Page 64 of Blink of an Eye
Lorraine murmured something and covered her eyes with her hands, but she looked up when Nigel continued.
"I, calmly, I thought, asked for my money, thinking we could at least begin some kind of negotiation. I would have been willing to accept a part of the total. Any amount of money, really, that could have helped me to close the club and start something new."
"And did he?" Susan asked, as caught up in the story as the rest of us. "Negotiate?"
"No. He was facing away from me, but then suddenly he made a half-turn toward me, raised the gun, and shot me in the head. It was a one-in-a-million shot, especially since he was injured and roaring drunk."
It should have been a dramatic moment, but at that exact moment the music box appeared on the table next to Susan and started playing:
"I Shot the Sheriff"'
"Stop or you're sawdust," Susan advised it.
Silence.
Two seconds later, Uncle Mike was on his feet. "Earl shotyou?"
"Yes. But he shot me in the forehead, unfortunately."
"Unfortunately?" Susan stared at him. "Master of understatement, huh? Yes, getting shot in the head would be unfortunate for most of us."
"I meant it was unfortunate for him, Sheriff," Nigel said. "Ogres have extraordinarily thick and hard skulls, almost unique in the supernatural world. That bullet had no chance of penetrating to my brain."
Andy leaned in, his eyes wide. "So what did it do?"
"It bounced. Off my head and then it flew right back at Earl and hit him in the back of the skull. The rest, as they say, is just details."
"What happened next?" I prodded.
"I was dazed from the bullet hitting me; even though it didn't penetrate my skull, it gave me a heck of a headache. And I was terrified. I knew everybody would blame the scary ogre. Dead End was not nearly as diverse and welcoming back then." He blew out a huge, ogre-sized breath. "So I ran. I ran and then I closed down the gambling hall that very day. Then I spent years waiting for somebody to discover what I'd done. When I heard the story about Beau claiming he'd run Earl out of town, I figured maybe Beau had found Earl's body and buried it. Either way, I was scared to death for a long, long time. A few years later, I opened the dance school, and I've never looked back before now."
There was utter silence in the room when he finished speaking, and then everybody started talking at once. But one voice cut through the clutter to make itself heard.
The voice of our sheriff.
"Bull."
Nigel blinked. "What?"
"So you expect me to believe that Earl shot you in the face and not only didn't you kill him, but he actuallykilled himself?I'm sorry, but that's the most ridiculous story I've ever heard."
Then she looked at Andy. "Do we have any ogre-sized handcuffs?"
"Hold off on the handcuffs, sheriff," I said. "Nigel. Show her."
He sighed. "You said it might come to this, Tess."
With that, he pushed his thick hair off his forehead and showed everyone in the room what he'd shown me and Jack earlier.
The giant divot in the middle of his forehead.
Susan whistled. "Yep, that would do it."
"And why didn't you tell anyone, all these years?"
"I was afraid," he said simply.
"So you ran and just left him there?" Andy frowned. "That's not great."
