Death by the Light of the Moon (14 page)

“He's not here,” I said. It wasn't inspired, but at least it was true.

“Who is this?”

“It's Claire Malloy, Mrs. D'Armand. I came to your husband's office to ask him a few questions.”

“But you said he's not there. Where is he?”

“I don't know. He made a call about an hour ago, and then left without saying anything to me.”

“He left an hour ago? Where did he go? Why are you still there?”

They were reasonable questions, I admitted to myself as I desperately tried to fabricate answers that would not implicate me too severely. I finally settled for evasion. “I've been waiting for him to come back. It's getting rather late, however, and I think I'd better return to the house. Shall I leave a note for him to call you?”

“I do not think so, Mrs. Malloy,” she said, then hung up.

I left the light on in the front room and went out to Ellie's car. D'Armand had not been discussing luggage with his wife earlier, nor had he informed her of an impromptu business trip. For his sake, I hoped he had a compelling explanation when he returned. If he returned, I amended as I drove back through LaRue.

Once I was on the highway, I chose a moderate speed and let myself consider what I now knew about Miller Malloy. He'd had some minor skirmishes with the law and then enlisted in the military—with encouragement from his parents. The siring of an illegitimate child was probable cause for said encouragement.

The letter was noticeably lacking in details. Miller presumed D'Armand could locate the child; this implied the scandal was local. Ergo, the mother was local. There was no evidence in the file that D'Armand had followed Miller's instructions.

Which meant, I thought as I groped for the lever to turn the headlights on bright, nothing. D'Armand might not have been able to find the mother and child, or he might have followed the instructions impeccably but excluded any telltale papers from the file. Or the child had not survived.

But if the child had survived, he or she would be approximately thirty years old. He or she would be a direct descent of Miss Justicia and entitled to one-third of the estate. He or she would not be popular. Stanford was counting on half of the proceeds. Maxie might have to make an addition to the family tree, with a notation that would not enhance her status in the Mayflower Society. Keith, Ellie, and Phoebe would have a new cousin with whom to contend, as would Caron Malloy.

I hadn't stopped to consider how Caron and I would deal with whatever she received from the estate—particularly if it involved a lot of money. Although our lifestyle would never be the subject of a television show, we survived off the bookstore. There were periods of relative famine, when microwavable entrées were replaced by boxed macaroni and canned soup. We shopped at the discount store, but we also shopped at the mall when I was courageous enough to withstand the sanitized music and the piranhas with their plastic cards. To her eloquently vocalized diegust, she was allowed to augment her allowance by working at the bookstore, and in rare moments of desperation, she did.

But now she was rapidly becoming a greedy green monster. I made a mental note to warn her that probate could take years, especially when several members of the family would contest the intestacy. The legal fees would diminish the estate, radically. Rodney Spikenard might be the only one to realize any profit from the sordid business.

Because, I thought as I dimmed the lights for an oncoming car, he had not written out Miss Justicia's new will. He'd said the reason fell into the realm of client-attorney confidentiality.

Headlights flashed in my rearview mirror, banishing any potential blossoming theories. Annoyed, I slowed down and pulled to the right side of the lane to allow the car to pass me. It was only a gesture, in that the highway ahead of me was devoid of oncoming traffic. “Get on with it,” I said irritably.

The headlights continued to blind me. They'd drifted to the right, too, and seemed closer. Feeling as if a dragon were bearing down on me, I decelerated even more and pulled farther to the right until I was partially on the shoulder.

The car behind me did the same. I'd been confused for the last day and a half, and my confusion had deepened in the last several hours. I was not brain-dead, however, and I had a fairly decent idea who was driving the car. Not who, I corrected myself with a grimace. It was the color of the car that was not challenging to surmise, and if it wasn't yellow, then I wasn't hyperventilating while driving down a deserted highway in a stolen Jaguar.

While being chased by a stolen taxi.

A glance in the mirror confirmed my theory. I couldn't think how far away the driveway of the house was. Ellie had made the trip in less time than it takes to plan one's memorial service, but I'd driven to LaRue slowly, and had been returning at the same speed.

And what was he—whoever he was—planning to do? I wasn't going to park at the side of the road, roll down the window, and wait for him to approach the car. If he wanted to follow me to New Orleans, the night was young and he was welcome to try it. It occurred to me it might be prudent to move away from the shoulder. I was assisted by a sudden jolt to the bumper. The steering wheel jerked to one side, but I clenched my hands and steadied it.

“You'd better watch it!” I growled, then clamped my lips together and considered what to do. He wasn't going to wait for me to park, nor was he interested in a marathon chase to the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, it seemed he'd selected the less time-consuming approach of running me off the road.

Shivering, I accelerated as much as I dared. Whenever the headlights closed in, I swerved across the lanes, tapped the brake lights, and in general tried to discourage him. He seemed to interpret my behavior as playfulness. Unless I was willing to continue this unpleasant game, I needed to take some sort of definitive action.

I risked taking a hand off the wheel long enough to tilt the rearview mirror and wipe away an accumulation of sweat. Heroines weren't supposed to sweat in gothic novels, I told myself with a hint of hysteria. Or in traditional mysteries, for that matter. As I drove at a dizzying speed, dodging a maniac in a yellow cab, I tried to think of a fictional ploy that might be useful.

I really couldn't attack him with a knitting needle or a brolly, unless I intended to get within striking range. I couldn't cluck at him and tell him how he reminded me of the vicar's younger brother. I couldn't disarm him with cookies, or even flee across the countryside on a camel.

Clearly, I'd been reading the wrong genre. If I'd forced myself to study the hard-boiled private eyes of both sexes, I'd now have some ideas how to rid myself of the problem.

The problem took it upon himself to remind me of his presence by ramming the bumper. I veered toward the shoulder, veered the opposite way until I crossed the median, and forced myself to drive even faster. I also called him several names more suitable to the latter genre as we sped past the entrance to the driveway that led to Malloy Manor.

In front of me lay a flat black stretch of nothingness. No cars had appeared from either direction since the taxi first loomed on my bumper. The house was behind me, and my distance from it was increasing at more than a mile per minute. At this speed, I told myself with a fierce scowl, we would be out of the parish before too long and on our way into the great unknown.

The headlights tried to engulf me. I bit my lip and put the pedal to the floor. The car leapt forward as if it had been goosed, a reasonably accurate analogy; I clung to the wheel and warned myself not to look at the speedometer.

LaRue was behind us, but I realized the airport was ahead of us. It was not my haven of choice. I could not expect to find a heavily guarded marine base, however, so I started trying to read the signs that materialized and vanished within seconds.

I finally saw the dusty green sign. I adjusted the rearview mirror long enough to determine I had a hundred feet on the taxi, braked abruptly, and squealed into the road that curved toward a low brick building. It wasn't La Guardia, by any means, but the lights were on and a few cars were moving.

I halted at the end of a sidewalk that led to double glass doors, grabbed the key, and sprinted for the interior. Once I was on the side of the door that I preferred, I looked back for the taxi. I didn't know if he'd turned on the airport road, but he hadn't continued to the building.

The decor here was less charming than in D'Armand's office, but I felt a rush of fondness for the harsh white lights, rows of plastic chairs, metal trash containers, and even the bored women behind the car rental counters. Based on their expressions, they were not as thrilled by my presence, nor were the clerks at the airline counters, nor was the custodian pushing a mop across the floor.

The lights above the airline counters went off at the same time, and the clerks went through doors behind them. One of the car rental agents announced it was eleven o'clock, and before I could realize what was happening, they, too, exited. La Guardia might buzz and hum twenty-four hours a day. Here, the runways were being rolled up for the night. The lovely white lights were going out one by one; the employees were going out the doors in droves.

The custodian, an elderly black man in a khaki jumpsuit, shot me an incurious look as he aimed his mop at a discolored circle in front of a plastic plant. I myself would have been more curious about the entrance of a pale and harried woman, nevertheless becoming, who'd skittered inside the airport as it closed for the night and now seemed resolved to stand by the door on a permanent basis.

“I'm lockin' up in five minutes,” he said as he attacked the circle. “Ain't no more planes tonight, comin' or goin'.”

This dashed my hopes of hopping on the next plane to Farberville, or to anyplace else. The only car visible was Ellie's, but this did not preclude a yellow taxi parked along the road. I'd drawn the attentions of a psycho or two in the past, but this guy seemed to have dedicated his days and nights to insinuating himself in my affairs in a most unpleasant manner.

“Got to lock the door shortly,” the custodian said. The mop was in the bucket, and the floor as pristine as it would ever be. He and I were the last two in the building, and for some inexplicable reason, he acted as though he had other ideas how best to spend what remained of the evening.

“I know this sounds crazy,” I said humbly, “but there's someone chasing me, and I'm afraid he's waiting out there for me. Can't we wait inside until he gives up and leaves?”

“You can wait
outside
as long as you want,” the custodian muttered. He began to roll the bucket toward a short hallway. “After I put this away, I'm goin' home. I've been here for eight hours, lady, and it ain't that much fun. You got three minutes to pray your crazy man finds someone else to chase.”

I scowled at his back. “I thought Southerners were warm and gracious. Here I am, alone and frightened, and…a widow! I'm a widow. I'd like to think you might do something to prevent a widow from being murdered in front of the airport.”

The bucket squeaked as he went through a doorway.

My oratorical talents were less impressive than my theatrical ones. I looked out the door once again, but all I saw was Ellie's car and an empty parking lot. If the driver was waiting, he'd switched off his headlights.

“Okay,” I called loudly, “but don't blame me when you have to mop the blood off the sidewalk in the morning!” I darted into the ladies rest room, gingerly climbed on the commode in the last stall, and pulled the metal door closed. I had a few minutes to read the graffiti, all juvenile and anatomically impossible, before the overhead light went off.

I held my breath as I waited to find out what he'd do if he noticed Ellie's car. Apparently, he was not interested in the whereabouts of the imperiled widow who'd pleaded for help. A lock was secured noisily, followed by footsteps and the sound of a second lock being secured. After several more minutes of self-inflicted oxygen deprivation, I decided I was alone in the airport.

The rest room was as dark as any crypt, thus making my turtlish journey through it an adventure in itself. I eased open the door. The main room of the airport was illuminated by a streetlight near the curb. I stayed in the doorway while I assessed the situation. Even the most moonstruck psychotic might realize the significance of Ellie's car in the drive—and the significance of the departure of the employees.

Who the hell could he be, I asked myself as I dug my fingernails into my palms, and why was he after me? Me, for pity's sake? I peered around the corner and noted that the lock on the glass door was a dead bolt, and, in particular, the kind that requires a key from either side.

I kept a cautious distance from the oblong of light as I explored the small building. The rear exit had a similar dead bolt. The doors behind each counter had more mundane locks, but they were locked, nevertheless.

My pursuer could not get in, which was good. I could not get out, which for the moment was not bad. I had no intention of strolling out to the car and presented myself as a target to be gunned down or run down, depending on his preference of the hour.

I read the board above the nearest counter. The first arrival was at seven o'clock. The other airline was anticipating no action until eight. The airport would open at six or so, I surmised, which meant I had no more than seven hours to amuse myself by memorizing arrivals and departures, and perhaps finding a print-laden ticket to study.

There were vending machines in a corner, but my purse was in the car. There were also pay telephones along the wall, equally inaccessible to those without coins. Wondering if the clerks might keep change in their drawers, I went behind the counter and discovered that I would never know, since the drawers were locked.

My frown faded as I noticed a telephone. I looked at the door to make sure the driver wasn't peering back at me (while drooling on the glass, or preparing to attack it with a hammer), then took the telephone and sat down on the floor behind the counter.