by Zoe Burke
Girlie!
I lunged for him then, or rather, I tried to, but Mom grabbed my waist and pulled me back down.
“Better not call her ‘girlie’ if you want to keep all your teeth,” muttered Dad.
I sat seething, elbows on knees, head in my hands, trying to control my breathing. Looking at the floor, I wondered why Mom was wearing four-inch high heels. I shifted my gaze to the coffee table and noticed a business card lying face down. It was Brad’s, the one I had given to Dad the day before. I stared at it, looked back at Mom’s shoes, and felt my face flush. My body tingled from head to toe as everything fell into place. In that instant, I knew Georgia Browning hadn’t killed Cassie and probably had never been in my apartment. I also knew it would be a miracle if we all got out of this alive.
Chapter Twenty-four
I took a deep breath and sat back up. “Okay, go ahead, search the house. You can have your lousy hatpins and your money and do whatever you want with it all. Let my parents go and just deal with me. And Mickey.”
“Bea!” Mom and Dad sort of gasped my name at once.
Brad stubbed out this cigarette right on the wood coffee table. “Mickey, old pal, I have to admit, there’s a lot of satisfaction in finding you mixed up in this. What a riot! Mary and Jake are looking for the broad who’s fucking the self-righteous holier-than-thou Michael Paxton! How is she in the sack? Worth all of this?” He laughed.
Dad shot up. “You watch your mouth, you hear me?” Mom pulled him back down.
Brad kept talking, and his voice got even nastier. “You always thought you were better than me. Hell, my own wife thought you were better than me. So, fuck you, Paxton.”
Mickey shifted in the recliner, to better confront Brad. “Patty clearly came to her senses. You are such a prick. You shoved her around once, when you were drunk, and she called me, hysterical. I told her to leave you then, but I guess she stuck it out a while longer. What did you finally do? Break her bones?”
Brad sprang to his feet and shoved his pistol against Mickey’s forehead. Dusty sat up and growled. Mom screamed. Dad and I jumped up. Brad snarled at us. “Sit the fuck down, now.” We did. Dusty stayed sitting up, alert.
Brad backed away from Mickey and sat back down, too. “Enough talk. Everyone shut up while we wait for Jake.”
Mickey rubbed his forehead, and I instinctively started rubbing my own. “Hey, Brad. Did you kill my grandmother?” Dad twitched, Mom let out a little cry.
Brad snickered. “Hell, no. I’m the new guy on the team. I didn’t kill the old lady, and neither did Jake or Mary or Georgia. They don’t kill the old people; they just rob them. No need to kill the walking dead.”
“You lousy fucking asshole dickhead creep.”
“Ditto,” my mother said.
He leered at her. Mom flipped him the bird.
“Now, Georgia killing Cassie Hobbs, well, like I said, that was a mistake. But she’ll be found and convicted. More money for me.”
I pounced on that comment like hungry black panther. “I doubt that, you dirtbag.”
Brad chuckled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Georgia didn’t kill Cassie. You did.”
Mickey leaned his head back against the recliner and closed his eyes. His good eye, anyway, the other hidden behind his patch. He looked gray. Mom and Dad turned toward me with surprise.
Brad’s thumb stroked his gun. “I just told you, idiot. Georgia killed her.”
“No, you did. Georgia couldn’t have. She’s petite, and short. Remember, Mickey? She couldn’t have bashed my door in. Not a chance.”
Mickey rubbed his cheek. “She was tall, as I remember…”
“Shoes! Didn’t you notice her shoes? She was wearing four-inch high heels with platforms, and she was about my height with them on. Plus she was slight, thin. She couldn’t have killed Cassie.”
Mickey frowned, maybe trying to recall Georgia’s shoes.
Brad tapped his gun on his knee, probably ruminating on something very different from shoes, then raised his eyes to confront me. “If Georgia isn’t the killer, what makes you think you can accuse me, you little bitch?”
I was starting to shake. I didn’t know if it was a mistake to piss off Brad even more by showing my hand. He had a couple of guns on him, after all, and could blow us all away. But he could do that no matter what.
So I kept talking. “You went to my apartment to look for the glasses case. You wrote her name on my notepad. You’ve been lying to everyone about her, pretending that you don’t know her. But once the police find out you were in my apartment before the investigation and wrote her name and number down, you’ll be their number-one suspect.”
Mickey sat up, alert. “How do you know?”
“The G and the B.” I picked up Brad’s business card and handed it to him. “See? Look on the back of his card, here, where he wrote her name and address in the interrogation room? They’re the same as the G and the B on the notepad. I shoved the card into my pocket then and handed it to Dad last night. I never saw the back of it until just now.”
Mickey studied it, with his good eye. “You’re right.”
Brad watched, shaking his head. “What are you, some kind of handwriting expert?”
“Anybody can tell this is the same handwriting. You know, at the police station when I told you about the notepad, I thought that you were just pissed off at me. Now I know you were pissed off at your own stupid self. Bonkers was already under my bed and on top of the notepad when the police—I mean police who aren’t scumbag murderers—got there. They’ll know you were in my apartment.” My shaking was turning into all-over body shivering. “Pretty stupid, Brad, dropping that notepad.”
Brad waved his gun at me. “You can’t prove anything. You gave me the notepad, and I’ve already destroyed it.”
Suddenly my trembling stopped. I leaned in, forearms on knees, and smiled. “Um, not all of it, asshole.” I pointed my fingers at him, using Luis’ gunslinger move.
Everyone froze. The vibe in the room shifted. It felt thick and heavy, stifling. I was sweating. Brad stopped playing with his gun and pointed it at my head. “What are you talking about?”
“I rubbed over the second sheet on the pad, too, and ripped it out. It’s not as clear as the top sheet, but it’s legible.”
Mickey blinked his eye and started calculating. “When?”
“Before we went to visit Georgia. You were in the shower.”
Brad got up and walked over to me. He raised the gun like he was going to hit me with it. “Where is it?”
I jumped at the gun, flinging myself onto Brad and clutching him as we crashed against the coffee table. Mickey was up in the next second. Brad fired. Mickey fell down. Mom screamed. Dad grabbed her head and they ducked. I fought free and crawled to Mickey, who was writhing in pain.
Brad yelled, “Stupid! Very stupid!”
That’s when Dusty took over. Golden retrievers, as you probably know, are not known for their fierceness, but that gunshot brought out her inner rottweiler. She clamped Brad’s leg in her jaws, biting down and growling. Dad joined the action, leaping up to grab a heavy brass table lamp and smash it on Brad. He got him on his ribcage and Brad went down. Mom yanked off her shoes to beat Brad with sharp whacks. He couldn’t shield himself with Dusty doing her best to shred his leg into spaghetti. Mom was cursing like a maniac. Dad found the phone on the floor and dialed 9-1-1, leaving the line open and tossing the receiver onto the couch. He wrestled the gun from Brad, dodging Mom’s blows, sat on him, pointing the gun at the back of his head, and screamed over to the phone, “Send police! Intruder! Gun shots! Police officer down!”
Brad bucked suddenly, trying to throw Dad off him. Dad dug his knees in, his legs straddling Brad. He whacked him on the head with the gun. Brad went still.
Mom stopped hitting Brad, out of
breath. “We need to tie him up!” She darted around the room, wild-eyed.
I was on the floor next to Mickey. I had ripped off my shirt and was tying it around his leg, to stop the bleeding. “Over here, Mom! Mickey’s shot!”
She stopped. “But what do we do about…”
Mickey quietly urged, “Handcuffs. Use his handcuffs.” Mom sprang back into action, reaching around under Brad’s jacket, finding handcuffs, and with Dad’s help, rolling him over and clamping them, his arms jerked back hard. Dusty still worked on his leg. Dad stood up, gun still pointed at Brad. “Don’t move, you lousy prick.”
Mom rushed over to Mickey and carefully inspected the hole in his thigh while I held his hand. “It’s clean, through and through. Annabelle, get me antiseptic, gauze, and tape from the medicine chest.”
I ran to the upstairs bathroom and came back with the bandages along with a hand towel. I tossed the towel to Dad. “Gag him.”
While Mom went to work on Mickey, Dad rolled the towel the long way and gagged Brad with it, tying its ends tight behind his head. Then he petted Dusty. “Good girl, that’s all right now.”
Dusty let go. She walked over to Mickey and licked his face, and then lay down beside him with her head resting on his chest, and we all waited for the good guys to show up.
Chapter Twenty-five
When we heard a car pull up in the driveway, a very few minutes later, Mom, still kneeling with me next to Mickey, putting pressure on his wound, snapped, “Well, it’s about fucking time.” I thought her a bit unfair. It seemed to me that the police had gotten there miraculously fast. Too fast, in fact. The doorbell rang, and Mom yelled, “Just come in! Now!” and cursed again, “Jesus fucking Christ.” Dusty barked, but she stayed with Mickey.
Mickey yelled “No!” and lucky for us, the front door was locked. I jumped up and fastened the deadbolt and leaned my back against the door.
Mom looked at Mickey and then me, stunned. Dad put a foot on Brad’s chest on the floor, his hands weary from holding that gun. I’d bet my entire collection of Nancy Drew mystery books that it was the first time he ever had a gun in his hand, let alone belted a murderer on the head with one. He took a deep breath. “It’s not the police, Sylvia.”
Mickey lifted his head just enough to meet my eyes. “Stall them, Annabelle, until the police get here.” Then to Mom, “Sylvia, Jeff’s right. These are not the police. That’s Jake and his friends. Police could not have gotten here this fast. And they wouldn’t be ringing the doorbell and waiting for us to answer it.”
Brad grunted.
“Oh god.” Mom looked at Dad, who was shaking now. I was afraid he would drop the gun.
I walked over to him. “Let me take over for a bit, Dad. Really, I’m getting good at this stuff.” He hesitated but gave me the gun. I couldn’t help myself—I gave Brad a hard kick in the ribs after I had it in my hands. As I kicked him, I thought, Oh jeez. This is how it starts; I’m heading down the road to a life of ruthless violence. I felt so bad about that, I kicked him again. Extra hard. Then I warned, “Make any noise at all, dirtbag, and I shoot.”
I heard Brad stifle a chuckle, so I kicked his head. I was beginning to enjoy it. Me and Uma. We could be twins after all. Fraternal twins, anyway.
The fake cops knocked hard. “Everything all right in there? Police. Open the door. We got a call about a disturbance.”
The four of us stayed quiet, and Brad must have been sick of getting kicked, because he didn’t even groan. Dusty started barking in a regular rhythm and trotted over to the door.
My mother yelled out, “Everything’s fine here, officer. We’re all just fine. Thanks for your concern.”
“We need to verify that, ma’am. Open the door now.”
Dusty was still barking when I saw a shadow move past the den window and realized one of them was coming around to the sliding glass door leading into the den, where we all just happened to be. The curtains were drawn, but it wouldn’t take much, I figured, for this dude to get in that door. “One of them’s coming around the back.” I whispered loud enough for all of us to hear.
“My gun, Annabelle, give me my gun.” That’s when I remembered that there were two guns, and Mickey’s was still in Brad’s pocket. I squatted down and pulled it out, handed it to Dad, and he gave it to Mickey. “Now, Sylvia and Jeff, get out of here. Go upstairs into the bathroom and lock the door.” Mickey was whispering, too.
Mom started to protest, but Mickey ordered, “Now.” He can do that. He takes control and gets everyone to do what needs to be done. He’s a natural leader. A guy you’d walk through fire for. A guy who can make you believe that a spontaneous trip to Las Vegas is the best idea anyone ever had, ever.
Dad helped Mom up and after giving me a look of, I have to say, full terror, he led her upstairs, saying, “Mick, you don’t let anything happen to our daughter.”
Mickey rolled over on his stomach and propped himself on his forearms, holding his gun in both hands and pointing it at the sliding glass door. “Get down, Annabelle. Keep your gun on Brad, but take cover.”
The recliner Brad had been sitting in was between me and the door, so I knelt down behind it and stuck the gun into Brad’s side. “Don’t you move,” I whispered. Dusty stopped barking and started growling, still at the front door.
A cement garden urn came hurtling through the glass, pulling the curtain with it and landing a few inches from Mickey. Jake followed, gun raised, and in the next second, he was down on the floor. I heard Mickey fire, and I figured he got Jake. Dusty barreled in, barking, and slid across the wood floor, crashing into me, knocking me over on my side. I pointed the gun toward the broken door and pulled the trigger. Then we heard a loud “Shit!” and someone running.
That’s when the good guys showed up.
Chapter Twenty-six
I rode in the ambulance with Mickey to the hospital again, and I waited while they stitched up his thigh—like Mom said, he was lucky, as the bullet didn’t hit a major artery or the bone. We gave statements over and over again to the police, that night and the next day.
Mickey did manage to shoot one of the bad guys. He didn’t die, but he won’t escape jail. The other guy was running to the car when the real police showed up; they hauled his ass off in the squad car.
My bullet, on the other hand, ended up lodged in the den wall just above the door. Talk about recoil.
As for Jake, well, he did die. But not because Mickey shot him. Jake lost his balance throwing that urn at us. He was falling to the floor before Mickey fired, and the bullet missed him. The urn busted in two, and he landed on a sharp edge of a broken side. That is, his neck did. Got his carotid artery that time. He was dead pretty fast. I won’t lie to you: it was a big sickening bloody mess.
Brad Slimebag Franklin got away with nothing. The police searched his car and found a tire iron with Cassie’s blood on it. He had used it to pry open the door and hit her with it, too. He confessed so he wouldn’t get the needle at San Quentin, but he’ll spend the rest of his life there.
Mary was arrested at SFO just as she was about to board a plane for Rio. Georgia was apprehended outside of Great Falls, Montana, a few days later. She had fled as soon as Mickey and I had left her office. I guess she was going to head north into Canada, as far away from Mary and Jake as possible.
Both women spilled their guts to the police, filling in all the details.
Georgia hatched the whole plan. She and Jake had teamed up at the casino in Vegas to embezzle some money, but Georgia chickened out on the deal at the last minute. When she quit the casino and moved to San Francisco, she decided to cash in on old people by specializing in estate law.
Jake had been pissed about her splitting and had been threatening her ever since. So Georgia invited Jake to join her in the Tall Oaks scheme, to get him off her back and out of her life. Together they decided to bring Mary in, since she was
such an accomplished thief, and Georgia finagled that room for her.
Mary’s role was to suss out the likely victims—plus steal their jewelry. Georgia would gain their trust—and their checks made out to her phony investment company. Withdrawals required two signatures, Jake’s and Mary’s. Once a month all three would go get the cash and secure it in the strong box within the safe deposit box. The three keys—Mary’s and Georgia’s strongbox keys hidden in the hatpins and Jake’s safe-deposit-box key—were insurance. Not one of them could make off with the dough without the others.
Once Mary was out of rehab she had to tell Jake about the missing hatpins, and that’s when Jake got Brad—his old police academy buddy—involved.
When Brad couldn’t find the hatpins at my apartment, he called Jake, who gave him Georgia’s number and told him to warn her that if she really did still have the key, then she was in trouble not only with Jake, but with Brad, who could arrest her.
Brad was right about Mary being afraid of her own son. She had texted him Luis’ medallion number when she saw us running out of the Royal Opal. That’s how Jake found us at The Full House, but by then she figured I didn’t have the hatpin on me and didn’t want to run into him any more than we did. She called him after she left the Sleep Tight Inn and told him I didn’t have the glasses case, and that she was going back to Tall Oaks. He hired his cronies—those two fake cops with the wrong shoes—to bring her to him. He didn’t trust her and was royally pissed about the missing hatpins.
Mickey went back to New York. As he put it, he had to “check in with his life.” I didn’t like that phrase. It seemed to imply that the past few days had been something other than his life, that I was something other than his life. I drove him to the airport in the Mustang. We checked his suitcase at the curb and hugged each other hard before he walked on crutches into the terminal. I waited for him to turn around and wave, but he didn’t. I knew he was in pain, so I tried not to read anything into that. Maybe he wasn’t good at goodbyes. And he said that it wasn’t really “goodbye.” He said he’d call me in a couple of days. I turned in the rental car and got a cab back to Mom and Dad’s.