Blindfold (27 page)

With the hammer no longer an immediate threat,

Maggie reached up with her bound hands to rip the blindfold from her eyes. Being able to see again made her weak with gratitude.

Lane was on the floor, on the other side of the sawhorse, blood dripping from her mouth. She wasn't unconscious. Her eyes were open. But she was clearly stunned.

The saw ... where was the saw? Maggie needed it. Fast! There ... it had fallen to the floor when Lane hit the sawhorse.

Maggie knelt, brought the rope around her wrists up against the edge of the saw, ripped it back and forth rapidly three, four times, until the rope gave. Glancing over her right shoulder to see Lane struggling to get to her feet, Maggie ran to the plastic flap to scream for help.

Lane got up. Swayed dizzily. Reached down blindly for the hammer. Grasped it, picked it up.

Maggie screamed. Far below her, like ants at a picnic, she saw workmen walking slowly toward the building from the direction of the high school. She screamed again, then looked fearfully over her shoulder.

Lane, swaying precariously, blood dripping steadily downward from her chin, creating a ribbon of red on the front of her white blouse, took a staggering step toward Maggie, hammer raised high.

"Lane, don't... don't," Maggie said softly. "You know it's over. It is."

The beautiful eyes blinked once, twice. "It's over?" she asked. "It's all over?"

"Yes," Maggie said gently. "Put the hammer

down, Lane. The sheriff is coming." And that was true. Maggie had seen him heading for the same door she'd come in, the one directly opposite the giant statue.

And for one quiet, peaceful minute, she thought Lane had accepted that. That she was going to put the hammer down and then maybe sink down to the floor or sit on the sawhorse and just wait for whatever was going to happen next.

And then Lane's pretty face twisted, and her bleeding mouth opened, and out of it came a scream of raw, pure, animal rage that filled the empty room. Maggie thought that even the blank, white walls shuddered in fear, hearing that sound.

Lane lifted the hammer. Still screaming that terrible sound, she rushed at Maggie, who stood beside the opening, clutching an open edge of the plastic in terror.

At the very last second, with the hammer only inches from her forehead, Maggie threw herself to one side, crying out Lane's name as she fell to the floor.

She stayed there, her face in her hands, as Lane went through the plastic and out into nothingness.

She screamed all the way down.

Maggie lay unmoving on the unfinished floor for what seemed like a very long time. She could hear distant voices outside. Maybe they were shouting. Maybe they were just talking. She couldn't be sure. It didn't seem to matter.

The next thing she was aware of, was a closer voice. Right there beside her, in fact, which surprised her. She hadn't heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Hadn't heard anything, only the steady flap-flap of the plastic wall that hadn't kept Lane from falling.

But there it was, a voice, asking her something. Scout. And then another voice ... Helen's? ... and a third ... Whit's. They wanted her to get up. They were telling her it was okay.

She had told Lane that. Only it hadn't been true. Maybe it wasn't true now. Maybe she shouldn't get up.

But she did, finally. And then she walked, as unsteadily as Lane had, pulled aside the flap, and looked down.

And there was Lane, lying on her back in the scoop on the left side of the scales in the hands of Lady Justice. Even from four floors up, since Lane wasn't wearing a blindfold like the statue, Maggie could see that her eyes were wide open. But she looked quite comfortable, as if she were only resting, and would get up in just a minute, when she felt better.

It seemed so perfectly ironic. Lane hadn't trusted the criminal justice system. Her sick and twisted mind had created a system of her own. And it had brought her here, where she rested in the scales of justice, after all.

"I'd like to go home now," Maggie said to her friends.

They took her home.

The party was going well, in spite of the recent tragedy. The new courthouse, the last set of hinges fastened, the last coat of paint applied, the last desk in place, was resplendent with red, white, and blue crepe paper streaming from its pillars, and huge pots of red geraniums dotting the front veranda. High above the ground, at the very top of the building, the statue was firmly fastened in place. Lady Justice stood unseeing, towering over the town of Felicity, balancing the set of scales in her hands.

It seemed to Maggie that everyone in town, maybe everyone in the county, had turned out. Even James and Chantilly were there, their faces scratched and bruised and a lot of their usual swagger missing. Maggie thought that maybe their brush with death had drained some of the fight out of them. When they passed Maggie and Whit, they each actually raised a hand in acknowledgment. The gesture seemed to say, / still don't like you

very much, but one of you did drag us out of that ditch. They were still facing charges of malicious mischief, but probably would get probation. It wasn't as if they'd killed anyone.

There had been talk, upon Lane's death, of canceling the party. But the consensus of opinion was, considering the pain and heartache Lane Bridgewater had caused the town, that wasn't necessary.

There hadn't been many people at her funeral. No one was especially eager to be known as her friend. Whit came, and Helen, Scout, Alex, and Maggie. And Ms. Gross, and most of Lane's teachers. Although Lane had been popular, few T of her other classmates attended. One of them told Maggie, when asked later why she hadn't attended, that her parents wouldn't let her.

"Right," Maggie said curtly, and walked away.

Scout's mother wasn't at the party. Saying that she was not about to travel all the way to California alone, she had insisted that Scout return the California ticket, which was what Scout had been about to do when Maggie saw him approaching the bus station looking so angry. He had been angry. And disappointed. But after some negotiations, Mrs. Redfern had agreed to attend rehab in Cincinnati, and Scout and his father were driving her there. She would get the help she needed.

Maggie hadn't seen any need to tell Scout that she had, even for a little while, suspected him of committing horrendous deeds. He had accepted, with grudgingly good spirits, the fact that she was with Whit now. The least she could do in return was

keep her big, fat mouth shut about thinking him a murderer.

With his mother about to leave for twenty-one days, and one of his closest friends, Lane, gone, Scout might have looked a little more forlorn if it hadn't been for Bennie Sawyer, who was doing her very best to cheer him up. Bennie was good at that. It seemed to be working.

Helen and Alex were playing Ping-Pong, and even laughed once in a while, though Helen, especially, had taken the news of Lane's death (and what she had done) hard. But Helen was looking forward to helping Maggie's mother restore the old warehouse and turn it into a children's museum. Sheila Keene had called it "therapy" when she talked them all into volunteering.

"She never stops, does she?" Helen had asked Maggie as they filled paper plates at a buffet table set up on the new lawn.

"Nope."

"You don't, either," Helen said with admiration. "Like mother, like daughter, I guess."

Maggie took that as a compliment.

She had looked, just once, at the old courthouse as they'd passed it, and felt a pang of remorse for Otis Bransom and the beautiful mansion he'd built. But it was time now for the building to pass on into history, time to move on to something new. The new courthouse would serve Greene County well. And there were no dark secrets hidden inside.

Whit had repeatedly asked her if she was still going to the party. She had said yes, of course she

was going. And he'd repeated something he'd said to her earlier, a long, long time ago. "You don't scare easily, do you?"

She hoped not. Being scared was not a good way to live.

Now, he came up to her with a cup in each hand, handed her one, and asked her for the second time that afternoon if she was okay being here after what had happened.

No, of course she wasn't okay. She had lost a best friend, in a horrible way. And in spite of everything that Lane had done, Maggie would miss her fiercely for a very long time. Then there was the pain of thinking she knew someone so well and finding out she hadn't known Lane at all. That was scary. Then there was the matter of visiting Felicity even after she'd left for good. Every time she passed the new courthouse, she would remember, and she would feel sick, remembering.

But...

She had lost Lane, but she still had good friends. More important, she still had her life. Lane hadn't taken that from her.

And she was Maggie Keene. Who didn't quit.

The first time Whit had asked her if she was okay being here after what had happened, she had answered, "I don't know."

This time, she forced a smile, tilted her head to look directly up at him, and answered, "Something happened here?"

And he laughed.

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