Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly (24 page)

“Get away,” I screamed, but the
club began its descent and I pulled the trigger over and over and over, the gun
booming, until the only thing left was the clicking.

Hours later I sat in the dimly-lit
hospital room beside Gene’s recumbent, snoring form.  My right arm, lying on
the bed, was asleep, too, but I didn’t move it because each time I tried, Gene
stirred as his fingers sought mine.

As for my left arm, I didn’t want
to think of it.  The shoulder was not broken, but the bruising was extensive,
and movement painful.

Outside, the rain continued to
pour, streaking down the windows and pounding on the roofs of the cars that
gleamed in the lights of the parking lot.

The door opened, but instead of
another nurse coming to check on Gene, it was Meg tiptoeing in with Kirk behind
her.

“Are you all right?” Kirk
whispered.  “How’s Gene?”

“Thank God he’s got a hard head,”
I whispered back.

“Jeez, will you turn on the lights
and quit whispering?” Gene said, his voice gravelly.

As Kirk flipped on the overhead
light, I pulled my hand free and stepped away from the bed.

Meg said, “Wow, Gene, you don’t
look so good.”

“I don’t feel so good either,” he
said, using the button to raise the head of the bed, “but at least I’m alive to
feel it.”

There was a thud against the
door.  It opened an inch, then fell closed again.  Mother’s voice said, “Will
someone kindly open this door?”

Meg sprang to obey, saying, “I
thought you were going to stay in your room.”

“I’ve heard too many rumors,” she
said, wheeling herself into Gene’s room, “now I want the truth.”

“You must be feeling better,” I
said.

“Yes.  It wasn’t a heart attack
you know, only a warning.  I’m ready to go home.”

Meg said, “I hope you won’t mind
that I’ve invited Jared to stay with us for a few days.”

“Jared!” I said.  “Meg, I don’t
think I want him—”

“It wasn’t his fault, Aunt Liz, he
didn’t know what his mother was doing.  He feels terrible.  There are reporters
all over his house.  Besides, nobody is going to believe he wasn’t involved
unless we show we believe it, and—”

“Still, I think—”

Mother’s voice cut through mine. 
“I’ll thank you not to make decisions about who may be a guest in my home,
Liz.”

“Mother, you don’t need any stress
right now—”

“Stress?  Like your plan to ship
me off tomorrow to a funny farm with not so much as the honor of a
consultation?”

“It’s a good convalescent
hospital,” Meg said, “and she was only trying to keep you from being hurt.”

“Well, I shall choose the course
of my life, thank you,” Mother announced.  She pinned me with a look.

Kirk said, “Well, I’d like to hear
what happened at the scout hut.”

Mother wheeled herself to the foot
of Gene’s bed.  Meg perched on the window sill, and Kirk took the visitor’s
chair.  Gene patted his bed and looked at me.  I shook my head, but I stood
near him while I told them what had happened.  When I got to the part about
Alisz telling me how she’d killed Fran, my voice gave out.

“I’d been floating in and out of
consciousness for a little while,” Gene said, “wondering how to get us out of
the mess we were in.”

“Thank God you came to when you
did,” Kirk said.

Gene continued the story, telling
how he’d pulled Alisz off balance when I “sprang at her like a crazed pit
bull.”  He glossed over the part about the shooting and stopped where he’d sent
me out to find a phone and call for help.

We looked at each other.  I
shivered.

“She would have killed us all,”
Meg said in a small voice.

Kirk walked over and settled on
the sill.  The way he pulled her against him showed more than a priestly desire
to comfort.  I finally realized why he was so determined to succeed with a
church in Warfield and why our house received so much of his attention.  He
said, “I don’t understand how she could hate Liz so much.”

“I don’t understand how she could
kill Andre and Fran.  She liked them, and yet she must have spent a lot of time
thinking of it,” Meg said.

“Right down to plugging Fran’s
phone back in after she died so she could call Liz after she discovered Fran’s
body,” Gene said.

“There’s no way to know that,” I
said.

“How else can we explain how the
phone was plugged in?” he asked.

“But she couldn’t have known I’d
be there,” I said.

Meg stood up.  “I’d told Jared we
were going to the climbing gym.”

Kirk shook his head.  “The poor
woman.  She must have been in such torment.”

“She was crazy,” Mother said. 
“There’s no more nor less to it than that.”

I put my hands up to cover my
face.

“You mustn’t blame yourself, Liz,”
Mother said.

But I remembered firing the gun
until it was empty.  As much as I’d like to believe it had been only to protect
Gene or because I was afraid, I couldn’t forget my rage.

Later, after I’d found a phone and
called for help, I’d returned to the cabin to wait for the ambulance.  I sat
beside Gene, afraid he would die before the paramedics got there.

Alisz had stirred and opened her
eyes.

I’d crawled between Gene and her
and said, “There’s an ambulance on the way.”

She shook her head, a tiny
movement, and closed her eyes.

I scooted back against Gene’s hip
and took his large hand, holding on to him and praying my heart out.  Once in
awhile his eyelids would lift, he’d look at me, then drift away again.  I was
terrified he’d drift too far.  The ambulance was taking forever.

I felt her looking at me.  I
glanced over.

“Gene.  How is he?”  Her voice was
low and weak.

“He’s alive.”

“But Fran is dead.”  She smiled,
closed her eyes.

Gene’s hand squeezed mine.  I
heard the faint wail of a siren through the steady drum of the rain.

“You loved Fran,” she whispered. 
She opened her eyes and stared into mine.  “I hurt you very much.”  The manic
light had faded from her eyes.  Now they were testing, seeking.

Gene’s hand tightened on mine. 
Could he tell how much I hated her right then?  I clung to him.  I would never
understand.  She’d had everything, the man I’d loved, a child, a home of her
own.

How could she feel such malice
toward me when I’d never meant her harm?  But then I thought of what she’d said
about me walking by oblivious, about me living in a castle, and I realized
though I’d never meant her harm, I’d never wished her well, either.  I
remembered the bow-legged little girl in the hand-me-down dresses that
embarrassed us both, I remembered when the only English she knew was “pleezz.”

“Yes, you hurt me very much,” I
said.  “I’ll be lonely for Fran every day of my life.”

Alisz smiled as a child would at
the end of a satisfying bed-time story.  Her eyes flickered and then stared
unblinking at the ceiling.

Gene shook my arm, bringing me
back to the hospital room.  “You did the only thing you could,” he said.

I blinked back tears.

A nurse bustled in, took a look at
Gene’s ashen face and said, “Everybody out.”

Kirk and Meg and Mother started to
leave, then, crowded at the foot of his bed, looked expectantly at me.

“I’ll be there in a second,” I
said, waving them on.

The nurse didn’t budge until Gene
asked for five more minutes.  “Just five,” she said, tapping her watch before
she left.

“Just one little kiss to keep me
safe while I sleep?” Gene asked.

I could feel the heat rise in my
face.

“Oh, Gene,” I said, my eyes
filling with tears.  “I thought you were going to die.  I’m so sorry I took
your gun.  If you’d had it, she’d never have gotten you.”

“You think that’s my only
gun?”

“You had a gun?  Then how… “

“I’d left it in the truck. 
Too much temptation to shoot you if you started tearing into me again.  I was
so preoccupied with all the stuff I was going to say to you once and for all, I
was a perfect target for her ambush.  It’s not your fault, Liz.”

He took my hand.  “You’re a good
person, Liz, hold on to that.”

“I didn’t do anything to save
her,” I whispered.

“You gave her what she wanted
most, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

The nurse threw open the door. 
“Out now,” she announced.

“That was no five minutes,” Gene
protested.

“Close enough,” said the nurse.

As I pulled my hand away, Gene
said, “Kiss.”  I leaned down to kiss his cheek, but he turned at the last
moment so my kiss landed on his lips.

“Sucker,” he whispered.

“If you weren’t suffering from a
concussion, I’d smack you one,” I said, walking toward the door.

“Hey, speaking of concussions, I
hope we’re even now and I’ll never have to hear about the one you got playing
football.”

“In your dreams,” I called over my
shoulder.

I smiled as I heard him laugh.  I
closed the door behind me and went to join my family down the hall.

THE
END

Thanks to:

The cast, crew, and
supporters of our library’s interactive mystery plays.

The amazing writing
pals:  Anne, Arlene, Barry, Claudia, Jeri, Karen, Randy & Ron.

Ron Johnson, retired police
chief, who read and improved the book (any procedural errors are mine).

The board and members
of the Harriet Vane Chapter of Sisters in Crime (Portland, Oregon).  What a great
group!

Erin, the clever
librarian, who helped with the cover.

The Encouragers:  Bill,
Claudia, Danielle, Debbie and all the others who’ve brightened my life—you know
who you are!