Drop Dead on Recall (30 page)

98

I came to almost
as soon as my face hit the cool vinyl. Jay was still outside the door, barking nonstop, his voice pitched high and verging on hysteria. I heard a shuffle and the squeak of a shoe sole on the vinyl behind me.

I scuttled across the floor on my hands and knees, trying to get to the back door, but froze at a bone-jarring report close at hand. It ended with the tinkle of glass shattering in the kitchen door and a sharp yip from outside.
Oh God, don’t let him be shot.

I ducked my head, cradling it in my left arm and wondering which throb would be the one that exploded my skull. Through the fog of pain and fear, my mind registered the sound of Jay barking again, loud and strong as ever.
Thank you, God
. I scrambled away from the back door, toward the living room.

“You’ll be sorry you ever stuck your nose in my business.” The threat came in a snarl barely louder than a whisper. I couldn’t identify the owner.

I wanted to ask who it was, but decided to shut up for once on the off chance I’d be invisible in the dark. If I could get to the front door … I heard Jay’s claws scraping the back door, his frantic yips ripping through my heart.
Please don’t let him get hurt.

As I edged through the doorway from kitchen to living room, I got my feet under me and rose into a crouch. I figured I could move faster that way while keeping myself a tough target. I sprinted toward the front door. A blast from the gun, the bounce of the bullet off the steel front door, the muffled finale as the drywall absorbed the ricocheted shell. I stopped in my tracks, revised my exit strategy, and turned back into the room.

“I see you, you nosey bitch!”

I knew the voice.

Another shot sounded like a cannon in my small living room.

“How will killing me help?” She might be beyond reason, but it was the only weapon I had for the moment.

“Shut up!” Click. “Shit!” Click, click. A bunch more clicks.

A shadow flew across the room at me, snarling, “I don’t need a gun to deal with you!” Then why did she seem to be raising one above her head like a club?

“You don’t have to deal with me!” I took a step back, forgetting that the couch was behind me, and tripped, sprawling backward onto the soft seat cushions. “It’s too late! You can’t get away with it now.”

“Yes, I can,” she growled. All my senses were focused on the crazy woman in front of me, but some corner of my mind registered that the front door had opened. Or did I imagine it? Then she was on me, like pure energy. She planted a knee, sharp as a spade, against my thigh and pinned me into the couch. Bone pressed into my flesh, through it to my own bone within, and I wondered vaguely whether the bruise would show if I died in the next minute or so.

I saw her gun hand slam down toward my head, but was able to block it, wielding the tapestry pillow like a shield over my head. The impact knocked the pillow into my nose, filling my sinuses with bubbling pain.

I peeked from behind my shield in time to see her raise the gun once more, and was preparing to block her again when an inhuman caterwaul shocked the night, a wail calculated to turn blood to jelly. In the next instant the air in front of my attacker erupted in shadowy frenzy as the woman jerked upright, away from me, and whirled, her screams almost a match for the first one.

I dropped the pillow and tried to get up. Big mistake. She whacked with the gun at her own thighs, acting as if an army of fire ants had climbed up her pants, and in her flailing caught my brow bone with an elbow, sending a galaxy of stars cascading through my head. The gun thunked against the oak floor, the sound nearly lost in a stream of curses, snarls, and more howls.

“Janet?” Goldie’s voice was almost drowned out, but I heard her.

“Here!” I panted, trying to get out from behind the maelstrom in front of the couch and onto my feet. I’d almost made it when I was smashed back into the cushions. A second set of snarls, pitched lower. I felt long fur against my hand. Jay. He’d unlatched the back door again.

The bones of my foe’s rear end dug into my gut, and her arms windmilled in panic. Her left hand slapped at her thigh. A beam of light hit us, quivered away, returned. I was vaguely aware that it came from Goldie’s hand, which was shaking too much to keep the flashlight steady, but steady enough to reveal the source of the blood-gelling screams.

99

Leo was locked on
to my assailant’s thigh, his fur standing straight out, ears flat against his skull, lips pulled back to let his fangs do their work, claws extended through cotton capris and into the flesh beneath. He sounded like he was possessed.

Jay had a grip on the intruder’s arm just below the elbow and was trying to pull her off me, or her arm off her torso, whichever came first. Low, rolling snarls erupted from his throat, all business, primeval, like nothing I’d ever heard from him before. Blood ran down the attacker’s arm where the dog had clamped on. It dripped and mingled with the gore that soaked the fabric of her shredded left pant leg.

The more Jay tugged on her arm, the more she pulled into me, knocking the air back out every time I managed to suck some in. I punched at her back as well as I could manage, pinned as I was to the couch. She shoved me farther toward the armrest. I braced my right hand against her and pushed, groping blindly toward the end table with my left, seeking a purchase, a way to pull myself free.

Leo let out a new unearthly sound, part growl, part battle cry, shrill hate and anger, as he dodged a blow to the head. He flinched and loosed the hold he had mid-thigh, swatted at the offending arm,
and reattached himself with a vengeance higher up. One paw slipped between the woman’s legs and sank daggers into the soft flesh at the top of her inner thigh. The other flexed wide and gripped
her buttocks. He worked his back claws like pistons, shredding the bloodstained cotton and ripping the skin beneath. The light beam danced erratically, but I saw my little tiger sink his fangs through the flimsy fabric once again, prying loose more barely human keening from the woman in his grip.

My head felt like a kettledrum, noise and heat and fear beating it raw. I pushed once more against the small of my attacker’s back, and managed to slip partway out from under her. I had no plan, and acted on pure pain and reflex.

I extended an arm toward the end table, fingers flexed, and heard something fall away, clatter to the floor, and roll. The naproxen bottle. I pictured the table, trying to build a map in my mind, and reached further, feeling in the dark. My fingernail brushed something hard.

A long howl erupted from the body on top of me. My attacker arched and shifted backward, emptying my lungs again as she came down hard.

Something white flashed forward and down from behind my head, past my eyes. I heard a dull hard
thwack,
and then the world went slow. My bloodied foe stopped mid-scream, swayed for a moment, and, with a little shove from my right hand, toppled to the floor.

Leo released his grip and flew straight up, changed direction mid-leap, and came down running. His tail stood high and straight, fluffed out like a feather duster as he let out a yowl and disappeared into the bedroom. Jay gave the arm he held a test tug to be sure its owner was out of the fight, let it go, and jumped onto the couch, planting his paws on my shoulders and his elbows against my bruised ribs as he whined and licked my face.

“That’ll teach her!”

I pushed Jay partway off and looked at Goldie, silhouetted like a spirit against the open front door, her long silver hair loose and wild, her free hand raised in a fist of victory.

I glanced at the body sprawled in the beam of Goldie’s light on the floor in front of me and felt a pang of regret. As I tried to push Jay off the couch and raise myself into a sitting position, I realized I had something in my left hand. I felt its familiar shape and heft, moved it into the light, and waggled my big clunky spare dumbbell at Goldie. “I told you this might come in handy.”

100

I got the lights
back on and fished my cell phone recharger out of my tote bag, but before I plugged the phone in, Goldie said, “I already called that detective.”

“You did?” Sure enough, I heard a siren somewhere in the night.

“She gave me her card a few days ago when she stopped by and you weren’t here.”

Goldie picked up a handful of bungee cords from where I’d left them on the end table. She rolled the intruder onto her stomach and secured her hands behind her back, then wound another cord several times around her feet. My attacker was waking up by the time Goldie propped her back against the couch and bound her knees together.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked Goldie.

“Jay was raising such a ruckus at the back door, and your lights were out. I knew something was wrong.”

The woman on the floor let out a string of expletives, ending with “hurts.” Her clothes were torn and bloody, barely concealing the lacerated flesh underneath. She started to say something, but stopped when two uniformed police officers rushed in, Jo Stevens on their heels.

“Why, Connie?” I asked softly. She didn’t answer. She tried to toss a strand of blood-soaked hair out of her eyes. I stepped toward her. She flinched from my hand, then let me push the hair behind her ear. I looked into her eyes, and a stranger looked back. Then she turned her head toward Jay, and her expression softened.

“I’m sorry I used you and Leo to scare that nosey bitch. I wouldn’t
really have hurt you.”

A rocket of anger exploded in my mind. “Not hurt them? You poisoned him and kidnapped my cat! Did you take Greg’s dogs, too?” I didn’t realize that more people had entered the room, or that I had stepped toward her again until I felt the back edge of Detective Jo Stevens’ arm cross my chest.

Connie continued speaking softly, ignoring me in favor of Jay. “Your biscuits weren’t poisoned, sweetie.” Jay cocked his head at her. “I would never do such a thing. I put mouse bait out in my garage.
That’s where the mouse came from. I put it in the pantry,” she turned toward me and went on, “while you were putting the grooming
sup
plies away. And Leo was perfectly safe.” Conflicting emotions seemed
to dance across her face, but I couldn’t see anything like affection or friendship, and a sledgehammer of loss smashed into my heart. Then Connie’s eyes filled with the light I knew and loved, and her voice went soft. “I thought I could scare you off. Should have known better, you’re so damn stubborn.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I took Pip and Percy so they wouldn’t have to smell that bastard’s body rotting or go hungry if no one found the sonofabitch for a while. I’d have found them all good homes.”

Sorrow gnawed at me as I realized I might never have known what happened to my cat, or to Greg and Abigail’s dogs. I looked at Goldie. “Where was Leo, anyway?”

“In that clunker van in the street. I heard dogs barking so I took a look.”

“The van was open?” asked Detective Stevens

“Not exactly. One of the back doors was tied shut with twine. I
squeezed my arm in far enough to unlock the front, and then popped
the locks. And there was Leo, in a crate, looking like a wildcat. There are a couple more dogs there, too, and a bunch of luggage. That black and white guy you had here, and a Poodle.”

Jo signaled one of the officers to go check the van.

Goldie continued. “Leo was a yellow streak to your front door when I opened his cage, and wild to get into the house.”

“How
did
you get in?” I asked Goldie.

“Door was unlocked.”

“No! I know I locked it.”

Connie made a face. “Key under the geranium pot. How creative.”

I looked at her, and tried again. “Why, Connie?”

Connie’s face went livid. “I waited for that bastard all these years while he had his fling.”

“Fling? Connie! Greg and Abigail were married more than twenty years.”

She bared her teeth at me, twisting against her restraints. A siren sounded in the distance. “When they separated, I figured my wait was over.” She snarled again, collected herself, and went on, “And then the stupid bastard ruined it all.”

“What?”

“Stupid sonofabitch thought Suzette killed Abigail,” she hissed. “I thought
you’d
blame her for Abigail’s death,” she glared at Jo, “but the police didn’t get it, and Greg got it wrong.”

My head was spinning now as well as pounding. “But I thought Francine …” My thought trailed off. “You killed Abigail?”

Connie sounded suddenly like a woeful little girl. “I’ve loved that man all my life. I got tired of waiting. I thought when he moved out it was finally my turn.”

“But they …”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” She shot me a look. “They were redecorating, for crying out loud.”

Another question struck me. “Why do you have Francine’s van?”

She looked at me like I was the village idiot. “I bought one like hers. And a stupid red wig. I knew if you kept asking questions, and thinking about it, you’d figure Francine did it because of the DNA tests. I knew you’d be on 30 that day, coming back from the lake. I just wanted to piss you off enough to make you blame Francine.”

“You did my tires, too?”

I took her glare as a yes.

“And what about Greg? I mean, if you loved him …”

Her eyes went watery. “I went to see him. Told him I’d waited all these years.” She sniffed a couple of times. “I told him I killed Abigail. I did it for him, for us, and he just went crazy, started screaming that he thought Suzette did it. Then he started bawling like a baby. Said we’d have to turn ourselves in.” She was talking very fast now. “He said he’d never loved me and he started to call the police, to confess about Suzette and tell them about me, and the next thing I knew the chisel was in my hand …”

Connie went quiet, Goldie and I exchanged looks of sympathy mixed with horror, and Detective Stevens directed one of the police officers to arrest Connie. As he stepped toward her and started to read her her rights, I asked, “Greg killed Suzette?”

Connie winced as she was pulled to her feet and cuffed, then nodded. “I think the chisel was meant to be there.” Her voice had turned to a monotone that spooked me more than her screeching had. “Then you wouldn’t back off, and I knew you weren’t really sure about Francine, and that was a big problem. With Tom around you’d find out about me and Greg and put it all together.” The venom was back in her voice. “You may be nosey, but you’re not stupid.”

I wasn’t too sure about that at the moment.

An ambulance pulled to a stop in front of the house. The cops escorted Connie out the door for her ride to the hospital and then the jail. She resisted at the door and turned her face to me, a glint back in her eye. “I don’t think you’ll get Leo into a cat carrier for a while. But if you need to, he’s a slut for sardines.”