by Ellis Quinn
Pete intended to kill himself. But if he’d brought her to the dollhouse to know the truth, that meant he’d not intended to harm her. She softened, leaned forward and breathed into her hands, held up in prayer over her nose. Pete’s gun waggled nervously at his thigh.
She looked up at him, propped her chin up on thumbs and said, “You killed Miranda, too.”
He closed his eyes. The truth of what he’d done brought him great pain.
She said, “Miranda found out about Julie, didn’t she?”
He lifted his head from his forearm, pushed himself back to stand away from the fireplace, turning to the center of the room. The weight of his guilt made him sag again, and his chin dropped and he looked at the floor. He said, “That’s why Miranda insisted on coming to Chesapeake Cove. She figured it all out, Bette. Figured it out and brought me here to confront it all.”
“She didn’t know Julie was going to be away?”
He said, “No. She assumed Julie would be here. She was going to bring all three of us together for a great big explosion.”
“So, she planned the trip. Booked the place just down the street from where Julie lived,” she said.
“Uh-huh. I thought it was a crazy coincidence. It never occurred to me that she’d figured it out. She never let on that she knew. Not until later. She booked the trip, and I’d been trying to put her off. Tried offering so many other places we could go. Make the. trip bigger, I said. Extravagant places, like the Caribbean, I even said a safari in Africa.” He chuckled, then rubbed his forehead with the muzzle of his gun. The sight of the raised gun made her stomach uneasy.
He said, “Miranda kept saying that was all too much, that she didn’t want to go far, that she just wanted a weekend together, all three of us going away, me, her and Drew. Then Julie tells me she can’t be here for our anniversary, she has to go up to Seattle. I’m relieved. Relieved to the point of exultation. You know?” He gestured the gun at her, making her uneasy again. “I felt so good about it, I proudly said, ‘Yeah, let’s go to Chesapeake Cove. Come on, we’ll look around there, the crab festival’s on, I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun.’ Made all the payments to rent the place, figured I was in the clear.
“Oh, no,” she said, realizing something
Pete looked her way. “What?”
“After you killed Julie . . .”
He nodded and closed his eyes again. “Miranda knew it was me who killed Julie. I didn’t know she’d known about Julie, and it didn’t register with me that Pete’s wife—my wife—would know that I’d killed her.”
“What did she say to you?”
He shrugged and said, “Miranda was going to go to the police. Once she divulged to me she knew of the second marriage, she said terrible things to me. Made me realize how crazy I’d been. How astounding the thing I had done was. What had I become?” he said, looking skyward, up to the tall inside of the turret, questioning the sky. “How did this come to be? . . . I pretended I was two people at once!” He held out two hands, the gun in one, brought them together and pressed till they shook. “It’s like two north-seeking poles being forced to touch each other,” he said, flailing his hands apart, the muzzle stroking her way and making her reel for cover against the couch arm.
The gun dropped to his side again. “She provoked me, Bette.”
“Miranda did?”
“She did,” he said, nodding, trying to affirm his course of action that day. “If she knew I’d kill Julie, why would she confront me? Why would she confront me about Brian’s marriage to Julie? My marriage to Julie? If she had just gone to the police, this would all have been over. I’ll be in jail now. Dead. Good riddance to wild old Pete. But no . . . no, Miranda had to confront me. Had to see it in my face when she told me she knew what I’d done. And when I resisted, when I argued and told her how wrong she was and that she was mistaken, she said she had proof, proof and more than that she would go to the police with it. Not just the proof that I was Julie’s Brian. That I was Brian! . . . She was going to show them the emails she discovered. Said she’d take Drew from me. Said I’d never see him again.”
“So, you . . . strangled her, too.”
“I did,” he said, sighing, eyebrows raised high. Like it was terrible, but what else could he do? Surely Bette could see the situation he was in. “But . . . then I saw Sam was in town.”
“And?”
And? That lowlife killed my sister, Bette. Driving drunk, hitting a tree. My sister went through the windshield! . . . Do you know what it’s like, Bette? Do you know what it’s like to go and ID the body of someone you love?”
“I do, Pete. You’re not the only one.”
He looked away, jaw muscles flexing. “That Sam was a real piece of work. He deserved it.”
“Deserved what?”
“To go to jail for what he did.”
“So what did you do?”
“You saw me. I punched him in the face. Boy, that felt good. That guy deserves it. Deserves worse. His blood was on my hand,” he said now, switching his gun to the left hand so he could admire his right fist. He looked at the knuckles he’d struck Sam with. “His blood was on me.”
Bette said, “That’s Sam’s blood on the bottle? The bottle on the floor that’s broken?”
“The champagne bottle Julie had specially made for us to celebrate,” he said as he chewed the corner of his mouth, his lips puckered in a strange fishlike motion, eyes staring far off. “He’s the murderer. He deserves to go to jail for killing my sister.”
“You tried to frame him, but why didn’t you . . .?”
“There’s no way out of this, Bette.” He spoke in a low and chilling tone. “No way out at all. There’s only one way out,” he said, and raised the gun to his head . . .
* * *
There was no other moment like it in her entire life. No other time that her body had ever betrayed her in such a way. An explosion of synapses fired up ligaments and muscles inside her without her request. She was off the couch before she even knew what she was doing.
One lace-up sneaker foot planted in the center of the coffee table, the champagne glasses flying, she hurtled up and over, the table toppling with her, her body weight flying across the small room, arms outstretched ahead of her. She fell against Pete, her nails grabbing at his neck and collar, hugging her body to his. He stumbled back a step, and her forward momentum wheeled them both around. They tumbled against the raised dais of the bed, Pete on top of her.
His legs went out wide and he struggled to stand, but she hooked her arm underneath his gun arm, pushed her right elbow against his neck, trying to keep his hand from turning the gun to himself. Through gritted teeth, lips peeled back, she growled, “Think of Drew!”
“There’s no other way, Bette!” he shouted, and stood with her clinging to him.
She hooked both legs around his ribs, her ankles crossed over behind his back. His arm was still trapped under her own, but he struggled, and she could feel his elbow bending, his wrist bending, too, trying to get the gun pointed. There was a chance he would try to shoot himself and miss—shoot her in the back of the head—so as he stumbled rearward trying to support her weight, she twisted herself further to the left trying to get her head out of the way where his gun would point. Pete wasn’t strong enough to bear her weight while standing for long and they toppled again, this time over the coffee table she’d upended.
They crashed against it, the sharp edge jabbing her ribs. Jabbing Pete’s ribs, too, enough that he barked out a loud Oof.
“Pete, think of your son,” she said, and pushed the heel of her hand into his face. His lips mushed against her palm, and she dug her nails into his cheeks, pushing his head away so he couldn’t see what he was doing.
But then the gun came into her view. Pete held it no longer.
It had sailed out of Pete’s hand when they fell, and it plopped onto the loveseat cushion, bounced twice and came to rest. She pushed Pete’s face away, scrambled over the table, fell
to the loveseat and grabbed the gun in both hands. Victory!
Pete’s weight crashed against her back. She couldn’t breathe. He grabbed her wrists, pulled her hands apart so she held the gun in only one hand. Her other hand now thrashed to the side, punching Pete in the thigh. She hammered over and over, hoping to give him a Charlie horse or something that would get him to let her go. Instead, he plucked the gun from her other hand.
“Stop, Bette, stop it. There’s no other way. . . . This world is much better without me. Drew’s world will be much better without me,” he said, backing away, fierce and frenzied, his eyes bugging out of his head. In the scuffle, she’d bloodied his nose, and it flowed to the corner of his mouth. His hair had gone wild, framed around his head in spiky clumps. “Okay?” he said. “You look after Drew . . .”
He raised the gun to his temple—
And then his face contorted in a painful twist as the champagne glass she hurled smashed him in the cheek. He made a funny lip-flapping sound and stumbled backwards, squinting to protect against broken glass.
He crouched over, and she was up again, getting on his back and slipping her arm around his neck, hoping maybe she could figure out some way to make him unconscious. Pete folded his arm over himself, and the gun muzzle appeared in her view, pointing right at her. She grabbed his wrist to push it away and squeezed tighter on his neck.
A loud crack shook the floorboards under their feet and she thought the gun had gone off.
But the crack came again and again, and it wasn’t gunshots. It was wood being splintered.
Next thing, a large human frame came into view—Marcus smashing the front door open and hurtling in to the cozy love shack. He jumped on Pete from the other side with no hesitation, all three of them clambering to the floor.
This time the loud crack was definitely a gunshot . . .
A SECOND LATER
The three of them lay still, clutched together in a three-way tangle on one of the multiple fine wool rugs over the dollhouse’s maple floor. No one moved a muscle. The crack of the gunshot shot still rang in her ears.
It was Marcus moving first, standing up now, and she rolled away from Pete. All three of them lay in the same direction, feet to the door, heads toward the fireplace. When she let Pete go, he crumpled.
Marcus stood with the gun in both hands, thumbed a button above the grip and withdrew the magazine. He tucked it in a pocket, pulled back the pistol’s top slide and a bullet ejected into the air, somersaulting, winking reflected light from its brass casing before plopping on the rug by Pete’s head.
Bette rose to her hip, scooted from Pete, hands going all over herself checking for blood. There was no pain, but . . .
Sticky wetness flooded her ear canal, and she closed her eyes, flinging her arms up protectively. She fell to her side, lay on her back and opened one eye to peep a big brown fur-face with golden eyes and happy pink tongue—Buster aggressively kissing her.
“Stop,” she said, “stop,” and struggled to stand. She hugged Buster’s neck while getting to her feet and looked at Pete. He still moved, putting a hand flat on the floor, his elbow poking upward. “Marcus,” she said, so worried it’d been him that was hit, but when her eyes moved to where he’d been standing, he wasn’t there.
Then one of his big hands was on her back, and he helped her to stand. She opened her mouth wide and worked her jaw around, fingers in her ears and winding them in jabbing circles. The ringing had abated enough she could hear.
As Pete moved to rise, Buster lunged forward, and mushed his lips near Pete’s neck. No teeth, but just a heads up that the chief dog was in town and Pete better watch himself. Buster was all business.
Marcus spun her around, his hands on her arms. The horror and worry on his face was intense. “Are you okay?”
His voice came to her as if underwater while someone blew a steady high-pitch whistle inside her brain. “I am,” she said, “I am. Are you okay?”
And then her hands were moving again with no provocation. Touching his black uniform chest, his badge, going down to his sides.
“I’m not hit,” he said.
Sam flew in the room and skidded on his knees to stoop beside Pete’s prostrate body. He rolled Pete over, slapping his cheek lightly as if to revive him. Then Sam’s hands worked down the polo shirt, looking to see if Pete’d been hit. He looked left and right, head moving rapidly, clean blonde hair floating around his thin face. “There!” he said, and pointed to a spot about a foot above the floor, a chunk of stone removed from the edge of the hearth—where the bullet had struck. No one had been hit.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said, and fell against Marcus, who wrapped his arms around her and held her.
Life allowed her four seconds of that enjoyment.
She snapped to with a realization of immediate panic. She shouted, “Drew!”
She pushed herself back from Marcus. It was her turn to show a horrified expression.
No time to wait for anyone, she fled from Marcus’s grasp, wheeling on a sneaker foot and lunging out the door, running as fast as she could, jumping off the deck, turning left, going back behind the dollhouse and running through the bush. Leaves and branches thrashed at her face. She ran with forearms up to protect herself, hips and shoulders hitting tree trunks, almost falling more than a few times, losing her footing in the dry pine needle bedding. Up and down hills, then a grassy section. Julie’s neighbor. The house between Julie’s and Miranda’s. The terrain here was clear and well maintained. Her heart pounded in her chest as she soared across mowed grass, the gravel drive, more mowed grass. . . . Jingling accompanied her.
Then Buster was launching past, there to protect her, there to get out ahead of her in case there was another man like Pete who might cause his mom some harm. The two of them slashed through the next thicket, then they were out onto grass again. They ran up the gravel drive together, her ears ringing, pulse thundering in her neck and temples. If anything had happened to that little boy . . .
Up the gravel drive, she and Buster ran, and by the time she hit the house’s front stoop, she was ready to collapse. Under normal circumstances she would’ve fallen into a heap long before she even made it to the neighbor’s house, but the adrenaline raced through her like rocket fuel.
She thrust her body weight against the door, grabbing the handle, but it was locked. She came to a dead halt against the wood. With both palms, she pounded on the door and shouted Drew’s name. “Drew! Drew!”
Now she ran counterclockwise to the picture window, cupping her hands to peer inside, then, seeing nothing, beating on the glass.
Sam joined her, huffing and puffing, also shouting Drew’s name and rapping on the glass with his knuckles. They ran around together to the next window, and then the next. There was a light on inside the house somewhere, but everything else was dark.
At the third window, at the side of the house, the pane had been pulled up three inches to let in fresh air. She pushed up on it with the heel of her hand, and shouted, “Sam, it’s open, it’s open!”
Legs kicking, she hoisted herself up, but struggled to make it to that height and pull her body in. Sam’s hands planted on both her butt cheeks and shoved her so hard she flew in headfirst and tumbled over a side table, knocking away a lamp that crashed on the floor.
But she jumped to her feet, opened the guest room door and ran into the hall. This side of the house showed no sign of Drew. Good or bad, whatever it meant, every minute she didn’t see him was a minute he could still be alive.
She ran to the opposite side of the house now, saw through the diamond-shaped stained-glass side panels bestride the front door the silhouetted shape of Sam and his long hair. She stopped, unlocked the door and yanked it open. “I can’t find him,” she said, and uttering those words brought tears to her eyes.
Sam darted in, Buster right behind him and racing past both of them. His nose was on the floor as he ran around the family room, the house floor plan exactly like Julie’s, s
cooting down to the lower tier, through the kitchen, up and then bursting into the hall on the other side. They followed as he ran to the end and paused at the last door on the right, and scratched. She and Sam hurtled to the end of the hall.
She beat on the door once with her right hand, left hand wrenching the handle . . .
* * *
Drew reeled in the most comical representation of terror she’d ever seen. His cute little berry lips circled into a perfect O shape, his eyes were big brown saucers set in a round white field—with plenty of white showing—his little eyebrows jumping up to his hairline. Over both ears were the biggest, fuzziest set of headphones she’d ever seen, a thin white cord extending from them to the tablet set in his lap. He’d been sitting in the dark in the bedroom, curled up in the pillows of the bed in his jammy-jams, and she and Sam and Buster had exploded into his room and given the poor kid a heart attack. He looked like at any second his hair might streak white.
With her forward momentum, she continued and collapsed on the bed, the exhaustion finally getting to her, but so incredibly happy. But poor Drew still didn’t know what the heck was going on and why these people were in his bedroom, and he climbed back into the pillows, dropping his tablet and looking at them with wide-eyed fright.
She said, “It’s me, Drew, it’s me, Bette,” and then Buster jumped on the bed to help remind him who she was.
Buster did all the greeting necessary, going right to Drew and licking his face, turning horror into joy. The sound of little Drew giggling brought inexplicable tears to her eyes. She flopped on the bed. All the muscle strains and pulls and tears to her joints and ligaments and aging muscles worked at her, and her eardrums beat with the thundering bass of war drums. “Oh my gosh,” she sighed and began laughing.
Buster continued licking, licked the headphones right off his ears, and Drew hugged her dog around his neck. She said, “Drew, how are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” he giggled, trying to get Buster’s eager tongue out of his ear hole.