“Find a Goodwill store,” she said, pulling herself up to the seat painfully. She felt stiff and sore all over. “You have to get me a few clothes, then a gas station where I can wash my face and change, and then a proper department store.”
Charlie grinned. “Shopping, that’s all you gals know.” There was no mirth in his expression when he looked at her in the rearview mirror and saw long scratches with dried blood on her cheek.
“Charlie, what are you going to do?”
“Kill him,” he said.
She drew in a breath. “That’s for later. I mean now, today, this afternoon?”
“Let you clean up a bit, get something to eat, get a motel room or probably a suite, wash your back, tuck you in for a nap. All that hiking, you must be tired. Leave a message for Ron to call me later at the new number, watch you rest.”
She nodded. “Sounds reasonable. You must be tired, too. Stress is fatiguing.”
“I’ll help you rest,” he said, and this time his grin was sincere.
By late Sunday evening they had both read every accident report several times, studied an enlargement of the work site, and now Constance was sitting on the floor by a coffee table, placing Go pieces as markers on the schematic. Charlie was on the couch behind her. There were five levels at the construction site, each twenty to twenty-five feet higher than the one below. The white Go pieces represented construction workers who had been in the approximate vicinity of the victim, and that one’s piece was black.
“Number one,” Charlie said when she drew back from the table. “Truck backed up and hit the guy. Pure accident. Witnessed by five or six guys.”
She nodded and removed that piece.
“Two,” he said. “Crane broke and dumped a load of dirt on the guy below. Again, many witnesses. Accident.” She removed the marker. “Three. Guy stumbled and fell down the elevator shaft.”
She hesitated. “He fell about twenty feet. That’s the kind of thing people survive all the time.”
“Not this guy,” Charlie said. “You can fall over a curb and buy the farm if you’re unlucky.”
“You really think they were all accidents, don’t you?”
“Yep. And the people who were hurt and survived said the same thing. Accidents. Or else you have a bunch of different killers knocking off workers. No one person was at each accident site, remember.”
“One was after the third accident,” she said. “That’s when Merrihew started hanging around, keeping an eye out, he said.”
“Right. And he didn’t see a thing that contradicted the accident reports. The next guy apparently didn’t notice a bulldozer heading his way and stepped in front of it. The driver couldn’t see him. Bingo.”
“How can you not notice a bulldozer?” She put the black stone near the bottom of the mountain where a road had been extended. She put another marker near it, one with a black cross on white. Merrihew’s marker. “He said his back was turned.”
Charlie nodded. “Honey, he’s paid a fortune to have this whole mess investigated. Rudy Carlucci has a good bunch of people working for him and he doesn’t come cheap, but he is thorough.”
She nodded. They had known Rudy back in New York in years past, and she suspected his investigators were as good as Charlie said. “And this one.” She touched another black piece with the marked piece near. “Electrocuted. No one noticed the red warning light in time. Merrihew was there and didn’t see the light.”
Charlie grunted. “That’s how accidents happen. Someone goofs, doesn’t notice a warning, steps in front of a bulldozer, falls down a shaft, gets hit by a load of lumber being hoisted in place. All avoidable, if someone’s paying attention.” He watched her remove another black piece, with the cross-marked piece close to it. “What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know. It’s just... uncanny, maybe. Too many accidents. Witnesses. Merrihew right there time after time, his back turned, looking the other way, preoccupied by something or other. It feels wrong. Don’t you think so?”
“Accidents tend to feel wrong,” he said. “You can always point and say if he had done this instead of that it wouldn’t have happened. That’s what makes them accidents.”
She continued to regard the Go pieces. “I don’t blame Merrihew,” she said. “I’d want another investigation, too.”
“You’re starting to sound like the people Ron and Lucinda talked to. Ghosts, evil spirits, curses.”
Ron and Lucinda had checked in with their report that afternoon. Merrihew had met opposition years ago, they had said, but he had made promises and kept them and the mood had changed to acceptance and then to anticipation of the change in fortune the development would make in the area. He had not demanded tax breaks and, in fact, having construction workers move in had been an economic piece of good luck for a depressed town. Folks were looking forward to having two hundred and fifty affluent buyers move to the area. Businesses had started to expand in anticipation. Now pessimism had set in. There was general agreement that the project was cursed, doomed.
Constance gazed broodingly at the remaining markers. Every remaining black one had one with a cross very near. And he never saw a thing until too late.
She knew that if she looked up, caught Charlie’s gaze on her, she would see a strange opaque flatness in his eyes. They could look like chips of obsidian at times, and at those times she was afraid, never of him, but for him. Years earlier, when he had insisted that she take martial-arts training, he had said that if anyone ever hurt her, she’d better take care of him herself and it would be self-defense, because if she didn’t, he would, and it would be murder. He had said he would kill Merrihew, and she did not doubt for a second that he meant it. She had not referred to it yet, and she would not until her scratches were completely healed, gone. Again and again she caught him examining her cheek, her hands, and arms with that cold hard look in his eyes.
“You know what I think?” Charlie said, placing his hand on her head.
“Not a clue.”
“I think that it’s ten after six, and that if we were to go to the desk and ask very nicely about a good restaurant not too far away, we would be given directions to a little place off the main drag that just happens to have a master chef in the kitchen and, furthermore, that the clerk on duty would be more than happy to call ahead and make us a reservation.”
“I think you’re brilliant,” she said, rising.
Two hours later Constance put down her fork and sighed. Her veal marsala had been excellent, and the pinot gris superb. She watched Charlie examine the duck bones on his plate searching for a morsel that might have escaped earlier. The bones were picked clean. When the waiter appeared to inquire about dessert she shook her head, and Charlie looked over the menu. “Chocolate mocha torte with raspberry filling,” he said. “Two forks. And coffee.”
He leaned back with a contented look. “Told you there’d be a place like this tucked away.”
“How can you possibly want dessert?”
“Since you won’t give me any at home, I seize the moment whenever I can.”
After coffee and the torte had been served, she said, “Something I wanted to ask and forgot. Why do you suppose Merrihew held out the last page of Rudy’s report?”
He shook his head. “Probably just a summation of everything that went before. Who needs it?”
“I think we do,” she said thoughtfully. “And why did Merrihew cut Rudy out and want you in? Aside from the fact that you’re a genius, I mean.”
“Honey, leave it alone. The reports speak for themselves. Accidents up and down the line. Rudy knows that and so does Merrihew, and why he won’t admit it I don’t know and don’t care.”