Naked Once More (41 page)

“If you’d like me to look—”

“I’ve already checked with Miz Cartwright, who cleaned for her.” Bill’s tone ended the subject. “That’s not why I called you before. Wanted to warn you. Spencer escaped. He’s on the loose.”

Jacqueline spilled vodka and ice cubes onto her lap and onto Lucifer, who registered his annoyance instantly and painfully. She juggled the phone. “What do you mean, escaped?” she yelled. “What from? He wasn’t in jail. You mean he—”

“I mean he walked out of the damned hospital this morning, minutes before Bob Lightfoot arrived to ask him a few questions. Grabbed his pants, put ’em on, stiff-armed a nurse who tried to stop him, and left. We’re looking for him, but we haven’t found him.”

“You can’t hold him, Bill. He hasn’t done anything.”

“Yeah? I’m not so sure. At least we can haul him in for questioning, and that’s what we’re gonna do. He shouldn’t of run off that way. Lightfoot’s not the sharpest sheriff this town ever had, but even he’s starting to wonder about Spencer.”

Jacqueline sighed. “I was afraid of this. Where could he have gone?”

“Well, he didn’t go home. I figured just maybe he might pay you a little social call.”

“Oh, did you?” Jacqueline’s lips drew back in a snarl. “Do you want to haul me in for questioning too, Bill? Do you think Paul and I—”

“For Christ’s sake, Jake, calm down. What are you so edgy about?”

“I’m sitting on a couple of ice cubes,” Jacqueline said, squirming. “Sorry, Bill. I am a little uptight. I have not seen Paul, if that’s what you want to know. And if I did know where he was, I’d tell you and ask you to lock him up. He could be, as they say, a danger to himself and others.”

“That’s sure a comforting thought. Listen here, Jake, if this thing turns into a case of murder, I can’t keep Bob off your back. I’ve got what you might call moral influence over him, but he’s the sheriff, not me. You aren’t holding out on me, are you?”

It was not a question Jacqueline cared to answer. “I can tell you why Paul and I were worried about Jan, if that will make you feel better. It’s really very simple. I had stopped by the store earlier and found it closed, with a notice saying that she had gone away for a few days. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, and it wasn’t until later in the evening that I happened to mention it to Paul. He told me she never went anywhere, and that she certainly wouldn’t have left town without asking him to look after her cat. Does that explain why we reacted as we did?”

“I guess so. That’s another thing, though—that notice on the door.”

“Yes,” Jacqueline said. “Bill, I wouldn’t kid you—I have a couple of ideas about this business. Why don’t you come to the inn for a drink tomorrow night and I’ll tell you about them. I may even have some solid information.”

He agreed, without further questions or comments. Small-town cops were much more agreeable than the big-city variety, Jacqueline thought, as she placed her next call. And in Bill’s case, far less chauvinist. He hadn’t made any stupid remarks about danger or risk. Of course he didn’t know her as well as O’Brien did.…

“Hello, Chris, it’s me. How is Evelyn?”

“Fine. I told you she was one of your biggest fans, didn’t I?”

“No,” Jacqueline said shortly.

“That was how we met, in fact. She was setting up a shelf of historical novels, including yours, and I happened to mention—”

Jacqueline clutched her head in a gesture of tragic despair. It was a pity Chris wasn’t there to see it. “Tell me another time, dahling,” she said. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? Pretending calloused unconcern about the hideous dangers that confront me.”

“What kind of dangers?”

“Uh—I guess they aren’t all that hideous,” Jacqueline said, cursing her unruly tongue. “I really have nothing to report, Chris. I just wanted to talk to you—to someone who knows the wild and wacky book business. It is a bizarre world, Chris. Outsiders can’t comprehend why we behave the way we do.”

“I can’t say I always comprehend,” Chris said. “Stop blathering, Jacqueline, and get to the point.”

“I want you to do something for me.” The list was the same one she had given Sarah. Chris’s reaction was just as negative, and more emphatic.

“I’m out of it, Jacqueline. I don’t know what’s going on in the business now.”

“But you have contacts, old friends, all over the place. You are,” said Jacqueline, “a shining planet fixed in the firmament.”

“What?”

“You shed the glow of your integrity upon us all. Boots says so. Chris, I have two separate, unrelated problems; until I can clear one of them out of the way, I won’t know which incidents are important to the main issue. I’ve got to find Brunnhilde, subito.”

“Your conversational style is even more oblique than usual, Jacqueline. What are these problems of yours? Aside from finishing that outline—”

“I can’t tell you; I’m sort of confused myself. And no sarcastic comments, please. But I have to locate that female Viking.”

“I did find out what her real name is.” Chris told her, and in spite of her frustration and anxiety, Jacqueline burst out laughing.

“That is divine. But I don’t see how it can help, Chris. She certainly wouldn’t register under that hideous appellation. I am convinced she’s around here somewhere, but I can’t check every hotel and motel in the area. Hasn’t she a bosom buddy she might confide in? Wouldn’t she tell her agent where she was holing up? I always do. In case of checks, you know,” Jacqueline added.

“I do know. All right, I’ll try.”

“Thanks, sweetie. Talk to you later.”

Without quite knowing how she had got there, Jacqueline found herself in the kitchen, about to pour vodka into her glass. With a grimace, she replaced the cap on the bottle. She knew what was bothering her. Paul. She had not been exaggerating when she told Bill she believed he was dangerous. In her considered opinion he was not suicidal; but in a situation so grave she was unwilling to rely on a considered opinion, even one as good as she considered hers to be.

It was much more likely that Paul had launched himself into a romantic vendetta to avenge his love. The fact that he had no idea who the killer was wouldn’t stop him from behaving like a melodramatic idiot. Men were like that. Even if he did find the murderer, and took justice into his own hands, he’d end up in prison… or worse. Jacqueline tried and failed to remember whether Kathleen’s home state had the death penalty.

Her glasses were balanced precariously on the tip of her nose. She shoved them back into place and swore, methodically and inventively. She had an idea of where Paul might have gone, and of all the places in the world she did not want to visit after the shades of night had fallen, that was it.

She delayed just long enough, not to clean out her purse—that would have taken several hours—but to remove the broken glass from it and replace the contents, helter-skelter. Lucifer looked as if he wanted to go along—or perhaps, Jacqueline admitted, that was wishful thinking on her part. She was sorely tempted, but decided she couldn’t take the chance of losing him.

As she drove up the mountain road, toward the site of Kathleen Darcy’s cenotaph, she was only too well aware of the chance she was taking. She had no concrete evidence to support the theory she had built up in her mind. She believed in it primarily because she wanted to believe in it—because it appealed to her as a writer, an inventor of delectably improbable plots. If she was mistaken, it might not be a romantic victim but a cold-blooded killer she was hastening to meet.

By the time Jacqueline reached her destination, her overactive imagination had presented her with several grisly scenarios, in living color and with full sensory accompaniment. She finally narrowed them down to two: Paul draped wanly across the cenotaph, a vial of poison clasped in his stiffening hand; or Paul driven to frenzy, battering the insensate stone with a sledgehammer, teeth bared in a wolfish snarl, eyes blazing red in the dark as he turned (sledgehammer raised) upon his would-be rescuer. Although the second was to be preferred on humanitarian grounds, she hoped grief rather than fury would prove to be in the ascendancy. Grief she could handle. Paul in a frenzy, even without a sledgehammer (or perhaps a crowbar?) was a phenomenon that might test even her powers.

When her car bumped into the clearing and she saw the stone standing in dark solitude, unmarred and unattended, her fantasies collapsed like a pricked balloon, leaving her feeling like a fool. There is nothing more embarrassing than unnecessary heroics.

At least no one had seen her performance. Nor was she quite ready to admit she had been mistaken. Paul might have come and gone. He might have come—and not gone. Hearing the car approach, he had had ample time to conceal himself. There was a lot of darkness out there. Jacqueline’s punctured ego began to revive. Having come so far, she might as well have a look around.

Or at least as much of a look as she could get from inside the car. She had often been accused of rushing in where angels fear to tread, but she wasn’t stupid enough to imitate the heroines of certain badly written thrillers, who ended up being abducted or assaulted because they hadn’t sense enough to remain in a safe place.

She backed and turned, backed and turned, until the beams of her headlights had illumined most of the area around the cenotaph. They cast grotesque shadows, more distorted and seemingly more solid than the ordinary variety. From one angle the outline of the cenotaph looked exactly like a crouching man. Beside it, something caught the light in a burst of muted sparkles. Jacqueline squinted, but was unable to make out what it was. She edged forward a few feet, and then hit the brake. Was that… Yes, by God, it was—barely visible at the farthest limit of the light, a hulking form the size and shape of a man. It dropped down, crouching, and began to retreat into the concealing darkness from which it had been watching her.

“Wait!” Jacqueline called, wrestling with the gear shift. Back, turn, forward… Her hands were unsteady. What was wrong with him? He was crawling on all fours, like an animal. “Paul, wait—don’t run away.”

He was gone. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear sounds of movement over the rumble of the engine. This was worse than anything she had imagined. He must be completely out of his head. She called him again, fumbled in her purse, found her flashlight. The narrow beam swung wildly when she directed it toward the spot where she had last seen him. She had to use both hands to steady it.

There. A little to the right… He had stopped. Perhaps he was hurt, unable to stand. Again she called his name. He had heard her. He was turning, creeping forward.

Jacqueline screamed. It was not something she often did, but the occasion seemed to justify it. Moving ponderously into the light was a big black bear. And apparently his name was Paul, because he was coming straight toward her.

At least he wasn’t carrying a sledgehammer. This mental comment was no more insane than some of the other ideas that flashed through Jacqueline’s mind, fragments of half-remembered myths and legends. Skin-turners and shape-changers… Werewolves were the most common variety, but in the East there were were-tigers, and in northern Europe, were-bears.

As she stared, transfixed, the bear reared up onto his hind legs. In this position he should have looked more manlike and more frightening, but his furry face and small, squinting eyes were pure animal—and in consequence, less alarming. Nothing in the animal kingdom is as dangerous as man.

He was curious. And so would you be, Jacqueline told herself, if you were strolling through the woods minding your own business and a member of an alien species addressed you familiarly. Very slowly and cautiously she withdrew head and arms from the open window and pressed the button that raised the glass. Very carefully she turned the car. She could no longer see the animal, and she prayed he would stay put, or retreat. What on earth could she do if he ambled out onto the track and sat down? Or tried to climb up onto the trunk? She pictured herself driving furiously down the highway with a bear sitting on the roof. There was probably a law against it. Would a traffic cop pull her over and give her, and the bear, a ticket?

The bear had lost interest in her, apparently. It did not reappear. However, Jacqueline didn’t take a deep breath until she turned off the track onto the paved road. Then she reached for the cigarette she had dropped when the apparition appeared. Lucky she hadn’t lit it. She did so now, noting with approval that her hands weren’t shaking—much.

Jacqueline smiled to herself. With a little editing—for instance, the complete omission of her childish fantasies—it would make a good story. Marybee would be green with envy.

And her hunch had been correct. Paul had been there earlier. The broken glass at the base of the stone had been a whiskey bottle. On her last swing, just before the bear distracted her, she had gotten close enough to see a fragment of the label. It was the same brand as the whiskey she had seen on Paul’s cocktail table. If she hadn’t been carried away by her fondness for melodrama, she would have realized that was the most likely of all scenarios. After emptying the bottle, he had smashed it against the monument. Just like a man, Jacqueline thought critically. They had no sense of the fitness of things. A crowbar or sledgehammer would have been much more dramatic.

She hoped Paul was not wandering drunk through the woods, but she had not the least inclination to go back and look for him. If he and the bear met, it would be tough luck on the béar.

By the time she got back to the cottage she had worked herself into a state of outraged indignation. She was muttering to herself as she unlocked the front door. “… dragging me up there at night, with bears… People are so inconsiderate, they always expect me…”

The shrill sound of the telephone startled her as she stepped into the house. She turned her head; but the momentary distraction probably would not have mattered, he was ready for her and quick as a cat. His hand closed over her mouth and forced her head back into the hard curve of his shoulder. The other arm pinned her arms to her sides and lifted her so that her feet dangled in empty space.