I didn’t tell Sam about Blackie’s phone call. I can’t say why. Maybe it was because I was scared I’d see that I-told-you-so look in his eyes. Maybe, I was embarrassed that I’d messed up so badly.
I wanted to call him. I wanted to lean on somebody. No, I wanted to lean on him. But I was afraid to, afraid to get attache and then to get hurt again.
Of course, I didn’t do all that analyzing at that very moment. I just pushed the thought of calling Sam out of my mind, told myself I was being weak for wanting his protection—
He has enough on his mind without you bringing him more trouble.
And reached for the phone to call somebody else. Somebody safe.
A locksmith.
Then I called Blackie back to ask him to meet me at my front door.
No need to endanger Sam, right?
My phone was ringing when I arrived. It had taken on a very shrill, insistent tone—one that I’d come to associate with shrill, insistent reporters. I had become the prey of my own species. I ignored it.
Blackie went through the house with me, both to make sure Echo wasn’t lurking somewhere and to offer suggestions as to where to add locks or bolt doors. Before leaving, Blackie talked to the locksmith, and then stepped back inside to talk to me.
“It’s going to be all right. The guy knows what he’s doing. He’ll set you up real nice.”
“Thanks, Blackie.”
“I wish I could do more.”
“You’ve done enough.”
I saw him out. For a few minutes, I watched the locksmith at work, and then I returned to the living room. Exhausted, I sank down on the sofa, kicked off my shoes, leaned back and closed my eyes. I was exhausted, but too tense to relax. I sat up again and rubbed my eyes. When the phone rang, I picked it up without thinking.
“Mrs. Price,” the silky voice said. “Mr. Echo knows the truth. You killed him. You made him betray his brother and then you killed him. The gun was in his hand, but you put it there.”
Fear stabbed me.
“Mr. Echo will make you pay. That is a promise. Mr. Echo will make you pay.”
I slammed down the receiver and unplugged the phone. He’d gotten my phone number. No doubt, he knew where I lived. I hugged myself, feeling cold and dirtied, as if a snake had crawled over me. I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat on the couch, shivering.
I couldn’t let this guy get to me like this. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t.
I shook myself free of the blanket and went upstairs, to my bedroom, and the night table next to Hamp’s side of the bed. The drawer slid open. The gun was still in there, wrapped in an oil rag, untouched since the day Hamp put it there. How I’d argued with him.
Don’t you be bringing death into our house.
We need this, Lanie. The way things are, every home should have one.
I checked the weapon. It was loaded. Hamp had taken me out to the gun range and forced me to practice. Practice. Practice. Until the gun no longer sickened me. Until it actually began to feel normal in my hand. And I sensed a certain pride in marksmanship.
I rewrapped the gun and returned it to the drawer, feeling calm and determined.
The locksmith called out. He was done. I fetched a bill from my purse and paid him. He told me the money was too much and tried to give some back. I pressed the change into his hand, curled his fingers over it and told him to keep it.
When the door was shut the door behind him, I flipped the new locks adorning my door. They were heavy and ugly and I hated what they stood for.
In stocking feet, I went down stairs to the kitchen. My gaze found Hamp’s leather tool kit. Whenever I entered the kitchen, it was always the first thing I saw. Three years, those tools had lain there. Three years. Right after his death, I couldn’t bear to touch them. As time went by, I’d told myself it didn’t make sense to put them away because I was going to fix the cabinet myself. One day, I’d do it.
But I never had.
I could’ve called in a carpenter to do the job, or asked any one of a number of friends to do it. But again, I never had. And to be honest, I probably never would.
My hands shook as I reached into the cabinet for my favorite cup—a dark blue chipped one that Hamp had made for me in a pottery class when he was in college. The cabinet was a bit too high for me, so I stood on tiptoe and leaned on the door in order to reach inside. I’d always been careful not to put too much weight on the door, but I guess that day I put on one ounce too many.
The cabinet shifted—like a picture off balance—and Hamp’s cup slid out. I tried to catch it, but fumbled it—the way I was fumbling everything that day. The cup slipped from my hand, fell to the counter top, and rolled off it. It hit the floor and shattered. It landed so hard it actually seemed to explode.
Frozen, I stared at the scattered bits and pieces. Even if I could find all of them, I wouldn’t be able to glue them back together again. I could never make the mug whole. Somewhere, somehow there’d be a place for liquid to bleed through.
I stood back and stared at the cabinet. This thing had somehow come to house so many of my memories, my yearning for my man’s return. It had been the focal point of my refusal to see the future, and allowed me to hold on to the past. It wasn’t irreparably broken, but the only man I wanted to fix it lay six feet under. How silly to have thought I could fix it myself.
How dangerous.
It was my determination to go it alone that had made me think I could handle the Todd case all by myself, and that determination that had played right into the hands of a killer.
I attacked the cabinet, hating it. All the grief-stricken rage I’d been carrying around since Hamp’s death roiled up, all the frustration at struggling to make it on my own, to take care of myself emotionally as well as financially, to not just be alone but proud and alone when everyone else I knew was part of a couple—all those bottled up feelings spilled free.
I grabbed hold of the cabinet door and pulled down on it with all my might. But the cabinet didn’t come crashing down, as I thought it would, as in all those years I’d feared it would. It stayed stubbornly in place, only now so dangerously tilted forward that all the dishes in it had skidded toward the edge.
I wanted to clear them away with a sweep of my arm, to let them fall to the floor and shatter, too. Instead, with deliberate calm, I removed the remaining four dishes and cups and stacked them on the table. It took less a minute.
Then I went to work.
Taking firm hold of the door, I brought my entire weight to bear. There was a tearing sound as one nail wrenched free. After fifteen seconds, the final nail holding the cabinet in place gave way. The whole thing tore away from the wall with a shudder and tumbled to the floor.
I stood over it, breathing heavily. It looked like a poor man’s coffin. A dead box and a box for the dead. A box too tilted and off-center to securely contain anything so precious as hope or life. I kicked it. The wood was so thin it cracked. So I kicked it again, and this time, my boot put a hole in it. I kicked it and kicked it until the battered box collapsed. Finally, I grabbed up the panels and whacked them against the floor. New scars appeared in the wooden floorboards. I didn’t care. I beat the panels until they splintered.
My rage expended, my guilt over Whitfield weighing me down, I sagged to my knees. Covering my face with my hands, I wept. I cried harder than I’d cried in years. At some point, I must’ve curled up and fallen asleep. I don’t know how much time when by. But the next thing I knew, it was dark outside, and I was on the floor shivering. Pushing myself into a half-sitting position, I surveyed the damage. It was the first time in my life, I’d ever let go like that and I was tired beyond words. My muscles felt stiff and cramped. My eyes hurt and my face felt swollen. I stood up and began clearing up.
I thought about taking the wood into the backyard. Later, I could chop it up and burn it in the fireplace. But I knew I’d never do that. It would haunt me out there. I’d never find the time or nerves to turn it into kindling. So I marched up and down the stairs, taking the pieces to the garbage can out front. Someone would find them and make good use of them.
When the cabinet’s remains were removed, I returned the kitchen to make that cup of java. Instead, I paused in the doorway and leaned against the doorframe. Across the room, on the other side of the table, Hamp’s leather took kit still lay open on the counter.
Without the cabinet above it, the kit looked abandoned.
I took a deep breath and crossed the room to the countertop. I reached out for the kit, but hesitated. There would be pain … I took a deep breath and lowered my hand to the leather.
There was a rush of sorrow, but it was only a ghostly echo of the old grief. More than that was the comfort of putting my hands where his had been. My fingertips traced the initials he’d carved into the tools’ scarred handles and my lungs released a slow exhalation. It was time now. Past time.
I rolled up the kit, just as I’d so often seen him do, and put it to my lips for one brief kiss.
Then I stowed it away.