The Ex Who Wouldn't Die (30 page)

"It's been great, having this little chat with you," she said. "But I've really got to go. The Randolphs are expecting me back soon." That was good. Let him know there were people out there who'd be suspicious if she didn't come back. "They'll probably be looking for me by now."

"Then I guess we'll have to cut our little chat short. Amanda…may I call you
Amanda
since we know each other so well that you would pay me an unexpected visit in the middle of the night?"

Amanda didn't want to hear her name come out of his oily mouth, didn't want the closeness a first-name basis implied. On the other hand, she didn't want to hear anybody call her
Mrs. Randolph
. For a moment, she debated. "Of course you can call me Amanda,
Roland
." There. She hoped she'd been able to put
her feeling of complete
disgust into his name.

"Very good, Amanda. Since it's getting late and you need to go, let me just cut straight to the heart of the matter and say that I have nothing you would be intere
sted in. If I once had the object of your interest
, it's long gone now."

Amanda's heart sagged in total despair. "You threw away the gun you took from my apartment." The words escaped from her lips in little more than a whisper. Even though she'd known that was a possibility, had told Charley it was, actually hearing it from Kimball was like a cold slap in the face. This man, in a misguided attempt to save his own skin had destroyed her only hope of
vindication
.

"I hope you don't intend to
tell anyone that
outrageous story your husband told you. You'd only be making a fool of yourself and risking a lawsuit for slander since you have no proof."

"That gun—"

"Let's get out of here, Amanda," Charley said
, interrupting her
.

She moved her gaze from Kimball to Charley and back again. The two men whose crimes had put her in danger of losing her freedom. She'd married Charley, and he'd brought Kimball into her life. At least Charley looked somewhat abashed, but Kimball looked complacent, in control, certain he'd won. Damn them!
Damn b
oth of them, but especially that smug, arrogant jerk looking so self-satisfied and pleased with himself, so sure he'd beaten her.

She took a step toward him. "That gun you stole from my apartment and disposed of, it wasn't your gun. It was mine. Charley gave me that gun when we got married."

Kimball's arrogant smile widened. "I have no idea what gun you're talking about, Amanda, but if Charley gave it to you, you can bet it was stolen. Our discussion is over. It's getting late. I think you should leave before I call Ted and his partner to come back and take you to jail." Kimball turned and started up the steps to his house.

"Hey!" Charley protested. "I didn't steal that gun! I bought it for you because I was afraid this jerk would find me after I took his money and ran. I was trying to take care of you, Amanda."

"Good job," Amanda snapped, her hands clenching into fists as she watched Kimball's back moving up the steps, walking away from his crimes, returning to his world of wealth and power where he always got his way.

"You made a mistake,
Roland
," she shouted after him, but he kept going. "That gun you stole from me was not the one you used to kill Dianne."

He paused, but then continued, turning the knob and opening his front door.

Damn him! She had to do something. She couldn’t let him get away with messing up her life so easily. "
I wouldn't leave valuable evidence like that lying around the house.
The gun you used to kill Dianne is hidden away, somewhere that’s safe from you."

He didn’t go inside his house. Slowly he closed the door and turned back to her. He was still wearing the arrogant, confident expression, but she had his attention.

"It's in a safe deposit box," she improvised, trying to come up with the most secure place she could think of. "And also in that safe deposit box, there's a paper with the whole story of how Charley saw you throw that gun into the trash behind that bar, how you had blood on your shirt and how he fished it out of the garbage. And it's all written in Charley's handwriting." She hoped Kimball wouldn't know that Charley's handwriting was completely illegible.

Kimball did a pretty good job of maintaining a stoic expression, but she thought his face paled a little, enough to notice even in the moonlight.

"My dad—" she continued, emboldened by his lack of reaction and her own rising anger, "he's a judge, you know—he has a key to the safe deposit box, and if anything happens to me, he'll open it and
they'll
match the bullet to the one that killed Dianne, and, poof!" She threw her hands into the air. "No more Governor of Texas."

"You go, girl!" Charley encouraged. "Tell him you know the details of how
he killed me
."

"Shut up!" Amanda snapped at Charley, then returned her attention to Kimball. "You killed Dianne, and you killed Charley. You wore motorcycle gear so you wouldn't be recognized going into his apartment, and then you made him call me, asking for the gun you used to kill Dianne, the one he used to blackmail you, but I
'm not stupid. I
didn't bring it. You hid behind the door, and when I left, you killed him, and you thought you'd killed me, too, so you just strolled through my apartment and
took the first gun you found
—the wrong gun."

Kimball glared at her, and even in the low light, she could see storms roiling in the midnight depths of his eyes. Apparently he hadn't noticed that Charley's duplicate gun wasn't the one he'd tossed into the garbage
after killing Dianne
. "I advise you not to go around town telling lies like that." Kimball still spoke with authority, but his
voice had lost some of its self-assurance
.

Amanda moved closer to the porch, putting one foot on the bottom step as if she might go after him. "You tampered with my bike and caused it to be destroyed, and you're going to pay for that. I loved that bike."

"It's not a good idea to threaten people, Amanda, especially people with a lot more power than you have.”

She jutted her chin forward
defiantly
. “You think you have power? You have no idea the power I have. I need that gun you stole from me to prove I didn’t use it to kill Charley. Whatever you did with it, you need to find it and return it to me. If you don’t—” she moved
back from the steps and leveled her gaze on him
—“I’ll have to take Charley’s story to the cops
along with Dianne's murder weapon
.”

She spun around and stomped back down Roland Kimball's driveway before he
could
recover his arrogance
,
call her bluff and kill her on his porch, in front of God, his wife, Charley and all the creatures hiding in the trees and bushes.

“You need to be careful, Amanda.” He spoke softly, but the words were heavy and dark and carried well on the still night air.

Amanda glanced
back, trying to put a smug smirk
on her face. “No, Roland, you need to be careful.”

"That was awesome," Charley declared, strolling happily beside her. "I couldn't have done better myself."

"Go away." The adrenalin of righteous anger was leaving Amanda's brain, and fear was returning.

"I’m so proud of you, the way you stood up to him! Stroke of genius, telling him we had his gun hidden away in a safe place."

"Are you insane?
Well, yes, you are. And so am I, g
oing along with a madman's…a mad ghost's plan. Almost getting arrested. What would your mother think if she had to come bail me out of jail? And then on top of that, I stand there like a crazy woman, baiting a murderer!"

"So you finally believe me, that Kimball's a murderer, that he killed
Dianne and he killed
me?"

Amanda turned back to see the murderer in question still standing on his porch, watching them. In the moonlight his tall silhouette seemed to glow with an unholy light. "Yes, I believe you." She increased her pace toward the end of the driveway. "I believe he's an egotistical, self-centered monster who thinks he has the right to take the lives of commoners, and I believe I just tweaked his tail. I never should have listened to you!"

"But we had to do something. We can't let him get away with killing me."

Amanda whirled to face him. "Yes, we can! If he could do away with your ghost, too, I'd give him a medal. All I wanted to do was find evidence to prove I didn't kill you, but I think all we accomplished tonight was to set me up as his next victim."

“Nah. You warned him that your dad would get that gun and my story if anything happened to you.”

Amanda snorted. “Even if he believed me, what would it all prove? He studied law. He knows we can’t connect the gun to him without your eye witness testimony…and you’re dead. He’
ll probably feel a lot better when
I’m dead, too.”

Charley was quiet for a few moments as if considering that possibility. "He already tried to kill you once, and that didn't work."

Amanda walked through the gate which
c
lose
d quietly
behind her. Creepy. Obviously the jerk was watching her on video. She tried to shake off the feeling that he'd be watching her no matter where she went or what she did. "What if he succeeds this time?"

Again Charley was quiet, looking thoughtful.

Amanda wanted to shake him or punch him or somehow inflict physical pain, but that was now impossible, thanks to His Honor, the Mayor of Silver Creek. "What if he succeeds in killing me this time?" she demanded.

"It's not so bad," he finally said, "being dead."

Amanda glared at him, then shoved her motorcycle helmet onto her head. "Thank you
for sharing that information
. I feel so much better now."

Chapter Fifteen

Amanda did not feel safe until she was back at the house with the door closed and locked behind her. Even then she kept looking out the window of Charley's old bedroom, half expectin
g to see Kimball standing among
the trees, looking up at her, that self-satisfied smirk on his face, murder in his eyes.

"You're safe here," Charley reassured her. "Dad's a hunter, and he's got this old shotgun—"

Amanda whirled from the window to face him. "Shut up! I don't want to hear about any more freaking guns. That's what started this whole thing in the first place, Kimball's gun in the trash. I wish you'd never seen it, and you wouldn't have if you hadn't been hanging out with another man's wife." She plopped down on the edge of Charley's old desk chair. "After tonight, I believe he kill
ed
Dianne, but why? The man has everything. Why murder someone like Dianne, his former girlfriend, the town saint? They hadn't had any contact since college."