“Oh, he’s sleeping, don’t worry.” She pointed to the box. “Those are the jewels.”
“I figured.”
“And there was another piece I wore today that I forgot to put in the box…” Her hand went into the pocket of her robe and came out with a small pistol that fired twice, throwing bullets sharply into his chest so that he staggered back and hit the wall of bookcases, dropping his own pistol he’d been loosely, confidently holding. He slumped to the floor, books plopping on either side of him like giant raindrops. He didn’t have to see the blood to know he was dying.
With the same surprising speed with which she’d drawn the gun, she crossed to him from the doorway, knelt, and picked up his .38. He tried to make a grab for it, but only his fingers would move, and those too slowly. “Why?” he asked, tasting blood.
“You’ll see. You deserve that much.” She crossed to the doorway, turned on the room light, and shouted. “Tom!” There was silence. “Tom!” She wrapped a handkerchief around the hand that held the gun.
A muffled cry answered her from somewhere in the house.
“Come here!” I’m in the den!”
“What is it? For crissake, it’s after two…”
“Just come in here! Something’s not right…” She walked over to where he’d been standing when she’d shot him and looked at him. “Now you get it?”
A few seconds later Tom walked through the doorway, and she shot him in the forehead with the .38. Then she wiped the other pistol and put it in her husband’s dead hand. “You’ll get yours back in a minute,” she said to the man dying against the bookcase. “I’ve got a couple of things to do first.”
He listened to her call the police on the kitchen phone, thinking how frenzied and horrified she seemed. The last sound he heard was the sharp clatter of glass as she broke the window in the kitchen door. From the outside, of course.