Philly Stakes, page 20
I squeezed Laura’s hand, trying to make the squeeze translate into “I never ever wanted to put you in jeopardy. Forgive me. Be brave. Help me be brave.”
“I’m sorry this has to happen,” Nick said. “But damn, it’s your own fault. Both of you. You, kid—if you hadn’t come downstairs that night…” He shook his head, still annoyed by Laura’s intrusion.
Laura’s eyes welled over, and she pulled her hand out of mine and wiped at them, almost angrily. “I do remember you,” she said with a shudder. “I thought it was just my imagination. A dream-memory. Something mixed up, but it wasn’t.” She was speaking to Nick, but she kept her head bent. She was almost doubled over, as if her stomach hurt. As if everything hurt. “This morning, outside the bakery, I thought—I got so scared when I saw you. It was like it cut my brain, it was so clear for a second. Then I was sure I was making it up. Imagining. But I saw you. I saw you standing where the tree had been. Just for a second, but I saw.”
“I know,” he said flatly. “I wish you hadn’t.”
“You would still have set a fire, wouldn’t you, though?” she asked, head still bowed. “So I’d be blamed.”
“Probably.” He tapped his right foot and scowled. I tried to scan his skull, read the brain paths, see his plan. His head went right to left, to the window, back to us, back to the window. He seemed ambivalent for a man who obviously had already reached some hard decisions.
“And you—” He meant me, this time. “All that crap about visiting this blind old lady-friend of your mother’s. All that cat and mouse.”
“But she was my mother’s friend! And that is why I went!” I realized, with a thudding fall that my reasons for visiting Silverwood might be innocent or guilty, but they were also irrelevant. I had gone and now I knew what I knew. And Nick knew what I knew. I fought off a powerful urge to abdicate, to curl into a fetal position and go to sleep, waking up someday, or not. I blinked hard, insisting on alertness. I was not going to spend my Christmas vacation getting killed.
There was reason for optimism, I told myself. For in fact, the living room lights were on, the curtains open, the street window at eye level. So if, for example, somebody decided to take an invigorating stroll in the cold and wet winter night air, and they chose my otherwise barely traveled street, and then they acted on a sudden urge to twist and contort so as to see around the Christmas tree boughs, we’d be completely visible. And surely, the passerby would then immediately run for help.
Maybe one of those “Little Streets of Philadelphia” walking tours was scheduled for tonight. Just because it was freezing and dark and the day after Christmas didn’t mean…
The fact was, I’d better think of a plan of my own that didn’t involve passersby.
“Right,” Nick was saying. “You didn’t know she was my mother. And sure, that wasn’t a game at the bakery this morning when you asked me who could have arrived at Clausen’s party in a taxi.”
“I never connected you with anything except that article you were supposedly writing. I didn’t even know your first name until five minutes ago when I hung up your coat.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Buy off the rack next time, Dominick.”
“And Laura’s being with you, that’s a coincidence, too, right?”
“Wrong. Laura’s with me for logical reasons. Her house burned down, and her father was killed. And her mother is not well. And her aunt and uncle are away. And I am her friend. And that’s why she’s here. The question is—why are you here?”
“Also for logical reasons.”
“I hope they involve shrimp and spaghetti.”
He looked at my Christmas tree. “I told you it was dangerous having a firebug as a houseguest. I warned you.”
I closed my eyes in a primitive denial reflex. He was going to burn us up. Repeat performance. “You have no imagination. It’s obvious that you’re not really a writer.” I opened my eyes. “There’s no deal with Philadelphia Magazine and no such thing as Oxlips, is there?”
“Hey,” he said, with a hint of the old smile. “We call it what we like. You say you’re visiting, I say I’m writing. Writing, visiting—”
“I know that one. The next line is ‘Let’s call the whole thing off.’ Can we?”
I had Sudden Stranger Syndrome with my own self. Who was this woman sitting straight as a cadet, heart in a prolonged aerobic workout, tossing second-rate lady-in-peril repartee around as if she were Myrna Loy with slingbacks and a dry martini? Nick didn’t seem overly impressed, but then, he wasn’t a Myrna Loy kind of guy. I couldn’t find out for sure, because our sophisticated banter was interrupted. Twice. The doorbell and the telephone both rang. “Ignore them,” Nick said.
I counted the phone rings. Eight. Nine. The doorbell rang a second and third time. Ten for the phone. A rapid knock at the door. Eleven.
The phone person obviously hadn’t read the telephone company’s suggested ten-ring maximum. Actually, in my house, three and a half rings is enough travel time from any point to an extension. At a saunter. My mother knows it, but she doesn’t care when she also knows I’m there. As when I’ve hung up on her in midcall.
Another knock at the door.
Go to it, I urged the phone. You’ve never given up before. Don’t start now.
Silence from outside. Nick listened hard, then relaxed. “One down,” he said. “One to go.” He moved sideways to the kitchen divider and the phone.
And then a form, a shadow, at the front window. Never had a Peeping Tom been more welcome. My random passerby. Our rescuer. Nick didn’t notice.
The persistent caller persisted one more time.
Nick lifted the receiver and slammed it back down.
Macavity, who had been sniffing around Nick’s grocery bag, jumped off the counter.
The window was a mirror on our side, the form on its dark side unidentifiable, obscured as well by the boughs of the Christmas tree, but I imagined him, pressing close for a better view, unable to believe his eyes.
Yes, it’s what you think! Two women at gunpoint. Quickly, run for the police!
“Laura!” The voice came from behind the window.
“No!” I shouted. “No! No heroics—use your brain, not your hormones!”
“Damn!” Nick said, walking to the door.
“Peter!” Laura’s voice was low and awed. “You found me. Peter found me, Miss Pepper!”
Big deal. Wonderful. I didn’t want to put a blight on young love, and Peter had been eliminated now as archvillain, but there were happier, saner options that he had overlooked.
“Come right in.” Nick stood at the front door, a malevolent caricature of the gracious host, his gun pointed toward the street. Peter rushed in, ignoring the gun, ignoring sanity, to kneel in front of Laura and silently inspect her. He seemed satisfied, and stood up. Both she and I shifted to make room on the sofa.
But he didn’t sit down. “You sure you’re all right?” he asked Laura. She nodded. He forgot to ask about my welfare, but I overlooked the slight along with the fact that he’d correctly identified Laura’s “M.P.” as Miss Pepper.
He wheeled around. “What do you think you’re doing, you son of a bitch!” For a moment, I believed. I thought we had gotten to the end of the reel, that by gum, Tom Trueheart had arrived, and Laura and I would be cut free of the train tracks and the villain roundly punished.
Except that Nick advanced on Peter with the gun and said, “What the hell do you think I’m doing? I’m going to kill them, and now you, too, punk. Sit down.”
I thought of Mackenzie boarding a plane even as we sat here about to die. How sad would he be? Would he blame this on Laura?
The phone started up again. “It won’t stop,” I said. “I assure you, it won’t, until I answer it and have a normal conversation with her.”
“How do you know who it is?”
“Trust me.”
“Then answer it,” he said. “And sound normal. Say anything weird, or give her a warning, and I will shoot Laura through the skull. Guaranteed.”
“Amanda!” my mother said. “Thank goodness! I called before and there was no answer.”
Mental telepathy with Peter had failed. Now I could use words, but only if they were coded. Except, my mind was a complete blank.
I looked around the room. Nick watched me warily. Laura and Peter stared. Her eyes were the size of satellite dishes.
“We were cut off!” My mother sounded agitated, worried still. “I thought something bad had happened.”
“How clever of you!” I said. “How true!” Get it, Mom? Something bad did happen, is happening. Call the police. Tell them to get here immediately!
“Don’t make fun of me. I was worried about you!”
“As well you should. You have every reason to feel that way.” Come on, you’re a bright woman. You’ve worried without cause your whole life. Now there’s cause. Help!
“You’re upsetting me.”
“Yes. I mean to,” I said.
Nick walked to the front window, waving his gun at the three of us with each step, and pulled the draperies closed. No more Peeping Toms tonight.
“Fine,” my mother said in the suffering-wounded-resigned voice that, along with the child, arrives on the delivery table. “You want to upset me, upset me. Whatever you say. I won’t take up any more of your time.” She sighed and then decided to do a dollop more of guilt mongering. “I just want you to know that I’ve planned out the vest. Looks like it’ll be very nice with the navy trim. About thirty inches long.”
“Eighty-six.” I didn’t know if she’d recognize that expression for killing something, but it seemed worth a try. Nick flashed a glance. “A great year,” I muttered. “What? What year?”
“Sorry. Measurement.”
“Eighty-six?” my mother said. “For heaven’s sake—that’s seven feet—a bridal gown with train! Are you crazy?” She sighed. “Look, what I was going ask is if you’d like patch pockets from the navy wool. I think they’d look nice.”
“Terrific idea. Navy’s very nice.”
“Big.”
“Very big. How does nine by eleven sound?” She had to get that, didn’t she? I couldn’t say nine-one-one. I couldn’t say dial emergency. She had to understand what I could say. Didn’t she?
Nick turned off all the lamps. Only the kitchen was still illuminated.
“Have you been drinking? Mandy, pockets that size would reach from your neck to—”
“Mom, I want you to do what I said.”
“Speed it up,” Nick said. “I don’t care how long your mother likes to talk. End it.”
I nodded. “I wish you’d listen to me, Mom.”
“I have been—and I hear somebody who’s had too much eggnog,” she said. “And with that little girl in your house, too! Eighty-six! Nine by eleven! We’ll talk tomorrow. I’m glad everything’s fine. Want some advice? Get a good night’s sleep.”
And that was that.
“I don’t know how many other family members think they need a chatting up tonight,” Nick said, “but I don’t care. Turn on your answering machine.” He stood in the shadowy living room, glowering over his revolver.
I leaned over the counter to the little black box, and reached out my forefinger. My last act on earth, activating an answering machine.
I turned the machine on. Then, inspired, or at least hopeful, I pressed another button, one on top, before I turned around.
“Okay,” Nick said. “I’m sorry, but this is how it has to be.”
“What’s going on?” Peter asked. “Who are you?”
“He killed my father.” Laura was sobbing. Softly, intently, as regularly as breathing. If we lived, I needed to think about that more, later. Think about how much grief she contained now, for so many, many reasons. “And an old man,” she said to Peter.
Nick fanned his gun back and forth across the three of us as he moved to the back of the house. “Wrong,” he said.
I stayed where I was, as near the kitchen light, as far from the sofa and the other two as possible, thinking to at least make target practice harder. Maybe we could coordinate ourselves, rush him from separate angles.
“I didn’t kill Donnaker,” Nick said to Laura. “Your old man did. And that wasn’t the first person he killed.”
Laura slowly absorbed this, physically, as if she were being pumped with it. Her puffed face swelled still more. There was a slick of tears on her cheeks.
“You didn’t do anything. Is that what you’re saying?” Peter’s voice was deep and menacing. I could almost feel his muscles ache to do something, anything. Despite his hair and black shirt, he was a kid. Blustering and unsure, using a belligerent voice as a weapon against a gun. “You had some kind of accident, I guess.”
Nick worked his way behind the counter and stuck his free hand into the brown paper bag. Out came a plastic bag of shrimp. Then a cellophane package of fresh pasta.
Were we going to eat first? Some kind of last meal?
“All the old guy wanted was an explanation,” he said. “It was like his heart was broken. You should have seen him when he realized what my mother’s story meant. Well, hell, you should have seen me when I realized what she was saying. I never had heard about it before. Anyway, all he wanted was for Clausen to make it right. Pay him back. Apologize. Anything. And Clausen killed him. It probably didn’t take much.” Out of the bag came a mushroom basket and green onions, then tomatoes and fresh basil.
“And what were you doing?” I asked. “Watching?”
Nick shrugged. “I wasn’t there. Donnaker was embarrassed, like it was all his fault, because Clausen had been his protégé, his son, can you believe it? I didn’t care. He had his angle, his reasons to be there, and I had mine. He wanted to make peace. I wanted to make a civilized business arrangement. Clausen had contracts to rebuild half the city. There was room to give me some of it. But when the old guy said could they be alone to talk it out, I figured what the hell—there was time to let them settle their score. I went outside for maybe fifteen minutes. Looked around. Nice neighborhood. House next door has this gigantic greenhouse out back.
“Except, when I came in, the old guy’s limp and broken, and Clausen’s standing over him with the cane. I had nothing to do with it. Nothing.” He put a small container of cream next to the vegetables and seafood.
Laura leaned forward. “I don’t understand. Who was he? Who are you?”
“Your father ruined my father. I could have been a rich kid like you. Fair is fair.” Nick reached into the bag again, but no more food emerged. Instead, he took out a small can of lighter fluid. I hadn’t seen one of those in a while. Not since refillable lighters during the golden age of smoking.
“Your mother came downstairs. She heard noises. Called down. Then clump, clump, she wasn’t walking all that steadily, you know. That’s when your father started dragging the old guy. Hiding him. Scared, because she must know him from way back. He was her husband’s boss. Practically his father.”
He pulled out rope—not a great seafaring coil, but twine, to wrap newspapers or packages. Out came matches. The man was prepared.
“Excuse me,” I said. “This is irrelevant but—what was all the food about?”
“If Laura hadn’t been here, I’d have had to wait for another time. We’d have eaten.”
“Listen,” I said, “if Alice Clausen saw you that night, she’ll remember. If you…hurt us, she’ll be able to figure it out.”
“Don’t make me laugh. She’ll be lucky if she remembers her name when she dries out.” He pulled rags out of the bag. “I went there to make a deal. Clausen wanted things, and I wanted part of them. He was going to own the whole damned city—why shouldn’t I get my share? Call it my father’s long-withheld commissions. With interest. We had a lot to talk about.”
“Isn’t it usually called blackmail?” I asked.
He flashed a dark flare of resentment. “I call it the truth. We could have made a deal, but he was crazy, threatening me, waving Donnaker’s cane, which I wasn’t about to have used on me. He forgot. He wasn’t dealing with an old man this time. I’m stronger and quicker than he was. So I’m sorry—but not for him. For me! What good is he to me dead? I’m back to square one.”
“Grow up, Junior!” I snapped. “Stop looking for the deal of the century.”
“I’m not into career counseling just now,” he said.
“I don’t understand anything!” Laura clutched the sofa cushions and looked close to hysteria.
I watched Nick carefully unwrap the twine. “Don’t do this,” I said. “Clausen was an accident—a scuffle, self-defense. This is on purpose. They’ll figure it out.”
“How? If the kid hadn’t come downstairs that night, nobody on God’s earth could connect me with what happened.”
“Well I’m not waiting for anybody to find anything out! You’re dead meat now!” Peter shouted as he leaped up, looming, black hair wild and eyes on fire. The suede chair tumbling backward as he propelled himself toward the counter.
“No!” Laura screamed, standing and rushing toward him.
Macavity smelled big trouble. His hair prickled and, unwilling to risk even one of his lives, he abandoned us, racing up the staircase. Which made me realize why you don’t hear too much about Famous Cat Heroes.
Then I forgot Macavity and feline cowardice, because Nick lifted the gun and pointed—he didn’t aim, he didn’t seem to think.
“Stop!” I screamed, but he pointed. And shot.
Peter seemed to rise up, float, then arch and buckle backward onto the floor.
The noise, the sight, exploded inside me. I was filled with screams and blackness and had to grab the counter to prevent myself from falling.
When I opened my eyes, Laura was bent over Peter, crying, repeating his name. She lifted her hand off his sweatshirt. It was covered with blood.
I had seen a million gunshots in movies and television, read about them casually in mysteries, and they were nothing, absolutely nothing, like this thing that had happened here and now in my living room in real life, to a real human being.
