Kay stood galvanized, rapidly blinking.
‘When I got pregnant, Jay was overjoyed. He wanted to tell the whole world, but I wouldn’t let him. He’s…’ Her voice caught. ‘He was one of the most unselfish men I’ve ever known.
Kay suddenly revived. ‘I don’t believe that Tessa is Jay’s child. You’ll have to prove it.’
A sly smile crept across Shirley’s face. ‘There’s DNA.’
Kay laughed out loud. ‘DNA? How? Jay’s been cremated. In a couple of hours, I’m taking his ashes back to Texas.’
I was thinking that comparing Lorraine’s DNA to Tessa’s would probably do the trick when Shirley crowed, ‘We had a paternity test done when Tessa was born. I was married to Link, so we had to be sure.’
Eva breathed into my ear, ‘Sounds like Jay didn’t trust Shirley much, either.’
Eva’d said it quietly, but Shirley must have overheard because her eyes darted in our direction. ‘And before you ask, Link knew all about it, but agreed to raise Tessa as his own. Link had a severe case of mumps as a kid, so he could never father children. It was the perfect solution for all of us.’
The perfect solution? I thought back to the day I’d comforted Tessa as she huddled miserably on a cold tile floor, hunched over the commode. Tessa was the glue that held that marriage together, but at what cost?
Kay stumbled to the bench and lowered herself down on it. ‘Melanie was wrong?’
I handed Coco’s leash to Eva and moved closer to Kay’s bench. ‘I don’t know what Melanie thought she saw, Kay, but whatever it was, it was clearly misinterpreted.’
Kay’s eyes swung from me to the red bag and back again. ‘That’s not Jay’s bag, is it?’
‘No, it’s not. The police have Jay’s bag. They’ve had it all along.’
Kay rested her head against the back of the bench and closed her eyes. ‘Jay was from a big Catholic family. He wanted children, lots of children.’ Her eyelids fluttered open and, for some reason, she was looking again at me. ‘I couldn’t give them to him. It’s complicated, but I just couldn’t.’
‘Kay…’ Shirley began.
Kay waved a tired hand, cutting her off. ‘About the will.’
Shirley went on alert. Had she been Coco, her ears would have quivered. ‘The will? What about the will?’
Kay’s head lolled slowly to the other side until she was looking directly at Shirley. ‘Tessa’s not getting the studio. The studio comes to me. Everything comes to me.’ She drew a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. ‘But I guess where I’m going, there won’t be any need for a studio, or a house, or anything else.’
‘But the will?’ Shirley wouldn’t let the matter drop.
Kay smiled blandly. ‘Jay intended to make a will favoring Tessa, but I found a draft on his computer and put a stop to it. I thought you found out about the abuse and were blackmailing him.’ Her head lolled back. ‘I made a mistake there, too, didn’t I?’
Something rustled the ornamental hedge behind me, and suddenly he was there: Don Fosher, a mountain in cammies, waving a dull gray pistol. ‘Move away from her, everyone. I have no beef with you.’
I stood rooted to the bricks. ‘Don…’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ives. I came back for my stuff, and I overheard you arranging to meet this, this…murderess!’ He steadied the weapon with his left hand, and pointed the barrel directly at Kay’s head. At a distance, Don could probably shoot the eyebrows off a fly. At close range, Kay didn’t stand a chance.
Tears coursed down Don’s face, but his grip on the gun didn’t waver. ‘Why did you kill her? Why? Tell me why?’
I would have been petrified, but Kay didn’t even blink. ‘Melanie said… oh, what does it matter? It’s a little late for me to be sorry about it now.’
That wasn’t the right answer.
Deep down, the horrible scream began, rumbling up through Don’s chest and out through his mouth, a cry of such agony, such desolation that my heart nearly broke. His finger twitched on the trigger.
‘Stop!’ someone yelled.
We all froze as a figure shot past, tripped over Coco’s leash, and dived like a missile at the feet of the gunman. Big as he was, Don Fosher went down, his gun bouncing and skittering along the bricks.
‘Thou shalt not kill!’ Kay’s rescuer shouted.
Over Coco’s frantic barking, Eva yelled, ‘Sweet Jesus, it’s Jeremy!’
‘Get the gun!’ Jeremy screamed, but Don’s arm clamped over his throat, cutting off his air. Don was trained in hand-to-hand combat; Jeremy was no match for him.
Yet somehow Jeremy squirmed free, and fell on Don’s back like a human cinder block. Don rolled over, throwing the smaller man off, while Coco nipped at his heels.
While the two men wrestled, I searched frantically for the gun, but it must have slipped under one of them. First Don was on top, and then Jeremy. Don roared, flipped Jeremy like a pancake, straddled him, and pinned him to the bricks.
‘It’s over,’ said the big man, back in control of the gun and pointing it at Jeremy’s head.
Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut. ‘“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he makest me to lie down…”’
‘Shut up!’ Don screamed, and clipped Jeremy in the temple with the butt of the gun.
Jeremy’s glasses flew into the air, the Lord’s Prayer silenced. Blood began to pour from a gash in his head and puddle on the bricks.
Don reared back in horror. ‘Oh, God, what have I done?’
I took advantage of the lull to push firmly on Don’s shoulder, catching him off balance and causing him to topple sideways, unresisting.
I knelt at Jeremy’s side. He was still breathing, but his pulse was ropey. I found a wad of tissue in my pocket left over from Jay’s funeral, and I used it to press against Jeremy’s wound, staunching the flow. Time had slowed; seconds became minutes, minutes, hours.
Behind me, I could hear the beeps as Eva dialed 9-1-1.
I heard Shirley say, ‘I’ve got the gun,’ and didn’t feel anything but relief, until a few seconds later when the explosion of a gunshot deafened me.
Keeping the tissue firmly pressed to Jeremy’s head, I twisted around.
Kay lay slumped on the bench, a dark stain beginning to leak between the buttons of her camel hair coat. Don Fosher bent over Kay. First her mouth moved, and then his. I couldn’t hear a word, but after a moment his body language said it all.
Kay Giannotti was dead.
It seemed obvious at first. Don had killed her.
Then I saw it was Shirley Douglas who held the gun.
Epilogue
It took a while for the dust to settle. First, I had to apologize to Paul a million times for pig-headedly (his word, not mine) undertaking a dangerous mission with only my spiritual advisor along for support.
Shirley Douglas got out on bail. Link’s connections on Capitol Hill had netted Shirley a hotshot criminal lawyer with a win-lose record of sixty and nil, who wore his hair in a ponytail. Word was, she’d get off light.
Alas for Tessa, production of Tiny Ballroom was postponed indefinitely following a boycott of the show’s sponsors by Citizens Against Childsploitation. As a diversion, Tessa’s father enrolled her in a gymnastics class. Tessa excels on the parallel bars and hopes to be ready for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Shirley’s victim’s ashes were flown to Texas by a second cousin once removed, where they were interred in the Giannotti plot next to her husband of twenty-five years, Jerome Ignatius Giannotti.
Everyone agreed it was Don Fosher who’d brought the gun – unregistered – to the park, but the sergeant remembered nothing about the incident until he ‘came to’ and found himself scuffling with a total stranger for control of the weapon. Post-traumatic stress was mentioned. After counseling at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, DC, Sergeant Fosher was back in Iraq. He has extended for another year.