But didn’t make it.
She fell forward, against the table, knocking the podium off, her bloody hand touching my shirt as I leaned forward toward her. I looked up.
Evelyn Kane was standing in the aisle behind where Mae Kane had stood; smiling like a skull. Holding a long-barreled.38 in her two gripped hands, the proper firing stance Roscoe had taught her when he’d schooled her in the use of a Garson gat such as this. The flap of the brown purse slung over her shoulder was open from where she’d withdrawn the revolver. Slowly she lowered the still smoking gun and let go of it; let it drop. It clunked on the floor near Mae.
People were standing and shouting, a few screaming, a few even scurrying out of the room.
But it had happened so fast, most of them were just standing there, like me. The two bullets had cut through Mae and right past me, under the table and into the wall, and I hadn’t even ducked for instinctive cover. The gun had been shot, the bullets had flown, before I knew what had happened.
Enough people had rushed out of the room, though, for Evelyn to find a chair to sit down and quietly wait. Wait for the police, that is. She didn’t have to wait for the media-the print reporters and TV news-people with their minicams were already gathered around her.
Mae was getting some media attention, too-flashbulbs were popping. I came around the table to her. Tom Sardini had her cradled in his arms, checking her pulse; not finding one, of course. I leaned down and closed the lids over the wide eyes; there was blood in her silver hair. I don’t know how it got there. She still smelled like jasmine.
For some reason, it occurred to me to retrieve the Life Achievement Award, which had tumbled out of Mae’s fingers when the two bullets hit her. But I couldn’t find it.
Some fan had gotten to it and taken it as a souvenir.
Kathy came up to me, face wet with tears; she touched the bloody hand-smear on my shirt, as if touching wet paint, and said, “Oh, Mal.”
That said it all. I put an arm around her shoulder and glanced about the room. Gorman was gone. Tim Culver, an arm around the shoulder of a shaken Cynthia Crystal, was escorting her out. Jerome Kane was standing in the aisle, ashen.
He moved down the aisle and found his way to where Evelyn Kane was seated, besieged by media people. He pushed his way in and sat down next to Evelyn the Grotesque, as he had so often called her, and held her hand.
PART FOUR
19
When I woke up Sunday morning, Kathy was gone; she’d left a note saying to call her in her room when I woke up, so I did. She said to stop by for her and we’d have breakfast.
After several hours of questioning by the police in the afternoon, and another hour of dealing with the media, we’d had the rest of Saturday to ourselves. And a pleasant Saturday it had been, considering the traumatic shadow the shooting of Mae Kane had cast. Kathy and I skipped the Saturday evening official Bouchercon banquet (Donaldson was the speaker) and, thanks to that friend of mine in the cast, we got to see Second City after all. And, prior to that, wandered about North Wells Street, looking in the book shops and antique shops and even taking in the wax museum and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, believe it or not.
Today I’d be heading back for Iowa, and Kathy for Pennsylvania, which I regretted.
And I told her as much, shortly after she let me into her room. She was packing. She had an eleven o’clock plane to catch and it was nine, now.
She closed the lid on her suitcase and smiled at me. “It’s been a real eye-opener meeting you, Mal. You’re just like your books.”
I put my hands on her waist. “I hope that’s a compliment.”
“Of course it’s a compliment. I love your books.”
“But do you love me?”
“Sure. You know I love ya.”
The “ya” bothered me.
“Kathy,” I said. “I don’t mean to be a hopeless romantic, but I thought we set off a spark or two. I know we’re separated by a few miles, but maybe we could do something about that.”
Wry smile #692. She bussed my cheek. “We’ll have to do this again sometime.”
And she moved away from me and went into the bathroom, where she was gathering toiletries up to put in a flight bag.
“Do what again?” I asked. “Have a little two-night stand at a convention?”
She looked up, smiled one-sidedly, arched a brow. “Sure. Why not?”
“I was hoping for a little more. Why don’t you come spend a week with me, sometime soon. Or why don’t I come spend a week with you….”
She walked out of the bathroom and stood solemnly before me. “Look, that just isn’t possible.”
“Why?”
“I’m sort of… married.”
“Sort of married?”
“Well, Ron and I keep it loose. I don’t wear a ring or anything and neither does he. We give each other space. But not that much space. You can’t come visit me and I can’t come visit you. But, maybe next year. Next Bouchercon.”
My mouth felt dry. I tried to swallow and couldn’t quite bring it off.
“Is that what this was? Just another Bouchercon?”
“Hey, come off it, Mal. It’s a convention; a weekend away from home. Boys’ night out; girls’ night out. Didn’t you ever hear of that?”
I nodded. “I heard of it. I just thought… we might be something more. Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”
Wry smile, arched brow. “Why didn’t you ask?” She patted my cheek. “I’ll tell you why you didn’t ask… because it was just another Bouchercon, and I’m just another girl. Don’t try to make it anything else, you sweet romantic sap.”
I found a little smile somewhere. “I won’t play the sap for you,” I said.
She patted my cheek again; very softly. “I got time for breakfast. You want to buy me some? Or is it my turn?”
“You buy,” I said.
As I was holding the door open for her, she said, “I suppose you’re going to break your promise to me now.”
“What promise?”
“You’ll turn this into a book. You won’t be able to resist.”
I shrugged. We were headed for the elevators.
“Now that Evelyn Kane killed Mae Kane in front of God and the TV cameras and everybody,” Kathy said, “she’ll be a celebrity. A regular literary cottage industry’ll grow up around her and what she did yesterday.”
“This year’s Jean Harris,” I said, glumly.
“Right,” Kathy said, cheerfully.
We got on the elevator. There were going to be some rocky nights, back in Iowa. I was going to have to live with the memory of Mae Kane dying in front of me; I was going to have to wonder if I had somehow caused that, somehow stage-managed that death.
And I was going to wonder if Kathy Wickman’s feelings for me were really as shallow as she wanted me to believe.
I knew one thing, going down in the elevator with her. When I got home I’d frame that original cover painting, from Murder Me Again, Doll, and hang it somewhere prominent. Looking at it would provide the sort of bittersweet experience I can’t resist-like listening to Darin sing “Beyond the Sea”; painful, but it reminds me I’m still alive.
And it wasn’t that the painting would remind me of Roscoe Kane; that was a loss I’d already faced.
Just before the elevator doors opened, I gave her a wry smile. “You really do look just like that girl in my Gat Garson painting,” I told her.
“I know,” she said.
But she wasn’t smiling.