“You mean Roscoe was the one who pushed me?” I was surprised, but not completely shocked.
“Yes indeedy!” she crowed, beginning to take pleasure in the telling of the tale. “I told Roscoe about the lunchbox, see? And then I gave him your address and told him to go downtown and watch you leave for work the next morning. After you’d gone, he was supposed to break into your apartment and look for the lunchbox and the diamonds. But when you came prancing out of your building with a goddamn shopping bag in your hand, he freaked out and abandoned the original plan. He felt he had to follow you into the subway to see what was in the bag. And when he snuck up behind you in the crowd and looked down into the bag and saw the lunchbox-shaped package . . . well, he just lost his moronic little mind
“He was certain the diamonds were in the package, see?” Elsie jabbered on. “And he didn’t know where you were taking them. So he thought he better grab them while he could. But he knew the minute he snatched your shopping bag you would start screaming and calling for help, maybe even chase him through the station yourself. So he had to do what he had to do. He had to wait till he heard the train coming, and then he had to grab the bag and push you down on the tracks at the same instant. That way nobody—not even you—would know what was happening, and he’d be able to make a clean getaway.”
So that’s the way it was, I groaned to myself. Just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong bag . . . er, box. “Did Roscoe hang around to watch me get creamed?” I asked. I could imagine the little beast hovering there in the rush hour crowd, craning his skinny neck to watch me crawling on the tracks, baring his little brown teeth in eager anticipation of the bloody, bone-shattering spectacle to come.
“Sure did,” Elsie said, with a sickening grin. “And I don’t mind telling you he was really disappointed when that big Negro pulled you up to safety. If you’d been killed, Roscoe said he would have snuck off to a dark corner of the station, opened the lunchbox, and seen that the diamonds weren’t inside. Then he would have run back to your apartment, busted in through the back door, and turned the place upside down till he found them. But with you still alive, he couldn’t do that. He had to get out of there fast—before you saw him. So he just stepped on the train—the same one that almost turned you into hamburger—and came straight to my place. We opened the package together.”
What a heartwarming scene, I muttered to myself. Right up Norman Rockwell’s alley. A perfect Christmas cover for The Saturday Evening Post.
“So, that was the same wrapping paper I saw in your wastebasket!” I said, excited, so caught up in the lurid details of Elsie’s narration I was forgetting the lurid climax that loomed ahead.
“Yeah,” Elsie admitted, also engrossed. Her arm was now hanging at her side, gun pointed toward the floor. “When you ran out of my place this morning like a crazy bat out of hell, I knew you’d seen something, or thought of something, that had suddenly made you suspect me. I didn’t know what it was, though, until later, when I went into the bedroom to throw away a snotty Kleenex. And there they were, four or five wrinkled-up, red-cheeked Santa Claus faces, grinning up at me in glee, making me feel like a goddamn idiot for not emptying the trash more often.”
Elsie was starting to get agitated, so I changed the subject again. I made a sharp U-turn and bounded back to the beginning of the story, panting and wagging my tail for answers. (Curiosity killed the cat, they say, so I was doing my best to act like a dog.) “Were you and Roscoe in cahoots from the start?” I asked, begging for another bone. “Did you plan Judy’s death together?”
“Don’t make me laugh!” Elsie snapped. “I would never have willingly joined forces with that greedy little weasel. How stupid do you think I am? I killed Judy all by myself! I didn’t want to share the diamonds with anybody!”
“So what happened? How did Roscoe get involved?”
“That was the worst damn luck of all,” she said, suddenly looking very tired. She must have been feeling tired, too, because she sat down on a kitchen chair and rested her outstretched right arm—the one that was holding the gun—on the table. “About ten minutes after I shot Judy, Roscoe came up to her apartment and started knocking on the door, calling out to her to open up for the landlord. I was still there, down on my knees in her bedroom, looking for the diamonds in her bottom dresser drawer. I didn’t answer the door, of course. I just knelt there next to the dresser, not making a sound, hoping he’d give up and go away.
“My first thought was that somebody in the building had heard the gun go off, and called Roscoe to report the noise. But then I figured if somebody had heard the shots, they would have called the cops instead of Roscoe. And then I realized that even if they did call Roscoe, he wouldn’t be fool enough to dash upstairs all by himself and start knocking on the door of an apartment where he thought a gun had just been fired.”
“So why was he there?” I asked. “What did he come for?”
“Oh, he probably just stopped by to make a pass at Judy,” she said with a sneer. “He was always doing that—showing up at her place when he knew Smythe wouldn’t be there, making suggestive remarks, trying to sneak a feel. What a creep he was! Judy said he made her skin crawl.”
“So what happened next?” I urged, so eager for information I forgot I was supposed to be taking it slow. (Hey, am I a born mystery writer, or what?) “Did he go away, or did you let him in?”
“He let himself in!” she wailed. “He opened the door with his own goddamn key! I couldn’t believe my eyes. He just waltzed inside like he owned the place.”
“Well, he did, didn’t he?”
“What?”
“Own the place,” I said. “He was the landlord, you know. ”
“Oh, who the hell cares? He had no business walking in on me like that, catching me in the act and scaring my fucking pants off, ruining all my plans for the future. If I’d had the gun in my hand, I’d’ve killed him on the spot! I wouldn’t have had to wait until this morning!”
I looked at the gun in her hand and shivered. Was the muzzle still warm? Were there two bullets left in the chamber just for me? “So where was it?” I asked, in a voice so tiny I could barely hear it myself.
“Where was what?” Elsie screeched. There was nothing tiny about her tone.
“The gun,” I said, in a near whisper, hoping against hope that the softness of my speech would induce a softness in her mind (i.e., make her forget that we were talking about a certain firearm—the same one she was grasping at that very moment).
“It was on top of the TV in the sitting room,” she said. “I’d set it down there as soon as I was sure Judy was dead, right before I began searching for the diamonds. It wasn’t there long, though!” Elsie added, getting agitated again. “When Roscoe came in, the first thing he saw was Judy lying dead in a pool of blood on the floor. The next thing he saw was me kneeling by Judy’s dresser, going through the drawers. And the thing he saw after that was the gun lying on top of the TV set.
“And that gun was in Roscoe’s hand in a flash!” Elsie sputtered on. “He didn’t waste a single second worrying about Judy, or kicking up any kind of fuss, or even asking any questions about what happened. He just grabbed the pistol up off the TV and pointed it at me! Then—acting cool as a cucumber popsicle—he asked me what I was looking for. I didn’t have any choice but to tell him about the diamonds.”
“So he decided to make himself a partner.”
“Give that girl a cigar!” Elsie crowed, tossing her head so hard her hat was knocked off kilter. She laid the gun down on the table and raised both hands to straighten it. I was preparing to leap across the kitchen and pounce on the released revolver, but Elsie snatched it up in her hand again before I could pry the hoofs of my horse slippers off the floor.
Hiding my thwarted intentions behind a sheepish smile, I fired off another question. “So what did you do then? Tear the place up looking for the rocks?”
“Tore it up good,” Elsie admitted. “
But as you damn well know, we couldn’t find the goods. We looked everywhere, too—behind the radiators, in the freezer, under a loose floorboard, even down inside the toilet tank—but we never found a single fucking piece. Not even an earring. Finally, Roscoe said I should go play canasta at Milly Esterbrook’s like I do every Saturday night. He said he’d wait for an hour or so, then call the police and tell them he just discovered the body. That way, with the place being such a mess and all, they’d think Judy was killed during a burglary.”
“Nice of Roscoe to provide you with an alibi,” I said. “He could have turned you over to the cops and come off like a hero.”
“Yeah, he covered my ass all right,” Elsie said. “I’ll give him that much. But don’t think for one second he did it to be nice. He figured the diamonds were bound to turn up soon—either the police would dig them up, or somebody in Judy’s family would find them—and since I lived right across the hall, I was in the best position to keep an eye on the scene, keep him posted on the proceedings. So he didn’t want anything bad to happen to me until after the diamonds were discovered. See?”
“I get the picture,” I said, wishing with all my soul that I was gazing at a different landscape.
“So where the hell were they?” Elsie rasped. “Shoved deep in the stuffing of Judy’s mattress? Jammed behind a false wall in her closet?”
“They were buried in a box of oatmeal.”
“Oatmeal?!” she cried, clearly shocked by the utter domesticity of the simple hiding place.
“Here, I’ll show you,” I said, moving slowly toward the kitchen counter, motioning for her to stand up and join me there. (Don’t ask me why I did that. I didn’t—and still don’t—have a clue.)
Elsie rose from her chair and walked toward me, keeping the gun aimed at the center of my chest. Her eyes were burning and her face was smeared with a rapacious smile.
I opened the cabinet over the sink, took out the Quaker container, and placed it on the counter. “This box came from Judy’s apartment,” I said, trying to infuse my voice with Edward R. Murrow-style drama and mystery, but surely sounding more like Speedy in the Alka-Seltzer commercials. “This is where the diamonds were. Terry Catcher found them when he was dumping all the food in her kitchen.” I opened the box, extracted my story notes and tossed them on the counter, then—with an exaggerated theatrical flourish—slowly poured the remaining dry cereal into the sink. (Don’t ask me why I did that, either. I guess I was just trying to keep her intrigued and pass the time.)
Elsie gave my little demonstration her full attention, but lost interest the second the last grain of oatmeal hit the porcelain. “Yeah, so that’s where the diamonds were,” she said, grinding her words through clenched teeth. “Now you can stop all your yakking and stalling and show me where the hell they are.” As she issued these orders, she poked the barrel of the gun hard into middle of my chest, right above the black lace edging on the bosom of my black silk slip.
“Keep your pants on!” I cried, raising both hands in the air again. “I was getting to that!”
“Then get to it now!” Her jaw was set and the veins in her temples were throbbing. Her talkative mood was officially over.
“Okay, okay!” I said, backing a few inches away from the gun and wondering what the devil I was going to do next. (To say that I was panicked is like calling a massive stroke distracting.) Knowing Dan wouldn’t arrive for a good half hour, and unable to think of a safe way of summoning Terry and Abby to my aid (I didn’t want them to get killed, too!), I finally came to the conclusion that my best hope of survival was the Clorox.
“The diamonds are right down here,” I said, giving Elsie a meaningful nod and slowly lowering myself into a squat by the cabinet under the sink. Heart pounding so hard I thought it would knock me over, I opened the door of the cabinet and took hold of the bottle of bleach. As I pulled the bottle forward, praying I’d find a way to open it, splash the bleach in Elsie’s face, and grab hold of the gun, my eyes caught sight of the scrunched-up shopping bag I’d hidden there the day before. The bag with Dan’s Christmas present in it. The Tiffany’s shopping bag.
Presto. There was a sudden change in plans.
“Here they are!” I said, letting go of the bottle and grabbing hold of the bag. I pulled the bag out of the cabinet, smoothed out all the wrinkles, and held it up for Elsie to see. I thought the sight of the famous Tiffany logo would thrill her, dazzle her, confuse her, make her think the diamonds were in the bag. And I was right! Elsie’s eyes lit up like beacons and her face split open in the brightest and greediest of all possible smiles. I had led her to believe—with all her evil, avaricious, murderous little heart—that the treasure was finally hers.
Which was the stupidest thing I could have done, of course. Because Elsie quickly concluded she didn’t need me anymore. And to prove it, she took a wide stance, aimed her gun at me with both hands, let out another hideous hyena laugh, and blasted me to kingdom come.
Chapter 32
WELL, NOT ALL THE WAY TO KINGDOM come, thank God. Since Elsie was standing so tall above me, and I was still squatting on the floor when she squeezed the trigger, the bullet didn’t have a clear, precise trajectory. It tore into my shoulder instead of my heart (or some other vital organ), and—though it knocked me flat on my back, and made me writhe on the floor in spastic convulsions and scream out in excruciating, unthinkable agony—it didn’t make me dead.
Elsie ignored this fact for the moment, stooping down in a mad frenzy to seize the bag I’d dropped at her feet. The bag she thought was full of diamond jewelry. The bag that held nothing but a Tiffany’s gift box and a silver cigarette lighter. She opened the sack and literally stuffed her face inside it—resembling, for a moment, a horse wearing a feed bag. Then she lowered the bag, pulled out the gift box, yanked it open, and—seeing that the diamonds were nowhere to be found—threw the bag, box, and the cigarette lighter in my face. (It hurt when the lighter conked me on the forehead and the gift box grazed the corner of my eye, but I was in so much pain already, I barely noticed.)
“You lying bitch!” Elsie screamed at the top of her lungs. “Where the hell are they? What did you do with them?”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy squirming and whimpering and bleeding. And praying. Let’s not forget praying.
“You might as well give up now, you know,” Elsie said, suddenly reining in her violent emotions and speaking in a low, controlled, truly terrifying tone. She leaned down close and gave me a sadistic grin. “The longer you hold out, the more it’s going to hurt. I promise you that. There are five bullets left in this gun—one for each limb, and one for the grand finale. The sooner you tell me where the diamonds are, the fewer times I’ll have to shoot you, and the sooner I can put you out of your misery for good. That’s a damn fair deal. Right, partner?”
She wasn’t bluffing. I could tell from the glint in her eye (and the way she was holding the gun to my nose) that she was not only ready—but eager—to proceed with the tortur ous treasure hunt.
And I don’t mind telling you I was scared. Scareder than I’d ever been in my whole sad, sweet, tragic, magic, short, full, too-soon-to-be-over life. I was so scared I couldn’t think or speak. All I could do was blubber.
“Still not talking, eh?” Elsie heckled, raising herself to full height. The fake sprig of holly pinned to her hat was as off-kilter as her smile. “What are you, a goddamn masochist or something? Well, that’s okay with me, kid, ’cause I’m getting a real kick out of this.” She moved a couple of steps back and took careful aim. “Last chance,” she said, with a sickening giggle. “No talking, no walking.”
When I didn’t answer, she shot me in the leg.
I’M NOT TOO CLEAR ON WHAT HAPPENED next. I think I blacked out for a minute or two. And when my consciousness returned, my only wish was that it hadn’t. The shocking, blazing, bone-searing pain in my mangled left thigh was unendurable. And the hideous stench of burning flesh (my flesh!), coupled with the metallic sm
ell of warm blood (my blood!), almost made me throw up. Head spinning and stomach turning, it took every ounce of strength I had just to keep breathing (and howling).
“How was that, Paige Turner?” Elsie croaked, leering down at me with a look of pure elation on her face. “Kinda uncomfortable, right? Bet you’re ready to turn the page now. ”
And I was, I was! I was ready to do or say anything that would keep her from firing another bullet into my wretched mess of a body. “Okay, I’ll tell!” I cried, lifting my unwounded arm up in the air, palm flat like a stop sign. “Please don’t shoot me again!”
Elsie grinned and took aim at my other leg. “I’ll stop shooting when you start talking.”
The words leapt out of my mouth like locusts. “The diamonds aren’t here,” I sputtered, not knowing what I was going to say, but not caring, either. “Terry Catcher has them. He’s had them all along. They’re wrapped up in one of his undershirts and stuffed down in the corner of his duffel bag.” Using my good arm, I tried to push myself up to a sitting position on the floor. But it was hopeless. I didn’t have the strength. My energy was seeping out of my body with my blood. I fell back to the floor with a thud.
“So where the hell is he?!” Elsie demanded.
“Who?” I muttered. (And, believe it or not, I wasn’t stalling now. My head was so crazed and groggy I think I’d actually lost track of what we were talking about!)
“You know who!” Elsie screamed, eyes bulging. “You better tell me where Terry Catcher is, and you better tell me right now! Or you can kiss your other leg goodbye!”
Unable to think of (let alone utter) an expedient answer, I sucked up my breath, squeezed my eyes tight, and begged God to let the next blast kill me.
KABOOM! There was a sudden, shocking, deafening explosion—but it wasn’t the sound of a gun going off. It was the sound of my back door being kicked open, and smashing against the wall so hard that all the remaining panes of glass shattered and fell out in shards and splinters on the floor. I couldn’t see what was happening from my prostrate position, but I heard it—and sensed the broken glass falling all around me, and felt a great gust of freezing cold air sweep over my skin.
Murder is a Girl's Best Friend Page 29