She pushed the door closed, flipped the light, took a step into the kitchen and stopped. A woman was sitting at the table and Margery took a step back. "Who the hell are you?" Then she saw the pile of money on the table. "That's my money, there."
Ruth Lewis picked up Loren Singleton's.380.
"You killed my sister, Mom. And you killed those little girls with needle injections. And God only knows who else. Something has to be done about that." She was pointing the pistol at Margery's chest.
The pistol, which Ruth had picked up at the church, had been surprisingly simple to work. She'd done a little practice before she'd sent another one of the sisters across the border with her driver's license. Ruth would cross herself later that night, with that sister's ID. A simple-enough alibi-she'd learned to think like a criminal.
"Well, you can't just shoot me," Margery said. She was thinking ahead two squares, like she had with Loren. Loren had been dead and gone before he'd left her house that night, and she'd known it. But Loren was screwed up in the head, and if the cops had gotten a handle on him, he would've spilled all the beans. And when they found the little girls at the dump, and found those needle pricks… who would have thought they could do that, after all this time?
"You can't just shoot me," Margery was saying. If she could get close enough to the table…
Ruth said, "I don't see why not."
She flinched with the blast, deafeningly loud in the small room. But she showed that cold, wintery smile when Margery Singleton went down.