I came out of the trees, running.
Liz whirled, first to her right and then to her left. She spun and plunged toward the stairway.
What was she doing, going down there at high tide? I thought. She couldn’t run down the beach. It was under water.
I jumped onto the platform and rushed to the edge. Liz was halfway down the stairs. Waves slapped at the cliff, sending showers of spray over her. The bottom three or four steps were engulfed in the roiling water.
“Stop!” I yelled. “There’s no place to go!”
She looked up at me, the wind whipping her cap of blond hair.
“Come back up here! You’ll drown!”
She looked back down at the water, then jumped from the steps. I watched as she floundered and righted herself. The water, though turbulent, only came to a little above her knees.
I started down the stairway after her.
Liz plunged into the surf, swimming toward the reefs. A couple of the larger ones were still above water. By the time I reached the step where she’d jumped off the stairway, she was clinging to a reef maybe thirty yards away.
I jumped down into the icy water. The cold shocked me and I almost fell. Then I started wading into the sea, battling the waves for balance. The water splashed upward, each wave bringing a new shock until I could feel my skin turning numb. Finally I ducked under and began swimming.
I reached the reef and put out a hand for support. I could still touch bottom, but the current was treacherous. At any minute I might be swept off my feet. Liz, sitting on top of the reef, kicked at my hand.
“Give it up, Liz. There’s no place for you to go from here.”
She kicked at my hand again. I let go, and a wave sucked me under. Salt water filled my mouth. I bobbed to the surface, spitting and coughing.
When I looked up, Liz had retreated to the far side of the reef. Cautiously, I began climbing. The rough rocks cut at my hands. The knee ripped out of my jeans. I felt a trickling that was probably blood.
I pulled myself to the top of the reef and crouched there, panting. Liz was about eight feet away. Her hair was plastered flat against her skull and water dripped down her face. Her coat and jeans clung to her slight body. She stood with her hands balled into fists at her sides, her knees slightly bent. Weaponless, she was still dangerous. I stood up. “Liz, there’s nothing you can do. Come back to shore with me.”
She laughed, a wild crow’s caw.
I started forward, one hand outstretched.
She backed closer to the edge of the reef. One foot slipped. She looked down at the swirling water, then back at me.
“Get away from me.”
“No.”
“I mean it!”
She lunged forward, grabbing my shoulders. Her hands went to my throat. I put my own hands up, trying to pry her fingers loose. They were as steely as the blade of her knife.
Liz shook me. “I mean it! You stop coming at me! They were always coming at me. Wanting something. All of them. More and more…”
My vision was blurring. I clawed frantically at her fingers.
“More and more and more. They wouldn’t stop coming after me.”
My knees sagged. I dug my fingernails into her hands a final time. The gray blurriness gave way to red and gold flashes…
Cold water hit my face. I groaned. An icy pool formed under my cheek. There was a second icy splash, and I groaned again. Salty water rushed into my mouth. I choked, coughed, and struggled to sit up.
I was lying on the reef, rocks cutting into my flesh. As I pushed up, they scraped my palms. I looked around, saw nothing. The surf was slapping higher than before, spilling over around me.
I looked down at where my face had been and saw an indentation full of water. A tidepool. I’d been lying face down in a tidepool. Liz had left me to drown as the water rose higher.
I sat up, looking around. She was no longer on the reef. Where had she gone? I couldn’t have been unconscious long. Where was she?
I pushed to my feet, shivering with chills, and peered around. The white water spewed up over the reef, slapping at me and almost making me stumble. The stairway from the beach was half covered now. I could still make it back, good swimmer that I was, but the water would be treacherous. And I was so tired.
But Liz. Where…?
And then I spotted her, on the only other reef that was still above water, many yards away. She stood there, her sodden clothing flapping in the wind. She was looking back at the beach, as if trying to gauge her chances.
I shouted but wasn’t sure she could hear me over the wind and the surf. I shouted again, waving my arms over my head.
Then Liz turned. She saw me and shrank back, clasping her arms behind her.
“Get off that reef!” I screamed.
She shook her head, stepping backward.
I went to the edge of my own reef, prepared to jump and swim for shore. Turning, I tried one last time. “Get off or you’ll drown!”
Again she made the negative gesture.
I looked beyond her and saw a huge wave rolling in. It was just peaking. It would break right where Liz was standing.
“Watch it! Behind you!”
The wave broke over her. I saw her tumble. The foaming water rushed on toward shore, but I couldn’t see Liz anymore.
A second wave, even larger, was rolling in right behind it. This one would reach my own reef. I jumped into the swirling water and struggled toward the stairway.
Chapter 21
When I entered Abe Snelling’s hospital room, he was sitting up in bed reading this week’s New Yorker. He was pale, and his eyes were deeply underscored with bluish semicircles, but otherwise you would never have guessed that two days ago he had been fighting for his life. When he saw me, he smiled and set down the magazine.
“How’re you feeling?” I asked.
“Not bad. You?”
“Fine.” It was the truth; I’d been staying at Don’s since the night Liz Schaff had been swept off the reef and drowned. He’d encouraged me to indulge in wine, home-cooked Italian food, good music, and other pleasures. “I’m going back to San Francisco today for a trial where I have to give evidence, but I’ll be back by the weekend. I wondered if there was anything you wanted from your house.”
“Thanks, but my former sister-in-law already drove up and got me what I needed.” He gestured self-consciously at an arrangement of home-grown flowers on the bedside table. There was another bouquet on the bureau-a lavish combination of roses and carnations. I looked at it quizzically.
“From The Tidepools,” Snelling said. “Keller and Bates are probably afraid I’ll sue because I got stabbed on their grounds.”
I grinned and took a chair beside the bed. “The police told you the Coast Guard picked up Liz’s body?”
“Yes. Lieutenant Barrow and I talked for several hours this morning. He’s sure they can close the books on all the murders now.”
I sat for a moment, silently reviewing the victims of those murders. Probably Abe was doing the same. Then I said, “One thing I wanted to ask you-did Jane Anthony figure out who you were by your photographic style?”
He looked surprised. “Yes. How did you guess?”
“I’m an amateur, but I’ve got an eye for style. Yours is distinctive; anyone who had seen Andy Smith’s photos would wonder why Abe Snelling’s were so much the same.”
“That’s what Jane did. She knew my work from when I showed it in little exhibits around Port San Marco. One day she just appeared on my doorstep in San Francisco. She recognized me, in spite of how I’d changed my appearance, and demanded I take her in, plus pay her a monthly…allowance, she called it.”
“Blackmail.”
Snelling nodded. “You know, when I first went up to San Francisco, it never occurred to me that someone would recognize me from my photographs. I was always afraid I’d be recognized by my face. In fact, that’s why I kept taking pictures-because I could go out on the streets and use a camera as protective coloration.”