Here Today, Gone Tamale

by Rebecca Adler

  “Go ahead and hide. I’ll come and find you in a minute. You won’t believe what I have to tell you.”

  I pulled out my phone to call the sheriff’s department. It connected for a second, but suddenly went dead. Great. My stupid phone had no bars in my own home . . . as usual.

  If I was right, one of the Burnetts murdered Dixie with her own necklace. My money was on Elaine, though I couldn’t explain why, at least not yet.

  Lenny ran through the living room and into my bedroom like the house was on fire.

  A prickly feeling came over my neck, and I shook it off. I wasn’t one to believe in ghosts, other than the Holy Ghost, but the hairs were standing up on the back of my neck.

  A tapping noise made me jump out of my skin. “Patti,” I whispered. “Is that you?” Nothing.

  Lenny ran back into the kitchen and jumped into my lap.

  “Hey, watch it,” I didn’t want him to pick the front of my slacks. “What is it?” I crooned, trying to kiss his nose. He wriggled in my arms. I lowered him to the ground just as he jumped. He ran into my bedroom again, but this time I followed.

  Tap. Tap.

  OMG. The tapping was coming from the closet. If this was Patti’s idea of a joke, I was going to kill her.

  Lenny began scratching at the closet door.

  I looked around my bedroom for a possible weapon. Even if it wasn’t Elaine, there was always the possibility that a rat, squirrel, possum, raccoon, or bat had taken up lodging in my closet, not to mention my clothes.

  With Lenny in one arm and a ski pole in my hand, I slowly opened the closet door. The closet was dark, but the bedroom light shone bright on Patti’s head.

  “Patti,” I cried.

  My best friend was there on the floor, duct tape on her mouth and around her wrists and ankles. Her eyes wide, she motioned wildly with her head, crying out as best she could behind the duct tape gag.

  I lowered the ski pole and dropped to my knees. In her eyes, there was no sign of tears or weakness, only outrage.

  Lenny whined, and I pulled the tape from her mouth.

  “Ahh,” she whimpered. She shook her head to clear the pain. “She’s coming back. She’s out there somewhere. Go and get help.”

  “But—”

  “Put that tape back on my mouth so she won’t know you found me. You don’t have time for anything else.”

  I started to do as she said. “You do mean Elaine, right?”

  She nodded and her eyes fell to the tape in my hand. “Hurry.”

  “I don’t get it. I left her at the auction. She wouldn’t leave in the middle of her big moment.”

  “She did this.” She tried to pick up the tape with her fingers, though her wrists were tied together.

  “Okay, okay, I got it.” I smoothed the gray sticky tape over her mouth as best I could.

  The room went black. I barely held in my scream. “Patti,” I whispered, “I’m going to go get help, but I won’t go far. Promise.”

  I could still see the whites of her eyes. I fumbled for the flashlight app on my phone. She was frantic, gesturing with her tied hands for me to go.

  As I hurried into the kitchen, Elaine’s voice floated up from the stairs below. “You shouldn’t leave your extra set of keys where just anyone can find them.” She sounded calm and in control as usual, as if advising the committee members on their festival duties.

  “Yip,” Lenny said.

  I dialed 911, but the screen remained dark. No service.

  Still holding Lenny in one arm, I fumbled through the knife drawer. In the very back, I found the old skeleton key that belonged to the closet. I hurried back, opened the door, and whispered. “I’m coming back. Hang on.”

  Patti struggled to speak through the duct tape.

  “No.” I caught her eye. “I couldn’t live with myself if she were to harm you.”

  Wide-eyed and shaking her head as hard as she could, she tried to speak around the tape, but to no avail.

  I checked my phone. No signal.

  Lowering my mouth to Patti’s ear, I whispered, “She’s downstairs. I don’t have a signal. I’ve got to find a way outside to call the sheriff before she breaks down the door.” I backed away enough to make eye contact. “Elaine Burnett is not going to send you or me to our maker, not while I have breath in my body.”

  At last Patti nodded, her steady gaze riveted to mine as if transferring all of her cool self-assurance to me. I nodded in return, placed Lenny in the closet with my best friend, and then quickly locked the closet door.

  In the bedroom all was quiet, no sign of Elaine.

  I threw the skeleton key under the bed and suddenly remembered the knives in the drawer. I hated sharp objects, especially knives. I even looked away in a movie if a character cut themselves by accident. And forget slasher movies, I avoided them like last week’s leftovers.

  But if a knife was all I had against crazy Elaine, then a knife it was. I’d channel my inner horror movie heroine and pray. Those chicks might run throughout the entire movie, but they managed to kill the creeper in the end.

  I was standing in the bedroom when Elaine jammed the key in the apartment door lock. Why hadn’t I placed a chair under the doorknob? Horror movie heroines were dimwits. I made it only as far as the kitchen doorway when the apartment door flung wide. Elaine stood on the threshold, wearing a tiny headlight. In her right hand, she held a pistol.

  In the closet, Lenny flew into a fury, barking and growling like a dog twelve times his size. “Don’t worry,” Elaine said. “I’ll take good care of him.”

  I backed into the living room, grabbed the coffee table, and flung it between us, hoping to give Elaine an obstacle.

  She laughed. “I haven’t used a pistol in a long time, not since my husband taught me to shoot on our honeymoon. But I’m pretty sure I can figure it out in time to put a hole in you if you don’t stand still.”

  Her words gave me a boost of confidence. Maybe the gun would jam. I ran for the bedroom and locked the door. I tried to check my phone for service, and she started firing at the doorknob. I dialed 911 just as the knob fell off.

  I looked around, frantic for even a wisp of an idea. “Elaine, what did I ever do to you?”

  She fired again, and a bullet plowed through the doorframe. Spotting the other ski pole, I crawled over to it and wedged it beneath the door handle.

  “What didn’t you do?” she demanded. “All you had to do was stay out of the way so Wallace and his deputies could bungle it.”

  “I couldn’t let Anthony go to jail.”

  She banged the door and the ski pole jumped. It wasn’t going to keep her out for very long.

  “Nine-one-one.” The female operator’s voice crackled to life. “What’s your emergency?”

  “Elaine Burnett’s trying to kill me.”

  “Ma’am, can you get to a place of safety?”

  Gunfire hit the door and wood chips started flying.

  “What’s under the door handle, Josefina?” Elaine’s irate, church lady voice suddenly reminded me of my seventh grade band director, Mrs. Chambers. After one band contest too many, the old drill sergeant retired early to a mental home in Corpus Christi.

  My gaze soared around the room, desperate for anything that would help. If I ran into the bathroom I was a sitting duck. She’d only have to shoot off the doorknob again to reach me.

  I spotted the street lamps and ran toward the light. I pried open the window and kicked out the screen. The balcony rested on the covered porch below. It was sturdy enough for me to sit outside on sunny days in my lawn chair, but not secure enough to hold two people. It was fifteen feet in the air and it was my only choice.

  I climbed through the window and shut it again, hoping she wouldn’t look to the windows first as I tried to get down without breaking my legs.

&n
bsp; I knew in a flash that once I stood long enough to lift my leg over the balcony rail, I’d be a sitting duck. I could hear the operator talking on the phone, but I couldn’t carry on a decent conversation in the midst of someone trying to riddle me with bullet holes. I crawled to the side of the porch, away from the window.

  I heard the window start to open. My adrenaline pumping like an oil gusher, I rolled back against the wall.

  “Josie,” Elaine whispered in a voice now devoid of anything but motherly concern. “Are you out there, hon?” If I didn’t know she was trying to kill me, I’d think she was worried I might fall of the roof. “Don’t make me turn on my light.”

  I gave no reply, and she said nothing further. It was a Mexican standoff between two women, one desperate and the other insane.

  “Have it your way. I’ll just go check on Patti.” Through the open window, I heard her struggle to open the door of the closet. Lenny barked as if he would rip her stockings off.

  “Very clever, Jo Jo,” she called. “That’s what your uncle calls you, right? Jo Jo.” She began to tug and bang on the closet door. “Bark away,” she raged, “you little health department nightmare.”

  Why wasn’t she shooting the handle off? Or did she think yelling at them through the door and banging on the panel would frighten them more? Maybe she was hoping to shock them into a stupor like a mistreated goldfish.

  Sirens began to wail, and two sheriff cruisers zoomed down Main Street, heading straight for us. I came to my knees, convinced I could wave them down. She wouldn’t dare shoot me with the deputies as witnesses.

  The cruisers zoomed on past, crossed the train tracks and disappeared, heading toward Two Boots.

  The deputy dogs had missed me.

  I dropped to my stomach and inched my way back to the wall, determined to make it over the balcony before she spotted me.

  As soon as I stood up, I heard the pistol cock.

  “There you are,” Elaine said sweetly. “Come on over here.”

  I leaned back against the wall, making a smaller target. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Dear, I wouldn’t try to be clever at a time like this.”

  Holy cow, Elaine was trying to mother me with a gun in her hand. I peered at the ground. How much pain would I feel if I flung myself over the balcony? What if I caught my heel on the rail? Would I land on my head?

  In the background, I heard the sirens, but then they disappeared on the wind.

  “Say something,” she demanded.

  I inched closer to the railing.

  “Fine. I’ll teach you to ignore your elders.”

  I heard a thwack as if she’d hit the closet’s door handle with her pistol. With any luck, the gun would go off and put her out of commission.

  Without delay, I lifted one leg over the railing and froze as a heartbreaking cry from Lenny reached my ears.

  “If you want me to have mercy on your friends, you’ll come back inside this minute.” Lenny’s whining came closer. She had to be standing at the open window.

  One leg over the railing and fifteen feet from either freedom or a broken leg, I wavered. “Why don’t you clean out your bank account and make a run for the border? No one would ever find you.”

  “Why would I do that?” Elaine asked matter-of-factly. “No one else knows I killed Dixie except you two.”

  Patti cried out.

  “I guess Miss Tattoo Queen isn’t as tough as she thought.”

  I ignored the adrenaline racing through my brain that was telling me to jump. I faced my fear and turned my head to stare straight into Elaine’s eyes. Holding the pistol like a club, she swung it by her side, and in her other arm she held Lenny close to her body.

  With one leg over the railing, I lied. “I told Lightfoot the whole story only forty-five minutes ago.”

  “When was that, my dear? Before or after he drank three frozen margaritas?”

  Chapter 21

  My mouth was as dry as dirt. “After, but you’d be surprised how well that man holds his liquor.” I was blabbering. Lightfoot hadn’t been drinking when he was with me.

  “I don’t believe you, Jo Jo. Why, you hardly said two words to him all night.” She could have been a disappointed parent.

  But how could she have seen us without me seeing her? “That’s what we wanted you to think. I told Lightfoot all about you murdering Dixie while you were on the dance floor.” I was grasping at straws.

  “Hmm . . . I danced with him just before I left. He didn’t act suspicious. He was too worried about not tripping over his own feet.” She laughed and her voice was light as a crystal bell.

  She had me cold, but how had she slipped away before me? “I don’t understand.” Maybe I could keep her talking? Or did that only happen in the movies?

  “Ow . . .” Elaine cried, dropping Lenny to the floor. “The mongrel bit me.”

  “Run, Lenny, run!”

  “Oh, that’s cute, right out of Lassie. How do you expect him to get out of the building?” Elaine waved me toward the window with the gun. “Get in here, Jo Jo, while I decide what to do with you.”

  I was a sitting duck. “You win.” I lifted my leg back over the railing and crawled into my apartment under her watchful eye. I dropped into the wingback chair. My hairbrush, mascara, hair dryer, and straight iron were on the top of my dresser, close at hand. Lenny had disappeared.

  “Why’d you do it, Elaine?” I reached down and she brought the gun to my face. Her eyes were overly bright, her gaze intent as if I were a snake in her garden that needed to be exterminated. “Why, Elaine? What did Dixie ever do to you that was so horrible you had to kill her?”

  She shook her head. “Now, Josie, you know she was rude to me every time she saw me.” She patted her perfectly curled hair the same way I’d seen her do so many times before. “I could have stood it. I mean, really. What did I care what that fat, obnoxious hippie thought?” She looked at me expectantly.

  “I thought Dixie was just kidding around.”

  She put the safety back on. “I could have stood her kidding around if she hadn’t tried to squash Melanie’s chances for success.”

  I must have looked as confused as I felt.

  “Now listen up, first she claimed that Melanie was trying to destroy her sales by asking her to sell her jewelry elsewhere, and then she claimed that Melanie was a . . . what was it she called her . . . a two-bit hack?”

  “That was unkind.”

  Elaine still held the gun at her side, but she was glancing at herself in the mirror that hung on the closet door. I thought this was odd, especially if she was about to take my life.

  I tried to lift up a few inches to pull my foot out from under me to position myself for a fast getaway.

  “Unkind?” Elaine repeated as if lost in thought. “She was deluded.”

  My eyes grew wide before I could stop myself. The queen of delusion was holding court in my bedroom at this very moment.

  “She had the nerve to tell The Texan that my Melanie has no talent.” Elaine wiped her eyes, underneath her glasses.

  “Where is Melanie?” If she were on her way to end my life, I wanted to know.

  Elaine turned to the mirror again, smoothing down her hair at the crown, again and again. “With P.J., I imagine. She kept her head high in spite of all Dixie’s yammering about how Melanie was trying to steal her designs.” She gestured with the gun to emphasize her point, and I covered my head.

  “Did I scare you?” She laughed in delight.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said politely as I lowered my hands.

  “I’ve never used one of these on another living, breathing soul.” She brought the pistol close to her face. “Did you know that after Dixie’s murder P.J. insisted that Melanie, Suellen, and I all learn to shoot?” She chuckled. “I was proud to tell him that I had learne
d to handle a gun over thirty years ago.”

  As she studied her weapon, I checked the window and bedroom door, evaluating which way to run.

  A loud thwack hit the closet door and it swung open.

  Elaine walked over and peered inside. “Patti, you need to stay quiet in there. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “Where will you go?” I asked. A better question was how could I get away from this crazy woman?

  “Go? Why, nowhere, honey. I’m staying here.”

  Where was my phone? I placed my hands on my thighs and tried to feel for my cell with my elbows. Not there. It must be on the balcony. Had the emergency operator believed my story?

  “Where’s her camera?” Elaine asked, pointing to Patti.

  “I don’t know.” Had I seen it since I’d entered the apartment? Slowly, I stepped toward the closet and peered inside and met Patti’s eyes. She was listening, no longer frightened out of her wits. “Elaine, you don’t really mind if I take the duct tape off of Patti’s mouth, do you? She sure would be able to breathe better.”

  The festival chairwoman from h-e-double-toothpicks gave us a narrow-eyed stare. Finally she nodded her assent.

  With my back to Elaine, I bent over to remove the duct tape from Patti’s mouth and whispered, “Where’s your camera?”

  Even though I stood between her and Elaine, she took no chances. Silently she mouthed the words, in the oven.

  “Patti Perez?” Elaine called sweetly.

  “Yes . . . ma’am?”

  “You stay in there, honey.”

  “Uh, yes, ma’am.”

  I patted Patti’s shoulder and left her in the closet.

  Elaine’s eyes were still overly bright, as if she were high on adrenaline. “You stay over there.” She pointed with the pistol to my favorite piece of furniture, a handcrafted Shaker chair placed against the wall.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Suddenly she slapped the arm of the loveseat. “Where’s Patti’s camera?” she demanded, her eyes snapping like a rattlesnake prepared to strike.