Here Today, Gone Tamale (24 page)

“Have it your way. I'll just go check on Patti.” Through the open window, I heard her struggle to open the door of the closet. Lenny barked as if he would rip her stockings off.

“Very clever, Jo Jo,” she called. “That's what your uncle calls you, right? Jo Jo.” She began to tug and bang on the closet door. “Bark away,” she raged, “you little health department nightmare.”

Why wasn't she shooting the handle off? Or did she think yelling at them through the door and banging on the panel
would frighten them more? Maybe she was hoping to shock them into a stupor like a mistreated goldfish.

Sirens began to wail, and two sheriff cruisers zoomed down Main Street, heading straight for us. I came to my knees, convinced I could wave them down. She wouldn't dare shoot me with the deputies as witnesses.

The cruisers zoomed on past, crossed the train tracks and disappeared, heading toward Two Boots.

The deputy dogs had missed me.

I dropped to my stomach and inched my way back to the wall, determined to make it over the balcony before she spotted me.

As soon as I stood up, I heard the pistol cock.

“There you are,” Elaine said sweetly. “Come on over here.”

I leaned back against the wall, making a smaller target. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Dear, I wouldn't try to be clever at a time like this.”

Holy cow, Elaine was trying to mother me with a gun in her hand. I peered at the ground. How much pain would I feel if I flung myself over the balcony? What if I caught my heel on the rail? Would I land on my head?

In the background, I heard the sirens, but then they disappeared on the wind.

“Say something,” she demanded.

I inched closer to the railing.

“Fine. I'll teach you to ignore your elders.”

I heard a thwack as if she'd hit the closet's door handle with her pistol. With any luck, the gun would go off and put her out of commission.

Without delay, I lifted one leg over the railing and froze as a heartbreaking cry from Lenny reached my ears.

“If you want me to have mercy on your friends, you'll come back inside this minute.” Lenny's whining came closer. She had to be standing at the open window.

One leg over the railing and fifteen feet from either
freedom or a broken leg, I wavered. “Why don't you clean out your bank account and make a run for the border? No one would ever find you.”

“Why would I do that?” Elaine asked matter-of-factly. “No one else knows I killed Dixie except you two.”

Patti cried out.

“I guess Miss Tattoo Queen isn't as tough as she thought.”

I ignored the adrenaline racing through my brain that was telling me to jump. I faced my fear and turned my head to stare straight into Elaine's eyes. Holding the pistol like a club, she swung it by her side, and in her other arm she held Lenny close to her body.

With one leg over the railing, I lied. “I told Lightfoot the whole story only forty-five minutes ago.”

“When was that, my dear? Before or after he drank three frozen margaritas?”

My mouth was as dry as dirt. “After, but you'd be surprised how well that man holds his liquor.” I was blabbering. Lightfoot hadn't been drinking when he was with me.

“I don't believe you, Jo Jo. Why, you hardly said two words to him all night.” She could have been a disappointed parent.

But how could she have seen us without me seeing her? “That's what we wanted you to think. I told Lightfoot all about you murdering Dixie while you were on the dance floor.” I was grasping at straws.

“Hmm . . . I danced with him just before I left. He didn't act suspicious. He was too worried about not tripping over his own feet.” She laughed and her voice was light as a crystal bell.

She had me cold, but how had she slipped away before me? “I don't understand.” Maybe I could keep her talking? Or did that only happen in the movies?

“Ow . . .” Elaine cried, dropping Lenny to the floor. “The mongrel bit me.”

“Run, Lenny, run!”

“Oh, that's cute, right out of
Lassie
. How do you expect him to get out of the building?” Elaine waved me toward the window with the gun. “Get in here, Jo Jo, while I decide what to do with you.”

I was a sitting duck. “You win.” I lifted my leg back over the railing and crawled into my apartment under her watchful eye. I dropped into the wingback chair. My hairbrush, mascara, hair dryer, and straight iron were on the top of my dresser, close at hand. Lenny had disappeared.

“Why'd you do it, Elaine?” I reached down and she brought the gun to my face. Her eyes were overly bright, her gaze intent as if I were a snake in her garden that needed to be exterminated. “Why, Elaine? What did Dixie ever do to you that was so horrible you had to kill her?”

She shook her head. “Now, Josie, you know she was rude to me every time she saw me.” She patted her perfectly curled hair the same way I'd seen her do so many times before. “I could have stood it. I mean, really. What did I care what that fat, obnoxious hippie thought?” She looked at me expectantly.

“I thought Dixie was just kidding around.”

She put the safety back on. “I could have stood her kidding around if she hadn't tried to squash Melanie's chances for success.”

I must have looked as confused as I felt.

“Now listen up, first she claimed that Melanie was trying to destroy her sales by asking her to sell her jewelry elsewhere, and then she claimed that Melanie was a . . . what was it she called her . . . a two-bit hack?”

“That was unkind.”

Elaine still held the gun at her side, but she was glancing at herself in the mirror that hung on the closet door. I thought this was odd, especially if she was about to take my life.

I tried to lift up a few inches to pull my foot out from under me to position myself for a fast getaway.

“Unkind?” Elaine repeated as if lost in thought. “She was deluded.”

My eyes grew wide before I could stop myself. The queen of delusion was holding court in my bedroom at this very moment.

“She had the nerve to tell
The Texan
that my Melanie has no talent.” Elaine wiped her eyes, underneath her glasses.

“Where is Melanie?” If she were on her way to end my life, I wanted to know.

Elaine turned to the mirror again, smoothing down her hair at the crown, again and again. “With P.J., I imagine. She kept her head high in spite of all Dixie's yammering about how Melanie was trying to steal her designs.” She gestured with the gun to emphasize her point, and I covered my head.

“Did I scare you?” She laughed in delight.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said politely as I lowered my hands.

“I've never used one of these on another living, breathing soul.” She brought the pistol close to her face. “Did you know that after Dixie's murder P.J. insisted that Melanie, Suellen, and I all learn to shoot?” She chuckled. “I was proud to tell him that I had learned to handle a gun over thirty years ago.”

As she studied her weapon, I checked the window and bedroom door, evaluating which way to run.

A loud thwack hit the closet door and it swung open.

Elaine walked over and peered inside. “Patti, you need to stay quiet in there. You're going to hurt yourself.”

“Where will you go?” I asked. A better question was how could I get away from this crazy woman?

“Go? Why, nowhere, honey. I'm staying here.”

Where was my phone? I placed my hands on my thighs and tried to feel for my cell with my elbows. Not there. It must be on the balcony. Had the emergency operator believed my story?

“Where's her camera?” Elaine asked, pointing to Patti.

“I don't know.” Had I seen it since I'd entered the apartment? Slowly, I stepped toward the closet and peered inside and met Patti's eyes. She was listening, no longer frightened out of her wits. “Elaine, you don't really mind if I take the
duct tape off of Patti's mouth, do you? She sure would be able to breathe better.”

The festival chairwoman from h-e-double-toothpicks gave us a narrow-eyed stare. Finally she nodded her assent.

With my back to Elaine, I bent over to remove the duct tape from Patti's mouth and whispered, “Where's your camera?”

Even though I stood between her and Elaine, she took no chances. Silently she mouthed the words,
in the oven
.

“Patti Perez?” Elaine called sweetly.

“Yes . . . ma'am?”

“You stay in there, honey.”

“Uh, yes, ma'am.”

I patted Patti's shoulder and left her in the closet.

Elaine's eyes were still overly bright, as if she were high on adrenaline. “You stay over there.” She pointed with the pistol to my favorite piece of furniture, a handcrafted Shaker chair placed against the wall.

“Yes, ma'am.”

Suddenly she slapped the arm of the loveseat. “Where's Patti's camera?” she demanded, her eyes snapping like a rattlesnake prepared to strike.

“Um . . .” Her agitation level was rising faster than a flash flood. Grasping for straws, I remembered that Texas mommas are a proud lot. “You know, Dixie was wrong. Melanie has a gift.” I decided to lay it on thick. “My whole family loves her paintings. That's why we display them on our walls.”

“All she wanted was to sell her work to the tourists and make a success of her gallery. She's slaved hard for her success.”

“Haven't we all?”

“No, we all have not!” Elaine cried, gasping for breath. “Dixie sure as hellfire didn't. Oh, but she wanted to take everything my Melanie had worked so hard for.” Elaine lowered herself to the bed. She leaned forward, the gun hanging loose in her limp hand. The older woman's voice was growing weaker by the minute.

“How'd she do that?”

“Why, she stole all the glory for herself, selling her necklaces to the tourists and keeping them from buying my Melanie's beautiful paintings.”

“She didn't mean to steal, uh, the glory.”

“Oh yes, she did. Mean was her first, last, and middle name. Mean, proud, and ugly, telling Melanie she was going to leave and find her own place.”

Making a big show out of considering Elaine's words, I nodded my head in tacit agreement. “Wouldn't that have helped Melanie's business if Dixie had left?” I was stalling for time, rifling through my mental card file for any tidbit to distract her, but I wasn't coming up with anything useful.

Elaine's face went slack for a moment. “No, darling.” The older woman made a
tsk-tsk
sound. Obviously, the good Lord hadn't given me enough sense to come in out of the rain. She leaned forward, eager to help me understand. “Melanie wanted Dixie to sell her turquoise jewelry somewhere else. You see, my daughter needed,” Elaine wrinkled her nose in disgust, “that woman to keep selling her other, less popular pieces at the gallery. That way, folks coming in to buy from Dixie would be awestruck by Melanie's work and buy one of her paintings instead. She could have sold her turquoise baubles anywhere, but oh no. She wouldn't have it.” Elaine jerked to an upright position, her right hand opening and closing as if grabbing onto an imaginary flashlight. “She had to grind Melanie's face in it.”

“Your daughter is so talented,” I soothed. “She's going to become famous.”

“Of course she will, once you're out of the way. You see, I can't afford for anyone to find out that I murdered Dixie. If the world found out her mother was a murderer they'd never take Melanie's art seriously.”

I wet my lips, desperately trying to formulate an argument.

“I always thought you were an intelligent girl. Unfortunately, you've proved too smart for your own good.”

“Josie, you okay?” Aunt Linda's voice floated up the stairs like a ray of sanity.

From under the loveseat, Lenny sprang like a mountain lion upon Elaine's chest, growling and biting her face while the older woman screamed. “Get him off me! Get him off!”

“Lenny, heel.” My tiny defender stared at me as if I'd lost my ability to command. “Now.”

“Yap,” he barked in Elaine's face before jumping from her chest and running to my side.

Elaine pulled up her knees, dropped her head onto her arms, and began to weep.

“We're okay, Aunt Linda!”

With a tenderness I usually reserved for Lenny, I joined Elaine on the edge of the bed, after I kicked the pistol underneath it.

“Josie, what happened to your door?” Aunt Linda called from the landing.

“Stay where you are,” I cried. “I'm going to invite Aunt Linda in to sit with you. Is that all right, Elaine? You know she wouldn't harm a fly.”

The weeping chairwoman lifted her head. “That's okay, I guess. Your Aunt Linda's a kind woman.” She patted my hand. “I really should have killed you, but I just couldn't do it. You're the spitting image of your mother.”

“Come on in.”

My worried aunt nearly fell through the doorway. She wrapped her arms around Elaine and proceeded to rock her back and forth while the older woman cried.

Right on her heels was Senora Mari, and behind the Martinez women were the cavalry, Sheriff Wallace and Deputy Lightfoot.

“Yip,” Lenny said. I was so consumed with showing my gratitude, I didn't mind that he licked my face and mouth. He was my hero.

When Lightfoot helped Patti remove the last vestiges of
duct tape, she smiled at him as if he were the second coming. If I hadn't been so happy to see her freed, I would have kicked her in the shins for making her attraction so obvious.

Wallace pulled me into the hall.

“What's going on here?”

“Sheriff, it's another case of the Texas cheerleading mom. Elaine wanted so badly for her dear, sweet, talented Melanie to get all the glory for being the most talented artist in Broken Boot that she convinced herself she had to get rid of Dixie.”

“That sounds too crazy to be untrue.” The sheriff took off his hat, which meant he was thinking deeply.

“In Dixie's upcoming interview in
The Texan
she skewers Melanie and her gallery, calling her a no-talent hack and worse. And she goes on about how Elaine bought Melanie's success.”

“How would Elaine know what was in that interview?”

“Dixie didn't hide any aces up her sleeve. Knowing her, she probably threw it in Melanie's face.”

Senora Mari stuck her head out into the hall. “She's coming, sheriff. You got the handcuffs ready?”

“That's not the way we treat upright, solid . . . I mean, that's not the way we do things here.” By his deep frown, it was obvious he hadn't completely comprehended how deep a puddle of crazy the festival chairwoman had fallen into. Straightening his shoulders, he hitched up his belt and went to talk to Elaine himself.

With an arm around Patti, who mysteriously appeared a lot weaker than she had fifteen minutes ago, Lightfoot paused in the doorway. With a quick glance toward the couch, he whispered to the sheriff, “She's sobbing a confession all over herself in there. If you ask me, someone should hand her paper and pencil while the words are flowing.”

“You okay?” I narrowed my eyes at Patti to make sure she knew how much I disapproved of her sudden display of feminine wiles.

She sighed and gave me a weak smile. “I'm fine. Guess I'm in shock,” she said, looking up through her eyelashes at the deputy.

Growling was not an option, but I wanted my friend back, not this flirt with dyed black hair and facial piercings. I couldn't help but feel a tiny bit disgusted with her and with myself. Hadn't I found Lightfoot attractive? And hadn't I looked for him every time a cruiser drove by? The whole thing was sickening. I was Josie Callahan, dang it.

I was not about to jump out of the pan and into the fish fryer. She could have him.

“Lightfoot, take Patti downstairs and find her a Dr Pepper. The sugar and caffeine will make a new woman out of her.” I gave her a knowing look, making sure she got the message.