If he was on his way in tiger shape, he'd still be close behind me. Maybe I should wait.
Then I remembered the coughing that I'd heard when I'd dropped off the soup. Mellie could be sick. She was almost certainly in danger. What if Vern got here before Jack?
I jumped out of my car and raced up to her porch and banged on the door, but nobody answered. I realized Mellie was almost certainly too ill or too locked in chains in the attic to come to the door.
I looked under the flower pots on the porch with no luck and then tried the lintel over the door.
Bingo!
I hurriedly unlocked the door, scanning the street for Vern's car or Jack, and then went inside.
"Mellie! Mellie, are you here? It's Tess!"
Silence.
Dread trailed icy fingers down my spine. Maybe I was too late. Maybe she was already dead, or locked up somewhere else, or…
"Stop it," I told myself. "Get looking. She might just be too sick to answer."
I ran into the kitchen, just in case she was chained to the refrigerator or something, but there was nothing unusual except a stack of sturdy logs of palm hearts, cut to the same size as the ones in the basket he'd sent me.
"Mellie!" I ran back into the front room and started for the stairs, only to see the door hanging wide open.
I'd definitely closed it.
"Jack?"
A nasty laugh floated down the stairs toward me. "No, it's not Jack."
Vern. But not Vern as I'd ever seen him. He had an expression of such hostile malice on his face that I barely recognized him. Worse—he was dragging Mellie with him.
And he was holding a knife to her throat.
"Why are you doing this, Vern?" I tried to keep my voice calm and even in spite of how afraid I was for Mellie. She looked so sick and weak, and her wrists were red and bleeding from where he must have had rope or some kind of restraints on her.
Vern looked down at his cousin blankly, almost as if he'd forgotten her. "Oh. She's nothing, Tess. I just used her to get to you."
I frantically tried to think of what would keep him talking. "To me? But—but what about Ann Feeney? Is she nothing, too?"
He made a high-pitched howling sound that was so eerie I could feel chills race down my skin. "She was everything! Everything, Tess, but she laughed. I proposed to her, but she laughed at me. Said nobody proposes after only three dates, and she was getting ready to break up with me anyway. I showed her."
His lips parted in an insane grin. "She'll never laugh at anybody again."
"I—oh, Vern," I whispered.
But he was off again. "Did you like it? Did you like the ring? Ann threw it back at me, but you liked it, didn't you, Tess? We just have to keep that stupid tiger away from you."
I edged toward my left an inch or so, backing away from the door so as not to spook him.
"Come downstairs, Vern, where we can talk, okay? Let's put Mellie on the couch to rest, and you can tell me all about it. About Ann and the ring."
His eyes lit up for a moment, but then he scowled. "Trying to trick me. You don't love me yet, but you will. Once I kill that tiger, you'll love me. I'll keep you with me until he's gone. You'll love me then."
A slight sound from outside gave me hope and a little bit of courage.
"Yes, Vern. Yes, I'm sure I'll come to love you, But I'm afraid of knives. You don't want to scare me, do you?"
He took a step down, still dragging Mellie, and stared at me suspiciously. "You don't mean it," he said, and he pulled Mellie toward him, slicing a shallow cut on the side of her neck.
I caught my breath and then started crying. "Yes, I do mean it. I promise I do, Vern. But now you're scaring me. I don't like the sight of blood after what happened to Jeremiah. You know about that, right? Please let Mellie go, and we can talk."
Vern studied my face and then came down the last step, finally releasing Mellie. She slumped sideways but didn't fall down hard enough to hurt herself more than she already was.
I saw the faint flicker of a shadow outside the window.
"Vern! Vern, look at me," I said, needing him to turn his back to the window. "We can talk about where we'll