by Lois Winston
I answered the doorbell a little after 8:30 that late June night to find Claire standing there holding a gun. She didn’t have it pointed at me, which was a relief. No, Claire held the gun limply at her side. I only saw it because the light from the front porch glinted off it.
“Claire?” Tentative, amazed, uncertain? All of the above.
She didn’t answer, didn’t move. She seemed to be in a trance.
“Claire?” I repeated.
She stared at me, and yet I felt invisible. “I just shot Jim,” she said.
“Shot him? Is he dead?” For a moment I was paralyzed. I should do something, anything, but what? Call 911? Rush to Jim’s aid? The irreverent thought flitted through my mind that nobody deserved shooting more than Jim Guthrie, to whom I’d taken an instant dislike on our first meeting. I’m sure it was mutual.
“Claire!” I spoke sharply. “Answer me. Does he need help?” Please, God, let her have shot him in the foot or something.
She just stared at me. Slowly she said, “No. Someone told me I should shoot his sorry ass. And that’s what I did. I shot him in the butt.”
I almost put a hand over my mouth to keep from hooting in laughter fueled by relief. “So he’s okay?”
She shrugged. “I called 911 before I left. Can I come in?”
“Of course,” I said, stepping back. I’d been so flabbergasted by her story, that I left her standing outside, still holding that blasted gun.
“What should I do with the gun?” she asked, as dependent as a child. As always, Claire Guthrie was perfectly groomed, in beige linen pants and a large pink linen shirt worn open over a white cami. Her pink sandals gave her clothes the finished touch of a completed outfit. I wore stretch cotton pants that were beyond stretched and a T-shirt and was barefoot. Therein you have the difference between me and Claire.
Claire is tall, thin, and always dressed in an “outfit,” her thick blonde hair loose in an incredibly flattering cut, her make-up perfect. I on the other hand tend toward tall, without the thin applying quite so much, though I do watch my weight. My brown hair is curly, and I wear it short or it would look like a bush on my head. At thirty-seven, I swear I already see age spots on my skin, along with a sprinkling of freckles on my nose. And while Claire is graceful and always poised, I tend to stumble through life, bumping into chairs that I know perfectly well are there. Mom once said she wished I took ballet lessons because it might have made me graceful. Gee, thanks, Mom.
I’d seen enough TV shows to know what to do with the gun. “Stay right there. Don’t move.” I left her still holding the gun at her side and bolted for the kitchen, where I grabbed a ballpoint pen and a baggie. When I returned, she still held the gun, so I didn’t need the pen to pick it up—didn’t I see them do that on Law and Order? I opened the baggie and said, “Drop it in here.” She did, I sealed the baggie, and, for some idiotic reason now beyond me, wrapped it in a kitchen towel. Then I put it on a high shelf in the kitchen, mindful of my girls, even though they were sound asleep.
“Claire, sit down. What can I get you? Coffee? Water? Wine?”
Her eyes were still blank, without emotion. “White wine would be lovely,” she said.
Knowing that the police would be here sooner rather than later, I asked, “Claire, how much have you had to drink tonight?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. But I’d like a glass now.”
What could it hurt? I fetched a glass of pinot grigio and came back—with two glasses, one for her and one for me. I didn’t know about her, but I needed a little soothing.
I’d met Claire Guthrie almost a year earlier when I’d sold her my house on Sixth Street in Fort Worth’s Fairmount neighborhood. My daughters and I lived in that house at the time, but I had just bought a wonderful Craftsman home a few blocks over. My ex-husband, Tim, did the Sixth Street house as a realtor’s showcase, but I was never comfortable in it. With its spacious rooms and over-the-top entertaining kitchen, it was a cinch to sell quickly. And it did.
Claire was several steps above me in social class and wealth—or at least so I thought—but we became friends, sharing lunches and even an occasional dinner when her husband was tied up with business. We talked about our girls—hers were almost grown and mine were still in pre- and grade-school. But I didn’t know her well.
I’m Kelly O’Connell of O’Connell and Spencer Realtors in the Fairmount neighborhood of Fort Worth. I am the O’Connell part and my ex-husband, Tim Spencer, was the Spencer part. Though he’d been gone for three years and is now dead, I didn’t change the name. O’Connell Realtors sounded ordinary to me. I liked having the business to myself—well, most of the time.
Fairmount is an inner-city neighborhood of homes mostly built in the in the early twentieth century, lots of bungalows but also some spacious two-story homes and some architectural gems, especially original Craftsman houses. My own house is one of those gems, a bungalow built around 1916. The original owners let me buy their furniture, huge overstuffed leather chairs with broad cherry arm rests, a matching couch and ottoman, cherry end tables and a coffee table almost Spartan in its clean, spare lines.
Claire sank into one of the over-stuffed leather chairs, staring at her hands, her expression beyond reading.
I perched in the other chair, close enough to hers to encourage comfortable conversation.
“Why did you shoot Jim?” I asked, trying to keep my tone conversational.
“He told me he is leaving me for his latest mistress. She’s the last in a long line of sluts I’ve put up with.”
“Was that enough reason to shoot him in…ah, in the derriere?” I asked. It struck me as a pretty damn good reason, but I didn’t feel it appropriate to say that.
“I probably wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t detailed, carefully and precisely, everything that was wrong with me, from the bedroom to the kitchen to the schoolroom. To hear him talk, I should be locked up in that place in Wichita Falls for people who can’t cope with reality.”
I watched her. She twisted the glass in her hands but never took a sip. And her face still had no expression—not triumph, not revenge, not regret. I decided, based on what knowledge I don’t know, that she was in shock.
“Claire, I have to call the police Do you mind if I call Mike? You’ve met him, haven’t you?” Mike Shandy is the patrol officer assigned to the Fairmount addition. I’d known him for a couple of years. I’d run into him at the Old Neighborhood Grill at supper or at a neighborhood association meeting, but in the past year Mike morphed from patrol officer to protector and finally to companion. At this point, neither of us wanted to talk about how deep the connection went, but I knew the attraction was there. And besides, he was someone I could count on.
“Sure, Kelly, call Mike.” She said it without emotion, as though the idea of police interrogation and the inevitable night in the jail cell didn’t bother her.
I punched the button on my cell for his phone and in seconds I heard, “Shandy.”
“Mike, I need you over here,” I said.
I could hear an exasperated sigh from the usually-patient Officer Shandy. “Kelly, it’s got to wait. I’ve already had one fatal accident, and now I have a shooting victim, and I’m dealing with the EMT folks, and….What the hell happened on your old street anyway?”
That startled me, so I asked, “What fatal accident?”
“That old lady who always thought your girls were picking her flowers. Mrs. Dodson, down the street from where you used to live.”
“Mrs. Dodson is dead?” Florence Dodson was my nemesis in several ways, always complaining about something, calling my mother in Chicago if she thought things were not quite right at my house, which was often. One of the less important reasons I was glad to leave Sixth Street was to get away from her. “She can’t be,” I said. No matter how much she bothered me, I wouldn’t have wanted any trouble to come to her. She was just a harmless old lady. Okay, an annoying harmless old lady.
“Looks like she fe
ll down her back stairs and hit her head. Anyway, she’s dead. Listen, I can’t talk. I’ve got to get Jim Guthrie—you know, your old house—into the ambulance and settled.”
“His wife shot him. She’s sitting in my living room.”
“Whaaaat? Oh, yeah, you’re friends. Kelly, can you keep her from going anywhere? I’ll be there right away.”
“Mike, she’s not going anywhere. Don’t break the speed limit.” I didn’t even hear an appreciative chuckle. So much for my sense of humor.
Claire perked up a bit. “Did I hear you say Florence Dodson is dead?”
I nodded. “Apparently fell down her back stairs and hit her head.”
Claire turned almost vehement. “Nasty old lady. Called me poor white trash. Said I didn’t deserve to live in a neighborhood as nice as this.” I swear her eyes flashed with life for the first time since she’d rung the doorbell.
But her passivity returned when Mike arrived. He was there within three minutes, bursting into the living room, gun not drawn but at the ready.
“Put the gun away,” I murmured, as he looked at Claire.
He took his hand off it and then approached Claire.
Claire Guthrie looked blankly at him and took her first sip of wine. I finished my glass and headed for the kitchen for more. Without asking, I brought Mike a cup of black coffee. He accepted it without looking at me, his attention fixed on Claire.
“Mrs. Guthrie, how are you?”
“I shot Jim,” she said with a slight smile, “in the ass, just like my friend told me to.”
“What friend?”
She just shook her head.
Oh, Lord, I hope he doesn’t think it was me.
Mike kept talking to her, and she told him that she was fine, knew what she’d done, knew she’d have to go to jail. She told him why she’d done it, and he just stared.
“Can you give me the gun?” His hand went to his own gun again, just in case.
Claire nodded at me, and I said, “I have it.” When I retrieved it from the kitchen, Mike looked at the dishtowel, then at me, but didn’t say a thing.
“Mrs. Guthrie, I’m going to have to take you downtown,” he said. “Do you want to call your lawyer?”
She looked at me, and I nodded, so she said, “Yes. Kelly, will you call him for me?”
I looked heavenward. Did she think I was psychic and knew who he was? “Yes, if you’ll tell me who it is.”
“Mitchell, Angus Mitchell,” she said.
“I’ll ask him to meet you at the jail.” That word didn’t seem to faze her.
Mike got out his handcuffs, but I reached to stop his arm. “I don’t think you have to do that,” I said.
“Kelly, I have to. If I don’t cuff her, and something happens, I’ll be in bigger trouble than you can imagine. I’ll cuff her hands in front, not in back.” And that’s what he did. And then helped Claire down the walk to his patrol car.
As I turned to go to the phone, I saw Maggie and Em peeking around the doorway, like stair steps, Maggie’s taller head over Em’s little one. Maggie is eight, and Em is five. They are the lights of my life, and I would do anything to protect them. Maggie is an effervescent child, ebullient when she’s happy and dramatic when she’s not. Em is my will-o’-the-wisp, sometimes amazing me with the solemn pronouncements she makes.
“What happened to Mrs. Guthrie?” Maggie asked, echoed by Em’s “What happened?” I didn’t want to explain about Claire shooting her husband. My idea of protecting my children was sometimes denial of reality.
“Oh,” I said, “Mrs. Guthrie went to help Mike with something.”
“In handcuffs?” Maggie gave me a look that asked how dumb I thought she was, and I knew that I shouldn’t try to fool the girls.
“Okay.” Spreading my hands in a placating gesture, I said, “There was some trouble at the Guthrie’s’ tonight….”
“At our house?” Em demanded.
“It’s not our house any more, Em. We sold it to the Guthries.”
“I don’t care,” she said in a stubborn voice, “it’s still our house.
“Em,” Maggie ordered, “let Mom tell us what happened.”
I’d been grateful for the distraction, but now I said, “Nothing much. Mr. Guthrie’s hurt, but he’ll be all right.”
“She shot him, didn’t she?” the world-wise Maggie asked, and I shuddered.
“Yes,” I said, “she did. Now let’s go into the kitchen and get some hot chocolate, so you two can go back to bed.”
Their minds didn’t linger on shooting or Claire Guthrie another moment. They clamored around, helping me make hot chocolate, and then sat in the living room, sipping their drinks and discussing Hannah Montana. Then they trundled off to bed, and, restless, I went into the kitchen for yet another glass of wine.
I retreated to my bedroom office and sat at my desk, wondering about Claire and what would happen to her. I knew sleep wouldn’t come, so I tried to work on some new listings that came into the office, but I couldn’t concentrate. I wandered back into the living room, put on a Stan Kenton and Julie Christie CD, and curled on the couch to think about life’s vagaries. And that’s when I dozed off.
I suppose I dreamt about Claire—what else would have made me jump awake with the realization that I hadn’t called Claire’s lawyer? Frantic, I looked at the clock—almost midnight. Claire was in custody, without council, for at least two hours, and it was my fault.
I rushed into the kitchen, grabbed the phone book, and then was stumped. What did she say his name was? I stared into space for a long moment. Angus! That was it—Angus something. My mind tried to play word games. Angus was a Scottish name, so maybe it was Mc-something. Fort Worth is now a large city, and thumbing in the phone book I realized we have a lot of lawyers—a whole lot of them. There was no Angus Mc-something, but I was sure it was an “M” name, so I thumbed through the M listings. Mayer, Manter, McDougal—he was Donald, not Angus—Meyer, Metz—Eureka! Angus Mitchell. I prayed he had an after-hours number, and lo and behold, the recorded message said, “If this is an emergency, call 817-381-1975.” My hands were shaking, and when a deep voice said hello, I blathered.
“Mr. Mitchell, my name is Kelly O’Connell, I’m calling for Claire Guthrie, she shot Jim, and she’s been taken to the jail.”
“Whoa, miss, slow down! Claire shot her husband?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, in the…ah, derriere.”
“So she shot the sorry bastard in the ass,” he mused, and I wondered if he was the one who told her to do it. Or maybe it was an opinion about Jim Guthrie that a lot of people shared.
“When was she taken downtown, and by whom?”
“About nine. Our neighborhood patrol officer, Mike Shandy, took her.”
There was a bit of silence, and then he seemed to be thinking aloud. “Okay. She’s been booked by now. I’ll go right down there to keep them from questioning her without me.”
“I’m afraid she tells everyone she did it,” I volunteered. “She wasn’t sad or sorry or anything. In fact, she was kind of scary, remote—like she was in a trance or something.”
“Young lady,” he said, “that’s the best thing you’ve said yet in this conversation. I’m on my way. Thank you.”
“Yeah,” I muttered as I heard the buzz of a call disconnected.
The doorbell rang just then. Peering through the peephole, I saw Mike and opened the door. Every single woman my age should dream about opening her front door to a Mike Shandy. I’m tall, but he’s taller. I’m dark, but his hair is sort of dark blonde, cut close to his head for efficiency. He’s neither skinny nor fat, neither drop-dead handsome, which would scare me, nor marred by some awful features. He’s just…well, Mike, and his eyes light up with laughter when I open the door for him or when the girls rush to clamor for his attention. I’m lucky, and I know it. What I can’t figure out is why I haven’t bought into the whole falling in love thing, but I haven’t.
“You need to give me
a key,” he said. “‘I’ll wake the girls ringing that damned old-fashioned clanging bell you have on the door.”
“Not a bad idea,” I said.
“What? Giving me a key or waking the girls?” He grinned and didn’t wait for an answer. “You got a beer? I’m off duty, thank goodness.”
I got him a Corona, picked up my glass of now-warm wine, and waited until he was ready to talk.
“Guthrie’s going to be all right, and the court-appointed lawyer will plead temporary insanity for Mrs. Guthrie. He’ll get her out on bail tomorrow, so she’ll only spend one night in jail. I’m betting that’s all she ever spends.”
I could feel my face flushing. “She has a lawyer,” I said.
“Well, he wasn’t there, and she didn’t speak up for herself.”
That didn’t surprise me. “He’s on his way downtown now. The girls distracted me, and… and I forgot to call him until just now.”
He gave me a long look that said, “Good going, Kelly!” But then he grinned and put his hand over mine. “You know, she said something strange to me in the car, something that had nothing to do with shooting her husband.”
“What?” I asked, even as I knew what he meant. I’d been chewing on her strange strong comment on Florence Dodson.
“She said she was glad her husband would be okay, but she wasn’t sorry that the old lady died. Called her a nasty bitch.”
“She said something like that to me too. I wonder what went on between them.”
“Well, it wasn’t homicide, so I guess she can’t get in more trouble for nasty thoughts. But I sure thought it was strange to talk about someone’s death that way.”
“And out of character for Claire, though I guess I don’t know her that well.” Remembering my conversation with Angus Mitchell, I asked, “Where will she go when she gets out? Not back to the house?”
“She and her husband will have to work that out. It’s way beyond my part of the puzzle. I’ll just have to testify at the trial.”