Irregardless of Murder (Miss Prentice Cozy Mysteries) (26 page)

I’ll do it. Then, when we get back to town, I’ll just call Dennis O’Brien and—

“Before God? Nobody ever has to know,” she added reassuringly, “just us.”

Her teeth glinted in the moonlight. Perhaps this was how she’d become a Gold Star Member of the Million Seller’s Club.

Marguerite’s earnest face popped into my mind. “It’s just so, so—evil!” she’d said.

Tears began to fill my eyes.
You were right, Marguerite. Evil is the only word for it.

Without thinking, I slowly shook my head. “I can’t.”

“I knew you’d say that,” Sally said with a laugh. “I was lying, anyway, you know.” She held the gun in both hands, pointed at me, and said evenly, “Stand up, Amelia.”

“N-no!”

“I’ll shoot you. You know I will.” Her tone was light, matter-of-fact.

I folded my arms and frowned ferociously. Being shot sounded preferable to going in that water. It was a brave front, but I couldn’t control the tears of rage and panic flowing down my cheeks.

“Oh, come on! You can’t think I’m happy about this. Without you around, I don’t suppose Gil will want to buy the Fields house.”

“Sally, please don’t,” I begged through a sob.

“Do you think your sister would sell me your house? She is your heir, isn’t she?” She waved the gun. “Stand up.”

I remained where I was, shivering in the icy breeze. The boat bobbed gently on the sleeping lake. I could hear the dull buzz of another motor in the distance. If only they knew what was happening here! What would Sally do if I screamed?

“You’re stubborn—you know that? Like with your house. I gave you the works—loose boards, dead bushes, the broken swing, even cut the wires on your doorbell and your security lights. Twice as much as I did to the Meconi house. You weren’t going to sell, even if the place collapsed around your head.”

“But—”

“Stand up, Amelia.”

“But how—”

There was a loud explosion, and I felt my face being jerked violently to one side.

“There. I pierced your ear for you. Care to try for the other one?”

I put my left hand to my face. Blood, gleaming black in the moonlight, was streaming down my neck. Slowly, trembling, leaning first to one side, then the other, I stood, quite literally rocking the boat.

“Now, step off.”

“No! You rotten—”

Vile, hateful, blasphemous names for her bubbled up from my throat. I swallowed them. I was determined that those wouldn’t be my last words on earth.

Sally sighed impatiently. “Come on! I haven’t got all night.”

“NO!” I shouted. The boat rocked again, and I grabbed desperately at the sides to balance myself. I could feel the warm blood dripping down my neck and wondered absently if I could ever get the stain out of my clothes.

Sally extended her long arm and brought the gun close to my face, guiding me upright and saying in mocking singsong, “Come on, Amelia, just pretend you’re at the Y.”

I heard my own voice moaning, high-pitched and animal with misery. “NO!”

Sally fired again, this time in the air, but I flinched, moving my head to one side, and it was just enough to send me wheeling overboard.

I didn’t even hear the splash. There seemed to be pressure everywhere. On my chest, on my eyes. A muffled ache pressed ever harder into my ears. And it was so cold.

Flapping my arms, I managed to propel myself upward and break the surface for a few precious seconds. With the fingertips of one hand, I grabbed the side of the rowboat, but Sally was right there, peeling my fingers away.

“Give it up, Amelia!” she growled. “Let go. They’re all gone. Your parents, your cat—” She hit my hand with something hard.

I gave a strangled yelp and let go.

Sally began to row away.

I sank again. I struggled and sank even further. My saturated wool coat was weighing me down. My straight skirt seemed to bind my legs. I held my breath until my chest began to explode.

Was this what it was like to drown?
Oh, Gil! Why didn’t I marry you? Oh, Gil . . .
I flailed frantically.

I’m dying, dear Lord. Into thy hands I commend my spirit . . . I’ll be seeing Mother . . . and Dad . . . and my baby sister Amy who died when she was born . . .

Frigid lake water shot into my sinuses and exploded behind my eyes.

My last thought would be one of mild irritation. Drowning hurt lots more than I’d been led to believe.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Pretty soon now, I’ll be going down a long tunnel, with a light at the end.

Just then, my feet hit something solid.

It was impossible. Even as the top of my head seemed about to blow off, I felt myself rising, slowly, steadily. My head and shoulders were suddenly above the water, in the frigid air.

I gasped and hacked, snorted and gulped oxygen greedily. There was a steady roaring in my ears that wouldn’t go away.

I looked down. Somewhere below in the black water my feet still stood on the solid something that kept almost half of me above the surface. Could there be a sand bar in the middle of the lake? I turned and found my nose inches from the side of a vibrating boat.

The name painted on the side was
Sweet Afton.

I heard a voice above me. “Praise be! Look what I’ve found! Hang on, Miss Amelia!”

I looked up into the grinning, hairy face of Dr. Alexander Alexander.

A life preserver came flying over the side. I grabbed it and clung, but still the blessed, firm surface remained steady beneath my tiptoes.

The Professor climbed down a rope ladder, gripped my arm firmly, and hauled me up, soon assisted by another pair of eager hands.

“Heere ye come! Up ye go!” I heard him say.

Just before I was hauled over the side, I looked down and saw a dark shape undulate along the surface, then disappear smoothly into the black waves.

A blanket was thrown over me. I heard someone say, “She’ll freeze out here. Let’s get her inside.”

“Lily, no,” I croaked feebly, “please, wait.” With every ounce of strength I had left, I pulled myself to a standing position at the side of Alec’s boat, leaned over, and lost the meager contents of my stomach. It was just as well that I hadn’t had dinner.

“Hoo, boy! Thar she blows!” I heard Lily shout behind me.

I straightened up and attempted to regain my dignity. “Don’t be crude,” I snapped at her, swabbing my mouth with a corner of the blanket.

“Poor bairn,” Alec said, patting my back.

“She’ll be all right.” Lily leaned near my face and smiled. “And she hasn’t been a bairn for thirty some-odd years.”

“Shut up,” I said. “Your hair looks terrible.” It did, too, all blown to one side and coming loose from its moorings in the stiffening lake breeze.

She laughed. “You see, Alec? I told you she’d be ungrateful. Come on, dear, let’s get you into the cabin. You’re turning blue.” She pushed me unceremoniously through a door and into a tiny room full of intimidating blinking instruments of every description.

I took a deep breath. “Lily, it was Sally Jennings. She killed Marguerite and tried to kill me. She might go after Marie. We’ve got to call Dennis or somebody!”

“Consider it done, dear lady,” Alec said behind me.

Expertly, he stepped forward, pressed buttons, turned knobs, and spoke urgently into a microphone. Much of the exchange was in some kind of mystifying code. Once, he paused to ask me for a detail. “ . . . and was last seen—Miss Amelia, where was she last seen?”

“In a rowboat on the lake near the Fields’ camp. She can’t have gone far.”

Alec nodded. He started whistling a hymn through his teeth.

My mind supplied the words: “Rescue the perishing, care for the dying! Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave.”
Alec always had an appropriate song for every occasion.

While he worked, Lily deposited me in one of the two seats and reached for a thermos bottle. “My hair does look pretty bad,” she admitted, examining her reflection in the silvery end of the thermos. “Maybe I should have I stopped at Gladys’s Beauty Spot for a wash and set before I arranged to have . . . you . . . rescued!” She leaned down towards me, speaking the last few words with particular emphasis.

“Thank you for saving me,” I said meekly.

“That’s better.” She poured steaming liquid into the thermos cup and handed it to me. “Here, sip this slowly. It’s cocoa and a teaspoon of brandy—Alec’s recipe. Purely medicinal. Trust me, you’ll like it.” She reached into a pocket of her jacket, pulled out a rubbery black stick and took a bite out of it.

I leaned forward and sniffed. “What’s that you’re eating? Licorice? You hate licorice!”

“I know, but Alec told me it makes a good substitute for cigarettes. Supposedly it tastes like tar and nicotine.” An involuntary shudder ran across her face. “It’s working—I think.”

“There,” Alec said, putting down the microphone. “That’s done. Now, we’ll head home.” He went outside to the controls. We heard the engine roar. The boat swayed as he turned the wheel and accelerated.

I was still sopping wet, but getting warmer. I took a sip of the proffered concoction. Not too bad. I took another. My mind was clearing.

“Lily, how did you—”

“How did I know you were going to need me?”

I nodded and took another sip.

“As soon as I heard your phone message, I knew you shouldn’t be alone with Sally. We expected to meet you at the Fields house, but then we heard shots. A few minutes later, we spotted you.”

“But they’ve arrested Judith. How did you know it was Sally?”

Lily took the other seat and swung it in my direction. “That UDJ thing stunk to high heaven, and I just couldn’t swallow Judith as the killer. And I can’t swallow this either,” she added as she spat a wad of chewed licorice into her palm and looked balefully around for an appropriate receptacle.

“Sorry, I can’t help you,” I said. “My tissues were in my purse and I left that in Sally’s rowboat.”

She glared at the black goo. “How can anybody actually eat this stuff?” She glanced around the tiny cabin and her expression brightened. “Ah ha! I know just the place for it.” She stepped through a small door marked Head and emerged wiping her hands on a paper towel. “Where were we?” She resumed her seat.

“You were telling me about your brilliant deductions.” I wrapped my hands around my cup. “Why couldn’t you swallow Judith as a killer?”

Lily spun gently in her seat. “Because I know her better than you do. A hundred years ago, our husbands were buddies. She gives me a pain a pill can’t reach, to coin a phrase, but believe it or not, she’s a truly soft-hearted gal. To her, those school kids are her children. Even all that personal medical stuff she spouts is really just her way of showing she cares. Now Sally, on the other hand . . . ”

“Is always pushing the envelope,” I put in proudly. Another Hardy Patschke expression.

“You could put it that way. What I was going to say was that she’s obsessive. She started out as a nobody, you know, and made herself into a somebody. And not the old-fashioned way either. Remember how she got elected head cheerleader? She literally stuffed the ballot boxes!”

“How do you know all this?”

“I was on the yearbook staff, and I always kept up with what was going on in school, remember?”

“I remember.” It was hard to believe, but Lily was actually less of a gossip now than in high school.

“But I didn’t remember everything.” Lily shook her head. “I forgot all about Sally’s real first name. It was supposed to be a deep, dark secret, but of course, it wasn’t. I learned about it when she begged us to change her name in the yearbook.”

“And you did?”

“Sure, why not? We shortened Elm DeWitt’s name, too. From Elmer.”

“Is that his real name?” I asked, astonished, picturing our distinguished district attorney.

“Didn’t you know that? You think he was named for a tree? Anyway, about an hour after I got home, I remembered what it was about UDJ that bothered me. You know the rest.” She looked intently at me, frowned, and gently pushed soggy hair off my face. “Are you all right? You look pale.”

I winced. “Ouch! Easy. That’s where Sally shot me.”

I touched my ear and my hand came away clean. The cold lake water must have washed away most of the blood.

“She
what
?” She leaned forward and lifted my hair. “Let me see that!”

She gently examined my ear. I heard her breath hissing between her teeth.

“Oh, Amelia,” she whispered. “I hope they catch her and I hope she
fries.
”

She hissed the last word. Her breath still smelled of licorice.

“Don’t forget she did much worse to Marguerite,” I said, “and if it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have known about the journal. That’s why it’s vital we catch her before she goes after Marie—oh!” I cried. I turned to Alec. “Oh, please—could we go back to the Fields’ place? I think I know where the journal might be. Sally was in a rowboat. We can probably still beat her back there and find it. It might be proof of something.”

Alec said nothing, only saluted with two fingers and turned the wheel.
What a nice man he is
, I thought.

Lily beamed at him. I shot her a quizzical glance, which she answered by sticking out her licorice-blackened tongue at me.

We arrived back at the Fields place rapidly. The lights in the house were still on, but there seemed to be no sign of Sally.

“Don’t you move!” Lily ordered. “You’re still wet. You go out in this cold and you’ll freeze solid. Where do you think the journal is?”

“Try her van. In the carport around front. And be careful. Sally may be back at any minute, and she’s got a gun.”

Alec reached into a small cupboard and pulled out a rifle. “So’ve I, m’dear,” he said grimly. “So have I.” With a courtliness that was a pleasure to watch, he assisted Lily down the ladder and into the shallow water. “Stay inside, Miss Amelia. If you hear anything, just hide. We won’t let her near you.” He gripped the rifle meaningfully.

I believed him. I stayed in the cabin, trying to make sense of Alec’s gadgets and screens until the suspense became too much for me. In one of the cupboards, I found a waterproof slicker with a hood and put it on. Crouching carefully, I sneaked out onto the deck and peered over the side.