It was a standoff, Jimmy with the gun and Richard with the knife held at Lisa. Neither man would budge, and so finally Jimmy pointed his gun at my head.
“If you hurt her, I’ll shoot Miranda.”
What Jimmy didn’t realize was that by shooting me, he’d actually be doing Richard a favor! My mind raced as I considered the situation. Next to me, AJ had found a small stick in the rubble, and she was trying to use it to cut the tape that bound her hands behind her back. I wasn’t sure if her efforts could work, but I needed to provide a distraction, just in case.
“Hey, Jimmy, I just figured out how you managed to fake such a convincing Long Island accent,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s not a Long Island accent,” AJ corrected. “That’s downtown New Orleans. They sound the same.”
“That confirms it then. His name’s not really Jimmy, it’s Junior. Jimmy is Junior. Lisa’s husband.”
AJ stared from one to the other, incredulous.
I felt stupid that I hadn’t made the connection before now, though I knew why I hadn’t: Lisa’s husband was a Creole, and Jimmy Smith’s skin was white. I had forgotten that skin tones of Creoles varied widely.
“Shame on you, Lisa,” I scolded. “You knew way more about the angelus than you let on. You knew enough to send your husband up to Manhattan to come after me.”
No one replied, so I continued.
“Let me guess how it went. I wasn’t responding to Willy’s letters, so you had to do something. You bought a cheap painting, added the symbol, and then brought it to me to get a feel for whether I knew where the bell was buried or not.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jimmy said, cutting me off, switching his voice to a high tone as he imitated me. “‘I know I’ve seen it somewhere, I just can’t remember where. I’m sure it’ll come to me.’ I had my guys search you to be sure. There it was, right there on your head. You’re a slick one. The next thing I know, Lisa tells me you skipped town and popped up here.”
“Where Lisa has been playing me all along, just waiting for me to figure out the things the two of you couldn’t.”
“You’re a smart girl, Miranda. It was worth a try.”
I shook my head, wishing I could think of a way to end this tragic standoff. AJ’s efforts with the stick had not worked after all. I spoke again.
“Even if you find it, you’ll never be able to sell that bell. It’s a priceless historical artifact.”
“News flash for you, babe, we already have a buyer. Did you really think I was an offshore oil worker? I’m in the import-export business. I’ve got several interested parties, mostly private collectors. Trust me, the price on this bell is more than you could fathom. Now we just have to get all of you out of the way so we can find it ourselves and get out of here. So how ’bout it, mister? How ’bout you let my wife go and we’ll cut you in, give you a piece of the pie.”
Much to my shock, rather than speaking, Richard simply pressed the knife into Lisa’s neck until he pierced the skin. Held tightly in his grasp, she began to cry, though her tears were for real this time. With a sickening grip in the pit of my stomach, I realized that by telling Richard about Lisa I may have taken us all from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.
“If she’s his wife,” AJ demanded of me suddenly, “why was he choking her last night?”
I thought for a moment and then ventured a guess.
“He wasn’t choking her. He was kissing her goodnight. Then they heard the door open and had just a second to cover for it.”
“Lucky for us that I’m a quick thinker and she’s a good actress,” Jimmy said.
Richard pushed the knife deeper as Lisa choked and gasped.
“Stop it, man, or I really will shoot her,” Jimmy said, the her being me.
“Go ahead, I don’t care,” Richard replied. “I just want out of here. You people can do whatever you want to each other.”
Somehow, I had a feeling that he really meant it.
“Fine,” Jimmy said, hearing the truth in Richard’s voice as well. “Leave.”
“Put down the gun and your walkie-talkie first,” Richard instructed. “If you do that, I’ll let your wife go.”
To my surprise, Jimmy did as he said, placing both items on the dirty floor in front of him.
“Kick the gun over toward those leaves.”
With great reluctance, Jimmy kicked his gun, sending it skittering noisily across the floor and into a massive pile of rubble.
“Now kick the walkie-talkie this way.”
Jimmy gave it a kick but it slid only halfway to Richard, coming to a stop about five feet from the ladder.
“Kick it again,” Richard said.
Jimmy did as instructed, though he grumbled as went. At the same time, Richard dragged Lisa with him toward the ladder and then let her go as soon as he had reached it. Sobbing and clutching at her bleeding neck, she flew into the arms of her husband straight ahead of her.
Richard’s next move took us all by surprise.
Before anyone could stop him, he jumped forward with a twist and rammed his body against the couple, knocking them off balance. In a flash, they both tumbled over the side of the loft and went crashing to the ground one floor below.
THIRTY-NINE
Swiftly they followed the flight of him who was speeding before them,
Blown by the blast of fate like a dead leaf over the desert.
Smoothing his clothes and hair, Richard stepped closer to the edge and looked down, obviously pleased with what he saw. There were no sounds coming up from down there, and I didn’t know if that meant that Jimmy and Lisa were both dead or just injured. Standing up straight, Richard looked at us without expression, calmly folded up the knife, and slipped it into his pocket.
Then, ignoring us, he crossed the room toward the general direction of the gun.
“And so you kill again,” I said, as he clearly had no intention of letting AJ and me go free.
“The first time was an accident, a horrible accident,” he said, kneeling to search through the rubble. “Cass was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She shouldn’t have been butting into something that wasn’t any of her business.”
“She was a little girl,” AJ cried. “Her parents were fighting and she was scared.”
“Yeah, you sound just like your sister. Yasmine wanted to tell the police exactly what happened, how I went to hit her and accidentally knocked Cassandra down the stairs instead. I talked her out of it, but then you showed up for the funeral, and I knew she’d tell you sooner or later.” Looking at me, he added scornfully, “Yasmine and Janet shared everything. Even their own children, as it turns out.”
AJ bristled at his cutting remark.
“At first I just kept Yasmine sedated,” he continued, still rooting through the debris. “I told everyone she was completely unhinged, on the verge of a breakdown so that nobody would believe her babble. But even in her haze, I knew she wasn’t going to stay silent forever. So I did what I had to do. The night after Cassandra’s funeral, I brought Yasmine outside to the garden and helped her commit suicide. She wanted to anyway, you know. I just speeded things along.”
“She was grieving the death of her child,” AJ said. “Of course she wanted to die. That doesn’t mean she would have taken her own life for real.”
He continued his search for the gun, ignoring her remark.
“Obviously, Willy saw you out there that night. He saw what you did,” I said, discreetly looking around for something sharp to cut ourselves loose while he was so distracted. “Why didn’t he go to the police?”
Richard continued digging, clicking his tongue.
“Good question,” he said. “Until all of this excitement here today, I always wondered that myself. Family loyalty? Some deep sense of Cajun justice? As blackmail so he could get a mention in the will? I was never sure of the real motive behind that man’s silence. All I knew was that instead of going to the police, he t
ook the information to my parents, who handled everything without involving the authorities. And handle it they did, telling me I had to leave this place and never return, giving me just enough money so that I wouldn’t end up homeless, signing my rightful inheritance over to a little girl who wasn’t even my own child…”
He flashed a look of pure hatred our way, though I wasn’t sure if it was directed at AJ or me—or both.
“Sit still!” he boomed, having caught both me and AJ discreetly rooting through the nearby rubble with our feet. “Not another move.”
We sat there, frozen, and after a moment he returned to his search, pushing more rubble aside in his attempt to find the gun.
“I guess my parents figured that with one son a murderer and the other a drunk who’d probably be dead before they were, the only relative left who deserved to inherit the bulk of their fortune was you, Miranda.”
“You murdered their grandchild and their daughter-in-law,” I replied sharply, “and they allowed you to walk away from here free and clear? They actually thought that taking away your precious inheritance was punishment enough?”
“You think it’s been easy for me, getting cut off and kicked out and having to start over somewhere else?”
“You made out okay,” I said, thinking of his wife and stepchildren and rambling faux stucco house complete with pool. Shockingly, depending on how all of this played out, he might just slip right back into that life without any of them ever realizing that they were sharing their home with a murderer.
“What do you know of my life? You’re a stranger to me.”
I didn’t justify his comment with a reply. Beside me, I could feel AJ shifting, and as I glanced at her, I realized what she was doing. She was rubbing her shoulder to her ear, trying to knock loose one long, silver earring. Even though I didn’t think she’d be able to get it loose by herself, it was a good idea. Though not exactly sharp, the metal might be the right shape to break through the duct tape—provided we had enough time before Richard found that gun and shot us both dead.
Scooting forward, I rested my head on her shoulder, innocently keeping it there until he glanced in our direction. To him, we were merely mother and daughter, huddled together for comfort. When he returned to his rooting—more frustrated now—I tilted my head back and used my mouth to bite the earring back and pull it away from the front.
“Finally,” Richard said, victoriously pulling the lost gun from the rubble and holding it up in the air.
As he did so, I discreetly spit the silver backing into the leaves and AJ shook her head in such a way that the heavy earring now slipped loose and dropped to the floor beside her.
The way we were sitting, she had a better chance of giving this a try than I did. Without a word between us, she struggled to pick up the earring while I prepared to run interference yet again.
“Why did you kill Willy?” I asked, watching as Richard cleaned the filthy gun with the bottom of his shirt. Beside me, AJ managed to get a grip on the earring and rub it against her bindings behind her.
“Because I was afraid he was finally going to spill the beans at the end of his life. I heard he was asking for you to come down, that he needed to tell you something. I figured that something was the truth about Yasmine. So I came here too. It wasn’t easy getting into the house unseen. The man was never left alone. Then you showed up and I knew it was now or never.”
“You were hiding in the bushes near the water.”
“Came up the bayou by rowboat and spent an entire day hiding out there in the brush, just waiting for my chance. Originally, I was going to smother him with his own pillow, but then I saw the lighter fluid just outside his door and thought that might be a better idea, that his death would be far less suspicious if it happened right in front of everybody rather than while he was alone. I just didn’t expect to cut my head when I put the lighter fluid back.”
I glanced down at AJ’s hand, thrilled to realize that she was making some progress with the earring. Unfortunately, Richard finished cleaning off the gun at that moment.
“You know,” he said as he examined the weapon more closely, “when Willy told my parents what he saw that night in the garden, he said that he’d been out there taking a late night walk and smoking a cigarette. Now that I’ve been learning about all of this bell business here today, I realize that Willy was lying, that he’d had his own secret to hide about that night too. That’s why he went to my parents instead of the police, so that he could get rid of me without his own secret being revealed.”
“Do you know whose bones the men found out there today?” I asked, wondering if Willy had also been a killer, if he had been up to something far more sinister that night than burying a bell—such as burying a victim. Willy even said that he had done something terrible, that he needed my forgiveness.
“No, but I have a theory. I’ve been listening to all of this, thinking you people are so convinced that the angelus is a bell. I’m thinking maybe the angelus was a person. Willy buried a person under the canning shed. This Jimmy or Junior or whoever he is who came here today to find some big valuable treasure, but he didn’t realize that he’d already found what he’d been looking for. Only the angelus wasn’t a bell, it was a body.”
Could that be true? Could the angelus be someone’s remains? If so, at least that would explain what Willy had been doing out there that night. Maybe the bones dated back several centuries and they were the treasure that I had sworn an oath to protect. It made a certain amount of sense, until I remembered my grandmother’s mural that I had uncovered upstairs. In that mural, there had clearly been a bell—forged from gold, carried out in the expulsion, kept safely hidden ever since.
“You’re probably right,” I said, now aware that nothing could be gained from telling him he was way off base. “But even so those bones might be valuable. With my training, I could help you excavate them, get them evaluated, and maybe even find a buyer. Depending on who or what they are, they could be worth a fortune. If people have been guarding them since the mid-seventeen hundreds, they could even be the secret remains of Columbus or Pocahontas or something.”
I couldn’t chance another glance at AJ’s hands, but from the subtle movements of her shoulders, I had a feeling she was close to breaking free.
“Yeah, or maybe Amelia Earhart or Al Capone. Whatever. I don’t need to bother with all that. I’m about to inherit a great big house along with a nice stretch of bayou-front property. Besides, you can’t help me out with that anyway because you’ll be dead.”
With that, he raised the gun and pointed it straight at me. Refusing to cower, I jutted out my chin and stared back at him defiantly.
“If you shoot me,” I said, “the police will know for a fact this was murder. Shouldn’t you try to make it look like an accident?”
“Oh, I am,” Richard replied, surprising me by lowering the gun and then tucking it into his waistband. Then he crossed to the ladder and climbed on, pausing before he headed down. “Funny, isn’t it Miranda? You saw everything that happened that night, but then you got all wacky on us and forgot about it anyway.”
“Lucky for me,” I replied, “or else you’d have killed me long before now.”
His only response was to give us a final smirk and climb down the ladder. My hope was that either Jimmy or Lisa had managed to survive their fall and were waiting at the bottom to ambush him. There were no sounds of a struggle, however, just the echo of Richard reaching the bottom and then wrenching the ladder loose from its rusty moorings.
“That’s just to slow you down in case that ridiculous earring trick actually works and you manage to cut yourselves free,” he called up to us.
AJ and I looked at each other and then I looked down at her bindings, which were nearly severed in half. She worked more quickly, continuing to saw away with the silver as we tried to figure out what Richard was doing down below. From the sound of things, he had continued on down the stairs to the first floor, though he hadn’t ye
t left the building.
When she finally got herself free, AJ frantically went to work on the tape around my wrists. This time it went much faster, of course, and soon she handed over the earring so I could cut my feet loose while she took out the other earring to do the same for herself. We were half finished when the smell finally reached us, the strong, distinct odor of gasoline.
“He’s going to burn the place down,” I hissed.
We kept working, and once we were both completely free, we crawled to the edge of the loft and looked over the side. To her credit, AJ didn’t gasp, though I knew we both wanted to. Jimmy was the only one still alive, but he was terribly injured. It looked as though he was crying, one hand touching his wife’s lifeless face. The other hand was grasping at his chest, and then I realized that he was trying to remove something from his front shirt pocket.
Through the open stairwell, we could see Richard on the bottom floor, still sprinkling gas from a can onto the trash and leaves and papers that were spread around down there. Before he was finished, Jimmy managed to roll over and with one big push slide himself toward the stairs. Then before we could stop him, he held out the item he had retrieved from his pocket: a pack of matches, which he lit and tossed down at Richard.
In an instant and intense explosion, Richard was gone. Directly below us, Jimmy simply rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, ready to sacrifice himself for the sake of avenging his beloved wife’s death.
I wasn’t ready to sacrifice either myself or AJ. Unable to do anything to help out below, I ran toward the open window, hoping to find handholds that we could use to climb down outside. There was nothing of the kind anywhere in sight.
Frantic, I returned to the place in the railing where the ladder had been. Empty now, there was no way to get ourselves down to the next floor even if we wanted to descend toward the fire, nothing that we could climb or slide down at all. Even up here on the third floor, the heat from the fire below was astonishing, the smoke burning our eyes and clouding our vision.
Whispers of the Bayou Page 33