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She sidled toward the window near his desk, so that she could see the parking area. “In Boston,” she replied.
“Well, I haven’t been to Boston in almost a year. In fact, I’ve hardly left Maple Hill. So you have me confused with someone else.”
Rising up on tiptoe, she spotted the top of the red car, but couldn’t see enough to be sure it was the SUV. She’d watched him pull in, she reminded herself, and she’d been sure then. Of course, she’d been dealing with those spots.
He took a cordless phone from the top of the desk and tried to hand it to her. “Call the police,” he said. “They can tell you who I am.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” she said with new resolve, polishing off the last of the coffee. “Gordon told me no police. Did you buy them off?”
He put a hand to his face and took a deep breath. “Why don’t we call you a doctor?” he asked finally, preparing to stab out a telephone number. “You look as though you’re on the verge of collapse. Sit down and I’ll—”
She made a desperate grab for the phone, thinking that he’d probably just get a doctor to sedate her or something, then they’d throw her in that beautiful lake behind the…
She couldn’t quite round out the thought.
Everything went red. Not black, but a sort of rosy red. She felt hot suddenly, as though a prickly woollen blanket were inching up her body. With a strange sort of detachment, she watched as the coffee cup fell out of her hands and the bat dangled from her fingers.
The man sprang off the desk to take the bat from her, and as she sank into a warm, fuzzy stupor, she expected him to hit her with it.
But he put it aside and reached out for her as her knees buckled. She expected a collision with the floor, but the last thing she knew was the cradle of a strong pair of arms.
CHAPTER TWO
EVAN CARRIED THE YOUNG WOMAN to the love seat, put two fingertips to her throat, and felt great relief when he sensed the tap of a steady pulse. He retrieved a ratty but clean blanket he kept in the closet. Her skin was icy to the touch. It certainly lent credence to her story that she’d been on the run all night.
Then he reached for the phone to dial 911. But remembering her fear, and her odd remark about the police being in collusion with the killer, he changed his mind.
He couldn’t imagine what had happened to her, but she seemed more genuinely fearful than crazy. Something or someone had driven her to this state. Someone with a red SUV.
He called Randy Sanford, who was an EMT and worked on Whitcomb’s Wonders’ janitorial crew in his spare time. Evan explained briefly about not wanting to call an ambulance.
“My bag’s at Medics Rescue,” Randy said. “You should call—”
“Just come!” Evan demanded. He’d pressed the speaker button so that he had his hands free to make a pot of coffee for the woman. “I don’t think it’s life or death, but please. Just get over here.”
“On my way,” Randy promised.
Once the coffee was dripping, Evan went to see what else he could do to make the woman comfortable. He noticed that her head rested at an odd angle on the pillow he’d propped under her, and tried to readjust it. Then he realized that the problem was a dirty, tattered piece of elasticized fabric wrapped around her hair. He worked gently to remove it, and combed his fingers through the dark burnished mass.
As he wrapped the blanket more tightly around her, he wondered once again what had happened to her. She had a pretty oval face, though even in her unconscious state, she frowned. Her nose was small, her chin slightly pointed, and her long eyelashes were a shade darker than her hair. If she wore makeup, it had worn off in her ordeal, and a spray of freckles stood out on the bridge of her nose and across her cheekbones.
When she stirred fitfully, he put a hand to her shoulder, telling her it was all right, she was safe.
She moaned in response, but her eyes remained closed.
BEAZIE WAS LEANING OVER Gordon in horrified disbelief as his life drained away.
She heard the door of the SUV open. The driver, a young man in a fleece-lined jacket, was about to step out, but the elevator doors parted and a throng of laughing, talking commuters spilled out. As soon as they noticed her sheltering Gordon’s supine body, they hurried toward her, one of them already on his cell phone. A young woman pushed Beazie aside, telling her she was a nurse.
The door closed on the red SUV and it sped away.
The ambulance arrived first, and the paramedics covered Gordon with a sheet. As soon as Beazie saw the police car pull up, she panicked and slipped away unnoticed in the crowd of onlookers that had gathered. Gordon had pleaded “No police!” She couldn’t risk them finding the tape on her.
Once she was out on the main street, she hailed a cab and headed straight for her apartment. Everything there was just as she’d left it that morning, and she experienced a strange feeling of unreality. She had to have imagined the murder of her boss. That kind of thing didn’t happen to a nice, middle-class girl from Buffalo.
Then she found the tape, still clutched so tightly in her hand it left marks. She walked to the window to examine it more closely and see if it was labeled.
Instead, her attention was caught by the bright red SUV parking in front of her building. Three men got out. One stayed with the car while the other two hurried inside.
Her flight-or-fight response kicked in and adrenaline raged through her body as she raced out of her apartment and scrambled down the fire escape. Once on the ground, she fled down an alley to the next block, and kept running as darkness fell.
She was cold, she was hungry. In her panic, she hadn’t thought to grab her purse. How was she going to get to Maple Hill without cash or credit cards? Then she came upon the gaping rear doors of a moving van and heard the driver and his assistant talking about their next stop in Springfield. She remembered from visiting a friend there and antiquing through the area that it was just a short distance from Maple Hill, a quaint little town at the foot of the Berkshires. Without a second’s thought, she climbed into the truck.
For several hours she huddled in the cold darkness of the moving van, wedged between a mattress and an easy chair. When at last they stopped, the assistant opened the doors, and she got ready to do some fast explaining. But the driver shouted a question and the assistant headed back to the cab.
Her body stiff with cold, Beazie struggled down from the van and headed toward the well-lit main street, wondering how on earth she would get to Maple Hill. Down a little side lane she noticed the shipping and receiving doors of a bakery wide-open, so she slipped inside, drawn by the warmth and the light. Beyond a wall of windows, big ovens were being filled with racks of something she couldn’t quite identify.
The aroma was torturous. She’d skipped breakfast, had been too busy for lunch and was now feeling weak and dizzy. Unfortunately, all of the bakery’s product seemed to be on the other side of the window.
She shrank back into the shadows as a tall boy in a white uniform and headphones came out another door carrying a large rack. He walked out in to the lane, headed for a truck with Palermo Bakery emblazoned on the side. After sliding the rack of bread in the back of the truck, he went to the driver’s door and climbed in. Taking her courage in hand, Beazie raced over and asked if he was going anywhere near Maple Hill.
He yanked off the headphones. “What’s that?”
“Are you going anywhere near Maple Hill?” she asked again.
He looked her over and smiled. “Sure am, dudette,” he said. “That’s my first stop. You need a ride?”
She nodded, grateful that he was friendly and amenable, if not the brightest light on the field. She wanted to add, Yes, and a dozen doughnuts, please, but she said instead, “I’m looking for someone named Evans there. Do you know anyone by that name?”
He nodded. “I do. Hop in, time’s a-wastin’.”
She couldn’t believe her good fortune. She closed her eyes against a thumping headache and was mercifully ignored while the young man sang loudly to the tunes from his Walkman. Within half an hour, he pulled off the road and into the parking lot of what looked like an old mill. It was now about four a.m.
“You’ll find him in that office,” he said, pointing to the far end of the building. “But probably not for a couple of hours.”
Beazie was also grateful that the driver’s youth and “duh-ness” prevented him from arguing about leaving her on what was now a dark and lonely road.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, and with a heartfelt “thank you” leaped out onto the parking lot and headed straight for a garden bench under a floodlight.
The sign on the building said Trent and Braga Development. Trent and Braga. Beazie turned to the truck, but the driver was already back on the road and almost out of sight.
She hoped this wasn’t simply the boy’s idea of a joke on a disheveled “dudette” and that there really was someone named Evans here.
Tired as she was, she decided to try the windows and was deliriously relieved to find one slightly open. She pushed it open even farther and climbed inside. The smell of sealant was strong, and she imagined that was why the window had been left ajar.
In the glow of the floodlight, the room appeared to be large and empty, and she made her way carefully to a door, which led to a hallway. Every other room along the hallway was also empty, except for one at the end that appeared to be a sort of office-storage area. And it had a sofa!
The room wobbled as she stumbled to the lumpy couch. She would lie down for a minute; then, as soon as the world straightened again, she’d look for something to eat. If this place was used as an office, there might be cookies or chips stashed in a drawer. She closed her eyes, quickly reviewed all the horrible things that had happened to her over the past sixteen hours, and reaffirmed her determination to grant Gordon his dying wish. He’d been a good friend to her, and she felt bound to help him in the only way she had left. She fell asleep with tears on her cheek.
THE WOMAN WAS STILL UNCONSCIOUS five minutes later when Randy arrived, ripping off his jacket. He was tall and dark-featured, with what Evan had heard the Wonders Women, his wife and his friends’ wives, refer to as heartthrob good looks. Randy never seemed to be aware of them himself.
Evan pointed him to the sofa and Randy sat on the edge of it and leaned over the woman, putting his cheek to her mouth and nose to check for breathing.
“What’s her name?” he asked Evan as he straightened up. He put his index and second fingers to the pulse at her throat.
“I don’t know,” Evan replied.
“Pulse is a little thready.” Randy shook her lightly. “Hey, pretty lady. Can you hear me?” he asked loudly. “Hello! Can you hear me? Can you talk?” He gave her another gentle shake. “What did you say happened to her?”
Evan went to the cupboard for coffee cups. “I’m not sure. She said something about seeing her boss killed, then being chased all night long. She started out in Boston.”
“How’d she get here?”
“Don’t know. I unlocked my door to find her threatening me with a bat. She looked pretty desperate.”
“No purse?”
“Uh…don’t think so.” He left the small table with the coffeepot, to check the corners of the office. He searched behind a stack of boxes, then under the love seat. Nothing. “No purse,” he confirmed.
“No coat, either?”
“No.”
The woman stirred as though uncomfortable, then moaned.
Randy lightly placed his hand above her waist. “It’s all right,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
When she didn’t respond, he took one of her hands and rubbed it. “She’s breathing a little fast, but that would be consistent with being frightened. And her pulse isn’t really strong but it’s definitely there.”
He put her hand back under the blanket and rubbed her arms through it. “She wasn’t dressed for a winter night. That coffee ready? That’ll do her the most good. She’s probably just cold and hungry. Not to mention scared and exhausted.”
The woman opened her eyes then, and at the sight of them, tried to propel herself backward on the sofa, looking desperate to escape.
“Whoa,” Randy said, catching her hands. “It’s okay. I’m an emergency medical technician.”
“He’s okay.” Evan came forward and handed her a cup of coffee. “I called him when you fainted. You’re safe. I’m driving a red Jeep, remember, not an SUV. This is Randy Sanford, a friend of mine.”
She studied Randy suspiciously, then looked up at Evan, her suspicion obviously deepening. But she took a sip of the coffee and seemed to relax a little.
“I’d like to take you to the hospital,” Randy said, “just to make sure you’re all right and that you fainted because you’re cold and hungry, not because of something more serious.”
BEAZIE MADE A QUICK DECISION. She could not go to the hospital. Someone would have to take down a lot of information, create a file that could be traced.
“No, thank you,” she said firmly. “I’m fine.”
“You fainted,” the first man reminded her. “Fine people don’t faint.”
“Hungry people do,” she replied. “You don’t have another doughnut, do you?”
He reached for the bag he’d given her earlier and offered it to her. She pulled out the cinnamon twist. “You should go to the hospital.”
She took a big bite of the doughnut, then glanced at him apologetically. “No, thank you. This will put me back on my feet.”
“What are you going to do then?” he asked. “You have no purse or coat.”
Many times during the cold night she had wished she’d handled her escape with more thought, but when she’d seen the red SUV on the street below her apartment, she’d panicked.
It didn’t matter, though. Somehow she was going to find this Evans person and give him the tape Gordon had passed to her with his last breath. He hadn’t deserved to die the way he did.
“I’ll do what I came to do,” she replied with far more conviction than she felt. “I’m looking for a man named Evans. Either of you know him?”
Randy Sanford pointed to his friend. “Your host is Evan Braga. But I don’t know anyone with the last name Evans. What’s your name, by the way?”
She hesitated a moment, then replied, “Beazie Deadham.” There was little point in withholding her name. If the men in the red SUV had been able to find out where she lived, she was sure they also knew her name.
Now that she was seeing more clearly and was more coherent, she realized Evan Braga wasn’t one of the men from the SUV. But Gordon had warned her not to trust anyone, and had directed her to give the tape to someone named Evans, not Evan. At least, she thought he had. His voice had been frail, and the sound in the underground parking lot less than ideal.
“That’s an unusual name,” Randy said.
“My grandmothers were Beatrice and Zoe,” she explained. “I’m Beatrice Zoe. Beazie.”
“Ah.” Randy stood. “I don’t think you need me anymore,” he said, patting her hand.
Evan Braga walked him across the room to the door, where they disappeared behind a stack of boxes.
“Thanks for coming so quickly,” the man named Evan said.
“Sure. Does this square us for last night’s poker game?” Randy asked.
“No, it doesn’t,” Evan replied. “You owe me thirty bucks and you damn well better pay up or I’ll sic my attorney on you.”
Randy laughed. “Bart is into me for forty bucks for hospital benefit tickets. Why don’t you just pay me ten and we’ll call it even?”
She heard a quiet groan. “Did you really think I’d fall for that?”
“It was worth a shot.”
“Randy, listen. Keep this to yourself, okay? If this woman is in danger from whoever’s following her, I don’t want anyone to know how she got here.”
“Sure. I was never here.”
“Thanks.”
Beazie thought that a surprisingly thoughtful request of her host.
There was the sound of a door closing.
When Evan returned, he went to his desk and picked up a small telephone book. “I know a Millie Evans,” he said, handing her the book, “but she’s ninety-three and in a convalescent home.”
