Partners in Crime (22 page)

She didn’t say another word as he slowly closed the door behind him. She waited until she heard him unlocking his own door before she jumped up and double-locked the outside door. Then she went to the connecting door, relocking it and moving the rickety armchair under the handle for extra protection. Not that she thought she had anything to worry about—Sandy wasn’t the sort to use force. Not when he had such formidable powers of persuasion.

She heard the voices of the policemen next door while she lay soaking in her hot bath. Apparently Sandy gave them more than enough information—there were no peremptory knocks on her motel room door. She stayed in the tub until the water grew tepid, then pulled on an oversize T-shirt and was heading for the dubious comfort of the motel’s best mattress when she heard the connecting door rattle.

She smiled smugly at the chair blocking the doorknob. “Go away,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”

Sandy’s reply was short and graphic, and the door rattled with the force of his shaking it. She decided to ignore him, climbing into bed and turning off the light, prepared to enjoy the sound of his futile struggles.

A second later there was a huge, crashing noise, the chair went flying across the room, the door frame splintered, and the room was flooded with light outlining a very angry man.

“Don’t,” he said with deceptive calm, “lock the door again.”

Jane raised her head off the pillow, matching his even tone. “I don’t think that’s possible anymore.”

“We’ll leave at six tomorrow morning. Is that all right with you?” He didn’t make any effort to come into the room, and somehow she knew he wouldn’t.

“Just dandy,” she said. “Am I allowed to close the door?”

“Certainly,” he replied with great courtesy. “I’ll even do it for you.” And without another word he pulled the splintered door closed, shutting out the light.

Jane lay on the sagging mattress, listening to the sounds of her accomplice as he moved about his bedroom. He was whistling softly, apparently well pleased with his brief act of violence.

At least, Jane thought, she wouldn’t have Margery’s problem. Alexander Caldicott wasn’t going to give up without one hell of a fight. And with that thought, Jane fell asleep. Smiling.

J
ane Dexter had to be the most infuriating, pigheaded, cold-hearted, sexless woman in the entire world, Sandy told himself. And then he quickly amended his judgment. Sexless, she wasn’t; she’d simply prefer to be. No woman had ever, melted in his arms the way she had, had ever turned as hot and demanding, as overwhelmed and overwhelming as she had during that too-short night in the old house in Bay Head.

He wanted her again. He’d wanted her last night when he’d given in to a childish fit of pique and smashed open the connecting door. One word, one sign of softening on her part and they could have spent the night a lot more profitably than he had, alternating between tossing and turning and taking cold showers. But she hadn’t exhibited any signs of relenting, and he’d felt like a damned fool smashing through the door like that, and so he’d spent the night in misery. His only consolation was the certain knowledge that she’d had just as wakeful a night. The paper-thin walls carried every creak of the mattress, every weary sigh. He lay there in his bed, staring at the clock, wondering how much longer he could reasonably wait before he could get up. Wondering how much longer it would be till Jane came back to his bed.

He groaned, punching his pillow and rolling over. He was going to have a hell of a time driving four hundred miles on approximately fifteen minutes of sleep. Maybe he could catch just a few more minutes. Maybe he could blot Jane out of his mind long enough so he could get a short nap. He pulled the pillow over his head, nestling his face into the scratchy sheets. If he could just blot out the evocative sound of her mattress creaking, he might have a chance.

The first cool gray light of dawn was filtering through the lime-green curtains of the motel room when Jane awoke. She squinted at her watch, moaned, and shut her eyes again. It was 4:45 a.m. Too early to get up, even if they were planning to leave by six. She wouldn’t need to pack—everything was still jumbled in her suitcase anyway. All she had to do was stumble through her morning ablutions and climb into that sinfully comfortable Audi. There was nothing to keep her awake.

Except the certainty that Stephen Tremaine, the bluff, avuncular figure from a distant past, had murdered her brother. She still couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t accept the fact that her brother died from someone else’s act of violence. Had he known when the car went over the embankment? Was he afraid of dying?

She shivered, sitting up in bed. Horrible, nightmare thoughts. Richard had never been afraid of anything in his life, not draft boards or the national-guard or rural, reactionary sheriffs or dying for a cause. She’d seen him lie down in front of a bulldozer that was trying to raze a building Richard considered a historic monument. She’d known him to walk in front of snarling police dogs, to starve himself down below a hundred pounds, to risk death in numerous ways, and he’d never been frightened. When it came right down to it, he was too self-absorbed to consider himself mortal. When death came he probably reacted with no more than surprise and mild outrage.

She found herself smiling in the darkened bedroom, and a small part of the clutching around her heart eased a bit. For the first time some of her brother’s noble, infuriating characteristics seemed to have some side benefits. At least they might have made death easier.

She only wished she were blessed with a similar self-absorption. It was always possible that the brakes on the Escort had failed normally. And it was remotely possible the moon was made of green cheese and the astronauts who landed there didn’t happen to notice.

She supposed she ought to be more frightened. If she were alone she would be. But the knowledge that Sandy was beside her, that another living, breathing soul was stuck in the mess along with her, gave her enough courage to face even another case of tampered brakes. If she’d had any plans to sever her relationship with her duplicitous partner, those plans had vanished after their dip in the canal. She needed all the help she could get, and no matter how mad she was, she preferred to have that help from Sandy.

Besides, it was clear Uncle Stephen hadn’t the nerve for a direct attack. He could tamper with someone’s automobile with impunity, and given his background that was understandable. Stephen Tremaine was a self-made man, and he just happened to have paid his way through undergraduate school by working at a local auto repair shop.

In the past thirty years he’d been involved in too many things for Jane to even contemplate, if she had to guess where the next attack might come from. As far as she knew, after college none of his work had been particularly hands-on. Maybe his murderous expertise was limited to cars. They’d better go over the Audi with a fine-tooth comb.

These thoughts weren’t conducive to going back to sleep, she thought, climbing out of bed and pulling back the hideous nylon curtain. The gray-blue light of early dawn bounced off the glaring streetlights, and there was frost on the Audi. Trucks rumbled past on Route One, but the rest of New Jersey was asleep.

She could stay in the room and brood, or she could get her last chance for a little exercise before being cooped up in a car for eight or nine hours, depending on how fast Sandy drove. While she thought jogging was a sign of insanity, she missed her early-morning walks that used to start her day in Baraboo. The parking lot of the motel lacked a certain jungle charm, but it was better than nothing. A little fresh air, even laden with chemicals and exhaust fumes, was better than nothing.

She pulled on Margery’s designer sweat suit, which had to be the most comfortable thing she’d worn in years, slipped on her Nikes, tied her long hair back with a scarf, and stepped outside into the early-morning chill. She closed the door behind her, taking a deep breath and watching the ice crystals on the air as she exhaled. Stuffing the keys in her pocket, she stepped out past the silver Audi, onto the pitted tarmac.

Her only warning was the sound of gravel beneath a noiseless tread. An arm snaked around her neck, a hand clamped over her mouth, shutting her scream off before it got past her throat, and something sharp jabbed into her ribs, something that could only be a knife.

She had a faint, panicked hope that it was Sandy trying to scare her. But the solid body behind her was too tall, even for Sandy, the arm across her throat was too thick and burly, the voice rasping in her ear too hoarse and obscene.

“Shut up,” he hissed in her ear. “You try to scream, lady, and you’ll be dealing with a heart transplant the hard way. Understand?”

She nodded, trying to swallow her terror along with her scream, hoping the pressure of the knife against her ribs would lessen. It didn’t.

The man began dragging her back toward the motel, back into the shadows. She wanted to beg him not to hurt her, but his hand was still tight over her mouth, and it took all her concentration to breathe through her nose, to keep calm, to keep from kicking and screaming and crying in sheer, childish terror.

Was he going to rape her? Kill her? Simply rob her? She’d come out without her wallet, with nothing but the keys to her room. Even if she were able to get away from him, she wouldn’t be able to unlatch the ancient lock on her door before he caught her again. Maybe she could reason with the man.

She felt the sharp point of the knife leave her rib cage, and she breathed a sigh of relief, only to experience the even greater horror of having the cold, sharp steel pressed up against the fragile underside of her jaw, just above the man’s arm.

“That’s right, honey. You know I mean business, don’t you? Jabba told you about Lenny the Rip, didn’t he? But you don’t learn too quickly, do you? First your brother’s car, then yours, and you still go around asking questions, talking to the police. My employer doesn’t like that. He wants you to butt out of his business. You’d like to do that, wouldn’t you?” He gave her a rough little shake, and the tip of the knife grazed her skin. “Just nod if you agree.”

She didn’t have much choice. She nodded, very carefully, so as not to impale herself on the tip of the knife. “So you tell your lawyer friend that you aren’t interested in your brother anymore. That he should go on back to New York, and keep out of places in the East Village where he doesn’t belong. And you go back to Nebraska or wherever it was you came from, and in a few months a nice fat check will arrive. Now isn’t that better than driving a car with crummy brakes? Just nod.”

She nodded, but the knife still bit into the tender skin. “I’m glad we had this little discussion. I’d be more than happy to go into detail, but I think you get my drift. Don’t you, honey?”

Once more she nodded, and she felt her body propelled along the walkway, back toward her room. “Reach in your pocket for the keys, lady,” he said in that same, hoarsely affable voice. “And unlock your door.”

Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely find the keys. Finding the lock without being able to look for it was even harder, but he was still holding her in that vice-like grip, and when she tried to move her head downward the knife jabbed deeper.

“Come on, lady, you can do it without looking, I know you can. A smart girl like you,” he sneered gently.

Getting the key in the lock was only half the battle. The lock was old and rusty and usually required careful handling and just the right amount of jiggling. She wasn’t going to stand and jiggle while her backside was pressed up against someone named Lenny the Rip.

Finally the lock gave, and the door opened in front of her. She didn’t move, terrified to precipitate something she couldn’t fight. Would he follow her in, out of sight of possible witnesses, and make his point more violently and more effectively?

“We’re agreed on this, aren’t we, lady?” he muttered in her ear. “You’re going back to Kansas, right?” He moved his hand a fraction of an inch away from her mouth, ready to slap it down again if she made the wrong sound, and the knife still rested against her throat.

“Right,” she said, her voice a thin croak of sound.

“Good,” he said cheerfully. And then she felt herself propelled forward, sprawling full-length on the seedy carpet, as the door slammed shut behind them.

She lay without moving, shivering in reaction as she listened to the sound of a car gun its engine and tear away. She heard the slamming of doors, the pounding of footsteps, and then her room was flooded with light from the connecting door, and she was no longer alone.

Sandy was on the floor beside her, pulling-her into his arms, his hands gentle, reassuring, as they pushed the hair away from her face. It wasn’t until she felt his arms around her that she started crying, great, gasping sobs of reaction and relief.

He held her tightly, murmuring to her, meaningless words of comfort as he stroked her face. She could see streaks of darkness on his hand, and knew with a sort of benumbed horror that it was her blood on his hand. Instead of calming down, she could feel the tension building inside her, bubbling forth into what might very well turn into hysterics, when she heard Sandy’s prosaic voice in her ear.

“Thank God he left when he did. I was afraid I might have had to rescue you.”

Jane’s tears halted abruptly. She stiffened in his arms, pulling back the few inches he’d let her, and stared up into his bland face. “You knew he was attacking me?”

“I could hear every sound you made during the night, every toss and turn. As a matter of fact, I didn’t sleep too well, either. When I heard you get up and go outside I decided to join you. I was just getting my clothes on when I heard Lenny grab you.”

She just stared at him, her hysterics forgotten. “And you didn’t want to step outside without your pants on, is that it?”

“It is cold,” he agreed. “But even more important is the fact that Lenny has had a great deal of experience with that nasty knife of his, and I had no weapon at all. Not to mention the fact that he’s about half a foot taller than I am and a hundred pounds heavier.”