Finger Prints (39 page)

“She’s come into a hell of a lot of money all of a sudden.”

“Now wait a minute. You’re suggesting—”

“That
she
was the one who was bought off.”

“That’s a goddamn lousy accusation.”

The two men stood eye to eye. Fully understanding the enormity of his accusation—and its ramifications, should it prove true—Greg didn’t flinch. “But it’d explain a lot. New car, new clothes, new bag, lofty dreams, but a dump of an apartment.”

“Her apartment? You’ve seen her apartment?”

“Many times.” His gaze narrowed, and though he knew he was inflicting pain, he needed to speak. “It’d also explain why she came on to me the way she did. A bosom buddy in the office—”

“Came on to you?” Tom clenched his fists by his sides. “What are you talking about?”

For the first time, Greg’s tone softened. “She seduced me, Tom. While she wanted you. And if you think
you’re
hurt, think of how I felt when she cried out your name when we made love.”

“You’re crazy!” Tom exploded. “Sheila’s no easy lay. Hell, she’s in love with me and still she—”

“Wouldn’t go to bed with you?” Greg paused, finding no satisfaction in the other’s stunned silence. “She didn’t, did she?” The answer that never came was answer enough. “Then she did have some sense of morals, at least. If she knew what she was planning, and that she was trading her body for my loyalty, that’s something. And loving you—which I’m sure she does—and feeling guilt—”

“What’s going on here?” Sam growled, walking a tight wire himself.

Dragging his gaze from Tom’s, Greg sighed. “I think we have a problem.”

“What problem?” Sam asked, only to have the phone ring before Greg could answer. Retracing his steps on the run, Sam picked it up.

“Yes,” he barked.

It was Ryan, sounding nearly desperate. “Thank God you’re off the phone. This is the third time—”

“I know. I have everything working. Where in the hell are you?”

“I’m on the highway. Eighty-nine. Carly’s in Vermont.”

Sam’s gaze flew to the far living-room wall and the plaque Tom had replaced. “Vermont? What’s she doing there? What are
you
doing there?”

“Lord, Sam, I think it’s bad. Right after I spoke with you, I got a call from Sheila.”

“Sheila! Where is she?”

“She said she was calling from a pay phone near Rockport. She said that Carly hadn’t been there when she’d arrived at school to pick her up. It didn’t occur to me then that Sheila was supposed to be there all day. She said that Carly left a note for her saying that she needed to get away. She said she hadn’t seen her and that she’d been looking all over, going to the places Carly had mentioned she and I had been. Vermont—you know, that cottage we rented at New Year’s—seemed the obvious place. Sheila suggested it herself.” He took a breath and raced on. “But I’ve been driving along and little things keep coming to me. That meeting I had this afternoon. A rush job. Two fellows, one of whom is accused of arson. But neither of them seemed particularly committed to retaining me. And one of them—not the one in trouble, but a guy with him—talked this funny way. Instead of ‘didn’t’ he said ‘din’t.’ I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me—until I remembered Carly telling me about that guy who tried to kill her in that alley back in Chicago. I told myself that maybe it was a coincidence. But there’s something else.”

“What?”

Greg and Tom had come to stand in the kitchen, but Sam’s every sense focused on what Ryan was saying.

“Right before I left I took a drink of water. I put the glass in the sink. It didn’t occur to me till a couple of minutes ago that there was another glass there. One with the remains of a dark liquid in the bottom. Carly is meticulous. She’d never walk out in the morning leaving anything in the sink. And Sheila claimed she hadn’t seen her.” He paused, almost afraid to ask. “Check it, Sam. What’s in that glass?”

Sam had already turned and was lifting the glass. He sniffed, then tipped it to his mouth to taste its tepid contents. “Rum and Coke.” His eye caught Greg’s, then Tom’s as, with quiet urgency, he addressed Ryan. “How far are you from that inn?”

“About forty minutes.” He’d been pushing seventy most of the way, praying the police wouldn’t stop him.

“Okay. Keep going. I’ll make some more calls, then move. Greg and Tom are with me. We’ll take a helicopter. It shouldn’t take long.”

“For God’s sake, hurry!” Ryan begged, then slammed down the phone and, leaving the phone-booth door rattling in his wake, bolted for his car.

“I still can’t believe this is happening,” Carly said, dazed as the lights of the inn appeared at the end of the drive.

Sheila said nothing, simply steered down the dark side road, heading straight for the small cottage that held such beautiful memories for Carly.

“Don’t we need a key?” Reminders of that other trip. Then the key had been hooked behind the swing.

“I told Sam what you’d said about last time. He was going to instruct the inn to leave it in the same place. The fewer people who see you, the better.”

But as the dim cottage light came into sight, Carly forgot to ask how Sam had ever thought to get the same one. “That’s…my car….” she stammered, perplexed. The yellow Chevette stood out in the night, a beacon of its own. “What….”

Sheila pulled to an abrupt halt in front of the door. Without a word, she reached for her bag.

“Sheila, what’s going on?”

It was only after she’d spoken that, in a haze of horror, she caught the glint of the small service revolver that emerged from the bag.

“Come on,” Sheila grated. “Let’s go see who’s there.”

“Someone stole my car!” Carly sucked in a breath. “That man, the one from Chicago, the one we saw before. He knows about Ryan. He knows about
me. He
must have!” She grabbed the other woman’s arm. “Oh, no, Sheila! We can’t go in! He’ll be waiting! But how did he get my car?” she murmured half to herself, withdrawing her hand, raising it to her forehead.

Sheila spoke calmly and clearly. “I gave him the keys.”

“You?”

Slowly and with deliberation, the gun turned on her.

Sheila’s face was shrouded in darkness, her characteristically nasal voice nearly unrecognizable for its sudden venom. “Get out. Now. And don’t try anything or I’ll use this.”

“I don’t understand….”

The sharp poke to her ribs made the first point, Sheila’s grating tone the next. “You will. Now get out.”

By the time Carly had managed to force her wobbly legs into action, Sheila was by her side of the car, clamping a firm hand on her arm, hauling her forward.

The door of the cottage opened and Carly instinctively drew back. There, silhouetted but unmistakable, was the same man who hours earlier had been at Ryan’s building.

“Took you long enough,” he growled.

“She wanted to stop by her place for some things,” Sheila explained with a snort. “As if she’ll need them….” Pressing the gun to Carly’s ribs, she pushed her on. The man stood aside, then closed the door firmly when the women were inside.

“That was dumb, stopping,” he snarled.

Sheila’s retort was cold. “She was getting hysterical. I had to do something.”

“Wasted good time.”

“We’re all right.”

“What’s going on, Sheila?” Carly cried, unwilling to believe that Sheila,
Sheila
, had betrayed her.

It was the man who spoke. “Nothing that should not have happened a long time ago. You caused me a load of trouble.”

“Who are you?” Carly whispered fearfully, eyeing the man whose ominous advance brought him directly before her. It was all she could do not to cower.

“Name’s Ham Theakos,” he announced with a kind of perverted pride. “Don’ remember me?”

“From the courtroom—”

“From the alley.”

If Carly had had any hopes for salvation, they were dashed with his curt statement. “You?” she breathed, stunned.

His smile was ugly. “Me. You got away from me then. Won’t happen now.”

Carly looked wide-eyed from his harsh features to Sheila’s. “This has to be a joke.”

“No joke,” Sheila stated bluntly.

“But
why
? What have I ever done—”

“You opened your mouth when you should not have,” Theakos grated. “You stuck your nose in where it din’t belong.”

But Carly’s eyes were glued to Sheila’s. “
Why
, Sheila? You were supposed to be protecting me.”

“I’m always protecting someone. This time I’m protecting myself.”

“But we were friends.”

“Hah! We were only friends because back in Chicago you had no one else. In other circumstances, you wouldn’t have looked at me twice. But we were stuck in that house together, day after day, week after week, and it was only natural.
Real
friends? Never.”

Shock raised Carly’s voice an octave. “Then you had this in mind
from the start
? You
asked
for that transfer just so that—”

“Not exactly,” Sheila interrupted, chin tipped up defensively. “Actually, it was much the way I told you. I was bored in Chicago. Nothing was working out there. I decided I needed a change and Boston seemed as good a place to go as any.”

Try as she might to understand it, Carly couldn’t. “Then you made this little deal—” she dared a glance at Theakos “—after you got here?”

“Remember when I went back to Chicago?” Sheila asked smugly.

“You went
looking
to do me harm?”

“Wellllll, that’s pushing it a little. While I was there, seeing Harmon and visiting old friends at Hoffmeister’s office, Ham, here, was snooping around looking for an in.”

“And you gave it to him,” Carly stated, crushed beyond belief.

“Why not? The price was right and there was cash up front. I’d had a good look at the way you were living. Pretty clothes. Fancy home. Super guy. You had everything. Now it’s my turn.”

“
At my expense
?”

“The way I see it,” Sheila went on baldly, “we all have to compromise a little in life.” Her eyes hardened. “I’ve done my share of compromising. Now I want a little of that luxury I’ve been looking at from the wrong side of the fence all my life.”

“This isn’t the way,” Carly whispered, even as she sensed that Sheila was past remorse. “And what about Tom—”

Sheila stiffened. “What about him?” She didn’t want his name brought into his. It had no bearing.

“He loves you.”

“I love him.”

“And you think that he’ll really be able to live with you after this?” She couldn’t suppress a shudder. Where she found the strength to think clearly, she didn’t know. But something drove her on, perhaps the need for a temporary diversion from her very real terror.

“He’ll never know.”

“Do you believe that? Ryan won’t take anything happening to me sitting down. Neither will Sam.” A new thought bloomed. “That call you made—”

“Was never made. Not to Sam, at least.”

Carly glanced again at Theakos. “Then you knew he’d be at Ryan’s office.”

“I called Ham from the bakery. He was waiting for my call at a phone booth near Ryan’s building. He’d just come from a meeting with Ryan.”

“
With Ryan
?”

The smile Sheila gave her then was enough to freeze her blood. “It’s all pretty brilliant, if I do say so myself. Took a lot of planning, especially when you began to clam up on me after Ryan returned from Chicago.” She cast a conspiratorial glance at Theakos. “But I think we covered everything. Ryan will be under suspicion simply for having met with Ham and his buddy. You will have been overcome at the thought that he might have been planning to betray you. It’d be perfectly natural that you’d commit suicide.”

“
Commit suicide
? I’d never commit suicide!”

“Maybe not on your own,” Sheila purred, “but with a little push and no one around to say differently, which reminds me.” She turned to Theakos. “We’d better get moving. I called Ryan. He should get here just in time to find her hanging. He’ll be the one to call the police. The distraught lover.”

For an instant, Carly was utterly paralyzed. Remembrance of Ryan’s Luis—whose death was still listed as a suicide despite Ryan’s doubts—flashed through her brain. Sheila was right. They would never know. She had to move.

With a burst of energy born of desperation, she broke for the door, only to have Theakos haul her right off her feet and back. “Not so fast, I’il lady. First we need a note.”

Carly struggled wildly against the arms that held her. “Let…me…go!”

“First the note,” he gritted. “Every suicide needs a note.”

She kicked back with her legs, but her captor was that much stronger than she was. She’d taken him by surprise in the Chicago alley; this time he was prepared. Her flailing arms hit air. “I’m…not writing…any….”

He lowered his head until his thin lips were by her ear. “If you don’t write it, we’ll wait and murder your lover when he arrives. Then it’ll look like a double suicide.”

The fight left Carly instantly. “You wouldn’t,” she gasped, looking at Sheila, pleading for any last remnants of sanity. There were none.

“We would. Very easily.” Extracting a piece of paper and a pen from the small desk against the wall, Sheila slapped them down flat.

Theakos shoved Carly forward, forcing her onto the hard wood chair. “Write what she tells you.”

“This won’t work, Sheila,” Carly began, only to be stopped, then filled with dread, by Sheila’s whimsical look.

“My beloved Ryan,” she began to dictate. When Carly stared at her in horror, Ham pressed a gun to her neck.

“Write,” he ordered. “If your boyfriend gets here before we’re done, he’s a goner. You wan’ him shot?”

Carly tried to catch her breath. When Sheila rapped a long fingernail against the stationary, she tried to focus, but her eyes were flooded with tears. Shaking, she lifted the pen.

“My beloved Ryan,” Sheila repeated, then waited until the words were written. “I never thought it would come to this. But I know what you’re planning—”

When Carly dropped the pen, Theakos prodded her again with the gun. Mustering shreds of strength, she retrieved the pen and wrote falteringly.