A Healthy Homicide (21 page)

I gestured down the hall. “I saw the open door and assumed Erin was finishing her packing.”

Patricia snorted. “Erin, ha. That’s a good one. As usual, she couldn’t finish one little chore, and now I’m stuck with it. If you want a job done right . . .”

I shifted my feet, still not sure what to say. “Don’t let me interrupt. I’m sure I’ll catch Erin another time.” I started to turn away.

Patricia waved her hand. “Sure. Leave. All my friends are going to. No one will dare be associated with the wife of a killer.” Tears formed along her eyelids.

I felt my heart tug. I hadn’t always been crazy about Patricia, but I certainly didn’t wish such a horrible turn of events on her. “Your true friends will stand by you.” I walked past her and over to the desk to grab a tissue out of the box sitting on top.

She accepted the tissue but crumpled it in her hand. “If I even have any. Here, I thought Carla was my best friend, and she was screwing my husband.” She squeezed her eyes shut, like she was trying to stop the tears from flowing. “We were friends for over thirty years! Who does that to a friend?”

I lifted my palms, at a total loss. I couldn’t imagine the double betrayal of both a husband and a best friend lying to you. “What will you do now?”

“I haven’t decided. I’m not sure I want to open my new shop in a town where everyone knows my dirty laundry. I might have to move.”

“Where would you go? And what about Stan?”

Patricia laughed a harsh, discordant bark. “Stan’s off to jail, right where he belongs. Even if the cops don’t find that stupid dog statue, he’s got no alibi and the perfect motive. Now I need to worry about myself, like I should have been doing all these years. I’ve spent my whole life taking care of other people, but from now on, I’ll be doing what’s best for me.”

She prattled on about small towns where she could start fresh and about how she had family in Colorado who would take her in, but I was only half listening. I was still stuck on what she’d just said. Where had she learned about the statue? Jason certainly hadn’t written about it in the paper. In fact, he’d said the police didn’t know if a statue was even used to strike Carla, since only one employee ever remembered seeing it. How could Patricia know about it? Had Stan told her?

I realized Patricia had stopped talking. She was watching me like an audience member watched a magician while trying to figure out the secret to a trick. I scrambled to think of an appropriate response. “Oh, yes, Colorado is a wonderful state.”

“You seem distracted,” she said, never taking her eyes off me. “What’s on your mind?”

The skin on my back started itching as she kept staring at me. “I’m still in shock that Stan has been arrested. You must be beside yourself.” I felt the urge to babble as I waited for her to blink. Or scratch her nose. Or do anything besides look at me. Did she know about the statue because Stan had told her, or was she the one who had killed Carla? Maybe the affair wasn’t a total surprise to Patricia, after all. Maybe she knew about it long before the police did.

I took two steps toward Patricia and the open door beyond her, every nerve in my body on high alert. “If there’s anything I can do, anything at all, let me know,” I said, hoping she couldn’t see how scared I was. If I could make it past where Patricia stood, I could outrun her and make it out of the spa.

Patricia wagged a finger at me before I could slip by. “I know why you’re upset. I mentioned the statue, didn’t I?”

I had no answer, but she wasn’t waiting for one.

“See what happens when I don’t plan out everything? I make silly mistakes like that.”

Before I could rush past her and out the door, she lunged for her handbag on the chair and yanked out something dull and black.

It was a gun. And Patricia was aiming it right at me.

“That’s okay.” She smiled. “I’ve got a new plan.”

I looked at the gun, pointed straight at my heart, and felt myself start to shake. I didn’t know what her plan was, but I did know one thing. I wasn’t going to like it.

 

I tried to maintain eye contact with Patricia, but my gaze kept drifting to the gun. “What are you doing, Patricia?” I squeaked.

Her grip didn’t waver. “A little housecleaning,” she said matter-of-factly. She looked down at the gun. “I got this from Stan. Now that I’m opening my own shop, he was worried about robbers.”

“Well, I’m no robber, so you can put it away now.”

Patricia sneered at me. “You’re no robber, but you’re a big problem.”

I didn’t like where this conversation was headed. Could I bluff my way out of here? “I don’t know what you mean.”

I took another step toward the door. Patricia raised the gun, her finger tightening on the trigger. I moved back and put up my hands, like she was the robber Stan was so worried about.

“Look,” I said. “I stopped by to say hi to Erin. I have no idea why you’re pointing a gun at me. Why don’t you put it away?”

“Too late. I saw your face when I talked about the statue. You must know now that I killed her. But this might work out, after all.” She waved toward the room across the hall. “You can die in the mud bath, like Carla. Of course, with Stan in jail, the cops will know he couldn’t have possibly done it and will have to let him go, which is a shame, but I bet everyone in town will start spreading rumors about a serial killer on the loose. They’ll never suspect me. I’m the perfect citizen. I’ve never gotten so much as a parking ticket.”

“Sure, whatever you say.” Far be it from me to argue with a crazy lady holding a gun.

Careful to keep my head still so I wouldn’t alert Patricia, I scanned the area in front of me for something, anything, I could use as a weapon.

I saw nothing.

The desk was behind me, and I tried to recall if anything there might help. I could remember only the box of tissues, but maybe I had overlooked an item. I started to shuffle backward toward the desk, but Patricia noticed me moving. I stopped.

“Don’t get all cute on me,” she said. “I’ll shoot you right where you’re standing if I have to.”

I fought down the panic I felt rising up. Where was Jason? Had he arrived at the Breaking Bread Diner yet? Was he calling my cell phone at this very minute? The phone I’d left in the car?

My car!
It was parked at the curb. Maybe he’d notice it when he drove by, and he’d come back to check. Then my momentary optimism faded. Who knew if he’d left work yet? He might still be writing his story and not even realize how late it was getting.

I needed more time, either to come up with a plan on my own or to give Jason a chance to worry that I’d missed lunch and come looking for me. “When did you find out about the affair?” I asked.

Patricia narrowed her eyes into slits. “I had my suspicions that Stan was seeing someone for a while. A good wife knows. So I started following him. When I saw him visit Carla one night after work, I knew.”

She squeezed her eyes shut at the memory, and the gun drooped in her hand. With Patricia distracted, I reached behind me and felt along the desk’s surface for a potential weapon. I came up empty.

She opened her eyes, and I brought my hand back down.

“He tried to deny it,” Patricia said. “Don’t all men? Claimed he was giving her some tax advice. Like I’d fall for that old line.”

“Maybe he was telling the truth,” I suggested.

She waved the gun at me. “I’m not an idiot. He has office hours. There was no reason to see her in the evening. The night Carla died, I started badgering him about it, and he finally admitted everything. Then he ran away like a little girl.”

She fell silent again, and I worried that she’d run out of things to say. I still didn’t have anything to defend myself with, and Jason hadn’t magically appeared. I needed to keep her talking. “What happened then?”

“I did a lot of thinking. About my life and whether I even liked it.” She smiled. “And you know what? I do. I’m opening my own craft store—even if it’s not here, after all—I’ve raised my kids to be full-fledged, successful adults, and Stan . . . well, he’s Stan. I can do only so much with him. The real problem was Carla.”

“But why kill Carla? Why not kill Stan? He was the married one in the relationship.”

“He’s also the moneymaker in the family. Why should I lose my nice house and yearly vacations because of his stupid mistake? I’m sure he was flattered when someone as attractive as Carla showed an interest, but he’s learned his lesson. He won’t stray from me again.” She pressed her lips in a hard line. “I didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident.”

I tried not to let my disbelief show. “Of course it was. You’re not the type of person who’d hurt a friend on purpose.”

Patricia nodded. “That’s right. I came down to the spa to talk to Carla, woman to woman. Surely, I could reason with her, convince her to stop sleeping with my husband. She owed me for all those years of friendship.”

I couldn’t help but think that their friendship didn’t mean that much if her best friend was sleeping with her husband, but I kept my mouth shut. The last thing I wanted to do was antagonize her.

“When I got down here,” Patricia said, “I saw Stan driving away in his car. Can you believe it? The second I find out about him being unfaithful, he runs off to his girlfriend.” She jabbed at her chest. “He should have been home with me, telling me how much he loved me.” The intensity of her stare made my toes curl.

I felt like a butterfly pinned to a board. I had nowhere to move. “You must have been furious.”

“You bet I was. I charged in here and started yelling at Carla. She told me I needed to calm down.” Her eyes grew wide. “Calm down! Are you kidding me? So I hit her with the statue. That shut her up. The thing weighed a ton. The funny thing is, I gave her that statue as a housewarming present when she opened this place. The shop owner said that foo dogs bring good luck. Guess he was wrong.”

“But she was still alive when you pushed her in the mud bath,” I said. “Why did you have to kill her? You could have explained that you lost your temper and didn’t mean to hit her.”

Patricia tossed her head back and laughed. “Like anyone would believe that. I’d just discovered my husband was cheating with her. Everyone would say it was attempted murder. I shouldn’t go to jail when I’m the one who’s been wronged.”

Well, she’d end up in jail if I had anything to say about it. I could only hope it wouldn’t be for
my
murder. “Does Stan know you killed her?”

Patricia smirked. “I’m sure he suspects. I catch him watching me every now and again, like he wants to ask me about it. But he always chickens out, of course.”

I’d run out of questions. I risked turning my head to peek at the desk. A smattering of papers and a small plastic container of paper clips sat in the far corner. Unless she had a paper-clip phobia, I wasn’t getting any help there.

Patricia pulled out her phone. “Oops. I’ve got a book club meeting in a while. We’d better get this over with.”

Fantastic.
She was scheduling my death between cleaning out Carla’s office and her book club meeting, as if getting rid of me was just another task on her to-do list.

She motioned with the gun toward the door. “Let’s go.”

My muscles tightened in protest. I didn’t want to obey her, but if I wanted to have any chance of escape, I needed to get out of this room. Patricia went first, stepping out backward, keeping the gun trained on me.

I followed her through the doorway, and my eyes fell on the back door. The last time I tried to escape through there, the door had been locked. Was it still?

Patricia must have figured out what I was thinking. “Don’t get any ideas. It’s locked.”

Disappointment and terror waged a war in my gut. I felt like every step closer to the mud room was one step closer to death. My palms were sweating, I was having trouble steadying my breathing, and still Patricia’s resolve never seemed to waver. What was I going to do?

Patricia jerked her head toward the mud room, keeping a safe distance from me as we stood in the hall. “After you.”

I swallowed hard and entered the darkened mud room. I sensed Patricia coming up behind me, and I tensed, but she was only turning on the lights. When I saw the long pits of mud, so much like graves, a sob threatened to burst out. I tamped it down. Now was not the time to cry. Now was the time to save myself.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Patricia said. She sounded almost gleeful.

I turned to face her. “Doesn’t seem like there’s anything left to say. You’ve made up your mind.”

“Yes, I have. Now I need you to get in the mud so I can finish this.”

My mouth dropped open. “That’s your plan? I climb in and stick my head under the mud until I suffocate?” Saying the words sent a fresh spasm through my chest, but I kept my face neutral. I didn’t want to give Patricia the satisfaction of seeing how terrified I was.

“I could shoot you first, but I don’t think either one of us wants that.”

Frankly, I didn’t like either option, but I doubted Patricia cared.

She gave me a little shove, and I stumbled back toward the edge. “Now go,” she said.

This was it, my last chance to escape. I turned and acted like I was contemplating my fate while I studied the room. This side was bare, save for a robe hanging on a nearby hook. A chair sat in the corner on the other side of the two baths, but I couldn’t reach it. Everything else must have been packed up. I was on my own.

I made a show of inching to the edge of the first mud bath. I bent down toward the muck and slowly lowered a hand in, as if to test the temperature. The dense, ice-cold mud clung to my skin, and I shivered. Patricia followed behind me, close enough to shoot me if I tried anything, but still well out of arm’s reach.

I tilted my head up toward her. “I wanted to ask one last question. Do you think Carla was better in the sack than you are?”

Patricia reeled back. I scooped up a handful of mud and threw it in her face. It splattered in her eyes. Her free hand flew up to scrape at the mud, and she waved the gun wildly with the other.

What sounded like a sonic boom exploded in the tiled room. My entire body shuddered at the sound. A pungent smell burned my nostrils.

My God, Patricia had actually fired the gun! Ringing filled my ears as I tried to orient myself.

She fired another shot, and I threw myself to the floor. I scooped up more mud and haphazardly lobbed it at her. She wiped at her face and squinted through the goop that clung to her lashes. I couldn’t stay on the floor all day. The second her vision cleared, I’d be the proverbial sitting duck. I shoved myself up and ran for the chair in the corner.

Patricia fired again. Tile chips flew off the wall near my head, her aim way too close for my liking. I glanced over my shoulder as I grabbed the back of the chair and prepared to throw it at her. She was running toward me, her face and chest covered in mud. As she raised the gun to fire again, I swung the chair up, hoping to block the shot. Patricia hit a patch of mud and started to slide.

Seeing my opening, I hit her with the chair. She let out a grunt and fell to the floor. I dropped the chair on top of her and darted for the door. I ran out of the room and pounded down the carpeted stretch of hall, aiming for the bright rectangle of light that marked the front door. As I ran, I expected to hear another boom, feel an agonizing pain in my back as a bullet struck, but no shot came.

I flew through the lobby and burst through the spa door, where I collided directly with Jason. He grabbed my arms.

“Hey, slow down! Were those gunshots I heard?”

Jesus.
Patricia might be right behind me. Now she’d get me and Jason both. I wrenched out of his hold and tried to pull him by his shirt down the sidewalk. “Patricia has a gun! We have to get out of here!”

A woman walking toward us froze and clutched her purse tightly. “Who has a gun? Where?” The man with her stepped in front of her, as if to protect her.

Before I could warn them, Patricia burst out of the spa, the gun still in her hand. “I’m going to kill you!” she yelled when she saw me.

I snatched the purse from the woman and chucked it at Patricia’s head. She put up her free hand to stop it. Beside me, Jason heaved himself forward, straight into Patricia. They both went down. Hard.

The gun flew from Patricia’s grasp and skittered across the pavement. I chased after it as it slid under the bench. Dropping to my knees, I reached under the redwood slats and frantically felt along the ground until my fingers closed around the smooth metal. Gun at the ready, I whirled around to help Jason.

But Jason didn’t need my help. Patricia lay flat on her back, with Jason sprawled on top of her. Each of his hands gripped one of her wrists, keeping them on the ground.

“Dana?” he called. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. And I’ve got the gun.”

I kept it pointed down as he got his legs under him and crouched over Patricia, still holding her wrists. When she didn’t seem to struggle, he let go of her. She immediately started to flail her arms, striking Jason in the face. I stiffened and brought the gun up, but Jason grabbed her arms and held them back down.

“Did she hurt you?” I asked.

“I’m okay.”

“Let me call the police.” I took one hand off the gun and started to reach in my pocket when I remembered my phone was in the car. I looked over at the couple, who stood to one side, both staring at Patricia on the ground. “Either of you have a phone?”

The woman snapped out of her trance and bent down to retrieve her purse where it lay on the sidewalk. She pulled out her phone and dialed.

When Patricia heard the woman talking to the 911 operator, she started to cry. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It’s not fair.”