Lexie Starr Cozy Mysteries Boxed Set Page 17

  "No, my grandparents died before I was born. This is the couple that lives next door to Jake—the Wilsons. Real nice folks," Clay said. "I took this photo of them."

  "How about this golden retriever?"

  "Yeah, that's Buddy, he was mine. He was a great dog, but he's gone now."

  At least Wanda had gotten one thing right. It saddened me that with a disturbed mind like hers, she could identify her son's old dog, but not recognize her own parents.

  "Who took this photo of you with the moose at the hunting cabin? Jake? Obviously somebody was with you," I said.

  "No," Clay said. He sighed and looked down at his tightly clenched hands resting on his lap. "Actually I took the photo myself. I used the self-timer and set the camera on the hood of my car. The Mustang convertible was still mine at the time."

  "You went moose hunting alone?"

  "Yeah," he said. Clay sighed again and let his head drop almost to his chest as he admitted having illegally killed the moose. "You don't take a crowd with you when you are poaching a protected species. And you don't offer it up as an alibi either. I lied to the investigators and told them I was studying at the library that day. I realize now that both were stupid decisions on my part. Well, okay—really, really stupid decisions."

  Clay glanced over at Detective Glick in anticipation, as if expecting Ron to pull over to the side of the road and slap the cuffs on him. The detective shook his head in disgust, but did not speak. I fell silent myself as we headed up an incline at the base of the mountains.

  Soon we began our journey into the forest. Clay gave directions to Detective Glick as we rode along. We'd just passed the sheer rock ledge Clay had mentioned on the phone. The men had been discussing a plan of action, but now as we drew nearer our destination, the air in the car seemed to fill with tension.

  Silence prevailed, as we were each absorbed in our own thoughts.

  "Over there is the footbridge," Clay said in a near whisper. We were traveling along a narrow gravel road that was predominantly potholes filled with rainwater. Clay pointed straight ahead. "At the next fork in the road we will need to bear to the right. There's a place to pull off the road about a half mile past that. It would be a good place to park the cars. We can walk through the woods from there and come up on the north side of the cabin. That's where we'll be the least visible. And if I know Jake, he'll come out shooting. He's an easily provoked, nervous, and excitable type of guy."

  Chapter 27

  "Ouch!" I whispered before stifling another scream. I could feel stinging nettles on every square inch of my calves. They were pricking me right through my heavy denim jeans.

  I'd already stepped into some kind of gopher hole and twisted an ankle and been slapped twice across the face with the backlash of tree limbs. However, the last thing I was going to do was whine and complain about my little aches and pains after being so insistent about not being left behind in the car. I looked up ahead and saw Harriet leading the pack, unconcerned about anything but getting to the cabin as fast as possible. Times a'wasting, I'm sure she was thinking. As I watched Harriet, she reached up, and in one swift motion, severed a dangling limb in two with her knife. As the limb fell to the ground in front of her she leapt over it like a world-class hurdler.

  I glanced over at Stone as he slapped at something on his shoulder. It made me think there must be some creepy-crawly thing on me too, so I gave myself a stinging smack on the forearm where I'd recently felt an odd twinge. I suddenly remembered why I'd never been interested in joining a Girl Scout troop. My idea of "roughing it" was when room service was late. Of course, those green uniforms that made any trendy young schoolgirl look like a geek might have figured into my decision too.

  "Doing okay?" Stone asked quietly.

  "Great. And you?"

  "Fine. I can't keep up with Harriet, but then no one else can either. She's a pistol, isn't she?" Stone grinned as he looked up ahead at the sprightly old lady, who was charging through the woods like a rabbit being pursued by a fox. He held out his hand to help me over a fallen tree trunk, ground out a glowing cigarette butt with the heel of his hiking boot, and said, "We'll be fortunate if she doesn't start a forest fire."

  I was yanking a tick out from where it had embedded itself in my wrist when we came upon the clearing and the hunting cabin. Stone pulled me over toward him and pointed silently to Jake's white Mustang convertible, parked in front of the log dwelling. Stone made a thumbs-up gesture. This was what we'd hoped to find when we arrived at our destination.

  Clay had led us to the clearing and then handed the reins of responsibility over to Detective Glick. Ron was waving to us to follow him, and we were all walking as stealthily as possible to avoid stepping on branches and snapping limbs with our boots. For a moment I thought Ron might make us all drop and do the belly crawl like a platoon of Navy Seals. I was willing to do whatever it took to stay safe and rescue my daughter.

  We were less than fifteen feet from the rock wall running alongside the water well when the front door of the cabin opened. Stone picked me up and threw me to the ground behind the rock wall as the whir of a bullet whistled right above our heads.

  "Who's out there?" I heard Jake's voice yell out.

  Nobody responded. We were all scrambling for position behind the rock wall. A second bullet ricocheted off the front of the old water well. Glick nodded to Clay, prodding him to strike up a conversation with Jake as a distraction.

  "Stop shooting, Jake," Clay shouted. "It's me, Clay."

  "What are you doing here?" We could hear Jake's voice, but we couldn't see him. The front door with the eagle etched into it was propped open with the toe of Jake's boot, and he was yelling from inside the cabin.

  "I'm your friend, remember? I came to see you, Jake. What's going on?"

  "You're not my friend, Clay. If you were my friend you wouldn't have left and moved away."

  "I had to, Jake, you know that. I had to get away from my memories of Eliza. I remarried, thinking I could block out memories of the past, but even that hasn't helped. You surely understand it wasn't that I was trying to distance myself from you."

  I shivered, despite the warmth of my sweatshirt. I had wondered why Clay had remarried so soon after the vicious murder of his first wife. Now I understood he was trying to escape the pain of losing her; much like Stone tried to escape the pain of losing Diana by moving from the home they'd shared for many years. It might explain Clay's reaction to Wendy's pregnancy too. He would have viewed it as a reminder of the child he'd lost when Eliza was killed. I listened as Clay continued trying to calm Jake.

  "But it doesn't mean you and I aren't still friends. You knew when you first met me that I was straight."

  "I didn't want you in that way, Clay," Jake said in an indignant tone. "I already have a partner in Wade. I just wanted you as a friend. I wanted us to stay close—as buddies."

  "We are still close. We talk on the phone nearly every day, don't we? I care about you, Jake. I really do."

  "So how come the people I care about all end up leaving me? I'm tired of it. My mother left me, and my father hated me. He put me down constantly until he finally left me. Uncle Bill didn't mean to leave me, but he left me all the same. And then you became my best friend and left me too."

  "Is that why you abducted Wendy from the airport, Jake? Was it to spite me?"

  I held my breath as I waited for Jake to respond. After a long silence, Clay spoke again.

  "I know you've got Wendy with you, Jake. Why don't you let her go, so you and I can talk? She has nothing to do with this misunderstanding between you and me."

  "We can talk just fine with her right here!" There was a loud shuffling noise, and then Jake stepped out onto the front porch with Wendy in front of him. He was using her as a human shield. Her feet were bound together with rope, and her hands were tied behind her back. She looked terrified but unharmed. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I knew she'd be hurt by Clay's remarks implying that his marriage to her had bee
n a mistake, and I was positive an annulment was in Wendy's future, if she survived this current ordeal. But I couldn't worry about the emotional aspect of this situation now; only the physical aspect mattered at the moment. Getting her out of this unharmed was my first priority. The future would work itself out one way or the other, and I felt Wendy would be better off in the long run if the marriage was annulled. Clay had too many ghosts he needed to exorcise before he settled down with another wife and family.

  "What are you planning on doing with her, Jake?" Clay asked.

  "I don't know, yet."

  "Were you planning to kill her like you killed Eliza?"

  This last question Clay threw out convinced me I needed to take defensive action. Jake was obviously deranged and unpredictable. I had noticed that while Jake was listening to Clay and responding to his questions, he wasn't paying much attention to anything else. I pulled away from Stone and did a quasi duck-waddle over to Harriet, crouched down behind the wall. As if she instinctively knew my intentions, she handed me her knife and said, "Watch yer back, sweetie."

  Any Navy Seal would have been proud of the belly crawl I executed to move from the rock wall to the north side of the cabin. I felt like an overgrown crab trying to make its way back to water. Maybe my earlier claim that I was turning into a crab had been prophetic.

  As I had edged away from the wall I'd heard Stone start to call out to me and then stop abruptly. I knew he'd been afraid of drawing attention to me. In his heart he had to know the bond between a mother and daughter was too strong to allow me to listen to reason. He seemed to realize his efforts would be better spent in trying to protect me than in trying to dissuade me.

  As I inched along the side of the building with my back flush up against the logs, I heard Clay shout out. I could tell he was choking back tears as he spoke. "Why'd you do it, Jake? You didn't even know me then. So, why did you have to kill Eliza?"

  I was now peering around the edge of the building, trying to think of a way to distract Jake. He was swinging the gun around wildly. Up closer now, I could tell he was definitely under the influence of drugs. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy. His movements were jerky, and his reactions were slow and uncoordinated. I was afraid the gun would accidentally discharge from his careless handling of it.

  "I didn't kill Eliza!" he said, swinging the gun from side to side.

  "Yes, you did! Admit it, Jake!"

  "I didn't kill her, Clay. I swear I didn't! He did—" Jake said, pointing at the door with his gun, as it swung open again and a stout, white-haired man walked out on the porch and ducked behind Jake and Wendy. His complexion was so pale that he'd have looked like an albino if not for his light green eyes. "I just brought Eliza to him when he asked me to. It was Uncle Ho—"

  "Dad!" Clay hollered in disbelief.

  "—mer. Uncle Homer killed her, not me."

  "Dad, what are you doing here?" Clay asked. His voice had risen several octaves in his hysteria. "Jake, what are you doing with my father? What's going on here?"

  "I met him outside a crack house in downtown Boston one night. Homer's been like a father to me ever since. When I lost my uncle Bill, I felt like I was alone in the world. But then I met Homer. I'd do anything for him now. He may have been your father at one time, Clay, but now he's mine. He's kind of adopted me as a foster son. He told me you disowned him as your father, and that you'd pay dearly for doing that. He even told me I could call him 'Uncle Homer' and—"

  "Shut up, boy!" Homer said. "You've said more than enough already."

  "And 'cept for Uncle Bill, Uncle Homer's the only one who—"

  "I said put a sock in it, boy! Don't you know when to keep your damn mouth shut?"

  As Homer turned and backhanded Jake across the back of his head, he noticed me peeking around the corner of the house. He grabbed the Colt .45 from Jake's hand and fired a quick shot in my direction. He missed his target, and I fell backward into a thorny bush. Detective Glick hollered at me to stay down. He stood up and fired a shot back to the right of the threesome huddled together on the porch. He couldn't risk firing a shot any closer because Wendy was positioned in front of the two men. I think Ron just wanted to advertise the fact he also had a firearm he was ready and willing to use.

  Homer returned fire with two wild shots back in Glick's direction. I flinched when Ron grabbed his arm as he ducked back down behind the wall.

  That was the fifth shot to come out of Jake's Colt .45. By my recollection. Clay had said it was a double-action six-shooter. I hadn't noticed Jake take the time to load new bullets into the revolving cylinder. Homer now had possession of Jake's gun, and he had just one more unspent bullet. I'd have to come up with a way to make him waste it.

  "Hey Jake!" I shouted from my position, flat on my butt in the bush. I knew my backside would look like that of a baby hedgehog's. I could feel numerous thorns embedded there, but with the adrenaline speeding through my veins, I was impervious to the pain.

  "What?" he hollered back with a defensive edge to his voice.

  "How come you let Homer talk to you that way?" I asked.

  "What way?"

  "Like you're a half-wit who can't think or speak for yourself. I'd say he's just using you as a pawn in his evil game. Bet he'd stand back and let you take the rap for him too, Jake. Seems to me like he treats you with even less respect than your real father did."

  "No, he don't. He's always been good to me."

  "Gives you cocaine when you need it, things like that?" I asked.

  "Uh-huh. When I need it."

  "Oh, so is that how he controls you, Jake? He buys your loyalty by supplying you with drugs for your habit? A habit you are finding hard to finance, isn't that right? He knows your weakness, and he takes advantage of it and uses it to get you to do his dirty work for him. He doesn't care about you, Rod, he's just using you, manipulating you. Deep down, you know that's true, don't you, Rod?"

  I had intentionally switched to his real name to jolt him back to reality.

  "Well, maybe a little—"

  "Oh, yes, I can see why he's so special to you, Rod. Why can't you see that he's evil, and when he gets taken down—which he will—he'll take you down with him?"

  "Oh, but, he's uh—he only killed Eliza to teach Clay a lesson."

  Homer backhanded Jake again. I couldn't see them but I heard Homer's hand make contact with the back of Jake's head and the bones in Jake's neck crack as it snapped forward from the force of the blow.

  "Ow!" Jake exclaimed.

  "Shut the hell up, boy! You really are a half-wit, aren't you?"

  "Hey! Don't talk to me that way!" Jake said. He pointed my way and continued, "She's right, you're starting to talk to me worse than my real father. I did everything you asked me to do, and now look at the way you're treating me, like I don't mean a thing to you. No wonder Clay's been avoiding you all these years."

  I was beginning to understand how badly Jake's childhood had affected him. Between the emotional scars of the past, and the drugs of the present, Jake was a very vulnerable and confused young man. He'd be easy pickings for a vile and manipulative character like Homer Pitt. Apparently, Homer was using Jake to enact vengeance on his son, Clayton. Clay had commented earlier that his father was a mean and abusive man. He was worse than Clay had imagined. Not only was he not "Father of the Year," he was also a drug dealer, a kidnapper, and a murderer.

  If Wanda had been correct that Homer had been redheaded, his hair had probably just naturally turned white since she or Clay had last seen him.

  Jake had completely forgotten about Wendy. He had stepped away from her to confront Homer. Homer was pointing the Colt at Jake. His stark white face was now pink, flushed in anger. "Quit your whining, you ninny. You're no better than that no-account son of mine who thinks he's too good for the likes of me, his own father. I wasn't worthy of his love and respect—and now I'm not worthy of yours? Ha! Well, I showed him! And I'll show you too, you little two-bit redneck."

  A s
hot went off a split second before I heard Jake scream and fall to the ground. That was the sixth shot, I thought to myself—the final round was spent. This was my chance. Without a second thought I jumped up onto the porch, wailing like a banshee, with Harriet's buck knife raised high in the air. Homer stepped back in alarm at my display of pure madness. He fell over backward in his haste to get away from the menacing-looking weapon I was brandishing. He knew from my reckless behavior I would not hesitate to use it on him. I'm sure I must have resembled something in a scene from a Friday the 13th movie.

  Then everything happened at once. The events that followed were a symphony of sights, sounds, smells, and feelings, colliding into each other as all of my senses came alive. Each observation imprinted itself on my memory and would remain stored there indefinitely. It was as if the next few minutes had occurred in slow motion.

  I remember Wendy's eyes appearing as large as teacup saucers as she stared at me in shock. Jake was lying across the threshold of the door, clutching his wounded shoulder. I could smell his warm blood running down the crevices of the eagle etching on the door. "Click, click, click," I heard, as Homer lay on his back and fired at me with a gun that had run out of ammunition. Detective Glick, Sheriff Crabb, Clay, Stone, Andy, and Harriet were storming the front porch and tackling Homer. I saw Clay rear back and smash a fist into Homer's face. I heard bones crunch and saw blood stream down from Homer's nose. I saw Detective Glick show me an indentation on his arm where he'd been grazed by Homer's bullet, when he saw my shocked stare at the bloodstain on his shirtsleeve.

  I felt Sheriff Crabb take the buck knife gently out of my hand and cut the ropes that had been binding Wendy's arms and legs. Wendy and I both had tears in our eyes as we embraced in grateful relief. She whispered into my ear, "Homer told me he was Stone when I got off the plane. Jake must have told him Mr. Van Patten's name. I'd never met either of them, Mom, so I believed him. I'm sorry."

  "Honey, it's not your fault," I assured her. I comforted her as best I could. I knew the heartache was just beginning for her. Clay came up behind me, and I walked away so he could embrace her too. I heard him apologize for deceiving her as he had. He told her he'd come to realize he'd need counseling before he settled down with a wife and family. She agreed with a resolve that amazed and relieved me.