After Caroline (30 page)

Once out of Lyssa’s sight, she paused again, trying to think past her churning uneasiness. She felt as if things were speeding up, as if what had been set in motion months before was building toward a climax.
Tick. Tick. Tick
.

But, dammit, she still didn’t know
what
had been set in motion, what it was all about. She didn’t even have a clue. All she had was her certainty that if she could only figure out why Caroline had died, she’d understand the rest.

With or without a medical excuse, she needed to talk to Doctor Peter Becket.

In his rather cluttered office in the clinic, Doctor Becket welcomed Joanna a bit abruptly, his perpetually tired blue eyes frowning a bit. “Marion said you wanted to talk to
me,” he said, referring to his receptionist. “Is something wrong, Joanna? Medically, I mean.”

She shook her head, sitting down where he indicated in a brown leather chair in front of his desk. “No, I’m fine.”

He folded his tall length into the chair behind the desk. “I see. My turn to answer questions about Caroline?”

His voice was mild, but Joanna nonetheless felt awkward and uneasy beneath his steady gaze. “Not if you mind,” she offered finally. “It’s just that somebody told me you had known her as well as anyone had, and I thought you might be able to tell me something helpful.”

“Helpful? In what way?”

Joanna had the idea that Becket was being deliberately obtuse, and it put her on guard. With a slight shrug, she said, “I’m trying to understand her. Who she was, what she was like. I can’t really explain why, it’s just something I feel I have to do.”

“I see,” he repeated.

“So, if there’s anything you can tell me, I’d really appreciate it.”

“I don’t think there is anything, Joanna,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Oh, I can tell you she was allergic to ragweed and pollen. I can tell you she tended to have one bad cold each year and never got the flu. I can tell you she had a difficult pregnancy but an easy delivery. Does any of that help?”

“Every snippet of information helps, if I feel I understand her better because of it,” she told him. “Some people have told me she was shy. Was she?”

“Reserved, I suppose.”

“Even with you?”

He shrugged. “I was her doctor, but not her confidant.”

Joanna was certain now that the doctor intended to keep whatever intimate and nonmedical knowledge he might have of Caroline to himself, and she was reluctant to push him. Instead, she asked, “Did you talk to her during the week or so before she was killed?”

Becket picked up a pen from his desk and turned it between his long fingers, glancing down at it. “No.”

He was lying, and he wasn’t very good at it. “Then you wouldn’t know if she was upset about anything just before she died,” Joanna said.

“No, I wouldn’t know about that.” He smiled pleasantly. “Sorry I can’t be more help, Joanna.”

“That’s all right.” She returned the smile. “Snippets. I get them here and there; most everybody has had something to say about Caroline. The pieces are coming together.”

“And what’s the picture?” he asked.

“If I had to title it,” Joanna said, “I’d call it ‘A Complicated Woman.’ The usual labels don’t seem to fit her very well.”

“Usual labels?”

“Yeah. Rich man’s wife. Small-town matron. Pillar of her community. Devoted mother. They all fit—but not well.”

“Do labels fit any of us well?”

“I suppose not.” Joanna felt frustrated once again, but she silently conceded defeat, at least for the moment. She got up. “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Doctor.”

He rose as well, his pleasant smile not quite reaching his eyes. “It’s just Doc, Joanna; I haven’t answered to anything else in years. And I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help to you.”

She lifted a hand in acknowledgment, then left the small office and made her way back down the hall to the receptionist’s desk. There were no patients waiting, and Marion was taking the opportunity of a slow afternoon to enter data into the clinic’s computer system. She stopped her work and looked up, however, when Joanna reached the desk.

“Any luck?” She was a brisk middle-aged woman with dark hair and very sharp eyes, and practically wore a sign that said she didn’t suffer fools gladly.

By now, Joanna simply assumed that everyone knew she
was asking about Caroline; it seemed reasonable, given the gossips of Cliffside—and her experience so far. So she merely shrugged. “Not really.”

“I suppose he quoted you chapter and verse of a doctor’s responsibility to keep his patient’s business to himself?”

“I guess I didn’t push hard enough to get that,” Joanna confessed. “He just basically said he didn’t know anything about Caroline that would be helpful to me.”

Marion nodded, unsurprised. “To call him discreet is to disparage the word.”

Joanna wasn’t about to ask this woman to gossip about whether Becket had seen Caroline outside this office, so she merely said, “Caroline came in here because of her allergies, I hear. Did you know her?”

“To see her, to speak politely to her—yes. But Caroline McKenna didn’t have much time for other women.”

“I’ve heard that,” Joanna murmured. “Didn’t she have any female friends?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did you see her during the week or so before she died?” Joanna asked.

“As a matter of fact,” Marion said, “she came in here late one afternoon about two days before she was killed. Wanted to see Doc.”

Joanna tried not to show a reaction to that information. “And did she see him?”

“Well, I was about to send her in when we got a call about one of the boys on the high school baseball team hurting his leg sliding into second. Doc grabbed his bag and started out, and when Caroline tried to speak to him, he brushed her off.” Marion frowned slightly. “Come to think of it, she followed him out to the parking lot, still trying to talk to him.”

Joanna thought of Becket lying about having seen Caroline and wondered if it was because he knew something he hadn’t told about her death. Maybe; he’d done the postmortem, after all. Then again, maybe he lied simply because
he was yet another man haunted by guilt because Caroline had come to him for help in the last days of her life and he had turned away from her.

“Did she seem upset?” Joanna asked the receptionist.

Marion pursed her lips. “A bit agitated, let’s say.”

“But you have no idea why?”

“None.”

Joanna nodded. “Okay, thanks, Marion.”

“Helpful?”

“God knows. But more pieces for the puzzle anyway.” Joanna glanced back down the hall toward Becket’s office and could have sworn she caught a glimpse of movement, as if, standing in the doorway, he had drawn quickly back out of sight when she had turned her head.

How much had he heard?

“Good luck with the puzzle,” Marion said, already turning back to her work.

“Thanks. See you.” Joanna left the clinic and walked back toward Main Street to get her car. It was beginning to get dark and there was a chill in the air. Bits of information—“snippets”—and speculation were going round and round in her head, making no sense to her at all. What she needed to do was go back to The Inn, have supper and a long, hot bath, and try to think logically about all she had learned today.

When she reached Main Street, Joanna paused, looking around at a town that seemed so peaceful on this late afternoon in October. Griffin’s Blazer was parked at the Sheriff’s Department, so presumably he was still in his office. Mrs. Chandler was locking up the library. Lyssa and Dylan stood in front of City Hall talking, both carrying briefcases, and as Joanna watched, they went their separate ways to their cars. Most of the stores in town were still open and would remain so until six or seven, according to individual habit. There were a few people on the sidewalks, going in or coming out of stores, no one in a hurry about it.

Just a peaceful little town. Except that three people had
died violently here since spring. Except that too many of the town’s citizens had gazed at Joanna through shuttered eyes, because they either disliked strangers, disliked her questions, or had something to hide.

Just a peaceful little town.
Except that something was wrong here
.

With a sigh, she tried to shrug off the uneasiness that wouldn’t leave her alone. Nothing was making much sense to her right now; it was time to call a halt for the day.

Joanna needed to pick up a few things before returning to the hotel, so she walked to the drugstore. In the ten or fifteen minutes she was in the store, she spoke casually to several people, and by the time she came out she felt doubtful about Cain Barlow’s future standing in this town. Virtually everyone, it seemed, felt sure that he’d had something to do with Amber’s death, and Joanna was convinced that unless Griffin was able to prove conclusively that someone else had been responsible, or that her death had been a tragic accident, then suspicion would hang over Cain’s head like a black cloud.

Joanna didn’t want to believe Cain had killed that girl, even by accident, but she didn’t know if there was anything she could do about the question—except to keep on as she had been, asking questions and trying to understand Caroline.

When she left the drugstore, Joanna walked to her car, which she’d left parked at the end of town farthest from The Inn. She fished in the front pocket of her jeans for the keys, then got in and started the car, automatically fastening her seatbelt even though the drive to her hotel would be fairly brief. Since the car was parked on a slight incline, she didn’t have to touch the accelerator to back out onto Main Street; she just put the car in reverse and kept her foot on the brake.

Even before her accident, Joanna had been a careful driver; these days, she was even more careful. It wasn’t her habit to drive fast under any circumstances, and she never floored the accelerator. But when she put the rental car into
drive and pressed lightly on the accelerator, it went all the way to the floor.

And stuck.

In those first seconds, Joanna tried to get the pedal unstuck by punching at it with her foot, at the same time trying to watch for pedestrians and other cars as the rental car picked up speed through downtown Cliffside. Everything was passing in a blur, her ears were filled with the roar of the laboring engine, and all Joanna could think of was what would happen if she made it past The Inn and Scott McKenna’s property south of town.

She had seen the maps. Just as it did north of town, the coast highway ran right along the edge of the cliffs farther south, with only a guardrail to stop a car from going over. It hadn’t stopped Caroline’s car.

It wouldn’t stop this one, either.

Joanna didn’t dare take her eyes off the road even long enough to check the speedometer, but she knew she had to be going over fifty when she passed the park at the south end of town.

She’d tried the brake, but other than producing a godawful noise it didn’t seem to slow the car, and though she tried to shift down into neutral, the gearshift refused to budge. She wasn’t sure, but had the vague idea that if she tried to turn off the ignition while the car was in gear and moving at such speed, it would be like hitting a wall. And despite her seatbelt and the car’s airbag, that was something she didn’t want to chance except as a last resort.

She passed the turnoff to The Inn just as she heard a siren; either Griffin or one of his deputies was behind her and catching up rapidly. Joanna didn’t spare a glance into the rearview mirror, because the coast highway was beginning to wind as it continued past the McKenna property, and it required all her attention just to keep the car on the road.

Then, ahead and on the left side of the highway, she saw a pasture dotted with numerous old-fashioned haystacks. Joanna didn’t know if the hay would provide enough resistance
to even slow the car, but she did know that her chances were better in that pasture than they would be on the coast road.

The barbwire fence provided little resistance, one post sheering off and the strands of wire snapping as her car hurtled off the road and into the pasture. Joanna felt the car begin to slide as it hit ground still saturated from the weekend rains, and she fought the steering wheel in the desperate attempt to guide it toward the first of the haystacks.

The car hit the small mountain of hay, shuddered, and barely slowed as it plowed through. She continued to fight the steering wheel, aiming for the next haystack. But the car fishtailed, hitting the hay broadside and then going into a spin. The rear end of the car grazed another haystack, the spinning slowed, and then the fourth haystack, finally, provided enough resistance.

The car hit it, again broadside, and shuddered violently. The engine screamed, then died abruptly as the car rocked to a stop. Immediately, hay covered the windshield and windows, and Joanna found herself in the dark.

With exquisite precision, she reached for the key and turned off the ignition. Then she folded her hands in her lap and just sat there listening to her heart pound against her ribs and looking down at the steering wheel, where the airbag remained snugly out of sight.