“Truman.”
“Dennis, this is Sandra. Did Edgar call me from there?” She heard him make an aside, “It’s her.”
“Are you on your way down here with the gun?” Dennis asked.
“No, she—”
Edgar Saul’s voice, “Salinsky, are you coming down with that gun or not?”
Sandra glanced at Kitty who stood at her front door peering through the peephole every few seconds. “Edgar, I need to talk to you first. It’s about Stuart.”
“I don’t want to hear a goddamned thing about anyone until I get that gun—”
“Edgar, listen to me! Stuart—”
“No, you listen to me. You either get down here with that gun or Miss Goody-two-shoes is going back to jail.” The phone disconnected.
“Son of a bitch.” Sandra stuck the phone back into her purse. “Kitty, I’ve got to go down to the police station. They won’t listen to me. I’ve got to explain things to the lieutenant and Edgar Saul, and see if they can help.”
Kitty gripped her arm. “You can’t leave me here alone, Sandy. What if he comes after me? Raymond may not get here in time.”
“Where is Raymond?”
“He went over to the mainland. He was supposed to be at his mother’s birthday get-together. I don’t know why he’s not back.”
Sandra didn’t voice her concerns about Raymond. “Well, I’ve got to do something. If I don’t get back soon, Stuart will
come searching for me. I have a sneaking suspicion he already knows I’m here. We’ll be safer if we split up. If he’s outside, he’ll most likely follow me. You lock yourself in. Take my gun.” Sandra pulled her .38 snub-nosed revolver from her purse and handed it to Kitty.
“I thought you didn’t believe in guns.”
“I don’t, normally. Listen, there’s not much of a kick to that thing, but hold it with both hands if you have to fire it. Also, it’s not that accurate because of the short barrel. Wait until he gets close, but not too close, and then pull the trigger.”
“Okay. I can do that.”
“Kitty, you have to pull the trigger over and over. It’s a revolver, not an automatic. There’s no safety, so just point and shoot.”
Kitty reached for Sandra and hugged her neck.
“You’ll be all right. I doubt he’ll come for you if he thinks we both know. He’d want to get me first.” She patted Kitty’s cheek as she would a small child’s. “If you hear anything, dial nine-one-one before you start shooting.” Sandra went out the door and eyeballed the grounds before she closed it behind her. As she hurried to her car, she heard Kitty’s locks click into place.
Quickly checking in, around, and under her car, Sandra jumped in, locked the doors, and headed for the police station. It wasn’t that far away. Under normal conditions, everything on the island was no more than twenty minutes away, most places, ten.
She wondered if Stuart still had Kitty’s gun. If he was smart, he would have gotten rid of it right after he did Lizzie. She wondered if he’d planned to get back into Kitty’s house and plant it. Or did he figure on the police finding it at Sandra’s office? That would be really clever of him, implicating
her in an obstruction of justice situation. They would really question her credibility then.
Did he keep a gun in his car? She’d never seen him with one. And certainly there hadn’t been one on him when they’d removed their clothing. If Kitty didn’t get indicted, did he plan to kill Kitty too? Just how far did he intend to go with this killing thing? Would Sandra be next?
Sandra called Edgar at the police station. “I’m coming down there,” she said. “I have something to tell you.” Glancing into her rearview mirror, she saw a vehicle with no lights on behind her.
“Sandra, are you bringing the .25?”
Sandra turned around in her seat and saw the SUV more clearly. It looked like Stuart’s, but when the lights came on in her eyes, she couldn’t see a thing. He must have known all along that she was at Kitty’s and called her on his mobile phone. She was sure it was his Ford Expedition when it bumped the back of her car. Her phone fell onto the floor and slid under her feet.
“Edgar, he’s right behind me,” she hollered, hoping Edgar could hear her. “It’s Stuart!”
The vehicle pulled up beside her on the left; the passenger window came down. Sandra only lowered her window a few inches. Stuart beckoned to her and yelled, “Pull over, Sandra.”
She drove east on the seawall. She needed to turn north to get to the police station. The trouble was, Stuart was in the left lane and she was on the right—on the water side, that being the side with nothing to stop her from going over the seawall if she lost control of her car. She jammed her foot on the accelerator and shot out in front of him. One thing about her Volvo, it had pickup.
Searching for her cell with one hand, keeping the other on the wheel, and shifting gears intermittently wasn’t all that easy. Sandra grabbed the phone and dropped it into her lap, squeezing her thighs together to hold it in place until she could get her bearings. Stuart’s lights loomed in her rearview mirror. The closer she got to the street she needed to turn on, the worse tourist traffic grew.
She had pulled in front of him, but he had gotten into the emergency lane. He caught up with her and hollered “—talk to you!” He edged his Expedition over into her lane, forcing her to the right.
Sandra jerked the steering wheel to the left to dodge a parked car and gunned the engine again. She would not let him force her over the side of the seawall. She needed to get to the police station but couldn’t get past him. Jamming her foot on the accelerator, she headed toward Cherry Hill, a two-mile manmade hill bordering four lanes on the seawall. There would be a lot less traffic. If she could speed up fast enough once she got out there, she could do a wide U-turn onto the hill and perhaps escape him.
Stuart blocked her turn all the way down in an attempt to get her to careen over the side. Sandra finally came to East Beach Road, which sloped down onto the beach on an unlit, two-lane, curvy, sandy, and lonely paved road. Not her first choice of destinations. She was forced to swerve to the right and down the ramp. Eventually she’d come to the condominiums—that is, if he didn’t get her first. Over her shoulder, she saw Stuart make a U-turn. Moments later, he slammed into her bumper again. If he pulled beside her on the two-lane road, he risked a head-on collision, but that was only if someone else was driving on that dark little road. Picking up her phone, she said, “Edgar, I’m on East Beach Road. Help me!” She could hear some yelling, but she threw the phone down in the passenger seat so she could concentrate on her driving.
Stuart bumped her rear again as she sped toward the condos, clumps of beach sand spinning out from her tires. She could hardly tell where to drive in the dark and feared running off the road and into a sand dune. Stuart pulled even with her and moved into her lane. When they reached a level area, he managed to cut her off and sent her swerving from the paved road, over the curb, and into the soft sand, her tires losing traction. Sandra stopped just before her car hit a barricade made of railroad ties that stopped people from driving over the big dunes and down to the water. She grabbed her phone and scrambled out of the car.
Stuart backed up and plowed after her in his Expedition until he couldn’t go any farther either. She could see the beach-front lights behind him as he got out and chased her on foot. Even though the sand dunes were covered with reeds, salt grass, dollar grass, and wildflowers, the sand made it difficult to get traction under her feet. Stuart drew closer. She could hear his voice behind her, but chose not to listen to whatever he yelled at her. The ocean crashed in her ears. She had hoped to get to the Islander East Condo for help, but it stood tall and almost dark in the distance. Stuart would catch her way before she could ever get there, his legs being longer than hers. Sandra held little hope that anyone in the condo would see or hear them in the dark. The only illumination came from the slice of moon above.
He leapt, grabbed her ankle as he f
ell, and she fell face forward. Stuart had a hold on her foot. Red and gold firewheels scratched at her face as he flipped her over.
“No, Stuart!” She hollered and kicked him in the face. He released her foot. Sandra pushed her heels into the sand and backed away. “Leave me alone, Stuart! Get away from me!”
“Sandra, I just want to talk to you!” He came at her on his hands and knees.
She kicked sand into his face and jumped up from the ground. “Just go away!” she called over her shoulder as she continued trying to run across the dunes toward the Ocean. “Come back, Sandra! I’m not going to hurt you!”
Sandra didn’t look back. She didn’t want to slow down long enough. Reaching the water’s edge, she ran in. “Edgar, we’re down East Beach Road. I’m going in. Help me!” she yelled into her cell phone before dropping it. The water felt warm as it came through her shoes. She could out-swim Stuart. He might be a runner, but he didn’t like the water. Looking behind her, she could see him a few yards away. “No, Stuart! Stay away from me!”
Her feet dragged so she began unlacing her shoes while keeping her eyes on Stuart. She stumbled and fell backward into the water. She could taste the salt. Her eyes never left Stuart. He stood at the edge of the water and called to her. She could see him breathing hard. Slowly, she backed into deeper water. She would backstroke all the way to Cuba if she had to.
“Come back! I’m not going to hurt you, Sandy! You know how I feel about you!” He stepped into the shallows.
Sandra removed her first shoe and pitched it at him. Then she wadded up her sock and did the same. “No! I don’t trust you! You’d better go away. The police know it’s you!” she hollered. “I told them!”
“What do they know? What did I do? Why are you behaving like this? Come back and we’ll talk about it!”
He took a couple more steps toward her, but she backed over the breakers several feet deeper than him. Not wanting the force of the waves to push her toward him, she back- stroked farther away before she took off her other shoe. She figured he’d never come out as far as she did.
“You killed Phillip! They know you did it! You’d better run, Stuart! They’ll be here in a minute!” She yanked at her left shoe. The laces were knotted. She pulled and twisted until it came off her foot anyway. Holding it up* she pitched it at him also. It missed, but splashed him. Pulling her sock off, she just let it drift. Now lighter, but still heavy in her wet clothes, she backstroked a little easier into deeper water. The current was slight.
“I never meant for anyone to get hurt, Sandy!” he yelled. “ ’Specially not you! I love you!” He glanced over his shoulder and moved from side-to-side in the knee-deep water as if trying to decide what to do. “You can’t stay out there forever! Come in! We’ll talk about it! You know I loved you!” The past tense of his words was not lost on her. “Yeah, you were going to love me to death, weren’t you Stuart Quentin?”
“Come back! You’re going to drown out there, Sandy!” “You want me? Come and get me!” She swam far enough away that she felt safe. Thank God he’d never let her teach him to swim. Hopefully he wouldn’t pull a gun and start shooting. She treaded water, no longer able to touch bottom. She could stay out there for quite a while if she had to. “The police are coming, Stu! You’d better go now! Get away while you can!”
“Sandy, none of this had anything to do with you!” he called. “I can explain!”
“You can’t explain killing Lizzie!” Flashing lights appeared in the distance. She hoped they were headed for them. “You could never explain that.” Stuart must have seen the lights moments after she did. He glanced back at her. She couldn’t read his expression in the dark.
“I swear I could have explained!” he said as he backed up a few steps. He didn’t pull a gun. He stared in her direction. She wasn’t sure he could still see her in the dark. He kept
backing up, then suddenly turned and ran to his SUV. When he did a half-donut in the sand and drove off, Sandra swam toward the shore. Wading through the shallows, she found her shoes and stuck her wet feet in them. Her phone rested in the sand not far away.
Stuart’s taillights grew smaller in the distance as he drove toward Apffel Park Road. They went up the slope to the seawall, but instead of turning left to possible freedom, he turned right. There was no escape to the right. There was only capture. The seawall ended at a two-foot-high concrete wall, followed by huge rocks and then water. His only other option would be to turn right at the end, but that road dead- ended at the water’s edge several miles away.
Tiny in the distance* three police cars were visible as they followed him very fast. It dawned on her then that Stuart would not be captured. He sped up. The police kept pace with him in the beginning, but the distance between them widened. As Stuart’s Expedition flew toward that wall, it was like a kamikaze pilot’s plane as it zeroed in on its destiny. Under the distant streetlight, Sandra could barely make out his vehicle flipping forward. A loud clattering noise followed, as it hit the rocks.
Sandra felt cold on the outside and numb on the inside as she dropped down onto the sand, water from her soaking head streaming down her back. The man she had thought she loved had just committed suicide.
The police cars lined up three abreast, keeping well away from the vehicle in case of fire. Sirens came again from the west. Emergency vehicles. More police units. Sheriffs deputies. Beach patrol. All of them sped eastward, undoubtedly too late to be of any assistance to Stuart Quentin.
Dennis Truman and Edgar Saul found Sandra where she sat on the beach. Dennis pulled her to her feet and wrapped
her in his arms for a few minutes. When he released her, Edgar even kind-of embraced her. Edgar Saul, who she never thought she’d be happy to see, and who she never thought would be glad to see her. They stared in the direction of the wreck and let out a collective sigh before getting into their vehicles and driving closer to the scene of Stuart’s death to see what was left.
EPILOGUE
It didn’t take the police much investigation to figure out what had been going on with Stuart once they knew who to look at and where to look. Searching his home turned up not only massive credit card receipts reflecting cards that were maxed out, but also shoeboxes filled with betting slips. A gambling addict, Stuart had lost thousands of dollars at the Gulf Greyhound Dog Track in LaMarque as well as at the casinos in Lake Charles and the Grand Coushatta Indian Reservation.
A bit more searching revealed that, among other things, Stuart was a methamphetamine user. His bedside table held bottles full of capsules. A further search turned up pills in his desk drawers, and even some in his suit jacket pockets.
Called speed in the 1960s, women went to diet doctors to get prescriptions for it because it would give them boundless energy and cut off their appetites. “Speed Kills,” they used to say. Thirty or forty years ago kids thought that was funny. But it was true. No wonder Stuart could eat anything he wanted and not gain any weight. No wonder Sandra had so much difficulty getting a hold of him at times. He was going all night. He spent his evenings at the dog track. When he finished there, apparently he would drive to Louisiana and hit the gaming tables, returning in the mornings to practice law. The only times he didn’t go on weeknights in recent months were when he was in the jury trial. Or with her. Authorities surmised that his debt level, coupled with the recent restrictions
on his time, caused him to engage in aberrant behavior. Edgar’s words.
And the reason he had endless energy when it came to their sex life was amyl nitrite poppers. Why hadn’t she noticed? She drew the line at discussing their sex life with the cops. If they knew what poppers were for, they had the good grace not to mention it to her.
Sandra couldn’t figure out how she had missed the indications that all was not right with Stuart, except that they both had been so busy. As she mulled that over at her desk late the next morning, her mother came practically bouncing into the office.
“What’s buoyed you up?” Sand
ra’s eyes followed Erma around the room as she bobbed to and fro. Erma acted like she was on speed.
“Besides the fact that all charges against Kitty have been dismissed?”
“Yeah, besides that.”
“Besides the fact that Kitty just dropped off a very large bonus on top of her fee?”
Even that couldn’t make Sandra smile. “Yeah, besides that, too.”
“Edgar Saul called and said that Raymond told him that Phillip thought Stuart had tampered with the asbestosis jury.”
“Yes, I suspected as much from something Kitty said last night.”
Erma perched momentarily on a delicate antique chair that Sandra kept in a corner so that no one would sit on it. Erma knew that Sandra worried about it collapsing. Even that couldn’t get her goat that day. “Well, Edgar says that’s why Stuart killed Phillip. ’Cause if the verdict was thrown out, Phillip was going to get Stuart disbarred.”
Sandra grunted.
“Want to hear what else Edgar said?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Sandra’s chest felt full. What she really wanted was to be by herself for a good long while. What she didn’t want was to embarrass herself with any outbursts.
“He thinks Lizzie tried to blackmail Stuart and that’s why Stuart killed her. ”
Sandra raised her eyebrows. “She must have known he killed Phillip. I figured Stuart was the one in the room next to hers. She must have heard him go out.”
“Perhaps she even followed him,” Erma said.
Sandra nodded and shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Yep,” Erma said. “I always liked Lizzie, but she killed herself with her goddamn greed. Edgar’s going to close that investigation, too.”
“Why didn’t you let me talk to Edgar?”
“ ’Cause you don’t want me to have fun anymore,” Erma said. “He called. I answered the phone. We talked. It was that simple. I told him I’d tell you. Besides, you were in here moping anyway.”
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