brought it over to me. He cast a quick, sidelong glance at his wife, and I knew then that I couldn’t count on him for any help. He was too scared of his wife to stand up to her. That was clear on his face.

  While Cindy kept the point of her weapon trained at my throat, McAllister bound my hands behind the back of my chair. I tried to keep my wrists as far apart as possible without being obvious about it, but I didn’t know how much good that would do me.

  Susannah choked out another sob, and Cindy’s eyes strayed in her direction, the point of the letter opener drifting to one side. I didn’t know if I’d have another opportunity to make a move, so I kicked out at Cindy’s knee. Her legs gave way and she stumbled, doubling over. The blade of the letter opener slipped across my upper left arm. I gasped but didn’t hesitate. Throwing myself forward, chair and all, I drove my shoulder into her.

  She screamed, the shrill sound filled with intense fury and a hint of lunacy. I fell to my knees and struggled beneath the chair that came down on top of me. I wiggled my arms and wrists toward the top of the chair’s arrow back. I needed to free myself before Cindy recovered enough to retake control of the situation.

  I almost had myself free, with only a few more inches to go, when strong hands grabbed my upper arms from behind and wrenched me to my feet. While maintaining a grip on one of my arms, McAllister righted my chair and shoved me back into it.

  By then Cindy was back on her feet. She was breathing heavily, her normally neat and tidy hair wisping out
in all directions. Her eyes were colder than ever, her mouth pinched with anger. She leaned in toward me and pressed the point of the letter opener to my neck as her husband held me down in the chair, one hand on each of my shoulders.

  “That is the last time you will ever interfere with one of my plans.”

  The venom in her voice chilled my blood as it pounded through my body.

  “Finish tying her up,” she ordered McAllister.

  He obeyed, using more rope to bind my torso to the back of my chair. Out of rope, he used scarves from a costume rack to tie my ankles to the chair legs.

  “What are you planning to do?” I asked, doing my best to keep my voice from quaking with fear. “Even without my help, the police will eventually figure out that you killed Jeremy. And if anything happens to me and Susannah, they’ll know you’re responsible for that too.”

  “Gag her, will you?” Cindy said to her husband. “I’m sick of listening to her.”

  “The police know I’m here. They’ll come looking for me.”

  McAllister stuffed a scarf in my mouth. I gagged and tried to spit it out, but he tied it firmly in a knot at the back of my head.

  A cruel, satisfied smile spread across Cindy’s face. “Much better.”

  I squirmed against my restraints, but that only made her smile more.

  “Nobody will connect me to anything once you’re out of the way,” she said with unnerving confidence. “I’ll simply tell everyone that you and the little brat were helping my husband search for some suitable props for the upcoming youth group play. Tragically, a fire started and you weren’t able to escape.” She smirked. “This old building is full of fire hazards, and the door to this little room has a rather unfortunate tendency to stick. I’ll be upstairs in my office at the time, completely unaware of what’s happening below me until I hear the sirens or smell the smoke. By then it will be too late for you and I’ll be free to start a new life.”

  I shook my head. I wanted to tell her that she wouldn’t get away with it. Not that she would listen to me. I didn’t think she was giving the police and fire investigators enough credit. More likely than not, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out that her story was fabricated, particularly if there was enough of Susannah and me remaining for them to figure out we’d been restrained.

  Of course, the investigative skills of the police and fire departments weren’t exactly of much help to Susannah and me right at that moment. They might help to get us ultimate justice, but they wouldn’t save us from a fiery, unpleasant end.

  I tipped my head back, looking up at McAllister, using my eyes to plead with him once again. This time he met my gaze, and I thought I detected a hint of uncertainty.

  “Help us!” I tried to yell through my gag but all that came out was a desperate but indistinct noise.

  Cindy understood me well enough. She laughed, reaching out and grabbing a frying pan off a shelf laden with props. “Don’t bother looking to him for help,” she said. “My darling husband is going to perish in the fire right along with you. That way I can pin the theft on him and be free of his idiocy.”

  My eyes widened. Maybe McAllister’s did too, but I never found out. As I jerked my head back to look at him, Cindy swung the frying pan at his head.

  I heard a sickening thud and McAllister crumpled to the ground behind me.

  Susannah screamed against her gag. I craned my neck around to get a look at the reverend. He lay in a heap, unmoving.

  Cindy dropped the frying pan on the floor. “And now it’s time for me to exit stage left.” She dug into the back pocket of her pants and withdrew a lighter. She smiled with a crazed glint in her eyes. “Goodbye.”

  She backed out of the door and slammed it shut. A moment later I caught my first whiff of smoke.

  Chapter 25

  THE PAIN IN my arm chose that inopportune time to vie for my attention. With my mouth gagged, I had to take deep breaths through my nose to help direct my thoughts away from the agony. A second, stronger waft of smoke did more than my steady breathing to sharpen my focus. Susannah must have smelled the smoke too. She squirmed in her chair, crying and trying to scream.

  We had to get free.

  I wiggled my wrists. The restraints weren’t tight but they weren’t loose enough for me to slip out of them. Not yet at least. Maybe I could work my way out of them in time, but time wasn’t something I had.

  I shifted my body weight from side to side, giving my chair an experimental rock. It felt rickety beneath me, and I hoped that would be the key to my freedom. I was only a ­couple feet from the nearest wall but I needed to get closer. By shuffling my feet and making bouncy, jerking motions with my body, I managed to inch my chair toward the wall.

  When I thought I was close enough, I gripped one of the slats of the chair back with my bound hands and lifted the piece of furniture up off the ground as I tried to stand on my feet. It was awkward but the scarves restraining my ankles shifted up my legs enough that I was able to stand, bent over at the waist. I pivoted my body as hard as I could and slammed my chair against the wall. Wood cracked, but I remained strapped to the piece of furniture.

  My arm protested with a fierce cut of pain, but I steadied myself and repeated the action, again and again. The third time was the charm. As I smashed the chair against the wall, it shattered, legs and slats breaking off the seat. The various pieces fell away from me, and I kicked and shimmied until the last bits clattered to the floor. The entire process had taken less than a minute, but I didn’t have a single second to spare.

  I dropped to my knees behind Susannah’s chair, my back to her, holding my bound hands against hers. I couldn’t speak to tell her what I wanted her to do, but I didn’t need to. Her fingers fumbled against my wrists until they found the knot in the rope. We were lucky that Reverend McAllister wasn’t great at tying knots. He must not have ever been a Boy Scout. Susannah had my wrists free in a matter of seconds, and I spun around to untie her.

  As soon as she was free, I yanked the gag out of my mouth, and she did the same with hers. The smell of smoke had grown stronger as we worked, and the first wispy tendrils slithered through the crack beneath the door. Somewhere off in the distance a fire alarm rang a shrill, unceasing note. I hoped help would come, but at the same time I knew it would be too late.

  I stumbled over pieces of broken chair to get to the door and placed my palm against it. It was warm.

  “We can’t go out that way.”

  “But it’s the only exit!” Susannah sounded frantic.

  I couldn’t blame her.

  I yanked two frilly gowns and a soldier’s coat off a rack of costumes and shoved them at Susannah. “Try to block the cracks with these.”

  She did as she was told, stuffing the costumes into the cracks beneath and around the door. It helped to slow the influx of smoke, but I knew that time was slipping away from us, the seconds ticking in my head like a metronome turned up to full speed.

  McAllister moaned on the floor, but his eyes only opened halfway. I ignored him. I had to if I didn’t want us all to die from smoke inhalation in the next few minutes. I cast my eyes around the small room, searching for something strong and sturdy. I considered the frying pan at my feet for half a second but then pounced on an electric guitar. Its body was scratched and it had no strings, but I wasn’t interested in making music.

  I grabbed the instrument and hurried to the wall opposite from the door. I knocked against it with my fist, working my way from left to right and listening to the change in sounds. Satisfied that I’d located a spot between studs, I held the guitar by its neck with both hands.

  “What are you doing?” Susannah asked.

  I didn’t bother to waste time answering. Instead, I swung the guitar as hard as I could. It broke a hole through the drywall.

  Hope gave me greater strength, and I swung the instrument over and over aga
in, smashing it against the wall, opening a wider hole with each impact.

  Behind me Susannah coughed. “The smoke! Midori!”

  “Help me.” I dropped the guitar and ripped at the jagged drywall with my hands.

  The sharp edges cut and scratched my skin, but I hardly noticed.

  Susannah joined me, and we soon had a hole big enough to squeeze through.

  And not a moment too soon.

  The smoke had thickened, and flames crackled and popped on the other side of the door. Even across the room I could feel the heat. It pressed against my face, urging me to flee.

  “Reverend!” I screamed at McAllister, my words ending with a coughing fit.

  He moved one arm but did nothing else.

  “Go!” I shouted to Susannah before turning back to McAllister.

  I grabbed him under the arms, but knew right away that I wouldn’t be able to move him on my own. He was too heavy. Somebody joined me in the murky dullness of the smoke-­filled room and took some of McAllister’s weight.

  Susannah.

  I wanted to scream at her again to leave, to save herself, but my coughs and protesting throat wouldn’t let me. There wasn’t time to argue with her anyway, and I needed her help to move the reverend.

  Together we hauled him to his feet. He swayed and lurched but shuffled along, making our job easier. When we reached the wall, Susannah climbed through the hole first and half caught McAllister when I pushed him through. I climbed out after him and secured his arm around my shoulders.

  I coughed and blinked as I took in our new location. We were in an unfamiliar hallway, but an exit sign glowed with a dull red light in the distance. With toxic smoke billowing out of the hole behind us, the three of us set off down the hall, Susannah and I supporting the reverend between us. We pushed through a heavy door and found ourselves in a shallow concrete stairwell, our heads just above ground level.

  A symphony of light and sound greeted us. Rain pelted against the street and parked cars, a siren wailed in the distance, and a fire engine rumbled to a stop in front of the church. The lights on the emergency vehicle flashed brightly and voices called out over the jumble of other sounds.