Too Near the Edge (30 page)

“Holly. Dr. Waycroft’s friend. She’s an
artist who used to study with my grandmother. She and Waycroft have
had a sort-of on-and-off relationship for years. Her place is kind
of hidden away on Mountain Pines Road, so I guess Waycroft figured
his car wouldn’t be found there right away.”

“So, do they have any leads on Holly’s car?”
Jack asked the officer.

“Not yet.”

“What do we do now?” Jack knew the answer,
but he had to ask. I know I felt like I should be doing something
to find Elisa, even though I had no idea what.

“The highway patrol will be actively looking
for the car. They’ll find it. Don’t worry. For now, we wait,” the
officer said. “We’ll stay here in case Waycroft calls with demands
or has your wife call.”

It was 4:30 by then. I thought about calling
Sharon to update her on what we knew about Waycroft and Elisa, but
decided against it. She had plenty going on, there wasn’t anything
she could do, and she had my cell number if she wanted to talk. So
we waited, speculated, fixed some food that only the cops ate,
paced the floor, checked the phone to make sure it was working, and
waited some more.

Sharon called me on my cell at 9:30. She had
waited until Nathan had gone to sleep. Joel was still there with
them. “I did my best to explain to Nathan what had happened without
giving him a lot of details. I told him that his grandfather had
gone crazy and tried to hurt people. Joel was great at explaining
how people can sometimes lose touch and do things that cause a lot
of pain to people they love. I didn’t tell Nathan anything about
Adam—just about what happened to us today.”

Sharon already knew about Waycroft ditching
his car at Holly’s. The police had called to see if she had any
ideas about where Waycroft might go from there. She didn’t. Sharon
sounded exhausted. I tried to convince her to get some sleep, but
she said she couldn’t sleep while Elisa was in danger. We agreed to
keep in touch during the night.

It was 11:00 pm when the call finally came.
Holly’s car had been found crashed off highway 119 near Central
City. Waycroft was dead. Elisa was in serious condition at Boulder
Community Hospital. We all jumped in our cars and headed into town
to the hospital.

I called Sharon, but of course the police had
already notified her. She had arrangements to make about Waycroft.
Fortunately Joel had insisted on staying, so she wasn’t alone.

It was a long night at the hospital. Elisa
had multiple injuries, and had lost a lot of blood. For a while it
looked grim. They took her to surgery. We waited. Finally, at 3:00
a.m., good news. She was stable. We wouldn’t be able to talk to her
for a long time, so at 4:00 a.m. I decided to go home and get some
sleep. I was pretty groggy by then. I managed to make it home, but
was having trouble getting my key in the lock on my front door,
when I heard a voice from the shadows of my porch.

“Need some help with that key?”

I screamed, jumped about a foot, and ran back
toward my car. But he was quicker than I, and grabbed me before I
could reach the car.

“Erik! What are you doing here?”

“We have some stuff to talk about, Cleo.”

“Look, Erik. This is one of the worst days of
my life. I can’t talk.

Now go away or I’ll call the police.”

“No you won’t.” He grabbed my purse, before I
could pull out my cell phone. “Now sit down. We’re going to talk.”
He pushed me down hard onto a wooden porch chair.

I was too exhausted to resist. So I sat there
waiting to see what he would do next.

He sat in a chair across from me. “You have
me all wrong,” he said. “Everything I do is to help people. My
products help people feel better, my herb business helps people
make money. I help the old feeble people at Shady Terrace get
stronger. But you make trouble for me everywhere. You snoop around,
accuse me of killing my wife and of pushing Adam over a cliff. Why
are you trying to destroy me?”

“Erik, don’t try to sell yourself as
altruistic. I know about your shady deals, your stolen assets, your
self-serving life. Okay. I was wrong about Adam. I know you didn’t
push him. But the other stuff I don’t take back.” I should have
tried to placate him, rather than confront him. But it had been a
long day, and I was too tired to be tactful.

He leaned forward to look me in the eye.
“Cleo, I’m disappointed in you. We could have had something
together—with our mutual interests in creating opportunities,
making the world a better place. But now a lot of people will be
hurt, and it’s all your fault. Thanks to you and your policeman
boyfriend prying and spreading lies about me, I’ve had to take down
my web pages and my companies are history.”

I figured Pablo must have been digging around
last week and found out more about Erik’s businesses. Maybe even
had police officers questioning him. It felt good to think Pablo
did take me seriously even though he didn’t say he was. I felt a
brief smile form within me at the thought of him.

I guessed Erik was scared his past had caught
up with him. “If your businesses are legitimate, why do you have to
disband them?”

“I don’t need all this hassle. I’ve run a lot
of businesses in my day, and I can go somewhere else where people
appreciate the opportunities I’m offering them. But because I’ll be
leaving here before I planned to, all the people growing the herbs
will get nothing—and that includes Nathan. Sharon will lose, too.
She would have gotten big returns on the money Adam invested in my
nutrition business.

But now it will all be lost.”

So that’s where Adam’s money went! “I’m
pretty sure Sharon doesn’t know Adam had invested in your business.
If this was such a great investment, why didn’t you tell her? Why?
Because it was all bogus! Pyramid schemes and other scams that you
planned to milk for what you could get and then skip town?”

“I guess you’ll never know, will you?” Erik
sneered. I don’t have to tell you anything. I’m on my way out of
town right now. I will disappear! No one will find me. I’ve done it
before.”

“Whatever, Erik. I’m tired. If you’re
leaving, go ahead and do it.” I pushed my chair back and tried to
stand up.

But Erik quickly stood up and pushed me back
down in the chair. “I’m not finished with you yet, Cleo. You
deserve to suffer, to pay for the suffering you have caused.”

“What about the suffering you’ve caused? You
ripped off Adam so Sharon and Nathan ended up poor. You’ve cheated
who knows how many people out of $500 or more. Don’t you owe these
people something?”

“That’s not your concern, Cleo. We’re talking
about you here.”

“Erik, you know Pablo knows about you. If
anything happens to me, he’ll know who to look for.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Cleo. That would
be too easy. But you will suffer. Because you will know I’m out
there, watching you. Don’t think I’ll forget you or what you’ve
done! I know how to find you. You’ll never know when I’ll show up
on your porch, in your house, or in your studio. You’ll live in
fear that someday when you least expect it, I’ll come along and
make you pay for what you’ve done. I’m one ghost that will
definitely come back to haunt you. Here’s your phone. Call anyone
you want. It won’t do you any good.” With that, he stood up and
disappeared into the shadows.

I got up, unlocked the door, went in and
locked it again from the inside—knowing, of course, that Erik could
pick the lock if he wanted to. I checked all the windows, then
staggered into the bedroom, pushed a chair against the door, pulled
off my clothes and sank into bed, too exhausted to take any more
precautions.

The next day—Sunday—I woke up about noon. In
contrast to the cheerful sunshine streaming through my windows, I
felt groggy and out of sorts. After a shower, I went out to the
garden to pick some tomatoes, chives, parsley and strawberries. Out
in the yard, I halfway expected to smell some nasty stink of Erik
still hanging there. But it was clean and sparkly almost as if
Natalie had come over and cleansed its aura while I slept. The
scent of my roses and phlox, blooming as though it were a summer
day like any other, improved my mood.

I had eaten next to nothing in the past
twenty-four hours, so I was starved. I fixed myself a huge
breakfast of scrambled eggs with tomatoes and herbs, strawberries,
toast and coffee. While I ate, I checked for phone messages.

Pablo had called from Oregon about 11:00.
Someone from the Longmont PD had called him and he was up-to-date
on what had happened to Sharon, Elisa and Donald. And he knew I had
been with them at the lab.

I dreaded the conversation I knew we would
have, but I called him back anyway. He had the basics that the
police knew, but he had a lot of questions.

“Cleo, what happened? What were you three
doing at Waycroft’s lab yesterday morning that set him off?” Pablo
sounded worked-up. Not that he didn’t have reason to be upset, but
as a cop he’s learned to at least sound calm under almost any
circumstances.

“What did we do to set him off? You make it
sound like it was all our fault. He’s the one who shot at me,
knocked Sharon out, and kidnapped Elisa,” I said indignantly.

“Whoa, Cleo, relax. I just want to know what
happened there at the lab.” His tone was steady now.

It hit me that only Sharon, Elisa and I—and
possibly by now, Joel—knew what we had found out about Waycroft’s
project, and, more importantly, knew Waycroft had killed Adam. Much
as I would have liked to vindicate my claim that Adam was murdered,
I thought it should be Sharon’s call as to what would be told about
Adam, now that Waycroft was dead. So I told Pablo only what we had
discovered about Waycroft’s research and how we went to his lab to
use the evidence to get him to back off and quit harassing us.

“And then he pulled a gun out of his desk
drawer, pointed it at us, and said he would find a way to kill us
and make it look like an accident.”

“Why did you run when he had a gun on you?”
He sounded incredulous.

“There was a demonstration outside that
distracted him for a minute, and I thought that was my only
chance.”

“You were very lucky, Cleo. You could have
been killed.”

“I know, I know. But I got away with just a
scratch. Elisa’s the one who was really hurt—actually almost died.
And I need to get back over to the hospital to see how she is.”

“I don’t know, Cleo. I want to hug you
because you’re safe, but I also want to shake you for taking those
chances. We need to talk more about this. How about tomorrow night?
I won’t be back until 4:00 today and then I have to work late
tonight to make up for being gone.”

It was a talk I wasn’t looking forward to,
but I knew we’d have it eventually. And I was curious about what
pressures he had brought to bear on Erik that led him to leave
town. We agreed on dinner the next night.

When I got over to the hospital, I found
Elisa much improved. They had moved her from intensive care to a
regular patient room.

She looked battered, with two black eyes,
scratches and bruises on her face, a bandage on her head where some
of her hair had been shaved off, and a cast on her right arm. Not
her usual put-together look. But she was alert and eager to talk to
me about what had happened.

“Right after he hit Sharon and knocked her
out, he tied me to a chair and gave me some kind of injection that
he said would put me under in about ten minutes. Then he untied me
and took me out to his jeep. I was asleep before we got to Arapahoe
and Folsom. The next thing I remember was being in a different car
driving up Boulder Canyon to Nederland. I think I came to just
before Boulder Falls.”

“So you don’t remember anything about being
at Holly’s, leaving Donald’s car, and taking hers?”

“No, not a thing.”

“I assume he switched cars to buy himself
some time,” I said, “because the police were looking for the jeep.
But why was he going up the canyon after that? And why was he on
highway 119?”

“When I first woke up, I heard him talking on
his cell phone arranging for a limousine to pick him up at Central
City to drive him to an airport in Pueblo. He didn’t know I was
awake, and I didn’t let on. Then I heard him make a call to someone
to arrange a charter flight for him from Pueblo to somewhere in
Mexico. I kept on acting like I was still unconscious and I guess
he was too busy making all those calls to take a careful look at
me. My face was turned away from him toward the window on my side
of the car, so I was able to open my eyes and look out without him
knowing.”

“So how come he crashed the car? Was it
because he was on the phone?”

“No. It was because I surprised him, grabbed
the wheel, and steered the car off the road when we were on a
narrow turn next to a steep ravine. I’d been sitting there thinking
about how I could get away. I could tell from the phone calls that
he planned to take me with him to Mexico as a hostage, in case he
needed a bargaining chip. I figured once I was in Mexico and he
didn’t need me anymore, he’d arrange for me to disappear or die in
some accident. So I decided I’d rather take my chances on an
accident here, where at least I had some chance of surviving.”

“Wow! That was gutsy. I don’t think I would
have had the nerve to cause a car crash in the mountains.”

“Well, you know me—I’ve always loved a
challenge. Maybe it was crazy, but I’m a risk taker by nature. No
question this was more of a gamble than I usually take, but I was
desperate to get away from him. And I couldn’t just sit there and
let that ass have everything his way. Could you hand me that water
glass?”

I put the glass in her left hand, waited
while she took a long drink and then put it back on the table. “I
guess you know Donald died in the crash.”