Scone Cold Dead

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  “You don’t lie worth a damn, either, Liss. And you’ll do what I tell you to do. For starters, hoist yourself up on that stool with your back to me and put your hands on your head. Keep your eyes straight ahead. Don’t move. Don’t even think about moving or I’ll slit the kid’s throat.”

  Liss obeyed, but Fiona hadn’t said anything about not talking. “You thought Victor’s death would be ruled an accident,” she ventured, “but once the police suspected murder, you knew you might have to flee at a moment’s notice.” She’d head for the Canadian border, Liss realized, remembering the phone call she’d overheard. Superorganized, Fiona had a contingency plan in place. “You were prepared to run, but surely you never intended to take a hostage?”

  “Shut up!”

  Behind her, Liss heard Fiona give a series of commands to Beth: “Open that drawer. Take out that roll of duct tape and tear off two strips, each about three inches long. Now two more, each about eight inches long.”

  Liss winced at the sound of ripping tape but she tried to tell herself that this was good. Fiona was going to tie them up and leave them in the apartment. Someone would come eventually. Emily and Winona would return within the next few hours. Nobody would get hurt.

  When Fiona ordered Liss to lower her hands and hold her wrists together behind her back, she obeyed, though she couldn’t contain a grimace when someone, probably Beth, wrapped them with the duct tape. When Beth moved in front of her to apply one of the smaller pieces to her mouth, Liss saw that Fiona had already used the other one. The girl’s eyes were wide and terrified above the strip of gray. Her hands trembled as she pressed Liss’s gag into place.

  Liss sent her what she hoped was an encouraging look, but she wasn’t at all sure the effort had been successful. How could it be when she was just as scared and shaky as her young neighbor?

  Fiona jerked Beth out of Liss’s line of sight, barking an order: “Don’t move or turn around.”

  More sounds told Liss that Fiona was taping Beth’s hands. Then she heard footsteps leaving the kitchen—Fiona and Beth going to the bedroom for Fiona’s suitcase, already conveniently packed. Liss considered making a run for it, but she couldn’t abandon Beth. She stayed put. After a moment, they returned.

  “Stand up,” Fiona ordered.

  Liss obeyed. She expected to feel duct tape being wrapped around her ankles, preparatory to leaving her behind. Instead, Fiona tossed one of her own coats, a navy blue poncho, over Liss’s head, effectively hiding her bound hands.

  Liss froze, unable for a moment to grasp what was happening. When she did, she spun around and was dismayed but unsurprised to find that Beth, tears streaming down a face leeched of color, was carrying Fiona’s suitcase. Her hands had been taped in front of her.

  Fiona, who had donned a coat, wrapped a scarf around her head turban-style and put on dark glasses, once more calmly pressed the blade of her knife to Beth’s throat.

  Liss went cold with dread. It was not the same knife Fiona had used before. She’d upgraded, exchanging the serrated blade for a butcher knife, one of the ones Liss’s aunt kept well sharpened.

  “Listen carefully, Liss. We are going to go downstairs and get in my car. I’m not willing to take the chance that you’ll be found too soon, so you two are coming with me. When I get close to the border, if you’ve been very, very good, I’ll let you out of the car. Do you understand me?”

  Liss nodded. What choice did she have? Irrationally as Fiona was behaving, Liss couldn’t take the chance that she would injure, or even kill, Beth Hogencamp.

  Fiona flipped the hood of the poncho over Liss’s head, partially concealing the duct tape over her mouth. She did the same with the hood of Beth’s rain slicker. It was still pouring out, raining so hard that Liss doubted any of her neighbors would realize that Fiona was leaving with two prisoners.

  They went down the outside steps single file, Liss first. Fiona followed close behind, one hand gripping Beth’s arm and the other holding the knife.

  “Get in,” Fiona ordered, opening the back door.

  Liss had never realized how difficult it was to balance while climbing into a car. With her hands fastened behind her, she had no way to steady herself when her weak knee buckled. She ended up in an awkward sprawl across the seat. Fiona shoved Beth in after Liss and slammed the door, obviously unconcerned about seat belts. A moment later, she was behind the wheel and had started the engine.

  Dan Ruskin stood at his living room window staring out at the rain-swept street. He’d just watched three people get into the dark blue Dodge Stratus Fiona had rented and drive away. There was something peculiar about what he’d seen, but he was having trouble putting his finger on what it was.

  “Was that Fiona in the turban?” Stewart wandered through from the direction of the kitchen, a freshly opened can of beer in one hand.

  “Yeah.”

  “Odd.”

  “What is?”

  “That’s her rental car, right?” At Dan’s nod, he looked momentarily bemused. “Why would she have rented a car on Saturday?”

  “It’s Sunday, Stewart.”

  “Not today. Last Sunday. That’s the earliest she should have rented it.”

  “Let me get this straight—you saw Fiona driving that car before Victor Owens died?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said? It was well before we knew we’d be stuck in this godforsaken backwater for more than a week. That’s what I meant when I said it was odd. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time that the woman driving that car was Fiona, but I do remember the turban. I wondered then why she seemed familiar, but I did not pursue the matter. I had other things on my mind.”

  Translated, that meant he’d been looking for a place to buy beer. “Are you sure?”

  Stewart gave him a haughty look and his accent got even more plummy. “My dear fellow, I am not drunk all the time. I know what I saw.” He took a long swallow of Keystone Light before he wandered off again.

  No, he wasn’t, Dan thought. And with shattering abruptness, he knew what it was that had bothered him about what he’d just seen. Both of Fiona’s passengers had gotten into the back of the car.

  “Hell!” Dan grabbed for his coat with one hand and fumbled for the keys in his pocket with the other. Something was wrong. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He was going after Fiona.

  The Strathspey bus was blocking his driveway.

  “Move that thing!” he yelled, scrambling into the driver’s seat of his pickup truck.

  “What’s wrong?” Cal shouted.

  “Do as the man says,” Stewart bellowed at him. Apparently the penny had dropped for him, too. He’d returned to the living room in time to follow Dan outside. Just as the bus started moving, Stewart climbed aboard.

  With what seemed to Dan to be excruciating slowness, the lumbering vehicle backed out of his way. He gunned his engine and, tires squealing, set out in pursuit of Fiona’s rental car.

  He tore around the corner of Birch and Main just as Sherri signaled her turn onto Birch. Dan caught only a glimpse of her face in passing, through the rain, through the windshield, but it was enough to tell him that she’d recognized him and guessed something was up. She leaned on her horn, but he wasn’t about to stop to explain himself. A sense of urgency rode him, all the more pressing for being so ill-defined.

  He’d seen Fiona leave Margaret Boyd’s apartment with two other people. He was convinced one of them was Liss. He had no idea why he was so certain of that. He just was. He was equally positive that she was in danger. It was odd to put two passengers in the backseat and none in the front. It was even odder to shove one of them into that backseat. It hadn’t really registered with him till now, but Fiona had pushed whoever had been wearing that yellow slicker. Hard. Then she’d slammed the door shut after her.

  Fiona had the car a day before she should have. Mary had said she’d taken her into Fallstown on both Saturday and Sunday, but that hadn’t meant anythin
g to Dan before. Now it did.

  A jury might have trouble jumping from “Fiona lied about the car” to “Fiona killed Victor,” but Dan didn’t. Logic be damned. Liss was in danger. That he was sure of.

  He drove faster, scanning the road ahead for any sign of a dark blue car. Where would Fiona go? If he was right, if she had murdered Victor, if she was a fugitive fleeing justice, with hostages . . .

  Taking hostages made no sense.

  Then again, neither had killing Victor.

  When she’d left Moosetookalook, Fiona had been driving north. If she wasn’t thinking too clearly, there was one obvious place for her to go. After all, Carrabassett County shared a border with Canada. Why she thought she’d get across, or be able to avoid extradition if she did, Dan didn’t know, but that had to be where she was headed.

  It would take her almost two hours to reach the border crossing. Dan grabbed the cell phone mounted on his dash and punched in 911.

  The rain was getting worse, slowing Fiona’s high-speed escape, but she still managed to hit every pothole in the county. In the backseat of the rental car, Liss and Beth had little control over which way they bounced. It was like being tumbled around inside a clothes dryer, Liss thought. She’d have bruises on her bruises by the time this ride ended.

  The first few times Fiona heard them thrashing about behind her, she had glanced over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t up to something. Now she just drove, ignoring their plight. Even before Liss managed to prop herself sideways on the seat, Fiona had lost all interest in her prisoners. Controlling the car on the slick, winding, narrow road required all her concentration.

  Liss closed her eyes and did some concentrating herself. Although it had been years since she’d tried this trick, and her knee wasn’t in the best shape, she still had the basic requirements—long arms and a small butt.

  The poncho was a hindrance. She had to wriggle and squirm to get that out of her way first. Then she had to fold herself nearly in half until, bit by bit, she could ease her hands forward and slide them beneath her backside. Thank goodness Beth had left her a little slack when she’d bound her wrists.

  She rested a moment, praying she hadn’t just made things worse. If she got tangled up in this position, she wouldn’t be able to maneuver at all.

  Checking to make sure Fiona was still preoccupied with her driving, Liss slid off her boots, then slowly tipped backward, lifting both legs and tucking her knees under her chin. Twisting herself into a pretzel had been a lot easier before knee surgery. Muscles screamed at her to stop as she worked her toes through the circle formed by her bound hands. For a terrifying moment, everything stuck. She couldn’t move forward or backward. Then, accompanied by an ominous popping sound, her feet slipped through and her hands, although still bound, emerged in front of her.

  Liss sprawled on the seat, sweating profusely. The poncho had worked its way up over her face. She waited until her heart rate steadied to shrug it back into place. Then, after a quick glance at Fiona, to be sure the other woman hadn’t noticed anything amiss, Liss went to work on the duct tape covering her mouth. She didn’t dare rip it off for fear that the sound would alert Fiona. Instead, inch by painful inch, she tugged it loose.

  Beth, wedged into the opposite corner of the backseat, watched Liss with an awed expression in her dark eyes. After a moment, she started picking at her own duct-tape gag, wincing each time a section released its grip on her skin.

  The downpour they were driving through helped hide their efforts. More than once, the rain thudding down on the roof of the car masked a small sound of pain, and the wet road conditions continued to command Fiona’s full attention.

  As soon as Beth freed her mouth, she opened it to speak. Liss’s warning shake of the head stopped her. Even a whisper might reach Fiona’s ears, in spite of the storm. Deprived of the means to explain what she was up to, Beth wriggled around on the seat until she could reach the right-side pocket of her jeans. She tried to wedge her hands into it but, bound together as they were, her wrists couldn’t twist far enough.

  Puzzled, Liss watched the girl’s efforts while she finished removing her own gag. After she’d verified that they were unobserved—Fiona was watching the road and not her prisoners—she scooted toward Beth. She had a better angle of attack, although the maneuver was still awkward. It required several minutes of fumbling before she succeeded in tugging a Ziplock bag out of Beth’s pocket. At first she had no idea what it contained. Then, slowly, comprehension dawned.

  Fiona hit another pothole, nearly dumping Liss onto the floor, but she was smiling when she righted herself. She hadn’t lost her grip on the Ziplock bag.

  Patience, she warned herself. She mustn’t do anything while the car was moving. The risk was too great that Beth would be hurt, or even killed. So they’d wait.

  Fiona had said she’d let them out near the border. Maybe she would, but Liss wasn’t going to count on it. What were two more murders when she’d already committed one? They needed an advantage, and the element of surprise, and Beth had just given her the key to both.

  Biding her time, she slid her feet back into her boots and started working on the duct tape that bound Beth’s hands. Once she’d freed the girl—which she quickly realized was not going to be as easy as getting rid of the gags—Beth could return the favor.

  She was still working on the tape when the rain abruptly ceased. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, revealing a misty landscape. Liss didn’t recognize their surroundings. She had no idea how much farther they’d have to drive to reach the border.

  It seemed as if they’d been in this car forever, but she supposed as little as half an hour might have passed. She was just thinking that it could be a long while yet before she had the chance to take action, when a fully loaded pulp truck came roaring around a bend in the road.

  Startled, Fiona jerked the wheel too far to the right, ending up on the shoulder. She tried to steer the car back onto the pavement once the truck had gone past, but the ground was too soft. Her tires sank into mud and the vehicle fishtailed. She hit the brakes—harder than she should have—and the next thing Liss knew, they were facing the way they’d come.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, expecting at any moment to crash into a tree, but after a sickening drop as the rear tires went down an embankment, the car came to a stop without hitting anything.

  Fiona swore loudly and inventively, but she did not waste long venting her frustration. She scrambled out of the driver’s seat—a tricky proposition when the front of the car was sticking up in the air—and jerked open the back door.

  “You’re going to have to get out and push,” she said, grabbing hold of Liss.

  Fighting a wave of pain and nausea when she put weight on her bad knee—the consequence of that loud pop, she presumed—Liss staggered to the side of the road. The poncho covered her to midthigh. Fiona couldn’t tell that her hands were no longer bound behind her and she didn’t seem to notice that both of her prisoners had rid themselves of the duct tape that had once covered their mouths.

  It was time to follow the plan. She had to incapacitate Fiona so she and Beth could take off running. She told herself that her knee would hold up. It would have to.

  While Fiona was occupied with hauling Beth out of the car, Liss worked open the Ziplock on the plastic bag. She flexed her leg, and was relieved to discover that it didn’t hurt as much as it had at first. Then she waited. Beth, her hands held close to her rain slicker so Fiona couldn’t see the trailing end of duct tape, managed to put a little distance between herself and her captor. There would never be a better opportunity.

  “Run, Beth!” Liss shouted, and rushed Fiona.

  Fiona turned, the knife clutched in her hand. Liss dodged to one side, at the same time thrusting the clump of cat fur she’d removed from Beth’s Ziplock bag directly into Fiona’s face.

  The result was all she’d hoped for. Fiona started to sneeze and couldn’t stop. Her eyes teared, blinding her.
Liss followed up with another thrust. Who would have imagined that a wad of Lumpkin’s fur, saved from a brushing to stuff a kid’s pillow, would make such an effective weapon? This time, Fiona dropped the knife.

  Beth, watching from the edge of the trees that lined the road, came running back. She retrieved the knife and sliced through the duct tape that bound Liss’s wrists. After another pass with the cat fur, Liss returned the favor.

  Fiona, eyes red, nose running, was still sneezing uncontrollably when Dan’s truck pulled up behind the rental car.

  Sherri’s pickup was right behind him.

  Followed by the company bus.

  And Sandy and Zara in Aunt Margaret’s station wagon.

  Stewart bounded out of the bus, rope in hand, and had Fiona trussed up like a Christmas turkey before she had time to recover from the allergy attack. Grinning, he bent down to examine the clumps of cat fur that now lay scattered on the ground.

  Liss expected a bad pun. Instead, he pronounced Fiona’s fate “poetic justice” and hauled his prisoner to her feet just as Gordon Tandy arrived in the county sheriff’s cruiser driven by Pete Campbell.

  Gordon surveyed the scene, his usual stony expression absent as he took in the extraordinary number of people milling about. For once he seemed at a loss for words.

  Liss was not. “How did you all get here?” she asked, directing her question to Sherri.

  “Everyone followed Dan.”

  “None of us knew where we were going,” Ray chimed in, “but we knew something was up.”

  “I saw her leave with you,” Dan said. “Took me a little while to figure out exactly what I’d seen, but with Stewart’s help, I realized Fiona had to be the one who killed Victor.”

  Amid gasps and exclamations from members of Strathspey, Gordon’s gaze briefly zeroed in on Liss. She thought she saw a flash of relief in his dark eyes, but it was quickly masked. “Do you have proof?” he asked Dan.