A Fair to Die For (21 page)

All she felt was someone taking the handcuffs off. Then she heard Second Man’s voice saying, “Lady, you’d better play dead until I can get out of the country, or I’m dead.”

After his footsteps faded away, Carrie shut her eyes and let herself fade away too.

Chapter Twenty-One
NOT QUITE DEAD

Cold.

That’s all Carrie was aware of for what seemed like a long time.

Silly, pull the blanket up.
She reached out and tried to close reluctant fingers around . . .
what?
Leaves? They rustled when she touched them.
Leaves.

In the woods. I’m in the woods.

She was lying on the ground, and she was supposed to be dead.

Not dead?

She heard a noise.
It’s me, Carrie McCrite, laughing and crying.

Not dead. Not . . . dead.
Oh, thank you.

But she had to play dead until Second Man got out of the country. She must do that. He’d saved her life.

And she had to tell Henry she was alive.

Using her arms to lift the weight of her upper body, she moved stiff muscles into sitting position. After a few moments spent wiggling feeling back into her hands, she reached for the tape around her neck, found an end, and pulled, passing the tape from one hand to the other to unwind the several loops that held the pillowcase in place.

At last she breathed clear air. Cold air.

It was still daylight, but the sun was in the west. Both the golden light and her rumbling stomach told her it was near suppertime, and lunch had been only a banana.

I’m hungry. I’m alive.

She took another breath of cold air, then surveyed the woods around her. No sign of the road, but Arnie had told Second Man to pull her far into the woods so her body wouldn’t be found quickly. She shuddered, and said a prayer of thanks.

Bless that man. Nameless, but he’d become a real person to her, a human with a living mom and a missing sister named Laurie.

Just so, she’d obviously become a flesh-and-blood human to him, someone he couldn’t kill, someone he’d been willing to trust with his own life. He knew Arnie and his boss wouldn’t tolerate a living witness to any part of their criminal activities.

Carrie took several breaths and thought about the man who had not shot her. She’d be grateful to him for the rest of her life. Her instinct to be friendly, rather than show anger or fight her captors, had probably helped save her, but she’d never sensed the mind or heart of a killer in Second Man. There had been too many tiny kindnesses, though they were well hidden under the tough guy façade.

Her feet felt like lead weights when she bent her knees to reach the tape around her ankles. She found the end of the tape and began unwinding until the last bit came loose. Her feet were free, though not ready to support her.

She’d made it through the first step toward safety.

Step two was to find the road before dark. Thank God this was fairly familiar territory for her, though possibly Arnie, at least, hadn’t thought of that. But then, what difference would it make if she were dead? He’d just headed for the nearest heavily wooded area he knew about.

Had Second Man suggested this place? Did he understand that familiarity would help her find a way out? If so, that meant he may have known, back in the grocery store parking lot, that he wasn’t going to kill her. Was it simply luck he had been the one chosen to take her off into the woods? Maybe it was just that Arnie didn’t want to be tagged as a murderer, should he ever be caught. She drew a breath in, blew it out in a long, wavering
whoosh
.

Her body felt numb and wobbly, it would help to have a walking stick. She looked around, saw a small branch that looked possible, and crawled toward it. It broke in her hands. Too rotten.

Several years ago she’d seen a man parked on the logging road when she was out hiking. He sat on the tailgate of his truck, carving a walking stick. Several small, uprooted trees were stacked next to him in the truck bed. “Dogwood,” he’d said, and showed her how the dogwood trunks in his stack had turned to the side just underground, forming a natural handle for walking sticks and canes.

Well, had she the strength, she’d uproot even a dogwood tree right now; though, back then, the waste and loss of spring beauty in the forest had made her angry at the wood carver.

She spotted a low branch on a nearby tree that looked dead. Maybe she’d be able to break it off. She crawled forward and reached up to grab the branch with both hands, testing its strength by cautiously lifting her weight. She caught herself just in time when the branch broke off.

It would do.

Carefully, she stood, leaning heavily on her stick. Then she thought back through the last horrible moments before Second Man fired his gun into the forest floor. Which way had they come? She stared at the place where she’d been lying. Yes, she was sure she’d fallen facing away from the road, so that meant the road was . . . over there. Carrie started walking, picking her way carefully over debris on the forest floor.

Henry was keeping busy in the kitchen. Working here helped keep the “what-ifs” at bay. If he thought about Carrie and “what-if,” he came close to losing control of any and all his emotions. How did other people cope? How had crime victims and waiting families he’d dealt with in Kansas City managed to live with anything like what he was feeling? He’d seen the jitters, the rages, the crying, the terrified and sad and hopeful faces. He’d never been to that edge himself. Until now.

Henry pulled the kitchen table away from the wall so there would be room for two more chairs, and began putting out plates and silverware.

Drinks. Should he make iced tea? Roger and Shirley would drink coffee; he and Carrie usually drank water with supper. As he recalled, Edie drank water with all meals except breakfast, so he wouldn’t bother asking her about a preference.

She was busy straightening up in the guestroom. He’d helped her put mattresses back on the twin beds and drawers back in the chest, then showed her the linen closet and left her to put clean sheets on the beds and return her possessions to wherever they’d been before the search.

Detectives, who had come promptly after Olinda’s call, uncovered no evidence of any outside presence in the room other than the mess itself, and Edie hadn’t found anything missing. So, what were searchers looking for?

Arnie and Co. had undoubtedly worn gloves inside the house, and hadn’t, insofar as anyone could discover, left other identifiable evidence of their presence. The banana peel with a smear of blood on it had fingerprints—probably Carrie’s. The other had none. The water glass displayed the same prints as the one banana, and the detectives had taken both peelings and glass with them.

So, that was it. All evidence of criminal activity inside their home depended on Carrie’s eventual testimony.

Olinda, who’d been doing a walk-around search outside the house, came in the kitchen and, when he looked up, shook her head. “Not even a tire track. Too dry.”

“I guess I expected that. Do you want iced tea with supper?”

“Water’s fine.”

She sat at the table and watched him take celery, carrots, a turnip, and a cucumber out of the refrigerator. “Making raw veggie sticks? Good idea. Can I help with that?”

He sighed. “Thanks, but no. Gives me something to do.”

“Ah, yes.” After a pause, she said, “So tell me about the Booths. I’ve not met him yet, but she sure seems a sharp cookie. According to Edie, she nailed Milton Sales’s true involvement in all this before we did. It’s almost like she has second sight.”

He chuckled as he began peeling a turnip. “Typical Shirley. She is sharp, especially when it comes to anything related to human nature; and she’s not afraid to speak her mind. It can be ticklish if she uncovers some supposed secret a bit too close to home, but you soon get used to that, and what she says is never really harmful. She and Roger are good and valuable friends of ours. Shirley has saved Carrie’s bacon more than once.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well, the first time was right after Carrie and I met. A friend of ours had been murdered near here in Walden Valley, and . . . ”

The logging road hadn’t been hard to find, but her strength was waning, her shoes weren’t meant for heavy walking, and increasing shadows made it difficult to see hazards. Recent rains had uncovered rocks and left ruts in many places, and she had to watch carefully to avoid them.

At last she reached the valley road and paused to rest, leaning heavily on the tree branch. She wished she dared sit down somewhere for a few minutes, but darkness had begun closing in. She had to keep moving, she had to let Henry know she was okay.

She began walking again, chanting to herself,
Left, right, left, right.

No, she had that backwards. She was leading with her right foot. She stopped, lifted her left foot, and started again,
Left, right, left.

She knew she wouldn’t have enough strength to make it up the hill to their home. Besides, who would be there? Edie? Maybe even Milton Sales or Inspector Burke, waiting to interview her. Who could she trust with the information that she was still alive?

Left, right.
At least this road had been graded recently.

It was getting darker.
Step, step, step, step. Keep moving, left, right.

She was shaking with cold as she trudged past the Booth’s pastures, and saw, at last, bright lights shining through the windows of their milking parlor. Roger’s truck was parked by the side door. So probably Roger and Shirley were taking the milking duty tonight.

Left, right, left, right.
She was moving more quickly now, drawn by that beacon of light.

She stopped by the farm gate, hovering in the shadows while she studied the landscape for possible dangers.

She didn’t see Junior’s truck, so he’d already left for his rented house up on the ridge. There was no sign of the hired man’s car either, but Shirley’s Cadillac was parked beside the house. So Henry, and probably Edie, had come back from the mill, left Shirley’s car, and picked up Henry’s truck..

Carrie opened the gate, stumbled, then steadied herself and headed toward light and warmth.

Henry looked at the kitchen clock. 6:35. The phone hadn’t rung. It hadn’t rung to bring news of Carrie, and it hadn’t rung to tell him Roger and Shirley were going to be late.

Roger and Shirley were never late. In fact, they were usually painfully early, arriving before you were quite ready for company. So, where . . .

The phone rang.

“Yes.” He’d said it too loudly.

“Something has come up.” It was Shirley.

“Yes?” Did he sound as frenzied as he felt?

“Everything’s okay, but could you come down to pick up your dinner? Come alone, and don’t let on to the girls that anything might be unusual. Tell them we have to stay here because one of our cows is having twins. Okay? Keeping a stone face is important, very important, but everything is fine now. You got that?
Everything is fine.
See you in a few minutes.”

He licked his lips, and turned toward Edie and Olinda. “News?” Olinda said.

“Not really, I just need to go and pick up our dinner. One of the Booth’s cows is having twins and they need to stay with her. I’ll hurry, I know we’re all hungry.”

He got his jacket and headed for the garage, his head buzzing with hope that was based on nothing but Shirley’s confident statement, “Everything is fine now.”

Chapter Twenty-Two
SECRETS TO SAVE A LIFE

All of Henry’s conscious thoughts during his drive down into the valley were on Shirley’s four words, playing over and over, “Everything is fine now.”

He stumbled up the Booth’s front steps and had just raised his hand to knock when Roger opened the door.

“What?” was all Henry could manage.

“Carrie’s here. She’s okay.”

The room began to spin, and Henry barely made it to the nearest chair before his legs gave out. “I . . . how?
Here?
”

Roger chuckled. “Here. The two men who had her all but brought her home. She was left in the woods off the old logging road. Walked here.”

“Where is she?”

Roger sobered. “In Junior’s old room, finishing supper. She’s had a rough time, Henry, and is kinda bruised and battered. She’ll tell you all about it later, not now, I think. She told us a bit, but the telling was hard on her. Two men drove her up there, one of them took her into the woods and was supposed to kill her, but he didn’t, or couldn’t. He shot into the ground, took off her handcuffs, then walked away. Thing is, she says he saved her life, so his life is in her hands now. If they find out he didn’t kill her, he’s dead himself. He trusts her to stay hidden until he can get away, maybe even out of the country. So we thought we’d keep her here for a while—at least until everything gets sorted out.”

“Oh God, oh my God.”

“Yes, you owe Him plenty of thanks. Come on back now. Shirley saw to it that Carrie had a hot bath, partly so she could look her over and see if she was hurt anywhere. She’s just finished supper now, and looks some better than she did when she got here. Shirley says there are bruises on her body, but her face is the worst. Get ready for that, and don’t let on.

“We all know you can’t stay long. Those girls will expect you back up the hill with a picnic basket pretty darn soon. Carrie understands, and doesn’t expect you to stay.”

“Why didn’t you call me right away?”

Roger stopped and turned to face him. “Well now, our first care was for her. Sorry my friend, but it took a while to sort things out here, and Shirley was immediately mother-hening, seeing to a bath, finding pajamas for her, and so on. Guess we coulda called and said she was here and safe, but we didn’t know anything more than that, and we didn’t know what was going on up at your house. Carrie warned us first off that we weren’t to tell anyone but you she was alive and safe. We didn’t know why she said that; we didn’t know anything.” He repeated, “Our first care was for her.”