Missing Marlene (21 page)

“You didn’t really think I was finished with you, did you?” Helen said, amused.

Once or twice in her life Jane, who knew nothing about guns and had never seen a real one before, had wondered what it would feel like to have one aimed at her. Now that it was actually happening, she felt surprisingly unafraid.

“We keep it at the store in case of a robbery,” Helen explained proudly. “Now that’s what I call a convenience store!” She laughed, then abruptly stopped, her face returning to its grim expressionlessness. “But I’m not going to use this. Not if I can help it. I’m going to get rid of you the same way I got rid of Marlene. It’s a foolproof method. But I will shoot you if I have to. Walk.”

Jane led the way back through the woods, Helen crunching along behind her. As they cleared the trees, Jane saw Helen’s old gray car parked at the side of the road.

“Get in,” Helen said, and kept the gun trained on Jane as she herself got behind the wheel. She started the car, one hand on the wheel, the other holding the gun on Jane, and drove up Lilac Way, past Jane’s house. She turned left onto Magnolia Lane and followed it, past Roger’s bungalow, until she reached Hawthorne Place, Mr. O’Rourke’s cul-de-sac. She parked at the side farthest from the cliff’s edge, close against the trees. Reaching across Jane’s lap, she opened the glove compartment and took out a large flashlight.

“Get out.”

Jane got out of the car and waited while Helen came around.

“Let’s go,” Helen said. “You know where we’re going.”

Jane marched toward the cliff’s edge. Her mind raced—she had to think fast. She considered screaming but rejected that idea for fear Helen would panic and shoot her. She thought of Nick as an orphan and prayed she would think of something before it was too late.

Slowly, so as not to spook Helen, she turned to face her. “Helen, please. Think about what you’ve done, what you’re doing. You’re ill. You need help.”

Helen threw back her head and laughed. “Aw, shut the hell up!” she said, and suddenly gave Jane a hard shove in the center of her chest.

Jane, thrown off-balance, flew backwards into nothingness. “Aaaiiiihhhh!” she screamed as she sailed through the air, and then the ground came up and hit her so hard it knocked the wind out of her and something cracked in her leg and she was rolling, down the rocky slope over rocks and bumpy earth and roots and branches.

Somehow she got her hand around one of the roots and gripped it tight, the rest of her body skidding downward. But still she held on and, scrambling with her feet, found a foothold among the rocks.

She was alive. Not dead like Marlene. Alive.

Carefully she glanced upward. She estimated that she was approximately fifteen feet from the top of the cliff, about halfway down. She couldn’t see Helen. Praying that Helen believed that, like Marlene, she had fallen all the way to the bottom, Jane remained perfectly still, waiting for the sound of Helen’s car starting.

But instead she heard the much deeper rumble of what sounded like a truck, and then headlights illuminated the top of the cliff. In the next instant Helen clambered over the edge and crouched on a ledge about five feet from the top.

What was going on?

Jane could see the flashlight in Helen’s left hand, the gun in her right. Helen looked down, switched on the flashlight, and shone it on the debris at the bottom. Then she began slowly scanning the slope with the flashlight’s powerful beam.

Jane froze. The beam passed over her—then quickly returned. Jane looked up at Helen and their eyes met. Helen leveled the gun at her. Jane knew that if she screamed for help to whoever had arrived at the top, Helen would shoot her.

The engine of whatever had arrived at the top continued to rumble. Agonizing pain shot continuously up Jane’s right leg into her thigh. Her leg was no doubt broken. Her left foot rested on a narrow spur of rock that barely provided room for the toe of her shoe. She realized she needed to gain a better foothold because she wouldn’t be able to perch like this much longer. Ever so carefully, she pivoted her foot, trying to dig deeper into the soil of the cliff face. The rock she was standing on came loose and fell away. Frantically, she dug at the soil for another toehold, but she only caused more rocks and dirt to crumble and fall, leaving her foot dangling.

Her hands burned, raw from clutching the rough roots. She couldn’t stay here like this much longer. Falling was inevitable. Perhaps if she could control the fall ... She glanced back at Helen, who was still watching her, still training the gun on her. Jane knew her only chance of surviving was to move, and the only place to move was down.

She let go.

She slid down the slope, desperately trying to grab at the roots and branches and spurs of rock, but the weight of her own body pulled her swiftly down. She hit a bush which thrust her sideways and then she was rolling, grunting with each jolt, each sharp bump, the pain in her leg like fire.

Finally she reached the bottom and came to a sudden jolting stop against the mound of debris. She heard a scrabbling sound and, turning her head slightly, saw Helen sliding down the cliffside. Helen had more luck than Jane and reached the bottom without rolling. But when she turned toward Jane she no longer had the flashlight—she must have lost it coming down.

Jane knew she had better move. Fighting the searing pain in her leg, she managed to stand. Then she began limping toward the woods and the road beyond, hoping Helen wouldn’t shoot as long as there was someone at the top.

Jane glanced back. Helen was chasing her, gaining quickly. When Helen was about ten feet behind Jane, a sharp cracking sound came from the trees. Both women stopped and stared into the shadows.

Faintly Jane could make out the silhouette of a person standing among the trees, absolutely still.

“Who’s there?” Helen demanded in a raspy whisper.

Whoever it was made no response.

Helen shifted the gun to the dark figure and stepped closer, squinting. “Say who you are or I’ll shoot you.”

A dark extension seemed to grow from the silhouette. From the extension’s tip a yellow burst of light appeared, and there was a loud popping sound.

Behind Jane, Helen made a strange grunting noise. Jane turned to her. In the center of Helen’s forehead was a round black hole the size of a quarter. Helen teetered, fell backward, and lay still.

The figure stepped from the shadows.

It was Dorothy Peyton, the plain blond actress from the play.

Jane nodded. She’d had all of it right.

“Hello, Marlene,” she said. “We’ve missed you.”

“Nosy bitch.” She spit out the words, her expression one of utter loathing—far more emotion, Jane reflected, than she’d exhibited in
Subways.
“And you’re smart, aren’t you? Figured it out.”

Jane simply nodded.

Marlene shrugged. “We only meant it as a game, a prank. We thought of it on the plane from Detroit. All of a sudden we realized that each of us wanted to do what the other would be doing. I would be working for you as a nanny, but I wanted to be an actress and live in New York. Zena would be studying fashion design in New York, but she wanted an easy, partying life in a quiet town.”

Marlene giggled. “So we traded places. We agreed to call each other at least once a week so we could each be convincing when we spoke to our parents. Of course, we had to work it out so our parents never called us. So Zena told her parents she had this roommate who worked nights and slept during the day and couldn’t be disturbed. Zena would call them. My mother and I agreed you were rich enough to pay for my calls to her.”

Jane had to smile at that. “You thought I was rich?”

“Of course. You’re an agent, aren’t you? ... So how’d you figure it out?”

“First, that whole elaborate story about the roommate just didn’t ring true,” Jane said. “Second, the fact that Zena wouldn’t give her parents her address, either, supposedly because their checks would be stolen from her mail. Highly suspect.

“Third, the fact that Zena often didn’t answer when I called her Marlene.

“Fourth, I remembered that you had planned to study acting at college, before you decided not to go.

“Fifth, Helen threw a birthday party for ‘Marlene’ in September. But that was Zena’s real birthday. I’d completely forgotten that you were born in March.

“Finally, when I realized that Zena’s parents had stopped hearing from her at the same time ‘Marlene’ had disappeared from Shady Hills, it all made sense.”

“For a while it worked beautifully,” Marlene said. “Zena found herself a boyfriend—Gil—and I moved in with Trevor. He’s helping me build my career, giving me acting lessons.”

Then you need a new teacher,
Jane thought.

“But then Zena stopped calling me,” Marlene said. “I knew she wasn’t calling her parents, either, because they kept writing to the post-office box, telling her to call them. That’s why I called your house and asked for Marlene.

“Then you came to the theater and left that note. Now I knew she wasn’t here. I would have called my mother to get her and you off my back, but I didn’t know what to tell her yet. Finally, I realized I’d better come out here myself and find out what was going on. I borrowed Trev’s car.”

“And his gun?”

Shaking her head, Marlene held up the gun and studied it. “This is mine. I’ve had it since I was sixteen. You need one in the part of Detroit where I hung out.”

“If your mother only knew ...” Jane said.

“There’s a lot my mother doesn’t know. Anyway, I drove past your house, and as I was coming down the hill, I saw you walking.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“My mother has pictures of you in our living room. Her ‘old friend,’ ”Marlene added sarcastically. “I parked up the hill and followed you down here. I couldn’t figure out what you were doing, so I watched from the trees here. I saw you looking around. I saw ... Zena. I saw the whole thing with Helen. Now I knew what happened to Zena. My beautiful friend who loved danger. And got in way over her head. Got herself murdered.

“I was just going to leave quietly. But then I accidentally stepped on a stick and gave myself away. I knew that if I didn’t kill Helen, she’d kill me. So I killed her. And now I have to kill you, Jane. I can’t let you run to the cops and tell them what I’ve done. I’ve got too much going for me. I have a whole new wonderful life now. I don’t want my old life anymore. No one will figure out what happened to Marlene and Zena. And Dorothy Peyton will live happily ever after.”

She leveled her gun at Jane’s chest.

“Somebody down there?” a man’s voice bellowed down from the top of the cliff.

Both women jumped.

“Keep quiet,” Marlene ordered in a low voice.

Jane kept quiet, but she took a step back, then another, to make sure Marlene noticed. Marlene did notice, her brows knitting in a fierce frown of warning, and she took several steps toward Jane. She stopped at the edge of the mound of refuse, not four feet from Zena’s chalky white upraised arm.

Just where Jane wanted her.

“Guess not,” came the man’s voice again. “Okay, let’s do it and get outta here.”

God forgive me,
Jane thought.

From the top of the cliff came a loud groan of metal machinery. Marlene looked up, puzzled. There was a low rumbling sound, like the start of an avalanche. Then, as both women looked up, from over the cliff’s edge poured what must have been a ton of rocks, dirt, wood, and plaster.

Realization suddenly dawning, Marlene screamed and covered her head with her arms.

It was her head that got hit first, smashed in by a watermelon-sized block of concrete. She crumpled straight down and was instantly buried by the rest of the debris that came crushing down on her with a sickening roar and a cloud of plaster dust.

Now from the top of the cliff came the hollower sound of the dump truck’s hydraulics lowering the empty hopper back into place. Doors slammed. The rumble of the truck’s engine faded to silence.

Jane realized she was crying uncontrollably. She felt her face contort, felt tears running down her cheeks. She took one last look at the smoldering mountain of waste. Then, crying out at the burning spear of pain that shot up her leg and thigh, she turned and took her first slow limping step toward the road.

It was the following Monday. Jane sat at her desk, forcing herself to make some sense of the chaos, to at least organize the long-neglected mountain of work into rough piles.

Not that her time was really her own now. The police would have many more questions. Ivy was still in town, and would stay until the police were finished with Marlene’s body and Ivy could arrange for the funeral. The Harmons were here, waiting for Zena’s body to be released. Jane imagined Helen’s mother was waiting for Helen’s body, too.

Jane wondered if Helen had hidden the money she’d taken from Marlene, wondered if Helen’s mother would find it. Jane hadn’t told the police about the money. Not that she cared about protecting Roger, but she had promised Audrey. And a promise is a promise. As far as the police knew, Helen had simply killed Marlene because Marlene had taken the man Helen wanted.

The reporters loved that story, called it juicy. Evil in a deceptively peaceful village, and all that. One TV reporter called it delicious. Hardly the word Jane would have used. Jane had talked to the reporters, would talk to more. Why not? The publicity might get her some new business.

One reporter, from a local newspaper, had asked, “How did you finally put the whole puzzle together?” Jane had explained that it had been her cat knocking down her wedding picture that had done the trick. The reporter had titled his story “Cat Solves Swapped Nanny Murder.”

Jane had to laugh at that. Let Winky have the credit. She deserved it.

From the outer office Jane heard a knock on the front door, then the sounds of Daniel speaking to someone and the door closing again. Jane grabbed her crutches and hobbled out to see what was going on.

Daniel was sitting down at his desk. He looked up. “A reporter. I told him we’re busy and to come back later.”

Nervy,
Jane thought,
for someone who’s leaving in a week and a half.
But she said nothing, only smiled faintly and nodded. It wasn’t worth arguing about.

“Jane,” he said. “This manuscript, the one you didn’t think was worth taking on. Would you mind terribly if I did take it on—after asking her to revise, of course.”

Extremely
nervy, she thought. “You mean take it with you to Silver and Payne?” She shrugged indifferently. “Do as you like. I don’t want it.”

“But
we’d
be representing it.”

She frowned, confused. “What are you talking about?
You’
d be representing it—at Silver and Payne.”

“Jane,” he said, smiling now, “this is my cute way of telling you I’m not leaving ... if you’ll let me stay.”

She stared at him. Finally she said, “You’re not going to Silver and Payne?”

“No. We both knew it wasn’t right for me. I belong here.”

She nodded, staring hard at the floor, fighting down the lump in her throat.

“Jane, why are you crying?”

“I’m not.” She crutch-walked back into her office and sat at her desk. Now the tears began to flow in earnest. She covered her face with her hands and soon found she was laughing, laughing in exultation.

She took her hands away and wiped her eyes. Then she turned to the photo of her and Kenneth and Nick in Cape May and smiled.

With new vigor, she attacked the pile of work on her desk.

There was so much to do.