“That’s not necessary,” Mize said.
“I insist,” I said.
Taking my eyes off Mize, I squeezed my phone, then crouched and set it on the carpet behind the ladder-back chair at the foot of the bed. With my left hand, I began working at the knots. My right thumb found the latch on the Ruger and I pressed it before I moved the gun to my left hand.
I made a sound of frustration, set the pistol on the bedspread, and set to work in earnest on the knots. I’d undone two and was stepping around Mrs. Striker when Mize dove on his belly, grabbed the Ruger, and aimed it at me, point-blank.
“I don’t know who you are, but I am going to enjoy killing you,” Mize said in Coco’s voice. “And don’t you move now, Pauline. We have unfinished business, you and I.”
“No, Jeffrey, I—”
Mize slammed the butt of the gun backward, hitting the side of Mrs. Striker’s head and opening up a rectangular cut that bled as she moaned.
“Why’d you do that?” I demanded.
“I needed her out of the way so you and I could have fun,” he said, coming off the bed, gun three feet from my chest. “Who are you?”
My mind was on overdrive, spinning through the little pieces of what I knew about Mize and the murders and what I’d heard coming up the stairs.
“Why kill me?” I asked. “I don’t fit your pattern. The mommy complex. Did you even have a father?”
“Shut up,” Mize said.
“It’s not difficult to understand you hating your mother and taking it out on these women,” I said. “Miranda, your mother, humiliated you right from the beginning, dressed you up like a girl until age…what?”
Mize glared at me, said nothing.
“I figure it had to be one of the few things that got you attention from her,” I said. “Women’s fashion and style were what you had in common. Maybe fashion was the only way you could tear Miranda away from all those men.”
“You don’t know anything about her,” Mize snarled.
“I know she spent a lot of money. I figure you barely inherited enough to keep up the house she left you. Or maybe, between your trust and the portrait commissions and your shop, you had enough money for a while. But recently the trust ran out, or the commissions stopped, or your shop began floundering. And it all got to be too much for you, didn’t it, Jeffrey?”
Mize seemed to be staring right through me now.
“So you went to the women who knew you, the women you’d painted before, the ones who reminded you of your mother, and you decided to let off a little steam.”
“Shut up, I said!” Mize shouted and he shook the gun at me.
“And maybe you stole money, jewels, and clothes from your victims, evened the score a little. All of them except Francie Letourneau; you took care of your maid because she was stealing from you, isn’t that right? Or, no, because she discovered your secret life as Coco, and—”
“Enough!” Mize screamed. He took a step closer and aimed the pistol at my face from less than a foot away. “Mother always said to get rid of pests fast!”
Chapter
73
I looked down the barrel of the Ruger, saw Mize’s slender feminine hand squeezing on the trigger.
“Freeze, Coco!” Detective Johnson yelled. “Drop the gun or I’ll shoot!”
“Don’t worry, Detective,” I said. “It’s not loaded.”
Mize’s flawless porcelain skin tightened over his exquisite cheekbones, and disbelief gave way to rage. He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He tried again—nothing.
He pulled the gun back as if he meant to chop me with it. Before he could, I slapped him silly, dazed him, and knocked him to the ground. Johnson was putting cuffs on him when Sergeant Drummond appeared, gasping for breath.
“Tough trip over the gate?” I asked.