Bright Eyes (35 page)

After first hearing the news, Natalie had been frightened. Now she just felt furious.
Frank.
He might die because of her. He had two little boys and a wonderful wife. Sharon was right; he had never harmed anyone so far as Natalie knew. And now he was in surgery, fighting for his life because someone wanted her dead. How could this happen to a nice man whose sole endeavor in life was to create beautiful music for the pleasure of others?

Why?
The question circled endlessly in Natalie’s mind. She’d seen nothing significant inside Robert’s home. She had an insane urge to run outside the hospital and scream,
“I don’t know anything, damn you! Leave me alone! Leave the people I love alone!”
Worst of all, according to Zeke, the police were saying that the collapse had been an accident caused by too much weight on weakened supports. They believed the bolts had snapped under stress when people in the crowd had started stomping their feet. Zeke swore up and down that any idiot could see the bolts had been cut, but Monroe had just accused him of being an alarmist.

Natalie felt so tired. So awfully, horribly tired. The events of the last week were a jumble in her mind. Before ending their conversation, Zeke had made her promise not to leave the ER waiting room alone. It was madness. Someone was trying to kill her. Things like this didn’t happen in Crystal Falls, yet it
was
happening. Her grand reopening had culminated in a grand disaster because someone wanted her dead.

Natalie was staring into her coffee, pondering the absurdities of that when her mom and dad arrived. Naomi sat on one side of her, Pete on the other. Each of them curled an arm around her. Natalie looked at Sharon and felt awful. Frank’s wife was the one who needed family around her right now. Unfortunately, Sharon and Frank’s relatives lived clear down in Modesto.

A half hour later, the surgeon came out to speak with them. Still dressed for surgery with a blue cap on his head, he sat beside Sharon.

“He’s out of the woods now,” he began.

“Oh!” Sharon covered her face with her hands and started to weep. “Oh, thank God.”

The doctor patted her shoulder. “He was a very lucky man, Mrs. Stephanopolis. If he’d been standing under that platform, he wouldn’t be with us now. As it is, he’ll be a week in the hospital, recovering from the surgery, and convalescing at home for at least twelve weeks after that.”

He went on to describe the injuries that Frank had sustained in the accident, which Natalie knew hadn’t been an accident at all. She couldn’t focus on all the medical jargon. She was just relieved that Frank hadn’t lost his life.

“When can I see him?” Sharon asked.

“He’s in recovery now.” The doctor glanced at his watch. “An hour or two. The nurses will come get you when it’s okay for you to see him.”

Tears streaming, Sharon nodded and closed her eyes. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much.”

Before the physician left, he turned to Natalie and her parents. “Are you relatives?”

Natalie’s tongue felt like a wad of cotton. She pried it loose from her teeth to say, “No, I’m Mr. Stephanopolis’s employer.”
And the person who almost got him killed.
“We’ll stay with Sharon until she can go in to be with him.”

The doctor nodded. “That’s good. The waiting is always easier with company.”

Three hours later when Natalie crawled into bed, her head was filled with jumbled recollections of Zeke’s parents and siblings, who had arrived at the hospital right after the doctor left. She smiled, albeit sadly, as she slipped under the covers, remembering Zeke’s prediction that their life together would never be calm with so many people on both sides of the family to cause upheaval. Natalie liked his mom and dad, and she had been relieved to see Jake and Hank, who had stuck to her like glue, accompanying her even when she walked up the hall to the ladies’ room. It had been almost as good as having Zeke at her side.
Almost.

Zeke had called from the club several times to give her updates as he dealt with the police and then tried to clean up some of the mess while the employees closed. Natalie imagined him shifting debris, sweeping up plaster, taping frayed wires to prevent fire, pulling down the tills, and then making a night deposit at the bank, all necessary tasks that she’d been unable to do herself. She was deeply appreciative of the fact that he had stayed to take care of things. But at the same time, she ached to feel his arms around her.

The yearning and need she felt for him made her feel small and selfish. Sharon Stephanopolis was sitting beside her husband’s bed right now, praying for his life. Zeke would come to her soon, whole and healthy. He would slip under the blankets and gather her close in his arms. She’d be able to touch him—be able to feel his hands, so big and gentle, on her body. He would come, and then everything would be all right again.

On that thought, Natalie slipped into an exhausted sleep, dreaming of him beside her.

Sometime later, Natalie awakened when the mattress sank under someone’s weight.
Zeke.
She smiled drowsily and lifted her arms to him, so glad to have him with her that her pulse quickened even though she was still half-asleep. She curled her hands over his shoulders, vaguely registered that they didn’t feel like Zeke’s, and bleated in surprise. Before she could scream, a hard, cruel hand clamped over her mouth, shoving her lips against her teeth with bruising force. Terror slowly dawning in her sleep-fogged brain, she stared at the shadowy shape of a man above her.

“Dumb bitch!”

Not Zeke.
She instinctively clawed at the dark blob of a face above her. Her nails sank into soft flesh, which, yet again, definitely didn’t belong to Zeke.
Panic.
Just that quickly, and Natalie was fighting for her life. Only he was all over her, a large, heavy body that anchored her to the mattress. Her legs, caught under the sheet and blanket, were useless. She could fight only with her hands. The man swore, grabbed the extra pillow, and shoved it over her face to muffle her screams as he wrestled to grasp her wrists.

Natalie bucked and strained to move, but her arms and legs were pinned. Her assailant’s knees bracketed her thighs, pulling the sheet and blanket as taut as a straightjacket around her body. Horror welled within her. She tried futilely to scream, but the pillow was cutting off her airflow and muffling any sound she might have made. She attempted to twist her face free, but the man’s forearm anchored the down over her nose and mouth.

She couldn’t see, couldn’t wriggle away. Her lungs grabbed for oxygen that wasn’t there, throwing her body into a convulsive struggle for breath. Natalie had always imagined herself putting up a good fight in a situation like this—scratching, clawing, and kicking. Now, helpless to move, she could only lie there, fighting frantically to breathe. The man wasn’t that much stronger than she was—she’d felt that when she touched his shoulders and clawed at his face—but he had the advantage of greater weight and the bedclothes to help hold her down.

An awful airless pounding filled her head. Her chest convulsed spasmodically. Her muscles began to twitch as her lungs caught short, her yawning mouth drawing in only pillowcase.
Oh, God.
In some distant part of her mind, she knew she was dying.

How long could she go without breathing? That question became her only focus, not who this was or how she meant to get away. Everything narrowed down to that one question—how long could she hold on? Her mind swirled with an awful, airless need for oxygen. Her fingers clutched frantically at nothing, her nails lacerating her palms and drawing blood. A heavy, black panic descended over her.

Dying. She saw Robert’s still face. She thought of her children, who needed her. She shoved with everything she had, trying to jerk her wrists from the man’s grip. Then, in a last, desperate bid for freedom, she arched her body and attempted to throw him off of her. Nothing she did made a difference. The next breath she tried to draw was stopped short, only the pillowcase fluffing up her nostrils and into her mouth.

Zeke stepped up onto the porch rail, a dilapidated wooden support that wobbled more precariously each night from the repeated jostling. He definitely needed to marry the lady, he thought. This was nuts. He gripped the roof, lifted his weight with his arms, and flung up a foot to gain purchase on the shingles. With a twist and a roll of his body, he was lying on the roof.

As he pushed up on his hands and toes, he heard a muffled sob.
Natalie?
He wondered if she was dreaming. No small wonder. The poor woman had been through so much over the last seven days that it was a miracle she was still sane. Zeke crept toward her window, hoping to awaken her from the nightmare with a kiss. God, he loved her. He could almost taste the sweetness of her mouth as he curled his hands over the windowsill to climb into her bedroom.

As one foot touched down on the interior floor, Zeke froze, his startled gaze riveted to Natalie’s bed. He couldn’t actually see what was happening, only that the shadowy shape hunched on the mattress was too large to be a woman. He swung his other foot in over the sill and sprang forward.

“Hey!” he yelled.

The man—as Zeke drew closer, he could tell for certain that it was a man—whirled around, his face a whitish blob in the moonlight that came through the window. With a bestial snarl, he leaped, his body striking Zeke’s with such force that they both crashed to the floor. Zeke barely felt the impact.
Natalie.
In a rush of disjointed thought, he put two and two together and knew that this flailing, cursing assailant had been trying to harm her.

Rage ignited in Zeke’s veins, turning his blood molten. He hooked a leg over the other man’s thighs and rolled with him. When Zeke came out on top, he didn’t bother with throwing punches. He went straight for the bastard’s throat, biting in hard with his thumbs at the larynx. It wasn’t a decision or even a thought; Zeke just wanted him dead.

Still gasping for breath, Natalie lay huddled on the bed, staring stupidly at the two men struggling on the floor. Zeke had her assailant by the throat. The man clawed uselessly at Zeke’s wrists and thrashed his legs.
No contest.
Zeke was by far the stronger. In the moonlight, she could see the muscles on his back and shoulders bunching with the force of his grip.

It took a few seconds for Natalie to regain her wits. When she did, she sprang off the bed and ran to Zeke. “Stop!” she cried. “Zeke!” She grabbed his arm. “Zeke, please. You’re killing him! Stop it!”

At first, Zeke didn’t seem to hear her. Then, slowly, he loosened his hold on the man’s neck and sat back on his stomach. “Move, you son of a bitch, and I’ll finish you.”

The man grabbed his throat, rasping for oxygen. Natalie had an unholy urge to kick him now that he was helpless. Fortunately the door to the bedroom crashed open just then. Pete entered first, Valerie and Naomi right behind him. Valerie held a lamp in her hands and looked prepared to bean anyone who moved.

Still weak at the knees, Natalie sank onto the edge of the bed, grateful for the air that filled her lungs each time she breathed.

“The bastard was trying to smother Natalie with a pillow,” Zeke told Pete. “Somebody call the police before I kill him.”

Valerie set down the lamp and raced from the room. Hands at her hips, Naomi stood over Zeke and the other man. “Death is too easy. Let me have five minutes with the son of a bitch.”

Two hours later, Zeke and Natalie sat beside each other at the kitchen table, all of her family, except for the kids, seated around them. Natalie had just gotten Chad and Rosie settled down and back to sleep, and Detective Monroe had finally arrived to fill them in on Natalie’s attacker and explain why the man had tried to kill her. Oddly, the detective, who’d never been reticent in previous meetings, seemed to be searching for words.

Smoothing a hand over his balding head, Monroe finally met Natalie’s gaze. “It’s not often in my line of work that I find myself needing to apologize, Mrs. Patterson, but I was dead wrong about you.”

Natalie shifted on her chair. She was glad to have Zeke’s arm around her shoulders. With his free hand, he toyed with her fingers and gently touched the gouges on her palms left by her fingernails. “I guess even cops are allowed one mistake, Detective.”

“I came damned close to destroying your life.” The policeman looked so shamefaced and sincerely distressed that Natalie felt badly for him. “Saying I’m sorry doesn’t seem like enough.”

“All’s well that ends well,” Natalie pushed out. “Naturally I wish that you had believed me sooner. My children could have been killed in that car accident. But I also understand that yours is not an easy job, and the circumstantial evidence did point to me.”

The detective puffed air into his cheeks. Then he smiled slightly. “Thank you for that. I feel really rotten for putting you and your family through all this.”

Zeke tightened his arm around Natalie. “Who is the son of a bitch?” he demanded. “Natalie says she never saw him before.”

“That’s true. She didn’t. But unfortunately he had seen her.” Monroe drew a small black notebook from his jacket. As he opened the binder, he said, “The man’s name is Mike Salisbury. On the way to the station, he wouldn’t talk, but once we began interrogating him, he broke down and told us everything.” Monroe frowned at his notes and then glanced up at Zeke. “You were on the right track, thinking the killer was a Realtor. You were just suspicious of the wrong one. Turns out that Mr. Salisbury is another broker who got ripped off by Patterson, like Stan Ragnor.”

Zeke ran his hand over the sleeve of Natalie’s robe, his touch soothing her as the detective went on.

“Salisbury and Patterson had a written agreement to split the profits fifty-fifty on a land deal out on Twenty-seventh Street,” the aging policeman said. “Nothing notarized or drawn up by an attorney, just a simple preliminary agreement that one of them had typed up. On the day of the murder, Salisbury discovered that Robert Patterson had negotiated an exclusive two-party contract with the property owner behind his back, cutting him out of the deal.” Monroe’s plump face darkened. “When Salisbury confronted Patterson, Patterson just laughed, saying the initial agreement wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Salisbury had gone there, prepared to do murder, and Patterson’s attitude so enraged him that he followed through with it.”