Dead End (43 page)

Oribel lived a ways out of town. Wally didn’t even know anyone who said they’d been to her house. He didn’t want to go out there with her. “Father said he’d see to it that it got fixed.”

Oribel brought her face close to his. “So why are you out here like this?”

He made himself look her in the eyes. “Because I wanted to see if the lamp got broken here. I don’t think it did. But it could be that Bonnie took it. Just because we don’t know what happened, and exactly when, doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been somethin’ completely different than people believe. I’m gonna take a look out where her car was found. There might be bits of glass around there. No one was looking for that, so they didn’t notice any.”

“They didn’t notice any because there wasn’t any.”

“I expect you’re right. Anyways, I should get along home.”

“Just like you always go home when you’re supposed to?”

He tilted his head and said nothing.

“I can’t let you go out there on that miserable road on your own, Wally. Surely you understand that.”

He nodded.

She took her bike outside and waited for him to catch up. “You’ll feel a whole lot better when that paint’s fixed. Father doesn’t have time to mess with things like that, but I do. Taking off some of his burden is my job.”

Wally felt a bit sick. “You’re kind. Could I come out there tomorrow?”

Oribel looked away. “I’d appreciate it if you’d come now. I bet you didn’t have your dinner, did you?”

“No.”

“Neither did I. I’ve got something good for you—and I sure would be grateful for the company. We’ll eat and attend to business. How’s that?”

She was a lonely lady. Wally wasn’t real good with grownups, but he could try to be helpful.

“Go wait for me at the top of the road,” she said. “I’ll get my things and be right with you after I lock up. If you like, I can call your folks and let them know you’re eating with me.”

“No,” Wally said. “Let’s just go.”

An urgent call from Spike had put Marc and Reb back in the Range Rover and heading for town. He’d assured Marc that Chauncey was being brought in even though he couldn’t do it himself. Worried about Precious’s physical condition, Reb had insisted on making her stretch out on the couch and get some rest, at least until she and Marc returned.

She knew he was working hard to keep the peace about his feelings on the subject. They’d ridden in tense silence for twenty minutes when Marc couldn’t control his tongue any longer. “I don’t like leaving that woman in my house.”

“What do you think she’s going to do? Steal the silver?”

“You heard what she did.” He didn’t sound amused. “All the things she did. She intended to kill my sister, and she would have if Amy hadn’t outsmarted her.”

“She had plenty of opportunity to do it,” Reb said. “She didn’t. And she wouldn’t have. She thought she could, but she doesn’t have that kind of violence in her.”

“No, just enough violence to chain Amy up in a bathroom and leave her there for days.”

“I can’t believe it,” Reb said. “But neither can I believe she put that tape thing in my consulting room. Even if she won’t tell us who asked her to do it, we nailed her on that. Spike will be pleased.”

“If she doesn’t take off before he can question her.”

Reb held up two sets of keys. “I learned something from her.” She nodded her head at one set of keys, then the other. “The keys to her car, and to the one I’ve been driving. Which I won’t drive again except to return it.”

“She can walk out,” Marc said. If she had hoped to soften him up, it wasn’t working.

“I gave her something.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “That and her being so exhausted will make sure she sleeps. Get your mind off her, sweetheart. I’m more concerned about Spike being anxious to see us.”

Marc put his cheek on top of her hair. “Anxious to see you. I’m an afterthought. Something must be going down and he needs you professionally.”

“If I didn’t feel like I’ve been in a wreck, I’d do indecent things to you, Marc Girard.”

He didn’t answer, but neither did he lift his head away.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked. “Have I offended you?”

“Nothing we do together is indecent—cute as you make that sound. When you say something like that I don’t think you know the power you have over me. If you did, you’d expect to be in that wreck you mentioned.”

“Oh.” She felt jumpy, excited—and uncertain. “I’d better watch what I say in the future. If you’re driving.”

“Never do that. Never change. Reb?”

She twisted to look at him.

“I don’t want to go back to New Orleans. The setup at Clouds End is good for me. I think well there.”

“I see.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I wasn’t looking forward to you telling me it was time to leave Toussaint.” The answer sounded inadequate, but she wouldn’t risk making a fool of herself.

“Why is that?”

“Oh no,” she said. “This isn’t where you get to throw out harmless bait—harmless to you—and see if I go after it.”

“Nothing I’m saying is harmless to me, cher. I’m the one on the line here.”

So say what I think you
’
re trying to say, if that is what you
’
re trying to say.
“Aren’t we both on the line?”

“Yes,” he said, glancing at her. “I guess we are. I know what I want to do about it. How about you?”

She felt tension ease and even a rush of happiness and hope, but he was going to have to work harder. “Let’s talk about this when we aren’t looking at a wall of flashing emergency lights,” Reb said, reaching to rest her hands on the dashboard. “Spike called in backup. He wouldn’t do that if there wasn’t something big.”

“Seems to me
everything
’
s
big around here these days. It surely isn’t the sleepy little burg I remember.”

Spike had called from the ice plant. Police and emergency vehicles were crowded into the yard out front. Marc was stopped at the gates. He told a policeman who they were and whom they wanted to see before being allowed to continue.

“If I could afford the luxury,” Reb said, “I’d be scared.”

“I give you permission. I need the company.”

No one else could make her smile like Marc could.

They parked as far out of the way as possible and walked to the building entrance. A medical emergency vehicle had been drawn up there, and the rear doors stood open. Inside the deeply cold plant noises echoed off fabricated metal walls and a high roof. Pipes ran wherever the eye turned.

One of Spike’s junior deputies came toward them, the woman, and she didn’t look happy, or well. “Deputy Devol’s expecting you,” she said. “He’s back there.” She pointed, then shivered and looked at the ground.

They thanked her and carried on, soon walking into an area where floodlights had been set up.

“Don’t go in there like that,” a man said. The plant manager, Zeb Dalcour, his round face even redder than usual, approached them carrying heavy, hooded coats and gauntlets.

Once they’d put them on, Zeb said, “Now these,” and boots were the finishing touch. “Don’t stay longer than you have to. You’re not used to it.”

The vast area they entered wasn’t at all what Reb had expected of an ice plant. Steel containers of various sizes stood in rows, a bit like oversized library stacks.

“Somebody’s hurt in here,” Marc said, putting an arm around Reb’s shoulders. “And it’s bad. Got to be, with all the official manpower around. That’s why Spike called you, because...I guess because you’re a doctor.”

“But you’re thinking it doesn’t look as if I’m needed here,” she said, and she agreed with him.

Voices were loud now, but garbled because of the strange acoustics. Spike emerged, dressed much as they were, only wearing a hat with flaps that covered his ears. “I called you in too soon,” he told Reb and gave Marc an abbreviated salute. “I thought you might pick up on a clue because you’ve been around some sticky cases. And, to speak the truth, I thought you might want to be here. But the ice is melting fast. Now we can see what we couldn’t see before.” Spike looked to Marc again. “Depew’s in custody.”

He turned on his heel and made his way along an aisle between containers. Water dripped from overhead where coils snaked in every direction. Even if it hadn’t been so cold, Reb doubted she’d be breathing too easily.

“Reb.” Marc stopped her. “If you aren’t really needed, why go through something that sounds gruesome? You’ve dealt with too many things lately. Any one of them should be enough. Why add another?”

“This is my job,” she told him. “To come to the site of a medical emergency when I’m called. And even if I’m not really needed, Spike said he thought I’d want to be here.”

“Of course.”

On the left side of the aisle, a door to one of the containers had been slid open. Police photographers congregated outside, talking together. Medics, their equipment on top of a gurney, stood silently by, watching whatever was going on inside.

“The blocks are up to three hundred fifty pounds,” Zeb said from behind them. “They’re made in freezing sections inside each container. Usually the containers are loaded onto our delivery trucks. Sometimes a customer picks up some blocks here, but not often. This one is all big stuff, and it could be that someone thought because it was way back here it might not be gotten to as often as some of the others. They thought wrong. Go on in.”

The lead up wasn’t encouraging. Marc stepped in front of Reb, but she hurried and walked beside him to where another man and two women stood—with Spike listening to what they said and glancing in Reb and Marc’s direction.

“This is Marc Girard, and Doctor Reb O’Brien.”

The man was older, with light eyes that hadn’t seen something that surprised him in a long time. He greeted them civilly enough, then said, “I thought you said a priest was coming.”

“He’ll be here soon,” Spike said. He turned to Reb and Marc. “This isn’t pretty, but you’ve seen worse today. A backup I.D. from you would be helpful, Reb.”

He took them a few yards to the left, past several sections. Reb hadn’t noticed there was water standing at least an inch deep on the floor and spreading rapidly. It ran from an opening where a metal flap had been hooked back.

In un-Spikelike fashion, the deputy stood on the opposite side of Reb from Marc and put a hand at her waist. “Just say who it is and anything else that comes to mind. Anything that strikes you as familiar.”

She broke free of them and stepped forward alone. For far too long she couldn’t make herself say anything. Crying wasn’t in her job description, but she cried anyway—at the sadness and enormity of it all.

“Reb,” Marc said, taking her in his arms as best he could. “Just do what you have to do and let’s get out of here.”

“It’s William,” she said in a clear voice, looking into the open, but dead and blood-encrusted eyes of the big man. He was still covered with ice, but enough had melted to turn it transparent so that he appeared to be behind a thick and dripping wall of irregular glass. “Shot in the head.”

“That’s what I couldn’t see at first,” Spike told her. “I recognized him from his size. And he’s distinctive anyway.”

“Smashed face,” Reb said. “Another one. It’s as if the killer thinks that by destroying a face, the person no longer has an identity.” William stood upright, his hands raised as if in a plea.

“Why didn’t he fall?” Marc asked.

“He was already freezing when the shot was fired,” Spike said. “Zeb explained how that could happen. We can’t pinpoint the time, but according to Zeb it probably happened yesterday afternoon.”

“You don’t need me here,” Reb said, turning away. “There’s nothing anyone can do for him.”

“Except find his killer,” Marc said.

Cyrus walked toward them, his worried face visible inside his hooded coat. “I know what’s happened here,” he said and pulled the two of them aside. “Do me a favor, you two. I have to go from here to William’s family. Take a run out to Oribel’s and stay with her until I can get there. Regardless of the way they riled each other up, she thought the world of him. She’ll take this hard.”

“You’ve never been out here?” Marc said. “Not even on one of your Florence Nightingale trips? I thought you visited everyone.”

Reb trudged ahead of him on the wet gravel path that led through dense trees toward what they hoped would be Oribel’s house. Finding the place had been a challenge, particularly since there wasn’t even a sign at the entrance to the overgrown trail. They had left the Range Rover beside the road because the vehicle was too wide to take in.

“You don’t make house calls for people who are never sick,” Reb told him. “Oribel has the constitution of a very healthy horse.”

“She likes her privacy,” Marc said. “I can’t believe she rides back and forth to town—the rectory—on a
bicycle.
”

“It could be one of the reasons she’s so fit.”

Marc walked and thought. Then he said, “She’s an odd duck. Or I think she is.”

“Obsessive,” Reb said. “And possessive where Cyrus is concerned. I’m sure it bothers him, but he’s too kind to get rid of her. He probably wouldn’t know how, anyway.”

“Bingo.” Marc caught Reb’s hand and they stood still. “There it is. Bigger than I expected.”

Oribel’s home, single-storied and set in a large clearing, was built on short, thick, cinder-block pillars. A warm yellow glow shone from windows across half of the front and some of the right side of the building. The exterior appeared to be of split cedar, but it was hard to tell. A gallery ran along the front, and a white swing and rocking chair glowed in the dark.

“Pretty,” Reb said. “I’d heard it was. Let’s get on. I’m not looking forward to this.”

They stepped into the clearing, and white lights, shining outward from the roofline of the house, momentarily blinded them.

“Yow,” Marc said. “The lady is security minded. That’s a good thing, I guess.” He shaded his eyes and said, “Weird. The floodlights came on and the interior lights went out.”

“Now the floods are off again. What a relief.” Reb held his hand tightly. “It’s not weird really. It’s sensible. If you’re inside, you want to be able to see anyone or anything that moves out here, but you don’t want to be seen yourself.”