Into The Darkness

by Kathy

  He knows, Meg thought.

  Meg wasn't the only one who suspected George was holding something back. Cliff kept badgering him until finally he lost his temper. "I'll be damned if I am going to be cross-examined like a hostile witness by my own son! What possible reason would I have for lying?"

  "Hey, Dad, I'm sorry. Just calm down, okay?"

  "We're all of us too tired and upset to think straight," Mike said. "Better get some sleep."

  If he was tired and upset he didn't show it. Unfolding his long legs, he stood up and smiled at Meg. "You must be beat, honey. Sure you're all right?"

  Meg nodded. She had too many things on her mind to worry about a few aches and pains. "Why don't you sleep here, Mike? It's getting late, and your car is—where? At home, or at the fire station?"

  "I'll drive Mike home," Cliff said quickly. "He's welcome to stay, of course."

  Mike shook his head. "I've never yet failed to open up at eight sharp and I can't hardly go to work looking like this. Besides, the dogs will need to be let out. I'll take you up on the offer of a ride, Cliff, if you don't mind. Just to the fire station."

  On general principles Meg kissed everybody good night, including Cliff, who looked surprised. Henrietta followed her up the stairs and into her room. "I wish you could talk," Meg murmured, watching the cat jump onto the bed and turn in circles, clawing the sheet into a comfortable nest.

  Henrietta rolled herself into a ball and covered her eyes with her paw. A muted grumble got her point across, clear as speech: it was long past the time when decent people should be in bed.

  Meg overslept next morning. It had taken her a long time to fall asleep, and apparently the staff had been warned not to wake her. Even Henrietta demonstrated unusual courtesy; she was pacing back and forth in front of the door when Meg focused bleary eyes on the morning, but she hadn't uttered a sound.

  As she hurried to shower and dress, Meg found scrapes and bruises she hadn't felt the night before, and a hiss of pain escaped her lips when she started to comb her hair. The bumps were no worse than several she had acquired from open cupboard doors, but they would be tender for a while. She braided her hair and wound it around her head in a coronet, avoiding the sore spots when she stuck the pins in. Her wardrobe was in a pitiable state; the laundry hadn't come back and she had to wear a light wool suit that wasn't quite light enough for the summer weather. At least it was loose-fitting; nothing fretted her varied bruises, and the pockets were deep enough to hold her wallet and keys and a few other things, eliminating the necessity of carrying a purse. The shoulder strap of the only one she had brought with her rested right over the most painful spot of all, where the first blow that skimmed her head had landed.

  Cliff was at the breakfast table when she came down, and so, she observed without surprise, was Darren. They presented quite a contrast—Cliff in his rumpled work clothes, cheeks sallow with sleeplessness, and Darren looking like a Business Week ad, tie precisely knotted, glasses freshly polished.

  He got up and started toward her. Meg ducked away from his outstretched arms. "Don't touch me, I know exactly how I'll feel when I'm eighty and riddled with arthritis. You shouldn't have come, Darren. I haven't time to talk now, I'm late."

  Darren adjusted his glasses. "You can hardly expect me to be indifferent to this latest outrage, Meg. This has to stop. We must take action."

  "What do you propose?" Meg asked, accepting the coffee Cliff handed her.

  "Why—uh—obviously the first thing is to investigate the scene of the crime. Cliff and I are going out there as soon as he finishes breakfast."

  Meg turned to her cousin. "You called Darren?"

  "I didn't call anybody, damn it. You know the way the grapevine works in this town." Cliff's sleepy eyes brightened as he studied Darren's impeccable attire, and he added maliciously, "He isn't going to look so pretty when he gets through. Want to borrow a pair of jeans, Darren?"

  He rose, stretching, in a flagrant display of his narrow hips and flat stomach. Darren flushed. "No, thanks. Are you ready?"

  "Wait a minute, I'm coming with you." Meg said, swallowing the last of her coffee. "Where's Uncle George?"

  "I made him go back to bed," Cliff answered. 'I'm worried about him. He's got high blood pressure, you know—"

  "I didn't know," Meg said.

  "Well, now you do. I accused him of not taking his medicine, and he admitted he forgets sometimes. See if you can't get him to take it easier, Meg. He won't listen to me."

  He didn't wait for her to answer, but led the way out, with Darren close on his heels. Anxious as she was to get to the store, Meg felt she had no choice but to accompany them. Neither man was an impartial observer. One or both of them might be ... something worse.

  She had to give Darren points for dogged persistence, though. A lesser man might have retreated in dismay when he saw the messy mixture of weeds and brambles, water and ashes; Darren plunged straight into it and kept on looking till his pants were soaked to the knee and his once-polished shoes were clumps of mud. Meg stuck to Cliff like a burr. He was even more thorough than Darren, crawling on hands and knees through the patch of weeds where Meg had been lying when she came to. The only "clue" anywhere in the vicinity was an empty beer can, whose unrusted state indicated it had not been there long.

  "Isn't that the brand your friend Tom drinks?" Meg asked.

  "Half the guys in town drink it." Cliff tossed the can away.

  "He brought a six-pack with him yesterday. I had one myself."

  He could have competed in a wet T-shirt contest; the thin fabric clung to shoulders and back, displaying an impressive set of muscles. The hands that had been so smooth and well tended now showed the signs of hard manual labor, including a network of scratches.

  Meg glanced at Darren, who was poking the sodden ruins of the cottage with a stick. "This is a waste of time," she said. "Didn't Mike say they were sending an arson team? Why don't we leave it to the experts?"

  Cliff shrugged. "Maybe you're right. Any luck, Darren?"

  "I shouldn't have let you talk me into this," Darren muttered. "We're interfering with an official investigation. Destroying evidence—"

  "What evidence?" Cliff demanded. He clapped Darren on the back, with more force than friendliness. "Stop being such a stuffed shirt. This ground was trampled over by a couple of dozen flat-footed firefighters last night, there's not a hope in hell of finding footprints."

  Darren grunted and went on poking the ashes. A sour, foul stench rose from the wet and blackened mass, and Meg realized they were all breathing through their mouths. It was Darren who voiced the thought that weighed on all of them. "You don't think there was anyone inside?"

  "If there was, it will take more guts than I've got to look for him," Cliff said, wrinkling his nose.

  They trudged back toward the house. Darren refused Cliffs unenthusiastic offer of coffee and drove off, while Meg ran upstairs to clean up, and place a call to the hospital, which she had neglected to do earlier—a shocking omission, but one for which there was some excuse, she thought grimly. Gran's survival was in the hands of the doctors and the good Lord, if you believed in Him; Meg didn't feel she could count on either to intervene on her behalf.

  Frances flatly refused to put Mary on the phone. "She's still asleep. She had a bad night. No"—grudgingly—"nothing like that. They say she's coming along fine. Only she was tossing and turning half the night, and muttering in her sleep, all about that damned cat, and you being in some kind of trouble. What have you been up to?"

  Apparently the grapevine stopped at the door of Gran's hospital room. Thank God and the nursing staff for that. Meg said, "I'm fine. Tell her I called, and that I'll be in later."

  She hung up before Frances could ask any more questions and slipped her feet into dry shoes. Should she call on the other invalid, see how he was feeling? She decided against it. George would be resting in his room or he wouldn't be resting in his room, there was nothing she could do in either case. Sudd
enly she was overcome by a desperate, irrational need to hurry. She tried to tell herself that five minutes more or less didn't matter, but her mind could not convince her body; her fingers fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, she dropped an earring and had to crawl under the bed to retrieve it. When she ran down the stairs she made herself hold tightly to the banister. That was how traditions of bad luck and ill omen started—when fear distracted people and haste made them careless.

  Gran hadn't passed on any warnings about the car, but Meg drove like a timid little old lady, testing the brake before she left the estate. Once she had thought she would never get used to Gran's conversations with Dan. Now she was not only accepting them, but wishing he would be a little more specific. Make that a lot more specific.

  The clock at the bank read a quarter to ten when she pulled into a parking spot. She hurried toward the store. It was not until the knob resisted her efforts to turn it that she saw that the "Closed" sign was up, and then the mindless panic she had been fighting took full possession of her. Her fingers felt as thick and soft as raw sausages when she fumbled for her keys.

  Faintly, from within, she heard the telephone ring. It increased her panic and made her more clumsy; by the time she got the door open it had stopped. Meg slammed the door and leaned against it, gasping for breath. He wasn't there. No one was there.

  She had known this might happen—but not so soon, not before she could take steps to prevent it. As she fought to control her ragged breathing the doorknob rattled and she sprang away from it, eyeing it as if it had been a snake. Riley? He had his own key, but if he had seen her come in just ahead of him. . . . She flung the door open.

  Following upon renewed hope, the sight of Candy brought the terror back, worse than before—cold, damp hands, queasy stomach, dry mouth. She stared, unable to speak.

  "Good morning," Candy said. "You're a little late, aren't you?" She shifted her weight, peering past Meg into the shadowy interior of the store. "I guess you're entitled, after last night. Riley's late too, I see."

  Meg moistened her lips. "Did you. . . . Have you seen him this morning?"

  Candy's smile looked like a bloody gash across her cheeks, rimmed with the blurred bright crimson of lipstick. She spoke slowly, drawing out the words, savoring Meg's anxiety. "Not this morning. No. Not this morning. You don't suppose I hang around here watching for him, do you?"

  "What do you mean, not this morning?"

  "It all depends on how you define morning, doesn't it?"

  Meg's fingers itched to slap the grin off Candy's face. She clenched her hands till her nails bit into her palms and forced herself to speak coolly. "How do you define it?"

  "Oh. . . . After the sun comes up, I guess. I just got here, you know. I don't stand on street corners waiting for the great man to show up."

  "Oh, really?" Meg produced what she hoped was a fair imitation of a knowing smile. "Well, Candy, much as I'm enjoying this conversation, I'm afraid I must tear myself away. Goodbye for now."

  "Wait a minute. I haven't told you about Riley."

  "Tell me, then." Meg managed not to let her relief show. If necessary she would have shaken the information out of Candy, but pretended indifference seemed to work better.

  "I saw him last night. Late last night. You could say it was morning, it was after midnight."

  "Oh?"

  "Don't you want to know where I saw him?"

  "Not particularly."

  She's really not very good at this, Meg thought, watching the struggle on Candy's face. She knows she's being manipulated, but she can't handle it. She's dying to tell me. It must be something damning.

  "It was at the Golden Calf," Candy said suddenly. "Some of us went back there after the fire."

  "After the fire," Meg repeated.

  The implication was not lost on Candy. Her cheeks turned an ugly shade of magenta. "I said 'after.' You can't pin that one on me. Or on any of my friends. We were all together at the Golden Calf. Some of the guys are on the volunteer fire squad, so when the alarm went off, we all went along. After the fire was out we went back, like I said. Riley was there. He was drinking like somebody else was paying."

  "So?" Meg managed to sound bored, but her palms were slick with sweat.

  "So I went over to him to say hello. Rod didn't want me to, but I did anyhow."

  "Did you succeed in starting a fight?" Meg inquired.

  "What the hell do you mean by that? I didn't. ... I was trying to be nice."

  "Get to the point," Meg snapped. "If there is one."

  "There's a point, all right." Candy's eyes narrowed. "It was pretty dark in the Golden Calf. I was the only one that got close to Riley. I was the only one that saw the burns on his hands and smelled the gasoline. Nobody else noticed. Just me."

  It was damning, no question about that. Whether or not it was true hardly mattered, so long as Candy was willing to swear to it.

  "What time did he leave?" Meg asked.

  "Around one, one-thirty."

  "And that was the last you saw of him?"

  "It was the last I saw of him. Rod followed him out."

  "Did they. . . ." Meg stopped. The gloating look on Candy's face was more than she could take. "Never mind."

  "Hey—what are you doing?"

  "Closing the door. Move your foot or lose it, I'm in a hurry."

  "No—wait—I wanted to ask you. . . ."

  "Well?"

  "I wondered ... I thought maybe you'd changed your mind. About giving me my job back."

  In her eagerness she had edged closer; her face was pink with expectation, and with another emotion so raw that Meg almost pitied her. She wanted Riley so badly she was willing to use blackmail as a means of being near him. Sisters under the skin, Meg thought, wincing.

  But the sheer naive stupidity of the demand cleared away any lingering doubts Meg may have had as to Candy's complicity. She was only a dupe, a pawn; it would be a waste of valuable time to question her further.

  "No," Meg said.

  "What?"

  "No, I haven't changed my mind." She slammed the door and locked it. Candy's yelp was, she thought, one of outrage rather than pain, but she didn't really care. The telephone rang and she ran to answer it. Maybe he was still in bed, too hung over to move. Or in the drunk tank at the county jail. Or. . . . She snatched up the phone. "Hello?"

  "Meg, is that you?" It was Darren's voice.

  "Who else would it be?" Dashed hopes harshened her voice.

  "Is Riley there?"

  "No."

  "I thought not." Even the mechanical distortion of the telephone couldn't conceal the satisfaction in Darren's voice. "He wasn't there when I drove past, shortly after nine, and I've been calling every ten minutes."

  "Why?"

  "Darling, I know how you feel, but it's time you faced facts. He's bolted. He went too far last night, and he knows it. Once they find evidence of arson—"

  "Even if they do, it won't prove Riley did it." But her voice betrayed her lack of conviction and Darren was quick to catch it.

  "Meg, dear, flight is a tacit admission of guilt. All the same, I'm not happy about you being there alone. He could be hiding somewhere in the area. I'm coming by to pick you up—"

  "You're fired, Darren."

  "I. . . . What?"

  "I said you're fired. I'm not your client. You have no right, legal or moral or otherwise, to interfere with me. Leave me alone."

  She hung up. Almost immediately the phone rang again. It went on ringing. Meg ignored it. The glass of the countertop felt cold against her palms as she leaned forward, her head bowed in an unconscious pose of prayer. Dan—Dan, you tricky old bastard—talk to me, for a change. You got me into this, show me how to get out of it in one piece. Tell me what to do. Just a hint, Dan. . . .

  Apparently she wasn't on his wavelength. The only thing that came to her was one of his infuriating old maxims: Keep your head, and use your brains. Easy for you to say, Dan.

  Meg realized th
at the phone had stopped ringing. Good for Darren; it had only taken him sixty seconds to figure out she wasn't going to answer it.

  Perhaps she shouldn't have cut him off so abruptly. Darren was impervious to gentle hints, though; you had to drop a piano on him just to get his attention. There was no way she could explain to him what she intended to do; he'd try to stop her, by one means or another—for one reason or another—and in her present state of mind, delay or interference would be unendurable. This way was better, safer, for everyone concerned.

  He could be right, though. Riley might have gone to ground somewhere nearby, waiting to see what would come of the investigation of the fire. His pickup was in its usual place. That fact surely argued against flight, but she knew how Darren would explain it; an intelligent fugitive would prefer to use a vehicle that couldn't be as easily traced as his own. It would take the police a while to locate a driver who had picked up a hitchhiker, or hear about a stolen car.

  When she straightened up, she saw that her hands had left damp prints on the countertop. She wiped them on her skirt and then reached for her keys. Maybe Dan had gotten through to her after all. Her brain might not be functioning at top capacity, but at least something was happening up there, and she no longer felt as if she might throw up.

  The stairway leading to the apartment was narrow and gloomy, wedged between the masonry walls of the adjoining stores. A dusty skylight on the second-floor landing admitted a ray of feeble sunshine that illumined only the topmost steps. Both of the fixtures on the wall were dark; they remained so even after she pressed the light switch. She groped her way up, trying not to hurry and risk a stumble.

  The key, labeled in Dan's minuscule handwriting, turned easily in the lock. Meg gave the door a shove. It hit the wall with a reassuring thud. No one behind the door. . . . Yet as she stood on the threshold she could feel her skin crawling. It was a sensation she had read about but never experienced; the description was in fact quite accurate.