Dead Giveaway (21 page)

“Aha!” Hal let out a whoop of pleasure. Now he could go home to bed. If he could get there.

Hal's legs refused to carry him any longer, and he sat down on the rug with a thump, staring at the darkness inside. What had Vanessa been doing in Clayton's apartment?

He ran his hand through the thick pile carpeting and frowned, trying to think of a connection. He shut his eyes to concentrate, but before he could draw any conclusion, he passed out cold.

 

 

Betty frowned as she stared at the screen. The moment she'd realized that her secret friend was in this movie, she'd pressed the button to record. And then she'd seen that it was another scary movie, the kind she didn't like. Why had they typecast him in roles like this? He was handsome enough to play a romantic lead, and he might be able to do comedy, too, if they'd only give him a chance.

Even though she knew it was only make-believe, Betty still felt very afraid. The man who drew the funny animals was dead, and her secret friend had killed him. She wasn't so sure she wanted him to visit her again, not even if he brought her candy.

She remembered a trick that Charles had taught her when they were young and saw the movie about the vampire. She'd wanted to leave. Charles had told her to cover her eyes with her hand and peek out through her fingers and she'd remember it was only a movie.

Betty put her hand over her eyes and peeked through. It worked. This was only a movie on her television set, all pretend. She watched as her secret friend dragged the body into the elevator and the doors closed behind them. Now she had to take her fingers down so she could use the remote control to find the rest of the movie.

It wasn't on forbidden channel four. They were running a late-night commercial for a company that sold pianos. These were old pianos and she'd seen this commercial many times before. It must be a very effective sales device because the cowgirl had bought one and moved it up to forbidden channel nine.

Betty smiled as she switched to channel three. She'd found it! It was just like reading a story in the newspaper. When they ran out of space on one page, they continued it on another. Television was like that now. Betty was forever having to switch channels to watch the ends of movies.

Her secret friend had thrown a rope over a beam on the ceiling. Now he was tying a loop in one end and hooking it around the funny animal man's neck. Betty got her eyes covered just in time. She watched through the space between her fingers as he pulled on the rope and hoisted the funny animal man up in the air to dangle. Then he tipped over a chair and put it underneath and the movie was over at last.

Betty knew that there was something very frightening about all the movies she'd seen lately. It had to do with the forbidden channels and the actors who appeared on the screen. She thought she remembered Jack telling her that they weren't really actors. Of course they could be part of a neighborhood theater group. Sometimes public access television ran amateur programming and that would explain why the movies weren't very professional. Once upon a time, Jack had sat right here in this very room and told her all about it, but she'd forgotten most of what he'd said.

Her frown changed to a smile as she pressed the button for forbidden channel eight. The doll-lady was sitting on a couch, paging through a magazine. There were bunnies around her feet again and Betty wished she had some, too. But why didn't they hop away? She was trying to figure it out, when the doll-lady raised her foot and a word popped right into Betty's head like magic.

“Slippers!”
Betty was so delighted she said the word out loud. The doll-lady was very generous. She'd given Betty the big patchwork doll, so she could have company now that Jack wasn't here. Maybe, if she could remember the words, the doll-lady would let her wear the fuzzy bunny slippers.

Betty reached for the notepad by the side of her bed and wrote down a
B
for bunny. That wasn't enough.
B
was for bunny, but it was also for ball. She sang the rhyme out loud. A
is for apple and
B
is for ball
. C
is for cat and
D
is for doll
. She needed more letters for the bunny slippers, but that was as far as she could remember. Perhaps she could draw a picture.

She worked very hard at the drawing and when she'd finished, she had a good picture, almost as good as a photograph. She circled the things, she'd forgotten their names already, and put in the mark that meant question. Now all she had to do was show it to the doll-lady.

She stared at the picture for a moment and then frowned, vaguely recalling that young children wore things like these. Was she too old to have them? She glanced down at her hands. She'd heard Nurse say that her job was like taking care of a big baby, but hers were adult hands. How did people judge age if they couldn't remember birthdays?

Betty searched her mind for the answer. If she had been a horse, she could have gone to the mirror and looked at her teeth. Horse traders could tell an animal's age by checking its teeth.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
It was clever if you knew what it meant.

Then a funny thought popped into her head and Betty laughed out loud. If she'd been a tree, somebody could have counted her rings. She had two on her left hand and one on her right. That told her absolutely nothing, but the rings were certainly pretty. She held up her right hand and the big Tiffany-cut stone glittered in the light. It was a diamond and diamonds were forever. Charles had said that when she'd opened the box. It was too bad that Charles hadn't been as forever as the diamond.

At a sound outside her door, Betty switched off the television set. Then she pulled up the blankets and closed her eyes so the Nurse-bird would think she was sleeping when she came in to do the bed check.

Walker moved close enough to recognize Alan and Laureen stretched out on the lounge chairs. Alan was sleeping on his stomach, snoring softly, and he looked very uncomfortable. Laureen was on her back with the blanket pulled up to her chin, as if she were taking the air on the deck of a cruise ship.

He studied their sleeping faces for a moment. Walker couldn't blame them for fleeing their own apartment. Dead bodies made him uncomfortable, too. He'd never grown used to seeing the slack features and wide-open eyes staring up at nothing. Sometimes there was a surprised look, a perplexed expression, or a grimace that didn't quite fade as death froze the features into a mask.

Walker'd had several close encounters and he had the scars to prove it, a six-inch knife cut that had nearly spilled his guts out on the ground, and a shoulder wound that still twinged whenever it was about to rain. Usually it didn't bother him, but there were times like tonight when he wanted out. They'd offered to let him retire after this job, but now that his family was gone, there was really no reason to take them up on it.

Some people accepted death as inevitable. Others sought all sorts of ways to ensure immortality, like spending a fortune to be preserved at subzero temperatures and thawed when modern medicine had found the cure for their fatal disease. Walker had decided that he'd be better off ignoring death and living each day as it came, which seemed to work just fine until something happened to remind him that his luck couldn't last forever.

Many might argue that his luck was relative. Walker had lost his wife and his six-year-old daughter in an auto accident. At least that was what he'd told people, omitting that the accident involved a bomb under the hood of his car. If you had good protection, they moved on to your family.

As Walker reached out to press the elevator button, his hand was trembling. His still got the shakes every time he thought about that morning, five years ago. The phone had rung at eight o'clock, just as Jenny had been sitting down to her favorite cereal, a gruesome concoction that turned pink and soggy when she poured milk on it.

“I'll get it, hon.” Cheryl had sprinted across the floor to grab it before he'd even pushed back his chair. She'd been a long-distance runner before they were married and had almost made the Olympic track team. She probably could have made it four years later, but she'd married him and had Jenny by that time.

“He did? Right next to his eye? That sounds nasty, Mavis.” Cheryl had held the phone with one hand and refilled his coffee cup with the other. “It's not really serious, is it?”

Walker had studied the furrow that appeared on his wife's forehead and sighed. Definitely a problem.

“Of course.” Cheryl's voice had been very sympathetic. “We'll just switch weeks, all right? And tell Danny he'll look like a pirate.”

Cheryl had hung up the phone and poured herself a cup of coffee. Then she'd flopped down in a chair and sighed. “Danny had an allergic reaction to a spider bite. His eye's swollen shut and Mavis has to keep him home from school. Do you mind driving the bug today, Walker? I have to do the car pool.”

“Sure, no problem.” Walker had agreed immediately, even though he hated to drive Cheryl's bug. When rust spots had appeared on her lime-green car, she'd covered them up with flower decals. From a distance, it looked polka-dotted, which was bad enough, but when people got a close look at the pink and purple and yellow daisies, they smirked.

Cheryl had laughed and Walker had known she was reading his mind. “Sorry, hon. I know how you feel, but I can't cram six first graders into the bug, and there's no time to run over to get Mom's station wagon.”

“I told you, no problem. It's probably good for me to drive around in a flowered car. Builds character. What was that business about the pirate?”

“Oh, that.” Cheryl had smiled. “The doctor gave Mavis a patch to put over Danny's eye. Naturally, he hates it. I just thought he might leave it on if she tells him he looks like a pirate.”

Jenny had nodded solemnly. “Danny wants to be a pirate when he grows up. He loves airpranes.” Walker and Cheryl had exchanged amused glances over the rims of their coffee cups. “Want to explain?” Walker had done his best to maintain a straight face. Jenny had developed a slight lisp and she was very sensitive about it.

“On the drive to school.” Cheryl had pushed back her chair and stood up. “Any gas in the van?”

“Not much. I was planning on filling it this morning.”

“Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. Isn't that our motto, hon?” She'd given Walker a quick kiss on the forehead. “There's not much in the bug, either. Come on, Jenny. Give Daddy a kiss and get your coat. We have to leave right now or we won't make it to school on time.”

He'd still been sitting at the table, drinking the last of his coffee, when he'd heard the explosion. By the time he'd run out the door, his van had been an inferno. The doctor had said they'd died instantly, but that had been small comfort.

For the first few weeks, Walker had been in a state of shock. And when that had worn off, his guts had churned with white-hot anger at the men who'd killed his family. He knew that a man hell-bent on revenge took foolish chances, so he'd waited, and two years later the opportunity had come. His retaliation hadn't brought Cheryl and Jenny back, but it had been sweet. And then he'd closed the book on his dream for a normal life. A man in his profession had to be a loner.

Walker thought about Ellen as he got off the elevator and walked down the hall. It was a real pity they'd raised questions about Johnny Day, and he was glad that Ellen hadn't joined in their speculation. He hated to think of what would certainly happen if she started adding up the facts. If there was some way to warn her off, he'd be tempted, but the orders he'd been given were very specific.

In spite of his orders and training, Walker had still gotten personally involved. He'd liked Ellen the first time he'd met her. She was bright and witty, and because she was so totally defensive around men, he'd spent a lot of time trying to bring her around. The turning point had come just a week ago, when he'd found her on a ladder, arranging supplies on her storage shelves. She'd asked him to please give her a hand, so he had. Right out of the box of spare parts.

Ellen had stared at him for a moment and then cracked up. She'd laughed so hard, he'd had to help her down from the ladder and she hadn't stopped laughing for at least five minutes.

Now she even teased him back occasionally. And she was an absolute master of the pun, Walker's favorite form of humor. That crack she'd made to Vanessa after he'd given her the bunny slippers had almost finished him off. And as her ability to laugh had grown, so had her trust in him. That had been his real objective. Ellen had to trust him enough to believe the lies he was required to tell her.

Walker smiled. He'd actually talked her into going up to the Jacuzzi with him last night, a step in the right direction. Of course she'd worn a discreet one-piece suit, and over that, a terry-cloth robe. She'd taken it off to jump into the Jacuzzi, but only after asking him to turn off the lights. Even though she had the perfect body for a bikini, Walker knew it would reveal too much of what she thought she had to hide. He'd never met a woman so paranoid around men before, which made his job even more difficult. There were times when Walker felt like marching Ellen over to the mirror, stripping off every stitch of her clothing, and forcing her to look at herself objectively.

Reaching for his key, Walker paused at the door for a moment. Part of him wished that Ellen would be awake again tonight, waiting up for him. No one had cared about what time he came home since Cheryl and Jenny had died. On the other side of the coin, she might get suspicious if she realized that he'd been out two nights in a row. Then she'd start asking questions and that could be very dangerous for her.

 

 

Ellen glanced at the clock. It was three-thirty in the morning and Walker was gone again. She sighed and turned back to the eight-month-old issue of
Newsweek
she'd bought for the article about Justin Holmes, an artist who made life-size dolls in New York. She hadn't bothered to read the rest of the magazine and now the news was too stale to hold much interest.

Even though she tried not to think about it, Ellen's mind turned to Vanessa. The thought of anyone trapped in a cold, dark place, bleeding to death all alone, was horrible. Ellen put the magazine back on the table and got up to pace across the floor. She'd give Walker another ten minutes before going up to the spa to look for him. She needed some company tonight to take her mind off the nightmare that had shaken her screaming from her bed, a recurrence of the graveyard dream she'd had last night. The only difference was that tonight's version had gone on longer.

Again, the hand from the grave had reached up to pull her down, and although she'd dug her fingers into the grass until her hands bled with the effort, it had dragged her down to lie in the damp, cold earth. Then something had embraced her there in the frigid ground, something cold and repulsive and evil. She'd been powerless to resist while it probed and fondled the most intimate recesses of her unwilling body, leaching the warmth from her flesh until she'd been waxen and paralyzed. Then, satisfied, it had given a maniacal shriek. And she had opened her eyes to see two people standing at the edge of the grave, watching her violation. She'd screamed so loud it had jolted her from the awful nightmare, but not before she'd recognized Vanessa and Johnny, laughing down at her.

Now that the dream had run its course, its message was obvious. Her experience with Johnny had been even more traumatic than she'd realized. And even though she'd vowed not to trust any man again, the nightmare still roused its ugly head whenever she'd had a troubling day.

After she'd hired Walker, it had stopped for a while, but now it was back with a vengeance. Was it because she was beginning to rely on Walker? If that was the case, she'd have to be very careful to see it went no further.

Ellen walked across the room and confronted her image, the same old Ellen in the mirror, skinny as a stick and about as alluring as a wet dishrag. At the sound of a key in the lock, she raced back to the couch, picked up the magazine again, and flipped it open. She didn't want Walker to think she'd been waiting up just for him.

Walker looked startled to see her sitting up, two nights in a row. “Don't tell me you couldn't sleep again?”

Ellen shrugged off his question. “I got up to make a sandwich. Then I didn't feel like going back to bed.”

“Want to go up to the Jacuzzi? It's beautiful again tonight.” Walker gave her a smile that made her heart beat faster and Ellen smiled back. So that's where he'd been all this time!

“No, thanks, Walker. My bathing suit's still damp from last night.”

“Probably for the best. We'd have to be too quiet, anyway. Alan and Laureen are up there, camping out on the lounge chairs. The freezer must have gotten to them.”

“I can understand that! I certainly wouldn't want to sleep right next to . . .” Ellen stopped and shivered.

“Me neither. How about a walk? It's not that cold, and the snow's stopped falling.”

“Great.” Ellen got to her feet. “We've been cooped up inside since the avalanche hit. Just let me get my parka.”

Walker glanced down at her feet and his grin got wider. “Better put on your boots, too. I don't care if you go out in your nightgown and robe, but I don't think those bunny slippers are snowproof.”

 

 

“Wake up, Paul. I need you!”

Paul opened his eyes to find Jayne leaning over him. He pulled her down and tried to kiss her, but she shook her head.

“Not that. At least not right now. Are you awake?”

Paul sat up and yawned. “I am awake. What is it, Jayne?”

“I know what was wrong at Clayton and Rachael's. I finally figured it out.”

“Tell me.” Paul reached out for her hand. It was ice cold.

“Rachael didn't take her fur hat, the one she always wore to keep her ears warm. She told me she got terrible earaches if she didn't wear it.”

“Rachael may have had two hats. I would take the precaution of buying an additional, if I were that sensitive to the cold. I think you are mortgaging trouble, Jayne.”

“Borrowing trouble.” Jayne flipped over on her stomach so her voice was muffled by the pillow. “I guess you're right. It just bothered me, that's all. Will you rub my back, honey? I missed your back rubs more than a greenhorn misses targets.”

Paul straddled her body and began to massage her back, trying not to think of the other enjoyable things they could be doing in this very same position. He wasn't successful, but Jayne relaxed at last and he continued to rub until her breathing was deep and regular and he was sure she was asleep. Then he covered her with the blankets and slid over to sit on the edge of the bed. Now he was wide-awake, wishing he'd given in to his impulse. Jayne would have welcomed him, he was sure, but he didn't have the heart to wake her. Had Rachael owned two fur hats? The only person who could tell them was Rachael, herself.

Paul got up and walked to the window, where he had an unobstructed view of the pine grove below. The moon, a bright silver sphere in the dark velvet sky, sparkled like gemstones on the smooth sheet of unbroken snow. He smiled as he recognized Ellen and Walker out for a midnight stroll.

As he watched, Walker took Ellen's arm to help her over an icy patch of ground, and Paul was pleased that Ellen didn't pull away. He thought back to the first time he'd met Ellen, right after she'd moved into Charlotte and Lyle's apartment. Painfully shy, she'd been friendly enough when she met her neighbors in the hall, but Johnny had been the only one she'd really talked to.