I searched around my brain for more reasons why she shouldn’t add me to her list of victims. I was ridiculously embarrassed to be intimidated by a woman old enough to be my mother, but she was taller and she had a gun. My only advantage was that she seemed to want to chat before she shot me, and I had the feeling that she wanted to tell me something I didn’t know yet.
“Guido will remember you,” I said, “and the police will figure it out.”
“The police give up easily, unlike you. I told Al years ago that you would be trouble.”
My eyes must have widened considerably, and I finally dropped the box of pastries I’d been holding. Mrs. Whitestone smiled, and I knew she was pleased at the effect her words had on me.
“Al? You knew Al Gravese?”
“Al and Margaret were a lot alike. First, they were too idealistic for the real world, then they took what they could get. But they were weak. They had qualms of conscience. They didn’t understand you can’t go back.”
“You had Al killed, too,” I said, my voice weak and hoarse at the stunning revelation of how far back into my youth this woman’s power reached.
“You’re a lot like me,” Mrs. Whitestone said. “An intelligent woman. Strong-minded. Not easily intimidated. Under different circumstances, we could have been great friends.”
Mrs. Whitestone must have been insulted by my wide-eyed, skeptical response to her compliment, because her eyes narrowed and she tightened her grip on the gun. I knew if I were going to act at all, this was the time.
I made a quick calculation of the length of the strap on my purse, hanging from my right shoulder, and flung the purse at Mrs. Whitestone with all my strength. She reeled backward, banging into the stairway banister, the gun falling from her hand, but it was still too far away for me to reach.
For once, carrying the huge leather sack around had given me an advantage, I thought. Even in the midst of panic, I wished I could call Elaine, whose purse was a small, classy fashion statement, and tell her she was right—my purse was a weapon, heavy enough to ward off an attacker.
I doubted that I could get past Mrs. Whitestone to the outside door. She was closer to the gun than I was, even if she was a little off-balance. I ran to the nearest inside door, which lead to the stairs to the basement.
My worst moments at Galigani’s seemed to be at the extremes of the building—first in the attic, where I was shot at, and now in the basement. I wished I’d spent more time here so I’d know my options better.
The laundry room had a window to the outside, but it was so small only a child could fit through it. The prep room, a “dead end” one might say, had no windows. I thought of the tour Frank had given me when I first moved into the mortuary, and remembered a host of potential weapons in the form of embalming tools. I shuddered as I pictured the trocar, three feet long, with a razor-sharp point, used to remove excess fluid from his deceased clients. I wondered if I had the courage to use it on a live person, even if my own life depended on it.
I went into the prep room and locked the door behind me, grateful that there were no clients on this Saturday afternoon. I thought about hiding—climbing onto a table and covering myself with a cloth, crawling into a cabinet under the sink. None of the options seemed feasible.
I was even more disheartened when I noticed the elevator, which I’d forgotten about. Galigani’s rickety old elevator ran through the middle of the building, from the second floor to the basement, opening onto the landing at the top end, and directly into the prep room at the bottom end.
I had no idea what Mrs. Whitestone’s condition was upstairs, or whether she’d noticed the elevator doors. If I could be sure she wasn’t on it, I could call the elevator down, and hold it open in the basement. Then I’d just have to spend the rest of the weekend in the prep room until someone came in on Monday. Unless, of course, someone died in the meantime.
I looked above the elevator door at the old-fashioned semicircular brass plate, and saw its arrow pointing to 2. If I called the car down, Mrs. Whitestone would hear it, and I couldn’t be sure the car wouldn’t stop for her if she pushed the button. So far, I’d heard no noise in the elevator shaft.
A moment later, I did hear a noise, but it was the doorknob rattling and I felt a shiver of panic, even though I knew the door to the stairway was locked. There was no window on the door, so I could only imagine an angry Mrs. Whitestone standing there, having recovered her balance and her gun.
This would make a good problem in a physics book, I thought, as if I knew no fear. Will the elevator car, now on the second floor, pass the first floor before Mrs. Whitestone, now in the basement, can get back to the first floor and push the button? Impossible to figure without knowing the speed of the elevator car, I concluded. I’d only been on it once before, without a stopwatch. And who could estimate the speed of a woman who was already responsible for three deaths that I knew of?