Partners in Crime (23 page)

Jane could feel outrage and loathing bubbling up inside her. “But he could have raped me,” she said furiously. “He could have murdered me.”

“Unlikely. Jimmy told me that Lenny’s gay. And he charges too much for murders—I don’t think Tremaine would be willing to pay that much just for an inconvenience like you.”

His arms were still around her. She whirled out of them, scrambling across the floor out of reach as the words tumbled forth, epithets she hadn’t used since she was fourteen and on the tough girls’ softball team. “You rotten, degenerate, low-living coward,” she snarled. “You self-centered, dishonorable, lily-livered, chicken-hearted pig. You...”

“Chicken-hearted pig?” Sandy echoed, unmoved by her fury. “Aren’t you getting your metaphors mixed? And I’m not the slightest bit degenerate, as you should know by now. I’m very healthy in my wants and desires. And I may be a coward, but I’m not stupid. It didn’t make any sense to make a heroic stand and risk getting myself knifed if there was no need to.”

She could feel the warm, sticky dampness of blood on her neck. “So instead you let me get knifed,” she said, her voice very quiet.

“Don’t be melodramatic, Jane,” Sandy said wearily. “He didn’t knife you. Lenny’s too smart for that.”

“What’s that on your hand, then? Ketchup?”

He froze. He stood up with one swift movement, and turned on the dim bedside light.

If Jane had been surreptitiously proud of her cursing a few moments earlier, it was nothing compared to Sandy. She didn’t even have time to duck before he swooped down on her, scooping her up in his arms and heading for the door.

“Put me down, dammit,” she demanded, squirming fruitlessly. She hadn’t realized Sandy was quite so strong. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“It’s not that bad. He only scratched me.” Sandy was fumbling with the lock, and she decided it was time for more forceful action. She didn’t want to go to an emergency room and have to answer a lot of unfortunate questions, she wanted to get out of New Jersey.

She rammed her elbow into Sandy’s unprotected stomach. He dropped her with a thud, doubling over in pain as he tried to catch his breath. She tried not to feel guilty as she dashed across the shadowy room for the bathroom. “I don’t want to go to the hospital,” she said as she switched on the fluorescent light and stared at her pale, bloody reflection. “It’s not nearly as bad as it looks, and I always hated Princeton Hospital ever since I had my tonsils out.” She began daubing at her bloody neck with a wet washcloth, wincing slightly as she cleaned it. There were two long, shallow scratches, and the bleeding had slowed down to a mere trickle.

Sandy pulled himself to his feet, staggered across the room and collapsed on her unmade bed. “You could have said something,” he groaned, still clutching his belly like a man in mortal pain. She hadn’t elbowed him that hard, she thought, grimacing at his reflection in the mirror.

“I believe I did,” she said. “Consider it my thanks for so gallantly coming to my rescue.” The bleeding had stopped, and now that the first stages of reaction had passed she was no longer hysterical, she was blazingly mad.

“Sorry,” Sandy said, sliding up and propping himself on her pillows. “Next time I’ll be more than happy to be virgin sacrifice for your bloodthirsty visitors.”

“It’s a little late for the virgin part, isn’t it?” She came and leaned in the bathroom doorway.

“You should know the answer to that as well as I do.” Suddenly he dropped his indolent air. “If I’d known he was hurting you I would have stopped him.”

She thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. The gesture was a mistake, causing her to wince in pain, but she did her best to cover her flinching. As usual, nothing escaped Sandy. “If you’d done anything he might very well have killed me,” she said. “It’s probably just as well you waited. What it lacks in romance it makes up for in common sense. I’d rather be mad and have a tiny scratch on my neck than be lying in Intensive Care right now.”

“I guess I can’t be your knight in shining armor.”

“I wasn’t looking for one.”

He sat up, looking suddenly cheerful. “True enough. You were looking for a cowardly sleaze. Maybe you didn’t do so badly after all.”

She looked at him for a long, thoughtful moment. His long, lean body was stretched out on her bed, his hands were still stained with her blood, his face, despite the jaunty grin, showed that he’d been far from untouched by Lenny’s attack. Even she wasn’t too self-absorbed to see the guilt and worry shadowing his eyes. It was dangerous, but she couldn’t resist it.

“Maybe I didn’t,” she said softly. And quickly closed herself in the bathroom before he could react. “It’s getting close to six,” she called out, reaching for the bloody washcloth and rinsing it in the sink. “Are you almost ready to leave?”

There was a long silence. “Give me ten minutes,” he said finally. And she could hear the connecting door shut quietly.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her brown hair was a witchy mass around her pale face, her eyes were huge and shadowed, her mouth pale and tremulous. Maybe once she put on makeup, wound her hair back in a bun and found her glasses she’d look more normal. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to wipe away the truth.

Margery Caldicott was right. Jane was in love with her partner in crime. And all her own common sense, all the common sense in the world couldn’t talk her out of it.

They were on the road in fifteen minutes, stopping at McDonald’s for a fast-food breakfast and three cups of coffee each before heading up the turnpike. The weather stayed cool and crisp, and Sandy kept the heater on low and the tape player on medium. “You sure you don’t want to tell the police?” he asked for the final time as they were heading over the George Washington Bridge.

“Positive,” she said sleepily, curled up against the leather-lined door. “They’d only hold us up. We don’t know where Stephen is right now, but I bet if he isn’t heading for Vermont already, he’ll be there soon enough. You pointed it out yourself, we don’t have any proof, just suspicions.”

“We might be heading into more danger,” he felt compelled to point out. Guilt was still riding him hard—every time he saw the long, shallow scratches on Jane’s neck his hands would clench around the steering wheel.

“I know,” she murmured.

“Aren’t you worried?”

“Nope.” She gave him a sleepy smile. “You’ll keep the bad guys at bay. You’ve got enough guilt to keep you on your toes for the next ten years.”

“It shows that bad, eh?”

“Sure does. And you deserve every rotten pang of it.”

“Jane,” he said sweetly, “that’s what I love about you. Your generous, forgiving nature.”

“Drive on, Sandy,” she said, closing her eyes again. “And remember, next time you’re attacked by Elinor Peabody don’t look to me to save you.”

“Promises, promises,” he muttered. But Jane was already sound asleep.

T
he weather, already a bit brisk in New Jersey, turned sharply colder by the time they reached Connecticut. A cold hard drizzle was falling by the Vermont border, and the road grew slick and icy as the sun began to sink.

All the glorious color of Vermont in autumn was long past. The trees were bare, the ground brown and hard, the sky and the mountains bleak and gray. The Audi shook a bit as the wind buffeted it along the deserted highways, and Jane shivered as she thought about her grandmother’s old house on the lake.

“I hope you brought some warm clothes,” she said, breaking one of the long silences that were surprisingly comfortable.

He turned to look at her. “That sounds ominous. Doesn’t your grandmother’s heating system work very well?”

“My grandmother’s cottage doesn’t have a heating system.”

“Oh, God.”

“Was that a curse or a prayer?”

“A little bit of both. I hope there are motels in Newfield, Vermont.”

“Nary a one. Don’t worry, though. Nana’s cottage has a huge fieldstone fireplace. If we just put our sleeping bags on the floor in front of it we should do all right.”

“Sleeping bags?” Sandy’s voice was rich with horror. “You’re asking me to sleep in a sleeping bag? Inside?”

“Nana’s cottage won’t feel much like inside this time of year,” Jane assured him.

“Small comfort.”

“In more ways than one.”

“I don’t suppose I get to share my sleeping bag?” Sandy asked in a hopeful tone.

“Well,” she said doubtfully, “sometimes squirrels get in and make their nests in the house. You could always ask one of them.”

“Thanks, I think I’ll pass. I presume you can provide the sleeping bags?” He sounded resigned but gloomy.

She thought about the big brass bed up under the eaves, piled high with quilts and hand-woven coverlets, and sighed. She had to gather her self-preservation about her, not give in to her baser instincts. “I can provide the sleeping bags.”

The snow started some fifteen miles south of Newfield, in the slightly larger town of Hardwick. Jane wasn’t surprised. If the weather was going to be bad, it was going to be worse heading out of Hardwick toward Newfield. The steep hill out of the bustling little village was already slick with sleet, and by the time they reached the first dip in the road the sleet had turned into hard white pellets, halfway between snow and ice.

“I’m not crazy about the driving conditions,” Sandy said between his teeth. “For heaven’s sake, it’s still October.”

“They often get a first snow by October tenth. I will admit this seems a little intense for this time of year.” She peered out through the whirling whiteness. “I suppose we should have checked the weather report before we took off. I’d forgotten how bad things could be.”

The Audi’s sideways skid immediately gave a perfect demonstration of just how bad things could be. Sandy proved himself more than capable, however, turning into the skid and bringing the car back under control with seemingly no effort at all. The snow was getting thicker, spattering the windshield between each swipe of the wipers, and Sandy slowed their headlong pace.

“Lovely weather,” Sandy muttered.

“You’re handling it perfectly,” she said with only the slightest bit of resentment in her voice.

“I was on the ski team in college. If you like to ski, you get used to driving through new snow. However, I usually had snow tires.”

Jane gave him a look of pure, unadulterated horror as they crested another icy hill and began sliding down the other side. Fortunately all Sandy’s attention was on the slippery road and not on his companion’s sudden lack of confidence. “No snow tires?” she managed in a sickly gasp. The snow was sticking to the roads now, a thin layer of white on top of the icy scum.

“No snow tires,” he verified. “Look at it this way, Jane. You wanted adventure.”

“I didn’t want adventure, I wanted justice. You’re the one who was terminally bored.”

“Well,” said Sandy, as the car began traveling sideways toward the bank on the side of the road, “I’m not bored now.” He touched the accelerator, nudged the wheel, and averted disaster once more.

Jane leaned back against the seat and shut her eyes. If she had to die she didn’t want to watch. She’d been brave enough for the past seventy-two hours, facing gangsters and near drownings and knife attacks. A snowy drive was suddenly her limit. “Neither am I,” she said faintly. “I only wish I were.”

Newfield hadn’t changed much in the years since Jane had been there. The snow slackened a bit as they drove into the village, and the light flurries only enhanced its perfect New England charm. From the white-spired church to the charming general store, from the barn-red mill that had been converted into a gift shop to the rows of perfect white clapboard houses, the place reeked of photo opportunities. The village was shutting down for the night when they drove through at just after five, and they had barely enough time to grab something for dinner before they headed up the road to the old Dexter cottage.

It had been snowing longer in Newfield, probably since early afternoon, and no one had bothered to plow the long, winding drive up to the house. Sandy tried twice, gunning the motor and taking a running start, but even he had to admit defeat. This time he wasn’t able to regain control, and the Audi ended up in a shallow ditch, the headlights pointing crazily at the old cottage.

“We’re here,” Jane said faintly. Sandy only snarled, as the two of them scrambled out of the lopsided Audi and headed up the embankment toward the house.

Even in the fading light Jane could see it, still unchanged after almost seventy-five years. It was the perfect prewar summer cottage, with weathered shingles, porches surrounding three sides, gables and dormers and multipaned windows looking blankly out into the snowy evening. Sandy stood there, ankle-deep in the snow, staring up at the old place, and his expression wasn’t encouraging.

“No heat, eh?” he said gloomily.

“The sooner we get a fire going the sooner we’ll be warm.” She sounded disgustingly hearty, even to her own ears, as she trudged up the broad front steps. She stopped for a moment, looking down. For an instant it had looked as if someone had walked up those steps before the snow had gotten so deep. She thought she could see the faint trace of a man’s boots beneath the fresh layer of snow. She peered down, but she couldn’t be certain. It was probably just Ephraim, checking the empty summer cottages as he’d been hired to do. If anyone had come up to the old house, they were certainly long gone.

It was about thirty degrees in the autumn night air. It was about twenty in the house, the high ceilings and curtainless windows keeping the air icy. Sandy dumped his suitcase on the floor and headed straight for the fireplace as Jane went around turning on lights. At least someone had left a fresh supply of wood and kindling. She listened to Sandy curse, a low, steady stream of profanity beneath his breath, as she wandered through the old place, turning on lights and looking back over her past.

She hadn’t been there in three years, not since Sally had brought her kids back East for a stilted summer reunion. Things had been too hectic then, chasing around after Sally’s hellions, dealing with Richard’s absentmindedness, all the while trying to use her time away from Baraboo to make up her mind whether she should marry Frank or not. No wonder she’d made the wrong decision.