My God, Gideon thought, she’s going to kill herself. Right now.
“Callie, this is a bad idea,” he said calmly. He didn’t feel calm. His pulse was thumping in his temples. “This can be worked out, believe me. Just put-”
“Goddamn you, shut up!” she screamed. The pistol jerked spasmodically at him. Gideon, who hadn’t flinched before, flinched now.
Christ, it’s me she’s going to shoot, he thought, dry-mouthed. From five feet away the muzzle’s trembling aim fluttered from his throat to his chest. His mind groped sluggishly for action, for words.
“Callie, look-”
“Oh, you bastard,” she said. Her arm extended the gun closer to him, quivering but aiming directly at his left eye. He tensed himself to make a grab for her hand. It had to be now. The gun was four feet from him. He coiled, his stomach muscles tightening. Now Without warning, Julie, sitting on Callie’s right, brought her hand sharply down on Callie’s forearm in a concise, chopping movement. Callie’s fingers flew open. Her hand hit the table with a thump and bounced up, the pistol dangling by its trigger guard from her forefinger. With a grunt she tried to force it into her hand again, but Gideon had already launched himself over the table, arms extended, scattering plates and glasses.
His hand swooped down on the pistol, snaring it on the fly, like a brass ring on a merry-go-round, and flinging it away in the same motion. The other hand caught Callie at the base of the rib cage, and down she went like a bowling pin, hooked behind one knee by the bench. John, with one of those bursts of speed with which he sometimes amazed Gideon, was behind her the moment she hit the grass, hauling her roughly to her feet, practically on the rebound.
“What the hell is going on here?” His grip solidly encircled her upper arm. Somehow he’d picked up the pistol too, holding it not like a gun but like a parcel or a book, in his other hand.
Callie glared back at him, ashen-faced and twitchy, her lipstick askew. She said nothing.
An anxious Honeywell had appeared at the table, somewhat twitchy himself. “What is it? What’s going on? What’s happened now, for God’s sake?”
“Lieutenant, you’ll want to put Dr. Duffer here under arrest,” John said brusquely.
“Why?” the agitated Honeyman demanded. “What charge do I use? What the hell happened?”
“Hell, carrying a concealed weapon, ADW, intent to commit bodily harm, I don’t know; you come up with something.” He held the gun out to Honeyman, who looked as if it were the last thing in the world he wanted anything to do with, but took it anyway.
“And check her bag,” John said. “She might have another one stowed away.”
“But what the hell happened?” Honeyman asked. “What was this all about? All I saw was-I don’t know what I saw. What did I see?”
“Just do it, okay, Farrell? Trust me, I’ll explain later.” He glanced sideways at Gideon. “When I know what the hell happened,” he said under his breath.
When the dubious but eventually cooperative Honeyman began to read Callie her rights, before a subdued, growing crowd, John gestured with his chin toward the open lawn, away from the others. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk. My cottage.”
Gideon and Julie followed him there, Gideon wiping potato salad from the sleeve of his shirt. He caught Julie’s hand. She turned to look at him.
“Thanks,” he said.
She laughed, her face flushed and excited. “I’ll never complain again about having to take a forcible-restraint class. Oh, boy, my heart’s still in my mouth.”
John smiled at her. “You did good, Julie.”
“We all did pretty good,” she said, laughing.
Nobody said anything else until they got to the cottage. Then John closed the door behind them and studied Gideon for several seconds, his hands on his hips, head cocked.
“Plastic wrap?” he said.
CHAPTER 21
“The plastic wrap, Gideon explained, was what had made it all come together. But it was the blinds, those up-and-down blinds, that had been the key. Those, and that twenty-four-hour period during which Harlow had dropped from sight. And of course that faint smell of insecticide in Harlow’s cottage.
“What smell of insecticide?” John asked.
“Well, I didn’t bother to mention it,” Gideon said. “I didn’t think it was important.”
John leaned forward. “You didn’t-!” He fell back in his chair with a wave of his hand. “Ah, what the hell, it wouldn’t have told me anything anyway. It still doesn’t tell me anything. What does insecticide have to do with anything?”
“The blowflies,” Gideon said. “She had to get rid of that first infestation.”
John made a visible effort to process this. “Doc, just what are you telling us, that Tilton had it wrong-that you had it wrong-that Harlow wasn’t killed when you said he was, when Callie was in Utah?”
“Nevada,” Gideon said. “And, yes, that’s right. She killed him before she ever got on the plane. He was murdered on Tuesday, not Wednesday. The time of death was faked. Brilliantly, I might add.”
“The time of death was faked,” John echoed woodenly. “Brilliantly, he might add.” He sighed. “I can’t wait for Applewhite to read my report.”
“Well, it was brilliant. Let me tell you just what I think happened, just how I think she did it, and see if it makes sense to the two of you.”
“This involves blowfly infestations?” Julie asked. “Yes, it does.”
She reached for her sandwich. “I think I’d better finish this. I have a strong suspicion my appetite is about to disappear.”
They were sitting around the table in John’s tiny dining area, an exact duplicate of Julie’s and Gideon’s. Spread out in front of them were the meager but welcome results of foraging in both their refrigerators: Cheerios, milk, baloney, Wonder bread, a six-pack of ginger ale. They had thought briefly of retrieving their barely touched steaks from the cookout area, where the picnic now continued in even higher spirits than before, but had decided that it would be better for them to keep to themselves for the time being. Besides, John had the impression that Gideon’s headlong dive across the table might have knocked their plates to the ground, a possibility also suggested by the condition of Gideon’s shirt.
“First of all,” Gideon said, “I think Callie decided Harlow had to go as soon as she saw how shook up he was when we found the burial-and we know Harlow had good reason to be shook up; he was the one who fudged the dental charts to cover up Jasper’s murder. I think it’s pretty safe to assume Callie was involved too, and that she got rid of Harlow before he cracked completely and gave everything away.”
“Ahem,” said Julie.
They looked at her.
“I believe I expressed this very hypothesis only yesterday, and was told by a certain eminent authority that it was out of the question.”
“Well, it was. Yesterday it made no sense at all. Today it does.”
“Yesterday it was my idea. Today it’s your idea.”
He laughed. “All right, credit where due. For the record: It was Julie who first fingered Callie, within hours after Harlow was found.”
“It was Julie who fingered Callie before Harlow was found,” she pointed out. “I knew right away there was something fishy about that horse thing, didn’t I? Even if the aforementioned authority took pains to point out the impossibility of that too.”
“That’s right, I’d forgotten. You sure did, Julie. We should have paid more attention.”
She nodded gravely. “Thank you.”
“But you have to admit that at the time it really didn’t stand to reason.”
“Oh, sure, that’s easy to say-”
“Look, folks,” John said, “can we straighten out who gets credit for what later? I’ve got to get over to Bend and tell Farrell what the hell is going on, and at this point I still don’t have a clue.” He looked pleadingly at Gideon. “Doc? Please?”
Gideon slowly chewed thick-sliced baloney and soft white bread while he got his thoughts together. “All right. Understand, I don’t know whether she had all of this planned ahead of time, or came up with it after she killed him, but I think I know how she pulled it off.”