Deadly Gamble

by Linda Lael Miller

  “You didn’t do it just for money—did you?”

  His face changed, in an instant, to that of a hard-eyed, soulless predator, closing in on its prey. “Mom was going to send me away to some school,” he said. “She called it a school, but it was really a hospital. A place where they could help ‘boys like me.’ That’s what she said. ‘Boys like you.’ Like I was some kind of freak.”

  He’d shot a four-year-old’s cat with a bow and arrow, and God knew what else he’d done, before and since. Mom had known, though. She’d probably had a list of atrocities running mercilessly through her head, things she’d tried to ignore, or explain away, and finally had to face. She’d thought the situation was serious enough that her son needed help.

  “The hospital would have been better than prison, Geoff.”

  “Prison,” Geoff rasped. “Do you know what Barbara paid me for going to that hellhole? Twenty-five thousand dollars. I was a kid. It sounded like so much money.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police—or someone—what really happened?”

  He grabbed my hair, on either side, and gave my hair a hard pull. The pain made my sinuses burn. “I told a counselor once, on the inside. I told him what they were doing to me in that place. And he laughed at me, Mary Jo. He laughed. After that, I didn’t tell anybody anything!”

  I closed my eyes, took a breath, girded myself to look into his face again. It was like being nose-to-nose with the devil.

  “You look like her, you know. Mom, I mean,” Geoff mused.

  I swallowed. “But I’m not Mom, Geoff,” I said, very quietly and very carefully. “I’m Mary Jo Mayhugh. I’m your half sister. And I never did anything to you.”

  Geoff raised one eyebrow. “How shall I kill you?” he asked, in a tone more suited to someone reading a menu, deciding what to have for dinner. Red wine, or white? Fries, or mashed potatoes?

  Bludgeoning, or strangling?

  Decisions, decisions.

  “First tell me why you killed Lillian,” I said.

  He smiled again, and it was more terrible than I would ever have believed a smile could be. “Because she was old and sick and ugly. Because I could.”

  “How many others have there been?” I pressed.

  He shrugged, spreading his hands. “Who knows?” he asked merrily. “It’s a rush, killing somebody. I like it.”

  It’s a rush.

  I like it.

  “Especially when it hurts a lot,” he added. “I like that best of all.”

  I must have paled. The truth is, I wasn’t all that scared of death itself, because I knew there was something beyond it. Nick and Chester were proof of that. On the other hand, I was really scared of the way I might die.

  Trapped in a burning car, for instance.

  The victim of some painful, incurable disease.

  I stopped there, because I knew I was standing on the precipice of something a lot worse than either of those things.

  “How many times did you visit Lillian before you killed her?”

  “Once, twice, three times. I wanted her to be scared.”

  Suddenly, in one flashing instant, I understood the three Tarot cards Lillian had given me that day in the nursing home. I gave myself a mental slap on the forehead; everything I’d read in The Damn Fools Guide to Tarot suddenly jelled.

  The Queen of Pentacles. Pentacles meant money, and worldly success, among other things, and of course the queen indicated a woman in midlife or later.

  Barbara Larimer.

  Lillian had been afraid of my uncle, too. I remembered her reaction that day, when he showed up at the nursing home.

  Hope stirred in me. Maybe Lillian hadn’t believed I was guilty.

  Maybe she’d been trying to protect me from deadly relatives.

  It was possible that Mom had confided in her, way back when, about Clive’s drug-running operation.

  Then there was the Page of Cups. A young man, standing on the shore, pondering a chalice with a fish flopped inside. Cups usually deal with human emotion—in this case, the distorted emotions of a maniac. Geoff had gone to prison in California—Lillian had loved the beaches there—and she would have remembered him as a sixteen-year-old.

  She’d been trying to warn me about Geoff. And trying to save herself, because by the time she gave me those cards, he’d visited her at least once.

  As for the third card, Death—well, that was a no-brainer.

  Lillian had wanted me to know that both our lives were in danger.

  “Oh, Lillian,” I said softly. “Lillian.”

  “Shut up!” Geoff shouted, and backhanded me so suddenly and with such force that I crashed into the wall next to the bathroom door. I tasted blood on my lower lip.

  I watched, sick with dread, as my brother pulled a roll of duct tape from the pocket of his dusty coat. Next came a brand-new box cutter, still in the blister pack.

  I began to get some idea of his specific plans for me, and I bolted for the door, screaming. I made it as far as the living room.

  Geoff was right behind me, and he caught me hard by the back of my hair and hurled me down again, all the way to the floor. This time, I fell so hard, I couldn’t catch my breath.

  I knew when I did, I’d have no problem screaming again.

  No problem at all.

  But who was going to hear me?

  Bad-Ass Bert’s was closed until further notice, and therefore empty.

  My sisters were dealing with an “incident.”

  Tucker was busy searching for his daughter’s lost classmate.

  I was totally screwed.

  I got to my hands and knees, tried to scramble away, launch myself onto my feet.

  But Geoff slammed me back to the floor again, even harder than before, and I struck my head. Saw stars. The drive-through hamburger I’d eaten on the way out of Cactus Bend hit the back of my throat in a glob. I was on my stomach now, and Geoff pulled my wrists together behind my back. I heard the sound of tape peeling off the roll.

  My heart hammered.

  And then I saw shoes.

  Nick’s shoes.

  Like he was going to be of any help, I thought. I was the only one who could see him.

  I turned my head, looked up at my ex-husband’s ghost.

  “Not to worry,” he said.

  Not to worry?

  I was alone with a psychopath who intended to swathe me in duct tape and cut me up—slowly—with a box cutter. And I wasn’t supposed to worry?

  Geoff shoved me onto my side.

  I stared up at Nick. He’d probably come to escort me to the train station, but the time before my ticket got punched could be a real bitch to get through. At the moment, I was a candidate for a segment on Forensic Files. I’d be the one with the chalk outline drawn around her mutilated body.

  The rest of the room receded. All I saw was Nick, standing there in his dapper burial suit, raising both hands like claws and making a face.

  Geoff must have seen something entirely different, because he let out a bloodcurdling shriek and dropped to his knees.

  I screamed too—I guess it was pent-up fear, or maybe I was just getting into the spirit of the thing.

  Nick stepped over me, still doing the Frankenstein bit.

  If it hadn’t been for the predicament I was in, I would have thought it was funny. I mean, it was the kind of thing you do when you’re a kid, playing monster in the backyard.

  Geoff screamed again, from some primal, subhuman place inside himself, and rocked on his knees, covering his head with both hands.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said.

  “Don’t break my concentration,” Nick replied.

  The outside door crashed against the wall.

  Geoff didn’t even seem to hear it. He was still screaming.

  “The boyfriend’s here,” Nick said, with a little sigh.

  Tucker boiled into the room like muddy floodwaters taking out a levee. He slammed Geoff’s face to the floor, jammed a knee in the mid
dle of his back and handcuffed him, all in one long, fluid motion.

  I gotta say, I was impressed.

  You didn’t learn stuff like that in a Damn Fool’s Guide.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  Tucker pulled the duct tape off my wrists. It stung, but it was the kind of pain that calls for celebration. It was I-am-alive pain. “I heard you scream,” he said.

  “Your hero,” said Nick, folding his arms.

  “You’re a hero, too,” I told him, and I meant it.

  “Is he here again?” Tucker wanted to know. “Your dead ex-husband?”

  He still had his knee in Geoff’s back, and my brother the serial killer was sobbing now, like a terrified kid.

  “Yes,” I said. Apparently, I had seen one Nick, but Geoff had seen entirely another. And just as Chester had used up his vital forces to save me from Heather, Nick had spent some serious ghost-juice putting on enough of a horror show to scare a homicidal maniac into blithering submission. “He’s here.” I paused, and my voice got small. “But not for long, right, Nick?”

  “Right,” he said softly.

  Tears filled my eyes. “Thanks,” I said.

  He gave a little salute. I thought he’d say something corny, like, “I’ve got a train to catch,” but he didn’t.

  He simply disappeared.

  And I knew I would never see him again.

  “I forgive you,” I whispered.

  Tucker was on his cell phone, calling the cops, but he rubbed my back with one hand while he spoke. Geoff turned his head and lay there, staring at me with a blank focus that froze my blood.

  “Mess with me,” I said, “and see where it gets you.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  J olie and Greer arrived at the apartment at the same time as Andy Crowley and the usual crew of uniforms and crime scene techs. Greer had a fresh cast on her left arm, and deep shadows lay like swipes of soot under her haunted eyes.

  I gasped. Forgot, for the moment, how close I’d come to being dissected on my living room floor.

  “Did Alex do that?” I demanded, pointing at Greer’s cast.

  She bit her lower lip, shook her head and stared at Geoff, lying inert on the floor, handcuffed. Her mouth moved, but she seemed to have lost the use of her vocal chords.

  I could identify.

  “Christ,” Jolie whispered.

  “Far from it,” I replied.

  “What happened this time?” Crowley wanted to know.

  I glanced at Tucker, hoping he’d explain, but it wasn’t his story to tell, it was mine.

  I started with the coffee, and how I got sleepy after drinking it.

  Crowley dispatched one of the crime scene techs to collect my java supply, along with the things I’d stirred in.

  I told the gathering how I’d awakened, put my feet on the floor and been grabbed around the ankles.

  A tic moved under Crowley’s right eye. He’d been a kid once, unlikely as it seemed, and probably remembered his own version of the old monster-hiding-under-the-bed routine. Or maybe he was just impatient, wanting me to get on with it.

  I related the rest of the tale, leaving out the part about Nick.

  Two officers hoisted Geoff to his feet and ushered him out of my apartment, none too soon as far as I was concerned.

  Everyone watched him go but Tucker and me; we were looking at each other.

  “There’s a hole under your bed?” Jolie said, breaking the difficult silence.

  For a moment, I was confused. How had she known that?

  I’d included the detail in my horror story, of course.

  I nodded numbly.

  We all trooped into the bedroom, and Tucker and a couple of the cops pushed the bed to one side. Sure enough, the vent I’d never known was there, gaped in the floor. It was two feet square, obviously big enough for a full-grown man to climb through, a straight shot to Bert’s prized Tombstone bar.

  There’s a way into your apartment.

  I don’t need a key.

  “You’ll want to plug that right up,” one of the younger cops said, sagely chipper.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Jolie replied.

  I gave her a look. The police are our friends.

  Her eyes were round with residual fear as the gravity of what I’d so narrowly escaped dawned on her.

  “You have definitely gotta move,” she said. “Soon.”

  I made one of those decisions that just pop into a person’s brain and right out of their mouth, unpremeditated and fully formed. “I’m going to use this place as an office,” I announced, “and reopen the bar as soon as I can score a liquor license.”

  “You’re going to run a bar?” Greer asked.

  “An office for what?” Jolie said, at the same time.

  I sorted the jumble of words into two sensible sentences.

  A look passed between Tucker and me.

  “Yes, Greer,” I said, “I’m going to open a bar. I’ll call it ‘Mojo’s.’ And I’ll need an office for Sheepshanks, Sheepshanks and Sheepshanks.”

  “Sheepshanks—?” Crowley began.

  “Don’t ask,” Tucker counseled.

  “I like it,” Jolie beamed.

  “You’re both nuts,” Greer said. “Mojo, you’re coming to live with me. You can stay in the guesthouse until you find something decent.”

  “Alex would love that,” I pointed out.

  I was hoping Tucker would jump in and invite me to shack up, which was crazy, because if he had, I’d have refused. It was too early for that, and things were still too complicated between us.

  He didn’t offer, so it was a moot point.

  And it only hurt a little.

  “Alex is gone,” Greer said woodenly. “He took his things and left.”

  The guesthouse began to seem like a possibility.

  “ANY LUCK finding Gillian?” I asked Tucker, an hour later, when he and I were standing in my kitchen. The cops were gone by then, Crowley included, and Jolie and Greer were in the living room, poking through the boxes Rotika had given me a century before, at Sunset Villa.

  Tucker shook his head, leaning against the kitchen counter. “It doesn’t look good, babe. Somebody found a ballet slipper a mile from the dance school, in a vacant lot. Gillian’s name’s written inside.”

  I moved close, slid my arms around his waist. “Don’t give up, Tucker. Maybe she’s still—”

  Tucker’s jaw tightened, but he rested his hands on my hips. “I’ve got to get back,” he said.

  I nodded, rested my forehead against his chin for a moment. “Thanks for saving me from the bad guy,” I murmured.

  “I think I had a little help,” he said. He curved an index finger under my chin and lifted, and I looked up at him. Nodded.

  “Nick came through in the crunch,” I told him.

  “You miss him?” Tucker asked gently.

  I thought for a moment. “Yeah,” I answered.

  He kissed the tip of my nose. “That’s okay,” he said. “You are going to tell me what really happened, aren’t you? When things settle down and we have time to talk?”

  I nodded again.

  “You’ll go home with your sisters? I want you to promise me you will, Mojo, because I’m not going to be able to concentrate if you don’t.”

  “I promise,” I said. “But it’s only temporary, Tuck. I need my own place.”

  “Fair enough,” he replied. He kissed me again, this time on the lips, and I felt the familiar stir. “Gotta go,” he said.

  I walked him through the living room, past Jolie and Greer, who were kneeling on the floor, absorbed in what was left of Lillian’s life and history. When I came back, sans Tucker, Greer looked up at me and smiled sadly.

  “I could really use a cup of tea,” she said. “Too bad the police took all your groceries away, in case that maniac poisoned them with something.”

  I plunked down on the couch. “What happened to your arm, Greer?” I asked. “And when did Ale
x leave?”

  Greer and Jolie exchanged looks.

  “Spill it,” I said.

  “We stopped to buy gas on our way over here,” Jolie explained. “I was inside, getting us some coffee, and Greer was at the gas pump. This guy screeches up in an old van and grabs her—tries to throw her into the back of his rig.”

  I was sitting up straight by then. “Can you describe him, Greer? Did you get a license plate number?”

  “I’ve been over all that with the police,” Greer said, her voice thin with remembered fear. “They met Jolie and me at the emergency room. That’s why it took us so long to get here.” She paused, bit her lower lip. “I’ve never seen the man before, and the license plate was covered.”

  “Thank God you got away,” I breathed.

  “I had some help from Jolie,” Greer answered. “She came running out of the convenience store and poured hot coffee down his back. He yelped and let me go. The police are checking hospitals and walk-in clinics for patients with scalds.”

  “He let her go,” Jolie clarified, “but not before he snapped her arm like a chicken bone.”

  I winced.

  “Do you have any idea what the attack was about?” I asked gently. Greer was clearly fragile, and I didn’t want to push her too hard. “Was it random?”

  Greer shook her head. “I think Alex paid him to kill me,” she said. A tear slipped, unnoticed, down her right cheek. “God, Mojo, you can’t imagine how scared I was.”

  “I think she can,” Jolie told her quietly. “Her psycho brother was going to filet her like a side of beef, right here in this living room.”

  Greer’s gaze found its way to me, unsteady and a little blank. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah.”

  “We know what happened with Geoff,” Jolie said, watching me. “Tell us about last night.”

  I described my graveyard adventure.

  “Why would you go to the cemetery in your bathrobe?” Greer asked, when I’d shared every heart-stopping detail.

  “She really does need tea,” I told Jolie.

  “She needs whiskey,” Jolie replied.

  “I want to go home,” Greer said.

  Jolie and I nodded. I packed a trash bag, and Jolie and I loaded Lillian’s boxes into the back of her Pathfinder while Greer sat in docile silence in the front passenger seat.