by Sharon Sala
After that, it wasn’t so bad. The pier itself appeared to be somewhere between thirty and forty feet long. The sound of lapping water against the poles below the walkway was almost soothing. Nothing ominous. Just a ramp and a dock where boats could be tied.
Every so often she stepped on a board that would groan and then creak, and she would automatically flinch and then laugh. It was only the old dock saying hello.
When she reached the end, she stood at the edge and looked outward. The sun was bright against the water, and she lowered her head in a brief moment of prayer and thanksgiving. When she looked up, a flock of wild geese had just taken off from the lake. Briefly they circled in the air and then, in a flurry of unfettered honking, took flight to the south.
“See you in the spring,” she said softly, then wondered if she was fooling herself into thinking she had any real part in Silk DeMarco’s future.
She looked back toward the house. No one else was in sight. Reluctant to go back and face Tony and the impending separation, she sat down on the edge of the dock instead. Her feet were only inches from the water. The sun was warm upon her skin. She leaned back on her hands and lifted her face to the sun.
Ron Gallagher pulled up at the DeMarco house as the security team was in the act of loading up their gear.
Gallagher took a deep breath and started toward Tony. As much as he regretted it, it had to be said.
“Tony…we need to talk,” he said.
Tony clapped him on the back. “Congratulations, Sheriff. You did it.”
“Hold the congratulations,” Ron muttered. “We got a problem.”
Tony froze. “Like what?”
“Like the fact that Charles Bartlett was in Portland the night someone took a shot at Sarah.”
“Oh Jesus,” Tony said. “Are you sure?”
“About as sure as I can be, considering he was at a podium in front of almost four hundred witnesses.”
“Christ,” Tony muttered, then spun toward the van. “Wait,” he said. “We’re not through yet.”
Before he could elaborate, Maury Overstreet drove up and got out on the run. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“Sheriff, you’re just the man we need to see.”
“What’s going on?” Tony asked.
Maury whipped out the picture, slapped it on the hood of the sheriff’s car and then got out his notes.
“I went to Moose Landing this morning, early. Found myself a dead man, only this one was fresh, not like the one you boys pulled out of the lake. At first I viewed it as a big setback to my case…as well as to the old fellow, of course. No offense.”
“None taken,” Gallagher said. “Please continue.”
“Anyway, I’m sitting there, waiting for the RCMP to show, ’cause I know I’ll have to explain why I’m there, and I’m bemoaning the fact that my only potential witness to what went on at that motel is dead, when up drives the old man’s daughter. Long story short, she used to work there as a maid. And, get this, she doesn’t recognize Whitman at all, but she IDs two other employees of Marmet National Bank.”
“Who?” Tony asked.
“Sonny Romfield and Moira Blake. It seems they had a thing going hot and heavy. Then Romfield dies a couple days after the money goes missing. At first I couldn’t figure out the connection between an affair and missing money and someone trying to kill Sarah, so I started backtracking. When you get blocked on a case, always backtrack.”
“Good to know,” Gallagher said. “I’ll remember that.”
“For God’s sake, Maury, spit it out,” Tony said.
“Okay, consider this. Sarah was just a curiosity, nothing worth killing, until she got hold of something that could reveal the truth.”
“Like what?” Gallagher asked.
“It’s the calendar, isn’t it?” Tony asked.
Maury pointed. “The man wins the big bucks! Right, it’s the calendar.”
“But I have a copy, and I saw nothing to indicate anyone’s culpability. Not even the ‘moose’ notations.”
“But that’s just it,” Maury said. “It wasn’t Whitman who was frequenting the Landing. It was Moira and Sonny. And didn’t you tell me that Harmon Weatherly mentioned clearing out both their desks at once? What if he accidentally mixed up the calendars? And what if Moira discovered that mix-up? Not only would it reveal their affair, but it would also reveal their connection.”
“Son of a bitch,” Tony said. “What was it Moira said about him at her dinner party? Oh yes! I remember. She said he’d been going to get a divorce. Who would know that better than the other woman?”
Maury was almost dancing, he was so pumped.
“So they were going to make a getaway with the money. Somehow Whitman discovered their plan, and they had to kill him to hide what they’d done. Only Sonny’s getting killed wasn’t part of the plan, and Moira was left with not only one but two dead men on her conscience.”
“What happened to the money?” Gallagher asked.
“I think that’s a question we should ask Moira Blake,” Tony said.
“Hey! Mr. DeMarco!”
Tony turned just as Dunn and Farley came out of the house.
“Miss Whitman said to tell you she was going for a walk.”
Oh God. Oh no. “Where did she go?”
“Down to the dock.”
“Christ,” Tony muttered, and started to run, with Gallagher and Maury not far behind.
He ran through the house, yelling her name. Lorett came out in the hall, and the expression on her face stilled Tony’s heart.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Something bad is going to happen,” she moaned. “The water. It’s trying to take my baby.”
“What the hell is she—”
“Don’t ask,” Tony said, then pointed at Gallagher. “Just help me find her.”
Lorett tried to run after them, but it was as if her legs wouldn’t obey her thoughts. She was frozen inside the horror unfolding in her head.
Sarah heard Tony calling her name. She turned with a smile, waving that she’d heard, as he came off the deck on the run. A brief moment of panic shot through her. Something was wrong. But before she could stand up, something took hold of her feet and yanked her into the lake.
She didn’t have time for anything but a quick, indrawn breath before the waters engulfed her. Struggling against the almost superhuman grasp someone had on her body, she felt herself being dragged farther from shore, deeper into the lake.
Eighteen
Tony saw her go under and screamed out her name, but it was a futile waste of energy and air. She was gone with little more than a splash.
Behind him, Gallagher was barking orders into a hand-held radio, while Maury was kicking off his shoes and shedding his coat. Tony kicked off his loafers as he ran. When he reached the end of the dock, he went headfirst into the water, surfacing moments later to scan for a sign of where she had gone. Maury was in the water behind him, bobbing up and down like a float on a fishing line.
“Any sign of her?” he yelled.
“No!” Tony shouted.
Not only was the water without turmoil, there wasn’t even a trail of bubbles that he could see. He dived again, and then again, each time surfacing with less hope that she would be found.
There was no thought in Sarah’s mind save the frantic need for air. The water was dark and cold and engulfing, pressing on her eardrums and pushing up her nose, wanting into that place in her body where oxygen persisted and life still pulsed.
She kicked and she thrashed, clawing at the arms around her waist and pulling backward with all her might, trying to break free. She reached for her captor, trying to feel skin or hair or some modicum of humanity on which she could gain hold, but her hands kept sliding off. It took a moment for her to realize her abductor was wearing a wet suit, and with that knowledge came power. If she couldn’t see under the water, then he couldn’t, either. And if she could tear loose the mask or the oxygen tank the
man was sure to be wearing, then he, too, would be unable to breathe. Only then might she have a chance.
She twisted abruptly, using every ounce of her strength to turn within the abductor’s grasp, and found herself face-to-face with her killer. In desperation, she began ripping at the mask. In the process, she tore loose a hose connected to the air tank.
There was a moment when she felt his shock and then panic, and in that brief span of time, she kicked free. With her last ounces of strength and her lungs all but collapsing, she swam upward toward light and safety. By the time she popped to the surface, she was gasping and choking and afraid to look back.
Tony saw her almost at the moment she surfaced, and screamed out her name. When he saw a large trail of bubbles not far behind her, he knew she was still in danger.
The moment she saw Tony, she began to swim. With every stroke of her arms and kick of her legs, she imagined those gloved hands encircling an ankle or grabbing a wrist and pulling her down again. And she knew if that happened, she would die, just as her father had died—alone and in dark water.
Just when she thought she was too tired to swim another stroke, Tony caught her up into his arms.
Not until Tony touched her face and pulled her tight against his body did he let himself believe she was alive.
Treading water, his arm around her waist, he heard himself yelling above the thunder of his own heartbeat.
“You need to get to the shore. Can you swim to the shore?”
“I think so,” Sarah said, and then gasped and screamed when something touched her back.
“It’s me,” Maury said. “Easy, Sarah girl. We’ve got you now.”
Sarah wanted to throw her arms up in the air and let them take over, but the danger wasn’t gone, not until she was on dry land. She looked toward the shore and saw her aunt Lorett wading into the water, and in that moment, she knew she was going to be all right.
Tony slid his arm around her neck. “Rest on me, Sarah. I’ll get you to shore.”
Fear colored her expression. “He might get me again.”
“It isn’t a he, it’s a she,” he said. “And I won’t let that happen.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just get to shore. We’ll talk then.”
She started to swim, with Maury on one side and Tony on the other, matching her stroke for stroke. It was patently clear that they’d celebrated too soon. Charles Bartlett must not have acted alone.
By the time they were at the end of the pier, Lorett was waist high in the lake and reaching for Sarah. When her fingers curled around Sarah’s arms, she began frantically dragging her toward dry land.
“Get her out!” Lorett screamed. “Get her all the way out of the water.”
As soon as Tony’s feet touched bottom, he lifted Sarah into his arms and started carrying her toward the house.
Gallagher was there, along with his deputies.
“I’ve got people in the air,” he said. “She won’t get away.”
Sarah struggled in Tony’s arms. “Put me down. Put me down! I can walk.”
But when Tony set her down, her legs crumpled. He scooped her back up and started toward the house.
“Tony, I—”
“Shut up, Sarah Jane. Just shut the hell up.”
She was unprepared for such unexpected anger.
“Why are you mad at me?” she asked.
It was the quiver in her voice that made him come undone. The back deck of his house blurred before him as he stumbled slightly; suddenly he stopped and sat down on the grass with her in his lap.
“Tony?”
“Oh God,” he mumbled. “Oh God, oh God.” And he buried his face against her neck and started to cry.
Shock spread through her in waves. For the first time, she felt the cold on her skin, the weight of her clothes, the water squelching in her shoes. Her eyes were still burning and her vision blurry. She had yet to take the ability to draw breath for granted again. And because she suspected there was more hell yet to come, she just held him, because she didn’t know what else to do.
Maury stopped a distance away to collect his shoes and his coat, and then went into the house without looking at them. Lorett approached, moving swiftly—touching Sarah’s head to assure herself that her baby still lived, and then putting her hands on Tony’s back.
“You must get up,” she coaxed gently. “You must get her out of the open.”
The warning moved Tony as nothing else might. He struggled to his feet and grabbed Sarah close.
“I am with you,” Lorett said. “Just hurry.”
As they moved toward the house, Lorett couldn’t help but look over her shoulder. The danger she’d sensed was still there, lurking beneath the surface of the dark, shining water.
Lorett was in Sarah’s bathroom, stripping her of her clothes, much as she’d done when she was a child.
“We’ve got to get you warm and then into some dry clothes,” she said. “The shower is ready. Wash it off, baby girl. Wash off all the ugliness and let Aunt Lorett rub you dry.”
Sarah was shivering so hard she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to stop. Coming down from the surge of adrenaline that had helped free her from her captor was giving her a giant-size case of the shakes. When she coupled that with the knowledge that Moira Blake might be behind everything, it was too much to take in.
“Why her, Aunt Lorett?”
“Get in the shower, Sarah Jane.”
Sarah stepped beneath the spray of warm water as Lorett pulled the door shut behind her. She squirted a dollop of shampoo in her hand and started scrubbing her hair. The door to the bathroom opened, then closed again, but Sarah didn’t look up. It wasn’t until she felt Tony’s hand on her back that she flinched.
“Tony! Aunt Lorett is out there.”
“Not anymore,” he said, then shed his clothes and stepped into the shower with her. “Here, let me,” he said gently, and began rinsing the shampoo from her hair. Then he handed her a washcloth and soap, and together, they washed themselves clean.
They dressed without speaking or touching, both watching each other as if they would never get enough. Finally Tony sat down on the side of the bed.
“I thought you were dead.” His voice broke again, as he struggled with the fear of believing she had drowned. “Sarah, I know this isn’t the most romantic moment in our lives, but I’ve got to say this. I love you. I do not want to spend the rest of my life without you in it. You have become the most important person in my life, and I need to know if you feel the same way.”
“Oh, Tony!” she cried, and crawled into his lap. “I love you, too. I don’t care if we did this too fast and for all the wrong reasons. I’ve been sick at heart, just trying to figure out how I’d ever learn to live without you when this was over.”
“I’ll move to New Orleans. We can start a third nightclub there. It’s time I expanded out of Chicago, anyway. I’ll do whatever it takes to hear you say you’ll be my wife.”
Sarah put her arms around him, her heart soaring with joy.
“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, I will marry you.”
“Now all I have to do is get you out of here,” Tony said.
“But—”
“They know who did this, Sarah. And so do we. She can’t hide forever. Sooner or later she’ll surface, and when she does, they’ll arrest her.”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I still can’t believe Moira was responsible.”
“Gallagher is searching her house now.”
“But how did she get Charles Bartlett’s gun?”
“She and Tiny are friends. It was probably a simple matter of knowing their habits and getting in and out of the house while they were gone.”
“Why would she and Sonny Romfield kill Daddy? Why didn’t they just take the money and run?”
“Who knows? Maybe he caught them in the act, or maybe they wanted to use him for a fall guy so they could live without always looking over thei
r shoulders. Whatever their plan was, Romfield’s death changed everything.”
“This is all still supposition, though, isn’t it?”
The phone rang before Tony could answer her. He leaned back and reached for the receiver without letting her go.
“Hello.”
“Tony…Gallagher here…we found the money.”
“You’re kidding! Where?”
“Of all damned places, in a trunk in Moira Blake’s attic.”
“Then this clinches it, right?”
“As tight as a drum. She’s going down for so many crimes that her lawyers won’t know what to fight first.”
“Any sign of her yet?” Tony asked.
“No, but we’re working on it. Her car’s here. Her belongings and all her identification are here. She can’t get far in a wet suit.”
“Right,” Tony said. “Let us know when you pick her up.”
“What?” Sarah asked, as Tony hung up the phone.
“They found the money in her attic. It pretty much clinches the case. They’re scouring the woods and the lake now. It’s only a matter of time before she’s picked up.”
“My poor daddy,” Sarah said. “He liked her…really liked her. I remember him and Mother talking about her circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“Looking back, I’m guessing that her husband was abusive, which explains the affair with Sonny Romfield, but it doesn’t explain how she could kill.”
Tony touched her face, then her mouth, tracing the shape of her features with his fingers, then putting his lips where his hand had just been. Sarah’s head fell back against his arm as she gave herself up to the magic of the man.
“Do you feel the passion?”
Sarah moaned. “Yes…oh, yes.”
His hands slid up her back, encircling her and then cupping her breasts.
“Do you feel my need? Can you feel the love from me to you?”
“Yes…dear God, yes,” Sarah said.
“It’s that simple, sweet Sarah. Moira killed once for love, and I’d wager a profiler would agree with me that, when Sonny died, the only way she could keep that love alive was to protect the secret they’d shared. Even if it meant killing again.”
