“All of which is correct, Jeff,” she laughed puzzledly. “I have no motive. I’m already included in the will. The only way I could gain was by the making of a new will.”
“Your motive was time,” I said, “and three million dollars. Three million is plenty strong motive. And the time element enters in when you consider the fact that Theron showed no signs of an early demise. You might have to wait for the money until you were an old woman. You killed him to get the fortune now. It’s as simple as that.”
She was close to me, and her perfume was heady. I backed away, close to the huge cupboard.
“But, Jeff, how could you know all this? Surely, you’re playing a game, Jeff! Her arms slipped around my neck, and it made my head whirl. She was beautiful, like an ice-frozen lake in clear, cold dawn.
“Two things tipped me, Nicki. When Bimbo started digging, you yelled sharply to him. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t — but you knew what he was about to find — Gaspard. You didn’t want Gaspard found so quickly. Then your hands... When we rushed in Theron’s room, I took your hands. The left was cool, the right hand hot and moist. You’d been wearing a rubber glove on your right hand. Nicki, short moments before, to keep from getting your prints on the knife, I’m sorry it...”
She buried her face in my neck. “Somehow when I first saw you, I knew my number was up, that you’re the guy who’d do me in. Jeff, I...”
And before I could bat a lash she had pushed me in that huge cupboard. I smashed the door, but she was too quick, flicking the key in the lock. I pounded as she ran from the room. “Nicki...! Nick...”
The low growl behind me in the darkness froze my words off. I knew now why I hadn’t seen Bimbo around. Bimbo was sleeping here in the cupboard...
I couldn’t see him. and he couldn’t see me, unless dogs can see in absolute, total darkness. But he could smell me and very likely heard the thudding of my heart. I heard the scrape of huge paws, knew he had sprung at me. I dropped down. He hit the wall with a thump that aroused thoroughly his ferocity.
I groped frantically, backing away. At his next charge, he took half my left coat sleeve and several inches of skin. It was only a matter of moments.
Then my fingers closed on the hatchet handle that someone had dropped in here in some forgotten past, never dreaming it might save a man’s life. The dog closed on me. buried his fangs in my shoulder: I gagged with pain, brought the hatchet down, oblivious to the fact that I might cut my arm off. I heard the hatchet thwack home sickeningly. Blood showered over my arm and chest, and the terrific weight of the dog fell from me.
My left arm a mass of fire. I held the hatchet in my other hand, chopped at the lock. The lock gave, and I was running down the hall. I reached the veranda just as the Buick roared down the drive. She’d known we would find the rotor somewhere with her fingerprints on it, also the rubber glove, which was probably in her pocket, planned to be disposed of moments later, while I had been talking to her.
She was a blonde Valkyrie, and that’s the way she drove the Buick. She reached the sharp curve at the bottom of the drive, and the weeds and soft dirt weren’t as stable as concrete. The Buick slithered, spun, flattened against the ancient stone wall like a tin can under a bulldozer.
When the sounds of tearing metal, showering glass, and her scream had faded into the depths of the night-shrouded hills, I became conscious that Anna and Horace and Sam were on the porch with me. No one said anything for a long lime, just looking at the wreckage. One headlight still burned, pointing crazily into the night sky.
I felt Anna’s hand on my arm, her soft voice in my ear. “You were falling in love with her, weren’t you, Jeff?”
My brain felt as if it would never let me sleep again. I wondered how long it would lake for the bitter lump in my chest to become a heart again. “Maybe I was,” I said. “She could have made me forget every woman I’ve ever known, even the girl in Baltimore who waited while I went to war, and who’s been thinking that a rattle-headed fool reporter would marry her someday. Nicki could have been all things to me, I guess, but,” I shuddered, “murder makes it different...”