Vows, Vendettas and a Little Black Dress

by Kyra Davis

  I tried my damnedest to be fast but the traffic was horrific. By the time my phone rang I was practically in tears. It was Leah. “I can’t reach Mary Ann,” she snapped. “She was supposed to meet us here at Neiman’s. I have the perfect dress for Dena and she needs to approve it if I’m going to get this job!”

  “Yeah, we have much bigger problems than dresses right now,” I said as I honked at the idiot in front of me. The light had turned green like five seconds ago; he needed to move!

  “This is her wedding! There is nothing bigger than this!”

  “Leah, she’s at Rick’s.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, I tried to talk her out of it but she just wouldn’t listen.”

  “She’s getting back together with Rick?”

  “What? No, you don’t understand.”

  “You’re right I don’t! I am this close to being hired for the biggest wedding of the year! Now the bride’s going to just ditch the groom and go back to her cheating ex? How could she do this to me?”

  “Leah, I really have to go.”

  “So do I!”

  She hung up and I threw the phone onto the passenger seat only to pick it up and dial Anatoly’s number. It went straight to voice mail. Of course it did. He was pissed at me for calling him an asshole…again. “I know you’re mad,” I said into the phone. “But this is important. You need to call me immediately!” I hung up just as I was pulling up to yet another red light.

  What was I going to do when I got to Rick’s? What if he really did have a gun? But if I could get there before things got bad and just dragged her out of there maybe it would be okay. It had to be okay.

  It took me over a half hour to get to Rick’s. Every stoplight seemed like a personal affront and I screamed at the drivers whose slow-moving vehicles got in my way. My mind kept flashing back to the night Dena was shot. I wasn’t in the room to help her…I didn’t even get out there in time to ID her shooter. That wasn’t going to happen again. I would get Mary Ann out of harm’s way, Rick would go to jail, Amelia would be cleared and everything would be fine.

  But what if it wasn’t?

  When I finally got to Rick’s block I spotted Mary Ann’s car immediately. I parked in the driveway, took a deep breath and bounded up the long staircase leading to the front door. It was unlocked and I burst into the room.

  “Mary Ann!” I screamed. “Where are you?”

  But it only took a few steps before I could see them in the living room. Fawn and Mary Ann were kneeling on the parquet floor next to a very unconscious Rick.

  “Oh, my God, what happened?” My eyes flitted around the room. Everything was quiet and nothing seemed out of place and yet there was Rick…not moving.

  “We don’t know!” Mary Ann exclaimed, looking up from Rick, whose cheeks she had been slapping. “I called him right after I talked to you and he was fine! But when I got here, he was just like this! Sophie, I don’t know what’s going on!”

  I looked at Fawn, who was now stroking Rick’s hair. “Maybe we should just call an ambulance. Come on, Mary Ann, we can call from outside and wave them down when they get here.”

  “I’ve already called them,” Fawn sobbed. “I arrived only a few minutes before Mary Ann. Of course when I saw him on the floor I called 9-1-1 at once!”

  “And they didn’t keep you on the phone?”

  Fawn looked up, her eyes were red and her hair was disheveled. “Why would they keep me on the phone?”

  “Because…that’s what they do,” I said carefully. I took a shaky breath. “Come on, Mary Ann, let’s go outside and see if we see an ambulance out there…and guide it in. Since Fawn called them, it shouldn’t be long.”

  Fawn was staring at me now and I reached for my phone.

  “Don’t do that,” Fawn said and stood up.

  “Sophie, I think his breathing’s getting shallower!” Mary Ann cried.

  “Well, that sucks for him, but we really have to go!”

  “No,” Fawn said, her voice heavy with emotion, and in the blink of an eye she tossed aside a beige throw pillow and grabbed the gun that had been hiding beneath it.

  It was a gun with a silencer and she pointed it at the back of Mary Ann’s head.

  Mary Ann didn’t look up, but there’s something about having a gun pointed at you at close range. Even if it’s not in your line of vision, you sort of sense that it’s there. She stopped slapping Rick’s cheeks and became incredibly quiet.

  “Fawn, we all know what kind of guy Rick is, and, well, we all think about killing the jerks who break our hearts, so who are we to judge, right?” I said slowly. “Mary Ann’s moved on, and if you let us go, we won’t tell anyone about this.”

  “I’m emotional but I’m not stupid,” Fawn said. There were tears in her eyes but she blinked them away impatiently. “Not stupid like her.”

  Mary Ann winced and I felt my hands curl into fists, but with effort I managed not to let my anger show in any other part of my body. “A smart woman like you knows that killing three people and getting away with it is going to be tough. And Rick’s not even dead. Whatever you did to him…well, I’m sure he’ll recover. We could all walk away from this with our lives and our freedom.”

  Fawn shook her head. “I don’t think I want any of us to walk away from this,” she sobbed. “I want to die. I want him to die, and I really want her to die.”

  Oh, shit. She was planning a murder-suicide. So she wasn’t hoping to get away with anything, and that was a huge problem because while I could easily explain why killing a bunch of people could land her in jail for life, convincing her that life was worth living was going to be a lot more difficult.

  My phone rang. I looked at Fawn. I wanted so badly to reach for it but I didn’t dare. The gun was still right there, pointing at Mary Ann.

  “Walk over here, by your friend,” Fawn said, gesturing for me to move over to where she held Mary Ann captive.

  I carefully made my way to Mary Ann and my phone kept ringing in my handbag. “You’re right on the verge of having everything you want,” I said.

  “Hand me your purse.”

  I did as I was told. “Mary Ann’s getting married. Rick will have to give up on her and then he’s all yours.”

  Fawn laughed. The sound was high-pitched and disturbing. “He broke up with me! He said he was sick of me following him around! Following him to the hospital, following him to Monty’s place. He called it stalking! It wasn’t stalking—it was love, Sophie! I loved him!”

  “He didn’t invite you to come with him to see me and Monty? You followed him against his will?” Mary Ann asked.

  “Shut up, you FUCKING BITCH!”

  “Sorry,” Mary Ann whispered. Her hand was on Rick’s heart. It moved up slightly with each one of Rick’s breaths. That was good. No one was dead. Yet.

  Fawn took the phone out of my bag. “Ah, Anatoly Darinsky,” she said as she examined the phone. “You think he’s all yours, don’t you? You think you’re the only woman in his life. Men aren’t like that, Sophie.” She looked up at me. Her eyes were like open wounds.

  “Stand up, Mary Ann,” she said.

  Mary Ann took a shaky breath and got to her feet. The gun stayed trained on her head.

  “I hit him over the head and then I chloroformed him before he could recover,” she said, looking down at Rick.

  “So he’s not going to die?” Mary Ann asked hopefully.

  “No, he’ll die. But not until I shoot him.”

  “Fawn, you can’t kill yourself over Rick!” I exclaimed. “The guy is such a friggin’ loser! He cheated on Mary Ann, he treated you like shit, and does he even have a real job anymore? He’s a Republican political consultant turned into a Libertarian political consultant. You know how many Libertarian politicians are successful enough to hire their own consultants? There are like five of them out there and to my knowledge none of them has hired Rick!”

  “I don’t care if he has a job!” Fawn sobbed. “He was ni
ce to me! He was decent! Who cares that he cheated on Mary Ann with me! If she had taken him back it would have been nothing more than a fling. Men need their flings! She had his heart and she broke it! I know because when he was suffering I was there to comfort him! I fell in love with him while he was crying in my arms!”

  Mary Ann was shaking. “Fawn, I’m so—”

  “I said shut up! He was so angry with himself for hurting you and really what did he do? Did he rob a bank? Did he beat you? No, he just acted like a man, and you couldn’t forgive him for that! I would have forgiven him! He could have slept with all the women in the world, and I would have looked the other way as long as he gave me his heart! All I wanted was his heart but he kept throwing it at YOU!” She pressed the gun against Mary Ann’s skull. “And you stomped on his heart again and again. You make me sick.”

  “Please, Fawn,” I whispered. “You haven’t done anything all that bad yet. You know, Dena’s out of the hospital. She’s already taken a few steps.”

  “I’m sorry about Dena,” Fawn said softly. “I was upset and I didn’t know Mary Ann had company. As soon as I fired I realized my mistake. It was supposed to be you.” She jabbed the gun against Mary Ann’s head and I could see the pain from the impact play across her face.

  But then Fawn pulled back. She moved several paces away, her back to the door. Her gun was still raised but it wasn’t just pointed at Mary Ann anymore. It was pointed at all of us. As far as Fawn was concerned we were all going to die.

  “Did you tell Rick what you had done?” I asked. I was stalling for time but why? No one was coming here to help us. No ambulance was on its way and Anatoly didn’t know where I was because I was apparently too brainless to leave that bit of information on his voice mail. Now that had been stupid.

  “I can’t die like this,” Mary Ann whispered. I swallowed and tried to send Mary Ann a silent message to keep still. It was a message she didn’t seem to be picking up on.

  “I’m in my ex-boyfriend’s house and…and I’m going to get shot by a taxidermist!”

  “Mary Ann,” I said sharply.

  “Oh, my God, Sophie, we’re going to get stuffed! This can’t be happening! Oh, God, I don’t want to be stuffed! We’re going to die and then she’s going to stuff us before we can even be organ donors!”

  “Please SHUT UP!” Fawn cocked the gun and Mary Ann immediately fell into a terrified silence. “Of course I didn’t tell Rick,” Fawn went on, now looking at me. “I did go to see him, though. I told him that my grandmother had a stroke, that’s why I was upset and he comforted me.” Her voice was getting hoarse and the gun in her hand was shaking. “He sat me down in front of the TV and went to make me a cup of hot chocolate…isn’t that sweet?”

  “Very sweet,” I agreed. “Let’s not kill him.”

  “Then the news came on and I saw the report that someone had been shot on Lake Street. When they said it was the apartment resident’s cousin, I knew it had to be Dena Lopiano. I said her name aloud.” More tears trickled down her cheeks. “I knew it was the name of the woman I had shot.”

  “You didn’t mean to,” I said. My hands were in fists again. “Accidents happen. If you could just forgive yourself instead of going on a murderous rampage, everything will be fine.”

  “Rick heard me,” Fawn continued. “He asked why I’d brought up her name and I…I just told him. I told him that she had been shot and then he ran back out into the living room and watched the last few minutes of the report. Rick cares about people. Once upon a time he cared about me.”

  “Do you want me to beg for my life?” Mary Ann asked meekly. “Could you put the gun down if I did that? Couldn’t watching me beg be enough?”

  “No,” Fawn said. “It’s not enough. You have to die.”

  I opened my mouth to protest but then I saw someone behind Fawn—my sister, a Neiman Marcus shopping bag in her hand, her eyes wide as she took in the scene.

  Mary Ann gasped but Fawn thought it was in reaction to her last statement. As far as she was concerned the only people in the room were the ones she held at gunpoint.

  “And guess what?” Fawn continued. “I’m going to shoot you first.”

  As the words left her mouth Leah whipped out a slinky black dress from the bag. Fawn started at the sound and tried to turn, but Leah was faster. She lunged forward with a growl that you might expect to hear from a mother bear. A shot went off and a lamp shattered to bits. Now Leah had one hand on Fawn’s wrist as she tried to keep the gun from aiming at us…the other hand had the dress wrapped around Fawn’s neck and she was pulling it tight.

  Mary Ann and I acted together, both of us going for the arm with the gun. In the background I could hear the sound of heavy footsteps but I couldn’t focus on that now. The gun was swinging from side to side…how could one skinny woman have this much strength? And then it went off again as Fawn struggled to regain control.

  “What the fuck!” It was Dena’s voice behind me and out of the corner of my eye I could see her held in Jason’s trembling arms in the doorway.

  “Get back!” I screamed and Jason leaped back out the door as Dena yelled, first Mary Ann’s name and then mine.

  Fawn’s expression remained determined even as she gasped for air, but now that we had her arm and Leah was free to use both hands to pull on the dress, her face was turning red. She tried to pull the cloth away with her one free hand but Mary Ann saw what she was doing and stopped her from seeking relief.

  And then, as her face went from red to purple, Fawn’s grip loosened and the gun was mine.

  Fawn fell to her knees just as Jason staggered back in through the door with Dena, his face drenched with sweat from the previous effort of carrying her up an entire flight of stairs. “Fucking hell, what’s going on?” He stared at the gun in my hand pointed at Fawn as Leah finally loosened the dress from Fawn’s throat. “Fuck me,” he said in a whispered voice.

  Dena, still in Jason’s arms, looked to me and Mary Ann, then to Fawn, and finally to Leah. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out.

  Leah looked dazed as she stared at the garment in her hand. “I just strangled somebody with a Helmut Lang.”

  “Your perfect maid of honor dress?” Jason asked dubiously. “The dress you thought you could somehow use as part of an argument to convince Mary Ann to stick with her fiancé?”

  “Yes,” Leah said as she began to gather her wits. “As it turns out it served as a very successful argument.” She looked down at Fawn, who was still gasping for breath. “You were going to shoot Mary Ann,” she hissed, “before I could even act as a consultant for her wedding! What kind of monster are you?”

  Mary Ann was also on the floor. “Leah?” she asked breathlessly. “Yes?”

  “I love the dress. If you want to plan my wedding I think…um…I think you’ve proved yourself.”

  “Sophie?” Dena asked. She still didn’t understand what had just happened.

  “It was her,” I said. Leah was now pulling her cell phone out of her purse to dial 9-1-1. “Fawn’s the one who shot you. She thought you were Mary Ann.”

  Dena stared at Fawn, who still didn’t have the ability to talk. “Put me down, Jason. Right there on the chair.” She didn’t sound scared anymore. She sounded seriously pissed.

  Jason didn’t need to be asked twice. You could tell that he was on the verge of dropping her anyway. He helped her onto the chair nearest Fawn so she could look down on her.

  “Fawn,” she said coolly, “when I walk to the witness stand to send your ass to prison, you will know that you have failed to hurt anyone but yourself. Your life is over.”

  Fawn’s eyes darted over to the man on the floor. “Rick,” she said weakly and then she closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER 25

  I only lie to people whose opinions I care about, so try to feel honored.

  –Fatally Yours

  It didn’t take long for the police to get there but it did take over an hour for all of us to expla
in what had happened. Fawn didn’t spin any lies. In fact she seemed on the verge of being catatonic. It reminded me a little of the silence that Dena had fallen into after being shot, but Dena’s silence had been terrifying, Fawn’s silence was incredibly satisfying. Rick was taken to the hospital. It looked as if he might have a slight concussion but it was going to be hard to tell exactly what was going on until the chloroform wore off and X-rays were done. Mary Ann called Monty and he rushed over. The police wouldn’t let him into the house but as soon as Mary Ann was free to leave she rushed down the stairs and into his arms. I was close enough to hear that he was the one crying this time as he held on to her for dear life. When Leah walked out he practically fell to her feet in gratitude.

  I had called Anatoly, too, but I had asked him to meet me at the house. Reluctantly he agreed. Before I got back in my car I spotted Detective Hoffman, the detective who had questioned me for a while before talking to Mary Ann, Jason and Dena. I steadied myself and approached him.

  “Excuse me, Detective Hoffman?”

  He turned around and smiled at me. “Can I help you, Ms. Katz?”

  “Yes…um…I hope it’s okay for me to ask you this but I was told that you had added Amelia Curtis to your suspect list after receiving a tip?”

  “Yeah, but she’s off the list now. It looks like Fawn’s ready to confess.”

  “Well, that’s great but…um…could you tell me who called in the tip?”

  “No.”

  “Can you tell me if it was Anatoly Darinsky or…um…that guy?” I pointed to Jason as he lovingly helped Dena back into Leah’s car.