Dying in Style (31 page)

Marina gave a sudden heartrending shriek and then hung very still, and Josie knew that the Russian’s banner standard was also pulling out of the wall.

She could see a crowd of horrified shoppers below, pointing and screaming. A security guard was talking on a radio. Another was pushing people out from under Josie and Marina. So our bodies don’t kill someone when we land, she thought.

“They’re going to fall,” a woman shrieked and threw her sweater over her child’s head so he wouldn’t see the awful accident. The little boy began to cry. People were running in circles and yelling useless commands: “Get help!” “Get a ladder!” “Get the police!”

“Hang on!” a security guard shouted up at Josie. She thought that was the most pointless advice she’d ever heard. Her grip was the only thing between her and certain death.

Then the brass standard lurched again, and another toggle pulled out of the wall. Two down. Four to go. Josie knew that help would not reach her in time. She had to find something that could support her weight better. Salvation was some three feet away. One of the huge Venetian glass chandeliers was solidly anchored to the ceiling with four sturdy chains. Each chain was as thick as Josie’s arm. They were designed to withstand tornadoes, earthquakes and other disasters, natural and unnatural. Josie tried to reach the chain, but her arms weren’t long enough.

The brass standard gave another dizzying downward lurch, and another toggle bolt pulled out of the wall. No time to think. Josie tried to lasso the chandelier’s heavy silver chain with the strap of her Coach bag. She missed.

A woman cried out far below. Josie could feel the brass standard coming loose. A little avalanche of powdered concrete and wallboard fell on the crowd. More screams.

Josie swung the purse a second time. This time the strap snagged a heavy anchor chain. The bowl of the Venetian chandelier tilted insanely, but Josie was secured by her purse strap. She wrapped it around her wrist just as the brass banner standard pulled completely out of the wall and fell to the floor with a hollow, bouncing clatter. More shrieks from below.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marina was doing the same thing with her Danessa purse. The athletic Russian looped her bag around the chandelier on the first try, and her hand reached out for the safety of the heavy anchor chains. That’s when the skinny strap on the obscenely expensive bag snapped.

Marina’s flailing body plummeted to the floor with a terror-filled scream.

Josie knew that she would hear it for the rest of her life.

Chapter 31

Marina looked like a sacrifice to a savage god. Her broken limbs formed a graceful X. A banner of long blond hair hid her smashed face. Even the deep red pool that haloed her head had a cruel beauty.

Josie stared down at the woman who had tried to kill her, fifty feet below on the cold marble. She felt an electric flash of anger. Marina had destroyed two women to avenge a murder that never happened. Such a freaking waste. If only Serge hadn’t been so cheap. So unfaithful. So destructive. Josie almost wished Danessa had murdered the SOB. He deserved it.

“Hurry!” a security guard barked down below. “What’s taking so long? Get help. This woman can’t hang up there forever.”

You took the words right out of my mouth, Josie thought. She had an odd urge to giggle, but her battered ribs ached too much to laugh.

Besides, there was nothing funny about what happened.

I’m supposed to feel terrible. I guess I will later. Right now I am triumphant. I want to beat my chest like Tarzan. I should have died, but I didn’t. I solved the murders. I saved my own life. If I was still hanging on that banner standard, I’d do one of those three-hundred-sixty-degree turns, like an Olympic gymnast.

There was a stir in the pointing, staring crowd below. A small woman marched across the mall, pushing security guards out of her way. Police officers pursued her, but she shrugged them off like yappy pups. The determined woman did not stop until she was standing under Josie.

It was a Fury in a pink pantsuit. She shouted up, “Josie Marcus, you get down from there right now. What were you thinking? You told me recording that phone call was safe.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Josie yelled back. Her words echoed against the marble.

“Sorry won’t cut it,” Jane said.

Josie could see her mother’s bulldog jaw two stories down.

“I couldn’t pick up Amelia at school because of you,” Jane said. The echoes intensified her martyred tone. “Your daughter is at that overpriced school on extended playtime. I had to put the twenty-five-dollar fee on my own credit card. You will pay me back, young lady.”

Shoppers stared slack-jawed at Jane, shouting at the woman dangling over their heads.

That’s my mom, Josie thought. She was secretly proud. She knew Jane was trying to hide her own terror.

“Alyce is driving out from Wood Winds to pick up Amelia at school,” her mother said. “What were you doing, running after a killer on your own? Have you gone completely nuts?”

“I think so, Mom.” What else could Josie say? She was hanging from a tipped-up chandelier in the fanciest mall in town.

“You!” Jane said to the security guard. “Find out what’s taking so long.”

“Help is right here, ma’am.” The guard pointed to a power lift chugging toward them.

“Well, tell them to step on it,” Jane said.

The guard spoke into his walkie-talkie and the orange machine moved a fraction faster.

The power lift was worth waiting for, Josie decided. It was staffed with two studly maintenance men. They were so hot they sizzled. That was the other thing Josie noticed about surviving your own death. You felt frisky.

As the power lift ascended to the ceiling, Josie studied her rescuers. One was blond and muscular with wide shoulders and tight buns. His sunburned arms had little golden hairs. He was the sort of man who would barbecue with beer, she decided, and make a woman laugh. The other was lean and had long brown hair in a ponytail. He looked worried. That man would be an intense lover, slow and deliberate. Two men, two moods. No wedding rings.

“Careful,” Ponytail said as they maneuvered the lift under Josie. “Watch it. She’s heavy.”

“I am not,” Josie said.

“Not you, miss,” Ponytail said. “The power lift.”

The lift was directly under Josie now. If she fell, she’d land on either the blond or the brunette hunk. That would be a real thrill for those guys, she thought ruefully. I look like I’ve been mud wrestling. The hair brushing her shoulders was stiff with the potting soil she’d rubbed into it. Terrific. I gave myself a mud mousse before meeting two hunky men.

Their strong hands reached out for her.

“Ouch!” Josie said as the men clutched her ribs. She flinched and felt their hesitation. “Don’t stop. Get me down from here.”

Finally Josie could let go of the chandelier. It swung wildly, then settled into a stately pendulum swing.

Ponytail wrapped her in a soft blue blanket, covering the worst of the mud. Josie couldn’t feel her fingers. They were red and numb.

The jolly blond took her hands in his and began rubbing them until they started tingling. Other parts of Josie were also tingling, a lot more pleasantly than her fingers.

“That will get the circulation back,” the blond said. “I’m Mike. I’ll be your copilot today. Our pilot is Christopher. If you feel dizzy, grab onto his ponytail.”

Josie started laughing, then winced.

“Broken ribs?” Mike asked sympathetically.

“I think so.” Josie studied her reddened fingers. They were surprisingly clean. “There was hardly any dust on that chandelier.” She sounded like a demented housewife.

“Thanks. That’s our job,” Ponytail said. “We keep the lights clean.”

“We usually don’t get a hands-on inspection,” Mike said. Josie liked the way his neck was sunburned.

Josie rubbed her head. Her semiclean hands came away covered in dirt and blood. She must have a cut up there somewhere. The crowd on the marble floor was coming closer. She figured they had about twenty feet to go.

“We’re almost there,” Mike said. “That your mama in the pink pantsuit?”

Josie nodded.

“She’s pretty worried,” Mike said.

“She’s gonna kill me,” Josie said.

“Not until she knows you’re okay,” Mike said.

Josie understood his logic perfectly. He must have a mother like Jane.

They were less than four feet from the floor now. Lean Christopher gently guided the lift and they touched down with a slight bump.

“Nice landing, Captain,” Mike said. Muscles bunched along his arms as he helped Josie off the power lift.

The crowd applauded. Jane elbowed everyone aside and threw her arms around her daughter. She cried and held Josie with a fierce strength, hugging her daughter’s battered ribs until she cried out.

“Ouch, Mom, that hurts.”

“Good,” Jane said. “Maybe it will squeeze some sense into you.”

Detective Yawney was waiting beside her mother. God, he was handsome. Josie decided the fight with Marina must have knocked something loose. She was horny as a teenager. Her eyes traveled from Yawney’s slim hips to his wide shoulders. Very nice indeed. Then it got to his glowering face.

Josie looked at him and said, “I didn’t do it.”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Detective Yawney said. “If you’d bothered returning my calls.”

“You knew who the killer was?” Josie said.

“That’s my job, ma’am,” he said.

Josie couldn’t tell if he was joking. He seemed angry, but she thought she caught a hint of a smile around those sculpted lips. It could have been a trick of the light. Of course he’d solved the murders. Josie should have known a suburban mom couldn’t beat the cops at their own game. Except she had.

“I got a confession from Marina,” Josie said. “She killed Danessa and Olga, too.”

“You nearly got yourself killed while you were at it,” Detective Yawney said.

Josie’s mother glared at her daughter, then said, “You told me that phone call was safe!”

Josie was glad when the paramedics rushed forward with a stretcher and firmly shooed her mother out of the way. She was saved twice in one day. Suddenly life seemed wonderfully safe and warm. Josie was so tired she could no longer sit upright. She settled onto the gurney. It felt good to lie down.

As the paramedics strapped her to the stretcher, Mike the macho maintenance man whispered in Josie’s ear, “I like a woman with spirit. Can I have your phone number?”

“Sure,” she said.

Maybe I should use a mud mousse more often, Josie thought dreamily as the paramedics wheeled her away.

The next day Josie felt like her arms had been pulled out of their sockets. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to walk. She had two cracked ribs and five stitches in her scalp. A chunk of her hair had been shaved off, and she was afraid to see if it showed. Her hands were bruised. Her life seemed hopeless.

When she sat up in bed, her ribs screamed for mercy. Her stitches itched. Her conscience hurt. Josie blushed with shame when she remembered how she’d eyed the men like a drunken hooker at a sales convention. Mike the Maintenance Man had actually asked for her phone number. What kind of example was she setting for her daughter?

Josie tried to fall back to sleep, but every time she shut her eyes she felt herself falling over the railing, saw herself swinging far above the bone-breaking marble floor, heard Marina’s final scream. The video ran endlessly in her mind, until she opened her eyes and stared at her cracked ceiling.

Then Josie would cry for no reason.

Actually, she cried for a good reason. She’d killed a woman. If only she’d taken Detective Yawney’s call, Marina would still be alive. Josie no longer felt triumphant at her attacker’s death. Any sense of victory was gone. She would give almost anything to bring Marina back to life. She kept remembering the moment she dragged Marina over the rail to her death.

The tears started again, leaking onto her pillow. Josie reached for a tissue and winced at the pain in her side. She’d told herself again and again that Marina’s death was justifiable, even deserved. The Russian had tried to murder her. But Josie still felt like a killer.

She’d showered three times when she came home from the hospital. She got the mud out of her hair, but not her soul.

Josie looked at her bedside clock. It was eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning. She should have been up hours ago, but she didn’t have the energy. Heavy weights pressed her back into the bed.

She could hear her mother and Amelia talking in low, urgent voices in the kitchen. She could smell burnt toast and fresh coffee. Even the thought of caffeine didn’t tempt her to get up.

There was a knock on her door. “Mom,” Amelia said.

“What?” Josie said. It came out as a bark.

Amelia hesitated, then pushed open the door. She was balancing a tray that tilted frighteningly to one side. Josie held her breath as Amelia carried it to the bed.

“I brought you breakfast,” Amelia said proudly, as the tray made a three-point landing on the bed and hot coffee slopped over the covers. Josie narrowly missed second-degree burns on her thighs.

“Oops,” Amelia said. “Well, there’s still some coffee in the cup. And it missed the toast.”

Too bad, Josie thought ungraciously. The toast looked like two buttered charcoal briquettes. A bouquet of the hated orange mums was crammed into a yellow plastic cup. In the middle of the tray was an outlandish pink bottle with a sickly sweet smell.

“What’s that?” Josie pointed to the bottle.

“It’s your birthday present early,” Amelia said. “I bought it with my own money.”

The ultimate sacrifice. Amelia guarded her allowance money like a miser.

“It’s mango-guava bubble bath.” Amelia held out the small, smelly pink bottle. “It’s cruelty free. No animals were harmed in the testing. You always said a hot bubble bath could cure anything. Why are you crying now, Mom?”

“Because I’m happy,” Josie said, and gathered her girl in her arms. Marina had tried to take this away from her. That was why Josie fought her to the death. She’d do it again, too.