ShadowsintheMist

by Maureen McMahon

  For a moment, I hesitated. I should go back and get help. If I could find David or Grant or Colin—or one of the security guards… But, having come this far, I was unwilling to retreat. Pure, illogical curiosity kept me moving upward.

  Chapter Fourteen

  By these storm-sculptured stones while centuries fled?

  The stones remain; their stillness can outlast

  The skies of history hurrying overhead.

  Jean-Paul Satre, The Heart’s Journey, pt 9

  It didn’t take long to reach the top, although at the time it seemed a very slow, painstaking ordeal. The last arc of the stairs was illuminated by the wash of light coming from the room above. At this point, I was able to see instead of just feeling my way. The light flickered and danced on the wall opposite the steps, interrupted intermittently by a huge, distorted shadow that could barely be identified as human.

  When I reached the top, I leaned flat against the wall to one side of the doorway and tried to calm my breathing. My palms were perspiring and I wiped them on my hoisted skirt. With thudding heart, I peeped around the door jamb. There, in the small upper gallery, a man squatted. His back was to me and a lantern stood on the wooden floor nearby. I couldn’t make out what he was doing but I recognized who it was instantly and felt a flood of relief that nearly made my knees buckle.

  With a chuckle at my inanity, I stepped through the door. “David! What are you doing up here?” I asked. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  I obviously took him by surprise. His back stiffened and his head jerked around and, in that split second, I glimpsed a large briefcase lying open on the floor in front of him. He slammed it shut and stood up to face me but I’d already seen what was inside. There was no way I could disguise my shock.

  “Suzanna,” he said gruffly, “You shouldn’t sneak up on a person like that.” He searched my face, reading the surprise and confusion there. He took a step toward me. In the dancing lantern flame, his face was unreadable and threatening and I automatically took a step back.

  “What are you doing up here?” I asked again. Something inside me grew very alert.

  David tilted his head to one side and smiled. “You shouldn’t have come, Suzanna.”

  “I saw the light,” I said. “I thought someone might be in danger. This place isn’t safe, you know.”

  He didn’t reply right away, still searching my face. Finally he sighed, squatted down to the briefcase again and threw the lid open, stepping back so I could see clearly.

  “It’ll bring a bundle of money,” he said with pride.

  I stared at the neat bags of white powder, racking my brain for a logical explanation. Perhaps he found it up here. Perhaps it wasn’t what I thought it was. But deceiving myself was useless. Like an animal smelling danger, I smelled corruption and David was its center.

  “Where did you get it?” My voice was cold.

  “Get it?” he smiled. “Oh, don’t worry, darling, I don’t use it. I merely pass it on to some friends of mine. They pay me well for my help.”

  I frowned. “Who are these friends, David? How could you get mixed up in this kind of thing?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a long story. Come here. I’ll show you something.”

  He moved to the little window in the stone wall. I hesitated but went to look where he indicated.

  “See that light out there?”

  I followed his pointing finger, peering into the night gloom, stiffening when his arm dropped casually around my shoulders. Far out on the water, I could make out a signal beam.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “I’m meeting them,” he said, his breath tickling my ear. “We’ve got business to do.”

  “David,” I tried to make my voice calm, “what sort of games are you playing? Does this have anything to do with the marina? Are you in some sort of financial dilemma?”

  “No,” he said. “Not the marina. This is just for me—at least now, anyway. It was going to be for both of us—you and me—but you turned your back on me. You see, I knew you wouldn’t want to be married to a pauper. Especially after all the luxuries you’ve been used to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He snorted and his arm tightened around my shoulders. “Oh, come now, Suzanna—little rich Suzanna! Don’t tell me you’d accept anything less than what Daddy gave you all these years?”

  I tried to pull away but he tightened his grip. “David, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go!”

  But he didn’t relinquish his hold and, as I looked up into his face, I saw an expression of pure malice that made me suddenly very afraid.

  “No, Suzanna, for once you’re going to listen. You’re going to hear all of it,” he said. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? Well, it doesn’t matter now. All this could have been for us. Now, it’s only for me. It’s my turn for a piece of the pie.”

  I struggled to get loose but it was useless. He pushed me up against the wall and pinned my shoulders. I felt the rough stone biting into my back.

  “You know, it’s all your fault,” he said through clenched teeth. “Yours and Leo’s!” He was breathing heavily and I could see his eyes were dilated and dark. “I was the only one besides Leo who loved Beacon. I’m the one who should have it. You—Colin—you’ve never learned to appreciate it. If you’d married me, Beacon would have been mine and none of this would have happened. But how was I to know that Daddy had other plans for you?”

  He was squeezing my shoulders so tightly I bit my lip. “Please, David. You’re hurting me!”

  Abruptly, he surfaced from his thoughts and focused on my face. “Am I?” He loosened his grip slightly but didn’t let me go. “You know, you’ve hurt me too, Suzanna. More than you’ll ever know.” His eyes misted. “How could you marry that bastard? How could you throw away what we had?”

  “You know why, David.” I was trying to sound calm. I’d never seen him so erratic. I didn’t want to provoke him. “If I didn’t, we all would have lost Beacon.”

  “Yes. Yes,” he murmured, as if to himself. “We wouldn’t want that…”

  I watched as a muscle tensed in his jaw. I must take advantage of his confusion. “Let me go, David. We can work all this out. I’m sure there’s a logical way to explain the drugs and…and, well, Grant is a good attorney. He could…”

  But I knew the minute I said the name that I’d made a tragic mistake. He shoved me hard against the wall. My neck snapped back and my head hit with a stunning force.

  “Grant! Grant! Grant!” he shouted. “It’s always been Grant with you! It only proves that you’re not worthy. Anyone who could love a whore’s bastard doesn’t deserve Beacon!”

  He was fumbling with his belt and, for one wild moment, I thought he was going to rape me. Instead, he whirled me around and brought my wrists together behind my back, wrapping them tightly with the belt and fastening it so my hands were useless.

  “David, please! I don’t understand what you’re doing!” I was sobbing now, confusion mingling with fear. This was a David I didn’t know. This was a David out of control—maybe even mad. I didn’t know what to do—didn’t know what he would do.

  “Shut up!” he snapped, slapping me hard so lights danced in my head and I fell backward to the floor. Before I was able to recover, he grabbed my skirt and ripped a long strip from it, tying it firmly around my ankles so that I was totally powerless. My head spun from the slap and it took some minutes to catch my breath. He stood over me, fists clenched, as I writhed helplessly.

  “Beacon should be mine!” he said in a low growl. “Leo took it away from me! He found out about the drugs. I tried to tell him it was for you and me—all that money. Do you know how much money you can make trafficking drugs? No, you wouldn’t. You’re too lily white! Always had plenty, haven’t you?” His mouth lifted in a sneer and I cringed, afraid he would kick me.

  Instead, he began to pace. “Leo was going to tell everyone, forbid you to mar
ry me. He even threatened to turn me in to the police. I had to kill him. He wouldn’t listen to reason.”

  I was too stunned to speak. That David was running drugs was unbelievable. That he killed my father was incomprehensible

  “This was to be the last time, you know,” he said. “After Dad found out and…” He rubbed his eyes hard.

  “It was you who ran your father down with the speedboat?” I whispered incredulously.

  “Dad overheard my arrangements for this haul. He was going to tell you. He always sided with you, with Leo. It was his own fault! If it hadn’t been for him, I never would’ve started dealing. It was easy, you see. He always left his big, black, ‘I’m-a-respectable-doctor’ bag lying around. And then Mother—she always had plenty of pills. She never missed them.

  “I found out at school how rewarding pill-pushing could be! And Jenny? Well, a nice target she was! Did you know that she and I were an item? No, I didn’t think so. We kept it very quiet. I spent a lot of time in New York. She’s the one who introduced me to Benny. ‘Want to make some big bucks?’ Benny said and within months, I was rich. All they wanted was a middleman. Someone to move the stuff. Is that so bad?”

  Aghast, I listened to his rambling tale, wondering if this was some sort of cruel joke. But my throbbing head and wrists told me otherwise.

  He moved to the window, stooped to pick up a pair of binoculars and gazed for some minutes into the blackness outside. He seemed calmer now, continuing to talk, half to me, half to himself.

  “Jenny shouldn’t have come back. I warned her to stay away. She never knew all of it, mind you but I wasn’t going to take any chances. She was having pangs of guilt—could have ruined everything.”

  “So, you were the sniper at the river?” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, testing my restraints.

  “I wasn’t trying to kill her, you understand, just warn her. It did the trick.”

  “But why the drugs, David? If we married, Beacon would be yours and you’d have access to my inheritance.”

  He laughed harshly. “That’s what I thought too—at first. But Leo was a wily, old bastard. He wasn’t going to let me have a penny I didn’t earn. He wanted me to sign a prenup ensuring that Beacon would stay in your name, along with the money and holdings. I wouldn’t have been any better off than I am now. I’d have to grovel for every penny and that’s one thing I’ll never do. No, I want Beacon but I want it in my own right. Besides, I get a great deal of satisfaction from using Dirkston resources to make me rich.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He glanced over, smiling. “The plane, Suzanna! We bring the stuff in using the seaplane! Smack, fantasy, ecstasy, crack, cocaine—whatever the latest craze. In the pontoons! It’s as simple as ABC—though I can’t take all the credit for working it out. Mike’s the one who came up with the idea.”

  My thoughts flashed back to the day I saw Mike Kensington squatting over the pontoon on the seaplane. He had seemed intent on something. Now I knew what. David saw recollection in my expression.

  “Yes,” he said, “Mike insisted you didn’t see anything that day and even if you did, you wouldn’t put two and two together. I wasn’t so sure. You were a problem from the beginning, Suzanna. If you’d only minded your own business… But no, you had to start snooping. It’s a trait in you I’ve always abhorred—meddling curiosity. I’d have cured you of it, given time.

  “Once you found the poker, I knew there was no going back. I knew you wouldn’t rest until you put the puzzle together. And when you married Fenton, I tried to convince myself that you only did it to save Beacon. I thought after the year was out, you’d leave him and come back to me. Then I began to watch the two of you together and I saw the truth. It became obvious I wasn’t going to get Beacon by marrying you, so my only alternative was to invalidate your inheritance.”

  At my look of confusion, he waved an expansive hand.

  “It all seems complicated to you, I know but really it’s quite simple. Who would inherit Beacon if something were to happen to you?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  He snorted. “Little Miss Naїve! No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Well, it would go to Colin and Colin is nearly as easy to manipulate as you. He’s so deep in debt that he’d sell his own mother, if someone offered him a cent! Not to mention that his lady fair, Alicia- dahling, has been under my power ever since she arrived.”

  “You gave her the drugs?”

  “Sure. She had an itch and I had the means to scratch it.”

  “But she’s off them now,” I said with false conviction.

  He looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. “You really are an innocent, Suzanna. All I’d have to do is,” he snapped his fingers, “and she’d be right back onto them—worse than ever.”

  “Does Colin know? About the drugs?”

  “Hell, no. He’s blind to anything he doesn’t want to see. Besides, he’s never had a head for business. He’s quite happy to let me do the bookkeeping and organization at the marina. Without me, Colin would be nothing.”

  I bit my lip and tried to get more comfortable. The floorboards were digging into my hip and I was losing sensation in my fingers. I wanted to keep him talking. I didn’t know what he planned to do with me but I knew my only chance was to stall him long enough for someone to come looking for us.

  “So, you decided to get rid of me, then?” I prompted.

  He made a wry face. “No, though I should have. Actually, I grew quite fond of you. I guess I even hoped I was wrong. That you’d see sense and come back to me. But I did figure I could alter your credibility a bit—make people wonder about your mental state.”

  I felt chilled. “How?”

  He reached into his pocket and held up a smaller bag of powder. “It’s all here. Mind control in a bag. A bit in your cocoa…a bit in your tea.” He made an exaggerated shudder. “Nasty dreams! Strange hallucinations!”

  I gaped at him. His teeth were very even when he smiled.

  “You gave me the idea yourself,” he said. “The night you nearly drowned in the pool—said you saw Daddy. They all thought you were having some sort of breakdown. Well, I figured I might just help it along.”

  “And my mother?” I whispered. It was too much to believe. The man before me now was a stranger.

  “Yes.” He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and turned back to the window. “Anna. She never liked me, you know. Shouldn’t have written all that about me in her diaries. How could she possibly know what I was like? I hated her—rich bitch! But did I kill her?” He looked at me again and shrugged. “Unfortunately, no. That was Colin’s doing.”

  I gasped. “Colin?”

  He waved a hand. “Oh, not like you think. It was just a prank. You know the ones we used to do back then. A practical joke. He was actually trying to get Grant into trouble. After Rudy saddled up the horses, Colin loosened the cinch. No one saw him. After Anna took a tumble, he was going to blame Grant. Colin really resented Grant in those days. He’d do anything to get Grant in hot water with Leo. He didn’t mean for her to die. I suppose he felt pretty bad about it afterward. But it worked miracles for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mind control, Suzanna! There’s only one thing better than drugs to control the mind and that’s guilt. All this time, I was the only one who knew Colin’s secret. How do you think I managed to keep him in line all these years?”

  I let out my breath in a long sigh, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to block out the shocking revelations spilling from his mouth. “So you’re the one who tore the pages from Mother’s journal?”

  He nodded. “I nearly forgot about them. Then, when I heard you were poking around in the attic, I remembered.” He chuckled. “I must say, I had to stay on my toes to keep one step ahead of you!”

  “And the message? ‘Get out while you still can’?”

  “Yes. You see? I never really wanted to hurt you. If only you’d done as you were told, you wouldn’t be in
the predicament you’re in now.”

  I felt sick. He turned away from me and raised the binoculars to his eyes. His silence accentuated the sound of the wind moaning around the upper parapet and gusting through the window. I craned my neck, searching for something sharp, something that might cut my bonds.

  Suddenly, he turned to me, his face set. “They’re coming to get me now,” he said. “I’ve got to go. I’m sorry it had to end like this, Suzanna. I’ll miss you.”

  He picked up the briefcase and the lantern and disappeared through the door, leaving me in darkness, alone and helpless but immensely relieved that he hadn’t seen fit to kill me first.

  * * * * *

  I allowed my eyes to become accustomed to the dark and was eventually able to make out moonlight coming in through the window. I rolled onto my stomach and squirmed over to the wall. Feeling carefully, I found a bit of raised ridge in the stone, testament to the rough masonry of past decades. I struggled to a sitting position, my back against the wall and began to drag the leather belt binding my wrists up and down over the jagged ridge. I felt the stone slicing into my skin but forced myself to persevere.

  After some minutes, I paused, my arms aching. I sniffed the air, curiously aware of an acrid smell that I hadn’t noticed before. I began to rub harder, feeling blood trickle down and drip from my fingertips. The odor was growing. In a flash, it dawned on me what is was—smoke!

  I peered through the blackness toward the door and saw a vague, incandescent flicker. My heart began to thud in my chest. David hadn’t shown mercy after all. He’d set the lighthouse on fire and left me here to burn!

  Frantic, I scraped harder at the belt. Despite its stone exterior, there was plenty of wood inside this old building and all of it brittle enough to easily catch alight. By the time the belt snapped, I was oblivious to any pain. The smoke was heavier now and my nose and eyes watered. Coughing fitfully, I fumbled with the bindings on my ankles, cursing my slippery, numb fingers. After what seemed an eternity, the knot came free and I stood up, my legs shaking and stumbled to the door, covering my mouth and nose with one hand. Flames danced far below and I could see they were already starting up the stairs.