Midsummer Murder (36 page)

She had no idea in what direction they were traveling. She wondered if Connie did.

And in a heart-stopping instant, she wondered if Connie had killed Larry Cleveland..

245

Twenty-Two

The thought turned her muscles to stone. Connie whiplashed into her, then yanked her violently forward, grunting against her weight.

Then suddenly they were standing on gravel. The light from a security lamp bathed them in its yellow glow. Still holding hands, they gulped in air. In front of them was the back of the student dorm.

“Home free,” gasped Connie.

They began to run up the path toward the main house. Connie stopped abruptly and Lindy plowed into him.

Stu was walking down the path toward them, whistling in the night air. He stopped when he saw them. His cane chucked up a piece of gravel and sent it into the shrubs by the side of the path.

“What on earth?” he said, taken aback.

“Thank God, Stu.” It was all that Lindy could get out. She took a deep breath. It hurt her lungs, and her relief made her weak in the knees.

Connie spun around. She held onto his hand. “It’s all right now, Connie. We’re safe.”

She pulled him toward Stu. “We’ve got to find Bill. The sheriff—”

“Connover Phillips,” said Stu in a voice sharp with surprise.

“Everyone has been worried sick about you. Where have you been, you young rascal?”

“No time,” gasped Lindy. “Got to find Bill.”

“By all means,” said Stu. He took Connie’s elbow. Connie tried to pull himself free, but Stu had a firm grip. “And you, too, Sheriff. Now this is a surprise.” Stu was looking past Lindy’s head. She whirled around.

Byron Grappel, hand on his black holster, stepped from the shadows.

Connie began to struggle. Stu dropped his cane and put his other arm around Connie’s chest, trapping the boy in front of him.

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“You shouldn’t run from the police, Connie,” said Stu. “The police are your friends.”

“He’s not my friend,” yelled Connie. He twisted and squirmed but couldn’t free himself from Stu. “He took the book.” He glared at the sheriff.

“What book?” asked Grappel.

“He took it so nobody would know who killed Larry. Let me go.” Connie wrenched to the side. Stu was thrown off balance, but managed to grab the back of Connie’s shirt. Connie yo-yoed backward and fell onto his butt. Stu hauled him back up.

“Would you please stop struggling? The sheriff just wants to ask you some questions.”

“Like what damned book is he talking about.”

“You didn’t find Larry’s notebook in the cave?” asked Lindy. If he hadn’t, then who had it?

Byron wrinkled his nose. Probably to activate his brain. “I don’t know anything about a damned notebook.” And then he looked at Stu.

Holy shit, thought Lindy. Grappel really didn’t know about the notebook, but it was clear from his face that he expected Stu to. Had Stu been a spy in their midst?

Connie lunged to the side; this time Stu lost his balance. His arms flew out reflexively. Connie scrambled away on all fours, then pushed himself to his feet and took off down the path.

“Stop him!” yelled Stu.

“He won’t get away,” said Grappel. “I’ll just call for some backup.

He can’t get far. It’s pitch-black out there.”

“You fool, they heard us.”

“Huh?”

“The night on the ridge; now go get the little bugger.”

Grappel turned and lumbered a few steps, then stopped. He turned back to Stu. “Robert killed Larry, right?”

But Stu had grabbed his cane and was running after Connie, faster than Lindy thought was possible for a man with recent hip surgery.

Grappel just stared down the path. Lindy took off after Stu. She heard Grappel behind her , but didn’t stop to look around.

They ran until the path joined the one that led to the archaeologist camp. Rounding a curve, she saw Stu’s uneven gait and beyond him, a shadow, running wildly. There was a cry, and the shadow dropped 247

Shelley Freydont

to the ground. As she got closer, she could see Connie rolling back and forth on the gravel, holding his knee.

Then Stu was upon him. He pulled Connie up and dragged him to the side of the path. Lindy made out the silhouette of the green guardrail against the murky sky. She slowed down; Grappel barreled past her, then came to a halt.

“What the hell are you doing, Hollowell? I just want to ask the kid some questions.”

Enclosed in Stu’s arms, Connie had gone deadly still. Hunched over, one hand holding his knee, he stared at Lindy with fearful eyes.

Stu sighed. A long deep resigned sigh. “Sorry, Byron. It’s too late for questions. These two little shits were too greedy for their own good.”

Connie shook his head, and kept shaking it long after he realized it would do no good.

Grappel just stood peering through the darkness at the man who held the boy poised on the edge of the cliff, a quizzical expression on his face. “You mean . . .”

“I mean, you idiot, that Larry Cleveland tried to blackmail me.”

“But Robert Stokes killed Cleveland.”

Stu turned to Lindy for the first time. “The good sheriff, my dear, is a man with little brains. No imagination.” He chuckled. “And then when you least need it, the fool has an inspired idea.”

Byron Grappel looked as confused as she felt.

“Things took a turn for the unexpected, and I had to do a little improvising. It would have all been fine, Byron, in spite of the fact that Lindy, here, stumbled onto Robert’s body before it was quite a body.

But I forgive you, my dear. How were you to know?”

“But, Byron . . .” Stu shook his head. “Fabricating evidence. It shows a gross lack of intelligence. Robert never used the computer. If he had left a note it would have been written on a piece of paper.”

He turned again to Lindy. “I assure you, my shock was genuine that day you told me about the suicide message.”

“You killed Cleveland and then tried to kill Robert?” Grappel’s hand reached toward his holster.

Stu glanced at his hand. “Byron, it’s too late for heroics. You’re an accessory to murder, a principal in the destruction of Easton property; you’ll be held for tampering with evidence, corruption, and sheer incompetence.

There’s nothing for it but to get rid of these two and get on with life.”

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“Why, Stu?” asked Lindy.

“Ah, Lindy dear, remember how this land looks in the light of day? I could have made Ellis a fortune. Freed him from Marguerite’s constant demands.”

He let go of Connie long enough to sweep his hand across the vista.

Lindy saw Grappel slowly unsnap his holster. “Why? Because like Everest, my dear Lindy, it is there.”

A guttural cry escaped from Connie, and he flung himself backward against Stu. Stu staggered, and they both fell to the ground and slid underneath the guardrail. Connie tried to roll away, but Stu, unhampered by a weak hip, now that they were both on the ground, held fast. Connie struggled blindly, dragging Stu toward the edge.

Grappel had his gun out of his holster. It swung back and forth in the air as his hand moved with the two struggling figures.

“Don’t shoot!” screamed Lindy. “He’s just a boy.” Grappel ignored her and crashed through the brush where the guardrail came to an end. Lindy followed, driven on by adrenaline, her good sense held in abeyance by her need to save the boy who had trusted her.

Grappel’s beefy arm suddenly swung to the side, stopping her dead.

She peered beyond him. Stu had managed to get Connie to his feet. The boy had begun to shake with blind terror, uncontrollably, like a seizure.

“Hold still, you little shit,” growled Stu. “Think, Byron. It’s your only chance. This one is history. You can’t stop me. Just take hold of Lindy for a minute. I’ll do the rest. Then life will be yours. Chi-Chi will be yours.”

Grappel’s arm moved so quickly, Lindy had no time to react. It closed around her and dragged her up against his body. She gagged on the musky scent of his sweat. He growled, low and guttural into her hair. “Run, damn you.”

He loosened his hold. She breathed in a spastic breath and yelled at the top of her lungs. “Cooonnie!” The sound echoed around her. Stu and Grappel stood as if stunned. Connie blasted his heel into Stu’s shin, and he dove headlong toward Lindy.

Grappel fired his gun in Stu’s direction. It must have been a reflex action, for the shot went wide. The bullet lodged into the earthen wall above the ledge, sending a spray of dirt, mud, and pebbles into the air.

Lindy’s hands flew to her ears, the ringing reverberating in her bones, shutting out everything around her.

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Stu staggered backward and slipped in the loose dirt.

And then everything began to slow down, happening in fractured pictures and sounds. Stu flailing his arms. The ground beneath him giving way. At first just a piece no larger than a piece of garden flagstone. Then, the entire point was gone. All at once. The top half of Stu’s body seemed to bend away from them. His arms flew out to his sides. And the rest of the ledge dropped like an elevator, in one huge piece, Stu dropping with it.

His screams echoed back through the crunching and whooshing of earth, mud, rocks, and brush as they thundered down the face of the cliff and piled onto the ledge ten feet below; then swept it, too, toward the depths of the chasm.

Connie crawled away from the encroaching devastation, heading for the guardrail as the earth gave way behind him. Grappel pushed past Lindy, knocking her off her feet. He made a grab for Stu, but Lindy knew that Stu was beyond his reach.

And then the rest of the world upheaved. Grappel was thrown backward, and Lindy slid downward with the rocks and dirt until her back was caught against a tree—one of the saplings that had gotten a toehold of life between the boulders.

She watched in horror as Grappel followed Stu over the side, only now there was no side, just a deluge of melting earth. She made a feeble attempt to grab the sheriff as he slid past her. Felt her own feet being washed away and grabbed the tree with both hands. She held onto it as if it were a thousand-year-old sequoia instead of a tenuous little runt easily torn from the earth.

She heard another scream. Connie’s. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and prayed, as the thunder of shifting earth drowned out everything else.

After an eternity, the rumble seemed to recede. She could distinguish individual cracks and thumps as the earth resettled below her. She was still alive. Her eyes refused to open, as if that slight movement would cause another shift in the ground. Her hands grew numb as she fought to retain her tenuous hold of the tree.

Bands of pain tightened around her forearms, cramping her muscles. Her grasp weakened as her arms went into spasm. Oh, God, Annie would be left here alone.

“Lindy.”

She opened her eyes. Bill was lying on his stomach on the rock above her.

It was his grip on her forearms that had cut off the circulation to her hands.

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Midsummer Murder

“Let go of the tree and grab my wrists.”

But she couldn’t move. Her hands were frozen to the tree. More ground gave way beside her, covering her legs with mud.

“Now.” Bill’s voice was loud enough to start another landslide.

She let go. Felt two arms beneath her grip. Wondered why she had never noticed how muscular he was. Felt herself being lifted up as the debris fell away below her.

Then she was being carried back to the path, Bill’s body trembling with exertion and adrenaline.

“Connie,” she said.

“He’s okay.”

She felt her heart pound in relief. Connie was alive.

Her feet hit the gravel with a crunch.

“Goddamn it!” Bill bellowed.

She lifted her eyes to his and cringed at the look on his face. “That was close.”

He started laughing. It grew until the woods rang with the sound.

“Bill,” she said. “You’re hysterical.”

He stopped as abruptly as he had started, a strange expression on his face. “Yes, I am.” He wrapped his arms around her and they clung to each other until the sound of running replaced the echo of Bill’s laugh.

Lindy turned her head, afraid to lose her fragile grasp of another human being. As if the world might yet swallow her up if she let go.

Connie was leading the pack, favoring one leg and shored up by Rebo and Rose. Peter, Jeremy, Biddy, and Annie followed close behind them. Every face, etched with fear, leapt out at her like masks from a Greek tragedy.

Bill’s chin was resting on the top of her head.

“I think you had better stand on your own now.” But he didn’t let go. “It wouldn’t do to have your friends, family, and coworkers find you in the arms of the other man.” He tapped the top of her head with his chin. “Even though I’m not the other man.”

That made her look up. “Well, there isn’t any other other man.”

“A comforting thought.” He pushed her gently into one arm and helped her toward the approaching crowd.

251

Twenty-Three

The entire camp had been aroused by the sounds of sirens and megaphones as the emergency teams began the arduous job of nighttime rescue. They stood along the path, watching quietly as a stretcher was hauled up the side of the cliff and rolled away to the waiting ambulance.

Byron Grappel was still alive, barely. The disjointed scream of the ambulance echoed back at them as it made its way across the mountain.

They watched the crew carefully pull themselves back up the face of the cliff. One carried a broken staff of wood, a piece of Stu’s cane they had found sticking out of the earth like a symbol of surrender.

Stu was dead, his body crushed beneath tons of rock and earth. The rescue squad had dug only far enough to establish that he had no pulse. Then they cordoned off the area and left two patrolmen to guard the site until the morning, when it would be safe to extricate the body without endangering the lives of the rescuers.

The others trudged back up the path, ushering the campers along in front of them. Rebo had scooped up Connie and carried him in his arms. Lindy focused on the boy’s fingers where they clasped the back of Rebo’s neck.