In a Heartbeat (5 page)

11

Dr. Art Jacobs was at a charity dinner at the Waldorf in aid of Cardiac Awareness. He knew Alberto Ricci to say hello to, they were passing acquaintances at these charity events. Their wives had served on some of the same committees— that sort of thing. But tonight, when Ricci came over to him and said, “How are you, Art?” Art was surprised.

“Good, Alberto. Everything okay with you?” Usually when people sought him out at parties it was because they wanted a bit of free medical advice.

“Fit as a fiddle, thanks, Art. I see you have an important patient now. Ed Vincent?”

“Yeah. Poor Ed. He’s a good friend of mine.”

“Is he doing okay?”

Jacobs shrugged. “He’s holding on. For now.”

“Any chance he’ll recover?”

“There’s always a chance. I doubt it, though, he’s a very sick man. Still”—he shrugged again— “Ed’s held on for two days now, he’s a tough bastard. You never can tell.”

“Well, let’s hope,” Ricci said as he nodded good-bye.

And just what was all that about? Art wondered. Why would Alberto Ricci want to know how Ed was doing? As far as he knew, the two had never met. He shrugged one more time. Probably just idle curiosity. The shooting had made the headlines. Now Ricci could tell his friends he’d heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Ed Vincent had a chance. But not much.

12

“I’ll tell you how it all began.”

Melba was in a small windowless cubicle in the precinct house in midtown Manhattan. She was sitting upright in an uncomfortable wooden chair, knees crossed, showing a lot of leg and looking alert now, though still disturbed. Camelia thought she was oddly beautiful. There was just something about the slant of her copper-colored eyes, the graceful length of her neck, the sweetness of her full mouth.

At least she wasn’t crying, he thought, handing her a cup of coffee. He took a pack of Winstons from his jacket, shook one out, offered it to her.

She shook her head. “No, thank you.”

He watched silently while she sipped the coffee. He didn’t trust her an inch. Thirty percent was a lot of shares. He wondered exactly
what
Ed Vincent had left her in his will.

Waiting,
Melba thought.
He’s waiting for me
to tell him that I did it. He thinks he has me.
For a second she wished she smoked, it would have given her something to do with her hands. Then she told herself to stop being nervous of this man, who looked like Al Pacino in a cop role.

She looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. He was handsome in a tough sort of way: sleek black hair, broad lined forehead, dark eyes under heavy black brows, a firm blue-stubbled chin. In good shape too, a hard, muscular body. A tough cop.

For a minute she felt the unreality of the situation, as though she were playing a part in a movie. And then reality hit her like a punch in the stomach. She looked the detective in the eye, reminded herself he was there to help Ed. He
needed
her.

“I told Ed someone wanted to kill him.” She set the Styrofoam cup unsteadily on the scarred wooden desk. “I told him so.”

“Oh? And when exactly did you tell him this, Zelda?”

She glanced sharply at him and Camelia knew he had made a mistake. “Zelda” was Ed Vincent’s private name for her.

“I told him three months ago,” she said coldly. “The first time I met him.”

Camelia loosened his silver tie, letting that one sink in. Only three months—and he’d given her thirty percent of those shares. . . . She must really have something. He took a drag on the cigarette his wife had forbidden him to smoke, then stubbed it out in the glass ashtray as Zelda/ Melba waved the smoke away.

“Excuse me, I didn’t realize the smoke would bother you.”

“You should know better, Detective Camelia,” she said disapprovingly. “Smoking kills.”

So do bullets from a .40mm semiautomatic, he thought, but said nothing.

They sipped their coffee in silence.

“Perhaps you’d better begin at the beginning,” he suggested helpfully.

She nodded. “Okay, but the beginning is be
fore
I met him.” She put her elbows on the desk and leaned toward him. Her swollen eyes looked into his.

“I feel so guilty,” she whispered, anguished. “I feel I could have prevented this, if only I had tried a little harder, been more assertive. . . . But Ed wouldn’t listen.”

Camelia sat back. He would let her get on with it, say what she had to say.

“It began in late October,” Zelda said. “My friend Harriet Simons and I had started this house-moving company about a year ago. Moving On, it’s called.” She smiled modestly. “Actually it’s just a forty-eight-foot truck and a small office in an old warehouse in Venice Beach, California. The truck was brand new,” she added, sounding regretful. “I’d gotten a small inheritance from my Aunt Hester and used it as a down payment. I was in hock up to my eyeballs for it.

“It was our first big job, relocating an executive and his family from Beverly Hills to North Carolina. We drove across country, completed the job on time, then went out to dinner to celebrate. Harriet got food poisoning. The oysters, I guess. She ended up in the hospital. They said she would have to stay there for a couple of days, so I decided to drive the truck back myself. We needed it in LA, you see, for another job later that week.

“It had been raining hard all day. A ‘tropical storm,’ they called it on TV. I wasn’t going to let a drop of rain hold me up, I had to get back. So I set off. . . . Oh, God, I remember it as clearly as if I were there now. . . .”

13

Mel was driving the forty-eight-foot sixteen-wheeler cautiously along the narrow road. The night was as dark as a toad’s mouth and the howling wind rocked the high-sided vehicle scarily. Toppled trees and debris littered the deserted road and the rain slashed sideways, sending waves of water back and forth across her windshield.

Right now driving was guesswork and instinct. She told herself she was crazy for even attempting this trip when the forecast had said clearly that a tropical storm was certain and a hurricane a possibility. But business was business and she had to get back to LA.

Shivering with cold in her damp T-shirt and wishing she at least had a sweater, she ran a hand anxiously through her jagged blonde hair. She had been driving for what seemed eternity. She could swear she should have connected with the highway intersection half an hour ago, but navigation was not her forte. She had been known to get lost two blocks from her own home.

She hadn’t passed a house or a building in the past half hour and the prospect of being lost in the boonies in this storm terrified her. She would have turned back ages ago but the road was too narrow for the big truck. She decided that as soon as she hit the next town, she would find a motel and spend the night. LA could wait. A cup of coffee, a sandwich, and a warm bed sounded just great to her right now.

The road suddenly ended. Just in time, she stamped on the brakes and the huge truck shuddered to a stop. In front of her was a narrow bridge. She could hear the roar of surf, a bass note under the shriek of the wind, and was surprised to realize she was near the ocean.
Too
near. She couldn’t see the end of the bridge, but she could see huge white-capped waves swirling beneath it.
Very close
beneath it.

There was no room to turn the truck around and go back. She could either stay there and be drowned by the rising waves or risk crossing.

She drove cautiously onto the bridge, gripping the wheel tighter as the truck caught the full blast of the wind.
Dear God, what was she doing
here, she was out of her mind. Only an idiot
would get lost and attempt to drive over a bridge
in a hurricane.
The big truck aquaplaned the last few feet, then skidded onto a flooded road.

Mel unfastened her sweaty hands from the wheel. At least she was on terra firma, even if it was covered with a foot of water. Opening the window, she stuck her head out and looked back. Waves were sweeping over the bridge, it was already half submerged. There was no going back now.

The lane sloped gently uphill and in a few minutes she was on drier land. She was driving through woods with the wind roaring through the treetops. And then there was a house.

“Thank you, God,” she muttered.
Civilization.
At last.

The isolated house was all gables and porches, dark and spooky-looking. No welcoming lights shone from the windows, no smoke curled from its chimney, no dog barked.

A shiver crawled up Mel’s spine. She had seen
Psycho
, but this must surely be the Bates Motel. Instinct told her she should get right back into the truck and drive back the way she had come. Then she spotted the car parked beneath the trees. A nice normal-looking Ford Taurus. Telling herself that guys from
Psycho
didn’t drive nice normal-looking Fords, she staggered through the wind and rain and up the steps.

Again, she hesitated. She was alone; the house was miles from anywhere; she didn’t know who might live there. It
could
be a Norman Bates. Shivering, she wiped the rain off her face with her hand. If she turned back now, she would drown crossing the bridge. Or a tree could fall on the truck. Or a broken power line. And the wind would probably blow the truck over. . . .
This
was what was meant by being between a rock
and a hard place. . . .

She pressed a cold finger on the bell.

14

Mel rang the bell again. Shivering, she pounded on the door. Still no answer. She tried the handle. To her surprise, it opened.

The house was in total darkness, not even a glimmer of a light.

“Hello?” Her voice echoed eerily. “Is anyone here?” She waited, then called out again. Her voice sounded thin and trembly in the dense silence. She felt with her hand along the wall for a light switch, found it, clicked it on, blinking in the sudden light.

In front of her, a staircase led to a galleried area above the hall. There was just one big room, sparsely furnished with battered old stuff. It looked as though no one lived there and she guessed it was probably used as a weekend beach house. On a rough wooden coffee table was a beautiful, slightly sinister-looking bronze of a crouching cat holding a terrified bird in its mouth. And a stone bowl filled with jellybeans.

Suddenly starving, she grabbed a handful and devoured them, still dripping water onto the bare wood-plank floor, considering what to do. If the owner found her there, she could be thrown into jail for breaking and entering. Except she hadn’t broken in, the door was open. She shrugged resignedly. What the hell, she was a victim of the storm, surely they would forgive her.

Catching sight of herself in a mirror, she had second thoughts about that. She looked a wreck. The cheap red dye from the Moving On logo on her white T-shirt had run, and she thought now she would probably have the logo embossed permanently on her chest. Her nose was red, the T-shirt clung to her like a second skin, and her sodden work boots squelched as she walked to the wall of windows fronting the ocean.

A solid sheet of rain obliterated the view, but she could hear the roar of the surf surging over the rocks below. She shivered. Somehow, the violence outside made the silence inside the house even creepier.

A sudden noise sent her heart lurching. She froze to the spot, hardly able to breathe. Had that been a door slamming? The house shuddered under the impact of a gust of wind and she heard the timbers groan. She told herself it was just the wind. Still, she wished Harriet was with her so they could laugh about all this.

She stepped cautiously back into the hall, calling hello again, though she would probably have had a heart attack if anybody answered. God, but she was wet. She needed a bathroom to clean up. She saw the door across the hall, opened it, switched on the light.

The glazed dark eyes of a dead man stared up
at her. His head was a mass of blood, there was
a great red pool of it beneath him, blood and
flesh splattered all around. . . .

She knew she was screaming, but the sound that came out of her throat was a howl. She wanted to run, but she was rooted to the spot with terror.

Then the light went out.

Panic spilled like molten lava into her veins, sending her running.
Right into a man’s arms.

A gun jammed hard into her ribs. Without pausing to think, she slammed her fist into his belly, heard the air whoosh out of him as he staggered back. Then she was skidding across the floor. She was running, running for her life . . . out into the night.

The wind slammed her back against the wall, the rain was coming down in sheets, she couldn’t even
see
the truck.
Oh, God, soon he would be
after her. . . .

Clinging to the porch rail, bent double, she staggered down the steps. But the wind knocked her off her feet. It snatched her breath, flung the rain at her, hard as hailstones. Gasping, she dropped to the ground, slithered on her belly across the streaming blacktop.

She had to make it, she just had to . . . think
of Riley. . . . Oh, God, she had to make it.

Then she was under the truck, as wet as a seal and still trying to catch her breath. Sobbing with fear, she crawled out the other side, hauled herself upright, tugged frantically at the cab door.
It
must be locked . . . but she didn’t remember
locking it.

It flew open suddenly, almost knocking her off her feet. “Oh, thank you, God, thank you,” she muttered, pulling herself up into the cab. “Thank you . . .”

And then a hand slammed across her mouth.

He jabbed the gun into her ribs again. “Shut the fuck up. One fuckin’ sound and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

His hand stank of stale cigarettes. Fear and nausea swept over her and she gagged.

Instinctively, he let go, and in that split second she threw herself at him, raked her nails down his face, jammed her thumbs in his eyes. . . .

“Shit.” There was a sickening crack as his fist hit bone, and Mel slithered slowly to the ground.

He stared angrily down at her. His eyes watered painfully. He put his hand to his face, felt the blood where she had dug deep into his flesh. He wanted to kill her right now, but he still needed her.

He took the expensive Ericcson from his pocket and dialed Mario de Soto’s number. Miraculously, the call went through. He explained that Ed Vincent hadn’t shown up; that he was there in the middle of a fuckin’ hurricane; that de Soto shouldn’t worry, he would get him next time. Vincent was as good as dead. He did not mention the woman or the dead Cuban.

“Get up.” He hauled Mel up to her feet, pushed her into the driver’s seat. “You are gonna drive us out of here.” He aimed the Sigma at her head.

Mel stared straight ahead. Her head swam and her cheekbone felt as though it had dissolved. She had no hope of escape, she would do as he said. Trembling, she put the key in the ignition. To her surprise, the engine caught immediately.

The gun was icy cold on her temple. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”

She drove the big truck down the driveway and out onto the lane that led to the bridge.

The bridge! Oh, God, surely it is underwater
by now. She wouldn’t be able to get across,
he would kill her then, she knew it. . . . Oh,
Riley . . . my darling daughter.

She heard the squeak of the wipers on the suddenly dry windshield. As abruptly as if someone had turned off the tap, the rain had stopped. The wind had dropped. And there were no waves. Just a sullen expanse of black water with the submerged guard rails of the bridge poking out of it, marking its position.

Now the sky was clear, it was growing lighter. She could hear
birds
singing. . . .
She must be
hallucinating.

From somewhere in the past, she recalled hearing about being in the eye of a hurricane. That though the storm still swirled all around them, here in the “eye” all was calm, and the birds that had been caught up in it and carried hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles from their habitat had suddenly found themselves deposited in a strange new terrain. That is, until the circling storm caught up with them again and carried them even farther away. Or killed them.
And her.

She stared at the sullen black ocean. There was no way to gauge how deep the water was or even if the bridge was still there. It was suicide.

The man holding the gun pressed it harder against her temple. “Drive,” he said.