Bitch Factor (37 page)

Brew’s call came less than five minutes later. He sounded as if he already had a snootful.

“Hey, Dix, thanks for the bubbly. You coming—”

“Brew, I need your help. I’ve a hunch a six-year-old is in trouble.” Nothing would sober him up faster. She rushed through an explanation, expecting her voice at any moment
to be garbled in static. “If you know anyone in the Lake Livingston area, send them to the cabin.”

He promised to call around, but Dixie could hear music and laughter in the background and wondered how much help she could count on. At the moment she couldn’t be choosy.

The road dipped into a densely wooded section of Sam Houston National Forest. Trees crowded the roadside, limbs whipping the icy air. The unpaved road, flanked by deep drainage ditches, snaked sharply in curves that defied her headlights. Dixie slowed her speed.

On the day of Courtney’s swim meet, Travis claimed he was at a computer conference near the airport—conveniently near Camp Cade. But with Ellie also at camp, that meant Rebecca was at home alone and already planning to attend the last day activities. What had Jon Keyes said?
We all enjoy swimming, snorkeling…
The prowler Courtney mentioned to her bunk mate that morning may have been Rebecca or Travis
…
checking out the lake. Rebecca would know her daughter’s risky habit of swimming alone
.

Did the child see her killer’s face as she was drowning?

The Mustang hit a pothole, invisible under the wash of rain and ice that covered the road. The tires bounced and skidded. Dixie knew she was driving too fast, but she had to keep moving.

Tracking her route by the dim map light on her dash, Dixie saw that she was nearing the turnoff to the cabin. She slowed for the turn—
Shit! That’s not a road, nothing but a muddy path—
whipped the Mustang to the right, wrenching her injured shoulder, and felt the tires slide before miraculously gaining traction.

Pines danced crazily overhead. Deciduous skeletons bent icy limbs across the road, scraping the Mustang as it barreled along. The darkness was absolute; her headlights bounced off sheets of rain and ice. Dixie slowed again, fighting the car’s constant slide toward the ditch.

A feeble light shone through the trees—it had to be the cabin. Only one car in the driveway. No sign of Travis, then.
No sign of help, either. Rebecca had certainly picked a remote spot. If Ellie’s condition worsened, who could blame Rebecca for not getting her child to a hospital in such miserable weather? For choosing instead to keep her daughter warm and snug until the roads cleared? And what could be easier than withholding proper care and medicine from a sick child?

But what kind of mother could sit calmly watching her child die?

The same mother who calmly waited at a curb until her daughter stepped into the intersection… or in a murky lake, ready to strike like a snake in the water.

Shaking off a feeling of doom, Dixie turned into the double ruts that served as a driveway, killed the engine behind a Chrysler LeBaron, and tried once more to reach the sheriff. McGrue. Anybody! When only static crackled in her ear, she wanted to hurl the cussed phone into the mud and stomp it.

Instead, she checked the stun gun on her belt—fresh batteries—too bad the .45 was still in the van with her “plumber’s tools”—and climbed out of the car.

Sleet peppered her face. She shivered and zipped her jacket. Light flickering on the window shades suggested a fireplace inside the cabin. Apparently, her image of Ellie shivering in a cold, dark room had been nothing more than Dixie’s own macabre imagination.

A lithe shadow moved from one window shade to another. Must be Rebecca.

Hunching against the driving rain, Dixie opened the screen and knocked on the door. After a minute, she knocked again, harder. When the door swung open, Rebecca’s green eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in suspicion. Her blond hair was tied back in a pink gingham ribbon that matched her full skirt. Her white blouse had a lace collar pinned with a gold heart. Little girl clothes.

“What are
you
doing here?” Rebecca demanded. “Did you
follow
me?”

Dixie slipped a booted foot across the threshold.

“Ellie’s father is worried about her. After talking to your mother, he asked me to drive up and make sure you’re both
all right.” She angled her body into the room, so that if Rebecca tried to close the door, Dixie’s foot and shoulder would wedge it open. Unfortunately, it was her lame shoulder. Icy rain blew through the doorway, spattering the wooden floor.

“Of course Ellie’s all right! She’s fine.”

“Then you won’t mind if I come in and talk to her.”

“Yes, I do mind. You tell Jon Keyes he’s wasted his money. It isn’t even his weekend to have her. Now get out.” She swung the door, but Dixie put up a hand to hold it.

“Mr. Keyes received a call from Ellie that led him to believe she might be in danger.”

“Danger?
She’s sick, that’s all. Oh, all right, come in before you flood the kitchen.”

The room was warm and bright. In the glare of a bare overhead bulb, ladder-back chairs cast long shadows on the wall. A chopping board, a colander of vegetables, and the bony remnants of a chicken on the counter suggested Rebecca had been cooking. The aroma rising from a pot on the stove suggested chicken soup.

“Ellie’s in here.”

Rebecca led the way to a small bedroom with two sets of bunk beds. Ellie lay in a lower bunk under a patchwork quilt. Raggedy Ann shared her pillow. The child’s hair lay in damp ribbons around her sleeping face. Nearby, a serving cart held a water glass, with a swallow of water left in the bottom, and a medicine bottle. Dixie recognized the prescription she’d seen at the cafe. Alongside the medicine sat a steaming bowl of soup, a spoon, and a napkin.

False alarm? Rebecca was apparently doing her best to help Ellie get well.

Ellie’s eyes opened slowly. They looked sleepy and feverish, but recognition brightened within when she saw Dixie.

“Hi, Dixie-plain-and-simple.” Her voice sounded tired yet reasonably alert. “Why are you here?”

Dixie was asking herself that same question. She sat down in a chair beside the bunk. “Came to see how my favorite jokester’s doing with that nasty flu.”

“I was sick, but now I feel better.”

Dixie took the girl’s hand. It felt warm, the pulse steady, maybe a little fast. She didn’t have a hell of a lot of experience taking pulses.

“Your daddy says you phoned him this morning. Can you tell me what you were calling about, what you wanted to tell him?”

Ellie looked blank for a moment. She glanced at her mother standing in the doorway.

“I
dreamed
I called Daddy Jon,” she murmured.

“Do you remember why you called? In the dream, that is.”

A pause while she thought about it. “No.”

“Well, is there anything you want me to tell him when I get back?” Dixie was striking out here, and she should be glad, relieved—hell, she
was
relieved. But after all the tension, the long ride, the certainty that Rebecca was the worst kind of monster, finding Ellie on the mend was something of a letdown. A welcome letdown, but hard on the nervous system all the same.

“Tell Daddy I want to see
The Nutcracker
again.”

“I think it’s over until next year.”

Ellie licked her dry lips. Her eyelids drooped. “Then I want to go again next year.”

“I’ll tell him that, if you’ll promise to concentrate on getting well.”

“How?”

“Well, take all the medicine your doctor gave you.”
The doctor said he hadn’t heard from Rebecca
… Dixie picked up the prescription bottle, shook it, watched the white tablets bounce around inside. “Drink plenty of water and juice and eat the nice soup your mother made.”

“If you’ll leave,” Rebecca said tightly, “maybe it will still be warm when she eats it.”

“Your mommy’s right, I have to be going, but your daddy wanted me to give you this.” She kissed Ellie on the cheek, the skin warm against her lips. The girl smelled slightly sour from being sick and not bathing for a while, but felt soft and tender, just as Ryan had at that age. Dixie was glad she’d made the trip. It was worth all the trouble to know Ellie was
okay. “You have a good time tomorrow at your grandmother’s.”

Ellie looked at her mother. “Are we going to Gramma’s?”

“Well, of course we are,” Rebecca said. “You just forgot.” Looking daggers at Dixie, she picked up the soup bowl and stood beside the chair.

Dixie tweaked Elbe’s ear and stepped back.

Rebecca scooted the chair closer and started feeding Ellie the soup. It must taste as good as it smelled, judging by Ellie’s speed in putting it away. Dixie’s stomach growled; she hoped Dann had saved her some dinner.

What now?
she wondered, walking back through the kitchen. She couldn’t exactly scoop Ellie up and take her home, which is what she wanted to do. She’d get some of her friends in the Highway Patrol to watch for Travis Payne. Maybe she’d even take a trip to Denton herself, make certain Travis didn’t engineer an accident for his wife and stepdaughter on their way back to Houston.

Dixie’s nerves refused to settle down. Her active imagination had pictured Ellie shivering and starving, Rebecca throwing buckets of freezing water on the tiny feverish body to accelerate the bronchitis. What she’d found instead was a mother taking care of her child, opting to spend the night in a cozy cabin rather than risk several hours on a dangerous highway, even making homemade soup under less than ideal cooking conditions.

Stalling, trying to make sense of her own emotional turmoil, Dixie stopped at the kitchen tap. She wasn’t thirsty, but she drew a glass of water anyway while she assessed the array of herbs and soup vegetables beside the chefs knife and chopping board. Had Rebecca brought all this food from home, expecting to cook it at her mother’s house? Or had she stopped somewhere after deciding to take the detour to the cabin?

Carrots, celery, onions, garlic, mushrooms, parsley, something else green and leafy, salt and pepper, some kind of sprouts. A bottle of herbal diuretic? Dixie picked up the bottle and read the ingredients—uva ursi, juniper berries, and a
long list of other herbs. The fat pink tablets reminded Dixie of something, but she couldn’t quite—

Daffodil bulbs? The open box was pushed against the counter’s backsplash.

Why would Rebecca bring the box of daffodil bulbs from the cafe garden? Dixie recognized the fluorescent PLANT NOW sticker on the front and a diagonal tear close to the top. The box was partially empty. She tipped it, held her hand to catch the bulb, which looked a little like garlic—in fact, it looked exactly like the garlic among the soup vegetables, or what Dixie had
thought
was garlic. This must be one of the exotic edible flowers Dann had mentioned.

Turning the box to read the back, she saw a line drawing of daffodils in bloom, along with drawings of other flowers from the same family, according to the blurb, jonquils and narcissus. Dann had said something about narcissus… had found some in her garden and said they were like the castor bean plants—
eat them and you’re dead
.

Shit!

And now she realized what was familiar about the pink diuretic tablets: They looked exactly like Ryan’s prescription tablets. The pills in Ellie’s prescription bottle were small and white. Yet, according to the label, the medicine was the same, Amoxil.

Three people have died
… Amy had said…
mostly dehydration and pneumonia
. Rebecca had switched the pills. Not only was Ellie not getting the medicine she needed, the diuretic would accelerate dehydration.

Dixie raced back to the bedroom, slipping the Kubaton from her pocket with her good hand….
Don’t frighten the kid, do it but don’t frighten Ellie, no time to deal with her fears when she could right now, oh, God, he dying from the poison in that goddamn soup
… Rebecca was touching the spoon to Ellie’s lips…

Dixie slipped the Kubaton under Rebecca’s arm, into the soft tissue deep in her armpit. Rebecca flinched and sucked in a sharp breath. Dixie kept the pressure steady.

“Mrs. Payne, would you set the bowl down and come to
the kitchen for a minute, please? I want to show you something. You don’t mind if I steal your mommy for a minute, do you, Ellie?”
Talk slowly, soothingly. Keep the Kubaton right up there where it hurts. Hold her arm down with the injured—owl—hand. Watch it, now, she’s tall, she can break your leverage
.

Rebecca leaned toward the cart, but with Dixie holding her arm, she couldn’t reach it. Dixie relaxed her grip a tad so Rebecca could set the bowl down—

The soup bowl slammed into her face. The soup stung her eyes. Blindly she grabbed for Rebecca’s arm, felt it slip away, heard Rebecca run out the door.

“Mommy?”

“Ellie, it’s okay.” Dixie wiped her face on her sleeve. “Stay right there, please.”

Dixie ran after Rebecca.

Something in the soup burning her eyes. Pepper? Okay if it’s pepper, no problem just pain, but what if it’s daffodil-god-damn-bulbs and the poison enters the system through the eyeball?

Dixie heard the kitchen door open, felt a blast of wet, icy wind, saw a blur that had to be Rebecca.

No time! Grab her
. Dixie dove at the open doorway, trying to keep her burning eyes open, hoping Rebecca was in her path.

Nothing. Rebecca was outside.

Outside in the dark with her good eyesight, and Dixie still couldn’t see, even in the light.
Let her go. The important think now is getting Ellie to a hospital
.

She stumbled to the sink, splashed water into her cupped hands, held it to her eyes, blinked rapidly into the water,
which was plenty cussed cold
. Scooped more water, rinsed her eyes again. And again. Fumbled for paper towels.

She could see now, blurry but she could see—

The knife was gone. The big chefs knife beside the cutting board had disappeared.
To hell with it—and to hell with Rebecca—she had to get Ellie out of here
.