“Jay knew about Leland and me. He and I ended our fling about the time I met Leland. Jay also knew about the Fernley place. I told him to take Harry there, tell Harry Candy was there, that she wanted to talk to him, make some sort of a deal. Jay knew this was it, end of the line. He dropped Harry off, didn’t come inside. I was in the house, alone. I told Jay I would let him know when Harry was gone. Harry had a duffel bag with a hundred thousand dollars in it he was going to give to Candy. It was supposed to appease her, keep her quiet, buy Harry a little more time. As instructed, he came in the house without knocking, and I crushed his skull with a length of iron pipe. I’d practiced on a tree outside, hitting it at about the right height. One hit as he came through the door and Harry was gone. Not just out, but gone from this earth.
“And, God, was I happy. I stood over him for five minutes, weeping for joy. For a while I couldn’t see through my tears.
“But then Jay was the problem. The brokerage account was in my name alone. I had nearly four million dollars and Jay was going to want half. If he didn’t get it, I knew he would blow the whistle on both of us and damn the consequences. We’d been close once, but as far as I was concerned, he couldn’t be trusted.”
Still working on my hands, Jeri snorted. “Speaking of people who can’t be trusted.”
Julia chose to ignore that. “I went to his house. I had my Glock and the pipe and I went in with a key I had from the time we were together. He was drinking. He was about half drunk when I pointed the gun at his head and told him to turn around. I didn’t want to shoot him because of the noise. Goddamn Glock is loud, but I would have shot him if I had to. He was stupid and turned around, so I hit him with the pipe—not too hard, just enough to put him down. He was out, not dead, but he was after I wrapped a plastic bag over his head and kept it there for an hour while I did other things.”
Suddenly the rope was off my wrists, but my hands didn’t come free. Which made no sense. Then Jeri shifted and whispered in my ear, “Bitch put one of those plastic ties around our wrists, too. I can’t do anything with that. I’m going to turn around and try to free your legs.”
I felt her move, push against me, felt her weight move along my body, knees in my back, then the pressures changed and she was working on the rope around my ankles.
Julia said, “When I was young, a teenager, my dad had a fire going in the fireplace. The logs were round, set in the fireplace in a dangerous way, as we found out. Once the bottom logs burned down, the top log rolled out, right into the middle of the room, sparks and embers flying. I remember screaming when it came out, this flaming thing rolling out into the room. My dad jumped up and kicked it, got it back onto the hearth. It’s still a very sharp memory. Interesting how the past works, though. It gives you ideas. I know fire people, like marshals, can go through a place and determine how a fire was set. They can find traces of gasoline or whatnot, and then they know. So I started a fire in Jay’s fireplace and got the logs burning. I took the bag off his head and dragged him up into a recliner, put some booze in a glass nearby like he’d been drinking, which he had, then waited. I had to wait a long time, until the logs looked about right, then I used a poker to pull the top log off and roll it out into the room. It sat on the rug, burning. After a while the room started filling with smoke and a smoke alarm went off so I got out of there. It was dark. I’d parked up the street. I got in my car and left. Jay was dead. All I could do was hope everything looked right. Later, though, they said it was murder so I guess it didn’t fly.”
“No smoke in his lungs,” I said.
“Huh?”
“He was dead when the fire started. They wouldn’t find any smoke in his lungs. You have no idea what you’re doing.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute, then went on as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “Anyway, I went back to Fernley and got Harry into the back of this car, where you are now—and in case you didn’t know, that bundle beside you is Leland. With Harry gone, Jayson Wexel dead, Candy dead, Leland was getting flaky. I’ll tell you about Candy in a moment. Last night, Leland and I had a good time at the Fernley house, one last time, but I couldn’t let him keep worrying about everything and possibly blowing it.”
“Black widow,” Jeri said.
For a moment I thought Julia would take offense to that, but she kept driving. I felt my skin crawl, lying there next to Leland.
“I took Harry up to the trailer. There’s an old mining tunnel in the side of the mountain not far from where Jay put the trailer, and there’s a shaft in the tunnel off to one side that goes down fifty feet and ends in a pile of rubble. It used to be boarded up, but the boards have rotted out. Candy was still at the trailer. I told her the money was ready and all we needed to do was get rid of Harry. She and I dropped him down the shaft, after she’d cut off
