by Carolyn Hart
Nela looked into Grace’s stricken blue eyes, saw a warning, a command.
“Gracie.” Blythe still aimed the gun at Nela, but she looked up at her sister in dismay. “Gracie, why are you here? You have to go away. I can’t let her tell the police.”
“Everything’s all right, Blythe. There won’t be anything for her to tell.”
Nela felt a rush of terror.
“You won’t remember anything about your conversation with Nela. We’ll go home now and call Dr. Wallis. You’ve simply been confused. Sometimes you get confused.” Grace spoke with emphasis. She stared into her sister’s eyes. Slowly she edged between Nela and the pistol in Blythe’s hand.
Nela understood. Grace was telling her sister that she could pretend confusion, perhaps mental illness.
“Dr. Wallis will explain to the police that you are so upset you didn’t know what you were saying.” Grace was soothing, calm. “Everything will work out. Come home now.”
Blythe shook her head. “Oh, no. I have to make sure she never tells anyone.”
“Hush now. Don’t talk anymore. I’ll take care of everything.”
Blythe bent to look beyond Grace at Nela. “She’ll tell the police.”
“That’s all right. People can say anything, but there’s no proof.” Grace’s voice was reassuring. “People don’t know about your blackouts—”
Nela saw the surprise in Blythe’s face and knew there were no blackouts.
“—and how sometimes you do things and don’t even remember.”
Nela watched the sisters. Blythe didn’t have blackouts. But Grace was trying to save both Nela and her sister. The Webster money would probably protect Blythe from the death penalty, but no matter what happened, Blythe was burdened by guilt, would always be burdened.
Grace held out her hand. “I’ll take the gun now.”
“Why are you here?” Blythe was querulous.
“I saw you leave the house. When you didn’t come back, I thought I’d better see. I couldn’t find you anywhere, but your car was in the garage. I looked everywhere and finally I knew there was only one more place you could be. Now”—she was firm—“give me the gun. I’ll put it back in the safe.”
Slowly Blythe handed the gun to Grace.
“Thank you. The safe’s a better place for it, don’t you think?”
Grace held the gun in one hand, gripped Blythe’s elbow with the other. It seemed to take forever for them to cross the space between the sofa and the door, Blythe talking faster and faster, words spewing, “Louise would have told someone…I had to keep her from talking…I didn’t have any choice…Gracie, you see that I didn’t have any—”
The front door closed.
Shaking, Nela came to her feet, struggling to breathe. She ran to the door, shoved the wedge into place, then raced across the room to the telephone. She yanked up the receiver, punched 911. “Help, please come. Blythe Webster has a gun. Her sister took the gun, but please come. One Willow Lane, behind the Webster mansion. Blythe Webster killed Marian Grant and Louise Spear. Please hurry. Get Detective Dugan. Grace Webster took the gun—”
Muffled by distance, Nela heard shouts. She strained to listen over the calming voice on the telephone. “Detective Dugan is off duty. Please explain…”
Jugs stopped a few feet from the door, shoulders hunched, ears flicked forward. His acute hearing picked up movement and sound long before anyone in the apartment would know someone was coming up the stairs.
Nela now heard thudding on the steps.
The doorknob rattled. “Open up.” Blythe’s shout was angry.
Nela gripped the phone. “Hurry, please hurry.” Where was Grace? Why had Blythe returned?
“Ma’am, remain calm. A car is en route. The car will be there quickly. If you can—”
Nela broke in. “There’s a murderer trying to get inside.”
Blythe’s voice was hoarse and desperate. “Let me in. I have to come in. This place belongs to me. Open the door.” The pounding on the door was loud, sounded like the hard butt of a gun against wood. Had Blythe managed to wrest the gun away from Grace?
“Blythe, stop.” Grace’s voice rose above the banging on the door.
The pounding stopped. “Go away, Grace. I can’t talk to you now. You mustn’t interfere. I have to be safe. Don’t you see? Go away.”
A shot and a panel of the door splintered.
Nela ducked down behind the desk.
Sirens wailed.
Nela’s head swung back and forth. She needed a weapon. Her only chance was to find something to use as a club. When Blythe shot away the doorknob, Nela would strike. Stumbling to her feet, she ran to the small table beside the sofa, grabbed the brass table lamp, yanking its cord from the socket.
She was midway to the door when a deep voice shouted, the sound magnified by a megaphone, “Police. Drop that weapon. Police.”
Nela stopped and listened.
“Drop that gun.”
A final shot exploded.
19
The wind ruffled Steve’s hair, tugged at his old gray sweatshirt. The day was beautiful, the temperature nudging sixty. “We’ll stop in Norman, have lunch. There’s a great new Mexican restaurant downtown. We’ll have plenty of time to meet Chloe and Leland’s plane.”
Nela liked the way Steve sounded, as if they were going to a fun place and there would be fun things to do. Each day that passed eased some of the horror of the night that Blythe held a gun and planned for Nela to die. Grace had done her best, but Blythe was wily. She’d grabbed the gun from Grace, struck her sister and stunned her, then whirled to run back to the garage apartment stairs.
When the police came, when voices shouted out of the night and lights flooded the stairway, Blythe had lifted the gun to her own head. When they gathered around her on the concrete patch below, her body lay quite near where Marian Grant had been found.
Nela pushed away the memories. She didn’t have to think about Blythe now or about Haklo and its future or whether Chloe would want to return there to work. She did have to make plans, for her and for Jugs. Ever since that dreadful night when she’d called Steve, she and Jugs had stayed at Mim Barlow’s house. But Nela had to decide soon where to go, what to do.
On the highway, Steve turned those bright blue eyes on her. “You won’t go back to California.”
Was he asking? Or telling?
Or hoping?
