“The whole thing took two hours,” Victoria said in a voice so calm it took my breath away. “I edited out the more tedious parts. And I had to change memory cards in the camera and put in a new battery, but, well…you get the idea.
“I think it’s only fitting that at least one of you should die like Jonathan.” She looked at each of us in turn. “And I think that someone should be”—she spun in place, considering the available options—“his lovely daughter,” she said. “The one whom Jonathan called ‘daughter’ all these many years.”
“No!” Kayla said in a thin voice. “Oh, God, no.” She wrenched at the ropes, then sagged on them, crying when her legs gave out.
“The one,” Victoria went on calmly, “who didn’t have the wits to stay in Ithaca, where death would have been so much faster, relatively painless.”
“Please, no,” Kayla wailed. “I can’t.”
“But of course you can,” Victoria said. “You’re a bright girl. You can do anything you set your mind to. Surely your loving father taught you that.”
Kayla continued to cry weakly. It was terrible to hear. I tried to close my ears to it, but couldn’t.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll fight her.” Tough words, but in fact it was a coward’s way out. I wanted this to be over and that was one way to accomplish it.
Victoria turned. She smiled. “Ah, a volunteer. Such bravery. Such chivalry. The world is saved.”
It was anything but bravery. I damn well didn’t want to die the way Jonnie had, inch by horrible inch, possibly with steel in my eye. But I couldn’t watch Kayla die like that. Or Jeri. I couldn’t.
“Not him,” Jeri said in a hard, tough voice. “Me. I’ll take on that anorexic little bitch. I’ll chop your psycho slut daughter into pieces the size of scallops.”
Slowly, Victoria turned and stared at her. “My God, we are awash in heroic figures.”
Jeri’s eyes blazed. “If you touch him again, just touch him, I swear in Christ’s name that when I die I will curl up in your brain and leave you with gibbering nightmares until the end of time.”
“Goodness!” Victoria exclaimed. “That sounds very much like love.”
Jeri looked straight at me. “It is.”
For an instant I thought my heart had stopped. My vision blurred, fractured into shards of rainbow-colored light.
“Look,” Winter said, staring at me. “He’s crying. How sweet.” Her eyes, however, were volcanic pools of fury.
“You’re jealous,” I managed to say. “No one gives a fuck about you, kid, including your crazy mama. God, how she must hate you, Jonnie’s kid—”
Winter punched me full in the face, bouncing my head off the concrete wall.
My skull throbbed. A wave of nausea returned, but I managed to grin at her anyhow, tasting blood. “Part of you is almost human, isn’t it? A very small part.”
But already the moment was over. Winter smiled at me, rubbing her knuckles. She arched her back. “When I do you, cowboy, I’ll do it topless in that thong like in the video, give you a real nice show.”
I glanced indifferently at her chest. “Yeah? What with?”
A murderous look filled her eyes. After a sharp word from Victoria, she grabbed the television and video player and carried them into the other room, pausing at the door to give me a long, lethal stare, like a monitor lizard eyeing a rat.
Victoria tilted her head at me. “Was anything…unusual found in Jonnie’s skull? Nothing was mentioned in the news.”
I gave her a blank look. “In his skull? Unusual? Like what?” I wasn’t about to give the fiendish bitch the satisfaction.
“So you don’t…well, I’m not surprised. Winter and I played a little joke.”
“Did you?”
“A symbolic gesture, very appropriate. Nothing important.” She turned away.
“Where is Jonnie now?” I asked. “His body, I mean.”
Victoria shrugged. “Out back with Milliken, buried under newly planted roses beneath a layer of lime and powdered sulfur to keep dogs from showing any interest, not that they would —we put the two of them down deep. The soil digs easily, and we were motivated, Winter and I. By the way, the desert here is alkaline. Sulfur’s good for plants.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “What about my nephew, Gregory?”
“What about him?”
“Did you…how did he…?”
“Die? A lot quicker than Jonathan, but he was much better with the foil. He had intuition and was surprisingly athletic. The best full-contact sparring partner Winter’s ever had, not that he made any contact himself. He was an extremely nosy person, but quite taken with her, the way she was dressed. He came inside for a Coke, and once he regained consciousness from the tap I gave him from behind, she entertained him in this room while I drove his car down to the Peppermill Hotel and walked back. You saw how Winter entertains. In spite of your silly vindictive comments, she has a very nice body.”
“You didn’t have to kill him.”
“We found him on hands and knees at the back of the house, trying to peer through a window into the basement.” She waved a hand, indicating the room beyond the door. “How was I to know what he’d seen? Maybe nothing, but I was most annoyed to find him out there snooping around. One look at Winter, though, and, well, you know the rest. We returned him to his office at three in the morning. His head, that is. The rest is under a honeysuckle beside the garage. It’s doing very nicely, too. Plants like food as much as the rest of us.”
“You’re insane,” I said.
“Oh, I should think that’s perfectly obvious. But at least life is interesting.”
Her eyes took in everyone in the room. “Talk it over. Decide which of you will try their hand against Winter first.”
Then she was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“ME,” I SAID.
“None of us,” Jeri responded, giving me
