Chapter Fifteen
Penny.
My new friend. My new client. I had been to her house, wandered around in her attic. We had chatted and laughed at her kitchen table while she picked out colors and patterns for her remodel. We had gone to dinner together. Worked out together. She was the one who’d saved me from being choked by the weights on the bench press.
“No,” I muttered, still dumbfounded. She hadn’t saved me. She had sabotaged the rack, causing the weights to fall on me while she’d wandered off, looking innocent. She was no savior. She was a callous, vicious killer.
She was wearing a small backpack, I noticed as I watched her shove Whitney closer to the cliff. Was she going to push her over? I couldn’t let that happen, no matter how ambivalent my feelings were for Whitney.
I grabbed my phone, pushed speed dial, and in seconds Eric answered. I told him where I was and what I was seeing.
“She’s got a gun,” I said, watching as Penny waved the weapon again. “I thought she was going to push her off the cliff, but now they’re walking toward the steps that lead down to the beach. There’s nothing down there but sand and water and caves. I’ll bet she’ll try to trap her inside one of the caves.”
It was the only possibility I could come up with. I just didn’t know why Penny had suddenly decided to target Whitney.
“Get out of there,” Eric shouted. “I’m on my way.”
“I’ll stay until you get here.”
“No, you won’t. Drive away now.”
“But you don’t know where you’re going.”
“I’ll find it,” he insisted.
“Tell Tommy it’s Barnacle Beach,” I said, ignoring his demands. “You’ll be able to see my truck from the highway and that’s where you’ll turn off.”
“Damn it, Shannon.”
“Hurry.” I had to hold the phone away from my ear to keep from going deaf. For a soft-spoken man, he could really raise his voice when he wanted to.
I hung up, got out of the truck, and tiptoed around the trees to get a closer look, just in time to see Penny shove Whitney again. In her silly high heels, she stumbled along the grassy edge until she reached the top of the rickety old stairs that led down to the beach.
They disappeared down the steps. I was shaking now from fear as well as the cold breeze off the ocean, but I had to see what they were doing. I crept over to the edge of the cliff and saw them step onto the beach. Penny pushed Whitney toward the nearest cave as the tide rolled in.
Whitney suddenly let loose a scream and Penny smacked the back of her head. “Shut up!”
I could hear them all the way up the side of the cliff, despite the roar of the ocean waves as they crashed a hundred feet offshore.
The two of them entered the cave and vanished from my sight.
I was tempted to scramble down the stairs and try to help, but I had no defense against a gun in the hands of a violent woman who had killed two people and attacked two—now three—others.
So I waited.
My mind envisioned the insides of the old caves. It had been fourteen years since I’d seen one, but I could still recall the moist darkness, the heavy, low walls, the rocks and sand, the clumps of seaweed strewn along the edges.
The caves were also home to the old, rusted trestles that had once been used as mooring for the ships that traveled along the coast from San Francisco up to British Columbia and back. This place had come to be called Barnacle Beach because of all the barnacles clinging to those old ship hulls.
A trestle would be good for tying someone up, I thought, and then shuddered at the possibility. I wouldn’t put it past Penny to come up with that plan. All she had to do was tie Whitney to an old trestle post and let the incoming tide finish her off. It wasn’t just evil; it was premeditated and downright diabolical.
The sun was starting to set and the sky was splashed in corals and pinks as Penny tramped out of the cave and crossed the sandy beach toward the stairs. I ran back to the tree line to watch and see what she would do. Was she actually going to leave Whitney to drown and then blithely drive off in her Jaguar? That was cold.
When Penny reached the top of the stairs, I could see she was breathing a little heavier. It was a long, steep climb and she was probably moving on pure adrenaline by now. She must’ve stowed the gun in her backpack, because she wasn’t holding it anymore. She stopped at the driver’s side of the car, slipped off her backpack, and stood there, seeming to ponder her next move.
A piercing scream split the dusky air. It was Whitney crying for help, and the sound of it caused the hair on my arms to stand up on end.
Penny turned and stared out at the cliff’s edge. She knew Whitney was going to die, but what else was she thinking? Did ice water flow through her veins? Did she really believe she would get away with this? God only knew what was going through her head.
In that moment, I didn’t stop to think about it. I began to run toward her. My boots didn’t make much noise on the grassy surface as I got closer. My only plan was to rush her, pin her down, and hold her there until Eric arrived with his cavalry. I just hoped they would make it in time to save Whitney.
Penny was still watching the ocean when I rushed up behind her and shoved her hard. She fell facedown on the ground.
“What the—?”
She scrambled to get up, but I jumped on top of her and straddled her back to keep her down. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“You.” She laughed harshly. “You really think you can stop me, you wimp?”
“I’m not a wimp,” I sputtered. Probably wasn’t a good idea to argue with her, especially considering how strong she was. But that pissed me off. What had I ever done to her? Why did she want to kill me? “I thought we were getting to be friends.”
Okay, it was a wimpy thing to say, but I couldn’t think straight.
“You were asking too many questions,” she snapped. “Then you brought that cop around.”
“I didn’t bring him . . . Wait.” Why was I even talking to her? But I wanted answers. “I was the one he suspected, not you.”
“He kept coming around to the bank,” she griped. “And as soon as he saw me with you at the pub, he knew.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I can read a cop’s face.”
“Oh, bull.” If Eric had known that Penny killed those men, she would’ve been in jail.
“Shut up and get off me.”
“Did you screw with my bike?”
“Of course,” she derided. “There you were, riding around town like the Pink Princess everyone thinks you are. I thought it would be fun to shove a stick through the spokes, so to speak.”
“So besides being a murderer, you’re just a bitch.”
“I’m a survivor,” she snarled, and, without warning, she bucked and bounced me off her back. It took her a few seconds to get enough traction to run away, and in that moment I grabbed hold of her foot. She kicked my hand away and raced over to the car. Grabbing the backpack, she pulled out the gun. But I was already right behind her. I yanked on her arm and she bobbled the gun. I managed to slap it away with my other hand.
With a guttural growl, she smacked my face and I fell backward, but caught myself before I hit the ground. She went running for the gun and I plowed into her. We both fell on the damp grass, but I was on top of her again and able to hold her down.
I could see the gun lying in the grass barely ten feet away.
Where the hell were the cops?
My cheek was stinging where she’d smacked me, and I wanted so much to start beating her head into the ground. I’d never been a violent person before but she was turning me into one.
“Tell me why you killed Jerry Saxton,” I demanded.
She tried to buck me off again. I grabbed her hair and pulled it hard, causing her to shriek.
“You scream like a girl,” I said, sneering. I hated to be petty, but it felt good to say that.
“Up yours,” she snarled.
“Why did you kill him?”
“I did the world a favor,” she blurted.
While that may have been true, I wanted to know what drove her to murder him. I asked her again and she grudgingly told me what had happened.
“He threatened to tell the entire town that I was in love with Jennifer.”
I almost felt my jaw hit the ground. She must have sensed my confusion, because she tried to throw me off her again. I was ready this time, though, and held her down more forcefully.
“Okay, first of all,” I said, “why would you fall for Jennifer? And second, how did Jerry find out? And third, who cares if you and Jennifer were an item? You can love whoever you want. Although that brings me back to my first question. How the hell could you ever like Jennifer? She’s a horrible person, in case you couldn’t tell.”
And clinging to life right now, I remembered. “Oh yeah, and if you loved her so much, why did you try to kill her?”
“If you’ll shut up for a minute, I’ll tell you.”
I grabbed hold of her jacket more tightly, just to let her know who was still on top. “Go ahead and talk.”
She rambled on about first meeting Jennifer when she came into the bank to fill out some loan papers. And she added that she ended up telling Jerry all about it because he was just so darn easy to talk to.
I knew in an instant that Jennifer had only sweet-talked Penny for some ulterior motive. I almost felt sorry for this silly woman who’d bought into Jennifer’s scheme. My pity for her was short-lived, though, since she’d tried to kill me more than once.
She was right about one thing: Jerry really had been very easy to talk to. I remembered that much from our blind date. Still, Penny was holding something back.
“Jerry may have been easy to talk to,” I said, “but why would you tell him something so personal? Were you two honestly friends?”
“We worked on some loans together, got to know each other.” I could hear the evasion in her voice.
It dawned on me what she was leaving out of the story. “You were the one who worked with him to scam those home buyers.”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” she said, her voice whiny, “but it was easy money. Homeowners these days don’t pay enough attention to their loan documents.”
I let that sink in. Apparently it was easy to justify going from fraud to murder when you had no moral compass to start with.
“How did you get Jerry over to the Boyers’ house?” I asked.
She shook her head in disgust, apparently realizing that I wasn’t going to stop asking questions. “We had worked together on the Boyers’ bank loan, so I told Jerry to meet me there to discuss an issue that came up over the closing costs. So we’re standing in the kitchen and he starts coming on to me.”
“What a jerk,” I muttered, realizing that their confrontation must’ve taken place the night after our blind date. He really was something else.
“Yeah, so, needless to say, I refused his advances and that’s when he started taunting me. He threatened to tell my boss that I was in love with a woman. I was furious. He was throwing back in my face something I’d told him in complete confidence. I guess I went a little crazy.”
“So, you were in the kitchen, but he died in the basement.”
“I was just waiting for the right moment. I’d seen your big pink toolbox in the corner of the kitchen and was looking through it. Meanwhile, Jerry’s thinking everything’s going his way. He opens the basement door and says we should go down and check out the work that you guys were doing. Like he really thought I was going to go down into the basement for some kind of romantic interlude with him.”
“He seemed pretty clueless that way.”
“Exactly. So I grabbed that big wrench and followed him downstairs. He was chatting like we were best friends as he wandered around the basement. I waited until he turned away from me and smashed the wrench down on his head. When I realized that he was dead, I wrapped up the wrench and tossed it into the sump pump. Then I got the hell out of there. Oh, but first I stopped and grabbed a bunch more of your tools. Because you never know. It’s always good to be prepared.”
I let that go. “Why did you kill Wendell?”
“Oh, come on. That guy deserved to die.”
Her words gave me chills. There had been a point when I’d hated Wendell enough to be tempted to toss him over a cliff. But I wasn’t about to act on it. Apparently Penny didn’t have that same braking action on her emotions. No, for her it was Get mad. Take him out.
“But why did you kill him?” I asked again.
She didn’t answer. Instead she twisted and tugged under me, but I continued to hold her down. Finally, panting heavily, she admitted, “I needed to deflect attention away from me.”
“So you picked him out and just . . . killed him.”
“He was an easy target. I met him at a bar on the pier one night. He was such a prissy thing, I was amused. So a few nights later I ran into him on the street and walked back to your place with him. I praised him and pretended to take his side on everything he complained about. He was bitching about your truck in the driveway and that’s when I figured out what to do with him.
“I complimented him on his beautiful car and asked if we could take a ride. He drove around the block, but that was it. He didn’t want to waste any gas. He was another jerk. Anyway. We sat inside the car, talking, while I waited for my moment. When he wasn’t looking I pulled that screwdriver out of my purse and nailed him in the neck. I knew nobody in town would mourn his loss.”
I had to force myself not to shiver at her cold words. She was a sociopath. Pure evil. And the fact that no one had noticed was chilling as well. I wondered if the people she’d killed here in my town were her first victims. I doubted it. This had all been too easy for her. I just had to keep her talking until Eric showed up. Where is Eric?
“Didn’t you get blood all over you?”
She snickered. “I wore a plastic poncho over my clothes. I told him I thought it might rain.”
I sighed. “So, once Wendell was dead, the police stopped coming around, asking you questions.”
“Yeah. Pretty smart, huh?”
“Except that they turned their attention directly onto me.”
“Oops. Sorry,” she chirped in a mocking tone. She jerked her shoulder to pull her jacket away, but I grabbed it again. She jolted, trying to bounce me off, but that didn’t work, either.
“Even if you do try to run,” I said, “Jennifer will identify you once she recovers.”
“You think so?” she said through clenched teeth. “Well, maybe I’ll just sneak into the hospital and finish the job.”
I was certain that she planned to do it, anyway, and the thought of her sauntering down the hospital hall in a fake nurse’s uniform made my stomach turn again. I switched the subject back to her main issue.
“I still don’t get what the big deal is about you liking women. Just because Jerry knew didn’t mean he could hurt you with the information.”
“You’re really nosy.”
I couldn’t dispute that. “Well?”
“Fine. In case you never noticed, Jerry liked to research the people he was dealing with. After I told him about Jennifer, he delved into my past. It didn’t take him long to find out what really happened at my former job.”
“What a scumbag.”
“Yeah. And by the way, Jerry seemed to know a lot of dirty little secrets around town. He enjoyed using the information to get what he wanted.”
“I’m glad I kicked him,” I muttered. “Still, that was no reason to kill him. Nobody here cares that you’re gay.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she chided angrily. “A year ago I lost my job because the homophobic old bat who ran the bank didn’t want my kind working in her family-owned bank. I wasn’t about to let that happen again.”
“You should’ve sued those people.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Did you drain my truck battery?”
She cocked her head and gave me a puzzled look. “Why would I do that?”
“Did you rig the bench-press rack to break while I was on it?”
She smiled. “That was almost too easy. And it was so sweet of you to think I saved your life.”
“Stupid of me.”
Whitney’s shrieks echoed from down below. I knew how fast the tide could come in. I estimated that it had been fifteen minutes since I’d called, so where were the damn cops?
The sounds of Whitney’s cries must have spurred Penny on to try to escape my hold. Without warning, her entire body quaked and kicked until she succeeded in throwing me off. I fell backward and she was able to push herself up and dash off.
“You’re not getting away,” I shouted.
She headed straight for the gun, but I dove at her, wrapped my arms around her waist, and pulled her back. She tossed me off again and ran blindly toward the cliff’s edge.
“Look out!” I screamed, and took a flying leap to tackle her sideways. It stopped her from going over the ledge, but she was furious now. She slapped me again and we grappled with each other, rolling and tumbling closer to the precipice.
Penny shoved my face away and I futilely punched her shoulders. I wasn’t much of a fighter, but I refused to let her get away. I also refused to fall off the side of the damn cliff, so I grabbed her jacket and yanked as hard as I could. It stopped our momentum just inches from the cliff’s edge. I don’t know how I did it, but I pulled her a few feet and flipped her over onto her back. Then I leaped on top of her again and straddled her, holding her shoulders down.
“Why did you use my tools?” I shouted. “Why did you try to frame me? And then you turned around and tried to kill me. Why?”
“I told you,” she said through clenched teeth. “You were getting too close. I saw that look you gave me that night at the gym. I could tell you suspected me. The only reason I went to dinner with you was to keep an eye on you. When you invited the cop to sit with us, that’s when I knew you couldn’t be trusted.”
I choked on a laugh. “I looked at you suspiciously because you were giggling with Jennifer. I couldn’t believe you had the bad taste to like her. I thought I wanted to be your friend, but that wasn’t going to happen if you were friends with her.”
She sniffed. “You can’t choose the people you fall in love with.”
“Oh, spare me,” I said. “She was just using you to get a bank loan.”
She froze. “That’s not true.”
“I’ve known her a long time,” I said. “She doesn’t do anything without an ulterior motive. Usually a self-serving or malicious one.”
Penny took a long, deep breath in and let it out slowly as she seemed to ponder that possibility.
I almost felt sorry for her in that moment, but knew the feeling would pass. “Okay, okay, you loved her. So why did you try to kill her?”
“She was starting to hound me about the loan,” she admitted. “She wanted more money. I’d already taken a chance by approving the original loan, even though her credit was too lousy to get one. Then I found out she told Whitney about me. They decided to have a little fun and blackmail me. I decided that both of them would have to die.”
As if on cue, Whitney’s screams grew even more shrill and earsplitting.
I must’ve looked alarmed, because Penny chuckled. “Oh, don’t pretend you wouldn’t love to see the end of that loudmouthed bitch.”
“I’m not saying I care for her, but you don’t get to go around killing people you don’t like!”
“Don’t see why not,” Penny argued. “At least it’s honest.”
Honest? I shook my head in revulsion. Try psychopathic.
“You tried to kill me, too. Remember?”
“Nothing personal.”
When Whitney shrieked again, it grated on my soul. I knew that even if Penny escaped me, she couldn’t hide from the police forever. Meanwhile, Whitney was probably close to drowning. I considered my options. There were only two: let Penny go and rescue Whitney, or stay with Penny until the police arrived. And Whitney could die in the interim.
Sensing my hesitation, Penny took advantage. She jerked her arm loose and swung at my head, clipping me above my ear, right where she’d pounded me with the hammer a few days ago.
I groaned and fell sideways. She pushed me off her and started to run, but her feet slipped on the wet grass and in the next instant she slid right off the edge of the cliff.
I screamed and scrambled to grab her.
She managed to clutch a thick tuft of the elephant grass that grew along the edge. Now she was hanging on precariously.
“Take my hand,” I shouted.
“Go screw yourself,” she yelled.
“I’ll pull you up.”
I could hear sirens now, growing louder and more urgent. Several cars screeched to a stop near my truck, and within seconds Eric was out of his car and running across the ground to my side.
“She’s going to fall,” I shouted. “Can you pull her up?”
As Eric sprawled by the cliff’s edge, Tommy came sprinting over, frantic. “Where’s Whitney?”
I pointed toward the steps. “She’s tied up in one of the caves. The tide is coming in. Hurry!”
He took off on a run just as Whitney’s shrill scream filled the air again.
Eric reached his hand down over the edge. “Grab my hand.”
“Penny, take his hand,” I begged her.
“Let me go,” she cried. “I’d rather die than go to prison.”
“Don’t be an idiot!” I yelled.
She glared right at me. “No way am I going to live the rest of my life in a ten-foot cell with someone called Big Beulah.”
I could see her point, but she didn’t have to die to prove it. Her hand slid down the long blades of thick grass.
“She’s letting go,” I screamed.
“Oh no, she isn’t,” Eric muttered tightly.
Just as Penny released her grip on the elephant grass, he snagged her wrist and hauled her up the cliff in one smooth motion.
“Wow,” I said. He’d lifted her as if she were a child. Now, those were some serious muscles.
Eric scowled. “No way am I having another dead body on my hands.” He turned to a waiting officer. “Cuff her.”
It was poetic justice that Penny would have to suck it up and play nice with Big Beulah after all.
A few minutes later, Tommy arrived at the top of the stairs holding his terrified, wet, and exhausted wife in his arms.
“Is she all right?” Eric asked.
“She will be,” Tommy said grimly.
“Ambulance is right behind us.”
“Thanks.” Tommy walked away, clutching Whitney for dear life.
“Are you all right?” Eric asked me.
I pushed back my hair. “Yeah. A little shaken up and smacked around, but I’ll be fine.”
“You look different. Your hair is straight.”
I’d forgotten. “Yeah.”
He touched the neckline of my wrinkled, grass-stained red sweater. “That’s a pretty color on you.”
“Thanks. I always like to dress for these outdoor events.”
He choked on a laugh, then shook his head. “You scared me—you know that?”
“I scared myself.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He pulled me close and held on. “Don’t do it again.”
It took me a few seconds to get over my surprise, but then I wrapped my arms around his waist, feeling warm and comfy in his embrace.
“I’m going to give it another minute or five,” he murmured in my ear. “And then I’m going to start yelling at you for disregarding my orders.”
I smiled and breathed him in. “I can live with that.”