by Karen Ranney
All I heard was Sally's soft snores as she chased a sheep in her dreams.
32
The night was serene. Even the wind died down until I couldn’t hear it outside. No branches clicked against each other. The temperature was in the high forties. When the climate control adjusted the heater, a soft hum was the only sound as the electric pilot light ignited the gas burner.
As Sally and I walked through the house, I improvidently turned on the lights.
Sometimes, I saw shadows out of the corner of my eye. The ghosts were walking tonight. A comment my paternal grandmother had often made. But, then, she was Scottish and given to Celtic pronouncements.
“There’s nothing there, Jennifer,” I said aloud. The sound of my own voice echoed back to me.
Sally glanced up at me as if I’d lost my mind.
The kitchen looked even larger tonight. I wrapped my arms around myself as I stood in front of the sink, staring out at a night sky scarred with stars.
Moonlight illuminated Linda's house, emphasizing its loneliness and emptiness. It seemed bereft in only the way an old house that had known generations of living can be. No one laughed within its walls, or wept. Life had moved on for the moment.
I jumped two feet when the doorbell rang.
Instead of taking up her position beneath the table, Sally accompanied me. Maybe she felt the ghosts walking, too.
The trip down the hall felt longer than it ever had before. I flipped on the porch light to find Dale Bradshaw standing there, a gimme hat with Bowie Construction embroidered on it pushed back from his forehead. His plaid shirt was covered by a lined jacket, and his jeans were tucked into beige and orange work boots.
"Mrs. Roberts?" he said. "Sorry to bother you."
"It's no bother," I said, hiding behind the door. I only had my pajamas on - not exactly hostess attire.
He handed me the printouts I'd given his wife.
"Did you recognize anyone?" I asked, putting the pictures on the sideboard behind me.
He shook his head. "No, ma'am, I didn't."
"Did you come all the way from Laredo?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No, ma'am, the Hamilton house. We finished up the last of the lights."
I wanted to ask a few questions to satisfy my curiosity about the Hamilton house, but in my mind, I saw the pretty woman at the door, holding the little boy. They'd be waiting for him.
We talked about him repairing the ceiling over my swim lane, and settled on a time for him to come back during daylight to give me an estimate.
When he turned to leave, he glanced back at me. "I didn't see anyone in your pictures," he said, staring over my shoulder. "But I saw her."
There are moments in which thought seems to be more than a mental exercise. It's as if every pore of the body cooperates to send the brain information. In those few seconds, everything came together. It all made sense in a perfectly horrible kind of way.
I turned, feeling as if time itself had slowed in pity for my inability to accept what my mind was screaming at me.
Maude stood in the hallway, close enough to have heard, a half smile on her face, her eyes like flat brown stones. Maude, who wasn't supposed to be here. Maude, who was smiling at me in an odd, unsettling way.
Maude's hands disappeared into the pocket of her coat and she pulled out a very large, very terrifying looking gun. I don't know a damn thing about guns except they kill people.
The sound I made wasn't a scream, exactly, more like a mousy squeak. Actually, I was surprised I was capable of that. I felt as if I'd frozen in place. My eyes widened, my heart pounded, but my feet were refusing to move.
Maude wasn't so handicapped.
Dale dropped to the floor of the porch before I actually heard the gunshot. A second later, adrenaline did what pure fear couldn't: made me run.
I grabbed one of the canes in the container by the front door. Maybe half for balance, half as a weapon. I rounded the corner in my socks, sliding over the shiny floorboards like a child playing tag.
This wasn't a game, however.
I could almost feel a target between my shoulder blades, the tearing of a bullet through my heart.
Sally ran with me, ears up and tail fluffed, excited about this new game of chase. My heart lodged in my throat as I slipped my hand in her collar, giving her a hand command we'd practiced a thousand times. Hand up, palm toward her, it meant shush. She couldn't bark, couldn't yip, and had to remain patient.
Where the hell was I going to hide? Maude knew my house as well as I did.
Where was my phone? I was dressed in my damn pajamas. I didn't carry my phone in my pajamas.
I pulled Sally into the storage room, behind the crate of china. I was shaking, my heart beating so frantically I could hardly breathe. I couldn't kneel because of my leg, but I bent down so I couldn't be seen from the door.
It was only a matter of time until Maude found me.
Sally made a snuffling noise, disliking the darkness. I bent to whisper to her and nearly screamed.
Bright red eyes stared back at me.
I moved my hand and they moved.
Dear God in Heaven, I'd grabbed the skeleton cane with its leering smile and motion activated red eyes. The carved staff looked like aged bone. Who the hell had given me such a macabre joke? I couldn't remember.
Scary movies don't frighten me. Only because I would never find myself in those situations. I would never walk down into a basement at night. Or enter a cave armed only with a flashlight.
Who knew my housekeeper would turn out to be a killer?
I held Sally between my legs, trying to compress all her fur so nothing showed. Sally made a subdued yip as if she'd absorbed my fear, and I bent my head until we were dry nose to wet nose.
“Shh,” I said, and she licked my chin.
Adrenaline was pumping through me so furiously I was breathless with it. My heart was beating three times its normal rhythm and I couldn't remember ever hyperventilating as much.
This was not a good time for a panic attack, face deep in Sheltie hair.
It was so dark in the storage room that the sudden light from the open door had the effect of a laser.
"Jennifer?" Maude said. "What a silly thing for you to do, trying to hide."
I didn't answer her.
"You've figured it out, haven't you?" she said, too calmly. "I thought you had when you started asking questions."
I couldn't see her, but her voice was creepy, chilling my blood. The palms of my hands were damp. Odd, since they were so cold.
Maude. No. Maude. Not possible. Maude.
She'd folded my underwear.
She'd bought my tampons.
Maude was trying to kill me.
Life might have done its worst to me, but I could still be afraid. Fear slid over me like a wet sheet. My heart thudded inside my chest. I was suddenly nauseous.
"What about your husband and your three children?" I asked.
She laughed, such a terrible sound I cringed. Sally made the canine equivalent of a moan. I totally agreed with her.
"Do you believe everything people tell you?"
"The people I trust, yes."
If this was the part where I was supposed to ask her all about her crimes, I wasn't doing it. I had the feeling Maude wasn't going to tell me, anyway.
I didn't have any brilliant ideas. Who was it who said never bring a knife to a gunfight? Evidently, I have a mordant sense of humor. Who knew?
Maude took a few steps into the dark room, came around the corner of the crate and raised the pistol.
For the first time in her five year old life, Sally went postal. Sally, who hates noises and falling leaves and starts at the sound of cars and horns, darted between my legs, going after Maude in a snarl of fur and fury.
I heard Maude swear, then Sally's yelp of pain.
I swung at Maude. My leg might be damaged, but I have a hell of a lot of upper body strength. As I struck her, the gun flashed, the sound
in such a small space nearly deafening me. I felt the pain in my arm but then I tripped over Sally, nearly fell, catching myself as I struck out at Maude again.
She moaned, and I heard something clatter to the floor. Again I swung and this time she went down. I leaned against the crate and kicked her, then swung the cane again. And again. And again. Dear God, again.
She didn't move when I stopped.
I was crying, but didn't realize it until I bent to pick up Sally and was nearly blinded by my own tears. I hefted her in my arms, collapsing in the kitchen, going down on my bad leg and nearly screaming with the pain. I lay Sally beside me and prayed. She was still breathing. What the hell had Maude done, kicked her? Or shot her? There was too much blood coating her side to tell.
A minute later, I realized the blood wasn't coming from Sally, but from me.
I glanced at my arm and nearly fainted.
Maude had shot me.
Well, hell.
I fanny walked to a chair and threw myself on it, pushing up with my good leg to a sitting position, just as Maude staggered into the kitchen.
I raised the cane just as I noticed the gun in her hand.
What the hell.
Bring it on, bitch.
"I can't let you go, Jennifer. You know that."
"Damn it, Maude, I thought you said you were going to take care of this problem."
My heart stopped.
Slowly, I turned, wondering why I was so surprised
33
A long con, that's what Talbot had called it. An investment in time and energy.
Claire smiled at me. For the first time, the perfect mask of her face shimmered a little, as if there were a creature beneath the beauty, something not so pretty. For the first time I saw her resemblance to Paul.
It hadn't been just Paul and his sister. It had been Paul and two women.
Claire shook her head, frowning at Maude. "This whole damn thing has been a clusterfuck," she said.
Dear Claire, sweet and demure, using such words. I wish I'd said it first.
"She knows," Maude said.
Well, I do now.
Claire sighed, waved her perfectly manicured hand toward the gun in Maude's hand as if giving her permission to use it.
"What's it going to be this time?" I asked. "Another explosion? A poisoning?"
Maude smiled again. I wish she wouldn't do that. With all the blood on her face, it was positively scary.
"Poor thing, you committed suicide. You were so distraught over your daughter's death and then your divorce."
"What about Dale?"
She looked confused.
"The man you shot! How are you going to explain him?"
She smiled and shrugged, as if getting rid of a body was no difficulty. Claire folded her arms and tapped her perfect shoe on the kitchen floor as if impatient to be done with all this messy murder stuff.
"Your cavalry has arrived, dear Jennifer."
I glanced over my shoulder.
Army Fehr stood in the doorway, armed with a Samurai sword. Frank stood beside him, his arm outstretched and trembling. In his hand, however, was a very lethal looking gun.
Claire rolled her eyes, turned and grabbed the gun out of Maude's hands, and aimed it at me.
Frank shot her eye out.
She didn't look quite so pretty after that.
Maude grabbed the gun from the floor which gave Army a chance to use his sword. He swung it toward her in an arc, missed, almost toppled over, but righted himself.
I slid off the chair, at Maude, swinging the cane like a scythe. The skeleton head connected with her temple, but she didn't go down.
Instead, she came at me, her eyes a mixture of rage and madness.
Maude raised the gun, grinned, and then screamed when I rammed the sharp, brass end of the cane into her stomach as hard as I could.
But she got off another shot, this one too damn close to my head.
"You just couldn't leave it alone, could you, Jennifer? You had to pick and pick and pick until you figured it out."
Really, just how much crap was I supposed to take? Clusterfuck, indeed. Although she was outnumbered three to one, Maude had a gun that worked and wasn't being "helped" by two septuagenarians.
Anger and fear cannot live side by side, however. Of the two emotions, I'd much rather be angry than afraid, especially when I was fighting for my life.
Frank was trying to reload his gun. Army was waving his sword around, and I, who had been so angry at God in the last year, said a hurried prayer both for wisdom and forgiveness before pressing the two red eyes on the skeleton head and thrusting it at Maude.
The spring recoiled with a loud sound. Maude screamed, staring down at the blade stuck in her chest with shock.
A second later, she fell to the floor, blood spurting around the blade.
The horror of the blood, the moment, and what I'd done was suddenly too much. If I'd been one of the original residents of my hundred fifty year old house, I would have fluttered to the floor in a graceful faint.
Unfortunately, I was a twenty-first century woman.
I turned and threw up.
34
“Jennifer?” Talbot bent down until we were eye to eye. “Are you all right?”
I think I nodded. I was sitting under the table with Sally.
He smiled then, an utterly charming smile that I put away to think about later.
"Sally's hurt," I said.
He pried my hands from my dog, and carried Sally to where the paramedics were working on Maude. They'd taken one look at Claire and decided no heroic measures were necessary.
Frank and Army were seated to my left, each leaning toward the other. From time to time, I would reach up and put my hand over one of their knees, patting them to make sure they stayed with me.
According to their initial statement to Talbot, they'd heard the gunshot, called 911, then raced over here to save me. My heroes. They both looked so pale I was frightened for their health.
Talbot lay Sally on the gurney and argued with one of the EMT guys. They weren't going to stop working on Maude to treat a dog.
I waved Talbot over and gave him the number for Sally's vet. He called while standing by the gurney. I wasn't all that displeased Sally was taking Maude's spot on the gurney. Or, when she was finally moved, Maude would have dog hair all over her.
"Did I kill her?" I asked one of the EMT people.
The woman just shook her head, but didn't offer any further information.
I wasn't going to hell, then. Was I going to jail? Another thought occurred to me.
"What about Dale?"
"Dale?"
"Dale Bradshaw. He's on the porch."
"He's already been transported," one of the EMTs said. "He was alive. What happened here? The gunfight at the OK Corral?"
For some reason, I thought that was uproariously funny and started giggling.
Talbot bent down. "Don’t you think it’s time you came out from under the table?"
"It feels safe here," I said. "No wonder Sally likes it."
"Jennifer."
"Do I have to?"
He nodded.
“I’m not dressed,” I said, looking down at myself. My pajamas were the worse for wear. They weren’t in great shape to begin with, but now they were covered in blood. I had no idea whose blood it was.
Claire was too close, half of her face staring up at the ceiling. The other half was gone, spread over the kitchen floor. They hadn't covered her. Instead, they were documenting everything with pictures.
I couldn't wait to be photographed in my threadbare, bloody, flannel pjs.
He held out his jacket for me. I would have donned it but I couldn't move my arm.
"I have a problem," I said.
"Another one?" He made a noise in his throat that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
I would have said something cutting but a wave of dizziness hit me.
Talbot grabbed my arms gently, pulli
ng me out from under the table as if he were a giant crane. I screamed, the pain so fierce it felt as if my arm was falling off.
"Holy crap, Jennifer, you've been shot."
I looked over at my left arm and almost threw up again. I blame it on the adrenaline load. Really, my stomach is stronger than that.
"I have to go to the vet," I said when my world righted itself.
"You have to go to the ambulance," he said, and picked me up.
"No, Talbot," I said.
"You're never going to call me Bill, are you? And you're going."
I shook my head, but he deposited me on yet another gurney, this one out in the hall.
"Sally needs me."
"You need a doctor."
"I think she bit Maude." Sally was going to get all the bacon treats she wanted for the rest of her life. "Please," I said, suspecting he was going to be difficult about this.
"I'll take her to the vet," he said. "If you promise to go to the hospital."
I didn't even have time to argue the point. In the end, he won, because I passed out.
35
Army and Frank escorted me home from the hospital. I was still smarting from the lecture my orthopedist had given me.
"Try not to damage another limb, Jennifer," he said. "Or I'll have to insist you see another doctor." He smiled, to mitigate his comment but his twin dimples had no effect on me.
A day of being able to do nothing but sleep had been restorative. I could use about five of those. Or maybe a month.
Talbot called me four times with reports on Sally. She was doing well despite a broken leg and bruised bladder and was due to be released today. Talbot promised to bring her home. Other than reports on my dog's condition, he was remarkably close mouthed. He wouldn't discuss Maude, Claire, or the murders.
"It's the least you could do," I said, my spine stiffened through the judicious use of two pain pills. "I was the one who convinced you Evelyn had been murdered. And, I might add, I caught the murderer."