Marta Perry (20 page)

Jake gave a low whistle. “About time we were getting a break. Listen, put the papers back exactly the way you found them. I want Burkhalter to see them in situ. It may take some time to convince him to come over, but I’ll manage it somehow. Just wait for us.”

Wait. She was getting tired of that word. Stay there, wait, don’t do anything.

Putting the papers back the way she’d found them, Meredith closed the desk drawer. Wait. She paced to the front windows, peered out for any sign of a police car, then stood looking out, willing it to appear.

Apparently police cars, when wanted, were like watched pots unwilling to boil. Who had her mother written to? What had she known?

A shiver ran through Meredith. Her mother had made an appointment with a killer—a killer they knew. She couldn’t have realized how dangerous that was.

Still no sign of the police. Forbidding herself to stand staring out the window, she went back to the kitchen, only to find she was craning her neck to see out the window on the side of the house.

Her breath caught. Laura Hammond hadn’t been seen in public in days, but there she was, walking down the sidewalk toward Meredith’s house, alone. Alone, with no Victor or housekeeper or Jeannette to keep her from talking.

Meredith hurried to the front door, her bruised ribs protesting at the speed. She swung it open.

Nothing. There was no sign of Laura. Frowning, Meredith stepped out onto the porch, hugging herself against the chilly breeze. It was yet another gray day with a touch of rain in the air, an odd day for Laura to be out for a walk. She’d felt sure Laura was coming to see her. It seemed she’d been wrong.

Meredith went back inside, shivering a little, and pulled a cardigan from the hall closet. By the time she’d figured out how to get the sweater on without further aggravating her shoulder or her ribs, she was thoroughly exasperated.

Where were the police? Why was it taking so long? Surely when Jake told Burkhalter what she’d found, he’d realize how important it was. Wouldn’t he?

She’d left her cell phone in the office. Maybe she should call Jake again....

But before she’d gone more than a few steps, there was a knock at the door.

Laura, she thought. She spun, hurrying to open the door. Victor Hammond stood there, his hand raised as if to knock again, his round face drawn, eyes worried.

“Is Laura here?” He tried to peer around Meredith into the house. “Is she?”

“No. I’m sorry,” she added, seeing his disappointment. “Is something wrong?”

He half turned away, shaking his head, and then he turned back. “She’s been so upset. Talking about Aaron again. I thought maybe she’d come to see you.”

She should be wary. Zach’s warning that the killer was someone she knew rang in her mind. But Victor looked so lost that it tugged on Meredith’s heart. She certainly knew what it was like not to be able to help the person you loved.

“I saw her a few minutes ago from the window. I thought perhaps she was coming here, but by the time I got to the door, she’d disappeared. Maybe she’s gone back home.”

Victor looked as if he were going to cry. “I’m afraid...afraid she’s going to...to do something to herself.”

“You think she might try to kill herself?” Her mind seemed to switch into gear. “The dam. If she means to harm herself...”

“She’d go there. Where Aaron died.” Victor was already trotting down the steps.

Meredith hesitated in the doorway for a moment. Stay inside, keep the door locked—that was the sensible thing to do. But how could she be sensible when someone she’d known all her life might be dying.

She pulled the door closed and hurried after him as quickly as she could move. Poor, lost Laura. Her mind seemed to tick away the seconds as she hurried toward the path. If they didn’t get there on time, the dam might well claim another victim.

CHAPTER TWENTY

M
EREDITH
COULD
HEAR
the water rushing over the dam as she raced toward the clearing. The sound jacked up her fear. Two days of rain, and the creek was high. If Laura ventured into the pool—

Don’t think that. Just hurry, hurry.

She’d lost sight of Victor on the path, but when she burst into the clearing he was already there, standing right at the base of the dam, peering into the churning water. The noise was so loud it reverberated in her head, making it hard to think. She scanned the surface of the pool, afraid of what she’d find. But there was nothing.

Relief washed over her. “She’s not here. She must have gone—”

But Victor shook his head. He pointed to the base of the dam, where the water roiled like some monstrous boiling stew. His arm shook.

“There. Is that her? Laura?”

Meredith ran toward him, stumbling over a fallen branch. If Laura was submerged they’d never get her out, not without help.

“Where?” She reached the edge of the pool next to him, straining to see anything in the foaming, churning water. “I don’t see—”

The push came without warning, hands on her back, propelling her forward. She stumbled, trying to catch her balance, but she was already knee-deep in cold water.

“Victor!” Even as she cried out, turning, he swung a thick branch at her, his face contorted.

She jerked away, heart pounding. “What are you doing? Help me.”

His only reply was to swing the branch again. She stumbled backward, away from its deadly arc. He was mad, he must be—

Her foot caught and she tumbled, off balance, ending up on her knees, the water rushing around her chest. Shock immobilized her for a moment.

She couldn’t let that happen. She had to get up, find a way to get out. The water wasn’t that deep here, if she could just get to her feet....

But even as she fought to get up the current caught at her, grabbing her like hungry jaws, pulling her toward the dam. Fight it, she had to fight it. She grabbed for something, anything to hang on to. If she let herself get pulled any farther it would be too late, she’d never get out—

Her hand caught a submerged rock, caught and held. The current pulled at her, trying to wrench her free, but she managed to get her other hand on the rock, clinging tightly. She could hold on—

“Why did you have to be so nosy?” Victor swung wildly at her. “You and your mother. And Zach. I had to stop you.”

The branch struck at her, knocking one hand loose. She fought to find the rock again, but she was numb, cold, the water soaking her clothes, dragging her down. Her vision blurred.

“I’m sorry.” Victor’s voice was clogged with tears. He loomed over her, standing ankle-deep in the water, raising the branch for another blow. “I have a gun, but I don’t want to use it. Just let go. It’ll be over in a few seconds.”

The branch swung toward her head. Sucking in a breath, she ducked under the water.
Hang on, hang on, don’t give up, don’t ever give up.

She came up sputtering, gasping for air, water streaming in her face, blurring her vision. If he swung again, if he hit her—

“Victor!” A voice screamed the name, and he halted in midswing, giving Meredith another precious second of breath.

It was Laura—Laura standing there, crying, screaming. “Don’t, Victor, don’t!”

“I have to, don’t you see?” Victor’s voice had turned pleading. “Her mother knew something. I had to do it. Now she knows. You should have stayed in the car, the way I told you. I have to do it now.”

Meredith’s numbed mind tried to put it together. Victor. It had been Victor all along. He’d used Laura to play on her sympathy and lure her out of the house.

“I have to protect you, Laura. I always did. Aaron would have ruined your life.”

Aaron. Meredith clung to the name, trying to force her scrambled thoughts into order, but she couldn’t. If he killed Aaron or if Laura killed Aaron, it didn’t matter, because she couldn’t hold on, and Victor was turning back toward her, raising the branch, and Laura was screaming, and it was the last sound she’d ever hear—

“Drop it!” Burkhalter’s voice, shouting, people rushing toward them. Help... Too late, her fingers slid off the rock, the water took her...

And then hands grabbed her, pulling her back, dragging her away from the dam, choking and shaking but alive. Alive, wrapped in Zach’s arms.

“Stop him!” Burkhalter shouted. Someone lunged toward Victor, but he had already scrambled free.

He ran out onto the top of the dam and stood teetering there for an instant. “I did it,” he cried. “Not Laura. Me.”

Before anyone could move, he’d pulled a handgun from his pocket. He put it in his mouth. The shot echoed, mingling with Laura’s screams.

* * *

“I
THOUGHT
Z
ACH
was under arrest.” Meredith obediently slid into the fleece robe Rachel was holding for her. “But he was there, at the dam. I wasn’t imagining it, was I?”

Given how confused she was about the aftermath of Victor’s suicide, that seemed entirely possible. She’d lost large swatches of time, only beginning to think coherently again when Rachel helped her into a hot bath.

“He was there.” Rachel toweled her hair, as if Meredith couldn’t be trusted to do it alone. Or maybe that was Rachel’s maternal instincts coming to the fore. “He pulled you out. Another second and—” She stopped.

“And it would have been too late. I know.” She shivered, and Rachel put a comforting arm around her.

“We weren’t too late. Concentrate on that, and be thankful. Especially to Rebecca.”

“Rebecca?” Meredith pushed her face back, wondering if she looked as bad as she felt. What did her elderly neighbor have to do with any of this?

“Rebecca saw you and Victor running toward the dam. It worried her, enough that she came to find me. We called the police.” Now it was Rachel’s turn to shiver. “Anyway, you’ve got an audience waiting downstairs if you feel able to talk. If not, they can just wait.”

The police, probably. And Zach? “No, let’s get this over with.” She shoved her feet into slippers. “I’d better not look in the mirror.”

“You look fine.” Rachel led the way to the stairs. She kept a cautious arm around Meredith’s waist all the way down.

Rachel had been right. There was an audience—Chief Burkhalter, Jake, even the assistant district attorney whose name had escaped her at the moment. But she only had eyes for Zach, who came immediately to help her to a chair.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” His eyes were dark with worry, his hair still damp, like hers. He’d changed, at some point, into dry jeans and a sweater.

“I’d rather do it now,” she murmured. She wanted to ask if he was all right, but she might betray too much emotion in front of the others if she did.

She sat down, and Rachel tucked the afghan from the back of Mom’s chair over her. Rebecca emerged from the kitchen with a steaming mug, which she put on the end table next to Meredith. After a searching look, she pressed her cheek against Meredith’s.

“God has protected you,” she murmured.

Meredith blinked back tears.

Burkhalter cleared his throat. “We don’t want to bother you, Meredith. But it would really help if you’d just confirm what we all saw. For the record. Victor Hammond attacked you?”

She nodded. “He came to the door. Said he couldn’t find Laura and thought she was suicidal. We went to the dam to look for her, and he pushed me in.”

She discovered her voice was shaking and stopped for a breath. Maybe it was a little soon to relive it.

“Did he say why? Give you any indication as to what was in his mind?” This came from the county attorney—Reilly, that was his name. Her brain must be functioning again.

“Not to me, exactly.” She frowned, trying to be sure she had events in the right order. “He said he had a gun, but this would be better. That I should just let the water take me.”

She shivered again, despite her best efforts, and Zach took her hand firmly in his.

“Can’t this wait, Chief?” His voice rasped with emotion.

“No, it’s all right. Let’s get it over with. I guess it was when Laura showed up that he said he had to get rid of me, like he’d gotten rid of my mother, because we knew too much. That he had to protect her.” She shook her head. “You have to realize he was swinging a branch at me, trying to knock me into the dam. I was just trying to hang on, but I thought he meant that he’d killed Aaron. Or that Laura had, and he was trying to protect her.” She frowned again, looking at Burkhalter. “What does Laura say?”

“Not much.” His face seemed to sag with the weight of all that had happened. “She was nearly raving. She did say that her parents wanted her to...well, have an abortion. And Aaron was trying to get her to marry him.”

“About then her attorney and her doctor showed up,” Reilly said. “She’s hospitalized now, out of reach.” He looked dissatisfied. Maybe he’d been hoping for a big case to push his career along.

“I doubt anything she said could be taken seriously as evidence.” Jake spoke for the first time. “And after all this time, you’re not going to find any other proof as to who killed Aaron Mast.”

“That’s for sure.” Burkhalter sounded relieved. Unlike Reilly, he had to go on living here in Deer Run. He’d be happy to close things out quickly. “We heard what amounted to a deathbed confession from Victor. And he was seen around the Willows at the time when that hammer must have been planted. As far as I’m concerned, that ends it.”

The two attorneys started talking simultaneously, with Jake upholding Burkhalter’s viewpoint and Reilly arguing. Under cover of their voices, Meredith turned to Zach.

“I thought you were under arrest. How did you get there to pull me out?”

His grip tightened on her hand. “Jake was making a pretty good argument about the papers you’d found. Burkhalter was already shaken when Rachel called, terrified that something was happening to you. He pretty much dropped protocol at that moment, and we all rushed over here.” His face twisted a little. “In time.”

“Yes.” In time. The danger was over, the past buried for good this time.

“Well, it’s a sad business.” Burkhalter stood, shaking his head. “And needless. The way I see it, Victor’s guilt drove him a little crazy. Attacking Margo like that—well, she couldn’t have known anything that would really incriminate him. Maybe saw him or Laura the night Aaron died, but that wouldn’t be enough to bring charges after twenty years.”

“She wouldn’t have made it public, whatever she thought she knew.” The words her mother had scribbled made sense to Meredith, now that she knew who their target was. “She... Well, she always felt that people like the Hammonds looked down on her. At most, she would have wanted to prove she was as good as they were.”

It wasn’t a particularly appealing side of her mother’s nature, but Meredith felt confident that her analysis was the right one. Her mother might have wanted attention, but not at the cost of being involved in a murder trial. That would be the wrong sort of attention entirely. Ironic, that her actions had nearly put her daughter in the role of prime suspect.

“She was always dissatisfied, poor woman,” Rebecca said, her face gentle as she looked at Meredith. “But nobody could have done anything to change that—not your
daad,
and not you.”

Meredith let the words sink into her heart, finding them healing. Rebecca was a wise woman.

“I’m sorry for all this trouble.” Burkhalter stopped in front of her, turning his hat in his hands. “Glad it’s over. You’ll want to get on with the funeral. I’ll see to it the funeral home is notified to move ahead.”

He gave her an awkward nod and went out, the other men trailing behind him. Jake paused long enough to bend and kiss her cheek.

“Congratulations on still being alive,” he said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

Rachel escorted them to the door. After a glance at Meredith and Zach, Rebecca carried cups to the kitchen.

Zach stood, and Meredith looked at him in surprise. “You’re going?”

“You need to rest.” He touched her cheek, his fingers gentle. “Burkhalter was actually right about one thing. You need to do a proper job of mourning your mother. Afterward, there will be time for other things.” He bent and kissed her lightly. “I’ll be around.”

* * *

M
EREDITH
MOVED
THROUGH
the people who crowded the living room and dining room after the funeral service, trying to speak with everyone who’d come. She’d been overwhelmed with offers of help—a reaction, perhaps, to the revelations about her mother’s death. So much food had been brought that she hadn’t had to do a thing for the traditional reception at the house, and there was probably enough in the freezer to last her for a month or two.

Rachel and her sisters had shown up early this morning to set everything up, leaving her with nothing to do but concentrate on, as Zach had said, mourning her mother properly. For someone who had shed small-town ways years ago, he’d been surprisingly wise about that.

He’d been around for the past couple days, dealing with the police, helping to tie up loose ends. They’d traced the anonymous call about the hammer to Victor’s cell phone. He must have been desperate to get Zach out of the way so he could deal with Meredith. The ironic thing was that she’d never seriously pictured soft, ineffectual Victor as a killer.

Laura had apparently collapsed entirely after witnessing Victor’s death. She was in a residential facility, and Jeannette seemed to be taking responsibility for her. Little though Meredith liked Jeannette, she had to admit the woman had proved a faithful friend to Laura.

Reminding herself of her duties, Meredith thanked the members of her mother’s garden club for the beautiful arrangements and agreed that Margo would have loved them. She glanced around, spotting Zach talking to Jake. He’d made no effort to talk to her privately in the past two days, giving her space, she thought, to get on with burying her mother before looking ahead.

But when she thought about the future, it seemed oddly blank.
There’s plenty of time,
he’d said, but what did that mean?