Apparently, Hilda had plenty of opportunity and a whole boatload of motive. Hell, if I’d been a little more patient, I could have let her to do the job for me.”
“B-but, he is—was—your friend.” Keep him talking. Buy some time. “Why would you kill him?”
“Let’s just say that my old buddy Curt found out that my relationship with the building inspector’s office was a bit more . . . involved . . . than he thought. Toby and I had a few profitable little projects going on the side that didn’t include him. Curt wanted a cut, and after all the work I’d put in, I wasn’t inclined to share. Things got out of hand after that.”
“But why bring me here so I could find Curt’s body?” she pressed him. “Why not bury him in the basement, too?”
“Because it was a hell of a lot easier to have him found murdered with you to back up my story than to try to hide the body.”
Barry gave his head a disgusted shake.
“Unfortunately, that kind of plan only works well once. Oh, and thanks for the tip about Bill Ferguson. If the police decide they don’t have enough evidence against Hilda, I’ll be sure to tell your detective friend that I overheard Bill threaten Curt more than once. With any luck, maybe we can pin your disappearance on him, too.”
With that, he made a show of glancing at his watch and added, “Like you said before, daylight’s burning, so why don’t we get this over with? Remember, I’ve got a funeral to go to in Connecticut.”
Once again, he advanced on her with grim purpose. Limbs quivering, Darla stubbornly began moving in a circle away from him while trying to avoid yet another hole cut through the subflooring. She vowed as she did so that first thing tomorrow—if she made it to tomorrow—she was signing up for self-defense classes. But for now, her only strategy was to keep the man from backing her into a corner. Pinned against the wall, she would be helpless. If she could keep on moving, just like in a chess game, she might still be able to slip past him and avoid a fatal checkmate.
Barry, however, knew what she was doing.
“You’re not going to win this one, Darla, I promise you. The harder you keep fighting, the worse it’s going to be for you—”
He broke off with a curse to dodge the roll of duct tape she had snatched from the floor and flung at him. The tape merely bounced off him, but she didn’t care. She took her chance and dashed toward the door. He made a grab for her arm and caught her coat sleeve, but an instant later she had pulled the same trick he’d done with Hamlet and shrugged out of her coat, free again. She was almost to the door, and out of arm’s reach now.
All except for her hair.
As she flew by him, Barry snagged his fingers in the long locks and jerked, stopping her short with a painful snap of her head that made her stumble against the doorjamb. He jerked her again, and this time her temple smacked squarely against wood. Momentarily stunned, she almost fell.
And then she was choking, her fingers helplessly scrabbling at the hands that were wrapped around her throat, cutting off any hope of screaming, any chance of breathing. Barry had won, just as he’d promised. Before the day’s end she would be joining the luckless Tera in a shallow hole that would be covered again by bricks and plywood.
Unless James managed to convince the police that Barry had something to do with her disappearance, then that would be the end of it. Once Reese and his people searched the basement and found nothing, Barry would be free to plaster over the basement door as planned, guaranteeing that no one would find them, or discover Hamlet’s battered body stuffed away in the ancient boiler. Barry would finish his remodel and sell the place to someone else . . . someone who would not know that a man had once been murdered within those damp subterranean walls, and would never guess that two women had followed him there in death.
But as she teetered on the last edge of unconsciousness, accepting her fate, the pressure abruptly released, and she dropped to the ground.
TWENTY-TWO
DARLA FELT THE SPLINTERED FLOOR PRESSING INTO HER cheek as she struggled for air, her vision little more than a red blur. Through the sounds of