Murder in a Hot Flash (23 page)

Chapter
26

The storm had been a late afternoon affair and it never did warm up afterward. Charlie began an awkward freeze-dry process—sitting with her back against a cooling slickrock shelter that wasn't really high enough for shelter. It brought to mind a lump of scrambled dinosaur eggs or a heap of nature's gallstones.

She sat on the river side of it, facing the ruined boat and load of supplies. The men decided she was the only one they'd trust to guard these items while they strode off to search for Mitch Hilsten, superstar.

Charlie sat there, aware that suspicion itself had become the enemy that might destroy them all. That she'd be a sitting duck if the murderer returned to do her in with the boat as Homer Blankenship had warned/worried when forced/persuaded to march off and lead the search, leaving Charlie behind.

When Charlie suggested she and Homer go up the river for help while the others looked for Mitch, Sid insisted that if the movie star were hurt, he should be the one to go out on the boat with the guide. Charlie could think of all kinds of arguments against this logic now that she had nothing else to do, but then she'd been too tired and too worried about Mitch to demand her say. Homer was delegated to pair up the searchers and choose the appropriate directions for the teams since he was the one least suspected of murderous intentions.

Even shivering and scared, Charlie began again to think through the list of suspects. It was motive that threw her. If there were two murders, were there two motives?

But Earl Seabaugh interrupted her deliberation by wandering alone onto the beach without his hat and camera.

“Run, Charlie, anywhere, Charlie, hurry.” There was something mechanical in his hoarse whisper and something strange about his eyes. Earl wasn't wandering, he was staggering. Charlie thought briefly of the rat staggering onto the road when she was changing the Corsica's tire but the cameraman fell on his face before he reached her, Homer's hunting knife buried in his back.

Charlie's adrenaline rush was so strong it made her dizzy and she had to crawl over to him. She was never more mindful of the scarcity of odors out here than now with the unexpected potency of the metallic scent of his blood.

He raised his head a few inches. “No, sand, Charlie, run. No sand …” he said and dropped his head back down on some.

The sea-green eyes stuck open halfway through a blink. Faint blond fuzz coated patches of a scalp he probably hadn't shaved today. And wouldn't need to tomorrow.

Reminded of the squashed tour bus, Charlie felt for a pulse in his neck as if she knew where to feel. But the sigh of a slow fart as Earl's body did the ultimate relax job convinced her he wasn't faking the blood seeping from his mouth into the sand either. She grabbed her jacket from a nearby rock where she'd spread it to dry and made it out of sight of the beach before stopping to think.

Three murders, if Tawny's death wasn't an accident, were moving this situation from the realm of necessity, expediency, or whatever to serious insanity. Of the remaining five suspects, Charlie figured only four were candidates. Dean was real. Okay, he was a blowhard, but he was tethered to nonmurderous reality.

That left Scrag Dickens, John B. Drake, Sidney Levit, and, yes, Mitch Hilsten. If only because he was here. But Sid alone seemed to have a motive to kill Cabot. And that wasn't much of one. But none to kill Earl or Tawny.

You've only known these people a few days. They could have motives and shared histories you know nothing about.

Charlie worried about Homer Blankenship. He was an innocent bystander pulled into the fray here. It might have been his knife but she couldn't believe his hand had …

She crawled under a bush to hide. Her jacket hadn't dried to the lining and only made her colder and stiffer in her cramped position. She was crying silent tears and trying not to wash out the remaining lens, remembering poor Earl's stuck blink. He'd worn contacts too, but his were heavily tinted. One of them had been dislodged enough to—

God Charlie don't think or you'll start screaming and the killer'll find you!

“Charlie, I don't want to startle you, okay?” a voice she recognized whispered behind her. “Try to back out from under that bush without making noise and then come over here. Hurry.”

It was Mitch. Charlie stayed where she was. She'd almost got him killed and now he was getting even. And he was on the shortening list of candidates for murderer.

“Charlie, I know you're terrified, but your legs are sticking out in plain sight.” He sounded ever so patient. Yeah,
wrong
.

But Charlie opened her good eye to stare down along her body. He was right.

“Please, Charlie, I know it's hard to trust anybody at this point, but there isn't much time.”

She would never remember making the decision, but Charlie was suddenly snuggled up to his warmth in a vertical rock crevice with scratchy weeds for cover.

“Earl …” she breathed in his ear.

“I know,” he whispered back. “I saw it.”

“You what? You saw—”

“I didn't see who stabbed him. But I saw him fall on the beach. I was watching the beach and you.”

“Everybody's looking for you. We thought you were lost or murdered—you were watching the beach?” She had the urge to slug him and stomp off, but even a jackhammer couldn't have dislodged her from this embrace she had no business believing was safe.

“Remember when you did something stupid? Backed off a cliff and nearly got us both killed? Charlie, I think I've done the same thing.”

And Mitch Hilsten explained in whispers in her ear that he'd decided to use her as a lure. That he'd hidden out to watch the beach, expecting the killer to come back for Charlie. “I was going to rush in and save you and unmask the killer.”

“Like the hero.”

“Like the hero. I'm sorry, Charlie.”

Could anybody that convincingly contrite be a murderer?

You bet.

“I couldn't believe it when poor Earl dropped dead at your feet. Did he say anything?” Did Mitch's body stiffen a little with that question?

Yeah, he did but it didn't mean anything. “No, he didn't. Well, he wanted me to run away.”

Had Mitch's body relaxed a little against hers with that answer? “Shit,” Mitch said, “he was the hero and he died for it.”

Mitch had schemed with John B. to lure everyone else away so that the murderer could come back after Charlie.

“Why would he want to kill me?”

“Because I convinced them all you knew who he was and were trying to trap him to clear your mother. At least I tried to.”

“By telling them I was psychic and that's how I knew. Thanks a heap.”

“Who
do
you think is the murderer, Charlie?”

“Everybody. It's motive I can't figure. Earl and Tawny might have angered John B. or Scrag somehow.” Or you. “But I can't fit Gordon Cabot into that scenario. Sid might have had reason to want Cabot dead but not the other two. Unless they figured out he lulled Cabot and needed to be silenced.” Actually, you were furious with Cabot and closer to Earl and Tawny than Sid ever was. “Scrag and Earl squared off a little bit ago, but Scrag was with me when Tawny …”

“At least you've stopped trembling.” And he kissed her, wiped a tear from her cheek, and buried his face in her hair. “I'm sorry I put you in danger like that, Charlie. I just wanted to get it over with.”

“Who do you think murdered Earl?”

“I know all those people well, Charlie. I can't believe any of them would do such a thing.”

Charlie wouldn't have believed she could let down her guard, feel warm and safe enough to fall asleep there. After all, she'd just seen a man die with a knife in his back and only the night before a young vibrant woman writhing in flames. But maybe murder gets easier to live with or the system overdoses and you go numb. Or maybe the stress sent her into shock and made her sleep. She'd never know. But she woke to darkness and cold. She was alone.

Next to falling off cliffs, crashing in airplanes, drowning, becoming one of the youngest grandmothers in history, or having to take Libby and go live with Edwina, Charlie's worst nightmare had always been being lost and alone in the wilderness. She'd prefer a dark alley sprawling with drunks and junkies any day, but it was beginning to look like she was on a roll this trip.

She peered through the weed cover to see several shapes, definitely male, standing off at a distance and gesturing as if in deep discussion. One wore a cowboy hat à la John B. One wore his jeans like Scrag Dickens. One had Sidney Levit's white hair, glowing now in moonlight, and the other was Mitch.

Charlie's legs were tingly asleep, but she decided she had to get out of here regardless. One of those dudes was a murderer. Anybody who'd killed three times would have little to lose by making her a fourth.

And thanks to Mitch Hilsten, whoever it was thought he knew that she knew who he was and probably why he done it. If it wasn't Mitch, that is.

How to unwedge herself from this rock without attracting their attention. Then find Homer and Dean. And then what? Charlie was in a real mess here. But she couldn't die and leave Libby with a demented grandmother. She couldn't leave this planet without telling off Richard Morse and throwing this job in his chauvinist teeth.

Charlie realized suddenly she'd paused for a fantasy about lining up a power job with William Morris first and throwing that at Richard as well. She had to get control of herself and think of a plan before Mitch brought the others over to her hidey hole. Maybe they were all together against her. She probably had only seconds to—

The guys looked up as if one and ran straight at her, shouting obscenities. Charlie froze, too shocked to react, not that she'd have had time to get out of the crevice and escape them. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, the men were gone and she was alone. Was she hallucinating or what here?

Then Charlie became aware of what she'd been hearing too, over the thunder of her pulse. What had sent them all running. The unmistakable tear in the quiet of a desert night. The roar of the jet boat engine.

Chapter
27

Charlie filled the plastic canteen, mostly by feel, in the puddle at the back of Spring Cave. She drank half of it and filled it again. The water tasted metallic but good. The upside-down ferns looked like shrunken heads hanging by their severed necks in the shadowy recesses. It must have been too cold for the mosquitoes but Charlie didn't linger anyway. This would be the obvious place for the men to look for her.

Aren't we being a little melodramatic?

Listen, I don't know about you, but I want to be alive to see that smirky runt of a sheriff's face when Edwina walks out of that jail a free woman. Charlie covered her mouth when she realized she'd carried on this conversation aloud.

Now that she had water she had to find a place to hide until morning. Glancing longingly at the wooden box with the dusty oats and hinges that didn't squeak, she passed it by. That would be too obvious.

The best way to survive this situation was to keep from panicking and feeling sorry for herself. The latter being almost more difficult because Charlie so loathed discomfort. Edwina used to rattle on about all sorts of things one should know to survive in the wilderness when she'd hauled Charlie off on research trips, not a word of which her daughter could remember. She'd been too busy loathing the discomfort and being away from her friends.

The moon was cold and bright and had highlighted the white-painted rocks lining the path that brought her here and would take her back to the beach at the first inkling help was arriving. Charlie had only to survive until then. That moon was also casting some heavy shadows for her to hide in.

She'd reached the slickrock jumble near the river and peered over it in time to see the jet boat round the bend heading upstream, the shapes of two men on board. Had to be Dean and Homer because everybody else was dancing around on the beach waving fists.

Earl's body had been covered. It looked as if someone had thrown the plastic tarp over him that once covered the supplies still piled where Charlie left them. By the way the covering bulged at one point, it was obvious no one had removed the knife.

Charlie'd turned and ran before they saw her, found the rock-lined path and raced, well, hobbled as fast as she could, along it to the spring. Her tire-tread sandals were neither warm nor swift, but she was not going to feel sorry for herself.

She didn't think they'd be able to see her tracks at night and by morning help would be here. What she needed to do was to stay off the path but follow it back toward the beach from the sidelines. Where, unseen, she could flit between shadow puddles if need be, but stay close enough to meet her rescuers. Sounded like a good plan.

One problem. A chorus of coyotes sent up a harmony only they could appreciate and Charlie made a wrong turn, chills rising everywhere. She'd heard coyotes often when traveling with her mother and even in town on a quiet night, her home but a few blocks from Boulder's mountain backdrop. Charlie had even heard the critters in the canyons of Southern California when visiting reclusive clients.

They'd always sounded so much farther away than they did now. But she wasn't going to panic or feel sorry for herself. Nor would she wig out over the fact that, although she was sure she'd retraced her steps exactly, the white rocks of the path were still nowhere in sight in any direction.

The coyotes keened and yipped lonely sounds she sincerely wished they'd stifle. Charlie visualized them ringing a campfire, pointing their noses at the moon, wearing bandannas around their necks.

The thing to do was to stop going in circles, find a safe shadow, and sit quietly to think what the thing was to do. Again it was a sound that set her off—a footstep or a hoofstep or a pebble dislodged from a path or … Charlie found her shadow and sat down fast.