Greedy Bones Part 31

The place was empty.

A loud, tearing sound made me whirl, gun at the ready, until I realized a gust of wind had caught one of the old tin panels. Rusted nails screamed a complaint. Nothing else.

"Peyton!" My voice reverberated. I didn't antic.i.p.ate an answer, so I wasn't surprised when there was only silence.

Why had Peyton--or Bonnie--brought me to this place? What had been accomplished?

That Oscar had been left alone? Was Bonnie Louise so far gone that she thought she'd attack Oscar in the hospital and finish the job she'd started?

That prompted me to pat my cell phone in my pocket. I could call Dewayne Dattilo and get him to provide some kind of security for Oscar's room. If Bonnie was so nuts she meant to kill Oscar no matter what, it might be best to have someone watch over him.

Reception in the tin building was nonexistent. I'd place the call when I returned to the car.

Which would be in about three minutes.

I'd made it to the end of the gin and found only dust, rust, and shadows. My time had been wasted.

As I eased toward the front door, something wet struck me in the top of the head. I sighed. Just my luck to walk under a dove with gastrointestinal issues. Lovely conclusion to a horrible day.

The bird poo oozed down my temple, and I wiped it away. Harold surely had a towel or hanky or cloth in his car. He was always prepared.

Another drop plopped on my hand. I swung the light to look. Dark, sticky, red. Not bird p.o.o.p. Blood.

I swung the light instinctively, the dread of what I would see already building. Instead of Peyton, though, it was the pet.i.te figure of Bonnie Louise that hung from the rafter, swinging gently as if a faint breeze moved her.

Blood coated both hands, and as I moved the light along her arms, I saw the long, open slices on each wrist that indicated she'd wanted to die. Just to make sure, she'd stepped off the second-floor landing with a rope around her neck. She was nothing if not determined. And she was definitely dead.

I didn't scream or run. I was frozen by the sight as my brain processed the scene. And the implications. If Bonnie had killed herself, where was Peyton?

Not even Bonnie Louise could be a kidnapper and dead.

I had to get out of that gin and fast. My sense that I was being played had been all too true--but not in the way I'd imagined. Several images leaped forward in my head--Bonnie's clothes and shoes in a drawer in her desk, Peyton's sly manipulation of information to put Bonnie in the worst light. Bonnie had never abducted Peyton. The exact opposite was true, which was why neither Cece nor Erin could identify Janks or Bonnie as their abductors. It had been Peyton all along.

"h.e.l.lo, Sarah Booth."

Peyton's voice came from the doorway and I turned to face him, the flashlight and gun trained at the exit. There was no one there. I shifted the light left and right until the beam caught him emerging from the shadows near the right side of the door. It was possible he'd been there all along, watching me explore the old gin. Or he could have just stepped inside.

"Why?" My question needed no explanation. Peyton would understand.

"Have you ever had someone take something from you, Sarah Booth? Something more valuable than gold?"

That was the wrong question to ask me. The growl came out of my gut, clawing up my chest. He'd taken something from me. Something that dissolved my fear and made me think only of lashing out.

The flashlight beam showed me that he held a gun. As much as I ached to rip his throat out, I controlled myself.

"What was stolen from you, Peyton?" As far as I knew, Peyton had no history with Oscar. Fidellas was not a Sunflower County name. Peyton had no connection to the Carlisle land, or at least none that I had unearthed.

"Have you ever heard of D-79?" He didn't wait for me to answer. "Broad spectrum insecticide now used in almost all commercial agricultural endeavors. I created it. And Austin Janks stole my formula and took it to DeFoe, got paid a hefty sum for it, and then stole it from them and resold it again. He earned a fortune off my genius."

"Austin Janks is dead." Peyton was crazier than I thought. "He was killed in a break-in at DeFoe's South American plant years ago. Besides, that has nothing to do with the people of Sunflower County."

Peyton's laughter rang out, bouncing off the tin walls. "You miss the point of my whole scheme. Austin Janks is very much alive. Who do you think backed Jimmy's development ventures? It was his father, and he did it off the money he earned from the formula he stole from me. Such a clever man. But now he'll have to live with the fact that his son died because of his greed. He stole from me so I took from him."

"You hurt a lot of people to get back at one man."

"But ultimately, it'll be worth it. I'll be a wealthy man, thanks to Bonnie's research. Or I should say the research that Bonnie conducted along with Austin Janks."

"What are you talking about?"

"She was brilliant. She's worked years on a type of cotton that would yield two harvests. She had it, too. She was all ready to give the seed to local farmers. Give it away! To benefit the farmers. The only way I kept her mouth shut was to contaminate the weevils' feed with mold and make her believe that her cotton was responsible for a potential epidemic."

Not even I had gauged the depth of madness at work in Sunflower County, and I'd greatly underestimated Bonnie Louise's real character. "You've known all along that Oscar and the others had been exposed to mold?" I'd wanted to beat Bonnie Louise when I thought she was responsible for the loss of my child. I wanted to kill Peyton. My finger felt the trigger of Harold's gun. One good shot and I'd take him out.

"Not even I understood the genetic changes the mold would produce in the weevils--or that they'd carry the deadly mold on their backs," Peyton said. "I was just lucky there. Seems like luck is on my side these days. Too bad for you."

"Your luck has run out." He was in my sights, and I would kill him if I had to.

The first shot whizzed by my cheek, missing by only a fraction of an inch. As I darted for cover, I fired at him blindly, twice, aiming at his body because Coleman had once told me that torso ma.s.s was easier to hit than a head.

Crouched behind an old piece of machinery, I tried to pinpoint his position with the light. He was nowhere to be found. Peyton obviously knew the gin far better than I did.

"At last, someone who fights back," Peyton said. In the darkness, his tone was amused. "You're a real bonus, Sarah Booth. When I conceived of my plan to settle an old score, I never figured on you, but you're the perfect ending to a well-plotted crime. Beaucoup will kill you and then take her own life. It's a little out of order, but I don't think the local law will deduce that. Especially not when I'm alive to tell them exactly how it happened."

I'd been so eager to finger Bonnie Louise as the culprit that I'd made a terrible miscalculation. So had Coleman. We'd all followed behind Peyton Fidellas like lemmings.

Exposing myself as little as possible, I swung the flashlight beam across the building until I found him again tucked behind a conveyor belt. There was a slight stain of red on his left arm. I'd winged him with one of my shots but done no real damage--unless I could keep him talking until he bled to death. Not likely.

"Why do you hate Oscar so much?" I asked.

His laughter grated on me. "Collateral damage, Sarah Booth. That's where you went off the track. You a.s.sumed Oscar was the target. Someone had to get sick from exposure to the mold, but I didn't care who it was. I'd planned on it being Jimmy Janks. Death by mold would be more satisfying than the gunshot I had to resort to."

My brain was working hard to process the new facts. Peyton had engineered the weevils, the mold, everything. And he'd set it up so that Bonnie Louise would take the blame. Now Bonnie would also take the blame for my death--a.s.suming Peyton could actually kill me this time.

I had him in my flashlight beam, but he also had a good shot at me, because I held the light. It was a stand-off. "You should have killed me in that cotton field, Peyton. You'd already abducted Bonnie, and you took her shoes out of her desk and wore them to throw Coleman off."

"Another rash a.s.sumption, Sarah Booth. But let me say I had no idea you were pregnant. A misfortune. Then again, you would be dead otherwise."

The idea that he could be so cavalier about my miscarriage steadied my hand holding the gun. My finger tightened on the trigger. I had it within my power to kill him. He might get a shot off at me--but I might get him first.

The things that I wanted to say--before I pulled the trigger--were lodged in my throat. I couldn't speak of the loss of a child to this creature. I thought of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. There was a scene where a rabid dog had to be shot. Atticus, a man who abhorred violence, did what had to be done to protect his children.

It was too late to protect my child, but I could prevent a madman from harming others.

"Take the shot," he said, taunting me, stepping out into the open.

Perhaps I'd never forgive myself for killing a person, but it was a risk I was willing to take.

The blow came from the dark shadows beside me and felt like it snapped the bone in my arm. The gun jerked down, discharging harmlessly into the dirt floor, and fell from my useless fingers.

Peyton's laughter rang eerily off the metal walls of the building, and I swung the flashlight around to spotlight a blond woman, tall, slender, and composed.

Sonja Kessler lifted the bat she held. "You're a hard one to kill, Ms. Delaney," she said. "But this time, I won't miss."

She lifted the bat a fraction to give herself more leverage. In a second she'd swing the weapon and I had no doubt she meant to strike me in the head. She was framed in the beam of my light, and I was unable to move. My arm was useless, the hand hanging at an odd angle.

Just as she started the downswing, there was an explosion. Sonja spun as if a giant hand had twisted her. She cried out, a noise that sounded like cloth ripping.

"No!" Peyton's cry came from the other end of the building. I swung the light to show him rushing toward me, his gun pointed.

I had no idea what had happened. In the darkness, everything was a jumble, and I was totally unprepared for the next a.s.sault. Someone--not Peyton--hit me in the midriff, knocking me backward. The weight of a body fell across mine.

I caught a whiff of something exotic and sensual--Tinkie's perfume. Another shot rang out, and Peyton grunted. Then, in the darkness, there was the sound of someone tumbling into some of the equipment.

It took a moment for me to regain my breath.

"Don't move," Tinkie ordered.

My arm was killing me, but I had no intention of moving. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Saving your a.s.s," she said sweetly. "You can thank me at any time."

"Thank you, Tinkie." I let the pain roll over me. "You're crushing the life out of me, not to mention my arm. I think she snapped the bone."

"Well, I haven't slept in a week. What's your point?"

"I think I'm going to faint." It was amazing, but the darkness of the building was not nearly as dense as the black that was moving in from the center of my brain.

"Don't you dare," Tinkie said. "Not after Coleman and I rushed out here to save you. The least you can do is stay awake and thank him."

"I'm not feeling all that chipper," I told her.

"Hang on, Sarah Booth." Coleman's voice came from the fringes of the darkness. "We'll have you out of here in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

I pondered the fact that to my knowledge there wasn't a single sheep in Sunflower County. Not that sheep couldn't live here. No ordinances against sheep existed. Somehow, though, sheep had chosen other locations.

Strong arms slipped under me and in the distance there were sirens. In my mind, the patrol cars were driven by sheep. The place where I'd drifted to was strange and wondrous and I had no desire to leave it. While I wasn't unconscious, I'd shifted to an alternate reality.

I opened my eyes to the familiar high-intensity light and acoustic tile ceiling of the emergency room. It was a view I knew too well. I was flat on my back on an exam table.

In the corner of the room, Doc worked on something, his back to me. Even as blurry as my reality was, I could tell by the stoop of his shoulders that he was exhausted.

"She's awake," Tinkie said. Her face came into focus. "Good thing you were asleep when Doc set your arm. It was awful, Sarah Booth. He had to pull and twist and the bone--"

"Sarah Booth!" Graf appeared on the other side of the table. His fingers brushed a strand of my hair away from my face. "Doc says you're fine. It was a compound fracture, but it should heal quickly." He tapped the cast for effect. "Cece picked the purple paisley wrap."

I noted my new fashion statement with some trepidation, but my concern was on the two people who'd tried to kill me. Twice. "Peyton? Where is he?"

"Down the hall, handcuffed to a bed." Graf spoke carefully. "He said you shot him, but he's going to be just fine."

Graf's gaze held mine. I nodded. "I did shoot him. I would have killed him if I'd been a better shot."

"Coleman will make sure he has his day in court," Graf said. He touched the corner of my eye and I realized I was crying. "You gave him a flesh wound, Sarah Booth, but I'm glad you didn't kill him. Let the justice system take care of him."

"Sonja? What about her? She's the one who hit me with the bat."

Tinkie answered. "She's in critical condition. Coleman shot her in the chest. A rib punctured her lung." She blinked back her own tears. "Nothing can ever make up for what she did, but I managed to get a few licks in before Coleman pulled me off her."

Another voice came from the foot of the bed. "Dahling, we're going to have to stop meeting this way." Cece, her face still bandaged, patted my foot. "I checked with Doc, and there's no possible way they could incorporate any type of plastic surgery into a broken arm. I thought maybe some silicone somewhere, but he said no." She tightened her grip on my foot. "But I did try for you. My new nose is going to be . . . perfection."

"Millie has come and gone," Graf said. He held up a stack of magazines. The Globe. The Star. The National Enquirer--Millie's favorites. "She left these for you to read while you heal."

Graf wiped my face with a cool cloth. "Coleman needs to speak with you. He's waiting in the hall. Are you up to it?"

"Yes. I have to tell him what I found out."

Tinkie kissed one cheek and Cece the other. Graf kissed my lips softly, giving me a promise that made my eyes burn with unshed tears.

They left the room, Doc stopping by to give me a thumbs up before he, too, exited. Coleman stepped up to the exam table and we were alone.

"So we have the illegitimate heir to the Carlisle plantation and a scientist in cahoots to frame Bonnie Louise McRae for this mess," I said. "Peyton meant to kill me and lay that at Bonnie's feet, too."

"Thank goodness he wasn't successful," Coleman said. His hand hesitated at my face, but then he brushed it gently across my cheek. "With Tinkie's help, we tracked the financial backing for Janks Development. It came from his father, who'd a.s.sumed the name of Jon Unger. He faked his death in South America, stole the formula, and reinvented himself as Unger."

"And Sonja? She must have flown to Jackson after I left her place in Chicago. She was in a hurry to get somewhere, but I never dreamed it was Mississippi."

"She's not talking."

I held out my hand and he gave me his so that I could pull myself into a sitting position. The room spun for a moment, but then it righted. My broken arm pulsed with a red devil pain that made me inhale.

"Maybe you should lie back down," Coleman suggested.

I shook my head. "I want to talk to Peyton."

"He won't talk to anyone," Coleman said.

"It really isn't about conversation." I eased to my feet. Even that gentle movement made my arm scream. I wasn't in a mood to take no for an answer.

29.

The compromise I worked out with Coleman involved riding to Peyton's room in a wheelchair. As Coleman pushed me into the hallway, Graf stepped behind the chair and took his place. Coleman yielded the position without hesitation.

"He's in room 312," Coleman said as he fell back beside Tinkie, Cece, and Doc.