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“You
whore
! You murderin’
bitch
! They thought they could keep you safe from me, but they didn’t know how smart I am. I can play their game. I can play tricks better than they can!”

James burst into the kitchen, momentarily diverting Bea. She squinted at him, then yelled, “You got yourself another one already? Be careful, boy. She’s a killer!”

“Stop it!” James shouted, striding toward Bea until she swung the bat in his direction. “Why are you doing this?”

“Not so smart, are you?” Marissa glanced up and saw Bea’s wild eyes, the tiny cuts all over her face, and bare hands dripping blood. “I’m Buddy Pruitt’s mama!”

“Ms. Pruitt—”

Marissa heard Catherine screaming out the front door for the patrolman as Bea snarled, “Sure, I’m Ms. Pruitt, but you can’t stop me by bein’ polite, boy. You can’t stop me from makin’ her pay for killin’ my Buddy.” Bea started to cry, tears running through the blood on her face. She started toward Marissa again, swinging the bat. Marissa stayed on her knees, cursing herself for backing into a corner. “You oughta thank me, boy. If you’d only seen what she did to my Buddy, you’d run a mile. Instead, in less than a week she’s got a new boyfriend—”

“I’m not her boyfriend, Ms. Pruitt.” Every time James spoke, Bea stopped swinging the baseball bat and looked curiously at him. He’d obviously noticed and was stalling her. He lowered his voice: “I’ve known Marissa for a long time and I don’t think she’d kill
anybody.
”

“Then you don’t know her at all.” Bea squinted, blinked, and squinted again. “I know you.”

“Oh?” James asked, his voice suddenly soft and threateningly curious. “Who am I?”

“You’re…you’re someone I saw at the funeral.” She pointed her bat at Marissa. “Her mother’s funeral. My Buddy said you’re no good. He said you’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

James held her gaze. “And why is that?”

“Because you…” Bea’s eyes looked empty before she blinked. “’Cause you can do just what you did to me! Make people forget what they’re thinkin’ and tryin’ to say!”

Bea took another swing, missing Marissa’s shoulder by only a few inches. “No wonder she’s with you. You both trick people.”

“You said you played tricks in the hospital.” She stared at James, who took two smooth steps toward her. “Ms. Pruitt, what makes you think Marissa killed Buddy?”

“’Cause she smacked him one time. Then he made a little joke at the police headquarters about Marissa’s Monster and she threw a fit and said she’d kill him! I heard all about it!”

James looked surprised for an instant. “From whom?” She stared at him. “Who told you Marissa threw a fit and said she’d kill him?”

“I’m not tellin’ you nothin’. Don’t you go thinkin’ you can trick
me
.” She swung at Marissa again, this time so close Marissa could almost feel the bat against her head. She crouched lower, trying to cover her head with her arms. “I’m no tattletale, Mr. Whoever-you-are.”

Bea took another swing and James leaped at her, throwing the swing off balance but not the woman. James had gotten between Bea and Marissa when Randall Crane ran in and whipped behind Bea so fast she didn’t seem to realize Randall had entered the room. Bea tried one more swing clearly meant for either James or Marissa when Randall closed his arms around Bea’s waist and yanked her backward. The bat crashed into a wall and stuck just long enough for James to grab it, toss it aside, and help hold the plunging, screaming Bea.

Catherine rushed into the kitchen. “I called nine-one-one. Oh my God, Marissa! Are you hurt?”

“I’m not sure.” Marissa tried to stand up and couldn’t make it.

Catherine ran to her side. “Hold still until the paramedics get here. Did she hit you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Bitch!” Bea shrieked. “Whore! Murderer! God will send you right into the flames where you belong, but you won’t see me and Buddy because we’ll be together in heaven.”

“Yeah, okay,” Marissa said weakly.

Bea struggled violently. My God, doesn’t the woman get tired? Marissa wondered, her panic fading with the certainty that even without the bat, this woman could kill her if she could free herself. Bea was stout, but James was young and Randall was astonishingly strong. Still, they had trouble getting Bea under control. She writhed, thrashed, and wiggled like something slick and gooey in their arms.

After what seemed like hours, Marissa vaguely heard sounds in the front part of the house. Two other patrolmen dashed into the kitchen, followed by a couple of paramedics. The last face Marissa saw before she fainted was Eric’s.

Chapter 20

1

Marissa opened her eyes. The handsome face above her swirled and she quickly closed them again. “Hi, Eric.”

“Hi your own self.”

“Am I alive? I mean all the way alive?”

“I think you’re asking if you’re injured. No. The paramedics didn’t even drag you off to the hospital.”

“
Please
tell me they took Bea.”

“First they sedated her. Then they took her and this time she won’t be back.” Eric shook his head. “Bea Pruitt is a better actress than anyone realized.”

Marissa finally opened her eyes. They had laid her on the couch and covered her with her grandmother’s hideous afghan. Eric sat beside her. Catherine and James leaned forward in their chairs as if inspecting her. “I feel like a bug under a microscope,” Marissa said.

Catherine looked as if she was recovering from a crying binge. “We were so worried. You could have been
killed.
”

“So this is last Saturday night all over again. Me on the couch wrapped up in this awful afghan and the three of you staring at me after my brush with death. I tell you, this is getting
old.
”

They laughed, asked again if she was all right, then told her they were all going to stay and keep her company. Marissa hadn’t thought she could feel much worse than she had on the kitchen floor, but her spirits dropped like rocks.

“You don’t all have to stay,” she protested. “I feel fine. Really. I just need a couple of aspirins for a headache. Bea might be a great actress, but she’s not a master with the bat. She didn’t manage to hit me. Catherine, James, you were going out to eat, then to the movies.”

“Oh, we’d rather stay with you,” Catherine said sincerely.

“Yes. We would.” James’s sincerity wavered.

I can be polite or I can say what I want, Marissa thought. Nobody can get mad at me for saying what I want after what I’ve been through. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’d rather you do,” Marissa said. “Catherine and James, I’d like for you to go to dinner and a movie. Or two movies.” Suddenly she felt shy, but she plowed ahead: “Eric, I’d like for you to stay with me.”

Catherine frowned, undecided. James and Eric looked as if they were trying not to whoop with joy.

“I say the girl who nearly lost her life tonight gets her way,” Eric said, grinning. “Catherine, James, off with you. And don’t hurry back. Marissa, I would be most pleased to stay here in your hour of need.”

Half an hour later, Eric walked into the family room and announced, “Your very kind neighbors have straightened up the kitchen as much as they could and nailed plywood over the space Bea left in the windows. I’m sure there will be a few drafts and Monday is Christmas Day, so you can’t even get a glazier to measure and order the new windows until Tuesday. I also have to warn you that they’ll probably be expensive.”

“Does home owner’s insurance cover damage done to the house by homicidal maniacs?”

“You’ll have to check with your insurance agent about that one. Even he may have to call the main office.”

“What happened to my surveillance?”

“It was dark, snowing, and that big holly bush you have at the corner of the house partially blocked Randall’s view of the house’s back left side, where Bea made her grand entrance. Also, something hadn’t felt right with the car. Randall had gotten out to look at the right rear tire, which had picked up a nail and was leaking. No foul play—just a foul nail. He was calling it in when Bea attacked. She must have been watching for quite a while, waiting until Randall’s full attention wasn’t on the house.”

“Well, great.”

“I’ll tell you what’s great,” Eric said. “That Bea didn’t bash your head in with that bat.”

“You put it so gently.”

“That’s exactly what she would have done.” He shook his head. “All these years I’ve never heard of Bea Pruitt so much as saying an unkind word, even about that bastard of a father she had. But when it came to Buddy…”

“Buddy was her world, Eric. She would have suffered anything her father handed out as long as the Old Man kept his hands off Buddy.”

“You seem to know a lot about her.”

“My father told us about Bea. He’d lived here all his life, you know, and he’d known Bea when she was in school. She got a crush on him, followed him around, sent him barely intelligible love notes. He was a kid and terribly embarrassed. It wasn’t long before they put her in the special education classes, and Dad said he’d heard she’d gotten another boyfriend within two weeks.” She smiled. “‘She just threw me in the gutter,’ Dad used to say.

“Years later some kind soul gave her a job in Walmart. My mother was shopping in the sewing goods department, ran into Bea, whom she only knew by sight, and Bea told her she was going to have a baby and was
thrilled
about it.”

Eric frowned. “Did your father have any idea who Buddy’s father was?”

“I never heard him even speculate.” Marissa paused, thinking. “Things were rather hectic in the kitchen and I’m not certain I heard everything correctly, but did Bea say Buddy had made a joke about Marissa’s Monster and that I threatened to kill Buddy? I didn’t throw a fit or threaten him, but he did make a joke about Marissa’s Monster. Who told her that stuff?”

“Buddy and Bea talked on the phone a lot. He was always calling her and I’d have to tell him to put the cell phone away. Then she’d just call the office. We had to deal with her three or four times a day. I figure he called her and told her the whole story, embellishing it by saying you’d threatened to kill him so he could get sympathy.”

“Well, if he did,” Marissa said, “he almost cost me my life.”

2

“Are you feeling okay?”

Marissa looked over at Eric. He’d built a fire in the fireplace and fixed her a glass of wine. He’d called and said they wouldn’t need more surveillance until around ten o’clock because he would be staying, getting statements, et cetera. He’d winked at Marissa while he was talking to someone at headquarters, meaning he knew he wasn’t fooling anybody and he didn’t care. He wasn’t on duty, he informed her, so having a bourbon and Coke was all right. He sat beside her on the couch, sipping his drink, talking casually, and kindly paying attention to Lindsay, who held her zebra, her smallest teddy bear, and her stuffed mouse in her mouth.

“I’m impressed, Lindsay,” Eric said, pulling gently at the teddy bear with no luck. “Three toys at once.”

“Lindsay’s goal in life is to cram as many things in her mouth at one time as possible.” Marissa laughed. “And you have to admit, this has been an exciting evening. She’s pumped full of adrenaline.”

Eric looked into Marissa’s eyes. “And love for her mistress.”

Marissa had known Eric since she was a child. She’d loved him and lost him and occasionally thought she hated him. Still, at this moment she felt shy with him and slightly lowered her head. “I guess love doesn’t mean you come to your mistress’s aid when someone is trying to kill her.”

Eric put his hand under her chin and lifted her head. He looked at her solemnly and said, “Love means cramming stuffed animals in your mouth when your mistress is threatened.”

Marissa burst into laughter. “And here I thought love meant never having to say you’re sorry.”

“Erich Segal got it wrong in more ways than one.”

Marissa reached for her wineglass, missed, and turned over the glass. Wine spread over the coffee table and Eric dashed into the kitchen for paper towels. As they began wiping the liquid, Eric started to laugh. “Do you remember that night we were in the Larke Inn dining room and I knocked over the flower arrangement? Who knew that dainty vase could hold so much water? It soaked the tablecloth, dripped on the floor, and I nearly knocked the plates off the table trying to sop it up before it got on your dress.” They both rocked with laughter. “And then you said, ‘Eric, will you
please
propose before you destroy this whole end of the dining room’?”

Marissa managed to catch her breath. “Well, you’d almost pulled the chair out from under me and set fire to your menu. I didn’t know what to expect next!”

Eric sat down beside her on the couch, wiping the tears of laughter from under his eyes. “Oh God, I’d planned such a perfect evening and it turned into such a mess.”

“No, it
was
perfect, because you turned it into what you thought was a mess. I thought the entire evening was magical.”

“Even when I pulled out the chair too far and you almost landed on the floor?”

“Even then.”

He paused, tilting his head slightly, amusement in his eyes. “You were expecting me to propose that night. Gretchen told you, didn’t she?”

“No. I knew when you suggested we go to the Larke Inn for dinner and you tried to sound offhand when you told me to ‘really get dressed up,’ and when you kept tapping your suit pocket in the dining room to make sure you hadn’t lost the ring.”

“Lost it before I created another spectacle. You’re lucky I didn’t turn over the table on you or knock you out of one of the windows into the waterfall. Maybe that’s why you said yes. You feared for your life.”

Marissa looked at him, tenderness overwhelming her. “That is
not
why I said yes. I think I’ve loved you since I was that skinny nine-year-old with crooked teeth.”

“The one with potential.” Eric smiled. “You more than surpassed your potential. Since you were about fifteen, I’ve thought you were the most beautiful, smart, unbelievably charming girl I’ve ever known.”