by Meg O'Brien
“But that Lydia woman digs in her heels and the deal’s dragging on and on,” Mauro says. “Ryan starts to go nuts. So your husband sends him and the wife down to Brazil, as far away as he can get them. Pays Ryan a huge amount of money to stay there and keep quiet. Even promises him the kid will be safe, so long as Ryan doesn’t break down and spoil the land deal. Neat, huh?”
I try to wiggle my hands and feet loose, without him seeing it. But he’s lashed me to the cross so tightly, it’s stopped the flow of blood. My wrists and ankles both have lost feeling. I can’t tell if I’m succeeding at all.
If only I could scream. That might waken the nuns in the monastery next to us, perhaps even some residents on another hill. But Mauro has covered all bases, keeping me gagged.
Well, he’s had some experience at this.
“See, the thing is,” he says, starting to shovel again, “this real-estate deal’s been getting out of hand. Too many people were involved, and your husband had to close the deal fast. We couldn’t let anybody rock the boat.”
He shakes his head again. “But then guess what happens? The kid gets away. I let my guard down once, and the little sonuvabitch gets away. And faster than even you can blink, Abby, Marti Bright shows up at my hotel room and tries to kill me with her bare hands. She says she knows about the real-estate scam, and she’s got proof now that your husband and I are running it. Not only that, but she says she’s got her son, and he can testify we kidnapped him.
“Now, that one really got to me, Abby. I mean, it could’ve been true, since the kid had just got away from us. But on second thought, I figure she’s bluffing, otherwise why would she even bother to tell me what she planned to do? Besides, it wasn’t in the papers or anything that the kid had been found. So I tell her I know damn well she’s bluffing, and if she ever wants to see her kid again, she’ll keep her mouth shut. I run my own bluff, see? Let her think I’ve still got the kid. Then I let her leave—but I know by now there’s only one thing I can do. I’ve got to kill her.”
He sighs, as if greatly disappointed at the way his perfect plan turned out.
“Of course, the method was a problem,” he says matter-of-factly. “I had Hillars on my tail already with supicions about the land scam, so I decided to make this murder look like something some religious nut would do, maybe even somebody from The Prayer House. That Sister Helen, for instance, or Lydia Greyson. Hell, we wouldn’t even need the nuisance lawsuit anymore—we could put them in jail for murder. That’d close the place down!” He chuckles.
“So I came up with the crucifixion. It seemed a nice touch, you know? Especially using that trepan. Back in the old days, priests used to open skulls to let evil spirits out. Did you know that? Oh, sure you did. The coroner told you that. So anyway, I figured that would throw even more suspicion on The Prayer House.” He pauses and looks across at the Carmelite monastery, which is shrouded in darkness at this hour. “I even picked this spot for that very reason. The connection, you know, between the two houses. Well, and it was closer than driving all the way out to the valley. See, I couldn’t be gone that long.”
Mauro slams the shovel into the ground and leans on it heavily. “First, though, I had to know if Marti really was bluffing about the kid. After all, I couldn’t leave him hanging around to talk about what happened. But the bitch wouldn’t tell me a thing. I did everything I could to get her to tell me where the kid was, took it nice and slow with the scourging, making each blow count.”
A smile reaches his voice. “Got that little S&M toy in a sex shop in Seaside. Nice touch, don’t you think? Still, all I could get out of her was that she’d lied, she didn’t know where the kid was.” He sighs. “I couldn’t help but believe her, Abby, all the pain she was in by then. So hell, I finished up the job—right down to a nice little last-minute touch. Found a can of red paint down by that house and painted the words ‘I LIED’ on her chest, sort of a Scarlet Letter for the lying bitch.”
Mauro leans down, so close I can feel his breath. “But then you had to poke your nose into things. And it all got too complicated, Abby. That asshole husband of yours went nuts tonight and killed that cop outside your house.”
I make a sound of horror and shake my head. Not Ben! Please, not Ben!
“Next thing I know he’s raping you up in that bedroom of yours. Shit, his DNA was all over the place, and I couldn’t just leave him there alive. He’d have been arrested, and he’d have blabbed about everything, including me. See, Abby, the land scam has been fading fast. But with any luck, I can persuade Hillars of my innocence, and I can still collect that bonus from Chase for getting rid of problematic right-hand man Jeffrey.”
I see his teeth flash white in a grin. “So I guess you know what I did,” he says. “I shot your bastard husband in the back of the head.”
Mauro holds something metallic up to my eyes that would probably be shiny, except that it’s coated with a dark, dry material, like blood. It’s in the shape of a long, narrow corkscrew.
“You know what this is, Abby? A trepan,” Mauro says. “How about that? Same trepan I used on Marti, in fact. Got it at the sex shop, too.” He checks the cloths around my wrists and ankles. “Tried to get loose, did you? Sorry, Abby. But you know, you shouldn’t feel too bad when you’re up there hanging. This trepan thing? I learned about it on the Net one day. When the skull gets opened up, it’s supposed to bring back the same kind of bliss babies feel in the womb. You could go out singing.”
The night is still pitch-black, no sign of a moon. I can make out his eyes, though, and they are so cold and flat they are barely human. I start praying again. It’s all I’ve got left.
“Well, it really is time now,” he says, standing. “I guess you know what I have to do, right?”
This time I don’t blink.
His hand comes down on my wrist, fixing it in place. He holds the nail against it and lifts the hammer. I close my eyes, choking on a sob.
So many dreams, Marti, so many plans to do good in the world. You did that. Why didn’t I? Where did I go wrong? Oh, God, where did I go wrong?
The hammer falls and the nail pierces my skin. I scream against the tape. The iron digs in, and it’s worse, I think, than childbirth must be. But then a loud clapping sound stuns my ears, over and over. Mauro stands straight and tall for a moment, and his hand goes to his head, as if saluting a flag. A dark, wet pool forms on his forehead and he wavers, totters and falls. The weight of him is on me, smothering me. I can’t breathe. Oh, God, help me! I can’t breathe!
I am blacking out when the weight is removed. I open my eyes and see Ben. He begins tearing at my wrists, cutting through the cloths, and gently, every so gently, he removes the tape from my mouth.
“I thought I was too late,” he says, pulling me against him. There are tears in his eyes. “God, Abby, I thought I was too late.”
Epilogue
Six months later
Ben found the sheriff’s deputy dead in his patrol car that night, in front of my house. Racing up the walk, he beat on my door. When I didn’t answer he broke through a front window and found Jeffrey on the floor of the bedroom. Just as Mauro said, he’d been shot in the back of the head.
That was long after Mauro had dragged me to that godforsaken hill, but someone had called dispatch to say he saw us leave the house and was worried. He told Ben he was out late walking his dog and thought he’d stop in if there was a light on in my house, to pick up a leash he’d left behind. He saw a man half carrying me to his car, as if I were drunk. The kid said he’d met me when he brought Murphy home one day and didn’t think I was the type to be falling-down drunk. So he thought he’d call the police and let them know.
I will never make fun of Carmel’s 911 calls again.
Going on the kid’s description, Ben figured it must have been Mauro with me. He contacted Agent Hillars, who told him he’d been suspicious of Mauro for some time. Mauro, it seems, kept disappearing and not telling his partner where he was.
&nb
sp; I figure he was in the Santa Cruz mountains, alternating with Jeffrey as they both kept an eye on their hostage.
Ben and Hillars put their heads together that night, and Ben, going on instinct alone, led the charge up the hill just in time to save me.
I don’t suppose we’ll ever know who killed Rick Stone, but my money is on Mauro. Jeffrey was evil, as evil as the day is long, as my mom would say. But he was also a coward in many ways. Karen told me he’d been beating her for months, and the beatings had escalated as he became more and more worried of late. I figure a man who beats a woman is usually too much a coward to kill a man.
Harry Blimm admitted to being in on the realestate scam at first, but said he pulled out of it after he met Marti at the homeless shelter in Seaside where he’s on the board. It was he who gave Marti the original information about Jeffrey’s scam, once his heart was softened by seeing firsthand what it was like to be without a home. In return, Marti never turned him in. Harry is doing some time now for his part in the scam, but promises that when he gets out he’ll make reparation to The Prayer House in some “financially substantial way.”
As for the injuries Jeffrey inflicted upon me in his rage that night, I’ve healed, at least physically. I may never get over what my husband, a man I trusted for too many years, did to me. But life does have a way of going on. I’ve sold Windhaven, which Sol had made sure was willed to me, and I’m using the proceeds to build that center Lydia Greyson has always wanted on the property of The Prayer House. I’m also helping them bring The Prayer House itself up to code.
Frannie has been hired by Lydia to organize the new center and run it, and my sister, Karen, will live there for a while, helping with the new gardens and “rebuilding her spirit along with her life,” as Lydia says.
Just to make sure the body as well as the spirit gets a fair chance, Davis and I will be teaching Kenpo to the women who come there. Most of them have been homeless and on the streets at some point, and they’ll need a bit of bolstering in the self-confidence department.
When the center opens—which, by the way, we’ve named Marti’s House in honor of Marti Bright—I’ll have a small apartment there for myself. Something simple—almost like a nun’s cell, in fact. I’m looking forward to the silence, and I can’t wait to get my fingers in the soil.
Not that they’ve snookered me in again. There will be no Victorian rules about “no special friendships” this time. In fact, while I wait for the center and my apartment to be finished, Murph and I are living with one of those special friends—Ben. Chief Benjamin Schaeffer, if you please. No need to be discreet anymore in Carmel. Not that it ever did much good, anyway.
Oh, and the letter A scratched into Murphy’s back? Ben caught some nutcase doing the same thing to another dog on the beach, this time a poodle. He’d read about the name “Abby” having been written in the ground on the hill and thought he’d get into the “fun.”
Justin is back with his mom now, the only one he’s ever known. Mary Ryan is relieved to have him home safe, though shocked and saddened by Paul’s having covered up what really was happening to him. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan has disappeared. Seems he never returned with Mary from Rio, but left her waiting at the airport alone. Mary’s theory about this is that Paul broke down and couldn’t face what he’d done. Even though it started out with him knuckling under to Jeffrey’s blackmail to save his son, she thinks the money Jeffrey gave him to go to Rio and keep quiet did a number on his conscience.
As for Justin, his real father—or biological father, if you will—came to me shortly after that night. He told me that he and Marti had one night together sixteen years ago. He had won her over in a vulnerable time, he said, and he knew it couldn’t last. But that one night was everything to him.
He told me he didn’t know until recently that she’d had a child, and that the child was his. Marti phoned him in July last year, at the same time Justin disappeared. She didn’t tell him who she’d given their son to, or anything about him, including the fact that he was missing. She told him only that she wanted him to know the child existed, in case anything happened to her.
He was stunned, but thrilled to learn he had a child somewhere. And now, he said, he wanted nothing more in the world than to meet Justin and be a father to him.
I don’t know if that will all work out, but I took Tommy Lawrence to meet his son. The two of them hugged, but hesitantly, the way men will. Then they found some common ground, in books. It wasn’t long after that before they were talking as if they’d known each other for years.
Tommy never was hanging around me for any dire purpose. While it’s true he was writing a book about Marti, he was largely hoping I’d lead him to his son. That’s why he took Marti’s letters from my attic, and why he was looking through my journals on the computer—hoping for a clue about who his son’s adoptive parents might be.
It’s also why he followed me to Rio—though he never did put together what I was doing down there.
Personally, I think Marti didn’t fully trust Tommy enough to tell him he had a son, after the way he obsessed over her years before. She might have been afraid he’d intrude on Justin’s life. Once Justin went missing, however, she must have felt the only right thing was to tell Tommy a son existed. Perhaps she knew he’d be dogged enough to look for Justin if anything happened to her.
So, Jeffrey and I were both wrong about Justin being Chase’s son. And that’s what comes of assuming the obvious when the truth is as close as the nose on one’s face.
Tommy finally admitted he’d had a small crush on me for a while; it’s why he kissed me in Rio. His feelings are dissipating, though, as he works on the book about Marti and the way she died. The seven-figure advance, Tommy says, will come in handy now. He wants to set up a trust account for Justin, and looking for his son these past months wiped out his savings. That’s why he was in debt.
As to why he lied about staying at the La Playa, it seemed to him that from the moment he came to our “land of milk and money,” everyone he met was rich. He didn’t think he’d be accepted as readily if people knew he couldn’t hold his own in that department.
I must admit, he was half-right about that. There are people in this town who look askance at those who don’t seem to be doing well. But that’s “surface Carmel.” Underneath, a lot of people are struggling, especially artists and writers who live in studio apartments because they love the town. Now that Tommy’s getting to know some of them, he’s more comfortable here. Which is good, since he’s living here now, to be close to his son.
I can see why you cared about him, Marti. When all’s said and done, Tommy’s good people. And the book he’s writing about you isn’t just for money. It’s a labor of love for Tommy, and a gift for Justin, too. It will include your good deeds and the way you loved everyone, especially the way you loved your son.
So, Marti, maybe some of our dreams have come true. Not the way we hoped they might, of course. Dreams seldom do. But your son has a home, he has a father, and he has good friends in Helen, Ben and me. We’ll watch after him now that you no longer can. We’ll see he continues to grow up honest, faithful, loving and strong.
Shining Bright, in fact—just like you.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-6376-8
SACRED TRUST
Copyright © 2000 by Meg O’Brien.
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