Sanger's secret getaway home on Lake Madera. From what she had been able to learn of Meredyth's parents, they seldom visited the Spring Brook home anymore, residing as they did in faraway Clover Leaf. She had learned that Mom and Dad would be arriving home from Europe tomorrow- information she had gleaned from a neighbor when Lauralie and Arthur had arrived at Mrs. Gaines's door, posing as realtors wishing to talk to the Sangers. Mrs. Gaines had been more than willing to help them, and she'd informed them that the Sangers were vacationing in France. Lauralie h^d gotten the Clover Leaf address when following Byron Priestly on his obsessive search for Meredyth the same day of his death. Now the ideal pair of wealthy parents would be blown up in their idyllic golf community, when they turned a key in the door to their picture-perfect, gas-heated retirement home. All it would take now, a single spark between lock and key. Lauralie had gained entrance by night, setting off the alarm, but she had charmed the bored, jaded young security guard who'd led a team of younger men to the location. She'd claimed to be the clumsiest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Sanger, visiting from California, and promising the man a date while she was in town, and young Mike had bought it, waving off the other security guards.
After Mike had finally gone, Lauralie wandered the luxurious house, and she watched the fish in the aquarium self-feed from a dispenser, and then she opened a gas line and left. The deadly gas had now had a twenty-four-hour buildup, and it would be forty-eight hours when the cab from the airport pulled up tomorrow. 'What a homecoming for Momma and Papa Sanger,' she said to the empty car.
From Paris to paradise, she mused, locating the niche off Highway 41 that led into the Madera Lake Estates. She needed sleep badly and wondered who on the lake might accommodate her.
Tonight she would strike Sanger at her heart, 'And just when the bitch thinks she can't possibly stand another blow, she'll learn about Mom and Dad dying in an inferno.'
Sleep… rest now, her mind told her. She could not recall the last peaceful sleep she'd had. Her mind seemed always in turmoil, always racing, if not with what she must do, then what she had done, examining, questioning, shoring up, and tearing down.
Her eyes closed, the sound of traffic going by on the paved road just the other side of the stand of trees filtering into her consciousness. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the faint whine of sirens. A ghastly discovery at the local diner, no doubt. She saw a mailbox with the family name carved into the wood-The Brodys-and turning in, she followed a winding dirt road toward the lake, when the Brody house peeked from behind the forest wall. She stopped short, viewing the house in the wood. It loomed large and lovely, a beautiful wraparound porch, several turret like pinnacles, a Cape Cod design. She also spied a row- boat this side of the lake at the pier.
She backed up a bit and pulled into a clearing among the trees, parked, shut down the engine, and considered her options. Somewhere on this same lake, Meredyth Sanger and Lucas Stonecoat were enjoying the warmth of their bed, wrapped in one another's embrace.
Sitting in the morning gloom, Lauralie thought of how she had posed Arthur's body, his heart on his sleeve, his dogs at his feet. She'd wanted Sanger and the others to find him in the mocking pose, and to find Mira's heart in the jar. After posing Arthur, she'd had to struggle with Mira's frozen half-corpse alone, wrapping her and transporting her to the car, breaking her nails and scarring her hands in the process. She had intentionally left her DNA in the freezer. Any idiot could put her together with the abduction and murder of Mira Lourdes by now. The investigation was a farce; any leads they enjoyed had, after all, been supplied by the Ripper herself.
'Catch me if you can, but not before I let you,' she said to the empty woods around as she exited the car and began to walk the distance to the house, her purse slung over her shoulder, the weight of the gun pulling it down.
'Time for a neighborly visit…'
Cognac. Lucas and Meredyth had, early that morning, settled on aged, expensive cognac, and after a playful contest of who could hold the most liquor before falling into a much-needed, deep slumber, they had nestled into one another's arms and had melded into one another's cognac dreams. Now, at three in the afternoon, they awakened after eight hours of sleep to cognac hangovers.
Meredyth asked herself if she had keyed in the security code downstairs before they had gone to bed. The log cabin-style home was equipped with a state-of-the-art security system, and was built to be impenetrable from the outside-no exposed wires, no weak spots. She brought up the memory of punching in the code, and she also recalled having taken both her cell phone and Lucas's off ring to accept messages only, so as to get some uninterrupted sleep.
Now it was mid-afternoon and Lucas was administering more cognac to combat the hangover, and it worked. They showered together and made love under the warm spray until they took their lovemaking back to the bed. There they luxuriated in one another's embrace, passions, and playfulness.
Sated, lying in one another's arms again, they were moved by hunger to dress, go downstairs, and raid the kitchen for anything they could find in the fridge and on the shelves. As she prepared sandwiches for them, Lucas joked that a typical reservation house could fit into Meredyth's kitchen.
'Is that designed to make me feel guilty?' she asked, punctuating her words with the knife in her hand.
'No…just an observation.'
'Well, I hear the Indian casinos are making a bundle,' she countered. 'So not everyone on the res is piss poor.'
'Casinos pay a petty tribute to the tribe, not enough to make a difference to the common good. In effect, an Indian tribe on a modem reservation is a commune-everyone helping everyone, everyone doing his part, all that. But it doesn't ever work out that way, now does it?'
'No…it doesn't. Human nature being what it is.'
'Most of the casinos are run by shrewd half-breeds who are as shameless as any CEO you have trading on Wall Street, NYC,' he said.
'It can't be that bad.'
'You haven't been out to the Coushatta.'
'Well…perhaps we can get a little public awareness going, start a drive, have a marathon or something, generate some funds.'
'You don't understand. It's not that simple.'
'Why not?'
'Because of who we are-American Indians. We have been made charity cases by the state-the U.S. Government-for almost two hundred years now, since the 1820s.'
'What's that got to do with what I'm proposing?'
'Damn, it's got everything to do with it. The Cherokee were robbed of their Eastern ancestral lands, an area covering most of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and portions of Kentucky. They were given Oklahoma before the Okies arrived, and it became an Indian state. My ancestors migrated from the Tallaquah, Oklahoma, promised lands to here, East Texas, and we cohabited with the Alabama, Coushatta, and other western tribes. What I'm saying is that the Texas Cherokee in particular didn't want any handouts from the U.S. Government. My people left the ancestral lands before Andrew Jackson forced all the southern tribes out of the Southeast on the Trail of Tears. They saw the writing on the wall, so to speak. They next left Oklahoma before the white man's treaty there was made and broken again. In Texas, we found a third home so as to not accept the white man's charity along with his worthless, stinking treaties.'
'Nice history lesson, but I still don't see what it has to do with raising awareness and funds for the reservation families and children.'
'They don't want your charity, however heartfelt it may be, Mere. Don't you get it?'
'You don't have to shout!'
He raised his hands as if arrested. 'Sony…let's eat.'
'I didn't know it was such a touchy subject with you.'
'Not me…I'm no reservation Indian, remember? I got off the res a long time ago.'
'I'm sorry White America has treated your people so wrongly, Lucas. I wish there was something I could do, that's all.'
'Meredyth, no one, least of all this clansman, holds you responsible for the thefts and rapes and lies committed in the past by the U.S. Government and military in the name of Manifest Destiny and assimilation of the aboriginals. So let's leave it at that…and while we're at it, you've got no business feeling guilty in the least for Lauralie Blodgett's becoming a twisted and cold-blooded killer either.'
