Trace Their Shadows (18 page)

By eleven Brandy began straining to hear a car. Almost none ever turned down their street. But the only sound was the monotonous hum of the room air conditioner. Her eyes grew heavy. She laid down her pen and nodded at her desk. About eleven–fifteen Meg growled deep in her throat and poked her creamy muzzle out below the bedspread fringe. Brandy turned off the desk lamp and peered through the venetian blinds.

She could see no headlights, no figure, only the bulk of their own cars, blocking her view of the garage. Beyond the driveway nothing moved except the fog around the pines and wax myrtle in the vacant lot. Meg squirmed out from under the bed, paced back and forth, whining, and laid her chin in Brandy’s lap.

“You know something’s amiss,” Brandy whispered, “but we don’t dare go outside and scare the person away.” Surely, she thought, she would be able to figure out from the documents themselves who had left them. Brandy waited until eleven–forty–five. Then she quietly peeked into the hall. From the crack under the other bedroom door, she could see her mother’s room was dark. Meg’s damp nose pushed forward, but Brandy petted her, then gently shoved her back into the bedroom. “Can’t have you barking,” she said, and closed the door.

Outside the sky was blanketed with clouds, the mist thicker than ever. She had depended on the garage door light and not thought to bring a flash. Now she hesitated, turned on the back porch light, and decided she could see well enough with the two.

She felt her way around the cars and stood for a moment under the pale bulb, peering into the dimness of the garage. One of the double doors had been shut. She didn’t remember seeing the change earlier in the evening, but she hadn’t looked. Maybe her mother wanted to protect some fragile plants from the wind.

When Brandy stepped onto the littered garage floor, she first examined the shelves and counter top near the entrance. No parcel. Her benefactor had been more secretive. She was conscious of a familiar odor——charcoal briquettes burning. Maybe her mother hadn’t completely doused the coals in the hibachi last night, then set it inside in case the rains came. Brandy would have to check before she left the garage. It was not like Mrs. O’Bannon to be careless.

After stumbling over a large bag of pine bark, Brandy felt her way along the counter past two metal cans of weed killer, almost tripped over a rake, and banged her shin on the lawn mower. At last through the shadows she saw a tall cardboard box she had never seen before, standing beside paint cans on a low rear shelf.

She had reached the box, had put her hands on the sides, then groped inside, when something creaked behind her, and she was plunged into sudden darkness. It took a minute for her to realize that the other garage door had swung shut. She hadn’t been aware of a rising wind. While she stood, startled, staring into blackness, the outside locking bar rattled into place.

She stood, shaking, in an inky pit. Wind could not shift the bar. How could the door have closed? The odor now was much stronger. She felt muddled, headachy. In the corner she had seen a clump of fiddle leaf plants and a large, potted bougainvillea, all recuperating from last winter’s freeze. The smell came from behind them. She could see no flame, but in the absolute night of the garage a ruddy glow shone through the leaves, not enough to give light——the hibachi.

She dragged herself back in the direction she thought led to the door, halted, tried to remember where the lawn mower and the bags of pine bark were. Now she had trouble getting her breath, felt nauseated. She needed to rest a minute and gather her thoughts. No one could hear her bang on the door now.

Maybe she would have to wait until morning when her mother left for work. Then she could check the box. As she lowered herself to the concrete floor, closed her eyes, and dropped her head between her knees, she heard one sound from a great distance——a faint barking.

SEVENTEEN
 

Brandy was first conscious of a strong light and her big red dog vibrating with excitement beside her, then of the round face of a woman in a white uniform above her. She lay in the night air on a hard, damp surface. She must be on her back in the driveway. Her head throbbed.

“A near thing,” the woman said, and placed an oxygen mask over Brandy’s nose. “Move one of those cars so we can get the van in here. We need to get out before the rain starts.”

“Will she be all right?” Her mother’s voice anxious, then a more reluctant, “If it hadn’t been for that dog… Her barking woke me up. I looked and my daughter wasn’t in her room. The dog led me to the garage.” More insistent. “Is she all right?”

The woman nodded and straightened up. “You got her into the air in time. A dog’s nose comes in handy. Ask the cops.” She motioned to someone behind her. “We’ll give your daughter a hundred per cent oxygen for a while, let the doctor check her out.” The medics lifted Brandy on a stretcher and carried her as they had carried John. Brandy dropped one hand and felt the retriever’s silky back. She was surprised when her mother knelt beside the ambulance and put her arms around Meg, fleas and all.

Before the door slammed shut Brandy saw a deputy jump out of his car at the curb and come toward them. “I need to get some facts here,” he said.

One of the medics turned. “Talk to the mother. Carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Then another loud, familiar voice. “What the hell is going on here?” Oh, lord. Rumpled and unshaven, Mack stalked out of the darkness.

Her mother close to her ear. “I called him, dear.”

She had a brief view of Mack’s tall form, his face perplexed and angry. “I want to know how this happened.”

The box of documents, Brandy thought, she had never checked the box.

The door closed. A woman sat beside her while she breathed oxygen.

***

Brandy tried to orient herself, to decide what was real. She had been asleep, had dreamed she was trapped in a box struggling to breathe. She was sure something like that had happened. Yet this was a hospital. In the dream the lid had closed on her, shutting out the air. But she knew there was something important about a box. She breathed deeply, and found she was now receiving her oxygen in a nose tube.

At the foot of her bed the plastic curtain slid aside, and a stocky, middle–aged man in street clothes came toward her. He flashed a Sheriff’s Office badge. “Detective Morris,” he said. “We need to talk. You okay?”

Brandy shook off the momentary terror and looked around. “I’m okay,” she said. “I was groggy, but my head’s clear now. Where’s my watch? I’ve got appointments this afternoon.” She noticed that someone, probably her mother, had laid fresh clothes over the foot of the bed.

The balding detective leaned so close that Brandy could see the hairs in his heavy brown mustache and eyebrows. It was not an unpleasant face, but purposeful. “It’s only nine, Miss. You’re in the hospital emergency wing. Doc says they’re letting you go soon.” He sat on a padded stool beside the bed. “Look, I talked to your mom before she left. She told me someone put a note in your mailbox yesterday, while you were both at work. She found it in your bag.”

Brandy pulled the pillow up behind her and sat up. “The big cardboard box on the rear shelf…”

“Blank paper on top, this week’s newspapers underneath.”

Brandy slapped her hand down on the blanket. “Of course! I was so muddle–headed I didn’t know what was happening.”

“Common with carbon monoxide. That’s why it’s so dangerous.”

Her voice rose. “Any prints on the note or the box?”

He grinned. “Everyone expects fingerprints. We dusted, but I don’t think so. Whoever did this knew about fingerprints. Also your only neighbor was away last night. She did hear the dog barking yesterday afternoon, but she didn’t go outside to check. Looks like that’s when the perpetrator moved the hibachi from the picnic table to the garage. Your mom would’ve been at work then. The perp knew what he was doing. Even used WD–40 on the garage door hinges.”

Brandy remembered the sudden blackness. “I couldn’t find the door. I got so disoriented.”

“Burning briquettes can fill a small, closed space with carbon monoxide fast.”

She clinched her fingers around the covers. “Any luck tracing the note?”

“Since you saw it, I guess I can tell you it’s a computer print–out. Hard to identify.”

“Any footprints in the vacant lot next door?”

“On pine needles?”

Brandy realized the intruder probably parked down the block and came across the lot. Any tire prints would be washed away by rain early that morning.

He poised a pencil over his spiral note pad. “I want you to fill in the details.”

Brandy folded her hands before her and explained all she knew. Her poking around had clearly made enemies, maybe at least four——Axel Blackthorne, Sylvania Langdon, Ace Langdon, and Grace Able. The detective stared back at her, his eyes grave. “My recommendation, Miss, is to forget this case.”

“Somebody wants me to chill out, all right. Maybe I’ll let them think I have. But I won’t give up my interviews this afternoon.” She smiled. “Anyway, you’ll have the case solved before my little feature story comes out.”

He sighed and stood up. “Stay available. And stay with people.” He glanced toward the wide doorway. “Somebody else out here wants to see you mighty bad.”

Her heart lifted. John was in the hospital. Maybe he had heard, maybe Steve or someone else in the Sheriff’s Office had told him. He might be allowed to come downstairs. But as the detective left through the open door, Brandy heard a nurse speaking rapidly, then that familiar voice again, loud. “I got to see her. She’s my fiancée. I want to know what the hell’s going on.”

Mack, of course. He’d followed her to the hospital. She lay back against the pillow and tried to look wan. If he thought she was going to stay here, he wouldn’t shadow her. She had heard Detective Morris’s warning. She would be more careful, but she would not give up on Eva Stone. Obviously she was close to some fact of enormous danger to someone. Mack would never understand, but she had to know what the sheriff’s men were finding near the boat house.

She greeted him with an exhausted smile. “I’m weak as a kitten,” she whispered. “I think I’ll be here quite a while.” He gave a nod of satisfaction. John had said she was manipulative. Maybe she’d proved him right.

A few minutes later he blundered out, not much enlightened. When the doctor looked in on her again, she persuaded him to let her go. No real damage had been done to her red blood cells, he said——thanks to her mother and a certain golden retriever.

She stepped into the rest room, changed into shirt and slacks, and stuffed the jeans from last night into a plastic hospital bag. In the waiting room she found an in–house phone and called John’s room. When he answered, he sounded restive. In the background she could hear——not the lyrical strain of the Chopin etude——but the rhythms of an evangelical preacher’s voice. Apparently a roommate had a strangle hold on the television remote. John said the doctor had just made his rounds and told him he could go. He was ready to dial his folks to pick him up. Brandy wondered if Sharon and his parents planned to drag him off to their lair.

“I’m going to your Aunt Sylvania’s this morning,” she said. “Check out what the Sheriff’s Office is finding. Even with the rain, they must be well along with the digging.” She would be in no danger with law enforcement officers around——especially if John would go. Outside the window she saw blue sky through patches in the clouds. “Want to go with me? Might as well re–visit the scene of the crime. It could be interesting.”

He paused. “I ought to see Sylvania,” he said, his voice mournful. “I need to apologize for trespassing.”

She looked at her watch. “I plan to go right away. I could drop you off wherever you say afterward.”

He might feel used again if she said Detective Morris told her not to be alone. Neither did she mention her own near miss. Time for that later.

In his room John sat beside the bed, dressed in short–sleeved shirt and jeans, his overnight bag packed, his fingers drumming on the arms of the chair. On the television screen above the two beds a disheveled girl was now shrieking and jumping up and down. Although John’s skin still looked unnaturally white, his cheeks gaunt, Brandy could see his swollen arm was a lighter purple.

He glanced down at it. “The doctor says I can handle this now with antibiotics.” He slipped the Chopin tape into his bag and handed her the player. “A life–saver when I could use it. Let’s get out of here.”

In the lobby she stopped to call her mother’s school and leave word that she had been discharged.

On the long ride past pastures, a newly planted grove, pines and palmettos, to the south side of Lake Dora, Brandy did not raise the questions about Sylvania, but John’s great aunt must know something. Why had she tried so hard to keep Brandy away? Why was she so eager to see the house destroyed when there was surely enough Able money to fix it up? Why, indeed, had her brother Brookfield built that boat house in such a hurry and then left it so promptly? Maybe because of the buried body. John might get Sylvania to talk. Brandy did decide to tell him about last night. Better he heard the account from her. She did not explain that she might have died, only that someone had——as he predicted——tried to stop her.

At the Able homestead two deputies’ cars were pulled up in the parking area. Brandy recognized the reporter from the Leesburg Commercial lounging against a long leaf pine with a bored expression, watching the two men in uniform.

All seemed quiet on Blackthorne’s side of the fence where the uprooted water lilies still lay rotting in the damp air.

The officers had strung yellow and black tape around the plot where the boat house once stood. Here the earth had been divided with cord into grids of about five feet each. The deputies knelt within them, digging methodically with trowels and throwing the dirt into screens, where it settled in moist piles and slowly sifted through into a tray below. On the lawn beside them lay a tarp, and on it the few items that had been culled from the site.

Brandy sauntered ahead of John and recognized Deputy Martin, the officer with the sandy complexion who had responded the night the skeleton was found. Apparently he had been allowed to follow up on the case.