Sight Shot (Imogene Museum Mystery #3) Read online

  Frankie stood in the gift shop doorway. She stood only because she was being held up by a meaty fist clenching her jacket collar — and her necklace. Her face, already deep red, was contorted in fear, her eyes wide.

  The fist emerged from an arm in a canvas field coat which connected to broad shoulders on a tall, husky frame. Dark blond hair covered his head. Even from behind, there was no doubt it was Wade.

  Sticking up above his right shoulder were the twin barrels of a shotgun. I don’t know much about guns, but I have encountered the business end of a shotgun before. The image is indelibly printed on my mind. As if the fist and Frankie’s gasping for air weren’t enough, the shotgun told me everything I needed to know.

  I snapped my gaze back to Frankie. She was on the verge of passing out. My fault — this was all my fault.

  I jumped up and yelled. “Wade!”

  He whirled and dropped Frankie, which is what I’d wanted. He whipped the shotgun horizontal and swung it my direction, which is what I’d really hoped he wouldn’t do.

  I’d hit the stairs and started sliding when chunks of plaster showered down on me. The mind-blowing blast came a moment later — disjointed, reverberating.

  I rolled off the bottom step, coughing from the powdery dust that filled the air, and crawled around the corner.

  Wade’s heavy boots clomped across the ballroom’s parquet floor. No question he could move faster than I could.

  Think. Think. There are all kinds of places to hide in the basement — between the piles of boxes of as-yet-undocumented museum pieces, behind leftover furniture and assorted junk from the mansion’s century of occupation, in the industrial laundry room. But Wade didn’t seem constrained by the historical or monetary value of whatever he might be shooting at — and shotguns, their destruction is widespread and thorough.

  No, I couldn’t go anywhere near the boxes of art and artifacts. Where’s a sandbag bunker when you need one?

  I reached for the phone in my pocket only to remember again that I’d left it upstairs in my office. Frankie was too new in town — she wouldn’t know to call Sheriff Marge. 911 would work.

  “Call, call, call,” I whispered. I hoped she had enough of her wits about her after the near strangling to reach the phone behind the counter in the gift shop.

  Wade hesitated at the top of the stairs. Maybe he was worried I’d ambush him.

  Offense. What offensive tactic could I take? I scanned the long, dark, low-ceilinged room. First, I had to get out of sight.

  Surreal. I couldn’t linger on it, but the thought that this was an insane, not-really-happening-to-me situation popped into my head. Poor Frankie. I had to get us out of here, alive.

  The elevator. The doors had closed again, but the carriage was sitting there, waiting. I dashed toward it and stabbed the open button.

  Wade’s heavy footsteps started down the stairs. Apparently, he didn’t know how to be stealthy. That would help.

  The doors slid open — slowly, achingly slowly. I couldn’t get in — I’d be a sitting duck inside that metal box. But I stretched around the doorframe and poked the button for the third floor.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw Wade’s jeans-clad legs from the thighs down. Big feet in thick work boots. I dropped to the floor and scrabbled behind an old steamer trunk.

  The trunk had been painted in its checkered past — several times — and multi-colored curls flaked off as I brushed against it. I slid to the other end and peeked around just as Wade bent at the waist and squinted into the gloom. The elevator doors clicked closed, and the whir of the motor started.

  Wade pivoted and stomped up the stairs. But I’d just sent him back toward Frankie. Not good.

  I dashed for the servants’ stairwell near the laundry room, barged through the swinging door and collided with a — with a plump, squashy, short person in a polyester pantsuit who smelled of slightly rancid gardenias. We tumbled to the floor in a pile of arms and legs.

  “Wha—” I panted.

  “The paintings,” Frankie hissed. She climbed over me, caught the swinging door on a rebound and propped it open with her knee. She pulled on my arm. “Come on. We have to hide them.”

  Hide them? First, we needed to survive. No art is worth losing your life over.

  Frankie had a wild but focused look. Her eyes steeled into me. “Now.” She yanked me to my feet.

  “Did you call 911?” I was breathing too hard to whisper.

  A shotgun blast shuddered the ceiling over our heads. Two. What was Wade shooting at? And why?

  Frankie dragged me the length of the basement to the documentation area. She dropped my hand to hover over the paintings, her lips moving silently. She was counting. Then she snatched up the café scene and pressed it to her chest.

  “The buttons on your jacket.” I pointed. “Don’t.”

  Another crashing volley upstairs. Three.

  The Imogene is built like a fortress — an ancient, decrepit fortress, but sturdy in her day with no expense spared. Still, she wasn’t going to be able to withstand this onslaught for long.

  Frankie jerked the painting away from herself with a gasp. She caressed the surface with her fingertips, checking for scratches.

  “Don’t touch it! What are you doing?” I yelled.

  “She’s my grandmother. Where can I hide?” Frankie spun around, frantic.

  “No hiding. Run.” I grabbed her shoulder.

  “No. No.” Frankie shook me off.

  This shotgun blast — I was losing count — ended with an explosion of shattering glass. Wade was taking out my display cases — and everything in them.

  I flew to the basement door, wrenched it open and ran up the ramp to daylight. I tucked next to the Imogene’s gray-green wall and stumbled, head down, around frozen shrubs and through dormant flower beds, ducking underneath windows. At the front corner, I slumped, wheezing, against the rough basalt foundation.

  Wade’s truck was parked broadside behind mine, blocking it in. No doubt, he’d noticed the missing tailgate. I tried to slow my breathing, tried to think. I exhaled steam billows into the clammy air and clenched my hands to keep them warm. I’d need them for whatever was coming.

  All phones were inside the building. I could try to drive my truck over the curb and through the bushes, across the lawn to the access road, or I could bash his truck in reverse, demolition style, and maybe wreck my way out. But Wade would be able to see me through the glass front doors if he was still in the ballroom. And that option didn’t help Frankie — crazy Frankie.

  I scrunched my eyes closed. My keys were upstairs in my tote bag.

  Keys. What were the odds that Wade had left his truck unlocked?

  High. No one locked their vehicles around here, except me because I still had that big-city habit.

  What were the odds he had another gun in his truck?

  Also high.

  I wondered how many shotgun shells he’d stuffed in his pockets before entering the museum.

  As I started jogging toward the parking lot, my heart stopped for a second while I wished — how I wished I’d called Pete. I wished I’d called him the very moment I’d thought of it. From now on, if I made it through this, Pete was going to receive all kinds of random phone calls from me — just to hear his voice, just in case.

  CHAPTER 21

  Low pewter clouds shifted uncomfortably, dragging their knuckles across the slick pavement. I skirted my truck and came at Wade’s raised rig on the far side, away from the museum. I skated on a thin sheet of frozen dew the last few feet and slammed against the running board under his passenger door.

  What if Frankie hadn’t called 911? I pricked my ears, willing myself to hear sirens in the distance. But there was only wind shivering the tree branches and a seagull’s piercing cry. The bird hovered overhead, feathers rippling, held aloft by a stiff cross breeze. He twisted his head and turned a black eye on me, checking if I was worth a scavenging foray.

  I was going to have
to fight my way to a phone.

  I stretched and pulled the truck door open. Sure enough, a rifle lay amid the junk behind the seat, just loose, sliding around back there. Wade was not a careful guy — not safety conscious. Oh yeah, and he’d burned down his cabin and was shooting up my museum. Right — that kind of guy. Don’t forget who you’re dealing with.

  I held my breath and lifted the rifle, testing its weight. It needed a lot of room to maneuver. I knocked the scope hard against the door frame and probably jilted it off-kilter. I didn’t know how to use that part anyway.

  I wasn’t exactly sure about the trigger either, but Wade didn’t know that. Where was the safety? We’d have to see how well I could bluff. I backed up, pulling the rifle’s long barrel out of the cab. Then I pointed the rifle down and held it tight against my side. I’d rather accidentally shoot myself in the foot than somewhere else.

  The Imogene appeared stoic from the outside, her windows dark, reflecting the threatening clouds. Was Wade still shooting? I didn’t know if I’d be able to hear gunfire from inside those thick stone walls. Walking straight up to the glass front doors could be a death sentence. I decided to run back around the building to the kitchen door. During business hours, it was unlocked from the inside as a fire escape, but still locked from the outside. But I could break the window in the door’s top half and reach through to the handle.

  A single pane window is no match for a rifle butt. I stepped into the kitchen, crunching glass shards under my loafers. My own breathing echoed in my ears.

  It was too quiet. What was Wade doing? And Frankie?

  I tiptoed to the hallway door and pulled it open a crack. Empty.

  Grey, cold light filtered through the window at the end of the hall, highlighting smudged handprints on the flat chalk wall paint. Low handprints, from my tours for the elementary school kids.

  The museum felt vacant, absent. She’s usually a living, breathing thing to me.

  “Come on, Imogene, where are they?” I whispered.

  I caught a high-pitched, plaintive wailing and dropped to a knee by the scrollwork grate of the cold air return. Frankie’s voice echoed through the ducts from the basement. “No. No. I won’t.”

  “Get up, you old bat,” Wade growled.

  “Ow! Don’t!”

  “Move it.”

  I stood quickly and glanced around. He was taking Frankie — where? At least she was still well enough to resist — and talk.

  Phone.

  I slipped out of my loafers and sprinted in wool socks to the ballroom.

  The Imogene’s wood floors have shrunk and there are varying amounts of give in the separate planks. Even though Wade wouldn’t be able to hear my footsteps, he’d be able to track my position in the museum through the progression of floor squeaks. But he doesn’t know the museum like I do. Maybe he wouldn’t figure it out.

  Phone.

  Wade had obliterated a display case of Klickitat beaded belts and pouches. Glass, splintered wood, a few puffs of rabbit fur and millions of tiny beads littered the floor in a rough starburst pattern.

  Wool socks are insanely slippery on wood floors. I slid, snowboarding-style, across the last ten feet of the ballroom, through the gift shop entrance and crashed into the counter holding the cash register — and the phone.

  I switched the rifle to my left hand, grabbed the receiver with my right and stabbed Sheriff Marge’s number into the keypad with my forefinger.

  “Yeah,” Sheriff Marge barked.

  “It’s Meredith,” I panted.

  “You at the museum? We got a 911 hang-up from there. I’m en route.”

  “That must’ve been Frankie.”

  “Huh?”

  “Wade’s here. He’s been shooting things. Not us — yet.”

  A siren started its slow windup in the background. “Visitors?” Sheriff Marge shouted over the din.

  Oh dear God. I hadn’t thought of that.

  I propped the rifle against the counter, half-climbed over the top and swept my hand under the register. I brushed the spiral wire of the notebook and caught it just as it fell. Frankie’s neat marks lined up in both columns — seven in and seven out. “No. Not unless someone came in after Wade. We wouldn’t have had a chance to see them.”

  “Hold tight. Get out of the building if you can. I’m eight minutes out.” Sheriff Marge hung up.

  “You lied,” Wade roared.

  I whirled around, the receiver still in my hand.

  “She left,” Frankie whimpered. “Really.”

  Wade had pushed her ahead of him with the shotgun barrel. I’d been so absorbed in the conversation with Sheriff Marge, I hadn’t heard them. Wade blocked the gift shop entrance and gave Frankie another shove into the room.

  She plopped on the floor like a belligerent toddler, her legs spread out. She still clutched the café scene painting, but now it was face out — and upside down. Tears trickled down her cheeks.

  “You talking to the law?” Wade held the shotgun level with my midsection, the butt resting easily against his hip. The fingers of one hand drummed on the stock. His other forefinger fiddled with the trigger.

  “Does it matter?”

  “You have something I want.”

  “Nothing in that valise is worth anything. I told you — in the message.”

  Color built in Wade’s face. “There has to be something.”

  I shrugged.

  “Why were you at my place?” Saliva sprayed, and a couple strings clung to his goatee.

  “I like flowers — the crocuses.”

  Wade snorted. “You and my idiot uncle.” He took a menacing step forward. “He had something — something he was holding back, something that was going to make him rich. All those trips to BC.”

  I didn’t dare look down at the shotgun. I kept my eyes focused on Wade’s, willed him to look only at my face and nowhere else. “Why’d you kill him?”

  “Who says I did?”

  In my peripheral vision, Frankie fidgeted on the floor. She was stealthily pivoting, scooting behind Wade. I ached to keep my gaze straight, not permit any flickering that would give her away.

  “A fake eye says you did.” I uncurled my cramped fingers from the receiver and set it on the counter. Slowly — stretching — slowly — I slid my hand over and down, toward the rifle. I wouldn’t be able to fire it in these close quarters, but I might be able to swing it.

  Wade sneered, his fleshy lips spreading thin across his teeth. “Spence never did see it coming.” He took a step closer.

  His hazel eyes were flecked with odd-colored greens — moss, kelly, chartreuse. Baruch Astruc would have enjoyed painting those eyes.

  “Thought he’d turn me in. Didn’t know the half of it.”

  My breath came in shallow flutters. I wrapped my hand around the cool metal of the rifle barrel. Pale blue and a streak of bright red flashed behind Wade. I blinked.

  Wade hitched the shotgun higher, toward my chest.

  Three things happened at nearly the same moment: I dropped to the floor, just let my knees give out and fell straight down while whipping the rifle overarm, butt-first, aiming for the vicinity of Wade’s head; Frankie, on her back on the floor, sprang her coiled legs, her heels ramming into the back of Wade’s knees; Edna doused us all with a chemical fire extinguisher.

  We didn’t figure all this out until later — much later. Because in the next instant, we were blindly clambering over a limp Wade, trying to sort out his limbs from our own and restrain him while hacking up lungfuls of white powder.

  Several sirens screamed into the parking lot, braked wheels skidded to a stop and a series of doors slammed.

  Then Sheriff Marge hollered on a bullhorn. “Wade Snead.” His last name ended in a horrible feedback squeal. “This is the sheriff. Come out with your hands up.”

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Edna wheezed.

  All three of us were sprawled across him, and the fact that he wasn’t struggling to breathe indicated h
e was, at the very least, unconscious. I was pretty sure no guns had gone off in the scuffle.

  “I’ll go.” I rolled off Wade’s shoulders and crawled to the glass front doors. I reached up, pressed on the crash bar and stuck a very white hand outside. I waved, then slumped through the opening onto the sidewalk. “You can come in,” I croaked. I curled up in debilitating coughing fit.

  Someone dragged me out of the way, and I remember many pairs of boots rushing by before the navy blue knee of an EMT blocked my view.

  CHAPTER 22

  Chemical fire extinguisher is nasty stuff. Both Frankie and I spent several minutes with our heads under the kitchen faucet, flushing every orifice. Then we tolerated the ministrations of the ambulance crew.

  Dale escorted Frankie to the ballroom to take her statement. Sheriff Marge pointed Edna and me into metal folding chairs situated around the lunch table in the kitchen. Then she eased into a chair and plunked her hat down beside her little notebook.

  “Edna, you first,” Sheriff Marge said. “I’ll try to get both of you out of here as soon as possible. From what the medic said, you’ll be feeling pretty ragged for the next few days.”

  I inhaled to ask a question and ended up coughing until my eyes watered. Sheriff Marge handed me a paper towel, and I blew my nose.

  Edna and I were thinking along the same lines. “What are you doing with Wade?” she asked.

  “Hospital until he regains consciousness, then jail for suspicion of arson, assault, destruction of property, maybe a few other things.”

  Edna nodded, her lips pressed together. “Okay.” She sighed. “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with why you’re here.” Sheriff Marge raised her eyebrows at me. “I thought the job didn’t work out.”

  Edna bubbled with the explanation of her new job — the repair work that had to stay at the museum no matter what.

  Sheriff Marge nodded sagely. “I see. So you came to officially accept the position this afternoon.”

  “Yeah. But I saw Wade’s truck in the parking lot — parked right in the middle, blocking Meredith in, and one of his doors was open, and I knew something was wrong — really wrong.” She finished in a whisper. “I don’t trust Wade.”