Chapter 15 - The Third Floorboard
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I didn't scream, and I didn't waste three seconds explaining to Diane.
In one silent, explosive motion, I snatched the heavy ten-inch forged-steel chef’s knife I had used to slice open the evidence box off the dining table, kicked off my heels so my feet wouldn't make a sound on the stairs, and sprinted up the carpeted parlor staircase two steps at a time while Diane dialed 911 and grabbed the fireplace poker!
As I rounded the top landing of the second-floor hallway, I froze for a fraction of a second.
Standing just inside the dimly lit doorway of Leo’s nursery—wearing a blue ConEdison utility jacket over black scrubs, with latex gloves on her hands and a capped glass vial and syringe already drawn from her pocket—was Brenda.
She hadn't come up here to hurt Leo first—she was standing by the nursery window looking down at the back garden stairs, waiting to inject me the second I came up to get my son from his nap so she could stage my death as a tragic overdose and burn the Mount Sinai SD card downstairs!
"Step away from that crib, Brenda," I said, my voice a low, lethal whisper as I raised the ten-inch steel chef’s knife at chest height, blocking the only doorway out of the room.
Brenda spun around. Behind her dark sunglasses, her eyes went wide with shock at seeing me already at the top of the stairs with a blade in my hand instead of drinking tea downstairs.
"Clara!" Brenda hissed, immediately backing two steps toward the crib where Leo was still sleeping soundly on his stomach. She held up the uncapped needle in her gloved right hand like a weapon. "Put the knife down and bring me the envelope from Greg’s box! If you take one step into this room, I swear to God I’ll drop this needle into the crib before you reach me!"
My heart slowed down into that terrifying, ice-cold arithmetic that had carried me since Christmas morning.
Ten feet separated me from Brenda. Three feet separated Brenda from the rails of Leo’s crib.
If I lunged at her across ten feet of rug, she could reach over the crib rail in half a second.
I needed her to take two steps away from the crib toward me.
"I already burned the Mount Sinai letter in the fireplace downstairs five minutes ago, Brenda," I lied smoothly, lowering the tip of the chef’s knife two inches and letting my shoulders slump as if I were terrified of the needle. "Wait—why would I give it to the police?! Look at the Boston file in my hand! If the police find out my father’s estate was tangled up with Evelyn Hayes’s insurance fraud in Boston, the Massachusetts court puts a constructive trust lien on my $3.7 million!"
Brenda stopped. Greed and self-preservation warred behind her eyes as she looked down at my left hand, where I was still clutching two pages of the Boston report.
"You... you didn't call the cops?" Brenda breathed, taking one slow step away from the crib toward the center of the nursery rug. "What about the micro-SD card Russo hid in the lamp?"
"Right here in my pocket," I whispered, reaching into my cardigan pocket with my left hand and pulling out a spare, blank black memory card from my digital camera—holding it out at arm’s length over the hallway threshold, six feet away from the crib. "Take it and go out the back garden door before Diane comes up the stairs. I don't care what you and Marcus did in Boston—I just want you out of my son’s room!"
Brenda’s eyes locked greedily onto the tiny black SD card between my fingers. Thinking she had me cowed, she took two quick steps forward away from the crib—putting herself five feet clear of Leo—and reached out with her left hand to snatch the card while swinging the syringe in her right hand straight toward the side of my neck!
She never had a chance.
I hadn't lowered the chef’s knife out of fear—I had lowered it to brace my wrist against my hip.
The instant Brenda’s fingers brushed the dummy SD card, I dropped the card, stepped inside the arc of her swinging right arm, and slammed the heavy flat steel pommel of the knife handle straight across the bridge of her nose while driving my left elbow viciously into her wrist!
CRACK!
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Brenda shrieked as cartilage snapped in her nose, blood spurting down the front of her stolen utility jacket as the syringe flew from her spasming fingers and skittered harmlessly across the hallway floorboards!
Before she could recover, I shoved her backward out of the nursery doorway onto the top stair landing—just as Diane Sterling came charging up the steps and brought the heavy brass fireplace poker down squarely across Brenda’s shin, sending the black-widow nurse tumbling head-over-heels down the padded carpet stairs to crash in a groaning, bleeding heap at the bottom of the foyer right as two NYPD squad cars screeched to the curb outside!
