Reilly 04 - Breach of Promise (19 page)

“Quit it, Alice. You know I appreciate the offer but right now, I’m so angry and hurt I really need to get out of town before I do something awful. I have these fantasies. . . .” Lindy’s thoughts weren’t good. She had been having nightmares. She thought that out there in the canyon, maybe all that earth and sky would leach the badness out of her like rain washing the dirt. “I’m afraid of myself, sometimes.”

“You’re not going to do something stupid, are you?” Alice asked. “Don’t go and hurt yourself.”

“No, not myself. Actually, that would be better than what I’m thinking.”

“Oh, you’re stuck in the murder and maim mode that comes right after he makes his announcement about the babe.”

“I guess I am.”

“I used to think of all the ways to kill him, lingering lovingly over the details. How I’d pluck his eyes out and squish them. What I’d do to his you-know-what. How I’d repair that undescended brain of his with a hammer. I’d be worried about you if you weren’t having those thoughts. Mike’s a bastard. My advice is, you go for it, sister. You take out that gun of mine from where you have it hidden and you blow his head off.”

“Alice . . .”

“Crime of passion. You might serve two, three years, and it’s so worth it. Maybe you’d get lucky like I did and end up in a hospital, supposedly correcting the error of your ways but instead medicated into a state of zombiedom.” She took a scarf off the bed and removed her shawl to try it on, looking at herself in the mirror. “That was pretty restful. No cooking, no cleaning. Hardly any sex.” Removing it, she tossed it into a box. “But you won’t because you are basically a civilized person.”

Lindy did not hate Mike. She hated Rachel. Alice wouldn’t understand that. Alice blamed everything on men. She had recently made friends with her ex-husband Stan’s girlfriend.

“Well, I’m glad you think I’m so civilized,” Lindy said. “And I’m going to work on maintaining that reputation in spite of the baseness of my instincts.”

She dropped the boxes at the cleaners, who agreed to deliver them to the consignment store in a few days. Then, dressed in her oldest, warmest parka, she drove her beautiful black Jag to the top of the Emerald Bay overlook, playing her favorite compact disc, driving slowly, enjoying the ride and wistful at the same time, knowing something beautiful in her life was over and it was too early to be thinking about new beginnings.

Once at the pull-out, she parked, got out, and stepped across the wet granite rocks to Tahoe’s most famous view.

She couldn’t see their house, which was located about a half mile south of the big green bay along the main body of the lake, but every boat that was willing to brave the cold that day she examined, as she had for the past months, looking for Mike. She climbed up the boulders for the highest perch, then stood in a cold wind, until her wet boots nearly froze to the rock.

Back in the car, she drove the Jaguar to a car dealer at the “Y” where the two local highways intersected. He offered twenty-five grand for her sixty thousand dollar car, and threw in an old Jeep in trade. She had very little to move from the Jag to the Jeep, just her battered leather suitcase.

She was close to the plant. Before she left town, she would take one more look at the place that had been her second home for the past dozen years. Turning on the noisy heater of the Jeep, and throwing it groaningly into gear, she drove up Tucker from the “Y” until their factory came into view. If he was telling the truth about abandoning the business, Mike wouldn’t be there today, so she didn’t have to steel herself for a chance encounter for a change.

She parked at the far end of the lot next to the building. Looking smaller than she remembered, their first factory stood on a low hill abutting a stand of fir trees. Its corrugated metal roof and red painted sides made it look more like a barn full of animals than a business, but the second story had windows on each end. The marketing group—three people—and the bookkeeper had offices up there. Mike and Lindy had worked up there occasionally.

Time sure got away from you, she thought, rolling her window down to examine the building for signs of neglect. But the place looked spiffy as ever, and she could hear the hum of a saw, probably doing up a redwood frame for a spa. Business as usual.

They had set the wheels efficiently in motion. She shouldn’t be surprised to see that these wheels continued to turn without them, but she was. All the machinery should halt, shouldn’t it, without her and Mike, the heart, soul, and guts of that business?

Dressed in slacks and a sweater, the petite figure of a woman appeared in the doorway. Rachel Pembroke. That’s right. Rachel and Hector were running things now, weren’t they? What a laugh. Rachel couldn’t count her change from a movie ticket purchase, and worse, had no interest in anything smaller than a hundred dollar bill. Hector was a nice guy who knew his numbers but had the imagination of a stuffed duck.

Wrapping herself up in a sealskin coat, Rachel jumped into her company car, a golden-brown Volvo sedan, and turned left, heading downhill toward town.

Strange how things turned out. Lindy hadn’t even thought about finding Rachel here. But here she was, dumped in Lindy’s lap, just as if Lindy had studied a timetable and plotted logistics. Why Lindy wasn’t even driving her usual car. Nobody would ever suspect Lindy Markov would be caught dead in this rattletrap. She was anonymous. And she couldn’t control the jealousy that rose up so powerfully in her she almost choked.

Lindy gunned the Jeep and followed.

Knowing she shouldn’t, Lindy continued to follow Rachel’s sedan, her stomach churning with emotion.

They had gone about a mile when the strangest thing happened. Rachel’s car started to weave across the center line.

Rachel must realize there was a car behind her, but she couldn’t possibly recognize Lindy behind the wheel in her wool scarf and sunglasses. Meandering down the road with the windows wide open to the cold, Rachel drove on, about two hundred feet ahead of Lindy, probably daydreaming about that day not long from now when she would have everything that belonged—that should still belong—to Lindy.

Lindy didn’t know and didn’t care why she was mindlessly following Rachel, but at a certain point it did occur to her to wonder what came next. She decided to make Rachel pull over. They would have a long-overdue talk. She would say, go back to Harry before it’s too late, before things get really ugly and you get hurt. Rachel might listen. And if she didn’t, Lindy didn’t know what she’d do then. Alice’s gun, tucked into her suitcase on the seat beside her, gave her little comfort. Pushing the case open, she took the gun out, just in case things got crazy.

But suddenly the roving that had appeared merely aberrant gave way to insanity as Rachel veered crazily back and forth along the frozen road. Her car, out of control, sped up, then slowed down, then made a sharp right over an embankment. Like a wasp zooming after a bit of meat, it flew purposefully through the air and vanished.

Lindy slammed her foot on the brake sending her own skidding car straight down the road toward the point where Rachel’s car had vanished over the edge. She knew enough to stop braking and steer into the skid. For a few moments she fought to slow and stop the Jeep. She then sat very still, stunned.

The lonely mountain road stretched ahead in the eerie silence, the snow piled high on both sides in some places. Rachel must have plowed right through a drift and over the side. Lindy, whose heart was pounding so hard she thought she could feel it beating through her sweater, spotted the other car in a ditch off the side of the road, its rear end sticking up into the air, the exhaust pipe spewing fumes.

Stupid, stupid girl! What was with her? She could have killed herself, and Lindy, too! Lindy pulled up about fifty feet from Rachel’s car and sat for a minute more, shaking, giving herself a second to restore her breathing to normal, then jumped out, her mind blank, just moving to keep ahead of the action that had almost overtaken them both.

She got out of the car, forgetting the gun, trying to figure out what to do next, when, out of the dim twilight of forest and trees, Rachel appeared. She was climbing quickly, clumsily up the snowy slope, heading straight for Lindy.

She must have seen Lindy following her, Lindy realized as she moved from one cold foot to the other. So here it came, the dreaded, hoped-for confrontation. And now, something strange. As the figure came closer, she got the distinct impression of a much larger person than Rachel. That must be her own fear blowing Rachel up. In the dimming light, Rachel looked immense, and so dark, dressed in bulky black clothes like a Ninja. And where was her face?

An instant later, Rachel, who had never slowed in her amazingly swift ascent uphill, knocked Lindy down. But Lindy had seen it coming, so she toppled softly into a snowbank. She leaped up, ready for a real round, if that was what Rachel wanted. And that was when another very strange thing happened. Rachel pushed right by her without stopping and ran down the road, faster than Lindy had ever seen the indolent Rachel do anything.

Nonplussed, covered with snow, Lindy stared after the girl until she disappeared around the bend. A few hundred more feet and the idiot would reach Highway 89. There she could flag someone down easily. Maybe she had a concussion or some other brain injury. Or . . . could she be afraid just at the sight of Lindy? Even though she knew it was disgraceful, Lindy enjoyed a delicious moment of pleasure at the thought.

What now? Get back in the Jeep and chase after her? But Lindy realized Rachel would blame her for the accident. The smart thing for her to do was to leave. Yes, time to go, pretend this had never happened. How humiliating it would be, having to admit she had been trailing Rachel, and she was sure Rachel would blow it up into a lot more. Maybe she just wouldn’t admit it. Truth had its limits.

A keening sound like the cry of an injured animal interrupted her thoughts. She ran over to see what could make a noise so terrible.

The front of the car appeared to be stuck in a snowbank. Rubbing away the snow on the window Lindy saw the strangest thing of all. There was a woman inside in the driver’s seat. Utterly confused at the sight, she stepped back. The woman stirred and she heard that awful sound again.

Lindy tried the handle. The door fell open, and Rachel tumbled out into the snow onto her back, still wearing her sealskin coat. She was semiconscious. Her eyes fluttered. Blood began to flow from somewhere.

Her eyes opened. When they landed on Lindy, she screamed and scrabbled at the snow, trying to use one arm to drag herself backward.

“Let me help you,” Lindy said, but Rachel’s eyes bulged out and she tried to shriek again and then her eyes closed and she stopped moving. Had she fainted? Was she dead? Lindy bent closer to find out.

A big black Ford Ranger came down the road from the direction of the plant, and Lindy recognized the driver as George Demetrios. Within seconds George came running. “What happened?” he asked, panting.

“I don’t know,” Lindy said. “Do you have a phone in the truck?” While George ran back to call an ambulance, Lindy sat in the snow beside Rachel. She wanted to do something, so she lifted Rachel’s head very gently off the snow and put it in her lap.

She had a dizzy, disoriented feeling. The sun shot bright ice picks through her sunglasses. Her scarf and one mitten had fallen off and the snow burned her hand. A few feet away, the forest turned dark and mysterious again. Rachel’s face seemed to shine in its ghostly sleep, so young and pretty, almost virginal-looking in its freshness.

A thought struck her. Here was Rachel in her arms. So who was the other one? The Rachel who ran?

Had Lindy run Rachel off the road? Maybe Rachel had recognized her car, felt Lindy’s fury behind her, and in her own fear had run her own car over the edge after all.

The figure running up the hill must have been a passerby, nothing more.

She heard a siren. George appeared on the side of the road. “Get the hell out of here, Lindy,” he shouted. “This doesn’t look so good. Let me take care of things from here.”

Propping Rachel’s head over a soft part of the sealskin coat, Lindy grabbed her scarf and mittens and ran all the way up the hill to her Jeep, pulling away just as the ambulance arrived.

At ten Monday morning, on a threatening day with clouds billowing day with clouds billowing over the western mountains, Rachel Pembroke entered Nina’s conference room looking as if she’d stepped off the runway at a New York fashion show. The dress was Isaac Mizrahi, the shoes Manolo Blahnik. The perfume made you want to lean in and breathe deep. Her long black hair gleamed like an oil strike, geysering down the front of her dress. A diamond on her left hand flashed prisms of expensive light. She was young, beautiful, and about to be very, very rich.

Everyone had heard about her trip to the emergency room on Friday afternoon, and that she had told the police she was convinced that Lindy was involved in some plot to harm her, but the only obvious sign of her troubles was a long scratch on one cheek. Apparently, Nina thought, Rachel was the kind of person who came out fighting.

Genevieve followed her to the conference table, looking understated in a sensible wool suit with a rose-colored blouse. She laid her notepads and pens out neatly on the table in front of her. Winston was a no-show. He and Genevieve must have decided to alternate on the depositions. Riesner had called to say he was running late.

“Oh, hi,” said Rachel to Genevieve, peering at herself in a silver-backed mirror, obviously mistaking the woman at her side for a secretary. “I’m dying for some coffee. Think you could get me some?”

Nina paused at the door to see how Genevieve would respond. Up came the curly head. “How do you take it?” Genevieve asked sweetly. “In your lap or on your head?”

Rachel snapped her compact shut. “Excuse me?”

Genevieve laughed lightly. She held out her hand, which Rachel shook, looking confused. “Forgive me for not introducing myself to you right away. I’m Genevieve Suchat, jury consultant for the other side.”