Reluctant Witness (31 page)

I ran down the details one by one, giving him
the chronology of events. Eve, pregnant, had that unusual fall in
the parking garage that caused her to go into labor. Shaun’s wife
was involved in the terrible car accident that resulted in his
earlier-than-expected retirement. Tovar showed up unexpectedly at
the Gilded Nest, and was shot by the man who attacked me. And when
the state police got involved in Windham, investigators showed up
at Shaun’s new home and found him beaten to a bloody pulp.

“I don’t even understand why Tovar showed up
that night after the wedding,” I admitted to the experienced
investigator sitting across from me. “How did he know where to find
me?”

“That’s one hell of a question, Marigold. I
wish I had an answer for you.

“Why didn’t he call me first? Did he know
that horrible man was coming to get me?”

“Maybe this is why the FBI has its boxers in
a bunch about you and why the Marshals Service has declined to
protect you. Maybe someone should be looking at your handlers and
asking some tough questions.”

“Are you suggesting that Tovar and the others
sold me out? You think someone got to them?”

“I’m not suggesting anything just yet. All I
know is that they didn’t follow the normal protocols. Either they
have a doozy of an explanation for that, or someone’s belongs in
the naughty seat for a big time-out.”

“What do you think I should do, Rocky?”

“You don’t need to do anything. I’ll talk to
Jeff and Linc. We’ll figure out something.” He patted my hand,
pulling out his cell phone. “Sorry. It’s the wife. I’ve got to take
this. Hey, babe....”

I joined Vince and Nancy at the bar, to give
him some privacy. They were arguing over which NCAA men’s teams
were likely to be in the Final Four. They agreed on the Arizona
Wildcats, but disagreed on the Syracuse Orange and the Kansas
Jayhawks.

“And don’t forget Michigan State,” Nancy
reminded him. “They’ve still got a shot at it.”

“Wisconsin. Always better with cheddar.”
Vince swirled his drink in the glass, a satisfied smile on his
face. He knew he was getting to Nancy and he enjoyed taunting
her.

“Oh, please! You have got to be joking!”

Rocky joined us a short time later. “Sorry
about that, Marigold. I didn’t mean to cut you off.”

“Not at all,” I smiled. “Besides, someone had
to break up these two. They’re still arguing about basketball.”

“Rocky, who do you think is going to make it
into the tournament?” Nancy pressed him for his pick. “I’ve got
Arizona, Syracuse, and Michigan State.”

“Gina,” was his answer.

“Say what?” Vince looked puzzled. “We’re
talking about the men’s championship.”

“Yeah, I know, but I just like saying that.
My kid made three baskets tonight in her game.” The proud father
held up his phone so we could see his daughter in action. Wearing a
blue-and-white jersey and white shorts, the twelve-year-old mugged
for the camera, a mouth full of braces, along with a couple of her
teammates.

“Nice,” Nancy decided. “She looks like a
future champ.”

“That’s because she takes after her mother,”
he laughed, flipping over to a photograph of an attractive
dark-haired woman and holding it out for me to see. “She gets her
long legs and agility from Mary Beth.”

“Pretty woman.”

“Smart, too,” he grinned.

“She must be. She caught you, didn’t she?”
Nancy patted him on the back. “Did you know this guy was hot stuff
back in the day when he was a bachelor?”

“Was he?” I laughed as Vince rolled his
eyes.

“You bet.”

“You’re just saying that because I’m your
boss and I sign your paycheck,” Rocky scoffed. “What are you
buttering me up for, Nance?”

“I was hoping I could get home for the
weekend. Terry’s got a few days off and he wants to play some golf
in St. Augustine.”

“Not a problem. I’ll make the arrangements.
What about you, Vince?”

“Doesn’t make any difference to me,” he
shrugged. “Flossie’s with the grandkids until Tuesday, so if you
need me to work, I’ll work.”

“I’ll let you know. Who’s having
another?”

“Actually, I’m beat. Would you mind if I made
an early night of it?” I set my empty glass on the counter.

“I promised Terry I’d call,” replied my
roommate amiably. “If I’m lucky, I can catch him at half-time.”

Nancy and I went back to our room, leaving
Rocky and Vince at the bar, watching the news.

I got myself ready for bed while she called
her husband. With my teeth brushed and my pajamas on, I tossed my
dirty clothes into the plastic bag in my suitcase and zipped it up
before placing it on the floor. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was
already after ten. What I really needed was some sleep. I could
take a quick shower before breakfast in the morning. I fluffed up
my pillows and got under the covers, settling myself in bed.

“No bath tonight, kid?” she asked, right
after she finished her call.

“Too tired,” I admitted. “Any chance you
could wash my hair for me in the morning, without getting my ear
wet?”

“I thought you’d never ask. Your hair is
really beginning to look like crap,” she announced
matter-of-factly. “Not to worry. We’ll get you looking gorgeous
once again. Mind if I watch some TV, kid?”

“Not at all,” I told her, sitting up in bed,
pillows at my back. “What are we watching?”

“Nothing scary. If there’s one thing I hate,
it’s a screamer in the middle of the night.”

“Oh, I’ll try not to do that,” I promised
sincerely.

“I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about
me,” she laughed, her fingers working the buttons of the remote
control. “Vince gets all bent out of shape when I do that. We
worked a case one time up in Minnesota. There was a Hitchcock
festival on all weekend and I watched Psycho. Well, I let out a
blood-curdling scream about three in the morning. Vince busted in,
armed and dangerous. Ever since then, he warned me that I’m only
allowed to watch comedies.”

Just before midnight, I
found my eyelids growing heavy. My roommate was still wide awake
and giggling as she watched
Bringing Up
Baby
. I drifted off as Cary Grant was
chastising Katherine Hepburn.

“Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan,
because, after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward
you, but - well, there haven't been any quiet moments,” I heard him
say. Nancy thought that was hilarious. I closed my eyes and set
aside my worries; taking a page from Vince’s playbook, I fell
asleep to the sound of laughter.

When I woke up, the room was filled with
sunlight. Nancy was snoring softly, lying on her back. I rose and
got myself dressed while I brewed a small pot of coffee in the
machine provided by the hotel. It was just past seven.

Rather than turn on the television and risk
waking the late-night movie fan, I decided to read. I took my cup
of coffee and paperback over to the arm chair by the window. It
didn’t take me long to get back into the story. I was relieved that
Nora managed to get through the forest safely, albeit alone, and
she was about to approach the car that would take her to
safety.

Emerging from the shadows of the foot path,
I could see the white Citroën bathed in silver moonlight. The door
was open and there was a man slumped over the steering wheel.
Another man sat on the hood of the car, arms folded across his
massive chest, legs out in front of him. I recognized him as one of
Alain’s shipping managers.

A slight rustling of leaves alerted me to a
furtive movement behind me. Desperate, I tucked myself back into
the darkness, holding my breath. A stealthy figure appeared,
hunched over and crab-crawling on the path just ten feet away. It
was Inspecteur Noiret.

Daring to show myself to him, I stepped to
the edge of the path and put a finger to my lips. Nodding, he took
my hands in his and kissed my cheeks, one after the other, in
measurable relief, without uttering a sound, and then he looked
past me. I could tell from his reaction that he had seen what I had
seen. Pulling me back into the rainforest, we ducked behind a
prolific trumpet vine that had attached itself to a locust
tree.

“Nora, we don’t have much time. I need you
to distract the man, while I dispatch him. Can you do that for
me?”

I could feel his warm breath on my ear as he
spoke those words to me. A delicious tingle coursed through my
body, and I found myself too aware of his masculine touch. How I
longed to lose myself in his arms, to forget Alain and the terrible
beast known as Le Scorpion. Was it only that I wanted to escape my
dreadful marriage, or was it that Jean-Claude Noiret somehow was my
true north, the man with whom I was destined to be?

“Yes,” I nodded. “What am I to do?”

His plan was to cross the road to the west
and make his way along the opposite side. Once he was in place, I
was to stumble out into the road, and when Alain’s goon turned to
face me, the French policeman would attack him from behind. As I
waited impatiently, I wondered what we would do if we actually
succeeded. Where would we go? How would we get off the island
without Alain finding us?

A tiny flash of light caught my attention,
barely visible, across the road. Inspecteur Noiret was in place.
Now it was my turn to act. With trepidation, I inched my way
forward, out of the shelter of the foliage, and set foot on the
dirt road. My huaraches scattered the pebbles noisily.

“Bonjour!” said a cheerful man as he sprang
to his feet, his beefy girth imposing. He seemed intent on
preventing me from seeing the dead body in the car. “You must be my
fare. Let’s get going, shall we?”

He walked in my direction, and that very act
made me nervous, for it spoke of a need to get close to me. Did
that mean he had no gun? Perhaps he planned to strangle me.

“Yes, let’s,” I agreed. “I’ll climb into the
back.” I danced away from him, towards the rear of the Citroën, and
I immediately realized he did not appreciate this, for he now had
more ground to cover before lunging. He took two long strides
towards me, and as he did, Inspecteur Noiret took advantage of the
moment and struck him on the back of the head. I heard a sickening
thud as metal connected with bone, and the big man crumbled to the
ground. Inspecteur Noiret quickly dragged him into the roadside
brush, out of sight, and then did the same with the dead man. And
then he did something unexpected. He opened the trunk.

“Get in, Nora,” he instructed me.

“No, I can’t!” I replied, panicking. “Why
can’t I just get into the back?”

“If I am stopped, they will inspect the
vehicle,” he explained. “I do not want someone to discover you that
way. You must trust me.”

“But what if something happens to you? I
will be locked in there!”

“Then I must be doubly careful that nothing
happens to me,” he told me, his lips brushing my cheek. “In you
go!”

“In you go!” Three simple words printed on
paper, but powerful ones capable of triggering my flashback. One
moment I was sitting in the chair, reading a story of a woman on an
exotic island a couple thousand miles away, and the next I was
remembering the one thing I most wanted to forget. I saw those
words and wanted to crawl out of my own skin. Suddenly back in that
frigid water, in the submerged car in the pond in Windham, New
York, I remembered. Even as I tried to push the memory away, it
came at me, again and again, until I could no longer resist.

I had fled the scene when Tovar was shot down
at the Gilded Nest. In that split second of sheer panic and utter
confusion, when bullets flew in all directions, I bolted out the
back of the building. Stumbling over the icy path in my haste to
get into my truck and drive away, I put all my effort into escaping
the madness inside the venue. It never occurred to me there would
be someone waiting for me outside.

“Look what I found,” said a silken voice, as
I tried to work the remote door lock. My eyes involuntarily looked
in the direction of the sound, and there she was, a silhouette
dressed in black, right down to the beret on her head and the
spike-heeled boots. Tall, thin to the point of being gaunt, gun
pointed at me, the hired hit woman approached. “Lucky me. Let’s go,
Marigold. You and I have a very important appointment to keep.”

“We do?”

“Indeed. Give me your cell phone.”

“What?” I answered, feeling a sharp pang in
my heart. She raised the gun higher, as if she was preparing to
fire. Was this the spot where I would die, where my life would
finally end?

“You heard me. Hand it over.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my
Samsung Galaxy, my lifeline. Much to my dismay, I reluctantly
handed it to her. The last year of my life was registered on that
phone; every contact, every client, every event. I knew at that
very moment that my life as Marigold Flowers was over. She had been
a creation of the United States Marshals Service, dreamed up to
give me some semblance of a normal life, and now she was dead. More
importantly, the real me might soon follow.

“We’ll take my car,” said the woman. She
herded me over to a late model Toyota Corolla some twenty feet from
my Ford Transit, popped open the trunk lid, and gestured for me to
climb inside. I stood there, hoping I had misunderstood, but she
had said the same thing that Inspector Noiret said to poor Nora.
“In you go.”

I could still recall my feeling of utter
helplessness as I lifted my leg into the opening of my metal coffin
and climbed inside. I even begged her not to shut me in, but she
just gave me a crooked, toothy grin.

“Them’s the cookies, little birdie. Try not
to let them crumble.”

The clicking of the latch as
the trunk was locked was the loneliest sound in the world. It was
so dark, darker than a starless night, in the narrow confines of
little more than ten or twelve cubic feet, forcing me to fight a
wave of unexpected claustrophobia. I was colder than I had ever
been. Curling into a small ball, trying to conserve my body heat
and stave off the terror I felt, I considered my likely fate and
the horror welled up in me. What did the tall, thin woman with the
gun and a crooked smile have planned for me? I didn’t want to
freeze to death in the Adirondacks and end up as some horrible news
story during the spring thaw. I could already see the
headline.
Tragic End for Lake Placid Woman
Found Frozen in Abandoned Car!
As she
turned on the engine and left the parking lot of the Gilded Nest,
so many thoughts went through my head. Where was she taking me? Why
not just shoot me? What did she want from me?