Thicker Than Blood (33 page)

“Good heavens. That would have been clumsy and crass, and far easier to discover.” A slow smile bloomed like a toxic flower across Alexandra’s lips. “I used a crop duster. It was so simple. And truly thrilling to have such ultimate power. Over plants, over insects, over bacteria. Over life itself.”

Rachel ran her tongue across dry lips. “They used a crop duster to smuggle the selenium and, I guess, other stuff Harry wanted, across the border.”

“Is that right? I can’t say I’ve ever done any smuggling, but the duster worked very well for my purposes.”

“Selenium isn’t illegal. Why did Harry have to get it for you? Couldn’t you just purchase it outright?”

“But you see, I needed a quite a lot. The quantities might have seemed curious, especially since Friends of the Earth doesn’t have a lab. Regardless, it would have left a paper trail. So Harry got it for me. Far as I knew, he got it from a chemical supply company.”

“I suppose he didn’t want a paper trail either,” Rachel said. “So he had it smuggled, maybe a little at a time because the dollar value wouldn’t have been worth enough for an entire load. And some of it probably was delivered to him by helicopter—through me. Lonnie must have carried one of those packages to the lab, thought it was something else, and snitched some.”

“Lonnie?”

“Guy who worked for me. Poisoned himself with sodium selenate. Or did you kill him, too?”

“Never heard of him,” Alexandra said. “But Harry did mention receiving a damaged package. He thought some of the stuff was missing. He was quite squeamish about it—went frantic when the pilot of that plane that went down with his shipment in the desert said he saw a woman take a box from the wreckage. Of course, at that point, we didn’t know the woman was you.”

“When did Jason find out?”

“He knew something, I’m not sure how much.” Alexandra glanced up at the yellow mouth, then her eyes shot back to Rachel’s. “Harry was crazed about Jason maybe discovering his sweet little multi-million-dollar scheme. Charlotte was suspicious when Jason was killed, but I think she was relieved. She felt almost as strongly as I did that Jason should not be allowed to ram through this ballot proposition.”

“Why didn’t she call in the cops?”

Alexandra’s laugh tinkled in the still air. “I would guess it’s because she discovered that the car that assisted Jason into the hereafter was checked out to her that day.”

“But Charlotte wasn’t driving it.”

“Of course not. That wouldn’t have been her style.”

“So what did happen?” Rachel’s voice sounded cold compared to Alexandra’s conversational tone.

“There was this mundane little press tour of one of InterUrban’s facilities. I drove out with Harry—I sometimes went along so that if Jason made some outrageous statement, I could contradict it before it got on the air. Charlotte had some minor car trouble, and she was worried about getting back. Harry decided to brown-nose. He offered to drive her car and gave her his. Harry is—or was—a rotten driver, so I insisted on driving.” Alexandra recited it as if giving a report.

“And there was Jason by the side of the road.” She couldn’t control a smile.

“It was just too perfect. I couldn’t resist.”

Chapter Fifty-six

Numbed by Alexandra’s ability to smile, Rachel gawked at her. “Harry knew? He was in the car?”

“Of course. But there was no way he’d say anything. I knew too much about him. I confess I didn’t think you’d ever enter into it, much less add any of it up. But then there was that ridiculous tie tack.” Alexandra’s mouth pinched at one corner and she shrugged.

“Tie tack?” Rachel asked. “What do you know about a tie tack?”

“That afternoon you and I went flying. Your purse spilled. Remember? And there it was,” Alexandra said, again smiling. “A tie tack, an odd design with a tortoise. I knew a Mojave jeweler who used that design, but it wasn’t common. And I had seen Jason wearing it. That was troubling.”

“And all the time, you were poisoning the environment you were supposed to protect.”

A pained look flitted across Alexandra’s face. “In some ways it was easier to kill Jason than it was to do that.”

“Then, why?”

“Sometimes a few have to be sacrificed to save many. In mere months, the most devastating proposition this state has ever seen would have been passed by the voters. I needed a hammer. The rest was a simple bit of barter.”

“Barter,” Rachel repeated the word. Her mind flashed to Alexandra’s tale of her grandmother. Barter, negotiation, and the Mojave who lived in harmony. Does she believe that’s what she’s doing?

A pair of nearly black eyes fastened on Rachel’s. “The delta will be returned to nature.…”

“It will never happen,” Rachel said. “There are tens of thousands of acres of farms in the delta that need it for irrigation.”

“But not that many farmers.”

“Meaning what?”

“The voters are in the cities. They care nothing about farming. They can be made to understand that everything in the delta is a losing proposition. Many of those farms are below sea level. For their very existence, they depend on eroding levees that cost the state a fortune to maintain,’’ Alexandra said.

“Not to mention the dozens of fault lines—one little well-placed earthquake and the ground would liquefy. Imagine thousands of miles of levees tumbling down like a house of cards. Sea water would rush all the way to Sacramento. The state would bankrupt itself trying to repair things.”

Alexandra’s eyes made it clear she would enjoy that scenario. “The public will see that it’s better to concede to Mother Nature what is hers before she takes it by force.”

Rachel was shaking her head. The longer the woman talked, the more time the other part of her brain had to think. “It won’t work.”

“When people see what the farmers have done to baby ducks, in living color.…” Alexandra’s face was sublimely enigmatic.

“At the ponds,” Rachel said, her voice husky.

“Yes. The ponds. You have to understand: nothing, and I mean nothing whips up fervor for the cause like failure.”

“Failure of what?”

Alexandra frowned as if Rachel was dim-witted. “Failure of the environmentalists to protect, of course. Donations have poured in since the news hit the press. Charlotte was one of the few who understood that.”

“Was Charlotte in on all this?”

Alexandra frowned again. This time there was impatience in it. “Of course not. Charlotte did try to stop Jason, so I delayed, just in case she succeeded. You see, Charlotte was afraid if water flowed too freely around the delta and south, developers would destroy her beloved Southern California, would turn it into one gigantic bumper-to-bumper city.”

“But Charlotte lost.”

“The rest of the board was backing Jason.” Alexandra gave an annoyed tap of her foot. “Charlotte didn’t give up easily. She mapped out a whole new approach. She called it the Delta Plan. She made sure the general manager who followed Jason was so weak he would do anything she wanted. Andrew Greer was a stroke of genius!” Alexandra fairly beamed.

To Rachel, it looked like the grin of a hyena after a kill.

“Did you kill her? That was no suicide.”

Alexandra’s smile faded. “She knew I had driven back with Harry and if that was the car that had hit Jason, I had seen it. She never dreamed that Harry wasn’t driving. She called, wanted to know why I hadn’t said anything.”

“And you said?”

“I went out there. Told her we needed to sit down over a cup of tea and discuss it face to face.”

“And then you murdered her.”

“I should have known it would come to that. Like with you. I didn’t want to. I am not quite the monster you think me.” Alexandra’s voice was soft as feathers on a pit viper. “Charlotte was clever to the end. She told me how much you knew, but not that you would be joining our little chat.”

“You were still there when I arrived.”

“You gave me quite a fright.” Alexandra was leaning forward, eyes like black marbles that seemed to read Rachel’s expression with a special kind of Braille that could feel her thoughts.

“So, that is the story.” Alexandra’s voice took on a faintly apologetic tone. “Now, I’m afraid we have to finish it.”

The sky was showing the first pinkish hints of dusk. Eyes vying with Alexandra’s like arm wrestlers, Rachel willed the muscles in her face to blankness, not at all sure she could do what she must do.

Slowly she shifted her right foot. Inside her boot, a long, thin shape against her ankle.

She was not without a weapon. There was the dog Max, and there was Lonnie. Sodium selenate was obviously quite lethal.

Before leaving the condo, she had unwrapped the syringe, dissolved some of the powder in a small amount of water, drawn the solution into the hypodermic, removed the eraser from a pencil, and stabbed the needle into the soft rubber. Then it was simply a matter of wrapping it in tissue paper, slipping it inside her sock and easing it into her hiking boot.

The balloon was drifting very close to the ponds, which now looked like mirrors that had melted into one another.

Alexandra was watching her. A strand of hair like a streak of coal dust fell across Alexandra’s face—a beautiful face, not marred, as it should have been, by the twisted mind, more like the face of a messiah.

Half mesmerized by the sun bouncing off the ponds, Rachel tensed her right arm.

“I hope,” Alexandra was saying, “that you won’t make this any more difficult for either of us than it has to be.” The gun in her hand was at full attention, a well-trained animal waiting to be unleashed. She stroked the side of it with her thumb. “Come over here. Trust me. It will be less painful if the placement is right.”

“Even if you manage to hide my…my body, eventually, someone will put the pieces—and all the bodies—together.”

Alexandra shook her head slowly. “Next spring, some farmer plowing his field will be somewhat astonished. But by then the forensics will be limited to guesswork.”

Rachel tried to take a step forward, then crumpled to the floor with an anguished cry.

She waited for the bullet. If it didn’t come now, there would be one very small chance.

It didn’t come.

“Ankle…I think it’s sprained.…” Slipping her fingers into her boot, Rachel grasped the syringe and flicked the eraser from the end of the needle.

“Get up!” Alexandra blazed, eyes like chips of black diamond.

Slowly, as if under water, Rachel staggered to her feet.

“That’s better.” Alexandra’s voice was cajoling again. “Move over here. Now.”

Rachel took a step, folded her ankle inward, lurched against Alexandra, and jabbed the needle through Alexandra’s sleeve into the upper arm. Breath coming in rasping gasps, Rachel pushed the plunger, praying the poison would be quick enough.

The woman clutched her arm where the needle had entered. “What did you do?!”

Rachel grabbed at the pistol. It went off, the bullet driving harmlessly through the side of the basket. She seized the derringer.

As if with some blind, animal desire to maim with claws and teeth, Alexandra lunged, pinning Rachel against the basket railing. She wrested the gun from Rachel’s fingers.

Inches away, the black eyes glittered as Alexandra jammed the muzzle of the little gun beneath Rachel’s chin.

“Shoot,” Rachel said. “For God’s sake, get it over. Kill me.” The balloon wheezed.

“In my own good time,” Alexandra spat. “Not yours.” Her head began to sway. Slowly, the glittering eyes faded to dull coal and she seemed to wilt, her elbow touching the floor, then her arm, finally the cloud of black hair.

Rachel looked up at the huge yellow mouth that gaped above her. She had not the faintest idea how to land a balloon.

Chapter Fifty-seven

The dials on the console told her little. What had Alexandra said?

The air heats, the balloon rises. What else? Pull a rope—yes, there it was—a hole opens and the balloon descends.

Over the suede rim of the basket, Rachel examined the landscape. The ponds were close. Very close. Did a balloon go straight down? How fast? How deep were the ponds? What about the poison-laced water?

On the ground to the left, a light flashed. A road snaked toward the ponds. A black pickup truck sat beside it like a forgotten toy, sun glinting from its windshield. The ground crew. Alexandra had said the ground crew would follow in a truck.

Rachel knew she must do it now: pull the rope before she drifted closer to the ponds and the truck.

The cord was quite long. She looked up at the balloon’s circus-tent-like interior and, forbidding herself to think further, pulled the cord hard. High in the fabric, a hole opened and the balloon began to sink. Fast. Then faster. She eased the tension on the rope and the descent slowed. If she let go, the air would be trapped and the balloon would rise again.

Still gripping the cord, Rachel dropped to a crouch, head to knees, arms protecting her head, trying to remember the in-case-of-crash diagrams in the seat pockets of commercial airplanes.

An air pocket bounced her against the side of the basket, wrapping the cord around her wrist and opening the hole wider. The balloon began to plummet like an out-of-control elevator. Rachel’s insides screamed, sending her stomach into her throat.

The impact was hard and fast. The basket tipped, throwing her to the floor. For a horrifying moment, Alexandra’s body bounced toward her, then danced away.

Pain pounded through Rachel’s shoulder, then her entire body blazed with it. Slowly she moved one arm, agonizing with the effort, then the other, then her legs.

She had lost the cord. The hole in the fabric had closed.

The envelope, brilliant yellow against the sky, began to rise.

Struggling to unsteady feet, Rachel pitched herself over the basket wall. Her throbbing shoulder struck the ground.

In the distance, a vehicle motor thrummed toward her. The ground crew? Did they know she was supposed to be dead?

Staggering to her feet again, she demanded that her legs run.

Every breath seared her lungs. A red-hot blade stabbed at her shoulder.

Tall plants on the left. A sorghum field. If she could get to that.… Rachel lost her footing again. She crawled the last few feet and pitched herself among the stalks.