“Darla, what’s wrong?” He clutched the phone cord, his eyes darting to the other phone booth situated three feet away and wondered if he could stay on the line with her while dialing the police from the other cabinet.
“Oh, Gerry—“ She sounded weak and frightened.
He could hear her begin to cry, as if the sound of his voice was the only catalyst she’d been vulnerable to.
“Darla!” he said hoarsely.
And then the other voice came on the line. A voice that would awaken him, time and time again for years to come, in a screaming sweat from the deepest of sleeps, the sweetest of dreams. A voice he would remember until the day he died.
“It’s me, darling,” the voice hissed. “It’s Patti. I’m here with wifey. We’re all here together.”
Gerry was mute. He tried to imagine the scene. Patti at his house, Darla hysterical...
“What’s going on, Patti?” he asked evenly, hoping he didn’t sound as out of control as he felt.
“I’m taking care of business, lover. I know how hard this must be for you.”
“Patti, what are you doing there?”
“Don’t worry, darling, I told you—“
“What’s going on?! Patti, let me speak to my wife—“
“Your ‘wife’? Your ‘wife’?” Her voice came across the wire like serpents writhing across dried leaves. “You can forget your ‘wife’, darling. She’s deadsville, okay? She’s terminated, okay?”
My God, my God, my God...Gerry felt his mind unraveling.
“...I did little Dierdre too, or hadn’t you figured that out? Maybe I overestimated you, Gerry. I’m doing it for you, you bastard! Do you hear me? I did ‘em all for you!”
Gerry saw his prospective buyer rise from his dinner chair and look impatiently in Gerry’s direction in the phone booth. Gerry twisted away from the image and stared at the back of the booth. “My God, Patti,” he said. “You couldn’t have...”
“Couldn’t have what? Killed someone for you? How about two someones? How about going on three someones?” A screech of laughter erupted across the telephone wire into the claustrophobic phone booth.
“Patti, don’t...don’t hurt Darla...if you care...” He knew he sounded impotent.
“The bitch is as good as dead, okay? So forget it. What I want to talk with you about now is the kid.”
Jesus! Haley.
“You call the police or screw things up in any way and I’ll kill her, okay, Gerry? Do you understand, dearest?”
“Let me speak to Darla, Patti...please...” He felt his tears splash against the phone receiver.
“No way, darling. Behave yourself and it’ll just be the three of us. I’ll be Haley’s new mama. Screw me over, Gerry, and I’ll strangle her right now with her own Winnie-the-Pooh bathrobe belt, okay?”
He heard her small, guttural laugh, and he thought he would lose his mind. “Patti,” he said softly. “Please don’t hurt my wife and daughter. Please, don’t—“
“You want to say good-bye to your first wife? I don’t mind that, Gerry. I’m not the jealous type. Especially when it comes to widowers.”
He heard Patti laugh again and then the small muffled noise that was his wife’s voice.
“Gerry?” Darla said. She sounded so weak and small to him.
“Sweetheart, be brave. Keep her busy until I—“
“Until you what, asshole?” Stump’s ugly, strident shriek was back on the line. “I told you, the bitch is history. Your only hope is for the kid now, understand? Do you fucking understand me?”
“Yes,” he said quickly, swallowing hard. “Yes, Patti, I do.”
5
Burton hung up the phone and turned back to the blackboard.
“No answer?” Dave asked. He stood, holding the Selby & Parker file in his hands.
“It’s busy.”
“The art director said Parker was scheduled to be out of town tonight.”
“So you said.”
“The wife would have the number where he could be contacted—“
“Her line’s busy, Dave,” Burton repeated testily.
A silence mushroomed between the two of them and they both stood looking at the blackboard.
Suddenly, Burton grabbed up his jacket from the back of his desk chair and jerked open the door.
“Bring the address,” he said over his shoulder.
6
Stump waved an arm at the cluttered kitchen, its boxes stacked and perched on counters and kitchen chairs.
“We’ll go away, just the two of us, Gerry and I,” she said. “But I think we’ll have to change our travel destination under the circumstances. Perhaps Columbia, or maybe Mexico if he doesn’t want to go quite that far.”
Afraid to speak, but convinced that her fate was assured if she did not, Darla cleared her throat again. “Why...why not just let him divorce me?” she asked in a whispery croak.
“Divorce you?” Patti’s face contorted into a sneer. “You must think I’m a moron. Is that what you think, Darla? Do you think Patricia Stump is stupid?”
She slammed her hand down hard on the table beside the gun and it jumped, making a harsh thumping sound. This seemed to remind Stump of its existence because she snatched it up and pointed it at Darla’s head.
“Go into divorce court with that mewling brat of yours and stick Gerry for alimony and child support and the house and the car and the agency? Just how well would I be taking care of him if I were to let that happen? And then you always popping up in our lives, I suppose? ‘Haley needs shoes, Haley needs a father, Haley needs, Haley needs..” Stump mimicked a sing-songy tone. “The only way Gerry and I can begin our new life together is for me to erase his old one.” She smiled and wagged the gun in Darla’s face.
Darla was surprised she wasn’t crying. Surprised she hadn’t broken down and become totally deranged. The bitch was pointing a gun ten inches from the bridge of her nose, and she was just sitting there, continent and calm. So this is what true fear does to you, she thought numbly. This is what facing your own death feels like. She tried to force herself to think of a plan. To concentrate on what she could do, could say, could possibly say...
The knock at the door made them both jump violently. Stump’s finger twitched against the trigger—the Glock did not have a safety latch—but the gun, miraculously, did not fire. She lowered the weapon and looked suspiciously at Darla.
“I don’t know who it could be,” Darla said, her eyes desperate and hopeful.
“Stay here and keep your mouth shut,” Stump said. “I’ll kill whoever it is if you so much as fart in here.” Her mouth was a tight, nasty little slit that spewed words like the snakes and toads from one of Haley’s book of fairy tales.
Darla nodded woodenly, her eyes never leaving Stump’s face.
Patti Stump took the gun and walked to the front door.
7
The taxi driver had refused to wait. Had snatched her money, deposited her suitcase on the sidewalk, and left, convinced, no doubt of his inability to find return fares in this out-of-the-way suburb.
Gerry and Darla lived in a tract subdivision with double and triple story elevations of stucco and brick. Maggie never noticed before how unfriendly the neighborhood seemed before tonight.
She rang the doorbell and held her breath. The house was dark but she could hear noises from the back. When the door finally opened and she faced Patti Stump—grinning insanely from behind a large, ugly handgun—Maggie found herself running through the options of what she could have done besides driving out here. And when she heard Darla’s sobs coming to her from down the hall and out onto the front steps, she knew that she had never had any other choice.
“You’re dead, Maggie,” Stump said. “You know that, right?” Stump grabbed Maggie by her hair and jerked her into the house.
Chapter 23
1
She lay quietly in the large, queen-sized bed. The house was quiet now. No more screaming or phones ringing or awf
ul threats. At last. Just a quiet easiness to the house, and, more particularly, to this room. Patti rolled over lazily and buried her face in one of the cotton floral pillowcases. Her heart quickened as Gerry’s distinct scent filled her nostrils. This must be the side he sleeps on, she thought with joy and she scooted her body over and lay on it. Here’s where he dreams and wakes, reads and makes love. A jarring thought pierced her when she called the image to mind of her beloved locked in a passionate embrace with the creature downstairs. Erasing the picture, she replaced it with a more vivid one of herself and Gerry, together, finally, in this bed.
She rolled across the whole bed, reveling in the feel of it. Our bed now, she thought happily, as she pulled the soft sheets, with their roses and violets dancing against a white background, up to her sharp, hard chin. She lay and listened to the quiet of the house and tried to imagine it filled with the sounds of Gerry’s laughter and pleasure in her. It gave her a warm feeling to think that it would all happen soon.
Getting up slowly, she walked to the bedroom closet and pulled out several of his shirts. Most of them she had seen over and over again at the office. She smiled to herself and looked at the bottom of the closet. There, amongst his shoes, was the laundry basket. She pulled it out and began pawing through it. With shaking fingers, she extricated a man’s blue and white striped dress shirt. She held it to her face and breathed deeply. Quickly, she peeled off her own violet-colored pullover and tossed it into the dirty clothes basket. She slipped the soiled button-down over her shoulders and fastened it up to her neck. Raising an arm to her face, she smelled the fabric. Any moment now that she cared to, she could access him, call him to her, by just raising a shirt sleeve. Patti moved to an old maple dresser that stood alone against one wall of the bedroom. Odd, she thought, that he would have this old crate here in among all this expensive furniture. Possibly a boyhood dresser, she wondered? She pulled open the drawers one by one. Underwear, undershirts, socks, his passport, bowties, cufflinks, a Father’s Day card from the little girl, postcards, a packet of condoms.
Patti held the condoms in her hand and reflected for a moment on how she felt about finding them. Deciding, at last, that they were his commitment not to have any more children by the bitch downstairs, she replaced them in the drawer and pulled open another. Her fingers touched another card: “To the man I married on our anniversary.” She opened the card and read its personal contents as coolly as if she were reading an autopsy report. She closed the drawer quietly, tucking the card in the waistband of her hiphuggers. Perhaps the bitch would like to look at this while the trigger was being pulled?
Feeling annoyed and agitated once more, she left the room, the card pushing uncomfortably into her midriff, the Glock gripped in her hand. She shut the bedroom door behind her and turned to the stairs leading back downstairs.
Time to do it, she thought. Time to finish it.
2
Maggie sat in one of the kitchen chairs next to Darla, her hands bound tightly behind her. Stump had pressed packing tape to their mouths and so the two sat, mutely watching each other, as if willing the other to be either a solution or a solace. Stump had propped up the anniversary card in front of Darla on the kitchen table. The cover showed floating silver bells and pink hearts, some art designer’s idea of marital bliss, with the words now screaming out: ‘To The Man I Married—On Our Anniversary.’
Darla knew it was all over. She knew it was going to end right here at her own kitchen table, her own macaroni-and-cheese-hot-soup-and-tea kitchen table. A bizarre thought came to her: she and Gerry had made love on this table once. She wished she was ungagged just long enough to tell the crazy bitch that. She looked over at Maggie. She looked dazed and scared. She felt a rush of guilt.
“Botched it with you once, Maggie,” Stump said as she wagged the gun at her. “Remember all that great advice you gave me? About how to make a man run for his life away from you? Remember that? You bitch. I’m going to enjoy killing you as much as wifey.” She turned to Darla. “I killed her sister, you know. It was easy. She was this stupid tramp, drunk or something. I just walked in, and did her. So easy. Didn’t have to shoot her. She had the strength of nothing.”
Without another word, she placed the snout of the Glock to Darla’s temple, her finger quivering on the trigger.
“Bye, wifey. Time to become the ex-wifey.”
2
Burton stepped across the tidily shaved and edged front lawn, and around to the side of the house. These new suburban housing designs made his job easier, since they eliminated all side windows. A small beam of light at the back of the house pushed through the row of oleander bushes which crowded the kitchen door. The light from the kitchen stabbed into the woods, illuminating the back yard and the trunks of the trees in the forest behind.
Moving as quietly as possible, while still being mindful that Kazmaroff’s watch was usually a little fast when timing ten-minute rear entries, Burton heard the first murmur of human voices coming from inside the house. His heart beat quicker. I was right.
He crept around the backyard and crouched at the end of a small deck behind the large kitchen window. Through the window, he could see two women, tied to chairs, their backs to him, and another woman—dressed like some kind of homeless person—waving the familiar, angular shape of a Glock. In the instant it took Burton to process the scene, the armed woman brought the gun to the head of one of the seated women.
And then the front doorbell rang.
No! No! Too soon!
The gun-woman froze. She looked over her shoulder toward the front door. Then she scanned the kitchen frantically as though looking for an intruder to suddenly materialize before her. The expression on her face reminded Burton of a cornered, wild animal. Her hand never wavered from the woman’s head where she held the gun.
Burton quickly tried to size up the possibilities. Would she try to answer the door? Would she make a run for it? Jesus, would she kill her hostages first?
He tried to get a bead on her with his own Colt-45, but the Parker woman was blocking the way. Think, man, think! She’s not gonna wait forever.
The sound of the brick as it hit the seven-foot expanse of window in the breakfast nook felt like a nuclear explosion to Maggie. She screamed, then jerked her chair over on its side, crashing into Darla and knocking her chair off-kilter too as both of them tumbled to the floor. At the same time, Maggie was aware of Stump screaming and shooting out the back window. The crazed woman pumped a dozen rounds into the darkened backyard through the jagged framework that was the rear of the breakfast room. Her screams were maniacal and frenzied.
“I’ll kill you, you bastard! Is that you, Gerry? She’s dead, you bastard! I killed her! I killed her! I killed her!”
Kazmaroff heard the first shot, then smashed his way into the house through the living room window, bringing drapes, curtain rods, window blinds and window frame crashing down with him. Still clutching his gun, he struggled to his feet and threw the draperies and hardware away from him and lunged down the short hallway to the kitchen, kicking and knocking over packing boxes as he went, years of sentimental keepsakes, photo albums, Christmas ornaments and special family treasures smashing against the wall behind him. Holding his gun in front of him in the ready position, he bellowed as he ran, “Police! Drop your weapons!”
He arrived in the kitchen with no time to assess the situation beyond pointing his gun at a woman shooting out the back window of the breakfast nook.
“Police!” he shouted again. “Drop it!”
She started to turn to face him, her gun still level, her finger still pushing the trigger.
He shot her once, in the forehead.
Epilogue
Gerry walked away from the gate and patted down his jacket pockets. He kept his wife and daughter in view at all times. In time, I’ll calm down, he thought. After a while, I’ll be able to relax again.
He watched Darla sitting in one of the long lines of plastic airport chairs, a roll of
magazines in one hand and little Haley’s mittened hand in the other. She seemed very animated as she talked to Laurent. Only the clutching hand holding her daughter told a different story.
“I guess you got everything?” Maggie stood next to Gerry in the airport gift shop and watched him anxiously.
He tapped his inside coat pocket. “Passports, visas, beaucoups American dollars, and a representative sampling of Kiwi dollars. Want to see them? They’re very pretty.” He stuck his hand in his jacket and pulled out a few pastel money notes in purple and pink.
“Very nice,” Maggie said.
“I was tempted to bring Monopoly money, but Darla assured me the vendors Down Under would be too sophisticated for that.”
“So, I guess you’ve got everything.”
“Yes, Maggie. I do. Calm down, okay?”
Maggie shook her head. “I just don’t know what to say,” she said.
“You act like you’re at a funeral.”
“I’m losing a friend.”
“There are daily flights to Auckland.”
“And applications for the next space shuttle too. Excuse me for thinking neither is a very viable possibility for me.”
“You choose your own limitations.”
“Oh, thank you, Dale Carnegie. Isn’t it time for you to go yet?”
“Maggie—“
“No, Gerry, listen. I’m glad for you, I really am. If this is what you want, then I am just too-happy, okay?”
“Really.” He looked unconvinced.
“And I officially apologize for that crack I made in the car.”
“You mean the one about Kiwi fruit causing cancer? Forget it. Darla will explain Auntie Maggie’s sense of humor to Haley and I’m sure we’ll get her to eat fruit again.”
“I’m going to miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too, Maggie. But you’ll visit. We’ll come back here for visits.”
“Won’t you be afraid of being gunned down in the concourse if you come back to the U.S.?” Instantly, Maggie regretted saying it.
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