“The one on top. And I swung it around and hit him right in the face. The coffeepot went flying and he went down hard on the kitchen floor. When he made to get up again, I knew he was probably gonna kill me, so I grabbed the spider that was setting on the stove and hit him again.”

“Spider?” Mike asked, looking very confused.

“It was just like this one,” Winnie said, getting up to fetch a large, black, cast-iron skillet, the kind you could use to fry two chickens at once. “It’s heavy, see?”

Mike lifted the skillet. “You’re right. It’s got to be ten pounds at least, maybe more.”

“Well I wasn’t sure that would keep him down for good, so I hit him again on top of the head. And by the time Arnie had bashed in the glass and come right in through the window to help me, I’d hit him another couple of times for good measure.”

“What did your brother do?”

“He checked to see if Red was a gonner, and he must have been because he just left him there. And then he scooped me up in his arms and drove me straight to Doc Knight’s office.”

“Not the hospital?”

“We didn’t have one then. Doc’s office was like a clinic. He had a couple of beds and he lived in the back, so he was always there.”

“And you had the baby?”

“I did, but not until Doc got me all stitched up. I was cut pretty bad from the ring Red wore when he went to the Municipal. It had these sharp edges, just in case he got in any fights.”

Hannah took another sip of her coffee to quell the sick feeling in her stomach. What kind of man would attack his pregnant wife? The coffee didn’t help, she still felt sick, and she swallowed hard.

“Anyways, right before Doc knocked me out, Arnie got me alone for a minute. He told me not to worry, and he’d take care of everything. And that’s what he did. I didn’t find out until I came home with the baby, but Arnie went back and rolled Red’s body in this big rug we had in the kitchen. He cleaned up the whole place so nobody would know what happened, and then he dragged Red out to his car and drove him over to the garage he used for a studio. I guess he must’ve chopped him up or something. Arnie never would tell me that part. But when he was dying, he told me he hid Red’s body in the base of that statue he made for the park.”