Ritual Sins (16 page)

She stopped in the middle of the graveyard and gave herself a brisk shake. She could probably blame her flaming paranoia on Luke Bardell as well, except that she’d always had a faintly paranoid streak. It came from having no one to trust.

But there was no reason why the citizens of Coffin’s Grove would wish her any harm. And if she thought about it, allowed herself the dangerous luxury of examining these imaginary feelings, she could sense no danger from those watching eyes. No physical danger.

The place was creeping her out. She turned, ready to give up, when she found what had been eluding her. Jackson Bardell’s gaudy monolith.

It was absurd of her to have missed it before. It was taller than the other gravestones, with a dog carved in granite at the foot. Surrounding it were bunches of plastic flowers in various unlikely shades of purple and yellow, mud-splashed and sun-faded. And a telltale pile of cigarette butts of varying vintages. Two different brands. Two people stood over his grave. Did they both mourn?

She looked at the deeply etched words.
JACKSON
BARDELL, DEVOTED SON, EXPERT HUNTER, DUTIFUL HUSBAND. CUT DOWN IN HIS PRIME
. 1930–1976.

No mention of his own son. Cut down in his prime was Esther’s doing, to announce to the world that she knew he’d been murdered. She said she was going to kill Luke when she got the chance. It was only surprising she’d waited so long.

She headed toward the gate, almost tripping over the small, marble plaque set in the ground, far away from Bardell’s ornate tombstone.
MARIJO MACDONALD
. 1940–1968.

No Bardell added to her name. But a fresh handful of wildflowers lay beside the marble stone, not yet wilting from the heat.

Someone had been here before her. Recently. Someone who’d cared about Marijo MacDonald, when her own husband hadn’t seen fit to put her name on her tombstone. Rachel looked up, suddenly alert, staring around her. There was no sign of anyone. Whoever had been here, whoever had visited Marijo’s grave and then stayed to watch her, was gone.

She wanted to run to her car, slam the door, and drive the hell out of town. But she’d come too far to run away. Again.

There were little patches of small white wild-flowers growing along the edge of the fence where the mower’s blade had missed them. Rachel didn’t
even think about what she was doing, she moved purely by instinct. She picked a small handful of the delicate white blooms and lay them carefully beside the others on Marijo’s grave.

She looked back at Jackson Bardell’s ostentatious display and a sour grin twisted her face. Let him keep the plastic tributes, she thought. He deserved them.

There’d been other MacDonalds in the graveyard, presumably Marijo’s family, but she rested nowhere near them. She was off alone, probably because she was a suicide.

But so, ostensibly, was Jackson Bardell.

Luke Bardell had taken her mother. But there was no denying that he’d lost his own as well. It made no difference in the long run.

But it lingered in her mind as she started up the rental car once more.

Luke stepped out of the darkness of the thick growth of trees, taking his time, listening as the sound of her tinny little car disappeared into the afternoon air. The car suited the kind of person she thought she was. White and anonymous, automatic transmission and lots of air-conditioning.

He didn’t see her that way. He could see her naked, on leather. And he would, sooner or later.

He didn’t bother going anywhere near Jackson Bardell’s grave. He’d put the old man behind him,
out of his life, his conscience. Instead he went to Marijo’s grave, staring down at the pale pink flowers he’d left earlier, the white ones lying beside them.

He squatted, touching one, turning it over. Marijo had been the opposite of Rachel Connery. Sweet-natured, helpless, almost simple in her needs and her loves. But something told him she would have liked Rachel. She would have folded Rachel in her warm arms and stroked her hair; she would have murmured all the safe, loving things that a child like Rachel needed to hear.

As she had with him.

He glanced back at Jackson’s massive headstone, testing himself, waiting for the flood of rage that could sweep over him at unexpected moments. Right now it was gone, squashed down in a tight dark place that never saw the light. At least not if he could help it.

It still lay there, though. He knew it, and there was nothing he could do to exorcise that fierce demon of murderous hatred. It was his cross to bear as he smiled benevolently on the troubled people who dumped their substantial incomes in the capable hands of the Grandfathers. It made him one of them.

He knew Esther’s house too well—years hadn’t been able to erase the memories from his mind. He knew which window didn’t latch, he knew which
step creaked, he knew how much codeine cough syrup the old lady sucked down every night as she smoked and watched TV from her airless bedroom. Old Doc Carpenter always kept her well supplied, and he doubted she’d changed her ways. The packs of cigarettes she went through every day was enough to produce an impressive cough that the codeine couldn’t stop. It could only send her into a drugged-out bliss.

It had always pleased his baser sentiments to know that the old bitch was addicted to something that would make her constipated as hell.

He wondered how lightly Rachel would sleep in that breathless mausoleum. Would she hear him as he opened the back window? Walked up the stairs? Opened her door?

Would she feel it as he pulled the covers from her body and stared down at her? What would she sleep in? The summer was hot, and Esther didn’t believe in air-conditioning or open windows. If she had any sense she’d sleep butt naked.

But she hadn’t shown much sense so far. Courage, but stupidity. She’d probably be wrapped up in a flannel nightgown, sweating, dreaming nightmares that he’d pop up and ravish her.

She had no idea who the real enemy was. The real danger to her pristine body and her ice-cold soul. Her real enemy lived inside that skinny, angry body she protected so fiercely.

Why the hell had Stella ever had a child? And what had she done to make such a mess of it? Even a helpless soul like Marijo, with no money and no education, had managed a halfway decent job until she’d ended up hanging herself from one of the rafters in Jackson’s barn. There were dried tears on her swollen face, and Luke had forgiven her.

But Jackson never did.

Damn! He hated being back here. He hated this town, the people, the memories that could creep beneath his skin and itch like crazy. He preferred keeping his distance, buying up just enough property to make sure he owned the town, and the people in it. Leroy knew it, so did Coltrane. So did most everybody but Esther Blessing.

She’d shoot him if she saw him, he had no doubt whatsoever. If Doc Carpenter had cut her back on the codeine, or if old age had turned her into a light sleeper, she might hear him coming up those stairs. And she’d blast a hole through his head bigger than the one that killed her precious son.

So be it. Life had been a cocoon out in New Mexico. He could just see the tabloids now, and a faint smile twisted his face.

Not before he had sex with Rachel Connery. He wasn’t going to leave this world with unfinished business.

* * *

Esther was a meat-and-potatoes cook. She fed Rachel pot roast and boiled potatoes, swimming in greasy gravy, and Rachel simply stared down at her plate in numb dismay. She couldn’t make herself eat, and she knew she had to. She couldn’t make herself leave, and she knew she had to.

The windows in her room were painted shut, and the air was stifling. Esther had grudgingly given her a small electric fan, but all it did was stir the sluggish air around the big room.

Rachel had stripped down to a tank top and panties and sat in front of the fan, searching for relief. In the distance she could hear the noise from Esther’s television, blaring between the closed doors. It was already past eleven—how late would the old lady play that thing?

She took a nail file and managed to pry open one of the windows, but the damp, lifeless air was no improvement. Even the low-wattage electric light seemed to add to the ovenlike atmosphere, and Rachel shut it off, lying down on the narrow, lumpy bed and staring upward in the darkness.

She could practically feel Luke’s presence in that house, in that very room. Logic told her he would have spent a fair amount of time here, and yet she couldn’t see a child being comfortable in such a dead, dank place.

She rolled over on her stomach, listening to the sound of her breathing beneath the rumble of the television. Canned laughter echoed through the upstairs, and she had the eerie feeling that all those people laughing at some late-night comedian were really laughing at her.

She’d leave tomorrow, she promised herself. The town records were gone, the graveyard told her exactly nothing, and no one seemed inclined to talk about the saint who had emerged from their midst. She’d find what was left of the house where Luke grew up and then she’d drive the hell out of there, as fast as she could go. She had a strong suspicion Sheriff Coltrane wasn’t about to stop her for speeding.

She closed her eyes. She could almost feel him there, watching her. His eyes skimming over her body, her long legs, her hips, her back. The nape of her neck. She felt safer lying on her stomach. Less exposed.

God, she needed to sleep. She couldn’t remember when she’d had more than a couple of hours of straight sleep. She was exhausted, and her stomach was a knot of tension inside her.

She needed sleep, she needed safety and comfort.

But she couldn’t rest until she found the answers she was looking for. About Stella. About Luke Bardell.

Surely Esther would approve of her mission to destroy Luke. And yet Rachel was loath to ask for the old woman’s help.

She didn’t want anyone’s help. She wanted to see Luke’s destruction on her own terms. She wanted him in the mud, groveling for forgiveness. She wanted him vanquished, out of her life.

And then maybe she’d be able to sleep again, she thought. Ignoring the fact that she hadn’t slept well since she was eleven years old.

R
achel was slowly suffocating.

The bed was too soft, but it cushioned her, wrapping her in a dangerous comfort that she could no longer fight. She drifted, deeper and deeper into sleep, kicking the covers away from her body and burrowing down in the too soft mattress. The night was pitch-dark, a cocoon of heat and blackness sucking her into a world that was part dream, part nightmare.

She could feel him in her room, smell him. But she couldn’t open her eyes. Some distant, dancing part of her mind argued—if she opened her eyes it would prove he could scare her, convince her that anything was possible, that he’d left his monastic existence and followed her into this sweating, swamp-filled nightmare. If she kept them shut,
allowed her body to stay in this half-world, then she would prove he couldn’t frighten her.

The noises were muffled, odd. Esther’s television set was still on, reassuring Rachel of the normalcy of things. She could hear an undercurrent of cheeping noise from the swamp on the edge of town. And the distant rumble of thunder, issuing a warning.

She shifted restlessly, telling herself it was all right for her eyes to blink open, to reassure herself. But her eyelids were too heavy, and she sank in deeper.

The memory was there, inescapable, but this time she willingly tried to dredge it up. The old man coming to her bed while she slept, touching her, whispering to her. She fought for that sense of horror and sickness, but this was a different time, a different man, and her body knew it.

Fingertips lightly grazed her body, so softly it was a feathery caress. Hands slid down between her legs, touching her there, and she shifted uneasily, restlessly.
Wake up
, she told herself. But she could only hear the thunder and feel the darkness cover her.

He wasn’t there, because she couldn’t feel him. Only the touch of his hands, the perfect erotic fantasy. Disembodied, caressing her, with no purpose but to serve her. He wouldn’t hurt her, this creature of the night. She knew that now, and she
slid farther down on the mattress, letting her body receive the attention it craved.

His mouth was there as well. Lips pressed against the side of her throat. Tongue licking. She shivered in the heat, keeping her hands beside her on the mattress as his head moved down. There was no heavy fall of hair brushing her, so she told herself those rich, wondrous lips weren’t Luke’s, as his mouth covered her breast beneath the thin tank top and drew it deep.

There was a sound then. A deep sound of utter longing that couldn’t have possibly come from her. She longed for nothing, she had no desire to have a man’s mouth at her breast. She had no desire.

When he released her breast it was full, aching, damp, and he covered it with long, sensitive fingers as he moved to the other breast, sucking it deeply. She moaned again, arching her back, and she wanted his hand between her legs again, this time beneath the thin cotton of her panties, she wanted him to climb onto the bed.

And then he wasn’t touching her. She waited, for the sound of rustling clothing, for anything to promise her that he wasn’t finished, when a bright flash of lightning turned the room into daylight, and her eyes flew open. For that brief, shocked second she saw him, and then the room
was plunged into darkness again, followed by a crash of thunder.

She dived across the bed for the lamp, switching it on, a furious scream bubbling in her throat. Only to find the room deserted. The door was still locked, the chair firmly in front of it. The window she’d managed to crack open wasn’t wide enough for a man. How in God’s name could she have thought she’d seen Luke Bardell in her bedroom?

She leaned back against the pillows, forcing herself to take deep, calming breaths. It was nothing. Nothing at all. She’d had erotic dreams before, whether she wanted to admit it or not. In the past she’d woken up with a start, her body spasming. This was the same thing, only the lightning had woken her earlier, before her body had claimed the release her conscious mind denied her.