Chapter 7

“Everything is permissible,” her voice was so sweet and loving, “but not everything is beneficial.” The elderly woman smiled at me as I fidgeted in my small wooden seat. All the other little girls did like me. “Everything is permissible, but not everything is constructive. Paul tells us. He does not say Moderation in all things, but rather, everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Do you understand, Theodora?” I shook my head yes though I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Somehow the past and present all mingled together. “Is murder permissible but not beneficial,” I asked Mrs. Adams.

“No murder is a sin, punishable by the electric chair. Do you want to sit in the electric chair and fry Theodora?” she asked, her voice far angrier than I remembered. Never had Mrs. Adams’s spoken so mean to anyone. In a flash, I was all grown up, still sitting in that terrible, small seat.

“Murder is a mortal sin.”

“Theo, this Mrs. Randolph, and her companion practiced homicide quite often. Over the past several months in different cities around the country,” a curiously young Mrs. Adams gazed at me.

Can’t remember her young, not ever.

Mrs. Adams melted into Estelle Parsons Clark-Smith. Telling me what she never learned. “They have murdered prostitutes with the most monstrous glee. You’re a terrible sinner, Mrs. Randolph!”

“I am a lowly sinner, and I do not expect forgiveness. However, I don’t want forgiveness from you or anyone else, my love.” Mrs. Randolph spoke with a silken voice hissing her words like a snake, packed with venom.

My eyes snapped open, the knocking in my head doubled from before. A quite perplexing benefit, while my head ached, my back and legs didn’t. My God, I had been dreaming, and I remembered my unconscious flight of fancy. What the hades? Why was the world upside down?

Glancing up, well, no down, but I’m gazing upward. Oh, Lord, my world turned upside down. My dress clung around my holster. The police-special still hidden between my knees. But my hands were tied, dangled below my head. Swaying, I twisted about, giving me a birds-eye view of the room. First one way, returning to the other.

The executed bodyguards hung with me, and I suppressed the impulse to say hello to them. Tatty-tap-tatty-tap, drip, drip, the blood from the men splattered on the floor in a slowing drizzle.

Oh, my, Florence Randolph still fed the deviant food to her husband. And the bitch chastised the poor bugger.

“I’m a sinner, but at least I’m not a brainless twat of a private investigator,” Florence said. Added, “Let her down.”

I must’ve talked in my ... would you call my previous state, sleep?

Oh, yes, bring me to the floor. The blood rushing to my head caused my head to hurt more. The war in my brain raged on, with the blows knocking from every which side. Inside I screamed to God for someone to let me down.

With a slight jerk, I rose. Fowling this, I descended. A soft squeaking noise as the rope passed over the roller of the hoist. Pulling my arms up to my chest, I tucked my head. When I hit the deck, landing first on my shoulders, after this, my legs landed on the icy concrete. Almost immediately, I found myself flat on my back. Sitting up, I gazed at Mrs. Randolph, who stared back at me laughing.

“Persistent little, bitch, aren’t you?” She took a bite of the wicked meat from the spoon, chewed, swallowing the junk down. Smiling at me, she licked her lips, “You thought I needed protection from Alistair? How altruistic of you. Well, aren’t you the sharp one? Yes, you are. Hell, you’re the sharpest tool in the shed. Should-a took a hike, cookie.”

“Yes, I reckon, I underestimated you,” lying back to the floor as I spoke. My skirt hung on me, still hiding the holstered snub-nose. How the two lovebirds missed my gun, luck, providence, the divine hand of God? Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, I’ll take whatever or whoever guarded me. If she’s a guardian angel, she’s one busy cherub.

“You aren’t the first,” a voice from my right, Tommy ‘The Knock.’ What a fine pair of narcissistic sociopaths they were.

The room was chilly, not cold like the outer rooms, but cold enough to hang meat or bodies.

“Eat up, dear this is deep-fried blonde whore. Tell me, lover, do you like the flavor?” Mrs. Randolph kept asking her husband questions with her silky yet harsh voice. “Wouldn’t leave me alone to have my fun, would you. Grew a conscience and had to ‘intervene,’ well, sweetie-pie, do you enjoy eating whore à la Florence? I do,” she said, putting the spoon in her mouth taking another bite.

“And so, do I,” Tommy chimed in. he sat at a table, eating the same potion as his doll fed her husband. Straight up, this pair of loons were wacky, bad business. If they were in the army, they’d be out on a Section Eight. As they weren’t in the military if arrested and tried, they were so nutty they’d never be executed for their crimes.

The occasion called for me to end this thing. Despite my tied hands, my pistol was under my skirt, and I figured I would retrieve my .38. I supposed I might shoot them as well. I glanced where Florence stood and turned to where Tommy sat.

Well, hot diggity dog, Tomy had a firearm in his hand, my automatic. At least, I thought the weapon mine. Standing, he moved, gun still in his hand, with a ladle in the other. In two quick steps, he reached the pot and stirred the cooking meat. I’m sure the stew was guard’s à la insanity. They were nutty as a peanut farm, but they weren’t reckless. My hands were tied quite well, and I’d require some effort to loosen the ropes.

Her diatribe belittling her husband went on, unabated as she forced him to eat a disgusting stew of human remains. The aroma of the cooked meat was unlike any other fragrance. My interpretation of fragrance told me the stuff was unique and not the scent telling me anything.

Still, my stomach threatened to be overturned. The grotesque perfume was noxious to me in the extreme. The two lunatics took mouthfuls of their concoction, eating it down with delight. While her husband was forced to eat the meat, his disgust was palpable. Well, shows how wrong you can be.

You really don’t understand what the dark is until someone switches off the light.

I had to clear my head and plan my steps. I would have to sit up and fish the gun out of the holster swiftly. Tommy Alberto had to be first. I spied a weapon on the table next to her. Hell’s bells, this wasn’t going to be easy. They were on opposite sides. Suspicion would begin as soon as I sat up and went between my legs with my hands. Working my hands pressing against the ropes, oh, yes, they were loosening. I didn’t have to remove the cords, only make them lose enough to use my hands.

Twisting and turning my hands and wrist. The ropes stretched, a shade. Still, they were tight. To tight! I wouldn’t be able to draw the gun from the holster. Come on, Theodora, work the ropes make them loosen!

Moving as fast as I might, I sat. Reaching down, I moved my skirt out of the way, snatched the gun. I held the pistol in my hand, aiming at Tommy’s chest, and fired. The miscreant dropped to the floor, with his body jerking for a second, stilled.

I spun towards Florence while she moved for her own pistol. Without taking aim, I did a snapshot, hitting her shoulder. She picked up the gun, turned toward me. She fired, screaming obscenities.

The floor near me, exploded sending flakes of dust and shattered cement, and the whiz of the ricochet echoed.

Taking aim, I fired, hitting her again, this time, above her breast on her right side.

The bitch managed another volley, and I bullet whizzed by my ear. DAMN, too, close for comfort.

Steading my nerve, I aimed at her head, dead center. With her screaming bloody murder at me, I pulled my trigger while controlling my breathing. My volley landed in the middle of her forehead. As the back of Mrs. Randolph’s head exploded, blood and brains sprayed over the floor and wall behind her. Some blood and gray matter spattered across Mr. Randolph’s face and shoulders.

Florence Randolph’s hung straight. After a second or two, she slumped to the floor in a heap. The gun was still clutched in her hand. As she slumped to the floor, Mrs. Randolph pulled the trigger twice. The concrete sparked and jumped up as the rounds ricochet off without harm.

Out of nowhere, a groan took my attention, and I went to my right. Well, I’ll be dad-blamed fit to be tied, Tommy knelt on one knee, taking aim at me. Hell, I thought he died, I fired, this time hitting him square in the center of his chest. Down he went again.

Once satisfied he was dead, I lay back. Letting the gun fall to my side, I began to wrestle with the ropes, which bound my hands.

“Next time you have a problem, Mr. Randolph,” I said, using my teeth on the rope to help loosen them, “hire someone else!”

“I think I will pay you 20,000 more. Don’t you agree you have earned a bonus?” Alistair Randolph said.

Sitting up my hands-free, I nodded in agreement as I struggled with the ropes on my feet.