She looked from one side to another as she came. She walked a few feet off the path to check behind several fallen trees. She would do the same when she got to mine. I prepared to duck my head because she was getting too close for comfort.
I thought I heard the sound of another car, approaching from the main road. Carol stopped walking; she heard it too. She stood, undecided, for four or five heartbeats; then she ran for her car, gun in hand. I quickly lowered my head and listened to the sound of her footsteps as they hurried by me, crunching twigs and dead leaves.
I popped my head up again and saw Sandra's little red Toyota come around the corner. Carol had reached her Mercedes, but she didn't get in. She dropped her gun into the pocket of her suit jacket and turned to face the oncoming car. It pulled up behind Carol's car and stopped. Sandra was driving; Mark sat in the passenger seat; Winston sat in his car-seat in the back.
As the two older ones got out, Carol went into an act. “There's been a terrible accident!” she cried, pointing down the path she had just retraced, toward my car. When Sandra and Mark looked in that direction they also saw Joe's body.
I couldn't let them get sucked into anything, especially with Winston here. With a great effort I stood up and shouted, “Watch out! She's got a gun!”
Sandra and Mark stared at me. I must have looked like one of the living dead. I had blood on my face and dirt all over. My appearance distracted them from Carol, who looked at me too.
“Thank God you're alive!” Carol said, striding the few steps to me. She kept one hand in the pocket with the gun. “I thought you had been…” she hesitated.
“Killed?” I asked.
She grabbed my arm with her free hand.
“Carol shot Joe!” I shouted. “She tried to kill me too.”
Carol pulled the gun out of her pocket and placed it against my head.
“Let her go!” Sandra said.
She and Mark edged closer to us.
“Hold it!” Carol commanded. They stopped. “Now listen to me.”
Carol's hand that held me was shaking and her breathing was rapid.
“Sandy,” Carol continued, “move your car out of the way but don't try to drive off or your grandmother gets it. Mark, turn my car around and leave it running.”
“She's going to shoot me anyway,” I said. “Get away while you can.”
Carol's grip on my arm tightened. Sandra watched as Carol shoved the barrel of her gun into the back of my head. As I winced, Sandra carefully walked back to her car, keeping one eye on Carol.
“I remember that your car has a security code,” Mark said to Carol. “What is it?”
“Seven, three, five, one,” I said. All the odd prime digits, starting with lucky seven and going down, up, down.”
“I'm glad I told you,” Carol said, jabbing me with her gun. “When I forget it in the future I'll ask you.”
“Mark,” I said, as he turned to go to the Mercedes, “remember our nim game? After your first move I knew it wouldn't go.”
“No tricks!” Carol said, poking me with the gun again.
Mark looked at us for another moment. I stared back at him, trying to give him a telepathic message. Then he got into the Mercedes, started it and turned it around, using the cleared path. He left it running, with the driver-side door open.
Sandra simultaneously moved her car well past the Mercedes toward Albert's house, taking Winston out of the line of fire, and then cautiously walked back toward us. I wished she had kept going.
Carol told Sandra to throw her keys into the Mercedes and then stand away from the car with Mark. Then, pointing the gun at my back, she made me limp in front of her up to the Mercedes. I glanced at Mark; he winked at me.
Carol forced me to get in the passenger side, which was closest to us. She locked and shut the door and raced around to the driver side before I could escape, but I managed to unlock the door and lower the electronic window a few inches.
Carol shut her door and tried to put the car into gear. As I anticipated, she couldn't get it out of Park. She dropped the gun into her lap so she could yank on the gearshift with both hands. Moving faster than I had in quite a while, I reached past her arms and snatched the gun. She tried to grab it back; she had her hand on it for an instant but with a last burst of strength I pulled it away and threw it out the window.
Mark immediately ran to the car and opened my door. He pulled me out and jumped in to subdue Carol, but she climbed out her side and began to run toward the main road. Sandra gave chase; she ran every day so it was no contest. She rapidly closed the gap between them and brought Carol down with as fine a tackle as I've ever seen.
Mark was right behind her. He took over guarding Carol so Sandra could run to her car and collect Winston. Her motherly instincts came out as she carried him back to us, hugging him and whispering to him, but keeping his head pointed away from Joe's body. Winston babbled, happy to be out in the fresh air, but when he saw my bloody face he pointed at it and said, “Uh oh.”
CHAPTER 30
“You owe us some explanations, Lil,” Tess said. She had collapsed into one of my chairs, having spent the day helping me move back into my apartment at Silver Acres. It was Saturday, exactly one week after I had moved out. The last two days I had talked to the police, rested and recuperated from my wounds.
My descendants were there, too, all three generations of them, plus Mark. We were drinking beer or coffee, according to personal preference. Winston practiced climbing onto his favorite chair. King walked from one person to another, putting her head in laps and asking to be petted.
“For example,” Sandra said, “how did you manage to communicate the locking code for the Mercedes to Mark. When I ask him he says it's a military secret.”
“That's easy,” I said. “Remember the game of nim Mark and I played in the bar the night we met?”
“What's nim?” Albert and Tess asked together.
“I'll tell you later,” I said. “But for Sandra's edification, the first move Mark made in that game was to remove three toothpicks from the five-row, leaving 7-2-3-1. That is the combination that locks the transmission in Carol's Mercedes for 30 minutes to prevent theft.
“How on earth did you both remember the details of that game?” Sandra asked.
Mark and I grinned at each other. “Great minds think like,” he said.
“Maybe you'd rather be dating Gogi than me,” Sandra aid, flipping her blond hair.
“If only I were 50 years younger,” I said.
Tess turned to Sandra. “And why did you and Mark turn up at precisely the right moment?”
“I was at Sandy's place sponging a meal,” Mark said, “when my beeper started going off, over and over again, always with the same number. I called the number, but I got an out-of-service message.”
“It was Gogi's former number here,” Sandra said. “We figured she was trying to tell us something…”
“We called Albert to see if she was with him,” Mark continued, “and he said she was with Carol at Silver Acres, but when we called there we got Carol's voice mail.”
“We called Tess' apartment, but she hadn't seen Gogi for an hour or so,” Sandra said. “So we decided to drive the route from Silver Acres to Dad's house. Fortunately, Silver Acres is almost on the way from my condo to Dad's place. We didn't see Gogi's car in the main parking lot there…”
“Or Carol's car,” Mark cut in.
“Then we drove directly to the farm and ran into Lillian and Carol on the road. It's a good thing you carry a cell phone, Gogi.”
“Modern technology is sometimes useful,” I said, remembering that Carol had said the same thing about forging my signature. I was gratified that Sandra had been cooking a meal for Mark. Nowadays, if a woman sleeps with a man, it means little. But if a woman cooks for a man, it can mean a lot.
“I still can't picture Carol as a murderer,” Albert said, shaking his head.