THE DEEP END (28 page)

Thirty-One

My Triumph roared to life and with one eye fixed on my rearview mirror, I put the car in gear. I released the clutch too quickly and the engine died. My heart died with it.

Powers tried to maneuver Bitty Sue’s tank of an Eldorado out of its spot. After about five seconds, he gave up on careful and collapsed the bumper of the car in front of him.

Almost screaming with frustration, I started my car again and zipped into oncoming traffic. Someone honked and I saw the shadow of a rude gesture as I sped by.

The closest policemen I knew of were at my home. I pointed the car in that direction.

They say misfortune comes in threes. They’re right. First, Powers, my dear friend who was also a murderer, followed me. Second, the engine in his car was twice the size of mine. Third, the puffy clouds I’d admired at dawn had coalesced into a grey ceiling that began to spit raindrops, and me with the top down.

I drove. Fast. Every few seconds I wiped water from my eyes without knowing if it was rain or tears.

A quick glance in the rearview revealed that Powers had closed the gap between our cars.

I was already in fifth gear, driving so far over the speed limit as to boggle the mind. Half-blinded by the rain, I could see just enough to know the pavement was dangerously slick. I drove faster. So did Powers.

The road wound around the edge of the golf course. A spilt rail fence was all that separated me from a deep creek bed and the seventh fairway.

My hands gripped the wheel.

My right foot pushed so hard on the accelerator it was a wonder it didn’t break through to the pavement.

I heard a sob in the rush of wind and speed and realized I was crying. Hard.

I gulped a damp, ragged breath. No way was I going to lose control. No way was Powers going to kill me the way he had Madeline and Henry and Roger. I took another curve going eighty and felt the wheels leave the pavement. My heart stopped as I fought to control the little car.

How ironic would it be if I killed myself in an automobile accident while fleeing a murderer?

The wheels grabbed traction in the strip of grass next to the road and I sped on.

I risked a second glance in the rearview. Powers was inches from my bumper. The Triumph couldn’t go any faster. Powers’ Eldorado could.

He rammed me.

Somehow I kept the car on the road. The obscenities I screamed were lost to the wind and rain and speed.

The Eldorado’s grill met the trunk of my car a second time.

I spun a dizzying, tilt-a-whirl circle then slammed through the fence, losing a side mirror. The car jolted down the embankment, scraping against rocks and trees before coming to a rest with its nose in the rising creek.

Thunder clapped as if I’d just provided an amusing show.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t move.

I had to.

Powers wouldn’t be satisfied with knocking me off the road. He had to make sure I was dead. He’d be coming.

My purse had fallen to the passenger-side floorboards, and I reached for it. Even the slightest movement sent waves of sharp pain careening through my chest. My fingers stretched, strained to grab hold of the handle that was just out of my reach.

I shifted then whimpered as new pain knifed through me. But I had it. I pulled the purse toward me and dug for my gun. A checkbook, a billfold, the bag that held make-up, house keys, tissue, random bits of paper, a hairbrush—my questing fingers touched it all. Finally, they found the comforting coolness of metal. My hand closed around the gun.

“Ellison!” Powers’ voice was full of concern and for one hopeful, insane, delusional moment, I let myself believe it was all a mistake. Powers, the man who’d appeared at my door with a bottle of bourbon and a box of donuts the morning after the coatroom incident, wouldn’t hurt me. Powers, with his snippy gossip and wickedly funny one-liners, wasn’t a killer. Except my destroyed car was half-submerged in a creek, each breath I took was a new agony and, when I peered through the falling rain, I could see him using a golf club as a cane to help him down the slope of the hill.

A silly, petty part of me was glad he was ruining his Gucci loafers in the mud.

A more sensible part, a part that wanted to stay alive, struggled to get out of the car. I pulled on the door handle and nothing happened. Nothing. I tried again. Still nothing.

Powers yelped. I looked up in time to see him slide several feet down the hill in his white pants.

The slide ruined a nice pair of linen trousers and brought him that much closer to me.

I gave up on the door and climbed over it. My left hand clutched my right side as if mere fingers could somehow hold ribs in place. My right hand clutched the gun.

I freed myself from the car only to have my feet sink in mud. A bubble of hysterical laughter escaped me. It was a bad day for Italian leather. I abandoned my Ferragamos.

Down the hill a rain-swollen creek looked ready to sweep me away. To my left was Powers. To my right, the embankment grew steeper. It wasn’t like I had much choice where to go. I scrabbled around the car then ran—barefoot—on rocky ground.

Rain, mud, the screaming pain in my side and the damn rocks underfoot. Did every single one have a jagged edge? I wiped pink water from my face and added blood to my list of complaints. I tripped, caught a sob in my throat, then pushed myself to standing with my free hand. A sharp clap of thunder was followed by the explosion of bark from a tree a foot to my left. Not thunder. A shot.

Thank God, Powers couldn’t hit the wide side of a barn under the best of circumstances. I clutched my gun more tightly and clambered over a large rock.

“Ellison, stop! We’ll work this out.”

I dared a peek over my shoulder.

He was twenty-five feet away. How had he gotten so close? Powers might actually be able to hit a barn if he got close enough to it.

I gave up on scrabbling through mud and rocks and starter oaks. Instead, I turned and raised my gun. “I’m listening.”

Powers’ white pants weren’t white anymore, his mint green shirt was torn and his blond hair was plastered to his skull. He held a .45. It was pointed at me.

“Tell me why.” My voice sounded strangled, as if I was fighting terror or tears. I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. The hand that held the gun shook and I loosed my hold on my ribs to steady it.

“It was Madeline’s fault.”

If I could keep him talking, someone might drive by and notice the hole in the fence, might peer over the edge and see my car in the creek, might send help. “Madeline?” I blinked away pink-tinged rain.

He nodded. “She snooped in my files.”

“So you killed her?”

“She figured out I’d been selling forged Picassos. She wanted a cut.”

Of course she did. She’d also told Henry and put us all on a road to misery. “Why sell forgeries?”

“The money.”

He didn’t say
duh
but the sentiment hung in the air like mist.

“You have plenty of money.”

“Not enough to open a gallery in New York.”

The pink-tinged rain that clouded my sight seemed redder, as if the mix of blood to water had increased. “New York?”

“I need to get away from here.”

“Bitty Sue won’t give you the money?”

The sound that escaped his lips was harsh, explosive, caustic.

I flinched.

“If I move to New York, Bitty Sue will cut me off.” Powers’ voice trembled. His hand trembled. A .45 is a heavy gun. Especially for a man whose heavy lifting usually consisted of martinis with four olives.

“So you sold fakes.”

“I was careful. There was no way men in Duluth and Provo and Akron would ever meet or compare collections. It was the perfect plan.”

I allowed myself a quick glance up the hill. The damned road was still deserted. “Until Madeline discovered it.”

“She wanted to expand. To sell more. She didn’t understand the more I sold the more likely I was to get caught.”

I swallowed. “So you killed her.”

“I told her to meet me at the gallery and we’d discuss it. I had a pitcher of martinis waiting.” His left hand covered his mouth, squeezed his cheeks, his gaze turned inward.

I took a tiny step backward. A shade more distance between Powers’ gun and me.

Then he laughed, cackled really. “She downed the first one and poured herself a second before I had time to find out if she’d told anyone.”

She’d told Henry, my grasping, rapacious husband, who’d enjoyed having power over others.

“She slurred out something about mailing insurance to Henry. Why do you think I kept going through your mail?”

Because he was a snoop. “Why dump her in the swimming pool?” I asked.

“I didn’t know she was dead. I thought if she drowned it would look like an accident.”

“And Henry?”

“I came back to your house to search for whatever Madeline sent Henry. He came home.”

“You killed him.”

“He wanted money to keep quiet about the paintings...and Madeline.”

My stomach turned. I already knew Henry was willing to blackmail a murderer, but Madeline had been his...Apparently she really had meant nothing to him.

“It was a stroke of luck that Roger and I confused our golf clubs the last time we played. After that, he looked so guilty. The cuckolded husband kills his wife and the man she’s been sleeping with. He’s overcome by guilt and kills himself.” He wiped the rain from his face. “God damn Madeline. Who doesn’t get their oven fixed? It would have been perfect if Roger had just died the way he was supposed to.”

“What now?”

For an instant, the man with the gun looked like the Powers I knew. “That depends on you.”

“On me?”

“They were bad people, Ellison. They deserved to die.” His spring green eyes blazed with certainty. “You stay quiet, and I get out of here. I go to New York and get out from under Bitty Sue’s thumb.”

He wanted my silence. Bad enough that he’d forged paintings. He’d murdered three people. I shook my head. “I don’t think we get to decide who lives and dies. Besides, Roger wasn’t a bad person.”

Powers shrugged. “He was a weak one. No one will miss him. So, you promise me you keep your mouth closed and we both walk away from this.”

He didn’t mean it. I saw the lie in his eyes, I saw it in the way his nose twitched, and in the set of his mouth. If I lowered my gun, I was dead.

“I can’t do that, Powers.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“Oh?”

“I never wanted to hurt you, Ellison.”

I blinked my disbelief. He’d left a body in a pool where he knew I swam every morning. He’d hit me over the head with a fireplace poker. He’d murdered my husband then left the body in the driveway for me to run over. Now, he pointed a gun at me.

“Powers, if you shoot that thing at me, chances are you’ll miss. We both know it.” I lifted my gun slightly. “I won’t miss.”

He actually laughed. “You won’t shoot me, Ellison.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know. You’ve never stood up for anything but your art and Grace. You’re not going to start now.”

He took a step closer and raised the .45.

“You’re wrong.” I tried to sound menacing, as if I meant to shoot him, as if my insides hadn’t turned to gelatin, as if I could kill a man.

He shook his head in disbelief. “I know you can’t do it.” He lifted the gun a bit higher. “I’m very sorry about this.”

“I am too,” I murmured. Powers had been so busy killing people he hadn’t noticed the change in me. I pulled the trigger.

Daddy once told me that if I pointed a gun at someone, I should shoot to kill. I watched red bloom bright on Powers’ green shirt. I watched as he looked down, surprise writ clearly on his face as he collapsed into the mud.

For a moment, I didn’t move. I stared in horror at the man lying on the ground. When my legs wouldn’t hold me any longer, I sank onto the large rock that extended from the embankment. Someone was screaming. I wished she’d stop. It was too loud. It threatened to disturb the stillness in my head.

The first policeman to arrive slipped in the mud at the top of the hill and slid halfway down on his ass. The second one did the same. The third one to arrive held onto trees as he descended. He didn’t spoil his plaid pants.

That one approached me slowly with his hands held in front of his body and a furrow between his brows. “Ellison.” His voice was so soft it sounded as if he was singing. “Ellison,” he crooned. “Put down the gun.”

I looked at my hand and was surprised to see the .22 still clasped in my fingers. I couldn’t let it go. “Is he dead?” I asked.

One of the policemen who’d slid down the hill looked up from Powers’ body. “He’s dead.”

Slowly, with great care, I put the gun down on the rock then I closed my eyes on the mud, and the blood and the rain.

An arm circled my shoulders and for an instant I allowed myself to relax into its comforting warmth. I hid my eyes against wet cotton and a muscled chest, and pretended the man who was stroking my wet hair was more than a policeman. When I looked up, Anarchy’s brown eyes searched my face. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I killed Powers.”

His arm tightened around me. “What happened?”

“He killed them then he ran me off the road.”

“Mr. Foster killed Mr. and Mrs. Harper and your husband?”

I nodded, suddenly too exhausted to speak. I rested my head against Anarchy’s shoulder.

He held me there for a moment. Then his fingers explored my hair. He pulled them away. Blood covered them. I felt his swallow. “Ellison, you’ve hurt your head. We need to get you out of here.”

The arm that circled my shoulders dropped to my waist. Before I could object, Anarchy lifted me off the rock. The pain in my ribs turned my sight as crimson as the blood on his fingers. I gasped for air, teetering on the edge of agony. Then I dove head first into blackness.