She’d started muttering to herself. I caught a few words.

“… be a lot easier if these damned creeps hadn’t come in and messed up everything…”

She seemed to have forgotten I was there. Which was a good thing. But what if she glanced over, saw me, and remembered that I was one of the creeps who’d messed up everything?

Just then I spotted movement in the archway separating the living room from the breakfast room. Someone was standing there in the shadows.

I glanced over at Jessica, and then back at the figure. I shook my head, and then jerked it toward Jessica.

The figure took a step forward. It was Martha.

I couldn’t remember when I’d been so glad to see a friendly face.

Chapter 24

I could see Martha peering out of the archway at Jessica. I tried to shake my head, ever-so-slightly, to suggest that stepping into the room was a really bad idea.

After watching Jessica for a moment or so, she glanced down at me, nodded, and withdrew back into the kitchen.

Make sure you’re far enough away so she doesn’t hear you when you call 9-1-1, I wanted to tell her. And get some kind of a weapon! But she’s dangerous, so stay back and don’t try anything—unless, of course, you see her about to shoot me or dismember me, in which case you should do something quick!

Martha was a cool customer, I reminded myself. She could handle this.

At least I hoped she could.

“Where is it?” Jessica again. “It’s got to be here. It’s got to!”

She seemed to be losing it. More of it than she’d already lost. She began flailing out wildly with the ax, shrieking inarticulately. She shattered the mirror above the fireplace. Knocked the legs out from under a delicate secretary desk. Chopped a couple of nasty holes in the carpet. Bounced around between the sofas and armchairs, shredding up the brocade cushions. I flinched when she came near me, but she sailed past and began trying to dismember the Christmas tree. Between her shrieks, the hatchet blows, and the smashing sounds as hundreds of ornaments fell to the floor and shattered to bits I could barely hear myself think.

Martha, bless her heart, began stealing into the room under cover of the tree surgery. She was heading for the table with the gun.

She had it.

I breathed a sigh of relief and gave my poor bruised fingers a rest—I’d made progress on unraveling the passementerie, but not enough. Not a problem, though—Martha could hold Jessica at bay until the police arrived. Or, if Jessica was so hysterical that she tried to attack her in spite of the gun—well, I suspected Martha had enough nerve to use it.

She lifted the gun in her right hand and steadied it with her left. She’d either used a gun before or had paid attention when watching TV and movie cops use them. Go Martha!

Then she fired, twice.

Jessica collapsed on the floor and fell silent.

I was stunned into silence myself for a few moments.

Martha walked over to take a closer look at Jessica.

“Did you have to shoot her?” I asked.

“She’s not dead,” Martha said.

“That’s a relief,” I said. “Can you come over and untie me?”

“Which means I’ll just have to shoot her again,” Martha said. “After bashing your head in with her ax, of course. It’ll look as if you shot her just as she was hitting you with the ax. I’ll let the chief of police decide who he wants to blame Clay’s murder on.”

I started working again on unraveling the passementerie.

“You killed Clay,” I said. “Why?”

Not that I didn’t have a pretty good idea why, between their professional rivalry and their shattered romantic relationship. But it seemed a good idea to keep her talking.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you know why,” she snapped. “You’ve heard how he took me in. Let me set him up in the design business and then turned on me and took all my clients. I lost my business and had to go to work as a furniture store design consultant. Took me two years to save enough to start up again here in Caerphilly—it would have taken a lot longer to get started again in Richmond. And a year later, he moves here and thinks he can do it all again. No way. I told him—back off, leave my clients alone. But did he listen?”

“So it was all professional?” I asked. “Or am I imagining that the two of you also had a relationship?”

“The bastard,” she muttered. “Turns out I imagined the relationship. He was just using me.”

“So you killed him,” I said.

“That wasn’t actually the plan,” she said. “I was just going to frame him.”

“For what?”

“Possession of a firearm,” she said. “In Virginia, a convicted felon who’s caught with a gun can go to prison. I knew that from serving on a jury once. And when we were all trying to rescue Sarah’s furniture, I dragged out this little end table, and suddenly the drawer pops open and a gun falls out. I kicked it under the sofa, and then picked it up later, with my cleaning gloves on. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I figured it would be good for something. And then I came up with the idea of leaving it in Clay’s room and calling the cops to report it.”

“So you took Violet out and got her plastered, so she’d tell everyone how sweet you were to take away her keys and let her stay in your guest room,” I said.

“Yeah.” She seemed to be enjoying the chance to brag about her cleverness. “I slipped her a Mickey to make sure she stayed out. I’m only six blocks from here, so I figured it would be a cinch to slip over here, plant the gun, and get back in before she noticed I was gone.”

“All that trouble for an alibi for planting the gun?” I asked.

“I figured he’d blame me for planting it,” she said. “He knew I had it in for him. So I wanted to make sure I could prove I hadn’t done it. Lucky for me, isn’t it? And bad luck for Clay, barging in when he did.”

“And you struggled, and the gun went off,” I said. “I’m sure you were devastated, but you were there to play a prank on him, not kill him. It was self-defense.” I tried to put a sympathetic, concerned expression on my face, as if I really did believe she was innocent. “Completely understandable. Anyone who knew Clay would call it justifiable homicide.”

“Nice try,” she said. “But I’m not buying it. Wish your little nut job had wrecked a few other rooms. Wonder if I have the time to—no, probably better not.”

“You won’t get away with it,” I said.

“I can sure try,” she said. “And you know what? I may not have time to wreck everyone else’s rooms, but I can hack Clay’s stupid paintings to shreds.”

“No,” I said. The thought of her slashing those three paintings was curiously disturbing.

“It’s going to be tough on your mother,” she said. “When she comes over and sees you lying dead in the ruins of her room. I feel almost sorry for her, even though I know she had a hand in trying to cut me out of the house.”

She didn’t sound sorry. And she was dead wrong. Mother had much preferred her to Clay. It was only thanks to Mother’s intervention that she’d gotten the rooms she had. But she’d never believe it.

“Nothing I can do about that,” Martha went on, as she headed for the archway that led to the hall. She stopped, looked back, and smiled at the devastation around us. “Before you know it—”

Something large, shiny, and metallic emerged from the shadows of the hallway and hit the top of her head. She stiffened and then slumped to the floor.

Ivy was standing in the doorway, holding the heavy bronze umbrella stand. She set the umbrella stand down, then bent over to take both the ax and the gun from Martha. Then she walked over, sat down on the floor beside me, and started untying my passementerie bonds.

“Thank God you stopped her,” I said. “But where did you come from? I had no idea you were even here!”

“No one ever does,” she said, with a faint smile, as she pulled away the last strands of passementerie.