Divas Do Tell (44 page)

“Be still, Trinket,” said Bitty, and I nearly cried with relief that she was alive and awake.

“We have to get out of here,” I said hoarsely.

“What do you think I’m trying to do? Stop wiggling so damn much. I can’t get your seat belt unfastened, and this water is rising fast. If we go much deeper, we won’t be able to get out.”

I remained as still as humanly possible when murky water is almost up to your chin and you can’t see a blamed thing but water all around you. As the water reached my mouth I strained to keep my chin up higher, and just as I thought I was going under Bitty got my seat belt undone, and I was free.

Somehow—and I’ll never know quite how she did it—she got us both out of the car before it was completely submerged. It went under with a sucking sound, almost dragging us with it as we flopped around in the lake. By now it was dark, no lights anywhere, clouds hiding the moon and obscuring any sense of direction. We were both disoriented.

“Which way is lake, and which way is land?” Bitty muttered as she struggled to keep us both afloat. I was a dead weight. My arms felt like lead, and my hands prickled as blood flowed slowly back into my extremities. All I could do was kick my feet and hope it helped.

“Let’s go back from where the car landed,” I suggested breathlessly. It’s hard to talk and try to keep your face out of the water.

“Do you think she’s still up there waiting and watching?” Bitty asked after a moment.

“I don’t know. I rather hope she’s burning in hell right now.”

We paddled for a few more minutes without talking. It took too much effort. Bitty had to help me since my circulation was slowed even more by the cold water. By the time we reached some weeds sticking up out of the water we were both exhausted. A few more feet and we could put our feet down and walk. We stumbled more than walked, but we managed to climb up onto a bank and just lay there, shivering and spent. I was amazed we hadn’t succumbed to hypothermia. I had no idea how long we’d been in the water, but knew that a few more minutes of it, and we’d both have been too cold to move and would have drowned.

My teeth were chattering when I sat up. Dirt and grit clung to my clothes, hands, and my left foot where I’d lost a shoe. I didn’t care.

“Come on,” I said to Bitty. “We need to get up and get moving or we’re going to freeze to death right here.” Since we couldn’t see each other we had to reach out to try to find one another in the dark.

“Follow the sound of my voice,” said Bitty after a moment.

Finally we connected. We held hands tightly, then hugged one another, then started trying to find our way back up the hill. It wasn’t easy. We had to pull ourselves by inches at times and still weren’t sure if we were going the right way. My biggest fear was that Sandra had hung around to make sure we drowned. If she had, she’d probably just shoot us to be sure we died.

After a moment Bitty said, “I hope Mira got away before she got back to finish her off.”

“If she did maybe the police will be out looking for us.”

“And maybe Sandra will be out looking for us.”

“It’ll be a miracle if we don’t die of exposure first.”

“Better than drowning,” answered Bitty.

Since that wasn’t an appealing thought, I shuddered. When we finally reached the top of the hill, we both had to rest. I lay on a clump of flattened grasses that crackled with my weight. If I could have pulled the stiff fronds over me like a blanket, I would have. Oddly enough, I’d stopped shivering. Maybe crawling up the embankment had warmed me up enough to keep me alive and going.

“Stay close to me,” said Bitty. “Body heat can warm us, I hope.”

We hugged, and when we got up and started walking down the gravel road again, we stayed close together. I had to limp along because of my lost shoe, and Bitty had lost both shoes, so we made slow progress. We walked in the grass when we could but some of it was so thick and overgrown it impeded our path, and we ended up back on the gravel. To compound our misery it began to rain.

I was back to shivering as the rain pelted us, and the gravel road turned to a quagmire that sucked at our feet and made walking a torture. We kept going by sheer determination, staggering along like drunk sailors, wet and woozy. I began to flag, wondering if we were going to make it or if they’d find our bodies alongside the road one day, bleached to nothing but bare bones.

“Look,” Bitty croaked. “Lights!”

We paused. Tiny pinpricks of light could barely be seen through the pouring rain. It was almost impossible to know where they were or how far. Any sense of direction I’d ever thought I had was obliterated. I didn’t know where north or south was, or if we were going deeper into the forest or toward Snow Lake Shores.

“Is it a house?” I asked after a minute and felt Bitty shake her head.

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“What if it’s where Sandra is?” I asked after a moment.

Bitty didn’t say anything. We both stared toward the lights without speaking for another moment. Finally she said, “We’ll find that out as we get closer. Come on. The longer we stand here in the rain the weaker I get. We have to do something, even if it’s wrong.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” I mumbled as I held onto her arm and limped alongside her.

“Sorry. I’m all out of comfort at the moment. All I can think about is going home and having a drink and a shower and getting into my nice, warm bed.”

It was the promise of rescue and warmth that kept us both going as we wobbled our way up the gravel road. When it turned to asphalt we almost cried with relief. Not only would we get off the harsh gravel under our bare feet, we must be going toward civilization instead of deeper into the trees.

Miraculously, the rain slackened off and the road got smoother, and we picked up our pace. Then car lights appeared out of nowhere, and we both dove for the ditch. If it was Sandra, we didn’t have a prayer of getting away.

The roar of the engine drew closer as we huddled in a ditch filled with rainwater and God only knew what else. The lights were blinding but provided enough illumination that I could see it was a truck. That let out Sandra unless she’d called for her driver, and I doubted even a hired ex-wrestler would want to be involved in murder and kidnapping.

As it got close the truck slowed down, and I heard the sweetest sound I’d heard in a long time: my name being called by a familiar voice.

I leaped up, shouting, “Here! We’re right here!”

Amazingly, the truck eased past me, then braked to a halt. Then Kit was out of the door and grabbing me, holding me close to him, his hands gripping my arms so tightly I couldn’t move.

“My God,” he said, “I can’t believe we found you.”

By the time he got that out of his mouth Jackson Lee was around the front of the truck and headed toward Bitty. She just sat in the ditch and looked up at him, her eyes as big as saucers in the headlights. He knelt beside her, brushed rain from her face, then gently picked her up and carried her to the truck.

I leaned against Kit, but I did let him help me up into the truck cab. Heat blasted out of the vents, and I put out my hands so close they should have been singed. I didn’t think I’d ever get warm again.

We sat in the back of the dual cab, me plastered to the heating vents and Kit folding a blanket that smelled of cow manure around me. As long as it was warm I didn’t care what it smelled like. Bitty must have felt the same way, because when Jackson Lee put a blanket from the back around her, she just sighed and snuggled into it.

“We’ve looked everywhere for you,” Kit said as I shivered deeper into the blanket. “For a while I thought you were . . . were gone.” His voice broke, and he had to clear his throat.

I looked up at him. “How did you know where to look for us?”

“Mira Waller,” Jackson Lee answered. “She said you had to be here somewhere close since Sandra walked back to the house.”

“Is Mira okay?” I asked.

“She’ll be fine.”

“And Sandra?” asked Bitty. “Where is she?”

“Gone. We don’t know where, but by God, we intend to catch her,” Jackson Lee said in such a grim tone that I knew Sandra’s days of freedom were numbered.

I just hoped she didn’t kill anyone else before she was captured.

Chapter 22

BITTY AND I SAT in big chairs with our bandaged feet up, cozy and smiling like Cheshire cats. A fire burned in her parlor grate, and we were out of the hospital at last. It felt good to be alive.

Kit and Jackson Lee had escorted us home, and after bringing us wine and books and any kind of food we wanted, they’d finally left us to recover in comparative peace. I looked over at Bitty.

“You sure you don’t mind me staying here for a while? Mama would wear herself out fussing over me, and I’d have to walk up the stairs to bed at night just to give her some sleep.”

“I’m glad you’re here, and I promise I’m not going to fuss over you. We can both sleep down here. These chairs make good beds with the ottomans pushed up close.”

Since I’d convalesced before on the very chair I was in at the moment, I nodded. “They do indeed. So what did your boys have to say?”

Bitty rolled her eyes. “That if I didn’t stop getting myself almost killed they’re dropping out of college and coming home to take care of me.”

I laughed. “That sounds just as I expected. Between them and Jackson Lee, you better stay out of trouble.”

Bitty eyed me over the head of her attached gargoyle. Chitling hadn’t left Bitty’s side since we’d come home from the hospital. “As if you can talk. Between your parents, Kit, and your daughter, you’ve had the same warning.”

“Yes, but I don’t think they have to worry. I have no intention whatsoever of ever getting involved in another murder. I don’t care if people are dropping like flies around me.”

“So you say now. What if it’s someone you know who gets murdered?”

“I knew some of the people Sandra murdered. Poor Abby. I think I feel worse about her than any of them.”

Bitty nodded. “I do, too. She had her life ahead of her. But you see that I was right, don’t you? I mean about it being a woman?”

I gave a very unladylike snort. “Right? You were so far off-base you weren’t even in the same ballpark.”

“You know I don’t watch or understand baseball.”

“But you do understand you weren’t even close when you said Dixie Lee or Mira Waller killed Billy Joe, Abby, and Buck.”

“Close enough. A woman killed all three of them, and she was from Hollywood. So I was almost right.”

“Is that like almost being pregnant?”

“Good lord, Trinket. You either are pregnant or you aren’t, and neither one of us are, so that’s not a valid argument.”

I smiled. It felt good to be arguing with Bitty again. We’d spent three days in the hospital without seeing each other. For my part, I’d slept the better part of three days, if you could call being woken up to take sleeping pills or check blood pressure or give blood, getting to sleep. I’d been more exhausted when I left than when I’d gone in, I think. Maybe not. By the time Kit and Jackson Lee got us to the hospital, Bitty and I both were barely functioning.

We were treated for hypothermia, exhaustion, cuts, bruises, and shock. Mira Waller had suffered reaction from the drug used to knock her out and had barely escaped with her life after Sandra got back to the house and saw that she was gone. Since she was tied up Mira hadn’t been able to go far, but had hid in a lower cabinet. It wasn’t until after Sandra fled the house for parts unknown that she was able to get to a phone and call for help.

Bitty gently stroked Chen Ling’s head, then looked up at me and said, “I never thought Sandra could be so wicked. I feel rather foolish for trusting her.”

“None of us did, so don’t feel foolish. Or at least, alone in feeling that way. Who would have thought she’d be so evil?”

“Well, she certainly was evil. I was just sure it was Dixie Lee who was behind all that. But she turned out to be having an affair with Johnny Payne, and now they’ve run off to some foreign city to get married. Cady Lee is her matron of honor. Who would have thought it?”

I shook my head. “Not me. After the way he talked about her when Rayna, Gaynelle, and I went down to Hickory Flat to ask him about sending death threats, I thought he’d just as soon shoot her as talk to her.”

“Maybe his divorce unhinged him so that he was willing to mess around with a former girlfriend,” Bitty suggested. “You’d think that he’d have been burned pretty good the first time, but apparently there are people who don’t learn their lesson well enough.”

I looked at her to see if she realized that she was a walking advertisement for people who don’t learn their lesson well enough the first time. It was obvious the irony went over her head, so I just sighed.

“As Aunt Imogene used to say, ‘Those who will not learn must suffer.’”

“I thought she used to say ‘Those who will not listen must suffer.’”

“Same principle. Either way, if you don’t learn quickly, you’re going to pay.”

After a moment Bitty said fiercely, “I hope Sandra gets what’s coming to her soon. She put us all through a lot of trouble and turmoil.”