Savannah stood looking down at us for a moment, then a formal smile crossed her lips and she took the chair as if it were a Hepplewhite in a formal drawing room. Her colorful chiffon scarves no longer looked jaunty, merely sad. Her pink ballerina slippers were filthy. Her hair could have used a good brushing, but her face and hands were clean.
“Ms. Sotelli, Miss McKenzie.” Her voice was as husky as ever. “How kind of you to visit. I confess I had not—”
From out of the darkness came two gunshots in rapid succession.
The shots were so unexpected that even though I’ve been raised around guns and actually had a .38 locked in the trunk of my car, it took a split second to register what was happening.
A third shot hit the steel railing above, spraying me with enamel paint chips before ricocheting off somewhere.
“Uncle Pell!” Lynnette screamed in terror and got up and started toward us.
“No!” I yelled, ducking and running down the steps to her. “Stay there! Lie down!”
But Pell was even faster. He pushed me aside and raced to snatch her up in his arms.
Another shot shattered the concrete wall beside Savannah’s head. Heather scrambled up the steps, grabbed Savannah’s hand and pulled her back into the hallway, out of the line of fire. As they ran for cover, yet another shot zinged past.
Even while listening for more shots, my mind was racing furiously. The shooter must be after Savannah since Heather and I had been there several minutes and no shots were fired till Savannah appeared on the stairs. But why shoot a delusional old woman?
Mentally I tried to add up the shots. Five or six? And did the shooter have extra bullets?
In the sudden silence, we heard a crash, then staccato footsteps running at least three aisles over.
“He’s getting away,” I told Pell. “Quick! Call Underwood.”
“Wait!” Pell cried, but I was already flying over the teddy bears, rushing toward the same door our assailant must be making for.
And would reach before me, unless I could somehow fool him into thinking someone was between him and the exit?
I grabbed a glass vase from the shelf I was passing and lobbed it as hard as I could over the shelves toward the exit. It landed with a satisfactory loudness and sounded as if it had taken a couple of other pieces of glass along, too.
And it worked!
The sound of running footsteps immediately swerved aside and headed out into the studio area. As he ran, crashes marked his direction. Glassware and metal fell to the floor as he brushed past them.
In the dim light, I saw a narrow cross aisle up ahead and put on more speed as I turned left and followed the sounds ahead of me. I stubbed my toe sharply on some metal object that he’d dislodged in the aisle. Broken glass crunched under my shoes and I almost tripped over a stack of baskets.
Then I heard another set of footsteps.
“This way!” called Heather. “He’s heading for the front office.”
I heard her roar, “Where the hell’s the fucking lights?” Then a crash from her direction. She must have tripped over a cable.
The first footsteps vanished. Had he stopped short or was he hurrying across a carpeted set?
I came around a wall in time to see Heather silhouetted against the security tights near the front.
“Deborah? Where are you? Where’d he go?‘ she called, running blindly toward me.
“Sh-hh!” I hissed as I strained to see and hear.
Then I caught a flash of white legs mounting upwards in the darkness. Someone was on those movable stairs. Theoretically, the steps went nowhere. In actuality, someone agile could probably pull up and onto one of the overhead catwalks and then run along a clear path to an unobserved exit.
Someone in white silk slacks.
Of course.
Although I was pretty sure that she killed Chan, I still didn’t know why: but I could make a pretty good guess as to why she thought she had to kill Savannah.
“You can’t get away,” I called. “I know who you are!”
I saw a flash and heard the explosion in the same instant as the bullet destroyed a portable light stand off to the side. God, she was a lousy shot.
“Help me,” I told Heather, who was puffing like a little steam engine as we both reached the sinuous set of steps at the same time.
I fumbled for the brake release, then we gave the thing a mighty tug and swirled it out into open space just as Pell finally found the lights.
Dazzled by the sudden brightness, I looked up into Drew Patterson’s startled face the exact instant she lost her balance and tumbled down the steps. The gun went flying and she bounced a couple of times, then landed at the bottom, whimpering with pain.
“You bitch!” said Heather.
“Why?” I asked.
“It was an accident,” Drew moaned. “An accident.”
“Accident?” Heather was speechless with rage. “You damn near kill us and all you can say is it’s a fucking accident?”
“Shut up, Heather,” I said pleasantly. “Which was the accident, Drew? Chan’s death or Evelyn’s?”
“My shoulder,” she moaned. “I think it’s broken.”
“Then tell me what I want to know and I’ll see about an ambulance.”
Her face was gray and twisted with pain, but I was having a hard time mustering up any sympathy.
“Both of them were accidents,” she wailed. “Honest. I was mad at Chan.”
“He was going off to Malaysia without you,” I said, “so you killed him.”
“I didn’t know he was that allergic. I just wanted to make him a little sick. First I wasn’t going to, but he was flirting with you, he was rude to Dad, rude to me—”
She tried to sit up, then gasped in agony.
“So while he was dancing with your mother, you went back to the ALWA party, put a couple of those brownies in a plastic bag that was lying on the table and smashed up some of your mother’s penicillin tablets. Then, when he was leaving and stopped to say goodnight, you slipped them into his pocket.”
“I told him to think about me when he was eating them. But I only meant to make him sick, not kill him. I swear it!”
“But you did mean to kill Evelyn so that you could have him,” I said inexorably.
“No! It really was an accident. I tripped and bumped the stairs. You see how easy they are to move. I barely touched them, but they went flying and poor Evelyn—Oh, my shoulder! Please. Please.”
I turned away, sickened, and saw Pell a few feet away. His hands were clenching and unclenching and his face was ghastly.
“You came rushing up to Savannah that day. I thought you were upset because of Evelyn, but you knew she’d seen you and you were afraid she’d tell. That’s why you kept saying what a horrible accident it was, over and over, until Savannah reached out her hand and smoothed your hair and started crying. And cried for two days until they came for her. You did that. To both of them.”
Then that gentle man spat on the floor beside her and turned to go let the police in at the rear door.
27
« ^ “The enjoyment of light in darkness could not be realized practically to any great extent without the means of vessels, or other mechanical devices of some sort, to contain in place, or convey to the action of heat, the fuels, oils, gases, etc., from which light is drawn.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872
I met Savannah again at the end of the summer.
That’s how long it was before I could borrow one of my brothers’ pickup truck and go pick up my headboard at Mulholland where Pell had stored it for me.
When I called Dixie to see which weekend would work for her, she mentioned that Savannah was going to be in town. “She’s going to stay with Pell while she clears her stuff out of Mulholland.”