Page 125 of Mother-Daughter Murder Night

Chapter Fifty-Three

“Jack! BOAT!”

No one could ever accuse Paul Hanley of running a tight ship. But there was one thing he insisted on all his employees doing properly: carrying a kayak. If he ever caught someone dragging when they should be lifting, or using their back instead of their knees, he’d rip up their time card. Jack had often heard Paul muse that it would be the perfect Olympic sport: synchronized kayak lifting. From the ground. From the water. From the racks. He trained his staff to do it all.

And so, on her mother’s command, Jack Rubicon, at 105 pounds, with a messed-up knee, lifted the double kayak from its hook, swung it around, and slammed it into Martin Rhoads.

The fiberglass hull made contact below his shoulder blades, driving through his jacket and lifting him off his feet. The gun and the lighter shot out of his hands, and Martin tumbled to a landing face-first by Lana’s side.

Jack watched as her mother scrambled to grab the gun, which skittered sideways toward the open door.

But it must have hit something. She heard a bang, and a scream.

Jack whirled around to see the barn wall behind Lana explode in a sea of fire.

It was fast, it was big, and it was everywhere. There was no dim copper glow anymore. Bright yellow-orange flames cartwheeled across the barn. Fire danced up the wall. The hay bales in the stall behind Lana were crackling, shooting sparks and jets of steam into the air. Her mom was screaming at her to get to the door. But her grandma was lying there in the middle of the chaos, the smoke and flames racing toward her.

Jack ran to Lana, ignoring the fire, ignoring her mother, ignoring the pain in her knee. Before she got there, though, she was thrown forward by a blast of pressure. A tremendous hiss filled the air and everything went white.

Chapter Fifty-Four

“Paul?”

Lana coughed, expelling smoke from her lungs. There was white dust everywhere, floating in the air, covering the stalls, as if someone had sprinkled the inside of the barn with powdered sugar.

“Not Paul.” It was a woman’s voice. Low. “You told me you were the one who had Paul, remember?”

Lana blinked, trying to clear the grit from her eyes so she could see.

“Ms. Rubicon. You can lower the shoe now.”

Lana looked down. Her field of vision was slowly expanding to encompass her body. She was half sitting, half lying on the ground, holding one of her spike heels to Martin Rhoads’s throat.

“Is he dead?” Lana blinked again, searching the smoky air for her daughter and granddaughter. She kept her grip tight on the shoe.

“He’ll be fine,” Beth said. Lana looked up.

“Jack knocked the wind out of him. With the kayak. She saved us all.”

Through the smoke, Lana could now see her daughter and granddaughter on either side of her, covered in white and gray dust.

There were two other figures in the middle of the barn. On the ground, Diana was bent over, her blond hair turned fully white. She looked broken, cracked, as if she’d aged a lifetime in an evening. The second person was standing, a red fire extinguisher in her hand.

“You came,” Lana said to Detective Ramirez. She dropped her arm, the one with the shoe, which poked into Martin Rhoads’s larynx. The man coughed, and Lana jolted back from him, letting his head bonk onto the dirt floor.

Martin clutched his head and groaned. He rolled onto his hands and knees, turning his head from side to side to shake the powder loose from his face.

Ramirez strode over and stood directly above him. “Martin Rhoads. You are under arrest for murder. Attempted murder. Arson. And a few other crimes.”

Lana watched the detective put handcuffs on him with a practiced snap of her manicured hands. She couldn’t have been prouder if she’d done it herself.

Soon, the ranch was lit up with a flotilla of cop cars and ambulances. Lana sat in the back of a fire truck, a metallic blanket around her shoulders, and watched, squinting, as Jack walked the sheriffs through the importance of the catcher’s mitt, the lone life jacket, and the black bag. They pulled five shovels, seven cattle brands, and two wheelbarrows out of the barn to test them for human blood.

Overseeing all the activity was Teresa Ramirez. The young detective stood in the center of the asphalt in tall black leather boots, spotlighted by the high beams from the trucks. The other officers, even Nicoletti, looked small in comparison. They scurried around like ants, approaching her with information and dashing off to do what she commanded.

After the first hour, there was a lull in the excitement. Diana was on her way to a private hospital. Martin was handcuffed in an ambulance, awaiting his fate. The Maserati and the barn were being meticulously picked over. The left side of Lana’s face was now completely numb from an ice pack, and the cold had sunk through to her bones. Even Beth and Jack looked exhausted, their adrenaline shot through. They were leaning up against each other, engaged in a slow, sleepy discussion about whether sailboats were more or less dangerous than murder investigations.

Lana glanced at her phone. It was time.