Murder For Love

"You have everything, Mrs. Britland," Lillian West said suddenly, her voice low and angry. "You're beautiful, you're young, you're in Congress, and you married a rich and attractive man. I hope you've enjoyed your time with him."

"Yes, I have," Sunday said quietly. "And I want more time with him."

"But that's not going to happen and it's your fault. What difference if he"-West's eyes scornfully glanced at Tommy-"if he went to prison. He tricked me. He lied to me. He promised to take me to Florida. He was going to marry me. He wasn't as rich as the others but he has enough. I've gone through his desk, so I know." A smile played on her lips. "And he's nicer than the others. We could have been very happy."

"Lillian, I didn't lie to you," Tommy said quietly. "I think you need help. I want to see that you get it. I promise that both Sunday and I will do everything we can for you."

"Get me another housekeeping job?" West snapped. "Cleaning, cooking, shopping. I traded teaching silly girls for this kind of job because I thought that somebody would finally appreciate me, want to take care of me. And after I waited on all of them, they still treated me like dirt."

The pealing of the doorbell had stopped. Sunday knew that the Secret Service would find a way to get in. Then she froze. When West admitted her, she'd reset the alarm. "Don't want some reporter trying to sneak in," she'd explained.

If Jack or Clint try to open a window, the siren will go off, Sunday thought. She felt Tommy's hand brush hers. He's thinking the same thing. My God, what can we do? She had heard the expression "staring death in the face" and now knew what it meant. Henry, she thought, Henry!

Tommy's hand was closed over hers. His index finger was insistently racing down the back of her hand. He was trying to signal her. What did he want her to do?

Henry stayed on the line. Collins was speaking from his cellular phone. "Sir, all the draperies are drawn. We've contacted the local police. They're on the way. Clint is climbing a tree in the back that has branches near some windows. We might be able to get in up there. Problem is we have no way of knowing where they are in the house."

My God, Henry thought. It would take at least an hour to get the special cameras and motion detectors over there. Sunday's face loomed in his mind. Sunday. Sunday. He wanted to get out and push the plane. He wanted to order the army out. He had never felt so helpless. Then he heard Jack Collins swear furiously.

"What is it?" he shouted.

"Sir, the draperies of the right front room just opened and there are shots being fired inside."

"That stupid woman gave me my opportunity," Lillian West was saying. "I didn't have time to kill you slowly and this way I not only punished you but that dreadful woman as well."

"You did kill Arabella," Tommy said.

"Of course I did. It was so easy. I didn't leave. I just showed her into this room, woke you up, shut the door, and hid in the study. I heard it all. I knew the gun was there. When you staggered upstairs, I knew it was a matter of minutes before you lost consciousness. My sleeping pills are much better than the ones you were used to. They have special ingredients." West smiled. "Why do you think your cold improved so much in these ten days since that night? Because I'm not giving it a reason to go into pneumonia."

"You were poisoning Tommy?" Sunday exclaimed.

"I was punishing him. I went back into the library. Arabella was just getting ready to leave. She even asked me where your car keys were. She said that you weren't feeling well and she'd be back in the morning. I told her I'd get them for her in a minute. Then I pointed to your gun and said I'd promised to take it with me and turn it in to the police station. The poor fool watched me pick it up and load it. Her last words were 'Isn't it dangerous to load it? I'm sure Mr. Shipman didn't intend that!' "

West began to laugh, a high-pitched hysterical laugh. Tears ran from her eyes but she kept the gun trained on them.

She's working up to killing us, Sunday thought. Tommy's finger was jamming the back of her hand.

" 'Isn't it dangerous to load it?'" West repeated, mimicking a loud, raucous voice. " 'I'm sure Mr. Shipman didn't intend that!'"

She rested the gun hand on her left arm, steadying it. The laughter ended.

"Would you consider opening the draperies?" Shipman asked. "I'd like to see the sunlight once more."

West's smile was mirthless. "You're about to see the shining light at the end of the tu

The draperies, Sunday thought. That was what Tommy was trying to tell her. Yesterday when he'd lowered the shades in the kitchen, he'd mentioned that the electronic device that worked the draperies in this room sounded like a gunshot when it was used. The clicker for it was on the armrest of the couch. It was their only chance.

Sunday pressed Tommy's hand to show him she understood. Then, breathing a silent prayer, with a lightninglike movement she pressed the button that opened the draperies.

The explosive sound made West whirl her head around. In that instant Tommy and Sunday leapt from the couch. Tommy threw himself at West but it was Sunday who slammed her hand upward as the housekeeper began to shoot. A bullet whistled past Tommy's ear. Sunday felt a burning sensation on her left sleeve. She could not force the gun from West, but she threw herself on top of the woman and forced the chair to topple over with both of them on it as shattering glass signaled the welcome sound of her Secret Service detail arriving.

Ten minutes later, the surface wound on her arm wrapped in a handkerchief, Sunday was on the phone with the totally u

"I'm fine," she said for the fifteenth time. "Tommy is fine. Lillian West is in a straitjacket. Stop worrying."

"You could have been killed." Henry didn't want to let his wife stop talking. He didn't ever want to think that someday he might not be able to hear her voice.

"But I wasn't," Sunday said briskly. "And Henry, darling, we were both right. It was definitely a crime of passion. It was just we were a little slow figuring out whose passion was causing the problem."

Hot Springs by JAMES CRUMLEY

At night, even in the chill mountain air, Mona Sue insisted on cranking the air conditioner all the way up. Her usual temperature always ran a couple of degrees higher than normal, and she claimed that the baby she carried made her constant fever even worse. She kept the cabin cold enough to hang meat. During the long, sleepless nights Benbow spooned to her naked, burning skin, trying to stay warm.

In the mornings, too, Mona Sue forced him into the cold. The modern cabin sat on a bench in the cool shadow of Mount Nihart, and they broke their fast with a room-service breakfast on the deck, a robe wrapped loosely about her naked body while Benbow bundled into both sweats and a robe. She ate furiously, stoking a furnace, and recounted her dreams as if they were gospel, effortlessly consuming most of the spread of exotic cheeses and expensively unseasonable fruits, a loaf of sourdough toast and four kinds of meat, all the while aimlessly babbling through the events of her internal night, the dreams of a teenage girl, languidly symbolic and vaguely frightening. She dreamt of her mother, young and lovely, devouring her litter of barefoot boys in the dark Ozark hollows. And her father, home from a Te