Riptide Read online

  “How did you know about that? Oh, never mind. My knife can certainly compete with the Coonan now. I watched you take the bullets out.”

  He grinned at her again, he just couldn’t help it, and held the automatic out to her, butt first.

  “What good is it? You’ve got the bullets. Give them to me now.”

  He scooped the seven bullets out of his pocket and handed them and the automatic to her.

  She eyed the gun and the bullets, then backed up another step. “No, you want me to come a bit closer and then you can kick my knife away. You’re fast, too fast. I’m not stupid.”

  “All right,” Adam said, and he thought, Smart woman. He laid the bullets and the gun down on the ground and took a good half dozen steps back.

  He said easily, “It’s an effective weapon, that Coonan, but if I have to carry one of those things, I prefer my Colt Delta Elite.”

  “It sounds like some western debutante.”

  He laughed. “Aren’t you going to pick up the gun?”

  She shook her head at him and didn’t move. She was holding the butcher knife like a mad killer in a slasher movie, her arm pulled back, the point out and arched. The sucker looked really sharp. He could get it from her, but one of them could easily get sliced up. He stayed put. Besides, he wanted to see what she’d do.

  “Tell me what you’re doing here. Why did you come up to me at Food Fort? Why are you watching me?”

  “I’d really rather not tell you just yet. I hadn’t expected you to see me. When I’ve wanted to stay hidden in the past, I’ve managed it quite well.” He suddenly looked pissed off, not at her but at himself. She almost smiled, then tightened her grip on the knife.

  “Tell me, now.”

  “All right, then. I’m here to do research on why women dye their hair.”

  She very nearly ran at him with the knife. She was so mad she nearly forgot the bone-grinding fear. “All right, you jerk, I want you to lie on the ground and fold your hands underneath you. Do it now.”

  “No,” he said. “The windbreaker is new. It looks good on me, hey, maybe it even looks dangerous and sexy. What do you think? Women like black, I’ve heard. Nope, I don’t want it to get dirty.”

  “I called Sheriff Gaffney. He should be here any minute.”

  “Nah, you can’t bluff me on that. The last person you want here is the sheriff. If I spilled the beans, he’d have to call the New York cops and the FBI.”

  She was so pale he thought she’d pass out. Her hand trembled a bit, but then she got ahold of herself. “So you know,” she said. “I don’t think you’re the stalker—your voice is all wrong and you’re too big—but you know all about him, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Now listen to me, Becca. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to—Hey, think of me as your own personal guardian angel.”

  “You’re so dark, you look more like the devil, but you’re taller than I think the devil is. What’s more, unlike the devil, I’ll bet you don’t have a lick of charm. The last thing you are is a guardian angel. You’re a reporter or a paparazzo, aren’t you?”

  “Now you’ve offended me.” She nearly laughed. But she had to remember that he was dangerous, fast and dangerous. No, she couldn’t afford to forget that, not for an instant. She would still have laughed if her gut hadn’t been frozen with fear for nearly as long as she could remember. He was trying to disarm her, at least figuratively this time. Thank God he didn’t have use of her gun. And he was too far away to kick out at her. But he was fast. He had long legs. She took another step back, as insurance.

  She waved the knife at him. “I’ve had it. Tell me who you are. Tell me now or I might have to hurt you. Don’t underestimate me, I’m strong. No, it’s more than that. I’m beyond frightened. I’ve got nothing to lose now.”

  He looked at her—too pale, her flesh drawn tightly over her bones, too thin, so stressed out he could nearly see her insides quivering. He said slowly, his voice as unthreatening as he could make it, “To hurt me you’d have to come closer. You know better than to do that. Yeah, you’re strong, maybe I wouldn’t even want to run into you in a dark alley. But there’s a big something you’re wrong about. Everyone has something to lose, including you. Things have just gotten a bit out of hand for you, that’s all.”

  “A bit out of hand,” she repeated slowly, then laughed, an ugly, raw sound. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” She waited, just stood there, the knife up and arched, her hand starting to cramp, her muscles starting to protest, staring at him, wondering what to do, wondering if she could believe him and knowing she’d be a fool even to consider it.

  He said, “Actually, I do. What I wanted to say was that the media and the press are after you in full force, that’s a fact, but you should be safe here.”

  “You found me.”

  “Yeah, but I’m so good I occasionally even surprise myself.”

  She raised the knife even higher. She felt the sun warm between her shoulder blades. It was a beautiful day and everything was a mess. He was her guardian angel? Her arm muscles were burning.

  He started to say something more, then stopped. It was the look on her face that kept him quiet. It was like they were both frozen in time and place. Then she surprised the hell out of him. She dropped the knife to the ground and walked straight up to him. She stopped a foot short, looked up at him thoughtfully, then stuck out her hand. He shook hers, bemused, as she said, “If you’re my guardian angel, then get on the phone to the medical examiner’s office in Augusta and find out how long that poor woman who fell out of my basement wall was buried in there.”

  He didn’t release her hand. She was tall. He didn’t have to look down that far. “All right.”

  She snapped her fingers in front of his nose. “Just like that? You’re so powerful you can find out something just that fast?”

  “In this case, yes, I can. You don’t look much like your mother.”

  The hand stiffened, but she didn’t jerk free. She said calmly, “No, I don’t. Mom always told me that I’m the picture of my dad. My dad—his name was Thomas—he died at the very end of the Vietnam war. He was a hero. My mother loved him very much, probably too much.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know all about that.”

  “How?”

  “It’s not important right now. Believe me.”

  She didn’t, of course, but she was willing to put it on hold for the moment because she said then, “I saw a really old snapshot of him. He looked so young, so happy. He was very handsome, so tall and straight.” She paused a moment, and he heard the hitch in her voice. “I was too young to remember him when he died, but my mom said he’d seen me born, held me and loved me. And then he left and didn’t come back.”

  “I know.”

  She cocked her head to one side, and again she let it go, saying, “When I first saw you in Food Fort, I thought you looked hard, like you didn’t smile very often, like you ate nails and hot salsa for snacks. I thought you could be mean if you had to, maybe even cruel. You still look mean. I can sense that you’re dangerous; actually, I just know it, so don’t even bother trying to deny it. Who are you, really?”

  “I’m Adam Carruthers. I told you that at Food Fort. That really is my name. Now, take me to your house and I’ll get on the phone. We won’t find out who the skeleton is, but we’ll find out at least how long she was in that wall. They’ll have to do DNA tests; that takes a while. First things first.”

  He watched her pick up her Coonan and stuff the bullets in her jeans pocket. He picked up her kitchen knife and followed her back to Jacob Marley’s house.

  It took him eleven minutes and two phone calls. When he laid down the phone the second time, he looked over at her and smiled. “It shouldn’t take long.” In no more than three seconds, the phone rang. He motioned her away and picked it up. “Carruthers here.”

  He listened, wrote something down on a sheet of paper. “Thanks a lot, Jarvis, I owe you. Yeah, yeah, you know I alw
ays pay up. It just might not be tomorrow. You know how to reach me. Okay, thanks. Bye.”

  He carefully laid the phone back into the cradle. “It isn’t Ann McBride, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “No, of course it’s not Tyler’s missing wife. I never thought it was. I’ve known him since I was eighteen. I’ve never met a more decent man. Really.” But she was nearly shaking with relief, and he saw it. However, it was his turn to let it go.

  But then she said, “I couldn’t have stood it if Tyler had been a monster instead of a really nice guy. I guess I would have just hung it up.”

  “Yeah, your boyfriend is off the hook. The skeleton was buried inside that wall for at least ten years, possibly more. She was probably in her late teens when she was killed by a hard blow right in the face, the forehead actually. Whoever did it was really pissed, enraged, totally out of control. Jarvis said it was a vicious blow, killed her instantly.”

  “It looks like Jacob Marley really might have killed her, then.”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not our problem, thank God.”

  “It’s certainly mine, since she tumbled out of the wall onto my basement floor. I can’t believe anyone would kill a teenager for wandering across his yard, and with such viciousness.”

  A second later the phone rang. It was Bernie Bradstreet, owner of The Riptide Independent, wanting to know what she could tell him. “I know the sheriff wants to keep a lid on this, but—”

  She told him everything, omitting only what Adam Carruthers had just found out from the medical examiner’s office. She didn’t think the sheriff would like to be cut out of that particular loop. Then Bernie Bradstreet asked her to dinner, with his wife, he hastened to add when she didn’t say anything. She put him off. When she hung up the phone, Adam said, “Newspaper? You handled it well. Now you need to call the sheriff. Don’t tell him you already know the answers, just encourage him to call the medical examiner’s office. Jarvis told me they’re not ready to release the information yet, but if the sheriff calls, he might be able to pry it out of them. Oh, yeah, when the sheriff comes, tell him I’m your cousin from Baltimore here to visit. Okay?”

  “Cousins? We don’t look anything alike.”

  He gave her a crooked grin.“Thank heaven for that.”

  Sheriff Gaffney didn’t like the news from Augusta. He liked tidy conclusions, puzzles where all the pieces finally locked cleanly into place, not this: an old skeleton, identity unknown, that had been bricked inside Jacob Marley’s basement wall after her gruesome murder. He didn’t really want Ann McBride to be dead, but it would have made things so much cleaner, so nice and straightforward. He glanced at Tyler McBride. The guy looked calm, but relieved? He just couldn’t tell. Tyler had always managed to keep what he was feeling close to his vest. He was good at poker, nobody liked to play against him. Funny thing, though, the sheriff would have sworn that Tyler had killed his wife. He still kept his eye on Tyler, hoping to see him do something strange, like visit an unmarked grave or something. Well, he’d been wrong before. He guessed maybe he was wrong again. He hated it, it wasn’t pleasant, but sometimes it happened, even to a man like him.

  Sheriff Gaffney looked over at Ms. Powell’s cousin, a big, tough-looking guy who looked like he could take care of himself. His body was hard and in good shape, but he seemed like a man who could be patient, as if he was used to waiting in the shadows, like a predator stalking its prey. Gaffney shook his head. He had to stop reading those suspense novels he liked so much.

  He looked over at Becca Powell, a nice young woman who wasn’t, thank God, so pale now, or on the verge of hysteria. Hopefully her cousin would keep her that way. After finding that skeleton, just maybe she would be glad to have him around for a while. He found himself studying Carruthers again. The guy was dark, from his black hair—too long, in the sheriff’s opinion—to his eyes, nearly black in the dim late-afternoon light in Jacob Marley’s living room. He had big feet in scuffed black boots, soft-looking boots that looked like he’d worn them for a good long time and waited in the shadows with those boots on his feet, not making a whisper of a sound. He wondered what the hell the man did for a living. Nothing normal and expected, he’d bet his next meal on that. Just maybe he didn’t want to know.

  The sheriff looked around the living room. Jesus, the place looked like a museum or a tomb. It felt old and musty, although it smelled like lemons, just like at home.

  He knew, of course, that everyone was looking at him, waiting. He liked that. It built suspense. He was holding them in the palm of his hand. Only thing was, they didn’t look all that scared or worried or ready to gnaw off their fingernails. A real cool bunch.

  Becca said finally, “Sheriff, won’t you be seated? Now, you have news for us?”

  He took the old chair she was waving at, eased down slowly, then cleared his throat. He was ready to make his big announcement. “Well now, it does appear that this skeleton isn’t your wife, Tyler.”

  There was a sharp moment of silence, but not the surprise he’d expected, that he’d wanted, truth be told.

  “Thank you for telling me so quickly, Sheriff. I’m pleased that it wasn’t, because that would have meant that someone had killed her and it wasn’t me. I hope that wherever Ann is, she’s very much alive and well and happy.”

  But Tyler hadn’t acted surprised. He acted like he already knew. Well, damn, if Tyler hadn’t killed Ann, then he would certainly know that the skeleton wasn’t her, or if it was, then someone else had put her there. That logic made the sheriff’s head ache. “Humph, I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve contacted all the local authorities and they’re going to check on runaways from between ten and fifteen years ago. There’s a good chance we’ll find out who she is. She was young, probably late teens. That makes it even more likely that she was a runaway. She was murdered, though. Now, that makes it a big problem, my big problem.”

  “It’s not possible that it’s a local teenager, Sheriff?” Becca asked.

  The sheriff shook his head. “Nobody just up and disappeared in the town’s memory, Ms. Powell. Something like that, folk just wouldn’t forget. Nope, it’s got to be a runaway.”

  Adam Carruthers sat forward, his hands clasped between his knees. “You think this old man, Jacob Marley, did it?” He was sitting in a deep leather chair that old Jacob had liked. He looked like he was the one in charge and that burned the sheriff a bit. Fellow was too young to be in charge, not too much beyond thirty, about the same age as Maude’s nephew, Frank, who was currently in prison out in Folsom, California, for writing bad checks. Frank had always had soggy morals, even as a boy. Maybe the fellow was shiftless, like Frank. But hell, the last thing this guy looked was shiftless.

  “Sheriff?”

  “Yeah? Oh, it’s possible. Like I told Ms. Powell here, old Jacob didn’t like people poking around. He had a mean streak in him and no patience to speak of. He could have bashed her.”

  Adam said, a dark eyebrow raised a bit, “Mean streak or not, you believe he actually bashed a young girl in the face with a blunt instrument and walled her in his basement because he was pissed to see her trotting across his backyard?”

  Sheriff Gaffney said, “A blunt instrument, you say. Well, the ME didn’t know what the murderer struck her with, maybe a heavy pot, maybe a bookend, something like that. Did Jacob do it? We’ll just have to see about that.”

  “Nothing else makes much sense,” Tyler said, jumping to his feet. He began pacing the room. His whole body was vibrating with tension. He had good muscle tone, the sheriff thought, remembering his own buffed self that the ladies had stared at when he was that young. Tyler whirled around, came to a stop, nearly knocking over a floor lamp. “Don’t you see? Whoever killed her had to have access to Jacob’s basement. Surely Jacob would have heard someone knocking away bricks, then putting them back up. The killer had to have cement to do that. Also, he had to haul the body into the house and down the basement steps. That would be quite an unde
rtaking. It had to be Jacob. Nothing else makes sense.”

  Adam said, leaning back in that old leather chair now, his legs crossed at his ankles, his fingers steepled, the tips lightly tapping together, “Now, wait a minute. You’re saying that Jacob Marley never left his house?”

  “Not that I remember,” Tyler said. “He even had his groceries delivered. Of course, I was gone four years when I was in college. Maybe he used to be different, went out more.”

  “Two things were always true about old Jacob,” Sheriff Gaffney said slowly. “Two things you could always count on. He was here and he was mean.” He heaved himself from his seat. He froze when the button right above his wide leather belt up and popped off. He watched, paralyzed, as the damned button rolled across the polished oak floor to stop at the big toe of Carruthers’s right boot. He sucked in his belly, but he still felt that wide leather belt of his continue to cut him something fierce. He didn’t say anything, just held out his hand.

  Adam Carruthers tossed him the button. He didn’t smile. The sheriff clutched that damned button close. Jesus, maybe he should think about that diet Maude was always nagging him about.

  Becca pretended not to see anything. She rose and stuck out her hand to the sheriff. “Thank you for coming and telling us in person. Please let us know when you find out who that poor girl is.”

  “Was, ma’am, was. I will. I’m glad I called them. I had to worm it out of them, but I finally got to speak to the main guy, a hardnose named Jarvis, and he finally coughed up the info.” He nodded to Tyler McBride, who looked hollow-cheeked, as if he’d been put through a wringer, and then to Adam Carruthers, a cocky bastard who hadn’t laughed when his button had popped off.

  “I’ll see you out, Sheriff,” Becca said and walked beside him out of the living room.

  Adam said to Tyler, “Becca told me what was going on. I’m glad I was nearby and could get here to help.”