Vanessa Gray Bartal - Lacy Steele 07 - Icy Grip of Murder (18 page)

Now that they knew Flea was the one
who had been following them, Michael and Jason were anxious to question him
again. They swallowed their tea and cookies in record time.
Lacy
lingered, nightmarish visions of Flea’s hooves swirling in her head.
At
last she could put if off no longer. Linda watched them go with an anxious
expression.

“Does anyone have any brilliant
theories on why Flea was following us?” Michael asked when they were in the
car.

“The first time it could have been
on Jenny’s orders,” Jason said.

“And today?” Michael prompted.

“Maybe he thinks we’re on to
whatever Jenny was doing, or at least close to it,” Jason said. He glanced at
Lacy in the back seat. She was quietly staring out the window, sitting on her
hands and trying not to rock back and forth. “Thinking about the feet?” She
nodded. “Be strong. It’s almost over. With any luck, he’ll keep them out of
sight.”

“Would it be wrong to pray for
that?” she said.

He smiled. “Ask your
brother-in-law.”

They arrived at the fishing camp
sooner than she thought possible, but as soon as they parked and set foot out
of the car, there was a new worry. A shot pinged off a nearby tree. They were
already out of the car, but they ducked low behind it as a few more shots rang
off.

“Either he has really bad aim, or
those are just warnings,” Jason said.

“Maybe both. How many was that?”
Michael asked as a couple more shots whizzed through the nearby trees.

“Five. One more and he’ll have to
reload,” Jason said.

Another shot rang off,
then
a door slammed. Behind the cabin, Flea took off into
the woods. “You stay here,” Jason said and he and Michael stood and began to
follow.

She didn’t listen. Why did he
always say that? Did he think she would prefer for him to get killed while she
waited in the safety and comfort of the vehicle?
And then
what?
She would go merrily on with her life?

“Lacy,” he said when he realized
she was following. He didn’t stop, though, probably realizing the fruitlessness
of the effort.

Lacy, meanwhile, was losing sight
of Michael and by extension Flea. He was outpacing them. How did a former
smoker have such good lung capacity? Maybe it was the long legs. Her nubby
stumps were having trouble navigating the rough terrain.
 

When she at last caught up to them,
Michael had reached Flea. One had tackled the other and they were now tussling
in a life-or-death struggle on the ground. Lacy looked around helplessly for
Jason, but he was nowhere in sight. When had she lost him? How had he disappeared
like that? She called for him and heard nothing but the grunts of the two men
on the ground.

She turned to survey them again and
realized they were evenly matched in height, strength, and skill. Michael was
on top and had the advantage now, but not for long. Lacy would have to
intervene and help if they had any hope of subduing him, but the only part of
him available was his feet. Revulsion made her hesitate; loyalty made her dive
in and grab on.

While they men struggled, she
pinned the mud-brick feet like a professional rodeo star holding a bucking
calf. For her efforts, chunks of mud broke off and smeared all over her chest
and arms. She closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth, refusing to
accept the reality of what she was doing. If she let herself think about it,
she would throw up, and that would make everything worse.

Finally, movement stopped beneath
her. She chanced opening her eyes to see Michael breathing heavily and Flea
beneath him, semi-conscious,
a
large red bump across
his left jaw.

“Where’s Jason?” Michael asked,
panting.

“I don’t know. I lost him somehow,”
Lacy said. Now that the fracas was over, she felt genuinely worried. No way
Jason would have left her and Michael alone in a fight.

“Go and find him, I think Flea’s on
ice for a while,” Michael said.

Lacy hopped away from the offending
mud feet, turning quickly so she wouldn’t have to see how much of the mud had
flaked off during the fight. Some of it might be on her now. She was better off
not knowing.

She retraced her steps as best she
could in the unfamiliar terrain. A sense of direction had never been her strong
suit, but they hadn’t come far since the car and she could see the cabins in
the distance. She called Jason’s name. There was no answer.

When she was almost at the car, she
went back again, this time making a wider arc. She was partway into the woods
again when she saw him standing unnaturally still, his arms dangling helplessly
at his sides. Had he encountered a moose or bear? She tiptoed closer, scanning
the area for danger. She saw nothing until she reached him.

He was bent over a metal pole, his
tongue extended and frozen in place.

“What on earth happened?” she
asked.

“I don’t even know,” he said, or
that was what she thought he said. It was hard to tell with his tongue sticking
out.

“Okay, I can fix this. Hold on, I
have to go back to the car for something.” She returned to the car and
retrieved the dregs of that morning’s coffee. It was cold but not frozen. She
returned to Jason who was still pinned in place by his tongue. She poured the
stale coffee over it, hoping there was enough to do the trick. It popped off
and released easily. He tucked it in his mouth and pressed his palm over his
lips.

“Were you running with your tongue
out?” she guessed.

He shrugged and gestured helplessly
to his mouth. She took that to mean it hurt too much to speak. “Come on,” she
said, turning in the direction of Michael and Flea.

Jason gestured to her ruined coat.
“I had to touch the adobe feet,” she muttered miserably. She felt like crying
with disgust. He put his arm around her and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “I’m
ready to go home,” she added. Thankfully, it appeared she would get her wish
soon.

Flea was rousing by the time they
returned to where he and Michael were. He had been dazed, but not knocked out.
He sat up, saw Michael, Lacy, and Jason surrounding him, and seemed resigned to
his fate.

“Why were you following us?”
Michael asked.

“I wanted to see what you were
doing,” Flea said.

“Why?”

“Because Jenny wanted me to keep
tabs on you.”

“Jenny’s dead.”

“I know,” Flea said and broke down
into great heaving sobs. Tossing himself backwards, he pressed his hands over
his face to muffle the sound.

“Pull it together. We need some
information,” Michael said.

Flea sat up and pinned Michael with
a murderous expression. “You never loved her.” Tears had left frozen tracks on
his face and under his nose. Lacy searched her pockets for a tissue, not
because she pitied him but because the sight was disgusting. She wasn’t usually
so testy about germs and dirt. She glanced at Jason, a man who had once used
tongs to pick up a grape that dropped onto the floor. He stared disinterestedly
at Flea as if the frozen snot trails didn’t bother him at all.

“But you did,” Michael said.
“Enough to do her bidding without question.”

“So? Jenny was beautiful. She was
the best, and she needed me.”

“She sent you to follow us when we
arrived in town,” Michael said.

“We went together.”

“And she sent you to throw homemade
bombs in our hotel room,” Michael said.

“We were trying to warn you. Nobody
got hurt. They weren’t that big,” Flea said.

“You slashed the tires on Lacy’s
car,” Michael said.

“It was a rental,” Flea said. “It’s
not like she has to pay for it.”

“You provided housing for Jenny all
these years. You hid her, kept her secret, supplied her with food and anything
else she needed.”

“I did, and I would do it again.
Jenny had nobody else. We stuck together. I stick by my friends.”

“Except me,” Michael said.

“You weren’t nice to Jenny,” Flea
explained.

“Is it that I wasn’t nice to her or
that I dated her in the first place? You always had a thing for her. It must
have eaten you up that she preferred me,” Michael said.

Flea didn’t answer.

“So you lied for her, covered for
her, helped her perpetuate a murder that wasn’t true. What else did you do for
her? Did you help her steal cars for Bug’s chop shop?”

“When she needed me to,” Flea
admitted.

“And you helped her get the jewelry
for Louse,” Michael said.

“It wasn’t that hard. We took old
pieces nobody wore anymore. Most people didn’t even notice it had been taken,”
Flea said.

“Then she went into hiding and you
had to find something else to do, something else to make money. Or maybe you
found it before and that was why she went into hiding,” Michael said.

Flea shrugged.

“She wanted me to know what it was,
she wanted to tell me. That was why she wanted to meet,” Michael added.

“I didn’t think she should tell
you, especially since you’re such good friends with cops now.” His eyes
lingered accusingly on Jason.

“But she wanted me to know. I
thought you always did her bidding.”

“Not this time, not when it could
hurt other people,” he said.

“What other people? Louse? Bug?
They can take care of themselves,” Michael said.

Flea pressed his lips together in a
stubborn display of silence.

“No, you know they can take care of
themselves. You wouldn’t protect them anymore than you protected me. It has to
be someone who can’t take care of himself. Larva?”

Flea snorted.

“Okay, not Larva. That doesn’t
leave anyone else.”

“Except Len and Linda,” Lacy
interjected.

Flea looked down, not meeting their
gazes.

“Is that what this is about? Are
you seriously going to tell me—or not tell me—that Len and Linda
are involved in something criminal?” Michael demanded.

“No,” Flea said. His tone was as
vehement as Michael’s. “Not that they know of, anyway.”

“What? Have you been using Len and
Linda as a front for something?” Michael said. He took another step closer.

“Of course not. We would never…I
would never. I was helping them, they just didn’t know it was being done
illegally,” Flea said.

“Explain.”

“Len is on a lot of expensive
medicine. Their insurance didn’t cover all of it. So we sort of helped him
out,” Flea said.

“Helped how?” Jason said, his
swollen tongue distorted the words and forced drool down his shirt. He pressed
a hand to his mouth and grimaced.

“Everyone knows you can get cheap
drugs in Canada. And since it’s our back yard, we figured why not?”

“You mean Jenny figured why not?”
Michael said.

“So it was her idea. Jenny cared about
Len and Linda, too.”

“Jenny didn’t care about anyone but
herself,” Michael said. “Did you only get drugs for Len or were there extras?”

“There were some extras,” Flea
said. “But so what? We were helping other people.”

“By giving them away for free?” Michael
said.

“Well…” Flea hesitated.

Lacy could tell Jason was dying to
jump in. He had once told her the street value on individual prescription pills
was astronomical, which was why they were such a danger to keep lying around
the house. “You sold them,” she said, saving him the trouble of using his sore
tongue. “For a lot of money, I bet.”

“What’s so bad about that? People
got the drugs they needed, and we made some money,” Flea said.

“A lot of money,” Michael said.

“Fine, we made a lot of money. So
what?”

“So maybe you and Jenny disagreed
over what to do next. I’m curious. Between protecting Jenny and protecting Len
and Linda, who would you choose?” Michael asked.

“Why would I have to? Jenny
wouldn’t have hurt Len and Linda,” Flea said.

“If she had revealed herself to me
and told me what she was up to, then the gig would have been up. Len and
Linda’s pills would have dried up, along with all the money. Why did you do it?
For Len and Linda?
For the money?
Or maybe because you
just couldn’t take being Jenny’s stooge anymore.”

“What are you talking about?” Flea
clambered to his feet.

“Easy there,” Anderson said as he
stepped from behind a tree. Andersen followed soon after.

“Did you call them?” Lacy asked
Jason, but he was giving her the same questioning look.

“I did,” Michael said. “Might as
well fight fire with fire, eh? The only way they would ever believe me was to
hear the truth firsthand.”

They advanced on Flea and read him
his rights as they cuffed him. Once he realized he was truly under arrest, he
began to struggle. “I didn’t do anything wrong! I didn’t kill Jenny. I loved
her,” he said. The fight went out of him then and he began to cry again. “I
loved her,” he repeated over and over, all the way to the cruiser.

Anderson and Andersen gave them
statements to fill out. They sat in the car and tried to get warm. Lacy felt
extra cold after her run through the woods. The sweat felt frozen to her. She
wore a coat, but not nearly enough layers for the freezing cold. As the sun
dipped, so did the temperature. The car’s heater was on full blast but still
putting out only stuttering warmth.

Jason sipped on a bottle of water
he managed to nab from the fishing camp. Since he occasionally stuck out his
tongue and poured the water over, she guessed it still hurt, even though he was
able to talk again.

Anderson knocked on Michael’s door.
“We need you to come down to the station for some paperwork.”

“An official apology?” Michael
guessed.

“Keep dreaming,” Anderson said.

“I don’t trust them not to slip in
some secret confession. Do you think I should call the lawyer before I sign
anything?” Michael asked.

“I’ll go with you,” Jason said.

“Can you drop me at Len and
Linda’s? I need to scrub myself with bleach,” Lacy said.

“Did you touch the feet?” Michael
asked.

“Pieces of them broke off in my
hands,” Lacy said. She sat on her hands so she wouldn’t have to look at the mud
streaks.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“There aren’t enough apologies in
the world for that,” Lacy said. She was near tears, the closest she had come to
crying for as long as she could remember. But every time she blinked, she saw
the feet and her horror
was
renewed again.

The men dropped her at Len and
Linda’s. The older couple wasn’t home. Lacy wondered if they had been called to
the police station to give a statement. Intentional or not, Flea had probably
landed them in hot water, at least on the drug charges. They could plead
ignorance about the origination of Len’s medicine, but that ignorance probably
wouldn’t get far with a judge. The best they could hope for was a plea deal.
With Len’s poor health and their record of community service, they were likely
to get it.

Lacy spent a long time in the
shower, scrubbing everything twice and refusing to let her mind replay the
images of Flea’s feet. She would pretend the whole thing never happened.
Usually she had a great capacity to block bad experiences, but the ability
wasn’t working as well as usual. She supposed if she were going to have fewer
calamities now then she would have to pay the price of remembering all of them.

She finished in the shower and went
to the bedroom to put everything away. With any luck, they would be on a plane
home in a few hours. She needed to repack, and so did Jason. Michael was
on his own
. They were friends, but not close enough for her
to touch his personal belongings.

Last night she had taken out her
earrings and set them on the dresser. Now only one of them was there. She would
have to search the floor. As she bent, she gave half-hearted notice to the
painting over the dresser. It was horrible. It looked as if a third grader had
done it. She knelt, smiling. Maybe one of Len and Linda’s former children had
made it for them. When she straightened, her smile fled and she took a closer
look at the picture. It was from last year. And
it was signed
by Larva
.

Lacy’s first thought was to wonder
why he would sign it “Larva.” Her second was to wonder why he had lied. He told
them he hadn’t had contact with Len and Linda since he left at eighteen. Why,
then, did they have a painting from him that was only a year old?

“That was part of a series,” Larva
said.

Lacy looked up to see him standing
in the doorway. He had ridden his bike over, or so she assumed by the bike
helmet that sat awkwardly on his giant head. Swaths of his hair poked stubbornly
through the vent holes.

“Oh. Why are you here?” she asked.

“I needed to take care of some
things. Where are Michael and the hat guy?”

“They’re at the police station,”
she said.

He blanched. “Why?”

“Because they’re cutting Michael
loose. They know he didn’t kill Jenny.”

Larva sighed. “I was afraid of
that.”

“Afraid of what?” Lacy asked. Despite
his sudden appearance, she wasn’t afraid of him. It was hard to be afraid of
someone wearing a bike helmet five inches above his forehead.

“That he would tell the police what
he knew,” Larva said. He propped one shoulder against the wall.

“I think I’m missing something
here,” Lacy said.

“Michael told the cops that I
killed Jenny.”

“What?” Lacy said.

“He said he knew the truth. He said
‘we both know I didn’t kill Jenny.’ I don’t know how he found out, but somehow
he knew.”

“No, he didn’t,” Lacy blurted and
immediately wanted to punch
herself
in the face.
Larva’s eyes brightened and he straightened.

“What? He didn’t know?”

“Yes,” Lacy said, but the lie
sounded lame now. Larva smiled, a childishly happy smile,
then
his eyes fell on her and narrowed. She had just made herself a problem to be
solved. “He knew. He knows. He’s blabbing everything. He might even have
pictures.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Larva said.
He took a step closer. Lacy held up a hand.

“Why did you kill her?”

“So many reasons,” Larva said.

“Care to list them?” Her eyes
scanned the room, searching for a weapon or chance of escape.

“She wasn’t a nice person. I never
liked her, ever. She picked on me, called me stupid. Until she needed something
from me.” He took another step closer. Lacy took a step back.

“What did she need?”

“My job. I travel between here and
Canada every summer, coming and going without notice. She wanted me to smuggle
stuff for her.”

“Did you?”

“At first, no. She wanted me to
move cars. I wasn’t into that. That was why she killed my dog, because I told
her no. But then she made the case for Len’s medicine. I would do anything to
help him or Linda. So I carried the pills from Canada. It was a good system,
but Michael came back and she was going to destroy it, all so she could brag
about how well she had done. She was making tons of money off the pills. I
didn’t care about that. I did it to help the old people like Len.”

“She was going to ruin things for
Len, and that’s why you killed her?”

“No, that’s why I yelled at her. I killed
her because she killed my dog. I thought I made that clear. You can’t kill a
man’s dog and get away with it. My dog was my best friend. What kind of evil
person kills a dog?”

What
kind of evil person kills another human being?
Lacy wondered, but she
didn’t sense evil in him. Instead it was as if he followed his own internal
guidelines. If she could tap into those, she could save herself. “Don’t you
think it would bother Len and Linda if you killed one of their houseguests?”
she tried.

“Only if I left a mess to clean
up,” he said. “Otherwise, why would they care? It’s not like they know you.”

“But they know Michael, and I’m a
friend of his.”

“Michael moved away. He cut his
losses. He’s no longer one of us,” Larva said.

“What would Bob Ross do?” she asked.
That gave him pause, but not for long.

“Bob was a soldier before he was a
painter. He would have done what he needed to do.” He advanced on her. She ran
away.

“You can’t kill me here. Eventually
they’ll figure out it was you,” she said, breathless as she ran in a small
circle, barely skirting his outstretched fingers.

“That’s true.” He paused again,
thinking. She thought maybe she had stumped him, but then he continued. “I know
the woods better than anyone. I’ll take you somewhere they’ll never find you.”
Once his plan was back in place, he reached for her again. Lacy escaped the
room and fled down the hall.

It would be worse for her if she
left the house. Not only was it freezing,
but
she
didn’t know the area. He did. He would use that knowledge to his advantage. The
only hope she had was to stay in the house and avoid him, but how to do that in
a house with a thousand square feet?

She darted toward Len and Linda’s
room and instantly regretted it. She had already hidden here before and there
was a good chance that the person who found her the first time was also Larva.
Nonetheless, she was there now. She slammed and locked the door, though that
would only slow him down a few seconds. She used those few seconds to throw
open the window and dart into the closet.

Her leg brushed a cool metal
cylinder—one of Len’s empty oxygen canisters. She picked it up and tested
the weight in her hands. It was lighter than she would have liked, but if it
were any heavier, she might not be able to wield it.

Larva popped the lock and busted
into the room. He ran to the window and stared out. Lacy emerged from the
closet and knocked him in the back of the head with the oxygen tank.

He turned to face her. “I’m wearing
a helmet.”

“Not on your face,” she replied and
bashed him in the nose. There was a sickening sound of crumpling cartilage and
a spurt of blood. He yelped and clutched his ruined nose. Lacy used the moment
to bring the canister up hard between his legs. He doubled over, retching. She
hit him in the back and ribs with more force until he finally crumpled limply
to the ground, whimpering.

A strange feeling surged through
her, and it was so unusual that it took her a moment to name it.
Victory.
This was what it felt like to
form a plan and carry it off without a hitch. That had never happened to her
before. For the first time she was
capable
.
She could get used to it.

She didn’t have long to savor the
moment. Michael and Jason appeared in the doorway. “You did that?” Michael
asked. At any other time, the incredulity in his tone might have been
insulting. Lacy was still too pumped on adrenaline to care.

“Yes,” she answered. “Everything
went according to plan.”

“That’s awesome,” Jason said. He
came forward and inspected her handiwork. Michael pulled out his phone and dialed
911.

“I can’t believe I’ve had to call
the police twice in one day. I feel so dirty,” he said.

On the ground, Larva began to stir,
saw the three hovering over him, and thought better of it. “Could I have some
ice?” he groaned.

“For what?” Jason asked.

“Everything,” he said.

Jason smiled again and squeezed
Lacy’s shoulders. “My girl is lethal with oxygen containers.”

“You should see what I can do with
helium,” Lacy said.

“What?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know. It seemed like the
cool thing to say,” she said.

“For the record, it wasn’t,”
Michael
said.

The police arrived a short time
later and arrested Larva for breaking and entering. Lacy gave another
statement, this time about his murder confession. Neither Anderson nor Andersen
seemed too interested.

“We’ll turn it over to the
prosecutor, but it’s probably not going to stick. The evidence is sketchy, the
confession coming from a biased third party. We’ll probably push to get him on
the drug running charges and that’s it,” Anderson said.

Lacy felt torn. On the one hand,
there would be no justice for Jenny. On the other, did she deserve it? After
all she had done to Michael, it was ironic that no one would be charged for her
death. Lacy didn’t feel good about that, but neither did she feel horrible. Mostly
she felt relieved to be done with it all.

Len and Linda arrived home soon
after the police left. Though they claimed they hadn’t known where Len’s drugs
came from, they were still being charged as part of the drug running scheme.
Lacy decided the best way to repay them for their kindness and hospitality was
to pay for their legal expenses. She gave them Michael’s fancy attorney who
assured everyone he could negotiate a plea deal with no time served.

Jason and Lacy booked the next
flight out of Minnesota. It would mean no sleep, but they didn’t care. Now that
everything was wrapped up, they felt almost desperate to be home.

Michael, who had regained his
confiscated passport from the police, decided to go a different route. “I think
it’s time I actually get a stamp in this thing. I’m going to go to Ireland.”

“For how long?” Lacy asked.

“A week, maybe two,” he said.

“Make sure and come back,” she
said.

“There’s no place like home,” he
said. He hugged her and did one of those hug/bump things with Jason that men do
when they’re trying to be affectionate but still masculine.

It was only after they said their
goodbyes that they realized they would be waiting for their planes together.

“You know, we still have ten pages
of Pearl’s play to finish,” Michael said.

“No, I’m begging you,” Jason said.

Despite his objections, they
finished the play. Lacy knew Pearl was waiting on a report; she knew because
Pearl had called her four times that day until she turned off her phone.

“When we last left them, Dolly
McGee and Jesse Canticle had decided to rob a bank in order to fund their quest
to prove her innocence,” Michael said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,”
Jason interjected.

“Here it says that from now on
Jesse will read his lines like Elvis Presley,” Michael continued.

“No, just no,” Jason said.

“You have to respect the writer’s
vision,” Michael said.

“The writer is certifiable,” Jason
said.

“All great writers are,” Michael
noted. “Do you think Jimmy Stewart ever refused to talk to an invisible rabbit?
No, and
Harvey
is one of his best
films ever.”

“What are you talking about?” Jason
asked.

“Forget it. Let’s finish this
before we have to board our planes.”