Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1) (35 page)

I’d gathered quite a collection of muffin baskets, so I used
that as a pretext for my visit.

“Samuel! What a nice surprise.  Come in dear.”

“I was just bringing your baskets back,” I said.  I stepped
inside her house and it was like a cave.  She turned on a lamp in the front
room, which shed barely enough light to get us to the kitchen.

“Have you eaten dinner?” she asked.

Whatever she was cooking smelled great, but all the pots were
wearing lids so their contents were a mystery.  “I had a late lunch,” I said. 
Even the smell wasn’t enticing enough to pique my appetite.

“Can I get you a drink?  A glass of wine or some tea?”

I was pretty much over my hangover and I figured a drink would
do me good.  “Sure.  I’ll take a glass of wine.  May I use your restroom
first?”

“Certainly.  You know where it is.”

I went back out and followed the light to the front room, then
made my way down the hall, past the guest bath to Mrs. Howard’s room.  I felt
like a Peeping Tom.  I sneaked back to her bathroom and searched through her
drawers until I found her hairbrush, then I pulled out the baggie I’d brought
from my house and stuffed a bunch of hair into it.  I put the brush back in the
drawer and got out of her room as fast as I could, making my way back down the
hall to the guest bathroom, where I washed my hands with soap and water twice. 
Touching her hair grossed me out.

I finished my wine as quickly as I could without seeming like
an alcoholic, and made excuses to leave.  Mrs. Howard walked me to the door,
but a thought occurred to me as I was about to leave.  I turned back around
before she could close the door.

“Did you ever tell Landra that you had included her in your
will?” I asked.

“Yes.  I gave her a copy of it.  Why?” she asked.

“I was just wondering.”

*    *    *    *

I called Niki Lautrec as soon as I got back home.

“I need your help,” I said.  “No questions asked.”

“Whatever you need.”

*    *    *    *

The two hours that had passed since I’d found out the truth
about Landra seemed more like two days.  I sat on the couch trying to watch TV
but I couldn’t concentrate.  Not only that, but I was beginning to feel
light-headed, almost like I’d been sedated.  I guess that’s what happens when
you find out that your girlfriend is a conniving, murdering bitch.  And that
was the first thing I needed to do: stop thinking of her as my girlfriend.

It was another 20 minutes before Niki came by.  I met him at
the door and gave him the baggie and he left without ever coming inside.

“Thanks,” I told him.

“I’ll call you in morning,” he said.

I went to the fortress and I was contemplating calling Maddie,
but before I could, someone knocked on my door.  I fully expected it to be
Maddie with a bowl of spaghetti, but when I opened the door, it wasn’t my
neighbor at all.  It was Landra.

Never in my life have I been filled with such hate and rage. 
I’d distanced myself all right.  It was like I was looking at a complete
stranger.  And the feelings were so strong that I couldn’t even put up a
pretense of niceness.

“What’s the matter?” Landra asked, without so much as a hello.

“You killed him.”  The words came out before I even realized
what I’d said, and once they were out, there was no turning back.

She came in and closed the door behind her. “What are you
talking about?”

We walked into the living room and I went straight over to the
mantle and picked up the button.  “I believe this is yours,” I said.

In the split-second before she covered her shock, the look on
her face said it all.  I knew without a doubt that it was all true.  I went to
place the button in her hand, but as I reached out, the Siamese came swooping
down from the armoire in between us, right over my head.  It scared the shit
out of me, and I jumped and yelled at the same time.  The bastard landed on the
desk, knocking over the lamp and sending the telephone flying, then he jumped
down to the floor like nothing had happened.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” I yelled, and I attempted to boot him up
the backside.  His feet were spinning underneath him, trying to get traction on
the hardwood floor, and if I hadn’t been in the middle of confronting my
ex-girlfriend about murder, I would have laughed my ass off.  As it was, I
turned back to Landra and grabbed her hand and crammed the button into her
palm.

She held it up and looked at it.  “That’s the button off of my
dress.  Where’d you get it?” she asked innocently.

“Where you left it,” I said without emotion.

She stepped closer to me and reached out and took my hand. 
“Why are you being so cold?”  She put her arms around me and tried to hug me,
but I stiffened.  I didn’t want her anywhere near me.

“Look at me,” she said, and she took my face gently in her
hands and made me look at her.  “It’s me.  I love you, Sam.  You can’t believe
that I could ever do something like that.  You know me.  Please tell me you
don’t think I could ever do something like that.”

She was good.  And if I wasn’t already 100% convinced that
she’d murdered Drake Reeds, she might have reeled me in all over again.

“You and I both know the truth, Landra.”

“Sam, you love me.  I know you do.  Please, let’s sit down and
get this straightened out.  That button doesn’t mean anything.” She tried to
kiss me but I turned my head away.

“That button means everything,” I said angrily.  I couldn’t
believe she could keep her cool when she knew that I knew that she’d done it. 
No wonder she’d gotten away with murdering her husband.

“What are you saying?  That you think I ripped my own dress?”

“I think you ripped your own dress; I think you beat yourself
up; and I think you drugged Drake Reeds and shoved him out that window.”

“Come on, Sam.  You don’t really think I could do that.  The
grand jury didn’t think so.”  She moved close to me and tried to put her arms
around my neck again.

“Get away from me.  You make me sick.”  I shoved her away and
the movement made me stumble back.  I hadn’t taken a pain pill in days, but I
was wasted and it was getting progressively worse.  And then it hit me.  
There
was something in the wine
.

“What’s the matter, Sam?  You don’t look so good,” she
laughed.  “You feeling a little lightheaded?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me that seeing you locked up for
life won’t cure,” I said.

“Well, that’s not going to happen, so you might as well make
another wish.  You can’t prove a thing.  Even if I
had
done it, I could
confess every last detail to you, and we both know you couldn’t say a thing.”

And there it was.  Will the real Landra Krally please stand up?

“You’re wrong.  I’m going to tell the DA,” I said.

“You can’t,” she asserted.

“No?  Watch me.”

“You’re my attorney!” she said, raising her voice.

“And you’re a murderer.”

She came at me out of nowhere.  One minute I was on my feet and
the next, she’d rammed me into the wall.  It seemed as if I’d completely lost
control of my motor skills.  I hit my head on the mantle as I was falling, and
then on the bricks of the hearth when I landed.  My teeth rattled and I could
feel blood running down my face.

I watched Landra go for the fireplace poker, but I was useless
to do anything.  My arms and legs refused to cooperate.  In all the murder
movies I’d ever watched, how many times was the weapon of choice the damn
fireplace poker?  It was so predictable in the movies and so overdone, yet somehow
it seemed very creative and novel when she was about to use it on me.

“You won’t get away with it,” I said, but I could feel myself
losing consciousness.

“Sure I will,” she laughed.  “I already have.  Twice,” she
added.  “And when you’re out of the picture, I’ll finish up with Sara.  By the
way, she told me you were over there tonight.  I understand you shared a glass
of wine.”

I don’t know if she hit me then with the poker or not, but if
she did I never felt it.    I remember being dragged across the floor, and
hearing the Siamese meowing somewhere in the distance.  I couldn’t even put up
the pretense of a struggle.

The next thing I knew, I was in my pool.  The witch was going
to drown me.  I’m sure I was unconscious when she threw me in, but the cold
water must have woken me up.  There was blood floating all around me in little
streaks, and I could see Landra standing by the edge of the pool, looking down
at me.  She had one hand on her hip and she was holding the fireplace poker in
the other, and she was looking impatient, like I should hurry up and die so she
could get on with things.  My clothes and shoes were weighing me down and I had
sunk all the way to the bottom before I realized what was happening.

I had no intention of dying, so my life didn’t exactly flash
before my eyes.  But Maddie was right there in my thoughts to the very end. 
And I decided right then and there that if I lived through the experience, I
was going to have put the Maddie thing to rest one way or another.  I knew what
I had to do.  I felt around the bottom of the pool for Oliver’s arsenal.

When I came up, it was by the sheer determination of a man
possessed.  No way was I going to let her get away with murder again.   I
fought my way to the surface and somehow managed to dog paddle my way to the
side of the pool, then I moved hand-over-hand along the edge to the steps and
dragged myself out.

Landra was coming around from the other side of the pool.  She
had the poker raised up in the air and the look on her face confirmed that
she’d never loved me.  I was just part of her plan.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a fist full of stones
and I hurled one at her as she rounded the end of the pool.  It was as pathetic
a shot as Oliver had ever thrown and it didn’t even come close to hitting her. 
I fired off two more but they both missed.  She was ten feet away and I didn’t
have a lot of strength left, so I decided to go for safety in numbers.  I
gripped all the remaining stones in my hand and I brought my arm back and I let
those babies fly.  I could actually hear them whizzing through the air and then
there was a sickening
thunk
and I saw Landra’s head jolt back.  It
stopped her dead in her tracks and she hit the ground like the rock that had
hit her.  I remember seeing her lying there not five feet away from me, and
thinking that I’d just killed my ex-girlfriend.

When I woke up, it was to the sound of sirens and the smell of
smoke.

“He’s out here!” Maddie screamed.  “I need blankets!”  She was
kneeling beside me, slapping me in the face.

“What’s going on?” I asked groggily.  I was freezing my ass
off, shaking uncontrollably.

“Your house is on fire!”

That sobered me up.  “I have to get my cat!”   I was on all
fours trying to get to my feet, but I was woozy as hell.

“I already got him,” Maddie said, pushing me back down.  She
was working to get my wet clothes off, which wasn’t easy because I was no help.

There was smoke pouring out of my fortress and the firemen were
inside spraying foam all over the place.  It looked like a giant bubble bath. 
I looked over to where Landra’s body had been, and it was gone.  Only the poker
was there.

“Where’s Landra?” I asked.

“I don’t know.  Did she do this?” Maddie asked.

“Yeah.  She was lying right there last time I saw her.  I
thought she was dead.”

“She wasn’t here when I got here.”

Two ambulance technicians came through the back gate.  Maddie
had managed to get my shirt off, and they wrapped blankets around me and loaded
me onto a gurney.  I couldn’t help think that the routine was becoming way too
familiar.

When I regained consciousness, I was back in the hospital.  My
parents were there,
again
, and this time, so was Maddie. Whatever was in
the wine had worn off for the most part.  My arms and legs cooperated when I
asked them to move, and I could think clearly again.   I sat up in bed and
looked out the window.  It was light outside.

“Back in here, huh?” I said to nobody in particular.

They all huddled around the bed and expressed their horror at
what had happened.  Apparently everyone already knew the story.  I fully
expected to see my picture on the front page of the Metro section again, beaten
up again and looking pathetic.  I might as well move to another city if I hoped
to continue my law practice.

“How bad is my house?” I asked.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Maddie said.

“Landra?”

“No one’s seen her,” she said.

“She’s poisoning Mrs. Howard.  There’s something in the wine,”
I said.

“You told the police everything last night,” Maddie said.

“Did I?  I don’t remember even talking to them.”

I tried to reconstruct what had happened, but my memory was
shot.  Not only that, but Maddie was holding my hand and it was making it hard
to concentrate.  I was wishing my parents weren’t there.

*    *    *    *

It was almost noon when I was released from the hospital.  I
got a ride with Maddie, but I made her stop at Taco Cabana before we went
home.  We parked in her driveway and walked across my yard together.  From the
outside, you couldn’t even tell that there was any damage, and I was feeling
hopeful that I’d be able to stay there while I fixed the place up.  But as soon
as I opened the front door, the smell of smoke was overwhelming.  I left my bag
of food on the front porch and we went in.

The rooms that had doors had been sealed off, with towels
stuffed up under the doors, and the contents of those rooms was untouched.  But
there was a thick coating of ash all over everything in the rooms that couldn’t
be shut off, and the fortress had been almost completely destroyed. The windows
had all been broken out and there were gaping cavities in the wall where the
fire had burned all the way through. In a way, it was poetic justice.  There
was no way I could have lived with those walls after what had happened.  They
would have been a constant reminder of Landra.