Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 (27 page)

“Don’t go out there,” Roger cried. “The whole wing may go anytime.”

“I’ll hurry.” I threw it over my shoulder. I dashed
through the upper central hall and ran down the corridor—the sloping corridor—-to my room. I grabbed a cotton robe for Miranda and some dry clothing for me. Back in the music room we slipped my robe around Miranda and tucked her into a blanket on one of the mattresses Lyle and Roger had brought.

It was nice to have a task to cling to, something to think about besides the pounding of the rain and the slam of the winds against the house and the gun that I should have found. With each surge of water the central part of the house shuddered.

How much more could this wounded structure withstand?

It wasn’t until we had Miranda as comfortable as possible and I had ducked into a dark corner to dry myself off and re-dress that I paid any attention to the room and its occupants.

Rosalia knelt at the foot of Miranda’s mattress, her hands gently smoothing the blanket. Valerie sat beside the mattress, holding one of Miranda’s limp hands in hers. Enrique remained hunched by the window. His eyes were closed, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. Trevor leaned against the piano, but his head was up and he was listening. I could feel his fear all the way across the room. Roger and Lyle huddled under blankets. Each held a mug in his hands.

God, yes. Something hot to drink, to fight the chill that bit deep into my bones. I was halfway across the room to the table with its array of thermoses when I suddenly stopped.

“Burton. Where’s Burton?” I looked at Betty.

“I hunted for him, Mrs. Collins. Just like you
told me to. I went to his room”—she pointed toward the other wing—“and I checked Mr. Prescott’s study, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I called for him and then I was going to go downstairs. I didn’t know where he could be, but I wanted to find him and ask him to come here like you told me to and I got to the top of the stairs. That’s when you were bringing Mrs. Prescott up the steps. If I hadn’t waited for you to come up the stairs, I would have gone down and I would be in the water.”

Damn Burton. He wouldn’t be any help, but this was by far the safest place to be.

“I can’t see any reason why he would have gone downstairs,” I said briskly. “So he’s up here somewhere. We’ve just missed him. I’ll go to his room. Why don’t you take another look in the study? Did you have a flashlight with you?”

Betty shook her head.

I gave her a flashlight.

It only took a minute to cross the hall—at a greater slant now—and check the secretary’s room. When I opened the door, I knew immediately that he wasn’t there. A window had blown in, shattering glass across the bed. Waves of rain swept inside, drenching the spread and the carpet.

My flashlight beam danced from the bed to the dresser to the desk. I walked that way and saw the briefcases he’d stuffed with folders sitting open on the desk. They, too, were wet, the luxuriant leather sodden.

As I watched, a black snake curled over the lip of one briefcase. The reptile lifted its head, looked toward me.

I stumbled backward. The light flickered from the desk to the windowsill. A cottonmouth oozed over the sill. I aimed the flash down between the bed and the window. A tangle of snakes quivered, a dark shivery mass on the floor. A water moccasin, with that identifiable pit-viper mouth, slithered from beneath the bed.

I whirled around, ran toward the door.

The snakes were fleeing from the flood, seeking sanctuary wherever they could.

I could imagine them crawling over the house, under the eaves, onto the roof.

I hurried out the door, slammed it behind me.

And that’s when the scream rose, high and hideous.

T
he tip of Burton’s tongue stuck out between his teeth.

I saw that first.

We arrived at the study at the same moment and clustered in the doorway—Roger, Trevor, Lyle, and I—our flashlights aimed at the motionless figure sprawled on the floor between the desk and a bank of filing cabinets. The top drawer in the middle cabinet was pulled out.

Betty huddled against the wall, just inside the door, trembling. “He must have been there all the time,” she whimpered, raising terrified eyes to us.

I looked at my watch. A quarter-past ten. I’d set out to look for Miranda and sent Betty in search of Burton for the first time about an hour earlier.

The maid pressed back against the wall. “Last time I just poked my head in the door and called.
Nobody answered and it was all dark. Then I heard you calling for help, Mrs. Collins, and I didn’t even think about him again.” She looked down at the flashlight in her hand. “But this time I had the light and I saw his feet.”

She swung the cone of light to the highly polished brown leather tassel loafers, then along Burton’s body to his face. He was lying chestdown, but his face was turned toward us, resting on his right temple and jaw. So the poked-out tongue, blood thick at the tip where he’d bitten himself, was easy to see. But this time it wasn’t a taunt. When Burton’s assailant struck him down—and the bloody misshapen swelling behind his left ear was easy enough to see—the blow had jolted Burton’s head forward and the reflexive movement of the floor of his mouth had thrust his tongue between his closing teeth.

“Oh, God,” Trevor moaned.

I was the first to break out of our frozen tableau.

In a couple of strides I reached Burton. I knelt by him and with a ghastly sense of déjà vu picked up a limp hand to seek a pulse.

Lyle followed. His flash revealed the drops of blood spattered on Burton’s downy stubble of blond beard.

“He’s still alive.” But his pulse was slow and erratic. I wondered how far the hematoma had spread, how much pressure was being exerted on the brain. Burton needed medical care immediately.

“If the Coast Guard comes …” I didn’t finish. Any reasonable chance of rescue had ended when the storm struck.

Roger dropped down beside me. “Could he have fallen, hit his head on the desk?”

I gave him a level look. “How? What do you suggest? Practicing a backward flip without a pool? Levitation gone wrong? Look at him. He’s lying in the wrong direction to have fallen and struck anything.”

Roger’s face reddened. “I thought maybe he lost his balance, something like that.”

I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I swept my light in a gradually widening circle around Burton.

Nothing is ever new under the sun, of course, but I thought this might qualify as a highly unusual means of attack, the kind of weapon that would delight even jaded police reporters.

The slender marble statuette of Aphrodite had been flung away. A white gash scarred the gleaming parquet floor. The artwork had skidded, scoring a several-inches-long path, then lodged against the clawfoot of a spider-legged table. Blood and flesh and hair clumped on the three-inch-square bronze base.

I remembered watching Chase’s hand close around the base of a statuette. I lifted the light, swept it across the mantel. The statuette was one of a pair. Its twin was still in place.

But the most telling evidence of all, the most meaningful, was the unstained beige cotton washcloth, thick and fluffy, lying a scant inch or two from Burton’s polished loafers. I understood its significance immediately.

Roger pointed at the statuette. “Oh, God, look at the blood.”

Lyle looked instead at the still, crumpled slight
figure. “Why him? Why the hell go after him? Chase, yeah, somebody might have a reason.”

As you did
, I thought,
as you did
,

“But Burton? That’s weird.”

“Yeah, somebody’s crazy, crazy as a loon.” Trevor’s self-control cracked. “Listen, don’t anybody come near me.” He was backing out into the hall. “Do you hear, don’t anybody come near me!”

He was close to collapse, the collapse of a man who’d never in his life faced danger or horror. I turned toward him. I could only dimly see a shape behind the shaking flashlight. “Trevor, we’re all going to stay together from now on. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of one another.”

“Oh, yeah, just like we took care of Chase. Somebody damn sure took care of Chase. Listen,” he said feverishly, “I don’t know anything. I don’t know who killed Chase. I don’t know anything about Burton. Hell, I was with you when the bastard shot at Chase. I don’t know a damn thing.”

“Then you should be quite safe. Why don’t you escort Betty back to the music room, Trevor? We’ll all be along in just a moment.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” The lawyer turned and headed up the hall. He didn’t wait for Betty.

She hesitated.

“Go with Mr. Dunnaway, Betty. We’ll take care of everything here.” I was glad to see them go. I couldn’t watch everyone at once, and I needed to be quite certain that I didn’t miss a thing; when it came time to move Burton. The odious little man might die, but I damn sure didn’t want to give his attacker another crack at him. It wouldn’t take much: pressure
on one of the carotid arteries, a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth, his nostrils pinched shut….

Someone was going to be devastated to know that Burton still lived. I wished I’d had the wit to look swiftly about when I announced he was alive. But I hadn’t.

From this moment on I had one priority: to protect Burton.

“When the going gets tough …” Lyle drawled. He didn’t bother to hide his disgust at Trevor’s behavior. “First thing I’m going to do when we get back to Atlanta is fire that jerk.” There was an instant of silence, then he slanted a look at Roger. “If that’s okay, boss.”

Roger stood very still. He wasn’t smiling. His gaze locked with Lyle’s. “Yeah, Trevor’s a jerk.” He spoke thoughtfully. “Dad thought he was a hell of a lawyer. I don’t know if physical courage has to be included in a lawyer’s job description. But we’re a long way from having to worry about that right now, Lyle. Right now we need to worry about Burton and whether we can keep him alive until help comes.” He shook his head. “Burton! I can’t believe anybody’d deliberately try to hurt him.”

Perhaps I’m cursed—or blessed—with a cynical mindset. It seemed to me that both Roger and Lyle were being more than a little disingenuous in their exclamations of surprise that the unctuous little secretary was a victim. The guilty person would be delighted to convince everyone that it must be a crazed killer, thus discouraging speculation about what Burton might have done to invite violence.

Because I suddenly felt confident that I knew the reason behind this attempted murder.

It all went back to the flurry of shots fired at Chase on Friday morning. I was sure of it. I didn’t say it aloud. But I would have bet a Coast Guard rescue vessel I was right.

“As you say, Roger, we’ll worry about what happened to Burton later. Right now I want to—”

The house shuddered, then gave a screech of agony like a living thing dismembered.

The floor beneath us tilted.

“Oh, Christ, the house is going, she’s going!” Lyle shouted.

Time expands when the mind confronts mortal danger.

It has happened to me before. Once when a guerrilla lifted a submachine gun to fire at a party of journalists; once when a hijacker grappled with a pilot and the airplane plummeted out of control; once when a gunman darted from a crowd, his pistol aimed at the President.

Time and distance were meaningless, as if each instance would last forever.

And this moment.

The images in my mind and heart were always the same: Richard’s laughing face and the touch of my mother’s hands and Emily’s bell-like laughter.

Those experiences convinced me that nothing matters—nothing truly matters—in life except people. Not money, not fame, not challenge, not despair, not hatred, not power—only the people who have loved you and whom you love.

The floor stopped heaving. A last tremor rippled through the wood.

I don’t know how long we crouched where we had fallen—yes, the jolt was that strong—before Roger spoke. “Good God, what do you suppose that was?”

Lyle swung his flashlight toward the door.

Water lapped over the doorsill.

“The south wing. It’s gone.” I managed to keep my voice even, but I couldn’t keep the shock out of it though I had covered Camille and knew too well what hurricanes could do—knocking off this portion or that of a hotel, destroying one house, leaving the one next door untouched. There is a capriciousness, an unexpectedness about hurricanes that makes them that much more terrifying. “We’ve got to get back to the music room.” I didn’t tell Lyle and Roger about the snakes. Maybe we’d be lucky. At the very least we should have a few minutes before the desperate reptiles clinging to the central portion of the house found this new raw wound to enter.

I didn’t have to urge the men to hurry. It took only minutes to fold a card table, gently lift Burton’s battered head, and slide him onto it. Roger and Lyle carried the table while I held Burton’s legs up and as straight as I could manage. We could only hope that Burton hadn’t suffered a neck or spinal injury. But we had no choice. We had to move him to the safest area.

I pointed the flashlight toward the floor. It helped Roger and Lyle see their way. It helped me watch for snakes. So far, so good. But I didn’t breathe easily until we’d cautiously maneuvered our burden down
the hall and into the music room and closed the door behind us.