by Meg Muldoon
“I’m done with this hell hole!”
She pushed her way past me and around the bar. She fought her way through the crowd of people, throwing herself forward like a bowling ball.
“Courtney!” I yelled after her. “Courtney, wait!”
But she didn’t want to hear what I had to say.
She busted out of there like she wasn’t ever coming back.
Dry Hack left a few seconds later after her.
Chapter 63
We closed the saloon down early.
Or more accurately, I closed the saloon down early, being that there was no one else left to do it.
But with the storm raging on outside, and that dangerous feeling still hanging in the air as thick as cigar smoke, closing down seemed like the prudent, responsible thing to do.
I kicked everyone out, to a round of grunts and protests. I knew most of the folks at The Cupid would have rather passed the rest of the blizzard inside of the bar, drinking themselves silly until the middle of next week.
But it was practically a one-woman show now, and this woman was almost dead on her feet.
When they left, I started cleaning up the empty place. I put some Dwight on, and ran around the saloon, collecting sticky beer bottles, sweeping up broken glass, and flipping chairs upside down on the tables, waiting anxiously for Raymond to get back so I could tell him what I knew.
I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the vision.
About that girl in black.
About the pain she felt. The phantom pain that I could still feel, that was so strong, it brought tears to my eyes just thinking about it.
The girl had suffered.
She had truly suffered, in the kind of way that was hard to understand unless you felt it yourself.
Which I had.
But what made her dangerous was that she wasn’t the type to just sit back and do nothing about that suffering.
It was all becoming clear to me now.
The girl in black, up in the stands, in Dale’s truck bed… She was Courtney’s—
Just then, I felt the buzzing of my phone in my jean pocket. I put down the bar rag, reaching for it, my stomach lunging as I read the words “Sunny Banks Nursing Home” on the screen.
Lawrence.
Were they calling me because something happened to him?
I answered before it got a chance to buzz a second time.
“Hello?” I said, nervously.
“Bitters?”
Lawrence’s old voice cracked over the line.
“What’s wrong, Lawrence?” I said. “What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Bitters… I think I might know who did it,” he said, his old voice cracking again. “She said something. Something that ties her to—”
Just then, the front door swung open, and a cold burst of air whipped through the bar, making the back shelves tremble and the glasses clink together like wind chimes.
I squinted at the door, unable to make out who was standing there in the dim lights.
“Just a second, Lawrence,” I said, holding the phone to my neck.
“I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” I said.
The woman walked inside like she didn’t hear me.
“We’re clos—”
“Aw, c’mon, hon,” she said. “It’s been a long day. Listening to that old man talk on and on the way old Lawrence does sure takes a lot out of a girl.”
She smiled, the crow’s feet at the edges of her black eyes rippling with the effort.
Lawrence’s voice came in small and faded from the phone speaker.
“She did it, Bitters,” he said. “She killed Dale.”
I looked over at Belle, horror coursing through me like a virus.
Each thud of her boots against the creaky wood floor sent a wave of shivers down my spine.
“I’m just dying for a drink,” she said.
Chapter 64
I placed the phone on the back counter, but I didn’t hang it up.
Belle took off her jacket. She wasn’t in her kitten-dotted nurse outfit anymore. She had changed to an all-black look.
She took a seat at the bar.
I wiped my sweaty hands off on my jeans, realizing that her full name was Anabelle.
Belle.Anabelle. Annie.
My mouth went drier than a wagon trail during an August drought.
“Sure, Belle,” I croaked out. “What, uh, what are you drinking?”
“I think I’ll have one of them Cupid’s Slingshots,” she said. “Always wanted to try one of those. It’s such a good name for a drink. Did you come up with it?”
I nodded silently.
“One Cupid’s Slingshot coming right up.”
I gathered together the ingredients, making slow, calculated motions. I added ice to one of the shakers, measured out the whiskey, cherry juice, honey simple syrup, and lime, and shook it until the outside was icy cold.
The whole time, I kept stealing glances at Anabelle.
Seeing the resemblance in her tired and worn face.
She sat there, picking at her nails, like she didn’t have a care in the world.
I poured the drink into a martini glass and slid it across the bar to her, doing my best to conceal my trembling hands.
She took it and brought it delicately up to her lips before taking a sip.
“Mmm,” she said. “That’s a fine drink, Loretta. A drink worth its name.”
She smiled, and I forced one back, even though smiling at her was the last thing I wanted to do.
“So, uh, how was old Lawrence doing this evening?” I asked, trying to keep the shakiness out of my voice.
“Oh, Mr. Halliday is just fine,” she said. “He doesn’t ever shut up, as you know well enough, but he’s just fine. Been going on and on about the murder that took place here. Won’t stop talking about it.”
I swallowed hard.
“Oh?” I squeaked out.
“Keeps saying he thinks some fella named Dry Hack did it.”
I felt her eyes on me, and I struggled to get the words out.
“Yeah, well, I guess he could be right,” I said.
She looked back behind her at the wood floor.
“This where Dale Dixon was killed?”
I nodded.
“Do you really think it was this Dry Hack fella who did it?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Then what’s your theory?” she said.
I looked down at the stain and then back up at her.
“I think it was a crime of passion.”
She raised her eyebrows at me.
“Really?”
“A woman did it,” I said.
That made her smile, and the look on her face made me break out in shivers.
“Well, you know what they say. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’” she said. “Sounds like old Dale never learned that lesson.”
She took another sip of her cocktail, her words hanging in the air like pollen in spring.
Goose bumps broke out on my arms.
I took a deep breath, and then asked, knowing that I shouldn’t have been going down this road—but realizing there was nowhere else to go.
“Did he deserve it, Anabelle?” I said.
She grinned again, and then looked up at me with those dark eyes of hers.
The same eyes as the girl in black from my vision.
“‘Course he did,” she said. “My sister deserves it too.”
Chapter 65
I was alone in the saloon with the murderess.
A bolt of lightning lit up the windows, and was followed shortly by a thunderous clap that made me want to duck down beneath the bar for cover.
The storm raged on outside, but Anabelle sat there like any other customer sitting at the bar and drinking.
Except Anabelle wasn’t any other customer.
She had bludgeoned a man to death.
My hands were trembling. I rested them on the counter,
trying to get a grip.
“I’ll admit that I was a little naïve back then, Loretta,” she said. “I see that now. I mean, we were all just kids. Just stupid kids. But the heart doesn’t always take that into account, does it?”
She stared past me, a faraway look in her eyes as she took a trip down memory lane.
“I’m just not the type that’s ever been able to take rejection well. Even all these years later, it still… it still burns.”
She cleared her throat.
“Would you be a dear and make me another drink?” she said.
I nodded, as if I had a choice in the matter.
When a psychopath asks for a drink, well, you better just give her one.
My hands were shaking so much that I mismeasured the cocktail ingredients, but it didn’t seem to matter at this point. I mixed it up and placed a new martini glass in front of her.
Anabelle sighed.
“Maybe I was a little impetuous, setting that brand new truck of his on fire like that,” she said. “I mean, not that he didn’t deserve it. But sometimes I think that I might have worn him down if I hadn’t done that. He sure did love that stupid car.”
She smiled.
“But as it was, I’d had, uh, a record already by then. The state sent me away to a mental hospital and, well, I didn’t see Dale for a long, long time.”
She took a sip of her fresh drink.
“You know, I’ve really been missing out by not coming to this establishment more often,” she said. “This drink here is really—”
“Why now, Anabelle?” I interrupted. “Why do all of this now? All these years later?”
Her face turned ashen.
“It’s always been all his fault,” she said. “My whole life I’ve been trying to move on. I even got married, but that didn’t help much. Husband finally left me last year, and I knew that it was Dale’s fault. My heart never got over him.
“After coming back to Broken Hearts, I watched him and my sister for a while. Just out of curiosity… but then guess what I found out? That the two of them were miserable together. Courtney’s been running around behind his back with that old veteran. Dale hasn’t been Mr. Faithful either. And, well, I just thought it might be a good time to put them out of their misery. Put me out of mine too. Three birds with one stone.”
She smiled again, but it faded quickly.
“He destroyed my life,” she said, each word dripping with bitter resentment. “Him and Courtney destroyed my life.”
“So you decided to destroy his?” I said.
She tilted her head to one side. I saw that her eyes were growing larger and darker.
“Seems like justice,” she said. “Don’t it to you?”
“No.”
She stared at me a long moment. A kind of stare that made me instantly regret disagreeing with her.
“You don’t know the first thing about it,” she said, fury building in her eyes.
But she was wrong on that point. I did know about it. I felt that girl’s pain, sitting in the bleachers, watching her true love in the arms of someone else. I knew about the pain and humiliation and heartbreak she felt when he told her he could never love her.
But despite all that, despite what Dale Dixon might have done to her, he didn’t deserve to end up bludgeoned to death in his own bar.
It wasn’t justice. It was homicide.
People had freewill. Dale had the right to choose Courtney over Anabelle, even if fate had wanted it the other way around.
And he didn’t deserve to die for it.
Anabelle got off the stool and started pacing around the bar.
I suddenly realized that her insane drama was only half over.
She’d come in tonight for a reason other than to tell her story to me.
She was waiting for somebody.
So she could complete the second part of her revenge.
“You wouldn’t really…” I started saying. “But, she’s your own sister, Anabelle. How can you—”
Just then, the door swung open and somebody came in from out of the storm.
“Speak of the devil,” Anabelle said, smiling. “And the devil shall appear.”
Courtney’s eyes went wide with terror when she heard her sister’s voice.
Chapter 66
Courtney stood there, her face as pale and white as the snow piling up outside.
Then her coloring faded to a shade of wet concrete as Anabelle let out a high-pitched cackle.
“C’mon, sis,” she said. “You must have had a sneaking suspicion.”
Courtney didn’t say a word. She looked like she couldn’t. Like her throat was as clogged as an old gutter in the fall.
“Well aren’t you going to tell me how much you’ve missed me?” Anabelle said, walking over to the jukebox, the floor shaking under the weight of her boots.
She plugged the machine in, and it lit up. Then she started flipping through the jukebox pages.
Courtney looked at me, her eyes full of desperation and fear.
“You got married to him, but you never knew the first thing about Dale,” Anabelle said.
Courtney’s grip on her purse loosened, and the tacky leather bag fell to the ground.
“He never told you the truth about us back in high school,” she continued. “About that night the week before the rodeo. About how we—”
“You should have stayed in that asylum,” Courtney said, her face growing red now. “You’re a liar, Annie.”
Anabelle’s lips curled up.
“You’re the liar, sis,” she said. “Running around with that old veteran, treating Dale like he was gum on the bottom of your shoe. All I did was put him out of his misery. I made all that hurt of being married to you for the last 25 years just go away like that.”
She snapped her fingers, and the quick and severe motion sent my heart jumping around in my chest like popcorn in a microwave.
Courtney closed her eyes.
“You were only with him to spite me. Do you know what it’s like to have someone take away the man you love like that? Your own sister, for the matter. Do you know how much that hurt?”
“Annie, that’s not—”
“And you know what he said to me right before I killed him?” Anabelle said, a twisted grin coming to her lips. “He said he regretted every marrying you. He regretted all of it.”
Courtney made a strange noise as her eyes flung open and grew wide.
“He only said that because you were about to kill him, you crazy bitch!” she yelled, her voice ragged and cracking.
Anabelle didn’t respond to that. She just pressed a button on the jukebox. A moment later, Tex Ritter started singing.
A sick feeling crawled up the back of my throat.
It was the same song playing when I’d found Dale lying on The Cupid’s floor. Deader than a doornail.
The fact that Anabelle had actually killed him suddenly hit home hard.
“You homicidal maniac,” Courtney said, her words dripping with hate. “You stupid, heartless—”
Anabelle turned away from the music box.
“Don’t put this on me,” she said. “You’re the one that got in the way. You ruined it for all of us.”
Her eyes were wide and black now, and held all the fury and rage that I had felt in the vision earlier.
“That’s not—” Courtney started saying.
But she didn’t get to finish her sentence.
In one lighting quick move, Anabelle grabbed the bottle of whiskey from off of the bar. She cracked it over the counter’s edge, shattering it. Broken glass and golden liquid flew everywhere, and I covered my face. Courtney screamed like she’d just been tossed off of a roller coaster and was hurtling down toward earth.
I couldn’t find my voice.
Anabelle held out the ragged edge of the bottle toward Courtney’s neck.
“I’ve got nothing against you, Loretta,” she said, glancing at me. “But if you ever want to see the outs
ide of this saloon, then I’m gonna need your help right now.”
She cornered Courtney, and her sister whimpered like a kicked dog.
My whole body was trembling now.
“What… what do you need?” I said, barely pushing the words out.
I feared the answer.
“Set that bar on fire,” she said.
Chapter 67
Anabelle was crazy.
But she had to be even crazier if she thought I was going to light The Cupid on fire.
“Are you sure this is the way you want it to go?” I said, trying to stall for more time.
“I wouldn’t want it any other way, hon,” she said.
I bit my lip.
“I know you must have a lighter somewhere back there, Loretta,” she said. “You set the bar on fire, and you’re free to leave.”
She smiled.
“There ain’t a better deal in town than that one right now.”
I swallowed hard, wishing I wasn’t the stubborn, hard-headed fool that I was.
But when it came to the well-being of The Stupid Cupid Saloon, there wasn’t anyone stupider than me.
“I know how it feels, Anabelle,” I said, grasping at straws when I should have been setting the bar aflame.
She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
“Don’t try and run some game on me, Loretta,” she said. “I’ve had people trying to do that to me my whole life. Now do what I’m telling you or this bottle is gonna be pointed in a different direction. You hear?”
“I was there, Anabelle,” I squeaked. “I saw you up in the stands that night, at the rodeo. I saw how much you—”
She turned toward me like a snake about to attack. The wrath radiating from her black eyes stopped me midsentence.
My throat went dryer than the Mojave.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” she said. “It’s not going to work. If you don’t get that bar lit in the next thirty seconds, my sis is going to start losing things.”
Courtney squealed. I went on anyway—I had to try.
“I felt how much you loved him, Anabelle,” I said, moving away from the bar. “You whispered that you loved him. Then you watched him hug Courtney like you didn’t even exist. Isn’t that how it went?”