A Crazy Little Thing Called Death (20 page)

“Those were accidents.”

“Yeah, and any one of them could have been fatal.”

“What are you saying? I should break it off with him?”

“Hell, no. Just break off the engagement. Before he gets killed. Then you can live happily ever after, but safely outside the bonds of matrimony.”

“Emma, I never expected this from you.”

“I know.” Her grin was embarrassed. “Me, neither. But it’s hard to ignore the evidence when your house is in flames, right?”

I looked up at the ceiling, too. “I can’t break off the engagement. It would hurt him, Em. He wants to be married. He’s really a very traditional person.”

My sister rolled over on one hip and pulled a smashed pack of cigarettes out of her hip pocket. She shook one out of the pack, but made no move to light up. “It’s the Catholic thing.”

“He wants a wedding.”

“So does Libby,” Emma said on a laugh. “I heard her on the phone earlier. She’s found somebody who will rent her a chocolate fountain. With an attendant who wears a G-string.”

“Why would anyone want a woman in a G-string at a wedding?”

“It’s not a woman, Sis.”

I groaned. Libby and her wedding plans were putting my stomach in knots. I had a lot on my mind, and a night of crazy, drugged-up behavior hadn’t made any of it go away. So I said, “Stick with Ignacio, Em. He’s very sweet. Sweet and uncomplicated.”

Looking up from his massaging, Ignacio smiled very sweetly indeed.

“Thing is,” she said, “sweet and uncomplicated doesn’t exactly float my boat.”

Before I could ask her to share more, her cell phone rang. She dug into her pockets again to find it.

“Yeah?” she said to her caller. Then, “Sorry, I’m all booked up tonight. Try again tomorrow.”

She terminated the call and found me watching her. She grinned. “You going to give me the third degree?”

I knew she was sleeping with a man who satisfied her need for sex without intimacy. And that she was buying ponies so she could teach little girls how to ride. So I figured there couldn’t be anything else going on that was too awful.

So I said, “Rock on, baby.”

We heard Michael’s car arrive, and in a couple of minutes, he came up the stairs and found the three of us in bed together.

Ignacio sat up abruptly, cheerful and willing. “Hello!”

“Not a chance,” Michael said.

Emma laughed as he bent to kiss me. “I figured you for the more adventurous type, Mick.”

“He doesn’t worry me,” Michael said. “You’re the scary one.” He had brought up a slice of cold pizza from the fridge. Seeing Ignacio’s hopeful expression, Michael gave the pizza to him. Then Michael pulled an unopened can of beer from the pocket of his leather jacket. He stripped off the jacket and dropped it on a chair. “How are you feeling?” he said to me.

“Like I’ve been kicked in the head,” I answered. “But better than this morning. Look at the get-well card Lucy sent me.”

“Cute.” He smiled a little, cracked the beer and sipped off the foam. “But your eyes aren’t so crossed anymore. I want to wring the bastard’s neck, you know.”

“I want to let you,” I said lightly. “I haven’t felt so hungover in years.”

Emma said, “Let’s plot some really good revenge.”

“Sounds good to me,” Michael replied.

With Emma watching, I decided to come clean. “I talked to Ben Bloom tonight. I saw him last night, too, before I turned into a raving lunatic.”

Michael took a long, relaxed swallow of his beer before responding. “I heard.”

“Aldo reported to you?”

“Yep.” He made no apologies for checking my whereabouts. “What’d you learn from Gloom? He making any headway on the dismembered-movie-star case so he can get his promotion?”

“He doesn’t want a promotion. He wants to get onto the city’s homicide squad.”

“When he grows up,” Michael added, then caught my look. “Okay, okay. I assume he wanted your help.”

“Yes.”

“And he threatened to have me deported or executed so you’d cooperate?”

“Don’t even joke like that, Michael.”

“Sorry.” He came back over and ran one finger underneath my jaw. “What did you learn from Bloom?”

“He has a suspect. A gardener from the Devine estate who disappeared back in the autumn. Kelly Huckabee.”

Emma glanced up. “Huckabee? That son of a bitch is gone? What’s going on? Serial disappearances?”

“They say he was fired and left the estate, but the police can’t find him. I think I could find out more about Kell if I asked Vivian Devine. Gently, of course.”

“The dead woman’s sister, right?” Michael said.

“The cat lady,” Emma said.

“The one with the big fence in her backyard,” Michael reminded us.

“I asked Ben about that fence. He says there’s nothing behind it. He figured they might have raised some farm animals there at one time.”

If Michael noted my use of Ben Bloom’s name, he gave no sign. He drank a little more beer.

I said, “So I’ve been thinking about what Libby mentioned. About Vivian’s house where she had all those cats years ago here in Bucks County. I wonder if she still lives there.”

“Me, too,” said Emma. “Libby’s such an idiot, she couldn’t remember where the house was. But I got to thinking about a map in Granddad Blackbird’s collection—”

To Michael, I explained, “Emma was our grandfather’s favorite. She spent hours with him. He collected clocks and mechanical toys.”

“And maps,” Emma said. “Are they still here?”

“Yes, of course. In the library.”

Emma stood up. “Let’s have a look.”

I put a bathrobe over my pajamas, and the four of us trooped down to the library. From one of the lower bookcases, I hauled a large bound book of maps. It was so heavy that Michael stepped in to carry it to the long library table, where his telescope was laid out in pieces. He set down the book on the opposite side of the table.

Emma unfastened the ties expertly and opened the book with care. She smoothed the covers flat. Inside, a selection of maps lay in sleeves, each one carefully folded. She let her fingers walk through the index tabs until she located the one she wanted.

It took a full minute to unfold the dry paper of the map without damaging it.

Emma said, “These really ought to be stored flat now. They’re getting too old to keep folded like this.”

“I don’t have room.”

“They ought to go to the museum, then.”

Emma hadn’t been a particularly good student, and she had lasted only a semester or two before dropping out of college, so her continued interest in cartography surprised me. Her passion had clearly been learned at our grandfather’s knee.

“Here,” she said, smoothing the heavy paper. “See?”

We all leaned close and tried to read the fine drawing.

She said, “Here’s the Delaware River, and here’s New Hope.”

She went on to point out landmarks we knew. Michael found the site of his own house across the river on the New Jersey side.

“And here’s Blackbird Farm.”

Our family’s estate was so old it warranted a grand label on the map.

Emma’s finger ran lightly down the river from the farm, cut westward through the hilly contours of the county and came to rest on a spot I didn’t recognize.

“See this?” she said. “From the description Libby gave me, I think this is Vivian’s property.”

I said. “It’s isolated, isn’t it?”

“More than you think. It’s really hilly. See these lines? That’s the topography. This looks like a cliff. See how fast it drops to this creek? The place wouldn’t be much use as a farm.”

Michael said, “You could find out who owns the place by looking at the tax rolls. That’s public information at the courthouse.”

I said, “I wonder if that information might be online, too.”

While they continued to study the map, I went for my laptop. I took it back to the library, plugged it into the phone line and went on the Internet. In five minutes, I’d found exactly the information I needed.

“Vivian Devine still owns the house.”

Michael grinned. “These newfangled inventions sure make crime a lot easier.”

“Crime? You’re thinking maybe we ought to pay a visit?”

“If you feel up to a little excursion.” His smile broadened. “Get your coat.”

“Now?” Emma asked, startled.

Michael smiled. “We’ll do a drive-by. Nothing fancy.”

I
put a raincoat over my bathrobe and pajamas and exchanged my slippers for a pair of gardening boots.

Then the four of us piled into one of Michael’s muscle cars—a streamlined convertible with a gleaming white top—and he drove for about twenty minutes with Emma navigating from the backseat. Ignacio, clueless about our mission, seemed to be enjoying our late-night jaunt. Perhaps he thought we’d gone out for ice cream.

In the dark, Michael drove slowly by the old farm.

“There’s a split-rail fence.” Emma pointed. “That’s probably the beginning of the property line.”

Beyond the fence we could see a tangle of underbrush—darkness prevented us from seeing through it—and in the distance rose a rocky hillside, covered with scrub trees made visible by thin moonlight.

The house was a low ranch-style place, probably built in the early fifties, made of yellow brick that looked dingy. A carport was jumbled with old trash cans and a flatbed trailer. An electrical wire sagged from a pole on the road to the corner of the house roof.

No lights shone from inside the house. I could barely make out tufts of grass growing up through the asphalt driveway. A stand of weeds nearly concealed the mailbox.

“House looks empty,” Michael murmured.

He cruised up the road a little farther, turned around and went back even more slowly, this time with the headlights turned off. He didn’t pull into the driveway, but crept past the house and stopped the car along the fence.

Quietly, he said, “There’s a flashlight in the glove compartment.”

I found the light and rolled down my window. The night air was cool, but dry. Flicking on the flashlight, I pointed it through the fence and into the overgrowth. The looming bulk of a barn was little more than a shadow.

“What are we looking for?” Emma asked, low-voiced.

The flashlight picked up a long, gleaming structure beyond the barn. I squinted, trying to discern what it was. I said, “A place where Kell Huckabee could be hiding.”

“I think it looks deserted,” Emma said. “Some of the windows on the house are broken. Nobody’s been here for ages.”

Michael pulled the car along a little farther and slipped it into a sandy spot on the shoulder of the road. He cut the engine.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He put out a hand for the flashlight. I could see the gleam of excitement in his eyes. “Taking a closer look.”

“Not alone, you’re not. If Kell is here, he could be dangerous. He may have murdered Penny.”

“He’s not here. Nobody’s here. The place is deserted. Stay put, Nora.”

I popped my door and stepped outside. “You’re too accident-prone to go alone.”

He got out of the car, too. “How are you going to explain that getup if you get arrested for trespassing?”

“That I’m sleepwalking. What about you?”

“Hell, we’ll all go,” Emma snapped, climbing out of the backseat. She hauled Ignacio out, too. “If we get arrested, at least we’ll have a foursome to play bridge in jail.”

Emma was in favor of jumping the split-rail fence, but in deference to my bulky outfit, the group followed the rails until we came to a break where a post had been knocked down—probably by a winter snowplow. We stepped gingerly in the clumpy grass. Michael flashed the light to and fro, and he found a recently fallen tree that had cut a swath through the thick brambles as it fell. We climbed over it.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Michael asked me.

“Stop asking. I’m fine.”

He pointed the flashlight at the barn. Its dilapidated shape leaned precariously southward. The moon shone down across the broken tiles of the old roof and revealed a gaping hole with a broken rafter poking out. As we watched, a pair of bats flickered out of the hole and disappeared into the sky.

“Hello?” Ignacio whimpered. He stepped closer to Emma.

“There,” I said to Michael. “Shine the light a little farther over.”

He followed my direction, and the flashlight suddenly picked out the criss-cross pattern of a tall chain-link fence. It stood fifteen feet high and stretched far into the darkness.

“What’s that for?” Emma asked. “To keep deer out?”

“Nope, look. Razor wire.” Michael aimed the light higher. “See?”

Emma cursed softly at the sight of coils of dangerously sharp concertina wire fastened to the top of the fence. “What’s back there?”

Nobody suggested we find out, but we all moved forward as if drawn by the same magnet. We followed the tall fence for as much as fifty yards before we reached a ravine where it made a turn and ran along the rocky ledge. Below, we could see the gleam of water and hear it rushing over rocks. We couldn’t walk along the narrow ledge, so we turned back the way we’d come.

And heard a low, long rumble.

“H-hello?”

“It’s okay, Ig,” Emma whispered.

The sound floated to us through the darkness. It reverberated in the air—softly, yet with menace. The back of my neck suddenly prickled, and even Michael froze still as a statue until the sound died away.

“What was that?”

“A motor of some kind?”

“Don’t laugh, but to me it sounded like a great big stomach growl.”

“A growl?” Michael said.

We retreated more quickly than we’d come and at last arrived at the beginning.

“I gotta pee,” Emma announced. “Whatever we heard, it went straight to my bladder.”

Ignacio was also hopping from one foot to the other in the universal language of urinary emergency.

“Go back to the car,” Michael said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“Okay, hurry.”

Emma grabbed Ignacio’s hand, and they hustled across the grass toward the parked car.

“I’m going with you,” I said to Michael.

“I can go faster by myself.”

“One of the foundations of a good marriage is compromise.”

He smiled in the moonlight. “Okay, let’s go.”

Together, we crept rapidly through a copse of trees, and ended up in the backyard of the house. A patio faced the fence, and a lone plastic outdoor chair sat on the pitted concrete with a bucket beside it. It could have sat there for a day or ten years. Impossible to guess. More trash cans were lined against the back wall of the house.

Here, the fence had a large gate. It wasn’t locked, just latched and tied with a short length of dirty nylon rope.

More than the gate, I noticed the smell. A heavy, moist, dog-kennel smell.

“What do you think?” Michael asked.

“Do you think Kell’s been living here?”

“Check the trash barrels. If he’s been here, he’d have left garbage.”

I hiked across the yard to the large plastic cans and found them all fastened tightly shut and secured with sturdy bungee cords, probably to keep raccoons and other pests from getting into the contents. Risking my manicure, I unfastened one of the elastic cords and pulled the lid off. Inside, I found, not garbage, but dog food. Lots of it. I replaced the lid with care.

Which was when I became aware of the mess beneath the carport. Someone had set up a pair of sawhorses with a sheet of plywood balanced on top. The plywood was stained, and so was the floor. My boots stuck to the dark, sticky substance on the concrete. The smell made my stomach roll.

In one corner of the carport, someone had created a heap of garbage. I looked closer and realized it was a tangle of antlers and animal limbs. Pieces of bone, the leftover bits of carcasses.

I backpedaled out of the sticky carport. The gunk on the floor was blood.

When I rushed back to Michael, he had already opened the gate and was inside the enclosure.

I ran, stumbling in my clumsy boots, across the grass to him. “Are you crazy?”

“Stay outside,” he commanded. “I’m just going to look around.”

“Don’t, Michael, please.”

“There’s another fence inside this one. Like a pen or something. I’ll be okay.”

I followed him. But he was inside, and I was outside. I trailed him as he progressed along the new fence, casting the flashlight upward to note that there was no razor wire here. Instead, the inner enclosure was topped by a kind of chain-link roof. Michael shone the light into the interior pen. Nothing.

Then suddenly, I heard a terrible metal clang and Michael stifled a yell. He cursed, lost his balance and fell headlong into the tall grass. The flashlight flew into the air, tumbling, and went out, extinguished with a crack of plastic on rock.

“Michael!”

I knew he was alive because he began to curse even louder.

“Michael!”

More cursing.

I ran back to the gate, my heart near to exploding in my chest. My hands—cold now and clumsy—fumbled with the latch for a terrible half second before I managed to jam it upward, and the gate squealed open. Inside the inner enclosure, I doubled back, heading for Michael’s now-strangled bellowing. I hitched up the bulky coat and bathrobe and tore through the grass, shouting—I don’t know what, but shouting just the same.

I found him thrashing in a patch of brambles.

He panted with pain. “Jesus Christ, it’s a trap!”

An iron animal trap. Clamped around his ankle and drawing blood. I could see the wet shine.

The two of us tried prying it off, but the thing had snapped shut with incredible force and was now impossible to budge. With my hands, I found the chain in the dark and felt blindly along its length until I located the juncture where the chain had been welded directly to the metal fence post. Only a blowtorch could have unfastened it. Michael sounded as if he was hyperventilating.

“Michael, Michael, I have to go for help.”

“Go,” he said, clenching his teeth to get control of himself. “It’s not so bad.”

But it was.

He didn’t tell me to hurry. There was no need for that. I got up, and ran back toward the gate, toward the car, toward Emma. I pounded along the grass. My breath was coming in sobs. Then my boot caught again, and I nearly fell. I grabbed the fence to catch myself. My cheek slammed against the chain link.

And then I saw it.

His yellow eyes first, and then the unmistakable black and orange mask, the wide mouth, the long, long teeth. A cat.

A tiger. The sleek body striped with orange was unmistakable.

Six feet away from me, with his gaze locked on mine.

And I heard him rumble again—the low, rolling purr of a hungry carnivore.

He took a pace toward me with one enormous paw. His head never moved, but his body eased forward like liquid. His shoulders looked as strong as a bull’s, and his body was nearly as big. He was very, very big.

I could not move. But the adrenaline in my veins was suddenly screaming in my ears. My hands, curled around the heavy chain link, felt like blocks of ice frozen in place.

A tiger.

Then Emma was beside me, yanking my hands, calling my name. The tiger leaped clean off the ground, smooth and silent as a bird, his paws outstretched, his giant claws unsheathed. He soared, growing more enormous, more powerful.

I pulled free and pushed back, taking Emma with me.

The tiger hit the fence just as we hit the ground, safe but nearly hysterical with fear.

The tiger opened his mouth and gave a kind of scream. Not a roar, but something louder, deeper and even more bloodcurdling.

Then he turned and leaped away, disappearing into the darkness of his prison.

Emma babbled, her hands still locked around my wrists.

“Go see what tools are in the car,” I said. “A tire iron, anything!”

I had just realized Michael had his cell phone, so when Emma took off running for the car, I raced back to find him again.

He was still on the ground, but stretched out on his back, and straining to get as far from the fence as he could manage. On the other side now were two more tigers. Both sets of eyes were fixed on him. One of the animals sat at the edge of the fence, the other paced in agitation.

“Jesus,” Michael said, and it didn’t sound like a curse anymore.

“Emma’s coming. Do you have your phone? Michael, your phone!”

“I dropped it. It’s here somewhere, but—”

The sitting tiger had begun to work her paw beneath the fence. She made hideous, throaty hisses as she clawed, trying to reach Michael’s foot, trapped just half a yard from those deadly claws. The second tiger threw himself at the fence with that scream-roar ripping the night air. They were so enormous, their slashing claws so lethal.

Michael dug backward, trying to stay out of range, but held fast by the trap. The tiger worked her incredibly muscular foreleg under the fence. I could see now why the outer enclosure had been laid with traps. Because the inner fence couldn’t hold the animals.

I fumbled through the grass to find Michael’s phone.

Emma arrived, tire iron in hand. She yelled and used it to bang the fence, causing the tigers to back off for a moment. Ignacio came, too, lugging the car’s spare tire and a tool kit wrapped in canvas. Emma took the tire and jammed it against the fence where the trap was fastened. It provided some protection from the tigers, which were back, hissing and pacing closer and closer.