Beauty Queen

followed, her hand in her bag, holding the gun hidden under the flap of the bag. In another minute—zip! zip! and the Hammer would be dead, killed by one billion of her victims, past, present, and future, all their uneasy spirits crying out from the grave for revenge, one billion gay ghosts haunting the corridors and bedrooms of the castle of Western civilization.
    Where the motherfucking Jesus was Armando?
    They went into the cemetery. Nothing very spooky about it—a lot of gravestones crowded together in the dark, like empty cardboard boxes piled up in the back room in a supermarket. Mary Ellen had always yawned through graveyard scenes in horror films.
    She leaned against a tall Victorian marble angel as she watched Jeannie wend her way among the graves. The smell of wet grass and moss was fresh in her nostrils. Her brain was very clear, like a dark crystal receiving powerful signals from a far star and transmitting them to an atomic-powered computer for Earthlings to read.
    Jeannie sat down on the edge of an eroded colonial headstone, and stared at her mother's grave, clasping her raincoat tightly around her.
    Down the drive, by Route 22, Mary Ellen could see the headlights of a car slowly turn in. It was about time. But she waited to make sure it was the dark-green Pinto, and not another car. Her hand slowly drew the Beretta from her bag. With the silencer, it looked long and menacing in the dark, like one of those ray-guns they used in sci-fi films.
    Jeannie Colter had less than sixty seconds to live.
    Jeannie didn't even notice the car coming—she was crying. The car definitely had the silhouette of a Pinto as it ■rounded the comer of the trees and came slowly into the parking lot. The headlights played harshly over the cemetery, backlighting all the graves and the bent figure of Jeannie Colter.
    Now, Mary Ellen thought.
    And then an important thought came through the dark crystal.
    It was one of those thoughts that you got in police work, when you wondered why you hadn't thought it before, but once you had thought it, you knew—with all the power of your hunter's instincts—that it had to be the correct and only thought.
    Bill Laird could know that she attended the MCC with her lover ... if he had been there himself.
    Quickly she slipped the gun and the silencer back in her bag and latched the bag shut.
    Armando had parked the car close to the cemetery, shut off the lights, and leaned his head against the window, pretending to be asleep.
    Slowly she walked toward Jeannie Colter. Now a hot sweat was breaking out all over her, as she thought of the close call she had had. Liv, everything, so close to being lost forever, when there was a better way to do it. Jeannie had stopped crying, and was searching in her handbag for a handkerchief.
    "What's the problem?" Mary Ellen asked.
    "Oh . . ." Jeannie found something, and blew her nose. "Tom has quit, and some of the others are mad at me. My dad ... no one seems to understand."
    "Understand what?"
    "That the homosexual thing is special. That I can't give it up. That I've been called to do it."
    "Why do you hate the homosexuals so much?" "Wouldn't you like to know?" Jeannie said, getting up, brushing off her raincoat. "I guess we'd better go home."
    As they walked past the car, Mary Ellen could see Armando sitting slumped in there, pretending to be asleep. He must really be puzzled. Mary Ellen gave the agreed-upon abort signal. She reached up twice and rubbed her head. "Wonder who that is, in that car?" said Jeannie.
    "Looks like he's asleep in there," said Mary Ellen. "He was probably falling asleep at the wheel so he pulled in here to take a nap."
    Fifteen minutes later, they were back at Windfall. They sat in the empty kitchen. Jeannie made herself a cup of hot milk, and Mary Ellen poured herself a cup of bitter leftover coffee. Jeannie looked haggard, with dark circles under her eyes.
    When Jeannie had gone upstairs to bed, Mary Ellen sat in the kitchen writing a note.
    Dear Jeannie,
    I guess it's one visit too many to the cemetery for me. Anyway, the craziness around here is beginning to get to me too. So, effective immediately,
    I won't be working for you anymore. Please send my last few days' pay to my home address in New York.
    Sincerely,
    Mary Ellen
    Softly, as the house full of people slept, she packed her few things, got in her car and left.
    Dawn was just breaking over the rolling wooded hills. The clearing skies bared streaks of blue. She breathed