Dead on the Vine: (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries #1 (A Cozy Mystery)) (32 page)

“Claire—” Hunter stood and came toward me, but I circled the table in the opposite direction.

“You let it happen, didn’t you?” I said, seeing him with new eyes, ashamed of myself for sleeping with him. This, I felt, is exactly what I deserved for letting my attraction to Hunter overwhelm my good sense.

Hunter held his hands out, palms up. “I warned Ben about—“

“And then Kevin found out and Laurel killed him.” I was on a roll now, my anger building with every sentence. I wanted to run after Ben and choke him. “Answer this for me,” I said. “Was Ben’s wife still alive when he started screwing Laurel?”

“She was very sick—” Hunter began and I held up a hand to cut him off.

“Buford Logan killed Jenna Valdez,” I said and Hunter quit talking.

“Probably,” he conceded, slouching into his chair. “But—“

“She’s dead,” I snapped. “Buford Logan confessed to killing a little blonde girl in the valley and dumping her in the Napa River, and it wasn’t Winter. It was Jenna. And I think you knew that. Now, thanks to you and Ben, he’s going to walk out of prison and do it again.” I slung my purse over my shoulder and crossed the patio to the kitchen door.

“Mrs. Harlan and her doctor identified the body,” Hunter said defensively.  “Besides, I was off the case and off the force by then. I didn’t suspect any of this until Kevin came to me a few months ago.”

“But you knew that Ben was sleeping with Laurel,” I accused. “And you knew that Laurel was lying.”

Hunter slumped into a chair and stared up at me morosely. “I didn’t know about any cover up. I was drinking a lot back then,” was all he said.

“Well, have one on me,” I said and slammed the door behind me. Hunter didn’t come after me. I grabbed my purse and left, boiling inside. All of this could have been avoided. Kevin would still be alive if Ben had done his job and Hunter had followed his instincts.

I climbed in Sally and gunned the engine, peeling off fifteen feet of rubber as I sped away from Hunter’s home. That’s when the tears came. Tears of shame, shock, anger and betrayal. I could barely see to drive, but I didn’t stop. The only consolation I could find in this mess was that finally Laurel would be made to pay for at least
one
of her crimes. But that wouldn’t resurrect the dead, or erase the blood from Ben’s hands.

Damn it, Ben, why?

When I arrived back at Violet, Victor was in the rows pawing through the vines, checking leaf color and bud count. He waved at me as I walked to the kitchen door. I waved back but didn’t stop. I was too drained to talk. I put coffee on and sat at the kitchen table to brood. My mind was so overwhelmed with anger at Ben, I couldn’t even think about Hunter. It was too painful and too close to get any perspective. He had done nothing to me, really, but he had shown himself to be less than I had hoped. And that I could not forgive, no matter how irrational it sounds. His negligence had caused two murders. And the murderer was still free. But what Ben had done was even worse. I had trusted him. I may even have been halfway in love with him. He had betrayed me. Even worse, he had betrayed his wife while she lay on her deathbed. And he had betrayed the trust of the entire community.

I poured a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. I had finished half of it when I heard Victor shout angrily from the back yard. I leapt out of my chair and rushed to the window to see Victor racing across the grass toward the shed I call a garage. Standing beside the garage was a man dressed in jeans, a blue jacket and a baseball cap. The man looked up sharply, his face shadowed by the bill of the cap. He fumbled something out of the jacket pocket as Victor barreled down on him.

As I watched dumbfounded the man struck a match. That’s when I noticed the gas can sitting at the man’s feet. It took a split second to make the connection. My eyes leapt to all I could see of Sally, her taillights poking out of the shadows of the garage.

I screamed, “No!” and bolted out the kitchen door just in time to see him toss the match, turn and sprint toward the rocky slope beyond the lawn. Behind him there was a
Whumph!
as flames raced up the walls of the shed and roared into the eaves. The ancient, bone-dry wood sucked up the flames and the garage erupted in a fireball. The edges of the roof joined in furiously and sparks and burning scraps of tarpaper bloomed into the sky like fireworks.

“Sally!” I screamed as I rushed toward the garage.

Victor had reached the garage. He looked back at me, his eyes wild, then threw his arms up to protect his face and raced headlong into the garage.

“Victor!” What was he doing? Was he crazy? Suddenly Sally didn’t seem all that important.

Victor jerked the driver’s side door open, and leapt inside. Unfortunately, the keys were lying on the kitchen table. I screamed “Victor!” again as a piece of burning tarpaper fluttered down from the rafters and landed on Sally’s hood and the old Mustang lit up like a barbecue pit on wheels, flames engulfing it. I realized then that Sally must have been doused in gasoline. I screamed again, and kept running toward the garage, only dimly conscious of the arsonist disappearing over the edge of the slope.

I reached the garage door and stopped dead at a wall of flames. I screamed Victor’s name, covered my head with my arms and rushed forward. The flames singed the hair off my arms and the heat tried to slap me back, but I barely noticed. My only thought was for Victor. I made three steps before Victor plowed into me, knocking me sprawling then ran right over me, his hair and shirt on fire. He dove to the grass and rolled, slapping at the flames.

I jumped on top of him, trying to smother the fire as I ripped at his smoldering shirt. I tried to wrench his shirt up over his head but he shoved me away.

“Get off of me!” I flopped on my butt, and looked at him in horror. His hair was singed to black scrub on the right side and so was his ear. That side of his face was red and already puffy and so was his right arm. He coughed and spit into the grass.

“I’ll kill him,” he said and coughed up black gunk.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding at the grass. “I’ll live.” He looked at his right hand and winced. Slowly, he got to his feet and shrugged off the remnants of his shirt. “I wish I coulda caught him,” he said through his teeth. “Damn, this hurts.”

“I’ll catch him,” I swore bitterly, my fear for Victor instantly replaced by rage and bloodlust. Victor could have been killed! And my garage had been turned into Sally’s funeral pyre. I was up and running before Victor could try to stop me.

“Claire!” He yelled. “Call the police!”

“You call them,” I yelled back. I hit the top of the rocky slope and skidded through a mass of boulders, gashing my knee on a jagged outcropping of porous black lava. The razor-bright pain made me move faster. I leapt over a boulder, skidded around another then slipped and slid on my butt down a river of loose shale, throwing up dust and shards of gray stone. I caught a glimpse of the arsonist up ahead, making slow time, cautiously picking his way through the maze of boulders and brush toward a dirt farm road six hundred yards below my property. A car was parked down there, but he wasn’t going to make it.

I covered ground like a jackrabbit, mindless of the spiny brush that slashed at my face and the rocks that tore at my hands. The arsonist heard me crashing down the slope and started moving faster. That was a mistake. I had grown up playing on slopes just like this, battering myself in the name of fun. I closed the gap quickly, getting to within fifty feet. The arsonist’s car was still a couple hundred yards away.

A thundering explosion came from the top of the hill and caused the arsonist to look back, taking his eyes off where he was going. He stumbled and went down hard, screaming. I screamed back, bellowing like a Viking. A wave of heat rolled down the slope and slammed into my back, but I didn’t turn. I knew exactly what that explosion meant; Sally was gone.

“Bastard!” I roared. I stooped and grabbed a hand-size chunk of rock with a wicked edge. The arsonist scrambled to his feet. Only fifteen feet of slope and five feet of elevation separated us. As the arsonist skirted a lava outcropping, I launched myself at his back like a tackle on Super Bowl Sunday.

My shoulder caught him dead center and he folded, air whoomphing out as my weight drove him into the edge of the lava bed. He bounced off with a fleshy thump and the cap went flying. Brown hair spilled around his shoulders and he flopped to the dust like a bundle of sticks. I landed on top of him, rolled off and got to my feet fast. I squared off with the arsonist, the sharp edged stone clutched in my hand, arm cocked and ready to drive it into his skull. Her skull, actually.

Laurel Harlan gripped her side and kicked at me as she scrabbled away on her haunches. The clothes she wore were men’s and far too large for her. The fall had left her dusty and ripped a hole in the knee of her jeans. Her always-perfect makeup was smeared and her hair was a tangled rat’s-nest. Blood leaked down her cheek from a scratch under her left eye. I watched her warily, the rock ready in my hand. I wanted so badly to use it! Then Laurel did something crazy. She laughed at me.

“Enjoy the barbecue?” she asked. “A little idea I stole from Michelle.” She grinned cruelly. “I know how much you loved that stupid car.”

“You almost killed Victor,” I panted, sweat dripping down my face, streaking through the dust and grit, stinging my eyes. The rock gouged into my hand, the weight of it begging to be brought down on Laurel’s skull. I blinked away the salt, not daring to take my eyes off her.

“Oh, my god!” she clapped a hand to her mouth and arched her brows. “How terrible! I am
so
sorry!” She dropped her hand to reveal a leering grin. She looked absolutely deranged. Her pupils were pin pricks and I could smell gin from where I stood. I wondered what she had downed with the booze? Whatever it was it had pushed her off the edge of sanity. “You’re next,” she said. “And then your little slut.”

“You’ve done all the killing you’re going to,” I promised, inching closer, lifting my rock. I thought of Winter’s mummified corpse and rage poured thick blood into my brain. My temples throbbed and my vision warbled. “How could you kill your own daughter?”

Laurel scooted back another foot. Her smile slipped off. “It was an accident. A terrible, horrible, terrible accident,” she said without a hint of sorrow, just an empty string of words. “An accident.” Her shoulders hit the boulder and she drew her knees up. Her eyes searched the barren spot we had landed in. I was smart enough to realize she was looking for a weapon.

“You buried her on my property.”

“Michelle did that,” she said, the rage flooding back into her voice and eyes. “I told her to get rid of her and she buried her fifty feet from my backdoor!”

“Winter,” I said. “Her name was Winter.”

“Winter!
” Laurel screamed at the top of her lungs. “I never wanted her. That was Kevin.
She was Kevin’s!”

“And you murdered her,” I cut in flatly. I couldn’t work up any more indignation. How can you be indignant with a snake?

Laurel glared at me.  “She fell. Down the stairs.” Her eyes never stopped probing the rocky scrap of ground. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. But I knew what the police would think. What people like
you
would think.”

“Was Kevin an accident?”

“You really are an idiot,” Laurel said with a laugh. “I didn’t kill Kevin. Oh, I
wanted
to bash his skull in when I found out he was banging your little slut. What he saw in that airhead I’ll never know.”

“Who did?” I wasn’t buying any of it. I was just waiting for Laurel to make a move so I could bash
her
skull in. I realized with a start that I wanted to kill her. That I would do it without remorse.

Laurel laughed, shrill and crazy. “You think this is a movie? Mystery of the Week? You’d be surprised, oh I can guarantee you that. You’d be
so
very surprised.”

“You’re not bright enough for a Mystery of the Week,” I told her, taking a step closer. “The prisons are full of trash who thought they were clever.” The flesh on Laurel’s face went tight to the bone and her teeth flashed like a dog’s. She snapped a kick into my bloody right knee and pain wrenched me out of my body. Laurel was wearing steel-toed boots. I wasn’t even conscious of falling until the ground knocked the wind out of me. I tried to stand, but my leg howled like an abscessed tooth and buckled under me.  

Laurel didn’t give me time to recover. She rolled to her feet, stooped down, and threw a punch at my head. I don’t know how I managed to get a forearm up in time, but her fist bounced off my arm sending a shock wave up to my shoulder and then she was on top of me, digging her hands into my hair, her knees on my chest, pinning me flat.

“Perfect little bitch!” she screamed as she jerked my head forward and then slammed it back, bouncing my skull off the rock. Starbursts and comets streaked through my vision. If Laurel had been stronger the fight would have been over and I would be dead. Luckily I was a hell of a lot tougher than she was. When she jerked my head forward to do it again, I punched her in the face, flattening her upper lip and snapping her head back. My second punch made her nose crunch and blood fly. She toppled off of me taking a double handful of my hair with her, ripping it out by the roots.

Laurel rolled over and pushed herself up to her knees, driven by fury. I know that because the same emotion was driving me. The pain in my knee was forgotten. The cuts, the bruises, Sally, it would all be worth it if I could wrap my fingers around that woman’s throat. I rolled to my knees and swung my rock at Laurel’s head. My aim was off, and I clipped her shoulder. She yelped and fell away, kicking at me. A steel toe hit my jaw and I was on my back again, dazed, tasting blood in my mouth.

Laurel used a pile of rocks to push herself up. We were both covered in dust and dirt and splattered with blood from Laurel’s now crooked and bleeding nose. Laurel’s lips were moving but no words came out, only a keening wail that sent shivers down my spine. Her eyes were sunk back in her skull, blood streaking her face and neck. Stupidly, I watched her pick up a wedge shaped chunk of rock. She took a step toward me, lifting the rock high. I gripped my own rock tighter and waited for an opening, waiting for Laurel to swing at me so I could get my own shot in. Not a good idea. I forgot about her feet. She kicked me in the ribs and I screamed. I lost my rock when she kicked me again, knocking the breath out of me, the pain freezing my right side.

Laurel looked down at me, blood dripping from the tip of her nose. It splattered on the rocks beside my head and started to puddle.

“You’re dead,” She said, lifting the rock high above her head. I threw up my arms, knowing she was right, wishing I had one more chance. Wishing I could take her with me. That’s when I saw Ben standing on the slope above us, his pistol in his hand.

Ben didn’t say anything. He took careful aim and shot Laurel in the side of the head.

Laurel lurched like she had been hit with a baseball bat. Blood and brain matter splattered the boulder behind her and her eyes went huge. She had a hole in her skull as big as a softball. For a frozen moment she stared down at me, the rock held in a loose grip, then she fell straight down like an imploded building. Her chin hit the rocks and she flopped backwards, her legs tucked under her. She twitched twice and then lay still, the rock still in her hand. 

I scrabbled away from the spreading pool of blood and vomited, my eyes locked on Laurel as if she might jump to her feet and yell ‘April-Fools.’  I gagged and choked and vomited again as Ben calmly picked his way down slope. He stopped beside Laurel’s corpse, his revolver loose in his fist.