Dizzy Spells (15 page)

I dropped off Thyme before heading home. I
refused her offer of dinner. I was tired and wanted a long bath, a
glass of wine, and to watch something mindless and comforting on
TV—if the house would let me.

I stepped inside, happy to be home. It has
been a long day. The living room was bathed in shadow, and the cats
were nowhere to be seen. I dropped my purse and keys onto the
coffee table and then yawned and stretched.

When the knock came on the door, my first
thought was that it was the police. Had I not been so tired, I
likely would not have answered the door. Anyway, I did, and there
was Dianne standing on my doorstep.

She had something in her hand, and for one
wild moment I was sure it was a gun. The woman stepped forward and
blue arcs of energy crackled at the end of the Taser I had mistaken
for a firearm.

“Let’s have a little talk,” she said.

Chapter 23

I knew I didn’t have a choice. If Dianne
wanted to talk, that’s just what we were going to do. It was hard
to argue with a crazy person who had a Taser held close to my
face.

“I know you’ve figured it out,” Dianne
said.

I looked at her. The portly woman was
disheveled, her face red and sweaty, her clothes wrinkly. “A friend
of mine from Newcastle called me and said that two women were
asking questions about me. I know it was you and Thyme.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, doing
my best to sound genuinely puzzled. “Please put that thing
down.”

Dianne laughed. She pressed the flat red
button on the side of her Taser again, and blue electricity arced
between the two raised metal prongs at the end of the device. “You
forget that Madam Dianne is psychic. I had a vision of Thyme
driving you there in her car. You can’t lie to me. No more
lies.”

I took a step backward. Clearly, she wasn’t
psychic, and she had just gotten it wrong again. Nevertheless, now
was not the time and place to point that out to her.

I summed up the situation. Dianne was a
crazy woman who had killed a man, and probably intended to kill me,
too. In fact, Dianne could come at me at any moment. On the other
hand, while I didn’t know much about Tasers, I didn’t think that
they were fatal. Well, I hoped not, anyway. Then there was the fact
that I was much fitter than Dianne, so I should be able to
overpower her in a struggle. And then there was my house. It wasn’t
attacking her yet, no doubt for reasons of its own, but I was
certain that it would, when crunch came to crunch. All in all, the
situation probably wasn’t as bad as it looked, but that didn’t stop
my heart beating out of my chest and my palms sweating.

We stood just inside the door, which Dianne
had swung shut with her hip. “You two fancy yourselves as wannabe
cops, solving a crime,” she snapped at me. “Go sit on the
couch.”

I nodded and backed away slowly. There was
no way I was going to turn my back on her. When I felt the back of
my legs bump into my coffee table, I skirted around it and then sat
on my couch. Dianne came forward, but remained standing.

“So you went snooping around and asking
questions about me,” she said. “And you found out what
exactly?”

“I found out you and Hale had a thing,” I
said.

That was apparently the wrong thing to say,
as Dianne exploded, her face contorting into a mask of rage. “A
thing? A thing? It was a lot more than a thing! We were in
love!”

“Okay, I’m sorry!” I said quickly. “I found
out you two were in love.”

“And your friend knows this, too?”

“Thyme? Yes, she knows.”

“All right then, I guess I’ll have to pay
her a visit when I’m done here.”

My stomach knotted. That certainly sounded
that Dianne did indeed plan on killing me, and then Thyme.

“He was divorcing his wife,” Dianne said
suddenly, the rage building on her features. “Well, so he said when
we started dating. He told me he was married; he never hid it from
me. Some men might have, but Tom was a good man. He had a good job.
He was divorcing his wife. They didn’t have kids, but you know how
divorce can be. He was sure his wife would get his money,
everything he’d worked so hard for. That’s why he was taking it
slowly.”

I wondered why she had killed him. Her story
certainly didn’t sound as if it was leading up to murder.

Dianne was still talking. “We moved here
together, but were living apart until he got a divorce. I had been
driving around look to buy a Victorian house with a nice garden,
and I saw this house. I knew it wasn’t for sale, but Tom suggested
we go and see if the owner would be interested in selling. I didn’t
know you lived here at the time.” She looked at me.

I nodded.

“Tom had been acting strange since we
arrived in town,” she said. “I was living in a rental and he was
staying in a motel. Tom had been quiet all that day. We were on
your porch, and I knew something was wrong. I challenged him—I told
him to tell me what was wrong. He finally said that he was sorry,
but he had decided to try to make it work with his wife. He told me
he loved me, but he said he loved her, too. Are you listening?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “Please go on.”

She shot me a strange look. “I wasn’t
thinking. I didn’t mean to do it. I just got very upset all of a
sudden. I reached into my purse and grabbed my insulin and I just
jabbed him with it. Right in the neck. I slammed the plunger down.
Then I realized what I’d done and I was shocked. I didn’t realize I
had done it. It all happened in slow motion. I don’t really feel
like it was me doing it. I remember it all, but it’s like a movie
or something. It still doesn’t feel like real life. It’s all
surreal.”

“Why don’t you tell that police that?” I
said in a placating tone. “I’m sure they’d go easy on you, given
the circumstances.”

“Do you take me for an idiot?” she yelled.
“Murder is murder! It’s not like it was self defense or
anything!”

“Why did you Photoshop those photos of me
and send them to the police? And put photos of me in his
wallet?”

Dianne’s eyes opened wide, but she did calm
down somewhat. “That’s obvious. I was their only suspect, so I had
to find them another one. As he died on your porch, you were the
obvious person.”

“And how did you keep the fact that you were
diabetic from them?”

Dianne shot me a look. “That was easy. I
simply denied that I was. They searched my house, but I knew that
they would, so I took all my insulin, syringes, and my blood
glucose meter to the park and hit them under a bottle brush
bush.”

“So what are you going to do with me?”

Dianne sighed. “You’re the only one who
knows. Well, you and Thyme. So I’ll have to make sure neither of
you can ever tell anyone.”

“But we’ve already told the police,” I said.
“I’ve just come from the police station. They know you and Thomas
Hale were in a relationship, and they know you’re diabetic. You
have the murder weapon, and you have the motive.”

“You interfering fool,” Diane screamed,
lunging at me with the Taser. “They didn’t find out anything much
by themselves. They wouldn’t have figured it out if you hadn’t told
them!”

As she lunged at me, Willow appeared from
nowhere and ran between her legs. Dianne collapsed in a heap on the
floor, the Taser flying from her hands into the fire grate.

I ran for the Taser, but Dianne caught my
leg as I went past, and held onto it. I struggled not to fall. I
twisted and turned, pulling myself from Dianne’s grasp and
teetering forward. “Help me!” I yelled at the house.

“
You’re
crazy,”
Dianne said. “Why would I help you?” She grabbed a handful
of my hair and yanked it hard.

I fell
backward, right on top of Dianne.
She wrapped her arms around me and flipped
me over. I could barely move, let alone breathe, with the heavier
woman on top of me. I was relieved that she hadn’t managed to
retrieve the Taser.

I pinched
Dianne’s neck hard. She yelled and rolled over. I wriggled out from
under her and tried to stand up, but she again
grabbed my leg and held it hard
in a vice-like grip.

There was a vase on the mantelpiece, or to
be precise, a blue and white ginger jar, most likely an antique,
which had belonged to my aunt.
I reached up over my head, and could just
wrap my fingers around it. I pulled, but nothing happened. That was
weird. I knew it wasn’t glued there; I’d removed it to dust it only
the other day.

Dianne
pull
ed
herself to her feet, using me to support herself. If only I could
get the vase free and smash it over her head, yet it wouldn’t
budge. After a moment or two, it dawned on me that the house didn’t
want me to break the vase. “Let go!” I yelled at the house. “Let
go!”

“
I won’t let go!” Dianne said. She
shoved me backward and then bit my leg.

“
Ouch!
” I screamed, and pulled her hair hard. It came right off
in my hands. I screamed again. Thankfully, it was a
wig.

I
n
one motion, I threw the wig in Dianne’s face and threw myself at
the coffee table. By some miracle, it still had the vase of dead
wildflowers Craig had given me on it. I landed too hard on the
coffee table, which then broke apart. The vase fell and shattered,
spraying me with water and dead wildflowers.

I picked up
the top of
the coffee table and shoved it forward. It slammed into
Dianne’s shins, and she shrieked and fell sideways, throwing her
hands in the air.

It was then that the house laughed.
It sounded like thunder, but was a deep belly laugh, rolling and
rumbling with mirth. It was followed by a clapping
sound.

“
You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I yelled at the house.
“This is not a Mixed Martial Arts tournament! This is real life! I
could get hurt!”

“
That’s what I’m counting on,”
Dianne said.

I looked up to see that she had
scrambled to her feet, and was pulling a syringe from her purse.
Her eyes glittered. “Insulin,” she said menacingly.

I summed up the situation. She was between
the front door and me. I looked at the Taser lying in the
fireplace. Before I could decide whether to try to reach it, there
was a loud banging on the front door.

“Police! Open up!”

“No!” Dianne yelled. “Go away! Get back in
your car, or I’ll kill this woman!”

“Who is that?” the voice called.

I saw another cop at the front window,
peering in. He turned away. “The suspect has a hostage!” he
shouted.

“I want you to leave!” Dianne yelled at the
window. “I won’t go down for this! I didn’t do anything—Amelia did
it. She’s framing me!”

“Step away from Ms. Spelled,” the cop at the
window said calmly.

“I want out of this!” Dianne screamed. “Go
away or she gets it!”

The cop vanished from sight.

“Get away from the Taser,” Dianne said to
me. “Go over there, into the corner.”

I did as she asked.

Dianne, keeping her eyes on me, stepped over
to the fireplace and then reached in for the Taser. As she did, her
arm passed through the grate. “What the?” she screamed.

Dianne kept disappearing, until just her
head was showing above the grate.

I was shocked beyond measure. I knew the
house could make other people see things, but now I was seeing
things too?

“No! Help me!” Dianne screamed. “It’s got
me! Help!” Her face was pale and white, and her expression showed
nothing but abject horror.

I wondered what to do next, but the house
decided for me. Both the Taser and the syringe of insulin suddenly
appeared in front of the fireplace. I picked them up and hurried to
the front door.

I opened the front door, and three police
officers practically fell in. Two ran past me, while the third
stayed.

“Are you okay?” the cop asked. “Are you
hurt?’

“No,” I said. “I think I’m fine.” The roots
of my hair hurt, and so did the bite on my leg and the scratch
marks. The house had a lot to answer for.

When I returned to the living room, one cop
was handcuffing Dianne, who to my great relief was out of the
fireplace and huddled in the corner.

“There’s no door! Just walls! Help me! Where
am I?” she whimpered pathetically. When she saw me, her demeanor
changed at once. “You!” she snarled. “I should’ve killed you, just
like I killed Thomas!” She then let out a string of words that
should not be repeated in polite company.

As they dragged her out, something occurred
to me. “Who called you?” I asked the third cop.

“Alder Vervain, the private detective,
called to say he saw an armed woman approach your house,” the
police officer said.

I followed them to my front gate and looked
up and down the street. Sure enough, there was a familiar car,
Alder’s car. I thought I could see him, sitting behind the wheel,
nothing but a black shadow.

Chapter 24

As soon as I returned to the house, I poured
myself a glass of wine and ran a hot bath. When I was soaking in
the lavender scented bubbles, I called Thyme to fill her in. I
wanted to get in first. The news would be all over town within
minutes.

“Would you like to stay with me tonight?”
Thyme asked, when I had finished my rundown of the evening’s
events.

“I’ll be fine here, thanks. Is there a safer
house in the world?” I went to take another sip, but realized my
glass was empty. I had downed the entire glass before I realized
that I hadn’t eaten for hours. No wonder I felt dizzy.