“Thank God you’re safe!” I said, feeling relieved.
“Oh, you’re the one who’s in danger. Come on up and join your friend. You’ve been making enough noise down here to wake the dead.”
She laughed a strange laugh, still pointing the gun. I finally caught on.
“Don’t try anything foolish, Irene. I’m an expert with firearms.”
I walked up the stairs and she prodded me into the kitchen. Andrew held a gun on Frank. I guessed from Frank’s empty shoulder holster that Elinor had his. Frank looked over at me, and for a moment we exchanged a look of mutual fear for one another. He forced a smile and said, “Come on in, Irene. We can wait here and watch the Hollingsworths get arrested.”
“Shut up!” Andrew said.
“Now, now, Andrew,” said Elinor, cool as ice. “There aren’t going to be any arrests. And even if I believed for a moment that the police were on their way, I have the comfort of knowing that these two will not live to see their would-be rescuers. Stand a few feet away from Mr. Harriman, please, Irene. The two of you will be very much together soon.”
“Let me guess,” Frank said. “Looking at old Andrew quiver and quake here, I’d lay money you were the one who killed that girl.”
“Of course I was. Do you think I was going to let some little white trash strumpet from Arizona spoil my wedding plans? And Andrew was going to marry her! Can you believe it?”
A pained look crossed Andrew’s face. Elinor smiled and went on.
“She shows up in town one night, tells him that she’s pregnant. She says it was from his visit to her on spring break. That was rather naughty of you, wasn’t it, Andrew?”
Andrew’s eyes glazed over, as if he had mentally withdrawn from us.
Elinor smirked. “She tells him she’s written a letter to her cousin, naming the father-to-be. What does he do? He tells her he’ll make an honest woman of her!”
Elinor hooted over this. “He came to tell me we would have to break off our engagement. I told him not to worry, to leave it all to me. And convinced the little whore that she should meet me under the pier and the rest has been history in this town for thirty-five years.”
“Not exactly,” I said, finding my voice.
She shot a hard look at me.
“What did you do with her hands and feet?”
Andrew blanched, but Elinor cackled.
“Oh, that was inspired. What better place for a pair of feet than at the end of a pair of legs?”
“She buried them under the Las Piernas cliffs,” Andrew said quietly.
Frank and I looked at one another.
“As for the hands, well, I made a very special wedding present of them to my dear husband.”
“Elinor! For God’s sakes!”
“They want to hear the story, Andrew. You know, Andrew thought I had just paid her off to leave town until the story came out in the paper the next day. I called him to remind him that I knew where he had eaten dinner with her, that he was the last one to have been seen in public with her, and that I could easily provide the link between the two of them. Who in Las Piernas wouldn’t take my word over his? Why, at that time, no one would have thought of a woman doing such a thing anyway.”
Even now it was hard to believe. Elinor had great physical strength and an iron will. A lady who always got her own way. “Why not just pay her off?” I asked.
“Oh, I tried. And I would have been good for it. It’s worked with our beloved mayor for years. But the cheap tart said she didn’t want my money, she wanted Andrew. Well, she simply couldn’t have him. I had come prepared in case she refused.”
She eyed us warily.
“Andrew, get some rope from the basement. We don’t want to take chances with these two.”
“No,” he said. “You know I won’t go down there.”
Elinor sighed. “His wedding present is in the freezer down there. He won’t go near it.” She laughed at him. “She’s not going to reach up and grab you, Andrew.” He turned red, but said nothing. She walked over to her husband. “Andrew has been very good to me over the years, so I put up with his little phobia about the basement.”
“Why O’Connor?” I asked. “What did he ever do to you?”
“He was about to figure out who she was, that’s what. I learned that from his son.”
She smiled at the look of surprise on my face. “I had an affair with Kenny. Strictly for espionage purposes. The little blabbermouth told me every move his father made. Of course he was clueless as to my reasons for wanting to know. Kenny’s not much of a lover. Nothing like Andrew. Andrew is a fantastic lover. I’m disappointed Kenny survived, but I understand he’s not saying anything.”
I looked at Andrew. He stood with a stony expression, not directly acknowledging our presence with anything other than the gun. If Elinor was embarrassing him, he didn’t show it.
“I’m surprised Andrew can get it up for you after the way you treated his girlfriend,” Frank said.
A look of cold fury passed over her face.
She walked up to Frank, put the gun to his temple, and cocked the trigger. “Raise your hands higher.”
He did. She drew her other arm back and punched him hard in the ribs. He paled and exhaled loudly, but he didn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing him crying out. She stepped away with a smile on her face.
Frank’s forehead was covered with sweat, but he lowered his arms again and said nothing.
“Irene, I really like you. And he does seem to be quite a man. I’m rather sorry we didn’t get to know one another better. Wouldn’t cry out for me. Well, we’ll see.”
“Elinor, let’s get this over with and get out of here,” Andrew said.
She looked at him.
“Very well, put them in the freezer. I’ll get the rope.”
She waited a moment to make sure he obeyed.
He motioned us over to a walk-in freezer not far from where we stood. He pointed the gun at me. “Open it.”
I did as I was told. I yanked at the handle and pulled the heavy door open. It was a small meat freezer. Various cuts of meat hung in it, large containers of ice cream were stored on racks on one wall. I shivered as I stood behind the door. I’m not sure it was from the cold.
He turned the gun on Frank. “Go on, you first.”
“Hollingsworth, this is your chance to get free of her,” Frank said. “Why let her push you around? She’s the murderer, not you.”
For a moment Andrew Hollingsworth looked bewildered. He glanced back at Elinor, then back to us. He leveled the gun at Frank, his hands shaking. “Get in there,” he said.
“You’re a DA, you know how it works. We’ll tell the attorney general you helped us out. He’ll go easy on you.”
He said nothing, just stood there quivering like a frightened animal.
“Let Irene go. She hasn’t done you any harm.”
“Andrew!” Elinor commanded.
It was only one word, but it cracked through the air like a whip. Hollingsworth grew wild-eyed. He turned the gun toward me and screamed at Frank. “Get in there! Do it now or she’s dead! I’ll do it! I’ll blow her head off!”
Frank walked stiffly and slowly, the barrel of Andrew’s gun now following his every move. He went into the freezer. I hated myself, knowing he was here because of me.
Elinor had walked over to the basement door.
“That’s odd,” she said.
All I heard after that was a loud explosion.
46
IFELT MYSELF ripped away from behind the door and hurtled hard into a wall. I lay there, flat on my back, stunned and unsure of what had happened. The air was hot. I felt my face covered with something sticky, something salty that was in my mouth. My ears felt as if they were filled with water. Next I became aware that there was smoke filling the room. I closed my eyes. It dawned on me that there was no sound.
Someone was lifting me. I opened my eyes and saw Frank looking down at me. He was trying to say something to me, but he wasn’t making any noise. I smiled at him and closed my eyes.