Cooking Up Trouble (22 page)

Paavo walked by Reginald
Vane’s side, traveling over all the areas where Danny liked to play between Hill Haven and Quint’s cottage. So far, they had found nothing.

The fog remained as thick as it had been that morning, making it close to impossible to see—even if Danny were just a few feet away. They had to rely on sound more than anything else and called out every few seconds, then waited, hoping for a return call.

They searched the ground as they went, since any footprints that had been formed in the soft mud within the last four or five hours would still be there. But there weren’t any.

The possibilities of who it could be committing the murders went round and round in Paavo’s head. The deaths here seemed to follow some plan. But what? If he just concentrated on the known victims—Finley and Miss Greer and Jeffers—and ignored for the moment Patsy, whose body had not been found, who did he come up with?

For Finley and Jeffers he had a surfeit of motives. The murder of Miss Greer had to be the key. Since none of
these people seemed to have known her before their little excursion to the inn, her death had to have been related to something she was doing or something she saw. Something in the kitchen, perhaps.

The kitchen. Was there something about the kitchen?

Paavo shook his head. None of it made any sense.

Angie scrambled up the ladder as fast as she could, slid through the open panel in the closet, then shut it. With any luck, Patsy would stay down there in her mad, confused state for a long time, but Angie got a chair from the dining room and wedged it under the closet doorknob just in case. If Patsy tried to get out, she wouldn’t be able to.

When Angie turned around, Danny stood behind her, holding up a baseball bat as if ready to swing. “Is she going to be able to get out?” he asked, slowly stepping closer to her.

“I don’t think so,” Angie said.

“Good.” He lowered his arms.

“You’re pretty brave,” Angie said.

He proudly puffed out his thin chest. “I didn’t want her to hurt you.”

Angie touched his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Sure.” He dropped his gaze. “It was just kind of scary.”

Something in Angie’s heart did a flip-flop as she watched this young boy trying to act so strong and self-assured, when she was quite sure he wanted nothing more than to be held by his mom. She’d never thought about having a son before, but if she ever were to, she hoped he’d be just like Danny.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We need to find Paavo and tell him where Patsy is. Oh, wait.” She’d left Paavo’s gun up
in the bedroom with her jacket. Should she go get it? It’d take time, and Patsy was locked in the cellar. Angie couldn’t imagine needing to use such a thing on crazy Patsy, anyway. Paavo could handle her.

“What’s wrong?” Danny asked.

“Nothing. We’re outta here.” She held Danny’s hand as the two of them ran toward the cottage. Luckily, he knew the way perfectly. Angie would have been hopelessly lost in the dense fog.

After a short while, though, her side began to ache. “Stop. I’m not as energetic as I used to be,” she said.

“I wonder if she’s trying to get out of the closet.” He gave a fearful glance toward the house. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. She was a nice lady and I felt sorry for her. But after she snuck upstairs and heard people talking about how her husband died, she went bonkers.”

“You must have a room in the inn, then?”

“’Course! It’s next to, uh, Moira. I been staying there most nights since Quint’s been gone. She didn’t want me to stay in the cottage alone because of all the weird stuff going on.”

“Good for her.” They moved quickly, a cross between a fast walk and a jog that allowed Angie to keep breathing as Danny all but pulled her toward the cottage. For sure, when—if—she ever got back to San Francisco, she’d do what she’d been putting off for years and join
Herobics
, a women’s aerobics studio run by one of her many cousins. She wondered if she’d ever again see a cousin, or any one of the members of her large family, or if she’d be stuck wandering around this damned hilltop the rest of her life.

She stopped suddenly, yanking Danny back, near her. She’d heard a noise. She might not be good at running, but she was exceptional at paranoia, especially when it involved strange footsteps or other noises.

“Quiet. I heard something,” she whispered.

Danny pointed past a group of pines. “Over there.”

“Maybe it’s Paavo.” They crept near. Angie wasn’t sure why she didn’t want to yell and make herself known, but she didn’t. Not until she was sure it was someone she could trust.

“Martin!” Angie called when she made out the figure of the older man through the mist. She waved and ran toward him. “Look, I found Danny.”

He looked up and smiled broadly. “Danny,” he clutched the boy by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. It was Patsy.”

“Patsy?” Martin stared at Angie. “Patsy’s alive?”

“She’s been hiding in some strange cellars.”

“My God. She’s the one behind all this?”

“That’s right, although the first death was an accident. She and Finley fought, and he slipped and hit his head. Then, somehow, he died.”

“Poor Patsy. I suppose she killed Running Spirit out of jealousy.”

“That must be.” Did she, though, Angie wondered, when she still loved him so much and his death caused her to go over the edge? “Weren’t you with Reginald and Paavo? Where are they?”

“We weren’t having much luck, so we decided one of us should come back to see if you ladies were all right. Where are the other women?”

“I don’t know. We split up.”

“Where’s Patsy now?”

“She’s still in the cellar. Having a not-so-quiet nervous breakdown. She’s terribly confused.”

“The root cellar?”

“No. That’s the thing. It’s totally separate. You get there by a secret panel in the hall closet near the kitchen.
You have to push on both sides of the panel at once, at about the height of my shoulders, and it pops open.”

Martin nodded. “Clever. Someone said old Ezra was a survivalist and built this house with lots of secrets. I wonder how Patsy learned about them?”

Angie glanced at Danny. He wasn’t about to confess. “I have no idea,” she said.

“Well, you hurry far away from here,” Martin said. “Find someone, particularly that boyfriend of yours, and send them to the house. He and Vane were heading toward the gardener’s cottage, then the beach. I’ll guard Patsy and make sure she doesn’t get away.”

“Okay.”

“Good luck,” Martin said.

“You, too.” Angie and Danny started toward Quint’s cottage again. Angie looked back and saw Martin stop and pull a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. He shook one loose and lit it.

Paavo and Reginald searched Quint’s cottage and the land around it. No sign of the boy.

“Let’s head toward the road,” Reginald said. “Maybe he was trying to get to town.”

“All right.” Paavo started walking, but with each step his legs felt heavier and heavier, and he had the strangest feeling, some intuition almost, that something was terribly wrong. He slowed down, not understanding what was happening to him. He’d never felt anything like this before.

Angie’s step slowed. Something was bothering her, but she couldn’t figure out what. It had begun when she saw Martin with the cigarette. She hadn’t seen Martin
smoke before, but it shouldn’t have surprised her. These days, lots of people huddled out of doors to smoke, since no one wanted them inside. She’d heard that in large office buildings, in particular, there were whole subculture networks of smokers who had secret signals for each other to go out and have a cigarette.

But all that meant was that Martin most likely knew Running Spirit smoked when most of the others didn’t. Martin, as well as Running Spirit, might have used the shed to smoke in. So what?

So nothing. But Angie was bothered nonetheless.

It couldn’t mean anything. After all, Martin was going after Patsy. Martin, suddenly brave, was willing to go after the killer of two men and one woman all by himself. Of course it was because he assumed she wouldn’t be dangerous.

But why would he assume that? He’d never been brave before.

He’d been the one most opposed to Finley’s food. He had the most costly ideas for the inn. It was obvious that he’d hated Running Spirit’s influence over Moira. It was clear that he’d feared Running Spirit would ease him out of the picture. And it was known that all his money, and then some, had been invested in the inn.

All were reasons for Martin to want to get rid of his two chief rivals for control of it.

No, she had to be wrong. She was being misled, again, by hunches and assumptions. Paavo told her to be wary of them. She couldn’t let…

But she couldn’t ignore her feelings, either—that Patsy had been telling the truth about Finley and had loved Running Spirit too much to kill him.

Whoever killed those two had to also have killed Miss Greer. Martin Bayman had no reason to kill her.

But then, neither did Patsy.

Bayman’s only connection with Miss Greer was when he said he wouldn’t serve the food she’d cooked—using Finley’s recipe—to his cat. Next thing, there was a dead rat in the kitchen.

Could there be a connection? There was something a bit droll, she had to admit, about the dead rat on the plate with the soy-lentil cutlets. Something in keeping with Martin’s weird sense of humor.

Miss Greer had complained to Angie about finding strange people in her kitchen. Angie thought the cook had been talking about her, but what if she’d meant Martin? What if she’d found him in the kitchen when he was trying to dispose of the rat, and he’d shoved it into the bin in the pantry cabinet so she wouldn’t see it? But she would have seen him….

No, that was purely circumstantial. Speculative. Emotional, as Paavo would say accusingly.

Yet she couldn’t ignore the fact that it rang true for her.

Martin Bayman had plenty of reasons for wanting to be rid of Finley and Running Spirit. Putting the blame on Patsy would be the icing on the cake. And if she, too, was dead, who’d be the wiser? Martin would have committed the perfect crime.

“Danny, I need you to be very careful and very brave,” Angie said. “Go toward your grandfather’s, find Paavo, and show him how to find the cellars. Can you do that?”

“No problem.”

“When you find him, tell him about Patsy, and tell him that I think Martin Bayman is the one we want. I’m going to go try to get Patsy out of there before Bayman shows up. Got it?”

“Bayman?” he said. “But you just—”

“I know. Hurry!”

He nodded and ran into the forest, disappearing almost immediately into the mist. She turned around to face back toward the inn, then said a little prayer that she could find it in the fog—a prayer for herself, and especially for Patsy.

She ran back in the direction she’d come from, circling around the section where she’d met Martin. She could only hope he was continuing at his normal, leisurely pace, and that he might be even less familiar with this area than she was.

The back way would provide quicker access to the cellars. Hurrying, she ran to the back door and let herself in, then went to the kitchen broom closet. After pulling the door shut, she jammed the chair rail as hard as she could under the inside doorknob. It would slow Martin down.

She opened the panel that led to the cellar and made her way down the ladder. Halfway down she saw Patsy standing there with the carving knife.

“So you’re back,” Patsy said, crying. “You tried to confuse me and you stole Jack’s child.”

God help me, Angie thought. Maybe she should simply let Patsy and Martin face each other. But Patsy was so far gone she wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Susannah, you put that knife away. I wouldn’t have come back here if I meant to harm you. I’m here to help.”

She sobbed louder. “I don’t believe you.”

“I’m telling you the truth. There’s a man who does want to hurt you, Martin Bayman. Do you remember him?”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“No, I guess not, since he’s living about ninety years in the future. Anyway, he wants to kill you. We’ve got to hide.”

“He wants to kill me? But why?”

“Because he can pin a few other murders on you if you’re dead.”

“Maybe I should be dead. What do I have to live for? Nothing. Jack’s gone. So is his child. I don’t want to go on.”

“You’ve got to.”

“Let whoever it is come and kill me. He’d be doing me a favor. I can’t bear this any longer.”

“Listen to me—”

“No!” Dropping the knife, Patsy put her hands over her ears, then sat on the ground. “It’ll be easier this way.”

Angie heard the rattling of the door handle. Martin had reached the closet. He was trying to open the door.

She grabbed Patsy’s arm. “Come on. We can’t stay here. We’ve got to hide until Paavo comes for us.”

“I want to die. Jack’s gone.”

“You don’t want to die! It’s not Jack you’re grieving for. It’s Greg. Running Spirit. Your husband. He’s dead. The man who’s coming here killed him. You’ve got to help me prove to the police that he did it, so he’ll pay for his crime.”

“I don’t care. Jack never loved me.”

“He did. He wants you to know that he’s sorry, Patsy. He’s sorry he treated you so badly. He’s sorry he didn’t love you the way you loved him. If he had, you two would have been happy—just the way you always wanted.”

Patsy’s head jerked up. “How do you know that?”

Angie was taken aback. She was just making things up—she had a propensity to do that, especially when crazy men were after her, wanting to kill her. “I just know it.”

The house shook as Martin slammed something against the closet. His shoulder? An ax?

“He’s coming! Please, Patsy.”

Patsy stared at her. “Jack! I miss him so.”

“Jack wants you to live, to tell the police everything
you know. Come on, Susannah. We’ve got to find a place to hide.”

“Jack said that?”

“Yes.”

“All right. We can go this way.” Patsy stood up and ran into the storage room they’d been in earlier, where Danny had been held. She picked up a lantern, ran toward a corner, then seemed to disappear.