A Killing in Antiques (28 page)

Then I heard the voice.

“Lucy? It’s me.”

What? Leaning over the edge, overhead, was Monica. Monica? What in God’s name was Monica doing here?

She was shaking, her voice unsteady. “My God, Lucy, I was sure you were dead.” Her hand gripped her chin, and in the bright moonlight a black shadow oozed through her fingers and dribbled down her arm.

The keys. I’d gotten her with the keys. I couldn’t see how bad it was.

“I’m alive,” I said, fumbling the tape away from my mouth. No need to tell her I’d been holding a wake for myself minutes earlier.

“Get me out of here.”

“Yes, I’ll get you to a hospital,” she said.

We grappled awkwardly with the rest of my ropes. “I don’t need a hospital. I have to get to the old man,” I said. Then I noticed that her wound spurted each time she spoke, or moved. It looked lethal. Guilt embraced me.

“I’m sorry, Monica, truly sorry. You need a hospital more than I do,” I said as my bindings finally came apart. I scrambled to stand up in Supercart, aware again that I had to get out of there in a hurry.

“How in the world did you find me?” I asked. And, lurching to my feet unsteadily in Supercart, I lost my balance, and flung my arms around her. Monica, misunderstanding, hugged me tightly, patted my back, and whispered “there-theres.” The kid was comforting me.

I was so startled to find myself being comforted that I burst, blubbering, into howling sobs. I clung to her, wallowing in her comfort. In a while, my wailing subsided, I ceased my sniveling, and with Monica’s help I climbed out of Supercart.

Free again
.

W
e came to our senses, and I asked for her cell phone.

“I left it on the kitchen counter, still plugged into the charger,” she wailed.

“Then let’s get out of here.”

We drove away, each babbling over the other’s story, trying to make sense of what seemed a random hash of events. “But how did Supercart end up over here?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I think I was driven over in the van, and then dumped into Supercart.”

She clutched her chin with one hand and steered the car with the other, trying to explain how she’d tracked me down.

I didn’t quite understand yet. I tried to stop interrupting. “But how did you find me? Why aren’t you back at the Cape?”

“I almost didn’t find you, Lucy. I came back for the amber necklace. It was after three by the time I got here. The necklace had been sold, and I stopped at Coylie’s to ask if he’d seen you.

“He hadn’t seen you, only your van. He said the van had been missing, then returned, but he wasn’t sure when,” she quavered on.

“I waited for a while. Then I left a note on the windshield and looked around the fields. I didn’t yet realize anything was wrong, but later the note was still there, and I finally looked inside. Antiques were there, but Supercart was gone.

“That’s when I knew that something wasn’t right. I drove out to Al’s to see if you’d landed there by some fluke. She hadn’t seen you all day. You hadn’t stored anything in her barn. She said that was unusual.

“So I came back to Brimfield, where everything was the same. I needed time to think, so I went to the little restaurant in town, and after I lingered over a cup of tea, I felt better. The sun had gone down by then, so I called home.”

Oh, no, bad move. “What did you tell them at home?”

“Not much, Lucy. As a matter of fact, I didn’t quite lie to Philip, but I didn’t quite tell him the truth, either. When I’d determined that you weren’t at home on the Cape, I told him that I was thinking of staying the night with you in Boston.” She looked over at me, guilt in her eyes, blood dribbling from her chin.

“Good work,” I assured her. “No need to get him all upset over nothing.”

“This is nothing?” she asked.

“No, but the worst is over. We can finish up and get out of here, and there’s no need to make things worse for ourselves with the family. But how did you find Supercart?”

“When I came out of the restaurant it was dark,” she said. “I checked the van again. Nothing had changed, but in the dark everything looked different. I looked for Coylie, thinking he might have an idea. At the picnic yesterday he mentioned that it would be a nice spot for camping. So I drove over, parked, and sat here.

“Coylie’s truck was nowhere to be seen, and I didn’t see much else in the dark. After a while my eyes adjusted, but by then I’d stopped looking, and I may have dozed. I was ready to give up. And then, right before my eyes, your big red exclamation point became visible. It took shape in the trees on the hill right in front of me, only it was black, not red, in the moonlight.”

I held up a hand to stop her babbling. “What exclamation point?”

“Supercart, Lucy. The big red exclamation point you painted on Supercart. It was there under the trees on the hill, right in front of my eyes, but it didn’t register with me as Supercart until it started rolling down the hillside.”

Useless now to explain away that red paint as swatches for choosing the color of our shutters. Maybe it did look like an exclamation point.

As Monica drove along the deserted road and told her story, I rubbed life back into my legs and checked my injuries. A couple of ribs in trouble, my left shoulder throbbing but functional, and my old hip injury competing for attention. The walnut-sized lump on my forehead had stopped oozing and was strangely numb, but it seemed to provoke a sort of flashbulb effect whenever I turned my head.

I checked her wound covertly. It made me sick. It would leave a jagged scar where I’d split her skin. I’d hacked a cleft into that chin that I understood, profoundly, would haunt me.

It was going to be hard, very hard, explaining all this to the family. Then, too, there’d be Monica’s reaction, when she finally got a good look at what I’d done to her. I’d need time to work out the story I’d tell them later, but right now I needed some simple cooperation from Monica.

“What I’d like,” I said, “is for you to drop me off at Mr. Hogarth’s, then continue on down the road a few miles to do two things. The Jones-Toner Medical Center is there. It’s a walk-in place, and you can get your chin treated there.”

Monica looked over at me. “And what will you be doing?” she asked.

I told her I wanted to see Mr. Hogarth for a minute.

“You’re going to drop in on him at midnight?” she asked, and paused a second before realizing that I didn’t intend to respond. “And what else?” she went on. “You said you wanted me to do two things.”

I couldn’t think fast enough to give her a foxy explanation for asking her to send the police to Mr. Hogarth’s. I preferred keeping her in the dark, and out of further trouble. But she already suspected the game was afoot, so as we drove along the rural road closer to Mr. Hogarth’s, I offered her a quick answer. I worked it out as I spoke.

“There’s trouble at Mr. Hogarth’s place.”

“Lucy, you don’t think the old fellow is the killer, do you?”

“I’m not sure exactly what is going on, but he’s been acting funny lately. I just want to check up on him, and I’d like to keep you out of harm’s way.”

She kept her eyes on the road, and said, “I’ll go to the hospital when you go to the hospital, but first let me tell you that I didn’t drive up here from the Cape to miss out on this part.”

That girl is stubborn—I can see trouble ahead for Philip because of it. But there was no time for debate now; we were approaching Mr. Hogarth’s.

We drove right past when we spotted two cars parked near the lamp shop entrance. At the sight of the second car, my stomach flip-flopped. Were we already too late? Monica pulled off the road at the curve beyond his house, and then she pulled up to the road’s edge, facing out. Good thinking.

She wouldn’t wait in the car, and I couldn’t waste time arguing with her. The best I could do, to impress on her that
I
was leading this venture, was to command her not to slam the door as we slipped out of the car. She didn’t answer me, but she didn’t slam, either.

The house was dark. In the lamp shop, at the front of the house, thin light seeped around the edges of the windows. The tiny flashlight on Monica’s key chain provided just enough light for us to make our way through the shrubbery and underbrush. When we reached the gravel path, we slowed, trying to mask the crunching underfoot. We stopped at the shop door and looked. In the dim light, the drawn shade, several inches away from the other side of the glass, did little to hide what was happening inside. It was terrible.

Mr. Hogarth was alive, but it was bad. He was tied to a chair, his hands behind him, his face a bloody mess. Wilson, gripping a flashlight, smacked it against Mr. Hogarth’s head. The flashlight triggered a rush of understanding. It was that flashlight, not the shove into Supercart, that had caused the wound in my forehead.