“And,” she said, her voice tinged with anger and disgust, “he told me that Mr. Hubbard wouldn’t like it.” She raised her eyes to me. “Mr. Hubbard wouldn’t like it. That’s what he said to me. Can you believe that? My husband came home and told me that my daughter and I were now in danger because of his stupidity, because of his greed, and why couldn’t we go to the police? Because the rich bastard who’d put him up to it wouldn’t like it. He wouldn’t like it.” She spat the words out like they were something foul in her mouth.

“He told me that, and I just stood there and stared at him. I was still holding the damned meat tenderizer, just standing there at the counter, listening to my husband explain how our lives were falling apart. And, eventually, I asked him what we were going to do.”

Her eyes seemed to grow distant as she looked at me. “I bet you’re dying to hear that part, aren’t you? I bet you’d love to know the master plan.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“Great,” she said. “I’d love to tell it. It’s all worked out so perfectly, you know.” The sarcasm in her voice rivaled anything uttered by Jerry Seinfeld or George Carlin. “He told me he was afraid the Russians already knew about the tape.”

“How?”

“I have no idea. I asked him that, too, but he ignored me. He said we were in danger now, that we had to run. He said Hubbard was going to give him enough money to get away. And all of this is happening so fast. I mean, I’d just come home from the grocery store. I’d bought a week’s worth of groceries, and now I was being told to run for my life.”

“So you came here?”

She nodded. “It was supposed to be temporary, though. A stopover. Wayne said he wanted me to take Betsy and leave. He’d stay an extra day, work out the money arrangements with Hubbard, talk to his father, and fly down to join us. From here, we were supposed to go to South America. He had a job all worked out. He was going to be a scuba-diving instructor for some sort of resort. He told me it would be great, living in paradise, waking up each morning for walks on the beach.” She shook her head sadly. “Paradise. That’s where we were going to go.”

“So he told you this, and you left the same night?”

“No. This was the day before we left. He thought we had a little time. We had dinner and put Betsy to bed and then stayed up all night talking about it. As scared as I was, it sounded like the best option. If we stayed in the city, we were going to be killed. If we entered witness protection, we’d hand our lives over to the government. They’d tell us where to live; Wayne would be given a job at Wal-Mart or something like that. But if we did it Wayne’s way and didn’t go to the police, then Hubbard would pay for us to leave. He’d give us plenty of money to create a new life.”

“What about your family?” I asked, thinking about John Weston and the agony he was suffering.

“I’m an only child, and so was Wayne,” she said. “My parents are dead. I was going to be leaving some good friends behind, of course, but as far as family it was just Wayne’s father and a few cousins. Wayne was going to tell his dad. But someone murdered him first.” Her voice broke a little when she said that, and I could tell that despite all the shock and disappointment her husband had provided her, she still loved him.

“What happened that night?” I said. “The night Wayne was killed.” She rubbed her fingertips against her temples, trying to drive away the beginning of a headache, maybe, or perhaps the lingering of a memory.

“He came home nervous,” she said. “He was real scared that afternoon. He came home and took me right into the bedroom. He told me he thought the Russians knew about him. He said I had to take Betsy and leave that night. He’d leave the house but stay in the city, and he’d talk to his father the next day and finalize the arrangements with Hubbard. He’d rented a car using false identification, and he piled us into it and told us to drive to Columbus. He didn’t want us to use the Cleveland airport, so he’d arranged for a flight to Myrtle Beach from Columbus. He said Randy knew everything, and he’d take care of us. Randy was Wayne’s closest friend. His most trusted friend.” Her voice was a clipped monotone now, an obvious effort to hide all emotion while she told the story.

“We flew into town, and Randy picked us up at the airport,” she said. “He told me not to worry, that he would take care of us until Wayne came down and we left. But the next afternoon we still hadn’t heard from Wayne, and I was starting to get nervous. Then Randy came up to the room and told me Wayne had been murdered. He’d found a story about it on the Cleveland newspaper’s Web site.”

She stopped talking. I said, “And?”

“And?”

I raised my eyebrows. “And what the hell have you been doing since then? It’s been days.”

“I wanted to call the police right away. I figured I could tell them everything, and we wouldn’t be in any danger. But Randy told me not to. He said the Russians were still going to be looking for us, because they knew we were alive, and they knew we could testify against them. And he didn’t trust the police or the FBI for the same reasons Wayne hadn’t-he thought Hubbard could pull strings. So we stayed here, waiting to see what the police would turn up. When it was obvious they weren’t producing anything, Randy went to Cleveland to sort it out.”

“Sort it out?” I said. “How?”

She frowned. “By killing the Russians, maybe? By killing Hubbard? By killing everyone involved? I don’t know, but I’m sure that’s what he had in mind. Randy is a very dangerous man in his own right, Mr. Perry. I’ve known him for years, and I’ll admit he still scares me. I know he would never hurt Betsy or me, but I’m certainly not comfortable around him. After we found out Wayne had been killed, Randy made it clear he was in charge. I didn’t argue. I was scared, and alone, and I had no one else to turn to. He told me he’d go to Cleveland and be back in a few days.”

“So you let him go.”

She pushed her hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ears. “What was I supposed to do? Stop him? Argue with him?” She shook her head. “You’ve obviously never met Randy Hartwick.”

“I met him,” I said. “For about ten seconds, until someone put a bullet through his chest.”

She lifted her hand halfway to her lips and held it there, frozen, her mouth open and her eyes wide. “Randy’s dead?”

“Randy’s dead. That’s what led me here. I wasn’t expecting to find you; I was just trying to find out more about him.”

She eased slowly into the plastic deck chair beside me, as if this last bit of news had extinguished the final flickering embers that had fueled her.

“So the Russians killed your husband?” I said, knowing she wasn’t up to more questioning but still trying to sort out the details.

She swiveled her head and met my eyes, “No. The Russians did not kill my husband. Whoever killed him made it look like a suicide, Mr. Perry.”

“Lincoln.”

“Whoever killed him made it look like a suicide, Lincoln. The Russians would never have been able to get inside our home to do that. Wayne was too smart for that.”

“So who do you think killed him?”

“Jeremiah Hubbard,” she said flatly, as if there were no room for doubt in her mind.

I didn’t know about that, but I didn’t argue with her. It was easy to believe Hubbard might have been involved in Weston’s death, but I had trouble imagining the aging real estate mogul doing his own gun handling.

“So you’ve stayed hidden in this hotel,” I said, “because Hartwick told you not to go to the police?”

“That was my decision,” she said firmly. “My life as I knew it is over. I understand that, and I have to accept it. My husband has angered the most dangerous group of men in the country. They will kill my daughter and me if they can find us. Jeremiah Hubbard will do the same. If we go to the police, we will be placed in witness protection and forced into whatever life they decide to give us. That is not how I will raise my daughter. But I also can’t let the world believe Wayne killed Betsy and me like they’ve been saying on the news. And I can’t let Jeremiah Hubbard get away with this.”