Fool's Puzzle Earlene Fowler (microsoft ebook reader TXT) 📖

look. He needed someone to blame, someone other than himself.

“If my wife finds out about Marla, she’ll take my son and split.” His voice broke slightly. I felt a flash of sympathy; I knew what Ray’s son meant to him. Still, that wasn’t my problem. I had enough of my own.

“I’m sorry, Ray, but I guess that’s one of the consequences of that sort of thing. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“No one is taking my son from me,” he said, his voice harsh. He stabbed the Xacto knife he was holding into my wood desk. “No one.”

I stared at the knife and held my breath. The look on my face must have shocked him back to his senses.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a soft voice. He picked up the knife and stuck it in his tool belt. “It’s just that you seem awfully involved in this. You and that police chief have gotten real friendly, I hear.”

“The next person who brings up the relationship I do not have with Chief Ortiz is going to have to sign a complaint against me for assault.”

He looked at me steadily. “All I’m saying is you should stay out of things that don’t concern you.” He turned and walked out the door.

As I stuck the keys in the ignition of the truck, I thought about all the things I should have answered. Of course, all I’d done was sit there and gape.

“No backtalk from you this time, bud,” I commanded the Chevy, “or I’m selling you for scrap.”

And for a change, someone believed me.

15

THERE WAS ONE message on my answering machine when I arrived home.

“Benni, call me.” Sandra’s weepy voice sputtered like an old engine. “Wade came home real mad, then left again. He said he saw you at Trigger’s. What happened?”

I didn’t call her back. I didn’t know what to tell her. I had no idea where Wade fit into this whole mess, but I knew one thing—I’d just as soon eat a saddle blanket as talk to or about him again.

A saddle blanket would have probably tasted better than anything in my refrigerator. I would have killed right then for the beef dip I didn’t eat at Trigger’s. While changing into jeans and boots, I decided what I needed was a real homemade meal—steak, baked potato, corn on the cob, apple pie with vanilla ice cream. And a movie. A funny one. Williams Bros. Market out by the university had everything I needed, except the movie. The video store had slim pickings, so I grabbed Police Academy, remembering it being a silly, slapstick comedy that made police look like mindless idiots. For some reason, that sounded appealing.

I balanced the paper sack of groceries on one hip and had inserted the key in the front door with the other, when a whoosh and then a plink sounded above my head.

The porch light shattered.

Tiny shards of glass sprayed across my face. I dropped the paper sack and frantically brushed at my eyes. The scent of Italian dressing surrounded me. I glanced out at the street. A light-colored pickup was idling there. In the dark I could just make out the outline of the rifle. Like a stupid animal, I stood frozen, staring.

Another plink chipped the stucco above me.

I shoved the front door open, hit the floor.

Sounds like a .22, I thought, amazed at my calm as I crawled across the floor toward my bedroom. No match for a .45. If I could get to it. My bedroom seemed a hundred miles away.

A front windowpane cracked.

I scrambled for the bedroom, knees banging against the hard oak floor. Nightstand, my mind commanded. Get to the nightstand.

I fumbled for Jack’s pistol. Slip in the clip. Safety off. Pull the slide back. Aim. Jack’s words, Daddy’s words, coming back to me. I sat back against the nightstand, rested the heaviness of the gun on my bended knees and aimed at the open bedroom door.

Somewhere, tires squealed.

Mouth dry, breath coming in sharp gasps, I sat in the dark, frozen. Police. Call the police.

The 911 operator had already received a report. A patrol car was being dispatched. I told her I had a gun. She told me to stay on the line.

“They’re coming up the walk now, ma‘am,” the dispatcher’s steady voice said after minutes of inane conversation she had probably been taught kept a scared caller from hysteria. It hadn’t worked.

“I have a gun,” I said. “Tell them I have a gun.”

“They’re in the house,” she reported.

“Tell them I have a gun,” I repeated.

“Police,” a loud voice yelled from the living room.

“I have a gun!” I yelled back.

“Put it down,” the voice commanded.

“Not until I see your uniforms!” I shrieked.

“Benni?” The faintly familiar voice broke through the loud adrenaline buzz in my ears. A dark head poked around the corner of the doorway. A bright light blinded me. I aimed the pistol at the light.

“Benni?” he asked again. I knew that voice. A sob gurgled up from my throat.

“Miguel?”

“Put the gun down, Benni. It’s Miguel,” he said in a soothing voice.

Another sob escaped, but I couldn’t put the gun down. A primordial voice in my subconscious whispered—it’s a trick—don’t surrender your weapon.

“Benni, I can’t put my gun down until you do.” His voice sounded apologetic. “Put it down on the floor next to you. Do it now.”

The deep, reassuring tone of his voice finally penetrated my brain. With trembling hands, I laid the gun on the floor next to me.

“Push it away from you,” he said softly. I shoved it across the slick floor. He turned off his flashlight, flipped on the bedroom light and picked it up, his pistol already back in its holster. Shaking his head, he removed the clip, pulled the slide back and emptied the chamber.

“Geeze Louise!” he said, sounding like the Miguel I knew again. “You scared the shit outta me.”

He passed the gun to the officer behind him and held out his hand. I grabbed it, pulled