“You’d already had a plan to slowly sell all that wine to people just as unsuspecting as your father had been. You’d already started.”
Ethan held up both hands. “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!” he said. “Give the lady a prize!”
“So why did you kill him?” I asked, clenching my hands in my pockets to keep them from shaking. “Why didn’t you just tell him the missing bottles got broken?” I pretty much knew the answer, but it was another way to buy a minute or two and I was going to grab every one I could.
“Because he wouldn’t let it go at that!” He sucked in a deep breath and raked his hands back through his hair. “He just would not let it go! He threatened to have me arrested. He wouldn’t do what he was hired to do and just go home.” He looked at me again. “Remind you of anyone?”
“He must have made you crazy,” I said, ignoring his last comment.
He looked at me and gave a snort of humorless laughter. “Oh, don’t pretend you understand so we can build a connection.” He made air quotes around the word “connection.”
I shook my head. “I really don’t understand. Why couldn’t you just wait to sell those bottles?”
Ethan looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. “Wait? Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting? I’ve been waiting for years to get out of this Podunkville little place, waiting for the day when I didn’t have to play the dutiful son, waiting for the day when that old man who was never satisfied with anything I did would just die.” His voice got louder and his manner more agitated with each word. “And when he did, you know what I ended up with? A wife who pretty soon isn’t going to be able to walk, another freaking millstone around my neck, and an inheritance that is worth less than what I’d get for taking the bottles to the recycling center.” He shook both hands in the air. “Don’t tell me to wait. I was a good son. I’m a good person and the whole damn thing backfired on me!”
“Is that why you’re going to Hawaii? Because you’re tired of waiting?”
Something changed in his expression and the manic behavior disappeared as if a switch had been thrown in his head. “Yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to Hawaii and that’s why I won’t be coming back.” He exhaled and smiled. “It’s going to be very sad, really. I’m going to have an accident learning to surf and my body will never be found. And I’ll finally get to live the life I was meant to live all along without my old man and everyone else dragging me down.”
Some of what I was feeling inside must have shown on my face.
“Don’t give me that look,” Ethan said, a heavy edge of sarcasm in his voice. “It’s not my fault. Why couldn’t Quinn just stay out of it? Why couldn’t you?”
“You can’t kill two people in this house,” I said. “People will get suspicious.”
“I know,” he said, “but I don’t recall saying you’re going to die here. I am going to kill you, but not here.” He made a sad face. “You’re going to have a tragic accident on the way back to your store.” He put a hand to his chest. “So very tragic.”
Then his arm snaked out and whipped around my neck like a rope. He pulled a small plastic bottle of ginger ale out of his jacket pocket with his free hand, managed to unscrew the cap and pressed the opening to my mouth. “Drink,” he ordered.
I pressed my lips tightly together.
Ethan slapped my face. Tears filled my eyes, but I kept my mouth tightly closed.
He grabbed my nose, pinching it between his thumb and index finger.
I held my breath as long as I could, but eventually I had to open my mouth to breathe.
Ethan forced some of the liquid into my mouth. I sputtered and spit, but some of it went down. He repeated the process twice more.
“I’m going to vomit,” I choked out. I wasn’t, but I needed a moment to breathe, to think.
He let go of me and took a step back. “That’s probably enough,” he said. I was bent over, hands on my knees, trying to get my breath. “You don’t have . . . to . . . do this,” I managed to gasp out.
“You sound like Quinn,” Ethan said. “The thing is, neither one of you gave me a choice. He was going to call the police. I would have lost my job. And he would have made all the rest of those bottles completely worthless to me. What choice did he leave me? It was him or me and I picked me.”
He looked away from me again and shook his head as though he were seeing himself back in the kitchen with Ronan Quinn. “It was poetic justice, you know, him being killed with a bottle of wine that cost less than ten dollars.”
Chapter 20
His attention had shifted. It was now or never. There was a stack of boxes, about shoulder height, to my left. I used my knee and one arm to knock them over between Ethan and me.
“Run!” I yelled to Elvis, and then I bolted for the living room.
Ethan hollered an obscenity and scrambled over the cartons after me. I pushed a floor lamp sideways and heard the glass shade smash as it hit the hardwood behind me. Ethan was only a few feet back.
“Get the hell back here!” he shouted.
I turned and shoved a worn leather club chair at him. It skidded across the floor and caught him in the legs, knocking him off his feet. Elvis had jumped up onto a stack of boxes. He leaped from there to the sideboard against the wall. I swept both hands at the boxes and sent them down on top of Ethan. They only held blankets and tablecloths, so they weren’t very heavy, but all I needed was a few extra seconds to get to the door and get out.
There was a vintage standing metal ashtray, missing one foot on the bottom, leaning against the sideboard and hutch. When I shoved the boxes, it fell on my own foot.
I stifled a scream, kicked it out of the way and ran for the door, breathing hard. My right foot skidded on the loose bit of hall carpet. I slid into the half wall, banging my knee on the corner edge. The pain almost knocked me off my feet, but somehow I managed to stay upright. I slid along the expanse of drywall and banged against the front door.
Ethan lunged for me, catching the edge of my sweatshirt and pulling me toward him. “You stupid cow,” he roared.
I tried to twist away from him and slammed into two boxes stacked on a wooden chair. At the same moment Elvis launched himself with a loud yowl from the sideboard, landing on Ethan’s back, claws digging in through the man’s shirt. Ethan yelled another obscenity and reached over his shoulder for the cat with one hand while the other slapped over my mouth and nose.
I couldn’t breathe. I fell back against the boxes, my elbow pushing down the flaps of the top one. I felt around blindly inside for something, anything to use as a weapon. My hand touched something heavy and metallic. I grabbed and swung my arm up and out as hard as I could, making very satisfying contact with the top of Ethan’s head before my left leg gave out. His eyes rolled back in his head, his hand slipped from my face and he dropped to the floor.
Elvis jumped down, shook himself and made his way over to me. He climbed onto my chest, where he sat down and looked at what I’d just used to brain Ethan Hall. It was a can of Spam.
“Merow!” he said.
I pushed my hair back out of my face. I looked over at Ethan and nodded. “Poetic justice.”
Chapter 21
I managed to get to my feet, pick up Elvis and get the front door unlocked. Ethan was out cold. I could see his chest moving, so I knew he wasn’t dead, and beyond that I didn’t much care.
I stumbled out onto the stoop as Nick’s SUV fishtailed to a stop at the curb. Mac was already out of the passenger side running across the lawn to me before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. He caught me as my leg gave way again and I half fell down the front steps.