Authors: Carlene Thompson
Hurriedly she checked all the doors and windows, even putting the lock panel on the dog door, slid into her coat, grabbed her purse, pressed the buttons to activate the alarm system, and ran outside. Then she went to her car and wheeled out of the driveway onto Prescott Road, heading north.
The temperature had taken an unusual rise during the day, but now it was dropping sharply again, causing the low-lying fog that had begun clustering in the trees thirty minutes before. It crept across the concrete, seeming to swallow the road, and Blaine put her headlights on low beam so they wouldn’t reflect off the shimmering layers in front of her. She also turned on the wipers to keep the windshield free of the clinging mist. Already the countryside was taking on a blanched, dead look.
Bernice lived in an isolated, one-hundred-year-old farmhouse two miles from her. She had been there only once, on a morning when Bernice was having car trouble and asked Blaine to bring her to the Avery home, where she would spend the day with Martin. Blaine had been surprised at Bernice’s home. Although she knew the house had been in Bernice’s family since it was built, apparently Bernice had no love for it, because she’d done nothing to keep up its condition since her husband had died ten years earlier. Battered, spiky wicker furniture sat on the sagging porch, and the glance Blaine had gotten of the entrance hall showed her water-stained wallpaper and faded, frayed rag rugs on worn hardwood floors.
Blaine turned off Prescott Road onto a narrow dirt lane leading to the house. She slowed, avoiding ruts in the road. On either side of her lay pastures, once well tended but allowed to go to ruin long ago. The fog, growing thicker, hung over rough grass where Herefords with gentle-eyed white faces once grazed.
Abruptly the pastures ended and a stand of trees appeared, separating the pastures from the house. The trees loomed over the road, their bare limbs forming a skeletal canopy. This is like the woods behind my house, Blaine thought. I feel like I’m back in those woods where I found Rosie, where she was probably murdered…
Blaine slowed. What am I doing here? she asked herself silently. It’s dark, it’s isolated, and Bernice sounded so strange on the phone. But I have to find out what she was talking about. For Robin’s sake, I
have
to find out.
She pulled up in front of the house, turned off the engine, and climbed the creaking porch steps. Bernice had at least left a porch light on for her, although it was a single, forty-watt bulb whose glow was nearly obliterated by the vast darkness and the fog. She knocked on the door. No answer. She knocked again, then stepped back. No light shone in the big front window. No noise came from inside. Bernice had said she was having one of her migraines. Had she taken something and then gone to sleep? No, certainly not after the insistent call she’d just made. Or had she been drinking? Susie had once mentioned being worried that her grandmother was drinking excessively, especially after Martin’s death, then had begged Blaine not to repeat the remark. “I shouldn’t have said that,” Susie had fretted. “Mom and Dad would
kill
me. Besides, I don’t know for
sure
that she’s drinking, and I’m sure she doesn’t do it on duty. It’s just that sometimes when you call her when she’s not expecting it, she sounds so
fuzzy
, you know, like someone who’s had too much.” Had Bernice “had too much” tonight? Was that why she’d sounded so strange on the phone?
Blaine turned the door handle. It revolved easily, but the door stuck. Obviously the wood was expanding in the dampness. She shoved, and when it wouldn’t give, she stood back and yelled, “Bernice! It’s Blaine Avery. Are you here?”
Still nothing. Blaine cursed under her breath. Here she was, trying to find out something vitally important about Robin, and Bernice was either asleep or gone. Gone where? she wondered. Gone to the police? It had taken Blaine a few minutes to lock up the house and try to get some response out of Robin. Maybe Bernice had decided she wasn’t coming and had gone on to the sheriff’s office. If so, there was nothing she could do to stop her.
Slowly she went down the steps to her car, looking back at the house a couple of times for signs of life. But there was no indication of movement within. Reluctantly, she climbed in the car and turned the ignition key.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she shouted when the only response she got was the same clicking sound she’d heard the day of Rosie’s funeral, when the car had been towed to Pearson’s Garage. “They said they fixed it!” They also said to take it back to the Mercedes dealer, Blaine reminded herself. They said they weren’t equipped to handle expensive foreign cars.
She tried a couple more times. Click, click, click. Hadn’t she noticed something earlier? Hadn’t the car seemed sluggish? And she’d ignored it. Stupid! She pounded the wheel in frustration, then reached for the car phone. Dead. Within the past few days, the phone company must have finally realized she hadn’t paid her bill and stopped the service. What perfect timing! She put down the receiver, then laid her head on the steering wheel. “Why can’t this sort of thing ever happen in your own driveway?” she asked aloud. “Why are you always
stuck
someplace?” Bernice, of course, had a phone, but she couldn’t get Bernice’s door open. At least not the front door. But there had to be other doors. At least one side door, right?
Blaine climbed out of the car and walked to the left side of the house, which faced a barn a few hundred feet away that Bernice clearly used as a garage because there was a gravel drive leading up to it. She impulsively walked to the barn doors first to see if Bernice’s car was there, but they were padlocked shut. “Naturally,” she muttered. Bernice was a fanatic about locks ever since the farmhouse had been broken into twenty years ago. The thieves had been a couple of teenaged boys who were breaking into houses all over the area and stealing jewelry. Bernice never tired of telling about losing her mother’s cameo, which grew more valuable with every recitation of the tale.
Blaine looked around, spotting a narrow door at the side of the house. She hurried up splintery steps and pulled open a screeching screen door, reaching anxiously for the knob. But this door was definitely locked. She pounded on it for a minute, then gave up. She circuited the house. No other doors. “Did you really expect any?” she asked herself. “Did you really think that just because most houses this size have at least three doors,
this
one would?”
Blaine realized she was talking to herself out of fear. Bernice’s call had shaken her to the core. Now she was out here in the middle of nowhere, stranded. There was only one solution—to walk back to Prescott Road and hail a car.
Glad she was wearing slacks and flat-heeled shoes, Blaine started back the way she had come. It wasn’t far to the road, she told herself. It was just that the night was so ominously dark. Fog billowed out from the trees, and she suddenly thought of all those movies she’d seen about Jack the Ripper that habitually featured fog-enshrouded London streets. “Why don’t you just make matters worse by trying to scare yourself?” she said furiously into the empty night. “Besides, this country lane doesn’t look a thing like a nineteenth-century London street. Jack the Ripper wouldn’t be caught dead here.”
She had gone about a hundred feet when she heard a noise. Involuntarily, she paused. Fog distorted sounds, but she was certain she’d heard a twig snapping in front of her and slightly to the right, off in the woods. An animal, of course. No cause for alarm. It was probably something fairly small, like a ground hog. Or maybe even smaller—a skunk. Now wouldn’t being sprayed by a skunk finish off this perfect evening? she thought, trying to laugh off her fear.
She took two more steps, then heard measured, crackling sounds, the same sounds her own feet made when she veered off into the tall, crisp grass. Not animal paws skittering through the woods, she thought. Not even a deer timidly approaching. Calm, deliberate
footsteps
. Her heart began to pound and she peered into the woods, but it was useless. The world had turned into a crawling mass of fog that even extinguished the light of the moon. She felt totally alone in this eerie mist—alone and vulnerable. After all, two girls had been murdered…
She took another hesitant step forward before a figure stepped out from the trees—a bulky, coated figure that stood approximately ten feet in front of her. She gasped, trying instinctively to make out a face in the moment before a powerful flashlight was shone directly in her eyes, blinding her. “Bernice?” she asked shakily, flinging up a hand to shade her eyes. The figure didn’t answer. She heard gravel crunch as it began to move forward. Then she heard the distinctive sound of a revolver being cocked.
Blaine whirled and ran left into the woods that a few minutes ago had looked so menacing and now seemed like a safe haven. It was harder to shoot someone dodging through trees than someone running down an open road.
She heard footsteps pounding behind her, driving her away from Prescott Road, back in the direction of the house.
Concentrate
, she intoned silently. Don’t think about who’s following you or when he’s going to shoot the gun. Just concentrate on not stepping in a hole or running into a low tree limb.
And don’t look back
. You’ll only slow yourself down.
Although Blaine was not particularly athletic, she normally was in good shape and had above-average stamina, thanks to tri-weekly workouts. But she hadn’t really exercised since her illness, and her body felt sluggish.
The ground was covered with dried leaves, and she cursed every one of them as they crackled beneath her feet. With all the noise she was making, she couldn’t possibly lose herself in the woods, and she didn’t dare stop for fear her pursuer would be on her in seconds. She had no choice but to go on.
She weaved around what seemed to be hundreds of trees, forcing her mind back to her flight. Briars grabbed her wool pant legs and she stumbled. Stopping to tear her clothes free, she heard feet thudding behind her,
close
behind her. Crouching low, she took off like a track runner.
Concentrate
, she told herself again. The ball of her foot slammed down on a sharp rock, sending a shock up her right leg to meet the pain in her right side. She gasped for breath in the cloying fog and knew that she couldn’t keep on much longer. She already felt like someone running in a nightmare, legs pumping harder and harder and getting her nowhere.
Suddenly she broke out of the woods into an open field. Unless she’d managed to run in a circle, the house should be about fifty feet ahead, she thought. The house meant lights and locks and a telephone to save her from the stranger chasing her. Because her pursuer couldn’t possibly be Bernice. The overweight older woman couldn’t run that fast. And if Blaine couldn’t get
into
the house? Well, she had to. The house was her only hope.
The fog had begun to swirl at an impossible speed, and she knew she was close to passing out. Oh, God, where was the damned house? She slowed, the stitch in her side becoming almost unbearable. She gulped air and tried to get her bearings. Was that a glimmer of light to her right? Or was it only a trick of the fog?
A shot cracked, and she was aware of a bullet whizzing just above her head. She let out a tiny, breath-starved scream and sprinted toward the light. A bulk materialized around it, and she realized she was seeing the weak porch light. She swallowed a sob, still listening for pursuing footsteps, still trying to concentrate all her energy on flight and not on whether the next bullet would find its mark.
She had reached the gravel drive and skirted around the house to the porch, leaping up the three steps and pounding across the old, unpainted boards. Another shot split the darkness with that odd snapping sound caused by the fog. Blaine grabbed the brass doorknob, turned it, and hurled all her weight against the door. It groaned, then opened, and she staggered into the dark entrance hall. She slammed the heavy door behind her and fumbled at the lock. But this was the original door, and the old-fashioned lock needed a key. Breaking into silent, wrenching sobs, she ran her hands up the smooth wood and found a bolt lock, which she shot into place. “Thank God,” she rasped. Sagging against the door, though, she felt only a few seconds of relief. The side door was locked, but what about the windows? She would have to check before he found another way in. But the entrance hall was spinning, spinning…
2
Pain seared through Blaine’s temples. For a few dizzy moments she had the impression her head had been pierced by something long and sharp. Then, slowly, reason returned. She felt her temples. Nothing, of course.
What she noticed next was the musty smell of rough fabric beneath her cheek. That explained the pain—she had fallen and hit her head. The blow had been cushioned only by a thin rag rug.
Automatically, she glanced at her watch. Seven thirty-five. She had been unconscious only a few minutes at most. Her pursuer could still be outside, trying to find a way in. Or maybe he was
already
inside.
Her heart slammed painfully in her chest, and for a moment she felt paralyzed. If I could just disappear into this rug, she thought wildly. If I could just sink down inside where no one could see me…
Blaine clenched her hands into fists. Stop thinking like a terrified child, she told herself sternly. You can’t disappear, but you
can
protect yourself. Slowly she sat up, looking around her. In a corner by the door stood a coat rack, and beneath it rested a long black umbrella. She scrambled to her feet, ran forward, and grabbed it, looking with satisfaction at its long metal point. It wasn’t a gun, but it was
something
.
She didn’t dare call out for Bernice. Raising her voice could give away her location if her assailant was in the house. Still, he must have seen her come in. And if he
was
in the house by now, would he have looked for her first near the front door?
She hovered in the hall, not knowing what move to make first. Should she hide? Should she make sure all the doors and windows were locked?