Heart-Shaped Box (Claire Montrose Series) (30 page)

Those who opted to stay would not only get free lodging that night, but the bill for their entire stay would be torn up. Each guest who chose to remain would also receive a coupon good for a three-day stay at a later date. As an added enticement, they were reminded of the glories that evening’s fireworks show - the biggest, they were assured, in Oregon. Possibly even west of the Mississippi, according to one of the more eager assistant managers. There were more inducements offered - casino scrip, a midnight buffet - but looking around, Claire thought that they probably weren’t needed. Most of her old classmates wanted nothing more than to be with each other, to tell each other the stories of where they had been when each event had taken place, to rehearse again their terror and relief.

###

Claire and Dante, on the other hand, decided to leave. Claire felt she would only be able to finally sleep in her own house, in her own bed. But as they packed, she moved more and more slowly as she began to see the holes in Martha’s theory that Logan must be the killer. For one thing, if Belinda had really been so afraid of Logan, would she have even let him into her room?

And why had Belinda left her room? Vanessa had said when she came back to their shared hotel room to change for dinner, her mother had been gone. As she sobbed in Claire’s arms, the girl had said she thought her mother had decided to attend the reunion, even though Belinda had been a weepy mess just a few hours before. And Tyler had said that a surveillance tape had showed Belinda walking past the casino in the early evening. But could there be another explanation?

Claire finished packing and sat down on the edge of the bed. “How much would you say Belinda and her daughter looked alike?”

“
Quite a -” Dante stopped as he saw where she was going. “You’re thinking about the tape, aren’t you?”

“
What if Tyler just assumed Belinda was on that tape because Vanessa had already told him her mother wasn’t in the room? But you’ve seen how much they look alike. And what about what Vanessa was wearing last night?”

“
That black leather jacket.” Dante stopped folding the pair of slacks he held in his hands.

“
Belinda’s jacket. And then there’s something else. Vanessa told me that when she went in their hotel room to get ready for dinner, the heat had been turned up until it was incredibly hot. She had to turn off the heat and crank up the air-conditioning to make it bearable.”

“
But why would Belinda do that?” Dante asked. He put his pants in the suitcase and then zipped it closed.

“
Maybe Belinda didn’t.” Claire’s brain was racing so far ahead that she didn’t bother to explain what she was thinking. “How does Tyler know when she was killed?” she demanded. “How do they fix the time of death?”

Dante sat down in the chair opposite Claire. She had his full attention now. “Partly by when she was last seen, I would think.”

“
But we know that might be wrong.”

“
Don’t they look at the stomach contents during the autopsy?” He answered his own question. “Except for she was so upset she might not have eaten anything. So - what other way is there?”

Claire was so excited that her answer crowded Dante’s question. “I think they take the temperature of the body to see how long it’s been cooling. And if the body was someplace hot for a while -.”

“
Then that might screw things up.” Dante tilted his head. “But Vanessa was in that room and said her mother wasn’t there. So where was Belinda?” He hefted his suitcase and opened the door to the room.

Claire picked up one of her own and followed him out the door. After making sure there was no one in the hallway, she answered Dante’s question. “Maybe her body was in the closet or under the bed.”

“
Maybe. I’m not sure how much Tyler would welcome another theory from you. Are you going to call him and tell him that Logan must have hid Belinda’s body for a while?” Dante held the elevator door for her as Claire went inside the empty car.

“
Logan?” Claire echoed. “But Logan couldn’t think like that. I mean, if the theory is that he went crazy and ran around killing people, why would he go to all the trouble of planting a box on Belinda or messing with the estimated time of death?”

“
Why couldn’t it be Logan? You said he was one of the smartest kids in school.”

“
But he doesn’t need to supply himself with an alibi by screwing up the time of death. He already doesn’t have an alibi, since no one has seen him.” As they stepped outside, Claire thought of something else. “But someone who was at the reunion banquet would have a reason. Maybe they wanted people to think there was no way they could have done it because at the time of death, they were surrounded by three-hundred people.”
Outside, even though the sun had already gone behind the hills, the heat was still oppressive. Claire’s mind was ticking away. She was missing something, something important, but what was it?

“
You need to get this lock fixed,” Dante said as he opened the trunk without benefit of a key and put his suitcase inside. “So you still think it was someone you went to school -.”

Claire interrupted him. “An older man!” She threw her bag in, not even minding when a zipper opened and some clothes spilled out.
“What?”

“
Jim said Cindy was also sleeping with an older man. Someone she really had to keep a big secret.” The last piece of the puzzle fell into place as she realized Belinda would probably have known all about Cindy’s secret lover. No wonder she had had to die. Claire slammed the hatchback closed. “He thought it was one of her parents’ friends, but -.”

Someone called her name in a hoarse whisper. “Claire!”

They both turned toward the sound, Dante stepping ahead of her. When a man’s head popped up over the edge of the adjacent car, Claire let out a muffled shriek.

It was Logan. He still wore the clothes he had the night of Cindy’s murder, although the suit jacket and red tie were gone. Even in the rapidly fading light, it was clear he was a mess. His once-white dress shirt was now stained and splotched, his pants dirty at the knees. His hair stood up in tufts. Logan looked like he hadn’t bathed or slept indoors since Friday night.

“
I need to talk to you. I’ve been watching your car. I need to tell you something.” His voice was only a shade above a whisper, and his eyes kept darting around, although there was no one in sight.

“
I think I know what it is. You saw something Friday night, didn’t you?”

Logan was silent, but Claire thought she could read the answer in his eyes.

“
What did you need to tell us, Logan?” Dante prompted. Claire could hear the tension in his voice. He still thought Logan was guilty of the killings. Overhead, there was a sudden rolling boom, and they all jumped before they realized it was just the first fireworks. Gold flickers spread across the sky. Behind the wooden stockade fence, the crowd shouted approval.

When Logan didn’t reply, Claire said, “You know what happened to Cindy and Belinda, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer her directly. “I’ve tried to kill myself so many times. I’ve walked out into traffic. I’ve put a knife against my own throat while I watched in the mirror. Jumped into the river wearing my winter coat and a pair of work boots. But I’ve never tried to hurt someone. Never. You have to believe me, Claire.” His eyes blazed at her, lit up by the burst of silver fireworks. “Tell me you believe me.”

She had to raise her voice to be heard over the thunder of the fireworks. “I believe you, Logan. So what do you want to tell me?”

“
I was out here that night. Friday night. In this parking lot.” He smacked his lips, reared his head back, then continued, “I was walking through the parking lot with a cigarette. The whole reunion thing was overwhelming. I just had to get away for a while. Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong in the world anymore. I’ve never used an ATM card, a CD player, the Internet. There’s people from our high school with grandchildren, and I’ve never been on a date.”

Claire nodded her head as she looked into his burning eyes. Above them, a firework exploded red, then another one, higher up, dripped white sparks, followed by a third one, higher still, that turned into blue pinwheels.

“
And then I heard someone running. I crouched down, I don’t know why. Well, I do know why. I was embarrassed. I had been talking to myself out there, trying to talk myself into going back. And then I see him go running by me, and he’s got this black rectangular thing in his hand.” His hands sketched a shape in the air. “It was a woman’s wallet.”

“
Who was it that you saw?” Dante asked.

Claire answered for him. “It was Sawyer, wasn’t it?” Sawyer, the one who had told her that Logan had been violent toward women in the past. Sawyer, Cindy’s walk on the wild side.

Nodding, Logan made a sound that was a cross between a bray and a moan. “I didn’t know what it meant then. But when I saw Cindy’s body, I knew who had killed her. And I knew I had to leave. Because who would believe me? The word of a crazy man against our next governor?” For a minute, there was only the sound of his labored breathing. “Do you know how much I looked up to him?”

Dante asked, “Did he see you?” His shoulders had relaxed, and Claire could tell that he finally believed Logan.

“
No. I don’t think so. But if he had looked me in the eye, then he would have known. I couldn’t hide my thoughts from him.”

This sounded too much like the old Logan to Claire. “I have to ask you something, Logan. Have you stopped taking your meds? Are you hallucinating again?”

His answer was firm and his gaze didn’t waver. “No.”

“
Why now? Why are you telling us now?”

“
Because my mom told me about Dick being arrested. And I knew I couldn’t let that happen. You have to go with me, Claire. You have to tell them I’m not crazy anymore.” He opened his mouth to say something more.

At first, before Logan crumpled to the ground, Claire thought the sound she had just heard was another firework. But then her brain put together the sound together with the red blossoming across Logan’s T-shirt, and she realized that he had been shot. Claire screamed, but the sound was lost in the explosion of fireworks and the gasps of the crowd behind them.

In the next burst of fireworks, she saw Sawyer standing behind Logan’s fallen body, coolly taking aim at her and Dante with a handgun. At the same moment Dante jerked her to one side, pulling her down to safety behind a car. She felt more than heard the bullet whistle past her ear.

“
Come on and keep low!” Dante hissed in her ear, and they took off running in a half crouch, zigzagging between the rows of parked cars. It was impossible to shout for help, to hear their pursuer, or even to know if Sawyer were firing at them. The boom and hiss of the fireworks offered perfect concealment. The only thing they had going for them was that Sawyer would be hobbled by his old injuries - but his gun meant that he didn’t need to get close to kill them.

All too soon, they came to the edge of the parking lot and a fence Claire had never noticed in the daytime. Both of them were crouched behind a red Ford Festiva, not the best car for hiding behind. To their left lay the glass doors of the hotel, radiating golden light one hundred yards away. Behind those doors lay help - but could they get to it before they were killed? Somewhere to their right was Sawyer. Dante raised himself a couple of inches and peeked through the car window, then settled back down again. His lips brushed against Claire’s ear. “We’ll have a better chance if we separate. You keep along the edge of the fence and I’ll make for the doors.”

She put as much force into her whisper as she could. “No. We stay together.” She was afraid that Dante planned to sacrifice himself to save her.

Their decision was made for them when a bullet sang above their heads, close enough that her ears rang. Dante tugged her to the right, and they ran down one row, up another, their heads bowed so low that they almost brushed their knees, left, then right, then left again, until finally Claire had no idea where they were in relation to anything. Where was the hotel, the fence line, or even the amusement park?

Claire turned her head and realized that the only important thing to know where they were in relation to was Sawyer. Because where he was only thirty feet away, holding the gun straight out in front of his body with both hands. The round eye of the gun looked back at her. She lunged forward frantically, praying she could move an inch or two out of the path of the bullet. The gun cracked just as the toe of her sneaker caught on something. Claire landed in a heap.

“
No!” Dante screamed from behind her. She heard him run past, but whatever happened next was covered by the sound of a firework exploding overhead in a shower of silver sparks.

Frantic as a bug on its back, Claire struggled to her feet. As she pushed herself up, the fingers of her right hand caught the edge of whatever had tripped her, something cool and slender that glinted in the light of the fireworks. A broken car antenna. She turned and ran after Dante.

Dante was on the ground, with Sawyer on top of him. Sawyer’s back was to Claire. The gun was in Sawyer’s fist, but Dante’s hand was wrapped around the barrel, so that it pointed up, midway between the two men. As Claire watched in horror, Sawyer began to force the gun downward, twisting it so it pointed right at Dante’s head.