Butterfly Sunday (34 page)

“Leona needs my help.”

“Leona isn’t worth helping,” Blue said.

“You bastard! She was in love with you!”

“You think she’s so damned good?”

“I won’t help you send her to death row.”

“Then you’ll help Leona send you to death row.”

Blue had to admit that in spite of all the circumstances, he was beginning to enjoy his visit. Soames
was always acting. Didn’t it figure then that she would fall for his performance?

“Send
me
to death row?”

“She says you shot Averill Sayres.”

Soames had plenty of color now. She pasted on an incredulous mask.

“I’ll let you see yourself out.”

“Look, we know she’s lying.”

She regained her aloof expression.

“Me? She turned on me like that?”

Blue wasn’t about to waste a cue like that.

“I know all about how Leona turns on those who care the most.”

That worked. He had reassured her.

“Don’t you want something to drink?”

When he was finally back at the wheel of the Jeep, he went all jittery. He had given her quite a performance, pretending that he had recently come to the reluctant conclusion that Leona had not only murdered Averill but Rhea Anne Brisbane as well.

“What?”

This time there was unmistakable triumph in her incredulity. Blue ran through the various incriminating facts surrounding that case as it related to Leona. He was hoping Soames would indicate some kind of satisfaction that he was basically saying that her setup had succeeded.

“She was not only the last person alone in that church with Rhea Anne, but the only person in the county who had any motive for killing her.”

Yet Soames seemed to weigh what he told her about the gun.

“The clinker is the gun. We know Leona used the
same one to kill both Rhea Anne and Averill. But we can’t find it.”

“I’m afraid I don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”

“I was just hoping she might have said something.”

“About the murder weapon?” Soames asked with disdain. “You must think I’m an accomplice!”

This was going to be his exit line. He had to say it just right.

“Not about the weapon, Soames. About me.”

“You?”

“Yeah. Like whether or not she ever really loved me.”

Moving down the long driveway toward the road, Blue kept checking the rearview mirror, half expecting Soames to step out from behind a giant Corinthian column and fire a pistol at the back of his head. Well, if she did, he mused, the county would have all the evidence it needed to free Leona and convict Soames.

Of course the real question was, now that he had set the trap, was she going to take the bait?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 2000

12:01 A.M.

There had been nothing to do but wait until dark in the woods. He had pulled the truck into a dry creek bed and under a sandstone ridge. Folding his fleece-lined jacket into a wad behind his head, he stretched out across the seat. He kept fading in and out. After midnight Blue drove without headlights as close as he felt it was safe, then he crept through the woods about a mile before he came out in the cemetery across the road from the parsonage. The house was dark. The Oldsmobile and the truck sat where they had been last night. All the same, he kept his head low and moved from tree to tree, making a wide arc that took him to the porch.

Once inside the dark house, he searched in the shadows, feeling around in drawers and at the backs of
shelves. The little pearl-handled pistol was wrapped in a piece of velvet and tucked into the toe of Averill’s galoshes at the bottom of the bedroom closet. He examined it for a moment, removed a bullet, and then wrapped the pistol and put it back.

Nothing to do now but wait. He sat in the silent house, crouched in a dark corner of the living room, and watched the moonlit face of an old Seth-Thomas shift from nine to midnight to three A.M. The longer he waited, the longer his list of unanswered questions grew. He had miscalculated something. Then around four A.M. he heard footsteps on the driveway. The door had been unlocked when he got there. He had locked it so she would have to jimmy a window. He wanted her to think her secret was locked tight.

Either she wasn’t much of a thief or she was drunk. It took her fifteen minutes to get a living room window open. She went straight to the bedroom. He followed her, standing in the door as she knelt at the closet. She didn’t start or even scream when he flipped on the overhead light. She just sat back on her haunches and threw her hands in the air, one of which held the weapon she had carried for protection.

“Drop it,” he said.

“I’m sick to death of it,” she said. Then her right hand aimed the gun inside her mouth and as she fell forward, his face was splattered with blood and brains.

CHRISTMAS DAY 1997

9:30 A.M.

Soames had no intentions of spending any more time in this hot sheet motel. She had woken up around six-thirty and dressed, leaving Averill in Birdland while she took care of business. Now it was after eight and the worthless bastard could start earning his keep.

“Lover …”

He opened his eyes, moaned and shut them again, turning away from her.

Where the hell did the shiftless piece of Holy Roller trash get the idea he had the right to sleep until noon? She pulled back the sheet and he drew his long torso into a ball. He reminded her of a hairless lizard in bikini briefs.

“Get your bony ass up!”

He stared at her, incredulous.

“What are you looking at?”

“ ’S wrong, baby?”

“I have a little Christmas present for you.”

He sat forward, grinning like a juvenile.

“It’s not here. It’s out at the house.” She threw him his shirt and trousers. He tried to shake off the rest of his sleep and confusion. Henri had thrown her out for good. She couldn’t go back to the house. He shouldn’t be here or anyplace close to here with Soames.

“You can’t go to the house right now.”

“Baby, I can go to that house anytime I like for as long as I like.”

“Henri …”

“Henri had a little accident this morning.”

Averill felt ice water running down his back.

“What kind of accident?”

“Hunting,” she said with a bored expression, swooping his socks off of the floor.

“How is he?”

“To my way of thinking? Henri has never been better.”

“Dead?”

“Death doesn’t close for Christmas, Father Feelgood.”

“How’d it happen?” he asked, carefully avoiding any direct reference to the strange name she had just called him. She was souped, high on something or out of her mind. She had an ominous air, a boding irony about her that scared him.

“I shot him.”

She’d flipped. She had a gun in her purse and she was going to use it on him. He dove for the door, jerked it open and ran into the afternoon drizzle without belt or shoes. By the time he was halfway across the parking lot toward the café, Soames was outside the room, bent
double, laughing. She had left her purse in the room and her hands were empty.

“Horny little worm.”

He followed her back inside the room.

“You think I’d shoot you in the broad daylight in a motel room?”

“Yes, you’re acting that crazy.”

“Well, I’m not even half that crazy, idiot.”

They had to get out to the house and make things look like a big Christmas dinner had been planned. She wanted him to help open a mess of presents so it looked like Henri and she had exchanged gifts that morning. She wanted breakfast leftovers with hers and Henri’s fingerprints on them. Then they would have to drag the body out into the fields and arrange it with the pistol she’d used so it looked like a self-inflicted wound.

He was certain now that she wasn’t armed. However, her assurances about her sanity hadn’t convinced him one iota. What made her think he’d have any part of murder? He was clean and he was going to stay that way.

“You go on, I’ll visit my sister and her husband.”

“You’d abandon me?”

“This is murder you’re talking.”

“Premeditated murder.” She nodded.

“Then you know I can’t get involved.”

Soames gave him a dazzling smile. Then she laughed. There wasn’t a trace of cruelty or sarcasm in it. She was genuinely amused. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Reverend. But you’re an idiot.”

She took obvious relish in explaining it all for him. He’d been the adulterous paramour of a murdered man’s wife. Without thinking, he had cosigned papers last month that made them joint owners of a home
in Laguna Niguel, California. Henri had not only taken his car away from him yesterday, but he had thrown Averill and his wife into the street. He had taken Averill’s church away from him and his lawyers were planning to name him in a series of lawsuits. Henri’s body was already stiff and cold, and nearby the gun used to murder him was lying in plain sight. Averill had purchased that gun a week ago. Averill’s fingerprints were all over it, as well as Henri’s bedroom, bed and widow. Averill had checked into this establishment last night with the deceased’s wife and both had been seen here today by the staff.

“I didn’t kill anybody,” Averill stammered.

“Not as long as you do exactly what I tell you to do.”

“I’ve got the truth on my side.”

“I’ve got the evidence on mine, stud.…” She grabbed his groin area with her fist and squeezed his testicles lightly. “Merry Christmas, lover.”

Later, when everything had been done as Soames commanded at the house, she called town for an ambulance. “An accident. My husband, Henri, was climbing a fence with a loaded pistol—a Christmas gift—it went off and I think … I think he’s … Hurry!”

Averill waited in the silence after she hung up the phone while she busied herself opening a stack of Christmas cards.

“Oh, the Heathertons!” she cried as if it was the merriest Christmas ever. “Look at the girls!?! Aren’t they gorgeous?” She handed him a photocard of a family of four in green plaid.

“What do you want me to do now?”

“Do?”

“I can’t be here when the cops arrive.”

“Who called the cops?”

“There’s been a murder here!”

“There’s been an accident.”

“I can’t stay here.”

“No, lover, you can’t.”

“What about the house in California?”

“You don’t really think I bought a house in California?” She chuckled with delight.

“You said …”

“I lied.”

“Why?”

“To make you my accomplice.”

“To murder?”

“To my life.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Your mind, body and soul.”

“You really are a witch.”

“No, I’m not that special; but I am a good liar.”

“Then why do I get the feeling you’re telling me the truth?”

“We’re rich, lover boy. When the smoke clears we’re going to sail around the world on the
QE 2
.”

She could think that if she wanted to. He was out of there. He’d go on foot if need be. “I’m leaving.”

“Your car’s in the garage.”

“What?”

“I had it towed.”

“You said …”

“I told you, I lied!”

“To trap me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“You don’t even trust me.”

“That’s different.”

“Well, I’m leaving you.”

“No, Averill, you’re leaving—but you’ll never leave me.”

Over and over as the Cutlass rolled down the highway, he heard the sound of her voice telling him that he would never leave her.