Vic moved along the wall next to me. “You want me to check the back?”
“No, we’ll go upstairs; that’s where the music is coming from.” I took another deep breath and peered over the foot of the landing. “Omar?”
The furniture was toppled into the middle of the passage like a makeshift barricade. There were holes in the sideboard and the Chippendale chair, with splintered wood and upholstery stuffing scattered on the oriental runner. I slumped against the wall and looked at my deputy. “Either they’re dead, or they can’t hear us over Edith Piaf.”
I started back up the steps; at least the barricade afforded some defense. At the top railing, I made the turn, thought about the layout of the second floor, and remembered that the master bedroom was at the end of the hallway. It was about forty feet to the door, which was closed, but even at this distance I could see where match-grade loads had traveled through it; ten rounds, maybe, at three thousand feet per second. Since Myra was the one who had been in Paris for the better part of the last year and since the music was French, I assumed it was she who was in the bedroom.
I was looking at the door when I ran my leg into the edge of the sideboard, causing the mirror to flip on its pivot and crash to the floor. Even with Piaf, it was a loud noise. I looked at the shards of mirror scattered across the expensive Turkish rug and thought about seven years of bad luck. Edith took a breath, and I made out the distinctive sound of a modular bolt action slamming home.
I dove behind the barricade and flattened myself against the floor as the first round splintered through the wood of the upturned edge of the sideboard. Less than two seconds later, the next round caromed off the door facing and dug into the floor just short of my outstretched right hand. I was attempting to scramble toward the stairway when Vic leaned out from the railing and snapped off two 12-gauge rounds into the ceiling, the salvo allowing me a rather ignoble retreat. I ran into Vic, and we both fell down the remaining steps.
I was lucky enough to have landed on the bottom; she was sprawled across my chest. We looked at each other, and she grinned. “That was close.” We stayed like that for a moment, then she rolled off me and I slid against the wall. We were sitting there on the landing a full ten seconds before we saw Omar. He was standing in the foyer and was eating a ham and cheese sandwich and drinking a bottle of beer.
“What the hell?” He lowered the longneck bottle and cocked his head. “What’re you guys doing? You could get killed up there.” He started up the steps, and I noticed he had a. 44 hunting sidearm in a holster at his leg. “I brought you guys a beer.” We continued to look at him. “If you want a sandwich, the stuff’s still out.” He took another sip, and I thought about throwing him over the railing. He motioned for Vic to take the bottles, which she did after shuttling the shotgun under her arm.
“What’s the story?”
He rolled his eyes and pushed his 50X silver-belly hat back from his forehead, the long curls of gold reaching to the collar of his white dress shirt. “She started drinking this morning, after we had a little talk.” He took another bite of his sandwich-I have to admit, it was looking pretty good. “She said she had traded me in on two twenty-year-olds, and I told her she wasn’t wired for 220. The conversation kind of deteriorated from there.” He finished off the beer and threw the bottle so that it shattered against the hand-patterned drywall. He put his hand to the side of his mouth to direct the volume: “Bitch!”
Two more. 308s slammed through the door above. Vic and I simultaneously ducked as the rounds sped harmlessly down the empty hallway above us.
Omar took both of the beers from Vic, opened them on his belt buckle, handed her one back, and took a swig from the other as the cap fell to the carpeted landing and rolled down the stairs. “You didn’t, by chance, happen to count how many holes were in the door?” He continued to look after the bottle cap. “There’s only one box of shells for that thing, sixteen in a box…”
I knew that there was an abundance of weapons in the Rhoades household. “What about all the other guns in the safe?”
“No ammunition. I moved it all downstairs.”
They both took sips and looked at me. “Twelve.” I nodded back to the landing. “And two more makes fourteen.”
Omar nodded. “She’s got two left.” We all nodded, as he casually drew the big. 44 from his holster, aimed it straight up, and fired two shots; the long-barreled Smith and Wesson bucked in his hand. A few pieces of the entryway, elk horn chandelier, and plaster ceiling fell down on us. “Cunt!” The. 308 thundered in response, but this time only once. Omar took another swallow. “Wisin’ up, conserving ammo.”
I looked at Vic, who looked at Omar. “Any chance of talking to her?”
Omar laughed, and I looked at him. “Is there a phone in the bedroom?”
“Yeah.” We traipsed down to the entryway table where an old-fashioned Belgian dial phone sat. Omar picked up the receiver, dialed the number for the bedroom, and handed the phone to me. “She’s not going to talk to me.”
The phone rang three times before Myra answered. “Bastard!”
“Myra, it’s Walter…” She slammed the receiver down with an ear-shattering crack. I asked Omar to dial the number again. She didn’t answer this time, but the thunderous report of the. 308 and the brief squall and whine of the line informed us that Myra had shot the bedroom phone.
I hung up and looked at the two of them. Vic looked back at the landing. “She’s out?”
Omar agreed. “Yeah.”
I wasn’t convinced. “How drunk is she?”
“Pretty damn, but she hasn’t missed the door yet.”
I crossed the landing, staying to the right, where I knew I could dive into the guest bedroom if she had ammunition left after all. The problem was that the closed door seemed a very dangerous twenty feet away. Credit the carpenters that built the Rhoades mansion-the floor didn’t creak as I carefully made my way around the barricade.
I had holstered my. 45; I had no intention of shooting Myra.
With the volume of the music, it was impossible to hear any movement in the bedroom. As Edith Piaf continued singing, I looked at what the 150-grain softpoints had done to three inches of solid wood and felt that familiar weightlessness in the trunk of my body.
I counted the holes in the door again, but the damage caused by the large-caliber rifle made it difficult to be sure how many shots had really been fired. I wasn’t betting the farm. It did look as if the shot closest to the knob had taken most of the mechanism with it, and the door itself stood ajar about a quarter of an inch, so I opted for nudging the base of it with my boot; it opened four inches. I waited, but nothing happened. I nudged further, gently sweeping it back about halfway before my leverage gave out.
I took a deep breath to clear my head and stepped through the doorway into the outstretched barrel of the big. 308. She had been waiting, but my left arm was still to my right so, with a sweeping gesture, I carried the barrel down and away from me in a backhanded pull that exploded a round into the floor. The sound in the room was just short of deafening.
I was going to kill Omar.
I made a grab for the front stock but missed as she stepped back, and the seemingly endless length of the bolt action swung up.
I had forgotten how good-looking Myra was, and the yearlong sabbatical in France with close to forty-eight million dollars had done her no harm. She had long, blond hair, the kind you see on the covers of magazines, and perfectly tanned skin that I’m sure had been kissed by the French Riviera. She was wearing a pink mohair cowl-neck sweater that barely reached the top of her thighs, and that was all. She was tall and lean, with strong, capable hands. The honking diamond that Omar had married her with was still on the left hand that pointed the rifle at my face. Above the scope was the palest blue eye, and as my lungs froze, the barrel dipped a little, and the sweater-matching pink lips smiled as slowly as glacial encroachment. I listened to Piaf singing “Le Chevalier de Paris” or “Mon Legionnaire,” I wasn’t sure which, and thought about how this wasn’t the worst way to go.