Courting Trouble

“Beth, please, put down the gun.” Anne’s tongue still tasted of wine, but its effects had vanished. “If you want to talk about something, we can talk about it. But not with a gun—”

“Don’t you dare tell me what to do!” Beth bellowed, her fair skin mottled. Her blond braid was in disarray, her lips trembling with anger. “Tell me when you started fucking Gil! It was you he wanted all along!”

“No, never.” Anne shook her head in disbelief. She flashed on the scene in the conference room, when Gil was drunk. Then the call on the cell phone tonight. “I never felt anything for Gil. I never did anything—”

“Liar!” Beth screamed. “He used to talk about you all the time, and when we broke up and I filed suit, he went and hired you!” The gun bored into Anne, making her breathless with fear.

“No, please—” Tears sprang to Anne’s eyes. She imagined the bullet tearing into her, ripping flesh and heart. She flashed on her entrance hall, drenched in blood. She knew just what it would look like. She’d be shot to death in her entrance hall. The horror had come full circle.

“I loved him and you took him from me!” Beth shouted, her features contorted with fury, spitting into Anne’s face. “He didn’t mean anything to you! I was going to leave Bill for him, but it was you he wanted! And you’re already on to Matt! Bill was right about that, you are a whore!”

Anne struggled to regain control. She had to do something. She tried to think.

“I was here Friday night!” Beth ranted. “I wanted to kill you for what you did to me, and I did, I killed you! But it turned out it wasn’t you at the door! And now Gil saved your life, I saw it on TV! Now he’s more in love with you than ever!”

Anne’s brain jolted with the revelation. Kevin wasn’t the murderer. It was Beth who had killed Willa. Her thoughts raced. Kevin must have been watching Anne’s house that night. He had seen Beth shoot Willa and he thought she’d shot Anne. He must have come over, picked up the murder weapon in shock, then dropped it. My God. It was Beth, all along!

“This time you’re going to stay dead,” Beth said evenly. “Bye-bye.” She raised her gun and aimed it point- blank between Anne’s eyes.

“No!” Anne screamed and whipped her arms upward into the gun. Crak! The gun exploded in a deafening report.

“You bitch!” Beth roared, enraged.

“Help!” Anne screamed and shoved Beth to the floor, bolting past her for the staircase. She took the stairs two-by-two as a second gunshot rang out. Crak!

“Help! Somebody! Please!” Anne screamed as she tore up the stairs. Where was she going? What would she do? She had no gun, she’d turned it in. Was there time to dial 911? She had a phone in her bedroom. She hit the second-floor landing with Beth running up the stairs behind her. She swung around the landing for the lighted bedroom before Beth could get off another shot.

“Help!” Anne screamed but nobody came. Where were her neighbors? Mr. Berman? Mr. Monterosso? All of them?

She tore down the hall and into her bedroom. She darted to the desk for the phone but it was too late. Beth was coming down the hall, running toward the bedroom. Anne grabbed her thick laptop from her desk, spun on her heels, and flung it at Beth’s face. It landed with a resounding thwack, then fell to the rug.

“Aargh!” Beth’s hand flew to her nose. Crak! The gun went off with an ear-splitting sound. Flame flared from the muzzle. Anne felt the heat of a bullet whizz past her cheek. The thought terrified her. Beth bent over, cupping her nose. Blood poured through her fingers.

Anne ran for her life. She bolted from the bedroom screaming, streaking for the stairwell and downstairs for the front door. In the next second Beth was after her, her footsteps hard on the stair.

Anne raced to the front door. She couldn’t make it in time. She’d be shot undoing the chain-lock. She’d have to fight. She looked around wildly. The rolled-up rug in the Hefty bag. Perfect!

She snatched the rug off the living room floor and swung it like a bat at Beth’s waist just as she hit the living room, raising her gun. The rug smacked Beth full-force. She doubled over, jarring the gun free. It fell to the living room rug, and Anne dove for it. She had it aimed on target by the time Beth straightened up, bleeding profusely from her nostrils and still howling with fury.

“You won’t shoot me!” Beth shouted, spitting blood.

Anne found herself shaking with rage. She hadn’t shot Kevin, but she couldn’t get off a clear shot then. She could now. She looked down the barrel of the gun, an old Colt revolver. No safety. Ready to fire.

Anne felt a surge of adrenaline. She could kill Beth. She should kill her. She should blow her face clean off. It seemed suddenly like a very good idea. The best Plan B Anne had had to date. No Lucy episode to cover this one. It was real life. She moved the site down, training the revolver between Beth’s blue eyes.

Anne flashed on everything Beth had put her through. She had just tried to kill her, she would have killed her. She had killed Willa. It must have been why Kevin was stalking her, not because he was in love with her, but because he knew she’d killed Anne. And she thought of Willa, her murder still unavenged, her lifeblood staining the walls.

Anne looked numbly at the gun in her hand. Then her gaze fell on something else. The Italian charm, twinkling around her neck, outside the tank top. It reminded her of Mrs. DiNunzio. The fragrant little kitchen. The percolating coffee. It reminded her of friendship, of family, and of love.

Anne’s fingers tightened on the smoking gun.

And she made her choice.

33

The fifth of July, a Tuesday morning, dawned clear and cool, the temperature hovered at a civilized seventy degrees and with no humidity. The sky over Philadelphia had a crystal-blue clarity, bringing the glitzy, metallic skyline into crisp focus. The sun was still low, lingering behind the skyscrapers, sleeping in after a busy holiday weekend of Uncle Sam stovepipes and red platform shoes.

The city was going back to work, collectively recharged. Boxy, white SEPTA buses barreled down streets that had been closed to traffic yesterday. Green-shirted employees of the business district speared cups and paper bags from the gutter. Storefronts rolled up their security cages on chattery, greased chains. People strolled to work a little late, wearing clean shirts with fresh tans, holding briefcases they hadn’t opened over the weekend. Many of them, like Anne, carried a folded newspaper under an arm.

FOURTH OF JULY FIREWORKS! read her Daily News headline, a special edition. Anne would have preferred CASE CLOSED, because the Chipster trial wouldn’t be going forward. Matt was at the courthouse, filing a notice of withdrawal. It would have been difficult to maintain a lawsuit with the plaintiff in custody for murder one.

Anne walked with her head held high, on taupe Blahniks. She wore a linen suit the color of buttercream with a white stretch T-shirt. She was feeling almost normal again, except that normal now meant no sunglasses, no lipstick, and a scar. And she was going in late to work because she’d dyed her hair back to its original color. Mental note: Life is too short to be anything but a redhead.

Her step was strong and lively as she strode the last block to work, down Locust. Part of her happiness was her clothes, but most of it was her new idea. The very thought buoyed her even as she floated toward the sea of cameras, reporters, and newsvans outside her office building. Uniformed police, eight of them, managed to keep the press from blocking traffic, and Anne smiled at the irony of the sight. It was more cops than she’d seen all weekend.

A reporter on the fringe of the crowd recognized her first and started running toward her. “Ms. Murphy, how did you catch the killer?” “What was Beth Dietz’s motive?” “We want the exclusive!” Other reporters started turning around, and camera lenses swung toward Anne. “Ms. Murphy! Anne! Over here!” they all started calling, and flooded toward her, breaking away as a mob.

Anne brandished her folded Daily News and met the throng. “No comment!” she said, waving them off as she plunged into the crowd. “I have no comment!”

She pushed through the crowd to the clicking of motor drives and the whirring of videocameras, but her way