Since Fran had taken over, the paper had changed, and I’d assumed it was because she didn’t have the same knack. Often, surprisingly, only one side of an argument would be strongly represented in the letters section. I had told myself that Warfield was changing as it grew, that people no longer found it entertaining to fuss at the editor.
Several times Fran had reported things in ugly terms. When, occasionally, someone had given her the cold shoulder, I’d put it down to jealousy.
The paper had missed some political stories as well. She’d laughed off complaints, saying a weekly paper couldn’t do what a daily could, but now—
My face had come to rest in my hands. I rubbed my forehead.
Jennifer’s words made me jump. “You asked,” she said from far away.
“But are you sure—”
“Look, she was good at reading people. Victor hates this town, he hates his job, and most of the time he hates me and the kids. The community theater is his life. Yeah, he gets favors from the women who want good parts, but he doesn’t force them, and they don’t mind until he drops them for the next one. That’s when they get all morally outraged and find their way here.” She shook her head.
“Everybody knows, and nobody cares, but if it became official, if people were forced to confront it, then someone would take it away from him. It’d kill him.”
“Why do you stay with him?”
“None of your business.”
“No,” I whispered. What was wrong with me? I never asked personal questions. I pushed myself up from the table. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She trailed me as I walked to the front door. “You asked,” she said.
I opened the door. “Yes, I know.” Grateful for the brisk, cool breeze against my face I concentrated on walking a straight line to my bike.
I forced the pedals around and around. I felt dirty. Foolish. Angry. Utterly bereaved.
The bicycle tire turned and turned until I found myself in the cemetery among the McDowell graves. I laid Squeaky in the grass and sat on a green wooden bench, my arms wrapped around myself, tears leaking from beneath my eyelids. “Fran,” I whispered. “Oh, Fran.”
I’d ignored so many little things. I’d seen Fran the way I’d wanted to see her, but underneath—
So reasons existed to kill Fran. She played around with other people’s husbands. I’d known that. Sometimes she was rude and demanding. I’d ignored that. She stooped to blackmail. That, I couldn’t understand.
Had we been living in alternate universes? Me with a warm and loving friend named Fran. She, avaricious and capable of blackmail, with a stupid little friend named Liz.
She must have used the paper to influence and to punish. She must have taken money or—the thought clicked in—the black Mustang. What was it she’d said? It wasn’t a color she’d have chosen?
And Thursday night in our kitchen—she’d begged me not to ask her questions. She’d been warning me not to look.
I took a few restless steps and knelt by my grandparents’ grave. I picked pine needles out of the incised lettering on their stone.
And even for Fran, she’d been pretty pushy about starting out early on our New Zealand trip. Had she realized someone wanted to kill her?
My fingertips grew numb from the cold gravestone. In a few days, Fran would be lying under one of these, many miles away. “Oh, dear God,” I whispered, feeling the weight of the dirt that would press down on her, “Oh, dear God, don’t let her be afraid.”
I knelt there as the hissing rain approached me through the whispering trees, across the still graves and the smooth green grass. As they got closer, the raindrops sounded like hundreds of little feet. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and goose bumps swarmed over me.
I jumped up, grabbed Squeaky, and raced away. The rain caught up with me on the hill, a light spatter of drops at first, quickly changing to a sluice of cold water that pounded my head and bounced off the pavement.
I knew better than to ride down a steep, wet, twisting road, but I couldn’t make myself stop. I’d almost made it to the bottom when Squeaky hit a patch of rain-slicked leaves, and the two of us launched into space.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Arms and legs windmilling, I thumped to the ground so hard all the air rushed out of my mouth with a loud “Oomph.” As soon as I could breathe, I pushed myself into a sitting position and looked around. I saw the road, some fields, and a distant farm house. There were no witnesses to my ridiculous flight, thank heavens.
I’d landed where new weeds were poking up through previous years’ accumulations. I tried to stand but couldn’t make it. I sank back into my soggy nest.
I didn’t feel much like moving, anyway.
Squeaky reared up out of the culvert near the juncture of the old road and the highway.
I heard a car approaching. I ducked down, hoping not to be noticed in the heavy rain.
Water began to stream off the road and into the culvert I’d flown over.
I sat there, my left leg bent, my crossed arms on my knee pillowing my head, the rain pelting my neck, my shoulders, my back. If Fran were here, we’d be laughing. We always found things to laugh about. No matter what she’d done, she’d been my good friend, my best friend, warm, loving, supportive, vibrant with life. Perhaps she’d had things to atone for, but she hadn’t deserved to die.
I sat there, eyes closed, listening to the occasional swish of passing cars, the sound that’s so cozy when you’re inside a warm room looking out.
I got cold, then colder. When the shivering grew irritating, I opened my eyes to the dark afternoon. The culvert now had a lot of water in it.
A vehicle approached through the gloom, and I was about to hail it when I realized it was Gene’s battered old truck. Of all the trucks in all the world, why this one?
He got out wearing a dark poncho with the hood pulled up. He bore a marked resemblance to Death. All he needed was a scythe. Perhaps he thought his gun would do.
I stood, numb and shivering, as he jumped the culvert.
The rain splatted against his poncho. “Jeez, Liz, you look like shit. How long’ve you been out here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hicks said you were sitting here like some dumb duck.”
“He’s not too much into the protect and serve bit, is he?”
“He’s okay. He just doesn’t like you.”
“It’s going around these days,” I said.
“Yeah.” He nodded toward the hill. “I got a call from our senate hopeful. She doesn’t think you should be out questioning people. I agree.”
I’d have shrugged, but it seemed like too much trouble.
“Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.” He raised an eyebrow and said, “You can tell me what you’ve learned with your sleuthing.”
“Leave me alone,” I said, starting to turn away, but my balance was off, and I began to fall. I grabbed his poncho, my fingers slipping on its slick, wet surface. He tried to get me but missed, and I plunked back down into my nest of weeds.
“Quit being stubborn, Liz. You need help. I’m here. If it makes you feel better, pretend I’m somebody else, somebody from one of your books, maybe.”
“You jerk,” I said, my tongue thick.
He reached for me, and I flinched. He felt my forehead, then my neck. “You’re freezing. Come on.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?” He glared down at me, then crouched next to me. His voice soft, he said, “Liz, I’d never hurt you. Don’t you know that?”
He waited for a response, but with the shivering and teeth chattering and the sleepiness that was pulling me down, it was all I could do to focus on his face and see, but not understand, the expression in his eyes.
The next thing I knew, I was slung over his hard shoulder, looking down past his behind at the ground as it moved beneath us. Cursing, he splashed down into the ditch, then up. His truck door shrieked as he pried it op
en. He flung me in and slammed the door.
Seconds later I heard a crash from the truck bed. He’d thrown Squeaky, good faithful Squeaky. A stray tear made a warm track down my cheek.
He started the truck.
I closed my eyes as the world blurred by.
We stopped. I heard him open the passenger door. He sighed. “Godammit, Liz.” He slung me over his shoulder again, and lugged me past the Cabriolet’s back bumper, then up the steps and through the back porch.
I heard water running. He pushed me into a small, white space. I realized I was in the downstairs shower under hot water going full blast, Gene holding me upright. “Can you stand by yourself?” he asked.
I nodded.
He let go, and I slid down the wall and sat under the hot water spray. I couldn’t stop shivering.
After awhile, he reached in and pulled me around so the top of me was out of the stream of water. He put a mug to my lips. “Drink,” he said.
I took a sip of hot coffee loaded with sugar and cream. “I hate sugar in my coffee,” I said.
“Drink the damn stuff,” he growled, pushing the mug into my hands. “Why the hell didn’t I leave you out there?” He sank onto the green bath mat. He pulled a pink towel off the rack above him and began rubbing his sodden hair.
The coffee steadied my brain, and I realized just how weird I’d been feeling. “Gene, I think Jennifer Ward fed me brownies with drugs in them.”
“Did you have a good trip?”
“I’m sure there were drugs in those brownies. You should go arrest her.”
“Not tonight, Liz.”
“Gene, it’s your duty—”
“Lay off.”
“You hate me, don’t you?”
“No.”
“You think I’m a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, Gene, I really am. The trouble is, I don’t know what to say and all this stuff starts coming out of my mouth, and—”
“Don’t get weepy on me, Liz. I hate weepy drunks.”
“You’ve done your St. Bernard trick,” I snapped. “Go home.”
“I’d love to. Unfortunately, there’s no one here to watch out for you.”
“I don’t need a keeper!”
He snorted. “The hell you don’t.”
“Will you quit swearing?”
He covered his face with the towel and groaned. His blue shirt and his jeans were soaked, his boots dark with moisture, probably ruined by stepping into the water in the culvert. He sneezed.
“Gene, don’t you think you should go home?”
“When I know you’re not going to die of hypothermia.”
I drank more coffee. It felt good running down my inside while the shower ran down my outside. I was hardly shivering any more. I needed a nap. My eyelids were just nicely fitted together when I dropped the mug, jerked upright, and snatched away Gene’s towel. “What do you mean there’s no one home?”
“There’s no one here, not even the poodle.”
“Mother and Kirk and Meg should be here. Oh, my God! Kirk’s killed them! I thought the two of them together would be safe!” I struggled to get up, couldn’t quite manage it, so I tried to crawl out of the shower stall.
Gene shoved me back in. “Calm down. I looked around while the coffee was brewing. There’s no one here.”
“But their bodies could be hidden behind a piece of furniture.”
“Godammit, I’m a cop,” he yelled. “Don’t you think if there was a dead body here I’d have seen it? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“There’s a killer loose, you moron!” I screamed back.
His blue eyes glittered. “Liz, I’m about to shake you till your eyes rattle. You want to calm down on your own?”
My mind was a cyclone of fear, urging action, not knowing what to do. I took a deep breath, then another, feeling my head growing clearer. I said, “Let me get up now.”
He withdrew his hands. “Okay, but you’re not going anywhere till you take off those wet clothes. I’ll go get something dry.”
“No!” I grabbed his wet shirt as he turned away. “I’ll go up and get clothes. You look through the house—carefully this time.”
After he strode off, I stripped off the wet clothes, then wrapped one towel around my hair and another around my body. I hauled myself up the stairs.
Gene was just coming out of Meg’s room. “I’ve been through everything, there’s no sign of them.” He paused in the doorway to my room. “We’ve got to keep this in perspective. They must have gone off together—a killer wouldn’t bother to take the dog.”
I was only half listening. I opened a drawer and pulled out underwear at random and threw them on the bed and opened another drawer.
“No sign of a struggle, either,” he said.
“What now?”
He didn’t answer.
I grabbed jeans and a sweater and turned.
His eyes had grown very dark.
I crossed my arms over the clothing I held.
He looked at me with such a strange expression, his eyes wide open, but almost unfocused as they stared at me, his mouth compressed to a tight, thin line. It was possible he was about to laugh or to cry. Possible he had gone beyond his usual range of anger to something I’d never seen before.
My skin pulled tight. I was aware of my nakedness under the towel. Of the soft, fuzzy wool of the sweater I clutched. I said, “Gene?” in a voice that belonged to a little girl waking up in the dark, seeing a shadow in her room, hoping it’s someone safe and familiar, afraid it’s the bogeyman. “Gene?”
He sighed. His eyes focused on my face. He was Gene again. He scrubbed at his damp hair with his hand. “Out there,” he gestured toward the window and beyond, “you were afraid of me. Why?”
Could I tell him about the pictures? After all, if he’d wanted to harm me, he’d already had the opportunity. I just didn’t know. As if from a long distance away, I heard my scratchy voice say, “Three people have died since Thursday. Doesn’t it make sense to be afraid?”
“Not of me.” He shook his head. “How could you think it was me?”
“You suspected me.”
“No. I had to question you, see if you knew something that might be significant, but I never thought you did it. Never. If I know that about you, why don’t you know it about me?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He shook his head again. “Get dressed,” he said as he closed the door behind him.
The phone rang. It had to be Mother or Meg. I leaped onto the bed and stretched my arm out to grab the receiver and said, “Where are you?”
Silence.
It was the caller. I knew it. My heart stuttered, then galloped. No fear, I couldn’t show fear. “What do you want?” My voice rasped.
A muffled giggle. Was it a man or a woman’s laugh? It was in between, could be either. I was afraid to guess, afraid to be wrong about something so vital. After that one, short sound, silence.
A noise behind me. I pushed up onto my knees and twisted.
Gene walked softly across the room. He mouthed, “Who?”
“The killer,” I mouthed back. I said loudly into the phone, “Why are you calling me?”
Gene tiptoed closer and bent so his head was level with mine. I tilted the phone so we could both hear. Not even the sound of breathing came through the phone.
“Who is this?” I demanded.
The caller whispered, “How does it feel?”
Ice raced through me.
“What have you done?” I screamed.
Gene’s dank shirt brushed my side as he stretched across the bed. He hit the memo button. The phone beeped, but the sound was lost as the caller asked, “Who do you love most?”
Not a good question to answer. Did the caller have Meg and Mother and Kirk? I shivered.
Gene studied the digital readout on the phone, then made a gesture with his hands as if he were pulling taffy. He mouthed something at m
e, but I didn’t know what. He tiptoed from the room.
“You have so much,” the caller said. “You will find out how it feels to lose everything.”
“Stop it! Don’t hurt them. If you hate me so much, come after me.”
“You will cry.” A moment’s silence, then a click as the phone was disengaged.
I dropped the receiver and ran down the stairs yelling for Gene.
I rushed to the kitchen, nearly colliding with him.
He pushed me out of his way and raced for the back door. “Stay here, keep the doors locked, don’t let anyone but me back in,” he yelled over his shoulder.
I caught up with him on the porch steps and grabbed his shirt. “Where are you going?”
He pulled away from me. “Lock the door.”
“Gene!”
“No time,” he yelled, clambering into his truck. “Get back inside.” The engine roared, and his tires threw up big rooster tails of water as he raced away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As I turned to go back into the house, I thought I saw someone move on the Ferguson’s porch. Great! If Jill had seen us, rumors of Gene and me in wild debauchery were sure to be flying around Warfield in the next fifteen minutes.
I pulled my towel more firmly about me and went inside. Where had Gene gone? What clue had he gotten? The phone number on the phone’s display panel. I locked the door behind me and hurried upstairs.
The number was still on the phone. I called the main library and had them check it in the crisscross directory. They had no listing.
Shivering, I pulled on clothes.
I called the rectory just in case. Answering machine. Where could they be? I remembered Alisz and Jared saying they would come for Meg. What had I been thinking? Alisz and/or Jared could be the murderer, and I’d given them the go-ahead?
“Oh, my God,” I moaned. There was no one I could trust. I called Alisz’ number. Answering machine. Didn’t anyone stay home?
Downstairs, I put the kettle on. Music books lay scattered on the table with three cups and saucers holding cold tea. A sheet of binder paper held only music titles and page numbers in Meg’s loopy handwriting.
Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly Page 18
