Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly

by Paula K. Perrin

  “Get away,” I screamed, but the club began its descent and I pulled the trigger over and over and over, the gun booming, until the only thing left was the clicking.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Hours later I sat in the dimly-lit hospital room beside Gene’s recumbent, snoring form. My right arm, lying on the bed, was asleep, too, but I didn’t move it because each time I tried, Gene stirred as his fingers sought mine.

  As for my left arm, I didn’t want to think of it. The shoulder was not broken, but the bruising was extensive, and movement painful.

  Outside, the rain continued to pour, streaking down the windows and pounding on the roofs of the cars that gleamed in the lights of the parking lot.

  The door opened, but instead of another nurse coming to check on Gene, it was Meg tiptoeing in with Kirk behind her.

  “Are you all right?” Kirk whispered. “How’s Gene?”

  “Thank God he’s got a hard head,” I whispered back.

  “Jeez, will you turn on the lights and quit whispering?” Gene said, his voice gravelly.

  As Kirk flipped on the overhead light, I pulled my hand free and stepped away from the bed.

  Meg said, “Wow, Gene, you don’t look so good.”

  “I don’t feel so good either,” he said, using the button to raise the head of the bed, “but at least I’m alive to feel it.”

  There was a thud against the door. It opened an inch, then fell closed again. Mother’s voice said, “Will someone kindly open this door?”

  Meg sprang to obey, saying, “I thought you were going to stay in your room.”

  “I’ve heard too many rumors,” she said, wheeling herself into Gene’s room, “now I want the truth.”

  “You must be feeling better,” I said.

  “Yes. It wasn’t a heart attack you know, only a warning. I’m ready to go home.”

  Meg said, “I hope you won’t mind that I’ve invited Jared to stay with us for a few days.”

  “Jared!” I said. “Meg, I don’t think I want him—”

  “It wasn’t his fault, Aunt Liz, he didn’t know what his mother was doing. He feels terrible. There are reporters all over his house. Besides, nobody is going to believe he wasn’t involved unless we show we believe it, and—”

  “Still, I think—”

  Mother’s voice cut through mine. “I’ll thank you not to make decisions about who may be a guest in my home, Liz.”

  “Mother, you don’t need any stress right now—”

  “Stress? Like your plan to ship me off tomorrow to a funny farm with not so much as the honor of a consultation?”

  “It’s a good convalescent hospital,” Meg said, “and she was only trying to keep you from being hurt.”

  “Well, I shall choose the course of my life, thank you,” Mother announced. She pinned me with a look.

  Kirk said, “Well, I’d like to hear what happened at the scout hut.”

  Mother wheeled herself to the foot of Gene’s bed. Meg perched on the window sill, and Kirk took the visitor’s chair. Gene patted his bed and looked at me. I shook my head, but I stood near him while I told them what had happened. When I got to the part about Alisz telling me how she’d killed Fran, my voice gave out.

  “I’d been floating in and out of consciousness for a little while,” Gene said, “wondering how to get us out of the mess we were in.”

  “Thank God you came to when you did,” Kirk said.

  Gene continued the story, telling how he’d pulled Alisz off balance when I “sprang at her like a crazed pit bull.” He glossed over the part about the shooting and stopped where he’d sent me out to find a phone and call for help.

  We looked at each other. I shivered.

  “She would have killed us all,” Meg said in a small voice.

  Kirk walked over and settled on the sill. The way he pulled her against him showed more than a priestly desire to comfort. I finally realized why he was so determined to succeed with a church in Warfield and why our house received so much of his attention. He said, “I don’t understand how she could hate Liz so much.”

  “I don’t understand how she could kill Andre and Fran. She liked them, and yet she must have spent a lot of time thinking of it,” Meg said.

  “Right down to plugging Fran’s phone back in after she died so she could call Liz after she discovered Fran’s body,” Gene said.

  “There’s no way to know that,” I said.

  “How else can we explain how the phone was plugged in?” he asked.

  “But she couldn’t have known I’d be there,” I said.

  Meg stood up. “I’d told Jared we were going to the climbing gym.”

  Kirk shook his head. “The poor woman. She must have been in such torment.”

  “She was crazy,” Mother said. “There’s no more nor less to it than that.”

  I put my hands up to cover my face.

  “You mustn’t blame yourself, Liz,” Mother said.

  But I remembered firing the gun until it was empty. As much as I’d like to believe it had been only to protect Gene or because I was afraid, I couldn’t forget my rage.

  Later, after I’d found a phone and called for help, I’d returned to the cabin to wait for the ambulance. I sat beside Gene, afraid he would die before the paramedics got there.

  Alisz had stirred and opened her eyes.

  I’d crawled between Gene and her and said, “There’s an ambulance on the way.”

  She shook her head, a tiny movement, and closed her eyes.

  I scooted back against Gene’s hip and took his large hand, holding on to him and praying my heart out. Once in awhile his eyelids would lift, he’d look at me, then drift away again. I was terrified he’d drift too far. The ambulance was taking forever.

  I felt her looking at me. I glanced over.

  “Gene. How is he?” Her voice was low and weak.

  “He’s alive.”

  “But Fran is dead.” She smiled, closed her eyes.

  Gene’s hand squeezed mine. I heard the faint wail of a siren through the steady drum of the rain.

  “You loved Fran,” she whispered. She opened her eyes and stared into mine. “I hurt you very much.” The manic light had faded from her eyes. Now they were testing, seeking.

  Gene’s hand tightened on mine. Could he tell how much I hated her right then? I clung to him. I would never understand. She’d had everything, the man I’d loved, a child, a home of her own.

  How could she feel such malice toward me when I’d never meant her harm? But then I thought of what she’d said about me walking by oblivious, about me living in a castle, and I realized though I’d never meant her harm, I’d never wished her well, either. I remembered the bow-legged little girl in the hand-me-down dresses that embarrassed us both, I remembered when the only English she knew was “pleezz.”

  “Yes, you hurt me very much,” I said. “I’ll be lonely for Fran every day of my life.”

  Alisz smiled as a child would at the end of a satisfying bed-time story. Her eyes flickered and then stared unblinking at the ceiling.

  Gene shook my arm, bringing me back to the hospital room. “You did the only thing you could,” he said.

  I blinked back tears.

  A nurse bustled in, took a look at Gene’s ashen face and said, “Everybody out.”

  Kirk and Meg and Mother started to leave, then, crowded at the foot of his bed, looked expectantly at me.

  “I’ll be there in a second,” I said, waving them on.

  The nurse didn’t budge until Gene asked for five more minutes. “Just five,” she said, tapping her watch before she left.

  “Just one little kiss to keep me safe while I sleep?” Gene asked.

  I could feel the heat rise in my face.

  “Oh, Gene,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “I thought you were going to die. I’m so sorry I took your gun. If you’d had it, she’d never have gotten you.”

  “You think that’s my only gun?”

>   “You had a gun? Then how… “

  “I’d left it in the truck. Too much temptation to shoot you if you started tearing into me again. I was so preoccupied with all the stuff I was going to say to you once and for all, I was a perfect target for her ambush. It’s not your fault, Liz.”

  He took my hand. “You’re a good person, Liz, hold on to that.”

  “I didn’t do anything to save her,” I whispered.

  “You gave her what she wanted most, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  The nurse threw open the door. “Out now,” she announced.

  “That was no five minutes,” Gene protested.

  “Close enough,” said the nurse.

  As I pulled my hand away, Gene said, “Kiss.” I leaned down to kiss his cheek, but he turned at the last moment so my kiss landed on his lips.

  “Sucker,” he whispered.

  “If you weren’t suffering from a concussion, I’d smack you one,” I said, walking toward the door.

  “Hey, speaking of concussions, I hope we’re even now and I’ll never have to hear about the one you got playing football.”

  “In your dreams,” I called over my shoulder.

  I smiled as I heard him laugh. I closed the door behind me and went to join my family down the hall.

  THE END

  Thanks to:

  The cast, crew, and supporters of our library’s interactive mystery plays.

  The amazing writing pals: Anne, Arlene, Barry, Claudia, Jeri, Karen, Randy & Ron.

  Ron Johnson, retired police chief, who read and improved the book (any procedural errors are mine).

  The board and members of the Harriet Vane Chapter of Sisters in Crime (Portland, Oregon). What a great group!

  Erin, the clever librarian, who helped with the cover.

  The Encouragers: Bill, Claudia, Danielle, Debbie and all the others who’ve brightened my life—you know who you are!