fun like Disney World.'
'I know what I heard,' Leo said. 'And I heard something.'
'Well, I wish you'd hurry up and kill her,' Betty said. 'I don't like standing here like this. What if one of the neighbors comes over? How will it look?'
'Downstairs,' Leo said to me.
'And don't make a mess,' Betty said. 'I just cleaned down there. Choke her like you did Nathan. That worked out good.'
It was the second time in twenty-four hours someone had pointed a gun at me, and I was beyond scared. I was vacillating between cold, stark terror and being truly pissed. My stomach was hollow from fear, and the rest of my body was spastic with the need to grab Leo by his shirtfront and rap his head against the wall until his fillings fell out of his teeth.
I imagined Lula was scrambling to help, calling the police. And I knew what I needed was to stall for time, but it was hard to think coherently. I was sweating in Betty's forty-degree kitchen. It was the cold sweat of someone facing death badly. Not ready to go.
'I don't g-g-get it,' I said to Leo. 'Why are you doing all this killing?'
'I only kill when I have to,' Leo said. 'It's not like it's indiscriminate. I wouldn't have killed that sales clerk, but she pulled Betty's ski mask off.'
'She seemed like such a nice girl, too,' Betty said. 'But what could we do?'
'I'm a n-n-nice girl,' I said.
'We didn't even get any information from her,' Leo said. 'I cut off her finger to show I was serious, and she still wouldn't talk. What kind of a person is that? All she said was that Maxine was in Point Pleasant. Big deal. Point Pleasant. Maxine and twenty thousand other people.'
'Maybe that was all she knew.'
Leo shrugged.
I did a panicked search for another question. 'You know what else I don't get? I don't get why you scalped Mrs. Nowicki. Everybody else had their finger cut off.'
'I forgot my clippers,' Leo said. 'And all she had in the house was this dinky paring knife. You can't do real good work with a paring knife. Not unless it's supersharp.'
'I keep telling you, you should take ginko,' Betty said. 'You don't remember anything anymore.'
'I'm not taking any damn ginko. I don't even know what ginko is.'
'It's an herb,' Betty said. 'Everybody takes it.'
Leo rolled his eyes. 'Everybody. Unh.'
Lula bobbed up at the window again. And this time she had a gun in her hand. She squinted and sighted and BAM! The window shattered, and a rooster pot holder hanging from a hook on the opposite wall jumped in place.
'Jesus H. Christ,' Leo said, dodging aside, whirling around to face the window.
'Drop your gun, you punk-ass old coot,' Lula yelled. 'You don't drop your gun, I'm gonna bust a cap up your ass!'
Leo shot at the window. Lula returned fire, taking out the microwave. And Betty and I dove under the table.
Sirens whooped in the distance.
Leo ran for the front door, where there was more gunfire and a lot of cussing from both Leo and Lula. Police strobes flashed through the front windows, and there was more shouting.
'I hate this part,' Betty said.
'You've done this before?'
'Well, not exactly like this. It was much more orderly last time.'
Betty and I were still under the table when Morelli came in.
'Excuse me,' Morelli said to Betty. 'I'd like to speak to Ms. Plum in private.'
Betty crawled out and stood and looked like she didn't know where to go.
I crawled out, too. 'You might want to detain her,' I said to Morelli.
Morelli passed her off to a uniform and glared at me. 'What the hell's going on here? I answer my page and it's Lula screaming how someone's shooting you.'
'Well, he didn't actually get around to shooting me.'
Morelli sniffed. 'What's that smell?'
'Dead guy in the basement. Leo's partner.'
Morelli wheeled around and went downstairs. A minute later he came up smiling. 'That's Nathan Russo.'
'And?'
'He's our friendly neighborhood funny money distributor. He's the guy we've been watching.'
'Small world.'
