All or Nothing (33 page)

“The same woman who figured she had to bed the boss to get the job, as I remember.”

“Bullshit. I would have bedded you anyway,” she said comfortably. “Anyway, mister, I have made a reservation at the Post Hill Ranch for tonight. You and I are driving down there. . . .”

“And you plan on making all my dreams come true.”

Her eyes linked with his. “At least for tonight,” she whispered sweetly.

“Finish your drink, honey.” Giraud smiled back into those gray–green orbs that still sent shivers down his spine when she looked at him like that. “You’re on.”

“Of course I am,” she murmured even more sweetly. “I already checked us out and asked the bellman to bring down our luggage. We’re practically on our way.”

Laurie swallowed the tequila in one gulp, grabbed her purse, brushed hastily past the enamored couple and paid the barman on her way out. Then she was in the black Ford pickup, heading out of San Francisco on Route 1, barreling south to Carmel and Big Sur.

She was laughing as she gunned the engine. This time they had played right into her hands. This time she was beating them at their own game. It would be a breeze.

It was dusk and the fog was rolling in when she spotted Giraud’s red Corvette driving through Carmel. Quickly she pulled out of the parking spot, keeping a couple of cars behind, following at a discreet distance as they wound their way down the coast. It was late and she knew that soon the traffic would disappear and she would have them to herself.

Post Hill Ranch was built into a bluff near Big Sur where the coast road snaked edgily along the cliffs with a sheer drop to the ocean, hundreds of feet below. In daylight and with good weather it was an easy enough drive, but with the darkness and the fog, Giraud had slowed down and was taking the bends carefully.

Laurie hung back, driving carefully too, keeping out of sight.

Giraud’s eyes darted between the dangerous road and the rearview mirror. He caught an occasional glimpse of a black pickup in back of them and he was glad the driver was also being sensible and taking it easy. This road, especially tonight, was no picnic.

Marla turned to look at the shopping bags from the smart boutiques piled in the back and when she thought about their contents she smiled.

“That’s a Cheshire cat kinda grin,” Giraud commented. “You got a secret I don’t know about?”

“I’ll tell you all about it later.” Her gray–green eyes gleamed with mischief. “All I’ll say is I’m saving the best ’til last.”

Giraud frowned. In the rearview mirror he could see the black pickup gaining on them. “He’s going too fast,” he said, alarmed.

They were on a tight curve as Laurie swept alongside, riding the double yellow, nudging them.

Giraud was yelling and Marla’s terrified screams cut through the foggy night like a razor blade through silk, blending with the squeal of rubber as Giraud put his foot down, trying to beat the pickup and get away.

Laurie was laughing now, in her element as she slammed into the Corvette’s rear left side, taking her foot off the pedal as the Corvette spun round and ended up, quivering like an aspen leaf, facing her.

She put her foot down again and screaming like a banshee, headlights blazing, bore down on her enemies.

The Corvette spun out, she could see Giraud fighting to keep control. Laughing, she roared forward, sideswiping them again, forcing them nearer and nearer the edge.

The Corvette swerved, swayed, then skidded.

And then they were sliding sideways through air.

Laurie waited until she heard the crash, then made a dangerous three–point turn, and with a triumphant look over her shoulder, sped back the way she had come.

She had finally removed the last link between her and the future.

The Corvette bounced once, twice, three times, then, amid an explosion of shattered glass and grinding steel, landed foursquare on a jagged rock escarpment.

Those bounces rattled through Marla’s every vertebra. Screaming, she threw up her hands to shield her face from the breaking glass, though she didn’t know why she bothered, her end had surely come.

“Are you alright?” Giraud’s voice sounded unnaturally calm in the sudden silence.

“Alright?”
Marla stared horrified out of the shattered window at the surf rolling far below. “Oh, God, how can I be
alright
? I’m halfway down a cliff, my butt is bruised and I’m bleeding.” She held up her arms to show him. “And I’m driving with a madman whose old car has no air bags. It’s lucky we’re still alive.”

“Lucky for the moment,” Giraud said drily. “Got any ideas about how we get out of this?”

She glanced out the glassless window again at the sheer drop.

“Oh,” she said in a very small voice, suddenly losing all her bluster and with it the adrenaline rush generated by fear. One move and she might end up at the bottom of this cliff.

She sat perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. “It must have been Laurie,” she whispered, as though speaking normally might rock the car over the edge. “The bitch tried to kill us.”

Giraud thought the bitch might still succeed, but decided not to tell Marla that. He felt as though his spine had been compacted.

The Corvette was perched precariously on the edge of the rock. It swayed gently in the gusty wind and he knew it could fall at any moment.

He examined the area outside his window. They were about thirty feet down the cliff. A spiky–looking tree, a pine of some sort, clung to the rock face, as it must have through decades of storms and harsh weather. Now it was his only hope.

“Tell you what, Marla,” he said, keeping his tone conversational so as not to panic her, “why don’t you ease over to my side? Slowly, now.” He didn’t want to upset the car’s fragile equilibrium and he held his breath as Marla shifted her weight and he felt it tremble.
“Slowly,”
he reminded her. . . . “
Slowly,
now, Marla.”

She lifted her feet cautiously over the center console, edging inch by inch his way. Finally she was squashed next to him in the driver’s seat and he could feel her heart thundering against his as he held her for a moment.

“Look, sweetheart,” he said, pointing through the gaping window, “see that pine tree? It’s one of the reasons the Corvette didn’t just keep on sliding. If I lean out of the car, I think I can manage to grab it and haul myself out, but when I do I’m afraid the car will lose whatever stability it has.”

“Don’t do it,” she begged, panicked. “Don’t leave me here, it’ll fall, I know it will.” Her eyes bugged alarmingly and her teeth were chattering with fear. The car swayed under them, groaning, and terrified, she clung to him.

“It’s our only hope, honey,” he said gently. “The car isn’t going to last here much longer. Edge across the seat after me and grab tight hold of my hand, tight as you can, with both of yours. Come, Marla, now . . . 
now,
baby. I’m gonna grab that tree and take you out with me. . . .”

She clung to his hand, sliding across the seat, close as a good lover should be as he hauled himself out of the broken window and reached for the tree. . . . God, it was farther away than he had thought . . . he felt the car spring beneath him, heard it groan as he shifted his weight then made a powerful thrust forward. . . .

He had it.
He gripped the branch with his left hand and Marla with his right, yelling at her to jump.

He turned to look, saw the car begin to slide, felt the unbearable pain in his right shoulder as Marla jumped and he hauled her, one–handed, upward through the air. And they fell back onto the rock together.

They lay there, hands still clasped, staring up at the foggy night sky, listening to the terrible grinding noise of the Corvette in its death throes as it bounced down the cliff.

In the long silence that followed, Al cradled Marla to him. The pain in his right shoulder was excruciating. “It’s okay now, honey,” he murmured soothingly as she began to cry. “Remember it ain’t over until the fat angel sings. And I’m not hearing any fat angels singing for us yet.”

“Al.” Marla paused in her sobs as he took out his cell phone and began to dial 911. Then she said doubtfully, “Did you ever stop to think maybe my mom was right?”

The fire rescue sirens were the most wonderful sound Marla had ever heard. And the sight of those brave men clambering down the rock face toward her, safely roped to their equipment at the top of the cliff, was surely a miracle. She shifted her grip from Al to her rescuer, crying loudly into his shoulder and apologizing for doing so until he told her not to worry about it, just go ahead and have a good cry, he’d probably do the same thing in her circumstances.

So, a short while later, bruised and battered, Marla sat still sobbing on the side of the gurney in the paramedic ambulance taking them to the nearest hospital while Al, his dislocated shoulder with its torn ligaments temporarily immobilized, blood running from a dozen cuts and his spine feeling as though he had been on the old–fashioned torture rack, was as usual on the cell phone. This time to Bulworth, explaining what had happened and that he needed Bulworth to ask the local police not to issue any statement about their rescue.

“So Laurie will assume you’re dead and gone,” Bulworth said and Al could tell he had a grin on his face.

“Yeah, that way she’ll feel free to come out of the woodwork, act normal, get back to her old ways maybe.”

“And then we’ll nab her.” Bulworth chortled. “Meanwhile we got records checking all the used car dealers and so far haven’t come up with anything.”

“You will,” Al said confidently.

“So listen, joking aside, are you and the legal eagle okay?”

Al glanced at the still–sobbing Marla. “Yeah, we’re okay, except she’s maybe figuring on marrying a regular nine–to–five orthodontist now.”

“Not a bad choice, buddy.” Bulworth was laughing as he put down the phone.

Laurie had treated herself to a bottle of expensive Patron tequila tonight and it tasted even better when she caught the eleven o’clock news report.

She took another slug from the bottle, pushing Clyde off her lap and leaning eagerly forward as the serious–faced newsreader told of a major accident on Route 1 near Big Sur.

They even had a camera there, pointing down the cliff at the wrecked Corvette perched upside down on the rocks below, and the fire rescue service trucks swarming with men in yellow slickers and helmets busy doing whatever they needed to do to get the vehicle up again.

“It’s known that two people were in the vehicle at the time of the accident,” the newsreader concluded.

Smiling, Laurie beckoned Clyde to her. She picked him up and hugged him, then walked with him into the ugly little kitchen.

Smiling, she fed him his nightly hamburger, watching as he wolfed it down in two gulps. Then she took him on her knee and brushed him until his fur gleamed and he nuzzled up to her, smiling doggy–style with pleasure.

“Well, baby, it’s just you and me again now. Bonnie and Clyde. We’re on our way,” she said triumphantly.

Steve Mallard was sitting at his wife’s bedside, holding her hand and every now and then speaking to her in a light conversational tone, about their daughters and how much he loved them, recounting memories of their babyhood that Vickie and he had shared, the laughs and the traumas.

Like when Mellie fell into the pool when she was two and couldn’t swim and he’d hauled her out by the scruff of her neck like a puppy. And how angry they had been that she had disobeyed them and somehow gotten into the backyard, until they realized it was all their fault and had stopped being angry and cried together because their precious baby was safe and alive and none the worse for wear.

And how Taylor was the star of the junior school soccer team and was doing well in class. “Quite a little genius, our kid,” he said, smiling fondly at the memory. “Now, I wonder who she gets that from?”

And every now and then, in between the memories of family vacations and Thanksgivings and High Holy Days, he stopped and kissed her gently on the lips and said, “Vickie, I love you, please come back to me.
Please,
Vickie, I need you. We all need you. Our lives are not the same without you. And I’m innocent, Vickie. Now they know who did it and I’m a free man.”

Almost
a free man, he added to himself because he was still holed up in a nondescript hotel room––a different one to be sure. They changed every week, sometimes every couple of days. His life was in such chaos he had stopped even trying to think about how to sort it out anymore and just got on with it. Waiting, waiting––forever waiting for the phone call that would reprieve him and give him his freedom again.

The only compensation was that they allowed him his daily visits to his wife. In fact, they were nightly visits, when there were fewer people around and it was deemed safer for him to be out. He was still a prisoner, though not an accused man, even though by now he would have been happy to take the chance of going free and letting Laurie Martin try to do her worst. He didn’t give a damn about Laurie Martin anymore.

He couldn’t even begin to think about the future, though one thing he knew, he was not going back to his old job. No, sir. He was staying right here in the San Fernando Valley, in his own home, close to family and friends. If there were any friends left. And that was another thing to think about.

Whoever would have thought life would have become so complicated, when all he had been looking for, all he had wanted, was a nice house with an ocean view? Now he knew that houses did not matter. Home was where your family was and that was good enough for him.

Vickie tossed her head restlessly and he placed his hand on her brow, lightly stroking her delicate eyelids, feeling them flutter under his fingertips.

He leaned over her, speaking into her ear. “Wake up, Vickie,
wake up,
come back to us, baby, we’re waiting for you, right here. I’ll never leave you, Vickie.”

Vickie stopped tossing her head, but she still did not open her eyes.

I want to wake up,
she said to herself,
I want so bad to wake up and I can’t, oh, Steve, I can’t. Help me, please help me. . . .