Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(94)
Bibi took off her blazer, mixed Coke and vodka in a motel glass, popped a pair of Tylenol, and sat at the small table to compare the text in the new copies of O’Connor, Wilder, and London to the pages from which earlier she had cut out lines with the switchblade. She repeatedly read the words that she excised and burned and forgot, but studying them did not bring enlightenment. If these lines or part of these lines, or variations of them, were what Chubb Coy had said to her in Dr. St. Croix’s third-floor Victorian retreat, they no longer triggered a revelation, perhaps because she had forgotten in what context he said them, or simply because the captain’s memory trick could not be that easily undone.
Putting the books aside, she turned to the lettered tiles from the Scrabble game that she had purchased. She didn’t possess a silver bowl, didn’t need one. She had no desire to engage in divination. Now and then over the years, she’d heard people warn that playing with a Ouija board could be dangerous, that when you posed questions to it and received answers, the responses didn’t come from the board, but from some spirit realm, from an entity that was not necessarily benign. And even if that entity didn’t boldly deceive and mislead with its answers, you had opened a door to it by initiating contact, after which it might not remain content to stay with the dead or the damned or with whomever it currently hung out. For other reasons—surfing, books, boys—Bibi had never been interested in Ouija boards. She had not given much credence to the notion of malevolent entities crouched in some Otherwhere, waiting for unsuspecting and ignorant humans to open a mystical gate for them. But if there might be any truth to such beliefs, Scrabblemancy would be no less dangerous than seeking answers from the Ouija. Besides, she wasn’t going to thrust a needle through the meat of her thumb, especially considering that she suspected the answer to Ashley’s whereabouts had already been conjured by Calida Butterfly in the hour before she’d been murdered.
Someone knocked softly on the motel-room door. Three quick faint raps.
What fresh hell is this? She drew the pistol and got to her feet and waited.
When the knock was not repeated, she went to the door and peered through the fisheye lens into a self-distorted world herewith further distorted. In the fall of light from the exterior lamp directly above the door, neither Death nor anyone else stood at her threshold in the atmospheric fog. She kept one eye to the lens, in case her elusive visitor returned to knock again. A minute passed, and then another, and her patience wasn’t rewarded.
She considered going to one or both of the windows and easing aside the blackout draperies. Not a good idea. If she revealed her position, she would be an easy target.
Call the front desk? Report a prowler? Doris might still be on duty. Sympathetic Doris would believe her. No. Don’t put anyone else at risk.
There seemed to be nothing better that she could do than return to the table. The knocking had been feather-soft, almost an idea of a sound. Maybe she imagined it.
She arranged twenty-seven Scrabble tiles in two lines, one above the other, just as they had been on the round table in Calida’s home office. The first line was ASHLEY BELL. The second offered an address: ELEVEN MOONRISE WAY.
According to the electronic map, that address did not exist in Orange County or anywhere else in Southern California.
The previous night, in Bibi’s kitchen, when they sought to learn why she had been spared from cancer, Calida hadn’t been able to find the correct message in the first eleven letters. She had arranged the tiles to read A FATE SO EVIL, then EAST EVIL OAF, and VIA LEAST FOE. Bibi had discerned the true message: TO SAVE A LIFE.
Likewise, in the second group of letters, Calida found SALLY BHEEL and SHELLY ABLE, but neither name felt right. Bibi spelled ASHLEY BELL, which subsequent events had proved to be the correct name.
Most likely, in the seventeen letters of this address, Calida hadn’t arrived at the pertinent combination. For some reason, logical or supernatural, Bibi—and Bibi alone—might be required to puzzle out the true location where Ashley could be found.
Of the many synonyms for the word street, only two could be formed from that combination of letters. Not AVENUE, not BOULEVARD, not HIGHWAY or PLACE or CIRCLE or DRIVE or anything other than WAY and LANE.
She tried using LANE. But working with the remaining thirteen tiles, she couldn’t form a credible word or two without leaving unused letters. Evidently, LANE was wrong, and WAY was correct.
A finger tapping lightly on a windowpane. Tum-tum-tum-tum-tum. As quiet as the previous knocking. Repeated. Tum-tum-tum-tum-tum. The window to the right of the door.
Her table stood to the left of the door. At a distance of twelve or fifteen feet from the farther of the two windows, Bibi couldn’t be certain that the cause of the noise was what it seemed to be. Maybe just a large moth bumping against the glass. But could a moth be so busy in the mist, which would quickly saturate its fragile wings and weigh it down?
To one side of the Scrabble tiles, the pistol lay ready. She put a hand on it. Although she had never fired it at anyone, she knew now that she could do the deed. She had stabbed a man to death with a knife, after all, which was a more disturbing—because more intimate—method of killing. Intellectually, she’d long known the difference between killing and murder. Now she understood it emotionally, and her sensitivity to the abomination of violence and the necessity for mercy would not dangerously restrain her if the moment came when killing was justified.