Triple Threat

story to her housekeeper.

The simple death he’d described to Carmel Rodriguez was anything but.

“I’m so sorry, Carmel… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. You remember that day in July, just a year ago? I was going to take the phone Freddy gave me and record them?”

“Yes, Mrs. Sarah.”

“After you left, I started to go down there. But I met Daniel on the stairs.” Her gaze shifted slightly, taking in the handyman. “He had me come back to my apartment and he told me what they’d just said—that the Beasts wanted him to help kill me. He said they had it all planned. There was nothing anybody could do to stop them.”

“Why not go to the police?” Carmel demanded.

Sarah replied, “Because at worst they’d get a few years in jail for conspiracy. And then they’d be out again, after somebody else. I started thinking about what I told you. Remember the moth?”

“The big moth you and your husband saw in Malaysia. With the wings that look like a snake.”

“That’s right. But I decided: One way to protect yourself is to disguise yourself as a snake. The other way is to be the snake itself. I fight back. I couldn’t kill them but I could make it look like they killed me. I didn’t ask Daniel to help me but he wanted to.”

“I was so mad at them and worried about you and about Rosa! John hinted that he’d been watching her, watching our daughter!”

Sarah said, “The Westerfields were very accommodating. John already had the Taser and the tape and the garbage bags.” She gave a wry laugh. “Think of all the money I’ll waste at Beacon Brothers funeral home here—that damn expensive casket. There are so many cheaper ways to go.”

Daniel said, “We pretended to forge a contract selling the building to them and then took all of the jewelry and cash Mrs. Sarah had in the apartment. She kept some and gave me a very generous amount.”

“And in my will I left Freddy here—” Sarah glanced to the side of the sun room she sat in, apparently where her other coconspirator, her nephew, sat. “—all my personal belongings. Probate took a little while but six months later everything was delivered here. Ah, but back to the scene of the crime, eh, Daniel?”

He winced and looked at Carmel. “When the Westerfields were out and you were shopping, we both went downstairs. I put on gloves and took one of John’s hammers and Mrs. Sarah cut herself. We got her blood on it and some hairs, too. And put some duct tape on her mouth for a minute and we added some of Miriam’s hairs. I rubbed her toothbrush on it, for the DNA. Sarah stuck herself with the sharp points on that Taser. We hid those things in their apartment, then I tried to hack into Mrs. Sarah’s banking accounts from Miriam’s computer.”

“I used to watch CSI,” Sarah said. “I know how these things work.”

“I left the city permits and maps in John’s office.” Daniel started to laugh then reined in when he saw his wife staring at him in dismay. “I was going to say it was funny because we thought the permits would be obvious. But the police missed those entirely; they thought she had been buried in New Jersey. But they missed it; it was Mr. Caruso who figured out about the foundations.”

Sarah said, “And I took the train down here. I’ve had to lead a pretty quiet life—they call it staying off the grid, right Freddy?”

A man’s voice, “That’s right, Aunt Sarah.”

“But I love it in Virginia. It’s so peaceful. I lived here a long time ago and I’d always thought I’d come back to spend my last years in horse country.”

Daniel now turned to Carmel. “I’m sorry, love. I couldn’t tell you!” Daniel said. “This was a crime, what Mrs. Sarah and I did. Putting those people in jail. I wanted to, I wanted to tell you a hundred times. I couldn’t let you get involved.”

Carmel was regarding her husband. “And the money… You said you were opening an account for the girl’s school… And you always had those fifty-dollar bills. I always wondered.”

Sarah said, “He risked a lot to save me. I was very appreciative.” Her voice faded. “And now I think it’s time for my nap. I’d invite you to come down but it’s probably not a good idea for either of you to visit a dead woman, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, Mrs. Sarah.”

“Good-bye, Carmel.”

Both women held their hands up in waves of farewell and Eddie Caruso, a good judge of timing, clicked the TV off.

Caruso said good-bye to the family, suspecting there would be more discussion of the events between husband and wife on the way home. He thought about lowering the bill yet more, but decided against it. After all, he’d done the job, and the case had had more or less a happy ending.

Even if it was entirely unexpected.

But that’s another thing about Game, maybe what really defines a person or event as Game or not: You never know ahead of time how it’s going to turn out.

Speaking of which…

Eddie Caruso propped up his iPad and typed on the keyboard. He was just in time to see Tottenham versus Everton. Fantastic.

You could never lose with Premier League football.

Well, soccer.

Paradice

On one side was rock, dark as old bone. On the other a drop of a hundred feet.

And in front, a Ford pickup, one of those fancy models, a pleasant navy-blue shade. It cruised down the steep grade, moving slow. The driver and passenger enjoying the Colorado scenery.

Those were his choices: Rock. Air. Pickup.

Which really wasn’t much of a choice at all as a means to die.

John Pellam jammed his left boot on the emergency brake again. It dropped another notch toward the floor. The pads ground fiercely and slowed the big camper not at all. He was going close to sixty.

He downshifted. Low gear screamed and the box threatened to tear apart. Don’t lose the gears, he told himself. Popped the lever back up to D.

Sixty mph… seventy…

Air. Rock.

Seventy-five.

Pickup.

Choose one, Pellam thought. His foot cramped as he instinctively shoved the useless brake pedal to the floor again. Five minutes ago he’d been easing the chugging camper over Clement Pass, near Walsenburg, three hours south of Denver, admiring the stern, impressive scenery this cool spring morning. There’d been a soft hiss, his foot had gone to the floor and the Winnebago had started its free fall.

From the tinny boom box on the passenger seat Kathy Mattea sang “Who Turned Out the Light?”

Pellam squinted as he bore down on the pickup, honking the horn, flashing his lights to warn the driver out of the way. He caught a glimpse of sunglasses in the Ford’s rearview mirror. The driver, wearing a brown cowboy hat, spun around quickly to see how close the camper really was. Then turned back, hands clasped at ten to two on the wheel.

Air, pick-up…

Pellam picked mountain. He eased to the right, thinking maybe he could brush against the rock and brush and pine, slow down enough so that when he went head-on into a tree it wouldn’t kill him. Maybe.

But just as he swerved, the driver of the truck instinctively steered in the same direction--to the right, to escape onto the shoulder. Pellam sucked in an “Oh, hell” and spun the wheel to the left.

So did the driver of the Ford. Like one of those little dances people do trying to get out of each other’s way as they approached on the sidewalk. Both vehicles swung back to the right then to the left once more as the camper