Deadly Descent (23 page)

She let go long enough to pick up a limb, raised it over her head. I tried to get to my feet, but managed only to twist aside far enough to take the impact of the blow on my shoulder, instead of my skull. She hit something. Something tore. My arm was finished.

I fell back full length and hoped she thought I was unconscious. She began dragging me into the thicket. I was wild with pain, but I did not cry out. My only chance would be to catch her off guard.

Eventually, she would have to go back for the shovel, the sacks of lime. It would take her a while to cover her tracks. That’s what the rake had been for. To rearrange this carpet of leaves.

I was dead weight. She was exhausted. Her breath was now coming in hot ragged gasps. She could drag me only a few steps at a time before she had to stop and rest. She dropped me abruptly.

I knew we had reached my grave.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Was she going to shoot me, knife me, or bash in my head?

Whatever she was going to do, she would do it right now, before she went back to the pickup for supplies.

Please God,
I prayed.
Let me live
. My timing had to be perfect.

Remembering what Sam Abbott had taught me about the danger of hesitation, before she could experience the giddy intake of breath from knowing she had reached her destination, I rolled toward her ankles, and yanked on her right arm, tumbling us both over into the open grave.

She landed hard, face down. I was on her back. Before she could catch her breath and push up, I got to my knees on top of her flattened body. My left arm was useless. I could only brace myself with my right arm. It was not enough to leverage myself out of the hole.

Her face still pressed into the damp earth, she groped behind her and grabbed my ankle. My blood froze. I was injured. She was not. It would all be over in a matter of seconds.

But it was Friday. I was wearing my cowboy boots. I kicked her head with my free foot. Kicked her three times.

Once for Zelda.

Once for Judy.

Once for Josie.

She was as still as a corpse. I stood fully upright on her back. Bracing my right elbow, I heaved myself out of the grave. Dizzy and terrified, I wobbled to my feet and stumbled toward the edge of the thicket. My tongue swelled in my dry mouth. I plunged forward, the hair prickling on the back of my neck, as though she could rise from that grave, fly though the air, and grab me.

I reached the edge of the clearing. Her Toyota was only three hundred yards away.

I could hardly breathe. I knew I had to get to the pickup.

I opened the door and dropped into the driver’s seat. The damned stick shift. My left arm was too injured to manipulate controls simultaneously. The seat was too far back to brace myself well. When I finally got into position to turn the key and hold down the clutch, there was a sickening whir, whir, whir, like an old engine makes on a cold morning. Frantically, I tried to reposition myself. The engine was getting weaker.

I tried to calm myself. I counted to thirty. When I turned the key again, there was a dead click.

I trembled violently, and knew with sickening certainty it was not from fear. Pain surged and I tasted blood.

My hands shook as I reached into my purse, glanced at the “no service” bars on my cell, then grabbed my gun. I tucked it into the band of my jeans. I had to get help, and there was only one way out. Down the road, the same way we came in. I shut my mind against the thought I might not have enough time.

Dizzy with shock, I got out and started down the road that was little better than a rutted path. I heard an occasional car in the distance. I reached down and picked up a limb to steady myself. I willed myself to push against the pain, the terror. Felt my blood pressure dropping like a rock in a lake. I had to get help. Had to make it to the road.

If I didn’t, I would die.

I staggered across the little culvert. I was close. Only twenty more yards and I would be over the little hill that obscured this area from the highway. If only I could make it to the side of the highway.

Any day but Friday and this road would be scarcely traveled. But it was high school football night. Everyone would be going to the game. Lots of people coming and going.

I heard a sound behind me. A twig snapped. Minerva was not dead.

Not dead.

She was coming for me.

I clamped down on a sob, on any sound at all.

Her progress would be slower than mine because she was trying to move quietly. She was skirting the edge of the clearing and I was using the road. But I was hurt and she clearly had not been hurt enough.

Not nearly enough.

My gun was useless. There was too little light for a long shot. Even if I made it to the highway there was no guarantee someone would see me before she killed me. She would know I was headed for the road. She would stop at the dead pickup. She would know a lot.

What she could not know was that I was slowly bleeding to death.

I couldn’t let her know that. I pressed on toward the highway, as though I had not heard her. I was nearing the rise. I knew she would try for me before I reached it.

She would not know about the gun, but it was too dark to shoot.

I heard a sound about ten yards away. Then dead silence. I knew she had stopped, cold afraid I had heard her.

Spurred by panic, I knew I had one chance. I groaned to let her know I was injured. Injured and easy prey. Groaned like I was too wiped out with pain to be aware of what was before or behind or below or above.

I dropped to my knees. An irresistible target. Hurt. Terribly hurt.

Now she did not bother to hide herself. She walked steadily toward me.

When she loomed right before me, I raised my gun and shot her. Three times.

Once for Zelda.

Once for Judy.

Once for Josie.

I hoped she was dead. I hoped I would live.

I dragged myself down over the rise.

There were cars coming. I saw there were two cars close together. One might stop if there was the safety of another close by. I thanked God this was Western Kansas. Farm country where people were used to looking, seeing, noticing.

Dazed, I heard Edgar Hadley’s pickup. Saw him pull over, jump from the cab. Start toward me.

Blackness. I swirled down into velvety blackness.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Blinded by an explosion of light, I squeezed my eyes tight against the pain. I heard voices.

“She’s awake,” Keith said. There was an odor wafting across the room. Jasmine. Roses. Heavenly. Something in me loosened, let go of terror. I knew I was smiling despite the torture of moving cracked lips and bruised flesh.

I slept again. Hours later, when I could bear to open my eyes again, Keith’s face was flanked by people in white.

“Josie,” I murmured. “Josie.”

Keith was by my side in an instant. “She’s fine,” he said. “Just great, Lottie.”

“I already know that,” I whispered.

Then I fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

“How did you know?” he asked, the next morning after I devoured a breakfast large enough for a harvester.

“I smelled Joy Perfume and figured she had sent you or someone else out to buy it. I knew everything was all right. Only a very conscious Josie would insist on her little luxuries while lying in a hospital bed. She had to have been out of her coma to send you off shopping. I doubt if even I could get you to shop for me,” I said ruefully. “So where are you hiding her?”

“On another floor. We’ll put the two of you together as soon as you’re out of intensive care. You’ve got a busted rib and it punctured a lung.”

“Josie’s here. Right here in this hospital?” But of course they would have flown me to Denver.

Later that morning, I was pronounced fit to be moved and transferred to her room.

“It’s for smokers, you know,” Josie said. She sat on the edge of my bed, her eyes bright with tears.

“Is not.” I laughed, then winced at the pain. I reached for her hand and patted it. We leaned toward one another, foreheads touching. I stroked her hair and felt her shudder.

“I’m so sorry I got you into this,” I murmured. “So terribly sorry.”

“Just hush. I’m fine.
And
we caught a murderess.”

***

“You have a visitor,” Keith said.

Elizabeth walked through the door, bearing flowers.

“I hear you’ve been blooded, Lottie,” she said. Her voice was solemn, respectful.

“It’s been quite an ordeal,” I said. She glanced at Josie and flushed. She walked over to her bed.

“I owe you an apology. I’m terribly sorry for my behavior the night you were at our house. Please forgive me.”

There was no mistaking Elizabeth’s sincerity.

“Of course I accept your apology,” Josie’s voice dripped with sugar. “Put the whole incident out of your mind, please. That’s certainly what I intend to do.”

“Thank you. You’re being very gracious.”

Keith beamed. Elizabeth came back to my bedside. “There’s so much I don’t understand, Dad. Edgar Hadley found her? Brought her to the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Why was he looking for her?”

“According to Sam Abbott, Edgar had seen our Suburban parked in his driveway, and when he went into the house, he asked Brian and Fiona what Lottie had wanted. When Brian realized what she might have seen or heard, he went tearing out of the house. He wanted to track Lottie down and ask her not to take his allegations against Fiona too seriously. He wanted his mother to have a decent lawyer before she talked to anyone.”

“And Edgar?” Elizabeth asked.

“Edgar had finally come to believe that Brian was the murderer. He went to town to warn Lottie.”

“Lottie’s family history books were like opening Pandora’s Box,” Josie said. “All the troubles in the world flew out.”

They were still limiting our visitors. Elizabeth stayed, chatted, until a nurse told her it was time to leave.

“Bye, Mom,” Elizabeth said shyly. Touched, I squeezed her hand, watched her stride from the room, followed by Keith.

Josie started to laugh. I tried not to. It was killing me.

“You’re in, girlfriend,” she said. “Part of Elizabeth’s sisterhood. I can feel the change in the air. You’re going to be her number one guru from now on.”

“Stop,” I managed to wheeze, but she would not. She finally shut up when the nurses came in to change her dressings.

***

Two days later we were sitting on the tiny little patio bordering the hospital courtyard.

“I’m still not sure just how all this started,” she said.

I had already told her about Minerva’s background and Wilson’s disease. It took a while to fill her in on all the rest.

“So Fiona knew Zelda was serious about blackmailing her when she saw the watermark on the paper?”

“Yes, and Minerva panicked when she realized Zelda had copied the letter.”

“Everything makes so much sense now,” said Josie. “It almost seems logical. Told you your murderer was smart.”

“Not smart enough,” I said.

Birds rested on the rim of ornate feeder next to a fountain. A finch respectfully waited for a grackle to eat his fill. I felt normal. Aspen leaves gleaming brightly in the morning sun, blew across the courtyard. I turned my face up to the sun, basked in the simple warmth, the return of order.

“Zelda was desperate for money. She couldn’t afford a nursing home and Max was showing some of the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s. And she never got over the way Fiona treated Judy. Her journals said it all. Her hurt, her bewilderment. Her heartbreak over Fiona’s coldness to her precious new baby.”

“I don’t care how this all came about,” Josie said. She unconsciously reached to pet a Tosca who wasn’t there.

They had us in wheelchairs. Some kind of hospital rule. The sun went behind the clouds. Chilled, I fumbled to pull the lap robe further up my body. Josie reached for her cardigan. Still stiff, she struggled to pull it over her shoulders. She had asked for medical books containing information on Wilson’s Disease. One was face down across her lap.

“Did you read about the fingernails?” I asked. “It’s why Minerva wore that weird nail polish. To cover the little rainbows on the cuticles. I always said it wasn’t like her to wear nail polish. It seemed inconsistent with her style.”

“How are the Hadleys handling this?”

“Keith says none of them are doing well. Edgar won’t talk to anyone and Fiona won’t leave the house. Minerva burned Zelda’s copy of the letter Judy was going to give me, so the family secrets might have stayed hidden. But it was Brian who called a press conference. He said he was withdrawing from politics and exposed his whole history. Then he went into seclusion. He’s taking it hard.”

“I’m sure he is,” Josie said dryly. “There’s no formula for taking the news that you were adopted and your real mother was a multiple murderer. Your grandmother, too!”

“Minerva burned the Custer letter along with Zelda’s story. Don’t know why she would have done that. Custer didn’t do anything to her.”

“I still have the copy of Zelda’s story.”

“Yes. I want it for my archives.”

“Are you all right, Lottie? With having killed a person?”

“No. I always knew I wouldn’t be. Yes, I would do it again. In a heartbeat. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

We sat silently for a few more minutes. “It’s getting cold,” she said. She reached inside the purse she had tucked into the edge of her cushion and pulled out a tiny leather-bound travel ashtray and snubbed out her cigarette.

“I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll fly straight back to Manhattan.”

“Tosca? What about Tosca?”

“The security men who were supposed to have picked you up took her back with them.”

I wheeled around and pushed the call light outside the door, and waited for the nurse.

“I have a loose end to tie up when I get home,” I said.

She looked up at the sadness in my voice.

Chapter Forty-Nine

I was going to lie, and it did not come easily to me. But it was the right thing to do. My mouth quivered as I walked down the hallway of the Sunny Rest nursing home toward Herman Swenson’s room.

Slumped in his wheelchair, restrained by white ties, the broken old man looked up when I walked through the door. He was angry. The aide had left him turned away from the TV set and there was a football game on. Nevertheless, I reached for the remote and clicked off the screen.

“I’ll turn it back on when I leave, Herman. There’s something I need to tell you, and I need your full concentration.”

He sensed something very important was coming, his eyes flickered rapidly.

I knelt beside his wheelchair and looked him fully in the face. My hand trembled as I stroked his cheek.

“Poor darling. This is going to be hard for you. So very hard.” My voice shook. “But it’s better than not knowing,” I whispered gently. “Your life has been ruined by secrets already.”

He breathed shallowly for a minute, as if he understood I was preparing him for something of great importance.

“Your baby. The one you never knew. It was a girl.”

I was stabbed by the grief, the knowing, in his eyes. “You were right about the baby clothes. Right all along. Someone did take her. That someone was Rebecca Champlin. It was Rebecca.” I was crying now. We both were.

“You figured this out, didn’t you? After it was too late to make anyone believe you. Too late. Too many changes to your body. You couldn’t even talk. Couldn’t make them understand.”

He closed his eyes.

“And here’s the best news of all. Despite being raised by Rebecca she was a wonderful person.”
Surely God would forgive me. It was the right thing to say.
“She was an excellent student. Valedictorian of her class. She was tall and strong and beautiful, and you know what was the most wonderful of all? You knew her. You knew her all along. Minerva Lovesey, the woman who reads to you.”

If he had had room to faint within his restraints he would have. “Now I have some tragic news. She was accidentally killed last week.”

His chest jumped with shock.

“She never knew you were her father, of course,” I lied. “She was just naturally drawn to you. Remember how she loved to read to you? All these years. Blood really is thicker than water.”

Oh, it was the right thing to say all right. His eyes, his eyes. Full of wonder. Pride. Pride there for the first time in over fifty years.

“I’m so glad I could tell you all this. Sam Abbott knows too. You’ve been cleared. It won’t change your life much now. Being here, I mean.”

As I heard myself saying these words, knowing the waste, the injustice, I rose and fled to the bathroom, grabbed a whole wad of toilet paper and sobbed helplessly.

Then I pulled myself together and walked back to his chair. “But people will know. Everyone will know you did not do that terrible thing. You didn’t do it. It was Rebecca.”

If old rheumy eyes can look triumphant, his did.

***

I was back at work. Brought back from Babylon by the powers that be and reinstated in my rightful place in the temple. The pipes clanked. It was bitterly cold outside, stifling in the vault.

Brian Hadley approached silently.

When I turned and saw him, I did not have time to prepare my face. No time to mask my deep grief for this good man who could have made a difference. We looked at one another solemnly. As I waited for him to speak, I was struck by how many of his abilities had come from Minerva. His confident bearing, his keen analytical mind. What a wonder his mother would have been under different circumstances.

“I’ve come to thank you, Lottie. Thank you for bringing everything out in the open, no matter how painful it is.”

“Brian, I’m so sorry. About everything.”

He nodded.

“You can try again. You’re young. The seat will be open again in another six years.”

“I’m finished, Lottie.”

“Our last two presidents were elected warts and all. People don’t expect perfection. Your disease can be treated.”

“Yes, and we have the tabloids and the press circling like a bunch of piranhas. They’ll watch for every sign of weakness.”

“I know, but…”

“No buts. That’s not the real reason I’m quitting. We both know it.”

There was a taste of copper in my mouth. The same sour metallic taste Brian had to live with day in, day out.

“I thought I was a Rubidoux, Lottie. Fiona’s and Edgar’s son. I’m not who I thought I was at all. I don’t know who I am, anymore.”

“Brian, please. There’s a lonely heart-broken old man over there in Sunny Rest. Your grandfather, Brian. Your grandfather. He would just love to meet his only grandchild. He was, and still is a wonderful person. You came from wonderful people. Please believe me. Give him this.”

Brian nodded. Then he left.