The Ex Who Wouldn't Die (Charley's Ghost)

by Sally Berneathy

  Charley was trying. She grudgingly gave him credit for that. But essentially she was alone in a tumble down cabin in the middle of nowhere with a murderer. Not exactly the way she had planned for the evening to go.

  "What choice do I have?" Amanda asked of Charley, her words quiet and dispirited.

  "None," Kimball responded. "The coat."

  She hugged the jacket more closely. "Why? You've got the gun. Our deal is finished." She edged toward the door, hoping he'd let her go, hoping she could escape with her life and her recording. Though Kimball had not made a confession, surely she had enough to convince the cops to investigate him.

  He moved with her, the gun still pointing toward her.

  "Give me the jacket. As soon as I check the pockets, you can have it back."

  Damn. She'd be lucky to get out of this with her life. It seemed there was no chance she'd get away with her recording.

  Slowly she unzipped her jacket the rest of the way. Maybe she could grab the hammer.

  And then what?

  Gun trumps hammer. He could shoot her from across the room, while she had to get up close and personal in order to beat his brains out with a claw hammer.

  Nevertheless, after slipping one arm out of the jacket, she reached inside with that hand and closed her fingers over the handle of the hammer. Moving quickly, she slid her other arm from the sleeve, yanked out the hammer and tossed the jacket into Kimball's face. The gun exploded, the bullet screaming past her head and slamming into the wall behind her.

  She surged forward, throwing herself at Kimball, swinging the hammer toward the hand holding the gun. She struck him a glancing blow, not enough to crack a bone but enough that he dropped the revolver and cursed.

  Her jacket slid to the floor between them as he grabbed her with one arm. She swung the hammer wildly, trying to connect with some body part, any body part. But Kimball wrapped his arm around her neck and twisted her so her back was pressed against him.

  "Lift the jacket with your foot," he growled, his mouth against her ear.

  When she didn't respond immediately, he tightened his grip on her throat and Amanda felt herself choking.

  "I'm trying!" Charley said, standing in front of her, his fingers of cold air on her neck telling her he was doing all he could to dislodge Kimball's choking arm.

  Amanda slid her foot under the jacket and lifted it a couple of feet off the floor.

  "Drop the damn hammer and get it."

  Amanda reached down, snagging the jacket with the claw end of the hammer and lifting it.

  Kimball took the leather coat. "Now drop the hammer." His arm tightened around her throat. She dropped the hammer. It fell to the floor with a thud of despair.

  He fumbled with her jacket, feeling inside the pockets until he found the cell phone.

  Lifting it with his free hand so both he and Amanda could see the recording icon, he laughed. "I knew it. I knew you'd do something dumb." He tossed it to the floor and ground his heel into it.

  "Okay, smart bitch, now that you're not recording anything, you still want to know about Dianne?"

  Amanda tried to squeak out that she could care less about Dianne at the moment, but Kimball squeezed her throat so tight she was unable to speak.

  Charley paced back and forth in front of them. "Don't let him tell you. If he tells you, he'll have to kill you."

  "Does anybody else know about the homeless man?"

  "Tell him no!"

  Amanda tried to shake her head, but her movement was constrained. "No," she croaked.

  Kimball's grip relaxed a little.

  "He's smiling!" Charley said. "That crazy man is smiling while he's killing you!"

  "Killing that man was fun," Kimball said, the tone of his voice confirming that he was, indeed, smiling. "We were stoned. Yeah, Saint Dianne did drugs. She did anything I told her to, except she didn't want to kill that worthless old man. She freaked out on me that night. Then she got religion. Married that wimp Carter and convinced the whole town she was pure as the virgin snow."

  His arm around her neck tightened again, and Amanda's fingers flew to her throat, trying to pry him loose.

  "Be still. You wanted to know all this so badly, pay attention." But he did loosen his grip so she could breathe. "I didn't care what she did. Things were fine until a couple of years ago when she got on a guilt trip. Wanted to confess her sins. Wanted to tell the world we killed somebody. Take her punishment."

  "What do you care?" Amanda croaked. "Your family owns the town."

  "Sure, I could have kept it from ever going to court. But that bitch I'm married to would have freaked, and so would my old man. They're no saints, but they want everybody to think the whole family is. They sit there on their money like they own me. They'd never have supported me as governor if Saint Bitch had talked. So I shot her. And everything would have been fine if your worthless husband hadn't found this gun."

  "I'll get help!" Charley shouted, and disappeared through the wall.

  "Are you going to shoot me?" Amanda choked out.

  "No. I don't want the two deaths linked. I've had more time to think and plan. You're going to be easy. Thanks to your habit of riding around town on that motorcycle, nobody's going to be surprised when you end up in a fatal crash, out riding the rough roads around the lake. Run the bike into the trees, throw you down beside it. A broken neck will just seem like part of the crash injuries, assuming they ever find your motorcycle or your body out here. This would have been a lot easier if you'd died the first time."

  Anger blended with Amanda's fear. "You admit you jacked with my bike!"

  "Your husband wasn't very smart. He told me you were taking a long trip. With my connections, it was easy to find out the details. Getting into your bike shop the night before was easy, almost as easy as getting into your apartment. I figured you'd be up in those mountains by the time you lost all the brake fluid and your tire came loose."

  "But I didn't die! I'll bet that ticked you off, to have your plans ruined. I'm the loose end, aren't I? You thought I'd die and be blamed for Charley's murder, but I'm still alive!"

  "Not for long. Yes, you would have been blamed for his death. You are being blamed. I wore motorcycle gear so everybody would think I was you. Then you came over, and that made it even better. Everything would have been perfect if you'd just died like you were supposed to. You'd be dead, Charley would be dead, you'd be blamed for his death, and I'd be home free."

  He tightened his arm around her neck. Amanda couldn't breathe. She was going to die after all. She thought of her mother and her father, of Herbert and Irene, and she felt tears in her eyes at the thought of never seeing them again. Even worse, she'd soon be on the same plane as Charley. Surely if they were both dead, they would no longer be married. That should as two deaths to part them. Surely she wouldn't still be stuck with him forever.

  Suddenly Charley came through the wall again, smiling, exultant. "Don't worry, Amanda! Your mother's here! And she's got a gun!"

  Her mother? Out here? The oxygen deprivation must be getting to her. She couldn't conceive of her meticulous mother, every hair in place, wearing thousand dollar heels, tripping through the rough terrain carrying one of the guns she deplored. She hoped she could live just long enough to see that.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Charley peered at her more closely. "Omigawd! He's going to kill you before she gets here!" His cold fingers brushed her throat as he tried ineffectually to pry Kimball's arm from her neck. Blackness crept around the edges of her brain.

  "Amanda! Lift your right foot and shove your heel against his knee!"

  The blackness edged closer, making Charley's words only a muffled noise.

  "Amanda!" he shouted. "Suck it up! Stop letting this creep have the upper hand! You never let me! You like him better than me?"

  If that wasn't just like Charley. She was dying, and he was trying to start an argument.

  "Lift your right foot!" he repeated. "Shove your heel agai
nst his knee! I'm not going to shut up until you do!"

  Wearily Amanda lifted her right foot.

  "Hard!" Charley demanded. "Push as hard as you can!"

  Mouthy Charley. Amanda lifted her heel to Kimball's knee and pushed.

  "Hard!"

  One final push, and she'd give herself to the blackness, stop fighting it.

  Abruptly the pressure around her neck released and somebody screamed. She fell to her knees, gasping and coughing. The screaming turned to cursing.

  "Amanda! Over here! Get over here, away from the window!"

  Amanda didn't want to go anywhere. Her throat hurt. She couldn't stop coughing.

  Somebody pushed against her, grabbed her shoulder.

  Couldn't be Charley. Had to be Kimball.

  She jerked her shoulder away and rolled to the side.

  "Good girl!" Charley applauded.

  Good girl? Like he was training a dog? She struggled to her feet and fell toward him. As soon as she got her strength back, she'd strangle him.

  A shot exploded through the open window.

  "Don't move, Mayor Kimball." The voice was familiar, soft-spoken but firm. Sounded like Sunny Donovan. Nah, that was impossible.

  "This bitch tried to break my knee," Kimball snarled.

  The front door flew open. "I'll break more than that if you move one muscle." Herbert stood in the open doorway, a shotgun leveled at Kimball. Irene appeared from behind him, pushing through the door and coming toward her.

  "Stand down! Everybody drop your guns! Police!"

  She was definitely hallucinating from oxygen deprivation. Detective Daggett and two uniformed cops could not be coming through the doorway.

  Another figure came in behind them. "That's my daughter! Get out of the way!"

  "Daddy?" Amanda tried to push to her feet. Her father's arms surrounded her, holding her up.

  "Are you okay?"

  "I guess. What are you doing here?"

  "On your feet," Daggett ordered, standing over Kimball, his gun aimed at the man's head.

  "I can't. That damn bitch broke my knee."

  "Then you better figure out how to crawl.

  "We were so scared," Irene said, wrapping an arm around her on the side her father wasn't holding.

  "I was afraid we'd lost you when you set off through the woods," Herbert said, holding his shotgun now pointed toward the ground.

  "You followed me?"

  Herbert shrugged and grinned shyly. "Yeah. It was hard to keep up when you all were going round and round the town, and then I had to track you through the woods. That part was easier. Been hunting these woods all my life. Reckon those skills came in handy tonight."

  Two uniformed cops from the Silver Creek force dragged Kimball through the door, and Daggett came over to her.

  "Are you okay? You probably ought to go to the hospital to get checked out."

  Amanda shook her head. "No." The word barely hurt as it came up her sore throat. She coughed twice and tried again. "No. I'm okay. What are you doing here? You didn't believe me. You wouldn't take my calls."

  Daggett raised his eyebrows. "I never said I didn't believe you. If I'd taken all your calls, I wouldn't have had time to do any work and track down this scum."

  "You did believe me?"

  Daggett shrugged. "Your story was a little strange, but I've heard stranger. My gut told me you didn't kill your husband, and that meant somebody else did it. After all you told me, I had to check into this guy's background."

  "You did?" Anger sent adrenalin surging through Amanda, masking her pain and giving her energy. "You could have made my life a lot easier if you'd bothered to share that with me!"

  "I never discuss an ongoing case."

  Amanda glared at him. "But I guess you're going to want me to discuss your ongoing case when you take that monster to trial."

  Daggett grinned crookedly. "I figured you'd be downright eager."

  "You got that right. I was trying to record his confession since there's no evidence, but he smashed my cell phone."

  "No problem. Your lawyer friend got it all." He nodded toward the window.

  Amanda looked in that direction. The moon had risen, and she could see Sunny Donovan quite clearly, standing outside looking in, clutching a Glock. With her other hand she lifted a small metallic device and smiled. Good grief. The whole town of Silver Creek was here, not to mention part of Dallas.

  "Sunny? What are you doing here?"

  Sunny shrugged and looked sheepish. "Keeping track of you, but after you spotted Frank following you—"

  "Frank? The man Kimball hired to spy on me?" Had Sunny and Kimball been working together after all?

  "Kimball didn't hire Frank. Frank followed you as a favor to me. But he's not very good at it. After you caught him, I had to figure out something else. Remember when I rode your bike? I palmed a couple of tracking devices from my desk drawer and put one on your bike and another in the lining of your jacket."

  Amanda recalled the day in Sunny's office when she'd fumbled in her desk drawer for a long time before finally producing a card and writing her cell phone number on it.

  "Why?" she asked. "Why were you tracking me?"

  "I knew you were headed for trouble."

  "Good thing she did," Daggett said. "I almost didn't find you with that legal description you left for me. That's about five miles from here, cross-country."

  "We found him wandering around, lost as a goose in a snowstorm," Irene said. "Hadn't been for Herbert being able to track so good he can follow a squirrel through the treetops, he wouldn't have found you."

  "She's right," Daggett admitted. "Those shots got us in the right vicinity, but Mr. Randolph took us the rest of the way. You are one lucky lady to have so many people looking out for you."

  "And me," Charley added. "I'm looking out for you." Amanda's attention snapped to him. "Yeah, I'm still here. Guess our business isn't finished yet." She could tell from the guilty look on his face that he knew exactly what other business remained. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

  Seeing Charley reminded her of his strange announcement that her mother was there with a gun.

  "Where's Mother?" Amanda asked.

  "Waiting in the car," her father answered. "You don't think she was going to walk through the wilderness in her best heels?"

  "No, of course not." Maybe she hadn't heard Charley right. She had been under a lot of stress, emotional as well as physical. Not every day a girl almost got killed.

  "She'll be pretty upset by now, worrying about you. Can we go, Detective Daggett?"

  "Sure. Bring her in tomorrow so we can take her statement. She probably ought to go to the hospital, but, good luck with that." He turned and left the cabin.

  "I'll fix her something for that throat," Irene offered.

  "Hot chocolate would be good."

  Irene laughed. "We can have some of that, too."

  "Dad, how did you know where to find me?" Amanda asked as they started toward the door.

  "Dawson called me. He told me what you were planning to do, and about the cabin where he thought it would happen."

  "Geez! You can't trust anybody."

  Her father looked at her strangely, then looked away. "Fortunately Sunny planted those tracking devices on you and your motorcycle since that wasn't the cabin you ended up at. Your mother and I came in with Sunny."

  Amanda looked toward the window and saw Sunny still standing there, watching. Amanda thought she saw tears in the woman's eyes, but it was probably just the flickering lantern light.

  "Come with us, Sunny," her father said quietly, and Sunny nodded. "There's something we need to talk about."

  "I'll ride Amanda's bike," Sunny said. "You and Beverly can take her to the Randolphs' house in my car."

  Beverly? Oh, yeah. Sunny had interned for her father's law firm. Apparently she'd been a friend of the family.

  ***

  Amanda sat at Irene's kitchen table, sipping hot chocolate, surr
ounded by her family, one friend and one ex-husband. Her throat was still sore, but Irene had concocted some kind of vile brew and insisted Amanda drink it before she could have a cup of hot chocolate. She was beginning to feel like a normal human being again. Well, maybe not exactly a normal human being…make that an extremely happy human being.