The 9th Judgment

Chapter 27

SARAH WELLS FLIPPED the chicken-fried steak in the pan and removed the garlic bread from the oven, thinking that it was all heart-attack food-or was that just wishful thinking?

The TV was on in the next room. Sarah could see it through the wall opening and could hear Helen Ross, the pretty, blond talk-show host, over the crackling of grease in the pan. Ross was sympathizing with Marcus Dowling about the pain of losing his wife.

“Come on, Helen,” Sarah muttered. “Put him on the grill. Don’t be a jerk.”

“She was so happy,” Dowling was saying. “We’d had this lovely dinner with friends. We were going on holiday, and then-this. The unimaginable.”

“It is unimaginable,” Ross said. She reached out to touch Dowling’s hand. “Casey had such spirit, such charisma. We did a Red Cross fund-raiser together last year.”

“There is no way to describe the agony,” Dowling said. “I keep thinking, If only I hadn’t done the washing up-”

Trevor came into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and bent to take out a beer, his girth falling over the waistband of his underwear. He popped the top, took a swig of Bud, then walked behind his wife and grabbed her ass.

“Hey,” she said, moving out of his reach.

“What’s with you?”

“Here,” she said, handing him the tongs. “Take over, okay?”

“Where’re you going?”

“I’ve had a tough day, Trev.”

“You ought to see a doctor, you know.”

“Shut up.”

“Because you’re on the rag all the time.”

Sarah sank into the couch and turned up the volume. All she’d thought about since she stole the jewelry was Marcus Dowling, trying to understand what the hell had happened once she’d bailed out the window.

“You couldn’t have known,” Helen Ross was saying.

The pan slammed on the stove behind her, Trevor trying to get her attention. On the TV, Dowling was saying, “The police haven’t turned up anything, and meanwhile this killer is free.”

Sarah finally got it. She didn’t know why he did it, but it was he. Dowling had killed his wife! There was no one else it could be. How convenient that Sarah had broken into his house so that he could set her up to take the fall.

Trevor said, “Chow’s on, darlin’. Your Cheerios are just the way you like ’em.”

Sarah turned off the TV and went to the dinette. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said, thinking it was better to apologize than to get him more wound up. Sometimes he could get physical. When she talked to Heidi about Trevor, they called him “Terror.” It was an apt nickname.

Trevor grunted, sawed on his steak, and said, “Don’t worry about it. I just wonder sometimes what you did to the sweet little girl I married.”

“One of life’s mysteries,” she said.

“What you meant to say was, ‘I’ll make it up to you tonight, sweetie.’ Isn’t that right?”

Sarah ducked Trevor’s glare and dipped her spoon into the bowl of cereal. She was going to have to step up the schedule. Maybe it wasn’t right, but she was going to get rich or go to jail.

There really wasn’t any other choice.

Chapter 28

SARAH WENT THROUGH the yard. Everything was dark except for the twinkle of the small light on the back porch, and where moonlight filtered through the tree limbs. The light was a signal that the back door was unlocked behind the screen.

The door swung open under Sarah’s hand, and she walked quietly up to the woman who was washing some dishes in the sink. Sarah put her arms around the woman’s waist and said, “Don’t scream.”

“Wow. You got here fast,” Heidi said, spinning around.

“Terror was passed out, as usual,” Sarah said, kissing Heidi, swaying with her in the dim light of the kitchen. “Where’s Beastly?” she asked, referring to Heidi’s husband.

Heidi reached up to a cabinet, took out two glasses, and said to Sarah, “You know what he always says. ‘Anywhere but here.’ Want to get the bottle out of the fridge?”

The staircase creaked under their feet, and so did the floorboards in the hallway that led past the kids’ room to a dormered bedroom at the back of the second floor.

“How long can you stay?” Heidi asked. She turned up the baby monitor, then unbuttoned her pale-yellow sweater and stepped out of her jeans.

Sarah shrugged. “If he wakes up and finds me gone, what’s he going to do? Call the police?”

Heidi undressed Sarah, carefully undid the oversize shirt one slow button at a time, unzipped the low-riding jeans, marveled as she ran her hands over Sarah’s lean runner’s body. Sarah was so strong.

“Your body is the next best thing to having a body like this myself,” Heidi said.

“You’re perfect. I love everything about you.”

“That was my line. Get into the bed, now. Go on.”

Heidi handed Sarah a glass and eased in next to her love, her sweetheart. The two women got comfortable in the iron bedstead under the eaves, Heidi putting a hand on Sarah’s thigh, Sarah drawing Heidi closer under her protective arm.

“So what’s on our travelogue tonight?” Heidi asked.

Sarah had a list of three places, but she had a special feeling about Palau. She told Heidi, “It’s so far from anywhere. You can swim naked in these amazing grottoes. Nobody cares about who you are,” she said.

“No problems with a quartet of two women, two kids?”

“We’ll say we’re sisters. You’re widowed.”

“Oh, because the family resemblance is so strong?”

“Sisters-in-law, then.”

“Okay. And about the language? What is it?”

“Palauan, of course. But they speak English, too.”

“All right, then. To life in Palau,” Heidi said, touching Sarah’s glass with hers. They sipped and kissed with their eyes open, then the glasses were put aside and they reached for each other, Heidi listening to the baby monitor, Sarah with an eye to the window, fear driving their passion into high gear.

As Heidi stripped off Sarah’s panties, Sarah was thinking, We can escape as soon as the last jobs are done. As soon as the jewels are sold.

“Sarah?”

“I’m here, Heidi. Thinking of the future.”

“Come to me now.”

Sarah had a sudden thought. She should tell Heidi about that woman and child she’d heard about who were killed in a parking garage, warn her to be very careful-but a second later, the thought faded and another came into focus.

She would sell everything but that yellow stone. One day soon, she’d give it to Heidi.