Edge of Midnight Read online

  Weak, cowardly, sniveling! When she could stand herself no longer, she tore off a paper towel and blotted her face. A shower would help. The thought of no clean underwear almost started her sobbing again. To come in and fall asleep on the couch was one thing, but to go using the bathroom, dirtying towels, went way beyond acceptable.

  A shower pulled, irresistible. It turned out to be quick. The noise of the water drowned out—ha, joke—other sounds. She couldn’t hear if anyone else was in the house, if the phone rang, or if Kelby woke, or burglars broke in. Using the towel on the towel bar, she rubbed herself dry, then felt her body cringe as she put back on her dirty, travel-weary clothes. At least she’d rinsed off some of the grime. She made another cup of instant coffee and sat on the sofa sipping it. Kelby didn’t seem to be much of a reader, there were no books in the living room.

  At first, she just sat, then she turned on the television set and watched an old movie, then early morning talk shows. The sky outside went through cobalt to deep purple to lavender to pale blue as day arrived. Still no sign of Kelby, no sound from upstairs. She picked up the Hampstead Herald, and peering close, struggled to read about the heat wave that was in day twenty, the church supper, the coming of the county fair, the band concert in the park. With no more words to read, she got out the knitting.

  At six o’clock in the evening, when she’d been waiting over twenty-two hours and Kelby still hadn’t called or returned, Cary knew something was wrong. First, go through the house and make sure Kelby wasn’t here. Oh God, she should have done that sooner. What if Kelby had fallen and was unconscious upstairs? Stop imagining disaster. Look and see if there was anything to explain her absence.

  Even with the icky feeling of wrongdoing, Cary went up the stairs. Stifling hot up here. Along the hallway. Office room, desk and computer, office supplies, printer, file cabinet, view of the small hills and vast sky outside. Dust behind the lounge chair. Paper, CDs, paper clips, envelopes in the closet. No books, only a dictionary and texts on insurance. How did anybody survive without books? A pair of binoculars sat on the small table next to the chair. She picked them up and looked out. Billions of miles of empty sky, a transparent wafer of moon, and endless horizon-to-horizon corn stalks.

  Down the hallway. Spare bedroom. Nothing in the closet or under the bed. Across the hall, the door was closed. She tapped. Waited, tapped again. “Kelby?” No sound. Pulse jumping, she eased the door open. Master bedroom and second bathroom. Clothes in the closet and the chest. No books here either. A pink velour robe hung on a hook behind the bathroom door.

  She retraced her steps, went to the kitchen, and opened the door leading to the basement. Wasn’t it always in the basement that murderers dug up the concrete to bury the body? Searching fingers found the light switch and she clicked it on. Idiot. Just a basement. You’re not going to find a bloody corpse on the floor with the axe lying nearby. Oh yeah?

  She put a foot on the first wooden step. It creaked. The next and the next and the next until she reached the cement floor at the bottom. Thin murky light crept in through shallow windows. She groped for the dangling cord and pulled, turning on the bare bulb. Furnace, shelves with boxes and dusty mason jars, washing machine and dryer. No Kelby slumped in a corner. Blowing out a long breath of relief, Cary went back upstairs.

  At eight she looked in the refrigerator and found a block of cheese. Crackers were in the cabinet. She took an apple from the bowl on the table, sat on the sofa and watched television again. She dug out old Country Living magazines from beneath the sofa and looked through those. Like an alcoholic without booze, she fidgeted and waited. She squeezed a dab of toothpaste on a fingertip and rubbed her teeth, then rinsed. She watched more television. She waited.

  Around two A.M. she dozed and again woke with total confusion, but this time it didn’t take long to realize where she was. Kelby Oliver’s house, Hampstead, Kansas. She couldn’t remember a time when she felt so rumpled and dirty. And bored. She ached for books to read. After eating another apple, she paced from living room to dining room to kitchen and back again. Like last night, she turned on the television, watched an old movie, and slept fitfully.

  When the darkness outside faded to gray with the first of the morning light, she went up to Kelby’s bedroom. Feeling like the worst kind of intrusive thief, she opened drawers and looked through everything. On top of the small chest under the window lay a set of car keys. A shelf in the closet held a beige leather purse; inside were Kelby’s wallet with driver’s license and credit cards. Cary studied the picture on the driver’s license, holding it close to her face and moving it around to find her small circle of sight, looking from Kelby’s picture to her reflection in the mirror. Kelby was thirty-eight, brown hair, five-two, weighed a hundred and thirty-five pounds. Eyes blue.

  There was a superficial resemblance between Kelby and herself. Cary was thirty-four, also five-two and had blue eyes, but her hair was blond. She didn’t know what she weighed. Since she’d lost so much, probably around a hundred pounds.

  Where would Kelby have gone that she didn’t take her purse with her? An awful uneasy prickliness took hold. Something was very wrong. How could she have been so stupid as to leave home and come all this way to stay with someone she didn’t even know?

  Why did Cary trust Arlette’s word that Kelby could offer sanctuary from Mitch? Why let Arlette disclose those most private and shameful secrets to a perfect stranger? Who was Kelby? Why did she agree to let Cary come here?

  Get a grip, she told herself. Do you think Kelby deliberately lured you here for some evil purpose? To carve you up for body parts and sell your kidneys and heart? A master criminal who needed a new identity, she planned to steal yours and bury your body in the basement? Cary took a shaky breath. She’d been reading too many mysteries.

  What if this was some kind of trap Mitch set up? What if he was just trying to see if she’d jump at the chance to get away? What if he was even at this very moment waiting for her to step outside? Oh, for God’s sake. Cary shook her head. Maybe she should take up writing thrillers.

  Mitch didn’t have that kind of imagination. He wasn’t devious. He was dead-on direct. What you saw was what you got. He couldn’t have arranged for her to come here. It was Arlette who knew Kelby and urged Cary to come.

  Before her courage gave way entirely, she grabbed the keys, trotted down stairs and put on her shoes. When she walked into the screened porch, the air felt like warm soup. Five in the morning and the temperature must be close to eighty. A dry, dusty smell of corn hung over everything. She followed the flagstone path around to the left side of the house and stared at the cornfield.

  “I’m as corny as Kansas in August.” Tall rows of stalks, at least eight feet high, clusters of fat cobs. Hot wind caused stirrings and rustlings that sounded like malignant whispering. When the wind died, the stalks fell silent. The vast field seemed alive, like some dangerous predator she mustn’t turn her back on.

  Goosebumps popped up on her arms in the muggy air. Shivering in eighty-degree heat, she took the path to the barn and rolled open the large door. Pearly gray light seeped into the dim interior. A Honda, similar to the one she had owned, except this one was white, sat inside. Doors unlocked. Nothing in the glove box but a map of Kansas and a flashlight. She clicked it on. Batteries were working. Car was clean, like it had recently been washed and vacuumed inside

  A strong smell of what she assumed was hay, grass of some kind anyway, made her sneeze. A small room just to her right. Officelike, old wooden desk, shelves with cardboard file boxes, pegs on one wall. Stalls on both sides of the center aisle. All empty, except one with straw on the floor. A ladder went to a loft above and she climbed just high enough to see what was up there. Stacks of hay, or maybe straw. A fit of sneezing attacked her and she backed down.

  Okay, nothing for it now but the car trunk. Hadn’t she read this scenario a million times? Idiot woman goes off to deserted place like old barn and finds body. She pressed a spot on the k
ey and the trunk lid popped up an inch or two. Big intake of breath. She nudged it open. It contained nothing more sinister than old newspapers.

  Cary slammed the trunk lid. She needed to talk with Arlette. Since she couldn’t call from Kelby’s house, she had to find a public phone. Where was the nearest? In town, of course, but she didn’t know how far that was, or exactly how to get there. She couldn’t walk to a neighbor and ask. That would be the same as wearing blinking neon lights in big letters saying “something not right here.” A second thought had her opening the trunk again to retrieve the stack of local newspapers. At least they contained the printed word, and she needed something to read. She slammed the trunk lid again and stepped from the barn.

  A high-pitched scream sliced through the predawn stillness.

  11

  By six o’clock, the pounding in Susan’s head and the crackling in her ears had reached a point where she wanted to bang her head against the wall or soak it in a bucket of water. She shut down her computer and navigated the hallway, tacked a hard right and went into George Halpern’s office.

  When she came in, he dropped his pen on the desk and rose to his feet. Gray hair circled a tonsurelike bald spot, pale blue eyes, kind, sympathetic, always ready to help anyone in need. Even thirty-some years in law enforcement didn’t shake his faith in the innate goodness of humankind. She’d lost that faith the second day on the job, when she arrested a woman who set her baby in the sink and poured boiling water over him.

  “How’s Tim?”

  “Serious condition. Burns over thirty percent of his body.” Susan lowered herself to a chair so he could sit back down.

  “Poor boy.” George shook his head.

  George had grown up in Hampstead, lived here all his life and knew everything about everybody. Whenever she wanted information about a local, he was better than the computer for facts, gossip, and rumor. “You know anything about an outfit calling itself Leading the Way? Miniature horses to lead the blind.”

  He smiled. “I believe we call that ‘vision-impaired.’” He leaned back in his chair and tented his fingertips over a flat stomach. “Veronica Wells. Parents were farmers here for years, then like so many others, they couldn’t make it. Her father recently died and her mother went to live with her sister in Colorado. Ronny just moved back, bringing those horses. Always was a horse woman. Competition riding as a kid. Blue ribbons for cutting and roping, even jumping.”

  Opening her mouth slightly, Susan moved her jaw back and forth to make her ears pop, hoping she could hear better. It didn’t help.

  “Ronny always had horses, probably loves those four-legged beasts better than people. I went to see her when she got back, extend a welcome. We’ve been friends forever, since high school, me and my wife and Ronny and her husband.”

  “Horses to lead the blind,” Susan said. The thing about George was, sometimes you got more information than you needed.

  “Ronny told me the first mini was a gift. A friend gave it to her for her birthday. Then she thought the little guy needed a companion so she got a second one. And one thing led to another. The idea about a guide horse came when one mini paired up with a blind horse she owned and led the blind one around. Why are you asking?”

  “Just checking that she’s not running some kind of con game.”

  He shook his head. “Not Ronny. She’s got a business going.”

  Because George thought most people were—deep down—good, Susan took that with a grain of skepticism and got directions to the Wells place. Letting Hazel know where she was headed, she went to the parking lot. The sun had bleached much of the blue from the sky, leaving it the color of dirty muslin. Heat from the pavement seeped up through her shoes.

  Windows lowered, air-conditioning on, she waited the required minute or two for cool air to kick in. Directions on the passenger seat, she headed east of town, took a county road for a mile and a half, turned right at the crossroads and continued another mile, past pasture land, horses in some, cows in others. All very bucolic. When she came to the gate with an arched sign, LEADING THE WAY, she turned in.

  After going up one hill and down another, she arrived at an old farmhouse recently painted white with deep blue shutters. The barn, red with white trim, sat behind. She pulled up near a corral where small horses walked around in a circle. A woman calling out commands noticed her, handed over a long whip to an assistant, and ducked under the rails. Susan climbed from the pickup. Heat slapped her in the face.

  “Ronny Wells,” the woman said. “I figured you’d be out sooner or later.” Salt-and-pepper hair, tall and slender, wearing well-washed jeans and white T-shirt with sweat stains down the back and under the arms. “Let me show you around.”

  In the barn, a tiny horse stuck its nose over the stall door and whickered softly. Ronny opened the door and the horse trotted out, nuzzled Ronny’s pockets. Ronny produced a carrot.

  “This is Ginger,” she said. “The one we took to the restaurant Tuesday evening. She’s the smartest one we’ve ever had.”

  Ronny rubbed Ginger’s neck. “This little girl is special, but she’s very sensitive. She’ll need to be with someone gentle, soft-spoken. If she gets yelled at, or anyone says a harsh word to her, her feelings get hurt. She gets depressed and withdraws in a sad huddle. Then she has to be played with, jollied back to a good mood. We’re very serious about fitting the animal with the handler. Personalities are taken into account, as well as how their walk fits.”

  Ronny gave the horse a final pat and took Susan around to the corral where an assistant was putting four small horses—not ponies—through their paces. “These four are beginners. They’re learning the basics.”

  Susan rested a hand on the railing and watched. “And these animals are safe to lead the blind?”

  “Under all kinds of conditions. Horses are very good at it because they have a three-hundred-and-fifty-degree range of vision. They can see traffic in a flash, for instance, and they always look for the safest, most direct route to get from point A to point B. And they have fantastic memories.”

  “They can be housebroken?” Susan’s voice was heavy with skepticism.

  Ronny smiled, apostle to the unbeliever. “If they need to go out, they tap a hoof by the door. They’re good for up to six hours.”

  Back in the sunshine, Ronny focused on the horses in the corral. One decided it had enough of this walking around getting nowhere and broke ranks. A command from the trainer brought it back in line.

  “You worried a guide horse might spook and take its handler into traffic or let him fall in a lake?” Ronny said.

  Actually, Susan wasn’t. Mounted police have horses trained to be calm in all kinds of noisy, chaotic situations. Fireworks, gunfire, vehicles honking, motors revving, balloons bursting, umbrellas popping open in their faces. There is nothing like a thousand-pound animal backing into a person to keep him in place.

  “These guys like people. They bond, horse and handler, just like a Seeing Eye dog does. We’re careful to make the right pairing.”

  The sun was beginning to make Susan feel a bit light-headed. “They live in the house with the handler?”

  Ronny shook her head. “No. They’re horses after all. They need a barn or outside shed.”

  “Are blind people interested in a small horse as opposed to a trained dog?” What would it be like to trust your welfare to a horse?

  “Some people like horses, they ride, or used to ride. If it were me, I’d chose a horse every time. There are advantages.”

  “And they are?”

  “A dog has a working life of eight to ten years. Some blind people have had as many as three dogs. It’s heartbreaking when a dog gets too old to do his job. A horse, especially these guys, can live thirty-five, forty years. They stand quietly in line, even take a nap, at the grocery store. Dogs have to sniff things. And for a bonus, horses keep your grass mowed. They have only one problem.”

  “Yes?”

  “Just look at them. They’
re so damn cute everybody wants to pet them.”

  “Do you have many people wanting these animals?”

  “Thirty on the waiting list. A woman here in Hampstead is interested.”

  “Who?”

  “Woman named Kelby Oliver. She called to find out about the program. Said she was calling on behalf of a friend.”

  Kelby Oliver? For a second, Susan couldn’t trace the name to a memory in her mushy mind. Ah, the woman who hadn’t called her sister. Did Kelby have vision problems? If the sister called again, Susan would ask.

  Ronny showed Susan the classrooms where handlers memorized basic commands, learned how to care for a horse. They went out to the pasture where beginners started training.

  “We go to shopping malls with escalators and elevators, airports and get on planes, heavily trafficked areas. Set up situations where the horse has to lead his handler out of very tricky conditions, like roadwork with streets torn up or flooded areas with downed power lines.”

  Susan thanked her for the tour and went back to the pickup. She took her aching head and crackling ears home, swallowed two Excedrin, and went to bed. Los Angeles Guitar Quartet on the CD player, she thought about Tim Baker and kids driving too fast, and what she could do about it. Sleep overtook her before she got anywhere.

  In the dream, she was running through a grove of trees, afraid she wouldn’t get there in time. Wind whipped the branches overhead and they tore at her like beseeching hands. She heard gunfire.

  “Hurry! Someone’s been shot!”

  “Who?” She pounded along tangled undergrowth, stumbled and—

  She woke with a jerk, sticky with sweat, heart banging away at her ribs.

  12

  As he sped along I-80, Mitch’s mind played out gruesome scenarios. He peeled off the freeway at Central Street and took direct aim toward the shopping center, slowed slightly as he skidded into the parking lot and pulled into a slot two rows beyond the recognizable PD cars and a detective’s sedan.