Virtue Falls (55 page)

Garik’s mouth went dry. “The hell she did. What did I say?”

“To meet you at her old house.”

Elizabeth had been duped. Somehow, his brilliant, logical scientist had been fooled.

Garik raced back to the truck.

As he opened the door, Ben shouted from the rim of the canyon, “Joe’s with her!”

They didn’t get it. They thought if they sent one guy to walk with her, one young scholar to protect her, she would be fine.

In fact, both Elizabeth and Joe were going to die.

Garik got in the truck, started the engine, and roared down the road toward the old Banner house. “Charles,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know how, but someone conned her, told her I wanted to meet her at the home where you lived with Misty and Elizabeth.” The choice of place sent a chill down his spine.

Charles stared straight through the windshield, his stare vacant, his jaw tight.

Garik continued, “We’re going there now. It’ll only take about ten minutes.”

Charles didn’t respond.

“Charles?” Garik put his hand on Charles’s shoulder.

Charles fell sideways.

Slamming on his brakes, Garik skidded to a halt, graveling flying off the side of the road.

Charles shuddered violently. His spine arched like a bow. His legs kicked out, once, twice, again.

Seizure.

“No. No. No.” Garik opened the console and grabbed a wad of napkins. He folded them into a long, tight stick and forced Charles’s mouth open. He thrust them between Charles’s teeth. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this now, Charles.”

Charles’s eyes stared at him, open wide, frantic and blind.

Maybe he knew what was happening. For sure he would want Garik to save his daughter.

“Right.” Garik had done everything he could for Charles.

He put the car back into gear and pressed on the gas.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

As Elizabeth and Joe approached the house from the back, Joe abruptly confessed, “That night, when we left you alone and you were attacked—that made us feel like shit.”

Elizabeth looked at him in surprise. “Well … good.”

He winced, and looked a little like he was going to kick the grass. “We didn’t realize there was any danger.”

Elizabeth relented. “I know you didn’t.”

“Let me go in and make sure it’s safe.”

Elizabeth found her pocket knife tucked in her bag, brought it out, and held it so the longest blade glinted in the sun. Her voice was cool. “You do that.”

At work, Joe had seen her use that knife dozens of times before. But now he viewed her as if she was Xena, warrior princess. “You think we’ll need that?”

“No. If I thought we needed it, I wouldn’t have come. But if this guy who goes around attacking and killing women is in there—then yeah, we need it.”

Joe obviously hadn’t put it together, that he was doing more than walking with her, that he might have to protect her. His brown eyes got big and scared. “My dad’s good with a knife,” he said.

“So are you. I’ve seen you.”

“Cutting brush!”

She patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. This place feels … so abandoned.”

But Joe was jumpy now, and went in and came out in a few minutes. “You’re right. Nobody’s in there. I thought it would be spooky, but it’s just old and dirty and beat-up.” He seemed almost disappointed.

She was curious to see it again, and more than that, something called to her: the hope of memories. “I’m going in anyway.” She slid her knife back in her bag and slung the bag over her shoulder.

He sat down on the steps. “Watch out for wildlife.”

Startled, she raised her eyebrows.

“Mice,” he said. “There are droppings in there.”

Not just droppings, she discovered, but also dust and exposed insulation. The closed-in back porch was filthy, cramped, the wooden floor broken where the washer had shimmied its way through the boards. She recognized the odor—all homes close to the ocean smelled the same, like saltwater doom waiting to happen.

She walked down the hallway and looked into one bedroom. A moldy, queen-sized mattress leaned against the wall. So this had been her parents’ room.

She walked to the next door: an old-fashioned bathroom with a pale green sink, a pale green toilet, and a white tub stained with rust.

The next door … an empty room, a smaller room, with peeling wallpaper and ragged, faded pink curtains.

A child’s room.

Her room.

Sad. She didn’t know how else to describe it. Just … sad.

A little girl had once hidden in here. Hidden from what she had seen.

Elizabeth didn’t remember. Or rather—she remembered only one thing, a drawing that wasn’t in her scrapbook, a watercolor of a little girl sorting seashells at the shore while her mother watched over her.

She was almost sure it was real.

Standing in the room, she absorbed the house’s atmosphere. “Mommy,” she whispered. “Tell me where it is.”

Where would a frightened little girl hide her treasure?

She opened the closet door and stepped inside.

A former resident had left winter coats hanging in here, now moth-eaten and mildewed. Chipboard shelves, denuded of paint and empty of toys or clothes, drooped from the humidity. Other than that, the closet was bare. Nothing to see here. Nothing of interest.

Did Elizabeth really expect the watercolor would be conveniently placed for her discovery?

Okay. She had. It seemed to her that if her mind had at last given up one small shard of remembrance, it was only fair she should be able to verify it. But no—life didn’t work that way.

She needed to look closer, get down on her knees and run her hands under the bottom set of shelves, look into the places where a little girl would hide a cherished possession. Yet the closet seemed close and airless, too small and getting smaller by the minute. She had longed to absorb the house’s atmosphere; well, in here, she wanted to brush at her skin, to take away the sense of evil crawling beneath her clothing.

She flipped the switch beside the door.

The hanging bulb remained stubbornly off.

Beside the switch, the electrical fuse door was rusted shut. Taking the metal ring, she jerked hard.

The ring broke. She staggered backward.

Gingerly she placed her bag on the filthy floor. Pulling her keys out, she tried to pry the door open.

The keys were too wide to get into the narrow gap.

She dropped them back into the bag and located her pocket knife. She opened the longest blade and slid it between the door and the wall. With an audible crack, the door opened a mere inch. Wedging her fingers underneath, she pulled it, the rusty hinges creaking as gradually the interior was revealed: nothing but electrical fuses, their switches leaning the same direction.

Disappointment sighed through her, then irritation.

What had she expected? It was a fuse box, not a treasure chest.

On the inside of the door, affixed with yellowing tape, was a piece of paper with a basic outline of the fuses and what each fuse controlled: kitchen, back porch, living room, bedrooms, bathroom. Pretty basic: most people wanted to know which fuse to flip when the lights blinked out or the hair dryer wouldn’t work.

But this was no ordinary, cheap piece of paper. It was vellum, thick, made from cotton, used for blueprints and … drawings. Drawings like the ones in her album.

She loosened the tape, took it and her bag, and stepped into the bedroom, into the sunlight. She turned over the paper—and there it was.

The watercolor had been first sketched in pencil, then filled in the palest of pastels. The artist had created a masterpiece of waves, sand, a four-year-old girl with a head of hair so white and fine, it looked like a puff of dandelion seeds … and a luminous, curvaceous young woman kneeling beside her, showing her the wonder of a seashell. Above them, a wash of pale blue sky curved down to blend into the horizon.

Elizabeth’s breath caught.

This was art. This was inspiration.

This was love.

And the scrawled name at the bottom told her everything she needed to know.

Bradley Hoff.

Bradley Hoff had loved her mother.

Bradley Hoff had killed her mother.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

At the sound of footsteps coming down the hall, Elizabeth lifted her head and called, “Joe?”

But the man who stepped into the door of the bedroom was not Joe.

Of course not.

Bradley Hoff stood there in blue jeans so worn they were faded white, a white T-shirt splattered with pastel shades of oil paints, running shoes … and carrying a long pair of shiny scissors like a blade.

Her heart began to thump hard in her chest. “Where’s Joe?”

“He’s outside.” He smiled, a crooked smile of great charm. “He, um, took a blow to the head.”

Had she managed to get Joe killed?

“How did you know I would be here?” she asked.

“I put the note in your bag.”

“But … Garik’s handwriting.” His distinctive handwriting. She knew it so well.

“I’m an artist.” Bradley said simply. “I can create lines. I got Jacobsen’s phone number, studied how he made his numbers, then I practiced as I handed it out to the fine, upstanding citizens of Virtue Falls. By the time I wrote the note, I was pretty good. Don’t you agree?”

She couldn’t believe her own gullibility. “You made me think Garik had written that note. You put it in my bag. You lured me here.” She had to ask. She had to hear him say the words. “Why would you do that?”

He looked almost young. He looked fit. And his blue eyes sparkled with anticipation. In a voice saturated with confidence, he said, “Elizabeth, you know the answer.”

She did. She had always known the answer. She had feared this moment all her life. “You killed my mother. And you intend to kill me.”

“I had to kill your mother. She betrayed me.” Bradley’s mouth quivered; he looked like a man wounded and deceived.

“Betrayed you.” His arrogance staggered Elizabeth. “How?”

“I seduced her. I taught her what it was to love. I kept our affair secret. I let her continue on with her sham of a marriage.” As if wiping away a tear, he put his hand to his cheek … his dry cheek. “All I required from her was that she be my muse.”

“Your muse … why would you kill your muse?”

“She phoned me. She said to come here. I did. I imagined all kinds of things. I imagined she was going to say she would leave Charles and you, and come away with me, and I would paint her every day of my life.” Bradley sighed with remembered pleasure. Then his smile faded. “Instead, she told me … she told me it was over.” Twenty-three years later, his eyes flashed with remembered rage.

“So you slit her throat.”

“Slit her throat? No!” He made a wide, slashing motion. The silver scissors glinted. “I committed a magnificent crime of passion! I ripped her throat open. I tore her guts out. She tried to crawl away. Tried to crawl toward the front door. I stabbed her in the back, in the heart.” He whispered, “
She tried to crawl toward the front door.
Do you know why?”

Elizabeth swallowed. She nodded.

“No, you don’t.” He was indignant. “It took me years before I realized what she tried to do.”

“The logic is irrefutable.” Elizabeth was proud of her calm manner. “I was in the bedroom, and she was trying to lead you away from me.”

That intense gaze flashed up to hers. “Yes. You’re right. She loved you more than me.”

“No kidding.” Elizabeth held her bag in her left hand. She held the small watercolor clasped between two fingers of her right hand.

“She was going to return to your father, to that milksop marriage with a man who was
good
to her. She didn’t understand. She was my muse.” In an extravagantly romantic motion, he pushed the casual droop of hair off his forehead. “Do you know the kind of work I did while she loved me?”

“I think so.” Elizabeth showed him the watercolor, and in a voice imbued with scorn, she said, “This is not some feeble Nature’s Artist crap. This is
good.”

“I don’t
ever
paint crap!” He flip-flopped from one emotion to another, from brokenhearted agony to violent rage, from self-righteous smugness to simmering resentment.

No matter what she did, she was in trouble.

Garik didn’t know she was here.

Joe was hurt, or worse.

She had to save herself.

Elizabeth had him off-balance. She had to keep him off-balance. “Really?” she said. “What you paint now isn’t crap?
Really?
” Her words dripped scorn, and she kept the watercolor turned toward him. “Because when I study this as opposed to that commercial stuff you now do, I can see the difference. You had feelings for the scene, for the subjects. You were obsessed.”

He stared at the watercolor, breathing hard.

“You’re
still
obsessed. With this subject. But not the pretty watercolors. Not the paintings of Virtue Falls and the beach and the sunsets. You know the difference,” she said softly. “You
do
. You see the difference between the passion that permeates this watercolor … and that
crap
you paint now.”

“Don’t call it crap!” he shouted in an explosion of resentment and anger. “People love that crap!”

“Crap! Crap! Crap! Your new paintings are very pretty. Pretty.” She paced toward him.
“Pretty! And crap!”

When she was almost in reach, he grabbed for her.

She jumped back. “If my mother saw what you were painting now, what would she say?”

His lips compressed. His head lowered as if he was a bull ready to attack.

“She would be ashamed of you.” Elizabeth pounded at his most vulnerable spot—his ego. “After the earthquake, you wanted to kill my father. You came to Virtue Falls to kill him.”

“The online article said you were visiting him, that you were connecting with him. Sooner or later, the two of you would get together and somehow you were going to figure it out. Who I was. What I’d done.”