Red flags, p.28
Red Flags, page 28
“That’s your complaint?” Ellie said. “That she made an executive decision?”
“Shut up.” And that quickly, he put his wife’s upgrade from kidnapper and extortionist to killer out of his mind and moved forward. Damage control. One glance at Becca and they were a team again. The Gabriel problem had been in the past. The Ellie problem still stood in front of them.
Ellie took a breath, turned her face toward her first cousin. “Are you really thinking of a way to kill me, Becca?”
A pause. “Of course not.”
But the pause robbed the statement of any conviction. Had they both moved closer without appearing to, or had she only imagined that?
Ellie pulled the book out of her pocket. The best defense, after all . . .
“Maybe you’ll want to consult this for suggestions,” she goaded.
“What’s that?” Hunter asked.
“The source of the letters on Mason’s ransom note.”
Once more, he stumbled. “Wh . . . How is that possible?”
“Because the plan had been put in place before you left town, the letter mailed before you left. It must have been tough for you,” she added to Becca, “mailing that letter, committing yourself to go through with it. Of course if you changed your mind, all you had to do was be sure to get the mail—not tough with Jenny out of town, and I’m sure Hunter here doesn’t concern himself with mundane tasks like that.”
“What are you talking about?” Becca’s fingers gripped the island counter, knuckles white.
“The timing worked perfectly, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t, if it arrived a week or a month later. The letter was only a distraction, meant to confuse. That’s why the strange amount—enough to sound convincing, but not enough to really cause an inconvenience.”
Hunter was still trying to puzzle this out. “Why would Becca—that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Her hair got caught in the glue before it dried. I believe Rachael knows it’s not a vellus hair—Mason’s—though it could be Taylor’s. Are we meant to think it’s Taylor’s? Is that why you used her book? Tell me you weren’t trying to frame your own daughter.”
“Becca?” Hunter asked, his voice abruptly uncertain.
“Of course not!” she snapped at her husband. “I would never!”
Ellie kept it up. “You didn’t think of simply using a newspaper or a magazine?”
Becca’s shoulders slumped, not under her cousin’s accusing gaze, but her husband’s. “Who gets magazines anymore?”
“You said Taylor reads the Post—”
“Online.”
“Stop!” Hunter shouted. “Where is Mason? Where is my son?”
Ellie looked at her cousin. “Do you want to tell him? Or should I?”
Chapter 40
8:10 p.m.
Becca remained as silent as if she were a teenager again, uncertain, caught but hoping she could brazen it out, anyway.
Ellie prompted, “He’s going to find out sooner or later.”
“Becca? What’s she talking about?”
Becca said, “Don’t listen to her. She’s just running off at the mouth, trying to get herself out of this kitchen after making all these accusations. Just let her leave. She can’t prove a word of what she’s been saying.”
“But she knows—”
“It doesn’t matter what they suspect. It only matters what they can prove.”
Was she trying to save Ellie? Or herself?
It didn’t matter, because neither plan worked. Hunter would not be distracted. “But where is Mason?”
“I don’t know!”
Hands clenching and unclenching, he took two more steps toward his wife. Unfortunately, it took him two steps closer to Ellie. Maybe he’d pass her entirely and she could run out as they argued, get in her car, and escape the house.
And then what? Leave her cousin at the mercy of her very irate husband, who was about to get a lot more irate once he learned the truth? Maybe have another murder take place—for Taylor to stumble across?
Though Hunter, so far, had only terrorized a few families. It was Becca who had committed the cold-blooded murder. Perhaps Ellie should worry about Hunter’s safety.
Or her own.
Hunter stopped a foot away and, snake-quick, reached out to wrap one hand around Ellie’s throat. He squeezed, and she instinctively punched him (which did nothing) and kicked his shin as hard as she could (which caused a grunt and a wince).
If she’d really wanted to do damage, she would have kicked his knee out, dislocating the joint. She meant this struggle only as a warning: She would not be manhandled, not even by a technical member of her family. She did not want to get in a fistfight with Hunter; first, she would lose, and second, she wanted both of them to keep talking.
He let go, but didn’t move. “You’d better tell me where my kid is, if you want to walk out of here.”
She looked to her cousin, to give her one last chance to confess voluntarily.
“Well?” Hunter demanded.
Time was up. “Look at the drawing. Taylor’s notebook.”
He glanced down at the opened book, next to him on the island, at Taylor’s illustration of a dragon carrying off an infant. “So what? She’s always drawing stuff.”
“Don’t you wonder why she called Mason a ‘dragon baby’?”
“Because she’s jealous of the new kid. So what?”
“It’s not jealousy. Mason has ichthyosis. A condition that causes scaly patches on the skin, trapping sweat glands under its scabs. Nothing serious, easily controlled by a skin care routine of lotions and exfoliations. But genetic.”
Hunter said, “What, that patchy stuff . . .”
“Yes. That Gabriel had.”
The tumblers fell. He had to see the connection, but clearly didn’t want to. “So?”
Ellie said, “Mason has it too.”
“You’ve never even seen Mason!”
“No, but Taylor has. The dragon baby.” Ellie pointed again to the drawing. “See the red patches along the baby’s arms?”
“There’s nothing like that on Mason. He’s my kid. I know what he looks like.” But he glanced at his wife, quickly, waiting for confirmation. He didn’t get it. Becca focused on Ellie, and Ellie alone.
Who said gently: “Yes, but I’m willing to bet you leave bath time and changing diapers to the nanny or to Becca. It’s only been four months, and you’re out of town a lot. A lot.”
His resistance began to show a few cracks. “Becca. Tell her this isn’t true. There was nothing wrong with Mason.”
“No.” She spoke without an ounce of conviction. “No, there isn’t.”
Ellie continued: “Jenny Cho had to know, and Mason’s doctors and nurses would have seen the condition during his checkups. That was another reason this had to be done while Jenny remained safely out of the way. Maybe to help her out, give her an ironclad alibi, but maybe so that she would not be here to be questioned about Mason’s medical conditions. She might have even known about Gabriel. But this way Megan and her group will be blamed for his disappearance, case closed, no reason to talk to Jenny at all.”
Hunter couldn’t hide from this truth any longer. He turned to his wife. “Gabriel? Really? Really?”
She stared at the table, at her daughter’s drawing of her son and the dragon.
Ellie said, “Did you even think of what this would do to Taylor? Wondering for the rest of her life what happened to her brother? If he was alive? If whoever took him would come back for her?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Becca said. “Taylor is happy he’s gone. Now she’s got us all to herself again.”
“Maybe you really believe that,” Ellie said. “It’s still inexcusable.”
This sparked fire. “What the hell would you know about having children? About having a family?”
Hunter also spared no sympathy for his daughter, too focused on his own humiliation. “Gabriel? Really? You—you did—”
Becca could have argued with Ellie all day and never cracked her iron shell, but she didn’t last thirty seconds under Hunter’s eye. “It was only a few times! You were gone so much—it didn’t mean anything! I could get him out of our lives, but if you ever knew, ever suspected, you’d reject Mason and you’d leave me. Our lives would fall apart, the house, the accounts, the projects. It wasn’t worth it. I had to let the baby go. And it killed me.”
Her voice broke on the last four words, so heartfelt and so piteously that Ellie almost wanted to turn away and write this off as a family conflict to be worked out among the parties themselves.
Almost.
But a man had been killed.
“She loves you,” Ellie told Hunter. “She murdered Gabriel to keep you.”
“My friend?” The words burst out in ragged shards, and this time he did brush past Ellie. “You two were pretending around me, knowing all the time, making a fool—”
Ellie was free. She could run now, and they probably wouldn’t even notice. But then Hunter’s hands went around her cousin’s throat, and as strong as the running and the spinning and the aerobics might have made her, Becca didn’t stand a chance against his mindless rage. Her cousin was bent backward over the table, legs trapped, arms pulling uselessly at his biceps.
Ellie grabbed one of Hunter’s arms and tried to pull it away, the effort a sneeze in the hurricane of his fury. He did stop killing his wife long enough to shove Ellie away; her hip slammed against the marble countertop and her spine popped loudly enough to be heard over Becca’s gasps.
Ellie needed a weapon. A gun might make him rethink his strategy, but, of course, she didn’t have one. Knives abounded, and she could stab him, but that would only make him turn on her, unless she actually killed him.
The knife block included a pair of scissors, and she pulled it out. Yanking the plug of the expensive coffeemaker, she cut the cord at its base. Then she approached the struggling couple and found the outlet at the end of the island.
Ellie had no idea if this would work. It might kill him. It might just make him mad. Madder.
It might kill him and Becca both.
She inserted the plug into the outlet. It didn’t have a GFI, she had to hope it dated to some far earlier remodel, before the stainless-steel Sub-Zero and the Simonelli. With luck it would at least startle Hunter into rational thought before the circuit breaker tripped and cut the power. And before he turned around and strangled Ellie instead.
Becca’s feet were kicking, but losing strength.
Ellie touched the wire to Hunter’s right ear, careful to hold it well back from the hot ends. There had not been time to strip them—
A tremor ran through Hunter’s body, down to his bare, grounded feet.
“Daddy!”
Taylor stood in the doorway to the dining room, her eyes huge, both hands held out in front of her as if she could push her father away from her mother.
Then the lights went out.
The circuit breaker had tripped, but in the dying light from the windows, Ellie saw Taylor’s mouth open for another scream, which didn’t come. Instead, the girl turned and ran, springing away as fast as any rabbit.
The hands around Becca’s neck loosened, then fell. Hunter stepped heavily to one side and slid awkwardly into a chair as Becca rolled over, sucking in breath as quickly as she could, coughing, then sucking again.
Ellie heard the rear veranda door clatter against its stops as if thrown by great force, and was in motion before she even realized what her body might be doing. Always smarter than her, it had reacted to the danger before she could form the thought.
Taylor! Distraught, horrified, unable to swim.
Ellie burst out of the back door, across the flagstones, past George the stone lion and his no-name partner. Taylor’s pa-jamaed form was already three-quarters of the way down the lawn with no signs of slowing.
Turn right, Ellie prayed. Turn right and go to your tree. Climb your tree to your special alone place. Don’t go to the dock.
The girl kept on straight, the short legs moving with unbelievable speed.
Behind her she heard the veranda door slam once more, and a more solid sound, like the thunk of a car door.
Don’t go to the dock. Don’t go off the end of the dock. Don’t be like Benjy, it’s not really that peaceful.
Taylor didn’t turn toward the woods. Her bare feet hit the planks of the dock with a slap so loud it made Ellie wince.
“Stop!” Ellie shouted. Or thought she shouted. Her heart beat too loudly for her to hear.
It was a long dock. It would take her a while. A splinter might slow her down, the hard wood too painful after the soft grass.
Without the slightest hesitation Taylor disappeared off the end.
Ellie reached the boards only a second—it had to be only a second, it couldn’t have been longer—after her, could just catch a glimpse of the white print pajama set in the water, already downstream from the jumping-off point by several feet. She had to do what Taylor had done. Don’t hesitate, don’t slow down. No time to take off shoes. I don’t know what real difference shoes would make, anyway—
She hit the water in a most inelegant dive, more or less smacking her face and stomach onto the surface. The sting distracted her from the shock of the water, which, while not exactly cold yet, wasn’t exactly warm either. She tried to breathe and managed only to get a mouthful of the Potomac. It didn’t taste great.
Where is she?
Ellie’s body was longer, stronger, she should be within reach with one more kick—but her fingers felt only water, that nothingness heavier than air.
She kicked harder, tried to lift her head out of the small waves. There—a flash of white against the greenish-brown flow. Ellie gave a frantic sprint, legs and arms in a panicked rush.
Something grabbed her foot.
She wouldn’t have believed her body could get any more mindlessly hysterical, but it did. She flailed wildly, kicking against the tendrils, until the submerged tree branches around her ankle flowed and gapped.
Another push, and her hand touched cloth. Ever so briefly, before the current took it once more out of her range, but enough to know she hadn’t imagined it. Her water-blurred eyes saw the whitish shade below the surface, and then she had hold of it.
With both hands she grabbed the girl’s torso and hefted her upper body out of the water. This pushed Ellie below the surface, but only for a moment. Her legs scissored—maybe taking off the shoes would have helped—and she managed to get both their heads into the air.
Taylor had gone completely limp; Ellie had no idea if the girl was breathing. She tried to grasp the girl’s back to her chest, looping one arm across her from armpit to armpit in the classic lifeguard carry. But, to be honest, Ellie had no idea how lifeguards dragged the rescued to safety. Though Aunt Rosalie had worked hard to teach her, Ellie wasn’t much of a swimmer.
With the set sun below the horizon, the shadow of the trees turned the riverbank to a deep darkness. There were no inlets or cleared land in sight and the current felt much stronger than she had expected. She struggled toward the shore, her kicking legs tangling with Taylor’s lifeless ones. Ellie didn’t bother shouting for help; there would be no one to hear.
A very small but grassy sliver of bank appeared ahead and Ellie aimed for it. Easier said than done, but the water grew slightly shallower and calmer near the edge. She talked herself toward it with Aunt Katey’s mantra: I can do this. I can do this—though she was not at all sure that she could.
Where is the river bottom? She should be able to reach the bottom, stand up, and pull Taylor out, but still her feet flailed in nothingness, without a toehold.
She heard a voice.
“Here! I’ll get her.”
A dark figure appeared on the slope, only two feet away. Once more, she pushed the girl’s body upward. Taylor should breathe, she should be able to breathe. This once again shoved Ellie under the water’s surface. Where the hell is the bottom?
Taylor was torn from her hands and yet she couldn’t pull herself up, her feet finding only silt that didn’t give enough purchase and even sucked her down farther. Her hands were in the air, breaking the surface, but the rest of her needed to breathe and couldn’t, and her legs had done all they could.
The soaking water, her flailing limbs, the smell of algae and lichen and restraints, and suddenly she was four years old again, in the backseat of a car, slowly sinking into—
Just as her lungs gave out, someone grasped her wrist and yanked.
Somehow she knew it was Michael Tyler before she opened her eyes. He crouched halfway in and halfway out of the water, fighting for balance in the uncertain, shifting wet earth of the riverbank. Behind him she caught a glimpse of Rachael holding Taylor as she coughed up water. Behind them Becca stood with her hands to her face, screaming with a raspy, damaged throat, one long wail of animal despair. For her daughter or for herself, Ellie couldn’t tell.
Ellie could do nothing to help, coughing and coughing to expel water from her lungs, her largest ambition at the moment to keep from throwing up on Michael. It might have been less likely if he hadn’t kneed her in the rib cage trying to haul her weakened body up onto the grass, but she wasn’t about to quibble.
Her face in a pile of branches, she rolled into a ball, hacking wet breaths onto the earth. When this finally slowed, she could hear the noises of someone else doing the same.
“She’s okay,” Michael told her. “Taylor’s all right.”
Chapter 41
Sunday, 10:30 a.m.
Rachael Davies stood in her front yard, supervising her helper as he cared for the chrysanthemums. Danton held the garden hose with both hands and great concentration, always fascinated by the cascade of clear liquid it produced and how it could take different forms depending on how one held one’s fingers over the end. But his experimentations always seemed to end with one or both of them in dripping clothes, and this morning Rachael had to make sure it wasn’t her.
