Night of the Raven (22 page)

“Go, McVey.” Panting, R.J. rolled onto his elbow. “I can manage. Find whatever bastard did this and put a bullet in him for me.”

McVey wiped blood from his cheek, spit it from his mouth. “Not him. Her. Check on your uncle if you can. I’m going for Amara.” His features hardened because, damn it, he should have seen this sooner. “And Yolanda.”

Chapter Eighteen

Woods and hills shrouded in fog flew by in an eerie blur. Despite her terror—which had peaked when Yolanda and her Luger had stepped from the shadows of a raven tamer wagon—Amara knew where they were headed. Bellam Mountain.

With her hands cuffed behind her and her ankles bound by a rough hemp rope, she could only give her body an angry twist. “What did you do to Uncle Lazarus?” she demanded.

Yolanda snickered. “I slipped a mickey into his milk, of course. Right after R.J. left for a night at Two Toes Joe’s bar. Traitor likes it there.”

“You call R.J. a traitor?” Amara gave another angry twist.

“I call it as I see it.” Her cousin smirked. “Fight all you like, Amara. I stole those handcuffs from Jake. You won’t be getting out of them any time soon.”

“Yolanda, this is crazy. Why are you—?”

“Shut up,” her cousin snapped. She beamed a smile across the cab when Amara wisely broke off. “I love it when I give an order and someone obeys. Especially when that someone is you. Now spill. Did you think it was me, Jake or Larry who put the spiders in Uncle Lazarus’s bathroom? Go ahead, you can say. Me, Jake or Larry?”

“Jake.”

“Seriously?” She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

“Revenge. I freaked his brother, Jimbo, out when we were kids. I didn’t think you’d go that far, and Larry’s got his own quirks and hang-ups to deal with.”

“So my brother sleepwalks naked. What does that prove?”

“That he has his own quirks and hang-ups to deal with, and while he might be willing to do you a favor, he’s not really a vindictive person. Plus, even though he’s a Bellam himself, I always thought Larry was nervous about the whole witch thing. He never possessed any power, but I’m pretty sure he believed we did.”

“You think Larry believed, but Jake didn’t?”

“Jake’s too sexist to believe any female could harm him.”

“Bull. What it really boils down to, why you really thought Jake put the spiders in Uncle’s bathroom and not me, is because Jake’s a guy and I’m not.” Yolanda gave the steering wheel a petulant thump. “Why do people think only men can kill with guns? Poison, that’s a woman’s weapon. Fine, maybe I didn’t shoot her, but I got Hannah with the butt end of my Luger. One whack and down she went. Not that it took much muscle on my part. She was pretty hammered by the time I coaxed her over to the main part of the manor.”

“You got Hannah to walk all that way on a bad leg?”

“She didn’t walk, she limped. Stumbled. Laughed like a loon. But come on, Ammie, we’re talking raven tamer whiskey here. A few swigs of that stuff and who even knows you have legs?”

“You got an old woman drunk so you could kill her.”

“The old woman was a lush. She dumped three fingers of whiskey into her coffee without a word of encouragement from me. I’ll cop to adding more while she was pouring me a glass of that gut-rot raven’s blood wine, but honestly? It was superfluous at that point.”

Working herself around so she could lean against the door, Amara regarded her cousin’s profile. “Call me dense, Yolanda, but I’m still not getting this.”

“You’re dense.” Only Yolanda’s eyes slid sideways. “You’re also stupid, stupid, stupid.” Grinning, she did a little butt dance. “Knowing that makes all the trouble worthwhile.”

“
Trouble.
Is that your euphemism for
murder?
” Amara tugged experimentally on her wrists, but, as predicted, the cuffs held. “When did you go insane?”

Her cousin sneered. “You’re such a weenie. People die every day. Some do it naturally. Others are helped along. I subscribe to the second way of thinking. And in support of my earlier remark about women and guns, Hannah wasn’t the only person I ‘helped along.’ I also offed the cute jerk with the knife who wanted the bimbo with the overbite instead of me. I admit that night’s a bit fuzzy, but I think I put a bullet in her before I did him. Would you believe the bitch pulled a gun on me at exactly the same time I pulled one on her? I mean, talk about your bizarre coincidences.”

She didn’t know. Yolanda had no idea who she’d murdered in that alley. Growing desperate, Amara worked on freeing her ankles rather than her wrists.

The foggy landscape rushed past as her cousin pounded through ruts and potholes, mindless of the damage she might be inflicting on the truck’s undercarriage.

“Yolanda... Ouch. Damn.”

“Almost bite your tongue off there, cuz? Not to worry. You’ll be dead soon. Won’t matter.”

“Yeah, I got that part. What I still don’t get is why? I know you hate me....”

“Loathe, despise, put a thousand curses on you that unfortunately never took.” Yolanda shrugged. “No point understating things.”

“We’ll agree we’re not friends. I never liked Jake’s brother, but I think murdering him would have been a little extreme. So I’m guessing there’s a reason other than loathing behind what you’ve done.”

“Well, duh.” Yolanda swung the truck with reckless abandon around the remains of a fallen tree. She did her second butt dance to an old Abba song. “Money, money, money. I want it, honey. When the rich man croaks.”

Astonishment momentarily blotted out every other emotion. “That’s what this is about? Money?”

“Rich man’s money. Richest man in the Hollow and the Cove combined’s money.”

The missing puzzle piece fell into place at last. All the way into place as Amara recalled the contents of their uncle Lazarus’s medicine cabinet.

“Oh, my God,” she exclaimed softly. “Sunitinib. And everolimus. The first drug was farther back on the shelf. It would have been older.”

“Is that doctor talk for ‘oh, what a dumb ass I’ve been’? Which you totally are, and I’d be the last person to argue the point. But bottom line? Uncle Dearest’s life is winding down like an eight-day clock ticking through the last few minutes of its final hour.”

Amara only half heard her. She’d been blind. She’d seen the drugs the night she’d gone looking for antacid. Seen but hadn’t absorbed.

“Saw the trees just fine.” She sighed. “Missed the forest completely.”

Yolanda ticked a finger. “More doctor talk, I assume, meaning your teeny, tiny mind overlooked what would have been a no-brainer for most first-year med students.”

Ignoring her, Amara let her head fall back against the window. “Those drugs are used to treat renal cancer, the newer usually after a failure with the older. But even the new drug didn’t have a recent date on it.” Her terror momentarily suspended, she regarded her cousin. “Uncle Lazarus has kidney cancer.”

“Yes, he does. It’s also in his bladder and, fingers crossed, his liver. And how do I know this, you ask, when in all probability he hasn’t told a soul?”

“You went through his desk?”

“Nope. One day, R.J. got sick and Uncle had to go to Bangor for a check-up. I offered to drive him. I mean, a girl’s gotta suck up, right? We drove, I made a show of leaving the doctor’s office, and on a lovely spring day, I stood under an open window in an alley very much like the one where I shot the jerk and the bimbo and I listened to Uncle’s doctor tell him he needed tests. Of course, Uncle Lazarus always does what’s needed, including getting himself to a lab at some point. The next part was a guess, but a good one, I think.”

“He wanted to see the test results,” Amara said. “All of them, personally, so he had copies delivered by express mail as soon as they were available.”

“Exactly. I retract one ‘stupid.’ The results arrived. Uncle got uncharacteristically drunk and punched the courier—or you could say messenger—down at Two Toes Joe’s bar.”

Amara was so far beyond shock, her mind simply went numb. “Did you see the results or just go with your guess?”

“Uncle’s drunken punch spoke for itself. It validated my guess well enough.”

“So all this death, all these murders, are about money.”

“Whacks of money, Amara.”

“Did you kill Uncle Lazarus’s sister, too?”

“Aunt Maureen? Didn’t have to. The old girl smoked herself to death. Thank you very much, Auntie Mo. But I will admit, it was her death that planted the seed in my head. As the seed grew, I said to myself, ‘Wait a minute, Yolanda, the old guy must have a will.’ So I skulked and I lurked and eventually I said to hell with it. One afternoon, when I knew he and R.J. would be in Bangor, I did what you said and searched Uncle’s office. Jackpot.”

They clattered over a broken-up section of the road. Amara stole a glance behind them. There were no headlights. Did that mean Yolanda had seen McVey tonight? Seen and... No, not going there, she decided. “Obviously you’re named in the will,” she said instead.

“Number four on the list,” her cousin confirmed. “Good old Uncle thinks I’ll be thrilled to inherit the Red Eye. Woo-hoo. You, on the other hand, as number-two heir, were initially in line for Bellam Manor and an offensive amount of cash. I don’t remember Hannah’s bequest—she was number three—but I do know Aunt Maureen was slated to receive the lion’s share of his estate. Here’s the best part, though, and the reason I did what I did. According to the terms of Uncle Lazarus’s will, if one heir predeceases the others, whatever bequest he or she would have received goes to the next person in line. How cool is that?”

“Too cool.” Amara closed her eyes. “So after Aunt Maureen died, I became number one. If I’d died, everything would have gone to Hannah.”

“‘Would have’ being the operative phrase.”

“And with Hannah and me both gone, you’re the big winner.”

“Bigger than big, Amara. Oh, I’ll share some of my winnings with my brother, but for the most part Larry’s perfectly happy setting off controlled avalanches in the Rockies during the winter and hanging out with his too-cool-for-school sister—who happens to be a Bellam female and a teeny bit scary when she doesn’t get her own way—in the spring and summer.”

“For the record,” Amara remarked, “in the bitch-witch pecking order, you’re miles ahead of me.”

“Why, thank you, cousin.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“No? Huh. Guess I’ll have to make your death doubly painful. Should anyway.” She huffed out a breath. “I’m pretty sure McVey’ll have to go once I do you.”

Relief coursed through her. McVey was alive. Thank God, he was alive. “You’re not a witch, Yolanda,” she snapped. “You’re a demon from hell.”

“Maybe, but I’m a smart one.” Her cousin buffed hot pink fingernails on her jacket. “Wanna know how I waylaid McVey?”

Amara shot her a look, but Yolanda merely snickered and sailed on.

“I smucked him with the spare cane Uncle keeps in this very truck. Had to shoot R.J. first, of course. Not fatally, mind you, just enough to knock him off his feet. I know, I know, I should have shot McVey as well, but I’ve been trying really hard to think of a way to finish this without offing him. I mean, it kills me—pun intended—to think of the waste. The man’s smoking hot. Unfortunately, I can’t get around the fact that he’s also a freaking great cop. Too great.”

“Meaning you’re not an equally great murderer?”

“I’m getting the hang of it—but, no, I’m not a major league player quite yet.”

“Is that your goal, Yolanda? To make the big league?”

“Only in the money column, cousin. Once the killing’s done, it’s done. If R.J. can’t identify me, he can live. He’s in the will, but lower on the list than me.” She widened her eyes. “I don’t need absolutely everything. Just most of it will do.”

All Amara could think right then was that Yolanda hadn’t killed McVey. She’d knocked him out, but he was alive.

And they were getting very close to Bellam Bridge.

She tried not to notice the baleful looks Yolanda cast her. Fear was an endless slither in her stomach. Her cousin wouldn’t be talked out of her plan, and Jake’s handcuffs were holding fast.

“I watched you the morning after you got here,” Yolanda said at length. “Took some binoculars and Larry’s old .30-30 and climbed a tree outside Nana’s house. There was a moment when I was tempted to shoot all of you—Uncle Lazarus, McVey and you—when you were together in the kitchen. But it crossed my mind that if I missed, especially if I missed McVey, I’d be screwed. And, well, hey— superhot cop.”

“I’ll have to remember to thank him for the reprieve.”

“You won’t be thanking anyone, Amara. My tiny lapse of confidence and lust only gave you a few more days to be scared out of your wits.” She waited a beat before asking, “So tell me—because I can’t help being curious—was the cute creep with the knife one of Jimmy Sparks’s people?”

“No, he was an old enemy of McVey’s people.”

“I’d say tell McVey he’s welcome from me. Unfortunately...yada yada.” She jumped on the brake pedal with both feet and almost flung Amara through the windshield.

Grinning, she set the brake. “Road ends here, Ammie.” Plucking the Luger from her lap, she straight-armed it so the tip was less than an inch from Amara’s forehead. “Now we walk.”

Amara forced her lips into a humorless smile. “Or in my case, hop.”

Yolanda matched her smile. “If you piss me off, yes. You might actually prefer to hop when you discover where we’re going.”

“Not Bellam Manor?”

“That would be too cliché, cousin. No, word’s out on the sorry state of Bellam Bridge. Why on earth you tried to cross it, no one in either town will ever understand, but you did—or soon will. Tragically, you fell through and died.” Eyes gleaming, Yolanda leaned forward to stage-whisper, “Or soon will.”

* * *

M
C
V
EY DIDN’T ASK
Brigham how he’d gotten to the motel or why he’d come. He only knew, if it was the last thing he did, he was going to get Amara back before Yolanda harmed her.

Sweeping a dozen large spiders from McVey’s truck, the raven tamer tossed a bulky pack onto the floor and plunked his own bulk in the passenger seat. “Go,” he said, and pointed. “That way.”