She fished them out of her back jeans pocket. I took them to the kitchen with the used towels. The floor looked as though we’d fought the Battle of the Bulge in here. I wiped up enough of the blood that I wouldn’t be slipping in it when I carried Geraldine out and dumped all the towels in the sink: the caretakers could deal with those when they opened the lodge in May.
I had dropped my briefcase by the back door when I came in-twenty days ago, was it, or only twenty minutes? I put Geraldine’s shoe and nylon in the case and called up the stairs to Benji to hurry up. “I’m going to get the car. You bring everything of yours and Catherine’s downstairs. And then I’ll need you to help me carry Ms. Graham to the car.”
The whining in my ears was dying down. When I went outside, I could hear the wind again, whipping the tree branches around. I slid the barn doors back and started the Range Rover. I’d have to figure out some way, some other time, to come back for Mart’s Saturn.
The Rover’s engine turned over with a roar that made me jump, but, as soon as it caught, it ran so quietly I couldn’t hear it at all. It felt queer to be perched so high above the ground, and it was hard to judge the sides. I inched forward cautiously, not wanting to scrape Mart’s car, nor ram into the barn door.
When I jumped down from the Rover to slide the doors shut behind me, the whining in my ears returned. I shook my head impatiently, trying to clear my ears. The whining got louder. It wasn’t my ears; it was a snowmobile roaring past the lodge and skimming to a halt in front of the cottage door. A compact figure with dark hair in a dark parka jumped off. “Renee!” I shouted above the wind.
She whirled around at my voice. “The detective! I should have expected to find you with my granddaughter. I knew you were lying about the Egyptian boy. You used him to lure my granddaughter from her home, didn’t you?”
“A good story, but don’t run the presses with it just yet,” I yelled.
I was about ten feet from her when she fired. I hit the ground, struggling to get my gun out of my jacket. Before I could shoot, she had opened the cottage door and gone inside.
When I had made it back into the kitchen, I could see Catherine at the bottom of the stairs, Renee above her on the second step.
Catherine was clutching at her grandmother with her sound arm. “No, Granny, nobody forced me to come; it was my idea, not V l.’s, not Benji’s. I kidnapped him, he didn’t force me to do anything.”
“Catherine, they call this the Stockholm syndrome; I’m all too familiar with its effect on people. I’m not surprised, after the week you’ve had, with your injury, and the anesthesia still in your system. Go outside now and wait in the Rover; I’ll be with you directly.”
Catherine turned to me, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, tell her, tell Granny. Benji came with me, he didn’t force me, you didn’t force me! Granny, Granny, it’s all right!” she screamed.
“Catherine, go out to the Rover. You’re in the way in here.” Renee stepped down to point her gun at me. “You! Drop your gun! Now! Kick it under the table!”
I couldn’t risk a shot at her without hitting Catherine. I dropped my gun and kicked it under the kitchen table.
Catherine’s eyes were black holes in her white face. “Granny. You don’t understand. VI. came here to help me. She’s a friend.”
“And you don’t understand, Catherine. You’ve gotten involved in something too big for you right now.”
Catherine ducked under Renee’s arm and ran up the stairs. Her grandmother fired at me, a reckless shot that made me hit the floor. She ran after her granddaughter. By the time I had crawled under the table for my own gun and gotten back on my feet, Renee and Catherine were both at the top of the stairs.
I heard Benji scream, “No, I doing nothing, nothing to Catterine, not touching, you not shoot,” and Catherine shouting, “You mustn’t, you mustn’t shoot him, he’s my friend. Granny, no!” and then the gun sounded again.
I pelted up the stairs, but before I reached the top, Renee appeared in the stairwell head and shot down at me. Plaster fell on me, blinding me, and I flattened myself against the side of the stairwell. Squinting through the plaster dust, I could just make out Renee’s legs and the motion of her hand. I tried a shot. Her legs moved back, but she fired again. Crouching down, hugging the wall, I ran up the stairs, shooting twice to back her away.
Renee’s legs suddenly crumpled. Her gun clattered past me on the stairs. I climbed the last three steps uncertainly. On the upper landing, Geraldine Graham was standing over Renee, the Gabonese mask clutched in her arthritic hands. She was trembling, and blood oozed through the towel on her left foot, but she was smiling grimly.
“Look to the children,” she said.