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"Wasn't enough?" I said in a low voice with a big quaver. Cara's face was ugly with loathing.
"It was never enough," she answered, her voice almost a growl. "We couldn't have our own children. We adopted the one baby, and Stuart decided after that, that one was enough, because he felt Henry was a lot of trouble. As if he did anything for the boy. So I took up swimming again, and I got really good, and I began wi
"I hear he went with you, though, to a lot of them, right?" I was backing toward the fence. I sincerely hoped Arthur was right behind it.
"He decided it was a good advertisement—for a cardiologist to have a wife who did such a heart-healthy thing, at her age!"
I didn't have an idea in the world what to do next.
"So you really did kill her so you could get into Uppity Women?"
"I really did." Cara was almost proud.
I didn't believe her for a second. Maybe that was what Cara chose to believe, but I thought it went maybe a few miles deeper than that.
"You came back in your yard with the knife and put it back in the house, didn't you? And got back in the pool?"
"I dove into the water after I killed her, and I washed all that blood off me and the knife. I figured the chlorine would take care of it, and it did," she said. "And then I couldn't think of what to do with the knife. I didn't exactly want to put it back in the kitchen drawer." She looked at me and rolled her eyes, as though she were confessing a charming foible. "And I didn't want to stick it in the garbage, because what if my garbage got searched somehow?" I began to have a real bad feeling. She strolled over to the raised flower bed by the fence and scratched her fingers through the pine bark that the gardener had put in as mulch. "So I buried the knife in here. And here it is!"
She smiled at me.
It was at least a foot long, and wicked-looking. I was so creeped out by Cara that a toothpick would have frightened me, but at the sight of this knife, I was almost paralyzed.
I had time to think, Where the hell is Arthur? when he came flying through the gate, which crashed back against the fence and rebounded, knocking the drawn gun from his hand quite neatly.
Cara disregarded Arthur completely and leaped at me. She gave me a powerful shove.
I threw Moosie at her.
Moosie screeched and bit and drew blood on Cara's chest, and the barking of the dogs in the house reached a frantic crescendo as Cara staggered backward, ending up near the lawn furniture again. Her wet feet slipped in the puddle of water where she'd been standing, and she fell heavily. As her head hit the concrete, I landed in the pool with enough force to send me right down. My glasses were knocked off by the force of the impact, and as I plummeted deeper, I looked up and saw them drifting lazily after me to the bottom.
The water was cold, cold, cold. The shock to my system was severe, and for a long moment I seemed unable to move my limbs, unable to save myself. It was fortunate that I wasn't wearing a heavy coat or boots. I shook off the paralysis and began to force water down with my hands so I could rise. My face broke the surface and I gasped for air. The first thing I saw was Moosie's face peering out from under the table by the back door, the one that held the towels. Moosie's sense of self-preservation was far superior to mine.
Arthur was scrambling to his feet, going for the gun that had skittered to the very edge of the pool. Cara was twitching, but silent. The fall had knocked the air out of her.
I made it to the side of the pool and shoved the gun toward Arthur. I was not about to pick it up. I don't know a thing about guns, and they make me very nervous. I began to pull myself up to sit on the side of the pool. I expected Arthur would throw me a towel, or give me a hand. I didn't expect that he'd walk over to Cara and kick her in the ribs as hard as he could.
"Stop," I said. "Arthur! Stop!" I sat and shivered, my feet still in the water. I had never trembled so violently in my life. The moderate day seemed frigid now. I simply could not get up to interfere.
I was scared of Arthur, too, scared to get close enough to grab his arm. He was almost as frightening as Cara. Cara deserved every kind of punishment for killing Poppy, but I hated watching her being beaten.
He drew back his leg again, and I screamed, "No!"
My voice penetrated the fog of rage that hung around him almost palpably.
Arthur's foot touched the ground again. He shook himself, then said in a thick voice, "Cara Embler, you are under arrest for the murder of Poppy Queensland. Anything you say ..."
Chapter Thirteen
I came out of my own warm bathroom, toweling my wet hair, just as Cara had dried hers. Only Phillip's presence in the house was keeping Robin from waiting in here in my bedroom, and oddly, I was glad of that. I needed a few more seconds to myself, more than my quick shower had afforded. I was warm now, and with the heat turned up in the house, my hair would dry fairly quickly. Short of sticking me in the oven, Phillip and Robin had done everything they possibly could to warm me up. This had been tremendously important to them.
I couldn't suppress a snigger as I thought of how they'd competed with each other to be the most solicitous. That wouldn't last long, of course, and they'd be back to their more normal selves shortly, but I would enjoy it while it lasted.
At the moment, I'd just discovered I had a whole new set of worries.
I should have gotten dressed again. I wasn't an invalid. But I felt like putting on a nightgown and bathrobe, so I did. I hadn't been hurt, but I was exhausted and achy. I'd actually thrown up after I'd come out of the pool. I'd found this acutely embarrassing, but none of the law-enforcement perso
Cathy Trumble had questioned me intently for about thirty minutes, until it became obvious that I had to get into dry clothes. She sent me home in a patrol car, with the warning that she was going to come by within a couple of hours to take a full statement from me.
Cara had gone off to the hospital under guard. I pitied the officer who had to call her husband. Dr. Stuart Embler was going to be pretty unhappy with anyone who'd arrested his wife. He could afford the best lawyers, too. Bringing Cara to trial might be a struggle; I'd have to testify in court, if it came to a trial. I figured I wouldn't count on that until it happened. If there's one thing television has taught Americans, it's that justice doesn't always move at the pace, or in the direction, that it should.
My black glasses were somewhere at the bottom of the Emblers' pool. I got my tortoiseshell ones and pushed them up the bridge of my nose. With a brush in my hand, wrapped in my favorite golden brown gown and robe, I wandered out into the den. To my surprise, Robin was there by himself.
"Where's Phillip?"
"I sent him to the store for some Epsom salts."
"Epsom salts? Why?"
"It was the only thing I could think of that you didn't already have."