"No, you didn't!", Clinton began. Then stopped. Then began again. "OK, this has gone on far enough. I came here to talk about books. If we can't deal one way, we'll deal another. I want to see the books. Now. Which one of you is going to take me to them?"
The situation had changed a great deal in the last five seconds. Clinton now had a gun in his hand. It must have been in his coat pocket. He was waving it from one to the other of us. From some secret well of courage I didn't know I had, I took the floor.
"I don't know anything about them. Rita knows where they are."
Clinton swung the gun towards her and said something abut her taking him to them or him shooting her or something to that effect. I realized what I had just done to Rita and tried to make up for it by leaping over the coffee table at the temporarily distracted Clinton.
I have no idea what would have connected had my leap worked. I had one foot behind a chair leg, so the great leap didn't go as planned. The chair went over backwards and I landed head first onto the coffee table. Clinton whirled back towards me and the gun went off just as the lights went out.
Rita and I had carefully arranged the lighting for effect. The only light was a table lamp which was on the coffee table so we could see Clinton's face clearly while we accused him. He was supposed to give himself away. It even worked.
But now the lamp was on the floor and I was on the remains of the coffee table and all I was thinking about was the terrific roar of the gunshot. I never realized how loud those things are. Then I felt something warm and wet trickling down my back and side. "Oh my God, I'm bleeding. I've been shot." I thought, "So this is what it feels like to die."
Then the ceiling light went on and I could see Clinton at the switch by the stairs. He went up the stairs looking for Rita.
After a few moments, I realized that I wasn't dying, and that other than a few bangs and bruises I was OK. I got up from the broken coffee table and eventually, once more, thought of Rita and the guy with the gun.
Call the police. Search for the cell phone. What was the number for the police in this town? Oh, yeah. 9-1-1 I called it.
"There's a guy with a gun trying to shoot us! Please come quick!"
"Where are you, sir?"
"I don't know. Wait. Do you know where George Honeycut lives? Or rather, lived? In a big old empty house. Close to downtown."
"I have a George Honeycut living at 327 Pine Street. Would that be it?"
I still didn't know. But I told her, "Yes. And please hurry. He is going to shoot Rita. He is going to shoot me, too. He already shot me!"
"We have an officer en route right now, sir. Is anyone hurt?"
Just then I heard another one of those ear splitting bangs pistols make and dropped the phone.
I didn't want any more to do with that gun, but if Clinton thought I was dead, maybe I could sneak up the stairs behind him. I looked for something to hit him with and found a coffee table leg, broken off in the collapse. It didn't seem like much, but might at least distract him. Who knows?, maybe I could hit him twice with it? So holding my short club in the very best club-holding manner, I tiptoed up the stairs.
I just made it to the top and was peeking around the corner into the hallway when I heard Clinton screaming to Rita, "Show me the books, right now."
Just then we all heard the siren. Clinton whirled around, saw me, and fired off that damned canon of his. He was quite getting into the spirit of the thing, and I was getting used to it. He was coming right at me through the smoke and I dived down trying to avoid being shot and trying to get back down the stairs. I had my eyes closed when he kicked me. Actually, He wasn't trying to kick me. He stumbled over me and was falling down the stairs when the police came through the front door, guns drawn. I stayed very still, expecting more guns going off, but it didn't happen. When I opened my eyes, Clinton was lying on his stomach on the living room floor with those plastic handcuffs on his wrists behind his back and the police were looking every direction for more people with guns.
Later on, after more cops had arrived, we were all gathered into the living room to explain what had happened. Basically, it boiled down to us accusing Clinton of poisoning some old man and Clinton trying to shoot both of us over it. The police calmed down quite a bit once the inventory of guns was completed at exactly one, belonging to Clinton, in in their possession. Clinton wasn't saying much, but he was sure mad!
The police were just starting to acquire some interest in the books, and wondering what that was all about when I cut in and asked Rita,
"Ok, Rita, I did my part. Now where are the books?" She said, "Follow me." and we all trouped up the stairs again. She walked to the center of the hallway, pointed to the wall, and said, "in there."
"In where?" I said.
"In there. Behind the wall. There is a middle bedroom behind this wall. I covered the doorway with sheetrock a couple of months ago. Anyone got a hammer? or a wrecking bar?
A policeman was sent to get a small wrecking bar out of his cruiser. She whacked the wall very professionally making a six inch slice in the sheet rock. Then she put her hands into the slit and pulled out the panel. It came off in several large pieces revealing a wooden door.
"I had to take the knob off to make room for the sheet rock. The molding, too. The knob is in a drawer in the back of the storage shed.
The same officer who got the wrecking bar was sent to get the knob. While he was gone, I asked Rita how she had done such a good job hiding the doorway. After all, the house had been searched thoroughly several times, and most of the furniture had been removed by movers, so everyone had had plenty of opportunity to see the tiniest imperfection.
"I used to be a sheet rocker. Actually, only a helper, but I learned how to do it. I did pretty good, too. I painted the whole hallway to cover my tracks. I knew Clinton was up to no good, and that George was blind in more ways than one, so I told him what I was going to do. He laughed. He thought it was funny, my doing that. I think that's half the reason he wouldn't talk about the books to Clinton. He wanted to see if Clinton could find the books. He just didn't believe I could do it.
The officer had come back with the doorknob. Rita put the shaft into the square hole in the door and opened the door. When she reached just inside the door to turn on the lights, we saw a room full of books. There were leather bound volumes in glass fronted bookshelves on all four sides of the room, wherever there was wall space for them.