Molly came away with the gun and rolled to a sitting position in time to see Buddy crawling up over the back of the chair I had been sitting in. His gun was already aiming in our direction when she pulled the trigger and blew his face away.
I got to my feet and went to Buddy. I checked his carotid artery for a pulse. He was still alive, but not for long. His legs twitched. His face was blackened, ruined. One eye had been ripped out. The other was open, blood pooling in it.
Picking up the four-ten, I aimed it at Roger as Molly searched him for a weapon. When she had finished I told her to call the sheriff’s department.
I heard her on the phone. Two people shot, she said into the phone. She gave directions to the farm. She answered several questions with a yes or no. Roger tried to talk once, but I ordered him to shut up. He stared at me, his breathing ragged, his eyes wet. He thought I had lied to him, and now, because of it, he was going to jail.
I told Molly to hang up. She looked at me, frowning. Police agencies, I knew, liked to keep people on the line during an emergency. ‘Hang up,’ I said.
This time, she did. ‘Flash the lights just like last time.’
She walked over to the light switch, three times off, three on. She didn’t understand but she knew I was up to something. Our phone rang, but I told Molly not to answer.
I looked at Roger. ‘You came in two cars?’
He shook his head. ‘I drove us out.’
I smiled at him. ‘Buddy needed a ride home, Roger.
He couldn’t very well drive your car away if he wanted the police to think you were out here by yourself.’
Roger stared at me, trying with his impressive IQ to comprehend what I was saying. I wasn’t sure he did until we heard a car pull into our driveway and start up the hill.
‘Sounds to me like a Mercury Marquis. That sound like a Merc to you?’
Roger blinked stupidly, but he finally got it.
‘Now who’s the dumb ass?’ I snarled.
Buddy Elder’s car idled in the circle in front of our house.
‘If she drives away before the cops show up, she’ll beat any indictment they throw at her. The thing to do is to get her inside the house and keep her here.
That way she can’t come up with some alibi. You get her involved in this and you can deal with the prosecutor. She drives off, you’re looking at death row for Johnna’s murder – with Denise as the state’s star witness.’
Roger’s eyes shifted nervously.
‘Of course, if you’re in love with the woman, the best thing you can do is tell her to run. Believe me, she will.’ I kicked up one shoulder. ‘At least one of you will be free to spend all that money.’
The car door slammed. I motioned to Molly to move back out of sight and pushed one of the chairs around a bit so I would have an unobstructed view to Roger as I retreated to cover. Roger started to stand up, but I told him, ‘Stay down, like you’re wounded, or I promise you will be.’
I listened for the sound of sirens, but the night was still silent. The door at the back porch screeched open and slammed shut.
‘Buddy?’ Denise called.
‘In here!’ Roger shouted. ‘Buddy’s been shot!’
We heard Denise running down the hallway. She burst into the room, eyes wide open in fright, her face bloodless. Seeing Buddy stretched out, his face broken apart, she ran to him and threw herself down over him with a shriek.
I went forward quickly, jerking her up by her coat.
She made no resistance when I threw her over the back of the chair and searched her roughly for a weapon. While I did, Denise screamed profanities at Roger with a nastiness that surprised me. What happened? What had he done to Buddy? Roger answered in the same spirit. They had been planning to kill him!
I told them both to shut up. When they ignored me, I tossed her to the floor and stepped toward Roger, offering the butt of the four-ten as a threat. Roger shut up, but he continued staring at his newly-wed wife incredulously, and I couldn’t resist.
‘You didn’t really believe she loved you?’
Roger didn’t answer me. He did turn, however, and watched Buddy and Molly working themselves toward a mutual climax on our television. It was, under the circumstances, an eloquent rebuttal.
I heard the first sirens and left the room, intending to snap on the floodlights so they could find Wade. I got as far as the front hall when I heard the report of a handgun. I was down before I registered that I had been shot. My back on fire, my brain struggling to understand what had just occurred, I heard two more shots from a handgun, followed by the unmistakable blast of the twelve-gauge.
I tried to crawl across the parquet floor toward the four-ten I had dropped when I fell, but Molly came to me. As she held me, I tried to speak, but I couldn’t.
Turning, I saw Denise Conway lying across Buddy Elder’s legs. The back of her head was broken apart, her peroxide blonde hair stained in blood. Roger Beery lay on his back, his arms and legs twitching oddly, blood on his face.
The front hallway lit up with whirling red and blue lights, the last thing I saw before I passed out.
Chapter 29
I was conscious again when they settled me into the ambulance, but not for long. Later, when I woke up, I looked at the hospital room, did not especially like what I saw, and went back to sleep.
At ten I was fully awake and in a different room.
Molly was in a chair close to my bed. From the number of magazines at her feet, I guessed she had been there quite a while. My voice cracked when I tried to speak.
I felt dizzy, but I did not pass out.
‘Wade?’
‘He got out of surgery a couple of hours after you did. It was bad, but he’s going to make it.’
‘What happened?’
‘Buddy had a revolver in his coat. Denise found it or knew it was there. After she shot you, she turned the gun on Roger. I don’t think she even knew I was in the room.’
‘They’re both dead?’
‘All three of them.’ After a moment she said to me, ‘I have the DVD, David.’
I closed my eyes, nodding, message received. When I woke up again Molly was gone. I talked to the nurse, then to the surgeon. That afternoon my mother showed up. She was the one who told me Molly wouldn’t be back. ‘She said to tell you she’s closing the house up.’
I saw Kip Dalton only after I had refused to talk to anyone else. I told him I had put together most of the pieces of the puzzle before Roger drove out to the farm, but not all of it.
Kip smiled at me. ‘Anything you can give me will help, professor.’
‘Buddy and Denise killed Walt and Barbara for the inheritance, but they needed to get rid of their new partner to get the money.’
‘What did Johnna Masterson have to do with anything?’
I shook my head. ‘Sport mostly, though it got blood on Roger’s hands, which gave them a degree of control. I expect Buddy showed Roger how they could frame me for her murder and do whatever they wanted to her. That would have appealed to Roger, I think.’
‘Well… they did.’ Kip’s face twitched as he said this, and I knew it was worse for Johnna than I could imagine.
‘The night they came out to the farm, they said they were going to let us go if we cooperated.’
Dalton nodded. He understood how killers use false promises to control their victims.
‘I think Buddy had convinced Roger they were going to terrorize us for a while and then stage another murder-suicide. Another bad marriage that ended badly. Truth was Buddy planned to kill Roger so Denise could inherit Roger’s money. Given my history with Roger and Denise, the sheriff would not have been inclined to look any farther than the evidence right in front of him: Roger shows up at the farm and all three of us go down with gunshot wounds. No one would even think to ask Buddy Elder about an alibi.’