A High-End Finish(82)

Penny was still watching the ocean when I rushed up behind her and shoved her hard. She fell facedown on the ground.

“What the—?”

She scrambled to get up, but I jumped on top of her and straddled her back to keep her down. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“You.” She laughed harshly. “You really think you can stop me, you wimp?”

“I’m not a wimp,” I sputtered. Probably wasn’t a good idea to argue with her, especially considering how strong she was. But that pissed me off. What had I ever done to her? Why did she want to kill me? “I thought we were getting to be friends.”

Okay, it was a wimpy thing to say, but I couldn’t think straight.

“You were asking too many questions,” she snapped. “Then you brought that cop around.”

“I didn’t bring him . . . Wait.” Why was I even talking to her? But I wanted answers. “I was the one he suspected, not you.”

“He kept coming around to the bank,” she griped. “And as soon as he saw me with you at the pub, he knew.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I can read a cop’s face.”

“Oh, bull.” If Eric had known that Penny killed those men, she would’ve been in jail.

“Shut up and get off me.”

“Did you screw with my bike?”

“Of course,” she derided. “There you were, riding around town like the Pink Princess everyone thinks you are. I thought it would be fun to shove a stick through the spokes, so to speak.”

“So besides being a murderer, you’re just a bitch.”

“I’m a survivor,” she snarled, and, without warning, she bucked and bounced me off her back. It took her a few seconds to get enough traction to run away, and in that moment I grabbed hold of her foot. She kicked my hand away and raced over to the car. Grabbing the backpack, she pulled out the gun. But I was already right behind her. I yanked on her arm and she bobbled the gun. I managed to slap it away with my other hand.

With a guttural growl, she smacked my face and I fell backward, but caught myself before I hit the ground. She went running for the gun and I plowed into her. We both fell on the damp grass, but I was on top of her again and able to hold her down.

I could see the gun lying in the grass barely ten feet away.

Where the hell were the cops?

My cheek was stinging where she’d smacked me, and I wanted so much to start beating her head into the ground. I’d never been a violent person before but she was turning me into one.

“Tell me why you killed Jerry Saxton,” I demanded.

She tried to buck me off again. I grabbed her hair and pulled it hard, causing her to shriek.

“You scream like a girl,” I said, sneering. I hated to be petty, but it felt good to say that.

“Up yours,” she snarled.

“Why did you kill him?”

“I did the world a favor,” she blurted.

While that may have been true, I wanted to know what drove her to murder him. I asked her again and she grudgingly told me what had happened.

“He threatened to tell the entire town that I was in love with Jennifer.”

I almost felt my jaw hit the ground. She must have sensed my confusion, because she tried to throw me off her again. I was ready this time, though, and held her down more forcefully.

“Okay, first of all,” I said, “why would you fall for Jennifer? And second, how did Jerry find out? And third, who cares if you and Jennifer were an item? You can love whoever you want. Although that brings me back to my first question. How the hell could you ever like Jennifer? She’s a horrible person, in case you couldn’t tell.”

And clinging to life right now, I remembered. “Oh yeah, and if you loved her so much, why did you try to kill her?”

“If you’ll shut up for a minute, I’ll tell you.”

I grabbed hold of her jacket more tightly, just to let her know who was still on top. “Go ahead and talk.”

She rambled on about first meeting Jennifer when she came into the bank to fill out some loan papers. And she added that she ended up telling Jerry all about it because he was just so darn easy to talk to.

I knew in an instant that Jennifer had only sweet-talked Penny for some ulterior motive. I almost felt sorry for this silly woman who’d bought into Jennifer’s scheme. My pity for her was short-lived, though, since she’d tried to kill me more than once.

She was right about one thing: Jerry really had been very easy to talk to. I remembered that much from our blind date. Still, Penny was holding something back.

“Jerry may have been easy to talk to,” I said, “but why would you tell him something so personal? Were you two honestly friends?”

“We worked on some loans together, got to know each other.” I could hear the evasion in her voice.

It dawned on me what she was leaving out of the story. “You were the one who worked with him to scam those home buyers.”

“I didn’t mean to do it,” she said, her voice whiny, “but it was easy money. Homeowners these days don’t pay enough attention to their loan documents.”

I let that sink in. Apparently it was easy to justify going from fraud to murder when you had no moral compass to start with.

“How did you get Jerry over to the Boyers’ house?” I asked.