*****
Patti sat at the table in the cluttered kitchen, boxes stacked on counters and kitchen chairs. “We’ll go away, just the two of us, Gary and I. Perhaps Columbia, or maybe Mexico.”
Afraid to speak, but convinced her fate was decided whether she did or not, Darla cleared her throat. “Why...why not just let him divorce me?” she asked in a whispery croak.
“Divorce you?” Patti’s face contorted into a sneer. “You must think I’m a moron. Is that what you think, Darla? Do you think Patricia Stump is stupid?”
She slammed her hand down hard on the table beside the gun. She snatched it up and pointed it at Darla’s head.
“Go into divorce court with that mewling brat of yours and stick us with alimony and child support while you take the house and the car and the agency? And then you would always be popping up in our lives. ‘Haley needs shoes, Haley needs money for college, Haley needs, Haley needs.” Stump put the gun to Darla’s head and stroked her cheek with the barrel. “The only way Gary and I can begin our new life together is for me to erase his old one.”
Darla was surprised she wasn’t crying. The bitch was pointing a gun ten inches from the bridge of her nose, and she was just sitting there, continent and calm. So this is what true fear does to you, she thought numbly. This is what facing your own death feels like. Perhaps it was the realization that she was totally helpless that made her calm. There was no sense in trying to come up with a plan. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen.
The sound of the doorbell made them both jump. Stump’s finger twitched against the trigger. She lowered the weapon and looked suspiciously at Darla.
“I don’t know who it is,” Darla said, her eyes suddenly hopeful and desperate.
“Stay here and keep your mouth shut. I’ll kill whoever it is if you so much as fart in here.” Darla couldn’t help but think the woman’s mouth was a tight, nasty little slit that spewed her words like the snakes and toads from one of Haley’s book of fairy tales. But she nodded.
Stump took the gun and walked to the front door.
Maggie stood on the porch and rang the doorbell a second time. Gary and Darla lived in an in-town tract subdivision with double and triple story elevations of stucco and brick. A typical bedroom community, it was virtually deserted by day.
She noticed it looked pretty deserted right now, too.
The house was quiet, but she knew Darla was home because she could see lights on upstairs and in the back of the house. She practically vibrated with excitement and anticipation. Just to see Darla’s face was going to feel like such a relief after that agonizing trip from hell, where she went through every imaginable possible scenario—and all of them bad. In one nightmarish image, she discovered Darla’s body hanging from her favorite apple tree out back. She shook the image out of her mind. In less than an hour, the two of them would be comfortably holed up in a luxury room at the Buckhead Ritz with room service.
She heard footsteps coming to the front door and shifted her purse onto her shoulder, ready to embrace her friend and feel the titanic relief of their escape.
The door swung open to reveal Patti Stump in a purple pantsuit, grinning at her from behind a large ugly handgun that was pointed right at her.
“This is Christmas morning, you showing up here, Maggie. That’s all I can say. You’re dead. You know that, right?” Stump grabbed Maggie by her jacket and jerked her into the house.
Murder in the South of France, Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries Page 53