Shadows on a Cape Cod Wedding (19 page)

Camomile: Engergy [sic] Will Surmount Adversity
.
Hand-­colored steel engraving from
American Flora
, 1851. Woman on columned balcony, staring at storm clouds above; man on ladder who has climbed to the balcony reaches up to her. Below the title is the poem, “We must on, —be our pathway o’er flowers or o’er thorns, / Do thunder-clouds gloom it, or sunbeams adorn! / Then sigh not! It never will lighten our woe, / But smile, and e’en pleasure from sorrow may flow.” Chamomile flowers surround the picture. Page, 7 x 9.5 inches, toned edges. Picture, 5.5 x 7.5 inches. Price: $50.

The sound of
Maggie’s cell phone interrupted them.

“Forget the proposal, Maggie. Forget me. I was wrong to think this was going to work. If it weren’t for this damn hurricane I’d leave for Maine tonight. I’m going downstairs. I need time alone.” The door slammed behind Will.

Maggie stood, shivering, as though a cold wave had just broken over her.

No. This couldn’t have happened. Will couldn’t have walked out on her.

But he had.

Her phone. That had probably been Gussie, cancelling the party. She’d check the message and then go and talk with Will. They’d make up. It would be all right.

Wind was hammering at the windows, shaking the panes. Somewhere a shutter had come loose and was hitting the side of the house. The banging felt as though it was inside her head.

Maggie looked for her bag, where her phone was. She found it under the wet clothes she’d hurriedly peeled off. Before the outline of her world changed.

Her phone was in the bottom of the canvas bag she used as a pocketbook. The bag was still damp; she should have emptied it and put it near the radiator. Too late for that now.

The message wasn’t from Gussie; it was from Annie. Because of the storm, the party’d been moved to an earlier time. Lily’d decided not to go, because of the storm, but Annie would pick Maggie up at five-thirty at Six Gables.

Five-thirty! She only had fifteen minutes to get ready. And no time to talk with Will; no cozy dinner here at the inn. If she weren’t the maid of honor, she’d be tempted to opt out, as Lily had. But she didn’t have a choice.

Somehow through her emotional fog she found clean, dry underwear, a pair of decent slacks, and a dry sweater. The sweater wasn’t as nice as the one she’d had on earlier, but that one wouldn’t be dry for hours. In this weather she couldn’t be expected to be elegant. She looked at the leather shoes she’d planned to wear, and then at her soaked sneakers. Neither was a good choice. She opted for the wet sneakers and a pair of dry socks. Her feet wouldn’t stay dry long anyway. Why ruin a good pair of shoes?

She made an attempt at braiding her still-damp hair, which no doubt would get soaked again, and added a minimum of makeup, hoping it wouldn’t run. She didn’t really care what she looked like anyway.

In case she didn’t see him downstairs, in case he cared, she left Will a note.
Time of bachelorette party moved up. Getting ride with Annie. Back as early as possible.
She hesitated before signing it,
Love, Maggie.
She did love him, damn it. She left the note on the bed.

As soon as she got downstairs, Annie pulled up in front of Six Gables, although not in the police car she’d promised earlier. Probably the chief had other plans for the patrol cars tonight, Maggie thought as she climbed into the passenger seat. “How are the roads?” she asked, as they took off.

Tonight was a night to think about Gussie; not about Will.

The rains were still torrential.

“Not good,” Annie admitted. “A half dozen streets have already been blocked off because of flooding, and I had to detour around another because a tree had fallen. Luckily, it hadn’t hit a house, just ­another tree and a mailbox. I called the station to let them know so they could put roadblocks up there, too. It’s going to be a long night.”

“I’m surprised Sheila and Gussie didn’t cancel the party,” Maggie said. “It’s ridiculous to ask anyone to come out in this weather. It must have been a challenge for you to find a baby-sitter tonight.”

“Luckily there are a lot of teenagers in the neighborhood,” Annie said. “I can usually find someone willing to earn some money.” She swerved, barely missing a large branch blocking one lane.

The only lights were from swaying streetlights that gave a ghostly appearance to the wildly blowing tree tops and the garish reflections of the car’s headlights on the wet road.

Maggie looked around. “How far is the Snow Squall Inn? I thought Gussie said it was close to town. We passed downtown a while back.”

“I told you some streets were blocked,” Annie assured her, wiping the inside of the windshield so she could see more clearly. “I’m going around that area.”

Maggie nodded. But she had a growing sense that something was wrong. Even with weather this bad, from what Gussie’d said they should have been to the inn by now. But she didn’t know the area, and it was dark, and with the storm making it even harder to see than it would have been usually, she couldn’t be sure.

Where would Annie be taking her if not to the Snow Squall for the party?

Annie was the wife of the chief of police.

She’d also been Dan Jeffrey’s lover. Diana had caught her searching for something in Dan’s room. Had she really been looking for love letters?

What if she’d been one of Cordelia’s drug customers? Annie was the wife of a busy man. She had two small children, an immaculate house, and still found time to cook almost everything from scratch, and have time-consuming hobbies. Maybe she was one of those housewives who needed a little chemical help to get her through her day.

And Tony Silva, the awkward boy who didn’t have close friends, whose dad was pushing him to excel at a sport he was failing at, baby-sat for her.

Maggie’s mind raced, as Annie’s car skidded around another corner. Annie was driving faster now, focused on the road ahead of her.

They were heading further away from downtown Winslow on roads Maggie was pretty sure she’d never seen. Or maybe it was seeing them through a canopy of wavering tree limbs and drenching rain that gave every twist and turn in the road an eerie feeling, as though whatever was ahead was unknown, and unpredictable.

Maggie tried not to focus on the road, but on what she knew about Annie Irons.

Was it possible Tony Silva hadn’t bought the OxyContin pills he’d taken? Could he have found them at Annie’s house when he’d been baby-sitting? He’d had serious asthma. His father had said that, and so had Sean and Josh. OxyContin was a depressant. It would have slowed Tony’s breathing down faster than it would have in someone without breathing problems. Slowed his breathing down enough to stop it.

And Ike Irons hadn’t found the person who’d sold the pills to Tony last spring. Could that be because no one had sold them to Tony? Because Tony’d gotten them from Ike’s wife?

How many teenagers died or overdosed from prescription medications in their parents’ or grandparents’ medicine cabinets, or those in the homes of their friends?

Too many, Maggie knew.

Sean and Josh had told her where kids
could
get drugs. They didn’t say they knew for sure where Tony had.

On the campus where she worked students bought and sold their own prescription medications, especially those for anxiety or ADD. Sales like that were almost impossible to control.

Annie’s knuckles on the steering wheel had looked white in the glare of the occasional streetlight. But now there were few streetlights, and no lights from houses on Annie’s side of the car. Unless this area had lost power, they must be on the beach road. On a clear night you’d be able to see stars, and the moon, and lights from boats on Cape Cod Bay.

But tonight all boats had been brought in to dry dock, and the sky was low and dark. The tide would be high about midnight, Maggie remembered. That’s when houses near the Bay would be in most danger from a storm surge.

“Where are we going, Annie?”

“To the party, of course.”

“We left town behind a while ago,” Maggie said.

“I want to show you something,” said Annie.

The car sped through the narrow streets. Annie might know where they were going, but Maggie had no idea. She reached for her telephone.

It wasn’t in the outside pocket of her bag, where she always kept it. Damn. She must have left it on the bedside table at Six Gables.

She felt for it again, to be sure. It definitely wasn’t there.

But even if she had it, who would she call?

What would she say?

That she didn’t know where she was? That she was out for a drive with Annie Irons?

Even if Tony Silva had gotten OxyContin from Annie’s home, Maggie had no proof, and there was nothing to be done about it now. And if he’d taken it from her medicine cabinet, he’d stolen it, and she’d been guilty of nothing but trusting a baby-sitter not to invade her privacy or steal from her.

Maggie clutched the sides of her seat. Now Annie was driving through sections of flooded street. How deep was the water? The headlights reflected back rain pounding on water, not pavement.

Annie gunned the car, trying to get out of the flooded area.

If Annie knew about Cordelia’s selling drugs, maybe she knew something else.

Something that would help find Cordelia’s killer, and clear Diana.

Now the rain was coming sideways as well as vertically. Annie swore under her breath as she squinted at the windshield trying to see through sheets of water. She’d turned off the flooded street onto a narrower street, or alley, or maybe a wide driveway. Bushes and low branches of trees scraped first Maggie’s and then Annie’s side of the car.

Annie, bent over the steering wheel, stared straight ahead. She never slowed down.

At the end of the narrow passageway she turned abruptly left onto a wider street, swerving as she turned. Suddenly, through the rain, Maggie saw a high brick wall maybe thirty feet in front of them.

Instinctively, she braced herself.

Annie slammed on the brakes, but nothing happened. Then she turned the steering wheel as far as she could to the right.

The car began to skid.

Maggie watched helplessly as the car fishtailed in slow motion and the driver’s side crashed into the wall, bounced back into the road, and then the left rear end hit the wall. Hard.

Panax Coloni.
Outstanding copper engraving of plant now called Marsh Woundwort, from Jacob Trew (Berlin) edition of Elisabeth Blackwell’s
A Curious
Herbarium
, her volume of “useful plants now used in practice of physic,” published in 1757. Also called All-Heal, Panay, or Clown’s Woundwort, as a tea it was used to stop internal bleeding and as a poultice to stop external bleeding. It was also said to aid dysentery, and as a gargle, sore throats. Artist and engraver Blackwell began working when her husband was imprisoned for starting a printing business without serving the apprenticeship required by English law. Her book was a success, and she was able to obtain his release. He was later executed for treason in Sweden. She was an artist and entrepreneur well beyond the norm for a woman of her time. 9 x 12.5 inches. Price: $250.

They’d crashed.
She was alive. Her neck and shoulders ached, and pain slashed through her left ankle. Blood? None she could feel. Maggie tried to focus in the dark.

The car’s engine was running.

She looked over at Annie. “Are you all right?”

Annie didn’t answer. Blood was dripping down her forehead, into her right eye, onto her raincoat. She was breathing, but her left arm was at an odd angle. Probably broken. Getting her out of the car wouldn’t be easy. Her airbag had probably saved her life, but now she was pinned between the steering wheel and where her side of the car was crushed and pushed in. Jagged points of what had been the door and roof of the car had hit her head. Rain dripped through openings in what a few seconds ago had been the car’s two left-hand doors.

Maggie unfastened her seat belt, reached over, and turned off the car engine.

She needed to get Annie to a hospital.

She didn’t have a telephone.

Annie would have one.

She pushed aside the now-deflated airbag on her side, found her canvas bag, and foraged for the small flashlight she’d bought that afternoon.

Annie’s pocketbook wasn’t in what was left of the front seat. It must have been thrown somewhere during the accident. Maggie tried to open her own door. The latch on the handle worked, but the door was jammed. The crash had changed its alignment just enough so it wouldn’t open more than an inch or two.

She, too, was imprisoned.

She managed to turn around in her seat enough to flash her light over the back of the car. There. Annie’s pocketbook was on the floor, but its contents were strewn all over the backseat. Her phone was in back of the driver’s seat, caught beneath a piece of the caved-in back door. Despite the searing pain in her ankle, Maggie managed to crawl halfway over the console between the seats. Annie’s seat was bent backward and sideways.

The throbbing in her ankle was worse when she moved it. Maybe it was broken.

A maid of honor with a cast on her ankle. Gussie would love that.

She squirmed around the broken seat and finally was able to reach the phone, and dial 911.

“We’ve had an accident. We need an ambulance. They’ll need to bring equipment to cut us out of the car. No. I don’t know where we are. Can you track this phone with GPS?”

The 911 operator pointed out there was a hurricane. Emergency vehicles were busy.

“I know there’s a hurricane. No, I don’t see any street signs. I told you. I can’t get out of the car. Yes, I’ll stay on the line. The woman who’s badly injured is Annie Irons, Police Chief Irons’s wife.”

She held on another minute. Then the line went dead.

Was that enough time for the Emergency Center to track the call? She hoped.

Annie’s cell phone battery light was blinking. Just what she needed. A dead phone.

She started to dial Will’s number. Maybe she could get through before the phone died completely. Then, only inches from her head, someone knocked on the glass of the passenger seat window.

“You folks need help?”

From outside, in the pouring rain, a face peered in at her.

She rolled the window down. Thank goodness Annie had an old-fashioned car. No power windows.

“We’ve had an accident. We’re both trapped in the car. I’ve only hurt my ankle, but my friend is unconscious. I called 911 but I didn’t know where to tell them we were. If you know, could you call and tell them?”

“No problem, Maggie. Let me see if I can get you out of there.”

Maggie looked closer. Through the heavy rain it was hard to see, and the man was wearing a dark hoodie. But, yes. It could be. “Rocky Costa?”

“In person.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Didn’t Annie tell you? I live over that way.” He gestured in the general direction of the brick wall. “You were coming to pay a call on me. You’re late, so I came to see what was holding you up. And here I’ve found you had a bit of a problem along the way.” Rocky stood and looked over the car, shaking his head. “Women drivers. Annie always did have a heavy foot.”

“I’d love to talk with you, but why don’t you call 911 first? Let them know where we are. Annie needs to get to a hospital.”

“Actually, I’m thinking this is working out just fine the way it is. Two birds in one car crash, as it were.”

“Why was Annie bringing me to see you?”

“You were getting a little too nosy, Maggie from New Jersey. I heard from one of the kids on my baseball team this afternoon that he’d talked with you. He wanted me to tell him he’d done the right thing. He figured it would be okay, telling you about the drugs, seeing as Cordelia isn’t exactly in the business anymore. He didn’t see the big picture. But I figured you, being a smart professor and all, you might put all the pieces together. So I told Annie what the boy’d done, and we decided it would be best if you didn’t tell anyone what you’d heard.”

“I haven’t told anyone,” said Maggie. Except Will, she thought. “I talked to the boys this afternoon, and was planning to spend the weekend celebrating a wedding, as you’ll remember. I’m going back to New Jersey Sunday.”

“Annie and I decided to change your plans a little. To make sure you don’t open your mouth and share any information someone here in Winslow might find of interest, you understand,” said Rocky. He stood back a little, his clothing and hoodie dripping, rain running off his nose and fingers. The wind had let up a little, but the rain hadn’t. Water coursed down the street, creating a new waterway. “But I believe now this little accident opens up new possibilities.”

“What do you want from me?” said Maggie.

“Simple. I want you to disappear,” said Rocky.

Not good. Would the emergency operator be able to trace her call? She couldn’t count on it. Caught in the car she had no defense. Maggie pressed down on the door handle again. “I don’t understand enough to be dangerous. Sean and Josh said Cordelia was dealing the drugs. Why should you worry about that? Cordelia’s dead.” She pushed on the door. It stuck at the same place it had before. Rocky didn’t seem to notice.

“For a professor you really aren’t that bright,” said Rocky. “Sure, Cordelia sold a few drugs to some high school kids. Those dolls of hers were a good cover. She was a nice lady. She and I were together a lot of years. But there’s no way Cordelia could have organized the business. She was small-time. All she wanted was money to pay her taxes.”

Suddenly Maggie understood.

“Annie. Annie was the one who managed the operation, wasn’t she?” Annie, who collected high-end antiques and wore expensive clothes on a small-town police chief’s salary.

Annie, who kept busy every hour of the day proving she was a perfect wife and mother. Annie, who had friends and family in South Boston. Suddenly it all fit together.

“But what about Dan Jeffrey? Why was he killed?” Maggie moved closer to the car door and kept pushing it with her shoulder and arm. She had to get out. The metal creaked and moved another fraction of an inch.

“He panicked when his daughter showed up. He thought she’d tell her friends in Colorado he was still alive, and it’d get back to the police or insurance people there, and he’d be arrested. He didn’t want that. He was going to take off. Annie said she loved him. I don’t know the details. But what Annie wants, Annie gets. Dan hired me to take him to Boston in my old fishing boat. I hardly use it anymore, but he was desperate to get away and not have anyone see him go, so I agreed. Somehow Annie found out. She met us at my dock at dawn the day we were going to leave. They argued, and she shot him. She paid me to take him and the gun and throw them both overboard in the Bay. I guess I didn’t go far enough out.”

“And Cordelia?” She tried to keep her voice steady, and Rocky talking, while she put as much pressure as she could on the jammed door. Every tenth of an inch counted.

“She wanted out of the business. At first she wanted to scare ­Diana, get her to leave Winslow. Get her away from the drugs and the craziness. That was the fire.”

“Cordelia was going to burn her own house?”

“She was pretending to. Then she told me she’d decided to get out of the business. She’d changed her will, Dan was gone, and she was going to ask Diana to come and live with her. She wanted a family. She was going to tell Annie she wasn’t taking any more product. She was going to return what she had, and that was the end.”

“And?”

“Next thing I knew Cordelia was dead.” Maybe Rocky’s eyes were filled with tears. Maybe the rain had just gotten harder.

“And so now you’re supposed to kill me,” said Maggie. “Because I know too much.”

“Idiot. You’ve made sure she knows more than she did before.” Annie’s voice was weak, but her eyes were open, and beginning to focus. “You’re even more stupid than I thought you were, Rocky.”

“Annie, I may be stupid, but I know enough to know I’m through with you. Through with all this. Killing Cordelia put it over the line for me. I loved that woman. You knew that, but it didn’t make a difference. You had no reason to kill her.”

“If she wasn’t in the business, she could have turned on us.”

“She didn’t know about Dan.”

“But I do. And now you’ve been crazy enough to tell this Maggie person. You’re an accessory to Dan Jeffrey’s murder, Rocky. There’s no way you’ll get away with that.”

Rocky reached under his hoodie.

Through the rain Maggie saw the end of Rocky’s gun. She pushed her shoulder even harder against the car door. The metal was groaning, but pounding rain on the roof of the car and the wind all around them masked the sound.

“You think you can get away with shooting both of us?” Annie managed to shriek. “Two defenseless women, trapped in a car, shot by a madman? My husband will hunt you down!”

Maggie, focused on trying to get her car door open, and on Rocky outside in the rain, heard Annie groan. She glanced back. Annie was looking for her pocketbook. “My gun,” she whispered. “In my bag. My gun.”

No way was Maggie giving a killer a gun. Especially a killer who’d lured her to wherever this place was and planned to kill her. She hoped the pocketbook was far enough back in the car that Annie, jammed in the front seat with a broken arm, wouldn’t be able to reach it. The gun must still be in her purse since she hadn’t seen it on the car floor.

Rocky was pointing his gun now, aiming it through the open car window, only inches from Maggie’s head.

If she closed the window would the glass deflect the bullet?

Not at such close range.

Besides, it would take too long to close the window.

“I think it would be simpler for me to shoot now,” he said, calmly. “At least I won’t be shooting either of you in the back of the head, Annie, the way you shot Cordelia. I’m giving you each a chance to think about what’s going to happen. Who wants to die first?”

One chance. Luckily the darkness and rain meant Rocky couldn’t see inside the car as well as Maggie could see out. She took every bit of strength she had left and pushed on her door.

This time it gave way, with the loud sound of metal scraping metal. The door sprang open, hitting the unsuspecting Rocky’s torso, including his gun arm, knocking him into the muddy street, and taking Maggie with it, as she held on to the door handle.

Rocky’s gun fired, and Maggie grabbed at the arm holding the gun, and kneed him in the groin.

He screamed and doubled up in pain as she grabbed the gun and managed to pull herself upright on the open door and limp a few feet away from both Rocky and the car.

She stood, gun pointed at Rocky, but with an occasional glance toward the car to make sure Annie hadn’t figured out how to reach her purse. And her gun.

Her ankle wasn’t just throbbing, she realized. It gave her no support. She couldn’t run.

She checked the gun. It was loaded. She’d hated going hunting with her father when she’d been a child, but she had learned a few things from those days.

She aimed, and she could shoot if necessary.

She didn’t say anything, and all Rocky did was swear a couple of times.

It seemed they were there, Rocky on the ground, Maggie standing in the rain and wind, forever.

But it was probably only a couple of minutes before they all heard the screams of an ambulance, and then a police car, in the distance. And then coming closer.