Runner (31 page)

The car seemed to appear behind her rather than to drive up. Suddenly it was there, over her left shoulder. Doors opened, and two men lurched out toward her. It was a second before she recognized Steve Demming and realized the other must be Pete Tilton. She thought of the gun in her purse, slung the strap off her shoulder, but wasn't fast enough. Demming snatched the purse away from her and tossed it to Sybil Landreau. Linda tried to scream, but the two men were so strong and fast that they had her in the back seat of their car between them before she could make a sound, and one of them slapped a length of duct tape across her mouth, so her scream
became a muffled moan. The doors slammed, and she could see Sybil Landreau moving quickly toward the gray Passat, fumbling in Linda's purse.

She found the keys, held them up so Linda's captors could see them, then began to open Linda's car. In an instant the captors' car shot forward, and Linda's surprise made her notice the driver. She saw blond hair, and knew it was Claudia Marshall.

Linda tried to struggle to turn her body—didn't anybody see what was happening? But the two men on either side of Linda clutched her arms tightly, so she couldn't move.

"Don't," said Demming. "We can fight you all the way back to San Diego if you want, but you won't enjoy it."

It was the seventh breakfast. Ruby Beale walked out of the kitchen, along the back hallway that ran the length of the big house, carrying a loaded tray. She held it high, balanced in her left hand with surprisingly little effort, as though it weren't heavy. She was big and blond and in her fifties, with a face that was in the process of changing from a ripe beauty to a preview of how she was going to look as an old lady. The blue eyes that must have been striking even ten years ago were half-hidden by puffy cheeks and lids. The skin above her full, red upper lip had wrinkled, and the soft skin on her neck and under her chin had begun to loosen. Her body still had the same rounded hourglass proportions, but it had widened everywhere.

She stopped at a door near the back of the house, put her ear to the wood for a few seconds before she straightened and knocked with one plump pink hand. She nodded to herself, took a key on a ring from her apron pocket, unlocked the door, pushed it open with her hip, and pivoted inside holding her tray. "Hi, honey. It's me, and I've got your breakfast."

She set the tray on the table at the wall of the room away from the window and looked at the girl on the bed pretending to read a magazine. "How are we doing today, sweetie?"

"I don't know about you," said Christine. "I'm doing shitty."

Ruby lifted the pitcher of orange juice and poured it into a glass, then looked back at Christine. "I've got poached eggs, toast, some really nice blueberry jam, some honey—everything organic. What would you like on your toast?"

"A set of keys." Christine looked away from Ruby at the window.

"Don't let your eggs get cold."

"I'm not hungry."

Ruby followed Christine's eyes. The window was old-fashioned and pretty, vaguely French, consisting of two small doors with panes of glass that opened inward. The steel burglar-proofing bars on the outside were nicely spaced so they matched the laths between panes. They weren't at all obtrusive unless the window was open, and then the five acres of lawns and gardens were visible. "Don't worry," she said. "It won't always be like this."

"How can it not be?" said Christine. "You kidnapped me."

"I kidnapped you?
I?"

"You know what I mean."

Ruby stepped closer and sat at the foot of the bed. "Things sometimes happen in life that at the time don't happen the way we'd like them to. Maybe the bride is pregnant, maybe somebody gets a speeding ticket on the way to the church, maybe there's rain on the reception. But these things pass, and after a while, you don't remember all the particulars. What you remember you forgive and forget. It's like that in every family."

"I'm not in your family."

"You're my only son's wife, and that's my grandchild in your belly."

"That wasn't a legal marriage. It's not real."

"Let's not waste our time arguing. You and I are a lot more alike than you can admit in your present mood. When you get to know me, you're going to like me a lot. I'm going to be your friend, somebody that in the end, you'll be glad you met. We're going to have fun and we're going to be happy."

"Sometimes I think you're actually crazy. I was minding my own business thousands of miles away, when your gang of thugs dragged me across about ten states to get me here. I'm a prisoner. I'm locked in here. You're all criminals."

Ruby slowly moved her head from side to side with a kind of empathy. "Think of it as an arranged marriage. The parents arrange to bring the girl home, that's all. Not everything in life is the way the feminists tell you it is. Most of the marriages in the world are arranged. And the vast majority of them end up happily—much happier than the regular kind."

"This isn't an arranged marriage, or any other kind of marriage."

"It's legal enough. The papers are all filled out and it's been witnessed and filed with the county clerk's office and everything. I know what you mean, of course. You didn't get to wear a white dress and walk down the aisle and all that. I don't blame you for being annoyed. I don't blame you for anything." She looked closely at Christine. "Richard didn't rape you, did he?"

"No."

"You actually fell in love with him, and voluntarily went to live with him and then got pregnant in the usual way, right?"

"Yes! Yes, I did. I'm stupid. But being stupid doesn't mean anybody who wants to can grab me and lock me up. That's kidnapping. You go to prison for that."

"Honey," Ruby said, "I really like you, and I'm happy you're in our family now. You're going to have my grandchild, and I'll always
be very grateful for that. And it's really not going to be bad for you. You started out as a girl deprived of an education, with no family left to speak of, and no way to make money but answering a telephone. Just being married to Richard makes you worth a few million if you end up divorcing him. And Andy and I have much, much more."

"I don't care about your stupid money."

"You'll get the last laugh, and there's not a thing we can do about it. Your child is going to be the one who ends up with everything we have. We intend to raise him or her to be the one who runs the business and inherits everything. I can see your face, and I know what you're thinking, but you can forget it. I'm not going to interfere with your mothering him. That's all you. I wasn't interested in that when I was the right age for it, and I'm never going to get in your way. Jesus, if I ever again have to spin one more of those arrow things and move some game piece five spaces, I'll blow my brains out."

"Exactly what crazy thing do you want?"

"I want grandchildren. I'm perfectly happy to stay in my place and let you raise your kid. But I'm going to be the one—mostly behind the scenes—who makes sure the kid is growing up strong and smart. I'm going to be sure you never have to worry about anything practical, and I'm going to pay for the best schools, from preschool through graduate school."

"Yeah, you really did a great job with Richard, didn't you?"

"Richard is another story." Ruby stared at Christine for a second, then said, "Okay, I'll admit he's been a disappointment. He's healthy, good-looking, athletic. He's even smart. Having him was like taking a photograph. You know how sometimes you take a picture and you just know it's going to be beautiful, and then you get the stack of snapshots back from the developer, and you flip through
all the rest just looking for that one, but it's not right? The picture has the same outline, and the right shapes, but it's not what you thought at all. It hasn't got any of the feeling it's supposed to have. Something just didn't get reproduced that was supposed to be there. That's Richard."

"That's what you think of your own son?"

"For a long time, I thought Richard would change as he grew up. Andy wasn't so sure. Then he was grown up, and he wasn't much different. When Andy and I found out you had been living with Richard for months, we started to have some hope. His father said, 'Well, at least we know he's not queer, and he's not dating them once and strangling them.' That wasn't funny to me. I started to have hope that maybe you were what was missing."

"I'm not interested," said Christine. "Not for any reason, not ever, so you might as well let me go. He's always been a creep, an idiot, and now he's a gangster."

"Obviously I can't let you go at this point. It's sort of up to you what you do with Richard. If you manage to solve his problems you'll get every bit of the benefit out of him and deserve it. I'd like to see you get along and have more children and stay together. Maybe that's too much to hope for. But I can tell you, you're not going anywhere before the baby is born."

"I can't fix him, and I don't want anything to do with him, or you, or your husband."

Ruby shrugged. "I'll never be one to blame you if you can't do what I couldn't do in thirty years of trying. You'll go on and live your life. You'll have all the money you ever wanted, because we need to keep you free to raise your kid. And God help anybody who tries to hurt your child or his mommy. That'll be true whether you stay with Richard or not." She reached out and grasped Christine's
hand. "You're a Beale now, Chrissy. You're our beautiful daughter, and you're having our only grandchild."

Christine shook the hand off and held her hand up in a fist, ready to repel another touch. "You're out of your fucking mind. I'm not your daughter. I'm the person you kidnapped. Your jerk Steve Demming and his stupid friends set off a bomb in a hospital to get me out. People got hurt. When the cops get here they'll put you all in a cell forever, not me."

"This is hardly a cell, honey. This is a master suite in a twenty-million-dollar house. People would kill to have a vacation like the one you're having."

Christine sensed the menace in her voice, and reminded herself that making Ruby angry at her wasn't smart, so she modulated her answer. "They'd be wrong. It's not good being locked up."

Ruby smiled and said, "We love you, and we'll take the best possible care of you. There will be plenty of time for you to come around. I think in the long run, when you throw into the balance all the good we're going to do for you, then you'll wonder what all the fuss was about. In the meantime we agree on the only important thing—having a healthy baby." She patted Christine's knee, stood, and said, "I've got to go. Try to eat your breakfast."

Christine watched her turn and step to the door. The key to the dead bolt was in her apron pocket. It looked like the key to the exterior door of a house, and the lock was heavy, like the lock on the storeroom in a business. The door was like the outer door of an apartment—thick, solid wood. Christine watched Ruby unlock it and pivot out so the door closed immediately. For a big woman Ruby was graceful, and she was surprisingly quick. But she did everything the same way every time. For the whole week that Christine had been here, it had always been the same, like a dance.

When Christine was about ten, her stepmother, Delia, moved in and brought her cat, Sue. Because Delia had brought it from Santa Barbara where she had last lived, she was afraid to let it out in San Diego, where it would get lost and probably killed. Sue the cat sat in the living room or in the kitchen whenever people were around, and patiently watched people opening and closing doors. Then one day, Delia's car pulled in the driveway, Delia unlocked the front door and pushed it inward, and the cat was already there, streaking out. Sue was so fast that she was off the steps and prowling through the brush beside the house before Delia had even begun to react. Delia let out a howl that was so late in coming that at first it seemed to Christine that a second, actual catastrophe must have happened.

Christine had also watched Sue, and knew the cat wasn't going to run off into traffic. She went out, found the cat walking on the grass and sniffing her surroundings, scooped her up, and delivered her to Delia. After that Sue was allowed to go out. Now, years later, Christine found herself envying the cat. If Christine hadn't been so pregnant, she was pretty sure she could have timed her move as Sue the cat had, bumped Ruby aside, and run for it.

But she was pregnant, and now was the time when she would have to make a move. The baby was due in two weeks. The whole prospect terrified Christine. Was she supposed to give birth here on her own? And it was very clear to Christine that Ruby and Andy were absolutely fixated on her baby. Ruby had said a dozen times that they were placing all kinds of hopes on this tiny unborn child. The day Christine had learned she was pregnant she had been afraid that Richard would see the baby as leverage, a hostage to force Christine to stay with him. Now she was beginning to believe that Ruby was the one to worry about. Ruby wanted to control Christine and her baby for the rest of their lives.

Christine got up and examined the food tray. Ruby really was a good cook. Christine had been smelling the food since Ruby came in, and it had made her hungry. She sat at the table. No matter what happened she was going to need to be healthy. During the first few days, she had worried that Ruby would put sedatives or something in the food, but now she knew better. Ruby would never do anything that might affect the baby. Until the baby was born, the food would be fine and she would be safe.

As Christine picked up the knife to spread blueberry jam on her toast, she noticed that there was another knife this morning. It was a sharp, serrated steak knife, probably put there so she could cut the thick, old-fashioned chewy bacon more easily. She looked around the room, then thought of the bathroom. She stepped in, looked around, and decided that the best spot was inside the big green plastic shampoo bottle in the shower. She unscrewed the wide top, pushed the knife into the thick shampoo, and closed the bottle again. She examined it carefully to be sure the knife hadn't displaced enough shampoo to make it drip over the side, then closed the shower door. Christine could hardly contain her excitement at her acquisition.