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  Especially if he had to beat them out of Carlo. And Gio. And Claud. And Dalton. He didn’t think Dalton was guilty, but he wanted to hit him, anyway.

  There was no one at the ATM, so Mitch slid his card in without looking around and punched in his password.

  The machine beeped. “Access denied. Your account has been closed. Your card has been confiscated.”

  “What?” Mitch yelled at the machine. “It can’t be…” His card had worked fine the day before. Who could have…?

  Mitch pounded the ATM machine because he couldn’t get to the murderers. He’d had enough with the Big Three and their hobbies. Poisoning old men, beating up cars, shooting at Mae, destroying credit ratings…

  Mitch’s internal rant died on that last thought. Who the hell would try to kill him, and then get really mad and go after his credit card? What kind of master plan was that?

  And then it dawned on him.

  It wasn’t a master plan.

  It was three master plans.

  “I’ll be damned,” Mitch said, and turned to go back to Mae, only to see Carlo standing behind him.

  “No, you’ll be dead,” Carlo said, and hit him.

  Ten

  An hour later, Mitch still wasn’t back, and Mae faced facts: she was on her own. She’d spent most of the hour trying to decide how Armand’s vasectomy fit with the holes in the condoms, only belatedly realizing that Mitch wasn’t going to show up.

  The possibilities of what had happened were limited.

  One was that Mitch had gotten tired of the whole mess and had washed his hands of her. It was what a prudent man would do, but Mitch wasn’t prudent and he loved her. Not in a million years would he desert her.

  Another was that Carlo had given up beating up on Mitch’s car and had decided to beat directly on Mitch. This had the beauty of plausibility and previous attempts to recommend it, but even Carlo would have gotten tired of hitting him in an hour. If it had been just Carlo, Mitch would have been back by now. That theory was out, too.

  A third theory was that the police had picked him up for questioning. If that was true, Mitch would stay away for a while to keep them away from her, but sooner or later, he’d have to come home. If they followed him and found her here, he’d be in trouble as an accomplice. That would be bad.

  And then there was always the possibility that Armand really had been murdered, and the murderer had jumped Mitch and killed him.

  Mae really hated that one, so she opted for number three, which meant that the smartest thing she could do was get out of the apartment in spite of Mitch’s instructions. Waiting around for the police to follow Mitch home had no appeal whatsoever.

  She picked up her purse and set out for the only place in Riverbend where she might possibly be safe.

  She had a phone call to make.

  WHEN MITCH CAME TO, he found himself looking up at the severed head of Holofernes in Gio’s office. It didn’t seem like a good omen. Then he turned his head and saw his three least favorite people in the world.

  “Ah, Mr. Peatwick, with us at last,” Claud said from his vantage point in a nearby chair.

  “Where’s Mae Belle?” Gio demanded from behind his desk.

  “I’m gonna kill you next time,” Carlo promised, looming over him.

  Mitch reached up and touched his temple, and his hand came away bloody. He groaned and eased himself slowly to his feet, tottering as he stood, and then, as Carlo smirked at him for being such a wimp, Mitch sucker-punched him to the floor.

  “That’s for hitting Harold,” Mitch told him as he did the looming this time. “I still owe you for shooting my car, clubbing me on the head and almost killing Mae.”

  Carlo surged to his feet, and Mitch drew back his fist, and Gio yelled, “Wait.”

  Carlo and Mitch both froze.

  “He almost killed Mae?” Gio turned his little obsidian eyes on Carlo. “What did you do?”

  “Nothin’.” Carlo stuck out his jaw. “He’s lying. I wouldn’t hurt Mae. Ever.”

  “You couldn’t see her,” Mitch said. “That night at the storage shed, you were shooting at her not me. You came within an inch of killing her, you moron.”

  “Is this true?” Gio’s eyes impaled his grandson. “Did you do this thing?”

  “I shot at him.” Carlo’s face was mulish. “I never shot at Mae.”

  “He missed her by a couple of inches,” Mitch told Gio. “He thought he was shooting at me because she was wearing my jacket, but he almost killed her.” He shook his head. “You know, giving him a gun is not a good idea.”

  “No more guns,” Gio said to Carlo who glared at Mitch. “I want them all.”

  “You might want to take the knives away from him, too,” Mitch suggested. “There was that incident with the finger….”

  “You stay out of this,” Gio snapped, and Mitch said, “No.”

  Gio surged up out of his desk chair. “Nobody says no to me—”

  “Well, they do now,” Mitch told him. “I’ve had it with all three of you. Who do you think you are, anyway? All of you, yapping away about how you want to protect Mae, and then you do everything you can to get her arrested or, God knows, killed. The police are after her, a murderer is on the loose and you take out the only guy who’s protecting her.” He jerked his thumb at his chest. “Me.”

  Claud stirred in his chair. “There is no murderer, and we know about the police. We’ve retained a lawyer. Now, if you’ll—”

  “She doesn’t need your lawyer,” Mitch said, exasperated. “I got her a lawyer. She’s got everything she needs except me, and the only reason I’m not with her is because you guys think you’re in a Godfather movie.”

  “She doesn’t need your cheap shyster,” Gio began.

  Mitch turned on him. “He’s not cheap. He’s going to cost you a friggin’ fortune. I was going to cover it, but after this last trick you pulled, he’s going to bill you.”

  Claud narrowed his eyes, which made them essentially disappear. “And why would we pay for this lawyer?”

  “Because I finally figured out what the hell was going on here,” Mitch said. “And you are in deep trouble, all of you.”

  “Where is Mae Belle?” Gio demanded.

  Mitch felt his temper hit boiling and tried hard to keep the lid on it. “Well, she was at my place, but knowing Mabel, she’s hit the road by now, so I have no idea where she is, and that’s your fault, too, Grandpa, so don’t hassle me about it. You know, I could have figured out this whole thing a lot sooner if you hadn’t been playing your dumb Master of the Universe games.”

  “Aside from Carlo’s assaults, there is nothing—”

  Mitch swung around to glare down at him. “Oh, no you don’t, Claud. You’re in this as deep as he is. You should never have messed with my credit, Claud. Bad move.”

  “What credit?” Gio scowled. “Who gives a damn about your credit? I want—”

  “Forget it.” Mitch leaned over the edge of the desk and stared him down. “What you want doesn’t matter anymore. Mae’s been arrested for murder, which means somebody actually did kill Armand.”

  “Nonsense.” Claud dismissed him without a flicker of emotion. “You’re just protecting your job.”

  Mitch took a deep breath. “Claud, pay attention here. The police arrested Mae. They don’t do that because they’re bored. They do that because they think they can get a conviction. If there was any doubt at all that Armand had been murdered, they wouldn’t be arresting Mae. Trust me on this.”

  Claud stared at him as if Mitch had crawled out from under a rock, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I was pulling for you three as the killers because I could spare all of you without too much trouble. But I couldn’t make it work.” Mitch glared down at Carlo. “Carlo was stupid enough to slash my tires—” Carlo growled and Mitch braced himself for another punch “—but he wasn’t smart enough or rich enough or connected enough to get me evicted from my office.” Carlo stayed put, and Mitch t