Beauty Queen

deeply, feeling a great relief. All of a sudden she couldn't imagine why she had agreed to go along with such a cockamamie idea.
    She stopped at a rest area where there were public phones, and called Armando.
    He was awake and very angry. "What's the hell's going on?"
    "Armando, I've called it off. There's a better way to stop this lady. Better than a bullet."
    "What do you mean?"
    "I'm sorry," she said. "It'll mean that you won't be able to go to jail for Danny. That'll be something you'll have to work out for yourself. But you gotta realize, I had to work this out for myself too. I was the one pulling the trigger for you. And when I realized that there was a better way, I just couldn't do it."
    "You're not making any sense," he said.
    "Armando, I've just found out something interesting about her father. I think he's gay."
    She crossed the Housatonic River at Kent. The old iron-girder bridge was deserted. On the other side lay the sleeping resort town with its Victorian houses and its little country-cabin motels. She stopped in the middle of the bridge, put up her car hood, and pretended to fiddle with the engine.
    She looked carefully to make sure no cars were coming, then she quickly whipped the Beretta out over the side. It fell, winking, and made a little splash in the smooth green current. She whipped the silencer out at a different angle, and it made a smaller splash about fifty feet from the first.
    Chapter 14
    A few mornings later, at about 11 A.M., Bill was working in his office when Mrs. Voeller buzzed him and said, "You have a call from a Miss Mary Ellen Frampton."
    Bill's stomach fell with fright. He knew that the young woman had quit Jeannie's staff.
    He picked up the phone. "Yes?"
    "Hi, this is Mary Ellen Frampton," she said. "I think you remember me."
    "I do indeed," said Bill. "My daughter was furious when you quit without notice."
    "Well," she said, "I have to admit, the whole thing was starting to get to me a little. You know, I found myself stuffing envelopes for an organization that I didn't approve of, and I suddenly thought, 'This is ridiculous.'"
    Bill's stomach was churning. At least the girl had sense enough to disguise her talk, in case Mrs. Voeller was listening.
    "What do you want?" he said bluntly.
    "I want to talk to you," she said. "You see, I figured out how you know about me. You know because you went there yourself."
    Bill was silent for a moment, trying to collect himself. He had feared this moment for so many years that, when it finally came, he hardly knew how to handle it.
    "I suppose you want money from me," he told her. "Well, I—"
    She cut him off in her cold cop voice.
    "I don't want money from you, Mr. Laird. I want us to talk heart to heart like a brother and sister in Christ. You and I have something pretty urgent to discuss."
    He sat there for a long long moment.
    "Mr. Laird?" she said.
    "All right," he said heavily. "Are you free for lunch?"
    "I'm free any time you are. I'm back in the city, and I'm unemployed."
    "Meet me at the Sumptuary at twelve thirty," he said. He gave her the address.
    Then he called the member of the city planning board with whom he'd planned to have lunch at the Four Seasons, and he postponed it.
    Mary Ellen and Liv had closed up the cabin and returned to Manhattan on Sunday afternoon.
    Liv still cried when she thought of Sam the kitten but she was basically happy with the time she had spent there, and with what she felt was a new atmosphere between herself and Mary Ellen.
    "I don't know exactly what it is," she said. "But I know that it is better. Maybe you needed to go to the cabin, Maiy Ellen."
    Mary Ellen had to agree. Of course, Liv would never know—she hoped—the reason for the shadow that had passed over them, unless Armando was so uncool as to tell Liv. But in some mysterious way, the whole affair had vented all her anger, drained all her bitterness. For the first time since her father's death, she felt at peace.
    Armando was mad at her for giving up the plan to "terminate" Jeannie Colter.
    She had told him bluntly, "If you want to kill her, you'll have to do it yourself. But look—isn't it better to try it this way? So maybe the whole country will see her giving up her homophobic crap of her own free will? They gave us a martyr, right? They gave us Danny. Is it really smart of us to make a martyr out of her for them? I don't think so. I don't think either of us was thinking too clearly right after Danny was killed."
    She had sat