Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 (2 page)

“Henrie O, only you!”

“You would have noticed in an instant.” It wasn’t simply a modest disclaimer. Margaret, also on the general news faculty, was a longtime INS correspondent in Paris. Very little escapes her.

“Perhaps. In any event, you’ve earned your holiday.” Her soft mouth looked stubborn.

We’d planned, before illness struck, to spend the spring break at Margaret’s cabin in the Cumberlands. I’d looked forward to our trip eagerly, our departure planned for Saturday morning. I dearly love Tennessee and never pass up an opportunity to visit there. Margaret grew up in Chattanooga, and the cabin had been in her family for years. Now there was only Margaret and a nephew who lived near Nashville.

I sat up straight. “Margaret, I didn’t think! Your nephew —I should call him.”

“No, no. No need. There’s nothing Craig can do and I don’t want to bother him.”

Funny how much you can read into words when you are my age. Margaret and I have a here-and-now friendship. We enjoy driving into St. Louis for art shows (everything from Turner to Monet to Klee), discussing politics (if you think today’s press coverage is savage, take a look at Charles A. Dana’s editorial invective in the New York
Sun
in the 1880s), and sharing discoveries of new books (Margaret likes poetry, I prefer nonfiction).

We don’t spend our lives in the past.

But we know the outlines of each other’s lives, our husbands, where we’d worked and lived, what we’d written. She was a widow too. She and Paul had no children. Her sister Eileen died several years ago. Margaret’s only family was Eileen’s son, Craig. I’d seen family photos scattered about Margaret’s house as photos are scattered about mine.

And she didn’t want me to call her nephew about her heart attack and surgery.

“He’s been very involved with his wife and her family since he married.” Her eyes slipped away from mine.

Translation: No time for an elderly aunt.

I let it drop. I pulled out the box of divinity and a new paperback.

Margaret smiled her thanks, then once again looked stubborn. “Now, I don’t want any heroics here, Henrie O. You go ahead tomorrow and take the holiday as we’d planned it. I don’t need to have my hand held. And several friends from the altar guild have phoned. They’ll be by.”

I let myself be persuaded.

Margaret was fine, was going to be fine.

And I was eager for my holiday.

A peaceful week in the Cumberlands in a solitary mountain cabin.

What could be more restful?

I drove through Nashville at dusk. It is a city I love, elegant and southern, a city of church spires and country music tour buses, glittering new glass office buildings and treasured antebellum mansions, boot factories and insurance empires, towering oaks and ghostly gray limestone. I stopped for dinner at Houston’s, an old favorite near the Vanderbilt campus. The restaurant was jammed, as always on a Saturday night. It was almost nine o’clock when I reached my turnoff from Highway 24E some eighty miles south of Nashville.

I had no trouble finding the cabin—Margaret’s map was excellent—though it was several miles to the east and far up a rutted gravel road. Not a gleam of moonlight penetrated the canopy of trees that interlocked above the twisting lane. My headlights stabbed into the darkness, disappeared into the night.

In the glow of my lights, the cabin had a deserted, bleak appearance, one wooden shutter hanging on a hinge,
pine needles thick on the rock path. I pulled around to the side, squeezed my MG between two pines.

I was tired from the full day’s drive and the stress of Margaret’s illness and my hospital vigil. I did take time to breathe deeply of the cool pine-scented air, to welcome the embrace of country silence, but within a few minutes I’d unpacked the car—my luggage and provisions for a week— washed my face, made up one of the twin beds, and tumbled into it and a deep, satisfying sleep.

I wake like a cat. Shifting in an instant from deep sleep to full alert.

Adrenaline pumped through me. The noise that jolted me awake—the metallic rattle of the front doorknob, the faint screech as the door swung in—was startling in the silence, but perhaps even more shocking was the sudden blaze of light from the combination living room-kitchen, illumination that spilled in a harsh swath into the bedroom.

The layout of the square cabin was simple.

The front door opened into the small living room and kitchen area. The bedroom door—which I’d left ajar when I went to bed—was to the right of the front door. I’d had no reason to close the door. I was alone in the cabin.

But not now.

There was no possible good reason why someone was inside the living room of Margaret’s cabin, between me and the only exit.

Except for the single bedroom window.

At bedtime I’d managed, with a struggle, to raise the window almost an inch for a breath of fresh cool night air. It hadn’t been easy. The window’d obviously not been budged in years.

The intruder would certainly hear if I tried to get out that way, assuming I could wrestle the window any higher, which I doubted.

That left the front door. And my late-night visitor.

I was already moving, easing over the side of the bed, grabbing my key ring with its attached Mace canister and my small travel flashlight from the nightstand.

The Mace canister? Of course. Women, old or young, pretty or ugly, sexy or plain, are always at risk. At home. At work. In hotels. On the highway. Daylight or dark. Every woman knows it.

I uncapped the cover to the Mace, gently touched the trigger with my thumb. My hand trembled.

The wooden floor was cool beneath my bare feet. Shoes. I’d run faster with shoes.

I fought indecision and knew it was a form of panic. Thoughts, incomplete, inchoate, whirled in my mind. Shoes … door … Mace …

But first I must know who was there.

I reached the open bedroom door with only one telltale creak of the boards.

I’ve trod a good many dangerous paths in my life. I’ve learned to look hard at faces.

The old saw instructs that pretty is as pretty does. The converse is equally true. The discontented droop of a mouth, the venal gleam in an eye, the obsequious curve of lips, the angry lift of a chin—oh, yes, faces tell tales. And dangerous men have in common an air of reckless abandon. They are not bound by any rules, man’s or God’s, and they will kill you without qualm.

I had to see the face of my intruder.

He slumped in the room’s single easy chair, his dark eyes wide and staring, focused on nothing.

His face surprised me. It was slender, almost delicate for a man. It reminded me of tintypes of Robert Louis Stevenson, oval with deepset eyes, a small, gentle mouth, a high-bridged nose. In his mid-thirties. Despite the bristly
stubble fuzzing his cheeks, my intruder had a thoughtful civilized, almost professorial look. But he appeared desperately tired. More than that, his face retained a kind of incredulous astonishment, like the single survivor of a road smash surveying the crushed cars and mangled victims.

His long, lean body sagged with despair. He wasn’t dressed for the part of a housebreaker. He wore a glen plaid cotton shirt, stylishly pleated khaki slacks, tasseled burgundy leather loafers. But his right trouser leg was soiled, some kind of dark stain.

And I had the elusive, teasing sense that I’d seen him somewhere before. Somewhere …

Faintly a motor rumbled from the road.

He jerked upright, every muscle tensed, his pale, strained face frozen in panic.

The roar grew louder, nearer.

He scrambled to his feet.

The car rattled closer, closer. And then it was by. The sound receded.

He drew his breath in, gulped it. His hands were shaking.

I saw him clearly now in the light. All of him—including his left shirt-sleeve.

I stared at the sleeve, at the blackish substance that discolored it. It was quite different from the stain on his trousers.

Blood.

Viscous thick blood had dried to a dark crust above the cuff.

A wound?

He didn’t move like an injured man. His left fist was tightly clenched. The instinctive tendency of an injured member is to go limp, thereby putting the least possible stress on pain-racked flesh.

Abruptly his fight-or-flight stance relaxed. The young man turned, stumbled wearily to the chair, and flung himself down.

I slipped away from the door, edged silently across the bedroom. I was wearing cotton shorts and a T-shirt, my favored garb for sleep. My suitcase and gym bag were on the floor near the bathroom. I fished out a pair of sweats and my Reeboks. I placed the Mace canister handily on the edge of the bed, then slipped into the sweats, pulled on athletic socks and the running shoes. Maybe it took me forty seconds.

I crept quietly back to the open door. He hadn’t moved.

My husband Richard always warned me against snap judgments. But I don’t waste time, and I don’t waver between choices.

I stepped out into the living room. “Excuse me. Could you possibly be in the wrong cabin?”

I did, of course, have the Mace in my right hand, ready to spray, and I was on a direct line to the front door.

His head jerked toward me. The remaining color drained from his face. He turned a sickly hue. I thought he was going to faint.

He struggled to his feet, staring at me as if I were the first witch in
Macbeth
.

I know that at times I can be intimidating. I have a Roman-coin profile, dark hair silvered at the temples, jet-black eyes that have seen much and remembered much, and an angular body with a lean and hungry appearance of forward motion even when at rest. However, surely not witchlike. Oh, the right age perhaps, but I feel that I look especially nonthreatening in baggy gray sweats and running shoes.

“Oh, my God, who are you? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins,” I replied crisply. “I’m a guest of Margaret Frazier’s. So I might ask the same of you.”

He swallowed jerkily. “A guest … oh, Christ. If that isn’t my frigging— Sorry. God.” He looked past me toward the bedroom. “Where’s Aunt Margaret?”

Aunt Margaret. Of course. That’s why he looked familiar. That aquiline nose and small, full mouth.

I slipped the keys and Mace canister into the pocket of my sweats.

Craig. Margaret’s nephew. “I’m sorry to say she’s in the hospital. A heart attack and bypass surgery. But she’s …”

He wasn’t listening.

I felt a quick flare of anger. No wonder Margaret had resisted notifying him.

“I believe she is going to recover quite nicely, in case you’re interested.”

His eyes blinked. He heard my anger. It took a moment for him to make the connection. “Aunt Margaret … oh, I’m sorry.” Blank dark eyes finally focused on me. “She’s real sick? I’m sorry.” He gave me a shamefaced look. “And I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t mean to. Truly, I didn’t know you were here. I’m Craig, Craig Matthews.”

He lifted a slender, well-manicured hand to massage his temple. The emerald in a thick yellow-gold ring glittered like putting-green grass on a sunny day.

The bloodstain ran from just above the cuff to his elbow.

He followed my glance.

There are many kinds of silence. Companionable. Hostile. Angry. Shamed. Defeated.

And frightened.

His handsome face crumpled, a mixture of horror and
pain and disbelief. He shook his head. “I didn’t kill Patty Kay. I didn’t do it.” It was a husky, broken whisper. Gingerly, he touched the crusted blood with his right hand. His fingers quivered.

His denial echoed in my mind. What had I stumbled into?
I didn’t kill Patty Kay
. Did he say it again or did the shocking, frightening phrase simply pulse in my mind?

No wonder Craig Matthews wasn’t worried about his aunt. No wonder his demeanor was terrified.

I tensed like a runner awaiting the starter’s pistol. My hand closed again around the slender Mace canister. Margaret’s nephew or no, if he took a step toward me …

Instead, he backed to the chair and sank into it again. Dully, he looked up at me. “You know Aunt Margaret?”