Do You Want to Know a Secret? (53 page)
Read Do You Want to Know a Secret? Online
Authors: Mary Jane Clark
Oh my God!
My baby’s in here and the killer is in the kitchen.
When Eliza saw the name of Dennis Quinn’s mother in Bill’s notes, she dropped the papers on the bathroom floor. She lifted the child from the tub and wrapped a towel around her.
“Janie, just stay here. Promise me you’ll stay here.”
The child looked scared.
“It’s okay, sweetheart, but you have to stay right here for Mommy. Don’t move. Promise me.”
Janie nodded.
Eliza opened the bathroom door. The hallway was empty. She darted to her room and went straight to her closet. She stood on tiptoe, reaching to the back of the high shelf. She felt the wooden container and pulled it down. With trembling fingers, she opened the mahogany box.
It was empty!
Eliza turned to run back to Janie.
Mrs. Twomey stood in the doorway. Eliza’s gun was in the housekeeper’s hand.
The unmarked police
car pulled up again in front of Eliza Blake’s building.
As they waited for the elevator, Detective Colburn turned to his partner.
“Eliza Blake may not have killed her psychiatrist, but she knows who did.”
Mrs. Twomey pointed
the gun steadily at Eliza. She was amazingly calm as she spoke.
“Ms. Gregory called. The police are on their way. I can’t have you telling them that I dropped your key ring at Dr. Karas’s body—my son’s career will be over. I can’t let that happen.”
“You killed Dr. Karas?” whispered Eliza incredulously. “But why?”
“He was blackmailing my son, Dennis.”
“And now you’re going to kill me? No, Mrs. Twomey, you can’t.”
The housekeeper’s eyes narrowed.
“I killed Bill Kendall’s nosy secretary when I thought she was on to Denny’s secret. I can kill you, too. I have to.”
“You pushed Jean in front of that train?”
“I don’t want to kill you, Mrs. Blake, but I have no choice.”
“You’d leave Janie motherless?”
The housekeeper seemed to hesitate.
And suddenly, Janie was behind Mrs. Twomey at the bedroom door.
“Mommy . . .” Mrs. Twomey started to turn and Eliza lunged for her gun.
As Detective Colburn
and his partner exited the elevator, they heard a shot.
Rushing shoulders first through Eliza Blake’s apartment door, both men burst in with guns drawn.
A little girl wrapped in a pink towel stood crying at the end of the hallway. The detectives raced down the corridor, one pushing the child aside, the other taking down the woman standing in the doorway.
Eliza Blake lay on the bloody bedroom floor.
The cab screeched
to a halt and Mack sprang out, throwing money at the driver. The angry flashing lights of an ambulance parked in front of Eliza’s apartment building warned that it might be too late.
It can’t be too late.
Mack ran past the doorman and sprinted to the elevator, pounding the Up button.
Hurry. Hurry.
The elevator door slid open. Two EMS paramedics flanked a chrome stretcher.
Eliza lay white and unmoving.
“Buddy, get out of the way. She’s losing a lot of blood.”