Devlin's Light

by Mariah Stewart

  “Nick, what—”

  “India, no … go back.” Nick’s voice was curt with alarm.

  Behind her other footsteps followed, but she ceased to hear them as she neared Nick and the figure he was leaning over. Darla lay face down on the ground, her blond hair now crimson. Blood splattered her shoulders and the back of her dress. With a cry, India fell to the ground next to Nick and reached for her friend.

  “Don’t touch her,” Chief Carpenter warned. “Wait for the ambulance.” He turned to Nick and said, “It looks like she’s lost a lot of blood. Did you find a pulse?”

  “Yes, but it’s weak.” Nick backed away to make room for the chief.

  “Dar?” India leaned over her. “Dar?”

  “Come away, India,” Nick tried to gently raise her, but she would not go. “The ambulance is here. Look, here come the EMTs with a stretcher.”

  “Darla?” India repeated as if she had not heard. Her tightly fisted hands dug into her gut and she cried without even knowing.

  “Nick!” She sobbed in disbelief as the ambulance crew carefully and efficiently guided the still body onto the stretcher and gently secured it. “Why would someone do this to her? Why would anyone want to hurt Darla?”

  Nick shook his head and gathered her into his arms and let her cry, asking himself the same question. He did not like the answer that was beginning to swim in his brain. He did not like it at all.

  Chapter 27

  “Can I stay with her?” a shaken India asked the young emergency-room doctor.

  “Maybe later.” He brushed past her as if she was invisible before seeming to evaporate before India’s eyes as he moved behind the curtain where Darla lay on a gurney.

  “Come wait out here with me, India.” Nick tried to lead her toward the waiting room.

  “I want to stay with her,” she protested.

  “Sweetheart, you’ll be in the way,” he told her gently. “Let the doctors take care of her, and then you can sit with her for as long as you want. Right now let them do their jobs so that they can help her.”

  India nodded numbly and followed Nick into the waiting room, where several rows of worn and faded orange-colored chairs were lined up with clinical precision across the length of the room. He guided her to a chair and pushed gently on her shoulders, indicating for her to sit, and she did so woodenly. He dropped some coins into a vending machine and handed her a paper cup of darkly questionable coffee, knowing she wouldn’t drink it, but it would give her something to do with her hands. Chief Carpenter came in and spoke softly with Nick, but India was unable to comprehend the conversation. All India understood at that moment was that they had all lost too much. They could not lose Darla too.

  She rose and paced, becoming nearly hypnotized by the simple process of putting one foot in front of another. At some point the doctor emerged to speak with the chief, who followed him down the hallway, speaking in hushed tones.

  “What?” India asked Nick, wide-eyed.

  “I don’t know,” he told her. “She’s still unconscious, Carpenter said. They’re moving her to a room.”

  “I want to go.” India muttered.

  “I know that. Let them get her settled and we’ll see if we can arrange that.”

  Forty minutes later, India stood in the doorway of a dimly lit room. Darla lay on her stomach, black stitches running across the back of her head like train tracks where her hair had been cut. Several strands still held vestiges of blood, the dull brown red mixing obscenely with the pale gold. There seemed to be tubes and monitors everywhere.

  “Are you a relative?” the doctor asked from the doorway.

  “A friend,” India whispered.

  “Normally we only permit relatives to stay,” the young woman told India as she made a note on the chart, “but since none have arrived yet, we’ll let you take the first shift.”

  Nick moved a chair close to the bed for India to sit in, but she could not stay in it. She stood, rather, next to the bed, gently rubbing Darla’s arm and talking her from kindergarten through to the present in a steady stream.

  “Remember when we were about five and you got caught picking Mrs. Murdoch’s prized marigolds?”

  “Remember that summer we went to camp and we tried to sneak across the lake in a canoe?”

  “Remember when we were sophomores and we got locked out of the house in our nightshirts at Candy Allen’s sleep-over party?”

  On and on through the night, India kept up the dialogue, hoping for something as small as the flutter of an eyelash, but Darla’s condition never changed.

  “Remember when you and Lynnie and I got caught smoking in the back of the bus on the way back from a basketball game?”

  “I remember that.” A soft voice drew her attention to the doorway. “Junior year. You were both grounded for a month and drew severe censure from the principal.”

  “Kenny.” India held her arms out to the man who had once been Darla’s husband.

  He hugged her briefly before stepping past her, nodding absently to Nick and seating himself gingerly on the side of Darla’s bed. With one tentative hand, he gently stroked her back and began to cry.

  “You tell me why anyone would want to hurt her.” Kenny drew a hand through his thick dark brown hair.

  “I was thinking maybe you could do that.” Chief Carpenter stood in the doorway.

  “Chief, you have got to be kidding.” Kenny shook his head in disbelief. “You couldn’t possibly think I would do something like this.”

  “I’m looking for motive, son.” The officer came into the room and leaned against the radiator, which fussed and hissed.

  “You’re going to have to look someplace else,” Kenny told him.

  “Chief, Kenny would never hurt Darla.” India stepped forward to defend him.

  “Well, India, let’s take a good look at this thing.” Carpenter sat in the chair opposite Nick’s. “We have a woman who has been struck in the back of the head with a blunt object—possibly a baseball bat or piece of pipe, we’re not sure—not once but several times. It appears that someone wanted to not just hurt her, but to kill her.”

  “Darla doesn’t have an enemy in this world—”

  “Now India, that’s just exactly what we used to say about your brother,” Carpenter argued. “And there are some folks in town who still aren’t sure that Kenny ever forgave Ry for stealing his wife.”

  “Ry Devlin did not steal my wife, Chief,” Kenny said as if very tired. “Ry had just married Maris when Darla and I separated.”

  “Well, there are some who think that there was hard feelings there just the same.” Carpenter rubbed his chin while watching Kenny’s face. It showed nothing.

  “Chief, I love Darla. I never stopped loving her. Not when she left me, not when she decided she was going to marry Ry. I always knew she had feelings for him. When he came back to town a few years ago, I knew it was only a matter of time.” Kenny sighed. “I just figured that Ry was an itch that Darla had to scratch. But I didn’t kill him for it, and I didn’t try to kill her.”

  “Can you tell me where you were tonight, Kenny?”

  “I was home, Chief.”

  “Anyone with you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you leave the house at any time?”

  “No.”

  “Is there anyone who can confirm that you were there?”

  “My son, Jack, called me just before midnight. I told him he could stay up late and call me. The baby-sitter would be able to tell you that.”

  “Who baby-sat for your kids tonight?”

  “Jenny Adams.” He nodded in India’s direction. “The kids are at the Devlin house with Corri.”

  “That’s right,” India told him. “Darla and I shared a baby-sitter. And Jack did say he was calling his dad right at midnight.”

  “Well, unfortunately, we don’t know what time Darla was attacked yet.” He stood up and looked at Kenny for a long time, then sighed loudly. “Son, I am afraid that
I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t ask you to come down to the station with me to answer a few more questions.”

  Kenny Kerns stood up slowly, looking not so very different than he had in high school, his hair curling over the collar of his plaid flannel shirt and his long athletic legs wrapped in jeans. His face, however, bore a look of resignation that aged him before India’s very eyes.

  “Tell her I was here if she wakes up,” Kenny said to India. “Tell her that I…”

  “I know,” India told him. “I will.”

  India watched as the two men walked down the quiet hallway toward the elevator.

  “Nick—” she turned to him—“Kenny Kerns did not do this. There was no reason for him to want to hurt her. Darla told me that they were getting comfortable with each other for the first time in years.” India began to pace as she spoke. “That Kenny had stopped drinking, that he was seeing the kids on a regular basis. That they were spending more time talking. But for the life of me, I cannot think of any reason why anyone would want to hurt her.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if anyone did,” Nick said.

  “What do you mean?” India paused in midstride.

  “Maybe Darla wasn’t the target,” he said softly.

  “Make sense, Nick.”

  “Maybe it was supposed to be you.”

  “Me? Who would want to kill me?”

  “Maybe the same someone who killed Ry.”

  “Why?”

  “If we knew why,” he told her, “we’d know who. But think about it. You and Darla were dressed alike. You look so alike. In the dark, no one would have known it wasn’t you.”

  He stood up and put his arms around her. “India, I think we need to have one more conversation with the chief tonight. There is a murderer in Devlin’s Light, but I don’t think it’s Kenny Kerns.”

  “I’d feel better if you were in that car with them,” Nick told Indy as Delia’s silver Jaguar carefully negotiated the crunching stones that made up Nick’s driveway. “Mother was perfectly willing to have you come with August and Corri to stay for the week. And I think there’s a greater need to get you out of town than either of them.”

  “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to them.” India crossed her arms and shook her head. “They’ll have a great time with your mother—Corri has never been permitted to take time off from school before—and I’ll have a great time here with you. Chief Carpenter and his officers will keep an eye on the house on Darien Road, and you will keep an eye on me.”

  “Well, I admit that the thought of having you here twenty-four hours a day, every day for a week, has a certain appeal.”

  “I would hope so.” She looped an arm through his and pulled him up the step to the wooden walk on the side of the cabin. “And besides, I can’t leave town while Darla is touch-and-go, Nick. I have to be there for her.”

  “I understand.”

  “It looks like we might get some snow.” She pointed skyward as they reached the back of the cabin. The low-lying clouds were plump as feather beds and just as lofty.

  “Maybe we’ll get snowed in,” he mused. “Maybe we should take a run to the grocery store and stock up.”

  “You could drop me off at the hospital for a while.”

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “You will not be out of my sight until this is over.”

  “Nick, you cannot possibly be with me every minute of every hour from now until whenever.”

  “Watch me.” He grinned.

  “I will.” She poked him in the ribs as she went up the steps and into the house, leaving him leaning over the deck railing watching a ragged line of snow geese fly overhead.

  She came back out with her pocketbook slung over her shoulder. “Drive me into town now and we’ll do a little food shopping and we’ll spend the rest of the afternoon with Darla.” She wrapped her arms around him from behind and whispered, “I’ll make it worth your while when we get back.”

  “A trip into town it is—” he grinned—“and I’ll take you up on that little offer later.”

  There was no change in Darla’s condition, though the doctors all said that she could regain consciousness at any time. India did not want her oldest friend to be alone when that happened, so she tried to spend every day there, leaving Darla to Kenny in the evening. No charges had been made against Darla’s exhusband, his next-door neighbor having assured the police that she had heard Kenny moving around the apartment at different times throughout the night, but she never did hear him leave. Since her beagle barked at every noise, she was certain she would have heard him had he come down the steps that night. It had seemed that Chief Carpenter had mixed feelings about letting Kenny go home. On the one hand, it meant that Kenny was innocent, as the chiefs gut told him the young man was. On the other hand, it meant that Nick Enright was probably right about there being a killer loose in Devlin’s Light, a suspicion that sent Carpenter’s ulcer reeling along with his blood pressure.

  Under other circumstances, a week to spend alone with Nick would have seemed like pure heaven, but under a threatening cloud, her stay at the cabin was marked by a lack of gaiety, a somberness that even Nick’s warmth and love could not dispel. Only at night, in Nick’s arms in the big bed they shared with Otto the Bear, did India forget that the same threat that had sent her brother to his grave and had put her best friend into a coma now appeared to hang over her.

  On the third morning of her stay, India got out of the shower, dressed and went into the kitchen for the big breakfast Nick had promised her and found him on the phone.

  “Thanks, Mom. I appreciate the information. No, I’m not sure what it means. Right, I will. Talk to you soon.” He hung up the phone and stood looking out the kitchen window for a long minute.

  “Okay,” she said from the doorway. “Spill it.”

  “What’s that?”

  India made a face. “Don’t be cute with me, Nick.”

  “My mother had a private investigator trying to track down the employee of Byer’s World who had arranged for the supposed sale of your land.”

  “Will Shuman, his name was.”

  “Right. Well, this P.I. couldn’t find a trace of him.” India raised an eyebrow. “Did he check with social security, voter registration?”

  “He ran traces six ways to Sunday. It’s as if this person never existed,” Nick told her.

  “That’s odd.” She frowned.

  “Oh, it gets better,” he said. “There is no record of the attorney, the settlement company or the person who notarized the papers that Lucien gave you.”

  “It’s as if they all disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “Or they never existed at all,” he said.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Look, it’s clear that a massive scam was pulled off. But against whom?”

  “Lucien Byers. Byers World.”

  He sighed and leaned back against the counter. “What do you know about Lucien Byers?”

  “Only that he’s the head of this real-estate development company that Maris scammed out of a quarter of a million dollars.”

  “But how do we know that?”

  India’s eyes narrowed and she studied him from across the room.

  “We have only his word, this story that he told you, and copies of some phony papers that he gave you. How do we know that that isn’t part of the scam?”

  “You mean that Maris never sold him anything? What would he hope to gain from that?”

  “Maybe some type of settlement from the Devlins.”

  “He didn’t look like a man who was hurting for money, Nick. He was well dressed, carried one of those really good leather briefcases. Drove an expensive car.”

  “You know that none of that means anything,” he reminded her, adding, “I’m surprised that you would take that attitude, knowing how many crooks you’ve sent up.”

  “You’re right.” She nodded. “I should know better than to assume. But I had no reaso
n to suspect this man. And every reason to believe that Maris would have pulled something sneaky like that. Did your mother’s investigator find out anything about Byers at all?”

  “He is the head of Byers World. The company does exist. That much we know. Mother said she told him to look a little deeper and call her back. We’ll see if anything develops over the next few days.”

  India rested her head against his chest and sighed. “I don’t like all this. I don’t like being on this side of the bad guys.”

  “No one does.”

  “Prosecuting is one thing. Being the victim puts a whole new spin on things. When it’s your family that’s involved, suddenly it isn’t all so routine.”

  “We’ll work it out, I promise.” He kissed the top of her head and she stirred against him. “One way or another, we will get to the bottom of this. Hopefully before someone else gets hurt.”

  “Whoever it is, they’ve taken all they’re getting from my family,” she told him. “It’s my turn now.”

  Chapter 28

  The front door slammed and India could not get there quickly enough.

  “Indy, we’re home!” Corri shouted.

  “I see that you are.” India held out her arms and the child bounced into them. “I missed you, Corri. I missed you every day.”

  “I missed you too. Wait till you see what Delia gave me!”

  “Delia?”

  “She said I could call her that ‘cause ‘Mrs. Enright’ was too formal. Aunt August said just plain old ‘Delia’ was too familiar, but Delia said ‘poppycock to that.’” Corri paused—barely—to take a breath. “Look! Look at what I got!”

  Corri opened a box and held it up for India to peek inside. A small turtle scratched tiny claws onto the cardboard bottom.

  “Ry used to have a turtle like that,” India told her.

  “That’s what Aunt August said.”

  “Where did you find it?” Nick leaned against the doorway, eating an apple.

  “The pond behind the barn.”

  “I used to find turtles there. Tadpoles in the spring, frogs and salamanders in the summer. Unusual to find a turtle out of hibernation this time of the year.”