Philly Stakes (26 page)

Peter moaned. “Leave him alone!” Laura said, her voice just this side of hysteria. “You’ve nearly killed him—leave him alone!”

“Well, I’m right. I know it. I saw the three of you in there, nobody sure what the hell was happening, what had happened.” He placed another soaked rag on the arm of the sofa, standing back to evaluate it like a demented interior decorator. Then, having satisfied himself, he looked directly at me. “Now here’s something weird. None of them were upset about Clausen being dead.” He went back to the counter for yet another rag. My house would be an inferno within seconds of his lighting a match.

My brain felt frozen in place, petrified, but I had to think. I looked at Peter, barely conscious and probably in shock, on the floor. How to get him out? How to get any of us out? What would he, do—toss a match and bolt? Could I get water to the fire fast enough? There was the vase on the coffee table and the crystal decanter on the table.

Ridiculous. Might as well spit on the flames.

And then that line of thinking became irrelevant. He walked over, pushed me onto one of the ladder-back chairs at the table and began tying me up.

“Come on,” I said. “Why this?”

He just shook his head. “I’m tired of playing guard. Nobody’ll notice twine burns afterward.” He wound it around my upper arms, then around my calves. “It’ll be chalked up as Laura’s last fire. Case closed.”

And when Laura reacted with an angry gasp, and stood up to stop him, to help me, he looked her directly in the eye and aimed his gun at Peter again, until she crumpled back to the floor.

My head hurt. My arms and legs hurt where he’d tied them to the chair, and most of all, my pride hurt. To go out like this—like the Perils of Pauline, humiliated, tied to a ladder-back chair!

“So,” Nick said, “I’m sorry. But here goes. Laura’s turn.”

Laura looked up from where she sat on the floor. I thought she was going to say something, or try to run, but that wasn’t it. She looked at the door, and then I heard it, too. A knock. Another caller.

“Stay where you are,” Nick whispered. “All of you.” The warning was a little ridiculous as far as Peter and I were concerned. “Keep quiet till they leave.”

There was another knock. Laura opened her mouth, readying a scream. Nick, in the dusky light reflected out of the kitchen, stood right where he was, but even though his back was half to me, I could see him point the gun directly at Peter’s face. “Don’t,” I whispered hoarsely. We were quiet.

The blood was beating so loudly in my skull, and my energy and concentration were so thoroughly on that gun, that I nearly missed it. Except that Nick’s head swiveled to the door and Laura’s eyes grew round again.

The little “scritch” sounded enormous; heavy, dark and solid.

The scritch of the less than fully committed lovers. Our song. Knock, then try the lock and come in if the door wasn’t chained. But that was impossible. He was on a plane. Had been airborne for a half hour.

Within the course of the turn of the key, I ran a half-gamut of emotions. Excitement—saved in the nick of time. Enormous relief. Then terror. Mackenzie wasn’t the cavalry come to the rescue. He was a man walking into a trap, opening a door onto the wrong end of a gun. Nick would kill him before he was halfway across the room.

The door opened.

I screamed.

Nick raised the gun, pointed it straight at Mackenzie, who was illuminated—a clear target standing in the light of the doorway, bulky and off balance, an overnight bag in his right hand and a garment bag hanging from his shoulder. He squinted into the gloom, his mouth half-open, figuring out what questions he had to ask to make sense of this.

“Sorry,” Nick said. I had heard that before. Also the click, the gun at the ready.

Something had to be done immediately. Opportunity popped open, like a gigantic, startled “Oh!”

The train was barreling down the tracks, the villain twirling his mustache, but the times had changed. Both Pauline and Tom Trueheart were tied to the tracks. No time for even one “Eek!”

Time only to hoist my own rear off those tracks, be my own hero, save the detective in distress.

I pulled at my arms, pushed with my legs, and all it did was give me rope burns. I had one choice of weapons. Me. Us. Mandy and her magic chair.

I looked at where Nick stood, hoped I remembered enough geometry to be right about angles and estimates, and pushed with all my might, thigh muscles knotting until I was up, onto my toes—and then forward, one great wood-and-woman mass in one swift fall. As hard as I could. As fast as I could. That was it, my only chance. Blam.

“Now!” I screamed as I plummeted, fast and hard. My forehead banged into the back of his neck, and he tumbled as the chair and my weight continued our unstoppable downward arc. Pieces of us hit the floor, hard—my knees and toes and one elbow where I bounced off something. His head, from what I thought I heard. His face mashed into the carpet under mine, from the muffled sound below me.

I also heard the thuds of Mackenzie’s luggage, and Laura, shouting, “I have his gun!” And Mackenzie, not making a sound, but moving faster than I’d known he could.

Untying me from the yellow ladder-back, freeing me from my humiliating, rear-end skyward, sore knees buckled, head-down position, Nick squashed below me.

I thought Mackenzie said “My heroine,” but I had hit the floor pretty hard and I was a little dizzy, so I could be wrong.

He tied Nick up while Laura called for an ambulance and a patrol car.

“Boy,” I said when I had my breath back. “Boy oh boy!” I started to laugh, with relief or confused craziness. I think with the sheer delight of being alive, a condition I had strongly doubted was in my future.

“How come you’re—you’re supposed to be—” I started laughing again.

Mackenzie waited till I was nearly coherent, although little hiccups of laughs kept striking. “I was bumped,” he said.

And that was definitely the funniest thing I’d ever heard. “So was I,” I said, rubbing my forehead and doubling over. “All over! What a coincidence!”

He looked wary. I tried to subdue my act. In fact, I suddenly couldn’t remember what was so funny at all, and I felt as if I were hung over. All over, including my knees.

“Well, they kind of ask for volunteers,” he said, “and I didn’t get there real early like you should, you know, but with you stuck here, I thought…” His expression darkened. “It’s obvious you weren’t expectin’ me.” He shook his head. “You sure found yourself a date fast. Although I can’t say much for quality control around here.”

I raised my hand to protest or explain, but it was too much effort. I sat very, very still to stop the throbbing in my head. My forehead, with no slack to do so, was nonetheless expanding painfully.

“He…killed my father,” Laura said in a strained voice. She stood at the front window, waiting for the ambulance.

“Liar,” Nick said, breaking his silence. “Everybody knows the kid did it.”

“But—”

“Hearsay isn’t evidence,” he spat out. “You have no proof. Not one shred.” His mouth curled as smugly as it could, given that his lips were swelling from the impact of his fall.

“There is so a shred.” I’d nearly forgotten. I hobbled over to the kitchen counter, fingers crossed. Please, please let me have gotten it right. I pressed on the lid of the answering machine and it flipped up.

The tape inside was still spinning. Victory.

I heard sirens in the distance. Several. Ambulances and police cars.

“I pushed Memo,” I said to Mackenzie. “The way you showed me. Everything is recorded. He even stood close to the machine most of the time. We can turn it off now.”

This time, I was positive Mackenzie said, “My heroine.”

The sirens came closer until they stopped abruptly. Doors slammed. The cavalry, twentieth-century style, had arrived.

“Don’t know quite how, but you’ve wrapped this one up neatly,” Mackenzie said.

Nick, in handcuffs, glowered at the police. Peter was gently lifted onto a gurney. It didn’t seem neat. It just seemed possible.

We helped Laura into the ambulance so she could ride with Peter, assured her we’d join her at the hospital in minutes, and walked to where Mackenzie had parked. I clutched his hand more tightly than my wobbly knees warranted.

Mackenzie helped me into his car as if I were damaged porcelain. Once he was behind the wheel, he leaned over and kissed me, avoiding all the sore spots and making at least my lips and heart feel just fine. We pulled apart and stared at each other, confirming that we were indeed still alive and miming relief, incredulity, and joy. We shook our heads, blinked, sighed, twisted our mouths, and shrugged our shoulders—although I did the last action very, very gently and only once, because it hurt like hell.

We needed, but lacked words to get us unstuck and on with our lives. Luckily, English teachers always carry an emergency kit bulging with other people’s words. I pulled a few out of mine.

“Like the lad said, God bless us, every one!”

I thought for a second. “Even Charles Dickens,” I added.

“Amen.” Mackenzie turned the ignition key and we moved on.

About the Author

GILLIAN ROBERTS is mainstream novelist Judith Greber’s nom de mystère. Winner of the Anthony Award for Best First Novel for her mystery Caught Dead in Philadelphia, she is the author of such successful novels as Mendocino, The Silent Partner, and Easy Answers. A former Philadelphia English teacher, she now lives in Tiburon, California.