Into the Dark Page 18

  Click.

  Too late, she heard Mrs. Meinhof behind her and, a split second later, felt icy fingers close around her neck, amazingly strong.

  “Run,” Ingrid said.

  For once Nigel did as he was told, taking off into the night.

  twenty-five

  “FOUND THESE IN her pocket,” said Dieter Meinhof, handing Cyrus Ferrand the Echo clippings.

  They were in the living room of The Cottage—Cyrus in a chair beneath the head of the wild sheep, the Springfield rifle leaning against the wall; Dieter standing beside him; Ingrid sitting on the floor, hands tied in front of her with a rope; Mrs. Meinhof nearby, casually holding the free end. Cyrus glanced at the clippings with his good eye. Then his head turned, and that eye fastened on Ingrid.

  “Mind explaining again what you’re doing here?” he said.

  “I told you,” Ingrid said. “I came for my dog.”

  “We’ve established that the dog is not yours,” Cyrus said. He held up the clippings. “What is your interest in these?”

  Careful, Griddie. He has to keep thinking this is about Nigel, and only Nigel. “They’re about my grandfather,” she said.

  “I’m aware of that,” he said. “But why—” Cyrus stopped himself, his gaze going to Dieter and Mrs. Meinhof. Both of them were looking at the clippings in a mystified sort of way, as though…as though they were really interested in the answer. And therefore? Did they have no idea that Cyrus was the murderer of Mr. Thatcher?

  Cyrus rose. “Dieter?” he said. “Please go find the dog. Take the snowmobile—he’s probably in the woods.”

  “Now?” said Dieter. “But—” Cyrus’s eye patch twitched a little, as though there’d been a slight throb beneath it. “On my way,” said Dieter. He left the room, putting on his coat.

  “And Mrs. Meinhof?” Cyrus said. “Secure our guest in some quiet spot.”

  “Quiet spot?” said Mrs. Meinhof.

  “Where I can continue our conversation while you prepare something nice and hot to drink.”

  “The basement storage room?”

  “Perfect,” Cyrus said.

  “Now,” said Mrs. Meinhof, tying the free end of the rope to an overhead pipe in the basement storage room, “we will see what is what.”

  Ingrid stood before her, wrists tied together tight, and said nothing. Mrs. Meinhof reached forward with one of those long-fingered hands and pinched her cheek, hard. Ingrid did her best not to cry, but her eyes filled with tears anyway. Mrs. Meinhof saw that and smiled.

  “All set, Major,” she called.

  She left the room, went upstairs. Ingrid tried to wriggle her wrists free. Not a chance: tied so tight her hands were swelling up. She tugged at the rope with all her strength, thinking maybe she could tear the pipe from the wall or at least bend it or something, but no. She gnawed at the rope with her teeth: useless.

  Ingrid glanced around. Was there anything in the storage room that might help? Along one side stood shelves loaded with paint cans, plastic gasoline containers, bags of fertilizer, empty flower trays. Gardening tools—rakes, weed whackers, shovels, a chain saw—and a few card table chairs hung on the back wall. More shelves on the other side, loaded with sports equipment: croquet mallets, badminton racquets, fishing rods, tackle boxes. Lots of things that might be useful, if only they were a little closer.

  She smelled smoke, glanced down. A weak and tiny plume of smoke, almost invisible, rose from the broken remains of the oil lamp, practically at her feet. What was that little cloth thing called, the part that actually caught fire? The wick? Yes. The chimney of the lamp was shattered, and so was the glass bottom that held the oil, but the wick in its metal ring was intact, the tail lying in a small glistening puddle. And there, against the wall, maybe in reaching distance of her right toe, lay a pile of old newspapers. What if—

  Cyrus Ferrand walked through the doorway, a steaming mug in one hand, the murder weapon in the other. He took a sip, said, “Ah,” set the mug on a shelf, unfolded a card table chair, and sat down, the rifle in his lap. “So,” he said, “your grandfather taught you how to shoot. What else has he taught you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Ingrid said.

  “Did you know he was quite the marksman?” said Cyrus. “But why am I speaking in the past tense? He hasn’t lost his touch, it seems.”

  “Grampy didn’t—”

  “Go on,” said Cyrus.

  Ingrid was silent.

  “Grampy didn’t what?”

  Ingrid kept her mouth shut.

  “Didn’t kill the conservation agent—is that what you were going to say?”

  “I came for my dog,” Ingrid said. “You can’t keep me here over a dog.”

  Cyrus nodded. “A very sensible position. If only I were sure this rather minor crime was merely about a dog, you’d be home by now. Safe and sound.”

  Therefore she had to make him sure of that. “It is,” she said. “I love Nigel.”

  Cyrus’s voice rose, sharp and sudden. “Fritz. I named him myself.”

  “But no one here loves him,” Ingrid said.

  “How is that relevant? Mrs. Meinhof bought him—she has the receipt.”

  Ingrid remembered that moment on the village green, Mr. Samuels taking pictures for the World War II vets story, when Cyrus had cast a long look at Nigel, probing and inquisitive. “Why didn’t you say something instead of just taking him?”

  “Negotiate with you?” said Cyrus. “Talk it out? Funny notion.” He took the clippings from his pocket. “Let’s return to your theft of these articles. What’s your interest in them?”

  “I told you,” Ingrid said. “They’re about my—”

  His voice rose over hers, high and almost out of control in a moment, with no warning. “I don’t have time for your games.”

  “I’m not—”

  He rose suddenly, the rifle falling to the floor, and came toward her, thrusting the clippings in her face. “What does this mean to you?” He jabbed a finger, twisted and yellow nailed, at the margin: DAMN IT TO HELL! And at those two question marks and the three exclamation marks. Jab, jab. “What does it mean? What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He raised his hand as though to smack her face. It trembled there, inches away. Then he lowered it. His eye shifted, tugged by some thought. He backed off. “You’re a child, of course. Children can’t be expected to understand. I’m sorry.”

  “Understand what?” Ingrid said. “About owning dogs, you mean?”

  “Ingrid,” he said. “Is that your name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this really about dogs, Ingrid?”

  “I told you and told you.”

  “Too insistently, if anything.” He turned to one of the shelves, shifted a paint can aside, felt behind it. “Has your grandfather told you much about the war?” he said, much more quietly now, his back to her.

  “No,” she said.

  “Predictable, I suppose,” said Cyrus. “I’m sure he prefers to keep the errors of his past a secret, especially from his beloved granddaughter.”

  “Errors?” said Ingrid.

  “His conduct,” said Cyrus, still fishing around on the shelf, “his real, unvarnished conduct, was rather shameful, after all.”

  “Grampy? Shameful?”

  “A long time ago, of course, and one always hesitates to use a certain word, but I’m afraid it applies in his case.”

  “What word?” Ingrid said.

  Cyrus smiled a rueful smile, like she was forcing him to act against his good breeding. “Coward,” he said.

  Ingrid’s voice rose, shaking with rage, beyond any chance of control. “Grampy a coward? You’re the coward. You stole Grampy’s gun and ran away. You killed the fishermen. And it was all your fault in the first place, staying up on that ridge.”

  Cyrus turned to her, a small box in his hand. His voice was steady, even soft, but his face was getting redder and redder, an enormous blush that sprea
d to the tips of his ears and down his neck, vanishing under his collar but reappearing again in his hands.

  “So,” he said, “not really about dogs after all.”

  Ingrid glared at him, said nothing. But way too late for silence. How could she have been this stupid, letting herself get trapped so easily? She thought again of that time on the village green, when Cyrus took that piercing look at Nigel. Something else had happened right after that, something, she was beginning to see, that turned out to be even more important. Mr. Samuels had said that Grampy had agreed to talk about his wartime exploits after so many years of silence, and had even promised a bombshell—his very word, according to Mr. Samuels, who seemed pretty excited about the whole thing. Not Cyrus’s reaction: He’d gone pale and trembling. Now she knew why.

  “You meant to kill Grampy, not Mr. Thatcher,” she said. “To stop him from telling Mr. Samuels the truth about you.”

  Cyrus’s mouth opened and closed. He turned even redder. “Lies on top of lies. And why did he want to spread them now, after so long?”

  “If they were lies, you wouldn’t be doing this,” Ingrid said. She knew what had changed Grampy’s mind, had discovered the answer at New York City Mercy Hospital, an answer she would keep to herself. Going silently to his grave would mean that this little bit of history—war history but also Echo Falls history—would have been forever false. Plus Grampy hated the Ferrands: That had to be part of it too.

  Cyrus’s good eye was on her, narrowing to almost nothing. The small box shook in his hand, made rattling sounds. Ingrid realized she’d seen boxes like that before, out at the farm. Cyrus opened it and took out some shells: .30-06. He started loading them into the magazine of the sniper gun. The action seemed to calm him, the redness fading from his skin. “All in all, this worked out just as well,” he said, almost to himself. “Gave him something else to think about.” His eye patch did that pulsing thing again. “And who believes a jailbird?” He started to close the magazine. Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Mrs. Meinhof entered.

  “There’s a man at the door,” she said.

  Cyrus turned to her in annoyance. “What man?”

  “Can’t place him, but I think I’ve seen him before,” Mrs. Meinhof said.

  “What help is that?” Cyrus’s eye darted around. Down inside he was weak, Ingrid saw, and not good at making decisions, as he’d proved in Bataan. Up above someone pounded hard on the back door.

  “I’d better have a look,” Cyrus said. He left the storage room, rifle in hand.

  “Wait,” Mrs. Meinhof said. She took a rag from one of the shelves, ripped off a strip, and gagged Ingrid—her squirming did no good—tying it extra tight at the back. “There,” she said. She followed Cyrus out of the storage room and up the stairs. Someone pounded on the door, harder this time.

  Ingrid heard the back door open. Then came a man’s voice. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, but she knew that voice, knew it beyond doubt: Dad. Dad? She remembered calling into Ty’s room that she was going to Chloe’s, and later, when the Ferrands had driven her home, seeing the TT in the driveway. Ingrid tried to yell, tried to scream, succeeded only in making not-very-loud noises in her throat. She tugged on the rope, jerked at it with all her might: useless. At that moment she smelled smoke again, the smoke from the not-quite-extinguished oil lamp wick.

  Ingrid reached out with her right leg toward that pile of old newspapers by the wall. Her leg was an inch too short. She stretched it out as far as she could, tried and tried. No good. What if she launched herself in the air, spun around—would that narrow the distance? Ingrid bent her knees as much as the rope would allow—not much—and jumped, at the same time spinning so her back faced the wall. She stuck out her foot. Her toe dragged on the edge of the top newspaper. Then the rope snapped her back down, almost tearing her arms out of their sockets. But: A whole newspaper now lay right in that oily puddle beside the smoking wick.

  With her foot Ingrid nudged a corner of the newspaper so it just touched the wick. At first nothing happened. She listened, heard Cyrus say, “Perhaps she went on the ski trip,” and Dad’s reply, the words unclear, but she could tell he was raising some objection.

  Burn, burn, burn.

  “I assure you,” Cyrus was saying, “if we hear anything at all…” Now Dad’s reply was quieter, no longer argumentative. Ingrid made more of those throat noises. Dad, Dad. He couldn’t hear, was about to go away, leave her behind in this basement, abandoned with terrible people. She screamed, “Dad! Dad!” but the sound got all muffled behind the gag. Ingrid screamed and screamed that muffled scream anyway, for a few moments unaware that down at her feet the little corner of newspaper was turning yellow. But then she noticed, in time to see a tiny flame appear, start to spread, half inch by half inch, finally meeting a patch of newspaper that was dampened with oil, probably kerosene in fact, like gasoline only—

  “’Bye now,” said Cyrus. “Nice seeing you.” The door closed. Dad! Dad! And he was gone. But then came a throompf. With a sound like that—throompf—a real fire sprang up, waist height almost at once. So hot already, but there was no Plan B. The longer she waited, the harder it would get.

  Ingrid raised up her bound wrists and held them to the flames.

  twenty-six

  INGRID TRIED TO be precise, tried to keep the rope exactly right over the tip of the flame, to keep the fire off her skin, but it couldn’t be done, at least by her. The flame wouldn’t stay still, wanted to dance around, lick at the rope for a second or two and then jump suddenly at her wrists or hands, searing little jumps from which she jerked away, couldn’t help herself. Be brave, Griddie, suck it up. Didn’t real bravery start with just making a little effort to control fear? But it hurt so much, and besides, the fire was growing now, rising higher, burning hotter. In fact the whole pile of newspapers was smoking, and the rag that Mrs. Meinhof had torn a strip from looked about to—

  Burst into flames. They spread almost at once to the bank of shelves to her right—the shelves with all those paint cans and plastic gasoline containers. The fire began making a noise, like the wind gathering strength, but not so loud that Ingrid didn’t hear footsteps coming down the stairs.

  Now, Griddie. Or never.

  She held her wrists over the flame and kept them there. It felt like a long, long time, the strands of rope going through stages—blackening, smoking, sparking—before they caught fire and frayed apart, but it couldn’t have been, because Mrs. Meinhof was just coming into the storage room when Ingrid twisted her hands free.

  Mrs. Meinhof’s eyes widened. “Wicked child! Major! Major!” She charged toward Ingrid, hands outstretched. Ingrid darted behind the flames, which now reached to the ceiling. Mrs. Meinhof glanced around wildly, looking for something to fight the fire with, saw nothing. She tore off her jacket and flapped it at the fire, a useless gesture, and worse than useless, because in seconds the jacket too went up in flames. And then, like fiery birds, flame balls flew into her wild hair, framing her face in a halo of fire. Mrs. Meinhof screamed. Something on the paint can shelf went boom. The whole room—and Mrs. Meinhof too—was on fire, raging and beyond control. Ingrid ran out, a hot roaring at her heels.

  She raced upstairs—no one around, not the slightest sign of what was happening down below—and headed along the hall toward the back door. It opened just as she reached for the knob.

  Dieter walked in. “Couldn’t find that stupid—hey! What the—?” She tried to dodge past him. He blocked her way, kicked the door shut behind him. “Major!”

  Ingrid backed up, toward the living room. Behind her, Cyrus said, “What now?”

  Ingrid wheeled around. Cyrus came out of the living room, the Springfield in his hand. He saw her. His eye patch pulsed. “What’s going on? Where’s your mother?”

  “Don’t know,” Dieter said. He sniffed the air. “Do you smell smoke?”

  “No,” said Cyrus. “Get her secured at once.”

  Dieter moved in on Ingrid from o
ne end of the hall, Cyrus from the other. Ingrid ducked into the kitchen; nowhere else to go. They followed her. She ran behind the table like a character being chased in some stupid comedy. Dieter and Cyrus closed in from opposite sides, Dieter arriving first. Ingrid was trapped. Dieter’s eyes shifted. He sniffed the air again.

  “What are you waiting for?” Cyrus said. “Grab her.”

  Dieter reached out, caught her by the sleeve. At that moment a boom came from below, this one tremendous, and flames shot up through the floor, right where Dieter stood. The boards gave way with a splintering crack. Dieter lost his grip on her and fell through, down into the inferno, cut off in mid scream. Cyrus’s mouth started to open. Ingrid dove under the table, scrambled toward the door. From the corner of her eye she saw the gun barrel rising. She launched herself into the hall. The rifle cracked behind her, and plaster exploded off the wall inches from her head. She ran down the hall, threw open the back door—the knob felt hot—and leaped outside.

  The snowmobile stood in the yard. Ingrid had never even ridden on a snowmobile, had no clue how to drive one. She took a few steps toward the lane but stopped almost at once—headlights shone from that direction, coming her way. Ingrid crouched down, crossed the yard, hid behind a tree.

  A car drove up the lane, parked at the edge of the yard. Something about the shape of that car… The driver’s door opened and someone—a man—got out. Something about the shape of that man…

  “Dad?”

  “Ingrid?”

  Then she was running, arms outstretched. He opened his own arms—hands white as snow in the moonlight—and wrapped them around her.

  “Oh, Dad.”

  “What’s going on?” Dad said. “I was driving away and Nigel came barking out of the woods, right in front of the car.”

  “You’ve got him?”