The siren howled louder now and Tommy Norton, thinking Harry had grown less vigilant, leapt toward her. A spit of flame flashed from the muzzle of the gun. Tommy Norton let out a howl, deep and guttural, and clutching his knee, fell to the ground. Harry had blown apart his kneecap. Undaunted, he crawled toward her.
“Kill me. I’d rather be dead. Kill me, because if I get to you, I’ll kill you.”
Blair got behind him, putting his knee in Tommy’s back while wrapping his good arm around the struggling man’s neck. “Give it up, man.”
The metal doors of the barn squeaked as they were rolled back. Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper, guns drawn, burst into the barn. Behind them stood Tomahawk and Gin Fizz, splinters of the fence scattered in the snow, the fronts of their blankets a mess.
“Did we do a good job?” they nickered.
“The best,” Mrs. Murphy answered, her fur now returning to normal.
Cynthia attended to Blair.“I’ll call an ambulance.”
“I think I’d get there faster if I drove myself in the Explorer.”
“I’ll take you.”
Tommy sat on the floor, blood spurting from his knee and his eye, yet he seemed beyond pain. Perhaps his mind couldn’t accept what had just happened to him emotionally and physically.
“No, you won’t. Both these men need care.” Rick pointed for Orlando to call the hospital and he gave the number. “Tell them Sheriff Shaw is here. On the double.”
As Harry and Blair filled in the officers, Tommy would laugh and correct little details.
“What was Ben Seifert’s connection?” Rick wanted to know.
“Accidental. Stumbled on Cabell Hall’s second set of books, the ones where he accounted for my payments. Cabell is somewhere up in the mountains, by the way. He ran away because he thought I’d kill him, I guess. He’ll come down in good time. Anyway, Ben proved useful. He fed me information on who was near bankruptcy, and I’d buy their land or lend them money at a high interest rate. So I started to pay him off, too, but …” Tommy gasped as a jolt of pain finally reached his senses.
Harry walked over to Mrs. Murphy and picked her off the stall door. She buried her face in the cat’s fur. Then she hunkered down to kiss Tucker. Tears rolled down Harry’s cheeks.
Blair put his good arm around her. She could smell the blood soaking through his shirt and his jacket.
“Let’s take this off.” She helped him remove the jacket. He winced. Cynthia came over, while Rick kept his revolver trained on Tommy.
“Still in there.” Cynthia referred to the bullet. “I hope it didn’t shatter any bone.”
“Me too.” Blair was starting to feel woozy. “I think I better sit for a minute.”
Harry helped him to a chair in the tack room.
Orlando stood next to Rick. He stared at this man whom he once knew.“Tom, you passed, you know.”
Tiny bits of patella were scattered on the barn aisle. A faint smile crossed Tom’s features as he fought back his agony. “Yeah, I fooled everybody. Even that insufferable snob, that bitch of a mother-in-law.” A dark pain twisted his face. His features contorted and he fought for control. “I would never have been able to marry Little Marilyn. Fitz-Gilbert could marry her. Tommy Norton couldn’t.”
“Maybe you’re selling her short.” Orlando’s voice was soothing.
“She’s controlled by her mother” was the matter-of-fact reply. “But you know what’s funny? I learned to love my wife. I never thought I could love anybody.” He looked as if he would weep.
“How much was the Hamilton fortune worth?” Sheriff Shaw asked.
“When I inherited it, so to speak, it was worth twenty-one million. With Cabell’s management and my own attention to it, once I came of age it had grown to sixty-four million. There are no heirs. No Hamiltons are left. Before I killed Fitz, I asked if he had children and he said no.” Tommy deliberately did not look at his knee, as if not seeing it would control the pain.
“Who will get the money?” Orlando wanted to know. After all, money is fascinating.
“Little Marilyn. I made sure of that twice over. She’s the recipient of my will and Fitz-Gilbert’s, the one he signed in my office that October day. Trusting as a lamb. It might take a while but one way or the other my wife gets that money.”
“Exactly how did you kill Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton?” Cynthia inquired.
“Ben panicked. Typical. Weak and greedy. I always told Cabell that Ben could never run Allied after Cabell retired. He didn’t believe me. Anyway, Ben was smart enough to get Fitz in his car and out of the bank before he caused an even greater scene or blurted out who he was. He drove him to my office. Ben was prepared to hang around and become a nuisance. I told him to go back to the bank, that Fitz and I would reach some accord. I said this in front of Fitz. Ben left. Fitz was all right for a bit. Then he became angry when I told him about his money. I made so much more with it than he ever could have! I offered to split it with him. That seemed fair enough. He became enraged. One thing led to another and he swung at me. That’s how my office was wrecked.”
“And you stole the office money from yourself?” Cynthia added.
“Of course. What’s two hundred dollars and a CD player, which is what I listed as missing?” Sweat drenched Tommy’s face.
“So, how did you kill him?” She pressed on.
“With a paperweight. He wasn’t very strong and the paperweight was heavy. I caught him just right, I suppose.”
“Or just wrong,” Harry said.
Tommy shrugged and continued.“No matter. He’s dead now. The hard part was cutting up the body. Joints are hell to cut through.”
Rick picked up the questioning.“Where’d you do that?”
“Back on the old logging trail off Yellow Mountain Road. I waited until night. I stored the body in the closet in my office, picked him up, and then took him out on the logging road. Burying the hands and legs was easy until the storm came up. I never expected it to be that bad, but then everything was unexpected.”
“What about the clothes?” Rick scribbled in his notebook.
“Threw them in the dumpster behind Safeway—the teeth too. If it hadn’t rained so hard and that damned dog hadn’t found the hand, nobody would know anything. Everything would be just as it was … before.”
“You think Ben and Cabell wouldn’t have given you trouble?” Harry cynically interjected.
“Ben would have, most likely. Cabell stayed cool until Ben turned up dead.” Tom leaned his head against the wall and shook with pain and fatigue. “Then he got squirrely. Take the money and run became his theme song. Crazy talk. It takes weeks to liquidate investments. Months. Although as a precaution I always kept a lot of cash in my checking account.”
“Well, you might have gotten away with murder, and then again you might not have.” Rick calmly kept writing. “But the torso and the head in the pumpkin—you were pushing it, Tommy. You were pushing it.”
He laughed harshly.“The satisfaction of seeing Mim’s face.” He laughed again. “That was worth it. I knew I was safe. Sure, the torso in the boathouse pointed to obvious hostility against Marilyn Sanburne but so what? The pieces of body in the old cemetery—considering what happened to Robin Mangione—was sure to throw you off the track at some point. I copied her murder to make Blair the prime suspect, just in case something should go wrong. I had backup plans to contend with people—not dogs.” He sighed, then smiled. “But the head in the pumpkin—that was a stroke of genius.”