Death Climbs a Tree (28 page)

“You know she went out to deliver something to the man Alex is dating. Jim somebody. Brought me supper first.”

“Yes, and?”

“When she came back—well, she didn't come all the way back here again.…”

“Andrew, get to the point. Is she hurt?”

“I don't know. I think maybe he attacked her.”

“And she's still out there?” He was on his feet.

“No. I saw her get in the car, but she looked terrible. She drove off. So I called her cell.”

Was there no way to speed him up? Fred forced himself to slow down, as he would with a witness to something he didn't care so much about. He loosened his hand from its death grip on the phone and waited.

Andrew went on, louder now, “She said he came on to her.”

“That's all?” Joan was capable of dealing with a flirt.

“No. He grabbed her arm, and she couldn't pull away from him. Then all of a sudden he let her go—pushed her, even. Anyhow, that's what she said. But isn't it true that a lot of rape victims are too ashamed to tell? That's how she sounded, ashamed. And scared. I saw her almost fall down the steps when she came out of his cabin.”

“Where is she now?”

“She didn't let me see her again. She said she was going to see a friend of Sylvia's. Oh, that's the other part. The woman's named Birdie, and that's what Sylvia said just before she fell: ‘Birdie, no!' Mom thinks she meant that Birdie. But I don't know where she lives.”

“I do. Thanks, Andrew.” If she was with Birdie, she was safe for the moment, anyway.

“Fred? You think I should come down?” The voice shrank again, as if he'd pulled away or maybe couldn't make himself say it.

Fred held back the explosion he'd been resisting ever since Andrew first dropped his own bombshell on them. “Of course I think you should come down. You never should have gone up in the first place.”

“I can see this guy's cabin from up here, you know. Let you know if he leaves.”

“He's in there now?”

“Yeah. Hasn't come out since he watched Mom drive off. He stood there and waved at her, can you believe it?”

That was the sheriff's territory. Pursuing someone out there was one thing, but staking out his residence in the county would be entirely different. Andrew, inside the city limits, could do the job without overstepping any boundaries. If you overlooked his ongoing trespass on private property, that is.

“The last thing I want to do is keep you up in that damn tree,” Fred said slowly. “But as long as you insist on staying up there, I want to know the minute you see him do anything. You have my cell phone number?”

“Yes.” Andrew's voice combined seriousness and joy in that one word. “And Fred, I won't let you down.”

He didn't use the siren on the short trip to Birdie's. But his fingers gripped the steering wheel as tightly as they'd gripped the phone, and he had to work to keep from flooring the gas pedal.

Relief flooded over him when he saw Joan's old car standing alone in front of the house. He took the porch steps two at a time and punched the doorbell.

“Lieutenant,” Birdie said. “Come in.”

He nodded and reached Joan in three steps. Then he couldn't speak. And he hesitated to take her in his arms.

“Fred, what are you doing here?” she said. Her hair was coming loose, but her shirt was buttoned and hardly rumpled, only a little more than usual for this time of day. Most of all, her manner was calm for a rape victim.

“Andrew called. He was worried after he talked to you.”

She smiled. “As hard as I work at not hovering, now he's doing it?”

“Are you really all right? He didn't hurt you?”

“Come sit down. Birdie has something I think you need to hear.”

He sat in the chair she pointed to, and she took Birdie's hand and led her to the love seat. Birdie's face was tear streaked.

“Tell him, Birdie,” Joan urged softly. “Fred will understand.”

Birdie shook her head and stared at her lap. “I can't.”

“I won't let anything happen to you. It's different now. I'll back you up. People will have to believe you. I'll even find you another job, if you don't want to stay there.”

“Really?” Birdie looked up at her. “You'd do that for me?”

“Of course I would. And I'm sure there are all kinds of people who'd be glad to have you working for them. We just have to find the right one. Someone who will treat you like a human being.”

“What happened, Birdie?” Fred asked gently.

She raised her eyes to his. “Jim Chandler—the man you met at Fulford…”

“Yes.”

“He raped me. More than once.”

“At work?”

“At his cabin. Where Joan went today. That's how she knows what he'd do.”

“When?”

“The last time was before he started going out with Alex—you know Alex?”

Fred nodded. That meant there was virtually no chance of finding any forensic evidence. Birdie would have bathed many times and almost certainly laundered her clothing since then. And any abrasions there might have been probably wouldn't show by now.

Birdie went on telling her story. At first she could hardly get the words out, but then they came faster and faster. Yes, she'd washed her clothes. No, she'd never gone to the hospital or filed a police report. But she had told a friend.

“What friend?” he asked.

“Sylvia Purcell. I made her promise not to tell anyone. She didn't like it, but she promised.”

“Did you go out to the cabin the day Sylvia fell?” he asked.

Her eyes opened wide. “How did you know?”

“We have a witness who heard her call your name just before she fell.” He avoided Joan's eyes, though maybe she'd already told Birdie what Andrew had said. “She could see his cabin from the tree, you know.”

“I know.” She was staring at her lap again. “She'd call me at work after I'd been out there and tell me I was a fool for keeping his secret.”

“Did he know you'd told her?”

“Yes, but he didn't take her seriously, and he didn't think anyone else would, either. And now she can't tell.”

“But you can. If we need you, would you be willing to testify?”

She nodded mutely.

29

On the short trip home, Joan wished they hadn't driven separately.

But she let Fred sit down on the sofa to take off his shoes before asking, “Have you excluded Jim Chandler from your list of possibles?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Until today, the man seemed squeaky clean. A Scout leader. He was working at home the day Sylvia was hit—Andrew heard her call out to Birdie not to go there. And he was in Tell City the Sunday Vint hit the tree.”

“That's what he told Alex, but I wonder. Birdie didn't tell you that he wasn't home the day Sylvia fell.”

He straightened up with a shoe in one hand. “He wasn't?”

“When he didn't answer the door, she left whatever she was supposed to deliver and got away while she had the chance. So he might have been near Sylvia's tree. He's dangerous, Fred.”

“Show me that arm.” She held it out to him, and he pushed up her sleeve. Even though he held it gently, she couldn't help wincing. “It's going to bruise. Better ice it down.”

“I will.” Reclaiming her arm, she slid the sleeve back down. “Fred, he could have been near enough. That thing of Andrew's shoots a hundred yards. But we thought she just fell. All our attention was on her—we weren't looking for anyone else. And the Petoskey stone proves somebody did kill her.”

“I don't suppose you spotted a Wrist-Rocket in his house.”

“No. But there was a lot of odd stuff in his lost-and-found. And I saw a basket of shells and likely looking rocks in with the Scout stuff. I hope he didn't notice that I was trying to see into it better. We've got to go back there before he gets rid of them.”

“You're not going back.” He said it flatly, and she could tell from his face that he wasn't kidding.

“You sound like Andrew. But I won't go, if you'll promise to.”

The phone in his pocket rang, and he held it to his ear. “Yes?… When?… I'm on my way.” He took her hand. “That was Andrew. Chandler just drove off.”

Which way? she wondered, but of course from that end of the road, there was only one way, and Andrew wouldn't be able to see the car when it reached the main road—he hadn't been able to see hers when he called her.

Fred held on to her hands. “Promise you won't go to his house.” His blue eyes stared into hers.

“All right, I promise.”

He kissed her. “I'll be back as soon as I can.”

“I'm all right, Fred. You do what you have to do.”

He hadn't even eaten, she saw when she went into the kitchen. She put away his food and cleaned up the kitchen, but her mind was racing.

Of course, Jim Chandler could be going somewhere perfectly innocent. Maybe he was taking Alex out to dinner. If she didn't refuse his advances, Joan thought, that romance might continue in an ordinary way. Alex had no idea how dangerous he could be. She was only being her ordinary obnoxious self when she sent me out there.

But he'd gone too far today, and he had to know that she knew Birdie. And if he suspected her of having guessed why Birdie was avoiding him, even though she had taken forever to figure it out, he could figure Birdie would talk to her, probably soon. Would he try to stop her? Or, if it had been worth killing Sylvia because Birdie had told her, would he now go after Birdie or her?

Either way, she thought, we'll be safer together. I'd better warn her. After drying her hands, she picked up the phone. “Birdie, I'm coming back. Don't let anyone in until I get there, all right?”

“Don't worry about me,” Birdie said. “Your husband already sent an officer to stay with me tonight.”

With you? she couldn't help thinking when she hung up. What about me? No officer has shown up at my door. She didn't usually lock the doors while she was at home and awake. Not in Oliver. But tonight was different. She turned the dead bolt on both the front and the back doors and checked the window latches on the first floor. All locked, good. She turned on both the front and back porch lights and even pulled the living room curtains shut, something she rarely did. But the dark outside made her feel too exposed with the lights on indoors.

From the corner, her viola and music stared reproachfully at her, but she knew she'd never be able to concentrate enough to practice. This kind of tension called for a good book. Not a mystery, though. The last thing she needed was suspense. She rummaged in the bookcase for her collection of Jane Austen's early, unsold works. Just right, she thought, and curled up on the big old sofa to let Lady Susan's machinations take her mind off what worried her.

Even so, when the phone rang, she jumped.

“Mom?”

“Andrew?” But that wasn't Andrew. “Good heavens—Rebecca?”

“Has it been so long since I've called that you can't even tell me from Andrew?”

There was a time when a crack like that from Rebecca would have worried her. Her daughter had gone through a long prickly stage, when almost nothing Joan could say had rubbed her the right way. But tonight she sounded merely amused.

“Forgive me. It's been a strange day. A strange week, for that matter.”

“He's all right, isn't he?”

“Far as I know. I took him supper.”

“Took him—Mom, where is he? He's called a couple of times, but I thought he was at home. And why can't he come home for supper?”

Joan wanted to kick him. If he hadn't told his sister what he was doing, that was one thing. But to call her and omit a little detail like making the call from seventy feet up in a tree was something else. She was tempted to make him do it himself. How much would be too much to tell Rebecca, stuck in New York as she was? Her bank job didn't allow weekend trips home to visit her family.

“Mom?”

She'd been silent too long. “I'm sorry. Are you ready for a long story?”

“Shoot.”

So Joan leaned back into the sofa and told her, beginning with her own impatience at poor Sylvia when she announced that the tree sit protest took precedence over the orchestra concert.

“Andrew was supporting Sylvia's protest, and when she fell out of the tree, he took her place.”

“She fell? And he's up in a tree? So how did he call me?”

“Cell phone. It's the only way the rest of us can talk to him.”

“Where is this tree, anyhow? And why can't you just go there?”

“Just inside Oliver. Andrew can see outside the town from his platform up there. But he's technically in town, which means that Fred is involved in anything that happens there. We can go there, of course, but without the phones we'd all have to scream. Most of the time the connection's pretty good, and we can swap batteries and recharge them for him. The people who were supporting Sylvia help him, too.” Rebecca was going to think she knew who those people were, but Rebecca didn't need to know everything.

“How high is he, anyway?”

“About seventy feet.”

“That's a seven-story building! How did his friend survive a fall like that?”

Joan hesitated, but she couldn't lie to Rebecca. “She didn't. She was still alive when the ambulance came, but she died in the hospital.”

“You know all that because of the orchestra or Fred or what?”

“I was there. With Andrew. We saw her fall.”

“Oh, Mom! I'm so sorry. And now Andrew's up there.”

“Yes.”

“You must be scared stiff.”

“Yes.” You don't know the half of it.

“I'm going to call him right now and tell him he ought to come down. He doesn't have the right to worry you like that! Or me!”