He dragged me backward a few feet, then shifted his arm a little. It gave me a chance to ask, “What do you want from me?”
“Just a little insurance for now.”
I was able to twist my head a little, not without a lot of pain, and I saw him. Will Parker.
I must have looked surprised, because he chuckled and said, “You’re a nosy bitch. I knew you knew it was me all along.”
He loosened his grip slightly, and I shifted. I could see the torn tuxedo. So it had been Parker out there shooting at us.
“You did steal Joel’s clip cord, didn’t you?” I asked with a lot more bravado than I felt. But as I thought about how Ray Lucci was killed, it dawned on me that Rosalie had already told me Lou had done it. Two people couldn’t have killed one man.
And then I realized what it had been about her story that didn’t jibe.
She said she’d gone over to the wedding chapel when Bernie and Sylvia were getting married, to see the wedding. Lou had gotten angry, hit her, and Ray Lucci cut him up. It was then that Lou killed Ray, Rosalie said.
But he couldn’t have. Ray wasn’t killed until later, because he’d stolen my car. His fingerprints were all over it.
Rosalie had lied. Lou Marino hadn’t killed Ray Lucci. Will Parker had. Later in the day, and then he’d returned my car to the parking garage as if it had never been gone.
“Rosalie’s protecting you,” I said. “She told me Lou killed Lucci. But it was you all along. It doesn’t matter now if she says Lou killed him because Lou’s dead.”
“No thanks to Lucci,” he said bitterly.
I started putting it all together. That ten thousand dollars in Lucci’s locker. The ten thousand dollars Bernie took from Sylvia. And something that Rosalie said: how Lucci had told Lou that cutting him wasn’t how he’d planned it.
Maybe that part of Rosalie’s story was true. Everything except Lou killing Lucci.
“Bernie paid Lucci to kill Lou, didn’t he?” I asked. “So what happened? How did you end up killing Lucci instead? Why?”
His grip got tighter, and he lifted me up a little, until I was almost off my feet. “He cut him up, but he didn’t kill him. He had all that money, and he hadn’t done it yet. Lou kept hitting her, and Lucci was dragging his feet.” The anguish in his voice was palpable. It was clear how he felt about Rosalie.
“So you took matters into your own hands? Anyway, why didn’t Bernie pay you instead to kill Lou? You were the one in love with her.”
“That’s exactly why I couldn’t do it,” Parker said, taking the bait, his voice a low growl. The gun had moved from my temple down to my neck now. “Lucci was the ex-con. If he got caught, no biggie.”
No biggie to him and Bernie, perhaps, but it was a biggie to Sylvia.
“Why do you think I know all this already?” I asked.
“You can’t keep your nose out of anything. When I surprised you at the chapel, I knew you’d been looking in the lockers. I knew you’d found it.”
“Found what?”
He sighed. “I’m so tired of you playing stupid. Pretending to buy the crap about how a girl got rough with me but telling me the whole time about how your brother, the cop, was there. I didn’t get why you hadn’t told him yet, except you were on a power trip. I knew it was only a matter of time, though.”
This guy was living in his own little fantasy world. I didn’t want to let on that I’d just figured everything out. I’d have loved to know what it was I’d supposedly found in his locker. I hadn’t even gotten to his locker. I’d seen Dan Franklin’s university ID, and that was it.
“That’s enough talking. We’ve got to go for a ride.”
Parker spun me around and shoved me in front of him, his arm still wrapped tight around my chest, so my arms were pinned to my sides. The gun hovered somewhere near my ear. I wanted to scream, but he’d already shot Jeff, so he probably wouldn’t have any scruples about shooting me, too.
He weaved me through a couple of cars. The Love Shack was across the street, and we were headed in that direction, away from the police and the lights in front of That’s Amore.
“How did you get out?” I asked. “Out of the chapel back there?”
He chuckled, the rumbling vibrating against my ear. “I was gone before the cops got there. Those couples were convinced, though, that I was still in there and told the cops that.”
Great. No one would be looking here, across the parking lot and then across the street. He’d taken his arm away from my chest but held on to my upper arm, the gun stuck in the center of my back, where my Celtic cross tattoo was. He was walking so close to me that no one would be able to see the gun or that I was being forced to go.
“How’s your friend?” he asked.
“Fighting for his life,” I said, trying to choke back a sob. I hadn’t signed on for any of this, and I was making promises to Sister Mary Eucharista that I would never get involved in this sort of thing ever again as long as she let me live.
The bigger-than-life Elvis hovered overhead, the Love Shack sign flashing its neon. Anyone watching us would think we were just another couple going in to get married.
I needed to stall for more time.
“So I think I know what happened,” I said. “Bernie paid Lucci to kill his son-in-law, who was beating up his daughter. You didn’t think Lucci worked fast enough; you had some sort of fight-that’s where those bruises on your hand came from-you ended up killing him and putting him in my trunk; then you sat back and waited until the time was right to kill Lou.” I paused. “How did you know where to return my car after you killed Lucci?”
“I was with him when he stole it.”
Okay, that made sense in a weird sort of way. “So how come your prints weren’t found in the car, but Lucci’s were?”
He snorted. “Gloves.”
People wear gloves only when they know they’re going to have to cover something up. “You stole the clip cord; you had gloves; you were waiting for that moment, weren’t you?” I asked.
“Always be prepared, right?” His voice was so cold it sent shivers down my spine.
“Lucci didn’t really try to run you down, did he?”
“I wish you’d stop with the stupid act.”
He was giving me a lot of credit.
I had another question. “Why the rat?”
“I hated that rat.”
“Dan said Lucci killed it.”
“I did. And I figured what better way to send off Dean Martin than with a rat. Rat Pack, right?” He chuckled at his own joke.
“But you didn’t kill Lou, did you?”
He stopped laughing, and he shoved the gun hard into my back. “What do you mean?”
“Bernie killed him. With the Gremlin. But you still wanted money, didn’t you? It wasn’t enough to have Rosalie. That’s why you had him meet you at Murder Ink. To try to get money out of him.”
He wasn’t arguing with me, so I figured I was on the right track. I wished I had a tape recorder or something so I could prove all this to Tim later. If I had the chance.
We were going toward the door of the Love Shack now. It was a twenty-four-hour wedding chapel, and it bled light out onto the parking lot. If he was going to kill me, it seemed pretty risky to do it here.
And then I remembered Martin Sanderson.
“You’re driving Sanderson’s car,” I said. “Why?”
“It’s my car,” he said. “Martin doesn’t know I switched the plates.”
He wouldn’t be telling me all this if he was going to let me live.
Maybe I could yank myself away from him. Try to kick up backward and get him in the groin or the shin. Spin around and push him away and run.
As I was going through scenarios in my head, I didn’t hear the roar of the engine until it was almost upon us.
The car made the decision for me.
Will Parker threw me aside as the Impala sideswiped him, throwing him up over the hood in a total déjà vu moment.
Chapter 62