Voices in the Wardrobe (24 page)

“Did you try to call me?”

“No, I was worried I'd help them trace you. So I lounged around the dock, watched CNN in the bar. That's when I figured out what had happened to the sheriff's department. They'd had prior orders from another part of the government to participate in the Emergency Response Drill and nobody in the bureaucracy ever talks to anybody else in the bureaucracy if they can help it so—”

“We watched part of it in a parking lot in Del Mar. It was a hoot. Kenny, I got a call from Luella this afternoon. She said she was in the cottages. And she said ‘we.' I'm hoping that means Maggie is still alive and they're together. She sounded drunk or drugged so I'm not positive that's what she said. I've had a call from Detective Solomon who says he's back up there now too. He insists I stay away from the Spa. I've talked to Mitch who says to park down at the marina and have the steward from the
Motherfricker
, that's a yacht he'll be shooting on in a few days, drop me off just below the crest of the promontory where he, Mitch, will meet me. And I have connived to get Brodie Caulfield and Keegan Monroe to forcibly restrain Libby Abigail Greene from coming up to the Spa as she has threatened to do because she has promised her grandmother she wouldn't let me out of her sight until said grandmother arrives at LAX sometime tomorrow.”

After a long pause and a longer stretch, a deep yawn, a shake of the head, Kenneth Cooper/Kenny Cowper blinked his black eyes at her black eyes and said, “That's what I've always liked about women—they lead such simple straightforward lives. But having met Edwina, having your mom here is not that bad an idea.”

“And the call from Mitch sounded funny. If he were being forced to have me be picked up down at the marina so I wouldn't get up there to begin with—I don't know—but there was something funny about that call.”

“You really sure you were talking to Mitch Hilsten there?” Kenny said in Mitch's voice. “See, he's famous enough to be mimicked pretty easy, sweet little Charlie. And you're hearing this from an amateur at mimicking.”

Thirty-One

“So you figure they're going to be waiting for you just below the crest of the cliff top?”

“Either that, or down at the marina where I was to leave the truck. Or it was Mitch waiting to meet me there like he said.” She kept a pair of crummy running shoes in the truck for emergencies she never had. Until now, maybe.

“Might have known any woman who'd drive a Ram would pack sensible shoes. Stands to reason.” But Kenny shook his head in bewilderment to negate his words.

They'd parked the Ram in a construction zone located several cul-de-sacs closer to their destination than their first stop and where a modest home, in the process of being scraped off its lot by a bulldozer, hunkered injured among several trucks, machines, piles of debris that overflowed onto the street. The mostly open lot gave them access to a social trail snaking up the side of the promontory for a way at least. Best they could do without knowing the lay of the land.

“I still don't know what you think we can do if your daughter shows up. Or what we can do about anything, frankly.”

“Do you want to just turn around and go back? Well, go.” She slipped her wallet and keys in her pocket, stuffed her purse under the seat. Her neck ached again. This time the weather change was for real.

“No Charlie, I want to know what the plan is.”

“The plan is to sneak around any welcoming committee waiting on the crest of the whatever-it-is and the main building of the Spa to the cottages behind it and rescue Maggie and Luella.”

“Oh well, that's easy. Why didn't you say so? One little problem I can think of though is that there's no cover. Unless we crawled on our stomachs and then—”

“Kenny, that's a wonderful idea. Why didn't I think of it?”

“I was being either vacuous or facetious. Man, I'm too tired to sort out which.”

“I really do appreciate your doing this.” She put an arm around his waist, which with the uneven terrain and his height was a stretch. “Tell you what, we get out of this all right, I'll give
you
a massage.”

“I'm holding you to that, Greene.”

“I know.” The climb was getting serious. He was in shape and she wasn't. That wind in Del Mar had followed her and tried now to push her over. So much for sensible shoes. Charlie finally called a rest stop—a real bruise to her ego but it took her three steps to match one of his. “Get down, way down, flat. Now.”

“I'm not really in the mood for my massage right—”

“No, I think I see someone.” A big rock would have been nice. But there weren't any. There was someone walking toward them though, and in a crouch.

It was Mitch. And the closer he came the angrier he looked. “What the hell you two doing? Charlie, I thought you were meeting Sidney down at the marina. You didn't say anything about bringing him.”

“Trying to sneak onto the Spa property without being seen,” Kenny said with a touch of sneer-like tone. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for Charlie. Saw you guys for miles. What the fuck stupid trick is this, Steeplehead?”

“Sorry you're so vertically challenged, Hilsten.” That sudden draining of all expression in the black eyes, the flattening of voice tone men exhibit when they're recharging the testosterone level in preparation to do something stupid. The world would be a lot less interesting without men but it would make a lot more sense.

“Now stop that,” she ordered, but wasn't about to step between them. “How did you expect to get me in there without being seen if I'd been dropped off by Sidney?”

“By approaching the Spa from the other direction. There's a lot more cover.”

“We'd have to cross the road.” Kenny straightened taller, just to rub it in. “You know the terrain over there?”

“Houses, backyards, dogs, and cul-de-sacs. Better than crossing the promontory, wide open to all the big-view windows of the main building.”

A very temporary truce evolved and they took off for the road heading up to the Sea Spa, pausing before crossing it to let Charlie catch her breath—another grudge she had against guys. No sign of Mitch's rental, the wind building even here, but no official types peering down at them that Charlie could see. Suddenly, they were in a neighborhood on a path along a dry drainage ditch lined with rocks and then on a sidewalk. Mitch led them down a street to a cross street and then up another cul-de-sac where his black rental was parked. He motioned them inside and drove to the end of the cross street—where it dead ended at a permanent concrete barrier, on the other side of which jagged a ditch filled with deep darkness instead of water. It meandered downhill out of sight and uphill it made a cut through the cliff top where sunlight spilled through like in a religious movie.

Charlie stood looking up at that inspirational beacon, feeling distressingly creepy.

“You made it this far, Charlie. This last little bit shouldn't be all that difficult.” Mitch Hilsten had some bruising under and along to the side of one eye.

“I could carry you,” Kenny offered.

“I know.” Charlie turned around so they could see her tears—part actress, part overwhelmed responsible person here—before they could make their own remarks into a reason to strike out at each other. “I'm just so afraid of what I might find up there.”

Whoa, we're not too manipulative here.

“Yeah, but it's for their own good.”

“What's for who's own good? Oh—” Kenny shrugged, embarrassed for her.

“Well, she's under a lot of stress.”

“I know that, Hilsten.”

“Okay, I'm ready to go up there now. This is really serious stuff here. I wish you guys would grow up.”

“Well, you're the one talking to yourself.”

“Are you intimating Charlie's losing it, Cow-per?” Mitch did his highly offended rage thing.

“See you guys later. I have more important things to deal with right now. Like life and death?” Charlie took off at a pace faster than she could ever maintain, hoping anger and dread would give her the extra energy the cocktail hour in Del Mar had not. She was halfway to the divine light when a firecracker, car backfire, or gunshot sounded above her. She couldn't tell how long surprise stopped her in her tracks before the males in the trio had raced up behind her and flattened her to the ground.

Charlie could barely catch enough breath to release a stream of invective that should have flipped-off the heavenly finger on the light switch above.

There was a dead man staring at them when they peeked over the crest's edge. But his eyes didn't follow Charlie as she pulled herself up on crumbling earth with the help of a butt-shove from the guys below. When she stood finally he stared at her sensible shoes instead.

“Christ, get down, Charlie. The shooter's still up here for sure.”

And she was pulled to earth once more and it was beginning to piss her off. She had half a mind to turn Libby and her famous knee loose on the other two stooges in this pratfall of an endeavor.

“I've never seen him before. Shot in the back of the neck. Looks real surprised.” Mitch.

“White shirt and tie, sleeves rolled up. East Coast maybe.” Kenny.

The guys continued the crime scene investigation dialogue in whispers, looking around for the person with the gun. All Charlie could think of was that it wasn't Maggie or Luella lying dead there. Maybe they were alive, still in the cottages somewhere. Hiding, waiting for her to come and help them.

The wind ruffled the guy's hair and the back of his shirt except where blood from his neck had stuck it to his skin. Charlie wondered if they'd try to pin this one on Maggie too. There were all kinds of different agendas stacking up here. All the deaths did not have to have come about by the same people or motive. But blaming it all on Maggie could be very convenient for both the killer, killers, and more so for overworked authorities trying to resolve the murders.

“This is a real dangerous place to be,” Kenny reminded them. “How do we get to the cottages, Hilsten, without getting picked off by the sniper? Your call.”

“That's somebody's son, husband, dad, brother, boyfriend, meal ticket,” the actor/producer said righteously.

“Look at it this way, he won't ever have to linger in a nursing home.” Kenny pushed her to move away from the dead loved one and crawl after Mitch toward a fake foundation of a fake stone ruin of antiquity. The whole place was like a planned copy of a ruin rather than the ruin of a copy of an ancient ruin, when you looked at it while slithering along on your belly—sort of a snake's eye view of man's folly.

When the going gets tough, Charlie gets philosophical, herself reminded her, and totally useless.

Another shot pinged off the fake stone next to Charlie's head and her contact lens went painfully crazy so fast she just removed it—all her eye paraphernalia back in her purse in the metallic blue Ram. Her tears provided the eyewash to move the offending speck of fake foundation rock to a corner where she could snag it out.

“You think that was a rifle or a pistol, Stretch?”

“I don't know the difference from this end of it, Shorty, but the guy's a good shot.”

While they argued over sound and velocity and whatever, Charlie snuck a peek with her one good eye before one of them pulled her back to earth.

“Jesus, Charlie, will you—”

“It's a girl.”

“What's a girl?”

“The shooter.” Knowing she wasn't supposed to do this, Charlie stuck the lens on her tongue to clean and lubricate it the only way she had now, not even a bottle of water to rinse it, and stuck it back in. If she got shot, this sin and probably all the others wouldn't mean much.

“Okay, stand up, all of you, with your hands behind your head,” Caroline VanZant said above them. “Believe me, I have nothing to lose by killing all three of you.”

Thirty-Two

“Why didn't you just shoot them too?” Snappy number, Ruth Ann Singer, snapped. “Might as well, you're shooting everybody else and now they'll rat on us.”

“For what?” Caroline's eyeglasses magnified her sadness and the redness.

“For what we're doing to them right now.” Ruth Ann was talking tough but looking terrified.

They herded Charlie and the guys into a side door of the Spa, ground floor at this level, which varied with the terrain. But this was the pool level and they were guided by Caroline's rifle into the exercise-machine room, forced to sit on the floor where Sue Rippon tied their wrists with elastic exercise cords to some of the heavy equipment Kenny had thought so cool.

“Caroline, please tell me what you know about Maggie and Luella,” Charlie pleaded.

“Let's just say they're feeling no pain.” She and the rifle turned to go. Sue and Ruth Ann couldn't leave fast enough. They were definitely not comfortable with this.

“Wait. Are they alive?”

“Not for long. Or you either.”

“And she'd seemed like such a sweet little old lady,” Kenny whispered when Caroline had closed the door behind her.

“I knew it. They're still alive. We've got to hurry.” Charlie set to squirming. “Watch to see if anyone's coming back.”

“Careful, Charlie, these things are tight. Now's not the time to break something.” Kenny pulled, pushed, and grunted against the restraints too. The three of them were attached too far apart to help each other and the machinery was attached to skids bolted to the floor.

“Relax, Cowper. She can fold her hands nearly in half vertically. And she's highly motivated about now.”

“He's right, Kenny, save your strength for later. We may need it.”

The walls seemed half glass with the show windows into the hall leading to the pool. Part of the pool was even visible. And then another wall had windows to the outside where a few shrubby things tossed in the wind off the Pacific.