Page 80 of The Mermaid Murder

I looked around, grabbed a chair, and swung it into the tank for all I was worth. It hit and the recoil spun me the other way and about ripped out my shoulder, but I came right back around, swinging again, and then again.

Not even a crack. “Mason!” I shrieked.

Jeremy came in, ran up behind me. “I don’t have my sidearm!” he cried. “Christy!”

I met Christy’s eyes. She was terrified, I could see her chest spasming for air and bouncing that stupid thing Sandra had bought her and?—

“The Crisis Companion!” I yelled, and then I grabbed at my necklace, held it up and pointed to hers.

She got it. I saw hope in her eyes and she grabbed the thing, picking it up, turning it frantically, and finally pressing its tip against the glass of the tank just as the cop reached my side, with his gun drawn to shoot out the glass.

“Wait!” I dashed sideways as a sort of after-thought, but it was too late. I heard a gentle, tink. Then the tank exploded.

Hell, I should’ve thought to get out of the way, huh? A wall of water with big sharp glass shards carried me and the tables and the chairs all the way to the entry doors, and I was jammed up against them, back-first, trying to get a breath while water blasted my face. My hands fumbled over my head, found the handle, and the doors swung open. I whooshed right through along with gallons and gallons of water.

Finally, the water sluiced away, leaving me gasping at the bottom of the stairs. “Christy!” I scrambled to push myself upright but my hands were slick, because my arm was bleeding so much. I found the cut, clasped it with my other hand, and got to my feet limping back inside. “Christy!”

She was lying facedown in the water, just the same way she’d been lying in the water in my dream. She was near the front wall where we’d sat that first night in the place. When I saw her there, her position, the curve of her arm, the water sluicing from her body, that nightmare vision of her flashed in my mind. Identical. It was identical…

…except for the slow flip of her mermaid tail.

“Christy!” Shaking away my paralyzing fear, I fell down beside her, gathering her up and hugging her to my chest. She was all right. She was okay. I held her while I looked for Jeremy. Then I spotted him. He was pushing himself up amid a pile of toppled tables and chairs over by the door Mason had just come through, and gave him a hand up on the way by.

“Get me out of this tail, will you Aunt Rache?”

I nodded. Christy rolled onto her belly, and I got the zipper down. I helped her peel the thing off without getting her silky leggings wet. They were the only dry thing on her. Then she sprang to her feet and right into my arms. “I thought that was it. I really thought that was it!”

“I know,” I said. “I know, but you’re okay.” I pushed her wet hair off her face. “Thank God, you’re okay. Where is Misty?”

“With Jen Scott!” She sort of yelled it, pulling out of my embrace. “Aunt Rache, that detective is the bad guy!”

“She didn’t find the body,” Mason said. “She planted it.”

“No, she did find it, she told us so. She said she dumped the body, and then she found it, and that Eva had found her way to their spot.”

“It was their spot,” I whispered.

Mason went on. “She planted Paul Quaid’s dog tag to frame him, then killed him so he couldn’t deny it.”

I blinked as my brain filled in blanks. “She’s been pretending to help us just to keep track of what we knew, what we were looking at,” I said. “And to subtly steer us toward Paul.”

“Paul was investigating too,” Jeremy said. He went to his backpack. “Zig got the photos they took at Quaid’s cabin digitized last night and sent them to me when I told her Misty was missing.”

He pulled up the photos taken inside the Quaid house before it had burned, then turned his phone our way.

The first photo was of a corkboard wall covered in other photos, clippings, and handwritten notes. I swiped through closeups of several of the items pinned to the board. One was a photo of two young women, arm in arm. I recognized them both. One was Eva Quaid. They were arm in arm, smiling at each other in a way only lovers do.

“They were together,” Jeremy said real slow. “And she told us she was the one who introduced Eva to Paul.”

“So, Paul fell for Eva,” I said. “And Eva married him. And Jen killed them both for it.”

“And planned to kill us, too. We have to find Misty.” There were tears around the edges of Christy’s voice. “We have to.”

“How the hell did you break that glass?” Jeremy asked. He bent to pick up a piece. “Look how thick it is.”

Christy wrapped her hand around the giant, ugly thing hanging from a chain around her neck and said, “Crisis Companion. An innocent young woman’s best friend in the cold, cruel world.” She held it up, spokesmodel style, complete with big smile, but then the smile dissolved in the tears that streamed down her face. “My fuckin’ mother. You tell her and I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“You shouldn’t ever hear the end of it,” I said. “It saved your perky ass. You should be on your knees thanking her.”

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