Murder in a Nice Neighborhood (23 page)

Before I could shove the rope over the other shoulder, Delores tore away from me, using both her hands to wrench at the gorilla head. She was cursing and moaning with pain, and I wanted to join her in that occupation, but I had run out of adrenaline. I couldn’t even move. My anger drained away, allowing the throbbing in my arm to fill me; I didn’t know how to cope with the situation any longer. Delores would get the gorilla head off and see that I was unarmed and wounded, and then she’d either walk away or strangle me and walk away, and that would be that.

The gorilla head bounced on the grass, and Delores whirled wildly, catching sight of me. I had just enough fortitude left to put my hand in my pocket, pointing my finger like we used to do when playing cops and robbers. It wouldn’t have fooled a sharp ten-year-old, but Delores swallowed it. She took a few steps back. “Go ahead and shoot me if you dare,” she shrieked. “No one will ever believe that I killed them all. They’ll think you did it and just finished up by killing me. You’ll go to jail!” I winced, and she noticed that. Her voice got triumphant. “They’ll probably send you to the gas chamber.”

“I wouldn’t shoot to kill you,” I said, wiggling my finger to make my gun more convincing. “Just maim you for life.”

There was a loud report, like another gunshot. A stentorian voice roared out suddenly, “Put down your weapons. The police are surrounding the house!” and there was Claudia on the back porch steps, her daughter’s old cheer-leading megaphone at her lips, the remains of a popped balloon dangling from her fingers.

That and the gunshot would go over big with the neighbors.

“Yeah, sure.” Delores turned her head back and forth between us. “You can’t stop me from leaving.” She glared at Claudia. “You—you old hag!”

“So rude.” The voice was Drake’s. Incredibly, there he was, standing in the driveway. An officer in uniform pushed past him and then halted, puzzled, looking from me with my fake gun to Delores in her gorilla outfit, to Claudia, perched like an aging cheerleader on the back steps.

“Who do we arrest?” He was joined by another uniform, and they both looked at me—smelling the old, faint stench of my criminal record, probably.

Seeing this, Delores pointed at me. “Arrest her,” she screeched. “She killed those other people, and she’s threatening me with a gun. She hurt my wrist!” She held it up, and sure enough it dangled limply. “I think it’s broken!”

The officers started toward me, although they were still darting glances at the gorilla suit. Drake didn’t order them to
back off. He did speak, however.

“Where did the gun come from?” He sounded idle, like it was just a routine question, but the uniforms halted.

“I don’t—what do you mean?” Delores scowled at him. “How should I know? She probably has a whole arsenal in that junk heap of hers.”

“How did she kill the others? With the same gun?”

Delores shook her head, the pretty, shiny hair swirling around her face. “She poisoned them. She gave them yew seeds and they died.” Her scowl transferred itself to Claudia. “Probably got them from that woman there— there’re yews on both sides of her front door.”

I just stood, feeling nothing but the pain in my shoulder. The officers rushed over when I took my hand out of my pocket, surrounding me and patting me down. I didn’t say anything. Who would believe me? But when they jarred my shoulder, I had to whimper.

Drake moved. “Liz. You’re hurt?”

I nodded dully. “Shot—shoulder.” Claudia exclaimed, and started down the stairs.

Drake stopped her. “Call the ambulance,” he said curtly.

“It’s on the way—should be here now.” Claudia stayed on the steps, though. She must have thought the backyard looked a little crowded.

Drake came over to me, gesturing to the uniforms. They backed off until they stood on either side of Delores.

“Where’s the gun?” Drake’s hands moved gently over my shoulder. I wanted to be a stoic, but it was too much. I would begin crying any time. I had to breathe deeply before I could answer.

“It’s somewhere back by the bus. Dropped near the side door.” One of the uniforms went the direction Drake pointed. I swayed, and he put his arm around my waist, marching me over to the steps. Claudia received me, patting my back and murmuring when I sank down. A distant siren cut through the stillness.

“See, she admits it. She broke my wrist,” Delores said triumphantly.

Drake nodded to the other policeman, who grasped one of Delores’s hairy arms. “Like to take you in for questioning, Miss Mitchell,” he said, the words polite but his voice ice-cold.

“I insist on medical care,” Delores said shrilly. “I want to call my lawyer. I’ll sue you for false arrest—”

“I didn’t say anything about arrest yet,” Drake said. “But perhaps you’d like to remove your costume? I don’t want the clerk to think I’ve busted the circus.”

Reluctantly, Delores accepted the uniformed cop’s help unzipping the gorilla suit. The other uniform, whom I recognized as the blond surfer boy from Pigpen’s death—so many eons ago—came back from behind the garage. He held a plastic bag with the gun in it, and a couple of crumpled pieces of paper. The siren was getting closer.

“Found these, too, Detective Drake.” He glanced at me curiously.

“Thanks, Rucker.” Drake took the paper, and with a glance at Delores’s surgical gloves, smoothed it out. He looked up at me. “She’s holding you at gunpoint?” A very small smile flickered over his face.

“Everybody’s a critic,” I said wearily. The ambulance pulled up. The bustle they created almost drowned out Delores’s outraged demands for an instant doctor. The paramedics pronounced her wrist probably broken, and Rucker scratched his head over how to handcuff her.

“You can’t arrest me,” she yelled. “I’m going to a Halloween party. It’s all her fault—she did it. You’ll look like a fool when the truth comes out.”

“I don’t think so.” Drake spoke over his shoulder, from where he stood, hovering over me with flattering attentiveness. “You see, I’d already found out about the mortgages.”

Delores shut up, like a teakettle suddenly turned off.

“What mortgages?” Claudia lost a little of her anxious look

“Later,” Drake said. “I’m taking Liz to the hospital now.”

"Two visits in two days,” I mumbled idiotically when he guided me to my feet. “A record.”

“Just don’t try to top it.” He paused, looking back at Claudia. “Thanks for calling us.”

“No thanks required,” she said graciously. “But be sure to bring Liz back and stay to explain it all.”

She stood with the megaphone at her feet, and I saw her over my shoulder as I climbed into the ambulance, where Delores sat sullenly, attended by the police. Luckily it wouldn’t be a long ride.

Chapter 33

“She picked on those two old women,” Drake said, stretching his legs out under Claudia’s kitchen table, “because they didn’t have family to complicate things. She wanted their property, and figured she could get it dirt cheap because she had a lien on it. In effect, she’d sell it to herself to pay off her loan.”

“I still don’t understand.” Claudia was stirring a pot of cocoa at the stove; the aroma of warm milk made me sleepier than I already was. I was ensconced in the rocking chair, with plenty of pillows, but I was still uncomfortable. My shoulder was stiff with bandages and my bloodstream full of painkillers. But at least I wasn’t in custody. I could almost feel sorry for Delores—what lay before her was like nothing she’d ever imagined in her life.

“I mean,” Claudia continued, ladling cocoa into mugs, “how could she get away with that? What about Vivien’s will? Does Liz still inherit the house?”

I took the mug she handed me and waited, in a placid, drug-induced state, for Drake’s answers. I was vaguely interested in them; they concerned someone I knew well.

“She could get away with it as long as there was no scrutiny,” Drake said, blowing on his cocoa. It was very hot; I’d nearly scalded my tongue with my first sip. "Eunice left her property to the Senior Center, and I suppose Delores meant to give them a little money and say that was all that was left after the lien was paid off. It actually suited her to have Vivien leave her house to Liz; that made Liz look guiltier than ever. But as soon as we started looking into the finances, it all fell apart. When I spoke to Ted at the pool he was cagey, but he admitted that he’d been offered development rights to both properties since Vivien’s death. He wouldn’t say who offered them, but I’m sure he will now.”

“So does Liz get the house?”

“Probably.” Drake smiled at me, for once without that wariness I was used to seeing in him. “If she can afford to keep it.”

“What does that mean?” I roused myself enough to ask the question, though my tongue felt thick and woolly.

“He means,” Claudia said, pouring a little more cocoa into her mug, “that upkeep and property taxes aren’t cheap around these parts. You might want to butter up Ted Ramsey.”

Drake cleared his throat. “Late breaking news,” he said unhappily. “The neighbors have gotten wind of Ted’s project and started a major petition thing. The whole development will probably die a natural death. You could sell the house to
a builder for the lot, but you don’t get much for a tear-down.”

“Oh well, easy come, easy go.” I yawned, suddenly and hugely. “I wouldn’t want to see more condos sprout up around there myself.”

“There’s a rental cottage behind the house, isn’t there?” Claudia stirred her cocoa. “You could get some income out of it that way.”

My eyes were just on the brink of closing. Drake’s voice came from far away. “We can discuss this another time. Liz needs to get some rest.”

“I’m all right.” I pried my eyes open and smiled drowsily at both of them. “Nothing to discuss, anyway. I’ll live in the cottage, rent the house.”

“It’s a big lot,” Drake said. “You might be able to get a lot-split. You could sell one of the houses, keep the other.” He started to
add something, looked at my drooping eyelids, and desisted.

Sinking into the fluffy cloud that wrapped me, I knew as well as if he’d spoken that he wanted that lot-split; he wanted to buy Vivien’s house from me. It would go cheap, in the condition it was in. Such a sweetheart deal wouldn’t have worked if I was dead or in the slammer, unable to profit from my supposed crimes. If I could have felt anything, I would have felt mildly disappointed.

“Liz, you’re not going to make any decisions tonight.” Claudia got to her feet and scowled at Drake. “You are going to bed, right now.”

I stood up too, swaying only a little. “Right. My lawyers will talk to your lawyers.” It sounded very grand. It would be all too easy to get used to being a person of property.

Drifting to sleep in my narrow bed, I remembered Vivien’s death as something sorrowful that had happened a long time ago. Vivien and Eunice, Pigpen and Alonso. Their absence from the world had already been overwritten by what had come next. As a survivor, I was filled with rosy visions and the relaxation of tension. My shoulder would be painful, but it would heal; my life would be disrupted, but for the better. I would finally finish that article for
Smithsonian.
Vivien’s house had seemed like a burden, but if I sold the house to Drake and kept the cottage, it would make all the difference. A steady income for the next few years would be like having Lady Luck hemorrhage all over me.

* * * *

When I woke up, it wasn’t the bright new day I’d been anticipating. Somewhere in the back of my dreaming mind was a thundering, creaking noise; when I put it together with the cold draft, I realized the window had been forced up. The curtains fluttered wildly, casting confusing shadows on the wall from the bright moonlight and bare tree branches outside. Still fuddled, I thought the gorilla suit was in the room with me, a large, dark shape creeping closer and closer.

This, I decided, was a dream, an attempt by my subconscious to begin dealing with the day’s events. I kept very still and breathed very deeply, willing the dream to change into something else, willing myself to wake from it. My shoulder throbbed painfully, and then I knew I was awake. I strained my eyes in the wind-tossed moonlight, trying to tell what was shadow and what was substance.

The dark shape was substance. It was standing over me now. My hand closed around the flashlight under my pillow. I yanked it out and turned it on, suddenly.

Tony’s face stared back at me, caught in the glare, blinking. Then his hand swept down, and the flashlight disappeared.

“Thanks, Liz. I needed a light.” His voice was the same, smooth, caressing, with that frightening hint of violence beneath it. The flashlight came back on, aimed at me. It flicked down the length of my body, lingered on the huge, faded sweatshirt I slept in, and then came back to my face. I couldn’t see behind it, but that one glimpse of Tony’s face was plenty. He had changed a little, but not enough.

“You’ve really let yourself go, kid.” He sounded amused. “You look ten years older. I wasn’t even sure it was you at the swimming pool this afternoon, till I watched you walk out.” He flicked the flashlight over me once more.

The swim I had wanted so badly had been my downfall, it seemed.

“Pretty smart of me, wasn’t it?” The bragging note in his voice was as familiar as an old bruise, but now I could hear the insecurity beneath it. “I knew you’d turn up at that pool sooner or later. Been watching it since I got into town. Some wild party you had here tonight. I thought you and the new boyfriend were gonna be locked up, and I’d miss my chance for a little private chat.”

I’d been threatened, almost killed. Ambulances, police cars—it had all looked like his kind of party to Tony.

“So,” he continued after a moment. “Aren’t you going to tell me how glad you are to see me? Or has the new boyfriend cut me out?”

The flashlight swung nearer, and now the violence in his voice was not just a hint. “Answer me!”

“Stop shining that light in my face.” I held my voice steady, but it was an effort. The lingering remnants of painkiller were burning off fast. My heart was pounding so hard my chest felt aflame.

He laughed and turned the flashlight off. The sudden dark was as blinding as the light had been. “Sounds like you’ve forgotten who gives the orders. You’ll have to remember again.”