by Janet Dawson
Anita reached for Peggy’s arm and the older woman slapped the girl. “Look what you’ve done,” Peggy snapped. “It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t been fighting—”
Anita burst into tears. “It was just an argument, a silly argument. Charlie was distracted.”
“It was an accident,” Charlie said, his voice anguished as he faced the Gebhardts. “We didn’t mean for it to happen.”
Sometimes a public confession wasn’t a good idea. The situation was too volatile. I pulled out my cell phone and flipped it open, quickly thumbing through the contacts for the number of the Alameda Police Department. I hit the send button and spoke urgently to the voice that answered.
“You killed my little girl.” Carol shook like a tree not strong enough to stand up to a hard wind. She fell to her knees. I moved toward her. Then I saw Steve reach into the bag that held the candles. I realized there was another reason the bag was so heavy. Steve’s idea of closure was revenge.
“He has a gun,” I shouted.
I dropped my cell phone and lunged at Steve, but I was too late. He fired three shots, astonishing loud. Then it was quiet as death. Steve stood there, the gun in his hand as he stared at the scene. He dropped the gun. He’d done what he intended to do.
Fred had picked up my cell phone from the grass and was talking into the mouthpiece. His dog Aggie barked frantically as he pulled her away. Sirens wailed in the distance and people poured from of nearby houses.
Someone started screaming. Anita Montano sat on the grass, her hand touching a crimson wound on her arm, as though she couldn’t believe that was her own blood.
She’d gotten off easy. Peggy Blaine and her son Charlie lay crumpled together on their front lawn.
Carol sat on the sidewalk near Emily’s shrine as the sirens got closer and finally stopped at the corner. Tears streamed down her face. She kept crying as the paramedics worked on Peggy, Charlie, and Anita. Then I saw one of the EMTs shake his head and pull a sheet over Charlie’s face. The EMTs loaded Anita and Peggy into an ambulance.
The police cuffed Steve Gebhardt, put him into the back seat of a cruiser and drove away, leaving me to follow with the wreckage of his wife. In my head I heard Peggy Blaine’s voice saying, as it had the day I met her, “There’s such a thing as excessive grief.”
Table of Contents
Casebook
“Little Red Corvette”
“Blue Eyes”
“Slayer Statute”
“Candles on the Corner”
