Killing Bliss

by EC Sheedy

  "Josh—for God's sake call him by his name," Susan demanded, looking as though she was about to either cry or explode. Addy's heart scrunched, knowing how painful this must be for her.

  "Josh," Gus corrected, his voice surprisingly soft. "When... Josh saw us, he screamed louder. Put his arms up, the way kids do. Beauty picked him up, tried to calm him down the best she could. She said he was hot, maybe sick, and nothing she did made him stop howling." An odd smile played across his mouth, then it tightened again. "I was checking the door, had opened it a crack to see what was going on in the living room. That's when Grover arrived."

  Addy saw Grover straighten in his chair, try to wipe the tears off his cheeks with his shoulder. He was utterly silent, totally focused on Gus. Bliss shook his head wildly from side to side.

  Cade got up, walked over to Bliss, and tore the duct tape off his mouth. "You have something to say?" he asked.

  "Fucking lies. Every word. Vanelleto killed my mother. I saw him do it."

  "Either you shut the fuck up, Bliss, or I do it for you," Gus said, his voice icy, a muscle ticking fast and rhythmically in his jaw.

  He turned his attention back to the group sitting at the table. "Grover started screaming about Belle being 'unfaithful' to him, about Frank talking to his wife, ruining his career. Went on about all the money he sent her way. How he'd trusted her. Next thing, he was whining about how much he loved her, how he'd thought she loved him—real Romeo and Juliet stuff. Belle was sloppy drunk, and when Belle drank, she got vicious. She hit him square in the face with her fist, shoved her face in his, and laughed at him."

  "She laughed." Grover echoed from the corner, his words barely a whisper, tears again streaming down his face.

  "Shut up, you dumb fuck." Bliss spit at Grover.

  This time Gus ignored him. "I guess that cackle of hers did the trick, because Grover pulled out a gun and shot her in the face—more than once, as I recall." He shrugged. "Had to be dead before she hit the floor."

  "And then?" Cade said.

  "He stood over her for a while—looked like he was in some kind of trance—then he dropped the gun and took off like a bat out of hell. I heard his car spit gravel on the window."

  "He dropped the gun," Cade repeated, then frowned and looked at Stan. The two men exchanged glances, but neither spoke.

  Gus nodded. "I knew we had to get out of there fast. I told Beauty to go, but she wouldn't leave"—he hesitated again, looked at Susan—"your grandson. I put the kid on Belle's bed and practically threw Beauty out the bedroom window, told her to run, wait for Addy and me behind the shed."

  Susan stared at him, her eyes full of hope and fear. Stan continued to knead her shoulders.

  Addy wished someone would knead her brain, make some shape of it. She'd been so certain it was Bliss who killed Belle. But Grover? A killer? It had never occurred to her. And the truth was, despite his sorry ethics and fixation on Belle, he'd always been decent enough to her. She remembered them talking about her mom one day, him telling her she'd have to work extra hard to make a life because she had no one to help her. And he always told Beauty how "pretty" she was, that he'd see her in the movies one day. Addy swallowed, forced her attention back to the present.

  Cade, quiet as a tomb, watched Gus with intense interest as if he were recording every word spoken, every change in tone.

  Addy leaned forward, put her elbows on the table and her hands together so they wouldn't shake. "I guess that's about the time I showed up. I heard the shots and ran downstairs and saw Belle. Gus pulled me into the bedroom. Beauty was gone, and Gus..." She glanced at Gus, half-smiled. "He threw me out the window, too. I met Beauty at the shed, and we waited for him, but he never came." Feeling numb, she rubbed her sore face gingerly and stopped talking for a few seconds. It was as if her brain lacked the energy to form more words. When she found some, she went on. "I knew we had to get away from there, but Beauty wouldn't leave without Gus. I told her to put a note on the shed, that he'd find us. All we had was some tissue, so she used that." She took some breaths. "Then we ran."

  "What did the note say?" Cade asked.

  "Two words. Star Lake." She looked at Gus.

  "I never saw the note," he said, "because I never went to the shed. I intended to, but..."

  Silence settled like lead into the tension-filled room. "What did you do, Vanelleto?" Cade asked.

  "Truth? I didn't know what the hell to do. I knew I couldn't leave the kid, so I grabbed a blanket and wrapped him up. Had some dim idea about dropping him off at a hospital or something. I was heading out when"—he gestured to Bliss on the sofa—"that piece of slime showed up. He looked at me, looked at Belle, and came at me. I was holding the kid, but that didn't stop him. He tackled me, and both Josh and I went down hard." Again he looked at Susan. "The boy wasn't hurt, other than a small cut over the eye. I took care of Bliss, and I was gone. End of story."

  "You hit me with a fuckin' wine bottle." Bliss shouted. "You killed my ma and you damn near killed me."

  Addy saw the effort it took for Gus to ignore him, but he did, forming his mouth into a tight, narrow seam.

  "You went out through the kitchen," Stan said. "Not the living room."

  Gus frowned, as if he couldn't remember, then, "Yeah, that's right, I did. I got some stuff from the fridge."

  "What stuff?" Cade asked.

  Gus looked away, and for a few seconds stared out the window. Addy was sure he wasn't admiring the scenery; he was delaying. Finally, he turned back. "Milk. Whatever I could find for... Josh."

  Everyone in the room looked at him, their expressions ranging from shock to confusion. Except for Cade's. He looked as if everything had clicked into place.

  Addy, her own breath pooling in her lungs, knew the silence in the room was as close to one of those pregnant pauses as she'd ever come. She couldn't stand it. "Where is he?" she asked. "Where did you leave him?"

  Gus looked away, hesitated.

  Susan stared at him with frigid intensity, looking as if she could make him finish his story by the sheer force of her will—or she was frozen in fear of what he was about to say.

  "I didn't leave him anywhere. I planned to, but..." Gus shrugged, looked suddenly weary. "I didn't. Couldn't."

  He centered his gaze on Susan. "I call him Sam. He's a great kid. Graduated high school a year early, top of his class, and he's a hell of a baseball player."

  "You took my grandson and you... kept him? Raised him?" If he'd told Susan he'd fed him to a pack of wolves, she couldn't have looked more stunned.

  Gus nodded. "Took some doing in the first few years, until I got settled. But we made out all right."

  "And he thinks you're what? His father?" Susan asked.

  "Brother. It didn't feel right doing the dad thing."

  He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and extracted a school photograph. He handed it to Susan.

  After studying the photo with greedy eyes, Susan slumped back, overwhelmed. "My God."

  Cade took the picture, looked at it, then passed it to Addy. The smiling teenager in the photo was as dark as Gus, but with blue rather than brown eyes, and a more open face, Addy thought. A happier face.

  Cade said, "He looks like his mother."

  Susan nodded and started to cry. "I always believed he was alive, but knowing..." She gripped Stan's hands, still on her shoulders, and he leaned down to kiss her head.

  Cade walked a couple of steps away. "This might seem like the wrong time, but you mentioned a gun, Vanelleto. You said Grover dropped it. The police never found a weapon."

  Gus shot Bliss a deadly look. "It was there when I left, along with a note I put beside it. Brief and to the point. 'Check gun. Grover did it.' Obviously that didn't suit Bliss as well as naming me—and the girls—as murderers and keeping Grover around to blackmail." He looked at Bliss's sneering face. "That about cover it?"

  "Your story, Vanelleto, not mine."

  Gus got up, walked across the room to whe
re Bliss sat bound at the edge of the sofa, and stood over him. A flick of his wrist placed a thin, wicked-looking knife in his hand.

  "Gus." Addy yelled. "Don't."

  Gus juggled the knife between his hands, smiled. "Don't worry, Wart. I'm not going to kill him, just mark up his pretty face until the bastard tells the truth." He touched the tip of the knife to Bliss's cheek, close to his ear. "Let's see... if I cut here, we'll have matching scars." He turned his head so Bliss could clearly see the streak of misshapen flesh that ran from his ear to his jawline. He shifted the knife to the side of Bliss's nose. "Then again, a nice straight cut starting about here would add character, make you real attractive to the ladies." A trickle of blood ran from the tip of the knife to Bliss's lower lip.

  Addy could see his chest heave in horror and loathing.

  "You son of a bitch," he sputtered, his eyes fear-wide.

  Another trickle of blood, this one thicker.

  Addy's heart was in her mouth.

  "The gun, Bliss," Gus demanded. "What did you do with the gun?" The knife continued to draw drops of blood.

  Addy saw the blade twist slightly, felt Cade, now standing beside her, tense.

  Frozen in terror, Bliss looked up and into the implacable black eyes of Gus Vanelleto. "I kept it." Another twist. "It's in a safety deposit box."

  Gus raised a questioning brow.

  "Seattle First... near Pike," Bliss finished when Gus shifted the blade to under his left eye. "The note, too."

  The knife disappeared as swiftly as it had appeared, and Gus shot a glance at Cade. "He's all yours," he said, and headed for the door.

  Susan's voice rang out. "You're not going anywhere, young man. You and I have some talking to do."

  The man who seconds before had threatened to slice a man's face in two parts halted abruptly. He turned back to Susan, studied her a moment. "You're just like him, you know." He paused. "Except I think he's got a better sense of humor." He took another step toward the door, stopped and waited. "Come on then. You want to talk, we'll talk. But we'll have to make it fast. I'm going back to the hospital." He paused, drew in a breath. "See to things." Before Addy could say anything, he raised his palm toward her and shook his head. "There's nothing you can do, Wart. I'll take care of her. You can see her when... she's beautiful again. That's how she'd like it." Then he gave Cade a level gaze, and without looking, jerked his head back to indicate Bliss. "You'll take care of him?"

  "Count on it. And, Vanelleto?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I have Beauty's mother's address. She'll want to know."

  Gus nodded, raised an impatient brow in Susan's direction, and said, "Coming?"

  Susan opened her mouth, closed it again, then set it into a stubborn line and followed him outside.

  Stan rubbed his temple. "Now that ought to be an interesting conversation."

  "They both care about Josh," Cade said. "They'll work it out."

  Addy watched them go, and for a moment closed her eyes. She thought there should be some kind of euphoria, a lightness where the weight of guilt and fear had lain so heavy for so many years. But Beauty's dying didn't allow for lightness. Instead, she felt as if her insides were all knotted and frayed.

  She wanted to cry, but there were no tears.

  She wanted to laugh, but her throat wouldn't let laughter through.

  She looked at Cade.

  She wanted to love, but her heart was too riled and hurting.

  Cade, his warm glance sliding over her as if it had nowhere else to go, said nothing and went directly to the phone. He called the police; she heard him say they'd need paramedics. When he hung up from that call, he phoned some lawyer he knew and began the process of mopping up fifteen years' worth of fear and lies.

  He was doing his job, she thought, the job that brought him to Star Lake in the first place. The job that included sugaring her up so he could dig around in her secrets to find Susan Moore's grandson.

  She put a hand on her stomach and rubbed at the logjam of wounded, oddly resentful feelings there—for no logical reason she could think of. Because, damn it, she'd have done exactly what Cade did if it were her family, but somehow being the "doee" instead of the "doer" made it all seriously confusing.

  And the love thing. When exactly did that sneak into the situation? Did it come in with the Chinese food, when they were all over each other in bed, when she ogled him in his running gear tearing up the path around her lake, or when he was sitting in the back of a rowboat reading to her? If she had more experience in such things, she'd know.

  She felt like a plucked daisy after a bad count, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me...

  Cade spoke quietly into the phone, nodded, then reached for a pen. He bent over her patched-together desk, jotted something on one of her pads, focused on whatever was being said by the other person on the line. She liked that about him, the way he listened, the way his eyes seemed to soak up her words as if they were honey, the way they looked when he made love, as if she were the center of his universe.

  She liked a lot of things about Cade. The only thing that bothered her was his timing—and maybe his reasons for looking at her the way he did, saying the things he did.

  Her stomach tensed.

  Maybe he'd got carried away doing his job, maybe he'd have all kinds of regrets about... everything.

  She touched the lines forming across her forehead, and made up her mind.

  She needed quiet time, and she needed to talk to someone who'd understand, and she knew exactly where to find both. At the door, she put on her yellow rain jacket.

  Thanks to Gus, Cade's truck was right outside, keys in the ignition. Should she? Her hesitation was brief, then gone totally in the seconds it took for Redge to rouse himself from his sleep on the porch, come up beside her, and lick her hand.

  She opened the driver's side door and looked at the friendly dog. "Get in, Redgie boy, there's someone I want you to meet."

  With Redge sitting alertly beside her, she glanced across the calm waters of Star Lake, revved the Cherokee, and headed to Seattle.

  * * *

  Cade found her four hours later, sitting on damp grass, running a hand over Redge's soft fur.

  The rain had started again. This time it was light, misty, and joined by gentle gusts of wind that made it swirl and dance over her cool face. Kisses from heaven.

  "Why'd you run away?" he asked.

  Redge deserted her immediately and went to say hello.

  She looked up at Cade, surprised he was here, and even more surprised to see he was angry. She couldn't remember seeing him angry before, at least not with her, and because she couldn't answer his question, she asked one of her own. "How did you find me?"

  "Not hard. You've only been in two places in the last fifteen years, Star Lake and here." He waved a hand around the deserted graveyard.

  "Ah, yes, the brilliant ex-cop, the el supremo profiler. I should have guessed." Redge, having paid his respects, came back to lie beside her, and she went back to stroking his back and staring at her mother's headstone. "I guess my next question is why? You've done your job, you don't need me anymore." She cursed herself for sounding like a needy, pouty little girl looking for assurances.

  "You don't believe that and you know it."

  "Not sure what I believe. That's the problem."

  "Then don't believe anything—for now." He paused. "You're a free woman, Addilene Wartenski. You can go where you want, do what you want, and choose who the hell you want to do it with." He focused those intense eyes of his on her until her bones, cold from the autumn-damp grass, began to thaw and heat like freshly torched kindling.

  She stood to face him, met him as eye-to-eye as their differing heights allowed. "The trouble is, whatever it is I want to do, I want to do it with you, Cade Harding. And I don't know how I feel about that, because you're a person of... false pretenses. You pretended to be someone you weren't and you suckered me." Which, of course, was the least of the problems
between her and Cade, because there was something else that rankled her a whole lot more.

  He thought a moment, then touched her cheek. "Let's go back a bit, shall we? When I drove into Star Lake Resort that day, I sure as hell didn't expect to find Addilene Wartenski—and I did not arrive with some nefarious plot to seduce you. I was looking for a lead, any lead, to Susan's grandson."

  He took a step away. "But to be honest, I wouldn't have done anything different." He paused and his eyes, always so keen and sharply intelligent, softened, took on the grayness of the mist swirling around them. "Then it was all about finding Josh, Addy—a boy who'd been missing for fifteen years. It wasn't about us." He came back to her, took her face in his hands, and lifted it until their gazes met. "Now? It's all about us—if you want it to be. And we can take it fast or slow. Your call."

  Her heart tumbled around in her chest like a bunch of play-crazed puppies on spiked milk. And for a woman who'd lived in the shadows for over half her life, looking over her shoulder, and planning her days around a wheelbarrow and a dozen needy cabins on a lake, the possibilities in the word "us" were too many to process. She didn't know what to say, and she sure as hell didn't plan on blurting out, "But I can't even read."

  Cade's eyebrows shot up, and he went as still as one of the headstones in the graveyard. "You think I care about that? You think I'd love you less for that?"

  "I may not be able to read, but I'm not stupid. You've spent a thousand years getting educated. Teaching other people. You're a professor. You'd end up... ashamed of me." She stopped. "I couldn't stand that. I wouldn't stand that." She shook her head to punctuate.

  He took her by the shoulders, tipped his head to look deep into her eyes. "Addy, I love you and everything you are. When I look at you, what you've done, I'm so proud of you it goddamn hurts."