A Death in Duck: Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series (Reverend Lindsay Harding Mystery Book 2) (24 page)

Lindsay couldn’t be sure if she screamed or tried to run. She didn’t even remember hearing the shot. The only thing that she was aware of was a ringing in her ears and Kipper’s once powerful body crumpled into a motionless heap at her feet. She threw her body down over the dog’s, willing him to rise up, but he could only whimper and blink, until his eyes finally closed. When she looked up, the gun was no longer lowered at Kipper; it was trained right at her head. From her vantage point on the ground, she could now see the man’s face clearly. There was no mistaking those insect-like green eyes, glowing like Kryptonite in that pock-marked, skeletal face. Leander Swoopes had found her at last.
 

Chapter 23

“You said something about your little puppy attacking me?” Swoopes said in a slow Texas drawl. He stood directly over Lindsay, pointing a shiny silver handgun at the space between her eyes. “Why don’t you git on up, girlie? Else you’ll get your pretty little behind dirty in the sand.”

Lindsay felt as if all the blood had drained from her face and filled her heart almost to the point of exploding. She rose slowly, not taking her eyes off the barrel of the gun. She kept one hand on the soft fur of Kipper’s abdomen until the last possible moment, in the strange, almost superstitious belief that if she could just keep touching his body, her own life force could somehow sustain him. When the contact between them broke, she realized that the front of her body was covered in his blood.

“All this time, I’ve practically been your stepdaddy, and we ain’t even been properly introduced,” he said, with a cruel-eyed smirk.

“I know who you are,” Lindsay spat back.

“Well in that case, what are we waitin’ for? Come on to my truck and we’ll get better acquainted.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Although her heart still pounded, her voice came out in a smooth, even growl.

Swoopes opened his mouth and laughed—his long, thin teeth looked like rock formations dripping from the walls of a cave. “You got spunk. Like your mama.” The mention of Sarabelle made Lindsay shudder. “Yeah,” he continued “your mama had more backbone than I expected, I’ll grant her that.” He turned his head and spat in the sand next to Kipper’s body. He took hold of Lindsay’s upper arm, wrapping his fingers around her bicep like a tourniquet. “What if I told you that I had a present waiting for you in the truck? Little girls like you like presents, don’t they? So, ‘cuz I’m so thoughtful and generous, I got you something, all wrapped up just for you. Sorry to say that she got a little bit damaged in shipping. Old ladies can be fragile.”

“What did you do?” Lindsay asked, her eyes growing wide in horror.

“Why don’t you come on and see?” he said, pulling her toward him.

Lindsay inhaled deeply and brought all her weight down, stomping as hard as she could on Swoopes’ foot. Whether through pain or shock, he relaxed his grip enough for her to wriggle free. She took off running down the beach. She only managed a few yards, however, before he tackled her from behind. He fell on top of her, pinning her facedown in the sand. He clambered to all fours, with his knees digging into the small of her back as he pressed her face into the wet sand with his hands. For a few terrifying seconds, Lindsay thought he would suffocate her, but instead, he grabbed her by the jacket and spun her around to face him. With the pistol still in his hand, he raised his arm and brought the gun down against her left temple. The blow dazed her, and Swoopes rose to his feet above her. He then swung his leg back and caught her between the ribs with a well-placed kick. The force knocked the wind out of her, and she struggled not to vomit. She lay hunched in a fetal position, inhaling lungfuls of air and sand until Swoopes grabbed her under the armpits and began to drag her along the beach.

They had only traveled a few hundred feet when Swoopes veered sideways, pulling her forcefully up and over one of the low dunes. She stumbled dizzily along next to him, barely able to keep her footing. Sheltered within a thicket of trees and shrubs, stood his red pickup truck—the same vehicle that had almost run Lindsay and Simmy off the road on Christmas Eve night. A hard plastic tonneau cover was pulled tight over the bed of the truck, and Swoopes set his gun down on top of it. He opened the tailgate and drew out a roll of duct tape. Again, Lindsay tried desperately to wrench herself free from his grip. Swoopes wheeled around and punched her in the ribs, aiming for the same tender spot where he’d kicked her a few minutes before. The pain of the blow was so all-encompassing that it was all she could do to remain conscious.

Forcing Lindsay’s arms behind her, Swoopes wound the duct tape around her wrists. Each movement shot bolts of searing pain through Lindsay’s ribcage and abdomen. After he finished binding her wrists, Swoopes squatted down to grab her right ankle. Despite the intense pain, Lindsay refused to go down without a fight. She leveraged his tight grip to deliver a roundhouse kick to the side of his head with her left foot; in the process, she fell backwards. She rolled onto her stomach and then scrambled to her feet, all the while screaming like a maniac in the hope that someone would hear her. Although Swoopes was momentarily stunned, he recovered more quickly than Lindsay, whose ribcage throbbed and whose head was still spinning from being pistol whipped. Before she knew what was happening, she was once again in his clutches, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Lindsay had always been physically daring, and in school, she had never backed down from the threats of a bully. But for the first time, she realized that her physical bravery might have been misguided. At the end of the day, she was a petite woman whose body could be snapped like a brittle twig.

When he had finished binding her, Swoopes pressed her body against the side of the truck and peeled off one last, short strip of duct tape. He placed the strip firmly across Lindsay’s mouth and then reached across her body and took hold of the gun. He paused to stroke her cheek with the cold, metal barrel. Leaning in close to her ear, he cooed, “I like girls with a little bit of fight in ‘em. Makes things so much more fun.” Able to breathe only through her nose, Lindsay inhaled his stench—stale cigarettes mingled with a sickening tang like rotten fruit. She turned her head sideways and gagged.

Swoopes folded back part of the cover that shielded the bed of his pickup truck. Lindsay recoiled when she saw a pair of spindly legs—taped together at the ankles—jutting out from the exposed part of the truck bed. The person lying in the truck wore dainty slippers made of exotic silk brocade embroidered with gold thread. Although the rest of the body lay concealed under the closed part of the cover, there was no mistaking those tiny, slippered feet. Simmy.

Swoopes lifted Lindsay by her hips and shoved her into the truck bed alongside Simmy’s motionless form. He secured the cover over the top of the truck bed and slammed the tailgate shut. With the cover sealed shut, the space inside became pitch black. Lindsay felt the cold, metal sides of the vehicle closing around her like a tomb. She kicked with all her might against the tailgate and cover, but it didn’t budge. A moment later, the truck started crunching over the sand. Its violent movements threw her from side to side, and she struggled to keep her head from slamming into something. Finally, when they came onto the road, the motion of the truck became more regular and the bumps became less jarring. Lindsay lay still, breathing heavily.

“Lindsay, honey, is that you?” came an urgent voice from nearby.

Lindsay could only emit a muffled cry in response.

“It’s me, honey. It’s Simmy. Did he hurt you?” Simmy paused, waiting for an answer. “I guess he probably taped your mouth. He taped me up, too, but the piece on my mouth came loose. I guess I wear so much makeup that it just slid off.” She laughed miserably. “He said he’s taking us to Patty’s house,” she continued. “He believes that one of us must know the combination to her safe.”

Lindsay’s spinning brain tried to process this information. Warren had told her that the safe was now empty—the police had confiscated all the guns as evidence. She realized that Swoopes must not know that the safe no longer contained anything valuable. Lindsay was sure she hadn’t revealed that information to anyone; Sarabelle must have assumed that the safe was still full and encouraged Swoopes to return to claim their prize.

Judging by the whooshing of the tires, the truck seemed to be moving quickly along the road. It would take less than 15 minutes to reach Corolla, another 15 to reach Aunt Harding’s house. Maybe another 30 minutes until Swoopes would discover that the safe was empty either by forcing it open or torturing the information out of Lindsay. One hour. Her last hour on the earth.

“Honey, I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, but no matter what, you need to know the truth,” Simmy began, speaking quickly and wriggling so close to Lindsay that their heads almost touched. “I’ve wanted to tell you so many times, but I guess the time just hasn’t been right. It’s probably good that you can’t answer back and you can’t get up and leave. You’ll have to hear me out.” She inhaled deeply. “I killed Patty. Not Leander Swoopes. Me.”

Lindsay’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom inside the truck bed, and she could make out the outline of Simmy’s tiny form. She was curled up, her knees pulled into her chest.

“I never got to finish my story before, but damn it all, I’m going to finish it right now, if it’s the last thing I do,” she said. “I told you about my hunch about Sarabelle being Rita’s daughter. Well, I felt sure that Patty must know something about it, so I drove straight over to her house and banged on her door. I told her I reckoned that Sarabelle was my granddaughter and wanted to know why she’d kept her from me.

“Patty let me come in but she was stone cold to me. I could tell by looking at her that my intuition was right, so I asked her how long she’d known. Turns out that she’d known for years. Years!” Simmy laughed bitterly. “When Sarabelle and your daddy were arrested when you were little, the authorities went through a whole long process of trying to find relatives to take you in. Of course you know that your daddy’s parents were already dead by that time, and Jonah and Sarabelle were both only children. When the Social Services got in touch with Patty, they’d explained that they’d tried to track down Sarabelle’s relations, and mentioned that Sarabelle’s mother, Rita Lutz, had been hard to find information about because she’d changed her name to Nancy Mix. Of course, I’d told Patty all about trying to make contact with Rita and how she’d up and disappeared, so the whole thing clicked into place for her right away.

“Well, I was beside myself when I found out how long she’d known. I had genuinely forgiven Patty for what happened with Peter. I guess things heal over better when you’re young. But this was different. I told her that I’d give her exactly one day to tell you, Jonah, and Sarabelle. If she didn’t, I was going to tell you all myself. She seemed resigned to it and agreed. I can’t even begin to describe what it was like for me when you showed up at my door that same night. Like a sign from above. It was all I could do not to blurt the whole story out then and there. All those years you lived with Patty… Maybe you should’ve lived with me?”

Lindsay, too, had been struck by the force of this alternate reality. If Patty had just told the truth back then, maybe Lindsay wouldn’t have grown up so lonely. Rather than spending her childhood in a Spartan home, devoid of basic comforts, she could’ve lived in a house that was bursting at the seams with too much of everything—too much laughter, too much music, too much love. Instead of just getting occasional sprinklings of Simmy’s
joie de vivre
, she could have bathed in it every single day. The missed opportunity was almost too much to bear.

Simmy’s revelations also solved another small mystery that, until that moment, had completely fled from Lindsay’s mind. On Christmas Eve, Simmy’s tires had already been deflated—because she’d been to Aunt Harding’s house earlier that day to confront her.

“I thought maybe she’d tell y’all over supper that night,” Simmy continued. “After all, we were having such a nice time together. But when you and your mama went into the kitchen, she said she needed to tell you without me there, so she could have a chance to apologize to you. I figured after all this time, one more night couldn’t hurt anything. She told me to come back first thing the next morning.

“I didn’t sleep that whole night. I got to the house around 7 a.m., and Patty was already sitting out on the front porch waiting for me. She said that she’d told you everything and you and your mama had gone down to the old fishing shack where we’d hidden Peter. Y’all had wanted to see where the whole thing began, she said.

“Now when I look back, it seems so stupid. Why would you have wanted to meet me out in some falling-down old shack at dawn on Christmas Day in the driving rain? I guess I was just so excited that I was going to get another chance to make things right that I would’ve met y’all on the top of Mount Everest at midnight. I always felt like I had so much to share if I’d had children—love, money, just everything—and now I’d finally get to. I could see how much Sarabelle needed help. And I’d seen how hard you’d had it growing up, too. I thought we’d all go for a walk on the beach and it would be happily ever after.

“Well, my heart pounded the whole way there and my legs couldn’t walk as fast as I wanted to make them go. When we got out there, though, I saw right away that I’d been duped. Nobody was there. I looked at Patty, and her eyes turned… I can’t even describe what she looked like. If I were a believer in such things, I’d say that a demon had hold of her soul. I know that a lot of people only saw her meanness, but she was always a good friend to me. Other than that one time, with Peter, she was always fiercely loyal. Always on my side, no matter what. Sometimes, it was almost too much, like she thought it was the two of us against the whole world. But in that moment, I couldn’t see that Patty at all. I remember telling her once that she needed to be more like the sand—just move around with the tides. Instead, she always set herself up like a seawall. And in that moment, it was like she cracked wide open.

“She said that you and Sarabelle were
her
family, and she wasn’t gonna let me take you away from her. She thought that you’d like me better and drop her like a hot potato, like Peter had. I actually laughed out loud because I thought it was so ridiculous. I told her that I didn’t want to take you away, and that she’d twisted herself all into knots over nothing. But I guess she believed that there was only but so much love on the planet. Like love was pieces of pie to fight over, instead of something that can grow as big as it needs to to fit everybody inside. By then I was hopping mad and told her that we owed it to you and Sarabelle to tell you the truth and I was gonna do it whether she liked it or not.