“Did you hold her head down while she drowned?” he taunted her. “Did you watch her choke on the water, drinking it, filling her lungs with it? How long did she take to die, Sally? Did you take off her jewelry afterward, pull it off her corpse, or had she already removed it for a shower? Did you have to pluck the earrings off of her cold, lifeless ears? Or were they already out and hidden? Is that why you ransacked the room, looking for them? Or was that just another distraction? How long were you planning this, Miss Freddins?”
The girl tripped over a step, then backed into the large table that was still set for their long-postponed game. The props for the game were all strewn about in disarray. Sally’s hand fell on the pipe. (Not the lead pipe of fame. This is the age of lead-poisoning. This one was made of good old American steel.) She grabbed the primitive weapon. If it was good enough for Colonel Mustard in the conservatory, it was good enough for her.
“Stay back,” Sally warned. Jericho kept advancing on her. She was backing toward the front door, waving the pipe in front of her. “You’re nuts.” Everyone is always crazy, Jericho thought, except for the loonies themselves. He told her to stop.
“Maybe you’re the murderer,” she said. “How do I know you won’t shoot me whether I stop or go?” The others watched the standoff between cop and criminal. The pipe was no threat to anyone but Sally herself. It certainly couldn’t stop a bullet. She opened the door and backed outside. The rain was wild and burst through the doorway. The night was chaos. Sally backed out into the storm, brandishing her pipe. She was still yelling, but no one could hear her over the thunder. Jericho kept his gun trained on her, but still she retreated. He could not bring himself to shoot the girl. She was not threatening him or anyone with that pipe. But he couldn’t very well let her get away. He lowered his aim to her left thigh at the same time a bolt of lightning crashed out of the sky and struck the steel pipe that Sally was holding like a baseball bat.
Both of her shoes exploded like firecrackers. She might have been screaming, but it couldn’t be heard over the crackling of the superheated electrical fire that scorched her skin and clothing to a charred crust in mere seconds. When her corpse cooled enough for Jericho to get a good look, he saw that her left foot was completely gone and her hands were melted around the steel pipe as if it had always been a part of her body. There was a hole in her skull the size of a lemon where the lightning blew her boiling brains out like buckshot. Justice is served hot, Jericho thought. A murderer sent to God’s version of the electric chair before the lawyers had a chance to muck it up.
Epilogue
What Really Happened
Monica Wheeler just had to get out of the little scarlet dress. The thing was too tiny. She’d been hoping there might be a cute guy or two here who also happened to be rich, and perhaps even single. But the only bloke who showed the least interest was a man old enough to be her father and fat enough to be her father, mother, and two brothers rolled into one. Since the only other choice was a stuck-up guy in a tacky yellow coat, she was eager for this little escape. A half-hour until dinner. A half-hour before she had to resume this tired little game. She was going to kill her boss for sending her on this publicity stunt.
Kelly Greene walked her upstairs and asked her for the fifth time if she was the murderer. Monica didn’t even know, or care. It was a stupid game about a fake murder. Now, if there was a real body without a foot down there, then things might be a little fun. But this was like playing a game about skydiving: Some things you can pretend, and other things have just got to be for real. She told Kelly that she really didn’t know. Kelly seemed to think it was she. Monica went to her room and wrote in her journal. She figured that Kelly was going to point her out as the murderer so she wrote “I think I’m in trouble.” She wasn’t really sad that she was going to lose this stupid game.
She needed to find something more comfortable to wear to dinner. She was tired of Oliver Powers gawking at her legs, which were showing way too much in this little red dress. She went through her drawers and dug out a more comfortable and conser-vative scarlet pantsuit. She laid out the outfit on her bed. Now she was craving a relaxing shower. She still had almost twenty-five minutes before she had to be back to the group.
There was a knock on the door. It was the old woman from downstairs. Monica had invited her up. She’d spotted a terrible snarl in the old woman’s hair and offered to give her a hand. She had this comb that could work magic with even synthetic hair. The two fought the stubborn tangle and finally worked it loose. They put a tear in Margaret’s beautiful peacock hat, though. “I can sew that later, if you like,” Monica said. Her mother had passed on from cancer years ago. She had recognized the stubborn sadness in the woman’s eyes when she first arrived. Monica immediately had a soft spot for the vulnerable curmudgeon.
She headed for the bathroom, ready to finally get out of the little scarlet number. She was stripped down and ready for the hot water when there was another knock at the door. Was it Sally? She was expecting the girl to stop by. She quickly grabbed the towel off of the sink as she headed for the door, wrapping herself in it as she went.
It was Oliver. He offered her a bagel and asked her out. Charming, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off what her towel wasn’t hiding. Not in a million years would she let Ollie get a look underneath that towel. She politely declined and he left her with the bagel. He took her decline graciously. She gobbled a bite and set the remains beside her journal, then walked toward the bathroom. She wondered again if Sally was going to stop by. And the name stopped her dead in her tracks. She stared at the mirror in front of her. Her hair was tied back in a short ponytail. There were no earrings in her ears. Her neck was bare. She’d taken off the jewelry by habit, preparing for the shower. But she didn’t recall at all where she’d put them. She had a moment of panic and then she turned and went back to her dresser where she’d selected her outfit for dinner.
She yanked out random clothes in alarm as she tried to remember where she’d left the expensive diamonds. She just couldn’t have misplaced them! Sally would kill her. The girl had lent them to her when Monica first arrived at the mystery mansion. “Gosh, those are beautiful,” Monica had said after Sally had introduced herself. The bracelet and necklace and earrings were all of a set. Sally told her that they would go great with her red dress. Monica just had to wear them, she insisted. Monica sensed that the girl was trying to befriend her. She must be used to having to buy her friends. Rather than hurt the girl’s feelings, she accepted.
But now she’d lost the bloody things! She’d had them ten minutes ago. But where? Her mother always said she’d lose her head if it wasn’t attached. Where had she left them? Where? Then the memory welled in her mind. She recalled setting them on the bathroom sink, right between the toilet and the tub. Right on top of the red towel that she was now wearing. Then where were they now? She ran into the bathroom. There was nothing on the sink! Had she been robbed?! What would she tell Sally? But no, she saw them. They twinkled like ice in the harsh winter sun. They had dropped into the toilet when she yanked up the red towel after Oliver had knocked on her door. She even vaguely recalled hearing the splash. She grinned, relieved. Easy enough to fish out.
She took one step onto the tiled floor of the regal bathroom. The jewelry had splashed just enough water from the toilet to make a decent slippery spot right under where Monica’s foot landed. She fell straight forward and her head went right into the porcelain bowl, her face plunging into the toilet’s water and banging hard against the bottom of the bowl. She saw stars. Reflexively, she gulped in a big mouthful of water, choking. She almost swallowed an earring, just inches from her face. She pulled back her head and her skull caught on the underside of the toilet’s rim, making the stars she was seeing double up. Dizzy, she tried to get a footing to shift her weight to lift her face out of the water, but her foot just slipped again, and she went down once more.