New Title 1

by Carol Davis Luce

  Chapter 17

  A hand caressed her back. Warm breath moved against her ear, a whisper, "Alex, wake up.”

  She opened her eyes. In the gray light of dawn, Justin, fully dressed, was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over her.

  "Humm? Something wrong?"

  "I have to leave. I want you up and dressed."

  "What time is it?"

  "Almost six.”

  "Ohhh," she groaned, rubbing her eyes. "You are definitely an early riser."

  He lifted the robe from the foot of the bed and handed it to her.

  Sliding her legs out of bed, she gasped when her hip pressed against the mattress.

  "Hurts now, huh?" He pulled back the sheet, crouched down and studied the purple bruise. "It looks bad.”

  "I'll survive. I've had worse skiing."

  His hand rested on her hip. His eyes moved slowly up her body to her face. "The locksmith has come and gone. New keys on the kitchen counter.”

  "A locksmith in the middle of the night?"

  He chuckled. "It's a twenty-four-hour town. I made coffee. That should perk you up."

  "It'll take more than coffee to get me moving this morning."

  "Oh yeah?" His hand moved up her thigh.

  She smiled. "I thought you had to leave?"

  He sighed. "I do. Get dressed.”

  She went into the bathroom, washed her face, brushed her teeth, then returned to the bedroom.

  Justin was stretched out on the bed, head propped up on one hand, smiling.

  "What are you grinning about?" she asked.

  "Y'know, you don't look half-bad in the morning."

  "I'm too sleepy to fight with you.”

  "Some women are downright spooky. And y'know what else? You don't look half-bad naked." He dodged the rolled-up socks she threw at his head.

  "Where are you going so early?"

  "The station. Paperwork. Looks like I'll need a warrant to search Thelma Klump's house. She refused to allow the investigative team in last night."

  "Anything about my sister?"

  "Not yet. I'll make a few calls myself. Hurry, I'm taking you to your friend Margie's house.”

  "Margie and her family are sleeping under an island moon right now. It's three-thirty in Maui.” She stepped into her panties.

  "Then you'll have to come to the station with me."

  "Sounds exciting, but I think I'll pass. I'll be okay for an hour." She reached behind her and hooked her bra.

  He opened his mouth to protest.

  "Really, Justin, I'll be all right. I have the gun.”

  He sighed. "Okay, but lock up. Don't answer the door to anyone, understand. Stay inside."

  She smiled, nodded.

  "C'mere a minute.”

  She finished pulling her head through the frayed neckline of an old sweatshirt and moved toward him, lowering the shirt over her breasts as she walked.

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, pulled her in between his knees, then lifted her sweatshirt. As he kissed her midsection he said, "Get naked again."

  "I thought you were in a hurry to get to the station?"

  "It's too damn early.”

  She knelt down in front of him. With his hands holding her face, he kissed her. Kissing, she mused, was definitely one of his strong points.

  As he kissed her, he lifted the sweatshirt and pulled it over her head.

  Thirty minutes later Alex watched Justin drive away. A patrol car pulled up the driveway and parked near the house. A lone policeman remained in the car. Justin, she realized, had assigned her police protection.

  Klump knocked again. After several long moments she slid the duplicate key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door. She looked in and called his name.

  The bed was unmade, though she knew he hadn't slept in it the night before. He hadn't returned to the house at all. The cops had come around midnight, tromping through her ice plant and azaleas, wanting to come inside and have a look around. She had exercised her legal right to turn them away.

  She was sorry now that she had taken the tall stranger in. From the day she had lied to the sergeant about living alone, she had been guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. She realized she could be held accountable, as an accomplice possibly, for his actions. He had assaulted her neighbor. That was serious. Very serious.

  There was only one thing to do, she reasoned. Get the goods on him. Go to the cops with something substantial before they had a chance to get back to her with a warrant. She'd say he had threatened to harm her—kill her--and had kept her a virtual prisoner in her own house. What was a poor helpless woman to do?

  She crossed the room to the bureau, reached for the radio and paused when she saw the painting on the floor. It faced the wall. Klump stooped and turned it around.

  A nude painting. The figure was of a woman in a three-quarter view, face turned away, hands holding long, dark hair atop her head. It had been painted by the hussy herself— Alexandra Carlson. Klump grunted. Although the face was not visible, she was certain the body had been modeled from the artist's. It was no wonder the man living in her basement was after her. Decadence begot decadence. She positioned the painting the exact way she had found it.

  She started to go back to the radio, eager to read the papers tucked inside the cavity, when something under the rumpled bedclothes caught her eye. She stiffened. Someone was in the bed. No. Impossible, she told herself. There was no mound, just crumpled covers. She flung back the blanket. On the dingy sheet, looking like a squashed animal, lay a gray wig. It was similar to the one she was wearing. Similar to the ones she kept in the hatbox on her closet shelf.

  With a rigid forefinger, she flipped it over. The Tress House label in the netting told her the wig was hers.

  Why that sonofabitch, she thought. Not only had he gone back on his word about hurting the Carlson woman, he had used her wig—no doubt in an effort to implicate her. "Well," she said aloud, "we'll just see who implicates whom."

  Feeling anger now, she took down the radio and, no longer concerned with being careful, yanked off the backing, threw it down, and pulled out the thick sheath of papers. Sitting on the bed, she began to read.

  He worked quickly. Sitting on the floor of Klump's storage shed, he pulled a length of fishing line from the spool and snapped it off with his teeth. He made a cinch knot, worked it over the sparrow's head, and pulled it tight. He opened the shed door a crack and tossed the bird out. It landed directly beneath the bird feeder

  He crouched on the balls of his feet, waiting. He didn't have long to wait.

  The black cat moved in with an inherent stealth, wary of the woman with the pellet gun who had already taken several off-the-mark potshots at him. His body was low, his tail twitching his eyes luminous.

  The man in the shed jerked the line. The bird seemed to leap through the air to land inches from the shed door.

  The tomcat stopped dead in his tracks. He opened his mouth and made strange clicking sounds. He advanced. Stopped. Clicked. Advanced again. Just before he pounced on the dead sparrow, the cat's rump wriggled from side to side.

  While waiting for Justin to return, Alex kept herself busy by writing in her diary. The month of October had begun with routine daily trivia. It now went beyond that. The events she entered in the log were macabre and far too eventful. She could write a book. With goosesbumps rising along her arms, she brought to mind the attack in the hallway and wrote it down.

  Alex heard a light thump. It came from the direction of the redwood deck. She paused, listening. A succession of soft snorts followed. Picking up the gun, she rose and walked to the slider.

  Blackie was on his side under the patio table. The cat was kicking his hind paws at his throat.

  "Blackie?" Alex slid open the door.

  Frantically now, the cat continued to kick. As Alex stepped out she heard a gagging sound. My God, he's choking!

  Running to the table, she knelt, dropped the gun, reached for him. T
he needle-sharp claws raked painfully across her hand. The gagging sound changed to a wheezy cough.

  She tried to grab Blackie's back legs to keep his claws from ripping into her arms and hands. On his back now, the cat thrashed wildly, eyes wide and terrified, tongue protruding from the side of his mouth. The horrible wheezing noise became a whistling hiss.

  In Alex's panicky state she could have sworn her cat was being attacked by a bird—a small sparrow. The bird was bouncing up and down on his chest. Alex grabbed the bird and tugged as claws tore into her wrist. The sparrow, she realized, was tied, by its neck, to Blackie's neck with clear fishing line.

  "Oooh, Blackie, stay, kitty, stay," Alex whispered hoarsely as she tore into the house, grabbed the scissors from a drawer, and ran back to the thrashing cat. Sticking her finger along the back of his neck, she found the line and cut it, fur and all.

  Blackie leaped to his feet, shook his head, coughed, and shook his head again. Alex gently picked him up. She hugged him to her.

  Klump had read the legal documents and was well into the scribblings of what she assumed was a journal. She felt the skin on the back of her scalp tighten. Most of what she had read was bizarre and without reason. And what she understood made her insides crawl.

  She sensed a presence in the room. She turned her head toward the door. The scream that tore into her eardrums could have come straight out of the journal— straight out of hell. It froze her. Anchored her to the mattress. It came at her like an avalanche. A powerful blow wracked her shoulder. Another pounded the back of her head, jarring her brain stem. Driven to the floor by one blow upon another, she clutched at the wig, holding it desperately to her head. The man's face frightened her more than the fists that rained down on her.

  It was inhuman.

  Alex hugged Blackie to her until he squeaked out a weak meow and fidgeted to be let loose. Then she put him down and watched as he ran across the deck and jumped onto the rail before leaping to the roof and disappearing.

  Alex spun around, glaring up at the house on the hill. "You bitch,” she said between clenched teeth. "You crazy, evil bitch."

  She snatched up the fishing line with the dead bird and ran, tripping and almost falling twice, down the wooden staircase to the yard below. She ran across the lawn to the sagebrush incline and started to climb in the direction of Thelma Klump's house. Halfway up the hill, her breath coming in ragged spurts, she heard shouting from below. She looked down to see the policeman running across her backyard, shouting at her to stop.

  What was she doing? she asked herself. Running off half-cocked—without the gun — exactly as Justin had told her not to do.

  She looked up at the house, threw the bird as far as she could throw it and screamed, "You stupid bitch."

  In anger and frustration, Alex was about to start back down when she noticed wisps of smoke curling skyward.

  Black smoke and flames.

  The house was on fire.

  Turning to the policeman, she shouted, "Call the fire department!" She pointed at Klump's house. "It's on fire. Her house is on fire." She watched the policeman turn and run back toward his squad car. Then, her heart in her throat, she scrambled upward, slipping and sliding on the loose soil.

  Reaching the top of the ridge, Alex stopped, and gasping, trying to catch her breath, she stared in morbid fascination at the burning house.

  Flames and smoke rose from the roof. She heard the sound of breaking glass as a window at the side of the house blew outward. Was Klump still inside?

  "Thelma? Thelma? Where are you?." Alex ran to the back of the house. There, on the other side of the window, wide-eyed from terror and shock, clawing frantically at the glass, was Klump, covered with blood and fighting for her life.

  Alex pulled up short, frightened by the manic look on the woman's face. Klump's mouth, gaping open, was pressed against the window, like a wet suction cup, her cheeks puffing in and out as she tried to suck air from the glass.

  Alex moved then. She ran the few steps to the window, put her palms to the warm sash and pushed. She cried out in frustration. It was locked.

  Klump pulled away from the window, her mouth leaving a foggy disk of condensation on the glass, and slid, still clawing, out of sight.

  She's dying, Alex thought, she's dying before my eyes.

  Around the corner of the house was a set of French doors. As Alex ran to them, she glanced down the hill to see the policeman, now joined by Justin, running across her lawn to the rocky incline. There was no time to wait for them, she thought, no time.

  Shaking the doors violently, she looked around for something to break the glass. She reached down, grabbed the garden hose and swinging it with all her might, smashed the glass with the metal spout. The heat hit her like a blast from a blowtorch, sending her back several feet. Putting her forearm across her face, she stumbled forward, reached through the broken pane and unlocked the door. Shoulder to the door, she pushed against it. Taking a deep breath, she rushed inside, heading in the direction of the window where Klump had been. It was impossible to see through the dense smoke, and she hoped she would find the old woman before her air ran out. Something caught her foot and she went over. Alex grabbed hold of the first thing her fingers touched— hair — and pulled. The hair came free and angled limply from her fingers.

  Alex threw down the wig and reached for Klump again. This time her fingers gripped real hair, oily and drenched with sweat and blood.

  She dragged the unconscious woman across the room, through the door, across the patio — gasping fresh air--over the lawn. She would have kept going until she collapsed if hands had not disengaged her fingers from Klump's hair and pulled her away.

  "Alex, stop. She's safe. You got her out," Justin Holmes said, holding her tight. "Easy, honey, easy."

  "Her house . . . her house . . . on fire." Alex doubled over, then sank to the ground.

  Justin sat beside her, put an arm around her. "Fire engines are coming now. Ambulance too. Hear them?"

  "Thelma?" Alex looked around to see the policeman hunched over, giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Klump. "Dead?"

  "No. Listen."

  Alex listened. She heard coughing, moaning. "She's alive."

  Alex winced as she shifted on the couch.

  Fifteen hours had passed since she had pulled Thelma Klump from the burning house. Justin had taken her to the hospital as soon as the ambulance had driven away with Klump. In the emergency room a doctor had cleaned the cat scratches, put three stitches in the back of her hand where broken glass had sliced through it, and had then given her a tetanus shot — by far the most painful of the three — in the left hip. They had stayed at the hospital most of the day, hoping to talk to Klump who, drifting in and out of consciousness was the only one with knowledge of her attacker. At seven o'clock they had given up and left.

  Back at Alex's house, Justin had drawn her a steamy bath in which he'd placed some Epsom salts. She had soaked for almost an hour, adding more hot water as it, cooled. It was Justin who cooked dinner.

  Now, her hair drying in the heat of the firepit, wrapped in the white kimono, Alex sipped brandy-laced coffee and watched Justin as he talked on the phone.

  He hung up and motioned to her to join him on the couch. When she sat he lifted her hand and squeezed it.

  "There's nothing to indicate that your sister ever lived in Haller, Oregon. It's a small rural town. Less than a thousand people. Those letters are twenty years old. She may have come and gone without so much as a stir in the community. Yet, if he looked anything like you, folks would surely remember.

  Alex felt a deep sense of disappointment. "We looked alike."

  "We're checking the neighboring communities.”

  "Did you find anything at Thelma's?"

  "He was living in a room in the basement," Justin said. "That's where the fire was set. We found the pistols and the shotgun, what was left of them. Klump managed to get out and make it as far as the window in the dining room. If ther
e was anything in his room to tell us who he was, the fire got it.”

  "Thelma knows.”

  "Yeah, she knows."

  Justin picked up the phone again, dialed. He placed Alex's hand on his thigh, his hand over hers. Speaking into the phone, he asked for Dr. Jacobs, waited, then said, "Yes, Doctor, Detective Holmes here. Has Thelma Klump regained consciousness yet? . . . It's imperative I talk with her . . . Yes, I understand . . . Whatever time you say . . . We'll be there, thank you." He replaced the receiver, turned to Alex. "She's conscious and asking to speak to you. But the doctor says he won't permit it until tomorrow morning.”

  Alex nodded.

  "How's the hand feel?" He lifted her hand and kissed the crisscross network of cat scratches along her arm.

  "Feels okay.”

  "How's this feel?" He ran a hand over her hip, where she'd had the tetanus shot.

  "Hurts like hell.”

  "I'm sorry." He pulled her around to lie across his lap. One hand stroked her face, the other rested on her hip. In a soft voice he said slowly. "One night, a million years ago, I held you in my arms just like I'm holding you now. You were wearing a kimono like this one. I watched you sleep. Your lips were swollen from crying. Through the opening in your kimono I watched your breasts swell with each breath. I thought you were the most desirable woman I'd ever seen. My need to kiss you, to touch you, was overwhelming. I slid my hand inside your kimono and cupped your breast. I kissed your mouth. You . . ."

  Alex put a finger to Justin's lips to silence him. She took his hand and slid it inside the kimono to her breast. Looking into his eyes, she arched her back and raised up, her lips lightly touching his. They kissed, tentatively at first, then with an urgency they both knew would stir and abate many times before the night was over.