Lethal Bayou Beauty (28 page)

You’re trained for this.

The controlled breathing helped steady my limbs, although they were still incredibly weak. I figured I could slide off the chair and onto the floor for the phone. I had enough mobility and strength to manage that.

Then I heard heels clicking behind me and I knew in an instant that we’d made a horrible mistake thinking this was all over with Ryan’s arrest.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The heels continued around me and I looked up into the barrel of a nine millimeter held by a smiling Vanessa Fontleroy.

I blinked a couple of times, but the view didn’t change, and I struggled to make sense of what was before me. “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you? You seem smart enough to figure it out at this point.”

Years of repeated Sinful gossip rolled through my mind—Pansy’s penchant for attached men, the mayor’s divorce, the ex-wife who left with most of his money and wouldn’t attend her niece’s funeral, Celia’s admonition tonight that others hadn’t suffered as she had.

Holy crap! Pansy had an affair with her uncle.

“Pansy was going to blackmail him, wasn’t she?” I said.
 

“She was going to blackmail him
again
. How do you think she got to LA in the first place? He gave his ex the bulk of his money for her signature on a nondisclosure agreement, and the old fool thought it would all be over. I tried to tell him that he couldn’t trust someone like Pansy, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Evidence?”

She frowned, then her expression cleared as she understood what I was asking. “She claimed she had pictures of them together, and not the family reunion variety. But I tore her room apart and still haven’t found them. I wonder now if she was lying.”

“Your hands,” I said, my words starting to slur. “Not big enough.”

“Oh,
I
didn’t kill her. I heard Herbert take the call from Pansy. I pretended to be asleep, but when he left that night, I followed him to Celia’s house, expecting to catch the two of them in a compromising situation.” She smiled. “Imagine my surprise and delight when I looked through the kitchen window and saw him strangling that bitch.”

“Why me?”

“It’s not personal. But when Herbert told me about you threatening Pansy that night at the pageant rehearsal, and since you’re essentially a stranger, I knew you’d make an easy target. When he got home, he was completely panicked, but I took control, as I always do. I told him that I knew. At first, he tried to deny it, but when he realized I was actually glad he’d killed her, he relaxed.”

What a lovely couple.
 

“Goody,” I managed.

“He’d been smart enough to take her cell phone, so I told him to call your house to make it look like you were the person Pansy had called around her time of death. No one would think anything of her calling Herbert earlier in the night—not with them being related and Pansy in charge of the festival.”

The drunk.
It was the mayor who’d called me that night. Not some drunk at the Swamp Bar.

 
“The coroner would only be able to assign a range for Pansy’s death,” Vanessa said. “Fifteen minutes, give or take, wouldn’t dissuade a jury that you’d received a call from Pansy right before her death.”

“I planned on planting the cell phone in your house and then calling a tip in to the sheriff’s department,” Vanessa continued, “but it took me a couple of days to rustle up a spare key. Then I had to make sure you were out of the house long enough for me to set everything up and make sure you were alone.”

The mob downtown.
 

Ida Belle said Vanessa had led the charge. It was her way of ensuring that Ida Belle and Gertie left me alone long enough for her to take action.

Vanessa frowned. “If Carter hadn’t been so stubborn—insisting on evidence before your arrest—this could have all been over days ago. You would probably have been in prison the rest of your life, but you would have been alive. If anyone is to blame for this, it’s Carter, for not doing his job.”

“Why kill me now?” My speech was slurred almost beyond the point of recognition.

“Oh, I’m not going to kill you—at least, not that anyone will suspect. See, I typed up a confession, going on about how guilty you feel about killing Pansy and poisoning Celia. Did I mention that the old bat has to go, too? I’m starting to suspect she knows more than we ever thought.”

“So,” she continued, “I’m going to put this pistol in your hand, hold it up to your head, and pull the trigger. Then I’m going to plant Pansy’s cell phone in your dresser drawer. It’s perfect.”

I tried to clench my fist, but I couldn’t even force the fingers into a ball. She was right—her plan was perfect. Never in my life had I wanted to kill someone as much as I wanted to kill Vanessa right now, and for the first time, I lacked the ability.

Surely this couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the sum total of my entire life—ending at a kitchen table over some pathetic man’s affair with his teenage niece. A pang of regret grabbed at me and twisted my heart as if it were in a vise. All of the things I would never have time to do flooded my mind, overwhelming me.

Concentrate!

I forced the thoughts from my mind, determined to find a way to beat the monster in front of me. I may go down, but it wasn’t going to be without a fight. Vanessa reached down and lifted my hand, then let it go. Surprised, I felt my muscles contract, but I forced them to release and allowed my hand to drop full force onto the table.
 

Some of my strength remained. It wasn’t much, but if I allowed Vanessa to do all of the lifting, I might have enough strength to pull off an escape. I’d only have a second to make it happen and only one bullet to work with, but it was the only chance I had and I was determined to take it.

“Enough chatter,” Vanessa said. “I need to get this show on the road and get back to my doting husband. He owes me everything now.”

She moved to my right side, lifted my hand, and wrapped it around the pistol. Then she moved it to the side of my head.
 

“It’s been nice knowing you,” she said with a laugh and moved her finger to the trigger.

At that instant, I pressed the magazine release and kicked myself backward as I twisted the pistol around, capitalizing the best I could on my weakened state. Vanessa screamed as the magazine dropped to the floor and clutched the pistol tighter, trying to reach the trigger.

It seemed it was happening in slow motion, but for me, these situations always seemed that way. Her finger connected with the trigger and I saw her knuckle whiten. I would never get the gun turned around in time, so I put my finger over hers and ducked as I pulled the trigger.
 

The bullet hit the wall behind me and I tumbled over backward in the chair, crashing to the floor. Immediately, I launched forward to grab the magazine before Vanessa got to it, but I’d used most of my remaining strength already. My fingertips brushed the cold plastic of the magazine as she grabbed it from my reach and reloaded the pistol.

As she leveled the gun at me, I prayed that she was an accurate shot and this was over quickly. I’d seen enough people bleed out to know that wasn’t the way I wanted to go.

The shot rang out and I waited for darkness. My body tingled, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the drugs or because life was slipping away from me.

“Nice shot.” Gertie’s voice sounded above me.

I twisted my head up and saw a blurry Ida Belle holding a pistol.
 

Gertie dropped down next to me and pulled up my eyelids. “She’s been drugged. Vanessa was a Valium junkie. Call for airlift. We need to get her to New Orleans.”

“Celia,” I said, struggling to remain conscious as the adrenaline drained out of my body. “She poisoned…”
 

Then everything went blank.

###

I was floating.
 

It was a strange but wonderful feeling, having no weight or gravity. Tufts of white billowed by in a bright blue sky, bursts of sunlight streaming around me. In the distance, I saw a shimmering figure moving toward me, but I wasn’t afraid.

Mother.

She looked just as I remembered her—long blond hair glistening in the rays of sunlight, turquoise eyes glowing with happiness and joy.
 

I broke into a smile so big that my cheeks hurt from the effort. I’d waited so long to see her again…had so much to tell her.

She stepped in front of me and lifted one hand to stroke my cheek. “My baby,” she said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I said, everything I wanted to say welling up inside of my head.
 

But she started to fade.
 

Dimmer and dimmer she became, until the last speck of light disappeared into the darkening sky. Then it was all gone and I was left in the middle of nothingness.

I bolted upright, gasping for air, hands clutching my arms.
 

For a moment, I gazed wildly around the room.

Was I dead?

Then I saw Gertie, Ida Belle, and Ally smiling down at me.

“She’s back with us.” Gertie sniffed, then brushed her eyes with her hand.
 

“She’s a tough bird,” Ida Belle said, but I could see the relief in her expression.

Ally threw her arms around me and sobbed. “Oh my God! I thought you were going to die. Even when the doctors said you’d be all right, I refused to believe them until you woke up.”

I hugged her back, the reality that I wasn’t dead finally sinking in.
 

“What happened?” I said when Ally released me.

“Vanessa drugged you and tried to kill you,” Ida Belle said.

“I remember that part,” I said.

Ida Belle nodded. “You put up one hell of a struggle for a woman with enough Valium in her system to put a horse to sleep.”

“High tolerance,” I said.

“Well, it’s a darn good thing,” Gertie said. “When Ally told us about your text, we knew something was wrong and went hauling it back to your house. That high tolerance of yours gave Ida Belle enough time to put one well-placed bullet between Vanessa’s eyes.”

I smiled, the memory of Ida Belle standing above me, smoke still coming out of her gun, slowly returning.

“Celia!” I shouted as all the details flooded back to me.

“Is alive,” Gertie said. “You managed to tell us she was poisoned before you passed out. Both of you took a helicopter here to New Orleans. She’s going to take a little longer than you to get back up to speed, but she’s going to be fine.”

I slumped back in the bed. “Thank God. So is Mayor Fontleroy in custody?”

Gertie glanced at Ida Belle and shook her head. “Word about Vanessa got to him before Carter did. He took the coward’s way out.”

“So they’re both dead?”

“Yeah, but Carter has plenty of evidence to put Pansy’s case to bed. Carter cut Dr. Ryan loose with a strong admonition that in the future, he be pickier about the women he gets involved with, but the New Orleans police want to talk to him about the vehicle he ‘borrowed.’”

I shook my head. “I wonder how he’s going to explain it all to his wife and staff.”

“Who cares?” Ally said. “Serves him right for cheating.”

“Got that right,” Gertie said. “Men are such trouble.”

Ida Belle gave Gertie a sideways look, then looked down at me, a faint smile on her face. “Speaking of men, Carter refused to leave until your vitals were stable.”

“Oh, I’m sure he was checking on Celia, too.”

“Maybe, but he didn’t spend last night in Celia’s room.”

I looked over at Gertie, figuring Ida Belle was pulling my leg, but she smiled and nodded. “He refused to leave. Caused a bit of a stink with the nurses.”

I looked down and pretended to be absorbed with adjusting the plastic bracelet on my wrist. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Carter taking such a personal interest in me. On one hand, it made me feel special, but on the other, it scared me, because the person Carter thought he was looking out for wasn’t that person at all.

But Ida Belle and Gertie knew exactly who I was, and they’d risked a lot to save my life and clear my name.
 

“Thank you,” I said to Ida Belle and Gertie. “I wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for you.”

Gertie sniffed again and Ida Belle looked slightly uncomfortable.

“Seems only fair that we’d bail you out,” Ida Belle said, “as we sorta got you into this mess to begin with.”

“The festival.” With everything else going on, I’d completely forgotten the reason for my run-in with Pansy. “What are they going to do now?”

Ida Belle shook her head. “The town’s operating without a mayor at the moment, so no one knows what to do. But I’m sure I can convince them of something more suitable.”

I grinned.
 

I would bet on it.