Cold Feet (Five Star Mystery Series)

by Karen Pullen

  The barn was fifty feet away, the minivan parked beside it. Jax was somewhere on the other side. Eenie-meenie-mineymoe. I went to the right, flattening myself against the side of the barn. Now I could hear the fire crackle. My eyes watered and my lungs burned as the smoke enveloped me, pulled up into the atmosphere by the low barometric pressure of the coming storm. I swallowed to hold back my queasiness, and very cautiously looked around the corner of the barn. An element of surprise was inevitable but I also wanted it to be all on his side.

  Jax stood in the drizzle with his back to me, a gas can beside his feet, and no obvious weapon—his hands were empty. He watched a flaming pyre, the burning of a partly blackened, recognizably human body, its legs and arms outflung and rigid as if in shock, its torso aflame, resting on a pile of boughs of pine and cedar, bits of two-by-fours.

  I stepped into the open, holding my SIG out straight with both hands. “Hands in the air! Now!”

  He turned to face me and I saw recognition flash across his face. He smiled. “Stacy, what a surprise. Or are you Stella today?” His voice was smoothing and so smarmy I felt like popping him right there.

  “Who’s that?” I motioned to the burning body. “And get your hands up.”

  He looked back at the fire, ignoring my command. “That is not your business, Stella. Now, it is perfect that you are here. I need to talk with you. Come, let’s sit. Put your weapon away.” He motioned to his minivan, and began to walk quickly toward it.

  Talk about arrogance! How did he know I wouldn’t shoot him in the back? I swapped the SIG for the Taser and gave him one last chance to pay attention to me. “Don’t touch the car.”

  He reached out to the car door handle so I squeezed the trigger like I meant it, overrode the five-second cycle twice, and the silvery threads fluttered as wattage pulsed through his body over a hundred times, giving him the mother of all full-body charley horses. He toppled and writhed, shrieking reflexively until I stopped, and before the effects could wear off, I pulled him to his feet, not easy as he was essentially quaking dead weight, and relieved him of a loaded Rohrbaugh R9, then cuffed his arms to the car door handle. He collapsed onto the wet ground and glared at me with his one good eye. I imagined he was angrier at the loss of control than the neuromuscular pain caused by the Taser.

  I ran back to the fire. Despite the splashings of gasoline, the flames had died down to a mere smolder. It’s difficult to burn a body, especially a near-emaciated one with as little fat for fuel as this one appeared to have. I found a thick dead branch and pushed the body off the embers onto the ground. The truly awful stench made me gag. I can’t adequately describe what it smelled like—perhaps something like pork marinated in chemical waste.

  The body’s extremities—its arms from the elbows down, and its lower legs—were not burned. The forearms were heavily and colorfully tattooed. The tattoos, red and black abstract designs of spikes and swirls, looked familiar. I covered my mouth and nose with my hands and leaned in more closely to study them. I’d seen those designs before, draped across the front seat of a dented station wagon, when Bebe drove Fredricks and me to buy the kilo, just before Mo tied a blindfold across my eyes. Those red and black tattoos had decorated Mo’s forearms.

  This was Mo’s body that Jax had been trying to burn.

  The smells and the smoke and adrenaline suddenly overwhelmed me, and I felt dizzy. I staggered away from the fire, around the barn to escape the noxious fumes, stopping only to vomit up a sour liquid, choking and gagging again and again as my body tried to expel the poison of this place.

  Cuffed to his minivan, Jax was going nowhere, but I needed backup to bring him in. My cell phone was still searching so I ran back to my car to drive out of the dead zone. Once I reached Highway 64 and passed the herd of brown cows, I parked and called the Essex County sergeant, giving him directions to Jax and Mo’s burning body. I told him I’d meet him there. It was raining harder now, and wind gusts rocked the car.

  I wasn’t in any particular hurry to get back to Jax. Let him ponder the burning body, contemplate his future in the courts, and drown in the drenching rain. I had an important call to make—someone had to break the news about Mo to Bebe. Perhaps Fern would do it more gently than I could. I dialed the number of the Pink Magnolia Bed and Breakfast. It rang a dozen times until the answering machine picked up. I hung up and redialed twice. Surely Fern and Bebe were there—they didn’t have a car and they were essentially hiding out.

  When she finally answered the phone, Fern was out of breath. “Stella! You’ll never guess what—Bebe’s water broke! Ricky’s going to be here in about a half hour to take us to the hospital. Can you meet us?”

  “Uh, don’t know.” I changed my mind on the spot—it was a terrible time to tell Fern and Bebe about Mo. It could wait a few hours. Let Bebe have her baby first.

  “As soon as he gets back, Blue’s going to watch Oliver.

  Everything’s under control, don’t worry.”

  “Where did Blue go?”

  “He’s gone to return the money.”

  “He took the money with him?”

  “Well, sure. How else would he return it?”

  “Where did he go?” I tried to sound calm.

  “He arranged a meeting at the Rosscairn Castle B&B. Stella, he’s so sweet. I told him I’d found the money and asked him did he earn it. He just blushed. He knew it was wrong. I asked him did his mother know about it? He said no, please don’t tell her. And then he made a call, put the money into a backpack, and hopped onto his bike.”

  Blue. Rides. His. Bike. While carrying thousands of dollars, a payment connected with Justine’s murder, I was certain—the deed itself, or assistance in committing it, or silence. Had Blue committed murder for hire? Or, had he seen something he wasn’t supposed to? I didn’t know which alternative was the most alarming. I had a very bad feeling about Blue and the person he was biking to meet at the Rosscairn Castle B&B.

  “When exactly did he leave?”

  “Oh Stella, you sound mad. Don’t be mad. He’s doing the right thing.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Fern, he’s in danger. When did he leave?”

  “About two minutes ago.”

  I snapped my phone shut. From the Pink Magnolia to Rosscairn Castle would take less than fifteen minutes by bike. I was five miles from the Pink Magnolia. Blue had probably taken the Trestle Road shortcut over the single-lane bridge. I thought I could catch him before he got to the Castle. Let the county cops take care of Jax. He was not my priority.

  I floored the accelerator and flew just fast enough to avoid hydroplaning in the water sheeting the pavement. US 64 I love you, I thought, you’re built for speed. My Civic was doing me proud. I barely slowed at the 15-501 intersection as I shot in front of a school bus. At Trestle Road, I braked and turned. Past Magnolia Manor, the road became a washboard of ruts, but I didn’t dare to slow.

  As the road twisted and curved, the wheels of my car sprayed gravel, spinning to gain traction. The road was narrow and tall trees hugged its shoulders. At one point, as I was skidding around a sharp turn, my wheels hit a pothole and the loss of traction sent the car into the brush, the wheels spinning until they bit and pulled us back onto the road.

  I didn’t see Blue until the gravel road straightened and began a downward slope to the river. There he was. About a hundred yards ahead, wearing a red windbreaker and pedaling in the manner of one who rides a bike for transportation, not to train for the Tour de France. He had almost reached the long, single-lane bridge, the one with the uncertain wood railings, built in 1922 for horses and hay wagons to cross one at a time, a protocol that worked only when all parties were aware of it, paying attention, willing to be patient and wait. I felt a rush of relief that Blue was okay. He rode onto the wooden bridge as I coasted to my end and stopped, waiting for him to get across before I followed. The bridge was wide enough for a car and a bike abreast, but it would be a tight fit, and I didn’t want to alarm him. The rain had settled
into a steady downpour and the bridge roadway was probably slick.

  Then I saw another car, a compact sedan, on the opposite side of the bridge, at the top of the rise leading down to the river. Uneasily I watched it roll forward.

  Blue’s red windbreaker was plastered against his body as he struggled across the bridge in the wind and the rain. He was almost halfway across when it became obvious that the oncoming car was picking up speed, not slowing, as it grew closer to the bridge and Blue on his bike. “Can’t even wait to get your money back, can you,” I muttered, and floored the accelerator.

  My rear tires slipped on the gravel and the car fishtailed, smashing the wooden railing and for an instant it felt like one tire was over the edge, then it grabbed the bridge road surface and I centered the wheel, heading straight-on toward the oncoming car. Passing Blue, I caught a glimpse of his pale face half-hidden by the red hood, his expression of fear like a mirror.

  About twenty feet past Blue, just at the halfway point on the bridge, I smashed into the oncoming car. At the very last, the other driver braked and swerved right. But I didn’t pull right, and I didn’t slow down, and as I hit the driver’s side of that car at eighty feet per second, the energy of the collision sent both cars spinning, crashing through the wooden guard rails, into the river.

  Instantly disoriented by the stunning force of the exploding airbag, for a moment I was unable to breathe, then the cold water pouring into the broken windows panicked me. The air-bags were deflating and I struggled to undo my seatbelt as water flooded into the car, the car tilted onto the driver’s side . . . don’t panic don’t panic . . . and I squeezed my way past the airbag and through the passenger-side window up to the surface of the murky river as the car slowly sank toward the silty bottom. I swam to the other car, fast as I could, but I was hampered by my vest, my clothing, and the river was so murky with silt that I could hardly see the car. The driver’s door was crumpled, and as I felt around in the mess of airbag, glass, and metal, a jagged edge sliced my arm, then I touched a face, and something different, and I began to need air, but I tugged until it gave and I needed air real bad so I burst to the surface, knowing it was too late for whoever had been driving.

  I sucked in a great lungful of damp mist, and another, then turned and floated toward the riverbank. Cold rain fell onto my face and blood poured from my arm, mixing with river water, and running in rivulets over the prize I’d pulled from the neck of the dead driver.

  A cervical collar.

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  Tuesday Early Evening

  By the time I dragged myself to the river’s bank, a precipitous slope of muddy rock, Blue was there to grab my hand. Together we scrambled up to the road. It was raining harder, now, and he was as wet as I was, but chilled from the wind. His teeth chattered as he shivered with cold, living up to his name.

  “Get us some help,” I said. “Hop on your bike and find someone with a car.”

  “Which way?” he asked.

  “Whichever way’s shorter.”

  He got on his bike and pedaled onto the bridge, up the hill toward the Rosscairn Castle. I examined my right arm. It was sliced open below the elbow, bleeding but not arterial, and starting to hurt. I decided to ignore it. Pain is in the brain and I had other problems. Gusty winds, cold rain, and a head-to-toe soaking had me shivering uncontrollably. Help would be a while in coming, and I was concerned about the effects of hypothermia. To generate some heat, I started jogging along the bridge after Blue. When I reached the splintered railings, I slowed and briefly glanced down, but the water was too murky to see Gregor McMahon’s car. Or his body. I struggled on, miserably cold, until Wyatt’s white minivan appeared and the doors opened and Blue jumped out with a blanket. Blue was turning out to be quite the little genius, though he had some explaining to do.

  And in only moments, it seemed, we were at the Castle B&B, where Liesle performed first aid on my arm, and then let me root through a bag of items left by their B&B guests. I found a pair of too-big sweatpants, socks, a white tee-shirt, and a very nice black Merino wool cardigan sweater she said I could keep. She handed me shampoo and pushed me into a bathroom for a shower.

  After all the river-stink had been washed from both of us, Blue and I cozily sipped hot chocolate in the parlor in front of a blazing fire. I ran my fingers through my hair to help it dry, feeling victorious and alive and warm in my new sweater, with Liesle’s cocoa in my tummy, Jax under lock and key, and Justine’s murderer in the drink. Or perhaps, by now, in the morgue.

  “You saw McMahon in the barn, the morning of the wedding, didn’t you?” I said.

  Blue shrugged. “I knew he was a guest. I remembered that collar thing he wore. I was scared he’d see me.”

  “Because . . .”

  He blushed, and pulled the blanket more closely around his shoulders. “I was messing with the water tank.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I put a dead squirrel in it.You know, when I was . . .”

  “That doesn’t matter right now. What about McMahon?”

  “Dude came into the barn, and like, scared me. I squeezed behind the tank to hide. He looked at all the chemicals. Finally he opened one and poured some into a plastic bag and left.”

  “So when you heard Justine had been poisoned with strychnine, you decided to blackmail him?”

  Blue looked affronted. “No!”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You contacted him?”

  He stretched out his long legs toward the fire. “It sounds stupid.”

  “We all do stupid things. What?”

  “I didn’t want anyone to know I saw him because then they’d know what I was doing in the barn. But I thought he’d turn himself in if he knew someone saw him. So I got his name and phone number from his registration card and called him.”

  “He didn’t turn himself in, obviously.”

  “He said she was a murderer, but it couldn’t be proved in court. That she was a phony woman and he couldn’t let his friend marry her. He didn’t think she’d die, he said. Her dying was an accident.”

  “He gave you money?”

  Confusion flickered across his face. I waited while he tried to work it out.

  “He gave me five thousand dollars to be cool. He figured out I’d messed with the water tank. He said I was an accessory.”

  “Hush money.”

  “I spent some on a phone. But I knew it wasn’t right.”

  “So when Fern asked you about it—”

  “Fern?”

  “My grandmother. Staying at your mom’s B&B.”

  “Oh yeah. She’s cool. I showed her some of my drawings and she wants me to join her painting class.”

  “Fern said you should give the money back?”

  “Not exactly. She asked whether I earned it and did my mom know.”

  I nodded. How well I knew Fern’s gentle oblique approach with teenagers, asking that one question you didn’t want to answer.

  “Who do I give it to now that the dude’s dead?”

  “I don’t know.” Maybe Blue deserved to keep the money, given that Gregor McMahon intended to kill him on the bridge. A survivor’s reward.

  My eyes were red and irritated from the river water, so I closed them. The next thing I knew, someone was gently waggling my blanket-covered foot. The fire had almost gone out, the rain had stopped, and through the big windows at the end of the room I could see the mid-afternoon sun hitting waterlogged air, creating a rainbow. Looked like its end was somewhere over Durham, parts of which could use a pot of gold.

  “You okay?” Anselmo said. He stood at the foot of the couch, looking solicitous.

  I sat up and stretched, aware of how disheveled I was, wearing secondhand clothes and blood-stained bandages, my hair an untamed tangle, my face still a mess of bruises. Someday, I thought, I’m going to clean up nice for this man, married or not. “I’m cold. Apparently Wyatt doesn’t believe in central heating. What’s up?”

&nb
sp; “They pulled both cars out. One body.”

  “Uh, where’s Blue? He was there.”

  “He just left, with his mother, in a cop car, to be interviewed.”

  “Geez, did Wyatt see them?” Wyatt would have been surprised to learn who Blue’s mother was, and I missed that. “Oh, never mind. You want to know how McMahon ended up in the river. Have a seat.” I pulled my legs up to give him room on the couch. “Wait, put more logs on the fire first.”

  He crouched in front of the fireplace, rearranging the logs and adding kindling, until flames blazed and the wood crackled. When he sat down on the couch, next to my blanket-wrapped toes, I wedged them against his solid warm hip. “My feet are really cold,” I said. “Sorry.”