Killer Market

“Help me,” I told Heather, who was puffing like a little steam engine as we both reached the sinuous set of steps at the same time.

I fumbled for the brake release, then we gave the thing a mighty tug and swirled it out into open space just as Pell finally found the lights.

Dazzled by the sudden brightness, I looked up into Drew Patterson’s startled face the exact instant she lost her balance and tumbled down the steps. The gun went flying and she bounced a couple of times, then landed at the bottom, whimpering with pain.

“You bitch!” said Heather.

“Why?” I asked.

“It was an accident,” Drew moaned. “An accident.”

“Accident?” Heather was speechless with rage. “You damn near kill us and all you can say is it’s a fucking accident?”

“Shut up, Heather,” I said pleasantly. “Which was the accident, Drew? Chan’s death or Evelyn’s?”

“My shoulder,” she moaned. “I think it’s broken.”

“Then tell me what I want to know and I’ll see about an ambulance.”

Her face was gray and twisted with pain, but I was having a hard time mustering up any sympathy.

“Both of them were accidents,” she wailed. “Honest. I was mad at Chan.”

“He was going off to Malaysia without you,” I said, “so you killed him.”

“I didn’t know he was that allergic. I just wanted to make him a little sick. First I wasn’t going to, but he was flirting with you, he was rude to Dad, rude to me—”

She tried to sit up, then gasped in agony.

“So while he was dancing with your mother, you went back to the ALWA party, put a couple of those brownies in a plastic bag that was lying on the table and smashed up some of your mother’s penicillin tablets. Then, when he was leaving and stopped to say goodnight, you slipped them into his pocket.”

“I told him to think about me when he was eating them. But I only meant to make him sick, not kill him. I swear it!”

“But you did mean to kill Evelyn so that you could have him,” I said inexorably.

“No! It really was an accident. I tripped and bumped the stairs. You see how easy they are to move. I barely touched them, but they went flying and poor Evelyn—Oh, my shoulder! Please. Please.”

I turned away, sickened, and saw Pell a few feet away. His hands were clenching and unclenching and his face was ghastly.

“You came rushing up to Savannah that day. I thought you were upset because of Evelyn, but you knew she’d seen you and you were afraid she’d tell. That’s why you kept saying what a horrible accident it was, over and over, until Savannah reached out her hand and smoothed your hair and started crying. And cried for two days until they came for her. You did that. To both of them.”

Then that gentle man spat on the floor beside her and turned to go let the police in at the rear door.

27

« ^ “The enjoyment of light in darkness could not be realized practically to any great extent without the means of vessels, or other mechanical devices of some sort, to contain in place, or convey to the action of heat, the fuels, oils, gases, etc., from which light is drawn.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872

I met Savannah again at the end of the summer.

That’s how long it was before I could borrow one of my brothers’ pickup truck and go pick up my headboard at Mulholland where Pell had stored it for me.

When I called Dixie to see which weekend would work for her, she mentioned that Savannah was going to be in town. “She’s going to stay with Pell while she clears her stuff out of Mulholland.”

How could I resist?

Dixie invited me to spend the night, so I took the three of them out to dinner at Noble’s—a much less crowded Noble’s. The food was even more delicious when you didn’t feel as if you were in the middle of the conversation at the next table.

The changes in Savannah were astonishing. Her hair was still gray, but shingled to take advantage of its coarse texture. Gone were the layers of pastel chiffon, but she was not totally dressed in black either. Instead, she wore chic black pants with thin white pinstripes, a black short-sleeved silk sweater over a white cotton shirt, and shiny black patent high-heeled sandals.

“Maybe I’ll graduate to purple by next year,” she said sardonically when she caught me staring.

They brought me up to date on things that happened after my week of court was up last April. Some of it I already knew, of course. When I made my original deposition, Underwood admitted that he’d given me all that information for a reason. “From the things Major Bryant said, I figured you must be a pretty good catalyst.”

I also knew that Drew was out on a very high bond while her attorneys kept stalling the actual trial, that Dixie and Pell had “found” Chan’s signed and witnessed will, and that Lynnette was now living with the Ragsdales in Maryland—“But she and Shirley Jane are coming to spend a week here before school starts.”