Full Dark, No Stars

juggling it and then securing her grip. Tess reached inside her jacket and closed her hand around the handle of the butcher knife that was her backup, aware that she was going to be too late. Norvil e was too big… and too maternal. Yes, that was it. She had protected that rogue son of hers for years, and was intent on protecting him now. Tess should have shot her in the hal , the moment the door was shut behind her.

But I couldn’t, she thought, and even at this moment, knowing it was the truth brought some comfort. She got up on her knees, hand stil inside the jacket, facing Ramona Norvil e.

“You’re a shitty writer and you were a shitty guest speaker,” Norvil e said. She was smiling, speaking faster and faster. Her voice had a nasal auctioneer’s lilt. “You phoned in your talk the same way

you phone in your stupid books. You were perfect for him and he was going to do someone, I know the signs. I sent you that way and it worked out right and I’m glad he fucked you. I don’t know what you

thought you were going to do, coming here, but this is what you get.”

She pul ed the trigger and there was nothing but a dry click. Tess had taken lessons when she bought the gun, and the most important had been not to put a bul et in the chamber that would first fal

under the hammer. Just in case the trigger was pul ed by accident.

An expression of almost comical surprise came over Norvil e’s face. It made her young again. She looked down at the gun, and when she did, Tess drew the knife from the inside pocket of the jacket,

stumbled forward, and jammed it up to the hilt in Norvil e’s bel y.

The woman made a glassy “OOO- OOOO” sound that tried to be a scream and failed. Tess’s pistol dropped and Ramona staggered back against the wal , looking down at the handle of the knife.

One flailing arm struck a rank of Hummel figures. They tumbled from the shelf and shattered on the floor. She made that “OOO- OOOO” sound again. The front of the housecoat was stil unstained, but blood began to patter from beneath its hem, onto Ramona Norvil e’s manshoes. She put her hands on the haft of the knife, tried to tug it free, and made the “OOO- OOOO” for the third time.

She looked up at Tess, unbelieving. Tess looked back. She was remembering something that had happened on her tenth birthday. Her father had given her a slingshot, and she had gone out looking

for things to shoot with it. At some point, five or six blocks from her house, she had seen a raggedy-eared stray dog rooting in a garbage can. She had put a smal rock in her slingshot and fired at it, only meaning to scare the dog away (or so she told herself), but hitting it in the rump instead. The dog had made a miserable ike-ike-ike sound and run away, but before it did, it gave Tess a look of reproach she had never forgotten. She would have given anything to take that casual shot back, and she had never fired her slingshot at another living thing. She understood that kil ing was a part of life—she felt no compunction about swatting mosquitoes, put down traps when she saw mouse-droppings in the cel ar, and had eaten her fair share of Mickey D’s Quarter Pounders—but then she had believed she would

never again be able to hurt something that way without feeling remorse or regret. She suffered neither in the living room of the house on Lacemaker Lane. Perhaps because, in the end, it had been self-

defense. Or perhaps that wasn’t it at al .

“Ramona,” she said, “I’m feeling a certain kinship to Richard Widmark right now. This is what we do to squealers, honey.”

Norvil e was standing in a puddle of her own blood and her housecoat was at last blooming with blood-poppies. Her face was pale. Her dark eyes were huge and glittery with shock. Her tongue came

out and swiped slowly across her lower lip.

“Now you can rol around for a long time, thinkin’ it over—how would that be?”

Norvil e began to slide. Her manshoes made squittering sounds in the blood. She groped for one of the other shelves and pul ed it off the wal . A platoon of Care Bears tilted forward and committed

suicide.

Although she stil felt no regret or remorse, Tess found that, in spite of her big talk, she had very little inner Tommy Udo; she had no urge to watch or prolong Norvil e’s suffering. She bent and picked up the .38. From the right front pocket of her cargo pants she removed the item she had taken from the kitchen drawer beside her stove. It was a quilted oven glove. It would silence a single pistol shot quite effectively, as long as the caliber wasn’t too big. She had learned this while writing The Willow Grove Knitting Society Goes on a Mystery Cruise.

“You don’t understand.” Norvil e’s voice was a harsh whisper. “You can’t do this. It’s a mistake. Take me… hospital.”