A Month at the Shore (42 page)

He actually seemed curious enough to expect Laura to answer, so she gasped, "The greenhouse."

"I
looked
there," he said, surprised and almost petulant that he'd missed it.

She thought he might be replaying the fatal struggle in his mind, because there was a pause before he abruptly said, "Let's wrap this up. Write: 'Whatever I've done, I'm sorry.' That should leave a good taste in everyone's mouth."

It was an incredible effort to keep on going. Four sentences; she could have been writing four chapters.

And then her scrawl stopped altogether.

Almost in a faint, she said, "I'm out of ink."

"I can see that!" he snapped.

He began to look around, his motions sending shivers of horror through her. One bad nick, that's all it would take. She was close to passing out from a runaway heartbeat.

Apparently he spotted a pen, because he grunted and turned to take the step or two to the counter to grab it.

It was the chance Laura needed to break free and run. She bolted like a rabbit out of a hole, knocking over the chair in her panicky flight. She heard Gabe trip and curse behind her as she ran out the kitchen door and down the steps onto the grounds. The fog was soupy enough to hide her, if she could just get far enough away.

Her panic gave her speed, but her sandals slowed her down. The sandy, gravelly road that led from the house back down to the shop and the road beyond it made for hard going. Where were the cars? Where were the damn customers? She caught a stone the wrong way and slid, falling with a twisting wrench of her knee to the fog-damp ground. Did it hurt? She didn't know. She scrambled back to her feet and took off again, afraid to look behind her in her flight.

Which is why she had no idea that he'd got close enough to grab her arm and yank her violently to a halt. She opened her mouth and started to scream but nothing came out, because a tidal wave of blackness suddenly washed over her, carrying her off in an easy rush to oblivion.

****

Town scion or not, Kendall Barclay III had very nearly ended up in the cell next to Snack's. The chief was hot, hotter than Ken had ever seen him.

Snack knew about the knife. While it was true that Snack had not divulged his source, it didn't take a rocket scientist (said the chief) to figure out that in a colossal betrayal of trust, Ken had rifled through the file on his desk. If it hadn't been for the fact that Andy Mellon himself had earlier leaked information to Ken, the situation might have been even dicier than it was.

Ken apologized profusely. As compensation, he offered the chief what he had just learned from Billy.

"Gabe too, now? Come on. Billy is seeing boyfriends behind every bush, don't you think?"

The chief, in short, was not impressed, which wasn't surprising. It was easier to suspect the devil you knew than the councilman you didn't. Fair enough. You had to go with the odds.

But as Ken drove out to Shore Gardens, he found himself conjuring up a compelling profile of a small-town golden boy, deprived of both his parents and his burning ambition in one fell swoop, who might be nursing a serious grudge against life. Who might not take kindly to being toyed with by a transient nothing, no matter how blindingly beautiful she was. Who might lose it altogether in an act of violence, and who was strong enough and lucky enough and hardworking enough to hide the deed for a good half of his life.

Psychological profile be damned. Gabe had the motive, and Gabe had the opportunity: as part-time help, he wouldn't have looked any more out of place on the grounds than a family member.

But when he came right down to it, Ken was zeroing in on Gabe for the simple reason that he was being overrun by an eerie, creepy feeling. At that moment, he felt a little the way he had at Miss Widdich's place, as if there were forces at work that he didn't know and didn't understand but did have to face down. When he had Laura in his arms again, that's when he'd feel reassured.

He speeded up as he approached the nursery. He couldn't help himself; the pull of Laura was too great. Corinne had left her sister behind in her rush to get to the station, and since the only taxi he saw had a group of passengers inside when Ken passed it, it was clear Laura hadn't gone that route. Hitching a ride from a local was her only other option, and Ken had been watching the few cars he passed on the way; she wasn't in any of them.

He was tense, no doubt about it. Billy had set him on edge, and the thick, chill fog was keeping him that way. Houses and hedges alike were shrouded in a ghostly gray vagueness that perfectly echoed the mystery that had pervaded all of their lives.

Uncertainty. Bankers, of all people, did
not
like the feeling.

He was about to turn into the nursery when he saw Gabe's new, monster SUV come roaring out of his drive, sending sand and gravel flying before heading down the road.

It was Gabe. Without Lau
ra. Going too fast. In a split-
second, instinctual decision, Ken turned the wheel hard, crossing the center line, and aimed his little Boxster squarely at the nose of the giant SUV in a head-on crash. He hadn't felt so outsized since the day he took on the eighth-grade bullies attacki
ng Laura in the woods. His air-
bag activated instantly, stunning him with its speed and force; he sat pinned behind it, trying to recover his wits.

He squeezed out of the crushed Porsche in time to see Gabe Welle
rton running toward his house ne
arby. Ken started on foot after him, and then—heeding the same instincts that had guided him this far—turned on a dime and headed for the nursery. He had no doubt that Gabe had left Laura there; the only question was, had he left her for dead?

His heart was galloping now as he barged through the main shop, screaming her name. The house, the greenhouses, the outbuildings, the well—she could be anywhere or nowhere at all.

Gabe ran. She's somewhere
.

He ran up the incline to the house, breathing hard, shouting her name. The sense of panic he felt was profound. He burst through the front door, racing through the rooms, calling her name, up and then down the stairs again. He was about to exit through the kitchen when he pulled up short: there was a note on the table in her handwriting, throbbing for his attention.

He scanned it
,
incredulous. His heart seemed to stop altogether. Taking out his cell phone, he punched in 911 as he dashed outside, trying to re-enact a crime he couldn't be positive—didn't want to be positive—had taken place.

Where?

The operator answered,
and he fought with her. No doubt he was incoherent, but he vowed he would pay any costs, and the upshot was that they were sending an ambulance.

He called Laura's name, over and over, cranking up the volume each time as he ran through the greenhouses and across the grounds; it seemed to him that the fog was hushing his rudeness, as if he were acting like a yahoo in a sacred place.

He stopped and listened.

Yes. A diesel engine; he knew the sound of it from his father's old Mercedes. Only it wasn't a classic sedan, but a classic John Deere tractor. Just as old, just as venerable; just as lethal. He ran to the shed where he knew they kept the Deere, hardly able to hear the engine anymore over the thundering thumps of his heart.

The swing-out doors were barred from inside. He threw his shoulder into them repeatedly, but they withstood the fury of his assault.

If Gabe got out, Ken could get in. He raced around the side of the building and found a single-paned window that swung horizontally on center pivots. The closed window was tucked under the eave, ten feet off the ground; easier to climb out of than to climb into. He looked around and found an old wooden ladder with missing rungs at one end. Propping it against the wall with the broken end at the bottom, and keeping his feet on the outside edges of the remaining rungs, he began his climb.

A rung broke anyway, sending him crashing down to the next one. But that one held, and his only harm was a jolt to the knees. He scrambled through the window with a contortion of legs and dropped onto an old scarred workbench beneath it, noting the upended stool that Gabe had kicked out in his escape.

There was no one in the tractor's seat. Ken circled the machine and found Laura lying under the exhaust pipe, semiconscious and in acute distress.

How long has she been here?
was his single thought. He scooped up her limp form and carried her to the wide swing doors, never imagining that not only would they be bolted, but padlocked.

Padlocked.
The concentration of carbon monoxide was enough to have his head already aching; they had to get out. He laid Laura to one side on the cement floor of the shed and climbed the tractor, aware of dizziness as he did so. It was dark in the shed, and the knob of the gearshift was worn smooth; but reverse was reverse. He found the right gear and floored the aging beast, heading with abandon for the locked doors, gambling that Laura would stay where she was. The old tractor crashed through the doors with ease, clearing the air, freeing them both.

He jumped down from the Deere and carried Laura outside to fresher air still, then laid her on the ground. Conscious? CPR? Those were the questions that consumed him as he hovered over her, trying to assess the extent of poisoning.

She moaned. And then she threw up. He rolled her to one side, clearing her mouth, trying to keep her from further harm.
Don't let this be too far,
he prayed, well aware of the long-term damage of carbon-monoxide poisoning.
For her sake, my sake, our children's sake
... please. Don't let this be too far.

So absorbed was Ken that he never heard the siren, never saw the strobe cutting the fog until the ambulance was almost upon them. When he finally looked up, he was himself disoriented: it seemed to him that he was with Laura on his boat in a life-and-death storm, and the flashing light was from a lighthouse, a beacon of reassurance in a world of threat. He felt a relief as profound as his previous fear had been deep.

Laura was safe.

****

"You saved my life," she kept repeating, but Ken seemed ridiculously nonchalant about his part in the affair.

She stared at him in continuing wonder. "Don't act as if you were just passing by and had nothing better to do than ram a tractor through a set of garage doors. Stop being so damned modest. You saved my life!"

"Shh," Ken said as the ER surgeon approached. "I'm in enough trouble with my insurance company as it is."

She laughed, giddy with joy despite her piercing headache. She was safe, Snack was innocent, inevitably Gabe would be run to ground. If it weren't for Corinne's hurt and disillusionment, Laura could honestly say that the Shores—the Shores!—were on a roll.

More good news. The physician said, "Your tests are fine. You're free to go. I'll write out something for that headache—"

"Oh, no, thanks, Dr. Brown. I doubt I'll need—"

"We'll take the prescription," Ken said, interrupting. "She may change her mind."

"So conservative; so like a banker," she teased.

Unperturbed, Ken said, "You'll thank me later."

They left the hospital and squeezed into the front seat of the nursery's rusty pickup alongside Corinne, who said with a tentative smile, "Where to?"

She was so sad. So thrilled for her siblings, but
... so desperately sad.

Ken said, "How do you feel about jail? We'll go spring Snack."

"Can
we?" Corinne asked, her spirits picking up.

"Yep. I just got off the phone with the chief. He's decided not to press charges."

Corinne burst into tears. It was all too much.

"Why don't I drive?" said Ken softly. "C'mon, kiddo; out."

Nodding helplessly, Corinne climbed down from the driver's side and went around to the passenger side. Hunched over with lingering sorrow, she said to her sister, "Too bad Gabe took the watch from you; now he can claim the prints were from today."

"Corinne! That watch is just frosting on the cake. Gabe
admitted
to me that he killed Sylvia. His prints are not only all over the toolshed—but on that ve
r
y high window. Not to mention, on the pen for my suicide note and the knife that gave me the cut on my neck. Plus, new fingerprints or old, there aren't any of Snack's on the watch, only yours and mine and Gabe's. The watch will be one more piece of evidence. Not the whole picture, but a piece of it."

"But you said he yanked out the strand of hair from it."

"A tiny bit is bound to be still in the band," Laura said confidently. "You know how those expandable types are."

Corinne sighed. "Will they find him, you think?"

"Yes. I'm sure of it. He's not the type to swing an escape to Venezuela."

"If they do catch him, how long do you think he'll be in jail?"

Laura said grimly, "Let's put it this way: Gabe won't be running for mayor anytime soon."

"No." Corinne sighed again and said, "He had such plans, such ambitions. When we sat on the porch
.
..."