In a Heartbeat (6 page)

15

“I guess you made it across,” Camelia said caustically, rolling an unlit cigarette between his fingers, his foot tapping impatiently. Was Zelda/Melba some kind of nut? Or was she just putting him on? Whatever, she sure was a great storyteller.

Mel caught his skeptical glance and glared angrily back at him. “Thankfully, yes I did,” she answered primly. Then with a sudden flare, “Dammit, I’m spilling my guts to you, Detective. Do you want to hear this, or not?”

He grinned as he watched her face grow pink with anger. “May as well.”

“Ohh!” Exasperated, she sank back, or at least sank as well as she could in a straight-backed wooden chair. She stared balefully at him. “This man had a gun to my head,” she said, speaking slowly and distinctly, separating each word as though speaking to a child. “I did not want to be dead. I wanted to be home, with my kid. I wanted to work some more with Harriet, moving families.
I wanted my life.
”

She was looking into his eyes and he stared back coldly.

“So I just said sorry to Aunt Hester, who had paid for my lovely truck—and drove it head-on into a tree.”

Camelia let out a low whistle of admiration. “Good thinking,” he said. “Never thought a woman would think that way, though,” he added, half to himself. “Too worried about a scratch on the new vehicle.”

Mel propped her elbows on the scarred table and rested her aching head in her hands, too exhausted, too gosh-darn bone weary to argue the point.

“Next thing I knew it was two days later. I was in the hospital. And Harriet was sitting by my bed, staring at me with that is-she-going-to-make-it look. . . .”

Harriet’s face swam into view as Mel’s eyes focused. It was like being underwater, everything blurred and opaque—until she blinked twice and there Harriet was.

Her best friend and business partner, Harriet Simons, was in her early thirties. She claimed to be an “ex-actress,” but she wasn’t really “ex” anything yet. Petite, whippet-thin, and with a distinctive gravelly voice, she was still always on the phone to her agent, still hoping for that break.

It had been Harriet’s idea to call their moving company Moving On. She said it fit not only the lives of their clients who were moving house, but also their own, moving on from the unsatisfactory itinerant jobs they had held previously and moving on with life. Except the truth was, Harriet had not really moved on yet. She still hit every audition and every casting call, still read
Variety
and the
Hollywood Reporter
as though they were her bible.

Mel thought that the only thing unfamiliar about her now was the anxious expression on her face. And that was worrying because it took a lot to scare Harriet.

“Am I all right?” Mel asked in a throaty voice she hardly recognized as her own.

“Of course you are.” Harriet’s face lit with relief as she added tartly, “For an idiot who drove our one-and-only brand-new truck into a tree.”

“Well, there was a hurricane,” Mel explained meekly.

“You’ve been here for two days,” Harriet retorted. “You have a hairline fracture of the skull, as well as a concussion, plus a broken cheekbone. . . .”

Mel put her hand to her face, felt the gauze pad, and suddenly it all came back to her.

“Harriet.” She grabbed her friend’s arm urgently. “He tried to kill me . . . that guy really tried to kill me. . . . He’d already killed someone else, the man in the library. . . .
Oh, God
, I have to get out of here, we have to tell the police. . . .”

She was already half out of bed when Harriet caught her and hauled her back. “Stay where you are, kiddo,” she said firmly. “As they say in the movies, you ain’t goin’ nowheres. Not yet, anyway.”

Mel glared at her, uncomprehending. “
Didn’t
you hear what I said?
The man had
a gun
, he held it to
my
head. . . . That’s why I drove into the tree. . . .”

Harriet’s face registered disbelief, then concern, then the fact that maybe, just maybe, this was not the hallucination of a woman with a recent head injury and that what Mel was telling her might in fact be true. “Begin at the beginning,” she said, practical as ever. And so Mel did.

She told her story from A to Z and then retold it as she recalled extra little details, like the scarlet pool of blood under the dead body; the yellow lumps of flesh; the light going out; the way the man had punched her; being forced to drive across the submerged bridge and not knowing if they were going to make it. . . .

“I could
almost
believe you,” Harriet said when she had finished, “except nobody else was found in the wrecked truck. There was no man. And no gun. You were alone. The rescue squad had to use the Jaws of Life to cut you out of there. Look at it this way, Mel,” she added soberly, “you’re lucky to be alive, so forget all this bad-dream stuff. You’re just confused from the concussion.”

“Dammit, I did
not
dream it.” Mel was already out of bed and rummaging in the closet, where her duffel bag, also rescued from the truck, was stashed. Flinging off her hospital gown, she dragged on her underpants and sweats and thrust her feet into her sneakers. She turned to Harriet, who was watching her, her mouth agape. “Okay, let’s go,” she said.

“But
where
are we going? You’re sick, you’re injured, you’re medicated. You only just woke from the concussion. The doctor will kill me if I let you move out of this room. In fact, I’m going to call him right now, this minute. . . .”

“You do that.” Mel was already through the door and running, in a rather wobbly fashion, down the shiny polished linoleum corridor. “I’m checking out of here.”

Grabbing the duffel, Harriet puffed after her. “But
where
are we going?”

Mel half turned. She gave her a withering glance and said, “To the cops of course,” as though there were no other course of action she could be taking.

The medics fought her on it, but Mel checked herself out of that hospital and, with Harriet at the wheel of a rental car, went to police head-quarters.

“I’m sure I needn’t tell you what happened there,” she said now to Marco Camelia.

“They told you you were crazy?”

She leaned closer across the table, looking into his eyes. “Do you think I’m nuts?”

He shrugged. “I think you tell a good story, Miss Zelda.”

Her gaze turned to a glare. “ ‘Melba,’ to you.”

“Oh, excuse me. Miss Melba. So? What did the cops say if they didn’t tell you you were crazy?”

Her shoulders slumped and she stared down at the table with a puzzled frown. “They told me that no one had died in the storm. No bodies had been found. That the area had gotten off lightly, apart from a few road accidents, like mine.

“I told them where I thought the beach house was, that there was definitely a body there. They said they knew the place, it belonged to Ed Vincent, the real estate magnate. Then they did me a big favor and called him. The housekeeper answered. She told them everything was in order, no bodies, no blood, everything was secure. And that though Mr. Vincent usually flew down for the weekend, this time because of the storm he had not. He hadn’t even been there. Nor had she. No one had.”

16

Walking out of the Charleston police station with Harriet, Mel wondered if she really had just dreamed it, if this was truly a figment of her fevered imagination, the dreams of a bad concussion. After all, she had hit a tree head-on. . . .

Back in the rental car, she slumped wearily into her seat, eyes closed—then suddenly the smell of stale tobacco was in her nostrils again— the smell of the killer’s hands. She felt the cold hard steel of the gun at her head, heard him say “Drive . . .” in that faintly guttural accent.

Her eyes popped open again and she sat up. “Dreams don’t make you remember the way things
smelled,
the way they
felt
. I did
not
dream this. I could not have.”

She scrambled her long length out of the tiny car and sprinted around to the driver’s side. “I’m driving,” she said, and there was something about the way she said it, a kind of scared urgency, that had Harriet out and into the passenger’s seat before she could even question the safety of a woman with a recent concussion, medicated, and wounded, in charge of a car.

“Tell me this is a play and I’m acting and you are dreaming and let’s just go home,” she pleaded as Mel whizzed around a traffic circle heading north out of Charleston. “Anyway, where are we going now?”

“Where d’you think?” Mel put her foot to the metal as she left the traffic behind and hit the beach road. She was in a hurry, she had to see for herself. She had to prove that it had really happened.

She stomped hard on the brake, though, when the bridge came into view. It was out of the water again, the pavement was cracked and crumbling at the sides, and most of the posts were missing. And there was a large sign that said CAUTION, BRIDGE IMPASSABLE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

“Well, that’s that,” Harriet said thankfully. This whole thing was getting a little out of hand, and anyhow she wasn’t sure she wanted to go looking for murder victims.

“No it isn’t.” Mel put her foot down again and rolled onto the flimsy bridge. “I’ve driven across this in worse conditions, and at least this time I’m not in a sixteen-wheeler in a hurricane and I can see what I’m doing.”

Harriet held her breath, one hand on the door handle, ready to bail out, the other covering her eyes, as Mel maneuvered the little car gently over the bumps and holes. “Just don’t tell me we have to do that again on the way back.” Harriet’s usually forceful voice was weak. “I don’t think I could take it.”

“Then you’ll just have to swim. This is the only way in and out. Oh, look, there it is. You see, Harr, I was right.”

Mel’s triumphant yell faded. The
Psycho
house looked immaculate, serene. The tamed ocean lapped sedately at the rocks, and the sun shone. It didn’t look the least bit like Norman Bates’s place.

“You mean this is it? The House of Horrors.” Harriet laughed in relief. “God, I was expecting Dracula or something.”

But Mel was already out and up the steps, standing on the porch, her finger on the bell. Harriet got out and leaned against the car, watching her. Waiting.

Nothing happened, the house was empty. And this time the door was locked.

“Damn,” Mel grumbled, trying it again. “Damn, damn, gosh darn and drat!”

Harriet giggled. “Well really, Miss Southern Belle, I don’t think your mama would approve of suchlike cusswords.”

But Mel was already circling the porch, pressing her nose against the windows, shading her eyes against the reflection with her hands. “This is it,” she yelled, waving an urgent arm for Harriet. “Here’s the room, the library. This is where I saw the body, I remember it exactly. . . .”

Harriet peered through the window. It looked quite normal to her, nothing out of place, no pools of blood. “So where’s the body, Mel?” she asked finally. “Where is this so-called killer?
Who
is he?”

“I don’t know.” Mel shook her head, totally bewildered. “I just don’t know. All I know is I’m not crazy, but this will surely drive me crazy if I don’t find out.”

She slumped onto the porch steps, elbows on her knees, head in her hands, staring at the blacktop driveway over which she had crawled, and from which she had been abducted. She remembered the killer hauling her into the cab, her fighting him, scratching his face, jamming her fingers in his eyes . . . and the brutal blow to her face that had sent her sliding onto the floor of the cab, dopey with pain.

But not so dopey that she had not heard what he said. “He made a telephone call,” she remembered. “After he hit me, he called someone. He told them Ed Vincent wasn’t there, but he would get him next time.” Her blue eyes rounded with alarm, she grabbed Harriet by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Harriet.
Believe me.
Ed Vincent is on that killer’s hit list. And if I don’t warn him, he will be the next one found dead in the library.”

“Should I ‘mark your words’?” Harriet asked with a grin, because somehow now she
almost
believed her.

“Darn right, honey.” Mel was already back in the car. “You’d better mark my words—and so had Ed Vincent.”

“Where are we going now?” Harriet closed her eyes as they approached the battered bridge. This time Mel scarcely even slowed and they practically flew over it.

“We’re going to telephone Ed Vincent in New York,” Mel announced triumphantly. “For sure, he’ll believe me.”

17

“So? Did he?” Camelia asked.

“Believe me, you mean?” Mel drummed her fingers impatiently on the table. She glanced around at her “prison,” a bare little room with a single blank window, a table, two chairs, and a layer of dust. She had been so caught up in her story, she had almost forgotten where she was. “Can a condemned prisoner get a Diet Coke around here? Please,” she added as an afterthought.

“Sure.” Camelia got up. He straightened his silver-gray silk tie and smoothed back his hair, Al Pacino–style, Mel thought, as he walked across the room and asked the uniform standing outside the door to get her a Diet Coke.

“Make that two,” Camelia added, closing the door again.

Mel took a good look at him, taking him in as a man and not just a cop—and a cop who thought she had tried to murder her lover at that. This guy was quite the fashion plate. If he were not a cop, she might have tabbed him as a member of the mob.

“You must be married,” she said, fingers still drumming on the table.

“Why do you say that?”

He leaned back in his more comfortable chair, one leg draped lazily over the other.

“No cop living alone would look as smart as you—freshly ironed shirt, light starch only, pants pressed, shoes shined.”

He grinned. “I shine my own shoes.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

He laughed then. Leaning across the table, he took hold of her hand. “Stop that drumming,” he said. “Anyone would think you were nervous.”

“Who, me?” She stuck her chin defiantly in the air. “I’m not nervous, I’m just trying to find out the truth.”

“Like me.”

“Like you.” Their gazes locked, and then, because she just couldn’t help it, she cracked. Tears streamed down her face. Big fat tears that rolled down her cheeks, dripped from her chin, leaked into her ears. Gosh darn it, she was bawling like a kid and all because her heart was breaking.
Ed
was lying in that hospital bed, Ed was gravely
wounded, Ed was dying. . . .

“I can’t bear it,” she wept, still sitting bolt upright in the chair. “I just can’t bear to lose him.”

Camelia got up. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.

She looked at it and then up at him. A kind of giggle, or maybe it was a hiccup, interrupted her sobs. “That’s what I mean about the wife,” she said. “A clean handkerchief. Anybody else would have offered a box of Kleenex.”

Officer Brotski knocked on the door, then entered, carrying two cans of Diet Coke. “With caffeine,” he mentioned to Camelia, who gave him a withering look.

Brotski took in the sobbing blonde, the clean white handkerchief, the tension in the air, and with a muttered, “Sorry, excuse me, sir” quickly departed.

“You really love him that much?” Camelia flipped open the can and handed it to her. “You haven’t known him that long.”

“Long enough.” She hiccuped. “And then again,” she added in a whisper, “not long enough.”

Camelia tilted his chair. He sat, one leg draped over the other, arms folded, silently watching her. There was something so vulnerable, so gallant about her at that moment, he was almost tempted to believe her. Then he reminded himself she was there because Ed Vincent had said she had tried to kill him. He took in the ragged crop of blonde hair, the earnest whiskey-brown eyes, the wide trembling mouth. And also the long legs and the extremely short skirt that suddenly, for some reason, reminded him of Sharon Stone in
Basic Instinct
. And nobody, he recalled uncomfortably, had been more wicked than her character.

With an embarrassed cough, he uprighted his chair and took charge again. “And so did you?” he asked abruptly. “Telephone him, I mean.”

“I tried, God knows I tried endlessly. But Ed’s office was like a fortress with a barricade of secretaries and assistants placed firmly between me and the boss. They said Mr. Vincent did not accept calls, and could I please tell them what I was calling about?” Mel lifted her shoulders, she shook her head. “How could I tell them? They would think I was some kind of nut. Mr. Big Shot, I thought. So full of himself. Too important to speak to little people. I almost let it go at that,” she added soberly, “but then I reminded myself. Ed Vincent was a big shot
in danger
.”

Camelia watched her closely, waiting for her to tell what had happened next. Her head was tipped back, her eyes closed, as though she had retreated somewhere inside herself and was reliving her story.

“So I got on a plane to New York,” she said finally.