bus.
I was about to toss the shoulder holster and automatic into the suitcase too, then changed my mind and put it on. I couldn’t be sure, but I might not be through with it yet.
Macy came in while I was checking all the drawers to see that I had everything. He looked as sloppy as he had the night I had arrived. He had dressed hurriedly, and missed a buttonhole in his haste. One side of the shirt was higher than the other. He lugged a big suitcase with him and parked it just inside the door.
“I called the airport,” he said, almost panting. “Plane’s waiting for me. No time to do this right. We were going by boat first. We’ll fly down to the Caribbean now. There’s an airstrip that isn’t watched on an island I know. Stay with me until I’m on the plane, will you Pete?” There was a note of pleading in his voice. Fear was icing his bones. The .45 was stuck into a big hip pocket of the grape-blue slacks he wore.
“I’ll drive you,” I said. “What have you got in the suitcase? You unload the safe?”
He nodded nervously. “I took close to half a million. The rest can stay there for now.”
“Who’s going with you?”
“Diane and Aimee. They got passports and everything. They’re fixed up legal. I’m not. It don’t make any difference.” He looked back over one shoulder. “Everybody gone?”
“Maxine and his crowd pulled out a little while ago. So did the Rinkes. I saw Reavis leave, too.”
“Watch the suitcase for me, will you, Pete? I’m going upstairs, pack a few things. Diane and Aimee are getting ready to leave. We’ll lock the house up and get out of here.”
He turned and hurried out before I could say anything to him. I glanced at the suitcase, then put my own beside it. A sudden gust of wind rattled the window. It was darkening outside. There would be a storm before long.
I walked out into the hall, hearing the French doors banging. I shut them, secured the latch. Outside, the palm trees shuddered and dropped in the grasp of the wind like witches shouting incantations. From somewhere close by I thought I heard a thump that I couldn’t identify.
The door to Owen Barr’s bedroom was open. I remembered that he had been lost in the sudden frightened shuffle after the speedboat explosion. The last time I had seen him he had been plodding toward the patio after offering me a drink I didn’t want.
After...
I walked into the bedroom quickly, remembering the cold steadiness of his voice as he had talked urgently to me. Something about being watched. Maybe he imagined it. But maybe there was a good reason for his anxiety.
He wasn’t in the bedroom. Some of the paintings had been taken from the walls, stacked on the bed. It was the only sign that the occupant might have considered moving out.
There was another thump. This time I got it. It came from the bathroom. It might have been a shoe hitting the side of the bathtub.
I pushed the bathroom door open, stepped inside. Owen Barr was lying half in the tub, half out of it. I saw the curve of his back over the side of the tub, and the protruding ridged handle of a switchblade knife. His foot moved just a little against the side of the tub, and there was the thumping sound again. It was getting weaker every time. I leaned over the tub and put my hand on his shoulder. I could see half his face. Blood ran out of his mouth and into the drain, a tiny red river in a white wasteland. His eyes were half open and had the look of a chloroformed frog. I thought his lower lip was twitching just a little.
“Who did it?” I said. “Who knifed you, Owen?” Maybe it was too late. Maybe the speech mechanism was rusted shut. But he tried to talk, and I could sense the great effort, though his face didn’t change much.
It was a tiny gurgling whisper. “Didn’t see...” That wasn’t all. He had more to tell me. One of his fingers curled a little. I didn’t dare move him from the awkward position.
“Carla... Kennedy. I saw her. Back was burned. Watch out, Pete...”
I put my face closer to his. “Who is Carla Kennedy, Owen?”
I don’t know if he heard me. He was a few seconds away from dying and what was in his mind pressed hard to get into words.
“She got... box from... car... threw it in... bay... I got it. Hid... hid in... bot...”
The last word stuck and he never finished it. He died quietly, with one last tiny shiver of breath. The blood spilling from his mouth had a metallic gleam.
I got up slowly, holding the few words that had come from him as if they were something light and delicate that would disintegrate and be gone forever if I wasn’t careful. There was a warning sound in my brain but I was too intent on something else to listen to it. Owen had hidden the contents of the box. I went into the bedroom, already beginning to suspect the answer I would find, but needing to know.
The bedroom was no different from all the others. I took the closet first, searched hurriedly. No place of concealment there. I turned to the dresser. The top drawer was jammed full of expensive underwear, socks, various accessories. I scooped them out of the drawer, pitched them toward the bed. Underneath I found six wrapped quarts of whisky lying side by side like bombs in an arsenal.
I scooted them out of the way one by one, stopped. One of the packaged bottles was far lighter, and there was no shift of liquid in it when I picked it up. I tore the sack away from the bottle. The top had been broken off once, then clumsily reglued. I took the neck and shoulder of the bottle and rebroke it with my hands. The contents of the bottle spilled into the drawer.
I looked at the items. Two neat clippings about the fire that had burned to death the family of Carla Kennedy more than twenty years ago. A little model of a Napoleonic soldier, trim and erect, rifle on his shoulder, coat a bright splash of red. A child’s locket, engraved
I had found Carla Kennedy. Like a lot of things you find in life, she had been found too late.
“Turn around, Mallory,” I heard a hard slow voice say.
I felt the brush of a bony hand across the nape of my neck. It was too late to think about being careful now. I turned very slowly, holding the broken piece of bottle.
Taggart was all dressed up and ready for town. He wore a new blue suit and a self-conscious little bow tie and there was a small revolver in one outsized hand. It pointed right at my stomach. His face had about as much expression as a beach pebble.
“Where is she?” I asked him. I wondered how close he was to pulling the trigger. It might come without warning, with no spreading of lips or crinkling of lines around the eyes. But maybe he had just enough dislike for me to wait and let the fact that he was going to kill me soak in. It was a hope.
His hard lips came apart an eighth of an inch in a sly smile.
“Who do you want?”
“You know who I want,” I said. “Diane. Carla Kennedy. Which name do you know her by?”
He ignored that. His eyes caught the movement of broken glass in my hand. “Drop that,” he said. I let it slip to the rug.
“She’s down by the gatehouse,” Taggart said. “With Aimee. Waiting for Macy to come looking for Aimee.”
His big square feet moved a little uneasily, as if he realized he was taking too much time with me. “She’s going to kill him herself. I get to take care of you.”
“Like you took care of the others?” My lips felt large and numb. It was an effort to talk. I began to feel the rise of fear, the kind that freezes you stiff. It was working up through my legs without haste. I was always
