Dead Ends (Main Street Mysteries Book 2) (26 page)

‘It was exactly what she told me in Chuck's office earlier this week. One.’

‘So?’ Mother was peering at daughter.

‘Don't you see? That one call was Barbara Jean with her pains. The responding units stumbled on us en route.’

Daisy was looking confused. ‘But that would . . .’

AnnaLise was nodding. ‘Exactly right. Joshua never called nine-one-one.’

Thirty-five

‘But why would Joshua Eames have said he called the emergency number if he didn't?’ Daisy was looking even more confused.

‘Maybe to keep us from calling ourselves?’

This time Daisy shivered and wrapped her arms around her torso. ‘Can we talk about this in the car?’

But AnnaLise was looking off across the gorge. ‘What if Josh was there on the road leading to the bridge heading home, not from work, but from shooting out Tanja Rosewood's tire.’ She pointed toward the white glint of the bridge and the road leading to it on the opposite side of the ‘c’ from where they stood. ‘It would be a clear shot from here, if not necessarily an easy one.’

‘Now you think
Josh
is the guilty one?’ Daisy asked, apparently forgetting her earlier chill. ‘What about your friend, the district attorney?’

‘Ben is a pathological liar and cheat, but maybe he's not a murderer.’

‘But Josh, someone you've known practically all your life, is?’

AnnaLise shook her head. ‘I'm wondering . . . I mean, we have only Josh's word that he lent Ben the gun. And even that he was attacked in the hospital just hours ago. If he lied about calling nine-one-one, maybe he's been lying about everything.’

‘What if . . .’ Daisy was staring off toward the gorge, arms still wrapped around her.

‘Go ahead?’

Daisy turned to her. ‘What if the sirens wouldn't have scared him off that night? He told us to stay in the car, remember?’

‘You're thinking he might have sent us over?’ AnnaLise followed her mother's gaze off the edge.

‘It wouldn't have taken much,’ Daisy said. ‘And if you're right that we caught him in the act –’

But AnnaLise was shaking her head. ‘But we hadn't. In fact, we didn't even know it was Josh until he called out to us.’

‘But
he
couldn't have known that,’ Daisy said. ‘Still . . . I know that the black truck was coming down the mountain.’

‘You're sure of that? Because if so, it blows my theory to smithereens. Josh couldn't have been both here shooting off the lookout and in the truck coming down the mountain.’

‘Maybe he wasn't in the truck,’ Daisy said. ‘You know how many dark-colored SUVs and pick-ups there are up here, and I told you I thought the truck just kept on going.’

‘Didn't you say the Eames house was very near here?’ AnnaLise recalled something else. Fred Eames saying that Josh liked to ‘tramp’ through the dead-end as a shortcut.

‘Just through there.’ Daisy pointed away from the cliff. ‘Fifteen minutes on the road, but probably ten by foot.’

‘More like five,’ a voice said from the nearby brush.

Joshua Eames stepped into the fading, slanting sunlight.

Thirty-six

‘They released you from the hospital,’ AnnaLise said, not knowing what else to say to the young man who stood wraithlike in front of them, head still swathed in gauze.

‘And police custody, thanks to you. Your friend Ben Rosewood is in a heap of trouble, especially now that I remembered what happened that night.’

Josh was standing with this back to the gravel road. While AnnaLise and Daisy could see his face, they were likely only silhouettes to him against setting sun.

Good thing, because AnnaLise didn't think she could keep the horror off her face.

‘Well, that's good,’ she said, glancing at her mother. ‘Daisy, we need to run. Ida Mae's waiting.’

‘I don't think so,’ Josh said, moving closer. ‘We need to talk first.’

Both women were standing on the driver's side of the Chrysler and AnnaLise pulled Daisy toward the front of the car, so the open door was between them and Josh.

She'd forgotten, seeing him in a hospital bed most recently, how tall he was, and how broad. His father, but with the six-pack. ‘“Always big for his age,”’ Daisy had said. Probably even at ten.

‘I'm sorry about your mother,’ she said now, as she had in the hospital when Coy Pitchford had broken the news to both of them. Though now she realized that it hadn't seemed as much of a surprise to Josh as it was to her.

‘You know . . .’ He stopped, his face expressionless.

‘Know what?’ Daisy said, looking back and forth between them. ‘Whatever you heard, Josh, it was just us gossiping. You know how much we all love to gossip in Sutherton.’

‘I do, Daisy. Especially you women.’

‘You don't like women?’ AnnaLise asked.

Josh shook his head, just once. ‘I sure try to, but . . . well, don't take offense, but I've found you just can't trust 'em.’

Funny, but AnnaLise had been thinking the same about men recently. Not that she planned to mention it to Josh just now. ‘We can be flighty creatures.’

‘Truer words were never spoken,’ Josh said. ‘My mother, even Suze. Say one thing, then do another.’

‘They said they loved you?’ Daisy asked gently.

AnnaLise, who wasn't so sure this was a good tack to take, kept quiet.

Josh dipped his head. ‘They did, Daisy. That they did. And then they left.’

A ‘huh!’ sounded in the woods. AnnaLise was appalled that it apparently had come from her.

‘You question that, AnnaLise?’ Josh said, taking another step toward them.

‘I'm sure AnnaLise wasn't so much questioning,’ Daisy said, sending a warning glance her daughter's direction, ‘as expressing disgust. At Suzanne's behavior, and especially your mother's.’

‘Right,’ AnnaLise said, and that didn't come out quite the way she meant it, either. Sarcasm might be called for, but she'd be the first one to say it shouldn't be expressed right at the moment.

‘Now you see, Daisy?’ This from Josh. ‘Your daughter is doing exactly what I said. Saying one thing, but meaning another.’

‘My –’ AnnaLise's voice cracked. There was something about having Daisy there with her that made the reporter more frightened, even, than when she'd been alone on the Parkway facing Ben. Whether it was because AnnaLise felt like a little girl, wanting her mommy to save her, or because she feared for Daisy's life as well as her own, would need further study.

Later.

AnnaLise cleared her throat. ‘My . . .
skepticism
,’ perhaps not the best word choice, but she'd have to live with it, ‘was not that your mother and Suze betrayed you, but that they'd left you. From what I've learned – and maybe you can tell me better, Josh – but from what I know now, neither of them left you of their own volition.’

‘Oh, but they did.’ Another step closer and they could see his eyes clearer. Not that it mattered, because the blue eyes were dead, as expressionless as the face they were set in. ‘I just . . . hastened them along their way.’

The game of tag, surrendered. ‘Just to get it over with.’

‘Exactly.’ A smile on Josh's face, but not really. ‘You understand.’

‘Well, I surely don't,’ Daisy said, and AnnaLise saw that she still had the cell in her hand, blocked from Josh's view by the car door. ‘Can somebody explain?’

Josh shook his head.

‘I can, Daisy,’ AnnaLise said, hoping to distract the young man – the crazy young man – long enough for her mother to dial. ‘I think I can explain everything.’

‘Do you now, AnnaLise?’ Interest was sparking in Josh's face for the first time, like a hunter whose winged prey had just taken erratic – and futile – flight. ‘Then please, go on.’

‘Thank you, I will,’ AnnaLise said politely. ‘But where would you like me to start? At the beginning with your mother?’

‘That would be fine,’ Josh said, tipping his head. ‘No need to go into how lonely I was, with my father going about his business, and my mother . . . hers. Though I did do my best to please my father early on, going hunting and fishing and the like.’

Now a laugh, harsh in the peaceful twilight. ‘Ol' Fred would get so irritated that I didn't seem capable of a clean kill, he eventually stopped bringing me hunting with him. Which was fine by me. That way I was free to wing quarry on my own. Takes a damn good shot to do that, you know – maim, I mean, without killing outright. And with no Fred to interfere and finish them off, I could sit and watch for hours as the light in their eyes slowly . . . flickered . . . out.’

AnnaLise felt sick to her stomach. From behind her, Daisy said, ‘But about your mother?’

‘I didn't get to see the light go out of her eyes.’

AnnaLise swallowed. ‘Did you catch them here, Josh? Did you see your mother with her lover?’

‘I did, but it wasn't just the one, AnnaLise. There were quite a few, actually.’

‘Told you,’ came loudly from behind AnnaLise.

‘Shh, Daisy.’ AnnaLise was shuddering. ‘So your mother was promiscuous, Josh?’

‘“My mother” was a whore. I saw her take money from those men and then get out of their cars to walk home.’

‘Convenient, I suppose, Lovers' Lookout being so close to your house.’ Again from Daisy, and this time AnnaLise tipped to the fact that her mother had successfully connected with someone – hopefully the police – on the cell. ‘So you killed her, Josh?’

Daisy's attempt to get the young man to confess seemed way too obvious and, besides, AnnaLise wanted to live until the police got there. ‘You were very young,’ she said sympathetically.

Joshua Eames was looking off into the distance. ‘At first, she'd buy me presents. Things I knew we couldn't afford. I figured out where the money was coming from, even if my dad didn't.’

‘He found out somehow?’

‘Nope.’ He turned his attention back to AnnaLise.

‘Then what changed? Why –’

‘Why? Because she was going to leave, don't you understand? The gifts . . .
everything
was going to stop. She
owed
me for her being with
them
,’ he spat out the indictment, ‘when
I
was the one who needed her.’

‘So you kept her from leaving.’

‘No. I sent her away, before she could leave me.’

‘How?’ Daisy's voice.

‘Easy.’ A smirk from Josh. ‘She took her car that day. I'm not sure why. Maybe the guy had a pick-up or something. Awkward for what they had in mind, you know? Her driver's door was open, just like yours is right now. And with a manual transmission, all I had to do was reach in and –’

‘ – put it in neutral,’ AnnaLise said.

‘Shh,’ came from Daisy. ‘Let Joshua tell us. It
is
his story, after all.’

‘Sorry,’ AnnaLise said. ‘Go on, Josh.’ And slowly, she prayed.

‘No, you're right, AnnaLise, I just slid the stick from park to neutral, then all it took was a little push.’

Big for his age, AnnaLise heard in her head again. ‘But your mother and . . . they were in the car, right? Didn't they notice? Maybe feel the car move and pull on the brake?’

Now Josh laughed outright. ‘You're kidding, right?’

‘No. Why?’

He snorted. ‘Because they were in the back seat, of course.’

Thirty-seven

Daisy said, ‘Four-on-the-floor, I imagine.’

AnnaLise preferred not to imagine the scenario at all. She turned to Josh. ‘And Suze?’

‘She was going to leave me, too.’

‘I suppose Suzanne found out you killed her mother?’ Daisy asked loudly from directly behind AnnaLise.

Her daughter rubbed her right ear. ‘Assuming you
did
kill Tanja.’

‘I did, though I have to say I got lucky there. I figured shooting from here would give me a clear shot across the gorge and, what with the car being yellow, I got a good bead on it coming down around that last bend to the bridge .Even so, the shot was a lot more challenging than wounding an animal or shoving a car off a cliff.’

‘Hey, you were only ten then,’ Daisy said. ‘Give yourself credit.’

‘Nix the sarcasm, please?’ AnnaLise hissed over her shoulder, then turned back to Josh: ‘What would you have done if the Porsche had just crashed instead of going over the cliff?’

Josh shrugged. ‘I'd have figured out something. In fact, I was walking over there to confirm the kill when I came across you.’

‘Walking?’ AnnaLise asked. ‘So you
weren't
driving your truck.’

‘Why? So somebody could ID it? Cutting through the woods on foot is a lot faster, anyway.’

‘But then who was driving the truck that nearly hit us?’ AnnaLise asked.

‘Got me,’ Josh said. ‘It just kept on going.’

‘Told you.’ Daisy, again.

‘You didn't call nine-one-one,’ AnnaLise said to Josh.

‘Nope, just like you said, talking to Daisy. That siren took me by surprise, while I was figuring out what to do.’

‘With us, you mean?’ Again, the sick feeling in the pit of AnnaLise's stomach.

‘Of course, with you. I figured you'd seen me, AnnaLise, though as it turns out you'd closed your eyes. If I'd known that I would have just gone on my way and left you there.’

‘But as it was, what if the rescue squad hadn't chased you off?’ Daisy asked, like she had to know.

Josh cocked his head. ‘I'm not sure. Interesting question, though. I surely have experience with sending bigger vehicles over than that crushed Spyder of yours, AnnaLise. I could have probably picked the little thing up and tossed it.’

AnnaLise thought not, but kept her mouth shut.

‘But back to Suzanne,’ Daisy said. ‘She figured out you'd killed her mother?’

‘Worse. She told me she was leaving. With everything that'd happened, she'd decided to go back to Wisconsin with her father. I didn't expect that. We had plans. She
told
me, she loved me more than anything. Anyone.’ He was close enough now that AnnaLise could see a vein in his forehead throbbing.

‘Sounds like you should have killed the father,’ AnnaLise's mother muttered. ‘Would have saved everybody a lot of trouble.’

‘Daisy!’ AnnaLise scolded, though she wasn't sure why.

‘I was just so angry,’ Josh said, and for the first time he looked shaken. ‘I showed Suze the rifle, explained what I'd done for us and that with her mother's family and all their money we'd be rich. You know how she answered me?’