Authors: Earlene Fowler
I started closing the program when a voice behind me said, “All through now?”
I jumped at the sound of Jillian’s voice and fumbled for the off switch on the computer. “Uh, sure—” I stammered. “Just doing some research for Dove. Historical Society stuff.” I looked down, cursing my expressive face.
“Well, the library’s been closed for half an hour. I was making the last rounds and saw you in here.”
I looked through the small window of the computer room. The library was completely dark. Apparently the children’s librarians had forgotten I was in here. I looked back at her, realizing something else. Something I hadn’t noticed when I sat down. The screen of the computer I’d been using was visible to anyone standing at the window. Anything on it was completely readable to someone with halfway decent eyes.
Anything.
The palm-sized handgun Jillian pulled from the pocket of her Armani suit was as elegant as she was. At least I’d die with class.
“You really never know when to stop, do you, Benni?” she asked.
“You?” I said. “But why?”
“You know why,” she snapped.
I started to protest, then stopped. Though I can be very stupid sometimes, I wasn’t stupid enough to argue with a crazy woman pointing a gun at me. Especially when she’d obviously killed once already. She must think that I’d found something that incriminated her on the disks. That means she couldn’t have read them from the window.
“Walk ahead of me,” she said, gesturing with the gun. I contemplated one of those quick, clever moves you see on TV—karate-chopping her hand, then kicking the gun across the floor. Then I pictured it failing and imagined what a bullet tearing into the soft skin of my stomach would feel like. Better rethink that plan.
As I walked past her into the dark library I thought,
Use what’s around you to your advantage.
The next thing I knew a trainload of firecrackers went off in my head, and everything went black.
It was still black when I regained consciousness. Black and dusty and cold. The floor I was curled up on was concrete. A generator vibrated the air around me. My hands and feet were tied, and my head throbbed like an abscessed tooth.
I tried to struggle loose, but whoever had trussed me up knew something about knots. I had no idea how long I’d been out, but my extremities were already numb. Lying there on the icy floor, I worried about permanent damage. A hysterical laugh fluttered deep in my chest. Permanent damage? The woman had already killed once. Damage to the nerves of my feet and hands was the least of my worries.
I lay my head back down on the concrete and tried to assess my situation.
Keep calm,
I said, feeling an uncontrollable trembling start. I blinked my eyes over and over, trying to force them to adjust to the darkness. My skull felt as fragile as an egg, and I would have given anything at that moment for a handful of aspirin and a soft pillow.
Think,
I commanded my brain.
Where could you be that would be this dark and cold?
But my brain wouldn’t function, and all I could do was swallow the sob starting in my chest.
Please, God,
I begged. That’s all I could think to pray.
Please, God.
I drifted in and out of consciousness, so it seemed like hours later when I heard a door open and the click of footsteps coming down stairs. A single fluorescent light came on, and I looked up into Jillian’s face. Then I realized where I was. The library’s basement. Used to store bulk office supplies, old weeded books waiting for the Friends of the Library’s yearly sale, holiday decorations, and custodial supplies, it was a standing joke among the employees.
“Going down in the Pit,” I’d heard them say to each other. “Send the search and rescue if I’m not back in an hour.” Was this where she killed Nora and hid her body until taking it over to the lake? It would have been the perfect place. My stomach churned. Were the ropes I was bound with the ones used to strangle Nora? I closed my eyes and contemplated whether screaming would help.
“She’s awake now,” she said. Even in the fuzziness of my confused brain, I wondered about her pronoun. Who was she talking to?
“What are we going to do?” a woman’s voice answered her. “
Madre de Dios,
what are we going to do?”
“Dolores, would you shut up,” Jillian snapped. “I need to think.”
I opened my eyes and looked up into Dolores’s frightened face. Jillian and Dolores? They were in this together? Boy, was Gabe going to be surprised. A wave of pain zigzagged through my head. Unfortunately I wasn’t going to be around to see it.
“Sit up,” Jillian said, reaching over and pulling me up by the upper arm. I leaned against some pasteboard boxes and finally found my voice.
“You two killed Nora?” I stuttered, my words tangling around a tongue that felt thick, like someone had shot it full of novocaine. “Why?”
“You know why,” Jillian said. “I had a feeling you found the missing Tattler columns. Where did you find them?”
“The Datebook Bum,” I said. “I think he found them in the library trash . . . but they don’t incriminate you. Not really.”
“They say enough,” she snapped. “Enough to get me”—her eyes trailed over to Dolores—“
us,
questioned again, and I can’t afford to let that happen.”
Dolores’s dark eyes looked as wild and frightened as a trapped animal’s. I realized what Jillian was worried about now. If the police questioned Dolores again, there was a good chance that this time they could probably break her down.
Through the basement’s open door I heard a buzzer. Apparently someone was at the employees’ back entrance upstairs.
Jillian frowned, then turned to Dolores and said, “Watch her.” She walked up the stairs and pulled the heavy door behind her.
I opened my eyes and stared at Dolores. She stared back, rubbing her hands over and over. High-school Shakespeare flashed through my mind. A picture of Lady Macbeth trying to rub the imaginary blood from her hands.
“Dolores, how did you get involved with this?” I whispered.
“I can’t talk to you,” she said, her face lightly sheened with perspiration.
Think about how you can use her. Remember the things you’ve seen on TV. Go for the weaker partner. She’s alone and frightened. Use that. It’s what Gabe would do.
Gabe. I couldn’t let these people kill me. He’d never forgive himself. The guilt would eat him alive.
Guilt. My disoriented brain floated back to a good-natured argument he and I had recently had about that subject. I pictured his smiling face.
“Catholic guilt is worse,” he’d declared while scrambling us some eggs a few weeks ago. Except for his wonderful Mexican hot chocolate and spaghetti, they were the only thing he knew how to cook.
“Ha!” I’d said. “That’s because you’ve never felt Baptist guilt. You all at least get to have fun and then go to confession afterward. We feel guilty the whole time we’re sinning.” I watched him put jalapeño peppers, fresh onions, cheddar cheese, and a dash of Tabasco in the eggs.
“But we have to worry about dying before we get to confession. Most of you Protestants believe that once saved, always saved, no matter what you do afterwards. You can die in the middle of adultery and still squeeze through those pearly gates.”
I laughed and stuck my fork into the finished eggs. “That may be technically true, but I’m sure it’s not something that Mac would want touted as a major selling point for the Baptist faith.” I took a big bite, savoring the taste. “You know, Friday, if nothing else, I would have married you for your
huevos
.”
“Is that right?” He grinned at my unintended double entendre.
I smacked him in the chest. “You know what I mean.”
“Well, I can tell you one thing about guilt, whether it’s Baptist, Catholic or whatever. Except for the sickest sociopaths, everyone feels it at some time. And I’ve often even wondered about them. There’s no doubt, though, that without it we’d definitely have a lot fewer criminals behind bars.”
I opened my eyes and looked at Dolores’s agitated face. She’d come out of the confessional just after Gabe went in. Had she confessed to her part in concealing Nora’s murder? If she had, that meant she probably felt guilty about it. I could use that. Right now it was the only weapon I had.
“I saw you at St. Celine’s today,” I said softly.
She widened her dark eyes and didn’t speak.
“What happened?” I asked again. “How did you get mixed up with this?”
I didn’t think she’d answer, but after a few seconds she started talking in a low monotone.
“I didn’t want to help her. I just happened to be there that night. I was coming downstairs to get some construction paper. She didn’t know I was here.”
“Jillian?”
She nodded.
“She killed Nora,” I prompted, wanting to keep her talking.
Dolores nodded again.
“But why?”
“Her husband,” Dolores whispered, then glanced furtively up the concrete stairs. We could hear low voices from behind the closed doors. I contemplated screaming, but I remembered the pistol. Where did Jillian hide it? I couldn’t imagine her talking casually to a library employee while brandishing a handgun. And I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger.
I shook my head slightly, trying to get it to stop feeling so fuzzy. It only made it worse. “Because of Roy?”
“No.” Dolores shook her head furiously. “Not Nora’s husband. Jillian’s. She poisoned him ’cause he cheated on her all the time. He’s buried under the patio off her office. Before they poured it.”
“The patio?” I repeated. This was getting more bizarre by the moment. I flashed back to the party she’d given when the patio and patrons’ garden were finished. Jillian had been drinking champagne and eating shrimp puffs while standing on her husband’s grave.
Dolores nodded dumbly. “I heard Nora tell Jillian that she’d found out and that she was going to print it in the Tattler column. They started fighting, and somehow Jillian got a rope that we’d used in a ranching display and choked Nora. I saw it all from the stairs. I was too scared to move or do anything. I thought they’d stop. I didn’t think anyone would get killed.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
Tears streamed down her face. “Jillian took me to her office and kept talking to me. I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. She kept saying that Nora deserved it, that she was an evil woman. And she said that Nora was going to write things about my parents’ restaurant that would close it down—about how we buy black-market beef and how my oldest brother, Felipe, was dealing cocaine to keep the restaurant going. I don’t know how she found out about that stuff. My parents didn’t even know. My father was still getting over his kidney operation, and there was no money and—” She broke down and started sobbing. “Benni, she said if I helped her she’d make sure that my family was taken care of, and she kept her promise. I didn’t kill Nora. All I did was help take her to the lake.”
Guilt,
a little voice reminded me.
You don’t have much time. Think
. “Dolores, you can’t help her kill me. That would be . . .” I thought hard for a moment, trying to remember what little Catholic doctrine I knew—venial sin? No, that was for the ones that weren’t so bad. The ones you could be forgiven for. Death—mortality—mortal. That was it. “A mortal sin,” I finished. “You’ll go to hell. Murder is a mortal sin.”
She looked up, her tears halted, her black eyes wide with shock. “No . . . I . . .”
“Yes,” I insisted. “Helping her after she killed Nora was one thing. But you know God could never, ever forgive you helping her kill someone else. You
know
that.”
Lord,
I prayed,
I don’t believe that’s true, and forgive me for messing with Your theology, but I’m in real trouble here.
“You’ll be a murderer. You’ll go to hell,” I repeated, and hoped that the Catholic guilt that Gabe and I talked about would kick in.
“No,” she moaned. “I’m not a murderer. I’m
not
.” She started praying softly in Spanish—
Santa Maria, Llena de gracia.
. . .
“You’re not yet,” I said. “Please help me, Dolores. Don’t let Jillian make you be a murderer.”
She opened her eyes. “What should I do?”
“I don’t know yet, but I have to know I can count on you. If I tell you to do something, then do it, no questions. Can you manage that?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice determined. “I can do that.”
The door to the basement opened, and in the dim light Jillian started down the stairs. I concentrated on trying to think of a way to get the ropes untied.
“What do you think we should do?” Jillian asked. “Her being the police chief’s wife makes it more difficult—”
I peered up at her through the pale light. Was she asking me? I couldn’t believe she’d be consulting Dolores; it was obvious Jillian was the ringleader here.
“Get rid of her,” a man said bluntly, and my heart jumped into my throat.
“Ash?” I stammered, shaking my head. This all had to be a bad dream. Three of them? Geez, it was like one of those tiny Volkswagens at the circus where clowns keep tumbling out. Would the whole storytelling committee be showing up eventually? Would they have to take a vote on how to get rid of me? I felt a hysterical giggle rumble in my chest. Then my hopes plummeted. Me and Dolores against Jillian was one thing. Ash in the picture made my prognosis look very grim.
“Just makes it more of a challenge, darlin’ ,” Ash answered Jillian. “We’ll put our clever heads together and think of something.”
“You were in on Nora’s murder, too?” I asked. “Why?”
“I imagine you can guess,” he said. “She knew a little too much about my background and was a little too willing to use it. I didn’t kill her, but I’d gladly have held one end of the rope.”
I glanced over at Jillian. “How did he find out about . . . what you did?”
She shrugged. “I accidentally told him one night after we’d drank too much. No big deal. I’m worth more to him out of prison than in.”
He gave me a cocky grin. “And the side benefits aren’t bad either. Breaking the law and getting away with it can be quite the aphrodisiac.”