A strong and impatient hand gripped Penny's arm. It jerked her to her feet while twisting her wrist just enough to keep the revolver pointing away from her captor.
The passage seen in the haphazard beam of her flashlight, and in the thin halogen light of her captor, was smoky with the stinging gas. She was being hustled up to the door. It was partly opened. Its side opposite the hinges was blackened. Her captor kicked the door wide open and pushed her through into the clear crisp night.
She stumbled but kept on her feet. She had dropped her flashlight in the doorway, where it shone over a stretch of grass like a painted line.
She heard a soft phut! sound to her left, then a high whining gasp of dismay.
A man fell to the ground, his right leg twitching and his left hand rubbing his chest. He lay on his back under a dwarf pine. A woman, breathing in loud sobs, knelt beside him.
Penny turned, her gun lowered, and watched her erstwhile captor strip the oxygen mask off his face, toss it behind him, and walk up to the kneeling woman with an automatic pistol in his taut right hand. He pulled her roughly away from the now motionless man. The woman fell over on her side and raised herself on one elbow, her other arm bent over her face and head. She was whimpering in a pleading fashion.
Penny took off her mask and dropped it. She walked dumbfounded to the unconscious man under the pine, said "Liam" in a hoarse voice, and looked over at the woman. Penny could hardly believe it was Lucy, but though the face was hidden there could be no doubt about the identity.
Nor was there any question about who the gunman was.
She stared at the man she knew as Ricklen Cruor in a rush of conflicting emotions. She saw in the set of his face that was turned toward her his positive regard for her. She had forgotten about her providing him the oxygen mask that had saved his life. She thought only of her sexual arousal and that he must be having a similar reaction; or why would he look at her so benignly?
"Were you expecting these two?" he asked her.
Penny hesitated a moment. Then she nodded, smiling. "But I'm having a hard time believing that they intended to follow through with this. I had a thought that it might be someone else."
"So, you know all about their involvement?" he asked.
She nodded again, jumping in alarm when the gun in his hand went off with its soft grunting cough. She bent down and put her Remington on the grass a little way from her feet, as Lucy collapsed and lay absolutely still.
"What happened to Nellie?" asked Sanguineus. He was pleased that Penny had disarmed herself. It meant she trusted his judgment. She knew she was of value to him.
"Nellie killed Ross and then killed herself," she said.
"Why did she kill Ross?"
Penny suddenly realized her mistake. But she didn't think it really mattered, not now with his favorable opinion of her. She fluffed out her hair and stood with her hands on her hips. "Alright," she said. "John and Eleanor killed her. They killed Ross, too."
"With your help?"
Penny considered. She had one quick glance at his expression in the moonlight. She sensed that he already knew the answer. It hadn't upset him, apparently, but she would play it safe and diminish her role in the deaths. "A little. I mean, I knew it was going to happen. I didn't warn her. I didn't really care about Ross. And Nellie, you know... we were never very close."
"It isn't necessary to make excuses."
Sanguineus motioned for her to stand away from the revolver. She dropped her hands from her hips, turned her back to him, took two steps, and said over her shoulder: "Why are you here? Don't you have a golf course to design?"
"The customers are dead, except for you." Sanguineus picked up the Remington. "I believe the house will be yours, if you can outsmart the family lawyer."
"You'll make that easy for me, won't you? There will be something in it for you." She smiled back at him. Then she turned to look up at the moon, as though nothing could be more romantic than the spot she was in.
Sanguineus saw how the lunar crescent seemed to crown her head. "You intended to do away with my client, Liam, and his wife Lucy," he said. It was a remark rather than an accusation. "You were going to put them in the crypt, I suppose."
Penny held her arms out to her sides and let them fall, slapping her thighs. When Sanguineus didn't make any comment she turned around to face him. "Your client?"
He walked up to her, a gun in each hand. Penny tried not to pay any mind to that.
"Liam hired me to kill 'Eleanor Carnivore' once I had discovered the identity of her victim, either you or your sister. I'm to kill her accomplices also."
Penny blanched. She turned quickly around to stare at the moon again, her hands pressed to her cheeks. "I was going to do what you've been hired to do," she said. It was a shaky voice trying to keep itself steady. "I don't trust John and Eleanor to keep their end of the bargain, either. I can help you... dispose of them, you know. They expect me to meet with them when this is all over with."
Sanguineus felt a rising annoyance. In other, less hardened men it would be frustration; but not knowing the truth behind a client's motive made Sanguineus angry. Liam had made a fool of him.
He said what had been gestating in his head from the moment the cyanide gas was released in the mausoleum. "This whole idea about a secret sorority dedicated to a perverse 'good life' was the brain child of Liam Pierce Arden, with help from John Huffins, and maybe his sociopathic redheaded girlfriend. Liam and Lucy used their highly vaunted analysis method to scare the NSA into thinking a homegrown terrorist group was in the works. There was no real evidence, of course, but Liam turned fabricated rumors into a viable suspicion. How much were you aware of this at the beginning?"
Penny walked a few feet to a statue of an angel. She ran a finger along the gleaming white marble. "Sleeping Beauty awake and standing on the grave of..." She bent down to read the gravestone inscription. "Of Horace Wright. Beauty romanced him and then she killed him. The good life. The best way to die, Horace would say."
"Is that your answer?"
"I guess it is. More or less. It was all Nellie's idea. And Eleanor thought it was cool."
Sanguineus waited for Penny to look at him. He waited for that smile. Then he said, "Thought? Or thinks?"
"I think she's against it now. But that's because Liam and John had a better idea. Get possession of the property that had been bequeathed to Ross. He's the only biological child of Helen and Avery Arden. We cousins don't count. So John gets power of attorney when he makes Ross believe that the Arden family finances are in sorry shape."
"It's an obvious homicidal scam," Sanguineus said, "and it wouldn't fly five minutes were not the NSA behind the hits. They get what they want, and so does the Liam group. This is not an uncommon enterprise. But I don't like being used."
"Used? Aren't you paid for this? Well certainly you are. What difference does it make, whether you're kept in the dark or told everything straight up?"
"Don't go dumb on me. I was set up. It was in Liam's deck of cards all along to get rid of me. I'll admit I was expecting Huffins and Eleanor tonight, but I planned to pop Liam as soon as it was convenient, if there was the least smell of a double cross."
Penny leaned back against a wing of the angel, the sickle moon in her ear. "And me? Were you... Are you...?"
Sanguineus had already decided what to do about her. He put her at ease with a shrug, saying, "You shared one of your oxygen masks. Were it not for that I'd be dead. I don't return evil for good. You're safe with me, trust me or not."
Penny came up to him. Her voice was eager but her eyes held that curious puzzlement. "I'll do whatever you ask of me," she said.
Sanguineus put the guns in his jacket pockets. "Let's get the amateur crooks in your crypt," he said, "and then get the hell out of here."
"What about John and Eleanor? They're at the Blue Pelican."
Sanguineus smiled grimly. "Did you give a key to Liam? To Lucy?"
"No," said Penny. "The cemetery superintendent did. He needs money. He'll give a key to anyone who pays him for the favor. Didn't you?"
"Then our first stop tonight is a visit with the superintendent. He lives in a rental cottage near the beach, and he lives alone at present. His wife's in the hospital."
"And--?"
"You'll do the honors. He was instrumental in the attempt to kill a Red Rum operative. The payment for that, in this case, is hot lead."
Penny stepped back from him, her eyes wide and searching. "Red Rum? With root beer? Ha. Never heard of it. An operative, are you? Well, there are things Liam didn't tell me. I thought you were just an opportunist. That's what Eleanor said."
"Pick up the woman, the fireman carry. I'll follow with my deceased client. The gas should be cleared out enough by now, and won't irritate our eyes too much. But we'll put the masks on for good measure."
"What's the 'fireman carry'?"
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