“Get out,” said Wallis, shoving him over with her high heel. David pulled himself up to a standing position, resting against the wall, breathing hard.
“Do what you want to me. It won’t stop anything. I’ve been waiting for this moment, Black Widow.” He straightened up, pushing his hair back into place. “I’m even doing you a favor warning you. Pedigree won’t always trump everything.”
“What disgusting thing are you trying to say?” said Wallis.
“You don’t know, do you?” he sneered. “That’s rich,” he said, wobbling from foot to foot and slurring his words. “You think it’s me. I’m some kind of snob but it’s really you!” he said, pointing at Wallis. “Doesn’t matter that you never knew, you still used the way everybody was willing to give you a free pass. But no more, that all ends tonight.” David lunged forward as Laurel swung again, making contact with his leg and the corner of the wall. He stepped back rubbing his thigh and looked as if he was about to make another attempt as Wallis and Laurel both raised their weapons.
“Huh, you’re not worth it,” he said, raising up his hands in defeat and sneering. “You’re not worth it.” He backed out of the door and stumbled down the stairs, making his way across the wide parking lot toward the darkened strip mall. Wallis stood on the small back porch trying to peer through the darkness that was broken up by only one tall street lamp.
“See anything?” asked Laurel.
“No, but we’re sitting ducks here. Time to go.”
“Nothing is the same, is it?”
Wallis took another look around at the darkness. “Apparently, everything is the same but we’ve finally been let in on it. Can you grab my purse? I’ll keep watch and then we’re both getting out of here.”
“Yeah, but where are we going?”
“To our respective homes, I guess. You okay with that?”
“No one seems to be after me,” said Laurel.
Wallis didn’t remember that her coat was still sitting in her office till she was standing by her car. She shivered in the cold and looked up at the dark window of Norman’s office on the second floor.
“Get it later,” said Laurel. “Do you mind if I advance a little theory before we part ways tonight?”
“Go right ahead. You’re usually more on the money than anyone else, anyway.”
“You’re assuming its Norman that’s been keeping secrets from you. No one’s actually said that it’s him, right? Well, excluding Ned, there is one more person to consider. What about Harriet? Isn’t she a more likely suspect?”
“I have no idea anymore,” said Wallis, as she placed a hand on the hood of the Jag to steady herself and bent over at the waist, taking deep breaths and trying not to throw up what was left of the salad from lunch. The scratch in the door was right by her head.
Sneak Preview - The Traitor’s Revenge
Oscar Newman loved his job, loved the way people took a step back when they saw him coming in his deputy uniform. It was the only thing in his life that made sense to him.
He walked briskly up to an older brick building in the bowels of Shockoe Bottom, located down near the James River and in the shadow of the few high rises in downtown Richmond. He quickly entered one of the old defunct tobacco warehouses with a faded logo for Pall Mall’s painted across the three-storied building.
The fresh wound that made a thin line down one side of his face was still smarting a week after it happened. “Damn bitch,” he muttered, growing angrier.
Oscar was determined and angry as he pulled open the side door and stepped into a large warehouse filled with men, black and white, rich and poor trading slips of paper and quietly reeling off short series of numbers to each other. It was the central count house for the city’s numbers organization.
“Six, eight, nine. Give me six, eight nine.” “How ‘bout triple three’s.”
The response from a small group standing at the front was always, “Quarter, quarter.”
All of the men who were taking the bets were wearing the same style of suit, trading numbers out of the same kind of leather briefcase, filled with more slips of paper and a ledger. They still preferred the old fashioned method to computers, which left too obvious of a trail to follow.
At one side of the room was a chalk board with recent dates and three numbers written next to each date. It was an old form of lottery the locals called combinating and worked the same as a daily lottery, only cost less to play and was never legal.
Everyone stopped mumbling and turned to look at the deputy sheriff. “Get out here!” yelled Oscar, his hand moving down toward his gun. A few men slowly rose as if to run or at least get out of the way. Most look annoyed.