Barbara Michaels - Shattered Silk

I can't risk it, Karen thought despairingly. It would take Mrs. Grossmuller forever to convince the police she had not been imagining things. And Mrs. Grossmuller was just as likely to go to the window and peer in, offering Miriam a clear shot.

Karen screamed at the top of her lungs. "Go away! Run! Get out of here!"

She heard Miriam's footsteps going rapidly toward the back of the hall. Dropping to all fours, Karen crawled behind the nearer sofa. There was no other sound, only Miriam's footsteps. What had happened to Mrs. Grossmuller? Had she left? Was she standing in the rain scratching her head and wondering what the devil was going on? Was she lying bleeding on the steps?

Miriam fired again from the doorway. The bullet thudded into the sofa behind which Karen crouched. She realized she was still holding the poker. It wasn't the most effective of missiles, but it would have to serve. If she threw it spear-fashion and ran in the opposite direction…

The pounding and calling broke out again, farther away now and muffled by closed doors. Another shot rang out. This time the bullet didn't come anywhere near Karen. She sank her teeth into her lower lip, fighting hysterical laughter. Good old Mrs. Grossmuller. A little thing like a bullet wouldn't stop her; she had gone around to the back door. And Miriam was losing her head, firing blindly in the direction of the knocking. Karen had lost track of how many shots she had fired. Not that it mattered. Now was the time to move, she could not delay any longer.

She rose to her knees, arm back, ready to throw. Then she heard something else that made her wonder if her brain had finally cracked. The racket from the back continued, but surely-surely that was the sound of a key in the front door. The lock stuck, as it always did.

There was only one person who had a key to the house.

Karen knew what was about to happen and she knew there was little she could do to prevent it. A scream or a cry for help would only bring Cheryl bursting in to her assistance. She pulled herself to her feet.

Miriam stood in the front doorway of the parlor. Her face was unrecognizable; every nerve twitched uncontrollably, every feature was drawn askew by distorted muscles. The gun in her hand swung in wild arcs, from the parlor to the front door to the back of the house, where Mrs. Grossmuller kept up her assault. The front door opened.

It was not Cheryl.

Mark said, "Hello-Mrs. Montgomery, isn't it? We met at a party, I believe."

Miriam shook her head. "I don't…"

"It's nice to see you again," Mark said conversationally. Rain darkened the shoulders of his raincoat and ran down his face. He didn't move.

Karen knew what he was trying to do. She knew it wasn't going to work. He had covered up his astonishment well; but whomever he had expected to find, it was not Miriam, and he could have no idea of her mental condition.

Miriam gave a small whimpering sound and steadied the gun. The trigger clicked on an empty chamber, and at the same instant Karen threw the poker. It struck Miriam across the shoulders and sent her staggering forward into Mark's raised fist.

He didn't even glance at her as she fell, but took two long steps and caught Karen in his arms.

"You hit her," Karen gasped. "You hit-"

"You're damned right I hit her. Are you hurt? Are you all right?"

There was no way she could answer, he was holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe, much less talk. But she dropped the poker and put her arms around him. That seemed to be the answer he wanted.

THE dress was never found. Cheryl had thrown it away, the trash had been picked up on schedule, and no one seemed interested in sifting through acres of garbage looking for its fragments.

"It doesn't matter," Tony said. "We have enough on her without resurrecting a decade-old crime, which could be a messy thing to prove after all this time. She'll never to go prison anyway."

"Why not?" Cheryl demanded. "Aren't two murders enough?"

"One. They think the Givens woman will make it."

It was later that evening and they were sitting in the parlor. Karen suspected the kitchen would not be her favorite room for a while; she would probably be compulsively scrubbing the floor at least once a day for days to come.

Cheryl, who had done the initial scrubbing, looked less distressed than angry. After finding that there was no such address as the one she had been given, she had driven straight back to Georgetown to find the street blocked by ambulances and police cars and a fire engine that had come by mistake. For several minutes thereafter she had required more attention from the medics than had Karen.

"Miriam'll end up in an institution," Tony went on. "Her husband can afford the best."

He appeared depressed for a man who had seen two outstanding cases closed, and who was supposed to be helping a friend celebrate her survival. In fact, it was a singularly quiet gathering for a celebration.

"She should have had help ten years ago," Karen said. "And he-her stepfather. It had been going on for five years when she… when she did it."

"It's a good defense," Tony began.

"Oh, no, it happened. I have no doubt it happened.

She wasn't trying to persuade me of anything, she was remembering-reliving it."

"It doesn't matter," Tony said again. "She's well around the bend how. Any halfway competent lawyer can get her off on the insanity plea. Her confession probably won't be admissible."

"She confessed?"

Tony's shoulders hunched as if he were repressing a shudder. Miriam's condition seemed to have affected him more than all the nauseating physical details he had seen over the course of his police career. "It wasn't so much a confession as a catharsis. They couldn't get her to shut up. If you could have seen her-bright and animated, perfectly poised-asking politely for a glass of water and explaining that her throat was dry from so much talking… Jesus."

"It's ironic, isn't it?" Cheryl said after a moment. "All our romantic ideas about long-lost treasures, and after all it wasn't a designer gown or a missing will or Dolley's jewelry-just a cheap, bloodstained dress."

"The real irony is that Miriam and Shreve brought the disaster on themselves," Karen said. "If they had left well enough alone, we'd have thrown the dress away and no one would ever have known."

"The guilty flee where no man pursueth," Tony said sonorously.

"I've never fully appreciated how true that is," Karen agreed. "When I remember the conversations I had with the two of them, I realize that every statement was misinterpreted-on both sides. When Miriam protested the price I asked for the dresses, she was really expressing amazement that I asked so little. And when I said I hoped she would buy more things, she interpreted it as meaning that there would be more demands for money, not only from her, but from Shreve. It would have been a rather ingenious blackmail method, actually; the merchandise was there, and as I kept telling everyone, the price depended solely on what people were willing to pay."

"I still don't understand why she killed Rob," Cheryl said, gazing at Tony with limpid blue eyes.

For once her attentive look and her appeal to his superior knowledge didn't improve Tony's morale. He answered almost reluctantly. "She-uh-explained that too. The house had been searched several times, without success; she thought Karen might have taken the dress to work and concealed it somewhere on the premises. She bribed Rob to let her in. They had been intimate-that's how she put it, intimate once upon a time-and she knew he'd do anything for money.

"What really killed the poor dumb bastard was a combination of curiosity and greed. Miriam told him Karen had something that belonged to her-implied it had been stolen. That wasn't good enough for Rob; he kept asking what it was. We'll never know whether he figured it out. Miriam thought he had-but as Karen has good reason to know, guilt makes people believe a lot of things that are false. Rob may well have had an inkling of the truth. After all, he had just written up that old murder case and he knew a lot about it. He knew Miriam was the girl whose parents had been killed; he may have suspected she did it. He wouldn't have been the only one to suspect her. However much he knew, he knew too much for Miriam. She believed she was already being blackmailed and she was not about to let someone else join the club.