Ella dashed into the hallway and down the stairs. She skidded and practically fell at the base of the staircase, before scrambling towards the front door. She grabbed the massive door with both hands and pulled the handle.
The door didn’t budge. She looked for a deadbolt, but the lock required a key from the inside as well. She certainly hadn’t locked herself in. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the keys. Before she could even begin fumbling for the right one, a stern voice pierced the fusty mansion air.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Ella turned around. Safada stood at the other end of the hallway, the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge framed up behind her. Just like in the purloined photo stashed in Ella’s pocket, Safada held a rifle with a telescopic site mounted on the barrel, pointed straight at Ella.
“Stay where you are,” she commanded. No foreign accent whatsoever, no mangled syntax, no grammatical comedy. She looked like a dinner party assassin, wearing an emerald green designer dress.
“You’re supposed to be at the Concours d’Elegance.” Ella asked.
“Is that the best thing you can think of to say?”
Ella turned back to the door. “Mark,” she called.
“Stop, now! Or I’ll fire.”
Ella stopped. “Your accent, what…?”
“Mean you this, amiginha, little friend?” said Safada, reverting to her stilted, heavily accented speech.
Ella looked at her quizzically. “You’re a real fraud, huh?”
“I wouldn’t use the word fraud. Creative, maybe. Resourceful.”
Ella turned towards the front door again.
“Don’t move.” Safada’s tone could have chilled a class of first graders on their way to a petting zoo. “Don’t worry about him, it’s not as bad as it looks. And what’s with the wig? Who do think you’re fooling?”
“What happened to the innocent little Brazilian?”
She bristled. “I am Brazilian, and very proud of it.”
“Where did the perfect English come from?”
“Private schools, American-run.”
“So you came from money and you work as a maid?”
“It’s not that simple, and besides, have you seen me clean anything?”
Ella moved a step closer. “You’ve got a point.”
“I said, stay right there.” She steadied the rifle on her arm.
“And you spent time in the military as well?”
“Sharp shooter. How’d you know?”
Ella toyed with the photo in her back pocket. “I made a few inquiries.”
“Did it turn you on to go through my private things?” She looked down the barrel straight into Ella’s eyes.
“I found it, how shall I say, informative. Did Salchiço Grosso hurt you, Safada?”
She flinched. “I was engaged to the bastard. He lived in Rio, I met him while I was in the army. Then he started his so-called acting career and moved to the U.S. All those women, what sluts…”
Ella thought Safada was one to talk, but withheld comment.
“That’s why you went AWOL? You came after him?”
“How’d you know I went AWOL?”
She gestured with her head toward the front door. “My friend’s father is the state Attorney General. That’s called access, my dear. His office contacted the Brazilian authorities, and we found out a few things.”
“You wouldn’t have found anything under the name Safada da Silva.”
“What about Maria Castro Alves?
Safada shifted the gun, a look of surprise on her face. “So you’re smarter than I thought.”
“Actually, it was you who was careless. But you’re right, Safada’s name came up clean with the cops.”
“That name belongs to a dead nun. How was I careless?”
Ella smiled nervously. “The day I came for my first interview with Giselle, the day you made those strong drinks and flashed your tits?”
Safada nodded, a faint smile rising on her face.
“When I walked in on you and Elton, your purse was on the counter. I took the liberty of a quick peek, and saw an ID card with your picture and this Maria Castro name. From there we made the inquiries, but until now, finding out about Salchiço in your life, I still wasn’t sure.”
“He deserved it, sitting in the hot tub with that whore.”
“So you faked this whole illiterate immigrant act just to get back at him?”
Safada laughed, shifting the rifle to her other arm. “Not exactly. I learned before I met Giselle that she likes to hire innocents new to the U.S. And I needed a comfortable place to stow away.”
Ella slid forward another yard. “You wouldn’t shoot me here in Giselle’s hallway.”
Safada fixed her fierce green eyes on Ella. “Maybe not, but outside I would, or maybe you’ll fall off the cliff into the ocean. ‘I mean officer, I came home and found someone sneaking around, I was scared for my life.’”
“Why are you home early anyway?”
“It was time to take care of you once and for all. Conveniently you just happened to be here, though I admit I was thrown by the look alike car with drag boy in back.”
Ella came even closer. “So is it men or women, Safada? I’m curious. Why be so jealous of your man if you like the ladies as well? You seemed quite enthusiastic when we were…” Ella trailed off. The two women now stood separated by little more than the length of the gun barrel.
“Like I said before, I’m happy either way.”
“Why’d you kill Tiffany and Gordon?”
Safada stood very still.
“It was you who tried to kill me up on Twin Peaks. Even with a mask, I’d know your eyes anywhere.”
Safada sighed.
“Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“Giselle promised to leave me the mansion in her will, then she meets this idiot Sanjay, and it all changes.”
“You could never afford to keep it, even if she left it to you.” Ella stepped just past the barrel of the gun, never taking her eyes from Safada.
“Keep it? Who wants to keep it? I’d get a stepped up basis, and could sell it tax free. I’d get the hell back to Rio and show those snotty bitches a thing or two.”
“You’d be jailed if you went back.”
Safada laughed. “You obviously no nothing of Brazil, our little ways of getting things done, the jeitinho. With this kind of money,” she briefly took her hand away from the trigger, waving toward the richly paneled living room, “I wouldn’t have to worry about any legal problems whatsoever.”
“Safada,” Ella said quietly.
“What?”
“Being so close to you, it’s distracting..., uh, you may not believe this, but I enjoyed our little… our little interlude.”
Safada held Ella’s stare. “You’re lying.”
But something in Safada’s eyes told her she’d stuck a chord. “I never expected to like it so much,” Ella said. She raised one hand in a lazy, unthreatening manner, and placed it softly on Safada’s cheek.
“I’m pretty damn good, aren’t I?” Safada whispered, pushing her face against Ella’s palm.
Ella leaned forward to kiss Safada.
Safada closed her eyes in anticipation. Ella whipped her hand off Safada’s exquisite face and lunged for the rifle. “Not that good,” she wailed.
Ella grabbed the gun barrel with both hands but Safada still had a strong grip. The two women struggled, both desperately clinging to the gun. Ella grunted and nearly fell down as Safada tried to wrench the weapon back.
“You lying little….” Safada hissed. The gun went off. The report scared the hell out of Ella, and she saw Edgar Frackle explode out from his gilded frame over the fireplace.
Ella pushed back on the gun, throwing Safada off balance. With that split second advantage she managed to get the rifle away. Safada regained her stance and leapt forward. Ella hurled the rifle as hard as she could toward the giant plate glass window facing the Golden
Gate Bridge. The rifle twirled across the living room and smashed through the glass in a deafening shatter that destroyed the entire window. The rifle flew on, sailing out beyond the edge of the cliff. Ella felt the cold air rush in. Safada stopped in her tracks, breathing hard.
“Ahhhh,” she screamed, and rushed toward Ella.
Ella ran. She jumped through the newly open window, landing on the soft ground outside. Dancing around the most dangerous looking shards of glass, she took off along the cliff side of the mansion. She heard Safada’s quick breath racing along behind her as she ducked past giant juniper bushes and cypress trees.
She cleared the house and shot out onto the open lawn. Within a hundred feet she came to the little creek of Pekinese fame, and stopped cold in her tracks.
She heard a man yelling. “Ella…” She looked over toward the driveway and saw Mark standing there in the deepening twilight, not fifty feet away, the Giselle wig hanging upside down in his left hand. He still wore the frilly white blouse.
“Mark,” she yelled back. Safada ran up and stopped, looking first at Ella, then Mark. Her heels had come off at some point and she stood barefoot on the lawn in her elegant green dress.
“It’s all over now Safada, Giselle’s home,” Mark said.
A honking horn interrupted the tense scene. They all turned to see the massive gates swing open, followed by the powerful sweep of headlights emanating from Giselle’s own Maybach sedan. The colossal vehicle flew up the driveway and over the little bridge at a brisk clip. The wail of police sirens grew in the distance.
Safada looked at Ella. “Why did you have to sell this house?” she said plaintively. “She almost took it off the market after Tiffany Reynolds died.”
“What would you have done if it hadn’t sold, murdered Giselle?”
Safada shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows.
Giselle’s crackly voice shot across the lawn. “Safada, what’s going on? Why did you run off, you missed the Concours d’Elegance. And why did that mortgage broker call? He said you’re involved with all those murders.” Sanjay stood at Giselle’s side, supporting her elbow.
Elton got out of the car, looking sexy and relaxed as usual. “Safada?”
Safada looked at her employer off in the distance. Shrieking sirens approached the mansion gate in a psychedelic swirl of red and blue lights.
“The gig’s up, bitch. Next stop, San Quentin,” Mark said. “Oh god, I can’t breathe, the gas…”
Safada looked around like a cornered raccoon. She backed up toward the cliff.
“Safada, no,” Ella said.
“Wait, I didn’t mean…” Mark said.
“I’ll never go to jail.” She looked deeply into Ella’s eyes, a haunting, dazzling, sad gaze. She turned and ran pell mell into the shallow creek, swooping headlong over the falls into the murky darkness, arms outstretched like a suicidal Olympic diver. One of the powerful spotlights illuminating Frackle Falls caught the flash of her green dress as she descended into rocky eternity.
Chapter 16
For our exclusive Live interview, we now go Live to Action Eagle Eye in the Sky News Team 12’s Chirley Wixon, who’s Live in our studio with Ella Barker…Live!
Thank you, Thad, and welcome to Speak Out! Where newsmakers tell it in their own words, NO filter. We’re here this evening with Ella Barker, the owner and founder of San Francisco’s Barker Brokers Properties. At first, the police thought Ella was the Sea Cliff killer, even throwing her in jail. Ironically it turns out that Mrs. Barker is the force behind single-handedly solving the gruesome murders that shocked San Francisco’s close-knit real estate community.
Ella watched Chirley’s breathless introduction from a comfortable arm chair a few feet away. When Chirley mentioned Ella solving the crimes, her perky face contorted as if she’d swallowed a rancid oyster. Ella crossed her legs and put her hands in her lap.
Chirley finished her introduction and turned to Ella. In the glare of the bright television lights, the younger woman’s pert breasts stood out like metal cooking funnels under a tight yellow turtleneck.
It must have been so frightening, Ella, to be chased by a maniac killer through that seaside mansion, I can only imagine.
With that, Chirley leaned forward and placed her hand on Ella’s knee. Ella lifted Chirley’s hand by the wrist, putting it back in her lap.
Well Chirley, to start with, not everyone thought I was responsible for the murders, only a few certain…
Ella, we’re getting off track. What everyone wants to hear about now is how you were nearly murdered by Giselle Frackle’s foreign maid. Why didn’t you have a body guard? You had to be next in line to die, it seems so obvious.
I meant to get one, it was being arranged, but I couldn’t just stop living life, could I?
I think that’s exactly what could have happened, Ella. Tell us about your suspicions. How did you beat the cops to the punch?
Well, the day I…
Chirley changed position and she listened with great intensity, eyes wide open. Suddenly she looked up and put her hands on her hips.
I’m sorry to interrupt you, Ella, but hold that thought for just a minute. We have someone here to help you tell the story. Mark Allen, come on out.
Ella looked around to see Mark coming out from the wings. While not pleased with the element of surprise, she smiled upon seeing her friend stride confidently onto the set. He sat down in a chair next to the beaming Chirley. The beginnings of a goatee covered his chin and Ella thought he looked very handsome.
Thad, we have with us Mark Allen, Ella Barker’s close friend and decorator to the stars.
Mark looked at Ella in mock surprise.
Mark, tell us, how did you happen to call the police when Ella was sleuthing around inside Giselle Frackle’s mansion? And what in the world were you doing wearing a big, blonde wig?
Actually Chirley, I’m an interior designer, not a decorator.
Uh huh, Mark, we understand that, now did Safada da Silva knock you over the head, is that why were you covered with blood when the cops arrived?
I wasn’t exactly covered with blood. I saw Safada coming at me, and she did knock me on the side of my head, with I don’t know what. I bit my tongue, which caused a little bleeding.
Chirley looked disappointed with this response.
So you called the police when you came to?
That’s right, Chirley.
Unbelievable, you two are SO brave, disguising yourselves and breaking into someone’s home.
Chirley turned back to Ella.
Ella…
Chirley, we did not break into the Frackle mansion. I had reason to believe, now fully justified, that my life was at stake. I was trying to prove who the killer…
I think we all know that by now. What I want to ask you next is to explain the video we’re about to see.
The monitors positioned around the studio came to life. They showed Ella standing at the edge of the cliff the day of the Frackle mansion open house, arms raised in the air, yelling “I am a sinner,” over and over. The screen went black after 15 interminable seconds.
What is that all about, Ella?
Mark chimed in. Yes, Ella, I’m curious myself.
Well Chirley, Mark, I had a kind of realization when that poor little dog was swept over the falls…
Did you have anything to do with the dog’s death?
Ella responded through clenched teeth.
No Chirley, I did not. It just caused me to start thinking about my priorities, and what…
But Ella, tell me, speaking of priorities, you do stand to make a lot of money from the sale of the Frackle mansion, isn’t that so?
Ella stared at Chirley, nearly speechless.
I don’t talk about my income to anyone Chirley…
When’s the big day, Ella? You might want to open an account at a new bank, your present one might not have enough room, ha, ha ha…Seriously, were you having an affair with Safada da Silva?
<
br /> No! I’m here tonight because this news broadcast unfairly maligned my good name…
Hold your horses, Ella.
Chirley put a hand up to one ear, staring ahead with blank eyes.
My producers are telling me we’re out of time. Thank you both so much for coming on Speak Out! and clueing our viewers in on this exciting story.
*******
A light, evening mist covered the road when Ella swung the Mercedes onto Roberta and Starka’s street. She’d picked up the S600 from the body shop earlier that afternoon, and it sparkled in unblemished splendor once again. She pulled down the visor as she shifted into Park, the light from the vanity mirror illuminating her tired face. Brushing a strand or two of hair out from in front of her eyes, she looked at the file lying on the passenger seat. She took a deep breath, grabbed it and got out of the car.
The early evening darkness did little to hide the fire’s mess once she got closer. Roberta and Starka Littlefeather-Jones’ new home lay in charred ruins, with mounds of blackened wreckage piled up in the driveway. A cracked toilet here, a messy stack of burned two-by-fours there. What remained of the house reminded Ella of news images that flashed annually across television screens in wildfire prone California. Just a few burned remnants still stood, and the brick chimney pointed all alone to the sky, the single element of the home steadfast enough to resist the searing temperatures and fatal lick of flame.
Inside the “handyman” motor home parked permanently in the driveway, a couple of dim lights glowed. Ella heard loud arguing coming from behind the plywood façade, and recognized Roberta’s belligerent tone. Ella climbed the portable metal steps. She stood for a moment clutching the file, then reached up and knocked on the flimsy door. A diamond ring she’d bought on impulse the week before flashed in the soft spread of the streetlights. She pulled it off her finger and slipped it into a pocket.
The door creaked open. Starka stood there wearing a heavy parka. Her eyebrows arched in surprise.