by Elise Sax
I gasped and stumbled backward. “What? But what about the witches?”
“Forget about them. Adam Beatman gave his stepmother vaginal soap for her birthday.”
Who gives their stepmother vaginal soap for her birthday, poisoned or not? It sounded like Adam should get jailed just for giving creepy birthday presents. “Poisonous vaginal soap,” I said.
Silas’s face brightened, which was saying something because he already had a euphoric glow to him, faced with a big scoop. “Deep background, right, boss? I like your moxie. Jack and I are running the story over here, but we need a quote from the sheriff. You got me? We can’t run this without a quote directly from him. That’s on you. You have to track him down and make him talk, write down what he says and bring it here or better yet, call it in to me.”
“There’s no cell service over there, remember,” Klee reminded him.
“That’s right,” Silas said, remembering. “So go over there and get that damned quote and run it back to me. Boss, run it back to me. It’s more important than Christmas. You get what I’m saying? You wouldn’t want to go without Christmas, would you?”
I shook my head no. “I like Christmas.”
“Then go. Here. Jack marked it on a map. No GPS out there, either. Go! The free world depends on you!”
“Holy crap!” I exclaimed, grabbed the map and my purse, and ran out of the office.
It turned out that I was no good at reading maps. Who the hell uses maps anymore? I never had, and it didn’t look like now was the time for me to start. I drove for an hour, got lost in the wilderness, and was sure I was going to get eaten by a bear. But finally, finally like Moses finally finding the Promised Land, I spotted Amos’s SUV by the bank of the roaring river. I couldn’t park next to him because my Altima was not a four-wheel drive. So, I parked up the hill on the dirt road, nestled between trees and climbed down the hill through the trees to get to the river.
“Hello!” I called over the roar of the water. It was a hell of a place to go fishing. Beautiful, but in the middle of nowhere and so wild that it was scary. “Amos! It’s me, Matilda!”
Nothing. No sign of him. I peeked through the driver’s window of his car, and he wasn’t in there, either. He had to be out there somewhere, but I didn’t know where. At the shore of the river, I looked to my left and to my right. Would he go upstream or downstream to fish? What did salmon do? Were there salmon in New Mexico?
Downstream was a straight line from his car. I could see far down the shore, which was comforting, but I could see that he wasn’t that way. So, I decided to go upstream, around the corner where the river turned and I would probably get lost and eaten by a bear.
“Hello!” I called. “Amos, it’s Matilda!”
I heard movement in the bush next to me, and I broke out into a run. A few minutes into my run, I saw him. Amos was standing waist deep in the river. He was wearing waders, which came up to his torso, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. The water rushed by his body as he lifted one muscular arm up and flicked the line of his fishing rod back and forth over his head, teasing the water.
“Hello, there!” I shouted. Amos turned in surprise and almost slipped, but caught his balance, quickly. “I need a quote!” I yelled over the sounds of the river.
“A coat?” he called back.
“A quote. A quote.”
I stepped forward, but he gestured for me to stop. He walked out of the river and stood on the shore. “What’s up? Did Goodnight burn down?”
“I need a quote about Adam Beatman’s arrest,” I said, taking my reporter’s notebook out of my purse. His chest was very distracting, and my eyes kept flicking to it.
“No comment.”
“Just a little one?”
“No comment.”
His face was set in stone. Impassible. There was no way he was going to tell me anything.
“Pleasssse,” I whined. “Silas is going to kill me if I don’t get something. This is a big story, you know. Deputy Sheriff kills woman with vaginal soap.”
Amos looked down at me and blew out, as if he decided that he didn’t have a choice. “He was arrested on suspicion. Nothing is decided yet. All right. I’ll give you my statement. Are you ready? Your pen is clicked on?”
I clicked my pen. “Ready.”
“The Goodnight Sheriff’s Department doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations.”
He stared me down, but there was a hint of a smile on his lips. “Really? Is that a real thing? Nothing? You can’t give me anything? Why did Adam Beatman buy his stepmother vaginal soap? That’s a weird gift.”
Amos shrugged. “I don’t know. He says a woman at the store suggested it as a gift. Deputy Beatman is suspended with pay pending the investigation. That’s about all I can give you. Do you have anything to add?”
“Me?” I asked.
“You. Trouble. You. The snoop hound Matilda Dare. You must have found out a lot of things. What can you tell me?”
I could tell him that I had been wrong. I had thought the murders were all related. I never saw the Adam thing coming. I could have told Amos about the witches and the curses, too. That was probably illegal. But I didn’t know anything for sure, and Silas would skin me alive if I divulged my story before it was written.
“Matilda Dare doesn’t comment on an ongoing investigation,” I said, finally.
“That’s what I figured. How about my entries for the Cook-off? Have you thought about it?”
“They were both delicious,” I said, honestly, and my stomach growled. “They’re both winners.”
“Or both second-prizers.” He sighed. “I can’t decide which one to enter. That’s why I’m out here. Trying to clear my head with fly fishing. You want to try?”
“I’m not a good swimmer.” And I had had an unfortunate experience a couple weeks ago when a large man fell on me in a swimming pool.
“You stand. You don’t swim. Never mind. I forgot you’re Trouble.”
He punched me playfully on the shoulder. Ah, the playful, pal shoulder punch. Whatever romance that had been between us was dead and buried. The gorgeous, rich cowboy sheriff was happy to look at pictures of his dead wife, cook, and go fly fishing. Not that I cared, I reminded myself. I was totally off men.
Amos walked back into the water with his fishing rod, and I ran back toward my car to bring the pathetic non-statement to Silas. I walked around the bend and almost made it to Amos’s SUV when I noticed someone on the other side of the river. I squinted, trying to make out the figure. It was a short person, thin…
Oh my God.
I ran down the embankment and stood right where the water touched the shore to get a better view. It was the dead girl from the bottom of the canyon. She was wearing the same outfit, and she pointed at me and said something.
“What?” I called. She said something, again. I took a couple of steps into the river, but I still couldn’t hear her. I waded deeper in until the water went up to my thighs.
“What?” I called again.
She pointed at me. “He’s closer than you think,” she said.
Chapter 7
“He is?” I asked and took one more step toward her. One step too many.
The water knocked me off balance, and I sailed away downstream. I kicked my legs and dog-paddled my arms, but the river was taking me, and I was powerless to right myself.
“Help!” I yelled and got a mouthful of river that went down the wrong pipe and made me choke, violently. I clutched my purse to my chest and started spinning. First, I was like a corkscrew and then I started doing somersaults. My whole life I wasn’t flexible, and I never could get through a gymnastics class, but now I was Gabby Douglas.
And it was going to kill me.
“Hel…” I yelled and got another gallon of water down my gullet.
This was it. This was the end. Still married to a murderer, a pathetic fledgling reporter, and a sort of homeowner with a large hole in her living room floor. That was the grand sum of
my life. What would Jack write for my obituary? She never did anything, but she smelled good. And she was crazy. And she spoke to dead people.
Oh, no. That was a terrible obituary.
I needed to live longer so I could have a better obituary!
Round and round I went underwater. My shoes flew off, and rocks scraped my feet. I tried to scramble to the top and get air, but the current was too strong for me. I was completely out of control and doomed to be killed by the raging river.
Funny how when you think all is lost and you give up hope, someone or something decides otherwise for you. That’s what happened with me. Just as I was going down for the last time, a strong hand grabbed me and pulled me out of the water.
I gulped air. “I’m drowning,” I moaned.
“No, you’re not. I got you.” He was large, strong, and muscular. He was behind me, his arm around my chest, pulling me in tight against him so my head would stay above water. The dead girl’s voice came back to me. He’s closer than you think.
“Help! Killer! Help!” I shouted and fought against the man. I managed to extricate myself from his grasp with a sharp elbow to his face. But then I was helpless again, carried away by the current, and so was the man this time. The current was stronger now, and we were picking up speed.
“Sonofabitch,” the man growled with his back to me.
The “sonofabitch” sounded familiar. “Boone?” I asked. “Is that you?” He turned around. “What’re you doing here?”
“Saving you,” he spat. “Why did you elbow me in the face?”
“I thought you were a serial killer who kept young girls locked up in a dungeon somewhere.”
“Great judge of character. How did you know about the dungeon?”
The water pulled me down, and he managed to pull me back up, but he was having trouble too against the current. I grabbed on to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
“Your purse is hitting the back of my head,” he complained. “You’re pulling me down. For the love of God, kick your feet.” I kicked my feet. “Not my balls! Not my balls! Kick in the other direction. Oh, never mind. We’re going to make it to that tree at the side.”
“The log over there? We’ll never make it. It’s too far. The current’s too strong.”
“Then we’re going to die because the Yellow River is about to spill into the Snake River, and it does it with level five rapids.”
“That sounds bad,” I said.
“We got to get to the tree now. Kick! Kick! Kick! We got to do it now!”
With the sound of the rapids getting louder, I kicked with everything I had. Boone did most of the work, though, and miraculously, we made it to the log. We held on tight to it. Boone was wet and sexier than I remembered. Wherever he had been during the past two weeks, he had gotten weatherworn. His hair was longer, but his face was clean shaven and tan. I caught him studying me, too, and I could only imagine how I looked.
“We’ll be fine now,” Boone said. “As soon as we catch our breaths, we’ll make it the rest of the way to the embankment.”
This part of the river had steep, muddy embankments on either side, and it would be difficult to climb out of the river. “Okay,” I said.
“What were you doing in the river?” he asked.
I was talking to a dead girl. “I fell in.”
“You fell into the river out in the middle of nowhere?”
“I was interviewing Amos and then I was going to my car, and I fell in.”
“You were interviewing Amos? Is that what the young people are calling it these days?”
He was jealous, and I loved that he was jealous. “I don’t like your tone, Boone. I don’t like what you’re insinuating, and I’m insulted. I’m a professional journalist. I needed to get an important statement about Adam Beatman’s arrest.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Adam Beatman was arrested for poisoning his stepmother’s vaginal soap.”
Boone blinked. “How much river water did you drink?”
I ignored his question. “All kinds of people have died since you left.” I told him about Leonard’s letter, the witches, and the dead old people.
“Margaret Marshall is the meanest bitch in Goodnight, but she’s always been nice to me.”
“Was. She fell off a cliff. I fell on top of her. Well, not on top. Near her.”
“Before you came to town, the most exciting thing that ever happened in Goodnight was the annual two-for-one toothpaste sale at Goodnight Pharmacy. It’s like you opened the portal to hell or something.”
“Amos calls me ‘trouble.’”
Boone scowled at me. “He did, did he? You’ve been talking a lot to Amos.”
I shrugged, which was hard because the water was cold, and I was shivering pretty intensely. “He cooked for me.”
“Ah, the Chile Pepper Cook-off. It’s his lifelong goal to get the blue ribbon.”
“Do you cook?” I asked him.
“I toasted a Pop-Tart once, but I burned it. C’mon, we better get you out of this water, or you’re going to get hypothermia.”
“I’m ready,” I said and let go of the log. “Oh no! My purse!” My purse was carried off by the river, and I grabbed for it.
“Don’t! It’s just a purse!” Boone called.
“My wallet and car keys are in it. And my reporter notes.”
And then it was too late. My swimming turned into uncontrolled floating. I was swept away toward my purse.
“Sonofabitch,” I heard Boone complain. “You’re determined to kill me.”
“I got my purse!” I called, managing to grab it, but I was being pulled away fast.
“Swell!” he yelled back and kicked off from his safety at the log.
It didn’t take long for him to catch up to me and grab hold of my arm. The water was moving at a violent speed and bringing us along with it at a fast clip. I looked back longingly at our log. There was no way to get back to it. We were powerless against the current.
“Keep your knees up,” Boone ordered. “It might help protect you from breaking your neck.”
“I don’t want to break my neck.”
“Then keep your knees up.”
“I can hear the rapids.”
“You know why you can hear the rapids?” he asked, not too patiently. “Because we’re about to die in them.” Boone took one of my hands, and I held onto my purse with my other hand. “Don’t forget, Matilda. Knees up.”
It was bad, nothing like a ride at Disneyland. The water threw me around like a rag doll, and the only thing that kept me up was Boone. Twice, he tugged me out of the way of a large rock. I gulped water, which made me cough and sputter.
“It’s going to get bad, now,” Boone warned over the sound of the rapids.
“It’s going to get bad? It’s not bad, already?”
“But it’s okay because you have your purse. It would be really bad if you didn’t have your purse.”
“I don’t like your tone,” I said, just as he pulled me out of the way of a boulder.
“This is it, Matilda. Fill your lungs with air.”
He gripped my hand hard and then it all went to hell. I was completely at the mercy of the water. Nature is a cruel bitch. Probably a lot meaner than Margaret Marshall. It took us about two minutes to get through the rapids, but it felt like an hour. But we made it through.
“We made it! We’re alive,” I said, euphoric. On the other side of the rapids, the water was smooth as glass, but the current was still strong. “That wasn’t too bad.”
“Swim to the side. Come on. The falls are coming.”
“What falls?”
He swam full out for the side of the river, but he was still holding onto my hand, and I was holding him back, no matter how much I tried to keep up. I wanted to tell him to save himself and swim to safety on his own, but I was a coward and didn’t want to break my neck or drown by myself. So, I kept swimming even though my stren
gth was leaving me, and I threatened Boone’s life with my added weight. It didn’t seem like we were making much progress. It was like a nightmare where I had no strength and couldn’t move as much as I tried. I was so tired, and the water was so cold.
Then, all went black.
I woke up lying with my face in the mud, and Boone peeling my cold, wet clothes off my body. “What happened?” I croaked.
“Well, you tried really hard to kill me, but I survived.”
“Did we go down the falls?”
“No, for some wacky reason you swam in the wrong direction toward the falls, but I knocked you out, flipped you on my back and swam you back to shore against impossible odds and a breakneck current. I saved your life. You’re alive because of me. Now I’m taking off your clothes so you don’t catch pneumonia.”
I rolled over and wiped some mud off my face. “You knocked me out?”
“You might have a bruise on your jaw. I hear arnica’s good for that.”
I sat up. “I’m not wearing pants. You’re not wearing pants.”
“Hell of a first date. Am I right?” he asked, and his eyes flashed big and dark. “I only had to get you in a near-death experience to get your pants off.”
“My purse!”
Boone picked it up from the ground, making a sucking sound as it was pulled out of the mud. “Your purse is intact. I’ve never met a woman so attached to her purse.”
“It’s leather.” Boone tugged at my shirt. “What’re you doing? I’m cold. I don’t want to be naked.”
Normally I would have wanted to be naked with Boone, if I were completely honest with myself. But I was shivering something awful, and my hands and feet hurt from the cold so much that I didn’t feel a thing on my jaw where Boone had knocked me out.
“I know it’s counter-intuitive, but first we need to get your clothes off and then I’ll start a fire. When you get half-defrosted, we’ll walk back to my truck, and I’ll crank up the heat.”
It was a plan. And since I didn’t have one of my own, I decided to let Boone have one for me. He pulled my shirt off me and tossed it in the mud. I was down to my bra and panties, and Boone was only wearing black boxer-briefs. “I’ll be right back,” he said, sticking a finger up in the air.
