The Man Who Tried to Get Away

  “Brew?” Sam asked when he saw the distress on my face, “are you all right?”

  I groaned vaguely and sagged back down.

  He had his medical bag with him. At once he started to examine me. Took my pulse and temperature, listened to my stomach, checked my pupils. When he was done, he nodded approval.

  “Considering how badly you care for yourself, you’re pretty lucky. Your temperature is coming down, your bowels work, and your blood pressure is almost normal—for someone in your condition. I’m starting to believe that you haven’t torn any sutures. If you stay right where you are for forty-eight hours, you’ll be almost as healthy as you were when this camp started.”

  That good, huh?

  Dully I said, “You know I can’t do that.”

  He repacked his bag. “I know. Under the circumstances, you can only hope that you don’t get any worse. I hate to say this, Brew, but you need to do some thinking ahead.”

  I frowned at him.

  “Assuming you survive until Reeson brings help, you can’t go back to Puerta del Sol like this. You won’t be able to defend yourself. You’ll have to go somewhere else. You’d better decide where while you can.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I muttered, “let me guess. The medical profession has determined that the best cure for a gunshot stomach is profound depression, and you’re trying to help me recover. You want to make me as miserable as possible.”

  Sam didn’t smile, but his eyes held a humorous glint. “You know, Axbrewder”—he snapped his bag shut—“you’re a cantankerous sonofabitch. That’s a good sign.”

  Queenie came to stand beside him. “There’s something I want you to know,” she told me. Her straight brave gaze raised my temperature at least a couple of degrees. “I think Rock made a better choice than he realized when he hired you and Ginny. I don’t blame you for the danger. You couldn’t possibly have known this would happen. But since it is happening, I’m glad you’re here. I might not trust somebody else.”

  Sam put his arm around her waist and gave her a squeeze.

  Sudden tears burned the backs of my eyes. Which made me feel incredibly foolish. Charming as ever, I said, “Get out of here. I’m supposed to rest, remember?”

  Sam nodded. “Come on,” he murmured to his wife. Apparently he knew when to leave his patients alone with their emotions.

  Before she let him draw her away, however, Queenie bent over me quickly and kissed my forehead.

  With their arms around each other, they headed toward the door—and nearly ran into Lara Hardhouse.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed softly, seeming flustered by the encounter. “I knocked, but I guess you didn’t hear me.

  “How is he?”

  “At the moment,” Sam answered, sizing her up, “he’s doing as well as can be expected. If he gets lots of sleep and plenty of antibiotics, he’ll be all right.”

  “Good.” Her hands made awkward little gestures, fluttered like a bird with a broken wing. “I’m glad. I’ve been worried about him.” Then, as if she were summoning reserves of courage, she added unexpectedly, “He shouldn’t be alone.”

  “He needs rest—” Sam began.

  Lara broke in. “But he’s in danger. More than the rest of us. How can he rest? If he sleeps, he’ll be helpless.” She took a deep breath. The mixture of determination and fear in her eyes made her extraordinarily beautiful. “I’ll stay with him.”

  Studiously noncommittal, Sam referred the question to me.

  What I thought was, No! Get that woman away from me.

  What I said was, “I don’t mind.”

  If anything, the nameless panic Lara inspired in me had intensified. But that didn’t seem like an adequate reason to avoid her. If I intended to turn my weakness to my own advantage, I couldn’t afford to ignore the opportunities it created.

  Sam shrugged and left with his wife.

  Lara closed the door behind them—

  —and quietly turned the lock.

  Then she walked toward me like a hungry woman approaching her first and maybe her only chance for food.

  As if I were helpless, I stared at her while she came to the bed and sat down and leaned over me. Her hair fell like abandonment on either side of her face as she kissed my mouth.

  Her lips clung to mine, the kiss of a woman ready soul and body to be ravished by love. Despite its gentleness, she put everything she had into it. Her mouth held mine as if she fed on me.

  I’d never been kissed like that. Not once in my whole life. Ginny wasn’t a woman who let herself go that way.

  For a moment, I forgot my weakness. As she kissed me, something that might as well have been strength filled my veins, and I ached to put my arms around her, wrap her into my heart until my loneliness burned away.

  Which was probably why she scared me so badly.

  So I didn’t put my arms around her. After the first rush, I didn’t kiss her back. Instead I lay there like I’d never had any use for love and waited for her to pull away.

  Finally she did. “Oh, Brew, Brew.” Trouble darkened her eyes, and she was unquestionably the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  I shrugged as well as I could while her hair hung over me and her beauty leaned so close to my face. A desire to weep choked my throat. Thickly I said, “I don’t know why you’re doing this.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me.” The struggle to force words past my grief made me fierce. “You’re married. Cat told me,” poor Cat, all her loveliness and grace blown out of her, “your husband is pretty impressive in bed. You’ve already had one affair since you got here. Mac would kill for a woman like you.” An unfortunate choice of words, but what the hell. “And I’m so damaged I can hardly stand.

  “You don’t need me. If you’re looking for a way to get your husband’s attention, use somebody else.”

  “Oh, Brew.” If she kept saying my name like that, she’d break my heart. “You don’t know. You don’t understand.

  “You’re wrong about Joseph. Believe me, he isn’t what you think. He doesn’t want me. He wants”—she hunted for words—“women like Cat. Broken women. If he could break me, it would be different. But I can’t let him do that. Can I? I have to keep myself from being broken somehow.

  “Mac is sweet, but he doesn’t mean anything to me. He’s just”—she let me see all the pain in her eyes—“just a distraction. A way to protect myself because you won’t let me near you. If you let me, I would sell my soul for you.”

  Which didn’t make any sense, of course. What, sell her soul for a gut-shot and unreliable private investigator she hardly knew? Bullshit. Yet somehow she made me believe it. Just for a moment or two, she inspired me to believe that her passion ran so deep. Her eyes were moist, luminous with her particular vulnerability.

  And I wanted to respond. I’ve always been a sucker for vulnerability.

  Putting one hand on her shoulder, I moved her aside so that I could sit up. In response, she slid her arm across my shoulders as if she thought I wanted that. I lacked the will to resist, but I didn’t encourage her, either.

  Roughly I said, “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  She avoided my gaze. Instead she watched my mouth, wanting it. Her lips parted. Gloss or moisture made them shine.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at me.” My fierceness changed slowly, growing purer. “What do you see? I’ve been shot. A killer is after me. I brought him here because I couldn’t get my brain out of the fog enough to recognize a voice over the phone. My life is a daily struggle with booze. If it weren’t for Sam and his bag of tricks, I wouldn’t even be able to sit up.

  “What kind of woman wants a man like that?”

  “Brew. Oh, Brew.” She did it again. “You’re wrong about yourself. You only think that way because you’re surrounded by people who sneer at you. Your partner isn’t any better than you are, but she acts like she is. Rea
lly, she’s worse. She doesn’t even know she’s crippled.

  “But it’s false, Brew. It’s false.

  “Don’t you know what you are?”

  I held her gaze as if I wanted to fall into them and drown.

  “You’re a man. Compared to you, Joseph is only male. And Mac isn’t even that. You’re the only man here. You know everything there is to know about pain. Terrible things have happened to you, and you’ve been so hurt, so hurt—You’ve been lost in alcohol. Your partner doesn’t care about you. You’ve been shot by a professional killer. Your enemies have torn at you until you can barely stay on your feet But you aren’t broken.

  “That’s what being a man is,” she said as if she’d built her life on it. “You endure everything there is to endure, but you don’t break.

  “I don’t know how any woman can look at you and not want you, not want to take every part of you inside herself, for comfort and healing and passion. If she did that—if you let her—she would be whole again.”

  Well, she was wrong about one thing, anyway. I didn’t know everything there was to know about pain. She’d already taught me something new. I didn’t know how to face it.

  But I did. We can all be brave if we need courage badly enough.

  I’d lost my ferocity. The naked heat of her confusion had burned away my anger. Gently, almost tenderly, as if she were a sore child I wanted to soothe, I said, “That has got to be one of the worst reasons for sex I’ve ever heard.”

  At last I’d succeeded at hurting her. Good for me. Her arm dropped from my shoulders, and her eyes seemed to go blank, almost opaque, as if she’d slammed the doors behind them shut. A hot spot of crimson appeared on her cheek.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” she retorted. “Maybe you are broken.” Her tone held so much concentrated acid that I actually winced. “Broken in so many pieces that you can’t tell you’ve been shattered. Maybe those bandages”—she poked a finger at my ribs, eliciting another wince—“are all that holds you together.”

  Before I could think of anything to say, we heard a scream.

  More of a howl, really, a full-throated yell of rage and frustration and loss. A woman’s howl, but doors and walls muffled it, I couldn’t identify the voice. Nevertheless it had enough power to cut into me like the bite of a drill.

  She screamed twice and then stopped.

  My mind went blank with shock. But I’d already reached the door. I had the .45 in my fist.

  The door refused to open. Lara had locked it.

  Frantic to get out, I twisted the lock, hauled open the door, lurched into the hall.

  I couldn’t tell where the scream had came from. But Sam Drayton ran past me. I followed him.

  Down the hall just a few doors. To Mac Westward’s room.

  By the time I got there, Lara and Queenie were right behind me. We found Connie standing beside the bed, Sam opposite her. She gasped for air in hard desperate chunks, the flush of her screams still on her face. She looked wild-eyed and extravagant, like a schoolteacher gone feral.

  Sam examined Mac. But I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that he was dead. People who lie with their heads at that angle are always dead. He must’ve been sleeping the sleep of the drunk when someone walked in and snapped his cervical vertebrae.

  Queenie gave a little wail and hurried over to Connie. But Connie didn’t react. She didn’t want comfort. She stood rigid, panting hoarsely, like a woman who wanted blood.

  The intensity of Lara’s expression surpassed my capacity to interpret it.

  We were the only ones in the room. No one else appeared. The other guests must’ve heard Connie’s screams, but they didn’t come to investigate. Apparently they’d already reached the same conclusion I had.

  The killer wasn’t outside where Ginny could hunt him down. He was in the lodge with us.

  18

  It didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t think. I could only stare at Mac. The angle of his neck made me want to throw up. Somehow I’d never clearly recognized the vulnerability of drunks.

  And the insoluble simplicity of the problem appalled me. Anyone could’ve come into this room and done that to him, anyone. It didn’t take strength. All it required was a working knowledge of how necks break. The killer could be anyone.

  But what staggered me most, made my whole moral world stand on its head, was the certainty that Mac hadn’t been killed by accident. Not like Cat.

  Which implied—

  I couldn’t think.

  Sam stood in front of me, glaring, his eyes hard—too hard. In a brittle voice, he said, “This changes everything, doesn’t it.” For the first time he sounded breakable. There were limits to what he could bear.

  Like an echo in an empty room, I said, “Everything.”

  And Connie said, “Everything,” contemplating murder.

  “Any one of us,” Sam went on, “could be next.”

  Come on, Axbrewder. Think, for God’s sake!

  “You found him like this?” Queenie asked Connie. “Did you scream right away? How long ago did this happen? Did you see anything? Why were you here?”

  See, Axbrewder? She’s thinking. Doing what people need to do when their lives are in danger—trying to get a grip on the problem.

  Do it, you sonofabitch. Mac was dead. Killed deliberately, not by accident, killed for reasons that belonged to him and no one else. Which implied—

  “Brew,” Lara asked softly, urgently, “what’re we going to do?”

  Well, look on the bright side, I told myself. Simon might still be alive. The killer was here in the lodge, one of us. And none of us could possibly have killed him, lugged his corpse up into the hills, and then come back before the rest of us realized the danger. Ginny might well be safe. She was hunting a panic-stricken actor, not a professional hit man.

  But that didn’t matter, not to us, not now. I had a more immediate problem. The killer was here, and I was supposed to deal with him, I had no idea what was going on.

  “What’re we going to do?” Lara repeated.

  “Survive.” My voice shook. Hell, my entire body shook. “Which means that we’re going to stay together. The whole group, everyone, in the same room. That way, whoever did this can’t kill anyone else.”

  “Right!” San snapped. Somehow I’d said what he needed to hear. “I’ll get them into the den. We can talk there.”

  He hurried out the door.

  “Brew”—Queenie left Connie, came over to me—“is that safe? Should I go after him?”

  Everything had happened too quickly. I couldn’t think fast enough. She was right, I shouldn’t have let Sam go alone. He might be the killer himself. Or the next victim. I should’ve sent Queenie and even Lara with him. But he’d left before I could get my brain in gear and my mouth open.

  “No.” I refused to risk Queenie, too. “He’ll be all right. It’s too soon for another murder.” To keep her from arguing, I said, “Take Connie to the den. Stay with her. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  Like her husband, she needed to move, to do something. She turned back to Connie.

  Connie didn’t budge. Rigid with strain and fury, she demanded, “Mr. Axbrewder, how are you going to catch Mac’s killer?”

  I wanted to yell at her, I don’t know! Catching killers is Ginny’s job! Don’t you understand? I’m just the hired help! But that didn’t seem particularly useful, so I swallowed it. Instead I faced her straight.

  “I’ll start by questioning you.” Pay attention. This is a threat “As far as I can tell, only two people here have a reason to want him dead, and you’re one of them.”

  Queenie raised her hand to her mouth in shock, but she didn’t interrupt. Lara studied me intensely, as if every nerve in her body were on fire.

  Connie didn’t flinch. She didn’t even protest. But her face twisted and went pale, like I’d punched her in the stomach.

  Well, I knew how that felt, but I didn’t apologize. None of this made sense. That was Smithsonian’s voic
e on the phone, I was sure now, and the shot that killed Cat could’ve been aimed at me, and someone had definitely tried to suffocate me with rat poison. No one except el Senor actively wanted me dead. But in that case Mac should still be alive. Mainly so that I wouldn’t start to whimper in frustration, I ordered Queenie and Lara to get Connie out of the room.

  They obeyed.

  Connie didn’t resist. I’d knocked the fury out of her. She walked with her arms folded over her stomach, protecting her pain.

  Unfortunately I didn’t have the vaguest notion what to do next.

  Search for clues. Sure. What did I expect to find? Would I recognize a clue if I saw it? The only thing in the whole room—or the whole lodge—that mattered was the angle of Mac’s neck. He hadn’t been given a chance to defend himself. To understand his plight, or fear it. A useless death. As soon as he’d started pouring wine into himself at lunch, he was a goner.

  He didn’t deserve it.

  Unless you believed that he deserved to die for screwing around with Lara Hardhouse.

  I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. Instead I studied the room for a while, trying to convince myself that I’d notice anything out of place, anything significant. I checked his windows. Behind their blinds, they remained latched. I checked his bathroom. The sink held a strand or two of hair that might’ve been Lara’s. However, I wasn’t really looking for clues. I just wanted time to calm my nerves.

  Without this hole in my guts, I might’ve vacuumed the rug and dusted the chintz in an effort to restore my sense of moral order. But my wounds refused to go away.

  As soon as I stopped shaking, I headed for the den.

  Most of the group had assembled ahead of me. Comfortable fires had raised the room’s temperature and cleared the last arsenic reek from the air. Nevertheless Murder on Cue’s guests huddled in front of the hearths as if shock or fear had chilled them. But they didn’t huddle together. Schisms of distrust separated them. Only Sam and Queenie clung to each other. Maryanne and Connie sat as far away from each other as possible on the same couch. Rock and Buffy had claimed opposite armchairs, facing different fires. And Joseph and Lara Hardhouse seemed to confront their marriage from either side of the tree trunk like a couple who couldn’t choose between loathing and passion.