'Til Death Do Us Part (37 page)

Remembering where Peyton had reached for the lights, I found them after a few seconds of fumbling. The lower level burst into full view, lit with a surreal brightness. I flicked the light off and then on again. As I heard the caravan of cars start off, I did a quick scan of the room. There were still some boxes piled against the wall, though the paint cans had been taken away. And on the stone floor, in the place where Ashley had lain, was the stain from her blood. You could tell someone had scrubbed and scrubbed at it because it was now a faint shade of pink. The only way to get rid of the rest would be to dig up the stone and replace it.

I shut the door and started up the staircase. On the second level I stopped for just a second to switch on the lights and glance around. Though I knew on a rational level that each floor of the silo had to look about the same as the lower level, I’d imagined something bigger up here. But the space was really nothing more than a circular balcony, about twelve feet wide around. Ashley had said that the silo was being turned into a gallery, so obviously an array of pictures would eventually be hung on the walls for viewing. I continued climbing to the third level, the one where Ashley had supposedly fallen from—and the one where the lights had been left on tonight. My heart was beating double time, and I almost jumped when I spotted the stepladder set against the wall. It had to be the one Ashley had stood on that day. I stared at it for a few seconds, thinking. Then I put down my purse and dragged the ladder over to a spot underneath a canister light in the ceiling. As I did so, I glanced over the wrought-iron railing. The ground floor of the silo seemed terrifyingly far away. I’ve never been afraid of heights but the long cylinder of empty space made my breath quicken in anxiety.

I looked back at the stepladder and tried to picture the scenario the police had described: Ashley putting in the light bulb so she could see, losing her balance, tumbling over the railing. Even if the other deaths hadn’t occurred, I would have had a hard time with that theory now that I actually saw the setup firsthand. With the stepladder right under the light, it was still a few feet away from the railing, and it was hard to imagine how just by losing her footing she could have been projected such a distance. If she’d lost her balance, wouldn’t she have simply fallen backward?

If someone had shaken the ladder, however, they could have easily propelled her over the railing. But how would someone have snuck up on her here? Ashley would have heard them coming up the stairs. It had to have been someone she trusted, someone she felt comfortable talking to while she was at work fixing the light. Another thought was that she’d never been on the ladder at all, that the killer had simply pushed her over the edge and later set up the stepladder. But the railing was fairly high, and it wouldn’t have been easy to toss someone over the edge—still, it could be accomplished if you were strong and determined enough.

The thought had barely formed in my mind when I heard the groan of the door, echoing up through the silo. I froze, terrified. For a few seconds it was silent again, and I wondered if the wind had simply blown open the door. Then there were footsteps—quiet, cautious ones. With my heart beating wildly, I edged as quietly as possible to one of the windows. There was another car in the parking lot, not far from mine—even through the mist I could see that it was a dark boxy vehicle—a van or an SUV. Was it the SUV that had run me off the road? I stepped back toward my purse and fished frantically for my cell phone. I took a breath and pressed 911. Maybe it was simply a night watchman, wondering about the light and my car. Maybe it was just one of the workers. Maybe it was even Peyton. But I wasn’t going to wait to find out.

Whispering hoarsely, I told the female operator the location and said that there’d been a break-in. I begged her to send help ASAP. She asked me twice to try to speak louder, but I was afraid that if I did, the person below would hear. She promised to stay on the line until help arrived, and I gripped the phone tightly in my hand.

I had no idea what to do. It was silent now down on the ground floor, but I could sense the person there, listening. Then I heard the clang of one foot on the staircase. Glancing upward, I could see that the fourth floor was just like the third. Though going higher would offer no safety, it would buy me a minute or two of time, something I needed until the police arrived. But I couldn’t bear the thought of being trapped up there, cowering until whoever was below finally ascended to the top.

I glanced around desperately for anything I might use as a weapon. A few feet away was a box with tools, a bright steel hammer resting on top. With my free hand I grabbed the hammer and then whispered into the phone again.

“Are they
coming
?” I asked frantically.

“Yes, the police are on their way. Please stay on the line.”

Slipping the phone into one pocket of my coat and the hammer into the other, I forced myself toward the stairs and began to descend them. Please let it be a watchman, I pleaded to myself. But as I rounded the curve of the stairs, I saw my pleading was useless. Trip was standing on the second floor, watching the stairs.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. It came out as a little frog croak.

“Well, I might ask the same of you,” he said sarcastically. “But then you seem to have given yourself license to go anywhere you damn well please in Greenwich.”

“If you’re looking for Peyton or David, they’re not here. In fact, I was just leaving for their place.” It was such a dumb thing to say, but I had this wild, crazy idea that if I didn’t act alarmed, I could just ease my way out of there.

He snickered at the absurdity of my comment.

“Noooo,”
he said, stretching out the word mockingly. “I’m not looking for Peyton or David. I’m looking for
you
.”

I nearly wet my pants as he said it. I saw that beneath his heavy wool coat, he wore jeans and a pair of brown leather boots. He’d clearly gone home from the office and then come out again. David must have called him and told him I was headed to the farm. Did this mean David was in on the whole thing?

“How can I help you?” I asked. Another absurd comment, but all I could think was that I needed to make everything go in slow motion until the police arrived. Trip didn’t answer, just shook his head hard from left to right, as if I’d said something totally insane. He was standing in the center of the floor, a few feet away from the staircase, and out of the corner of my eye, I tried to calculate whether he’d catch me if I tried to bolt for the first floor.

“If you’re thinking of making a run for it, I wouldn’t,” he said.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I really have to go,” I said, gripping the hammer in the pocket of my coat.

“No, you and I need to have a little chat.”

From the pocket of his long black coat, he pulled out a gun.

CHAPTER 19

I
WAS SCARED
, really scared. I was also experiencing this ridiculous urge to laugh from contemplating the hammer in my pocket. It would be a big help now, wouldn’t it? What was I supposed to do—hurl it at him like a boomerang and knock him out cold before he had the chance to shoot?

Somehow this one, still rational square inch of my brain took control. It commanded me to stay calm, to do nothing to make Trip agitated.

“Trip,” I said quietly, “why are you doing this? Why would you point a gun at me?” I hoped the 911 operator had picked up enough of what I’d said to realize that there was now a gun in the picture.

Trip laughed, though it came out more as a bark. His eyes looked wild, as if he’d helped himself to some laudanum before dropping by.

“Why am I doing this? No, the question is why are
you
doing this? You’re the one trying to hurt me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, please,” he said, turning his head slightly and looking to the side, as if there were people offstage he hoped to enlist in support of his displeasure. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie, would you? You went to see David tonight, and now he’s going to start digging around, looking for stuff, and everything is going to be a big fat mess.”

“I just wanted to be a good friend to Peyton and David. They—”

“If you were such a good friend, you would have just stayed the hell out of it. Yeah, I moved a little money around, and the feds don’t like that sort of thing, but none of our clients got hurt in the end. Now David’ll figure it out, and it’s all gonna blow up in our faces.”

“That wasn’t my intention, Trip. I didn’t even know when I—”

“I tried to warn you, you know? Back when you first got started. David told me how you were foaming at the mouth about the deaths and about wanting to uncover the truth and outsmart the police and all that shit. I could tell his wheels were spinning and you might start him looking into things all over again. I thought if I gave you a warning, you’d be smart enough to back off. But you just don’t like to take a hint, do you?”

“So that was you in New York, then? In Jamie’s apartment?”

“Bingo.”

“Does that mean you left the note? And ran me off the road?”

He swung his head to the side again in exasperation. “See, there were two other warnings. I tried to play fair, give you a chance to butt out.”

Despite how agitated he was, he seemed eager to talk, and I had to keep him at it, looking as though my curiosity could not be contained. I kept my eyes on
him
, not the gun or the railing to his left. It would be so easy for him to send me over the edge.

“How did it all start, Trip? Did Jamie come to you?”

“That Jamie was quite the opportunist, you know? She didn’t know what she’d heard between me and David, but she knew it had to mean something. She called me, started fishing around, trying to figure out if she was on to something. Yeah, Jamie was a real bottom feeder.”

“Is that why you killed her?”

He froze, holding my gaze like someone gripping the edge of a bridge. Then he threw back his head and began to cackle, as if I’d said something so hilarious that he could barely stand it.

“You just don’t get it, do you,” he said as the laughter wore down.

A big wind blew out of nowhere, whistling through the shingles of the silo, and when it finally died down, we could hear the crunch of cars on gravel. With the gun still pointed at me, Trip backed toward one of the windows.

“You called the police?” he exclaimed as he gazed below. “You little bitch.”

I had a sudden picture of him grabbing me and taking me hostage.

“No, I swear I didn’t. Maybe some kind of alarm got tripped because we’re in here after hours.”

He froze in position—that is, every part of him except his eyes. They darted back and forth as he tried to determine what course of action to take. Two seconds later he made his move. He bolted down the stairs, the clanging sound of his footfalls reverberating up the center of the silo.

I rushed to the window myself and gazed below. A police car was bumping along the driveway to the farm, almost at the parking lot. Dropping the hammer to the floor, I headed for the stairs. Just as I reached the second-level landing I heard the groan of the front door swinging open, followed quickly by the word “Halt!” I stepped over toward the window and peered out again. Two cops had spilled out of the police car and had their guns trained on the door of the silo, where Trip was obviously standing. He must have quickly put down his own gun because one of the cops approached the silo, and then I saw him lead Trip toward the car. I bolted down the last flight of stairs. As I reached the bottom, the second cop, a dark-haired guy no more than twenty-five, stepped through the open door of the silo. He still had his gun drawn, and I instinctively put my hands in the air.

“Are you okay?” he called out, lowering his gun.

“Yes, he never touched me. But he scared the hell out of me.”

“What’s going on here, anyway? Do you work here?”

“No, but I’m a friend of the owner, Peyton Cross, and I have her permission to be here. It’s a long story, but this man attacked me on several occasions and came after me tonight with a gun. I believe he’s a murderer and was responsible for a death here last week, as well as two others. I’ve had several conversations with Detective Pichowski about all of this, and it’s important that he be contacted.”

He eyed me cautiously, his monobrow furrowed. “I need you to come down to the station. But you can’t ride in the back of the patrol car with a suspect. Do you have your own car?”

“Yes, it’s the Jeep out there.”

As we stepped outside into the night, I saw Trip being guided into the back of the patrol car by a woman officer, his hands cuffed behind him. When he caught sight of me out of the corner of his eye, he jerked his head back and screamed in our direction.