“The Colonel and I have made up a list of all the neighbors who might be of assistance in trapping our vandal . . .”
There was a slight noise in the foyer, and Alison stood in the archway between it and the vast living room. She peeked in hesitantly. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“No, dear, of course not.” Laura and Samantha spoke in unison. All of them laughed and Alison came just into the room.
Samantha looked at Laura. Laura deferred to her with a wave of her hand, and Samantha began explaining. “We’re making plans to catch the vandal. Damaging the gardens was bad of him. But now the possibility arises that he may have . . . may have . . .” Samantha couldn’t finish her sentence. Not with Olivia Charles’s cousin sitting there so quietly.
“Please.” Janet’s voice was husky with repressed sorrow. “Don’t let my presence matter. I am as anxious to hear your plans as any one of you.”
Of course she was. Samantha should have known that Janet wouldn’t rest until she’d found out who’d killed her cousin. Hadn’t Olivia been the one to bring Janet to Norfolk to work? Persuaded Herb Talley to hire her for Greater Tidewater Realty? And hadn’t Olivia often said that she had been Janet’s ‘keeper’ almost all the younger woman’s life? Looking at Janet’s strained face and the way her hands twisted in her lap, Samantha could easily understand that protective attitude in her late friend.
Poor Janet. If Samantha felt bereft at the loss of Olivia Charles, what must Janet Wilson feel?
McLain said, “Come on in, Alison.”
After an instant’s hesitation, Alison crossed the room and curled up in a chair just out of their circle. Laura queried her with a raised eyebrow then handed her a cup of tea with two sugars.
Alison smiled her thanks.
Samantha took her notebook out of her handbag again. “Colonel McLain and I have made a list of all the neighbors we think could help us trap the vandal.”
Alison’s tea cup rattled in its saucer. She steadied it with her other hand as she placed it on the table beside her chair.
McLain turned to smile at her. He received a small nervous smile in return.
Samantha sighed. Everybody was uptight just now. She was, too. “We decided that the best idea was to choose women living alone who had couples on either side who would be willing to take turns watching the woman who is alone’s garden.” She frowned at the way her sentence sounded, gave it up and went on. “Standing watches, the Colonel calls it—in order to call the police in the event that the vandal shows up.”
“The Colonel is going to ask the police to please have a unit—that’s a police car—near Riverhaven at all times. Those of our neighbors who possess firearms will hold the vandal until the police can arrive.”
“What if he strikes where there isn’t a gun owner?” Laura wanted to know.
“That is a problem. Guns have become so unpopular lately.”
The Colonel interrupted with, “Yeah. In spite of the FBI statistics that clearly prove that the more gun permits there are in a given area, the less crime there is in it.”
Samantha couldn’t help it. Even knowing that decent people having gun permits lowered crime rates, Samantha didn’t like guns. She had to struggle to be fair when the subject came up.
Amusement in his eyes, McLain went to her rescue and changed the subject. His voice rumbled, “Of course, we may have seen the last of the vandal now that he’s committed murder.”
“That’s true.” Laura wrapped her arms around herself .
Alison shuddered.
Samantha tore a sheet out of her little notebook. “Here.” She handed the paper to Laura. “I’ve divided the list between the two of us, giving each of us the people we know best. Though there are a couple on it that neither of us knows at all yet. I’m sure they’ll want to help anyway, don’t you think?”
“Of course they will.” Laura was certain of it. “It’s their neighborhood, too.”
McLain said, “They’d be damned poor neighbors if they didn’t.” He chuckled. “And I bet between you and Ms. Prissy, they’d be made pretty miserable if they didn’t help.”
Laura looked at him blankly. “Mrs. Prissy?”
Samantha glared at the Colonel, then turned back to inform her hostess, “Colonel McLain finds humor in being insulting. He calls me prim, proper and prissy.”
“Oh,” Alison cried, “I don’t think you’re prim or prissy at all.”
Samantha threw a smug look at McLain. “Thank you, Alison.”
McLain muttered, “She didn’t say you weren’t proper.”
Samantha turned back to Laura, ignoring him. “Anyway, you call your list tomorrow and I’ll call mine. We probably won’t be able to get everybody the first day, so let’s give it two. Then we’ll set the trap and hopefully catch our culprit.”
“All right.” Laura was twisting a strand of her hair. “There are no meetings on my schedule for tomorrow, and the evening is free to call the ones who work or play golf.”
“Doesn’t look as if they’ll be playing much golf tomorrow.” McLain nodded toward the two large windows at the end of the room. A flash of lightning shot across the sky. An instant later they heard the crash of thunder. In the next flash they could make out broad ribbons of rain falling from not-too-distant clouds across the river, then all the panes were black again.
“Oh, dear.” Samantha placed her tea cup carefully on the tea tray as she rose. “I have to get home and take Rags out before that storm gets here!” She turned to McLain. “I can walk home, Colonel. Don’t disturb yourself.”
“Fat chance I’d let you.” He rose. “Thanks for the coffee Ms. Fulton.”
“Laura.” She smiled warmly at him. “Please call me Laura.”
“Thank you. I’m John.”
“And I’m in a hurry,” Samantha interjected. “If you are going to insist that I wait until you drive me home, please come now. I don’t want to get drenched seeing to my dog!”
“Samantha! Behave.” Laura shook her head apologetically at her male guest. “She’s usually lovely, you know.”
McLain threw her a look that told her what he thought of that statement.
“Really,” Laura insisted.
“I know.” He relented. “I just rub her the wrong way.”
“Will you come on!” Samantha was half way to the door.
Just to aggravate her he turned to Janet Wilson and offered, “Would you like me to walk you to your car, Ms. Wilson?”
“No. No, thank you. I’ll be fine. I’m leaving with you anyway. Thank you so much for the tea, Mrs. Fulton. And for the talk. I feel so much better, knowing what’s being done.” She moved toward the foyer gracefully, passing Samantha.
Samantha stomped along behind her, passed her and ripped open the door. “Goodnight, Alison, Laura. Thanks for the tea.” She didn’t speak to McLain until he had opened the car door for her in her own driveway. Ignoring the hand he offered to help her out, she said, “Thank you for bringing me home, and thank you very much for dinner.”
Suddenly she realized how surly she was being. She sighed, trapped by ‘proper behavior’ again. “And thank you for helping with the vandal list,” she said with more warmth.
He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah,” he told her generously, “No problem.” With that, he got into his car and drove off.
Samantha watched him hesitate in the street until she got her door open and waved. She watched him start away as she closed her door. Then she called, “Rags. I’m home.”
There was a welcoming “Yap!” Then the little terrier began digging frantically at the bars of his kennel door, desperate to get to her.
Samantha let him out, swooped him up to give him a quick hug and put him down again His toenails clicked across the kitchen vinyl. “Ruf!”
“I know, I know. Don’t scold. I didn’t mean to be so late. Just let me change my shoes.” She kicked off her good pumps and slipped into the loafers she’d left for that purpose. Pocketing her keys, she pl
opped her purse in a kitchen chair and started to open the door again.
“Yap!” The Yorkshire sat.
“Don’t you want to go out?”
The terrier started down the hall, looking back over his shoulder.
“Rags. Come back here. It’s going to rain, we have to hurry.”
Reluctant, he stopped and looked toward her bedroom. Then he sat and looked at her.
“No, you don’t want to go to bed. You want to go out first.”
Rags looked at her with an expression Samantha could only interpret as scornful. Taking charge, she told him, “Come on. You have to make your last duty call. Fool dog. I won’t let you get wet. Come on!”
With a last, low growl toward the other end of the house, Rags rose, sighed, and followed as his mistress commanded.
Chapter Seventeen
A quarter of an hour later, Rags and Samantha were in the house to stay at last. Thank heavens! Samantha couldn’t believe that she had been Bridge hostess only that afternoon. “It’s been a long day, Rags.” She smiled down at her tiny companion. “I’m weary.”
Surprised at the discovery, she made an extra effort to straighten her shoulders. In her head, she could hear her mother’s gentle voice. Ladies do not beg the world for sympathy by exhibiting their weaknesses, Samantha. Never Slump.
“Yes,” she muttered, “but I don’t see why that has to apply to my dog.”
Rags looked up at her and yapped.
Samantha burst out laughing. “Great Scott. I am tired, Rags. Sleepy, too. Let’s get to bed.”
At the mention of bed, Rags ran ahead. Instead of leading the way into her room, however, he stood across the threshold of the bedroom as if to bar her entry. “Grrrrr.”
Samantha halted in astonishment. “What in the world’s the matter, Rags?” She bent and scooped him up.
The phone rang. Moving to the bedside table with the squirming Yorkie under her arm, she lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
Rags squirmed even harder to be free. “Yap. Yap!” He threw his head back and forth in a determined effort to gain his freedom. With a mighty shove of his hind legs against her hip bone, he flew out of her arms onto the bedspread in the middle of the bed.
Braking his forward momentum by digging his front claws into the spread, he backed to the foot of the bed so fast he would have fallen off the end if it hadn’t been for the quilt rail at the bottom of the four poster. As he backed away from the pillows, his outcry became all the more fierce.
“Hush, Rags! I can’t hear!”
Rags stopped barking and settled into his on-going, low growl. His bright button eyes swiveled from her face to the head of her bed frantically.
“Oh, hi, Laurie. Yes, I was wondering what Janet Wilson was doing over there. Is she finally trying to make friends in the neighborhood?” Rags wouldn’t let Samantha sit on the edge of the bed—he kept darting at her and snarling—so she gave up, went to the slipper chair and sat to take her shoes off.
“At least she’s facing her loss. That’s healthy. And it’s nice she’s taking such an interest in catching the vandal. We need everyone to be interested, and it should help keep her mind off her loss.” She reached down and pulled off a shoe. “Of course, I wanted to talk to you about what you thought Lieutenant Nichols would think of what we’re trying to do, but I couldn’t in front of Janet. It would have reminded her about Olivia.”
“What?” She’d missed Laura’s last remark. Rags was barking again. Samantha was afraid he’d wake the neighbors. “Heavens!” She turned to him and said, “Rags, be quiet! I’m afraid you’ll wake the dead! Hush!” She reached for him. Her fingers only brushed his taut little frame.
Rags kept up his clamor as he evaded her. “Yip, yip! Grrrrr! Yap! Yap! Yap!”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Rags, pipe down! Hang on, Laurie. I don’t know what his problem is, but I can’t hear a word you’re saying. He’ll calm down in a minute, I’m sure.” She reached for the edge of the bedspread to flip it down to fold away as she chatted. She wanted to get to the serious business of sleeping as soon as she and Laura had finished catching up.
Rags darted at her wrist and slammed into it with his bared teeth.
“Rags!” Had he lost his little mind? She rubbed her wrist as her mind flew to the plants in her garden that he might have nibbled. She knew darn well she didn’t have any loco weed. No, nor anything like it. What was the matter with Rags? Taking a steadying breath, Samantha crooned, “There, there, darling,” and reached for him.
As she did, she thought she saw the bedspread, where it stretched between her two pillows, stir. She froze.
Rags leapt into her arms.
Samantha caught him by sheer reflex. The phone fell from her grasp. Samantha didn’t even notice. Her gaze was riveted to the slight space between her two down-filled pillows. As she watched, she felt her eyes go as round as saucers.
A sleek head appeared over the edge of the spread. Triangular, smooth, black as death, it advanced, its tongue darting in and out of its mouth as it sensed the air, searching for the heat of any warm-blooded presence.
Samantha stared, anchored to the floor beside the bed by sheer horror, as the thick black body of the water moccasin slowly uncoiled from the space between her pillows. From between the pillows on which she would have lain her head by now if Rags hadn’t been making such a fuss.
“SSSSnake!” Samantha screeched. “That’s a snake!”
The receiver of her abused phone screamed from the flokati throw rug beside her bed as, “What snake?” Laurie screeched in her turn. “What’s happening? Are you all right? Samantha! Hang on! I’m coming!”
Samantha rushed to her closet and grabbed her umbrella. She knew the snake could find a place to hide if she went out of the room for a poker—a rake—a shovel—an axe!!!
Ohhhh, God! Why didn’t she keep an axe in the house? In her bedroom!! She hated snakes! It was all she could do to tolerate the good black ones that kept the bad ones away! And this was a bad bad one.
Looking at the bulging poison sacks on either side of its head, she knew they were full of venom. The snake would probably kill her if she were bitten. Surely it would kill a little dog like Rags!
Rags was squirming to get down again. Barking furiously at this threat to his mistress, he was ready to sacrifice himself to save her.
Samantha tightened her grip on her friend. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, she knew his tiny frame would never survive an injection of so much venom.
Rags had to stop barking. Samantha had crushed him to her so hard, he couldn’t get enough breath to go on.
Samantha brought the crooked handle of her favorite umbrella down on the snake. Unaffected, it fixed its gaze on Samantha and began to coil into striking position. As it did, it hissed. Its jaws opened wide showing the white interior of its mouth, white as snow—Cotton Mouth the Southern nickname for the water moccasin. And its fangs! Dear Lord, its fangs looked three inches long!
Samantha drew the umbrella back for another blow. Oh, why didn’t she keep her gun handy? She didn’t care if she did shoot a hole in her expensive queen-sized mattress. She didn’t even care if she shot her solid cherry four-poster into kindling. All she cared about was killing that snake!
Rags began to gasp for breath.
The kitchen door slammed back against the wall so hard that Samantha could hear it all the way here on this side of the house. An instant later Laura Fulton ran into the room, the spare key to Samantha’s house in one hand, the poker from her fireplace in the other. She began slamming the later into the snake.
Suddenly, “All right!” McLain’s voice roared at them. “Stop that before you make a mess!” Without taking his eyes off the coiled snake, he told Samantha, “Let the dog breathe, Sam.”
Samantha gave a startled look at her canine friend. He was limp! She eased her death grip, and saw the little hero desperately gulp air. Dropping her umbrella she shifted him to lie over her shoulder as if she wanted to burp him a
nd patted air back into him.
Her attention, though, was all on the Colonel. Thank God he’d come! She was so thankful to see him that she didn’t even wonder how he’d gotten here.
McLain was approaching the awful thing on her bed. With one hand, he commanded its attention by wiggling his fingers until the snake’s cold gaze was locked on them. When it struck at that hand, the hand was no longer there. McLain’s other moved in a blur.
“There.” His voice was full of calm satisfaction. His hand was full of riled Cotton Mouth.
Laura and Samantha clung weakly to each other and looked away. Then both of them stared at the writhing snake McLain held so casually. It hissed and thrashed for all it was worth. McLain reached into his pocket for his Swiss Army knife, put it up to his mouth and opened the largest of its blades with his teeth. “Ms. Fulton, if you would be so kind as to open that door for me,” he nodded to the French doors in the end wall of Samantha’s bedroom, “I’ll just take this little snake outside. I don’t think you ladies want to see this.” He raised the knife significantly. “Sam. You go make us a pot of coffee. We need to talk.”
Neither of the women could think of anything to say. Neither of them could have found the breath to say it if they could have. Samantha didn’t even mutter “Don’t call me Sam!”
Laura, shaking like a leaf, opened the door for him.
Samantha went to make coffee.
Rags just kept breathing.
Chapter Eighteen
The windows rattled in their frames as thunder crashed on the heels of a bolt of lightning that lit Samantha’s kitchen with garish blue light. An instant later the heavens opened, and rain drummed down blotting out all other sound.
Samantha ran to close the kitchen door. Laura and the Colonel had left it standing open in their haste to come to her rescue. Just as she reached it, the Colonel ducked in. One hand raked raindrops out of his hair. The other he held behind his back. “Got a plastic bag?”
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