Lemon Tart (36 page)

“Um, can we get in the van?” Mindy asked. “I’ll explain on the
way.”

That sounded fine to Sadie and she headed toward the passenger
door, reminded of her urgency once her feet were moving again. She glanced over
her shoulder to make sure Madsen wasn’t sneaking up on her, but the road was
empty except for some autumn leaves blowing across the ground. It was lovely to
sit in the plush seat of the minivan and relax for a moment. It would have been
even better if there weren’t two feet worth of fast-food wrappers,
Dr. Pepper bottles, school papers, and crayons on the floor. For some reason
the van smelled like cat litter, but Sadie was in no mind to be picky.

Mindy put the van into reverse and turned around to head back
the way she’d come.

“So how did you find me?” Sadie asked again. “You came home for
lunch?”

Mindy began nodding vigorously. “I did, I had the last of the
Alfredo you brought last night—it was delicious, by the way. I
usually make that kind that comes in the packet, you know the kind, right? But
homemade is so much better, the kids noticed the difference right away.”

Sadie was always glad to have her cooking complimented, but she
didn’t have the presence of mind to thank Mindy right now. She didn’t need to
worry, though, Mindy was still talking and it was all Sadie could do to keep
up.

“I also just wanted to check on the house, ya know, I thought I
might have left the basement door unlocked and kept thinking about what
happened to Anne, wondering if maybe she’d left her basement door unlocked and
that’s how the murderer got in. I saw that in a movie once, where he came in
and lived in the house for weeks, learning all about the family. He actually
fell in love with the woman and decided to kill the husband, so one day he—”

“What happened when you came home from lunch?” Sadie
interrupted.

A momentary look of confusion crossed Mindy’s face, but she
found the original train of thought and pushed forward again. “Oh, right, so I
ate the Alfredo and was double-checking the windows and doors before I left
again when I heard Jack’s truck squeal out of the circle. I saw it go around
the corner just as you got in your car and chased after it. I couldn’t figure
out what was happening, but then the detective—he was on your
porch talking to someone—jumps down, runs for his car, and
takes off too. Well, I just didn’t even have time to think, so I ran downstairs
to the garage and jumped into the van. I worried that something had happened to
someone else in the circle, that you and Jack were rushing to the hospital
or something, so I took off, but I was way behind the rest of you so I thought
I’d lost you guys altogether, until I passed you getting handcuffed by that
cute cop.”

“Cute cop?” Sadie said, picturing Madsen’s face the last time
she’d seen him. He’d been swearing and kicking, his face contorted with such
anger and hatred that he looked demonic. The words he was using were anything
but cute.

“Don’t you think he looks a little like Val Kilmer?” Mindy
continued. “I love Val Kilmer, in fact I was watching Willow a few days ago—remember that
movie? And there’s this part where he takes his shirt off. Whoa. I’m a married
woman and all, but Val Kilmer without a shirt on is about as good as—”

“You saw me getting arrested?”

Mindy came back to the present again. “Well, that’s the thing,
there was something funny about what he was doing. See, first of all he was
alone and cops aren’t supposed to do stuff alone, and second, he looked so
mad—like weird mad—ya know? But there was
nowhere to pull over so I drove through the intersection and turned around to
come back. By then he had just parked your car. Now why would he do that? I
wondered. So I drove past again and then turned around just as he was pulling
back into traffic. I thought I’d follow for a minute, but when he started
heading out of town I really freaked. I didn’t know what to do, so I tried to
call the police, but we have really spotty service once you get past Mountain
View Road and my call wouldn’t go through and so I thought the best thing to do
would be to follow you until I got service. I had to stay back though, ’cause I
didn’t want him to recognize my van or anything. Then I saw him take the Green
Valley exit and I thought, ‘Mindy, this is so bad.’ But there were no other
cars on the off-ramp and I just knew he’d see me, so I pulled over on the
freeway—the shoulder, ya know—and waited until
he went into the trees before I followed.” She looked over at Sadie with a
sympathetic smile. “That was a mistake ’cause once I got to the trees I didn’t
know where you’d gone. The snow had melted on the road and I couldn’t see any tire
tracks. So I drove around for what seemed like forever, taking different roads
looking for you, and then I found you.”

Sadie smiled and tears filled her eyes—both
actions hurt her face terribly. “Mindy, you’re an absolute angel.”

Mindy beamed at the compliment. The van came out of the trees,
the fork in the road half a mile ahead of them. “Well, thanks,” she said. “Now
we just need to get you to the hospital. What happened anyway? Did he beat you
up? I saw that on the news a few weeks ago, how these cops beat up this guy. He
was in bad shape, I tell you what, his face all big and gross. I could tell
right away he’d have a scar where they—”

Sadie sat up straight. “Mindy,” she said, turning toward her
savior and putting a hand on her arm. “We can’t go to the hospital.”

Mindy glanced at her and her eyebrows lifted. “We have to,
Sadie, you’re badly injured.”

Sadie shook her head despite the pain it sent through her neck.
“We have to find Jack’s cabin,” she said, pointing to the fork in the road.
“Carrie has Trevor there.”

Mindy’s eyebrows lifted even higher. “Trevor?” she repeated.
“What do you mean?”

“Detective Madsen killed Anne,” Sadie said, leaning back
against the seat. “But I think Carrie told Jack she’d done it and took Trevor
and now she’s hiding him. Jack turned himself in and said Trevor would be found
soon, and Carrie was going to give Trevor to Madsen, but Madsen is handcuffed
to a tree. Trina’s helping her mom and we have to find them. Trevor is Jack’s
son, see, and Carrie found out about Anne and . . . well, it’s a bit
complicated.” Wow, she’d spoken almost as fast as Mindy.

“Carrie?” Mindy repeated as if that was the only word of
substance she’d been able to grasp in Sadie’s explanation. She glanced at Sadie
again. “Jack?”

Sadie pointed at the fork just a few yards ahead of them. “Take
the other road,” she said. “Jack’s cabin is up there.”

Mindy was silent for a few seconds and Sadie feared she’d
perhaps dropped such a bombshell that even the likes of Mindy Bailey was
silenced by the shock.

She was wrong.

Mindy took a breath and began talking again as if Sadie hadn’t
just shared such a sordid secret. Mindy had never struck Sadie as particularly
bright. “It is? I’ve never been there. Steve has, he used to hunt with Jack
sometimes and he told me about it—said it wasn’t much. But
Steve’s not much of a rustic man,
ya know, despite the fact that he works at a sporting goods store. He’s more
the athletic type, not so much the outdoorsman. This one time . . .”

Sadie tuned her out, her attention riveted on the road. Mindy
made the turn as Sadie instructed and Sadie leaned forward, scanning the trees
on either side. She remembered a dirt road on the left, that was the first
turn, but it was a ways up the road.

“Turn there,” Sadie said a mile later, pointing to the dirt
road, hoping it was the right one. She immediately saw a large
A-frame that she knew hadn’t been there the last time she’d been to
the cabin. She hoped it had been built recently and that she hadn’t chosen the
wrong road. There was no time to wander aimlessly.

Mindy hadn’t skipped a beat. “And they wanted to charge me
eighty bucks when he wasn’t even there for an hour. I told them, no way, not
for something like this. Now if it were carpets, that’s different, but then you
pay by the room for carpet, not by the hour. My father-in-law
used to lay carpet and he said that most people don’t know that—”

“Right here,” Sadie said, swallowing as the trees parted enough
to show the small brown cabin set back from the road. Both Jack’s truck and
Carrie’s car were parked along the side and Sadie swallowed.

They were here!

Chapter 38

As soon as
the van door opened, Sadie jumped from the vehicle and ran for the cabin door,
throwing it open. Carrie and Trina looked up from where they were sitting at
the small table covered in papers. Sadie barely gave them a glance before
scanning the room, her eyes taking in the black filing cabinet next to the
table before resting on the small form curled up in a
port-a-crib in the middle of the room. She took a few steps
forward and seeing his small chest rise and fall made her feel as if her heart
had just begun to beat again. A fire was roaring in the wood-burning
stove in the corner and Sadie was relieved that he’d been warm. The last thing
he needed after all of this was to catch a chill.

Both of the other women came to their feet and the three of
them stared at one another across the small—but surprisingly
tidy—room. Sadie held Carrie’s eyes. “You were going to let him
take the fall for it?” she accused her sister-in-law. “You were
going to let him go to prison?”

Carrie didn’t look away, raising her chin slightly in a display
of arrogance. The room was silent, until Mindy came up behind Sadie in the
doorway.

“Oh, hi, Carrie,” she said in what sounded like a cautious
tone. But it didn’t take long for her to switch into her
hyper-oblivion mode. “Hi, Trina. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?
Do you like it there? It’s fun, isn’t it? I remember college, wow, what an
experience. I think all kids should go to college. That’s where Steve and I
met, you know, I was a freshman. Have you met any—”

“Mindy,” Sadie said, still staring at her
sister-in-law. “Please, for once in your life, shut up.”

Mindy’s eyes went wide but her teeth snapped together. Sadie
had never talked to her that way and, under the circumstances, Sadie didn’t
even care—though she knew she’d be baking later to make up for
her rudeness.

“Who’s to say Jack didn’t kill her?” Carrie said.

Sadie shook her head. “That’s not why he’s there, is it? He’s
there because he thinks you did
it and he believes it’s all his fault.”

“It is his
fault!” Carrie hissed. She placed her hands on the small table and leaned
forward, her eyes narrowed and her jaw tight. Trina looked like a scared kitten
and seemed to shrink backward, making Sadie wonder just how willing a
participant she’d been in this whole thing.

“No, it’s not,” Sadie said slowly. “Detective Madsen killed
Anne, Carrie; he’s the one who belongs in prison. You knew it wasn’t Jack all
along. He’s a good man, and you know it, but you were willing to let him take
the fall for vengeance.”

Carrie’s nostrils flared. “He is not a good man,” she said.
“How can you dismiss what he’s done? How can you let him get away with it?”

“He’s not getting away with anything,” Sadie countered,
throwing up her hands to encompass all that had happened. “He’s had to live with
himself through this whole thing, knowing how many people he was hurting. Now
Anne is dead. He’ll carry that with him the rest of his life.”

“It’s not enough,” Carrie said between clenched teeth as she
shook her head. “Not nearly enough to make up for what he’s done.”

“Perhaps not, but then he’s never been good enough for you
anyway, has he?”

Carrie’s eyebrows came together and Sadie continued. “What he
did was wrong—horribly wrong—but you are not
helping anything.” She looked at Trevor and began walking toward him.
“Especially in this.”

Carrie hurried to get in Sadie’s way, lifting her chin and
looking defiant. “You aren’t—”

“Yes, I am!” Sadie said slow and sincere. “You’ve done enough
and if you think I’ll be half as easy to roll over as Jack has been, you’ve
made a grave error in judgment. Madsen”—she looked at Trina with sympathy—“the
man you know as Randy Sharp—isn’t coming, and there is no way
to keep Trina or yourself out of this any longer.” Trina’s eyes went wide with
confusion. “You are going to have a lot of explaining to do, but if you try to
stop me from taking this little boy to his father now, you’ll have more fight
on your hands than you could possibly imagine.”

Carrie lifted her chin higher and when Sadie took another step
and Carrie moved forward to block her way again, Sadie raised both hands and
pushed the other woman as hard as she could. Carrie was taken off guard and
stumbled backward before tripping over the hearth of the wood-burning
stove. She immediately stood and took a step forward, but Sadie lowered her
chin and took a stance similar to the one she’d taken with Madsen not long ago,
crouching slightly, shoulders up and jaw tight.