Presumed Guilty

Thirteen

The steady growl of an engine slowly penetrated Chase’s numbed awareness. The car in the garage…the closed door…

That’s when the realization hit him. He lurched to his feet.

Miranda.

He sprinted across the yard to the garage. A cloud of fumes assailed him as he pushed through the door. Miranda’s car was parked inside, its engine still running. In panic, he flung open the car door.

Miranda lay sprawled across the front seat.

He switched off the ignition. Coughing, choking, he dragged her roughly out of the car, out of the garage. It terrified him how lifeless she felt in his arms. He carried her to the lawn and laid her down on the grass.

“Miranda!” he yelled. He shook her hard, so hard her whole body shuddered. “Wake up,” he pleaded. “Damn you, Miranda. Don’t you give up on me. Wake up!”

Still she didn’t move.

In panic he slapped her face. The brutality of that blow, the sting of her flesh against his, shocked him. He laid his ear to her breast. Her heart was beating. And there it was — a breath!

She groaned, moved her head.

“Yes!” he shouted. “Come on. Come on.” She sank back into unconsciousness. He didn’t want to do it, but he had no choice. He slapped her again.

This time she moved her hand, a reflexive gesture to ward off the savage blows. “No,” she moaned.

“Miranda, it’s me! Wake up.” He brushed back her hair, gently took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead, her temples. “Please, Miranda,” he whispered. “Look at me.”

Slowly she opened her eyes. They were dazed and full of confusion. At once she lashed out blindly, as though still fighting for her life.

“No, it’s me!” he cried. He held her, hugged her tightly against him. Her frantic thrashing grew weaker. He felt the panic melt from her body until she lay quietly in his arms.

“It’s all over,” he whispered. “All over.”

She pulled away and stared up at him with a look of bewilderment. “Who…”

“It was Noah.”

“Evelyn’s father?”

Chase nodded. “He’s the one who’s been trying to kill you.”

“You have no right to hold me, Lorne. You understand? No right.” Noah, his face bruised an ugly purple, stared at his accusers. Through the closed door came the sounds of the police station: the clack of a typewriter, the ringing phone, the voices of patrolmen headed out for night duty. But here, in the back room, there was dead silence.

Quietly Lorne said, “You’re not in any position to pull rank, Noah. So talk to us.”

“I don’t have to say a thing,” said Noah. “Not until Les Hardee gets here.”

Lorne sighed. “Legally speaking, yeah, you’re right. But it would sure make things easy if you’d just tell us why you tried to kill her.”

“I didn’t. I went to her house to talk to her. I heard the car running in the garage. I thought maybe she was trying to kill herself. I started to go in, to check on it. Then Chase showed up. I guess I panicked. That’s why I ran.”

“That’s all you were doing there? Just paying Ms. Wood a visit?”

Noah gave him an icy nod.

“In a getup like that?” Lorne nodded at Noah’s black shirt and trousers.

“What I wear happens to be my concern.”

“Chase says differently. He says you dragged her in the garage, left her there and started the car.”

Noah snorted. “Chase has a little trouble being objective. Especially where Miranda Wood is concerned. Besides, he attacked me. Who the hell’s got the bruises, anyway? Look at my face. Look at it!”

“Seems to me you both got some pretty good bruises,” said Lorne.

“Self-defense,” claimed Noah. “I had to fight back.”

“Chase thinks you’re the one who’s been going after her. That you set fire to her house. Drove at her with a stolen car. And what about tonight? Was that supposed to be a convenient little suicide?”

“She’s got him all twisted around. Got him taking her side. The side of a murderer—”

“Who’s the guilty party here, Noah?”

Noah, sensing he’d said too much already, said abruptly, “I’m not going to talk till Les gets here.”

In frustration Lorne crumpled his paper coffee cup in his fist. “Okay,” he said, dropping into a chair. “We can wait. As long as it takes, Noah. As long as it takes.”

“It’s not going to stick,” said Miranda. “I know it won’t.”

They sat huddled together on a bench in the intake area. Ellis Snipe had brought them coffee and cookies. Perhaps it was his way of personally atoning for the ordeal the police had put them through. So many questions, so many reports to be filed. And then, halfway through the interrogation, Dr. Steiner had shown up, called in by Lorne to check on her condition. In the guise of a medical exam, he had practically assaulted her with his stethoscope. Breathe deep, damn it! Gotta check your lungs. You think I like making all these house calls? This keeps up, you two will have to put me on retainer!

The questions, the demands, had left her exhausted. It was all she could manage, to sit propped up against Chase’s shoulder. Waiting — for what? For Noah to confess? For the police to tell her the nightmare was over?

She knew better than that.

“He’ll get out of it,” she said. “He’ll find a way.”

“This time he won’t,” said Chase.

“But I never saw his face. I can barely remember what happened. What can they charge him with? Trespassing?” Miranda shook her head. “This is Noah DeBolt we’re talking about. In this town, a DeBolt can get away with murder.”

“Not Richard’s murder.”

She stared at him. “You think he killed Richard? His own son-in-law?”

“It’s starting to fall together, Miranda. Remember what that lawyer FitzHugh told us? The real reason Richard gave Rose Hill to you? It was to keep the land out of Evelyn’s control.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“Who’s the one person in the world Evelyn listens to? Trusts? Her father. Noah could have talked her into selling the land.”

“You think this is all for control of Rose Hill? That’s not much of a motive for murder.”

“But the threat of bankruptcy is. If his investment collapsed, Noah would be left holding acres of land he could never develop. Worthless land.”

“The north shore? Then you think Noah was the money behind Stone Coast Trust.”

“Which makes Tony Graffam nothing but a front man. A patsy, really. My guess is, Richard found out. He had those financial records from Stone Coast, remember? The account numbers, the tax returns. I think he matched one of those accounts to Noah.”

“Richard could have ruined him right then and there,” she pointed out. “All he had to do was run the story in the Herald. But he canceled it.”

“It’s the way their relationship worked, Richard and Noah. They were always out to cut each other down. But not in public, never in public. It was a private rivalry, just between them. That’s why