Deadfall (16 page)

For a minute she frowned, hating to be protected, her mind slipping back to the quandary of her relationship with Alex—remembering her reaction to his birthday gift. What
would
she do, if and when he did offer her a ring? Why was she so sure it would happen? Part of it, she knew, was her sure and instinctive knowledge of his rather traditional values. They fit well together, enjoyed each other’s company, were good friends, all of which counted for much. But did she want to marry him—to marry anyone? Somehow it felt like letting go of a large part of her independence. Living with Alex was one thing, marrying him another. Why was it different? Was it all in her mind?

“Well, I’d better decide, before it comes up,” she said aloud. Then she consciously forced her thoughts back to the situation at hand.

It was reassuring to know that whoever had been in the sauna the night before could not have been her stalker—to know it must have been someone who had come and gone without realizing her presence at the other cove. If she had not happened to walk across and lay her hand on the barely warm stove, she would never have discovered the person had been there at all. She would be feeling as safe and confident as she had the day before…well, except for Ted and his big mouth. Maybe saying nothing to him of the reason for her visit would keep his speculations from running rampant. After all, Millie loaned the use of her house periodically, and it was not especially unusual for someone who was not a part of the family to be there.

Oh, to hell with it, she told herself, tired of her own concern. I’ve done all I can, given the circumstances. “Don’t trouble trouble unless it troubles you,” she said to Tank.

He looked up, waiting: company, at least—dependable company.

With that, she banked the fire, changed into the shirt she slept in, took the lamp to the chest of drawers beside the bed, and got in with her book and a handful of cookies, to read and forget about the whole thing. The sheets felt damp and cold, so she got up again, heated some water, and filled a hot water bottle to put between them. With her feet on it, the rest of the bed was soon comfortable. An hour later, she had blown out the lamp, listened for a while to the wind and the lulling monotony of rain on the roof, and gone easily to sleep. The shotgun was now within reach between the bed and the chest, and once again Tank slept on the rug beside the bed, carefully guarding his mistress.

S
omething woke him in the darkest part of the night. The storm had swept in again, this time in earnest, the wind creating a host of large and small sounds in and around the building. A metal wind chime clanged irregularly, tossing to and fro, and something rattled on the deck. A corner of a plastic tarp covering a small generator outside the front door had evidently pulled loose and crackled as it flapped. Knowing these were natural sounds, the husky discounted them and listened alertly for another—different—sound he had heard.

Quietly, he got up and, toenails clicking softly on the wood floor, went into the larger room, where he lapped a little from the water dish Jessie had put down for him. Then he moved slowly through the whole house, from door to door, and into each room, listening and searching for something he felt was not normal to the environment. Between the gusts of wind, he heard the odd sound again, faint and far away, before it was again overpowered by the stronger roar and clamor of the rain.

Hesitating, he waited till it was repeated once more, then
went back to the bedroom, put his forepaws on the bed next to Jessie, and whined.

Instantly, she was awake, turning over and reaching for the flashlight she had left on the chest. Aiming its bright beam at the ceiling to give the room a dim, diffused light, she sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed.

“What is it, Tank? You hear something?”

As she rubbed his ears and under his chin, she listened, heard nothing, and asked him again.

“What is it, guy? Show me.”

Dropping back to the floor, he padded into the outer room while she followed silently in her stockinged feet. He led her to the back door, where he paused, cocking his head to wait for the sound. Watching him, she listened, too, identifying the chime, rattle, and crackle among the sigh of spruce branches and dull growl of heavy waves washing high up the beach to tumble the smaller rocks and pebbles as the tide flooded in.

The wind died slightly, as if it were taking a deep breath, and suddenly there was a hint of music beneath its suspiration—upbeat notes of music, almost too far away to be heard—simple treble notes over a plinkety-plunk bass. The melody faded and disappeared as the wind rose to overwhelm it. But Jessie had recognized the song, as well as the instrument—knew what made it, if not who.

Someone, on the ancient piano in the shed above the beach house, was playing a half-familiar song—an old, out-of-date favorite of her mother’s.

She could even remember some of the words:

J
essie’s heart turned over as fear flooded in, turning her skin clammy with the sensation of being hot and cold at the same time. She drew one horrified, shuddering breath, then suddenly was furious, as well as frightened, and a little contemptuous.

Who the hell was playing the song? Who would dare? “
…you belong to me
”?…Was she reading meaning into the lyrics and title of that particular piece of music? But, most of all, who was playing the old piano, and was it for her benefit?

Two choices lay open to her. She discarded the first immediately—stay where she was, keep the doors locked, barricade the doors, and wait to see what would come next. Unacceptable. She knew she could not tolerate the stress and apprehension of closing herself in the beach house, crouched in the dark, with the shotgun clutched in icy hands for the rest of the night—let alone the following day or days—without identifying the cause of her anxiety. The preceding week had shaken her confidence considerably, but she was suddenly determined to
have it back. She would have to go and find out who was in the shed. But she would not go carelessly, without making sure she had as much of an advantage as possible, for what if that sound was meant to lure her up the hill?

Should she call Alex before she went, just in case? She considered and decided against it. A phone call would wake him in the middle of the night for something she couldn’t explain and he could do nothing about. Best to cautiously assess the situation, find out what was going on, and wait to call him when she had facts instead of fantasies to report.

Quickly dressing and buckling on the .44 in the dark, so no beam from the flashlight would betray her through some crack or window of the house, she put on the rain slicker, but left off the oversized pants that would make it impossible to move silently. Pocketing the flashlight and adding some shotgun shells to the ammunition she had put in earlier for the handgun, she took the shotgun and the keys to the house and, sliding back the jerry-rigged locks, opened the front door, which put the house between the shed and herself.

Tank didn’t usually bark when they were together, but she warned him anyway with a tap on the nose.

“Quiet, boy. No barking.”

Together, they slipped out, and she used the key to lock the door. No sense in providing an opportunity for
…whoever…
to hide or use the beach house for an ambush.

Cradling the shotgun across one arm, she stepped around the corner of the house. Wind-driven water instantly hit her in the face and began to soak her hair. With her free hand, she pulled up the hood on the slicker, found it impossible to hear over the roar of rain hitting it, and shoved it off again. So she would be wet—she could get dry later.

It was dark, but not quite as dark as it had been inside. She could differentiate shapes, which was all she needed; she was familiar with the route she would take. Like a shadow, she moved almost silently around the back of the house and across the plank that was laid as a bridge over the small stream of
fresh water, Tank behind her. As she gained the opposite bank and started up the steeper part of the path, she heard the sound of the piano again—a few notes of a tune she did not recognize this time—before the wind, whistling in the spruce, whipped it away. Pausing to wipe her face and take a deep, even breath, she felt her hands tremble.

The shed was perhaps a hundred yards away. Looking up between the trees, she could barely distinguish its dark rectangle. The wall facing her was windowless, but as she moved up the hill, she could detect a glimmer of light shining from one of the shed’s front windows onto a nearby tree trunk. The tinkling of piano keys came again, louder as she approached, then faded away. The crash and thunder of the waves on the shingle of beach was louder, too, as she neared the top of the rise and drew close to a twenty- or thirty-foot dropoff that fell straight down to sand and driftwood invisible below. Though the sounds of the storm disguised any small noises she made, they were also a hindrance to her own ability to hear.

Cautiously, carefully, she crept up and around the corner of the shed, and now, mixed with the thunderous music of the storm, she could plainly hear what was being played. Another tap on Tank’s muzzle to remind him to be still, and she moved forward, toward the glow of what had to be a lamp that shone from the nearest of the two windows on either side of the closed door. Abandoning popular tunes, the pianist had shifted to classical, for Jessie recognized Debussy’s
La Mer—
how appropriate—and how odd. The player was accomplished, but the dead keys and out-of-tune condition of the piano gave the music a strange and ominous funhouse quality.

Focused on the lighted windows she was about to reach, Jessie didn’t realize she had lost her night vision until she stumbled over a half-buried rock. Pitching forward, she dropped the shotgun with a clatter and instinctively threw out her hands, which landed with a thud against the wall just under the nearest small square window. The advantage of surprise lost, she scrambled from her bruised knees back to her feet, ignoring
the sharpness of a splinter in her palm, in time to see the light go abruptly out. Then she heard the dull pounding of feet on the wood floor within the shed as the phantom pianist dashed for a second door at the back of the building.

“Dammit!” Jessie swore under her breath, then grabbed the shotgun, snatched the flashlight from her pocket, and leaped to the door. Throwing it open with a crash, she raced through the library and workshop to the rear door, which she found swinging emptily wide on its hinges, and cast the beam of the light back and forth in a wide sweep across the trees and brush on the hillside.

The heavy flashlight was an exceptionally bright and far-reaching variety used by law enforcement, which Alex had given her for use in wilderness sled dog races. Halfway through its arc, she caught sight of a human figure in motion as it vanished into the trees behind the beach house, headed east. In that brief glimpse, she noted a tan jacket over jeans and what appeared to be gray hair pulled back into a braid at the nape of the neck.

Without hesitation, she followed, running when she could, fighting her way through brush and over irregularities in the ground, hurdling the narrow creek to land with one foot in a patch of mud, which staggered but hardly slowed her determined progress. Wet branches whipped at her, stinging where they hit her cold face and hands. There was no time to think, only to pursue.

Thrashing sounds guided her into a particularly dense clump of devil’s club. As she thrust her way through it on a ragged path in the large leaves shredded by her quarry’s passing, she felt the spiny thorns tear at her clothing and bare hands. But the person she tracked had taken the worst of the wicked stabs and was slowed a little, for the desperate sounds of flight were a bit nearer when Jessie broke out into the open space beyond, which held a familiar trail. Rather than take what she recognized as one of the two paths that went up
behind the beach house, the person had dashed across the paths and back into the brush on the other side.

She paused for an instant to listen, soaking wet from the waist down and the neck up. But as soon as the sound of her advance died, so did that of the fugitive she sought, and once again there was nothing but wind in the trees, pouring rain, and the roar of the surf to the right. Tank started forward, but she caught his collar and they both waited, listening hard. There was nothing for a long minute. Then a stick cracked from the weight of an incautious foot, farther along and up the hill. The sound suggested the pianist was headed almost directly up the steep hill she had climbed on her way to the other cove.

Rather than crash on through the undergrowth, advertising her position, she swiftly elected to go down one trail to Millie’s then cut back up the other. Shielding the light with her fingers so that only a thin beam showed her where to step, she went quietly along it and was almost to the intersection of the two trails when another sound stopped her. There was a crash, a thud, and the noise of a fall, accompanied by an involuntary cry of pain or surprise as a body hit the ground and, from the sound of it, tumbled, until stopping with a grunt loud enough for Jessie to hear from where she stood.

Immediately she was running up the hill toward it, shotgun held barrel skyward, without concern now for the flashlight’s beam, Tank a swift, dark, eager shape at her side. Reaching the area where she estimated the sound had originated, she stopped, and shone the light in a circle around her. Trail, spruce needles and cones on the ground, brush, tree trunks, and…a boot below blue denim, under a bush against the large stump of a fallen tree. Over the sound of her own heavy breathing, she could hear someone gasping, trying to catch limited breath. Evidently the collision with the stump had knocked the wind from the tumbling figure.

Cautiously, keeping herself behind the beam, she took a few steps toward the person on the ground, and, extending the
barrel of the shotgun so it could be seen, moved the light to the man’s face. As it hit his eyes, he closed them and threw up an arm to deflect the brightness—or the threat of the gun.

“Don’t…shoot. Please…don’t,” he said breathlessly. “I won’t…move.”

“Hush,” she told Tank, silencing his low growl.

The man on the ground was probably in his late sixties. A tanned face bore the traces of years spent in the outdoors—a myriad of wrinkles and creases that were exaggerated with tension in the blinding light. Receding gray hair had widened his forehead, and as he squinted, trying to see who was confronting him, Jessie caught a glimpse of eyes the color of the bay on a day of scudding clouds: gray-green. She moved the flashlight beam a little to one side so she could examine him as he relaxed his face.

“Thank you,” he said, and his breathing eased.

He was clad in the jeans and tan jacket she had already seen; under the jacket he wore a blue-plaid flannel shirt, open at the collar, with a plain brown sweatshirt over it. She could tell he was short and spare of flesh, though his shoulders were wide enough for strength, and he did not appear frail.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

“Rudy. I’m just old Rudy Nunamaker. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

“Not likely. Not while I’ve got a shotgun pointed at the middle of you, anyway. What are you doing here, playing the piano in the middle of the night and running away from me?”

“You scared me. Can I sit up, please?”

“No. You stay right where you are and answer my questions.”

He sighed. “Really, I can’t hurt you. I just come here sometimes when there’s nobody home. I don’t hurt anything. Just like to spend a day or two, then I go back.”

“Back where? Where did you come from?”

He squirmed uncomfortably.

“There’s something sticking into my back,” he told her. “Could I please just sit up?”

“Okay, sit up, but keep your hands where I can see them, and don’t do anything stupid. I know how to use this, and I will—in a heartbeat.”

He used a branch of the bush to pull himself to a sitting position, kept his hands on his thighs, and looked up at her silhouette behind the light, sighing this time with relief. He didn’t look dangerous, but rather disturbed and leery of the gun she held steadily pointed at him.

“That’s better, thanks. Now…I have a little place up at the end of Jakolof, built it myself back in the woods, before so many people moved over there. But a couple of times a year I go across the bay to Homer for supplies. Then, if nobody’s here, I usually stop for a day or two on my way back. I don’t hurt anything—just use the sauna and play the piano. Millie knows me. She knows I come over—leaves a key to the sauna where I can find it. Sometimes, when she’s here by herself, I stop in to see her.”

“Describe her.”

“Nice lady—medium build, brown hair turning white, good smile. Comes down mostly in the late spring or summer for a week or two at a time. She likes gin and tonic—or, once in a while, a martini. Fell on the beach rocks getting out of a boat a couple of years ago and broke her arm.”

It was Millie, all right. He knew her, and Jessie thought it unlikely her stalker would. Still, she was not absolutely sure. She paused to think for a minute, half soaked with rain dripping off her hair and down the neck of the slicker. She could smell the salty, iodine odor of the sea on wind that blew water from the nearby trees into her face. She was tired, wet, and the hand with the splinter was pulsing with a sharp, annoying pain. She needed to ask another question or two, however.

“So, Rudy, it was you in the sauna, night before last?”

“Yes, I used it. How’d you know?”

“You forgot to lock it and the stove was still wa—Never mind. How long have you lived there—in Jakolof?”

“Oh, must be almost thirty years now.” He half smiled, remembering. “Let’s see…I came in ’69, and…”

Jessie lowered the shotgun. This old man was no threat that she could discern. She felt weak all over as relief took the place of anxiety. Then she had to smile.

“So, I scared you, huh?”

“Yeah. Why’d you hammer on the wall of the library like that? Gave me a real turn.”

“I didn’t mean to. I tripped on a rock and hit it as I fell.”

“Well, I had no idea who it was in the middle of the night, so I skedaddled. Better to be safe than…you know.”

“Yeah, I
sure
do. You about scared me silly when I woke up and heard your music in between the gusts of wind. Really spooky. Gave me a nasty few minutes—then a chase through the woods that beat us both up. Are you okay? Oh…you can move now, by the way.”

He got to his feet, moving his arms and legs, checking to be sure they worked, rubbing a spot where his ribs had evidently come in hard contact with the stump. He would be stiff and sore for a day or so, but there didn’t seem to be anything broken or seriously damaged. He completed his inspection, tested the side of his head over his left ear, and grimaced.

“Ouch. Got a pretty good bump swelling up. Must have hit it on something on the way down the hill. A limb or something rolled under my foot and flipped me on my keester. Knocked the breath right out of me.”