“Her friends,” he said with bitterness. “They used to come to the house for circle meetings, and I was always ‘Dear Ralphie,’ and expected to pour their tea, refresh the cookie tray, and so on. And they all raved about how lucky Mom was to have me at home when their sons moved away and married. I could tell they were smirking at me, thinking I was gay or something. And all the time I was just beaten down by my mother. I don’t know why I didn’t have the nerve to stand up to her but I didn’t.”
And where did he get the nerve to murder?
He put the butcher knife down for a minute to run his hands through his hair in a gesture of despair. But there was no way I could get to the knife, bound as I was.
Mom grew more pale by the minute, and I hoped she wasn’t going to faint or throw up—either one seemed a possibility. But to my surprise, she asked, “What does that have to do with me?”
He threw his hands up in the air. “You were the first breath of fresh air in my life. I was always shy in school, the geeky kid, the nerd no one made friends with. And then I never had a job outside the house—I worked from home as a computer consultant because Mom almost demanded it. You are the first and only woman I ever dated, and I saw you as my chance for a normal life—maybe not children, but I could have grandchildren—Kelly’s girls. And a marriage and a home where I was king. And Kelly ruined all that.”
My mind whirled, and I squirmed in my chair, trying to no effect to loosen the tapes. “Why kill those women?”
“They were the ones that patronized me the most, the ones who patted me on the head and said what a good boy Ralphie was when I was way past fifty. Before your mom moved to Fort Worth, I spent all those years seething with anger inside me, and one night when Florence Dodson was particularly objectionable, I just snapped. After that it was easy.”
I could and could not follow his distorted reasoning, but I looked at Mom and saw that she lost all the hope she had of future happiness. Still there was more I wanted to find out.
“Why Mrs. Gibson, after you met Mom?”
He shrugged and sat in a comfortable easy chair, butcher knife always close to him. But now his head was in his hands, and his nervous feet tapped the floor. “She was the last one on the list of the women I despised. I just couldn’t let it rest. I went to tea with her when she invited me. She always said how much she trusted Ralphie. Why not? I was the perfect patsy.”
We sat in silence, Ralph exhausted by his rambling confession and Mom and I too stunned to say anything.
Finally in a quavering voice I asked, “What now?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still the good boy. I don’t have the nerve to use this knife on either of you, particularly Cynthia, though it was easy to bash the others in the head. But I can’t just let you go after all this. I think I’ll light the gas stove and oven and leave. I hope you know how much it pains me to do this, Cynthia.”
If I’d only known a few minutes earlier that he didn’t have the nerve to use the knife!
Cynthia somehow found her voice. “Ralph, Kelly has children, daughters who depend on her. If you kill her, they’ll be orphans.”
“They’ll have that cop to take care of them,” he said. And then, “Yes, that’s what I’ll do.” He got up and headed toward the kitchen, leaving the butcher knife on the table where he put it.
I heard him turn on the burners, then blow out the automatic starter, and do the same with the oven. How long, I wondered in an almost detached fashion, does it take to die by gas? The horrible image of the gas chambers during the Holocaust flashed through my mind, and I fought to control myself.
To my horror, I heard him call out, “Goodbye, ladies, and I…well, I’m sorry.”
“Wait,” I cried. “Where will you go? Where will you be safe after this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ve never been safe before, so why now?”
The kitchen door closed with a decisive bang.
After a moment, she said, “Kelly, you’re a wonderful daughter, and I love you so much. I…I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“You didn’t Mom. I got both of us into this, and I’m sorry. And I love you a lot too.”
Something is going to save us, I thought. Maybe Anthony didn’t seal all the windows tightly…or maybe…who knows?
I have no idea how long we sat there, but it seemed an eternity. I did start to feel a little woozy, and if I twisted my neck I could see that Mom began to look green or blue or something wrong. I prayed, maybe something I didn’t do often enough, but I talked to God about my girls and my mom and my life.
Like the answer to a prayer, I heard Keisha’s voice from the back door. “Quick, Claire, go in there and turn off that stove. Open all the doors and windows you can. Then go outside and call 911 on your cell—don’t do it inside or you’ll blow this place up. I’ve got this twerp.”
Claire did as she was told, almost paying us no attention. She called 911 and they kept her on the phone forever.
Get off the phone and cut us loose!
I wanted to scream, but I could fee the fresh air, cold as it was this time of year, flowing in at us. And from out back I could hear Keisha yelling at Ralphie, such things as, “You almost killed the best two women I ever met! I could wring your neck—maybe I will and save the authorities the trouble.” I heard whimpers coming from Ralphie—I would never again think of him by any other name.
Claire kept talking to the operator. “Yes, yes, they’re conscious, but I need to go cut them loose….What? Leave them that way?”
A long pause and then, “If you say so.”
She hung up as I heard sirens round the corner and bear down on the house. Claire came to hug each of us and said they wanted photos before we were cut loose.
Damn police procedure!
Police and EMT arrived at the same time, a few flash bulbs popped, and our hands were cut free. I rubbed my wrists to restore circulation and then reached to hug Mom, but she was already enveloped in a huge Keisha-hug, and Keisha stroked her hair and murmured, “There, there. It’s okay now. You going to be just fine.”
The paramedics examined each of us, pronounced me fine but said they want to take Mom for further tests. When I said I’d ride in the ambulance with her, Keisha pushed me aside. “You need to go home. Mike should still be there. You rest. I’ll see to your mama and let you know what they say.” She nodded to Claire, who took me by the arm as though I were disabled and led me to her car.
“We’ve got to lock the house,” I said, looking behind me.
“Kelly, the police are still there doing their investigation. They’ll secure the property. Want me to take them the key?”
I nodded, handed her the key, and sat by myself in the car, still stunned, to rethink the madness I had just been part of.
When she got back in the car, I noticed for the first time that Claire wasn’t her usual spiffily-dressed self. She wore a terrycloth robe over tennis shoes, with some sort of tights peeking out below, and her hair was pulled off her face and held with an ordinary rubber band. She had no make-up, but she still looked beautiful to me.
“Claire, how did you happen to be there?”
“Keisha called and asked me to meet her two doors down from your mom’s house. She said she was suspicious about your mom being sick and all and when you didn’t call, she knew something was wrong. I told her I wasn’t dressed yet and it would be thirty minutes.” She looked down at her clothes. “You don’t need to hear what she said to me, but I was there in three minutes. And, wow, am I glad.”
“Why did she call you? I thought Keisha could fight bear on her own.”
Claire grinned. “She could. I have no doubt of it. But she seemed to know that Hoskins guy was there and said she’d have to deal with him, so I’d have to take care of you and Cynthia.”
“Her sixth sense,” I muttered. “She always said she had it.”
“She does.”
Claire saw me into the house and into Mike’s surprised arms and then slipped out the door, before I could thank her—or ask if she’d called Terrell Johnson yet.
Mike’s “What’re you doing here?” turned into, “Oh, God, what didn’t you call me before you went over there?” as I repeated the story. By now I was shaky, crying, and clinging to him. He left me on the couch just long enough to go into the kitchen, reach on the high shelf, and get the untouched bottle of bourbon. He brought me one finger with an ice cube floating in it and commanded, “Drink this.” Then he sat down and held me tight while I sipped and, gradually, the shakes diminished. But not the tears.
“We’ve got to call the hospital about Mom.”
“Kelly, we don’t know if they took her to the county hospital or where, and Keisha will call when there’s news. Just relax. I’m calling in to see if I can trade shifts. Then you’re going to bed, and I’ll get the girls.”
“You can’t. You’re not on the authorized list. Keisha is.”
“We’ll change that,” he said. “Meantime I’ll find Keisha and send her. You are not to worry.”
I slept like the dead, grateful that I wasn’t one of them. But as I drifted off to sleep I realized that Mike never once lectured me that this was my own fault for sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong. I loved him a lot, and my last thought was, “I want to marry that guy.”
It was dark when I woke up. A look at the clock told me it was five o’clock. Dark comes early in December, but still I’d slept about six hours—and I was hungry. I wandered into the kitchen where I discovered the girls helping Mike cook. Em rushed at me to push me out of the kitchen, saying “It’s a s’prise.”
“Oh, Em,” Mike said, “let’s tell her. She’s got to hear how Nana is and all.”
“Okay.” She crossed her arms in front of her in clear disappointment.
“How is she?” I asked.
“The hospital gave her oxygen and wants to keep her overnight for observation. Nothing serious. Just a precaution.”
“I’ll go stay with her,” I said, turning to go get dressed.
“Better call Keisha on her cell phone first.”
When I told Keisha I was headed to the hospital, the reply was, “No, you’re not. I’m staying with Miss Cynthia tonight. She’s sleeping right now, and she’s comfortable and not afraid. They’ve put a cot in the room for me, and I’ll be just fine. You stay home, eat that dinner Mike’s fixing you, and rest.”
“I just slept all afternoon,” I protested.
“So sleep some more,” she said. “You got to get the gas worked out of your system.”
I had no idea if that was a medical theory or her own idea, but I said okay, told her to tell Mom I loved her, and I’d be there in the morning. Then I took a deep breath. “What are you cooking?”
Maggie chanted, “Mike’s making roast salmon with some sauce on it—what’s it called, Mike?”
“Lemon-dill sauce,” he supplied.
“Yeah, and roast asparagus and a Caesar salad. It’s a celebration!”
“Of what?” I couldn’t think of a more horrible day, unless it was the day Jo Ellen North tried to kill me.
“Of the fact you and Nana are okay,” Maggie said.
“Yeah,” Em said, rushing up to hug me around the waist. “Mike told us you could have died.”
I looked at him, wondering if he should have told them that, but he shrugged, “I want them always to know the truth. And the truth is that I’ll always be here for them too.”
Dinner was delicious, and I ate ravenously, but—helped along by two glasses of wine—I found I was sleepy again. I barely got the girls to bed and kissed them before I collapsed.