Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 04 - With This Ring (30 page)

“What the hell—?” Buck said, as he took a step backward and stumbled over a water hose lying on the floor of the garage. Sheila fell to the floor behind me and began to crawl behind the front right wheel of the Mustang in an attempt to put a ton or two of metal between her and any flying bullets.

“Listen, Sandy,” I said, as calmly as I could manage under the circumstances. “Please put the gun down. Whatever’s bothering you can be discussed and dealt with accordingly. There’s no need to hurt anyone. I’m sure there’s a good reason for whatever you’ve done. I’m going to step over there, and you can hand me the gun. You don’t want to do anything you’ll later regret, and make matters even worse for yourself.”

I took one timid step toward her. She waved the gun at me, and with steel in her eyes, said, “Stand back! If you get any closer to me, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes!”

I had no reason to doubt her. I took a step backward and looked behind the car to see if there was room next to Sheila for me.

“What’s going on?” Buck asked hysterically. “Talk to me, Sandy. Why are you holding my gun?”

Sandy waved the gun my way. “She knows what’s going on. Ask her!”

“No, I don’t know, Sandy,” I confessed. “Please put the gun down and we’ll all pretend this never happened. No one else needs to know.”

“It did happen. And there’s no way you’ll pretend it didn’t, Lexie,” Sandy said. “All three of you, stand together next to that back wall while I think about what I’m going to do with you. Make any sudden moves and I’ll start shooting!”

“But honey—” Buck began.

“Don’t honey me, Buck! I’m sorry, but when you started caring more about winning the state football championship than you cared about me, I decided to have an affair. I met Thurman Steiner at a non-denominational prayer meeting. He was kind and gentle, and not hard on the eyes. He showed a genuine interest in me, and in what I had to say. I decided then and there to make a move on him. He was not opposed to my advances, I might add.”

Buck gasped in pure shock. It suddenly occurred to me that Sandy was about to confess to her part in the death of the pastor, and that Buck, Sheila, and my lives were in imminent danger. I reached in the pocket of my jacket and pressed the “send” button twice on my phone. This would cause it to dial the number from the last call I’d made, which had been to my home phone to speak to Wendy. Hopefully, she or Stone would pick up the phone, figure out where we were, and what was happening, and notify the police.

“I have never cared more for football than you, honey, I swear—”

“Shut up!” Sandy replied. She brushed her long, beautiful red hair back off her shoulders using the barrel of the gun, and then flipped it back around to point at us, aiming it at each one of us in turn. “Anyway, we were having an affair until Thurman tried to break it off with me a couple of weeks ago. He suddenly felt remorseful, and as if he had turned away from God by ‘coveting thy neighbor’s wife,’ being involved in an adulterous affair, and all that crap! He told me he was going to confess his sins to the congregation at church this Sunday. I couldn’t let that happen. It would soon have been all over town, and I’d have ended up jobless, divorced, broke, and desperate. Our marriage wasn’t ideal, Buck, or even particularly happy, but at least it was comfortable financially, and I wasn’t anxious to see it end unless I could’ve convinced Thurman to marry me after the divorce. He refused to even consider it.”

“My God, Sandy!” Buck exclaimed. “What are you saying? Did you kill Pastor Steiner?”

Sandy just stared at her husband as if she were talking to a moron. What part of “I couldn’t let that happen” didn’t he understand? I decided I better get involved in the conversation in case someone was on the other end of my phone call, waiting for a clue to where we were. I was holding the phone in my hand, aimed right at Sandy, because she was too wound up to notice, and I wanted her words to be as clear as possible on the other end of the line. I was praying somebody would be listening to them and send help before it was too late.

“Look, Mrs. Webster, Sheila and I didn’t come over here to your house on Mulberry Street to confront you or accuse you of anything. I’m sure whatever it is you did, a good lawyer will be able to get you off on an insanity plea. It was obviously a crime of passion, and you went temporarily insane. Please put the gun down. If you were to kill all three of us off now, you’d never see the light of day again. In fact, I would be terribly surprised if they didn’t just give you the needle.”

Sandy stopped swaying the gun back and forth from one of us to the next and seemed to reflect for a moment. “You’re right,” she finally said. “My life as I know it is over no matter what I do now. There’s no point in even living.”

She looked down at the gun in her hand for a few seconds and then pointed it at her own temple. She wore an expression of resignation.

“Sandy! Wait!” Buck and I yelled out in unison. Sheila had closed her eyes and placed her hands over her ears. She was probably hoping Sandy would pull the trigger before she changed her mind again and aimed the gun back at us.

“No,” Sandy said. “There’s nothing left for me to do but to end it all. I killed the man in cold blood. I parked my car a couple of blocks away and walked to his house in the dark, wearing my driving gloves. All I could think about was the humiliation and embarrassment it would cause you and the entire town of Rockdale when you found out about my affair with Thurman. I truly loved him, but he’d already made it clear we weren’t going to end up together, and I couldn’t bear to let him confess his sins in church, and bring my world crashing down around my feet.”

“But, honey,” Buck pleaded. “I would have been there for you. I would have forgiven you. I love you more than anything in the world.”

“Yeah, right,” Sandy said, sarcasm dripping off her tongue. She had started her story and was determined to finish it before she committed suicide right in front of us inside the garage. “So, anyway, I knocked on Thurman’s back door and after he’d let me in the house, I hit him on the head with the tire iron out of my trunk. He hollered out, and then staggered a bit before falling to the floor. After he lost consciousness, I held a sofa cushion over his face until he stopped breathing. I turned off the outside floodlight and looked out the kitchen window. I saw a car running in the driveway across the street. A man started to get in the car, but then walked back into his house. I didn’t see a sign of anyone else who might witness my departure, so I raced out of the house with the tire iron and back to my car to make a quick get-away. Until now, I actually thought I was going to get away with it and no one would be the wiser. I hadn’t counted on a nosy bitch like you, Lexie, interfering in my business.”

“So where does Steiner’s wedding ring fit into all this?” I asked. After all, I’d already been classified as a nosy bitch, so why not delve even deeper into the situation. I was still confused about the ring and how it ended up in the console of Sandy’s car. “Did you wear it around on a necklace for a while and then give it back to him when he called off the affair? Then, for some reason, you removed it from his finger at the funeral? Didn’t it feel a little weird to you to wear his wedding ring from his marriage to Stella?”

“It wasn’t his wedding ring. He bought us matching rings to wear as a symbol of our love. He found them at a crafts fair when he attended a religious conference in Montana. His wedding ring from his marriage to Stella is in his lockbox at the bank, I think, to pass down to one of his daughters some day. He was wearing his ring like mine when he was buried. I don’t know why he continued to wear it even after he broke it off with me. I stopped wearing mine that day, and it’s been in my car ever since.”

“Where was I during all this?” Buck asked. I could tell he was trying to find a broken link in her story, making it all a gory and vivid figment of her imagination.

“The affair or the murder?” Sandy asked.

“Both, I guess.”

“Well, as far as the affair was concerned, you were at ball practice, sporting venues, or other after-school events. You were golfing, you were fishing, you were hunting, you were bowling, and you were anywhere else you could go to get away from me. Basically, you were gone more than you were home, so running around on you was pretty easy.”

“I’m sorry,” Buck said. “I never realized how unhappy you were. I should have stayed home more, spent more time with you and the kids. Please forgive me. Put the gun down and we’ll talk it over and work things out.”

It pained me to watch Buck grovel for forgiveness when it was his wife who’d had the affair and committed murder. He might have not been the best husband, but he provided for his family, and he professed to love Sandy. And, as far as I knew, he was loyal to his wife. He wasn’t attentive, perhaps, but he most likely wasn’t abusive, a cheater, or a cold-blooded killer either.

“What about the murder?” Buck asked, his voice having dropped several octaves. “Where was I when that took place?”

“It was early and you were still asleep. I was home and back in bed before you even woke up. I was sweating and shaking like a leaf, but naturally you didn’t notice because you pay almost no attention to me these days. I could have been lying there dead myself, and you’d have gone right on about your day without giving me a second thought. “

“Sandy, you know that’s not true! I would have gone back to the bedroom to check on you when you didn’t come into the kitchen and fix me breakfast like you’ve done every morning of our married life.”

That’s not what I think Sandy wanted to hear. It only stood to remind her of her depressing life with Buck as a husband, and what might have been had she and Thurman eventually ended up together.

With renewed resolve, Sandy pressed the gun firmly against her temple and squeezed her eyes shut. I knew the moment had come. Sandy was concentrating hard, lost in the moment. I was the nearest person to her, and seeing her eyes were tightly closed, I made a lunge for her right arm, the arm that held the gun.

Ka-Boom! A loud explosion reverberated through the garage. I watched the large pistol bounce off the concrete floor. I grabbed the gun mid-bounce as a mounted jackalope fell off the wall and down on to the workbench below. The fur was flying and the left antler was broken off right above the bottom spike from the fall. There was a ghastly-looking hole where the animal’s nose used to be. If the jackrabbit hadn’t already been dead, it would be now.

Sandy collapsed to the floor. She was emotionally and psychologically spent, but not injured from the accidental firing of the weapon. As she began to sob into her hands, several uniformed policeman rushed through the side door into the garage with their weapons drawn. Wyatt Johnston was in the lead. I knew they thought they were walking into the middle of a massacre when they heard the gunshot as they were approaching the house.

“Don’t shoot!” I yelled. “Everything is okay!”

“Is anyone injured?” One of the cops asked.

“No, although the jackalope didn’t fare well,” I said. I quickly explained what had just happened. Wyatt told me that Wendy had been vacuuming when my call came in, drowning out the ringing of the phone. Because of this, the answering machine picked up and captured nearly the entire conversation that had taken place inside the garage. Sandy’s recorded confession would no doubt be valuable evidence in court. Wyatt said he didn’t really want to know how Sheila and I had ended up in the Webster’s garage, but was thankful I’d had enough wits about me to dial home. Wyatt went on to explain that Stone had walked into the kitchen and heard the voices being picked up by the answering machine. He’d let the machine keep recording and dialed Wyatt on his cell phone. Wyatt, who was in his patrol car just a couple of blocks from the Webster’s house, called for back up, and he and his partner were on the scene within a minute or so.

“As you can imagine,” Wyatt said, “Stone, Randy, Wendy, and everyone else at the inn are frantic. Please ring the house again and let them know you two are all right. My partner is cuffing Sandy right now, and we’ll take her to the station and book her.”

“Okay, good. I’m so glad this turned out the way it did. My entire life was passing before my eyes for the second time in the last few days. It was really annoying me that I was about to get killed on my wedding day,” I said. Sheila echoed my sentiments. She claimed she wasn’t wild about getting shot on any day.

Wyatt smiled, and went on to say, “I don’t know how you two figured out Sandy was the killer, but she was totally off the radar as far as the investigators were concerned. We had questioned Buck, because of the black Mustang reported to have been seen in the area at the time of the murder, but never even considered speaking with his wife. We didn’t even know Sandy and Steiner were acquainted.”

“Well, I’ll tell you all about it later,” I promised. “Right now we need to get back to the inn so Sheila can style my hair for me and we can get ready for the wedding ceremony. You’re still planning on being at the inn at three, aren’t you, Wyatt?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. After what’s taken place here this morning, Stone might need someone to hold him up while he repeats his vows.”

“And I might need someone to drag him to the altar!” I replied. Flashbacks from my wedding nightmare were going through my head. It wasn’t too late for Stone to change his mind and leave me standing at the altar. I just hoped the clown, Paula’s dogs, my late great-grandmother, and a long-retired NFL quarterback didn’t show up this time!