The kitchen was big but cozy with lots of dark oak, used brick on two walls, a copper range hood, copper pots hung on hooks, and a dark blue, ceramic-tile floor. It was the kind of kitchen in which TV sitcom families worked out their nonsensical crises and attained transcendental enlightenment (with heart) in thirty minutes each week, minus commercials. Even to Laura it seemed like an odd place to be cleaning a weapon designed primarily to kill other human beings.
“Are you really afraid?” Thelma asked.
“Bet on it.”
“But Danny was killed because you were unlucky enough to wander into the middle of a drug deal of some kind. Those people are long gone, right?”
“Maybe not.”
“Well, if they were afraid that you might be able to identify them, they’d have come to get you long before this.”
“I’m taking no chances.”
“You got to ease up, kid. You can’t live the rest of your life expecting someone to jump at you from the bushes. All right, you can keep a gun around the house. That’s probably wise. But aren’t you ever going to go out into the world again? You can’t tote a gun with you everywhere you go.”
“Yes, I can. I’ve got a permit.”
“A permit to carry that cannon?”
“I take it in my purse wherever we go.”
“Jesus, how’d you get a permit to carry?”
“My husband was killed under strange circumstances by persons unknown. Those killers tried to shoot my son and me—and they are still at large. On top of all that, I’m a rich and relatively famous woman. It’d be a little odd if I couldn’t get a permit to carry.”
Thelma was silent for a minute, sipping her coffee, watching Laura clean the revolver. Finally she said, “This is kind of spooky, Shane, seeing you so serious about this, so tense. I mean, it’s seven months since . . . Danny died. But you’re as skittish as if someone had shot at you yesterday. You can’t maintain this level of tension or readiness or whatever you want to call it. That way lies madness. Paranoia. You’ve got to face the fact that you can’t really be on guard the rest of your life, every minute.”
“I can, though, if I have to.”
“Oh, yeah? What about right now? Your gun’s disassembled. What if some barbarian thug with tattoos on his tongue started kicking down the kitchen door?”
The kitchen chairs were on rubber casters, so when Laura suddenly shoved away from the table, she rolled swiftly to the counter beside the refrigerator. She pulled open a drawer and brought out another .38 Chiefs Special.
Thelma said, “What—am I sitting in the middle of an arsenal?”
Laura put the second revolver back in the drawer. “Come on. I’ll give you a tour.”
Thelma followed her to the pantry. Hung on the back of the pantry door was an Uzi semiautomatic carbine.
“That’s a machine gun. Is it legal to have one?”
“With federal approval, you can buy them at gunshops, though you can only get a semiautomatic; it’s illegal to have them modified for full automatic fire.”
Thelma studied her, then sighed. “Has this one been modified?”
“Yes. It’s fully automatic. But I bought it that way from an illegal dealer, not a gunshop.”
“This is too spooky, Shane. Really.”
She led Thelma into the dining room and showed her the revolver that was clipped to the bottom of the sideboard. In the living room a fourth revolver was clipped under an end table next to one of the sofas. A second modified Uzi was hung on the back of the foyer door at the front of the house. Revolvers were also hidden in the desk drawer in the den, in her office upstairs, in the master bathroom, and in the nightstand in her bedroom. Finally, she kept a third Uzi in the master bedroom.
Staring at the Uzi that Laura pulled from under the bed, Thelma said, “Spookier and spookier. If I didn’t know you better, Shane, I’d think you’d gone mad, a raving paranoid gun nut. But knowing you, if you’re really this scared, you’ve got to have some reason. But what about Chris around all these guns?”