by Leslie Leigh
"Well now," said the man in a deep, unsettling voice, "that is adorable. Too bad you're going to die, Allie Griffin. It's a great story, one I helped Cass develop. It involves the silly little bumblings of a poor sap named Eddie Ganz. Ganz shipped defective parts to the hospital and your husband died as an indirect result. You went to the hospital and started meddling, as I hear you often do. Everyone saw you argue with Hawkes. It gave Cass and me an idea. This has all the earmarks of a revenge killing. Cass strangled the man's corpse, just to put the final touch on it all. Your last case was a strangling. You're quite educated in how to kill. Hawkes's strangulation had the telltale signs of a woman about your height and build, pulling that rope with all her might, with all the hatred she could muster up. That idiot Ganz was supposed to pick up the POC, but Cass and I agreed he needed to be removed from the picture altogether. It fits: You went after him too, once you found out about his involvement, and you shot him. With this gun. And then you went back to your house and shot yourself with it."
"You're crazy," said Allie. "You can't fake a suicide like that."
"Watch me," he said, inching closer.
Allie struggled
DuBarry walked slowly and steadily toward her, gun in hand.
"One shot," he said, "and it will all be over."
"Absolutely right," said Frank Beauchenne, pressing a gun beside the man's temple.
Allie rolled her eyes. "I'm getting tired of you doing that."
"You’re under arrest, DuBarry."
"Seriously, Frank," said Allie. "I could have eluded him. He wanted to make it look like a suicide. I just had to keep moving and keep my head far enough away from him. He never would have shot me unless he got just the right angle to make it look like a suicide. Now I look like I need some big strong police guy to come and save the day for me. I'm stronger than that, you know. And I'm smarter than you."
"Really?" said Frank Beauchenne. "You're doing this now? It can’t wait?"
"No, it can’t wait."
"Allie, do you mind doing the domestic thing later? I'd like to read this man his rights."
Something about Frank Beauchenne arguing with her while pressing a gun to a man's temple made her giggle, then full-on break down into raucous laughter.
Somewhere beyond her laughter—really a release of stress and tears and closure to a six-year-long mystery—she heard Sgt. Frank Beauchenne apologize to the lawyer and read the man his rights while another officer undid her binds.
21
"So how you holding up?" said Sgt. Beauchenne.
They stood in Allie's living room, where it had all begun for her, back in the day with that ill-fated book club gathering all that time ago.
"Me? Oh, fine. Peachy." She disappeared into the bedroom, wanting to immediately rid herself of the clothes she'd been held captive in.
"You sure?"
"Sure," she yelled from her room. "Why wouldn’t I be? Stalked, threatened, bound, almost killed, and for the fifth time in just under a year. I'm doing just dandy."
"Alright, we'll talk later."
She emerged from the room in sweatpants and a Mad Hatter T-shirt. "Why later?"
"Excuse me?"
She leaned up against the wall, arms folded. "I said why in the name of everything holy would you want to talk later? What is it with men running away whenever there's something obviously wrong?"
"Now, Allie, hang on a second."
Her breath was heavy in her chest. Anger and frustration boiled in her veins. She came away from the wall and walked toward him slowly. "You have no idea what I've been through, Frank. You can’t possibly know."
"I have an idea."
"Oh really."
"Yeah, really."
"You know I actually had the nerve to consider going into private practice? Allie Griffin, Private Eye. A part of me really loves this stuff, Frank. I've got a good head for it. Deductive logic, problem solving, an eye for detail."
"I don’t disagree with any of that."
"But this life, Frank, I don’t know. The moment I was in that garage and heard those gunshots... I don’t know. I just felt like... I felt like running to you. I know that's ridiculous and I know I just blew up at you for—quote, unquote—saving me. But the truth is I'm angry at myself for needing you."
Beauchenne looked as though something was brewing in his mind.
"What?" said Allie, calling attention to the look.
"Nothing. I better go."
"Frank, what is it already?"
He had a twisted smile on his face. "Oh man, I know I shouldn’t tell you this."
"Tell me what?"
He made a sound like the benevolent grunt of a German shepherd and reached into his coat pocket.
Allie's eyes nearly popped from their sockets when she saw the card.
"Tomlin can’t keep anything to himself," said Frank Beauchenne. "You should have known he couldn’t hold on to something like this without eventually waving it around in front of everyone's face."
"Oh, good Lord..."
"Hear me out, Allie Griffin. I know this was meant for me, and what's more, everyone else knows. No one was fooled for a second into believing this was meant for Tomlin—especially when it was discovered that you gave it to Billings. Not for nothing, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together there. You said something like 'give this to your boss.' Billings is a good kid, but takes everything a bit too literally sometimes."
"Oh, God..." said Allie.
"What?"
"I don’t know. It's just that... I kind of feel worse now that you have that."
Beauchenne chuckled. "Why?"
"Don’t laugh. When I said you don’t know what it's like, I meant it. And what I said in that card about awkward moments, I meant that too. I tried to make you dinner and wound up poisoning you. I tried to write you a love letter and I botched that too. I even tried making myself prettier for you with makeup but wound up looking like a member of the Rocky Horror floorshow. So when all is said and done, awkwardness wins the day with Allie Griffin. And, after all that, what you could possibly want with a bumbling, unwifely woman like me is beyond the capacity of rational analysis."
Beauchenne took her head in his massive hands. They were a tiny bit rough, and they smelled of gun oil. And he smiled at her, and he kissed her gently on the lips, and she melted into it.
When he pulled away, he said, "I want you to hear something. You tried to win me over in so many ways. You tried to win me over through my eyes by making yourself attractive. You tried to win me over through my heart with poetry. You tried winning me over through my stomach with food. Am I missing anything? Ah yes, of course, the one thing you didn’t even have to try at: You won over my heart and soul with your mind alone. A thousand women can cook, and a thousand can express themselves with a card—and by the way, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever read in my life—and a thousand women paint themselves every day in order to achieve some standard of beauty that they think men are looking for. You never once thought, with that magnificent brain of yours, that there was someone out there who could fall for you and love you without your having to even lift a finger? You only had to debunk my ghost story to amaze the hell out of me, and you only had to pick up on 'Marsh Test' to win me over completely. So you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, Allie Griffin. Oh, and by the way, you make a mean grilled veggie sandwich, you write beautifully, and you happen to be damned attractive. So there's that too."
Allie stared at him. For once in a situation like this, words didn’t fail her, and she said them out loud to him, and for him.
~ END ~
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