Pier Pressure (35 page)

“All right. When the cops find your body, the circumstances of your death'll seem more probable if you're wearing clothes. Who'd accidentally fall into the sea wearing only a robe? Dress, but be quick about it. Turn on no more lights.”

She followed me back to my apartment and in the dimness, I stood at my closet for a moment before I reached for the jumpsuit I'd worn all day. I stepped into it, wiggled it up and over my shoulders.

“Need shoes.” I stalled a few moments longer. With my back to her, I stooped and fumbled through the sandals and boat shoes on the closet floor. In those moments I managed to reach into my upper pocket and thumb the tape recorder on, praying she wouldn't notice, praying she wouldn't remember that I recorded every work session, praying the battery was up.

When I stood again to face her, I could think of no more ways to delay her plans. She nudged me toward the front door.

“Open the door. Turn off the light. Get into my car.”

I followed her orders, wondering if I might be able to grab the gun away from her while she drove. I soon nixed that idea. She held the gun in her right hand, guided the car with her left. With her head turned slightly to the right, she looked ahead at the road, but I knew that through peripheral vision she could see any movement I might make.

“Where're we going?”

“Wait. Soon all will be revealed to you.”

I hated her smart-ass answer, but I said no more while she drove us to the White Street Pier
and parked in a spot where shadows hid her car. Pulling the keys from the ignition, she dropped them into her pocket, her gaze never leaving me.

“Stay where you are.” She opened her door and walked behind the car, coming up on my side and opening the passenger door. In those few moments I managed to thumb Punt's number into the cell phone, but I'd no time to call for help.

“Get out.” Shandy motioned with the gun.

“Where're we going?”

Her gun spoke for her as she nudged me toward the pier. Cold terror rose inside me until I felt like an ice bag, frozen and immobile. I stopped walking, but her gun nudged me forward until we were on the pier, heading toward the far end of it. Only a few dim lights on shore lit our way. The wind had freshened until it was blowing a gale and thrashing raging waters to a foamy froth.

“Feel like a swim tonight?”

“Shandy, you've lost your mind. Take me home and I'll say nothing about this to anyone.”

“You enjoy the water, Keely. So enjoy tonight. It'll be your last chance for a midnight swim.” Shandy's gun prodded me toward the broken retaining wall.

“You won't get by with this. People will be looking for me. Punt. Nikko.”

“Punt and Nikko may look, but it'll be Coast Guard or Marine Patrol boys who'll find you. They'll think you're some dumb broad who walked where she shouldn't have walked and accidentally fell into the sea. Sharks feed at night, you know. They can smell blood for miles—and there'll be lots of blood. If the sharks and 'cudas don't get you, you'll die of contusions as the waves ram you into the rocks and the pier pilings. This's it, Keely Moreno. You and your alternative healing! Maybe you can give the sharks a little foot reflexology.”

Shandy's voice grew more crazy and frenzied as she talked, and now we had reached the broken retaining wall. The wind had come up even stronger, and waves crashed onto the pier as Shandy pushed me toward the opening. Water soaked my shoes, and the wet legs of my pantsuit clung to me like a second skin.

“You won't get by with this, Shandy.” I sounded like a broken record, but I had to keep her talking. “I called Mr. Moore. He spotted you at The Wharf.
He knows you were in on the bank robbery in North Dakota.”

“You may have called him, but you didn't get him. I know about the blizzard, the ice storm. No messages going through. I tried, too. With you dead, I'll be safe again. Key West is a nice place to hide out. Too many freaky characters for anyone to notice a plain little barmaid just doing her job, and now I'll be a rich little barmaid.”

“That's why you shot Margaux, isn't it?”

“Yes, I shot her. Easy pickings. She deserved to die.”

“You killed her so you'd be rich. And you tried to make it look as if I killed her. Thanks a lot, Shandy. Tell me; how did you get my gun?”

“Easy, easy. One day I pretended to be in a hurry after you finished my session in the chair. I gave you a dollar bill and asked for parking meter change. You didn't have any quarters, so you ran to Celia's shop to get some. While you were away, I took the gun.”

“How did you know it was there?”

“I overheard you talking to Nikko about it. Arguing about your using it. About where you kept it. Dumb broad.”

“So now you'll be rich—as soon as the courts probate Margaux's will. A rich barmaid. Don't you think people'll think it strange if you continue working? Having all that money may blow your cover. People will be noticing you, speculating about you. You can't get by with murdering me, Shandy. Punt knows you're guilty. He and Nikko will find the proof they need. You're getting yourself in deeper and deeper.” I felt myself talking in circles, making no real sense, but I had to keep talking.

“One murder. Two murders. Three murders. The penalty's much the same. Anyway, I won't get caught. You're bluffing about Punt and Nikko.”

Keep her talking. I had to keep her talking. I had thumbed in Punt's number on the cell although I wasn't able to talk to him. Maybe he was searching for me right this minute. I had a chance if I could only keep Shandy talking.

“How does it feel to be a rebound wife, Shandy? You feel good knowing Otto married you because Margaux dumped him? That's what your marriage is. A rebound affair. He couldn't care less about you. Everyone in Key West knows that.”

When Shandy spoke, I heard the fury escalate in her voice.

“That's another reason Margaux had to die. She made a fool of me. She gets the rich Beau Ashford. I get the poor Otto Koffan. All my life I've been cheated. In the bank robbery, one guy escapes with the money. I get none. Instead, I get a lifetime of hiding. When I kill Margaux, money begins to come my way through Otto, a druggie on his way out. I may help him along to the next world, too—after he makes the proper bequests in my behalf.”

“It'll never work, Shandy. Never. Never.”

Shandy peered into the raging waves before she looked at me again. “I'm curious. How'd you know I shot Margaux? I hid my tracks well.”

“Not well enough.” I told her about the dropped blossom. I told her about Mr. Moore noticing her scar. Then I had an idea. “Shandy, you used a walk on this pier as part of your alibi. That was your downfall. You miscounted the widow's walk lights.”

At the word “miscounted,” Shandy turned to recount the lights. In that moment I gave a chop to her wrist and the gun flew from her hand and dropped at our feet.

Thirty-Six

STARTLED, WE BOTH stared at the gun for an instant before we scrambled for it. I stooped to grab it, slipped, and crashed onto one knee, but I felt the gun's wet coldness beneath my fingers. My hand closed around the butt, and as I tried to get my finger on the trigger, Shandy shouted.

“Drop it. Drop it now.” Ramming into my left side, she knocked me off balance, giving my hand a kick that sent the gun skittering away from me—and also away from her. She had the advantage of being on her feet while I still struggled to get up.

The gun rattled past the pedestrians' safety barrier and stopped dangerously close to the gaping hole in the retaining wall. I regained my balance, leaped up, and dove on top of the pistol seconds before it dropped into the sea. Again I lay sprawled on wet concrete, but this time, as Shandy rushed toward me, I clutched the gun with my finger on the trigger.

“Stop where you are.” I pointed the pistol at Shandy. “One move and you're dead.”

Could she hear the shake in my voice? See the tremble in my hand? I rose to my feet ever mindful of the slick concrete, the thrashing sea. My mind whirled, searching for some bit of wisdom that would tell me what to do next. I'd never expected to be thrust into the role of captor, but I liked it a whole lot better than the role of prisoner.

“You don't know how to use a gun.” Shandy's words taunted me. “You'll end up shooting yourself, you dummy.”

I tried to block her words from my mind—and failed. “Don't push the envelope, Shandy. Of course I know how to use a gun.”

“Maybe—on the target range. Bet you never practiced on a moving person.”

“Move at your own risk.”

Why talk to this woman? I needed to think, needed to keep focused on getting help. Maybe I could force her to walk back to the car, to drive us to police headquarters. Or maybe I could do the driving.
Move away from the broken wall.
My mind shouted orders, but my body refused to obey. Terror froze me to the spot.

What if I ordered Shandy to walk toward the car and she refused? Could I bear to shoot her? Could I bear the guilt of snuffing out a human life? I had no answers. I only knew I didn't dare shout an order I couldn't back up with a bullet.

Cell phone. My thoughts began to focus as I remembered the cell phone in my pocket. I clutched the gun in my right hand. Through wet fabric clinging to my legs, I felt the cell phone in my right-hand pants pocket. The awkwardness of the situation scared me, but I managed to keep the gun trained on Shandy while I thrust my left hand into my right-hand pocket and pulled out the cell.

I didn't dare lose eye contact with Shandy by looking down at the phone, so working by touch, I managed to push the power button to break whatever connection I might have had to Punt's phone, then I pushed “power” again and keyed in nine-one-one.

“Phone's probably dead or too wet to work,” Shandy taunted. “Must be soaked from all those waves. You'll get no help from the Key West's finest tonight. You're on your own.”

Shandy's words reinforced my worst fears, but working left-handed, I pressed the phone to my ear and waited. Good! It lived! I could hear the rings.

“Police dispatcher. Your name, please?”

“Keely Moreno calling.” Once I spoke, once I knew help lay only a phone line a way, words poured out. “I'm on White Street. At the end of the pier. I'm holding Shandy Koffan at gunpoint. Need help. Now. I'm holding Shandy's gun. She used it to kidnap me from my apartment, drive me to the pier, and try to drown me. Hurry. Please hurry.”

“Stay where you are, Miss Moreno. Help's on its way. Keep talking to me. I'll hold this line open. Keep talking to let me know you're still okay.”

I forced myself to keep talking. I talked. And talked. In my terror, I gave up any thought of moving or of ordering Shandy to move. The police were coming. Let them give Shandy orders. I kept talking and talking until the howling wind crashed another wave onto the pier, a wave so strong it knocked us both to the concrete, drenching us as it swept both the cell phone and the gun into the sea.

Shandy attacked me in the next instant, pounding my head with her fists, kicking my shins and legs. I tried to focus on the dim lights on shore, but a world of blackness whirled around me.
Fight back.
I wanted to fight back, but all stamina left me and I concentrated on protecting myself from Shandy's onslaught. She kicked the barrier blocking the hole in the retaining wall and the heavy sawhorse fell across the small of my back. Pain shot through my body and I gasped for breath as I felt her kicking me and then tugging me toward the hole where the sea came crashing through.

“Tell the world goodbye, Keely,” Shandy shouted in my ear as she pushed the sawhorse from my back. “This's it. Over you go. Over and out. I'll tell the police you attacked me and you won't be around to deny it. They'll think about Margaux. They'll think about Jude. They'll think I held the number three spot on the list of a mad-woman—a serial killer who killed without motive.”

In my mind, that future scene played out as Shandy described it. The police had suspected me of murder all along, but with my last bit of strength, I clutched a protruding chunk of concrete and hung on. There's a universal force within a human being that'd rather live than die. Shandy kicked my hands, my fingers. I held on. Waves kept me so wet I couldn't feel my blood spurting from my body, but I could smell its rust-like odor as it leaked into the sea.

Sirens wailed in the distance, but so what? Crazy things flashed through my mind while I clung there dying. I thought of books and articles I'd read about people near death seeing a bright light at the end of a tunnel, seeing loved ones waiting to welcome them. I saw none of those things, and that fact gave me strength. If I saw no tunnel, no bright light, no deceased friends waiting, maybe I wasn't dying. I clung to the life remaining in me.

*

THE NEXT THING I knew I woke up in a dimly lit room. Where? I peeked through slitted eyes, wondering if Shandy still waited, ready to attack again.

“Keely? Keely?”

Punt's voice. I opened my eyes wider.

“Keely, can you hear me?”

“Of course I can hear you. Where am I? Why are these mittens on my hands?”

Someone turned on a brighter light and I bolted upright in bed in spite of muscles that screamed in protest. “Where's Shandy? She's after me. She's going to kill me. Watch out, Punt! She's dangerous!”

Punt gently eased me back onto my pillow. “You're in the hospital, Keely. Relax. Everything's going to be okay.”

Before Punt could say more, a nurse entered the room. “Good morning, Miss Moreno. How are we feeling today?”

The nurse raised the window shade and sunlight flooded the room. I didn't know how she felt, but I felt really rotten, and the medicinal smell that traveled with her increased my nausea.

“It's Friday morning?” I whispered, remembering Thursday night's horror as I tried to relate to this calm world.