Murder in a Hot Flash (24 page)

“If you're out there, darlin', you stay put, hear?” Scrag's voice came low and somber. “This shit's going to work itself out.”

She could hear him repeat the message twice as his footsteps faded away. He was probably walking the trail and if she moved in that direction maybe she could find it. If Scrag was warning her not to show herself it meant either that he was on her side or it was a trick.

What she would do was sit quiet as the proverbial mouse until he came back and then she'd know it was safe to leave her shadow. Wouldn't she? Sounded like a good plan, but she didn't have the patience to sit there and wait in gross discomfort and seriously substantial fear.

She experimented by moving a shadow puddle closer to the area from which she'd heard Scrag Dickens and the sky didn't fall in, no night creatures out feeding made a grab for her. So she moved on, a shadow at a time, keeping low, from bush to bush to … no white-painted rocks, no trail, no overhang shelters or cowboy line camps, no river. God, where was she?

By the next morning the swelling in her feet had completely disappeared and tighten the straps as she might it was a major effort to keep her tire clogs on. And, yes, she was lost but she figured she couldn't be that far from the river and if it was big enough to carve the Grand Canyon it was big enough for her to find. And if she found it, the rescue squads sent out by Dean and Homer would find her. Logically, if she found a wash or arroyo or whatever and followed it downhill she'd come to the river.

And the sun was rising in the east, which should give her some direction as well as warm her. Charlie was so cold she'd lost the battle to keep from feeling sorry for herself hours ago. But every time her stomach rumbled she forced herself to see the body on the beach and the burning woman at the electrical substation and her hunger went away. She'd taken not one sip of water and her canteen was still full.

She worked up the nerve to climb a pile of slickrock and stand above the scrub forest and weeds to look out on a veritable garden. A garden of buttes and buttresses and pinnacles and sculpted ribs of rock, monoliths that rose blood-red out of swirling purple shadow, ground mist, and night, their tops flaming with sunrise.

Definitely big-screen stuff that would have had a lot more appeal from a cozy theater seat. But from their position she figured the river could be in any of three directions. Or all, when you thought about it, because it curved and wound so. No matter, the sun would warm her soon and there would be airplanes in the sky and maybe Dean's helicopter and she would jump up and down and wave and be rescued.

On that happy note Charlie took a breakfast swig of water, rolled it around on her tongue and teeth before swallowing to get the full benefit.

As the sun continued to move down the buttes and cliffs, birds took up singing and flitted from bush to bush as she had bush shadows half the night. Bright, strong twitters and tweets and trills—no chorus of them—they were individual and far flung. But they sounded ridiculously happy and at home in this ghastly place.

Charlie searched the sky for rescue planes, but saw only a contrail too high in the friendly skies and too busy to notice her speck of a life in this universe.

As she lowered her eyes another bird circled ahead. Turkey buzzard. Vulture. They like dead meat. Circling over Earl Seabaugh of the once-laughing sea-green eyes? Very likely. And if so, that was the direction she should head.

Here's to the buzzard, the body, the beach, and the boats to the rescue. Charlie took another swig, giggled, and started off. She was kind of proud of herself for not running around banging her head against rocks and screaming by now.

The buzzard kept circling, then descended out of sight. Charlie planned to hide behind the same pile of rock she had last night when Homer and Dean took off in the wounded jet boat and case the scene carefully. She hadn't spent the previous horrible night saving her skin to have it exposed by walking into a trap.

She noticed her course was weaving, but that was because of the ill-fitting footwear. Wasn't it? She slipped into a fantasy in which she was describing her heroic escape and calm calculating demeanor, at a time of terrible danger, to her daughter and Maggie Stutzman. Libby and Charlie's best friend were awestruck.

Get real, they'd be yukking it up. Probably have to hang on to each other to stay upright.

Where have
you
been?

Right here. You just haven't been listening. I'm a little worried about our present direction. Should we maybe slow down and scout the scene …

Charlie's inner voice was too late and she was reminded of why they have serious medication for people who hear voices.

The vulture rose at her approach just as three others appeared from nowhere but pulled out of their dives toward the body on the ground to soar off with their brethren. They voiced no sound but their giant wings whumped the air as they ascended. For a moment the big sky filled with feathers and an obscene stench.

It wasn't the river, the beach, or Earl that had attracted them either. It was Mitch Hilsten. He lay sprawled on his stomach, a bloody wound on the back of his head.

Chapter
28

Charlie didn't know whether to use her precious water to try washing out Mitch's wound (maybe the blood already had) or try to force some down his throat. She'd turned him over so that he was bleeding on the collar of his sheepskin jacket. But he was breathing. She could almost see his beard growing.

She pulled the lapels of his jacket together to keep him warm, found one side decidedly heavy, and reached into a pocket stuffed with two cans of soda.

Charlie sat back and studied the unconscious man while downing a warm Dr Pepper, not wanting to admit how relieved she was not to be alone.

The guy's out, Charlie. How much more alone can you get?

Yeah, but he's still warm.

The other pocket was stuffed with Oreos. Charlie ate only two before guilt overcame her and she dribbled water between the beautiful teeth. The first dribbles ran out the corners of his mouth but then he swallowed, eyelids fluttered.

“Mitch?”

“No.”

“Mitch, open your eyes, it's Charlie.”

He did. And his eyes were crossed. Did that mean concussion?

She rolled him on his side and off the wound. The movement pulled up his jacket and revealed something red sticking out of his pants' pocket. One of those thick pocketknives that have more attachments than a vacuum cleaner. She slipped it into her own pocket thoughtfully.

Charlie had forgotten that a lot of men carry pocketknives. Homer's cutlery had clearly killed Earl, but any of the rest of them could have wounded the second jet boat with one of these.

She wished she had something to wrap Mitch's head with, but neither of them possessed a clean inch of skin let alone clothing. Edwina would have plucked a strip of skin off a cactus or plastered leaves from the bushes together with spiderwebs and spit or something equally gross.

He closed his eyes again and she offered him water, Dr Pepper, an Oreo, and a kiss. His response to all was the same.

“No.”

“Well, I can steal the rest of your cookies and soda and go off and leave you to the buzzards, you know.”

“Vultures.” One eye opened to a slit. “Turkey vultures.”

“Mitch, do you know who I am?”

“Why would Scrag hit you over the head with a rock?” Charlie's gnat bites oozed. Some had crusted over and they seeped again when she rubbed off the scabby crusts trying to scratch without nails. The most maddening were those inside the outer curling of her ears.

“I don't know. Always liked the guy. Even lent him money once. Maybe it's because he can't find work. He can't think of anything else.”

She'd tried to convince him they should stay put and await rescue. But he knew that he knew the way to the river. Charlie knew he was not acting right. She'd even tried to hold him back but he shrugged her off and kept wandering. No telling where they were by now.

“Yeah, but why would he attack
you
because
he
didn't have work?” Charlie knew that by “work” he meant work in the “biz.”

“Terrifying, not having work. It does things to you. I should know,” Mitch told her. “When you're trained to do one thing and no one can afford you. No reason to leave the house. But the house is empty. I have three houses, a condo in Aspen, and one in Switzerland. I don't want to live in any of them. It's hard to make friends when people look at you and see an image instead of a man. Even my kids get lost in the image. My own flesh and blood. My wife couldn't live with the image and didn't want the man.”

“Please, Mitch, if we ever get out of here you'll hate me for having heard all this.” Part of Charlie ached to respond to the staggering loneliness in the dazed eyes, part of her wanted to believe in the image, the rest of her couldn't believe they were having this conversation at a time like this.

He told her he'd met and married his wife in New York and their relationship had been good while he'd studied his craft and found small roles on the stage and in television commercials to help her support them and their growing family. She held down steadier jobs—waiting tables, clerking. Then he landed several bit parts in movies and started traveling too much.

He was discovered in one of those small parts and offered a leading role. He moved his family to California. “Janet hated it out there.” His career zoomed, his marriage died. “Now I have nothing but an image and three houses and two condos.”

“Hey, more good scripts will come your way. They'll have to. You're Mitch Hilsten, for God's sake.”

“I'm either too old or too young. Or the role doesn't fit the image.” His speech was getting less slurred, his gait steadier. But Charlie waved his sheepskin at two flies buzzing around the clotted blood at the back of his head. She'd ended up carrying both their jackets because he'd just wandered off and left his.

“Mitch Hilsten can be convincing as a fool or a villain or a weakling, Charlie. I've seen you consider me all those. I've seen it in your eyes. But the public won't like to see that happen to the image they've invested part of themselves in. I'm the invincible hero. And that's all I can be. Shit, I can't even grow old.”

Charlie knew this happened to actors. She just didn't want to believe it had happened to this one. Like giving up finally on Santa Claus when you're a kid. “When I moved Libby to L.A. from New York, it was just the opposite. I had trouble adjusting and she took to it so fast I haven't really known her since. It's a paradise for snotty blondes out there.”

They should be sitting still and keeping still in whatever shade they could find and conserving energy. But she just kept following his wavering course like a goddamned squaw. She did
not
want to be alone out here.

Charlie heard herself go on to explain how Richard Morse came to offer her a job on the West Coast. She'd talked to him by phone from New York while working for Wesson Bradly Literary Agency, negotiating options for film rights on books his clients might be interested in—sometimes studios, usually actors looking for stories with possible starring roles from which they'd like to see scripts written for them.

An option tied up the property while a producer looked into financing and scripting possibilities. It paid the writer and his agent some pocket money to keep it off the market. Rarely did an option result in a film going into development and even more rarely showing up on the big screen or even television, but it all somehow added to the gambling allure and helped keep people like Charlie employed.

“Richard said one time on the phone that I had a voice like a gravel pit and it didn't sound very literary and he just had to see what I looked like. Next time he came to New York, he took me out to dinner and explained that Congdon and Morse had come far enough up in the world to have its own literary agent. He didn't feel qualified to judge screenwriters or to screen the literary properties coming his way. He needed someone with East Coast contacts in publishing in his office.

“He offered me the job and boy have I just found out what all it entails. He offered me the job and enough money to support us so we wouldn't have to make up what I couldn't live on by being a drag on Edwina. Libby and I joined the middle class. We were blessed with California sunshine, freeways, and debt. You won't believe what Richard's latest demand is though. Mitch?”

“Charlie, look,” he pointed to a really deep shade puddle and then headed for it. “I think we should stop and rest, don't you?”

And the squaw carrying the jackets and Oreos and Swiss army knife and what water they had between them followed obediently. “I just don't want to be alone right now, okay?”

“What? Oh, Charlie, I'm sorry. I'm still a little groggy. Feels like Scrag used an ax instead of a rock. Here, let me carry some of that. Christ, have you got a sunburn.”

They crawled into an abscess in a rock formation, not deep enough to be called an overhang, but offering blissful relief from the heat. Charlie's feet had swollen again, which was probably not a good sign, but did help to keep her tire clogs on. Charlie's hands were swollen, too, and sticky with sweat, a fine layer of grit coated her face, and more itchy bumps were forming. Those on her neck were along the big veins that ran close to the skin. Wonderful, some living thing too small to see was feasting on her blood.

“Do you think Scrag hit Gordon Cabot over the head with Edwina's ax like he did you with a rock? Maybe Cabot wouldn't give him a job.”

“Maybe it's just me. Maybe even my friends are turning on me.” Mitch's eyes were no longer crossing but he'd never looked less like a superstar. Dark patches puffed under bloodshot eyes, a scraggly beard was growing out dirty and uneven.

Still, Charlie could look at him and see Lawrence of Arabia deciding to do something heroic, romantic. She could swear she was looking at box office. Stereotypes do die hard. So do images.