The Other Lady Vanishes by Amanda Quick
“Damn right,” Raina said.
Chapter 45
Everything had gone wrong. Again.
Gill flung the last of his clothes into the suitcase, wiped cold sweat off his forehead, and swung around to examine the hotel room. He must not leave anything behind that would lead Truett and the police back to him. Truett was the one who worried him the most. The bastard should have died tonight, the victim of a jealous husband who had gotten drunk and then gone to a midnight rendezvous with the intention of killing his rival.
The plan had included Conrad Massey’s death, as well. At least that part of the scheme worked. One of the bullets had struck Massey. He went off the end of the pier. There was no way he could have survived.
No possible way.
Gill forced himself to check the bathroom cabinet and the closet one last time to make certain he had not left anything behind. He had been careful to register under another name when he had checked into the cheap, run-down hotel. Truett and the police would not be able to use the guest records to identify him. Not that they were ever likely to trace him to this dump, he thought.
He closed the suitcase, hauled it off the bed, and headed for the door. He hurried downstairs to the dimly lit lobby. There was no sign of the night clerk at the front desk. The sound of snoring came from the inner office. One piece of good luck at last—there would be no one to witness the late-night departure of the mysterious Mr. Smith.
Gill opened the door, hurried across the porch, and went down the front steps. He walked quickly along the sidewalk and around the corner. Earlier, when he had returned from the debacle at the pier, he had parked on an empty side street. There was only one streetlamp at the end of the block. The light it cast did not reach far into the darkness. He did not think anyone would notice the Ford.
He tossed the suitcase into the trunk, closed the lid, and started toward the driver’s side door. A figure emerged from the shadows of a long row of bushy oleander trees. Calvin Paxton moved into the moonlight. He had a gun in his hand.
“I always knew that you were too weak to stick with the plan if things got complicated,” Paxton said. “Figured you’d lose your nerve and run.”
“What are you going to do?” Gill opened the driver’s side door. “Shoot me here on the street outside my hotel? If you really think that’s a smart move, you’re as crazy as any of my patients at Rushbrook. The cops will investigate. Once they identify me they’ll start asking questions. Sooner or later they’ll find a connection between us. It’s over, Paxton. The operation is crumbling. If you had any sense, you’d run, too.”
“There’s no need for me to run,” Paxton said. “No one knows that I’m involved with you and the drug business that you and Ormsby were running out of Rushbrook. Zolanda and Leggett are dead. They are the only ones who could have pointed the finger at me. I’m in the clear, unless, of course, you decide to talk to the police or the FBI.”
“I’m not going to talk to anyone,” Gill said. “Massey’s dead. As long as you and I keep quiet, we’ll be all right.”
“You don’t know, do you? Of course not. How could you know?” Paxton lowered the gun. “Massey survived.”
Gill felt as if he’d taken a punch to the gut. For a second or two he could not catch his breath.
“The hell he did,” he said. “I saw him go off the end of that pier. He was alive but he was bleeding. I shot him, Paxton. In addition, he was in a full-blown delirium. If he didn’t bleed to death, he must have drowned.”
“I watched Truett and Pell take him into the police station. From what I could tell, Massey was only semiconscious, but you’re right, he was hallucinating wildly. That means we’ve got some time. You gave him a big dose of Daydream, so it will take at least a couple of days before the effects of the drug start to wear off. But when they do, he’ll talk. He’ll tell the police that you drove him to that pier to meet Truett. He’ll say that you were the one who set him up—that you drugged him and put the gun in his hand.”
“The key is that he was on drugs,” Gill said urgently. “Hallucinating. Don’t you understand? Nothing he says will stand up in court—especially when they find out that I was at home in Rushbrook when the shooting happened here in Burning Cove.”
“It’s a long drive back to Rushbrook. A good three hours, maybe longer if you run into fog.”
“That’s why I have to get on the road. It’s after one. If I leave now, I can be there by four or five. The staff at Rushbrook believe I’m away on a fishing trip. I’ll go into the office at my usual time tomorrow morning and tell everyone that the fish weren’t biting so I returned sooner than planned.”
“What are we going to do about Massey?” Paxton asked. “He knows too much.”
“If the police question me, I’ll tell them that there’s a streak of insanity in the Massey family. I’ve got his crazy aunt tucked away at Rushbrook to prove my point, remember? But I’m telling you, it won’t come to that, not if I get back to the sanitarium before the night is over. In fact, with a little luck we can still salvage the plan. Think about the money, Paxton. Daydream is worth a fortune.”
“Even if you convince the police that Massey is insane, what about Truett and Adelaide Blake?”
“I’ve been thinking,” Gill said. He spoke slowly, feeling his way as the new plan began to take shape in his head. “Adelaide Blake is crazy. Hell, she escaped from an asylum. The police won’t believe a word she says. But it occurs to me that if she were to poison her lover, Jake Truett, it wouldn’t be the biggest surprise in the world. After all, she was locked up for a reason.”
“Huh.” Paxton sounded intrigued. “That is not a bad idea.”
“It will take a little planning but I think we can come up with something that might work. But I need to get out of town first so that I can establish my alibi.”
“All right.”
“You’re safe. You were nowhere near the pier tonight.”
“True.” Paxton slipped the gun inside his jacket, took out a gold lighter, and lit a cigarette. “You’re right. I’ll be fine. Go on, get out of here.”
Gill did not need any urging. He climbed behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. Just as he was about to put the car in gear, Paxton materialized at the passenger side window. He rapped on the glass.
“Hang on,” Paxton said loudly. “Your trunk is open. I’ll close it for you.”
Gill waited while Paxton moved behind the Ford, raised the trunk lid, and slammed it firmly closed. He waved once, signaling that the problem had been taken care of, and then he turned and swiftly disappeared into the shadows of the oleanders.
Gill put the Ford in gear and pulled away from the curb. He started to breathe again. There had been a time when he was jealous of Paxton and Paxton’s glittering, star-studded life, envious of the fact that Paxton was fucking the most beautiful woman in Hollywood.
Now I’m afraid of the bastard, Gill thought.
No question about it, he would have to find a way to get rid of Paxton. Maybe he could figure out how to kill Paxton as well as Truett with Daydream and blame both murders on crazy Adelaide Blake. Maybe he could salvage the original plan. Maybe he could survive the mess.
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed obvious that he did not need Paxton. He promised himself that by the time he got back to Rushbrook, he would come up with a scheme to ensure that he was the last man standing. He and he alone would control Daydream.
He got as far as Cliff Road before the explosion erupted, shattering the silence of the night. He died instantly.
The intense fire crackled to life a short time later.
* * *
• • •
Paxton stood in the shadows and watched the Ford burn. It had been so easy to light the fuse on the stick of dynamite he had hidden under his coat, so easy to toss the explosive into the trunk of Gill
The thrill of satisfaction was intoxicating. They were all gone now—Ormsby, Madam Zolanda, Thelma Leggett, and finally, tonight, Gill. The drug ring had been shut down—except for him, of course. He was the last man standing. Now he and he alone controlled the powerful hallucinogen called Daydream.
Unlike Gill, he had no intention of selling it to a foreign government or anyone else. The potential was too promising. A few refinements were all that was needed to make Daydream more predictable. He could use derelicts and transients for the final phase of development.
Once he was sure that the drug was reliable, he would be able to control the most powerful people in the nation: industrialists, newspaper magnates, politicians—hell, maybe even the president.
Paxton envisioned his destiny with a sense of wonder. Soon he would become the most powerful man in America.
There was no reason to worry about Conrad Massey. It was true that he knew too much but everything he knew was connected to Gill and Ormsby, and both of them were now dead. Massey had never been aware of the drug ring that had been operating for years out of the Rushbrook Sanitarium. He had never known that Zolanda and Thelma Leggett had been dealing drugs to celebrities in Hollywood or that Gill’s old pal from medical school had been involved from the start.
Gill had been right about Adelaide Blake. No one would take her seriously once it became known that she had escaped from an asylum. Jake Truett was the only unpredictable element in the equation. He was evidently the kind of man who would keep asking questions until he was satisfied. Gill’s idea to have Adelaide Blake poison her lover was not a bad one. It had been easy enough to slip some Daydream into Truett’s drink at the Paradise Club. It was just a fluke that Truett had survived the first dose. He would not survive a second.
The front door of the hotel slammed open. The night clerk rushed out onto the porch to view the fiery scene at the end of the street. A few startled guests raised their windows to see what was going on.
The night clerk hurried back inside, no doubt to telephone the fire department.
Sure enough, a short time later sirens sounded in the night. By now the night clerk was back outside on the porch. He was accompanied by a handful of guests in their bathrobes.
Paxton waited a moment longer before he left the shadows of the oleanders and entered the hotel through the back door. There was no one in the lobby. The registration book was open on the front counter. It showed that a Mr. Smith had been staying in room five. The key was still on the counter where Gill had tossed it on his way out.
Paxton grabbed it and headed upstairs. It wouldn’t take long to set the stage.
He left the crumpled receipt in the trash basket and then he hurried back downstairs. His car was waiting on the street behind the hotel. Time to return to the Paradise. The most beautiful woman in Hollywood was waiting for him. Vera would start to worry if he didn’t get back to her soon. She got very anxious when he was not around.
Chapter 46
Luther hung up the phone on the wall of Adelaide’s kitchen. “Oliver Ward says that Paxton left the Burning Cove Hotel earlier this evening and has not yet returned. My manager told me that Paxton showed up at the club a short time ago. He is currently seated with Miss Westlake. They are both enjoying martinis.”
“That leaves a lot of Paxton’s time unaccounted for,” Adelaide pointed out.
“He’s involved in this thing,” Jake said. “I know he is.”
It was going on two thirty in the morning. She was at the kitchen counter making coffee. Jake, Luther, and Raina were gathered around the big table. It had been a night of shocks and surprises, she thought, but at long last they were getting some answers. Things were falling into place.
“Well, we know one thing for sure,” Raina said. “Paxton is alive and having cocktails with Vera Westlake, so that tells us he’s not the dead man in the Ford. It must be Gill.”
“There’s no way to know for certain until that car cools down enough to allow the authorities to pull the body out of the front seat,” Luther said. “And even then we might never know for sure.”
“That fire was very intense,” Jake said. “I doubt if there will be enough left for a positive identification, but unless Gill shows up alive at Rushbrook, I think it’s safe to assume he was the one behind the wheel of the Ford.”
Luther looked at him. “I agree with you, Jake. Paxton is closing down the drug ring that was operating out of Rushbrook.”
“All we’ve got at this point is that receipt for three sticks of dynamite,” Adelaide said.
“Dynamite is not exactly a subtle method of getting rid of people,” Jake said, “but it does have one very useful side effect.”
“It doesn’t leave much in the way of evidence,” Raina observed.
Adelaide turned around, coffeepot in hand, just in time to catch the expression on Luther’s face. He was watching Raina with an interesting mix of speculation, curiosity, and admiration.
“You make an excellent point,” he said.
When news of the explosion reached the police station, they had all piled into cars and followed Brandon and his officers to the scene. There was enough left of the burning vehicle to identify it as a Ford, but the warped and twisted metal was still too hot to allow the fire department to extract the remains of the body in the front seat. The hotel desk clerk said that one of his guests had driven the Ford.
Detective Brandon had not argued when Jake, Adelaide, Raina, and Luther accompanied him up the hotel stairs to number five. Gill had done a thorough job of packing but he had missed the crumpled receipt for three sticks of dynamite in the small trash basket. Jake was the one who had noticed it.
“What we know for certain is that someone, presumably Gill, purchased three sticks of dynamite from a hardware store in a small town about halfway between Burning Cove and Rushbrook,” Jake said. “If we assume that one of the sticks was used to blow up my car, that means Gill might have had two more in the Ford.”
Adelaide poured coffee into the four mugs on the table. “If Gill was the one who purchased the dynamite sticks, the explosion tonight must have been accidental.”
Jake picked up his mug and cradled it in two hands. “A stick of fresh dynamite is not particularly unstable, but old dynamite is very dangerous. The stuff degrades over time. The nitroglycerin seeps out and that, of course, is highly volatile. Wouldn’t take much to set it off.”
“Dynamite purchased in a small-town hardware store might be old,” Luther observed. “A careless match or even a strong jolt could cause it to explode.’”
“Gill smoked,” Adelaide said. She sat down in the empty chair next to Jake. “He always had a cigarette in his hand. I remember Dr. Ormsby complaining about it whenever Gill came up to the lab. Some of the chemicals were highly flammable.”
Raina’s eyes narrowed a little. “If Gill tossed a match or a half-smoked cigarette out the window and it blew back into the car and landed on the dynamite, that would certainly account for the explosion.”
“Maybe,” Jake said.
Adelaide looked at him. “What’s worrying you?”
Luther studied Jake from the opposite side of the table. “He’s thinking that this whole thing seems to be ending a little too neatly.”
“Neatly?” Raina said. “It all seems very bizarre to me.”
“Not if you consider that everything that has happened somehow revolves around the drug that Adelaide’s parents discovered,” Jake said.
Adelaide shuddered. “Daydream. They should have called it Nightmare.”
“Let’s assume that Gill and Paxton had been running a profitable little drug ring and marketing their wares to Hollywood celebrities,” Jake said. “They used Madam Zolanda and Thelma Leggett as distributors. Then Gill realizes that Adelaide’s parents have discovered a new hallucinogen with hypnotic properties.”
“But only if Gill and Paxton can have exclusive control of the drug,” Jake continued. “So they decide to get rid of everyone who knew too much about the original drug ring and about Daydream. Patient A evidently died from the effects of the drug. That left Ormsby, Zolanda, Thelma Leggett, and Patient B.”
“Me,” Adelaide said.
Jake looked at her. “But Patient B vanished the night they planned to murder her. That left Gill and Paxton with a serious problem because Adelaide was the one person who knew all about the secret experiments at Rushbrook. They had to find her before they continued dismantling the ring. They finally tracked her down here in Burning Cove.”
“Madam Zolanda and Thelma Leggett were sent here to get a handle on the situation,” Luther said. “If Jake’s right about Paxton, that explains his presence in town.”
“They knew that I wouldn’t recognize any of them,” Adelaide said. “But by the time they found me, I had settled into life here in Burning Cove. I had a job. Friends. People would have noticed if I simply vanished. They needed a plan to kidnap me or maybe murder me without drawing attention to themselves.”
Raina nodded. “Do you think the original scheme involved Madam Zolanda making that final prediction about someone dying before morning?”
“Maybe,” Jake said. “It wouldn’t have been a bad plan, when you think about it. If Adelaide had been killed or if she had vanished that night, the press would have gone wild. Zolanda could have added to her fame by helping the police find the body.”
“Instead, it was Zolanda who was killed,” Luther said. “If her plan was to predict Adelaide’s death, it backfired.”