by Kathy
He came upright with a sudden rush, swayed violently and would have fallen if she hadn't braced all her weight to hold him. His chin resting on the top of her head, Riley murmured, "Too damned beautiful for the likes of me. But that wasn't what finished me off, Meg—Mignon . . . you being beautiful. If you hadn't also been tough and kind and funny and smart and a fighter. . . . Why'd you kiss me? You did kiss me, didn't you? Geez, my head feels like a tornado hit it. I thought I was starting to sober up."
"You've had a hard day," Meg said, fighting to keep her voice steady. "Sit down for a minute. No, with your back to me, so I can untie your hands. How did you get those bruises on your face?"
Riley subsided onto the toilet seat and rested his head against the wall. "He was waiting for me when I came home last night. Caught me off guard. I'd had a few beers, and I wasn't expecting him to move so soon. I guess he figured I'd be easier to handle if. ... He was right, too."
"And the burns on your hands? They didn't come from the fire."
"No, I got you out of the cottage before either of us was singed."
"You mean he. . . ."
"Cigarette lighter."
"But he doesn't smoke."
"My cigarette lighter. That sort of added insult to injury," Riley said thoughtfully.
In a voice choked by tears, laughter and outrage, Meg said, "Oh, Riley, I do love you," and slid her arms around him. "Come on. My car's out back."
He came obediently to his feet when she pulled at him. His one functional eye looked dazed, whether by her confession or by the potent combination of pain, alcohol and cramped limbs she couldn't tell. He had to lean heavily on her—the injured leg wouldn't support his weight at all—and they had only taken a few difficult steps when it happened. She had been watching the back door. It hadn't occurred to her he would dare enter through the store.
"That's far enough, I think," he said in his calm, pleasant voice.
Meg whirled around, letting go of Riley, who fell to his knees and then slumped forward, bracing himself on his hands. Involuntarily Meg stooped to help him, but the same calm voice stopped her. "No. Get away from him. Over there."
The gun in his hand was aimed, not at her, but at Riley's bowed head. Meg backed away, step by step, until a smiling nod told her she had gone far enough.
She had been almost certain, but actually to see him was as great a shock to her sensibilities as surprise would have been. It didn't seem possible that the same gentle, quiet man who had consoled a grieving child and tended an aging woman could be responsible for a twenty-year-long campaign of betrayal and crime—that he could be holding her at gunpoint, with every intention of using that weapon.
Then she saw his eyes, and shuddered and looked away.
She had known he had a gun, and a license for it, but this wasn't his gun. It was one of the ones Dan had bought after the burglary—a classic Colt revolver, sleek and gleaming, its grip inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She remembered it well, for she had been impressed by its deadly beauty, though she hadn't seen it for years. Dan must have convinced the sheriff it was a collector's item—which it was—and been allowed to keep it. Or else it had more or less got lost in the shuffle—there had been so many guns. . . .
His face sickly gray under the bruises, Riley pulled himself to his feet. "Don't be foolish," George said. "You'll only fall and hurt yourself. Why suffer unnecessary pain? I'll make it quick."
"Uncle George. . . ."
"Yes, my dear?" He glanced at her, but the barrel of the gun didn't move.
"You won't—you won't hurt Gran, will you?"
He had expected her to plead for her life and Riley's. The question surprised and amused him. "Certainly not. I'm very fond of the old darling, and she won't live much longer. Long enough, though, to make a new will. She's always had a soft spot for Cliff, and with you out of the picture. . . ."
"That's not my gun," Riley said suddenly. "They'll never trace it to me. How are you going to make people believe—"
"They'll trace it to Dan," George said. "The assumption will be that he kept it here, in the store. Many merchants do."
He had closed the door behind him, but remained near it, at a safe distance from both his prospective victims. When the voice boomed out, apparently from thin air, he started violently.
"Dad! Dad, are you there?"
George's gloved hand flashed out and hit the intercom switch. "He must have seen me come in," he muttered, frowning. "I wonder what. . . ." Fists beat a fusillade on the door behind him and Cliff's voice came again, faint and far away now that the intercom was off. "Dad! Answer me! Is anybody there?"
George moved slowly away from the door, toward the safe. "He'll leave in a minute." His voice was barely audible. "But he may be back. Open the safe, Riley."
Riley's lips set in an expression Meg knew well. "Don't be a hero, Riley," she said. "Do what he says. Open it."
He caught her meaning as quickly as she had hoped, but his lurching progress, from one supporting piece of furniture to the next, wasn't quick enough for George. "Don't stall, Riley. I don't really need that safe opened, it will just help to set the scene. If you want me to kill you now—"
"I'll do it." Riley caught the edge of the safe and lowered himself to one knee.
Cliff was more persistent than his father had expected. He began to kick the door. "Open up! I know somebody's there, I heard voices. Meg, is that you?"
"Scream if you like," George said softly. "It will only precipitate matters."
Meg moistened her dry lips and put her shaking hands in her pockets. "Then Cliff isn't in this with you?"
"He doesn't know anything about it. He mustn't know. I'm doing this for him."
Meg felt an illogical lift of relief. The fact of Cliff’s innocence changed nothing for her; he'd never be able to get help in time, even if she could alert him to her danger. Yet she was glad her exasperated affection for him had not been misplaced. "For him," she repeated.
George didn't miss the irony in her voice. "It's your own fault, Meg. This needn't have happened. If you had loved him and turned to him, instead of believing this—this intruder. . . ."
"You're wrong." Still on his knees, Riley turned, slowly and painfully. "I told her nothing. You don't have to do this, Wakefield. You're still in the clear, there's no proof. Let her go. It would be your word against hers."
"That would be enough to hang me. What kind of fool do you take me for, Riley? She's like him—like Dan. She'd hunt me down if it took the rest of her life and every penny she possessed. Get on with it! I know what you're trying to do, but it won't work."
With a shrug and a betraying glance at Meg, Riley turned back to the safe. He had managed a few more seconds' delay, but George was right, it didn't matter. Yet she felt the same need to delay the inevitable; a few more seconds, a few more breaths of air. . . .
"Cliff didn't want me, George," she said. "Except as a friend."
"That's a lie! He'd have loved you if you had given him the slightest encouragement. I didn't want to do this, Meg. You forced me into it. If you hadn't started work on the cottage. ... I wasn't worried at first, I didn't think he'd remember—and I didn't know about that hiding place he had in the floor of his room. He must have heard Joyce and me quarreling. Heard me. . . . What the hell is the matter with you, Riley?"
"Almost there," Riley whispered.
"What if he does remember?" Meg forced the words through stiff lips. "Will you kill him too?"
"He won't remember. There's nothing left now to waken forgotten memories. Those memories aren't damaging in themselves, all he heard were a few fights; he was away at school when I. ... Why the hell couldn't you have left well enough alone?"
He was quite sincere; the anger in his voice was genuine, and directed at her. But if he was insane, then half the world was crazy too—all the people who wanted to pass the buck, refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions, blame someone else. The lines in his forehead smoothed out as he accepted
his own facile excuses, and his voice was almost gentle when he said, "Ten seconds, Riley."
"It's not there," Meg said. "I mailed it today—to someone who'll know what to do with it if anything happens to me."
Her uncle smiled. "I'm afraid that remark rather weakens Mr. Riley's claim that you are unwitting, my dear. So it was in the safe after all. I suspected it might be, but that was the one place I couldn't search since my—er—informant was in no condition to respond to questions earlier. It doesn't matter. Without your testimony and his, there is really no case against me. Riley, I still want that safe opened."
"Got it." The safe door swung open. George started toward it. Riley edged back, but he was too slow; without breaking stride George swung his foot, and the tip of his polished shoe caught Riley on the side of the head, toppling him over. The worst thing about the blow was its cool calculation—not hard enough to do lasting damage, just hard enough to stun Riley momentarily. Meg's hands clenched. George kept his eyes fixed on her as he reached into the safe and scooped handfuls of loose gems onto the floor. A neat finishing touch, that one—the fugitive financing his flight by stealing easily convertible gems, caught red-handed by the rightful owner, whom he had already threatened and tried to murder. And a few extra goodies for George? Yes; he was putting the best, the biggest, in his pocket.
The pounding on the door had stopped. Soon. He had to do it soon. If Cliff did go to the police it wouldn't be long before someone tried the back door, and that would cut off George's means of escape—the unmarked van in which he had been hiding, waiting for her to come—and in which he had probably kept Riley prisoner part of the time. She had thought she was so clever, renting a car; why hadn't it occurred to her he was equally clever? That big Mercedes of his was as conspicuous as the Ferrari.
Riley groaned and rolled over onto his back. The merciless eyes of the killer, cold as ice, told Meg that the final moment was upon her. He had to come out from behind the open door of the safe to get a clear shot at Riley, and he had to do it before Riley was fully conscious, because the fatal bullet must appear as if it had been fired by his own hand. The angle, the powder burns, all had to be right to substantiate a verdict of suicide. A stupid, irrational verdict—but that was what Riley was supposed to be, irrational. Drunk and desperate and crazy—seized by remorse after murdering the woman he both loved and hated. . . . She could almost hear George's sad, controlled voice explaining. They would believe it because there was no other possible explanation, and it wouldn't matter if Riley died a few seconds before she did, they couldn't tell the exact time of death so closely. George knew all about those things.
It took three shots. The first one went wild, as she had intended; in fact it came closer than she meant it to, the heavy gun jerking in her hands. It brought George upright and staring, safely distant from the man who lay on the floor. The second shot missed him by a foot. He could have killed her then, while she steadied the weapon, fighting not only her shaking hands but her loathing of what she had to do. He hesitated for a moment that seemed to last a decade and then turned, with the same unnatural slowness, away from Meg, toward Riley, who was struggling to move.
She had all the time in the world. Through the ringing in her ears a distant voice murmured instructions. "Closer. Brace your wrists on something—the chair, the bench. Don't pull, squeeze. That's it."
She aimed for his thigh, and missed. The bullet tore through his side and sent him spinning in a half-circle before he fell.
It hadn't been fondness, or a last, belated attack of conscience, that made him turn from her to Riley. It had been contempt. He hadn't believed she would do it—could do it.
George was screaming and squirming, hands clawing his side. She hadn't killed him. He was harmless though, his gun lay on the floor where he had dropped it, and pain had wiped everything else from his mind. Meg took the precaution of kicking the weapon under the bench before she went to unlock the door. Not a bad shot, she thought, wondering at her own coolness. Shock, she supposed; she'd be a blubbering wreck when it wore off, so she had better go for help while she was still coherent.
Not a bad shot at all, considering the circumstances. And it had not been the ghostly hand of Dan Mignot that steadied hers. He had never been able to hit the side of a barn.
"I found the ring when the apartment was being remodeled," Riley said. His bruises had started to fade; they stood out like patches of greenish lichen on a granite head. "It had fallen down behind the baseboard in the bedroom. I couldn't imagine how it had gotten there, or who it belonged to, but it was obviously valuable. So I showed it to Dan, told him where I'd found it."
He paused, shifting position uncomfortably. The chair he had chosen, ignoring Meg's gesture at the place next to her on the sofa, was a stiffly elegant construction of mahogany and petit point. Meg didn't suggest he change seats. She had pushed her luck far enough getting him to the house.
It was the first time they had been alone. She had visited him once in the hospital, bearing the conventional gifts of flowers and candy—which she knew Riley would despise as much as she did. Conversation of the sort that was desperately necessary would have been impossible in the constant bustle of the hospital and the presence of his roommate, a bored, garrulous old man recovering from prostate surgery. Finding he was to be released that afternoon, she had effectively kidnapped him, sending the car and chauffeur to pick him up. When she greeted him in the hall he had accepted her excuses and explanations quite graciously—for Riley. "Yeah, I know. There are still reporters camping in the hospital lobby. And I figured you'd want to talk."
She hadn't summoned enough courage to tell him what else she had done. Even in the small parlor, which she had chosen for their tete-a-tete because it was the least pretentious of the reception rooms, he was visibly ill at ease.
Of course he had good reason to dread the conversation. He had plunged into his story with the air of a man determined to face the worst and get it over with.
Riley abandoned his efforts to find a comfortable position. Stiff as a statue, he went on. "I thought he was going to have a stroke. Maybe it was a stroke, a minor one; his face turned purple and he kept clawing at his throat like he couldn't breathe. Scared me half to death. I tried to get him to go to the hospital, but you know how he was. . . . After he calmed down some, he started talking. We'd gotten to be good friends, but I don't think he would have spoken so freely if he hadn't been so shaken. It was like he was talking to himself—in broken phrases, and with a lot of cussing.
"I knew some of the story. If I hadn't, I might not have been able to make sense of what he said. But one thing was clear: the ring couldn't have gotten where it was unless she'd been there, in the bedroom."
"And on the bed."
"That's what Dan said. He made me describe exactly where I found it."
"But she had another ring," Meg said. "An exact copy. What did she do, tell my father she had lost the first one and ask him to make another? She'd have to invent some story, he'd be bound to notice."
Riley shook his head. "Not your father—Dan. She came to him, crying and hysterical, said your dad would be hurt if he found out she'd been so careless. Your dad was out of town on business, so Dan was able to get the copy made before he came back. Dan was no designer, but he was a damned fine goldsmith, and he had the original sketches. Your father never knew. And Dan didn't give it a second thought until the original ring turned up."
"George was living in the apartment then," Meg murmured. "So the affair must have begun before he and Joyce were married. But it didn't stop then."
"That's what Dan figured. He . . ." Riley's eyes darkened with memory. "I was afraid the seizure had affected his mind, the way he sputtered and swore and jumped from one unsupported statement to another—but his reasoning wasn't as illogical as it sounded. He'd been brooding about the facts of that old tragedy for more than twenty years. He really loved your dad. Don't get me wrong, he loved her too, but she was his little girl, and S
imon was the son, the successor, the strong right arm he'd always wanted. It's hard to explain; I have trouble understanding that viewpoint, much less sympathizing with it—but in a funny sort of way he wasn't as hurt by her guilt as he had been by Simon's."
"She was only a woman, after all," Meg said. "A poor weak sinful female."
"Uh—yeah. I guess you could put it that way. That stained-glass window in the church was his design, you know. Your father's. Dan had it installed a few years after he died."
It wasn't a non sequitur, though it might have sounded like one to an outsider. Meg turned her face into the pillow. "I never knew that."
He might have come to her then; short of dissolving into tears and asking aloud for comfort she could hardly have expressed her need for it more directly. The chair creaked as he shifted his weight, but he didn't get up.
"Now, after all those years, Dan had a single feeble fragment of evidence that let him believe he might have been right about Simon after all. He fell on it like a starving man on a scrap of bread, and proceeded to build a whole new structure of theory. There were a few odd incidents that could be said to substantiate it. Joyce's and George's marriage wasn't as great as people believed. Once or twice Dan had seen bruises on her arms and body. She claimed she'd fallen—the usual thing. Suppose she found out he was also cheating on her, with her own sister. If she confronted him, accused him, threatened to divorce him. . . . George had a nice cushy job, practically a member of the family. He wouldn't want to lose that. Dan would not only have fired him, he'd have made sure he left without a character, as they say. Dan could be pretty vindictive."
"Dan would have spent the rest of his life tracking George down," Meg agreed. She shivered involuntarily, remembering George's own words—about her. He had been right, and so had the others, when they said she was more like Dan than she wanted to admit. Like Dan, and perhaps for the same reasons, her understanding of the meaning of the wedding ring had been more intuitive than logical. "Seeing that ring had the same effect on me as it did on Dan," she went on, half to herself. "I knew she had another one, I used to—I used to play with it. So the one I found had to be a duplicate, and you had to be the one who hid it in the bag of citrines. You were living in the apartment, George had lived there before you did. . . . But I don't think I would have grasped the implications so quickly if I hadn't already realized that George must be the one who had planned that campaign of harassment—with or without Cliff's assistance. It wasn't until George actually said so that I could be certain Cliff wasn't an active partner in the conspiracy. The fede ring that was found in Gran's room after her heart attack—either it was one of hers and had nothing to do with the other incidents, or it was planted by a member of the household. No outsider could have put it there. And the threatening telephone call—George took it, or so he claimed. People who play ugly games like that don't usually stop with one call, but no one else received such a call. George was away the night the truck tried to run us off the road. He could have rented one that looked like yours. The fire at the cottage was the final thing that convinced me of George's guilt. The cottage had to be destroyed, not because of any physical evidence of what had occurred there—he'd had more than twenty years to remove that—but because Cliff was starting to remember. When Cliff confessed about the hiding place under the floor of his room George realized he might have overheard—quarrels, accusations, even physical violence. Cliff had blotted out those memories, but they were coming back, and he intended to spend a lot of time in the cottage. Joyce was killed there, wasn't she? George virtually admitted as much. But I still don't understand how he arranged . . . how he arranged the rest of it."
