Games to Keep the Dark Away Read online

  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.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you’re holding a camera, people rarely look at you. Surely you’ve noticed that. They focus on the camera itself, or they get worried you’re going to take a picture of them, so they start fussing with their hair. The photographer is just the anonymous figure behind the black box.”

  “Now that you mention it, yes, I have noticed.”

  “It was ironic—Jane located me because of my work.”

  “How could you stand to have her in the house, when she was blackmailing you?”

  Snelling shifted and adjusted a pillow behind him. “At first it was awful. I even contemplated causing her to have an accident—slipping in the shower or something. But I couldn’t I realized that when my own wife asked me to help her out of her pain and I couldn’t. I guess Jane sensed that and, as insurance, she wrote a letter about who I was, saying she was blackmailing me and that if she died violently I would have been the one responsible. She left it with her mother, to be opened in the event of her death. But it hasn’t turned up yet.”

  “I doubt it will. Mrs. Anthony probably opened it and, when she realized what her daughter was doing, couldn’t bear to show it to anyone.”

  “Probably you’re right. Anyway strangely enough, Jane and I became friends of sorts. The kind of relationship a prisoner and his jailer might develop. We used to cook together. We’d talk photography and I’d let her help me in the darkroom.”

  “And all the time you were paying for her silence.”

  “Yes. I think she was putting the money away, with some thought of helping Keller out of his financial mess.”

  “You knew about Keller?”

  “Only that there was a boyfriend some place. I wasn’t aware it was Keller until you told me on the phone a few days ago.” He paused, his eyes clouding. “You know, if Jane and I hadn’t developed that friendly adversary relationship, she and the others would probably still be alive.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “A few days before she disappeared, she was helping to organize my files. She must have seen the negatives of Liz Schaff at the Blue Owl and started to wonder.”

  “Why did you take those pictures anyway?”

  “I recognized Liz as someone I’d known at The Tidepools and felt I should document her presence in San Francisco. But then the robbery happened and the shooting started. And, what with everything else that’s gone on in my life since then, I forgot all about the negatives.”

  “And what Jane saw in them was the same thing both you and I noticed the other day—that Liz was wearing a pharmacist’s smock rather than a nurse’s uniform.” I hadn’t even picked up on that when I had had lunch with her at the Blue Owl, because it had been a cool day and she’d kept her coat on. “Jane must have remembered that Liz also had a degree in pharmacy and had moonlighted at one while she worked at The Tidepools.”

  “I guess so. At any rate, she took off a couple of days later. And she did have Liz’s hours at the S.F. General Pharmacy written down in her phone book, as if she’d done some checking.”

  “Do you think she knew that Liz was in San Francisco before that?”

  Snelling shrugged. “I think they may have had lunch a couple of times, but that didn’t mean Jane knew she was working in the pharmacy until she saw the negatives.”

  So what Liz had told me about becoming worried when Jane missed a lunch date was most likely true, I thought.

  Only she’d been worried about her own skin, not her friend’s. Probably she’d feared she’d let something slip at one of those lunches. “You hired me because you were worried about the letter Jane had left with her mother, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes. I was constantly afraid something would happen to her—a car accident, anything—and then when she just disappeared... Well, I had to know.”

  “But when she was killed, you didn’t run.”

  “I started to. I packed my bags, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’ve been a recluse so long that the idea of going out in the world and beginning life all over again was just inconceivable. I decided to stay, and resigned myself to the fact that the letter would be opened and I’d be arrested. But then, the other day, when I started figuring things out, I actually felt some hope.”

  Figuring things out, I thought. Just like Jane had. “Once Jane verified from the hospice records that Liz had been on the team that had worked with all three patients who had overdosed,” I said, “it must have been pretty apparent to her how they got their drugs. And, since Liz still held a job and drove a ratty old black VW, Jane probably realized she must have salted away most of the mercy-killing money. So she decided to try blackmail on a larger scale.”

  “I wonder why the police didn’t catch on to Liz in their investigations of the overdoses?” Snelling said.

  “Probably no one knew about Liz’s pharmacy job. The Tidepools, like most health-care facilities, must have fairly stringent rules against moonlighting.”

  Snelling nodded, looking tired now. “You think Jane set up the meeting with Liz on the old pier?”

  “Yes. And when Liz fled after killing Jane, John Cala recognized her. But she also saw him.”

  “So she set up her own meeting and killed him too.” Snelling lay back against his pillows. “At The Tidepools, in that shed, she kept ranting at me about how people wouldn’t leave her alone. There she was, having killed all those people, and she was carrying on as if she were a victim.”

  “She was—the victim of herself.” I was silent a moment. Snelling was tired and I should let him rest, but there was one other thing I had to know. “Abe, what exactly happened at The Tidepools? When did you get there?”

  “A little before ten. After I left San Francisco, I drove down here and went to Susan’s house. I had to ask her if she remembered Liz Schaff as being part of Barbara’s medical team. I thought she had been, but I couldn’t remember for sure. Needless to say, Susan was shocked to see me, but she did remember. She wanted me to call the police immediately, but I decided I had to verify from the personnel records you mentioned about the other women who overdosed. I drove up to the hospice, but there was someone in the office and, even if there hadn’t been, the burglar alarm was turned on. Dumb on my part.”

  “And then?”

  “I was on my way back to my car when Liz appeared, walking in from the road.”

  It fit with the time element, I thought. Liz had left San Francisco considerably after Snelling had, since she’d taken the time to ransack his house. “Go on.”

  “At first I tried to duck behind my car, but she spotted me. She acted friendly and said she knew why I was there, that she hadn’t done the killings but knew who had. She claimed she had proof and asked me to come with her. I did. Dumb again.”

  “And she took you to the tool shed?”

  “Yes. We were halfway there before I realized she’d trapped me. Then it was too late. She had the knife at my ribs. She forced me in there and started ranting at me. She carried on for I don’t know how long and none of it made sense. Then she used that knife, suddenly, and that’s all I remember until I came in to the recovery room here after surgery.”

  “You were lucky she got you into a dark place like the tool shed,” I said. “She probably didn’t realize at first that she hadn’t killed you. And, by the time she did, I had crossed the lawn and she was afraid to do anything more than hide in the shadows. The darkness probably saved your life.”

  “No,” he said. “You did.”

  I felt a flash of pleasure, followed by embarrassment. “I only wish it were that deliberate or well thought-out. But, whatever, I’m glad you’re on the way to recovery. And I’d better get out of here before you have a relapse.”

  He grinned wanly, and we agreed to get together once he got back to San Francisco. I went out and started down the hospital corridor, which was as starkly white as Snelling’s living room. Halfway to the elevators, I spotted Susan Telle
nberg. She was dressed in a crisp linen suit and heels, and her cheeks glowed as rosily as the basket of apples she carried. She didn’t see me as she moved purposefully toward Snelling’s room, and I didn’t bother to call out to her.”

  In the lobby, I found a pay phone and called Don on the Hot Hit Line. We agreed to meet Friday night at the Sand Dollar; he had arranged to have the whole weekend off. Then I went out to my car and drove from the parking lot, toward the road that led through the hills to the freeway.

  I flicked on the radio to KPSM and smiled as I heard Don frantically extolling the virtues of the local Black Angus Steak House. Then he did a traffic report, followed by a shampoo commercial. Finally, he promised three terrific hits, back to back, no interruptions.

  He dedicated the first song to me. It was called, “Somewhere Between Lovers and Friends.”

  The End

  We hope you’ve enjoyed this McCone mystery. Now check out the rest of Marcia Muller’s SHARON MCCONE series – all available as ebooks and audiobooks from AudioGO!

  1 Edwin of the Iron Shoes

  2 Ask the Cards a Question

  3 The Cheshire Cat’s Eye

  4 Games to Keep the Dark Away

  5 Leave a Message for Willie

  6 Double

  7 There’s Nothing to Be Afraid Of

  8 Eye of the Storm

  9 There’s Something in a Sunday

  10 The Shape of Dread

  11 Trophies and Dead Things

  12 Where Echoes Live

  13 Pennies on a Dead Woman’s Eyes

  Plus two short story collections: McCone and Friends, and The McCone Files.