Swoopes folded back part of the cover that shielded the bed of his pickup truck. Lindsay recoiled when she saw a pair of spindly legs—taped together at the ankles—jutting out from the exposed part of the truck bed. The person lying in the truck wore dainty slippers made of exotic silk brocade embroidered with gold thread. Although the rest of the body lay concealed under the closed part of the cover, there was no mistaking those tiny, slippered feet. Simmy.
Swoopes lifted Lindsay by her hips and shoved her into the truck bed alongside Simmy’s motionless form. He secured the cover over the top of the truck bed and slammed the tailgate shut. With the cover sealed shut, the space inside became pitch black. Lindsay felt the cold, metal sides of the vehicle closing around her like a tomb. She kicked with all her might against the tailgate and cover, but it didn’t budge. A moment later, the truck started crunching over the sand. Its violent movements threw her from side to side, and she struggled to keep her head from slamming into something. Finally, when they came onto the road, the motion of the truck became more regular and the bumps became less jarring. Lindsay lay still, breathing heavily.
“Lindsay, honey, is that you?” came an urgent voice from nearby.
Lindsay could only emit a muffled cry in response.
“It’s me, honey. It’s Simmy. Did he hurt you?” Simmy paused, waiting for an answer. “I guess he probably taped your mouth. He taped me up, too, but the piece on my mouth came loose. I guess I wear so much makeup that it just slid off.” She laughed miserably. “He said he’s taking us to Patty’s house,” she continued. “He believes that one of us must know the combination to her safe.”
Lindsay’s spinning brain tried to process this information. Warren had told her that the safe was now empty—the police had confiscated all the guns as evidence. She realized that Swoopes must not know that the safe no longer contained anything valuable. Lindsay was sure she hadn’t revealed that information to anyone; Sarabelle must have assumed that the safe was still full and encouraged Swoopes to return to claim their prize.
Judging by the whooshing of the tires, the truck seemed to be moving quickly along the road. It would take less than 15 minutes to reach Corolla, another 15 to reach Aunt Harding’s house. Maybe another 30 minutes until Swoopes would discover that the safe was empty either by forcing it open or torturing the information out of Lindsay. One hour. Her last hour on the earth.
“Honey, I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, but no matter what, you need to know the truth,” Simmy began, speaking quickly and wriggling so close to Lindsay that their heads almost touched. “I’ve wanted to tell you so many times, but I guess the time just hasn’t been right. It’s probably good that you can’t answer back and you can’t get up and leave. You’ll have to hear me out.” She inhaled deeply. “I killed Patty. Not Leander Swoopes. Me.”
Lindsay’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom inside the truck bed, and she could make out the outline of Simmy’s tiny form. She was curled up, her knees pulled into her chest.
“I never got to finish my story before, but damn it all, I’m going to finish it right now, if it’s the last thing I do,” she said. “I told you about my hunch about Sarabelle being Rita’s daughter. Well, I felt sure that Patty must know something about it, so I drove straight over to her house and banged on her door. I told her I reckoned that Sarabelle was my granddaughter and wanted to know why she’d kept her from me.
“Patty let me come in but she was stone cold to me. I could tell by looking at her that my intuition was right, so I asked her how long she’d known. Turns out that she’d known for years. Years!” Simmy laughed bitterly. “When Sarabelle and your daddy were arrested when you were little, the authorities went through a whole long process of trying to find relatives to take you in. Of course you know that your daddy’s parents were already dead by that time, and Jonah and Sarabelle were both only children. When the Social Services got in touch with Patty, they’d explained that they’d tried to track down Sarabelle’s relations, and mentioned that Sarabelle’s mother, Rita Lutz, had been hard to find information about because she’d changed her name to Nancy Mix. Of course, I’d told Patty all about trying to make contact with Rita and how she’d up and disappeared, so the whole thing clicked into place for her right away.
“Well, I was beside myself when I found out how long she’d known. I had genuinely forgiven Patty for what happened with Peter. I guess things heal over better when you’re young. But this was different. I told her that I’d give her exactly one day to tell you, Jonah, and Sarabelle. If she didn’t, I was going to tell you all myself. She seemed resigned to it and agreed. I can’t even begin to describe what it was like for me when you showed up at my door that same night. Like a sign from above. It was all I could do not to blurt the whole story out then and there. All those years you lived with Patty… Maybe you should’ve lived with me?”
Lindsay, too, had been struck by the force of this alternate reality. If Patty had just told the truth back then, maybe Lindsay wouldn’t have grown up so lonely. Rather than spending her childhood in a Spartan home, devoid of basic comforts, she could’ve lived in a house that was bursting at the seams with too much of everything—too much laughter, too much music, too much love. Instead of just getting occasional sprinklings of Simmy’s joie de vivre, she could have bathed in it every single day. The missed opportunity was almost too much to bear.
Simmy’s revelations also solved another small mystery that, until that moment, had completely fled from Lindsay’s mind. On Christmas Eve, Simmy’s tires had already been deflated—because she’d been to Aunt Harding’s house earlier that day to confront her.
“I thought maybe she’d tell y’all over supper that night,” Simmy continued. “After all, we were having such a nice time together. But when you and your mama went into the kitchen, she said she needed to tell you without me there, so she could have a chance to apologize to you. I figured after all this time, one more night couldn’t hurt anything. She told me to come back first thing the next morning.
“I didn’t sleep that whole night. I got to the house around 7 a.m., and Patty was already sitting out on the front porch waiting for me. She said that she’d told you everything and you and your mama had gone down to the old fishing shack where we’d hidden Peter. Y’all had wanted to see where the whole thing began, she said.
“Now when I look back, it seems so stupid. Why would you have wanted to meet me out in some falling-down old shack at dawn on Christmas Day in the driving rain? I guess I was just so excited that I was going to get another chance to make things right that I would’ve met y’all on the top of Mount Everest at midnight. I always felt like I had so much to share if I’d had children—love, money, just everything—and now I’d finally get to. I could see how much Sarabelle needed help. And I’d seen how hard you’d had it growing up, too. I thought we’d all go for a walk on the beach and it would be happily ever after.
“Well, my heart pounded the whole way there and my legs couldn’t walk as fast as I wanted to make them go. When we got out there, though, I saw right away that I’d been duped. Nobody was there. I looked at Patty, and her eyes turned… I can’t even describe what she looked like. If I were a believer in such things, I’d say that a demon had hold of her soul. I know that a lot of people only saw her meanness, but she was always a good friend to me. Other than that one time, with Peter, she was always fiercely loyal. Always on my side, no matter what. Sometimes, it was almost too much, like she thought it was the two of us against the whole world. But in that moment, I couldn’t see that Patty at all. I remember telling her once that she needed to be more like the sand—just move around with the tides. Instead, she always set herself up like a seawall. And in that moment, it was like she cracked wide open.
“She said that you and Sarabelle were her family, and she wasn’t gonna let me take you away from her. She thought that you’d like me better and drop her like a hot potato, like Peter had. I actually laughed out loud because I t
hought it was so ridiculous. I told her that I didn’t want to take you away, and that she’d twisted herself all into knots over nothing. But I guess she believed that there was only but so much love on the planet. Like love was pieces of pie to fight over, instead of something that can grow as big as it needs to to fit everybody inside. By then I was hopping mad and told her that we owed it to you and Sarabelle to tell you the truth and I was gonna do it whether she liked it or not.
“I turned to walk out, but she shouted at me to turn back around. She pointed a gun right up at my chest, saying that it was Peter’s gun that he’d given to her. I couldn’t say anything—not because I was afraid of dying, but because after being so close to getting everything out in the open, now you and Sarabelle would never learn the truth. We’d carried these secrets for so long, and now Patty was trying to make me carry them into the grave. I was so angry that I rushed at her like a banshee and pushed the gun away. It dropped out of her hand and fired when it hit the ground. When I saw her fall, I stood there for a minute. But then I just turned around and walked away. Maybe you think that was terrible, that I didn’t try to help her. But in my mind, the Patty I knew had already died. I didn’t see where the shot hit her, but from what the police told me, there was nothing anybody could’ve done anyway. Peter’s gun shot her right through that twisted old heart of hers.”
Chapter 24
Lindsay had lost all sense of how much time had passed since Swoopes pitched her into the back of his truck. At some point during Simmy’s recitation, they’d passed from the paved road onto the sand road of the 4x4 beaches. Simmy had finished her tale, and now the two women lay silently side by side, each lost in her own thoughts.
Although Lindsay understood why Simmy had taken the chance to unburden herself of the tangled story of Lindsay’s ancestry and Aunt Harding’s death, she couldn’t help but wish that she could have spent her last few minutes of life in blissful ignorance of this tragic history. For one thing, the new knowledge only deepened the painful irony of Sarabelle’s betrayal. Simmy had been poised to offer Sarabelle everything that she had, but rather than receiving Simmy’s offer of money, a home, and security, Sarabelle had partnered with Swoopes to try to take those things by force. The revelations also increased Lindsay’s confusion over her aunt’s life and death. It was tragic beyond measure that her aunt’s ability to love was so warped that she’d lived and died as a prisoner of her own pettiness and jealousy. What might their lives have been like if only her aunt had been open to the possibility of happiness?
The truck moved more slowly now, wheels shushed by the sand—Aunt Harding’s house must be only minutes away. The shock of Kipper’s death and of being beaten and kidnapped had temporarily lulled Lindsay into a mute acceptance of her imminent death. But now she tried to focus on finding a way out of her situation. This is how she imagined that Simmy must have felt when Aunt Harding turned the gun on her in the shed. No!, she wanted to scream. She didn’t want the story to end like this, with her powerless and shivering in the back of a psychopath’s truck. She tried to get her brain to snap to attention, but it stubbornly slouched there, refusing to come up with an idea. She knew that physically she was no match for Swoopes. The throbbing in her jaw and abdomen testified to that. Her only hope was to outwit him.
The truck was stopping, and still no clever plan of escape revealed itself. Footsteps crunched on the sand, the tailgate opened, and Swoopes flipped back the tonneau cover. Although the clouds blocked out the light from the moon and stars, the night seemed almost supernaturally bright compared to the womb-like darkness of the closed truck bed. When she saw Swoopes, Simmy let out a terrified scream—the raw screech carried on the wind like the cry of a seagull. Lindsay twisted her body so she could see what was happening. When Swoopes realized that Simmy’s gag had come off, he dragged her toward him by the tape on her ankles. He took hold of her throat and pressed her against the bed of the truck. Simmy turned her face sideways, still screaming for all she was worth. Without a moment’s hesitation, Swoopes grabbed Simmy by the shoulders and slammed her backwards. Her head hit the side of the truck with a sickening thud. Simmy’s eyes rolled in her head and then closed. Swoopes pulled a piece of tape off the roll and fixed it over her motionless lips. Her wig had come off in the struggle and, through the wispy white hair that veiled Simmy’s scalp, Lindsay could see a sickening purple bruise forming.
With Simmy unconscious, Swoopes turned his attention to Lindsay. He grabbed her legs, pulling her violently from the truck and hoisting her over his shoulder like a sack of fertilizer. Although his shoulder dug painfully into her injured ribs, she still struggled against him with all her might until she heard him say, “You just keep on wiggling, little girl.” He stroked her rear end with one hand to emphasize the meaning behind his words. After that, she lay very still.
Swoopes had parked a few dozen yards away from the house, behind a clump of trees. He stomped up the back steps, entering Aunt Harding’s house through the kitchen. When they reached the dining room, he set Lindsay down with a thump on the floor next to the gun safe. “You stay right there,” he purred. “I need to go and collect your old lady friend.” He took a few steps back toward the kitchen, but then turned and gave Lindsay a running kick to her left hip. Tears sprang to her eyes and despite the gag over her mouth, she made a loud cry. “That’s just to make sure you do what Daddy says like a good little girl.”
Lindsay slumped over onto her right side, struggling to breathe. As the initial intensity of the pain subsided, the details of the room came into focus. Only a single lamp was lit, and it cast its sickly yellow light over the scene. The room bore no resemblance to the homey scene that had greeted her only a week before. On top of the dining table lay an oversized duffle bag, the type athletes used to transport their equipment. Lindsay presumed that this was to hold the supposed loot contained in the safe. Two of the dining room chairs had been overturned, and next to them, under the table, lay Sarabelle Harding’s battered body. Her right leg stuck out at an odd angle, and her back was facing Lindsay. Lindsay dug her heels into the ground and used her feet to inch herself toward her mother’s body. She came around the table to a vantage point that allowed her to see Sarabelle’s face. Her mother’s closed eyes were swollen grotesquely. Her bottom lip was split wide open and almost purple with bruising. Only the gentle rise and fall of her chest let Lindsay know that she was still breathing. Sarabelle’s right hand lay open on the floor in front of her. In her palm was Lindsay’s silver angel pin, the one she thought she’d lost at the hospital. She must have been clutching it when she fell.
Lindsay struggled to make sense of the scene. Did this mean that Sarabelle had tried to double cross Swoopes? Had she done something to anger him? Or had he simply decided that she had outlived her utility? And why was she holding Lindsay’s pin?
Lindsay heard footsteps on the back porch and quickly scooted back into her original position near the safe. The next thing she knew, Simmy was next to her, moaning softly, her eyelids fluttering. Leander Swoopes stood before them, blocking out the lamplight like the specter of the Grim Reaper. He leaned down and ripped the tape off their mouths. “All right now. Which one’a you is gonna tell me how to open this safe? Oh, and don’t bother screaming. Sarabelle tried that, but as you can see,” he said, kicking Sarabelle’s immobile foot with the toe of his boot, “didn’t nobody come to her rescue.”
He stalked back towards them and squatted in front of them. He held Simmy’s face in his hands. Her eyes lolled around in their sockets insensibly. He smacked her hard across the face, leaving a red imprint of his fingers. “Looks like I cleaned her clock a little too well. Earth to Old Lady!” he shouted, shaking her head from side to side. “What’s the combination to your friend’s safe?”
“What makes you think there’s anything in there?” Lindsay said, as much to distract him from further harming Simmy as to test how much he knew. “Maybe the gun you got was the only valuable thing there was.”
“Why are you so sure that one of us can open the safe?” Lindsay asked.
“Somebody has to know the combination, and it wasn’t Sarabelle. I know she’s a damn good liar, but she also knows my temper. I warned her that if she didn’t tell me, I’d have to involve you and the old lady. She never liked it when things had to involve you, so if she knew the combination, she would’ve said.” He glanced at Sarabelle’s still form and chuckled to himself. “She thought that she’d seen the last of me when she came out here, but she underestimated my…affection for her.”
“But you couldn’t always make her do what you wanted, right?” Lindsay said, trying to buy time to think. It seemed that maybe there had been some truth to Sarabelle’s story after all. She really had tried to get away from Swoopes and hide out. Rather than escaping from police custody as Swoopes’s accomplice, she’d been kidnapped by him as a victim. Lindsay calculated her options, and decided to take a risky path. “After all, she came out here. Slipped your net for a good few months.”
His eyes narrowed angrily. “She was stupid to think she could hide. Anyway, she did what I said in the end. At first, she only wanted to give me enough to pay me back what she owed. I never say no to an offer of money. But then she showed up with that gun as payment instead of my cash. I could see that it wasn’t any ordinary piece, so I asked her where she got it. She wouldn’t say right away, but I persuaded her. That’s how I knew about the other guns.”
A Death in Duck: Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series (Reverend Lindsay Harding Mystery Book 2) Page 23
