The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder (33 page)

She stumbled toward me. Blood and tears streaked her face. Her nose looked like it had been broken. A ragged gash ran along her hairline. She clutched a cell phone in her bleeding hand. I put my arms around her, as she shook.

“You have to help,” she managed to say after a minute. “No service here. Randy is . . .” Haley collapsed, racked with deep, shuddering sobs. I managed to help her climb into the Santa Fe. Her leg was obviously injured and she gasped in pain as she struggled into the passenger seat. I was afraid she was going into shock. I backed the Santa Fe up the hill to the highest point, where I was lucky enough to get a signal on the phone.

For once 911 didn’t chastise me when I told them about the accident and gave the rough coordinates. “You’ll see my vehicle. It’s a Santa Fe, an SUV, dark red. There’s an injured woman in the passenger’s seat. I think she’s in shock. Her name is Haley Brennan. I believe her husband, Randy, is in the van that went off the road. She says he’s badly injured and possibly . . .” I heard my voice breaking. “I’ll try to get down into the ravine to see if I can help him. It could take me ten minutes or so to make my way down that hill and then I’d have to climb back up to call back.”

I took a deep breath and headed down the steep, snowy incline, praying I wouldn’t find Randy dead. I grabbed onto the dried grass, brush, and small trees as I slid. At the bottom, I struggled to wade through the snow. Up close, the van was buried nose first and tilted. Boxes and supplies had tumbled toward the front seat. The window was broken, probably where Haley had climbed out. I could see her bloody handprints and drops of blood in the snow.

“Randy? Are you there?”

Nothing.

I could see Randy slumped against the driver’s side window. Something was wrong and it took a couple of minutes to realize that no one ever held their head at that angle. I gasped before I could stop myself. I forced myself to reach in and try to see if there was a pulse. There was nothing I could do for Randy. I turned and fought my way up out of the ravine and back to the Santa Fe.

It was hard to meet Haley’s eyes. As she stared at my face, her tiny remaining hope was extinguished.

Haley whimpered, “My God, what am I going to do without him? We have always been together. Always.”

“What happened?”

“She forced us off the road.”

“What?”

Haley took a deep shuddering breath. “The meeting didn’t happen. Mona was screaming at me from the time we got to the parking lot. I guess it’s a good thing the diner was closed. When I tried to suggest she come home with us, she just lost it. Shouting, swearing, kicking the van. She said she wanted to kill me. Randy got upset and insisted on leaving. He said I didn’t have to take that. Two wrongs don’t make a right. We drove away and she drove off like a crazy person. Before we got home, someone forced us off the road. It had to have been her.”

“Mona?”

“I couldn’t see her face, but it had to be.”

“Did you see her car?”

“I saw it in the parking lot. A little red thing.”

That was bad news. “But did you actually see who forced you off the road?”

“No. We had a lot of new supplies stacked in the back of the van and the boxes were blocking my view. But who else could it have been?”

I had no answer for that.

“Randy’s an excellent driver, but she rammed us. I wanted to get out and try to reason with her, but Randy said he was afraid she’d run over me. I think now that he was right. Do you know she actually hit our vehicle? When she came at us, Randy swerved and we crashed right through that guardrail. I can still feel it, the noise, like an explosion. But I thought at least Randy could get us out and . . .” Haley’s torrent of words stopped and she started to sob.

“Are you sure it was Mona who hit you, Haley?”

Haley gripped my hand until it hurt. “Of course it was.”

“But did you see her? Is there any chance it could have been Serena?”

“Serena? Oh. She’s capable of it, but . . .” I could tell she was thinking hard. “No. It had to be Mona. Serena was nowhere around. I thought I was going to die. I passed out for a bit. I don’t know how long. She left us to die. She killed Randy. She killed him. She did it to hurt me. Oh my God, maybe I deserved that. But he didn’t.”

Although the flashing lights were a welcome sight and the paramedics got Haley out of the Santa Fe and into the ambulance efficiently, I wasn’t doing too well myself. I was shaking and my teeth chattered, even though I felt relieved that the team was calming her down. The snow now seemed thicker and wetter and more oppressive. My clothing was soaked right up to my hat. My feet were icy from the snow that had worked its way into my boots during my descent to the van.

A paramedic suggested I wait in my vehicle. He said the police were also on their way and they’d want to talk to me. I supposed the crime scene techs would be there shortly too. I climbed back into the Santa Fe, turned on the engine, and sat there quivering, even after I put the heater on the highest setting and boosted the heated seats. I couldn’t get Randy out of my mind. It had been a bad week for innocent bystanders and he was the latest. What would poor angry Brie do now without her father? How could Haley cope with running the business and living without her high school sweetheart and husband? And worst of all, knowing that it was all a result of her actions as a teenager.

I still had a hard time accepting that Mona could do this, but I’d been wrong before. I could never have imagined that I’d be staring at Randy’s corpse when I left the house to try to intervene between Haley and Mona.

Mona’s life would be over too. I didn’t imagine she’d get much sympathy in court, regardless of the background. They’d accept that she’d been the victim and she’d allowed her corrosive hatred and anger to turn her into a villain. Randy had paid the price for that. A gentle man, a devoted husband, and a wonderful father, gone. I kept asking myself if there was any way that it could have been Serena. Haley hadn’t actually seen who was driving the car that pushed them off the road. But even I had to admit, it was looking very bad for Mona.

It didn’t take the police long to arrive and in short order I was giving a statement. Lucky me, it was Officer Dean Oliver.

“I think we’ll just get you home first,” he said. “We can do it there. Maybe you need—”

“Never mind me. Check out Haley.”

“The ambulance is leaving now with her. She’s in good hands. We don’t want you to get hypothermia.”

Yes, I’d been having a rough day, but I hadn’t lost a family member. All to say, I had no choice but to do my session at the library that night. The topic was The Perils of Procrastination. As you can imagine, canceling was out of the question. I would have gone on a stretcher if I’d had to.

“Are you insane?” Jack asked conversationally. “Someone tried to kill you yesterday and today you found the body of someone you know. You have to cancel.”

“No. I don’t want to lie around and think about Randy. That would be even more upsetting.”

“Think of your safety.”

“I will certainly be safe at the library.”

“And after the session’s over? When you have to drive home?”

“I have this huge vehicle now. It will be good.”

“This time I am going with you. I shouldn’t have let you talk me out of going to hunt for Haley. Look what happened there. Mona could have wiped you out too.”

“You’re far too busy with your contractor, I am sure.” Even I thought that sounded stupid.

Jack scratched his chin and stared at me. “Okay. You are upset about that and I have no idea why. But I’m not going to be sidetracked. I’m following you to the library and I’m following you back. If you don’t like it, call a cop.”

On my way out the door, Bethann’s brother-in-law called me. It took me a minute to remember that I’d given him my card.

“I thought you’d like to know. You were right,” he said. “Bethann did get a call from someone she’d gone to school with. Someone called Serena, who had made her life miserable. She wanted to ask Bethann for forgiveness. Bethann said, ‘I’ll forgive you after I sue the designer pants off you. See you in court. Or better yet, in hell.’ My wife said Bethann said a few other words she wouldn’t repeat. I’m not sure if this helps, but I thought you should know.”

My workshop wasn’t too bad. Of course, only about half the registrants showed up. That didn’t surprise me too much, given the topic. It was too bad, as procrastination is the biggest thief of time. But I was glad to be doing something to take my mind off my aches and bruises and the hit-and-runs. The painkillers helped too.

I glanced toward the back of the room, where I’d first seen Haley sitting less than one week before. I shuddered, then did my best to put her disaster out of my mind and focus on the people who had shown up.