me retch. Whatever she’d done, she didn’t deserve this. I began to recount my long story to the officer, but he wasn’t really listening, too preoccupied with calling for help.
The hour that followed was a blur. Even now I can’t remember the sequence. The rain had become so terrifying I feared the patrol car might get washed off the road completely. At some point I was alone with Beanie, while the officer—Bill, he said his name was—prowled around outside, waiting for help. But when I rolled the window down to peer out, I could see neither hide nor hair of him. Thunder roared. Spidery, luminescent veins of lightning crackled above, firing the sky up in a blaze of white, so loud they felt like explosions. Beanie and I stayed put in the car, me clutching on to him for dear life. Where could we go? Tears filled my vision. I couldn’t see, and all I heard was the lashing of rain, pounding on the car’s roof and intermittently the police radio, with urgent messages and promises to get to the scene ASAP. We couldn’t leave, we had to wait for backup, for a tow truck to arrive and more officers. For the sheriff. An ambulance. For extra police to come and save the day, to take Dan and the others in for questioning. Outside the safety of the patrol car, I wasn’t even sure what was going on. Before Bill had gone off, I had managed to blurt out most of my story. Whether he believed me or not, I wasn’t sure. The calm look on his face was of skepticism, the twitch of a smirk, incredulity. As if Lee and I—two catty wives fighting over property—were just bickering, and it was a “domestic situation” best left alone. Lee had smiled at him so charmingly when he had buzzed on the door: a pretty, wide-eyed blonde who might fool any man.
I wanted to get the hell away from Cliffside, even from Big Sur, but my only option was to carry on sitting in the patrol car like a dumb target. I didn’t even have that gun anymore. But then I remembered how I’d told Lee about the buried money, and I smiled. No wonder Dan was in such a rush to get back home. Lee would have phoned them on my cell. They’d be down in the woods, right this second, laden with picks and shovels, digging away by the redwood in the pouring rain, clawing at the earth on their hands and knees.
More voices clamored on the patrol radio, but when I leaned out the window—rain slamming into my ears and eyes—I couldn’t see Bill anywhere. Had he walked back to Cliffside? From the information crunching through on his radio, the whole of Monterey County was suffering this flash flooding. With Beanie shaking from fear of the thunderstorm, and me shivering, the car was our only refuge. And then it all happened at once. Police sirens. The rumble of helicopters swooping in from above. Machine gun fire? I buzzed down the window again but even wilder torrents of rain flew in, so I had to zap it back up again. All the commotion was happening further down, towards the ocean, from the sound of what I supposed must be gunfire.
I buzzed down the window all the way this time, despite the water gushing inside. It was twilight, visibility almost nil with the rain.
That’s when Beanie jumped out.
Fifty-Four
I leapt out of the passenger seat, onto the road, but didn’t dare look at the bloody devastation of Pippa beneath the car. Rivers of muddy water rushed towards me from the banks on the side of the highway, streaming down from the mountains. I belted my mackintosh and pulled up the collar, but within seconds I was drenched anyway, my feet squelching in my sneakers. Beanie had darted towards Cliffside and my heart clattered with dread of losing him for good. How would I find him in this turmoil? Another torrent flooded towards the road, washing with it a massive boulder in its wake, which smashed into Pippa’s car nudging it several feet sideways and dislodging her body. Nowhere was safe, least of all the side of the road with mounds of wet mud clumping down the banks, flowing in brick-red estuaries and gushing waves.
I yelled out to Bill, my yodeling voice a whisper in the ruckus, but couldn’t see him anywhere.