For the Sake of Their Baby (23 page)

Emily nodded her head, then shook it. Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, plopping unceremoniously onto her blouse. Not a blouse, Liz realized suddenly. A pajama top, the same blue one from the night before.

“Let me call Ron for you,” Liz begged.

“No.”

“Then how about I drive you home?”

Emily finally stopped staring into space and turned her attention to Liz, who shrank back against the chair under the intensity of her friend’s gaze. She said, “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”

Furrowing her brow, Liz said, “Leave what alone?”

Emily closed her eyes for a moment and her head swayed. “Me. Us. You,” she said. “Why couldn’t you just leave everything the way it was? Why did you have to meddle, why did you have to bring Alex around again, why couldn’t you love Ron?”

Liz blinked several times. She wasn’t sure what to say.

“I knew I had to have it,” Emily said, her voice now dreamy sounding. “The minute I saw it, I knew. It’s like that sometimes. Oh, most of the time it’s just an urge, like being a little hungry, like wanting a snack. But sometimes, the feeling is overpowering, like being ravenous, like killing the first beast you come across and devouring it whole. Your uncle was a beast, Liz. Ron told me how much you hated him.”

Yikes,
Liz thought as the first prickling of fear tingled her spine. Rising, she said, “Em, you aren’t well. I’ll drive you home.”

“Sit down,” Emily demanded. “I’m not done. The least you can do is listen to me.”

Liz sat.

“I knew I had to have it,” she continued. “I could see myself wearing it before I even touched it, I could feel it around my neck…I wanted it and I took it and I saved you. But did you appreciate what I’d done? You only had eyes for Alex, you couldn’t even see Ron. You couldn’t see that I saved you, that I offered you a second chance. You didn’t care—”

“I don’t understand,” Liz said, fear escalating from a prickle to a drumbeat. Searching for the right thing to say, she added, “You can have the necklace, Emily. Like you said, it’s mine now to do with as I choose and I want you to have it. Let me get it for you. It’s in the bedroom.”

As she said all this, she stood.

“Not the little gold horse. The green scarf.”

Liz felt like shaking her head to clear her ears. “You?” she whispered. “
You
took my scarf?”

Emily nodded.

Liz looked at her friend beseechingly. “Emily, listen to me. You must have left the scarf where someone else could find it. Think, Em. Who was nearby when you set it down—”

“And those beach stairs,” Emily said.

The stairs! Liz was trying not to react, trying to keep her cool, but the words just shot out of her mouth. “You broke Sinbad’s leg and tied him down there?
You
sabotaged the stairs and tried to kill me?”

“It had to be done,” Emily said.

Liz stared at Emily and tried to make sense of this information. It was no use, she couldn’t. She needed help. She said, “I’m calling Ron. It’ll be like old times, just the three of us.”

“Sit down.”

“No, Emily, you can trust Ron, you know he’ll help you.”

Emily’s hands shifted as she withdrew a black handgun from the folds of her skirt and rested it on her lap.

Liz swallowed a lump the size of a basketball. “Where did you get that?”

Emily lifted the gun until Liz was all but staring down the barrel. “I don’t remember where I got it,” she said.
“Maybe I borrowed it from somebody. I must have borrowed it….”

“I’m calling Ron.”

“Sit down. You aren’t calling anyone.”

“But—”

“Don’t make me kill you, too.”

Chapter Twelve

“Who else did you kill?” Liz mumbled.

Emily shook her head.

Uncle Devon?
But Emily had never known him, she’d never met him until the night of the party. Even Uncle Devon couldn’t provoke a killing frenzy that quickly. Who then? Had Emily drugged Harry? Did she think he’d died? Or had she shot Ron or Alex—

Liz battled panic as she said, “Who, Emily? Who else did you kill?”

Emily kept shaking her head. Liz glanced at the phone. If only she could call Alex and tell him to come home! When could she expect him? Ordinarily, he’d come directly from the fire station, but he’d been perturbed with her when he left so who knew what he might do to blow off steam. Run on the beach, go to the gym, drive up to the national park and hike along a wintry trail—anything was a possibility.

Come home,
she cried in her heart.
Please, come home to argue with me, come home to be angry, just come home!

Liz’s mind was so focused on trying to figure out a way to get the gun, cursing her present ungainly state, calculating trajectories without having the slightest idea
what it all meant, that it took her a while to figure out that Emily had asked a question. But what question?

Emily waved the gun at Liz and said, “Tell me why.”

Why what?

“Tell me!”

Liz jerked. “I…please, ask me again.”

“I said, why can’t you love Ron?”

Liz inched closer to the edge of the rocker. “Um, well, I didn’t meet Ron until I was already married,” she said, a sudden plan popping into her head. She grabbed her leg and groaned, struggling into an upright position. “I have a horrible cramp, Em! I need to walk. Don’t make me sit.”

“Over there,” Emily said, gesturing with the gun to the area by the Christmas tree. “You can walk around over there. Just don’t get too close to me.”

“I won’t.”

“If you’d met him first—”

Ron. She was still talking about Ron. Liz said, “Your brother is a fine man. You and he are valuable friends.”

“He loves you,” Emily said.

She wanted to argue this point but the gun made honesty a difficult policy, at best. She said, “I love him, too. Like you love him. Like a brother.”

“My mother was so happy when he was born. She and Daddy used to sing to him. They loved him. But me…” Her voice trailed off.

Liz heard a noise outside and held her breath. Tires crunched, the sound muted by the rain that had started up again as Emily’s talk drifted from one thing to another and back again. Liz prayed that Emily, unaccustomed to the particular sounds that heralded visitors at this house, might not recognize the fact that someone was coming.

Please, please, be Alex…

Emily said, “Your uncle had to die.”

“Why, Em?”
Keep her talking…

“Ron said you hated him.”

“I—”

“So I killed him.”

Liz stopped pacing. “But Emily, you didn’t even know him. Did he catch you stealing the necklace, is that what happened?”

“Ron said you hated him.”

“We had our troubles—”

“He fell on his letter opener, but if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered because there was your pretty green scarf. He had to die. He wouldn’t cooperate. So old, so feeble, so stubborn.” She paused for a second, looking confused. “It’s like a dream, like a story,” she said, her voice almost sing-song. “But now he’s dead. Did you hate him, Liz?”

“I don’t know.”

“You try to like everyone. It doesn’t matter, Ron still wants you so Alex has to go.”

Liz’s heart had been beating like a marathon racer, but as Emily’s intent finally sank in, it stopped cold. Emily was going to shoot Alex the second he opened that door.

With a lurch, her heart leaped back into the race.
No. It’s not going to happen. I won’t let it.

Liz made a decision, born of fear, strengthened by the knowledge that she had to do something right now. Coddling hadn’t worked, perhaps authority would. She held out a hand and moved with all the bluster she could manage. “Enough is enough, Em. Stop this right now and give me that gun.”

Emily sprang to her feet, grim determination filling
her eyes, her mouth a slash of rage. Liz suddenly understood that Emily’s fury had been building for years and had now been fueled and honed by a psychosis no one had even known she had. Her fury was demanding an outlet, consequences be damned. If she couldn’t kill Alex, she’d kill Liz. She’d already admitted she killed Uncle Devon; somewhere in her mind she had to know she’d burned a bridge that could not be reconstructed and that Liz was now an enemy.

All these realizations passed through Liz’s mind in less time than it takes to blink, but they formed the foundation for her next move. Still staring at Emily, she dodged into the kitchen. Sinbad howled as she tore past him, upturned a chair in her path, yanked open the back door, stumbled down the cement steps, fled into the yard, toward the bluff, Emily in hot pursuit. She cradled her belly and kept moving, hoping that Alex would come in time, knowing the only way to give him a chance—him and the baby she so ponderously carried—was to draw Emily away from him.

She heard a shot and a bullet whizzed by, striking a tree to her left. Gasping, she struggled on through the deep, wet grass, rain beating on her head, sliding into her eyes. Another shot. Her arm burned, she tried to crouch. She heard Alex’s voice and ducked behind a tree, driven to look back, afraid Emily would turn the gun on him, unable to bear the thought.

Emily stood thirty feet away, her attention focused toward the house. Alex stood at the back door, completely vulnerable, the gun now pointed at him. He’d started talking to Emily much the same way Liz had, coaxing her to put the gun down, to give it to him. Emily let him approach, down the stairs, across the wet grass,
rain flattening his hair, staining the shoulders of his leather jacket.

Liz opened her mouth to warn Alex. She knew this was a trick, a trap, that Emily would only let him get close enough to be sure he couldn’t escape, then she’d shoot him. At close range.

Behind Alex, another man appeared in the open doorway. “Emily!”

Emily’s attention shifted from Alex, up to the house, to her brother.

Ron stared at his sister with frantic eyes. “What are you doing?” he yelled. “For God’s sake, Emily.”

Emily yelled, “I’m taking care of things…for you. Like I did old man Hiller. Like I—”

“Stop it,” Ron said in a softer tone. He held out his hand in the same beseeching way Liz and Alex had done and added, “No more, Em, you know what you have to do.”

Liz’s view of Emily was restricted to her back. Long, wet hair, clinging pajama top, skirt drooping, boots dark from moisture. She saw Emily nod as though she understood.

Someone had finally gotten through to her!

Emily lowered the gun from Alex’s head and then, in a flash, she raised it to her own temple and pulled the trigger.

A
LEX HAD KNOWN
Emily was going to shoot herself the minute she’d changed the aim of her Glock 9mm. He’d seen it in her eyes. He’d tried to move forward to stop her, but it all happened too fast. Even as Emily’s body crumpled to the ground, even as the noise of the shot seemed to ricochet off every tree in the yard, he ran past her, toward Liz whom he’d seen hiding behind a trunk,
reaching her as she screamed and sank to her knees, deep sobs consuming her.

He held her trembling wet body in his arms and soothed her with soft words that sprang from the very depths of his soul, words that originated in his devoted love of her, words fine-tuned by the last few minutes when he thought for sure that Emily would shoot him in the heart and then turn the gun and her madness on Liz and their baby.

In the distance, he heard sirens, he heard Ron, he heard the ocean, he even heard Sinbad cry, but it was all lost in the part of the world that didn’t include him and Liz, the far away part, the unimportant part. He kissed her wet head and held her until she grew still and silent and then he held her even longer, trying to absorb her fright and pain.

Eventually, paramedics arrived and he realized that Liz was bleeding, that the bullet had grazed her upper arm. Ron was pale and silent, sitting on the steps in the rain, his eyes vacant as he stared at the covered body of his sister, protected by a canopy, waiting for the medical examiner.

Eventually, Sheriff Kapp asked questions. Liz refused to leave with the paramedics until she’d recited what Emily told her, how Emily confessed to murdering her uncle.

Eventually, he heard Ron tell the sheriff about finding his gun and his sister missing, how he’d raced here to elicit help, how he’d almost been too late.

And Alex had thought to himself that he’d almost been too late, too.

Eventually, he rode with Liz to the hospital and stayed by her side as they treated her, stayed by her side as her doctor examined her, stayed by her side as they wept
with relief that the baby was okay, that they were okay, wept with great sorrow for what had happened to Emily…and Ron.

Eventually, he arranged to have Sinbad taken to the vet’s for boarding, and checked them into the nearest hotel, a plush place overlooking the rain swept sea where, still dressed in their damp clothes, they fell into each other’s arms and slept.

I
T WAS ALMOST
midnight when Liz woke from a sleep as dark and quiet as death. The rain had stopped and a sliver of moon now hovered over the ocean. For some time she lay there looking out the undraped window at the remarkable vista, Alex’s regular breathing a peaceful sonata beside her.

Emily would never see the moon again.

Liz felt her eyes fill with tears. She felt the bed shift and then Alex’s finger gently wiped a tear from her cheek. “No more crying, my love,” he whispered.

“But—”

“Not now,” he said. “You’re cold, I can feel you shivering. I know just what you need.”

He kissed her cheek and got off the bed, walking around to her side and helping her stand. “The only room they had left was the honeymoon suite,” he said softly, leading her toward another door. He flicked on a switch and the bathroom came to life. The star of the show, a pink heart-shaped bathtub sat smack-dab in the center.

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

He laughed as he turned on the faucets. “I figure what you need is warm water and plenty of it.” From the array of supplies provided by the hotel, he picked up a
trio of pink spheres and plunked them into the roaring water. “And bubbles,” he added.