The elderly man, looking confused, gestured the young woman into his living room. He had a nice home, big and formal.
The actor playing the older man began to protest that his car hadn’t been involved in any accident, and when the young woman asked him if she could have an associate examine the car, he readily handed over his keys.
He was a fool, I thought.
So was I.
On the screen, the young woman tossed the keys out to her “associate,” a large, blond young man with impressive shoulders. He strode off, presumably in the direction of the homeowner’s garage, but the camera stayed inside the house while the owner continued expostulating with the woman. To show us how shifty this woman was, the camera dwelled on her eyes flicking around the attractive room while the homeowner rattled on. She drifted closer and closer, and when the man announced his intention of calling his own insurance agent, the young brunette dropped into a classic fighting stance, drew back her left fist into the chamber position, and struck the man in the spot where the bottom ribs come together. He stared at her, stunned, for a second or two before collapsing to the floor.
I was barely conscious of a shuffling of feet behind me.
“Excuse me, Lily,” Claude said abruptly. “I’ll be in the bathroom.”
I didn’t respond. I was too shocked.
Now the camera showed the man lying limp. He was probably meant to be dead.
“While their victim lay on his own living-room floor, breathing his last, Sherry Crumpler and David Messinger systematically looted his house. They didn’t leave until they had it alclass="underline" money, jewelry, and car. They even took Harvey Jenkins’s rare-coin collection.”
Show the mug shots again.
As John Walsh went on to detail the couple’s string of similar crimes, and urged viewers to bring these two murderers to justice, their heads filled the screen once more.
I peered at the face of the woman. I paused the picture. I put my hands on either side of her face. In my imagination I painted all the colors in brightly.
“I thought I heard someone up here,” Becca Whitley said from the doorway.
I hit the OFF button immediately. “Yeah, Lacey asked me to work up here some more. I shouldn’t have been watching television,” I said, trying to smile.
“Watching television? You? On the job? I don’t believe it for a second,” Becca said blithely. “I’ll bet you found another tape.”
She turned and spoke into the hall behind her. “Honey, she knows.”
Her brother came in. He was the other mug shot. He was much more recognizable.
“Where is the real Becca Whitley?” I asked, glad they couldn’t hear how loudly my heart was pounding. My knees bent slightly, and I shifted my feet for better balance. “And the real Anthony Whitley?”
“Anthony got into a little trouble in Mexico,” David Messinger said. “Becca is a pile of bones in some gulch in Texas hill country.”
“Why did you do this?” I asked. I waved my hand to indicate the apartment building. “This isn’t riches.”
“It just dropped from heaven,” the woman I still though of as Becca said. “David had been romancing Becca for months when he had to leave the country for a month or two. Things were getting too hot for us to stay together. David talked Anthony into going with him. Becca was a real straight arrow, but Anthony was a bad boy. You ever wonder why the apartment building was left to just Becca? Because Anthony was in jail. In fact, that’s where Dave and Anthony met. While they were down in Me-hee-co, the guys went boating together, and when the boat came back in, why, there was only one man on it. And that man had all Anthony’s papers.” Becca smiled at me, her hard, bright smile that I’d grown nearly fond of. “I’d remade myself, as you can see. The best wig I could buy, and a lot of makeup. While I was hanging around with Becca in Dallas, being her best friend since I was gonna be her sister-in-law, she thought, her uncle died here in Shakespeare. She’d told me about him, about his apartment building and his little pile of cash. And she told me about the great-grandfather, too. I needed a place to be, a quiet place where no one would bother me. So after she’d quit her job and given up her apartment to move here, Becca and I took a little drive together.”
Her smile was genuine and bright.
Sherry Crumpler and David Messinger were between me and the only door, and as I watched, David shut the door behind him. He was really big. She was really good at combat.
They were wary.
“What about the keys, did you take the keys?” How long would Claude’s stomach be upset?
“I knew I’d have to give mine up to the sheriff, at least temporarily, and I couldn’t be sure Deedra hadn’t left some kind of message. So I stole the whole purse, and I took her extra key from the umbrella in the car stall. I came up here right when I got back from the woods, and took the TV Guide, because it was marked. But people started coming back from the weekend then, and I had to stay in my apartment. After that, I had a chance to come up here twice trying to find any trace she’d left about us, but I decided she hadn’t left anything. Until I saw you carry out all the tapes. Then I realized she’d probably taped the show. I was watching AMW that night. You can imagine how I felt. But I was sure no one would recognize me. Then I saw Deedra on the stairs the next morning when she left for church. I was shocked when I could tell she knew who I was.”
“It’s incredible how much difference the makeup makes,” I said, as they split up and began to approach me from both sides.
“You know, I hate the stuff,” Sherry said frankly. “And I hate this damn wig. At least I could take it off to sleep, but during the day I have to wear it every minute. That time you dropped in and I was in the shower-if I hadn’t trained myself to put it on perfectly the second I could, I would’ve strolled out of the bathroom in my bare head. But I’ve got discipline, and I had my hair on and my makeup in place.”
She’d gradually been easing into a fighting position, her side turned toward me, her knees bent, her fists held ready. Now she struck.
But I wasn’t there.
I’d stepped to the side and kicked her right knee.
She made a gagging noise, but she recovered and regained her stance. David decided to slip up behind me and circle me with his arms from behind, and I threw my head back and caught him on the nose. He staggered back and Sherry attacked again. This time her strike hit me in the ribs, and through the pain I grabbed her fist and twisted.
I was just prolonging the inevitable, but I had my pride.
I lost it when David clouted me upside my head.
“Claude!” I yelled through the ringing in my ears. “Claude!”
Becca-Sherry-was in the act of starting her kick when Claude came out of the hall bathroom with his gun drawn. She had her back to him, but David saw him, and I was at least vaguely aware Claude was there as I shook my head to clear it. Claude managed to knock Sherry off target by shoving her shoulder, and she sprawled onto Deedra’s couch while Claude kept the gun steady on David. I scrambled, minus any dignity, from between Claude and the man and woman, taking care to keep low so Claude could shoot them if he wanted to.
He spoke into his shoulder radio, got back a lot of surprise, and repeated his orders in the calm, steady, Claude way that kept him in office.
“I can’t even leave the room, much less the town, you get in trouble,” he said to me when he figured I’d gotten my breath back. “You want to tell me what this is all about?”
“She killed Deedra,” I said. I opened the door David Messinger had closed, so the cops could come in. I could hear sirens coming nearer.
“Becca killed Deedra? Why?”
“She’s not Becca. Deedra found that out.”
The woman didn’t say anything. She just glared and clutched her knee. I hoped I’d put it out on her. I hoped she was in tremendous pain. David had blood streaming from his nose, but Claude wouldn’t let him reach for a handkerchief. David wasn’t talking, either. Far too experienced a criminal for that.