by Joanne Fluke
“I’ve got all night for something like that,” Tucker shot right back.
“Unfortunately, we’ve only got three minutes or so,” Hannah said. “I don’t want to get locked in.”
“Oh, you won’t. I can let you out the back way.” Tucker jingled the ring of keys in his pocket. “You didn’t tell anybody else what you thought about me, did you?”
“No. And now that they caught the real killer, I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Me, too.” Tucker gave a little chuckle. “Why did you suspect me anyway?”
The lights flickered again and Hannah took another sip of her coffee. She really wanted to head for the gate with the crowd, but she owed Tucker an answer. “Because one of the 4-H kids saw Willa with a cowboy and I thought it was you,” she explained. “And because when Willa walked past the roping demonstration with me, she almost passed out cold from shock. I thought you were her husband, Jess Reiffer.”
“Her husband?” Tucker looked completely mystified. “But I’m not married. I’m engaged to Brianna.”
“I know that. And I realize that if anyone was Willa’s husband, it’s Buck Jones.”
“Hold on.” Tucker held up his hand as the lights flickered for the fourth time. “Buck Jones is the bum we fired right after the rodeo on Tuesday. Sam said Riggs caught him slacking off on the setup.”
“I know. Ruby told me about it. We think that’s what happened when you got thrown and Curly got hurt. Ruby’s almost sure there were supposed to be more barrels. She figures Buck hid some so he didn’t have to move them all out.”
Tucker’s mouth dropped open. “So that’s what was different! I knew something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. What do you think Buck did with the barrels?”
“I don’t know. You’ll probably find them when you pack up the show.”
“Probably.” Tucker glanced up as the lights flickered again. A moment later, there was a hollow thunk and then the dim strings of nightlights went on.
“I’ll take you out the back way,” Tucker said, looping his leg over the seat and standing up.
“Okay,” Hannah agreed, taking a bit longer to extricate herself from the picnic-style table with the attached seat. “What really threw me off was the engagement ring.”
“You mean the one I gave Bri?”
“That’s right.” Hannah followed him past the deserted food booths and onto the midway. “It was the inscription inside.”
“Yesterday and Today,” Tucker repeated. “And her wedding ring is gonna have, Tomorrow and Forever. What’s wrong with that?”
“Those same words were written on a florist card that Willa kept. That’s why I thought she was tied to you somehow.”
“You don’t know?” Tucker asked, grinning his engaging grin.
“Know what?”
“It’s from a country-western song. Somebody big sang it. I forget who. You must not listen to country-western music.”
“Not often,” Hannah admitted. She was about to ask him the name of the song so that she could tell Norman, when she heard the first two bars of the William Tell overture and they seemed to be coming from her purse. “What’s that?”
“Sounds like a cell phone.”
Hannah reached in to grab it. “Oh, great! Andrea must have turned it on. I hate these things. Hold on a second and I’ll shut it off.”
In the dim glow from the strings of nightlights all the icons looked alike and it was impossible to tell the green phone from the red phone. Hannah pressed buttons at random trying to find the right one and dropped the phone in her purse again. They’d just started to walk down the midway when she heard her sister’s voice. It was muffled from inside her purse, but it was perfectly audible.
“Hannah? We were wrong about Buck Jones. He stole the money, but he didn’t kill Willa. Are you there?”
She really didn’t need to hear this now. Hannah hoped that Andrea would assume she wasn’t there and hang up. But her sister’s voice continued to resonate from the depths of her purse.
“Hannah? I’m just hoping you’re hearing this and it didn’t go to voice mail, because they checked out his alibi and it’s good. Buck Jones was at the Corner Tavern when Willa was killed, eating a sixteen-ounce porterhouse and a rock lobster. Nick Prentiss remembers him because he had too much champagne and he tried to dance with Albert, the grizzly. Anyway, call us back. We’re getting worried about you.”
Buck Jones hadn’t done it. And that meant every one of her suspicions about Tucker were still valid. Hannah turned to glance at him and swallowed hard. His boyish, gal-winning grin had turned into a nasty gal-slaying grin. And he was grinning it straight at her.
“Uh-oh!” Hannah breathed. And then she was off and running as fast as she could, down the midway heading for…
She didn’t know what she was heading for, but that didn’t slow her pace. She’d stop at the first place she found to hide. It had worked before when she’d hidden behind the hay bales from Willa’s killer. And now he was after her. And nobody knew she was here at the fairgrounds in danger!
Hannah shut off her mind and concentrated on making her feet move. Left, right, left, right, as fast as she could go. She didn’t turn to look, but she could feel that Tucker was behind her and that made her run faster. She rounded a corner, hurtled a fence with the grace of an elephant and found herself in the enclosure that housed the tilt-a-whirl.
Hide, Hannah’s mind said. And she did. Before anyone could say There’s a psychopathic rodeo cowboy killer after you, and you should take cover, she was huddled in one of the tilt-a-whirl carts, hoping against hope that Tucker hadn’t seen her tumble in.
Chapter Thirty-One
Hannah huddled on the floor of the round orange cart. She could see the moon above her through the double bars of the safety handle, a thin sliver of pale blue-white. Not a full moon. That was in her favor. And the fact that the string of dim nightlights was not directly over her cart was in her favor, too.
Footfalls pounded past her on the dirt path and Hannah held her breath. Would he find her hiding place and kill her? But the sound receded and Hannah realized that he’d run past the tilt-a-whirl and around the corner.
She wasn’t out of the woods yet, but perhaps she could stack the deck in her favor. Without even realizing that she’d generated two clichés in a row, Hannah rummaged in her purse for her cell phone. Norman was number one. She’d call him and tell him to send Mike out to the fairgrounds to save her. At full speed in his powerful cruiser Mike could be here in ten minutes.
There was a clinking sound and Hannah felt her hold on reality slipping. Tucker was doing something two rows over, and she thought she knew what it was. He was taking the chain from the strong man mallet. Mike might be able to be here in ten minutes, but she could be dead in five!
She had to think of some way to delay Tucker if he found her. She’d kept killers talking for longer than that in the past. They seemed to like to tell her about their exploits, to explain why they’d done what they’d done. Perhaps it was ego. Perhaps it was stupidity. Whatever it was, she’d take it.
Hannah’s fingers punched in a one, and then the button she thought contained the green phone icon. And then, wonder of wonders, the phone started to ring.
“Call Mike!” she gasped when Norman answered. “I’m hiding. Tilt-a-whirl. Tucker killed…”
Hannah stopped abruptly as her phone went dead. Hannah heard it go with two clicks and a beep. The dying swan had gasped its last breath and Hannah could only hope that she wasn’t in the same boat.
That was when she heard it, a squad car with siren screaming in the distance, racing down the highway that led to the fairgrounds. But she also heard something else and that was the sound of someone running straight for her. Hannah looked down at her choice of weapons. Nothing. And then she looked down at her means of defense. All she had was her saddlebag purse and while it might deflect one blow from the strong man mallet if she was very lucky, it couldn’
t last forever.
Frantically, she looked around her for ammunition, anything that she could use to thwart a killing blow. There was nothing, unless a piece of grape bubblegum sticking to the safety handle counted. She’d have to depend on her wits to save her. And at that moment, she felt quite witless.
The night wind picked up, blowing down the midway and kicking up debris from the trash cans. They were in for another summer storm. A crumpled Dixie cup zipped past Hannah’s cart, closely followed by several scraps of paper.
She heard rather than saw him coming. The sound of his boot heels hitting the dirt was like thunder. Hannah did her best to emulate a piece of flat cardboard in the bottom of the cart and prayed that Mike would get here soon. She no longer heard the siren. Perhaps it hadn’t been a police cruiser after all. It could have been an ambulance, or a fire truck, or…Hannah deliberately stopped thinking of other vehicles with sirens. She had to believe that it was a police cruiser and help was coming. The alternative was unthinkable.
And that was when it happened. Something she’d never expected. Opportunity dropped in her lap. It occurred quite literally as a black plastic raincoat someone had left on the seat of the cart just above her was blown up and out. It hovered in the air for a moment, looking like a huge black bat, and then the wind ceased and it dropped down to land in her cart. Some would call it fate, providence, perhaps even divine intervention. Whatever the origin, it was incredible timing. The coat spread over her like a welcome blanket only seconds before he walked through the opening in the fence and stepped up to her cart.
The raincoat was directly over her face. It was nearly suffocating her, but she dared not move. Through the narrow slit of one buttonhole, she could see him looking down at her and she held her breath and fought her urge to scream. Was this how a mosquito felt a split-second before a giant human palm came down to flatten it into oblivion? If that were true, she’d never kill another mosquito as long as she lived!
Several thoughts ran through Hannah’s mind so fast they seemed simultaneous. Was the plastic raincoat thick enough to camouflage her shape and render her nearly invisible in the dim light? Had she told her family that she loved them lately? Would Norman take Moishe after she was gone? Would it hurt when Tucker killed her? Would Lisa manage to work the quirks out of the recipe for Black Forest Cookies that had her stymied?
And then he was turning away. The raincoat had worked! She was saved! But a second later, it was snatched away and he was grinning down at her. “Did you really think I wouldn’t see you?”
It was too late for hiding, but perhaps she could buy a little time. “I was hoping,” she said.
“And now you’re going to try to keep me talking until your boyfriend gets here, right?”
“Which boyfriend?” Hannah asked, the reply coming to her lips almost automatically.
“That deputy in the hospital.”
“Mike Kingston,” Hannah said his name, half-hoping he’d magically materialize. Of course that didn’t happen, so she went on. “I thought maybe you meant Norman Rhodes.”
“A gal like you has got two boyfriends?” Tucker Smith, or Jess Reiffer, or however the man who meant to kill her thought of himself, gave an ominous little chuckle. “That’s enough talking from you. This’ll be over in a second.”
“Did Willa know it was coming?” Hannah asked, shuddering as he bent over to pick up the strong man mallet.
“Naw. I got her in the back of the head. I’m gonna have a little trouble with you, being as you’re inside that tilt-a-whirl cage. Might take me two or three tries.”
“Wait!” Hannah called out as he reached out for the mallet. “Why did you kill Willa? She wasn’t any threat to you.”
“Two million dollars. That’s why I killed her. That’s how much money I’m gonna inherit when I marry Bri and Sam dies. But I couldn’t marry Bri when I was already married, could I?”
“What was wrong with divorce?” Hannah asked.
“Willa didn’t want a divorce. She said she was still in love with me. And if I hadn’t played along, she would have said something to somebody about that time I spent in jail. And then…”
“Were you driving that car that was behind us when Norman and I left the school?” Hannah interrupted him.
“Yeah, that was me. The guy you had with you is some driver. I still don’t know how I lost you.”
Hannah sent a silent thank-you to Norman, along with a silent plea for someone, anyone to do something to save her. “And right before we got to the school, you went through Willa’s desk and cut yourself out of your wedding picture?”
“That’s right. Didn’t want anyone to recognize me. Now stop talking, sister, and sit real still. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have to.”
“I thought you were a good rider,” Hannah said, hoping his vanity would distract him.
“I am a good rider.”
“It didn’t look like it in the arena. Unless…did you let that bull throw you on purpose?”
“Of course I did.”
“Then it all makes sense. And because you’re such a good rider and you made it look so real, nobody suspected that you set Curly up.”
Tucker was smiling as he took a step closer to her cart. “You know, you’re pretty smart. Too bad it won’t do you any good.”
“I’m not that smart,” Hannah retorted. She had to keep him talking. “I still haven’t figured out why you tried to kill Curly.”
“That one’s easy. Curly found out who I really was, and he gave me an ultimatum. He said if I didn’t leave town right after the rodeo was over, he’d tell Brianna and Sam.”
“So you tried to kill him?”
“Yup. And I’ll finish the job right after I take care of you. Now you just stay there nice and still and it’ll be over real quick.”
Hannah raised her purse to block his blow, but he grabbed it out of her hands and dropped it on the ground. “That’s just gonna delay things.”
Hannah watched the mallet rise up in his arms. It hovered overhead and was just starting its whizzing descent when she flew forward, then, backward, then around in a circle.
For a second, she thought she was dying. People who’d described near-death experiences talked about walking into the white light, but she’d never heard anyone mention a whirling wind tunnel. She was aware of the wind blowing against her hot cheeks, she could see the sliver of moon flashing by overhead, she could hear calliope music playing loudly, and she could feel her stomach churning. Since there was no way throwing up to the strains of “Yankee Doodle” could be a part of anyone’s journey to the hereafter, she must be still alive. And someone had turned on the tilt-a-whirl to whisk her away out of danger!
Hannah struggled to lift herself off the floor. It took some doing, but after several attempts, she managed to scramble onto the bench seat and grasp the safety handle. As the cart whirled crazily, she looked down to see Mike fighting with Tucker.
Mike was alone! And while he was strong and fit, so was Tucker. Hannah watched as she whirled past. On the first whirl, Mike was on top, but on the second, Tucker had the upper hand. Then it was Mike, Tucker, Mike, Tucker…she had to do something to give Mike an edge!
She could help Mike if she were on the ground, but the tilt-a-whirl was going too fast for her to jump out. She’d never make it. She couldn’t even stand up in the cart without being thrown back into her seat. If her phone was working, she could call for backup, but it was as dead as she would have been if Mike hadn’t flipped the lever to start the tilt-a-whirl. What could she do with a dead phone besides throw it away and…
That was it! She’d throw the phone to distract Tucker. Hannah tried to stand up, but she was thrown back when the cart began its dizzying descending whirl. She couldn’t even lean out to throw. The centrifugal force pinned her against the back of the seat like a bug on a moving windshield. She was about to throw the phone anyway and hope for the best when she noticed something.
Most of the tim
e, the cart whirled madly this way and that, alternating between left swirls and right swirls. But there was one place, just as it reached the apex, when the cart hovered for a moment, caught between two equal forces, one from the left and one from the right. If she threw the phone then, she might actually hit something that would distract Tucker so that Mike could finish him off.
The music played gaily as Hannah’s cart whirled. Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony. Stuck a feather in his hat and called it…She reached the apex on the third syllable of macaroni, raised her arm and let loose with all the force she could muster. And then the dizzying whirl began again and she had no idea if she’d succeeded, or not.
“Way to go, Hannah!” she heard Mike yell. “You hit him in the head!”
And then there were other voices yelling over the sound of the calliope. There were several deputies with Mike now, and she thought she heard Norman calling her name. She was about to shout out for someone to put an end to her newest least-favorite carnival ride when the music ceased and her cart slowed and stopped at the very bottom.
“Thanks,” she said, as Norman took her arms and helped her out. “What are you doing here?”
“I jumped in the car the second after you called me. They patched me through to Mike and I talked to him on my way out here. He was already halfway here.”
“But if you hadn’t called him yet, how could Mike have been halfway here?” Hannah asked, congratulating herself for regaining her powers of logic. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet regained her powers of locomotion, because she felt as wobbly as one of Winnie Henderson’s newborn foals.
“I ran Tucker’s fingerprints and I got a hit for Jess Reiffer.” Mike arrived just in time to answer her question. “Come on, Norman. You take one arm and I’ll take the other and we’ll walk her to your car. I’ll bring her truck by later.”
“Hold it,” Hannah said, digging in with both feet as they rounded the corner by the box office. She was still shaky and a bit woozy, but what Mike had said didn’t make sense.
