Chapter 24
As Libby stared at the gun in Tiffany’s shaking hands, she surprised herself. She knew she should be feeling scared, but instead she was pissed off.
All the time she’d spent worrying about Tiffany, all the calls she’d made, the places she’d looked. Not to mention the fact that her father was angry with her and their store was being watched by the cops and this was the thanks she got. Getting pushed down and sitting here in the rain and getting wet and muddy while Tiffany threatened her. No. She didn’t think so.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Libby barked.
Tiffany’s eyes filled with tears. Her lips quivered.
“Don’t talk to me that way.”
“I’ll talk to you any way I want.” Libby got up and wiped her hands off on her jeans before straightening up. “I ought to slap you. Now give me that gun,” she ordered.
“No.” Tiffany took a step back.
“Yes.” And before Libby realized what she was doing, she’d reached over and grabbed the damned thing out of Tiffany’s hand. “Is it loaded?” Libby asked as she tried not to think about what her father would have said to her if he could see what she was doing.
“I don’t know,” Tiffany confessed. “I’ve never held a gun before.”
“Me either,” Libby admitted as she realized she was pointing the thing at herself.
She carefully turned it around and placed it on the stump of a tree near her. Even though she’d seen her father clean his service revolver on the kitchen table hundreds of times, she didn’t know anything about guns. He’d never explained anything about them to her, and she’d never asked because they’d scared her, maybe because her mother had hated having them in the house so much.
“Where’d you get the weapon?” Libby asked Tiffany, who promptly broke down in tears.
“It was so horrible,” she sobbed.
“What?”
“Geoffrey Holder.”
Libby began to get a bad feeling.
“What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
And Tiffany began to cry in earnest.
Libby wiped the raindrops out of her eyes and sneezed.
“I didn’t even know I’d taken the thing till I got back here, honest.” Tiffany nodded towards the gun. “You believe me, don’t you?” she asked.
“Of course.”
Libby desperately wanted to. She told herself she did as she extracted the small bag with the two cookies in it out of her T-shirt pocket, took one for herself, and offered the other one to Tiffany.
“Thanks,” Tiffany said.
“Don’t mention it,” Libby replied.
Eating cookies at a time like this was a strange thing to do, she thought, but the feel of chocolate chips on her tongue did make her feel better. She supposed it was her version of downing a shot of Scotch.
“I’m such an idiot,” Tiffany wailed, taking Libby back to the present.
“Yes, you are,” Libby agreed, then felt immediately guilty for saying that even if it was true.
“I should never have run away. I’m sorry for everything.” Tiffany sniffled. She took a bite of a cookie and asked, “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to walk back to my van and call my father.”
And hope he doesn’t bite my head off, Libby added silently as she rubbed her forehead. This was definitely going to be an eight-aspirin day. But come what may, Libby decided, she was having that drink with Orion. And she was going to wear her new T-shirt. Then she immediately felt bad for thinking about things like that at a time like this.
Libby looked at Orion. They were sitting on the sofa in his parents’ living room. He seemed so quiet—no, the word was contained—and she was having a hard time keeping still.
“Just like old times,” he remarked as Libby folded her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t pick at her nails.
“The sofa’s new.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“I like your T-shirt.”
“Thanks.”
Libby took a deep breath and tried to look casual as Orion moved closer and put his arm around her shoulder. This was like being back in high school, she told herself as she felt her pulse race. They should have stayed at the bar and had another beer. She wasn’t ready for this. Not yet. Especially not after today.
“Where are your parents?”
“At Lake George visiting friends.” Then Orion bent over and gently kissed Libby on the lips.
“I never stopped thinking about you.”
Libby moved back a little.
“I don’t know . . .”
“What’s to know?” Orion asked.
“This . . .” Libby stood up. “It feels weird.”
“You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?” Orion asked. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were.”
“Well . . . it is hard to trust someone who did what you did,” Libby conceded.
“What can I do to change your mind?”
Libby couldn’t think of an answer. She’d blanked out. Orion reached over, took Libby’s hand, and patted it when she didn’t reply.
“Considering the day you’ve had, maybe this isn’t the time to talk about things like this.”
“It has been horrible,” Libby said.
“Little Tiffany killing two people.” Orion shook his head. “Hard to fathom.”
Libby removed her hand from his and stood up. “She didn’t do it.”
Orion got up too and faced Libby. “I really hope she didn’t. But then it’ll be someone else we know. It’s not as if it’s a stranger doing this.”
“Maybe it is,” Libby countered.
“Do you really believe that?” Orion asked her.
“I’d like to,” Libby said softly. “But no. I don’t.”
She watched Orion straighten and smooth back his hair with the palm of his hand.
“I was speaking to Geoff the other day,” he mused. “And now I’m going to be going to his funeral.” He paused for a moment. “And I thought things were going to be quiet when I moved back.”
Suddenly Libby felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
“I have to go,” she told him.
“Can I see you again?” he asked.
“Definitely,” Libby said.
He leaned over and kissed her.
“You taste sweet,” he told her as he escorted her to the door.
Something is wrong with me, Libby said to herself as she got into her van. She’d fantasized about being with Orion for the past ten years and now, when she had the opportunity, what had she said? I have to go. Bernie is right, she thought as put the key in the ignition. I need professional help.
Sean sat in his wheelchair, sipping Wild Turkey from a jam jar. He knew the jam jar annoyed Libby. They had, as she kept reminding him, perfectly good glasses downstairs, but for mysterious reasons he preferred using this one, maybe because it reminded him of when he was a kid and it was all they’d had.
As he gazed at his two daughters, he wondered what his dear departed wife would have said about what happened today. Nothing good. Of that he was sure.
It was a little before twelve o’clock at night—past his bedtime, but neither of his children gave the slightest indication that they were ready to go to bed. Neither was he, for that matter. They were all too wound up from the day’s events.
First there had been the call from Bernie and then the call from Libby, not to mention the call he’d made to Paul. He hated asking anyone for favors. Once was bad. Twice was insupportable. No matter what the problem was, he would never have called Paul for himself, but he was the first to admit he’d always been a sucker for his girls.
“You’re sure she’s not going to run this time,” Paul had asked him.
Sean had looked at the quivering, sodden mess that was Tiffany standing before him and said, “I’m sure.”
“You’re positive? Because I don’t want . . .”
“Trust me on this.”
“Be there in ten,” Paul had told him before hanging up.
As Sean had studied Tiffany, he doubted that she’d even have the energy to climb back down the stairs to the street again, let alone jump out of another window.
“You want to tell me what happened?” he’d asked her.
But she’d just cried harder.
“Try pulling yourself together,” he’d urged, but that had only led to a fresh bout of sobbing. She’d still been at it when the patrol car arrived to take her into custody.
Sean sighed and turned his attention back to his daughters.
Libby was sitting in the armchair, her legs slung over the side of the chair, methodically eating her way through the plate of lemon bars that she’d brought up from downstairs, while Bernie was perched on the end of his bed alternately eating olives and making serious inroads into the pitcher of vodka martinis she’d mixed herself.
“So.” Libby broke a lemon bar in half. “Paul will represent Tiffany.”
“Someone in his firm will,” Sean corrected.
“And isn’t that person lucky,” Bernie observed. “Now he or she can defend Tiffany for two homicides instead of one.”
Libby put the first half of the cookie in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed, leaving a faint dusting of powdered sugar on her lower lip.
“She said she didn’t kill Holder and I believe her,” she told Bernie while she cleaned the sugar off her face with the back of her hand. Then she put the plate on the table next to her and swung her legs down.
“So you keep saying,” Bernie observed. “And I’d love to believe you, but she had the weapon that Holder was shot with in her possession.”
“She explained that. She found it near Holder’s body and reached down and took it with her.”
“Why? Because she thought it looked nice? The color appealed to her?” Bernie said.
Which was, Sean noted, what he’d been thinking as well, though he wouldn’t have phrased it in quite that way.
Libby leaned forward.
“Tiffany was scared,” she shot back. “She grabbed it on impulse and ran away. Haven’t you ever done anything like that?”
“No,” Bernie said. “I can’t say I have. But then, I’ve never been in her situation either. Here’s another question though. Why was Tiffany in Holder’s place of business?”
“I already told you. She said she got a call to come over.”
“From this mysterious woman who she can’t identify? Now let me get this straight. Here she is being looked for by the police and she hitches a ride out to Holder’s business and walks in the back way? It’s something I would definitely not do.”
“She’s not you,” Libby snapped.
“Thank God. And how did she get this alleged phone call considering she’s in the middle of the woods?”
“On her cell. Everyone has her number. She uses it to book her hair appointments.”
“The call shouldn’t be hard to verify,” Sean pointed out. “Paul can get a court order for the phone records.”
“Maybe we should hire a private detective to help with the defense,” Libby suggested to her father.
“I don’t think your friend has the money for that,” Sean replied gently.
He started to raise his glass to take another sip of his drink, but it began to slide out of his hand. He hurriedly put it back down on the tray before Bernie and Libby could see what was happening.
God, he hated this. He could feel one of his black moods descending on him when he saw tears rolling down Libby’s cheeks.
“What is it?” Sean asked, his problems suddenly forgotten.
“I shouldn’t have called you,” she said to her father. “If I hadn’t called you, Tiffany wouldn’t be in jail now.”
Sean made a soothing noise. “You did the right thing.”
“Not for Tiffany I didn’t,” Libby said.
“Bernie and I will do the best we can,” Sean told her. What else could he say in the circumstances? “Right, Bernie?”
“Right, Dad.”
Libby wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“You think there’s a chance?” she asked.
“There’s always a chance,” Sean answered. He closed his eyes. Suddenly he felt exhausted.
“We should go,” he heard Libby say.
“No.” He couldn’t bear the thought of his daughter going off like this. “Just give me a second.” A moment later, he opened his eyes to see Libby and Bernie staring at him in concern. “I’m fine,” he snapped.
“Like hell you are,” Bernie shot back.
He’d never been able to get the last word in with her, he thought. Not even when she was six years old.
He made a supreme effort to clear away the fuzziness in his mind and focus.
“I was thinking,” he said to Libby. “Most killers, unless they’re professionals, use one M.O., modus operandi. So the fact that Tiffany supposedly poisoned one person and shot another might work in our favor.”
“I hope you’re right,” Libby said. “I really do.”
“So do I,” Sean said. “So do I.”