"Don't you ever think that, Mary Nell. It's his fault." Sybil gestured with the gun toward her longtime lover.
It seemed to me it was sort of Sybil's fault, too, but I wasn't going to raise any issues as long as she was holding the gun. While I was being ignored, I wanted to put a safer distance between me and Paul Edwards, so I was edging back to the far end of the couch. On Edwards's other side, Tolliver was shifting himself a little closer to the two women, but he was careful to keep the line of fire between Sybil and Paul free and clear.
"Yes, it's my fault," Paul gabbled. He was looking around the floor surreptitiously. He was looking for his gun. Paul Edwards was not down for the count.
"You need to tie him up," Tolliver suggested. "Call the police."
Nell began to move back through the doorway, presumably to go into the kitchen to call the police, but Paul made a sudden move and she stilled.
"No, don't call," Paul said. "Mary Nell, I'm your dad, too. Don't give me up."
Poor Nell couldn't have looked more horrified if he'd said he'd made an offer for her hand.
"No," Sybil hissed. "Don't listen, Mary Nell. It's not true."
"She's right," I said, very quietly. But no one paid attention. My brother and I were definitely the audience. The innocent bystanders. You know what happens to innocent bystanders.
"Did you kill my dad, somehow?" she asked Paul. "My real dad?"
"No," I said. "Your dad died of a heart attack, Nell. He really did." I didn't see any need to throw in the circumstances.
"You... you... asshole," she said to Paul Edwards.
Her mother opened her mouth to reprimand Mary Nell, then had the good sense to close it.
"You killed my son," Sybil said instead. "You killed my son. You killed his baby. You killed his girlfriend. You killed... who else did you kill? Helen, I guess. The mother of your daughter."
"You have yourself to blame for that," he said sullenly. "It was you hiring Helen, you having her around here cleaning that gave Dell and Teenie a chance to get to know each other."
"Gave you a chance to see Helen again, too, I guess," Sybil said in a very ugly voice. "Who else did you kill, Paul?"
"Sally Boxleitner?" I suggested.
Edwards gaped at me as if I'd sprouted another head. "Why do you... ?" he began, then trailed off, apparently at a loss.
"She figured it out, didn't she?" I asked. "Did she call you?"
"She called me," he admitted. "She said she, she..."
"What did my wife tell you?" Hollis asked from the open front door.
I wondered if Tolliver and I could just creep out through the kitchen and be gone. We could go back to the motel and grab our stuff, leave this town forever. I caught Tolliver's eye and tilted my head toward the doorway into the rest of the house. He shook his head slightly. We were just spectators at the showdown at the OK Corral, but that still meant some injudicious move might get us killed in the cross fire.
Hollis didn't look like the stoical cop I'd met when I'd come to Sarne, and he didn't look like the lover I'd joined in bed. His eyes were showing a lot of white. He was wearing a long shiny waterproof slicker, and his uniform hat had a plastic bag on it. His face was wet with rain, and his slicker dripped onto the carpet. He was wearing rubber boots over his heavy cop shoes, and he had a glove on his left hand. His right hand was bare, holding his own gun in a very businesslike way.
I wondered if Mary Nell had a firearm tucked in a pocket.
"I didn't kill her," Paul said. "She called me, told me she had some questions about blood types. I agreed to meet her, though at the time I didn't know what she was talking about."
"You killed Dell," Mary Nell said. "You killed Teenie, and the baby, and Miss Helen. How can we believe you didn't kill Sally, too?"
"Sybil," I whispered.
Only Tolliver heard me. His eyes widened.
"You can't pin that one on me," Paul Edwards said, beginning to pull himself to his knees. I thought it was strange that the charge would make him indignant enough to be defiant, with all that he'd admitted. "I think you can understand why I didn't want Teenie to bring a child into the world with a bloodline like that," and he half-smiled in a parody of a reasonable expression. "But I never laid a hand on Sally. Sally was a good girl. And definitely not mine, of course."
"Good," Hollis growled.
"But you know, since I thought she'd drowned in the tub by accident, like the coroner said, I'd never stopped to think. Sybil, I told you that Sally called me, said she had something to tell me about Dick's death. At the time, I thought Sally might be priming up to tell me a tale for some kind of blackmail. But when she died, too, it didn't seem to make any difference. Sybil, did you go talk to Sally?"
Mary Nell gave a choked laugh. "Don't you try to go blame that on her, you murderer! Mama, tell him..." The girl's voice trailed off when she saw her mother's face. "Mama?" She sounded lost. Gone for good.
"She said she'd looked up blood typing, and she knew Dell wasn't really a Teague," Sybil said dully. "She wanted me to ask Harvey to resign early. Sally wanted Hollis to have Harvey's job. She was scared Hollis would get restless without it, that he wasn't happy piecing together a living in a little town like this."
Hollis looked like someone had hit him in the head. His hand was wavering. He didn't know who he wanted to shoot most. I understood the feeling.
Sybil gulped. Her own gun was falling down to her side. "I couldn't do that. And I couldn't stand her lying like that. I made myself believe it was a lie. So I went by one afternoon. She'd left the door unlocked, which I figured, and I walked in with this gun, but she was in the tub, singing away."
Hollis looked sick.
"And I just stepped in the bathroom and I grabbed her heels and pulled," Sybil went on. "And after a minute, she stopped trying to get up." Sybil stood there, lost in the memory, the gun down by her side.
Mary Nell screamed in horror. Paul Edwards launched himself at Sybil's gun, and Tolliver leaped over to knock me down behind the couch, his arms wrapped around me. Of course, a bullet could pass through the couch like it could pass through butter, but at least we were out of sight and mind.
A gun fired, and there were more screams—I was pretty sure Mary Nell's was one of them. When there was a little period of silence, we stuck our heads around the end of the couch.
"You can get up," Hollis said, his voice heavy and about a million years old. Tolliver straightened first and helped me up. My bad leg refused to lock for a minute, leaving me wobbly.
Paul Edwards was on his knees, clutching his shoulder. Behind him there was a dent in the wall, and pieces of glass glinted on the carpet. Mary Nell was standing as if she'd been turned into stone, glaring at Paul. Sybil was looking at her daughter.
"You dislocated my shoulder," Paul wheezed, "you little bitch."
"I hit him," Mary Nell said in a disconcertingly childish voice. "I threw the glass apple and hit him."
"Were you trying to hit him in the head?" Hollis asked. "I wish you'd aimed higher."
Horribly, she laughed.
"Why don't you shoot me, Hollis?" Sybil's voice was deep and throbbing. "Come on, you know you want to. I'd rather you shot me now than go through a trial and sentencing."