The Jewelry Case (39 page)

"Got my feet free," Ian said with satisfaction from the ground. "Find the gun?"

"He could be lying on it, but I can't budge him. He's too heavy, and I think he's about to wake up. What should we do?"

"
Run
."

He grabbed her hand and pulled her with him into the darkness, like two squirrels diving into a hole. Weeds and brambles snatched at Paisley's clothes, while she heard Ian's gasps for breath and sensed his lurching stride. Soon she was setting the pace and he was barely keeping up. Had he been wounded in the fight with Ray? Something tightened around her heart.

"Gotta be ... farmhouse ... this way," he gasped. "Saw a light from the road."

She spared enough breath to reply, "You okay?"

"My legs ... dead. That jerk ... roped up ... too tight." Ian saved the rest of his breath for running, and she didn't blame him. She was starting to pant, too. Although her leg with the implanted titanium rod had been functioning better the past couple of weeks, but this ground was uneven and she was conscious of Ray's presence behind them. He would be waking up any minute, and it was imperative that they find help soon.

She wasn't sure which direction they was going
--
the moon had gone behind a cloud again, eliminating visual cues -- but she thought they were running away from the main road. Surely there must be a farmhouse somewhere around here, in the middle of the country. The night was silent enough that, far behind, she thought she heard faint sounds of swearing and a heavy body treading loudly over broken stalks. Ray was awake now, and seemed to be blundering about, however, as if unsure which direction to take.

Thank goodness the moon had chosen this moment to disappear again, she thought. She only hoped the cloud cover held. It was their only chance, for unfortunately the land was flat, with no hills or trees to hide them.

She lost track of how much distance they had covered, but their pace inevitably slowed, and she began to think again. Her big mistake -- all right,
one
of many
--
was that she had never taken her danger seriously. Another mistake was keeping the jewels secret. She should have told everyone about their existence, flaunted the photograph of Ruth wearing them, made it clear that if they surfaced, she was their owner. That would have ended Ray's hope of selling them without attracting notice. But she had held back, afraid of looking like a fanciful treasure-seeker. But why should she care what people thought? It was pride, foolish pride, that had led to ...
this
.

Her breath came in stinging gasps and her bad leg wobbled, ready to give out. The fields stretched out for miles in every direction. What if they were running away from help rather than toward it? she wondered. Ian's breath was becoming more ragged, and he had said nothing for a long time. If he fell, there was nothing she could do about it.

She held onto his arm, to support him as well as to support herself and wondered where Ray was. He could be right behind them, or he might have stopped chasing them altogether. She did not dare turn around to find out.

The uneven field had given way to a cultivated field of grapevines, whose loose, hilly soil was even harder to navigate. They limped down an endless ditch until Paisley could not take another step. She bent over, gasping, as pain cut through her abdomen. "Sorry. Can't ... go ... any farther."

Ian did not reply. Under her horrified gaze, he slowly crumpled to the ground.

"Ian! Are you all right?"

His eyes opened and he looked at her dully. "Ray got the best of me when we fought. Broken rib ... maybe some internal bleeding...."

She sank down next to him and probed his chest, looking for the wound. His sharp intake of breath told her when she found it. "I think you're right," she said grimly. "Maybe if I use your shirt to wrap around your torso, like a bandage...."

He shook his head. "Waste of time. Go for help. We can't be far from that farmhouse. Call 911."

"But if Ray finds you...."

"He won't see me in the dark. There are hundreds of these rows of grape vines, and they all look alike. Trust me, this is our best chance."

She looked at their surroundings again, and her spirits rose slightly. She hadn't noticed it before, but darkly silhouetted against the night sky stood an old-fashioned farm house which no doubt belonged to the owner of these grapevines. The moon glinted off a large, round, metal apparatus: a wine crusher, just like the one Steve had once shown her. The house’s windows were dark. The farmer and his wife must have gone to bed.

"All right, I'll look for help." Paisley planted a quick kiss on Ian's mouth, then a second one, not so quick. When she raised her head, relief flooded through her. So he wasn’t entirely out of commission….

Rising, she hobbled toward the house. Her left shoe had come off at some point during their flight, but until now she had hardly noticed the pain of running barefoot across twigs and small rocks. Then, as she neared the house, she stopped in her tracks. All the local farms looked similar, especially by night, but something about this place seemed unsettlingly familiar. Paisley tried to make out the architectural details. Moonlight glinted off peaked gables and the boards of the wide front porch and revealed the curved lines of the outbuilding behind the house. The place could have been the twin of Steve's home, she thought with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Those double chimneys, and the large juniper bush that grew by the steps.... Surely she and Ian could not have had the bad luck to jump out of the frying pan into the
fire!

Behind her, she heard the low purr of a car engine and the crunch of gravel. A double swath of white headlights swept the long drive behind her, and she jumped back into the shadows just before it raked across her form. She didn't need to see anything else to realize that her luck had run out. No doubt Steve had given up the search for Kevin and come home. She hoped he had not seen her. He seemed less violent than Ray, but she was not willing to bet her life on it. According to what Ray had said, Steve was more desperate for the money from the jewelry more than Ray was.

Step by step, Paisley backed up, holding her breath. She needed somewhere to hide, fast, and the only place she could think of was the building that housed the winery. She groped behind the decorative stone near the threshold of the door and her fingers closed comfortingly around the key. Thank goodness Steve had not found a new hiding place for it since their dinner together.

Quietly, she inched the winery door open and squeezed inside. The tiled central aisle provided no place to hide, but the shadowy niches between the enormous barrels were large enough
,
barely, for a small woman to squeeze into. It would be uncomfortable to spend the night wedged between the curved slats, but maybe that would not be necessary. In an hour or two, when Steve had gone to bed ... even he must sleep, eventually ... she could wriggle out and get help.

She didn't dare run the hundred yards to her own house ... not with Ray still out there possibly with a handgun. She wondered how she could have left Ian alone and helpless amid the grapevines. But what choice had she had? One of them had to get help.

She’d hoped Steve would go into the house after parking the car, but moments later she heard slow footsteps in the gravel coming toward the winery. Her heart sank, and she tried to wriggle farther back in her shadowy niche. Had her neighbor seen her heading this direction? Heard something? What had given her away?

The hinges of the door were well oiled: she did not hear the them open, and yet somehow she knew another presence now shared the darkness with her. Holding her breath, she listened. The intruder was gulping air shallowly. The footsteps drew closer to her hiding space. They were uneven footsteps, as if their possessor was limping. She heard a catch of breath, as if from pain. Her heart leapt. Ian? No, Ian's footsteps were heavier, and he would have called out to her had he followed her in here.

"Damn!" The epithet was so low it was almost inaudible. Filled with relief, she inched out of her hiding place and heard a defiant, "Who's there?"

"Don't be afraid, Kevin," she whispered. "It's me, Paisley."

Although she kept her voice as low as she could, each syllable rang in the silence. Suddenly a small light pushed back the darkness, causing her to blink. In its circle, she saw Kevin's sweat-soaked face, his dark eyes wide.

"Hey, Mrs. Perl ... Paisley! It's you!" He hobbled a few paces toward her, holding the small key-ring light so it wouldn't flash in her eyes. "What are
you
doing here?"

"Same reason as you, probably." She tried to fight down a burble of hysterical laughter stemming from relief that he was alive and the absurdity of their situation. "Your brakes went out going down that hill, didn't they? Ray Henderson had them cut. He's the guy who plays…."

"…The Major General."

Of course he knew. "It turns out he's after the jewels, too, Kevin. He's in league with Steve. They're trying to get rid of us, so no one stands between them and the treasure." She patted Kevin's shoulder to reassure herself that he was really alive, when what she really wanted to do was hug the boy until his eyes bulged.

Kevin extinguished the light and she heard him collapse onto the floors with a sigh. "Oh boy, it feels good to sit down." His voice floated upward. "I think I broke my ankle getting out of the car, or maybe it's just sprained. It took me forever to limp here."

"What about the rescue workers?" she asked. "Didn't they find you?"

"What rescue workers?" he wanted to know. "No one came. That's why I went looking for help."

She wondered with a metaphorical head slap how she could have imagined that Ray's phone call to 911 was real. Or that Steve's panicked call to Ray had been about Kevin's safety. More likely, Steve had been worried that his stepson had survived the accident. That was the point, wasn't it? Eliminating witnesses.

"Why didn't you flag down a ride, at least?" Paisley slid down next to the exhausted teenager.
"I didn't dare. In case he was out there looking for me."

He.
The flat way Kevin intoned the simple pronoun spoke volumes. And she had assumed his dislike for his guardian stemmed from normal conflict between a headstrong teenager and a confused but well-meaning adult! She reminded herself that neither Steve nor Ray were killers. After all, they could have done away with Kevin long ago, but they hadn't. Something had changed tonight, something that had brought things to a head. The discovery of the jewelry, of course.

Paisley sat for a while in silence. Like the teenager had said, it felt good to catch her breath. Her adrenaline had kept her going longer than she had any right to expect, but it was depleted. She would feel the effects of all this tomorrow ... if she survived.

Surprisingly, Kevin was in a mood to talk. "You walked right by me, you know. By the river. I was hiding in the bushes when Mr. Henderson pretended to call the search and rescue workers. You sat down on a log just a few feet away."

She revived. "You little idiot, why didn't you call out to me? All this time I thought you were dead!"

"I couldn't. He would have heard me. I'd already had my suspicions that something weird was going on. They were always kicking me out of the house so they could talk in private, or going outside with that metal detector thing Steve sent away for. And when Steve brought home that telescope, I knew it wasn't for stargazing. Steve didn't know anything about astronomy." His voice was full of contempt. "At first I figured he was a pervert or something, trying to look in neighbors’ windows. Then I decided it was some business thing they were up to, maybe something to do with the winery. But everything made me nervous anyway, how they were always being all secretive. It wasn't until tonight that I connected it with what you and I talked about the other day, though. You know, the jewels. I had no idea they knew." He fell silent again.

"It wasn't you, Kevin." She felt an urge to reassure him. "Ray and Steve were already searching for the jewels before you came. It was my coming that kicked everything into high gear. They were convinced I knew more than I did, and decided to follow me to them. And I did. I found them tonight."

"Huh." He sounded mildly interested. "So Grandma was right. But I still don't get it. Why the mast falling, and the brakes being cut? They were behind both of those, right?"

With a shudder she realized that Ray must have planned the "accidents" ahead of time after all. He had known he had to get rid of her quickly once the jewels turned up, in order for his plan to work. But as Ray had said, he hadn't counted on her re-hiding the jewels so quickly. He had expected to find them in the house, or, when they didn’t turn up there, to have them with her. A big mistake on his part; if the mast had crushed her, or if she had been killed in the car accident, he’d have been back where he started.

"It was me they were after, not you, Kevin. It was just bad luck, you being in the car." She reached for his hand. "Remember, it was Ray who was in charge," she said gently, as if that would somehow make it better. "Steve had already left the theater when we decided you'd drive my car home."