I willed myself to be still. It worked only a little, but I could hear some sounds coming up the stairs. This intruder was no skilled stalker.
I found I was more frightened of what Martin might do than I was of the intruder. Only slightly, though.
I heard the someone enter the room. I covered my face with my hands.
And the lights came on.
“Stop right there,” Martin said in a deadly voice. “I have a gun pointed at your back.”
I peeked around the chair. Sam Ulrich was standing inside the room with his back to Martin, who was pressed against the wall by the light switch. Ulrich had a length of rope in one hand, some wide masking tape in the other. His face was livid with shock and excitement. Mounting my stairs must have been pretty heart-pounding for him, too.
“Turn around,” Martin said. Ulrich did. “Sit on the end of the bed,” Martin said next. The burly ex-Pan-Am Agra executive inched back and sat down. Slowly I got up from my place behind the chair, finding out that during those few moments I’d spent there, my muscles had become strained and sore from the tension. My legs were shaking, and I decided sitting in the chair would be a good idea. My robe was draped over the back of it, and I pulled it on. Madeleine had vanished, doubtless irritated at having her night’s sleep so rudely interrupted.
“Are you all right, Roe?” Martin asked.
“Okay,” I said shakily.
We stared at our captive. I had a thought. “Martin, where did you park when you came tonight? Are you in your car?”
“No,” he said slowly. “No, I parked out back in one of the parking slots, but I’m in a company car. I don’t like to leave my car parked at the airport.”
“So he didn’t know you were here,” I observed.
Martin absorbed that quickly. From looking perplexed and angry, his expression went to murderous.
“What were you going to do with the rope and the tape, Sam?” he asked very quietly.
I felt all the blood drain from my face. I hadn’t followed through on my own idea until Martin asked that critical question.
“You son of a bitch, I was going to hurt you like you hurt me,” Sam Ulrich said savagely.
“I didn’t rape your wife.”
“I wasn’t going to rape her,” he said, as if I weren’t there. “I was going to scare her and leave her tied up so you’d know what it was like to see your family helpless.”
“Your logic escapes me,” Martin said, and his voice was like a brand-new razor blade.
I knew this was a quarrel between the two men, but after all, it was I who would have been tied up.
“Didn’t you feel it might be a little cowardly,” I said clearly, “to creep up in the dark and tie up a woman who wasn’t even your real enemy?”
It seemed Sam Ulrich had never put it to himself quite that way. He turned even redder in a slow, ugly way.
“I’d like to kill you,” Martin said very quietly. I didn’t doubt his sincerity, and I could tell from the hunch of his shoulders that Ulrich didn’t, either. Martin, even in pajama bottoms, had more authority than Sam Ulrich would have had in a suit. “But since it’s Roe’s house you broke into, and her you were going to harm, maybe she should decide what should happen to you.”
I knew that Martin would kill this man if I asked him to.
I thought of calling the police. I thought of cops I knew from having dated Arthur, perhaps even Arthur himself, up here in my bedroom looking at me in my black nightie. I thought of their eyes as they found out Martin and I had been asleep together when I heard someone downstairs. I thought of the report taken from the police blotter that appeared daily in the Lawrenceton Sentinel. Then I thought of letting this dreadful coward go scot-free. But my flesh crawled when I pictured myself alone here with this frustrated man and his rope and his tape.
And I’ll tell you what I just plain liked about Martin. He let me think. He didn’t say one word, or look impatient, or even make a face.
“Do you have a wife?” I asked Sam Ulrich.
“Yes,” he mumbled.
“Children?”
“Two.”
“What are their names?”
He looked more and more humiliated. “Jannie and Lisa,” he said reluctantly.
“Jannie and Lisa wouldn’t like to see their father’s name in the paper for attacking an unarmed woman in her home.”
I thought that between anger and humiliation he might cry.
I got a pen and a notepad from my bedside drawer.
“Write,” I said.
He took the pen and paper.
“Date it.”
He wrote the date.
“I am dictating this now. Start writing,” I told him. “I, Sam Ulrich, broke into the townhouse of Aurora Teagarden tonight…” His hand finally moved. When it stopped, I continued. “I had with me some rope and masking tape.” Done. “She was asleep in bed with all the lights out, and I did not know anyone was in the townhouse with her.” His fingers moved even slower. “I was only prevented by her house guest from doing her harm. If I do not abide by the conditions she sets forth, she will send this letter to the police, with a copy to my wife.” And as he finished writing, I told him to sign it.
He waited to hear my conditions.
“What I want to see is your house up for sale tomorrow, and for God’s sake don’t list it with Select Realty. And I want you out of here, moved, family and all, within the week. I never want you to come back here, and I never want to see you again. You may not get a job like you’re used to, but anything, I think, would be better than being in jail for what you wanted to do to me.”
Martin’s face was blank.
Ulrich was so upset his features were distorted. I wondered if between rage, and relief, and shock, he would have a heart attack on the way home, and I found myself not much caring if he did.
“Martin, could you please walk Mr. Ulrich to his car?”
“Sure, honey,” Martin agreed, with a dangerous kind of smoothness. “Come on, Ulrich. You’re lucky I asked the lady. I would have put you in the hospital if it had been up to me.”
Or the morgue, I thought.
Sam Ulrich rose slowly. He took a step forward and then stopped. He was afraid to go closer to Martin. He was not such a fool as he looked. Martin moved back, and Ulrich preceded him down the stairs.
I heard the back door open and close, and wondered if I’d left it unlocked when we’d gone upstairs for the night. I didn’t think so. Not a very good lock. I’d get a better one.
Being left alone for a few minutes was a great relief, and I burst into tears and tried very hard not to picture myself at the mercy of the man now being marched to his car.
I was rinsing my face at the sink, the cold water making me shudder, when Martin returned. I saw his reflection in the mirror beside mine.
“You’ve been crying,” he said very gently, putting his gun on my vanity table, where it lay looking as out of place as a rattlesnake. I turned and put my arms around him. His bare chest was cold from the outside air, and I rubbed my cheek against him.
“He’s driving home,” he said, answering a question I was scared to ask.
“Martin,” I said, “if you hadn’t been here…”
“You would have called 911, because I wouldn’t have been between you and the phone,” he said practically. “They would have been here in two minutes, maximum, and you would have been fine.”
“So this doesn’t count as a rescue?” I asked shakily.
“We’re even on this one. You kept me from doing something stupid to him. I would hate to have to spend the night down at the police station because of Sam Ulrich. You saved his family, too.”
“Martin. Let’s just get in bed and pile all the blankets on, and you can hold me.”
I was trembling from head to toe. I realized, as I lay with my eyes wide open in the dark, that I had had to wait to find that Sam Ulrich had left in his own car-alive-before I could let myself have the luxury of relaxing, believing the incident was over. Martin was awake, too, listening. I didn’t think Ulrich was stupid enough to come back; he should be in his own bed counting his blessings.