A Fatal Romance

by June Shaw

  The job on it had been done well so that it would be barely noticed—unless someone like me would be searching for it.

  A thin rope with a small anchor also held this decoy in place on the water. The weight and bulkiness of both geese would create problems for me to try to swim with them together, so I would take one and then get the other.

  I grabbed the one with the side cut first. Lifting its string and anchor, I tucked all of this under my left arm, gripping the anchor with that hand. With my right arm, I swam a slow stroke toward shore, my heart racing in anticipation of what this might mean.

  I reached the shallow area where I could stand. Doing that made carrying this bulky item through water much easier.

  “Yes!” a male voice shouted.

  He was behind me. I’d been so busy with the geese and water that I hadn’t been checking the shore.

  Intense quiet pressed against my eardrums. Until I heard click.

  Did he cock a pistol? Some unknown person shot and killed Crystal. This person tried to kill Eve.

  “Sunny!” Dave Price called. Oh, Dave, I didn’t want it to be you.

  Angry and scared, I felt “Jingle Bells” rush from my throat as I shivered and turned, pulling the gun from my pocket, not knowing if it would fire when wet but needing to try. I shot at the person on shore, who satisfied me because it wasn’t Dave, and felt the sting of a bullet strike my left shoulder.

  The backs of my eyes burned from tears trying to rush out ever since I’d watched Crystal die, but I forced them inside, pouring out my fury on the man facing me. I kept firing the gun until my view of the world dimmed, grew unclear, and went out.

  Chapter 28

  My eyelids fluttered. A siren screamed from the vehicle transporting me and made me wake up. My arm ached too much. So did my head. I squeezed my eyelids together and forced the agonizing world away.

  The next time I opened my eyes a slit, the bed I lay on felt softer. I was no longer moving. The tube in my mouth felt like a hose, and a thick bandage kept my shoulder in place. Needles and tubes were connected to me. My hand—the one without a needle taped to it—felt warm. A hand held mine.

  I slid my gaze up from that hand to find the rugged face of Dave Price. He smiled and tightened his grip on my fingers. “She’s awake,” he said.

  Indeed I was, and pleasantly surprised to find him with me. I smiled back at him.

  “Good job, Sis. God, I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  Seeing Eve on my other side squeezed opposing reactions inside me. I tugged my hand away from Dave’s and smiled at her, happy to see her but not this minute. Right now he was with me. Or had he come with her?

  I’d heard him calling my name near the pond. “Where were you?” I asked Dave, although I’d soon want to know the same thing about her.

  “I was going to see about a job down the highway past the Snelling home when I noticed your truck in their driveway. I wondered why you were there, so I turned around and went back to find out. I was concerned about you.”

  “Going there alone was stupid,” Eve told me.

  “I couldn’t find you to come with me.”

  Her lower lip pushed out. “I am so sorry. After that happened while Dave waited for police and an ambulance, he tried my number and found my messages full, so he texted me and said you’d been shot.”

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “Being silly, staying at the hotel in town.” It was the only one. They wouldn’t have let me know whether she was there.

  Dave touched my arm. “Eve told me you had an argument that caused her to leave your house and not tell you where she was staying. Although I can’t imagine what you two would argue about.”

  You. I kept the word hidden inside my mouth.

  “I parked in front of the Snellings’ place,” Dave told me, “and walked to the back, calling your name. That was probably about the same time the seminarian yelled something and shot at you.”

  Eve bent down and hugged me. “I am so glad you’re safe.”

  “Me, too.” I embraced the love she was sharing. Her soft cheek against mine made me feel at peace, as though I were floating.

  I’d drifted off, I later learned. I learned many things in bits and pieces, some from Eve, a little from Dave, much of the information from Detective Wilet, who came to visit and question me and fill me in.

  The man who’d been a seminarian would need crutches in prison for a long time. Good. I’d been firing wildly but got him in the knee. He had parked down the road and had been searching around the Snelling house, trying to find a way inside when he heard my truck. Then he hid on the other side of the house and watched me bring what held the treasure to him, he thought. But Dave was hurrying near when he heard the gunshots. He knocked out the seminarian and rushed into the water and plucked me out.

  Motives and events that transpired to get so many people involved began to take shape. Landers, the seminarian, confessed he had begun having an affair with Daria while assigned to a church in New Orleans, a city she’d often visited. She had told him she wanted to leave Zane and would as soon as she found the cache of illegal money he’d received from his grandpa.

  So Miss Hawthorne was right about Zane’s gangster elder, although I wouldn’t want to know whether he really went around commando.

  Daria had killed Zane during their argument once she ran out of their house after him. His conceit about his prowess with women better than she was made Daria determine she’d dump his ashes so people could walk on him and grind his ashes into the church’s carpet. She’d brought that nail file, the seminarian confessed, and worked to pry the glue loose from the minute she had the urn in her hand. And she ripped the plastic bag inside.

  He met her at the grocery store the next day when I saw them, but she hadn’t wanted him to stay around her in a public place, so she’d rushed away. He followed to her house, confronting her at the backdoor where they couldn’t be seen. He wanted his share of Zane’s cache that she’d promised would simplify their lives.

  Daria ordered him away, saying she wasn’t sure where the money was but would find it and tell him. He figured she would take the fortune and run. He had already ruined his future by fooling around with her.

  Spotting the extra pavers Eve had stacked near the door, he grabbed one and smashed Daria’s head with it. She went down inside her kitchen door. He panicked and spied the blinking light on the answering machine on the counter. Maybe someone saying they were coming right over. He punched the playback button.

  It was my message telling Daria I was the tall redhead from the funeral, not bothering to say there were two of us, and I had something important of her husband’s. She should call me.

  Of course she never did. But the seminarian was in so much trouble already and needed a lot of money to get a distance away. He figured Daria’s caller had the stash from Zane’s grandpa. He had once visited a parishioner down Eve’s street, noticed Eve at her mailbox, and thought she was that redheaded caller. He broke into her house through the sliding door but couldn’t get beyond it. Furious, he smashed her paintings and wrote on the wall.

  As days passed, he’d grown more desperate. He returned to her house with a gun and tools to get past her studio. Of course Eve was in the backyard. He’d been ready to shoot her, but I was inside the glass door and scared him away, making his gunshot miss her when she dropped to the ground.

  It seemed Zane’s grandfather had hoarded numerous large bills he’d gathered illegally, five hundred dollar bills and ten thousand dollar gold certificates, no longer printed but still legal tender and worth many more times their original value.

  Zane hid this inside the goose he then floated in the middle of his pond. The seminarian said Zane had told Daria of a stash, maybe at first planning to share it with her and leave town. Second thoughts most likely came once he continued affairs with other women. He probably hadn’t decided when he would leave Daria and needed to mak
e arrangements about where to live, and with whom, so the law wouldn’t become suspicious.

  “In the meantime, he’d enjoy sitting alone in the area you and I prepared for him and watching his fortune float right in front of his wife’s nose,” Eve said. “And he drank scotch, not beer, as he’d told me.”

  The detective said Daria’s older sister had let Zane rest at her house whenever he worked in the town where she’d lived. One thing led to another, she’d told police, and Zane swore to her he no longer loved Daria. That had been easy for her to believe, especially since Daria had always been the spoiled sister.

  I could relate. I loved my twin, but had sometimes felt a pinch jealous and hadn’t minded a few of the times Eve didn’t seem totally happy.

  But what about these new feelings I’d been experiencing? Every time Dave came around, which he did often to check on me, I wanted him to stay close. My whole body turned warm, with an inner tugging toward him.

  I was released from the hospital, and he came to see me at my house, where I insisted I stay while Eve returned to hers. We sisters needed to work on getting our lives back to normal.

  “I’m really sorry I pretended to be Eve when I first met you,” I told Dave while we sat alone near each other on my sofa.

  The right corner of his lips tilted up. “I knew you weren’t Eve. I’d met her once, and she came on a little strong, a trait I don’t normally admire in a woman.” He leaned his face closer to mine so that his breath feathered my lips. “I prefer one who isn’t so bold.”

  I wanted to be that woman for him. An instinct tugged inside, making me want to move closer, to snuggle my body against his.

  But he was my sister’s. Eve wanted him. And she found him first.

  Dave’s grin widened. “I also knew you weren’t her that first day at her house because of the striking gold flecks in your blue eyes.”

  Striking? Gold? I was flattered, struggling with temptation.

  “I also knew you two were playing me. When Eve phoned you in her house to ask if you were all right while you sat next to me on her sofa, I could hear every word she said.”

  “Oh.” I felt my cheeks growing pink. “I guess I should have moved away from you sooner.”

  He chuckled a good-hearted laugh. I laughed with him. My laugh didn’t feel so sincere. Maybe a smile or a laugh now and then was all I would ever share with this man.

  Eve visited Mom, giving her more accurate news than she might have heard otherwise. She promised Mom for me that I would be in to see her soon once I healed up a little better. She also told Grace her pictures had helped police solve a mystery.

  “Grace keeps bragging about that to everyone who visits the retirement home,” Eve told me.

  People kept calling Eve and me, rescheduling jobs they’d canceled. Word got around quickly about all that transpired with the Snellings and seminarian and me and my twin. New customers wanted us to work for them. We made lists, needing to put people off until my shoulder and achy joints improved.

  Detective Wilet returned my silk jacket bearing some of Zane’s ashes.

  I knew what I would do with them.

  Chapter 29

  I contacted Lillian, the one woman I felt had truly still loved this man, and extended my sympathy.

  But he’d been playing different women, pretending he loved each one of them. Zane Snelling died because his wife discovered all she had about his romances. Lillian didn’t want any of his ashes.

  Eve drove me where I wanted to go. Beside the pond in the backyard of the Snelling residence, I removed my jacket. I’d once thought Zane was a great guy and had wanted to find a proper place to bury him.

  “Turns out he was hot stuff. He needs to cool off.” I turned my pocket inside out, rubbing out all of the ashes I could into the water. Still, a few remained caught in threads along the seam.

  I tied my jacket into a big knot and threw it out as far as I could. We watched the thing bubble up and sink.

  “I’m good,” I told Eve.

  She hugged me. “I just want you to be happy.” Her eyes were intense with sincerity.

  I was a stronger person now. We both were. Yes, this was the time.

  “I want to tell you something,” I said. “I believe you may have been right when you spoke in the manor the other day. I think what I do need is a gratifying romantic relationship.”

  “Yes! Oh, Sunny!” Hands clasped together, Eve looked thrilled.

  I dreaded popping her happy bubble, but I must. I needed to tell her the truth. She wouldn’t be at all pleased with the man I hoped to share that warm encounter with.

  Her brows lifted, eyes as wide as I’d ever seen them while she watched my lips, waiting for them to express more about my anticipated romance.

  Her phone rang. She’d obviously gotten rid of some extra messages.

  “That’s okay,” she told me, glancing at her purse hanging on her arm. “Come on, Sis, tell me more. I can’t wait to hear about this.”

  I opened my mouth to do that, but she yanked her phone out of her purse.

  “Wait, it’s Randy. I need to check this call.” Her eyes spread even widener while she listened. Her face that showed total joy minutes ago now expressed pure ecstasy. Her lips squeezed together and quivered.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s a boy!”

  It took seconds for me to swallow and let her words drop inside me. “My sister’s a grandma.” A tear of happiness rolled down my cheek.

  I wrapped my arms around Eve. She was still living. And soon both of us would rush to snuggle the unseen child we already loved. He was the main male she and I would be talking about for quite some time.

  One day, though, I would need to tell her about the other one.

  Meet the Author

  From the bayou country of South Louisiana, June Shaw previously sold a series of humorous mysteries to Five Star, Harlequin, and Untreed Reads. Publishers Weekly praised her debut, Relative Danger, which became a finalist for the David Award for Best Mystery of the Year. A hybrid author who has published other works, she has represented her state on the board of Mystery Writers of America’s Southwest Chapter for many years and continued to serve as the Published Author Liaison for Romance Writers of America’s Southern Louisiana chapter. She gains inspiration for her work from her faith, family, and friends, including the many readers who urge her on. For more info please visit juneshaw.com.