Hear No Evil (23 page)

She saw him release the trigger, and the arrow flew to pierce the edge of the bull’s-eye, burying itself to the hilt. He loaded another arrow, raised it, and aimed again. The crossbow, Eden thought, had a cruel, medieval look.

“What’s he doing?” Peyton asked uneasily.

“Target practice,” Eden answered, watching him loose the arrow again. It embedded itself in the target with remarkable accuracy and force.

“But he doesn’t have a gun,” Peyton said, with something like disapproval. “For target practice you got to have a
gun
.”

Eden looked at her. “How do you know that, sweety?”

Peyton shifted uncomfortably. She got a furtive, shuttered look, and Eden could tell she wasn’t going to answer.

Owen retrieved his arrows and thrust them into the bow’s built-in quiver. When he turned, he saw Eden and Peyton standing at the edge of the drive. He gave them a curt nod, walked back to the Blazer, and put the bow back in its case and stowed it in the hatchback.

He came up to Eden, giving Peyton a cursory glance and something that might have been a tight smile that failed. He looked at Eden, and his eyes seemed as blue as the flawless October sky.

She was suddenly self-conscious. “Hi,” she said as brightly, as casually, as she could. “Did you find my note—that we’d be right back?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see Jessie?”

“Yes. She’s fine, but tired.”

He gazed down at the old dog, which Eden held in her arms. A frown line appeared between his dark brows. He said, “I need to talk to you. Alone.”

Eden swallowed in apprehension, but released the child’s hand and gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “Go run and play a minute, Peyton. But stay in the yard.”

Peyton, her head cocked curiously, went off to examine the target.

“She’s interested in that,” Eden said, looking after her. “She talked as if she knew something about guns and target practice, but she wouldn’t say what. Owen, I hate to admit it, but I’m getting scared.”

She told him of the disturbing call and how she could not stop fearing the woman was Mimi. She told him, as well, what Peyton had said of Mrs. Stangblood in Detroit.

Owen nodded. “Stangblood? I’ll check her out.”

“Owen—you said we had to talk. About what?”

He gazed up at the sky, his eyes narrowing. “After I saw Jessie, I got a call. Some information you won’t like.”

A frisson of foreboding ran through her. “What’s wrong?”

He took her arm, drew her closer to him. His voice was low. “Louise Brodnik’s house didn’t burn by accident. Somebody torched it. And she was dead before it burned.”

Stunned, Eden stared up at him in bewilderment. “What?” she breathed.

“Right after I left the hospital, I got a call from John Mulcahy, a detective in Missouri. The fire at Louise Brodnik’s house was set.”

She felt as if all the air had been knocked from her body. “But—but why?” she asked.

“We don’t know why,” he said. “But the autopsy report shows no smoke in Louise Brodnik’s lungs. Whatever she died of, it wasn’t the fire.”

“Then what killed her?”

“They’re not sure. It may have been her heart. But if she died of natural causes before the fire was set, who set the fire? And how? And why?”

Eden stared up at him without comprehension. “What’s this got to do with us? With Peyton?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But maybe somebody was looking for Peyton. Maybe they still are.”

Eden touched her fingertips to her mouth, unable to breathe, to speak.

“Think about it,” he said. “Peyton’s afraid of something, deathly afraid. She’s been coached not to talk, told it’s dangerous. What does she know? And is it important enough for somebody to shut her up?”

Eden glanced automatically at Peyton to make sure she was safe. The child poked her finger at the holes in the paper target, peered at them warily. Eden thought of the nameless blond woman with her hand full of fire. She thought of the plane in Miami. She was afraid to say what she was beginning to fear.

She turned back to Owen and knew that he could see the alarm in her eyes. His grip on her arm softened.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I think I’d better stay with you until we know what’s going on.”

Eden sucked in her breath sharply. “No. I can’t let you do that.”

“We’ll argue later. Come on,” he said. “Let’s take this thing back to the house.” He took the dog from her arms, set it on the ground, held its leash.

She nodded numbly. But she kept looking over her shoulder, to assure herself that Peyton was all right.

Even with the sunshine flooding down, Eden felt cold. A minute shudder trembled through her.

Owen noticed. His arm slipped around her shoulders, and she didn’t object. The old dog hobbled behind them, and at last Owen had to scoop it up and carry it in his free arm.

Peyton played alone, by the riddled target.

Tomorrow’s the last day
, Mimi told herself.
Tomorrow it’s over
.

She had tickets for tonight and for tomorrow morning, for another breakfast show. She had tickets for tomorrow afternoon and night.

She took the money out of her jeans, unwadded and counted it. She had exactly sixty-eight dollars and seventy-one cents. It was enough to keep her in wine and cigarettes until tomorrow and pay for the room one more day.

She sipped at the wine, and felt a stab of grief that she could not go home to Jessie with Peyton. She was not only an embarrassment to them, but a danger. There was only one gift she could now give her child—her absence.

She sat on the edge of her bed, crossed her arms on her knees, and buried her face. She was weary to the marrow of her bones, and she felt old, thousands of years old, but as if age had never brought her wisdom.

At first, stupidly, she had thought that Drace and the others were simply talking big, playing games, that they didn’t
actually
mean to strike out in violence against the government. It was posturing and blustering, she thought, just a kind of theater to them. She hadn’t minded. Like them she was full of anger and suspicion, and like them, she was wont to posture and bluster and blow off steam herself.

And, at first, she had been a perfect fool for Drace.
She hadn’t understood what he wanted from her. He liked having two women, of course, and he would have liked to have had more. But Raylene was jealous as hell, even if she couldn’t say anything, and Raylene had hated her guts and Peyton’s, too.

By the end, Mimi had belonged to all the men, not just Drace, who seldom wanted her anymore, and Raylene treated her little better than a slave. When Mimi objected, she was “disciplined.” It kept growing worse, it kept growing crazier, it kept spinning more wildly out of control.

She realized now that she had not thought clearly during any of it. And when she finally understood what was happening, it was too late. She had trapped herself, and for her there was no exit.

But when she’d discovered Jessie’s ad in the back of a tabloid, she’d thought she’d found a way for Peyton, at least, to escape. At first, that had seemed enough.

But she’d known that night she’d walked away from the farmhouse with Peyton and the stolen money that she didn’t dare go back.

So, this was the only plan she could come up with for herself. She had run this far, and it was futile to run farther. She knew the one best thing she could do for Peyton.

She raised her head and scrubbed her palms across her wet, burning eyes.

She got up from the bed and took her wallet from her scuffed purse. She went into the bathroom, and one by one, she tore up her false identity cards. She had no real ones left.

She looked a long time at the one photograph she carried of Peyton. Although it hurt, she tore that up, too.

She flushed away the scraps of paper that had validated
her life. She kept only the piece of newsprint with Jessie’s ad and phone number. She would keep that until tomorrow night. Perhaps she would allow herself one last call. Just one.

She looked at her mottled face in the mirror, at the hated scar across her throat. She looked at the bottle on the sink.

She heard Jessie’s voice in her ears, strong and vital:
Don’t do anything rash. Take care. Don’t be reckless
.

“Don’t worry, Jessie,” she croaked in her broken whisper. “It won’t be rash. It won’t be reckless. I’ll get it right.”

She washed her face, brushed her tangled hair, changed into a clean T-shirt. She stuffed her ticket into the pocket of her jeans and set off walking for the Moon River Theater.

It was nearing showtime.

“Y
ES, YES, YES
,” E
DEN TOLD
J
ESSIE AT THE HOSPITAL THAT
evening. “He’s staying with us. Stop fussing about it.”

“I’m not fussing,” Jessie contradicted. “I’m looking out for Peyton’s welfare. I don’t know why you didn’t bring her. I was counting on seeing her.”

“I told you, she got as far as the hospital door, then didn’t want to come in. I think the place scares her. Owen’s taken her over to the ice-cream parlor.”

“Make sure he stays close to her,” Jessie ordered. “That child needs protection. That fire in Sedonia wasn’t no accident. I know it.”

Eden allowed herself to show no reaction, not an iota. She and Owen had decided not to tell Jessie yet that her vision about the fire had proved true.

“That fire’s bad news,” Jessie said, “but I got good news, too. Mimi’s coming home soon. I seen it clear as day. She’ll walk in the front door and say, ‘Hi, Granny, I come home to stay this time.’ ”

Eden frowned. “Home to stay—Mimi?”

Jessie gave a thin smile of satisfaction. “Indeed. It’ll be soon. Before the year is out.”

“She’ll stay with
you?
” Eden said dubiously.

“Till she finds a place of her own for her and Peyton,” Jessie said. “Why not? This last trouble’s made her grow up. She wants to settle down. I got a very strong feeling about that, so wipe that skeptical look off your face.”

Eden was deeply worried about Mimi, but she kept her expression as blank as possible.

“Let’s hope you’re right,” she said. “But I have something to ask you. This person—Constance—called again. She sounded disturbed, very disturbed, and she hung up on me. If she calls back, I need something to hold her, to keep her on the line. What can I say?”

Jessie shrugged, almost irritably. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve been doing this most of your life,” Eden said, putting her hand on her hip. “I tell you, this woman worries me. How do I get through to her?”

“No thought of Constance has crossed my mind today,” Jessie said. “I been concerned with Mimi. My own flesh and blood, thank you very much.”

Eden sighed. “All right, Jessie. I’m begging. Please give me your expert advice.”

“You should have brought my crystal ball,” Jessie complained. “I’m too tired to lay out the cards. Let me see what I can get.”

Jessie leaned back against the pillow and closed her eyes. For a long moment she stroked the largest of the
rings on her left hand, a moonstone set in silver. Then her fingers went still, her breathing became deep and even, and her eyelids twitched slightly.

A full minute passed. Then two.

“Jessie?” Eden asked in a cautious whisper.

Her only answer was the most delicate of snores. Jessie slept.

Peyton, sated with ice cream, went to bed at nine o’clock without argument. She slept, her small, limp body curling in on itself, her thumb in her mouth.

Eden left the night-light on in the bedroom and padded barefoot into the living room. Owen stood by the little phone table, studying a handwritten list. The lamplight gleamed on his pewter-colored hair, and he raised his eyes from the paper to meet hers.

She turned away, uselessly straightening one of the dozen doilies Jessie had draped on the furniture.

“You don’t have to stay here tonight,” she told him. “Jessie doesn’t have to know. We’ll just tell her you did.”

“No. It’s settled.”

She shrugged and kept toying with the foolish doilie. “I’d really—really rather you didn’t stay. I can take care of myself.”

“Louise Brodnik brought Peyton here. Two days later she’s found dead, her house set afire. Jessie’s sensed trouble all along. I’ll stay.”

Eden gave a chilly little laugh at the idiocy of it. “If you’re worried about us, just loan me a gun.”

“You can shoot?”

“Of course I can shoot,” she answered. “I grew up in the country. I’ve shot rats and copperheads and once a
timber rattler. He was as long as your arm. Well—almost.”

“How much gunslinging have you done since you ran off to Hollywood?”

“None. But—”

“I’ll stay,” he told her.

Still she didn’t look at him. Desperately, she searched for something to say. “Have you called the police?” she asked. “To tell them what Peyton said about Mrs. Stangblood in Michigan?”

“Yes,” he said. “Here and in Sedonia.”

“And?”

“And they’ll get back to us. In their own sweet time.”

“I
hate
bureaucracy.” Eden raked a hand through her bangs. “That’s all? They’ll get back to us?”