Killer Cousins (33 page)

I heard the front door close. Stevie’s footsteps returned. I felt her hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

I shook my head. “It’s okay. She was just a plant.” She’d been the living presence accompanying me instead of an animal that might have been more difficult during my travels. “Just a plant,” I said, shaking more soapy water off her. She’d been knocked into this water—the water
I
had left in the sink—and was broken into bits. Her head knocked off. Tiny pink poufs came apart.

My arms shook and my eyes burned as I held my cactus, the one I’d spoken to and learned how to keep alive. Until now.

“I want to bury her here,” I told Stevie. “And I’m going to get whoever did this.”

We went into the backyard. Stevie carried a shovel. I carried Minnie. I chose a sunny spot in the corner near the fence on April’s side.

“Do you want to say anything?” Stevie asked once I had Minnie buried.

I stared at the loose dirt. Shook my head. Told Minnie, “You were important.”

Stevie called in sick at school. We went to town, and I bought a white trellis. We found a few bright flowers to plant near Minnie’s place of rest. Back at Stevie’s, we positioned the trellis and plants, creating a memorial.

“You can come and visit anytime you’d like,” Stevie said.

I squeezed her hand. “I respect you even more for not laughing at me.”

“I haven’t heard you laughing when I go in with my candles.”

“Do you really believe in all that stuff?”

She sighed with a shrug. “I need something or someone to believe in.”

I cut my eyes toward April’s house. “You’ve been afraid to lose them. You knew everything wasn’t as it seemed next door with the way they’ve lived.”

Fear filled her eyes. “Don’t hurt them.”

“I don’t want to. Darn it, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I want everybody to be just great! But they’re not.”

We stared at each other. Parted inside the house and did our separate things. She fiddled with papers. I studied my list, jotting notes next to most names of her quitters’ group, pushing my mind to come up with more. Massaged my shins that didn’t even hurt.

The newspaper arrived. Fawn’s funeral was tomorrow. She had a husband, two children, one brother, three sisters. I cried for her and them and Minnie and myself and Pierce Trottier, who might have had faults but didn’t deserve to have anyone take his life.

“Time for lunch.” Stevie held her purse.

I sat in my bedroom. “I’m not hungry. I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“We haven’t eaten a thing today. I understand. I’m not real hungry, either, but good food will help us think.”

When she said good food, I knew she’d head for Gil’s restaurant.

She did, and we joined the dozen or so people inside. It was only 11:15. No Gil visible. If he was inside Cajun Delights, I hoped he wouldn’t come out while we were here. Sure, I’d want to share my loss with him, to tell him about Minnie and someone breaking into the house. But he had that other agenda, possibly a heavier one to deal with.

Love.

I didn’t want to have to consider my feelings toward him right now. Hatred for whoever was hurting people around us and my plant swelled inside my chest, leaving little room for other emotions. We ordered red beans and rice and smoked sausage and corn bread and iced tea.

The musicians set up on stage. Their presence reminded me of something else I’d said I would take care of. I glanced around.

“Have you seen Babs?” I asked Stevie. “You know, the pretty manager who’s here in daytime.”

“The one who’s scared to drive at night? No.”

I spied Babs going toward the restaurant’s rear. I wasn’t in a mood for trying to get a couple together, but I’d promised Gil I would help him here. I hadn’t said how, since he believed people were attracted on their own to find love.

I believed they sometimes needed help. Maybe a nudge would get Babs to really consider Jake a man to date—a man who seemed to like her, but was too shy to ask her out.

I was way past shy. Gil needed more help at this restaurant to get it back on its feet. Getting his managers together so they would no longer argue seemed the best way for me to help.

“I’ll only be a minute,” I told Stevie. I followed Babs, thinking she’d go into the ladies’ room or the lounge. She did go through the empty employees’ lounge and continued out the back door.

I smelled cigarette smoke before I opened that door and saw her right inside the fence, lighting up. She dropped her lighter back into her purse.

“You smoke?” I said, surprised. “You don’t seem like the type.”

“What type of people smoke?” Her voice sounded huskier than I’d noticed before, possibly because tars and nicotine now coated her throat.

“I don’t know. People who drink a lot of coffee often smoke. And I don’t really know. I’m just surprised at you.” I hesitated to speak of dating someone, not certain I was getting off to a good start. But Gil needed help. “Did you think about what I mentioned to you the other day—that Jake seems like a good man?”

I watched her eyes—wide and pale green usually, but now hard and narrowed.

A jolting chill shook me. I feared those eyes had stared at me before.

She held her cigarette high, red lipstick surrounding the filter like a kiss.

My gaze swerved to the ground beside the fence. A few cigarette butts. Two with plum lipstick. My legs numbed. I’d seen her wearing that lipstick before, I now realized. The first time I’d seen her, that lipstick matched her suit.

“You were with Pierce Trottier before he died, weren’t you?” I said, staring at the butts like the one I had found. “And you came outside their stop-smoking session to find out how people would react to his death.”

“He was a vicious man.” She pointed at me with her long cigarette.

“What you did to him wasn’t nice, either.” I shifted my purse on my shoulder. Not heavy enough to hurt her. My phone was inside it.

“I don’t have to be kind to the people I hate.”

Another fear emerged. “Fawn McKenzie? Did you kill her?”

Babs leaned toward me. “She was supposed to be him.”

Him
numbed my brain.

“Yes, you know who. Your precious man who threatened to fire me if I didn’t straighten up and quit arguing in front of customers.”

My jaw went slack.

She meant Gil. She’d tried to kill Gil.

I was moving toward her. She drew a pistol out of her purse. Aimed it at my chest.

I kept still. “Were you watching me from across the street of my cousin’s house the other night?” I asked, remembering a smoke tendril out there. “You watched when I went on the porch.”

“I was deciding. Watching you out there and deciding what I would do. It’s a good thing I live only a couple of blocks away and didn’t have to drive too far at night.”

“So you saw my car out front one day.”

“I saw you.”

A new chill ran down my arms. “Why would you want to hurt me?”

“I know you’re most important to him. I’d hurt him any way I could.” She aimed the gun higher, its barrel pointed at my nose. “And I tried last night. I finally made the decision to break in. But you were gone from the house.”

So she’d broken in.
Moved through the house in the dark. Smashed Minnie along the way. My Minnie.

“There’s a gate back here,” Babs said. “I want you to go through it. I’ll have this gun aimed at your back. I guarantee I’ll use it.”

I turned toward the rear gate. “What’s back there?”

“A garbage vat. You’ll climb inside it.”

Depravity had guided this woman, making her kill two people that I knew of. And now she believed I’d want to take my chances inside a dumpster, and possibly she’d miss me with her gun? I faced the gate, slipping my hand inside my purse. I opened my cell phone, ready to press the memory button for Gil. I glimpsed inside my purse. Not one pinch of light. Dammit, was my battery dead? Or maybe it worked, and Gil was about to answer his phone. I’d speak so he’d know where I was and my problem.

“Babs,” I said, placing both hands in her view, “do you come here behind Cajun Delights often to smoke? And do you always bring a gun?”

She looked at me curiously. She glanced at my purse, still open. “What are you doing?”

I turned toward her. “I need to know why. I understand you got pissed off at Gil and wanted to hurt him, probably since you’d already killed Pierce Trottier. So what was another dead body, right? But why Trottier?”

“He cheated my mother. They were second cousins, so she trusted him and let him keep the books for her gift shop in Alabama. She thought her funds weren’t coming out right, but he promised he’d take care of the problem.” Her gaze fell to the ground. Swung to me. “He did. She lost everything.”

My heart lightened. “But it’s just money.”

“My dad always told Mom she was so dumb. She bought that gift shop to prove he was wrong.”

“She can still show him. She can get back on her feet.”

Green eyes viewing me widened. “She killed herself.” Babs straightened her arm, taking aim at my forehead.

“Don’t do it,” I said, legs shaky. “Your mother wouldn’t want you to kill again.”

“It’s too late.” Her knuckles tightened on the gun.

The back door burst open. “There you are.” Stevie stood on the top step.

“Squash her!” I yelled.

Stevie’s eyes swung toward Babs and widened. She threw herself at Babs.

Striking her side, Stevie made her wobble. The gun went off, the bullet going wide.

I slammed my own body against Babs’s opposite side. We all tumbled to the ground.

I scrambled on my knees and grabbed the loose gun. Babs fell on her back.

Stevie plopped down, sitting on her chest.

“Get her off me!” Babs cried. She looked especially frail under my cousin’s wide hips.

Gil came rushing through the gate we’d almost gone through. “What the hell?”

“Long story,” I said and kissed his lips. I leaned against Gil’s chest for his strength, waiting for my trembles to stop.

Sirens wailed. They came nearer.

I held onto Gil and shook.

Chapter 34

“I was pulling up to Cajun Delights when I heard the gun go off and then your yell,” Gil told me. “Your voice registered before the gunshot.”

Police took Babs away. I answered many of their questions during the afternoon, with Gil and my cousin close by. Stevie seemed shocked that Babs was such a horrid person. Gil hadn’t known the terrible things she’d done, but instinct had told him she wasn’t a good person. It was one of the reasons he’d threatened to let her go if she didn’t straighten up soon. He hadn’t hired her. “But soon I’ll need to hire someone to replace her.”

“My neighbor,” Stevie said, standing straighter.

“April?” I said. “She can manage a restaurant?”

“That’s what she used to do. She made good money back in Alabama.” Stevie leaned to speak into my ear. “And her name’s really Molly. Molly MacRae.” She grinned.

So she knew.

I smiled back at her. “And her child’s Angel,” I said, and Stevie smiled wider.

I faced Gil. “You might hire Stevie’s neighbor, Molly. She’s great. And I know exactly who might keep her child all summer.”

Stevie beamed.

The police were finished with us for a while. Gil drove us to Stevie’s house.

“Stevie,” I said, remembering the day I arrived and fell. “What about the dog? Who has a large one that might have come in your yard?”

Her cheeks reddened. “Did you notice the guy at the gym?”

“Mac? Hard to miss him.”

“He runs the place at night. He came over a couple of times. With his dog.”

Ah, a romance brewing? Or had it blossomed, and my arrival messed it up? Well I would leave soon, and they could catch up where they’d left off.

Gil stayed with us a while. Stevie admitted that what changed her so much recently was she could no longer deny to herself the signs that April was not who she said she was. Like me, Stevie noted clues over time and figured it out. But she’d come to love her neighbors so much and feared something bad was going to happen and she’d lose them. That was the real reason she’d wanted me here. She’d hoped that, together, she and I could figure out the problem and keep her neighbors here.

How sweet that she’d thought so highly of me. And how surprising.

We all determined the threatening note under Stevie’s gate had surely been shoved there by Pierce Trottier and meant for her neighbor. He must have gotten confused since their fences were the same.

The police had discovered how Trottier found out where April lived. She’d been cleaning people’s homes and offices. He saw her leaving an office with cleaning supplies and later called that office’s manager, saying his cleaning lady had quit and he needed to hire someone good to clean his office. The manager told him April did an excellent job. She didn’t have a phone number listed but said where to locate the house she rented. It seemed the police had been doing an excellent job of trying to find a killer.

We were all exhausted. Gil invited me to join him but understood I wanted to stay with Stevie, especially tonight. At the front door, he and I hugged. I clung.

When my new bout of shaking was over, Gil touched the tip of my nose. “You’ll get over this,” he said. “We all will.”

I nodded. Held onto him. We kissed. Our kiss deepened.

“Are you sure you want me to go?” he asked once our kiss broke. “Or that you don’t want to come with me?”

“Uh-uh.” I stepped back. Dropped my arms to my sides.

He planted a warm, lingering kiss on my forehead. “Good night. Call if you need me. I love you.”

My eyes misted. I bit my tongue. Nodded. Gil went out the door. I locked it. Sighed.

Stevie was down the hall, the door to her candle-room open. She saw me and said, “This room’s a bunch of crap.”

I considered the ring of candles. The makeshift altar. “There’s carpet on that floor. Maybe you could change it into a workout room.”

She eyed me.

“
Somebody
could probably give you help,” I offered. “Then you could exercise more at home. But you wouldn’t have to stop going to the gym, too.”