A Match Made for Murder

by Iona Whishaw

  The trouble was Martinez was powerless to deal with whatever was happening. Even if Galloway had kidnapped the whole Darling clan and then some, he had no idea where they might have gone.

  The phone rang, making him jerk his hand off the receiver momentarily as if it were burning. “Yes? Tucson police, Sergeant Martinez.”

  “Martinez, it’s Jim Hazeltine from the sheriff’s office. We’ve had a call from the Mariposa Dude Ranch, and we just can’t get to it. Both of us are out on other calls. A group was out early on horseback in the upper foothills, and they had to bring them back in a hurry. Some idiot is out there shooting the place up with a rifle. Hunting way too close to civilization. Would you mind going out to take care of it?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “What’s he shooting at? I don’t think he sees us,” Meg said. She was crunched down in the narrow space they had found, where the ridge was split along a parallel, her knees pulled up.

  “I agree. I don’t think he does see us. But he might have seen our movement out of the corner of his eye and knows we’re around here. I’m beginning to think he’s just trying to pin us down. Or flush us out. I wish I could see where he is,” Lane said, frustrated by not knowing, fearful that he would figure it out and come up this hill and find them. They’d be sitting ducks wedged into this rock formation.

  Very slowly she rose and edged forward to where she could see a portion of the terrain below. There was no movement in the limited section visible to her. Then she nearly jumped when a lizard scampered across the rocks in front of her.

  “What are you doing?” Meg whispered frantically.

  Lane only held her hand up and moved forward another foot. She was at the edge of the outcrop. She gasped and pulled back. The cowboy was just below them at the bottom of the gully, looking up the opposite incline. Then something made her look again. In the middle distance, the dust of a passing car. The road! They’d come so close. She frowned at the man, who now seemed to be looking toward the road with his field glasses. He let the glasses hang loose at his neck and fired two shots into the air. He turned back to the task of scanning the terrain, slowly turning toward where Lane was observing him.

  She held her breath and pulled back. The dust had settled on the road. Those two shots had been a signal: “I’m over here.” Maybe even, “I’ve got them cornered.” Whoever was driving the car had stopped. She pulled back to consider a course of action. It was only a matter of time. She sat down next to Meg.

  “There’s a car out on the road. Those last two shots were a signal; the gunman thinks he’s got us. That means it’s Galloway or Griffin or someone. That man with the rifle, is he one of your husband’s men?”

  “Yeah,” Meg sighed. “That’s Idaho.”

  “He’s really called Idaho? Okay. So that means Griffin had me snatched off the street. Do you know why?”

  “How should I know? He might think you saw who shot that Mr. Renwick or figured it out somehow. Though I don’t know why he’d bring you up here.” She thought for a moment. “You know, Paul is in up to his eyeballs with Artie. Maybe he got Artie to pick you up. What would Paul want you for?”

  Lane sat back, her hand on her forehead. So she’d been right. He had found out somehow that she’d helped Priscilla get away. She could feel part of her mind trying to trace how he could have done it. Had the nurse talked? She didn’t think so. Nurse Yelland was one of the most implacable people she’d ever met. But someone else must have, a cleaner at the hospital perhaps. It made little difference at this point. She pulled her attention back to the current situation.

  “Look, I don’t think either one of them wants us dead, though I can’t say the same for your chum Idaho out there. You’re Mrs. Griffin, after all, and Galloway thinks I have information he needs.”

  Meg shook her head. “You don’t know Artie. If he thinks I know something, something he doesn’t want me to know, he’d get rid of me. And Paul Galloway? Probably worse. He’s a dirty cop. He has more to cover up. Now I’m sitting up here on the side of a mountain with a sore butt and a man trying to shoot me because Paul wants you! If I’d known that, I would have skedaddled long before this!” She turned away staring glumly at the wall of rock directly in front of her and crossed her arms. “You know, I tried to leave him before. I was gonna go back and find an old sweetheart from when I was a kid. He was called Ricky. Turns out he was killed in the Pacific. He’s the only person I ever really loved. But Rex, he’s a real sweetie. It’s too bad, really.” She sighed and adjusted how she was sitting. The ground was rocky and uncomfortable. “Anyway, I don’t want Artie to find me. Even if he doesn’t want me dead, he’s turned into a crazy jealous bastard. I want out.”

  Lane’s thoughts were churning. “Do you mean that?”

  Meg wheeled on her, her voice nearly coming out of the whisper they’d been using. “Of course I do! I think he had that poor Mr. Renwick shot. I can’t trust him.”

  “Why would he have Renwick shot? They arrested his brother for it.” That’s when fog cleared, and she finally put it together. The thing that had bothered her in the cabin. “Wait, if your real husband is Griffin, then Mr. Holden . . . Oh, I see.”

  “Okay, you figured it out. That’s what I do. I’m a grifter. Now I’m sick of it. I want some peace and quiet.”

  “But why do you think he was responsible for Renwick’s death?”

  Meg shook her head. “Not one hundred percent, but maybe ninety-nine. Artie is pretty jealous. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Did he think Renwick was your boyfriend? Just a case of mistaken identity?” Lane was appalled at the idea that a completely innocent bystander might have been shot in some sort of lover’s quarrel.

  “I wish I’d stayed with Rex. He would have helped me out of this. He really loved me! Not a jealous bone in his body.”

  Not able to make complete sense of this, Lane was about to speak when she turned toward the gully. They could hear a muttered curse and a sliding sound much nearer to where they were hiding. It would be only moments before he found them.

  Time had run out. Lane knew what she had to do. Meg was right. Even if she were a grifter, she didn’t deserve to get shot for helping Lane escape. She turned to Meg and put her hand on her arm. “Look. Don’t move. Don’t say anything. Don’t come out till you’ve heard everyone leave, including the car. And good luck.”

  With that Lane got up, took up the flight jacket she’d been sitting on, and walked into the open from their hideout with her arms up.

  “All right. I’m coming down,” she called loudly. “No need to shoot the place up.”

  He must have felt there was a need, because he waited till Lane was most of the way down the hill and fired one more shot.

  May 1943

  Lane tried to pull Claude away from the doorway, but he was clinging to the frame, digging his nails in, his knuckles white. “Claude, we have to go! When they realize they have missed one person they will come back.”

  He wheeled on her. “What chance do we have? You don’t even have a revolver. What kind of a spy are you?” Tears splashed on his blue jacket. He took one last look at the three people who’d been tied and executed where they sat, and then let her lead him away.

  They ran to the edge of the property. It was still early, barely past dawn, so the road was empty. They could hear a dog barking in the village just around the bend. But Lane could also hear a woman shouting. She sounded familiar. Who was she? She wanted to shift her head to hear better but couldn’t seem to move it. On the other side of the road, they headed quickly to the small forest that lay at the top of a rise. They were halfway up the hill when Lane heard the motorcycle returning. She pulled Claude down among the stands of dead grasses. It was the two she’d seen leaving when she’d been making her way to the safe house. They turned back into the property, jumped off the machine, and began to search. One of them shouted to th
e other that he was an imbécile for not checking the outdoor privy the first time.

  “Now!” said Lane. “They’re busy. We have a few mo- ments.” They bolted into the wood and continued up the hill. Lane breathed with the regular rhythm she had taught herself so she could move quickly over long distances. She could still hear the woman, who sounded angry now, and wanted her to stop. At the top, the trees dwindled, and they could see the open country below them. Her thoughts clouded. She could hear the motorcycle as if it had come straight up the hill behind them. And then the woman shouting, really close now. She turned but saw only darkness. That shot—she knew it was the one that killed Claude. He had stood up just at the wrong time. It was her fault. She could not stop the well of anguish that grew in her at this. But it wasn’t Claude who was down. She was—she could feel where the bullet struck her in the side. At one and the same time she felt the searing pain and the surge of relief that she had not been responsible for Claude’s death.

  “Get up!”

  Lane opened her eyes. She felt herself lying on the ground, a rock pressing into her neck, her arm high above her being pulled.

  “Get up. I barely grazed you. And that’s just because you’ve been a pain in the ass.”

  “Let her go, you bastard!”

  Lane heard but didn’t see the rock that struck the gunman with a soft thud on the shoulder. She was still dazed, and though it was dawning on her that she was not in France, she had a momentary sense that it was Claude who’d been struck. But who was the woman shouting?

  She felt herself being helped up. She tried experimentally to move her feet and found she could. “It’s okay. I think I can walk,” she said. Her mouth felt unfamiliar, as if someone else was talking. She instinctively put her right hand to her left side, and then pulled it away, whimpering at the pain. She tried to focus. She was with a cowboy and a woman going somewhere. It was coming back. She could hear angry male shouts nearby. The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  She’d been running from someone with that woman from the hotel. She suppressed an instinct to look back, as her memory came swooping home. Meg should be there, hiding, Lane thought, her heart sinking. Meg wasn’t hiding. She was helping her limp across the desert to the road, and she was saying something shrill and very ill-considered to the man with the gun.

  Lane tried to turn her head to see where he was, but it hurt. She thought she could hear him walking behind them. The angry, “Would you shut up?” confirmed it.

  “Meg,” she tried. “You should have stayed.”

  “You’re right about that! But I just got sick of Idaho beating up on people who can’t fight back. Look at you. He shot you for no good goddamn reason!”

  Lane could see the car she’d been kidnapped in parked up on the road, Paul Galloway leaning on it watching, a cigarette in his hand, a gun trained on Darling, and she was overwhelmed with dread. It had all been for nothing, just like Meg had said.

  Amy Watts stood in the woodshed dangling the letter in her hand, looking out the door at the utter dreariness and cold. She’d have to burn it, of course, though she had an impulse to keep it. It had proved her right, which made it kind of a prize. What had Barney sent to get a response like this? And to whom? Sighing, she lifted it up and reread it. He must have been trying to get money out of him. He’d been gambling his paycheques away steadily. She’d known about the gambling. Had fought with him, had cajoled him, had begged him. But this, and those . . . well, she didn’t even know what to call them. Prizes? Tokens? A change purse, a ribbon, a chain bracelet. She walked slowly back to the house, which now had a strangely hollow feeling as if it had been wilfully deserted by Barney. He’d finally left her after all, just as she’d feared all those years.

  She thought of him opening the envelope, being disappointed by its thinness, and seeing these words: “Don’t you dare communicate with me again. I was prepared to forget how I protected you from that Tina, but now it’s come up again, hasn’t it?” And then an incomprehensible signature. When Amy had first found it, she had turned it over and over, trying to understand who sent it. Barney must have destroyed the envelope. Now it didn’t matter. All that mattered is that it had to be burned, just like the clothes and everything else she’d burned to free herself from Barney Watts. She opened the grate with the lifter and watched the flames dancing inside the stove. She dropped the letter in and closed the grate.

  “What do you want?” Tina stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips. This was all she needed.

  “Hello, Tina.” Amy got out of the car and looked around as if she were a big-city buyer. “I guess you heard, Barney’s dead.”

  “I heard, yes. I wish I could say I was sorry. I know you have a little girl. It must be hard. I am sorry about that.”

  “Thanks. That means nothing, coming from you. You were planning all along to take him from me.” Amy cocked her head sideways and looked at Tina. “I never did understand what he saw in you. Look at you. A grease monkey with a floozy’s hair.”

  Tina frowned, feeling like the ground was sliding underfoot. “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about, Amy. I told you ten years ago that I hated him. I still hate him, even dead as he is.”

  Amy sneered. “Right. That’s why he came here the other day, I suppose. That’s why he kept that little memento you gave him. He tried to hide it, but I saw it one day stuffed at the back of a shelf in the woodshed.”

  Tina knew instantly. The purse. Taking a deep breath, she shook her head. “Look, Amy, I never told you this. I should have, but I was young and frightened. He raped me. I was sixteen, and he drove me up some dark road somewhere and he raped me. He had his hand over my mouth so I couldn’t breathe or scream. I was sixteen, do you understand? I didn’t even know if he was going to kill me. He drove me back and pushed me out of the car at the top of that drive,” Tina said, pointed angrily toward the road, “and left me like a piece of garbage he was throwing away. I wouldn’t run away with him for all the tea in China. I’d as soon kill him. I never gave him that purse. I thought I’d lost it, but it must have fallen out of my pocket and he kept it. Anyway, he only came here to find out if I’d ever told anyone about the rape. Why would he think, after all this time, I would have told anyone?”

  Amy nodded, her lips clamped together. “What a liar,” she said. “What an unbelievable lying bitch you are.”

  Tina glanced at the bay doors and turned back. “It was you.”

  “Of course it was me. As soon as I learned he’d come here. Then I took care of him.”

  Tina backed away, slowly. She felt as if her insides had melted. Where was her father? She wanted to close her eyes, to think. Amy had just said she’d “taken care” of Barney. Had she killed him? If so, she wouldn’t admit it unless she was planning to kill her as well.

  “Look, Amy. I don’t know what you’re saying. But if you killed him, you should talk to the police. They’d understand. He was a bad man. Life with him must have been no picnic. You’d get off.”

  Tears formed in Amy’s eyes. She opened her purse and pulled out a handgun. “That’s where you’re wrong, Tina. It was a picnic. He was sweet and worked hard and loved Sadie. I know he could never do what you say he did. Never. I knew he was up to something when he started staying late, disappearing on the weekend. I got the letter, and right away I knew it was true. Then I found the purse. See, he never forgot you.”

  Tina backed into the garage, trying to think. What letter was she talking about? “Amy, you can’t shoot me. Don’t be ridiculous. My dad could be back any minute. The police know something is up. Sergeant Ames—”

  “Shoot you? I’m not going to shoot you. Way too messy and noisy. Now get in the car. Here, I’ll even let you drive”

  “Sergeant Ames? Tina’s not here. I don’t understand it. The bay doors are open, and the trouble lamp she was using for an engine repair is still on
inside the car. I’ve looked all over. She didn’t even take her jacket.”

  “Don’t move. Stay by the phone in case she calls. We’re coming right out.”

  Ames hung up the phone, his hand shaking, and then picked it up again, asking O’Brien to put him through to the Watts house. A woman answered.

  “Mrs. Watts?” He wanted to be relieved, but he already knew it wasn’t her.

  “No, this is her mother. I’m looking after Sadie, but Amy should have been home long before now. I was wondering if she had an accident or something. Maybe I should call the police.”

  “This is the police. Where did she say she was going?”

  “Just into town to get groceries, but—”

  “Into town,” he said, “in what?” Ames felt his chest compress.

  “In the car. She said you finally gave it back. And, well, the thing is . . . it’s just . . .”

  “What is it?” Ames asked impatiently. This was mad- dening.

  “Well, I went up to her room to get something and all the drawers were pulled out and most of her clothes were gone. I’m worried that she . . . I mean, she hasn’t been the same since Barney died. What if she ran away or something? I can’t look after Sadie on my own.”

  “Terrell!” Ames bellowed, hurtling down the stairs.

  Terrell was up and by the door, pulling his cap on.

  “Keys!” Ames shouted. “O’Brien. Alert all the local rcmp detachments. We’re looking for a dark green 1940 Chevrolet coupe, one, or possibly two, women.”