The Jinx (24 page)

“Well, your opinion doesn't matter.” She fixed me with a stony glare and then got to her feet. “Rachel, honey, I do appreciate you coming by. But this conversation is over.”

B
arbara showed me the door with the utmost in fake courtesy, and I was pretty sure that the noise it made when she shut it behind me could be classified as a slam. I descended the steps to the sidewalk in what could definitely be classified as a huff. The worst part was that I hadn't had the foresight to call a cab, which would have been okay if I weren't wearing heels and if it weren't twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit, not including the blistering windchill, and snowing hard.

The streets were quiet, and the chances of a taxi just happening to pass by on a Sunday morning in this residential neighborhood were slim, so I started down the sidewalk in the direction of Charles Street while simultaneously digging in my purse for my cell phone. Directory Assistance connected me to a cab company, and the dispatcher promptly put me on hold.

“Rachel?” a voice called out behind me.

It was Adam Barnett, tall and geeky in jeans and a big down parka, the ubiquitous Harvard scarf tied around his neck. I'd forgotten about his bachelor pad on the top floor of Barbara's house.

“Hello, Adam.”

“Can I give you a lift somewhere?” He gestured toward a car parked across the street. Through its blanket of snow, I could make out a bright red Porsche Carrera. If I hadn't recently been made painfully aware of Adam's aspirations to be a high-flying takeover artist, I would have thought it an odd choice for such a dorky guy. It was the sort of car I usually associated with male midlife crises.

“Um, I'm just calling a cab right now.”

“It will take forever in this weather. Where are you headed?”

“Harvard Square.”

“No problem. Hop in.”

I did a quick inventory of my options. I could freeze to death waiting for a cab, or I could get into Adam Barnett's car. The former choice was the more attractive, hands down. However, I'd made no headway with Barbara, and while I doubted I'd make any with Adam, the puppet in Barbara's little puppet show, it did seem like I should at least take this opportunity to try, especially since all of the crazed attackers and killers I knew were safely in police custody. Besides, the sooner I got back to the hotel, the sooner I could go back to sleep, which was pretty much all I could imagine doing right now. I ended my call and put my phone back in my purse. “Thanks. That would be great.”

He unlocked the car doors with a button on his key chain and I lowered myself into the bucket seat on the passenger side. He twisted the key in the ignition and the engine purred to life.

“Nice car,” I said as he pulled away from the curb.

“She's a beaut,” he agreed, reaching out a hand to stroke the leather of the dash and launching into a detailed description of the Carrera's assets, using words like
cylinders
and
torque
that made my head pound with renewed vigor. I stifled a yawn while I waited for a break in Adam's enthusiastic ode to fine engineering so that I could talk to him about the takeover. He shifted smoothly from one gear to the next as the twisting streets of Beacon Hill spilled us out onto Storrow Drive. The snow was coming down even harder now, and I could barely see the river that paralleled the road.

Heedless of the snow, Adam increased the pressure on the accelerator, and the car responded by jumping forward. “Aren't you driving a little fast?” I asked, breaking into his monologue. What was it with men and driving in the snow? Didn't they realize that you were supposed to take extra caution? If I wanted to take a spin on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride I would have gone to Disneyland. And I'd always preferred the Peter Pan ride, anyhow.

“No, this baby comes equipped with antilock brakes. There's nothing to worry about. Well,” he chuckled, “maybe not nothing.”

The way he said this sounded so strange that I looked over and saw what I hadn't seen before. He held a gun in his left hand, and it was pointed at me.

“Oh, come on,” I said in disgust.

In the past twenty-four hours I'd done battle with a serial killer and entrapped a violent stalker. I was exhausted and hungover, and all I wanted was to get back to the hotel, run a hot bath and crawl into bed.

“It's loaded,” he said, indignant at my dismissive tone.

“Whatever.”

“And I can shoot with my left hand. I'm ambidextrous,” he said proudly.

“Right. But you still can't drive and shoot me at the same time.”

“You want to try me?”

“Not especially. But can I ask why it is that you want to shoot me? I don't get it.”

“How can you not get it?” he demanded, his voice rising with anger. “You're trying to screw up my deal.”

“Your deal? It's your mother's deal.”

“You think she had the brains to set everything up? I was the one who planned everything. I just let her think it was all her idea.”

“How nice of you.”

“And the deal's going to go through. There's no way it's not going to happen.”

“Well, am I just supposed to sit back and let you take over Sara's company?”

“Yes!” he exploded. He jerked the wheel suddenly, steering awkwardly with his gun-laden hand while he downshifted with the other. The car skidded on the slick pavement, but after a sickening moment it straightened, and I realized we had taken the exit that led onto the Mass. Pike.

“What are you doing?” I asked, only now starting to panic. My reflexes were on some sort of time delay this morning.

“We're going for a little ride.”

“Obviously. But where?”

“You'll see.” He slowed the car as we approached the automated toll booth, and I grabbed for the handle of the door next to me. It was locked, of course, and Adam responded to my fumbling with a pleased snicker. With his right hand, he pushed the control that slid the driver-side window open and reached for two quarters to drop into the basket. He managed to toss the coins in and pull away from the toll without taking the gun off me.

“You know, they have cameras at the toll booth. There'll be a picture of us.”

“The picture will be of the back of the car and my license plate, both of which are covered with snow. As is the camera, probably.”

“Oh.”

He snickered again.

“Where did you get a gun?” I asked, reaching furtively for my handbag and the phone inside. “You don't seem like the type.”

“Oh, I picked it up off the street in Roxbury,” he said, attempting a breezy tone as if he were, in fact, the type who would have a black-market gun. “It's completely untraceable. I planned it that way. I plan everything very carefully. Although, I have to say, this snow really helps.”

“Good for you.”

“You know, if I were in your position, I'd try to be a bit more polite, here.”

“I'm no Emily Post, but it seems to me that pointing a gun at a person in a moving vehicle isn't exactly the height of etiquette.”

“Put your phone away.”

“What phone?” But it looked like my attempt at distractingly witty banter had been unsuccessful.

I heard a click. “That noise was me taking off the safety,” Adam explained. “That means that all I have to do is pull the trigger and bang, you're dead.”

“It would make an awful mess in your precious car,” I pointed out, but I returned the phone to my bag.

“I've scheduled a detailing later today. It's part of the plan. But that was just to make sure there were none of your fingerprints or anything left over. I'd rather not have to wipe up pieces of your brain before I take the car in.”

“So, this plan of yours, what is it exactly?”

“There's a park a few exits up with a nice deep ravine. I'm going to take you there and shoot you before rolling you into the ravine. It will probably be months before anyone finds you, if they find you at all.”

“Um. Okay. And you're doing this because I'm messing up your deal?”

“That's right. I heard you talking to my mother about Whitaker Jamieson, and I know you met with him yesterday. It seems like it would be safer to have you out of the way if you have any influence at all over Whit.”

“Nobody has any influence over Whit,” I protested. “He's senile. And what do you mean you heard me talking to your mother?”

“I was in the kitchen. You must have heard me—I dropped a plate. Unless you were stupid enough to believe my mother's line about the cat.”

“Did Barbara know?”

“That I was listening in? Of course not. She's pretty clueless.” He snickered yet again. “She even thought Tom died of a heart attack.”

“Tom did die of a heart attack,” I said, confused.

“Sure he did. After I put a massive dose of my mother's diet pills in his morning coffee. She's addicted to the stuff, ephedra. It causes heart attacks and it's especially dangerous for someone with a history of heart disease.”

“You killed Tom?” I asked, stunned. Although, now I had the answer to at least one question. Adam had put his plan to work before Tom's death, which explained why the activity in the stock had preceded Tom's actual demise.

“Uh-huh,” he said, clearly very pleased with himself. “Mom's weight obsession came in handy for once. She has to buy the stuff online now that it's been banned, but she has a huge stash, and she doesn't seem to notice when any of it disappears.”

“Jesus.”

“And that's not all,” he continued. He was on a roll now.

“What do you mean that's not all?”

“Well, Sara will be dead soon. I need to figure out how, but they say the third time's a charm.”

“Oh my God.” Stark realization washed over me. Jonathan Beasley hadn't attacked Sara. Adam had. And how dense was I? I'd gotten into a car with him. “You are a total jerk.”

“A jerk with a gun,” he answered smugly. “And soon to be the CEO of a pretty important company.”

“That's why there was no security at the hospital on Friday night. Your mother said you'd arrange for it, but you never intended to.”

“Nope. Sara was supposed to be dead by Friday night. Paying for a security guard would have been a waste of money.”

“What else have you done?” I asked in horror.

“You mean, besides killing Tom? And you, and Sara?”

“I'm not dead. And neither is Sara.”

“Yet. Well, let's see. Sara's parents were easy.”

“What do you mean? They died in a car accident.”

“That accident wasn't an accident. They lived down the street from us, so it was no big deal to slip into their garage and tinker with their brake line. And it went off without a hitch—nobody even realized there was a problem with the brakes since the car caught on fire. The only downside was having to play sick for an entire weekend. Although, after a weekend of my mother's chicken soup, I really was sick. She's an awful cook.”

“Good to know. But I don't understand why you killed Sara's parents in the first place.”

“You're not very bright, are you?” I assumed that was a rhetorical question and didn't bother to reply. “I thought that if Sam were out of the way, Tom would take over, and then one day I'd take over from him.”

“But Tom wanted Sara to take over.”

“I thought he'd come around eventually, but we had a conversation a few weeks ago in which he made it clear he wouldn't, which was a lot like signing his own death warrant. Bad things happen to people who get in my way.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

“You won't have to. You'll be worm food.” With that, Adam steered the car off the turnpike.

“Worm food? Who do you think you are? Clint Eastwood?”

He didn't answer.

 

We drove several miles down deserted, snow-covered country roads with Adam making smarmy comments the entire way that, like the “worm food” line, seemed to have been lifted from bad movies. We passed a forlorn strip mall and a couple of lonely-looking houses, but that was about it. Soon we'd pulled into the empty parking lot of a state park, identified as such by a green sign cut in the shape of a pine tree.

Adam got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. I was digging frantically in my bag for a weapon of some sort when he opened my door, but, alas, it had never occurred to me to keep cans of Aqua Net handy. “Take your bag with you,” he suggested. “I'll throw it in after you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Okay, let's go.”

“Where?”

He nodded toward the woods and grasped my arm in a rough hold. “This way. There's a path to the ravine.”

He pushed me in front of him. Trees crowded in on either side of us, and the path was more ice and slush than path. My feet sank deep into the snow, and I cursed my unfortunate choice of footwear. Not only would my shoes be following my suit directly into the trash bin, they weren't the most practical thing to be wearing when one had to figure out how to escape from an armed narcissist. Running was not an option given the terrain. And the gun.

“Don't you watch
CSI?
” I asked, batting a branch away from my face.

“Sure.”

“Then you must know you'll never get away with this. They'll trace the gun, they'll figure out I was in your car, or they'll find your tire tracks. Or something.”

“Nothing like a blizzard to really mess with forensic evidence,” said Adam in the same smug tone he'd been using for the past half hour. “I'm not worried.”

Besides the fact that it looked like he was actually going to kill me, his tone really pissed me off.

“You suck,” I told him as he propelled me inexorably forward. This elicited a shove that nearly knocked me over. I grabbed on to a tree branch to keep from falling.

“Why don't you shut up already and keep walking.”

“Okay,” I said.

Then I had an idea. I looked more carefully at the path before us. “How far is this ravine, anyhow?”