Chapter Fifty-Two

I think it was the sound of rain slashing against the house windows that drug me into semi-consciousness. Or it could have been that eerie feeling I get when I sense I'm being observed closely that made me throw open my eyelids.

Kitty was sitting on the edge of the couch cushion staring at me. The second I reached up to touch her, she gave out one of her testy meows and jumped to the floor. "I didn't want to pet you anyway," I told her before the yawns and stretches came as I worked myself up into a sitting position.

It took a few seconds for my eyes to focus properly and to see darkness was falling around me. That put speed into me. I was on my feet in a flash when I saw the numbers the hands on the grandfather clock in the corner were pointed at. I had slept half the day away. Something a woman in my position could not afford to do. The hours of freedom were numbered for this old gal.

There wasn't time to waste making telephone calls. I didn't take precious seconds to check the answering machine for messages, either. If someone had called, surely I would have heard the ringing.

I was in my car and on the road in less than five minutes. I did give the parking lot at the local gossip corner a quick look as I sped by. I didn't think Mitch's pickup was there. But I certainly wouldn't swear to it.

This time when I parked behind Joe's place, I did have that quick look through the garage window. His Mercedes was parked inside. So I hurried up the backyard. I also remembered my umbrella, but the way the rain was coming down, I was getting hit from all sides anyway. I had Marie's diary shoved down the front of my jeans with my sweatshirt covering the top part that stuck out of my pants. So I was confident that little book was staying dry.

Joe saw me before I reached up and gave the screen door a rap. He was sitting at the kitchen table facing the door. I could see he had been reading something of importance. He had on his glasses.

"Come on in, Fay," he said, motioning me inside. Then he folded up his legal-sized papers and shoved them under the napkin holder that served as table centerpiece. He removed his reading glasses and carefully returned them to their case that stuck out of his dress shirt pocket.

I took a quick look around me before I joined him at the table. Angel was not within eyesight. This disturbed me as much as it pleased me.

"You just missed Allen and that friend of his, Dana."

"Allen was here?" I asked surprised, while I called my ex a liar inside my head. He told me it was over between he and the little beauty queen.

"He brought my new will by for signing. That Dana girl was a witness to my signature. She notarized the thing too. Hope you don't mind."

"Of course I don't mind," I was quick to respond. If she was here for a legal purpose, and not as Allen's girlfriend, what would be the point in getting all bent out of shape.

"Allen ain't such a bad fellow, I guess. He did say he wouldn't charge no extra for making a house call. Or because it was a Sunday. So I'd say there's some good left in him."

I had an idea Joe was headed somewhere with all this talk about Allen suddenly being one of the good guys again. I can't repeat the things he had said about him when he filed for divorce from me, which is why I was a little suspicious here.

"You want a read the thing?" Joe offered as he reached for the papers he had shoved under the napkin holder just a few minutes ago. "It's not the original. Just a copy. Allen's got the one that counts with him."

"It's really not my place to read your will, Joe," I told him when his fingers pushed the folded papers across the table toward me.

"You're in it, you know. Angel and you get it all." His voice had softened to almost a whisper when he next said, "Ethel's name was taken off this new one and Angel's put on in her place."

I wanted to ask where Angel was. But I couldn't speak. The adrenaline was torpedoing through the system too rapidly at that very moment for me to form words and then say them slow enough to be understood. I finally knew why Ethel had to die. All the more for Angel. If I were out of the way, the pie would be even bigger. Everything was beginning to make perfect sense. Angel wanted Joe for her papa because she wanted his money. Allen told me months ago Thomas was broke, on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. And Angel would know this. Or at least she had access to the information during those weeks she worked as a temp in Allen's law office.

I didn't know where to begin, but I had to tell Joe. I had to warn him. Angel was an extremely dangerous woman. She was also a very smart one.

"Father, you should have told me we had company again," Angel said as she entered the kitchen from the hallway.

I swallowed long and hard before I dared look up. I had to get myself ready for those doll-eyes of hers. The ones that when you looked into them deeply, you saw darkness, the emptiness-and pure evil.

"If it wasn't getting so late, I'd offer you some tea, Fay."

I had been told this as I watched her slither around behind Joe and give his hunched over shoulders a rather rough looking squeeze. "Father here really has had a very long day. I just came down to help him along to bed."

My limbs were beginning to jerk from my indecision of what to do here. Do I spill the beans? Do I tell Angel I know she's the one who murdered Ethel? And that I know why now. Do I pull out Marie's diary and hand it over to Joe while I tell him Angel is not his daughter, but his brother, Thomas's?

Before I made up my mind of what to do, Angel was dropping pills into Joe's mouth and handing him a glass of water to wash them down with. "Now you'll sleep like a baby," she told him sweetly, while her eyes glared at me destructively.

And that is the appropriate word, because any courage I had was falling away from me with the speed of lightning. I was trembling as I stood. I hoped my words were audible and without slur when I apologized for dropping by at such a late hour before making my abrupt departure.