Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

I could call for help, you attacked me. I pulled my gun and shot you both. Who could blame me? I didn’t even know who you were until after the event.”

If I was going to die, I wanted answers. “Why did you kill Elisa Morano?”

“That bitch. That lying, cheating, conniving bitch!” She snarled the words, her lips drawn back from her teeth and spittle flying from her mouth. “She thought John would leave me for her. Can you imagine? She was nothing more than another piece of ass to him. He would never violate the vows of marriage for trash like her.”

“Seems to me that he did just that when he slept with her,” Bobbie interjected. I pushed a finger into his back, trying to tell him nonverbally not to aggravate her.

“Oh, he might have committed adultery. But leave me? And the children? Divorce me? I laughed in her face that night, when I met her at Tony’s apartment.” The hand holding the gun started to waver slightly. She grasped the weapon with both hands to steady it. “She said she wanted to talk…she called me things, ugly hateful things. I didn’t mean to do it. I was angry, I lost control. Even Father Tom agreed, he told me it wasn’t planned, that he could absolve me.”

“Why the stabbing, Jane?” I asked in a quiet, calm voice.

She was practically sobbing. “When I shot her, when she fell and bled all over, when she lay there, still beautiful, even in death … I couldn’t stand it. I grabbed a knife and stabbed her, wiped out her beauty. Her beauty was only outward. She had no spiritual beauty, she wasn’t a godly woman.” She stopped, seemed to come to her senses. “I tried to make amends. If you’d left it alone, no one would know. Her mother would be happy, living the good life I set up for her.”

“But Elisa is dead, Jane. You can’t make amends for that.” My voice was hypnotic, like a mother reading a bedtime story, hoping that the child will drop off.

“I’m not going to jail,” she said. “I have my husband, my children, my church to consider.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry.” She sighted the gun.

As she spoke, I was groping behind me, my smaller frame hidden by Bobbie. My hands fastened on a bottle. It felt like a laundry detergent bottle. I twisted the top off. When Jane sighted, ready to shoot us, I swung the bottle sidearm, around Bobbie’s body and straight at her.

Black powder. Choking. Gasping. Gun shots, ringing in my ears. Falling, Bobbie on top of me. Pain in my side. Bobbie whispering in my ear, “Hold on, Angie. Hold on. The police are on the way.” Sirens. Shouts. Running. More sirens. Wukowski? No, that can’t be right. Spiraling down a dark black hole.

Chapter 29

How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The room was light green. Sun was shining on my face. Wukowski leaned over me, holding my right hand. “How you feeling, beautiful?” His voice was low, intimate.

“Awful.” My throat was dry and hurt like the devil. So did my left side and my head. “What happened?”

“Remember tossing the copier toner at Jane?”

So that’s what the black powder was that filled the room!

“She fired wild. You took a bullet in the side. Went right through. You’ll have to get used to explaining the scar if you wear a bikini.”

“Bobbie?” I panicked and tried to sit up.

Wukowski pushed me gently back against the pillows. “He’s okay. Quite the hero, as a matter of fact. He tried to cover you.”

Tears welled up in my eyes as I recalled him on top of me, telling me to hold on. “Jane?” I asked.

“In custody. Look, I have to go. They only allowed me three minutes, but I knew you wouldn’t rest until you heard what happened.” He carefully placed my hand on the bed clothes, as if it were made of finest porcelain.

“Wait,” I croaked. He stopped. “Were you there? Why do I remember you being there?”

“Yeah, I was there, but not in time.”

“How?”

“Bobbie Russell is one smart guy. While he was pretending to finger the money clip in his pocket, he was really dialing 9-1-1 on one of those super skinny cell phones that look like a credit card. The dispatcher got the whole conversation between you, Bobbie and Jane—‘Mrs. Dunwoodie, at the agency, Elisa Morano, what good will it do to shoot us?’ She figured it out and sent a squad, then contacted me as the detective in charge of the Morano case.” His face tightened into a mask. “I thought for sure that you were a goner, Angie. I thought I was too late again.”

I started to retch and a nurse suddenly appeared with one of those little kidney-shaped plastic basins. Why are they shaped that way? I wondered, as I spit up bile. Does it catch the vomit better? When she laid me back down and wiped my face with a cool cloth, Wukowski was gone.

The next time I woke, Papa was leaning over the bed, watching me. “Hi, Papa,” I said in my froggy voice.

“Angelina, you took twenty years off my life, and I don’t have that much to give.” His voice quivered with emotion.

“I’m sorry, Papa” I mumbled.

Aunt Terry stood behind him. “Pasquale, stop haranguing her. I bet she hurts all over. You can yell at her later, when she’s home. For now, just say you love her and let her get some rest.”

“Ti amo, cara figlia,” he said as he kissed my forehead. I love you, dearest daughter.

“Ti amo, Papa,” I said, tears and my sore throat making the words almost silent. Terry handed me a tissue, kissed me on the cheek, and said in an undertone, “Don’t worry, he’ll get over it.”

It was dark when I woke again. A white-coated woman stood beside my bed, reading papers from