by Maggie Pill
She looked fabulous.
Though she wore the typical model’s stare, before she turned to step onto the dais Cecily sent me the slightest of winks. Mounting the steps gracefully, she reached the center, turned onto the runway, and came forward, where she pivoted so everyone in the room could see her from all angles. Someone started clapping, and everyone joined in. Never changing her expression, Cecily returned to the dais and exited on the opposite side.
Everyone clapped again.
As Cecily disappeared into the darkness on the right-hand side, Dail came up the center aisle. I almost didn’t recognize her, though her less-than-light footsteps gave her away. By some miracle she appeared neither belligerent nor angry, and the outfit we’d chosen for her softened her square form and made her seem almost feminine. Dail’s turns were less impressive than Cecily’s had been, but she managed to get through her walk without a mistake. Again the audience clapped appreciatively.
As the Everly Brothers’ “That’s Old-fashioned” played in the background, Pixi came out, then Candice, who looked like someone’s kid sister ready for her first formal dance. The others followed in turn as the song switched to Merle Haggard’s “Old Fashioned Love.” Some did beautifully, others were passable. I was amazed by the effect the clothing had on their attitudes. Though Jin giggled once as she left the dais, she was lovely in shimmering violet. Plenny, who came next, still resembled a cheerleader performing for the varsity team, but she managed to keep her posturing to acceptable levels.
As I watched the final round, I became acutely aware of the passage of time. Somewhere nearby a crime was taking place, and Honny’s abrupt departure meant he was involved, doing as Roger Engel had told him to. The question that bothered me was what would happen afterward. Would he tell Ted to let Retta go? Would he leave her locked in whatever place she was being held so we could find her once they were gone? I looked around to see where Bill was, but he had disappeared while I was taken up with my duties.
I was furious with myself. How had I let him slip away? After the last model glided along her pathway to the strains of B. J. Thomas’ “Whatever Happened to Old Fashioned Love?” I turned the lights back on, breaking the spell the show had cast on the guests. Surrounded by women who surged forward to congratulate her, Dina didn’t see me slip out of the room.
Chapter Forty
Retta
It’s terrible when your mind won’t let a thought go, though there’s not a thing you can do to change what’s happening or what happened. All night long I worried about my sisters. Though I tried to keep in mind I was next if I didn’t prepare, I couldn’t stop thinking about Barbara. If she was dead, it was my fault for insisting on taking this dumb case on in the first place.
Of course I thought about Styx too. If I never returned, my dog wouldn’t understand where I’d gone or why I’d left him. He’d be very sad, and he’d probably wait at the end of the driveway like one of those dogs you read about—
In the middle of all that, my brain did what brains do when you stop trying to force a memory. As if he stood over me at that very moment, I heard Dad’s voice inside my head. “Go to North Carolina.” That was the mnemonic for starting the tractor. GtNC stood for gas, throttle, neutral, choke. Those were the steps; that was the order. After that you went to the front and cranked hard.
I jumped up, eager to try the newly-recalled information. As I did, I heard voices approaching the shed. Bill and Ted. I crept close to the door to listen.
“—let her go?” Bill was asking.
“When we’re ready to take off,” Ted replied. I heard the clink of metal as he added, “Here, let me hold that while you open the lock.”
“I guess I should pack some things—Hey!” Bill’s voice registered surprise. I heard, “Uh!” and no more.
Bill wasn’t leaving with Ted. He would be yet another casualty of the weekend.
The sounds that followed were hard to interpret, but I guessed Bill was being set up. He’d take the blame for all the deaths this weekend: Chet Auburn, Barbara Ann, and me, no doubt. But in an ending worthy of an Ambrose Bierce story, Bill would die too, probably in an “accident” that would leave no way to question him about why we’d died and how it was done. The cases would close, and people would say to each other, “Who knew what kind of monster was hiding inside an apparently normal man’s mind?”
A muffled groan sounded outside, telling me Bill wasn’t dead yet. I had to get to him before Ted finished what he’d started. Stepping to the tractor I turned the on switch, and, repeating, “Go to North Carolina” in my head, approached the tractor’s left side and turned on the gas. That was the step I’d forgotten earlier, and leaving it out had made everything else I tried useless. Once I remembered there was a gas switch, it was easy to find. Moving to the dashboard, I set the throttle about a third of the way up and reached over to put the gearshift in neutral. Going back to the side, I pulled the choke out an inch to let gas enter the carburetor. Once I turned the crank, I’d hurry back and close it so the engine didn’t get too much fuel and die. It was a delicate balance, but I felt confident. Barbara believed I could do it, and Dad had taught me how.
I left the seat, lifted the crank from the toolbox behind it, and went to the front. As soon as I fired up the tractor engine Ted would know it, so I had to move quickly.
Setting the crank into its hole at the front of the tractor as quietly as possible, I took a deep breath, set my feet, and cranked hard. My shoulder wasn’t happy with yet another attempt, but this time my ears were rewarded with the chug-chug-ROAR of the engine coming to life.
I hurried to the back, closing the choke on the way, and hefted myself into the tractor seat. The engine made an odd hiccup every once in a while that told me it wasn’t in the best state of repair. Would it go when I put it into gear, or would it cough to a stop? Only one way to find out.
Again it was as if Dad spoke to me: First gear is up and to the left. Muscle memory told me the pedal on the left was the clutch. I tried it and felt the gears engage. Grabbing the rubber-coated steering wheel with both hands, I lifted my foot and said a little prayer.
The big machine started forward with a lurch that rocked me back in the seat, but it went. Tractors have no regard for barriers, and the nails that held the metal hinge to the wooden door separated with a screech of protest. One door burst off its hinges; the other was bumped aside by the front wheel of my mighty steed.
Ted crouched over Bill’s prone body, and he looked up at me in surprise as my iron horse bore down on him. He had a decision to make. If he stayed where he was, I’d run him over. He might take his gun out and shoot me, but that wouldn’t stop the tractor. The smartest thing he could do was run. That’s what Ted did.
Pulling the gearshift into neutral, I set the brake and got down to see if Bill was still breathing. He was. In fact, he opened his eyes and looked at me—at least one of his eyes did. Though definitely loopy, he seemed to understand he’d been had. “Tried to kill me.”
“I warned you.” Not a nice thing to tell him at that point, but I wasn’t sure he was processing the spoken word anyway. “Come on, Bill. We have to get you to a doctor.”
“Creighton,” he mumbled. “Call me Cray.”
“All right, Cray. Can you stand?” He did, with a lot of help from me. I was pretty sure he couldn’t walk far, and certainly not the distance to the inn. “Get up on the tractor.”
“What?”
“The tractor. Can you get up there?” I led him to the back and pointed at the C-shaped hitch bar. “Use that for a step, and pull yourself up by holding onto the seat.”
I demonstrated, climbing up then back down. He nodded solemnly, though I could tell he wasn’t quite with me. “I can do that.”
He tried twice unsuccessfully, losing his hold on the seat the first time and failing to lift himself high enough to reach the platform the second. In the end I put a shoulder into his bum and boosted him in an upward direction. It wasn’t pretty
, but eventually he landed in the metal seat, reeling like a kid just off the Tilt-a-Whirl. I set one of his hands on the left fender and the other on the right. “Hang on,” I ordered. He did.
That left the question of how I was going to drive. Tractors aren’t set up so a person—at least a petite person with short arms, can drive from anywhere but the seat. There was only one way to do it, and though I shuddered at the thought, it’s like they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Climbing up to the platform, I stepped in front of him and sat down on his lap. Immediately he wrapped his arms around my waist, but I peeled them off and set his hands back on the fenders. “Stay like that. We’re going to get you some help, understand?”
Bill laid his face against the back of my neck. “Wahoo.”
Chapter Forty-one
Faye
As I left the dining room, I saw that the help had set various kinds of wine on the table so we could purchase some to take home. Several women stood reading labels, some with a bottle in each hand, frowning as they tried to choose. Threading my way among them, I headed up the staircase to the room, hoping to find a sister or two there.
The place was just as I’d left it, and I faced the fact that something had gone terribly wrong. I should have called the police last night, as soon as it became clear that Barb wasn’t coming back. I should have told Dina there was a crime happening during her show. I should have followed Bill when he left the dining room. I’d failed one sister while trying to save the other, and they both might pay for my indecision. Suddenly weak with self-loathing, I sat on the bed and wished I’d never heard of St. Millicent’s. I wished I were anywhere but here.
Giving in to despair is for me a typical but usually brief response to stress. Though I’m aware I tend to blame myself too much when things go wrong, I need to let feelings of guilt and remorse wash over me for a few minutes before I can put things into perspective and move on. There are even articles that say it can be good for you, as long as you limit the time you allow yourself to spend doing it.
After my sense of failure abated somewhat, I was able to make a decision. I would go back downstairs, ask to use a house phone, and call Barb’s cell. If she didn’t answer, I’d call the local police. Maybe they could stop Bill, Ted, and Honny before they left. Even if—and I had to bite my lip as the thought came to me--even if things had gone wrong for my sisters, I needed to do something instead of pretending everything was okay, as I’d been forced to do all weekend.
I stood up. Time to stop wallowing and take action.
When I opened the door, the perfume girl stood there, her hand raised to knock. She wore another girlish outfit, short skirt, knee socks, and a sweater so tight it looked like it belonged to her younger sister. Her eyes met mine, and in their depths I read two things. First, she was the one who’d been watching me all weekend. Second, her dead expression didn’t come from boredom. It came from a lack of any sort of genuine human emotion.
“Back inside.” She raised the hand that had been concealed in the pleats of her skirt to show me a wicked-looking knife. I stared at it, almost able to feel it slicing into my flesh. I imagined her calmly wiping the blade on my sleeve after she’d killed me. Sometimes you just know things about people.
Farther down the hallway a door slammed, and three women came toward us. The girl returned the weapon to her side. “Inside,” she said again, more urgently this time.
A braver person might have refused, but the imminent threat of being stabbed was too real for me. I obeyed. Following me into the room, she kicked the door closed with her foot. I heard the women in the hall exchanging goodbyes and promises to stay in touch.
Somehow I knew I wasn’t going to be keeping in touch with anyone anymore. Of all the crimes committed at St. Millicent’s this weekend, my death was going to be the last one. There would be no one left alive to say what had happened or who had been involved.
Facing a weapon in the hands of someone who fully intends to use it is one of the scariest things a person can do. I’d faced a gun before, but for me a knife was worse. Imagining what it would do to me, wondering how long it would take me to die, I felt my courage trickle away like raindrops on a tree branch. I retreated from the blade until the backs of my legs touched the bed then sidled around it to the far side, putting myself as far from it as possible.
Weird things ran through my head. I thought of Buddy. He’d be all right if I died, because Dale would see to his needs. Still, it was sad to think of him roaming the house and whining, wondering why I’d abandoned him. And Dale. Would he--?
“Don’t yell,” the girl said. “You’ll be dead before anyone can get up here to help you.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, but for some reason her words helped me pull myself together. Putting together all my guesses I asked, “Are you part of the drug deal that took place today?”
She snickered. “We didn’t come up here to sell Avon.”
“So you work for Roger Engel.”
“Roger?” She made a rude sound. “We got our own thing going.”
That sent my thoughts in a different direction. After a few seconds of re-evaluating I said. “You and Honny are double-crossing Engel.”
Her lips formed what I figured was for her a smile. “Honny, yeah, and Troy and me. I’m Troy’s girl.”
I guessed Troy was the man I knew as Ted. “That sounds dangerous to me.”
“We got it all figured out.” She listened for a moment. The three women in the hall were still out there talking, which meant she couldn’t kill me yet. “Engel had a shipment come in that’s supposed to go to his people. When we found out about the show this weekend, Honny made his own deal with a woman up here. On Monday Roger will find out his drugs are missing, but we’ll be gone by then with a million bucks.”
“What about Dina—?”
She laughed aloud. “Dina’s clueless. She never liked her dad much, but Honny plays them against each other so they never really talk.”
If a person can feel better when she’s about to be murdered, the news that I hadn’t been wrong about Dina helped a little.
Something clicked into place in my head. “Honny brought the drugs here in the platform.”
“A million-dollar prize inside the box.” She raised a drawn-on eyebrow. “Better than Cracker Jacks.”
“He couldn’t get at them because Dina worked all night on the clothes.”
“Yeah. It slowed us up a little, but we handled it.”
“What about my sisters?”
“The one who drowned, or the one that got strangled by the crazy inn employee?” The same sickly smile appeared. “That crazy maintenance man murdered the FBI guy too. Ain’t that weird?”
I was struck silent, but she didn’t seem to notice. The voices in the hallway finally faded as the women finished their goodbyes and parted company. The perfume girl came toward me. “If you holler now, no one will hear you. It’s time to get back on schedule.”
That’s what my death would be to this woman—an item to be ticked off on a to-do list. As she came around the bed, I realized I’d boxed myself in. I had nowhere to go. I knew the window didn’t open, and even if it did, dropping twenty feet onto concrete pool area would probably result in serious injury. The bed was on my left and the wall was behind me. If I launched myself over the bed, could I move fast enough to escape? The knife blade looked so sharp, so deadly.
A knock on the door made me jump. “Faye?” a familiar voice called. “They said you hadn’t checked out yet.”
The perfume girl stopped, her expression frustrated. Would she simply ignore my visitor and hope she went away?
“Faye, are you okay?” It was Dina, and she sounded worried. My knife-wielding guest rolled her eyes in frustration.
Three loud knocks. “Faye?”
With an irritated gesture, the woman indicated I should answer the door. She stepped back so I could get past her then followed me, positioning herself in a spot where she couldn’t
be seen from the hallway. The knife stayed at my back, and though she didn’t actually touch me with it, the sensation of sharp metal at the center of my spine was all too real.
I opened the door to find Dina holding a vase of flowers and smiling broadly. “I brought these as a token of my gratitude.”
I looked at her in confusion. The flowers she carried were a centerpiece that had sat on a table in the hallway all weekend. Had she come to thank me with stolen blooms and an institutional vase?
Dina was staring at me intently, and I read a message in her gaze. “Why, that’s so nice of you,” I said, and her eyes approved.
“Now where I can set them down?” she said, taking a step forward.
Behind me the perfume girl shifted, and I guessed the knife had slipped out of sight. Dina frowned when she saw her. “Gretchen?”
“I came to thank her too,” the woman said weakly. “I-uh-I didn’t think you’d have time with all the stuff you had to do.”
Dina nodded as if that were a perfectly acceptable explanation. “These are kind of heavy. Where do you want them?”
“Um, over there.” I pointed at the dresser, aware this was my chance to live through the day. I had to disarm the perfume girl without getting either Dina or myself hurt or killed.
Dina was way ahead of me. As she passed between me and Gretchen, she tilted the vase, spilling water down the front of Gretchen’s shirt. When Gretchen stepped back with a gasp, Dina reached out her free hand and shoved her hard, knocking her onto the bed. Using the vase as a weapon she struck at the knife, which went flying into a corner. The vase dropped to the floor with a crash as Dina launched herself at Gretchen and pinned her to the bed.
She didn’t give up easily. Raising her legs like a Big Time Wrestler, Gretchen tried to twist out from under Dina. She didn’t succeed on the first try, but when she did it again, Dina slid off to one side. That was when I realized I should be helping. Stepping onto the bed, I sat down on Gretchen’s torso, squashing her into the mattress and rendering her incapable of drawing enough breath to keep fighting.
