by Lora Roberts
She moved her head weakly from side to side on the pillow. “No. But there’ve been phone calls—breathing, and muttering. When I got sick, I worried about it a lot—that he would come back when Byron wasn’t here, get hold of your father, and there’d be a fight or worse, and your father would be killed—”
“Relax, Mom.” I pushed her back on the pillow. Her breathing was light and fast, and two red spots burned on her cheeks. “There’s nothing to worry about. The threat he made is untrue, and he won’t be back if there’s no profit. I’ll take care of it for you. I’ll take care of him.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I knew you would. After all, you brought him into the family. You have to settle this, Lizzie.”
I swallowed the retort that rose to my lips. She was right, as far as she saw it.
We sat for a moment, holding hands. She was almost smiling, and then I realized she’d fallen asleep. I disengaged my hand gently and went to find Amy.
“So how did it go?” Amy sat at the dinette, sipping tea, eating a large peanut butter sandwich, and reading from a big textbook. “I was dying to come in, but I thought you needed some privacy.”
“You’re perceptive.” I found another cup and poured from the old blue and white teapot. “She’s sleeping.”
“You set her mind at rest?” Amy spoke around a mouthful of peanut butter. “Something was really eating at her.”
“I’ll take care of it.” I stared into my cup, wondering just how I was going to do that. I didn’t want to see or confront Tony in any way. And yet somehow I was going to have to make him quit threatening my family.
There was a thump on the front porch. “Oh, gosh, I thought Daddy was going to keep Grampa away,” Amy cried.
“Sounded more like a big newspaper. Is there evening delivery?” Even as I said it, I realized how unlikely it was. The clock over the stove said 8:31; no one brought papers around that late.
Amy ran to the front door. “I don’t see Daddy’s car,” she said, puzzled, peering out the little window. “Just some hot-rodders or something.” We could hear the revving engine, the squealing tires.
I pulled open the door. At first I looked toward the street, catching a brief glimpse of a big white vehicle careening around the corner. Then Amy gasped, and I looked down.
A man lay sprawled on the front steps. His head was on the welcome mat. His eyes were open—the two brown ones that I was familiar with from several years of marriage, and a neat black hole like a third eye between them.
Tony had bothered the Sullivans for the last time.
Chapter 4
Tony was dead.
For one instant my own heart stopped. A tidal wave of emotion rushed through me, leaving my knees weak. I clutched the doorknob, staring at that round third eye. It was as if I had time-traveled back ten years, with Tony’s gun smoking in my hand after my feeble attempt to kill him, as if everything between that moment and the present had been wiped out, and I was that terrified young woman again.
Then it washed away, and I recognized the emotion that flooded me. Relief.
Amy screamed. The present snapped back around me like a rubber band.
I put an arm around Amy, turning her horrified gaze away from Tony’s body. Cold night air poured through the open door; across the street, Barker hurled himself against the car window, yelping furiously. My mother cried out from the bedroom.
“Don’t let Mom get up. Don’t let her come out here.” I squeezed Amy’s shoulders and nudged her toward the hallway. “You’ll have to get a grip on yourself.”
Amy drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I—I—was it a dead man, Aunt Liz?” She sagged against me.
“Yes, he’s dead. You can’t help him. Help your gramma.” The next nudge was not so gentle.
“Right. Right.” Noises came from my mother’s room, and Amy ran down the hall. “Gramma—no. It’s okay.” I heard her close the bedroom door behind her.
Without Amy to bolster, I felt shaky again. Light streamed out of the house onto the porch, casting golden bars onto Tony’s face and open eyes, giving him a lively air. For a moment I wondered if he really was dead. The hole in his forehead seemed pretty conclusive.
It was important to call the police. I knew that. But I was rooted to the floor, while all kinds of mad ideas rushed through my head—getting rid of the body, wafting myself away from Denver, turning the clock back so I could decide not to visit my family in the first place. Such thoughts were futile. That blessed moment of intense relief would have to be balanced by hours, maybe days, of close encounters with the police.
A light flashed on the porch of the house next door, and a little figure scuttled out. Mrs. Beamish, like my father, seemed much smaller than my memory of her, but her voice was the same commanding boom.
“What’s going on there? Mary, is that you?”
“It’s Liz, Mrs. Beamish.”
“Liz?” She came to the edge of her porch, peering over the railing. “Liz who? What’s that there?”
“Liz Sullivan. Could you call nine-one-one, Mrs. Beamish?”
“Nine-one-one? Is your mother taken bad?”
“Not my mother.” I tried to sound calm. “There’s been an accident, though. Please call for me.”
“You haven’t been around in a long time.” She sounded accusing.
“Yes, I’ve just come for a visit. Mrs. Beamish—”
“Fine, I’ll call for you. I don’t understand why you don’t do it, though. What’s the matter? Has someone passed out or something?” Mrs. Beamish lingered another moment before going back into her house.
I could have made the call, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I turned my back, Tony’s body would vanish. That would be fine, actually, but Paul Drake’s voice in the back of my head was telling me not to leave the scene, not to touch anything.
To hell with Drake. I took a deep breath and knelt beside the body of my ex-husband.
He was wearing jeans, a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and scuffed hiking boots. I put my fingers on his neck. No pulse. No gun concealed under his arms, in his front pockets. I fished a tissue from my own pocket and, wrapping it around my fingers, angled behind him for his wallet. His body shifted, the dead weight pinning my hand. With something like panic, I pulled out my hand, his wallet in it.
His face stared back at me from the driver’s license. I repeated the address given there a couple of times, hoping I’d remember it. There was money in the wallet—I saw a couple of hundred-dollar bills, and didn’t count any further. He had a Visa card that bore a woman’s name: Maud Riegert. I stared at it for a moment, wondering why the name was familiar. Then I heard a noise from next door and quickly stuffed the card back into the wallet, the wallet into Tony’s pocket.
“So what’s the matter with him?” Mrs. Beamish, booming her questions, scuttled down her front walk and up my parents’ walk. “Drunk, is he?”
I got to my feet, fighting off the urge to stand between her and Tony. “Actually, he’s dead.”
“Dead?” She stopped, halfway up the walk, and stared up at me. Her thick glasses caught the light from the open front door. I hoped her eyesight was bad enough that she hadn’t seen me rifling Tony’s wallet.
“Yes. Are they coming?”
“Who? I told the girl there was a drunk passed out, not a dead man. Maybe you’d better call again.”
She came a step farther, peering avidly up at the sprawled form that decorated my mother’s front porch. “Poor Mary,” she added in passing. “Certainly not good for her in her condition.”
“I’ll call,” I said, driven to desperation. “Please don’t let anyone else up here, Mrs. Beamish. The police will likely consider it a crime scene.”
Her mouth opened a little farther at that, dentures gleaming in anticipation.
My parents’ phone didn’t have a long cord. I was trapped inside the little kitchen, not knowing what Mrs. Beamish was up to. The brisk voice at the other end
of the phone didn’t hesitate when I gave her the address and said the drunk that had been reported was actually dead.
“No hurry for the ambulance, then.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Any evidence of foul play?”
“There’s a bullet hole in his forehead.”
The brisk voice paused briefly. “Any firearms around?”
“No. He was dead when he got here.”
Another pause. “The officers will be right over. Please stay on the line.”
“That’s not such a good idea.”
“Wait! I didn’t get your name—”
I hung up the phone and rushed back to the porch. Mrs. Beamish had come as far as the foot of the steps. She transferred her glittering gaze to me.
“So, Lizzie. When did you get back into town?” As loudly as she said it, I was sure the whole neighborhood would be out soon.
“Just tonight, actually. Thanks for your help, Mrs. Beamish. The police will be here soon.”
She backed up a couple of feet. “The police, is it? Does your father know you’re here?”
“He will.” There was no possibility, now, of keeping my presence away from my father. And after my earlier glimpse of him, I didn’t care anymore. The stern disciplinarian of my youth, the fearsome authority figure, had no more power to cow me. I was only amazed that my brother still found it necessary to placate our father.
A police cruiser rounded the corner, lights flashing but no siren. Perhaps the dispatcher had conveyed that there was no emergency. Mrs. Beamish edged off the walk and into the shadows of the big catalpa tree that grew between her yard and my folks’.
“I’ll just be getting on home,” she said more softly than usual. “Let me know if your mother needs any help, Lizzie.”
“Thanks. I will.” I watched the police car pull up to the curb, facing the wrong way. Barker had quieted down, but he was still watching me, his wet nose pressed against the window glass to make slimy smudges I’d have to clean off later. If I were free to wield my window cleaner.
Amy came out of my mother’s room and joined me at the door. She shivered in the cold. “Gramma’s resting. I told her everything was all right.” She glanced at me anxiously. “Did I lie?”
“Probably.”
The cruiser’s doors popped open and the officers made an appearance. “Do you have any weapons?” The driver of the cruiser was a tall, beefy-looking silhouette, just out of range of the porch light.
“Weapons?” Amy squeaked. “Jesus God, Aunt Liz. Do they think we killed this guy?”
“Probably.” I raised my empty hands, fingers spread. “Show them, Amy. They do have weapons, you see.”
The other officer approached us slowly, watchfully. As the figure came into view, I saw it was a woman, looking bulky in her thick waist-length jacket, her peaked hat casting a shadow over her face. She had one hand on the gun at her side; her other hand held a cell phone close to her mouth.
“Come down here, please,” she said. Her voice was neither demanding nor harsh, carrying the lilt of Hispanic pronunciation. Something in it compelled, besides the hand on the gun. We went down the steps, me first, Amy shrinking away from Tony’s body as she negotiated the steps.
The woman cop waited until we were level with her, then pocketed her cell phone and patted me down. Amy’s skimpy leggings and hooded T-shirt took even less of her attention. “No weapons,” she tossed over her shoulder to the guy, who still waited, using the cruiser as a shield against our potential violence.
The woman flashed her badge at us. “Officer Gutierrez,” she said. “Hear you’ve got a dead body you want to get rid of.”
Chapter 5
“Jeez, Gutierrez.” The big cop came out from behind the patrol car, finally. “They might be kin to the stiff—the dead guy.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, clearing my throat, “he’s my ex-husband.”
Amy gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me? Aunt Liz—”
“Listen.” I turned to the woman cop, thinking she could more easily understand. “My mother is sick in bed in there, and my niece should be taking care of her instead of standing out here shivering. Can you let her go back in while I give you the story? You can talk to her later.”
Officer Gutierrez thought about it for a minute. “Guess so,” she said finally. “He wasn’t killed here?”
“No, he was just dumped out. It was around eight-thirty.”
Amy started shivering again. “Go on in,” I told her. “Make some more tea or something—make some for Gramma, too. Tell her I’ll be in later if she wants to talk about it.”
Amy nodded and sidestepped Tony’s body on her way up the stairs. Her back was stiff with holding in her usually volatile emotions. I had to give her credit for keeping her cool.
The male cop stopped at the front of the steps. “You been through here, right? Anyone else?”
“Just my niece.”
He went up a couple of steps, examining Tony’s body critically, as if we were holding a body-dumping contest and he was the judge. “You move him at all?”
“No.” I saw no reason to mention my snooping, and hoped Mrs. Beamish wouldn’t either.
Officer Gutierrez took out a notebook. “Let’s have the story.”
I told her as briefly as I could how I’d just gotten into town, stopped at my brother’s, come over to my mother’s sickbed. There was a small-to-nonexistent chance they would finish grilling me and cart Tony’s body away before my dad came back. I made my story as quick as possible.
“My dad’s down at the VFW,” I finished up. “He’s old and frail. Any chance we can clean this up before he gets back?”
Officer Gutierrez tilted her head, examining me under the porch light. “You’re pretty cool about your ex-husband’s murder,” she said slowly.
“Yeah, well, he was ex for a reason.” I sighed. “Look, you’re going to find all kinds of great stuff when you start up your computer on this one. He beat me, I shot him—ten years ago.” She had stiffened, her hand going to her gun. “I did time for it, then I left for California. I haven’t been back until now—tonight. Just my luck that someone offs him the instant I get back. If you want to arrest me, get it over with and let’s get out of here before my dad comes back and has a heart attack.”
Gutierrez stepped away from me and spoke into her cell phone. I watched the male cop put on plastic gloves and begin going over Tony, his pudgy fingers moving with surprising delicacy. Shooting off my big mouth wouldn’t get me anywhere—I knew that already, but I’m still apt to do it in moments of stress.
“The Homicide guys are coming,” Gutierrez announced, flipping her phone shut. There was a hint of hostility in her voice when she spoke of Homicide. “I’m just going to keep the scene intact and take statements from your niece and any neighbors who might know something.” She looked narrowly at me. “Are you planning to leave town?”
“Not anymore, I guess.”
“After we secure the scene, you’ll be coming with us for further questioning. The Homicide guys will decide whether to detain you or not.”
That was that. A few minutes later, a van full of equipment and people pulled up, and they took pictures, fingerprints, scrapings, and sweepings, of this and that. The lights they rigged made the whole front yard glow like a scene from a science fiction movie. Neighbors started to gather just outside the circle of light. I could hear Mrs. Beamish’s foghorn voice broadcasting everything she knew.
After a few minutes of that, I asked to sit with my mother, and received an absent-minded permission from Gutierrez. Just before I shut the front door, an ambulance pulled up to take away Tony’s mortal remains.
There were people inside, too, doing a rough but efficient job of tossing my mother’s living room. It gave me a horrible feeling to see her antimacassars and embroidered cushions strewn every which way. They barely looked at me when I walked toward the hall.
Amy was curled up on the bed beside my mo
ther. She lifted a scared face to me. I could see a million questions trembling on the tip of her tongue, but mercifully she suppressed them. I didn’t notice the stolid policewoman in the corner until I shut the door. My mother lay back on her pillows, her face white and exhausted. Her eyes, worried, flicked open when I came over to the bed.
“Amy said your husband is dead, that that’s what this is all about.”
“Yes, he’s dead.”
“Did—did you—”
“Gramma!” Amy let the word explode. “I keep telling you, Aunt Liz has been with us—with me—since nearly seven this evening. She couldn’t possibly—”
“I didn’t shoot him this time.” I leaned against the wall, fatigue washing over me, as tired as if I’d walked all the miles between Grand Junction and Denver that day instead of driving them. “I’m sorry, Mom. Whoever dumped him on your doorstep must have been hoping I’d take the fall. I just don’t understand how that person knew I’d be here.”
“It’s punishment for our sins,” my mother said gloomily. “I doubted your father, so I’m being punished.”
“Bullshit.” She winced, and I tried to moderate my voice. “It’s sheer bad luck, is all it is. And anyway, like Amy says, I have an alibi for most of the evening, so probably everything will be okay.” I studied her face. “This isn’t doing you any good. You need your sleep.”
“I’ll sleep later.” She reached out, grasping my hand, her fingers surprisingly strong. “Will they arrest you?”
“They’ll take me to the station for questioning, and then I’m sure they’ll let me go. The investigation will take some time, and while it’s going on I’ll be around. Then, hopefully, they’ll find out who killed Tony, and it’ll all be finished.” I squeezed her hand, and her grip slackened. “You’ll be over the flu by then, back on your feet.”
“I hope so.” Her voice was feathery, her eyelids drooping. “Your father—he’s going to be—”
“Upset, I’m sure.” From the corner of my eye, I could see the policewoman taking notes. “He’ll deal with it.” I stood up. “Amy, let’s get out of here and let Mom sleep.”
