She scanned the library for the ledger.
Samson, carrying a glass with four ice cubes and his favorite Dalwhinnie, wandered in, opened a cabinet door, and sat down in a leather chair. He clicked on the television, which was concealed in the cabinet. Neither he nor Lulu could stand to see a television sitting out. Too middle class.
“Samson, where’s your ledger?”
“Has nothing to do with Jefferson or his descendants, my dear.”
“No, but it has a lot to do with Kimball Haynes.”
He turned up the sound, and she grabbed the remote out of his hand and shut off the television.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” His face reddened.
“I might ask the same of you. I hardly ever reach you on your mobile phone anymore. When I call places where you tell me you’re going to be, you aren’t there. I may not be the brightest woman in the world, Samson, but I’m not the dumbest either.”
“Oh, don’t start the perfume accusation again. We settled that.”
“What is in that ledger?”
“Nothing that concerns you. You’ve never been interested in my business before, why now?”
“I entertain your customers often enough.”
“That’s not the same as being interested in my business. You don’t care how I make the money so long as you can spend it.”
“You’re clever, Samson, much more clever than I am, but I’m not fooled. You aren’t going to sidetrack me about money. What is in that ledger?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why didn’t you let those women go through it? Kimball read it. That makes it part of the evidence.”
He shot out of his chair and in an instant towered over her, his bulk an assault against her frailty without his even lifting a hand. He shouted.“You keep your mouth shut about that ledger, or so help me God, I’ll—”
For the first time in their marriage Lucinda did not back down.“Kill me?” she screamed in his face. “You’re in some kind of trouble, Samson, or you’re doing something illegal.”
“Keep out of my life!”
“You mean get out of your life,” she snarled. “Wouldn’t that make it easier for you to carry on with your mistress, whoever she is?”
Menace oozed from his every pore.“Lucinda, if you ever mention that ledger to anyone, you will regret it far more than you can possibly understand. Now leave me alone.”
Lucinda replied with an icy calm, frightening in itself.“You killed Kimball Haynes.”
47
The squad car, Deputy Cooper at the wheel, picked up an urgent dispatch. She swerved hard right, slammed the car into reverse, and shot toward Whitehall Road.“Hang on, Mrs. H.”
Mrs. Hogendobber, eyes open wide, could only suck in her breath as the car picked up speed, siren wailing and lights flashing.
“Yehaw!” Harry braced herself against the dash.
Vehicles in front of them pulled quickly to the side of the road. One ancient Plymouth puttered along. Its driver also had a lot of miles on him. Coop sucked up right behind him and blasted the horn as well. She so astonished the man that he jumped up in his seat and cut hard right. His Plymouth rocked from side to side but remained upright.
“That was Loomis McReady.” Mrs. Hogendobber pressed her nose against the car window, only to be sent toward the other side of the car when Cynthia tore around a curve. “Thank God for seat belts.”
“Old Loomis ought not to be on the road.” Harry thought elderly people ought to take a yearly driver’s test.
“Up ahead,” Deputy Cooper said.
Mrs. Hogendobber grasped the back of the front seat to steady herself while she looked between Harry’s and Cynthia’s heads. “It’s Samson Coles.”
“Going like a bat out of hell, and in his Wagoneer too. Those things can’t corner and hold the road.” Harry felt her shoulders tense.
“Look!” Mrs. Hogendobber could now see, once they were out of another snaky turn, that a car in front of Samson’s sped even faster than his own.
“Holy shit, it’s Lucinda! Excuse me, Miranda, I didn’t mean to swear.”
“Under the circumstances—” Miranda never finished that sentence because a second set of sirens screeched from the opposite end of the road.
“You’ve got them now,” Harry gloated.
As soon as Lucinda saw Sheriff Rick Shaw’s car coming toward her, she flashed her lights and stopped. Cooper, hot on Samson’s tail, slowed since she thought he’d brake, but he didn’t. He swerved around Lulu’s big brown Wagoneer on the righthand side, one set of wheels grinding into a runoff ditch. Beaver Dam Road lay just ahead, and he meant to hang a hard right.
Sheriff Shaw stopped for Lucinda, who was crying, sobbing, screaming,“He’ll kill me! He’ll kill me!”
“Ladies, this is dicey,” Cooper warned as she, too, plowed into the runoff ditch to the right of Lucinda. The squad car tore out huge hunks of earth and bluestone before reaching the road again.
Samson gunned the red Wagoneer toward Beaver Dam, which wasn’t a ninety-degree right but a sharp, sharp reverse thirty-degree angle heading northeast off Whitehall Road. It was a punishing turn under the best of circumstances. Just as Samson reached the turn, Carolyn Maki, in her black Ford dually, braked for the stop sign. Samson hit his brakes and sent his rear end skidding out from underneath him. He overcorrected by turning hard right. The Wagoneer flipped over twice, finally coming to rest on its side. Miraculously, the dually remained untouched.
Carolyn Maki opened her door to assist Samson.
Cooper screeched to a stop next to the truck and leapt out of the squad car, gun in hand.“Get back in the truck,” she yelled at Carolyn.
Harry started to open her door, but the strong hand of Mrs. Hogendobber grasped her neck from behind.“Stay put.”
This did not prevent either one of them from hitting the automatic buttons to open the windows so they could hear. They stuck their heads out.
Cooper sprinted to the car where Samson clawed at the driver’s door, his head pointing skyward as the car rested on its right side. Oblivious of the minor cuts on his face and hands, he thrust open the door and crawled out head first, only to stare into the barrel of Cynthia Cooper’s pistol.
“Samson, put your hands behind your head.”
“I can explain everything.”
“Behind your head!”
He did as he was told. A third squad car pulled in from Beaver Dam Road, and Deputy Cooper was glad for the assistance.“Carolyn, are you okay?”
“Yes,” a wide-eyed Carolyn Maki called from her truck.
“We’ll need a statement from you, and one of us will try to get it in a few minutes so you can go home.”
“Fine. Can I get out of the truck now?”
Cooper nodded yes as the third officer frisked Samson Coles. The wheels of his Jeep were still spinning.
Carolyn walked over to Mrs. Hogendobber and Harry, now waiting outside the squad car.
Harry heard Sheriff Shaw’s voice on the special radio. She picked up the receiver, the coiled cord swinging underneath. “Sheriff, it’s Harry.”
“Where’s Cooper?” came his gruff response.
“She’s holding Samson Coles with his hands behind his head.”
“Any injuries?”
“No—unless you count the Wagoneer.”
“I’ll be right there.”
The sheriff left Lucinda Coles with one of his deputies. He was less than half a mile away, so he arrived in an instant. He strode purposefully over to Samson.“Read him his rights.”
“Yes, sir,” Cooper said.
“All right, handcuff him.”
“Is that necessary?” Samson complained.
The sheriff didn’t bother to respond. He sauntered over to the Wagoneer and stood on his tiptoes to look inside. Lying on the passenger side window next to the earth was a snub-nosed .38.
48
“Copious in his indignation, he was.” Miranda held the attention of her rapt audience. She had reached the point in her story where Samson Coles, being led away to the sheriff’s car, hands cuffed behind his back, started shouting. He didn’t want to go to jail. He hadn’t done anything wrong other than chase his wife down the road with his car, and hasn’t every man wanted to bash his wife’s head in once in a while? “Wasn’t it Noel Coward who wrote, ‘Women are like gongs, they should be struck regularly’?”