Imperfect Strangers

CHAPTER 52

Sandy's dreams were awful; they spun violently in his head, and he couldn't get make them slow down. Then his eyes opened, and he wondered where he was.

His cheek lay against soft carpeting, and there was a large, dull pain in the back of his neck. He lifted his head, and the pain increased. He was on a strange staircase; he could feel the bannister next to him, but he couldn't see anything. There was no staircase in the New York apartment, so where could he be?

He had a sudden memory of dancing, so he began there and worked his way forward. He was dancing, then he was shaking hands with people. Sam Warren was there, saying good night and climbing the stairs. The stairs were in the house at the vineyard! He got to his knees. What the hell was going on? He struggled to his feet and held onto the bannister, willing his feet to climb the stairs. Why? What was the rush? What was waiting for him upstairs?

He climbed faster, his breath coming in short gasps, his neck hurting. Cara was up there somewhere. He paused at the top of the stairs to get his bearings. Their room was to his right, wasn't it? He tried shaking his head to clear it, but that made his neck hurt even more. He stumbled toward the bedroom.

The door was open and moonlight flooded the room. Had the lights been off? He looked toward the bed. Someone tall was standing there, shaking his upper body in an odd way. Then he realized that two people were standing there, and one of them was doing something to the other. "Cara!" he shouted, then moved toward them.

"Sandy, help me!"

The two figures separated and the tall one fled past him to the door. Sandy grabbed weakly at the man, and for a moment, he had hold of a raincoat sleeve, then something heavy hit him in the face, and he went down. Before he blacked out for a second time he heard, as from a great distance, Cara's scream.

Shorty Barnum was jarred awake by the shaking of the airplane. Someone was opening the rear door. "Prendergast?" he asked, blinking rapidly.

"Yes, let's go," Prendergast said, latching the rear door and falling into a seat. "Get the bloody thing started." The man was breathing hard.

Shorty checked the circuit breakers out of habit, then picked up his checklist.

"For God's sake, man, let's get out of here!" Prendergast shouted from the backseat. He sounded less American than ever.

Shorty fired up the two engines and checked the panel gauges. The engines were still warm from their flight up from L.A., and everything was in the green. If Prendergast was in such a hurry, he wouldn't bother with a runup. Shorty eased the throttles forward and taxied onto the runway. Still rolling, he pushed the throttles to wide open and let the airplane gather speed. A moment later they were rising through the darkness, and it was not until then that Shorty realized that he had not bothered to turn on the runway lights. Still, he had had plenty of visibility from his landing and taxi lights.

He got the landing gear up and trimmed for his climb. He set nine thousand feet into the altitude preselect, chose a heading that would take them east of San Francisco airspace, and switched on the autopilot. As he climbed, his attention was attracted to flashing red lights on the ground. They were on top of a car, and they were moving in the direction from which the airplane had just come. A police car or a fire truck, he thought. He couldn't hear any sirens over the engines.

When Sandy woke up his head was in Cara's lap, and a strange man was speaking to him.

"Mr. Kinsolving? Can you hear me?"

"Yes," Sandy said and tried to sit up.

"Just lie still, darling," Cara said, and he let his head fall back to the warm nest.

"Can you see me?" the man's voice asked.

Sandy struggled to focus his eyes, and after a moment, his vision was filled with the upper body and head of a young man in a tan shirt and trousers. "Yes, I can see you. What's happened?"

"You appear to have had a blow on the head," the young man said. "I'm Deputy Wheeler of the Napa sheriff's office. An ambulance is on its way, and we'll have you at the hospital in a few minutes."

"Hospital? What for?" Sandy tried again to sit up, and this time he made it. With the deputy's help he got to his feet, but he was dizzy, and he sat down heavily on the bed, rubbing his neck.

"With a head injury it's always best to get some X-rays and have a doctor take a look at you."

"Quite right, Sandy," Sam Warren said. He stepped forward and put a hand on Sandy's shoulder. "Are you in a lot of pain?" he asked.

"I've got a hell of a headache," Sandy replied. "Cara, do you think I could have some aspirin?"

"An ice pack would be a better idea," the deputy said.

Cara left and returned with some ice cubes in a towel; she pressed them to the back of Sandy's head.

Sandy sighed. "That's better," he said. "Now tell me what's happened?"

"You've had an intruder in the house," the deputy said.

Suddenly, everything came back to him. "Cara, are you all right? I saw you struggling with a man."

"Yes, I'm all right," she replied, stroking his hair. "Don't worry about me."

"Who was he?"

"I don't know for sure, but it could have been Peter," she said.

"Peter? Here?" He tried to think. "I was downstairs on the front porch; I turned off the living room lights and… I don't remember anything until I was in the bedroom. He hit me, I think."

The deputy spoke up. "Looks like he hit you from behind when you were downstairs, then again when you got up here. Mrs. Kinsolving saw that."

"Mrs. Kinsolving? What the hell did Joan have to do with this?"

"That's me, darling," Cara said, sitting beside him on the bed.

"Forgive me, I'm just getting my bearings."

"You've got some swelling on the side of your face," the deputy said. "Could somebody get some ice to put on it?"

"I'll do that," Sam said, then left the room.

"Did he try to hurt you?" Sandy asked Cara.

"Yes. He tried to strangle me with something."

"That necktie, I figure," the deputy said, pointing at the tie Sandy had been wearing earlier than evening. It was lying on the floor at the foot of the bed.

"I was lucky," Cara said. "I reached up with my arm to push him away, and my wrist was caught in the loop." She looked odd. "It's funny; he smelled like Peter, but he seemed to have a beard."

Shorty turned on final approach to Santa Monica Airport, and he was grateful for the runway lights rushing up at him. He hadn't had much for dinner, and he was tired, as well as hungry. He made his usual good landing, then slowed the airplane and turned off the runway toward his premises. He turned the plane and brought it to a stop, all lined up to be pushed back into the hangar. Then, before he could even cut the engines, the rear door opened, and Prendergast was out of the airplane.

Shorty turned off all the switches, then pulled back the mixture controls all the way. The engines died, and he turned off the ignition, alternator, and master switches. He was home, and he was five thousand dollars richer. That would get him out of the hole he was in.

He got out of the airplane and looked around. Prendergast had vanished, but from behind the hangar he heard a car start, then drive away. He could see parts of the access road from where he stood, and the car, he wasn't sure what kind, drove away at a leisurely pace, stopping at all the stop signs where the taxiways crossed the road.

Prendergast had sure been in a hurry to get out of the airplane, but he didn't seem to be in much of a hurry driving away Still, Shorty was glad he'd collected the money in advance.

He pushed the airplane back into the hangar, locked up, got the five thousand dollars from his desk drawer and went home.