*****
Maggie saw Darla squeeze her eyes shut and the movie of exactly what was going to happen in front of her played out in her head. She screamed behind her gag as loudly as she could and was rewarded with Stump snapping her head around to look at her.
“Got something to say, Maggie? Oh, this I gotta hear. If you scream, though, I shoot you both and no more fucking around.” Stump tucked the gun under her arm and grabbed the tape on Maggie’s mouth. When she ripped it off, Maggie felt a layer of skin go with it and she couldn’t help her cry of pain.
Stump pointed the gun at Maggie and grinned. “You could beg for your life. I’d listen to that.”
“You can’t seriously think you’ll get away with this,” Maggie said, her lips on fire from the removal of the packing tape.
“Why not? No one talked to me about either your sister’s death or Deirdre’s. Isn’t that wild? The cops interviewed Pokey but not me! Did you know that eighty-two percent of all non domestic murders in this country go unsolved?”
“You killed Elise instead of me. Why?”
“That is a very good question, Maggie. Why, indeed?”
“It couldn’t be a case of mistaken identity. You knew I wouldn’t be home from the office in the middle of the day.”
“That’s true. But the idiot I sent to do the job didn’t know that.”
“You…you hired a guy?”
“And learned once and for all that if you want something done right, etc.”
“Okay, so he killed Elise thinking she was me. Then what were you doing there?”
“How do you know I was there?”
“I found something you dropped.”
“Yes, well, when the moron called to say he’d finished the job and I knew for a fact that you had just left the office to go shopping at Lenox Square, I then also knew he’d screwed up. So I went to see for myself.”
“And you were in the crowd of gawkers in my apartment building.”
“Everyone was buzzing everyone else in. A very friendly bunch in your building. When I saw the cops taking names and statements, I left.”
“This is different, Patti. You can’t just execute us tied to kitchen chairs. The cops will pick you up before you’ve driven a hundred miles.”
“Well, first off, Maggie, I’m not going anywhere. I’m waiting here for Gary to come home. And second of all, I’ve done my research. You don’t think I’ve seen CSI? Every piece of evidence in this house will point to the inevitable conclusion that you and wifey here duked it out over who gets Gary. Sadly, you killed each other in the process. I’m not stupid you know. I’ve given this at least as much thought as the average crime show scriptwriter.”
The arrogance of the woman was as unnerving as the gun she kept waving at Maggie. Patti really thinks she can outmaneuver the police because she’s become a forensic expert through watching television.
“But this time, Gary knows,” Maggie said.
“Gary loves me. He’s upset right now, but he’ll be fine in time.”
“You’re crazy.” It had just slipped out, but from the expression on Patti’s face it had hit home, too.
“And you’re minutes from being dead, Maggie. I’m actually doing you a favor,” she said, turning to Darla. “Gary’s practically in love with her as it is. You should see the two of them together in the office.”
Maggie knew their only hope was to stall long enough that something might happen. A miracle might happen. Anything. Just something besides their deaths. She looked at Darla and saw that tears were streaming down her face. Stump noticed them too.
“Aw, don’t fret. We’ll raise little…what’s her name? Doesn’t matter. I’ll change it anyway, if I don’t kill her. I know Gary wants to emigrate and that fits perfectly for us starting over together.”
She put the gun barrel to Darla’s head. “Time to finish this ladies. I got a date with a widower.”
Burton stepped across the front lawn and sidled around to the back of the house. These new housing designs made his job easier, since they eliminated all side windows. A beam of light at the back of the house pushed through the row of oleander bushes crowding the kitchen door. The light illuminated the back yard and the trunks of the trees in the woods behind.
Moving as quietly as he could, while still being mindful that Kazmaroff’s watch was usually fast when timing ten-minute rear entries, Burton heard the first sound of voices coming from inside the house. His heart beat quicker. He crouched on the small deck under the large kitchen window. Through it, he could see two women tied to chairs, their backs to him, and another—dressed like some kind of homeless person—waving the familiar, angular shape of a Glock semi-automatic pistol. In the instant it took Burton to process the scene, the armed woman brought the gun to the head of one of the seated women.
And then the front doorbell rang.
No! Too soon!
The gunwoman froze. She looked over her shoulder toward the front door, then scanned the kitchen frantically, as though looking for an intruder to suddenly materialize. The expression on her face reminded Burton of a cornered, wild animal, but her gun hand never wavered from the woman’s head.
Would she try to answer the door? Would she make a run for it? Jesus, would she kill her hostages first? He aimed his Smith & Wesson pistol but one of the hostages was in the way.
Think, man, think! She’s not gonna wait forever.
The impact of the brick as it hit the seven-foot expanse of window in the breakfast nook felt like a nuclear explosion to Maggie. She screamed and forced her chair to fall over on its side, crashing into Darla and knocking hers down too. She could hear Stump screaming and shooting out the back window.
“I’ll kill you, you bastard! Is that you, Gary? She’s dead, you bastard! I killed her! I killed her! I killed her!”
Maggie squeezed her eyes shut against the bedlam and heard what sounded like a tank coming through the front of the house as Kazmaroff smashed his way in. He barreled down the hallway to the kitchen, knocking over packing boxes as he went.
From where she lay on the floor, Maggie saw him appear in the doorway to the kitchen, window blinds still attached to him from his entrance through the front window.
He held his gun in front of him. “Police! Drop your weapon!”
Maggie could tell that Stump had frozen, and that she was still facing the back yard, where the brick had come from.
“Police!” he shouted again. “Drop it!”
Without moving, Patti lifted her arm as if she were going to drop the gun, then casually straightened her arm to let it hang by her side—pointing downward at Darla’s head.
Kazmaroff shot her three times in a tight cluster in the back of Gary’s pinstriped shirt.
Murder in the South of France, Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries Page 56