Heather Horrocks - Who-Dun-Him Inn 01 - Snowed Inn (35 page)

“Let me plot it out for you. The others thoughtfully went skiing, which leaves no witnesses. I’m wearing cotton gloves, which will hide my fingerprints and keep any gunpowder residue off my skin. My cab will be here soon. When they track me down in a day or so to question me, I’ll say you were both alive and well when I left. Your grandmother could go to jail, though. This is her gun, and it will be found with her fingerprints here, along with the bodies of her granddaughters.”

Would it really end this way? And would Grandma actually go to jail? No. We might die, but I knew Paul, DeWayne and the deputies could figure out what actually happened.

Alexis obviously liked believing her scenario, in her demented little mind; while I liked to think Liz and I were going to escape alive. “You can’t keep killing and expect to get away with it.”

“No one will find you until after I’ve left. I’ll get my son and we’ll go away. Far away. Somewhere your brother will never be able to follow us.”

“You’re crazy.” Liz clenched her fists.

“I have enough money. We can go someplace without extradition. My baby will learn a second language. I like complex plots, but today, I think the simpler, the better.” Alexis smiled. That cold smile. Those icy eyes. That big gun.

“Calabria deserved to die,” I rambled, my fear loosening my tongue. “But we haven’t done anything to you. Let us go.”

“Goodbye,” Alexis said, taking deadly aim at my twin. “No!” I lunged, knocking the gun from Alexis’s hand. She snatched the heirloom candlestick and swung. I tried to twist out of the way, but the blow to my head knocked me to my knees, and I was helplessly swaying with pain.

With my vision blurry from the blow, I forced myself to stand, as warm blood seeped into my hair.

Liz roared with anger and rushed Alexis. I heard them thump into the wall as I struggled to my feet. Their arms and legs were flailing everywhere and they were breathing heavily. I staggered my way toward them, leaning on the chairs. I thought I would pass out from the pain in my head, but I had to keep going. I couldn’t leave Liz to fight a maniac alone.

Alexis’s fist caught Liz in the nose, and Liz crumpled with a loud, “Ow! You crazy loon!”

When Alexis lurched toward me, I used every bit of my strength to push off the chair and punch her in the stomach. She grunted and knocked me to my knees again with her fist.

Panting for breath, Alexis lunged for and grabbed Grandma’s gun. Her smile looked absolutely demented.

At this point, everything went crazy. The dining room door flew open, knocking Alexis off balance. She fell on top of me. Liz jumped on Alexis— smashing me— and pinning her.

Grandma stood in the doorway wearing her church dress and coat. “You slut! How dare you shoot my grandbabies with my husband’s gun!?”

Grandma picked up the vase of fall flowers, and hit Alexis over the head. Water spilled. Flowers toppled. Alexis dropped.

Alexis quit struggling and became dead weight. Little as she was, I had trouble breathing with her limp body on mine. She was out cold.

I stared up at both grandmas. “Way to go, Grandma. Ma’ams.”

“I said you’d talk differently when I saved your fanny from a troublemaker.”

Liz helped roll Alexis off me and we tied her up with duct tape.

Her hands were still covered in rings, and slowly, I realized one of them was mine! “Hey,” I said, pulling her hand up and working off my ring. “She stole my ring.”

As I slipped it on my ring finger, the tears started. I had Robert’s ring back.

The tender moment was ruined by Alexis coming to, first yelling and screaming, then begging and pleading. We ignored her and inspected ourselves for injuries.

Grandma looked at us and shook her head. “Didn’t your mother teach you girls not to wrestle like tomboys? And on a Sunday, too.”

“Grandma, how did you know she had Grandpa’s gun?” I asked.

Grandma shrugged. “Something woke me up, and I went into the kitchen to knock off the rest of the ice cream. I saw that slut holding George’s gun in her dirty, little hands through your mirror.”

Liz and I started to laugh, but I stopped immediately as it hurt too badly. We looked horrible, my head was still bleeding, and I could use a bath and some aspirin, but we weren’t dead.

Grandma stared at us. “You girls are strange ones.”

We laughed again, and she started to laugh with us.

* * *

It took Paul and DeWayne a while to unwrap the wonderful duct tape job we did on Alexis, with her screaming, punching and kicking the whole time. Like a madwoman, as it were.

Liz dressed my small, but painful and swollen wound.

I could tell DeWayne wanted to comfort Liz, but she didn’t invite his solace so he kept his distance. Instead, he taped a tarp over my shattered window to keep out the frigid air.

I was willing to take comfort from anyone, so I accepted a hug from DeWayne, and one from Paul and three from Grandma.

As Paul pulled the last piece of duct tape off Alexis, DeWayne slapped handcuffs on her. She wept like a baby. I actually felt sorry for her— until I moved my head. Ouch.

Grandma studied Alexis. “Migraine meds aren’t going to help your problems, missy. You need a good shrink. In fact, you need to be completely shrink-wrapped.” She laughed at her own pun.

While Alexis did the most unnerving, high-pitched, keening thing, I wondered who would take care of her son while she was being shrink-wrapped?

“I’m going down to call Nicholas.” Grandma took a few steps, then stopped. “He’ll be sorry he missed all the excitement.”

Most women her age would go down for another nap after taking out a dangerous criminal. But not my Grandma. She wanted to call her boyfriend. I smiled. She smiled back.

I thought of my earlier questions. “Wait, Grandma. I have to know. Did you actually see Alexis in her room when you took the medicine up?”

“Just heard the water running in the bathroom and assumed she was doing what I suggested. You need to clean up, Vicki.”

As Paul half-led, half-carried Alexis toward the front door, the other authors— Garrett, Clark, Bonnie and Martha— returned from skiing. Paul asked me to shut the door, but before I could, Alexis called out, “Please, Garrett, tell them I’m innocent.”

Garrett took it all in for a few seconds, and must have realized what happened. “I can’t cover for you again.” That comment earned him an invitation into the dining room.

DeWayne began the questioning. Liz and I went in as if they weren’t there. We continued to set the table she was setting before all heck broke loose. I sank into a chair, my head throbbing, but not about to miss this interview.

“What did you mean, Mr. Long, you couldn’t cover for Ms. Cordova?” Paul’s voice was ice cold.

Garrett sighed deeply. “I wasn’t sure, but I wondered. I knew they had an affair and Gregorio promised to marry her. Then he brought us here and sprang the news of his engagement to BJ. I knew Alexis went to the carriage house to confront him, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d killed him. But when I asked her, she denied it. And I believed her.”

“Do you know you can be charged with obstructing justice?”

“For believing a friend?” Garrett shook his head. “I didn’t have any proof. Just a gut hunch. And how much credence would you have paid to that?”

“Didn’t you care about an innocent man going to jail?”

“He didn’t seem innocent when he pulled out the knife.”

“Did you see Ms. Cordova go to the carriage house?” DeWayne asked.

“No. Just before the lights went out, I talked with Alexis in the library. Argued with her, actually . She insisted on confronting Gregorio. Alone.”

Aha! It was Alexis and Garrett arguing in the library in the dark. Alexis wanted to implicate BJ, but not Garrett, who was probably the only person who would give her the benefit of the doubt.

“I told her I had proof of Calabria embezzling money. I couldn’t talk her out of it, and she insisted on going alone, so I told her I’d go out first and light a candle when I left so she’d know he was alone. I never thought she’d kill him. And, most importantly, I never knew for sure. After all, it could have been anyone. Even Kevin.”

Paul said, “Didn’t you get a clue when she said Calabria and BJ were the ones in the library that night?”

Garrett frowned and absentmindedly tugged at the neck of his black sweater. He shrugged. “I didn’t hear her say that, or I would have come forward. Besides, I knew she had her reasons for wanting to keep her son’s parentage a secret. It’s better if Martha doesn’t find out.” He shrugged a second time. “I wished I had the guts to do the job myself, but all I did was show him my accountant’s audit and inform him my attorney was going to break the contract.”

Garrett looked nervous. I hoped he got off light, but apparently, he’d be following Madame Psychopath’s squad car to the police station.

The door opened and David stuck his head inside. It wasn’t a good sign that my heart lightened to see him. He caught my eye and smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back. He lifted his arm to reveal bags from Marlene’s Natural Foods as he kept on going toward the kitchen. I figured Mr. Investigative Reporter would turn on the speaker and take notes. I ought to have warned Paul.

But David didn’t make it to the kitchen. He peered back in and narrowed his eyes at me. That’s when I knew for sure the Inn had yet another scary-looking woman in residence.

That’s about the last thing I remember before a wave of dizziness swept over me. I was carried to bed, and nearly slept the clock around.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The next morning, Monday, I woke up with a pounding head and an incredibly dry mouth. I could hear laughter from upstairs. In the kitchen, I thought. I raised my head from my pillow.

My grandmother’s voice floated down the stairs. “Victoria, come up here. You’ve been sleeping all day.” I realized it was her voice before that awakened me.

I sat up and winced with pain. My shoulder ached, along with my back, arms, and legs. I climbed out of bed, groaning, but smiled when I realized my wedding ring was back on my finger where it belonged.

A hot shower loosened up my aching muscles. It took me another ten minutes to pull on jeans and my peach-colored sweatshirt before carefully brushing through my hair. I walked slowly up the stairs.

More laugher erupted from the kitchen. My grandmother. Zach. A man. Paul. Another man. David? Was he still here?

He was. Never in a million years would I have believed the sight before me. A man standing at Grandma’s stove, wearing her apron, and holding her wooden spoon— and she was smiling.

I stared from Grandma, to David, Paul, Zach, Martha, Xavier, Lonny, Liz, DeWayne, and back to Grandma, who wagged her index finger at me. “You should have introduced this nice young man to me. Don’t you hide him from me again.”

David caught my eye and grinned.

“All right,” I agreed.

DeWayne studied me. “You look like total crap, Vicki.”

I cracked a smile. “To think I dated and married Robert when I could have been verbally abused by you.”

David smiled. “Even with that shiner, you look radiant.”

I could tell horse-hooey when I heard it. I told him so.

Lonny pulled up a chair for me and made sure I was comfortable before he took a stool and placed it close to mine; in the process, planting himself neatly between David and me.

Zach hugged me, carefully. “Lonny and I played Cosmic Warrior Four until we beat the nineteenth level.”

As I wrapped my arms around my son and savored the feel of him, I glanced at Lonny. “Thanks for keeping him safe.”

In a quiet, serious voice, he said, “My pleasure.”

Paul cracked his knuckles. I grimaced. “Stop that.”

“Just wanted to get everyone’s attention.”

Liz said, “Wow. I’ll have to try that in court.”

I looked at Paul. “Are you a new father yet?”

“Nope. Jennifer’s going for the length-of-pregnancy record in
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.
” He took my hand. “We talked with Alexis. How would you describe her reaction, DeWayne?”

“She cracked as though you were Perry Mason.”

“Yup.” Paul released my hand. “That says it pretty well. She confessed to everything she’d done wrong since second grade.”

“I’ve been wondering.” I tilted my head and immediately regretted it. “Who put the knife in her pillow?”

“Hold your horses. I’ll get to that.” Paul was enjoying his moment in the limelight. “Alexis wore BJ’s stolen clothes during the murder. When Alexis found Martha’s lipstick on the counter, she decided to implicate Martha, as well, by writing the taunt we found.”

We certainly didn’t plan it, but at that point, we all looked at Martha, who seamlessly took up the story. “I left the lip print because I wanted BJ to think I’d done the wild thing with Gregorio. I knew he wouldn’t erase it because he’d be amused to see two women fighting over him. It was childish of us both, I admit.”

“But what about your statement that you did the wild thing with him?” Paul asked.