“But most important, I could tell Robbie anything and everything. I felt completely comfortable around him. I told him about my first marriage to Jared, and how the man I loved had turned out to be gay. That’s when Robert said, ‘I got news for you, Joanie. I play for that team, too.’”
Claire exhaled. So that was the but. She said, “And the two of you decided to get married anyway?”
“It worked for Judy Garland.” Joan laughed. “Look, I love Robbie. He is handsome, don’t you think?”
“Very.”
“He’s very talented, too. He can sing and dance. And he can act like that guy on NCIS. Mark Harmon.”
“Impressive,” said Claire.
Joan nodded and pulled the large silver Bentley up to the gates to her home. She held the remote out the window with her good arm, pressed the button on it, and the gates swung in. She drove up to the beautiful house and parked next to a Mercedes sedan.
“I got that for Robbie for our anniversary. The two of us have a good marriage.” Joan turned off the car and faced Claire. “That’s why I know that Robert didn’t try to kill me, Claire. He doesn’t want to be a widower. He’s pretty obsessed with his image, and that title would make him seem old. Besides, he and I have nothing but good times. We don’t fight. We have love and companionship. Honestly, that’s all we need.”
“And Samuel Alton?”
“Who? Say, is that coffee and something yummy I smell?”
Claire opened her car door and Joan reached over to the glove box with her bandaged arm. She took out a pistol.
Claire said, “Whoa. What’s that for?”
Joan shrugged and said, “Someone tried to murder me, remember?” Then she grinned and started waving the gun like a rodeo clown as she took Claire around the side of the house and out to the patio.
Once they sat down at the table, Marjorie came out and said, “Welcome, Dr. Washburn. Would you like a mimosa to start?”
Claire said, “I’ll have orange juice without the champagne, please. I have to go back to work after breakfast.”
Joan was standing at the edge of the patio, sighting various objects on the property over the top of her gun, from the statuary to specimen trees to the birds. Each time she aimed her gun at something, she said, “Pytoo, pytoo, pytoo.”
Claire said, “Joan? Is that thing loaded?”
Joan called back, “Of course it is. I’ve also got a license, if you’re wondering, and I’ve gone out to the range to practice. You can never be too careful when you were almost murdered.”
“Come sit down and give me that thing. I’ll give it back after I leave, okay? It’s just for my own safety, get me?”
“You’re silly,” Joan said, laughing, but she sat down and put the gun on the table. The muzzle was pointing in Claire’s direction. Claire gently spun the gun so it was pointing toward the horizon.
She let out a small breath, but her heart kept beating wildly in her chest.
Marjorie brought out the breakfast. It was a mushroom and fines herbes frittata that smelled delicious and was paired with a side of oven-fresh warm bread. Claire’s stomach rumbled, so she unfurled her napkin and placed it in her lap. She was just lifting her fork when she heard what sounded like a gunshot.
“What’s that?” Claire asked.
Two more shots were fired.
“It’s coming from the pool house. Damn it to hell!”
Then Joan grabbed the pistol and started to run.
Chapter 25
Claire stood up fast. She knocked over a chair, hit the table with her hip, and scattered the contents of the dishes and the juice in the wineglasses. She started moving, doing her best to catch up to Joan. The woman was her age but slimmer, and even with her clipped wing, Joan was faster and more athletic than Claire.
She called out to her, “Joan, wait up!”
But Joan was not listening.
Claire huffed behind her, crossing the lawn. She saw a cottage to her left, a swimming pool, and a set of meandering stone stairs. There was a man standing at the top of it with a rifle. He had the gun sight up to his eye as he pointed it down the steps.
Joan yelled, “Peter! Peter, stop what you’re doing! Right now!”
The man whom Joan called Peter was fit and bare-chested. A pair of glasses was hanging from the cord around his neck, and he was wearing a pair of khaki shorts. When he heard Joan calling him, he turned toward her, but only slightly. He hardly lowered the gun at all, maybe just a few degrees. And he certainly didn’t drop it.
Joan was still holding her pistol. And she raised it and pointed it at Peter.
It was a standoff. But how long would it last?
Claire pictured the horrible scene that was about to happen in front of her.
But then she had an idea, albeit untested. She called out, using the most authoritative voice she had.
“Everyone freeze.”
She heard a groaning noise coming from the edge of the steps, where Peter had pointed his rifle and had likely fired the three shots. It sounded almost human. Had he shot someone? Was that person lying down there?
“Peter,” Joan called out from forty feet away. “You’d better put that gun down. I figured out what you did. I know that it was you all along. And if you drop that gun, we can talk about it.”
Again, Peter lifted the gun sight to his eye. This time, he was aiming his rifle directly at Joan. But before he could squeeze off a shot, Joan fired.
Not once, but three times.
And the sound of the gun was not pytoo, pytoo, pytoo.
It was BAM, BAM, BAM.
The sound was deafening, and the aftershocks echoed off the exterior walls of the tiny cottage. Peter yelped, grabbed his gut, and went down to the ground. His body curled into a ball.
At that moment, a man came galloping across the lawn from the direction of the main house.
And he was screaming, “Peter, Peter! Oh, my God, Joan! You shot Peter!”
Chapter 26
Claire had left her handbag at the breakfast table, which meant that she didn’t have a phone on her.
Holy shit, she didn’t have a phone.
She ran past Joan over to the man called Peter, who was on his back on the grass. The other man, whom Claire took to be Robert Murphy, was cradling Peter’s head and pleading with him, asking him not to die.
A quick visual exam told Claire that Peter had taken a shot under his rib cage. The man was probably bleeding internally. He’d taken another bullet to his left thigh, which was spouting blood like a small fire hose.
Peter was conscious, and he seemed to be in excruciating pain. In between moans, he was gasping to Robert, “It had to be done. I had to do it.”
What was he talking about?
Claire directed Robert to take off his belt so he could make a tourniquet above the bullet hole in Peter’s thigh.
“Robert, cinch it and hold it tight. Good. I’m going to make sure an ambulance is on the way. Do not let him move. Do you hear me?”
Robert nodded. Tears were running down his cheeks. “He has PTSD. From a stint he did in Afghanistan.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He freaks out sometimes. Jesus Christ. Peter.”
Claire told Robert to try to keep Peter calm. Then she stood up to look for Joan.