“He’s chasing us,” Dean said, “but not as fast. I think one of his tires was damaged.”
“Good. Because we can’t speed like this down Blue Star Highway. There will be too many cars. I’m sure to hit someone.”
Tess held up my cell. “Guys, I’m still on the phone with Kit Holt. He’s sending police to BAS.”
“Now we just have to get to the bayou,” I said. “I’m going to lead Joel straight to BAS. There’s only one way in or out. If he keeps following us, he’ll be trapped. With luck, the police will get there before we do.”
“He’s getting closer, Marlee,” Theo warned. He sounded the calmest of anyone in the car.
“What are we going to do if we can’t stay on the highway?” Andrew asked.
“Take a shortcut.” Without warning, I made a wide turn at the next intersection, my high speed forcing me to drive through the gravel parking lot of a roadside fruit market.
Tess covered her face as I knocked over a stack of crates. Peaches flew into the air. Joel’s headlights appeared in my rearview mirror. The damage from the post auger had slowed him down but hadn’t stopped him. If I maintained my speed, I thought I could outrace him. I just had to avoid hitting anything else. My car was now shaking from whatever damage I had sustained from my bucolic version of the Indy 500.
I pressed down on the accelerator, causing Tess to moan.
“We’re going way too fast, Marlee,” she murmured.
“So is he.” I slowed in order to make the next turn without flipping over my car but sped up again for another long stretch. I spotted blueberry bushes to my right. It was the O’Neill farm, and I knew there was an open access road that divided the middle of the property. A few moments later, I turned down it, happy to see there was a delay before Joel’s headlights appeared behind me.
When we emerged on the other side of the property, I headed in the direction of Oriole River Road. I could make good time now unless something got in my way. I had no sooner thought this when a deer decided to cross up ahead. Again I pressed on my car horn. I missed the frightened doe by no more than an inch.
“My hair has gone white,” Andrew said. “I know it.”
When I saw an open pasture ahead, I turned onto it.
“Not another farm,” Dean complained. “Can’t we just stay on the road?”
“I’m taking another shortcut.” It would be my last. As soon as I got on the other side of this property I’d be on West Pine; from there it was only a few miles to Blackberry Bayou.
“What are those strange lights in the sky?” Theo asked.
“I don’t care about anything in the sky right now.” I was too aware of Joel gaining ground.
“Hey, wait a second,” Dean said in alarm. “Are we on the Sanderling farm?”
“We are.” I winced when I hit an unseen hole in the dirt, which increased my car’s worrying shimmy.
Andrew and Dean gasped. “Oh no, I bet those lights are UFOs!” Andrew shouted. “Remember all those stories of UFOs being spotted here in 1975. Maybe they’ve returned!”
“Would you please calm down,” Tess said with exasperation. “It’s a plane. Definitely not UFOs.”
“If only they were UFOs.” I sped along the edge of what was left of the Sanderling grapevines. “We might get abducted and Joel would never catch up with us.”
“That isn’t funny,” Dean said. “This place is haunted and we—”
“Are now safely off the property.” I turned onto the road on the other side of the farm. “It’s only a few miles to BAS. And if I keep up this speed, we’ll be there in about three seconds.”
After that, I stopped looking at my speedometer. I didn’t want to know how fast I was going along Oriole River Road, a road comprising two narrow lanes. It also climbed upward, a result of the lake’s sand dunes, which gave the area its varied elevations. As I started along the uphill road, I glanced in my rearview mirror. Through my cracked rear window, I spied Joel’s SUV. It appeared to be weaving. All I had to do was keep a clear head and get this car to the bayou.
I let out a cry. A happy one this time. “Look behind us. Those are police flashers in the distance.”
A cheer went up from everyone. “We can slow down now,” Tess said. “Joel can’t escape, not with the police right behind him.”
“Joel knows he’s caught. But he’s determined to get rid of me and Theo first.”Proving my statement, Joel’s vehicle now drew much closer to us.
I increased my speed. The road to the campus had never seemed longer, or more winding. When I came upon a car up ahead, I honked my horn before passing in a flurry of dirt and gravel. Joel was right behind.
I was going so fast that when I hit the speed bump at the entrance to the BAS parking lot my car briefly achieved altitude. I didn’t have time to join my passengers in screaming. Not with people strolling around the parking lot, and a killer hot on my trail. I drove through the lot, one hand pressed continuously on my horn. As I raced past, I saw people rushing to all sides, shouting and covering their ears.
Suddenly, I was on the BAS campus, which was filled with people sitting at picnic tables. While trying to avoid a trio of musicians now running for their lives, I knocked over a small buffet table laden with pies.
“What are you doing?” Dean cried. “There’s nowhere to go!”
“Yes, there is.” Taking a deep breath, I pressed my foot to the floor. And drove straight into the bayou.
Water gushed through my open windows, but I kept the car going until it finally ran aground on the shallow bottom. I heard shouts from behind me and another splash of water.
Because the bayou was only a few feet deep, there was no danger of drowning. The only danger was Joel. All of us sat motionless and silent as water seeped in through the open car windows. I was too drained to even look behind me to see what had become of Joel. All I knew was that we weren’t alone. Hundreds of people were on campus, and it seemed like all of them were splashing through the water toward us.
The first person to stick her head through my window was Piper. “What in the name of God do you think you’re doing?” she cried. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
“No,” I said after a moment. “But the man chasing us has.”
Before she could continue to berate me, Theo said, “I want to get out of the car.”
“Amen,” Andrew muttered.
Then the cavalry did indeed appear. Or my version of it. Kit Holt pushed aside Piper, and I smiled at the sight of his face. It was such a cute face, too. And right now, there was no one I would rather have seen, not even Ryan. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“Can we please get out of the car?” Theo repeated. He was beginning to sound agitated. I didn’t blame him.
“Where’s Joel?” I asked as Kit helped me exit through my window. It was easier than trying to open the car doors in all this water. I waited anxiously until all of my passengers were safely taken out of the car and standing in the bayou with me. Everyone looked fine. Stunned and exhausted. But otherwise fine. A stricken Andrew still clutched the road rally envelope in one hand and his cell phone in the other. Tess and Dean held each other and wept. Theo tried to squeeze the water from his soaked T-shirt.
I heard splashing and looked up as Detective Trejo and Tina Kapoor approached.
“Mr. MacGregor hit a boulder on the edge of the bayou and flipped his vehicle,” Trejo said. “Knocked him out, but he’s coming around. His air bag went off, so he’ll live.” Trejo gently took my arm; Kit had hold of the other. “Given what he did to Sienna Katsaros—and that he tried to kill all of you tonight—he’ll spend a lot of that life in prison.”
“You poor things look exhausted,” Tina said, clucking over us. “Let me find towels to dry you off.”
“Absolutely.” Piper was not to be overlooked at her own Blackberry Road Rally. “We’ll get some food and drink into all of you while the police clear this mess up.” She waved at the flashing lights on land, the overturned
SUV, and the hundreds of BAS alumni crowded along the bayou’s edge and wading into the water.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt, Marlee?” Holt looked at me with touching concern.
I shook my head. “And no one else got hurt tonight, either. Although given how I drove, it’s a miracle we’re still alive.”
Dean looked up from his tearful embrace with Tess. “Don’t listen to her. Marlee is the greatest driver in the world. The greatest.”
Tess sobbed. “And she outraced a murderer.”
Theo splashed over to me. “Marlee went very fast. We even drove through a barn and a fence. And we didn’t kill any of the animals. Not even the chicken.”
“My fans.” I gave Holt a shaky smile. “But if you’d asked them about my driving ten minutes ago, you would have gotten a different response.”
Trejo chuckled. “I guess we need more speed traps out in the country.”
“Well, we can’t stand in the bayou all night.” Piper looked down with chagrin at her wet capris. “Here, come with me.” She reached out a hand to Andrew, who wordlessly gave her his phone and clue envelope. I suspected Andrew was still in shock.
All of us began to slosh our way out of the bayou. When we passed the overturned SUV, I barely spared a glance as the police dragged out a semiconscious Joel. People crowded round as soon as we reached shore. The first to greet us were Emma and Alison, who seemed even more in shock than Andrew. I wondered if Ryan had come to the picnic with his cousins. If so, how long would it take before he learned it was his fiancée who had come crashing through the BAS picnic before landing in the bayou.
Holt led me to the first picnic table we came to, and I collapsed onto the bench. Theo sat beside me and took my hand. I looked over at him in surprise.
“Thank you for catching Sienna’s killer, Marlee,” he said in a low voice. “It was an important thing to do. For Sienna. And her family.” He screwed up his face and I thought he was about to cry. “And me.”
I took him in my arms, and we both wept. Theo mourned the loss of the girl he had cared for so long ago; I cried over the tragic waste of such a young, promising life. And for the unending grief it had caused her family and loved ones. As the Chaplins had taught me, murder was the darkest, most unforgivable, of crimes.
We broke apart when Kit knelt before us and held out napkins. Theo took one and blew his nose, while I wiped my eyes with the other. “Thanks. You’re always around when I need you,” I told him.
“I wish that were true. You were on your own tonight during the road rally. I should have been there.”
“You couldn’t have come with us,” Theo said. “There was no more room in Marlee’s car.”
I gazed out at my poor little Chevy awash in the middle of the bayou. “You know, I was thinking about replacing my car for something bigger. I guess that decision’s been made for me.”
“See, the evening hasn’t been a total waste,” Kit said with a laugh.
I heard a loud whoop of joy.
Andrew ran up to our picnic table, looking happier than I had ever seen him. “We did it, Marlee! Thanks to you driving so fast, we did it. We got here first!”
He handed me a fancy certificate. And a check. I whooped with joy as well. It appeared the evening had turned out better than expected, for we hadn’t just caught a killer.
We won the Blackberry Road Rally.
Chapter 25
The following week no one talked about anything but the Blackberry Road Rally. Specifically, my wild drive through the countryside with a killer in pursuit. Every news outlet in Michigan reported how Joel MacGregor had been arrested for the murder of BAS student Sienna Katsaros. He was also charged with trying to kill a carful of road rally participants. Not the sort of publicity Piper envisioned for the event. Thanks to everyone packing an iPhone, the road rally chase soon went viral after alumni at the picnic posted video of me barreling onto the campus at eighty miles an hour, then plunging into the bayou. I watched the YouTube videos with horrified fascination. How I avoided running over dozens of people that night I will never know.
Being Internet celebrities thrilled the Cabot brothers as much as the grand prize money did. Tess and I were appalled. Theo didn’t understand why anyone who hadn’t been at the rally would even care. I did make Gillian happy by granting her father an exclusive interview for his paper. This upset the editor of our town’s rival newspaper. I hoped she wouldn’t carry a grudge.
Our brief fame burned even brighter when a national morning show interviewed my entire road rally team. Except for Dean, who took too long to get ready for the satellite feed and missed filming altogether. As for Piper, she decided even lurid publicity was better than no publicity. It helped that the morning show wanted to interview her, too.
After we were done filming, Piper turned to me with obvious frustration. “I’ll never be able to follow this. People who register for next year’s road rally will expect all sorts of excitement. And I doubt we’ll have another mad killer joining the festivities.”
I gave her a jaundiced look. “We can only hope.”
Since I’d been dragged into two murder cases this summer, I wasn’t all that confident there wouldn’t be fresh mayhem next year. And I had to admit it was hard to top headlines like: BLACKBERRY ROAD RALLY TEAM RACE FOR THE WIN—AND THEIR LIVES!
At least Joel was finally behind bars, although his wealthy family hired an expensive legal team to take up his defense. I prayed justice was indeed blind, especially to the MacGregor money. There was an additional attempted murder charge filed against him; this time for trying to run Christian Naylor off the road. Police had tracked down a witness driving in the opposite direction that rainy night who saw Joel’s SUV force Christian’s Jeep into a tree.
Amanda Dobson arrived two days after the road rally. She surprised me by being a vivacious, pretty woman, with a fondness for profanity. Not what I had expected from a renowned botanist. Her testimony about how Joel asked detailed questions about the toxicity of baneberries solidified the case against him. Along with her account of how he pushed her into a bed of poison ivy. I found her far more likable and warm than the rest of Sienna’s Bramble. Then again, she hadn’t spent the past twenty years covering up her friend’s death.
The fate of those Bramble friends was uncertain for a time, especially Christian. But after ten days, the doctors deemed it safe to bring him out of his coma. Christian remembered nothing of what had occurred the night of the accident. Although I heard he took comfort in the fact that his sister and parents were by his bedside when he regained consciousness.
The Katsaros family arrived in Oriole Point shortly after the road rally. Their main purpose was to retrieve Sienna’s remains, but they insisted on meeting with Leah, Zack, Gordon, and Dawn. I have no idea what transpired during their private talk. However, as Holt had predicted, the county prosecutor declined to press charges against them for covering up what they believed was an accidental death. Their youth at the time of Sienna’s death was a factor. He’d also taken into consideration the wishes of the Katsaros family, who asked that no charges be brought.
It was a compassionate gesture on their part. Joel needed to go to prison for his crime, but the others had been frightened teenagers. And the guilt they carried these past twenty years had been its own form of punishment.
“Is the Bramble gang free to get on with their lives?” I asked Kit Holt and Greg Trejo when they came by my shop to update me on the case. In the two weeks since the road rally, I’d seen both men every day. They were starting to feel like close friends. Even Detective Trejo.
“Naylor remains in the hospital here,” Trejo said. “When he’s strong enough, he’ll be transferred to Atlanta, where his parents live. This way they can be close by during his recovery.”
“Zack Burwell left for North Carolina last night. Let’s hope his A.A. sponsor there can keep him sober,” Kit said as he enjoyed the boysenberry sundae I had made for him. Of course, Detective Trejo refused m
y offer of Berry Basket ice cream. “And Dawn Vance reportedly caught her flight back to Minneapolis this morning.”
I ate a spoonful of my own raspberry sundae before replying. It was almost noon and ice cream seemed the perfect lunch. “That woman needs help just as much as Zack does. She used to be a crazy stalker. I wish the court had ordered her to undergo psychological counseling.”
“Not our problem.” Trejo eyed the customers in my store. His suspicious expression suggested he was waiting for one of them to shoplift. Did this man ever relax?
Kit looked up from his sundae. “It also appears Gordon Sanderling has had his fill of Oriole Point. He put his farmhouse up for sale. I’m betting he does the same with his company.”
I thought about all the cursed and haunted rumors concerning the farm and wondered how easy it would be for him to sell it.
“And you might be interested to hear that Leah Malek and Sanderling are officially a couple,” Kit continued. “We’ve learned he and Ms. Malek plan to take an extended vacation together in the Caribbean.”
“That is news. But not surprising. She’s had a thing for him since they were teenagers.” I finished off my ice cream. “And I don’t blame them for taking a vacation after all that’s happened. I’m doing the same. And right in the middle of summer tourist season, too.”
Indeed, when I announced my plans a few days ago, it was met with general shock and disbelief by my friends and fellow shopkeepers. No one who owned a business in Oriole Point took a vacation during high season. And I was more work obsessed than most.
“I need a break,” I added. “So does Theo. That’s why we’re vacationing together.”
“Seems strange to me,” Trejo muttered.
“Can’t believe you’re going on a road trip.” Kit chuckled. “Don’t you want to stay off the road for a while?”
I did understand why a road trip seemed like the last thing I’d want to do. But after being chased by a killer, I needed pampering and home-cooked meals. That meant driving to Chicago, where my parents lived. Just as they had done when I left New York after the Chaplin murder trial, Mom and Dad were happy to get my bedroom ready in their Wicker Park town house. Since I was bringing Theo, they had also readied the guest room.
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