Electric Blue (35 page)

“Equipment. Basic outdoor maintenance stuff. Oh, and Cammie’s car. One she wrecked.”

“Yeah?” Dwayne squinted. “What’s it doing here?”

“I don’t know, I guess she just hasn’t fixed it yet.”

I looked toward the house, hearing the sound of my own words still hanging in the air. That was what was bothering me, I realized. The car.

Dwayne said, “Someone’s pulling in.”

I heard the engine. From where we were the front drive was blocked by the house. “It’s Cammie,” I said, my voice sounding odd to my ears.

“Damn,” Dwayne said, taking off at a fast clip toward the house. “If she sees me and Chris, she’s bound to jump to some conclusion that’ll set her off.”

I let him go. Instead of following I reentered the equipment garage, walking briskly to the tarp-covered car. I folded back the heavy sailcloth from the front end. It was a Range Rover, similar to the one Cammie drove now. Same color. Maybe even the same year. Only this one’s right headlight was broken out, the fender crumpled back to the tire. The hood was buckled and there was green paint along its bumper and streaked across the fender.

I looked inside the front window. On the floor was a box of candy canes, the peppermint sticks broken and crumpled.

I backed up as if burned. I reheard Logan’s voice in my mind, telling me someone was trying to kill him.

It had been Christmas when Orchid first told Logan he would inherit…Christmas when Logan had bragged about being the one to inherit it all.

Cammie wanted everything for Rosalie and Logan stood in the way.

She attempted homicide twice.

Cammie…

I ran for the front of the house, the side door banging shut behind me. Cammie was just stepping out of her car, her face a dark cloud as she gazed at Dwayne, who was approaching to talk to her. Chris was standing in the open bay of the garage, next to his truck. Cammie gazed at him, then at Dwayne, then at me, running toward them.

She climbed back behind the wheel of her Range Rover and started it up. I could picture Cammie driving from the scene of the crime to the Black Butte house, then driving the white sedan “house” car back. It could be done in one night, if necessary. She’d then bought another Range Rover, just like her damaged one, and made the switch somewhere in the intervening months.

If anyone happened to go to Black Butte, the car was there, but that was a chance she had to take. She’d hidden the damaged vehicle in the equipment garage, and I doubted anyone knew it was there but Chris. She’d gambled that he might realize what it was, but she was desperate to reconnect with him as well. He was wrong. Cammie wanted everything for Rosalie, yes, but she also wanted everything for herself and that package included Chris. And so far she’d been right: she’d had to tell Chris the car was hers but he already thought she was a terrible driver, so she spun the plausible lie about slipping in the snow. It simply wouldn’t occur to him that she’d run Jazz’s car off the road to try and take out Logan. He might not believe it now, but I knew it as if she’d whispered the truth in my ear.

“Dwayne!” I yelled.

He’d stepped back as Cammie threw the Range Rover in reverse. I wondered for a moment if she was about to shoot out of the driveway backward.

Her face was grim through the windshield. She’d seen the direction from where Dwayne and I had come. She knew where we’d been. She had to know what I’d seen. She thought Dwayne knew, too.

I started running. My legs felt like ice.

Chris yelled something. He stepped forward, waving at her. He was puzzled by her actions, worried probably that he hadn’t vamoosed before her arrival.

I stopped short at the front of the house, breathing hard. “Dwayne,” I called again, but I didn’t have a lot of voice. He glanced over at me.

And then she threw the vehicle in drive and hit the gas. The back wheels spun for half a beat, then the Range Rover jumped forward, charging like a roaring beast straight at Dwayne.

“Dwayne!” I screamed as he dove to the right. Cammie twisted the wheel and came at him full bore.

He almost made it but she rammed forward. She caught him a glancing blow. His shoulder slammed into a tree. To my utter horror, she backed up to make another run at him. I was racing forward but I was too far away. Dwayne staggered a bit as Cammie punched the accelerator. The vehicle bumped forward over a stump. I screamed again as it burst forward, jamming him against the bole of a tree. His body jerked and fell over the hood.

“God, oh, God…” I ran toward him, ran toward Cammie, breathing his name. “Dwayne…Dwayne…” Behind me I was aware of Chris at my heels. Violet was yelling something from the house.

I skidded to a stop. Dwayne was splayed across her hood, his right leg crushed at the thigh.

He said, quietly, “I think it’s broken.”

Tears jumped to my eyes. “You’re okay though? Okay? You’re going to be okay?”

He glanced up, white-faced, then bent back on the hood of the Range Rover, restoring blood to his head.

“Jesus, Cammie,” Chris whispered.

She sat in her car, hands gripped around the wheel, body taut as a bowstring. Chris stared through the windshield at her through horror-stricken eyes.

Violet breathed heavily behind me. “I’ll call nine-one-one,” she said, and hurried back toward the house.

But Cammie suddenly pushed open her door, eyes wild, jaw set. She was breathing hard. To my shock she lunged at Dwayne, as if he were the cause of all her problems. Her fingernails raked at his face.

I scrambled around the vehicle, propelled by emotion. I grabbed her by her hair. She turned on me like a wild thing, but I yanked as hard as I knew how, ripping some out by the roots. Inhuman noises were issuing from my throat. She shrieked and slapped at my hands. I hauled back with my right fist and punched her, hard, directly at her nose. I felt cartilage break beneath her skin. Blood flew in a spray. She gurgled and wailed. Her blue eyes were saucers.

“Get away from him,” I growled. “Get away from him.”

“You…You…” Her mouth opened in an O of shock and pain. She was crying, tears mixing with blood.

Rage consumed me. Something murderous moved through me. It must have showed on my face because Chris said, “Whoa…” in fear.

“Darlin’, let it go,” Dwayne’s strained voice said somewhere through the red mist of fury that blinded me.

My one hand was still tangled in her hair; the other still in a fist. She was a pathetic quivering mass. I shook her hard. With an effort, I dropped her and backed away. I looked up and found Dwayne eyeing me with real concern.

“She broke your leg.” I was outraged.

“You broke her nose,” he pointed out.

Cammie sent up a piteous wail at this.

“Shut up,” I said, and just managed to keep myself from kicking her.

We all ended up at the hospital in Bend. A couple of officers met us there and tried to ascertain what had come down. I think they thought we were all a bunch of meth addicts, high and crazed. When my tale about Cammie’s murderous intent came out, they looked at each other in silent disbelief. I told them about the damaged car and explained it was linked to a hit-and-run in Portland, right around the previous Christmas. They left to check out my story.

Once Cammie’s own rage subsided, she fell into hysterics, blaming anyone but herself. No one stood up for her. Chris was horrified when he learned the real reason the fender of her car was crumpled. Cammie cried for him, but he moved away from her as if she were acid.

Jazz was white-faced, both from shock and his own worsening headache. He started swaying on his feet, and the staff put him into a wheelchair. I explained about the headaches and he was put into another examining room.

The whole thing was a circus.

As for me, I wouldn’t leave Dwayne. When they’d pushed the Range Rover away from him, I’d seen bone, blood, muscle and fat. It was like a view beneath Dwayne’s skin. I’d had to duck my head between my knees and hang onto my stomach contents with an effort as the EMTs got him moved to a gurney and into the ambulance.

“I’ve got surgery ahead of me,” Dwayne said, sounding more pissed than concerned as they prepared to take him to the operating room. “The bone’s split. There’s some blood vessel repair, too.”

“I know,” I said, fighting back another wave of sissy wooziness. “I heard.”

“She blamed me,” he said, in a totally conversational tone. I knew an IV was feeding him a soothing cocktail of drugs, but he sounded so normal it was eerie. “She blamed me for her breakup with her husband. Can you get that? She blamed me.”

“She saw you coming from the direction of the equipment garage. She thought you knew she was responsible for the hit-and-run. And Chris was standing there. She probably believed you told him. It all just mixed together and she snapped.”

“She’s crazy,” he said. His voice was taking on a slurred edge. “They’re all crazy.”

“Yes, Dwayne. They are.”

I
look back on the whole thing and what keeps bothering me is the fact that I was never really on a case. I was more of an investigator for the Spence/Miriam/Janice love triangle and for the First Addition vandal than I ever was for the Purcell fiasco.

Nevertheless, I wrote up the paperwork as if it were a major case file. I wrote everything down, all the data I’d learned and all my suppositions. I debated on handing the report over to Jazz but decided against it. He didn’t ask for it, so I didn’t offer. Besides, he’s got more pressing issues. The accident that took his wife’s life and left him with short-term memory loss created a slow-building blood clot. Unnoticed these many months, said clot had been slowly cutting off vital blood flow. It’s been two weeks since Jazz underwent surgery to correct the problem. By all accounts, he’s doing very well. I’ve been to see him several times but he doesn’t really recognize me. Like before, he knows who he is and he knows Logan and the rest of the Purcells, sans Violet, of course, but Jane Kelly’s association with the Purcells is a foggy sea. Logan desperately wants to think Jazz will remember me as soon as he recovers. He’s got this lame-brained idea that we could be this little nuclear family, but I kind of think it’s okay to be a missing piece. What a way to avoid a messy breakup.

As we all pulled our lives together, one more remarkable event occurred: James Purcell the Fourth walked onto the railroad bridge that spans the Willamette River between Lake Chinook and Milwaukie and stepped off to this death, an echo of his great-uncle Garrett I’s suicide from the Steel Bridge on his twenty-first birthday over a hundred years earlier. James did manage to paint one more picture before he died. It was discovered in the playhouse the other day when Violet brought in a contractor to have it demolished.

It was a woman lying on a bed of thorns with three knifelike serpents aimed at her as if to bite.

Now, I glanced at my watch as I pulled to a stop in front of Dwayne’s cabana. I was late from a trip to Lou’s and the purchase of a couple of seriously saucy chili dogs. Dwayne’s right leg is in a cast up to his hip. He’s been spending most of his time on his back deck, but that may change as it’s now the first week of November and the weather’s gray and blustery with icy, shooting winds that whip your hair and nearly stop your breath. Hasn’t fazed Dwayne yet. He just wraps himself in a down jacket, stocking cap and blankets and watches the world go by. I know the inactivity is making him stir crazy, but hey, as I keep telling him, he’s lucky to be alive.

Unlocking his door, I stepped into the kitchen, balancing the dogs and looking for plates. These suckers were messy. Once I got them arranged, I headed to the back door, peering out at Dwayne for a moment while he still couldn’t see me.

It’s ironic that Logan was right all along: someone was trying to kill him. We now know that someone was Cammie. She detested him and reacted with murderous rage when she overheard him brag that Nana was leaving everything to him. But unfortunately for Cammie, though Jennifer was killed in that first accident and Jazz was seriously injured, her real target escaped harm. Logan was alive and well and free to inherit, which he did. The first chance she could, Cammie got him in her car and smashed it on purpose, trying to kill him, risking her own life in the process. There was never anyone following them. Hyped up on rage and a sense of injustice, Cammie used any means that would cross her daring, twisted mind to gain control of the money. She wanted it for Rosalie. She wanted it to buy back Chris’s affections. She wanted it because she believed it was her due.

And when it all started to unravel she zeroed in on Dwayne and went after him like a crazed hunter.

Jesus. Sometimes I get a shiver all over when I think what could have happened to Dwayne. Now I took a moment before I opened the sliding door.

Dwayne looked up. At the same moment he picked up the thin metal rod with its small hook on the end that he uses as a scratcher and shoved it down inside his cast.

“Aren’t you worried you’ll rip something apart you shouldn’t?” I asked.

“What are you? My mother?” He must be getting better because he’s certainly getting grouchy.

I set the plates down on the table between our two chairs. “Chili dogs?” he said in surprise. “From Lou’s?”

“Uh-huh. Don’t say I never do anything for you. Holy moley it’s cold out here.”

“You just need the proper attire.”

We ate in companionable silence. Whatever romance had been brewing between Violet and Dwayne ended at Black Butte. Violet still hangs around a bit. She’s taken their non-relationship in stride, apparently, but she likes Dwayne enough to keep in touch. I’ve started thinking she’s okay again now that she isn’t all over Dwayne. And no, I don’t
even
want to consider what that means. I know better than to get involved with Dwayne. I do. And one of these days I’m going to really convince myself of that fact.

Finishing his chili dog, Dwayne wiped his hands and mouth on a paper towel, then grabbed up a pair of binoculars to gaze across Lakewood Bay. “You gotta see this,” he said. “The house over there with the brick and wrought iron fence. The one with the black Mastercraft and the little flag thing on the boathouse?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They’re like exhibitionists. Right in front of the bedroom window. You can see her legs in a V. And he’s right there between them.”

“You’re spying on them?” I was getting a Jimmy Stewart,
Rear Window
hit, but I took the binoculars anyway. I watched for a few seconds, said, “Ick,” watched some more.

“When are you going to let me see that rule book?” he asked lazily.

“Which one?” I asked, though I knew.

“The one with the no Dwayne rule.”

“You’d have a better chance of me singing that camp song to you again.” I passed back the binoculars.

He shrugged and grinned at me. “I got the time.”

“I don’t. One of us has to work otherwise the landlord’ll be at the door.”

A noise sounded from inside the cabana: the front door opening and closing.

“Violet,” Dwayne said.

Sure, enough. I glanced through Dwayne’s sliding glass and saw her approaching. “Sorry, the chili dogs are gone,” I said, though I wasn’t really sorry at all. I mean, okay, I don’t
love
her.

She sat down in the one extra chair, hard.

Dwayne and I both looked at her.

“My ex-husband’s dead,” she said, sounding like she was struggling to process.

“The one in Portland?” I asked.

She nodded. I was kind of thinking she was Typhoid Mary, the way people she came in contact with had been checking out the past few weeks.

“He was killed yesterday. On his daughter’s wedding day. He was still at the house, and these robbers showed up thinking he was gone, and he wasn’t, and they killed him.”

“Wedding robbers?” I asked, looking at Dwayne, whose focus had sharpened on Violet.

“The police came to see me today.” Violet’s eyes were huge. “God, I don’t believe this. They seem to think
I
did it.”

“You said the robbers killed him,” I reminded.

“Why do the police think you’re responsible?” Dwayne asked.

Violet swallowed. “Because he was killed with a heavy metal platter that has my fingerprints on it.”

“Did you kill him?” Dwayne asked in the moment that followed.

“I don’t think so.”

Dwayne reached for the binoculars and focused on the house across the bay. “Well…” he said, “the Purcell penchant for secrets and death continues.”

“I need your help,” Violet said, alarmed at the way Dwayne appeared to have checked out.

Dwayne shot me a look and lifted his brows. “Jane’s the lead investigator now.”

Violet turned to me, all the bravado I’d come to expect from her completely missing. “Will you help me?” she asked in a small voice.

I looked at her. I thought about how much money I might be able to make. Smiling, I asked her, “What’s it to ya?”