RESORT TO MURDER (12 page)

"Mmmm," Dyna nodded, "like a rock.
Everything's back in balance again."

"I'm glad. Did you order yet?"

"Just juice and coffee.” Dyna indicated the
two carafes on their table. Maggie reached for the coffee and
poured out a steaming cupful for herself. She knew by now that Dyna
would stick with juice alone, spurning the less healthy
caffeine.

After the waiter took their orders, Maggie
sat back in her chair and took a long sip from her cup. Dyna
glanced over at the nearby pool, its blue water now empty and
calm.

"This makes me think of a vacation I went on
with my folks once - to Jamaica."

"Really? What about the Highview reminds you
of Jamaica?"

"Well, there's a mountain area there - I
forget what it's called. Port Something-or-other. Anyway, the other
side of the island from Montego Bay. We stayed at this place that
had tables out like this, and mountains around us. It was really
pretty. More flowers than here, though. Big, bright ones."

"Sounds nice."

"Mmm, it was.” Dyna stretched her arms above
her head, then ran her fingers through her hair, apparently
unconcerned with how she rearranged it. She wore yellow and white
today in the shape of an oversized shirt and snug shorts, with a
few chains of colored beads draped from her neck.

"I was eighteen then, and I remember Dad was
trying to convince me to try college. `Just for a year,' I remember
him saying. I guess he hoped once I started I'd be hooked or
something. He almost had me convinced, too. I mean, I didn't know
what else to do with myself at that time."

At
that
time? Maggie was tempted to
tease, but held her tongue.

"But then we went down to
Kingston to look around the shops and stuff. That's where I found
this most amazing woman. She not only could tell me all about
myself - things she couldn't have
ever
known - she told me about
my
past
lives
too. It was like she could look right into my soul, you
know?”

Maggie didn't know, but she nodded, thinking
that her friend certainly made interesting early morning
conversation.

Dyna leaned back in her chair. "Well, after
an experience like that, there was no way I was going to sit in
class to study the usual earth-bound, mundane things. That's when I
knew I wanted to find out all about witchcraft - the good kind -
and paranormal things. There's a place up in New Hampshire, a
school you can go to, did you know that?"

"No, I didn't."

Dyna exhaled heavily, blowing wispy bangs up
off her forehead. "I went there, and I tried, I really did. But
sometimes you have to admit you just don't have a talent for
something, no matter how badly you want to do it."

Maggie wasn't sure if she should offer
sympathy or congratulations. But since their food arrived at that
time, she simply offered a bagel. Dyna brightened immediately and
reached for it, her career woes quickly forgotten.

Maggie glanced down at the plate in front of
her and called the waiter back. "I'm afraid you brought me the
wrong order. I asked for the eggs well-done, not sunny side up.”
Maggie looked at the two soft, yellow yolks jiggling on top of the
eggs and stifled a shudder.

"Oh, gosh, I'm sorry!” The young waiter
looked embarrassed and apologized as he took Maggie's plate away,
rushing back to the kitchen.

"He's new, isn't he?" Dyna asked as she
watched him go. "Maybe they hired him to replace, Lori, 'cause I
don't think I've seen him before."

The waiter, whose name tag Maggie noticed
said "Chuck", brought the correct order to the table and apologized
again for the mistake. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with sandy
hair that fell over his forehead. She also noticed his hands were
shaking as he set the plate down, and she smiled at him
reassuringly. It was tough, she knew, breaking in on a new job.

She put her fork into her new eggs and
nodded with satisfaction as it hit solid yolk. Old habits die hard,
she thought, aware that the only reason she couldn't bear soft eggs
was because her brother Joe had once compared them to something
jellyfish back at the age of seven, turning her off them
forever.

"You know," Maggie said, "it's funny that
you said your folks were eager for you to go to college. Mine, I
think, would have been delighted if I'd stayed home after high
school and just worked in the bakery with them."

"Yeah?"

"Mom, especially. I think it was fear of the
unknown. She'd been kept close to home by my grandparents, who were
immigrants, and college must have been a strange, scary world to
her, a place she didn't want to put her daughter into. If it
weren't for the partial scholarship I won, and my high school
counselor urging them to send me, I might not have gone, or at
least would have had a much harder time of it. Even then, they
insisted I live at home and commute."

"That's funny. It's like we were both born
into the wrong set of parents. Maybe we were switched at birth, or
should have been."

Maggie wondered how her conservative parents
would have enjoyed having a daughter interested in witchcraft, and
her lips twitched at the thought. She turned back to her food,
scooping up the last of her eggs and chewing quietly at her bagel.
When she reached the point of her second cup of coffee, Maggie held
up Lori's journal to show Dyna. She explained what it was and how
she got it.

"You've read it?" Dyna asked.

"Yes. Unfortunately Lori's privacy doesn't
exist anymore, and if I gave it to the sheriff unread, who knows
how long it might languish in a drawer before anyone did anything
about it."

"Yeah. So what did you find out from
it?"

Maggie let out a sigh. "Not
a whole lot, I'm afraid. She writes about things that happened
here, but after a while she goes into a kind of shorthand using
initials instead of names. And she doesn't give full details of an
incident. But then, she wasn't writing for anyone but herself,
and
she
knew what
she was writing about."

"Bummer.” Dyna took a final bite of
bagel.

Maggie nodded. "It's frustrating."

"So it's not any help?"

"Well, some.” Maggie told Dyna about the
entry mentioning

"R."

"R," Dyna said, her brow wrinkling. "Do you
think she means Rob?"

"I don't know. She could.” Maggie frowned.
She realized she didn't want it to mean Rob, but hated to admit it.
She looked at Dyna. "I had dinner with him last night."

"With Rob?"

Maggie nodded.

"Did you find out anything more?"

"Well, I found out he has a low opinion of
Eric Semple, the guy who came up to me on the path yesterday. He
was the one we heard Rob shouting at.” Maggie paused, then added
with a smile. "I also found out he likes kids a lot. He'd like to
have his own tennis camp someday."

Dyna looked at her friend for a moment,
tilting her head. "Hey, are you falling for this guy?"

"No!" Maggie answered too quickly, then
repeated again a more controlled, "No. It just happens that there's
a rather nice side to him. If it turns out he killed Lori, of
course, that wouldn't matter. That would cancel everything out. But
I'm just trying to keep an open mind. Innocent until proven, you
know. I'm trying to be logical."

"Right, 'cause that's what you're good at -
logic. I mean, with your math and all."

Maggie nodded, but her mind wandered to the
image of Rob sitting across from her at the table last night, his
blue shirt picking up the blue in his eyes. It lingered there for
just a moment, until she brought it back to the present. Logic,
yes, logic.

Chuck came back to their table, and they
waited in silence as he began to clear the dishes. Suddenly though,
while reaching for something, he knocked a water glass over and
Maggie quickly grabbed at Lori's journal to keep it from getting
soaked.

"I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!" he
apologized. He was at least getting good at that. His ears reddened
and he looked flustered. "Did I get your book wet?"

Maggie shook her head. "No, it's OK."

He mopped up the water with more stammerings,
then escaped a final time to the kitchen.

"I think you're right,” Maggie said with a
smile after he had gone. "He must be new.” She gathered up her
things and stood up. "I'd better get this over to the sheriff's.
Want to come?"

Dyna wrinkled her nose. "No thanks. I think
I'll hang around here. I might join the aerobics class at ten."

"OK. I'll see you later then.” Maggie stood
up, gathering her things, and caught sight of their young waiter at
the back of the patio. He was saying something to Kathryn Crawford
who looked her usual grim self, and whose gaze was aimed over his
shoulder directly at Maggie. Had she seen his accident, Maggie
wondered, and was she chewing him out about it? He, however, seemed
to be doing all the talking.

Maggie turned to leave, but before she could
take a step a small-sized head and shoulder suddenly bumped her
sharply from behind. She nearly lost her balance and grabbed onto
the table.

"Oh, sorry!” Tyler, one of the twins from
the tennis lesson, stood before her gasping, but the look on his
face showed he assumed she would think it was just as much fun as
he did. He picked up Lori's book for her, which had fallen to the
slate, then ran on his way. His laughing twin brother soon
followed, and Maggie quickly stepped out of the way.

Before she had time to catch her breath, Rob
Clayton appeared from behind the hedge. "Where did those two devils
go?" he asked her. He tried to look severe, but he obviously was
enjoying himself as much as the boys.

"They went that-a-way," Maggie said,
pointing to the other corner of the hedge leading to the parking
lot.

"Thanks. I'll let them think they got away,
then I'll pounce on them," he said with a wink, then disappeared
around the hedge, hot on their trail.

Maggie looked at Dyna, laughed and shrugged.
"Well, I'm off. Again."

"Maggie," Dyna called to her after a moment.
When Maggie turned she said, "I just thought I should remind you.
Kids and animals almost always are crazy about the town drunk."

Maggie laughed, and nodded, but Dyna's face,
for once, was serious.

As Maggie climbed into her Dodge Shadow,
Dyna's words echoed through her mind. It was true, she admitted,
putting the car in gear and backing out of the parking spot.
Everyone tends to think you're wonderful if kids like you, but kids
- and animals - can't and don't look too deeply.

She pulled onto the white
gravel driveway and reached for a sourball from the bag in the
console. She drove the twisting roadway, winding her way through
the trees, and finally came to the end where the white clapboard
sign hung. However, she argued with herself, kids
do
have instincts. Often
quite good ones.

Maggie unwrapped the cellophane from her
candy, then turned onto the mountain road, popping the sourball
into her mouth at the same time. Tangy orange. The road was as
empty as it had been the other times she drove on it. Maggie took
the sharp turns at a leisurely pace, keeping several feet between
her car and the guard rail on the right. The sun dappled soft
patterns through the trees, and her thoughts soon returned to Rob
Clayton. She reran their conversation of the previous night.

She had just come to the part she liked
best, their discussion of teaching methods and kids, when something
caught her eye in the rear view mirror. A large blue van had
suddenly appeared on the road behind her. Her eyes turned back to
the road as she tried to pick up her thoughts, but in a moment her
gaze returned to the mirror. The van had gained on her. Too
quickly.

She glanced back and forth several times
from the twisting road in front of her to the van reflected in the
mirror. It was now close behind her. Uncomfortably close. Maggie
pressed down on the accelerator and felt herself taking curves at a
speed that made her pulse quicken. Another car shot toward her from
around a curve in the opposite lane, edging over the center line,
and Maggie jerked her car away from it. The van kept pace.

She tried to see who was driving, but the
sun reflected off the dusty windshield, hiding whoever was behind
it. Slow down, she muttered, anger building. Back off! Maggie's
tires squealed as she rounded a tight curve. She instinctively put
her foot on the brake, and as she slowed the van pulled even with
her.

She couldn't believe it! Were they crazy,
trying to pass her on this twisty road? Maggie imagined a tanker
truck coming towards them, just around the bend, and broke into a
sweat. Her hands gripped the wheel tightly.

Much of the light was blocked off from her
window as the van moved closer to her, looming only inches away.
Suddenly Maggie felt a bone-jarring thud. My God, what are they
doing!

She grabbed at the wheel as it slipped
through her hands. Another sickening thud. The steering wheel spun,
and Maggie saw a blur of trees as her car aimed straight for the
guard rail and the steep slope beyond.

***

CHAPTER 14

The silence was near-perfect, until slowly,
tentatively, a single bird began to peep somewhere high in a tree.
Maggie's head lay against the steering wheel, unmoving, as the lone
bird's chirping was joined by others. Hot sunlight beat through the
windshield, and one hand moved up to wipe a drop of sweat trickling
toward her eye. She became aware of a lump in her left cheek and
touched it with her tongue. Tangy orange - the sour ball she had
popped in her mouth just minutes ago. She waited until her
heartbeat slowed closer to normal, taking long, deep breaths,
listening to the birds, feeling but not thinking, then eased
upright and blinked, looking around.