by Josh Lanyon
He flushed, and his jaw tightened. “Suit yourself,” he clipped out. “I was trying to be nice.”
“I can see that. And it’s hard to think of anything nicer than being locked up in the stockade all day and then having someone threaten to kill you.”
“I didn’t threaten to kill you.”
Now that got some interested looks—quickly concealed.
J.X. lowered his voice. “Jesus, you’re a baby. I’ve done all the apologizing and explaining to you that I’m going to do. You got yourself into this. If you want to sit there and sulk, be my guest.”
Debbie reappeared with our drinks, saving me from having to answer, even if I could have. Maybe I wasn’t being very reasonable about the situation, but…it wasn’t an easy situation to be reasonable about.
J.X. ordered the salmon. I said I wasn’t hungry.
I said it politely, by the way, but J.X. muttered, “Oh, for God’s sake. He’ll have the salmon too.”
Debbie departed, I sipped my drink, and J.X. stirred sugar into his coffee. I watched the room mirrored in the dark window. The other diners seemed to be losing interest in us.
“Are you really going to write a series about a Regency P.I. demon?”
J.X. was smiling a little, his eyes teasing, and I realized that he was one of these unbearably irrepressible types who got over their anger quickly, forgiving and forgetting—occasional death threats aside.
“No,” I said repressively. I couldn’t help adding, “Anyway, the P.I. is not a demon, her boyfriend is.”
“Ah.” He sipped his coffee. “Can I make a suggestion?”
“Could anything on earth stop you?”
“No.”
“Be my guest.”
“Why don’t you write about something you know?”
“Because I write mysteries—and we can’t all be cops.”
“We can’t all be elderly spinsters with cats either.”
“So what do you suggest? I join the police force? I kill someone—oh, wait. You think I did.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m not saying you have to live it to write it. That’s biography, not fiction. I’m saying there are some young guys who could write believably about a repressed English spinster and her horny tomcat—you’re not one of them.”
“Wh-wh-what?”
He met my aghast stare calmly. “You heard me. Oh, you write one hell of an amusing mystery, but there’s not one shred of anything real or meaningful in it. Those books are just witty, academic puzzles.”
“How very dare you!”
To my mounting outrage he continued to smile at me, his expression quizzical. “Come on, you know exactly what I mean. You’ve been cranking those things out in your sleep for years now. I’m not saying they’re not clever. I can never figure out where you’re going with them. But there’s nothing real in them. There’s nothing of you in them.”
“How the fuck would you know whether there’s anything of me in them or not? You don’t know me.”
“I thought I did once.”
I opened my mouth to deliver the obvious and crushing truth, but somehow I couldn’t. Somehow, remembering how…sweet he had been all those years ago. Not in a sappy way. He had been a tough, savvy young cop sort of awed to find himself with a book contract and rubbing shoulders—and other things—with the mystery elite. And every time his eyes met mine that long-ago weekend there had been a look that said he thought I was wonderful. And when we had made—fucked—there had been something alarmingly close to tenderness—
But why think of that now? What was the point? It was painful remembering.
So I swallowed the cruel words, and I stared out the window at the black rain washing away the world beyond this dining room.
“Why don’t you write about something that matters to you?” J.X. asked.
“You think Regency period demons don’t matter to me? You really don’t know me.” I raised my brows mockingly and sipped my drink.
Debbie brought our salads then, and the conversation was limited to passing the salt and pepper and me ordering another drink.
We had worked our way to dessert and the dining room was largely emptied when Espie stopped by our table, pulling up a chair.
“Please don’t talk to the prisoner, ma’am,” I drawled.
She guffawed. “Yo, esse, if you offed that pair, you’ll be getting a commendation from the writing community.”
“I’ll look for it with my next royalty check.”
J.X. gave another of those long-suffering sighs. I said to Espie, “For the record, I didn’t kill either of them.”
“I believe you,” she said easily. She nodded at J.X. “He believes you. He told us all he’d lock you up if that would make everyone feel better, but it didn’t look to him like you could have done it.”
I threw J.X. an uncertain look. I couldn’t bring myself to say thank you, although I was grateful for this unexpected show of support.
“Did he tell you they found a rain slicker covered with blood in the Dumpster behind the patio?”
“No, he didn’t,” I said, my gratitude fading as quickly as it had flared. J.X. was looking at Espie with resignation.
“It was from the closet in the lobby. That means anyone could have taken it.”
“Anyone in the lodge,” I said.
“Right.”
I said tightly to J.X., “But not me because I wasn’t in the lodge, and you know damn well I wasn’t wearing it or carrying it when I went back to my cabin last night.”
He said evenly, “How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t think you killed anyone?”
“He thinks I did it,” Espie told me.
“Did you?”
“Nah. I’ve had the prison experience. Been there, done that, and I have no intention of ever going back.”
“What were you in prison for?”
“I killed my boyfriend.” She chuckled at my expression. “It was an accident. Sort of. He was cheating on me, and I chased him with my car. I hit him accidentally on purpose, if you know what I mean.” She tapped the side of her head as though to indicate non compos mentis. “I was seventeen. You know what that’s like. Anyway, I did my time. And I am a very safe driver these days.”
J.X. looked unamused. Once a cop, always a cop. I said, “What would your motive be this long after the fact?”
“Revenge. We Latinas are known to be very hot-blooded.”
“That’s very hard to make fly in fiction, let alone real-life crime.”
“Doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true.”
The dining room lights flickered and went out.
Chapter Nineteen
“Now’s your chance to make a break for it, Christopher,” Espie announced into the shocked silence seconds before everyone began talking at once.
“Don’t even think about it,” J.X. stated clearly over the rising babble.
Reaching for my glass, I replied irritably, “Where the hell would I go?”
We weren’t in total darkness due to the candles on each table, but it was certainly very murky, and the remaining diners were gloomy outlines against the uncertain backdrop of candlelight. I could see a lot of shining eyes and shining teeth.
J.X. rose and requested that everyone stay in their seats.
“He’s very good at this kind of thing,” Espie said to me.
“Yes, he’s a real loss to the crossing guard division.”
She chortled. J.X. ignored this interchange. “Stay put. I’ll be right back,” he said, and we watched his tall shadow moving through the dining room, reassuring people as he headed for the entrance.
Espie and I abruptly ran out of things to talk about. We sat silently listening to the conversation around us—louder than usual as people instinctively raised their voices as though the darkness was a sound barrier.
“They were saying earlier that it happens out here a lot during the winter…”
“It seems kind of a coincidence…�
�
“This is bullshit about not being able to get a refund…”
“Maybe she tried to blackmail the wrong person…”
I glanced around, trying to see who had made that last comment, but although I could narrow it down to one of the two large round tables behind our own, I couldn’t pinpoint it. I hadn’t recognized the voice, and none of the weirdly highlighted faces at the table looked familiar.
Turning, I tried to find Rachel in the gloom, but it looked like she had already left her table.
I said to Espie, “How’s Rachel doing?”
“Fine.”
“Kit.” I started as J.X. materialized out of the shadows. “Come with me.”
I rose, excusing myself to Espie, and followed him across the assault course of chair backs and chair legs and purses. We reached the hall. It was darker here despite the sparsely placed emergency lights.
J.X. pushed my coat into my arms, and I put it on automatically. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“Come on,” he said, turning away. He had a high-powered flashlight, and the beam lasered its way down the hall to the front door. I matched J.X.’s long strides past the Indian baskets and long wood-framed mirror. As we reached the front door it swung open, and a frigid blast of icy rain gusted in with a tall figure in a cowboy hat.
Edgar Croft looked mighty cold and mighty grim.
“Someone’s been fooling with the generator,” he told J.X.
“Sabotage?”
“Looks that way.”
“Can you fix it?”
“We can try.” He ducked out into the wet darkness.
J.X. turned back to me. “I don’t want to leave you on your own. That’s why I’m dragging you out here. You understand?”
I nodded. I felt his unease plainly. If he was seriously worried about my taking off on my own, he could relax. No way was I about to brave the elements—let alone a possible stray murderer.
He stepped outside the door, and I followed, turning my collar up against the blast. Tracing Edgar down the porch, we squelched after him across the muddy yard. It was bewilderingly dark—even the lodge vanished into nothingness a few steps away from its porch—only the windblown cacophony of the chimes giving away its location.
We dodged dripping tree branches, and J.X.’s flashlight picked out a small shed like a tiny log cabin. The door stood open, and a feeble light shone from within. We crowded inside and studied the large blue and silver Yamaha generator.
Edgar was quietly but fluently swearing as he examined an empty propane bottle. “Someone’s drained the tank on the generator and emptied all the fuel storage containers.”
“Will it run on gasoline?” J.X. asked.
“It will, but even if we emptied every vehicle on the place, we’d only have a couple of hours’ worth of fuel. This little girl drinks it up like soda pop.”
“Then we better save that option until we really need it,” J.X. said.
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
“How long does the power usually stay out?” I asked.
Edgar shook his head. “It depends. Sometimes the power company gets right on it. But in a storm like this…nobody is going to be repairing lines tonight.”
“The storm can’t last forever.”
Edgar and J.X. exchanged looks. J.X. said, “There’s supposed to be another front moving in on the tail of this one. It might not materialize, but if it does, we could be cut off for another day.”
“Nobody’s going to starve, and nobody’s going to freeze,” Edgar reassured. “We’ve got food and fresh water stored, we’ve got kerosene lanterns, and we’ve got plenty of wood to burn.”
I couldn’t help pointing out, “You’ve also got a murderer running loose.”
“No one’s forgetting that,” J.X. said warningly.
Edgar took his hat off and slapped the generator with it, giving vent to more quiet but heartfelt swearing, the gist of which seemed to be That Damned Woman. I took it for granted he meant Rita—my jaded view of marital unions, I guess—but J.X. said, “Are you talking about Peaches?”
“That’s right,” Edgar said. “If that bitch hadn’t come around here, none of this would have happened.”
Not that I was exactly donning sackcloth and ashes for Peaches, but I didn’t see how the storm of the century could be blamed on her.
“That bitch was trouble from the minute she showed up,” he concluded.
I said, “She was originally a local girl, wasn’t she? Did you know her back when she was Patty Ann Stewbecki?”
Edgar gave me a long, grim look. “Yeah, I knew her,” he said at last. “Every boy around here knew her. And despite the fancy clothes and the fancy hairstyle and the fancy fingernails and the fancy name, she hadn’t changed any.”
He gave J.X. what they used to call “an old-fashioned look,” and J.X. said, “Hey, not guilty.”
Edgar shrugged, clearly not believing him. “Well, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.” As though he hadn’t spent eight and a half minutes cursing Peaches to Kingdom Come.
I said, “Steven Krass seemed pretty fond of her.”
Neither J.X. nor Edgar had an answer. We filed back out into the blustery wet, and Edgar locked the door behind us. Unspeaking—the wind would have swallowed our words in any case—we trekked back to the lodge.
Rita and Edgar gathered everyone in the main meeting room and doled out candles and matches and extra blankets. They reassured the conference attendees that power outages were nothing new in these parts, and that everything was under control.
“What about him?” one young woman said, pointing at me. She looked vaguely familiar. I thought she might be the one who had screamed for help after I discovered Krass’s body on the patio. She seemed, in my opinion, prone to hysterical outbursts.
J.X. said reassuringly, “Mr. Holmes will be staying out in his cabin.”
There were murmurs of approval. I opened my mouth to point out the obvious, that the generator had been sabotaged by someone who wasn’t me since I’d been locked up all day, but catching J.X.’s eye, I subsided. I understood why he didn’t want the attendees aware that the generator had been sabotaged, but I would have preferred not to star in the role of bogeyman. There were approximately fifty loudmouths in attendance who were going to leave this conference convinced that I was a homicidal maniac. Like my career wasn’t in enough jeopardy as it was.
The meeting disbanded, and the chicklets retreated to their rooms, clutching their candles like heroines in gothic novels, casting me disapproving looks as they queued past.
I made my way over to Rita. “Did you have a chance to find out anything on that earring I was asking about?”
She gave me a blank look. “What earring?”
“The earring that was in a glass on the dresser in Rachel Ving’s room.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I tried for patience, but I know I sounded agitated. “I was asking you about it this morning—right before I was dragged off to quarantine.”
“Do you know how much has happened here since this morning?”
“This was important, though. This could help prove—”
J.X.’s hand fastened around my arm. “Time to go,” he said, and despite the brisk tone, he was glowering at me. I was tempted to dig my heels in then and there, but the bitter awareness that he could put me in a headlock and drag me off—and was probably looking forward to doing so—forced me to give in with good grace.
Or at least give in.
He towed me right out of the room and down the hall to the heavy front door.
“Listen,” I gritted through my teeth, freeing myself at last. “I understand about not antagonizing this killer, but I don’t want to spend the next twenty years rotting in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. That earring is vital to my defense.”
“If you’re dead, you won’t need a defense.” He thrust my still-damp coat at me.
I shrugge
d it on, saying, “You’re going to great pains to make sure I can’t talk to anyone or build any kind of case that could help me.”
“So you know, I already asked the kid, Debbie, about the earring.”
“What did she say?”
He said calmly, “She said the glass was on the dresser, but it was empty.”
I stared at him. “That can’t be right.”
“I’m just telling you what she said. So you see, there’s no point going around blabbing to people that you think you’re being set up. You’re not going to get the answer you want, and you’re liable to draw the wrong attention.”
I was silent as he hauled open the door. In fact, I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say all the long trek back to my cabin. The night seemed eerily black and silent, the rain pattering steadily and the squishy thump of our boots the only sound as we walked. The perfect circle of J.X.’s flashlight beam bounced merrily ahead of us, highlighting puddles and clumps of weeds. Our breath smoked in the air. The cabins rose out of the lightless night. Dark windows and smokeless chimneys. About as uncheery a destination as could be.
J.X. unlocked my cabin door and pushed it wide.
I stepped inside and waited for him to lock me in and leave me alone in the woodsmoke warmed dark, but he stepped inside too and shut the door behind him.
Still saying nothing, he set the kerosene lantern he’d brought from the house on the table and lit it. The flame guttered and then lit, throwing crazy shadows across the rough wood interior.
“Why don’t you pour yourself a drink?” he said as he moved to the fireplace.
“I thought you said I drank too much.”
“You do, but tonight you’re entitled to have a drink. One drink,” he added. “You can pour me one too.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that this would make it my third drink of the evening; he knew as well as I did. Maybe he hoped I’d drink myself into a stupor, and anything that might shut me up for the night was worth a try. “To what do I owe this honor?” I asked bitterly, but I poured us each a slightly flat gin and tonic while he rekindled the fire in the fireplace. When the fire was crackling brightly, I handed him his drink.
