Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 06 - Whiskey and Soda (31 page)

Nodding, I stood, also. Stevie picked up a tan trench coat that she had folded over a wingback chair and laughed.

“I don’t think this will be warm enough now, do you? Let me grab my parka.”

I took a few steps toward the front door and stopped. Contemplating the living room décor, I said, “Such a pleasant room. Did you put it together?”

Before I could say all the words, Stevie opened the coat closet. Hanging on the inside of the door was a crossbow. Built like a combination rifle and bow, it was nearly identical to the one my father had hunted with when I was a kid. It even had a similar scope for precision shooting, but this crossbow was loaded. My father had unloaded his after every use.

“Wow, you shoot a crossbow—” I began.

Pulling her parka from the hanger, Stevie froze, and my heart lurched. I knew enough about crossbows to appreciate both their accuracy and their force. Unlike conventional bows, they could be used to lethal effect by a person with no archery skill. A person who decided to kill another person by firing at him on his bicycle from the woodsy edge of an archery club.

“My dad had one of those,” I babbled. “Man, it is not easy to bag a buck. I admire you for hunting. Hey, let’s go eat!”

Stevie didn’t move.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” she said slowly. “And I really, really wish you hadn’t.”

Like my dad’s crossbow, this one no doubt required a little time to load, and that was why she kept an arrow in it with the safety on. Just in case she needed to defend herself or her kid or both of them. Who knew how Stevie’s mind worked? All I knew was she might want to kill me, so I had to go.

In a single motion, Stevie dropped her parka and spun toward the crossbow, snagging it from the door. Continuing the arc of movement, she turned the weapon in her hands, assumed shooting stance, released the safety, sited at me, and cocked.

I wasn’t standing still, but given her proximity to me and the distance to the front door, I knew I’d never make it out. So I did what any self-respecting expectant mother would do if cornered with a crossbow in a living room. I dove behind the big sofa. The crossbow pinged, and the upholstery exploded. I felt rather than heard the arrow erupt through the back side of the couch and bury itself in the plaster wall just inches above my bowed head. Foam and dust filled the air.

I could have been shot clean through. Only I wasn’t. I was alive and intact, and trapped in Stevie’s cottage. But, unless she had an arrow in hand and was deft at loading it, I might have time to get the hell out. I pulled myself to my feet and lunged toward the door, screaming so hard and long that my throat burned.

Stevie recoiled, her face twisted. She had already withdrawn another arrow. Notching it in would take maybe twenty seconds if her hands weren’t shaking. Twenty seconds would just about see me out the door and off the front porch. After that, I was running prey.

“Fuck!” Stevie yelled, fumbling the arrow. Then I flung open the door and threw myself into the howling wind. Pushing with all my might, I ran against the stinging wall of snow toward the mansion that housed The Bentwood School. Visibility had decreased since I’d been inside, and now the force of the weather was full in my face. I opened my mouth to call for help, but the wind sucked my voice away.

Alumni Hall was coming up on my left. My best chance would be to vanish inside and find someone, anyone, to help me. Hugging the building as I ran made me feel smaller and less like a target. My left palm grazed the wall, my heart thudding. She hadn’t shot me yet. Panting, I located the concrete steps to the main door and stumbled up them. I missed the top step and crashed onto my right knee. From somewhere not far enough behind me came the muffled zoop of a powerful bow being released. Flattening myself against the cement stoop, I vibrated with the arrow as it penetrated the wood siding near my neck.

“Help!” I shouted, pushing myself upright. The double door had no window. I tried the brass knobs. Locked. Pounding with both fists, I screamed again. My only option now was to run and to hope, once more, that my assailant would be slow to reload.

Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted Stevie standing on the green, notching another arrow. In the wind, her auburn hair stood out from her head like dancing snakes. Medusa with a lethal weapon, she had absolutely no reason to quit.

I pounded the sidewalk toward the main building, which seemed unfairly far away considering a crazy woman was firing a crossbow at me, and my right knee hurt like hell. Snow still blasted my face, forcing me to turn my head sideways as I ran. My eyes watered, my nose leaked, my lungs ached. No question that I was slower than I’d ever been in my life, and yet I was running for my life. Running for two lives.

A man’s voice reached my ears, his words muted and blurred by the wind. The sound came again, like a chant. I could see no one ahead of me, and, oh, how I longed to see anyone.

Suddenly a blonde blob emerged like a shot from around the far side of the mansion, bolting down the middle of the green. The man called again, and this time I understood him.

“Abra!”

My shaken brain put it together. Jeb had lost control of our bitch in the parking lot. She was running free, and he was running after her straight into the path of an arrow about to be fired with deadly force. The good news was that my family had arrived when I needed them. The bad news was that we were all in mortal danger, and two of us didn’t even know it.

My fiancé appeared, running hard after our Afghan hound.

“Jeb!” I waved frantically. “Jeb! Be careful!”

He spotted me, waved and slowed. I wasn’t sure he saw Stevie or grasped her intent. Jeb was used to my chasing Abra, so seeing me run might not strike him as strange. Today I was supposed to be with a friend. Instead I was being hunted by one.

“Be careful!” I shouted again into the gale. I was still running alongside Alumni Hall, aiming toward the nearest part of mansion. “Stevie’s trying to kiiiiiiiilll meeeeeeee!”

Whether or not he understood my words, he accelerated, charging in a diagonal path straight for me. Making himself a clear target for Stevie. Would she kill him? Was she desperate enough now to take out anyone who got in her way? Or would Jeb’s arrival jolt her back to her senses?

Abra chose that instant to rhoo-rhoo, her eerie bark rising on the wind.

“Fucking dog!” I heard Stevie cry.

When I turned my head, I saw Abra like a yellow missile launching herself toward the wild woman with the crossbow cocked in her hands.

“No!” I shrieked.

But the wind swallowed my prayer.

Everything that ever made sense suddenly didn’t. A nice person, the only new friend I’d made in months, was a cold-blooded killer, and the moment I figured that out, she tried to murder me.

Thank god she didn’t kill my dog. When Abra vaulted straight into Stevie’s face, she knocked the crossbow to the ground before Stevie could pull the trigger. Jeb reached me seconds later and held me tight as I gasped for breath between hysterical sobs. Meanwhile, Abra contained the killer, intimidating her with snarls and snapping jaws rarely seen in an Afghan hound. Don’t let the breed fool you. They manage their energy, and they know how to get what they want.

Abra’s barks attracted attention. My screams helped. The rear door of The Bentwood School opened, and adults spilled out, led by George Bentwood and Loralee Lowe. Jeb called Jenx on his cell phone; she would alert all authorities. I heard Bentwood shout to his teachers that the school was now in lockdown, but a student burst past him through the door. Coatless, Tate McCoy dashed into the blowing snow and down the green toward his prone mother, calling for her. Two young men I hadn’t met bolted after him. Before he could reach Stevie, they caught and restrained Tate, who kicked hard. I later learned that they were education majors observing classes for a college course. No doubt their time at The Bentwood School taught them volumes.

Jenx was first officer at the scene. Brady and Roscoe arrived right behind her, followed shortly by paramedics and the Michigan State Police. Jeb kept reminding the EMTs attending me that I was pregnant, as if they couldn’t tell. My right knee was bruised and swollen, and I did show signs of shock. Otherwise, I emerged unscathed. Or, as I liked to put it, un-penetrated by any arrow.

Once Abra was pulled off criminal containment duty, Stevie tried to kick, hit, and bite her human captors. She required a sedative before they could cuff and transport her. By comparison, her son’s arrest at Vestige had been downright uneventful.

In the days that followed, we learned a lot about Tate McCoy and his troubled mother. As Anouk had theorized, the engraved gold bangle found near the Rail Trail did indeed belong to the killer, who was one of Bentwood’s sexual conquests. We had all been misled by the coincidence of an arrow fired from
Tir à l’Arc.
Stevie was no archer, just a reasonably experienced crossbow hunter on a mission.

A free spirit when she was young, Stevie never planned to have children. The marriage she mentioned to me was a mere blip right out of college. In her thirties, she met George Bentwood, and that relationship became the love of her life, or at least her single obsession.

For Bentwood, though, Stevie and Anouk filled exactly the same purpose. They were on-again, off-again mistresses whom he enjoyed year after year. Along the way, Tate “happened,” as did Anouk’s two kids. In essence, Anouk and Stevie shared Bentwood until Loralee replaced them both. While Anouk could afford to give him up, Stevie relied on George—emotionally and professionally. Tate, who had learning issues, needed the small class size and individual attention afforded by The Bentwood School. As long as Stevie worked there, she could send Tate for free, and, courtesy of George, she had access to heavily subsidized on-campus housing.

“Sure, Stevie knew about George’s scams at the school,” Jenx said. “She directed publicity and managed their web site and social media, remember?”

The chief and I were sharing a booth and updates on the Vreelander case over a couple mugs of peppermint mocha at the Goh Cup. Four days had passed since the showdown at The Bentwood School. Another winter storm had rolled through, and that one had blanketed the ground with a few downy inches. Now, two days before Christmas, the sky was as blue as George Bentwood’s eyes, and the mood in downtown Magnet Springs matched the holiday music piped into the streets.

“Stevie saw herself as Bentwood’s ally, if not his savior,” I theorized. “And she contrived a plan to rid the school of Vreelander, who was hellbent on exposing lies and fixing weaknesses.”

“She needed to keep the school going to keep her job,” Jenx said. “But there was a lot more to her plan than killing the headmaster. She stole the contents of his school office so nobody could read his notes.”

“That’s why his office was bare when you checked it,” I said.

The chief nodded. “Stevie also stole his cell phone, which he left in his desk drawer. She made the Blitzen poster and put his number on it.”

“But how did she get Anouk’s photo from the Rail Trail for the poster?”

“Anouk texted her fellow archers, remember? That included Robin. Robin texted the PTO, and Stevie—duh—is a member.”

I gasped. “Of course she is. Her son goes to the school. But why make the poster? What was the point?”

“Stevie wanted to confuse the issue, to deflect attention away from the school.”

“She got the PTO moms excited, all right,” I recalled. “They were almost ready to lynch me at that assembly.”

Jenx slurped her mocha. “Stevie also wrote the note you found on your car the night you had dinner with her.”

“Huh? She arrived at the restaurant before I did, and left after.”

Then I remembered her taking a long mid-meal break, presumably to go to the bathroom. Given how mild the weather was that night, I wouldn’t have noticed reddened cheeks or hands when she sneaked back inside.

“What was the point of the note on my car?”

“She wanted to create drama and mess with your head.”

“Back up. You say Stevie stripped Mark’s school office looking for what she needed. Who ransacked his home office?”

“Stevie. After she pushed Pauline down the basement stairs. We got that much from Pauline, who, by the way, likes the roses you sent. She’ll be in the hospital a few more days, but she said to tell you she’s ready to sign the listing papers.”

Jenx explained that Stevie had rung Pauline’s doorbell an hour before the widow’s appointment with me. It was also Stevie at the door the day I waited upstairs in Mark’s office near the end of Pauline’s house tour. On both occasions, Pauline refused Stevie entry. She didn’t want a visit from anybody at The Bentwood School, but Stevie was desperate to know what Mark kept in his home office. After Pauline denied her access the second time, Stevie sneaked around the back of the house and admitted herself, using a copy she’d made of Loralee’s old house key, ‘borrowed’ without Loralee’s knowledge.

Pauline heard Stevie coming in. The two argued, and Stevie struck Pauline in the head with a skillet as Pauline moved toward the wall phone to call 9-1-1. Stevie shoved the unconscious woman down the basement stairs. After that, she tossed Mark’s office and grabbed anything that looked potentially dangerous to George or the school.

“Stevie took the skillet, too, and she remembered to wear gloves,” Jenx said. “Like you never do. The State Boys couldn’t find her prints on anything. She screwed up, though. She was sure she’d killed Pauline, but Pauline lived to identify her.”

I sipped my peppermint mocha, which smelled and tasted even better this year than last. Either Peg had a new recipe, or I owed the pleasure to being pregnant.

“What about Loralee?” I said. “What was she doing in Vreelander’s home office right after I finished my tour?”

“Loralee admitted to me that she let herself in with her old key, the one she used when she lived in the house, back when it belonged to George.”

“The key Stevie copied,” I guessed. “That’s breaking and entering.”

“Pauline won’t press charges. Loralee only did it because George Bentwood sent her. He didn’t know Stevie was on the same mission.”