Authors: Claire Gillian
I opened the door.
Leslie Turner lay on the floor by the window, a bullet wound in her forehead. Her lifeless eyes faced the door, and a huge pool of blood surrounded her head. Bob sat in a nearby chair sobbing, his head in his hands and a gun lying at his feet.
41
Jeff moved from behind me, picked up the gun and tucked it in the waistband of his pants. I noticed for the first time he wore gloves, but Bob did not.
“What did you do? Why is Leslie here, dead, and where’s Marilyn?” Jeff asked Bob, echoing my thoughts.
“I didn’t … I … Oh God! Leslie. I’m so sorry …” He resumed his sobbing.
I stood rooted to my spot and tried not to look at Leslie, but the puddle of her blood continued to grow. I had never seen a dead body before, and I never wanted to see another one.
“Bob! Where’s Marilyn?” Jeff had to repeat himself to get Bob’s attention.
Bob stood and shook his head. “It’s over, Jeff.” He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Somebody told the FBI. They know everything.”
“Well, whose fault is that? Maybe if you’d kept a better eye on your wife, none of this would have happened. First Kenneth, and now Leslie … what in God’s name were you thinking?”
“You shut up!” Bob lunged at Jeff. “Leslie’s dead because of you! And so is Kenneth! You killed him, not me! I’m not taking the fall for either murder.”
“Me? What the hell are you talking about? I had nothing to do with Kenneth’s death, and I certainly didn’t kill Leslie. Why is she even here?” Jeff took a quick step back and pointed his gun at Bob. “Why’d you do this now of all times?”
What is going on? Why was Leslie at Marilyn’s house?
The two women weren’t friends, and I doubted Leslie had popped in to drop off a Pampered Chef order.
Jeff hadn’t once mentioned Jon or me to Bob. The whole back and forth over who killed Kenneth was also unexpected. Who was I to believe? One of them had to be lying. Perhaps that lack of trust might work to my advantage. Jeff seemed to have forgotten about me. I doubted Bob knew of my presence at all.
While the two men squared off, one doubly armed and the other distraught and unpredictable, I inched back toward the bedroom door.
“I didn’t kill her! Marilyn did.” Bob wiped the fresh tears out of his eyes.
“Marilyn? How could Marilyn? You aren’t making any sense. Where is she anyway?” Jeff crouched at Leslie’s side, his back to me.
Why would Marilyn have killed Leslie other than in self-defense? If so, was Leslie in on the whole insider-trading ring too? Or was Bob lying?
“I don’t know why.” Bob collapsed in the chair. “We need to call the police.”
“The police? Are you crazy? And tell them what?”
For a moment, I got so caught up in the drama, I almost forgot my own precarious situation. I took another baby step toward the door, ready to make a break for it if the opportunity presented itself.
“Start from the beginning, and tell me what happened.” Jeff said with a small note of compassion in his voice. He lowered his gun.
“I don’t know. When I got here, Leslie’s car was parked in the driveway, but nobody answered the door. It was unlocked, so I came inside. I heard a shot and ran upstairs. I found her like this.
Dead
. Marilyn stood over her, but when I went to check on Leslie, she ran past me.”
“Did she say anything?”
“No.” Bob’s voice trembled, and his shoulders shook as he sobbed again.
“What a mess,” Jeff said. “I don’t understand why she would come here.”
“I don’t know either,” Bob said.
I glanced around the room and spied one of those weighted bars for exercising peeking out from beneath Marilyn’s bed. A couple of strides separated us, but I doubted I could grab it faster than Jeff could lodge a bullet in me. I had been inching closer to the bedroom door and was almost close enough to have a fair shot at making a break for it.
Where I would run after I fled, I hadn’t yet worked out. The darkened hallway favored me. The lights on the first floor did not. I’d be an easy target if I tried to run down the stairs. If I made it to one of the other bedrooms and locked the door behind me, I might be able to climb out a window onto the roof of the wraparound porch. If the gutters had an exterior downspout, clinging to it might slow my drop to the ground.
I continued to inch toward the door. Adrenalin built as I drew closer.
A loud crack at the bedroom window made me jump. Both Bob and Jeff jerked and scrambled to the site of the impact, giving me the chance I needed to slip out.
I ran down the hallway into the first room I came to and locked the door.
Voices and footsteps spilled out seconds later. Jeff yelled, “Get Gayle! You go downstairs, and I’ll check up here.”
“Give me a gun,” Bob said.
“You don’t need it. She can’t get far if we trap her in the house. Go!”
Rapid footsteps thundered down the stairs. I opened the window and kicked out the screen.
Jeff tried the locked door. His unsuccessful effort was followed by an eerie but short-lived snatch of silence. The soft scrape of metal against wood at the top of the doorjamb preceded a key sliding in the lock.
With no time to climb out the window, I gambled and hid in the closet instead, hoping Jeff would continue his search on the roof. The bi-fold doors I closed were louvered, allowing me to spy into the room through the slats.
Metal ground against metal until the doorknob surrendered. The door burst open. Jeff flicked on the overhead light and tossed the key to the floor. He walked straight to the open window where he leveled his gun, scanned outside and climbed onto the roof.
I cracked open the closet doors and, seeing no sign of him, bolted from the room down the stairs. Footsteps pounded the floor upstairs as I ran toward the front door. Bob lurked somewhere on the lower level, but assuming Jeff hadn’t handed over one of his two guns, he wasn’t armed. On the other side of the front door he’d left open, Bob sat on the steps of the porch. I stifled a scream and turned back into the house, hoping I hadn’t given myself away.
I scurried into the kitchen and opened the first door. Beyond was a tiny broom closet. For once, I considered my small size a blessing. Equally grateful the space was free of clutter, I ducked inside and closed the door.
Like the closet I’d hidden in upstairs, the door was louvered, allowing light to enter and me to see out. My heart pounded so hard, I swear my pulse reverberated off the walls. Hopefully Jeff would linger with Bob a minute and take his search outside, letting me hide until Jon could take care of him.
No sounds but my own ragged breathing filled my tiny space for a long stretch of time until two gunshots rang out in close succession. Jon and Jeff? Marilyn? I didn’t dare move until either Jeff left or Jon stood on the other side of the closet door.
Sweat drenched my underarms and slid down my temples. I wiped my forehead with my palm and dried my hand on my jeans, but in doing so, I tipped over a broom. Its handle scuffed along the wall as it toppled backwards. The drumming of my heart began a new tattoo. I prayed I hadn’t betrayed my location.
“Come out, Gayle!” Jeff’s voice drifted in from the house somewhere on the lower level, but not in the kitchen. “Jon can’t help you now. Sorry about that. Looks like he’s abandoned you and run away scared with Marilyn. No matter. We’ll catch up to them later.”
His voice sounded like he was at least a room away. I made my breathing a little shallower as I listened through the slats.
“I know you’re hiding down here somewhere. Come on out so we can talk about your options. We won’t hurt you—just want to talk. I might have a nice deal you can’t refuse. We could use someone with your …
talents
.”
I’ll just bet he had a sweet deal for me—one that no doubt included silencing me forever.
Please, please, please, God, don’t let him find me.
“Don’t make me keep hunting for you! I’m really sick of your little games—yours and Marilyn’s and Jon’s. Hopefully Bob has taken care of that snitch by now, just like I’m going to take care of you.”
I guessed negotiating was off the table.
Footsteps sounded in the kitchen, and a trickle of light seeped in through the slats. I had enough to make out a few objects in the closet with me—a feather duster, a plunger, various cleaners, including Comet, Windex, ammonia and bleach.
Housekeeping had never been my forte, but I remembered a warning I’d read on the cleaning bottles and online. Chemical warfare might be my only option.
I grabbed and uncapped the bleach bottle. The ammonia I positioned nearby and loosened its cap. With the bleach in my left hand and the nasty end of the plunger in my right, I mentally rehearsed a move I hoped I wouldn’t need to use.
Jeff paced the kitchen tiles. “I
will
find you, Gayle, because you are one of the dumbest staff Anderson-Blakely has ever hired. As a matter of fact … you’re fired. We should have let Doug take care of you a long time ago. Too bad he’s not here now, eh? You’d squirm like a worm on a hook if I dangled you in front of him. No boyfriend to dash to your rescue—not this time. I told you he ran away, didn’t I?”
A sliding glass door moved in its tracks as it eased open and shut. I hoped he’d gone out back, thinking I’d left the house, but I didn’t dare bank on that assumption. Movement within the kitchen and the sound of him throwing open the door proved my worries justified. Thank God I had been smart enough not to hide in the pantry, though the canned goods might have made debilitating missiles. I tensed, ready to strike if and when he opened the broom closet door.
“Olly-olly all come free.” He sang off key.
Through the louvers, a flash of dark clothing passed on its way toward the sink. Jeff stood still for a second, his back to me. He spun and focused his gaze at the broom closet, almost right at me.
I froze—no breathing, no blinking, only the tiny thud of a single drop of sweat as it landed on my shoe. He covered the distance between the sink and closet in three steps and stopped in front of the door. Another sweat drop plummeted to the floor as my fight or flight hormones surged.
He lifted his hand to grasp the door handle.
Him or me.
When the latch disengaged, I kicked the door into Jeff, sending him reeling backwards. I burst out and jabbed him in the stomach with the plunger handle. He fell to the floor, gasping for breath. I struck him on the head with the rubber end of my makeshift weapon and poured bleach on him and the floor where he lay.
I scrambled back into the closet and seized the bottle of ammonia. Holding my breath, I splashed the liquid onto the puddle of bleach and ran out of the kitchen, away from the noxious chlorine gas I’d created.
Jeff’s gun went off, but I didn’t hear any bullets whiz past, so chances were he hadn’t come close to hitting me.
Bob walked in the door as I entered the living room, so I had to make a hard left and run back up the stairs. He lunged for me but wasn’t fast enough.
Into Marilyn’s room I fled, with Bob panting behind me as he gave chase. I grabbed the weighted bar under her bed, drew back and swung with all my strength into his kneecaps as he entered the room. Bob crumpled to the floor, writhing and yelping. I struck him again near his neck. Jumping over his groaning form. I ran to the office for the second time and climbed out onto the roof, still carrying my bar. The cool evening breeze lifted the damp strands of hair stuck to my cheeks and re-energized me.
As I ran around the roof to the front of the house, matching footsteps echoed on the porch beneath me. Jagged pieces of roof shingles flew up in my face as a bullet exploded through them. I screamed. Jeff shot once more, but I hugged the side of the house, out of his range.
By my count, he’d fired at least five times if the two I’d heard when I was hiding were both his. Assuming he hadn’t reloaded, he had one shot left if his revolver was like most of the ones I’d seen and used. I’d learned a few facts about guns growing up. My brothers thought it amusing to have a little sister able to outshoot all of their friends and win their sucker bets for them.
I found a loose shingle and threw it behind me but remained still except for the rapid rise and fall of my chest. The footsteps below reversed and ran toward the shingle’s resting spot. Another shot blasted through the roof—the sixth and the last if I was lucky, but I couldn’t be sure.
I side-stepped toward the front corner and crept to the edge of the roof where the drainpipe ran to the ground near the driveway. Marilyn’s silver Volvo was gone. The cable van hadn’t moved.
Had Jon left with Marilyn and abandoned me to fend for myself? He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have. I knew in my heart he’d never do that to me, but wherever he was, I needed his help.
I clamped my feet around the drainpipe to slow my descent, taking the bar with me. When my feet hit the ground, I turned to run into the woods. Instead, I nearly smashed noses with Jeff Hardinger.
He raised his gun and pointed it at me. Cocking his head to one side, he said, “Hi Gayle. Remember me?”
42
Did I take a chance Jeff was out of ammunition, or did I try to wait him out and hope Jon would intervene? I opted for the latter.
“You said you wanted to talk?” My voice shook.
“I did before you tried to kill me. We’re through talking, you and me. Drop the stick.” He put the gun to my temple. I dropped the bar and squeezed my eyes shut.
Oh dear Lord, he really means to kill me. Please let the gun be empty.
My head fogged as I breathed in and out in quick, shallow breaths. A single tear escaped the vise of my eyelids and rolled down my cheek.
“Are you crying? Aw, sweetheart, there’s no crying in public accounting.” He snickered at his stupid joke.
Maybe he’d already killed Jon with one of those earlier shots. He wore gloves and carried a gun as if murder had always been on his agenda. If killing Marilyn had been his original intent, he had nothing to lose killing two more.
The cold pressure of the gun against my head fell away. I opened my eyes.