A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2) (28 page)

A few seconds ticked by, and I began to shiver, but not necessarily from the cold. Clay moved over and placed the tip of the silencer against my temple. I flinched. A moment later, Doe stepped out from behind a tree on the other side of the newly dug grave.

“No need for that,” she called out. “C’mon, Blair. The jig’s up.”

Blair finally emerged from behind the large marble headstone. She stepped into the shallow light carrying the baseball bat, snow blanketing her blond hair.

“Drop the bat,” he ordered. She tossed it forward, and it fell to the ground with a soft thud.

“Get over here next to your friend,” he said, gesturing with the gun.

He stepped back, while Blair moved next to Doe on the other side of the hole.

“Okay, now hand over Dana’s cell phone,” he said, holding out the flat of his hand to me.

I looked at Doe and Blair, thinking this was the one piece of evidence we had that could tell the police who did it. “I don’t have it with me,” I lied. “I left it at the Inn.”

“I don’t believe you,” he snapped again. “And if you don’t hand it over, I’ll shoot you in the knee and then various other parts of your body, until you do.”

His hand shook as his anxiety rose. I took a deep breath. His face was like an iron mask in the low light, and his eyes bulged behind those coke-bottle lenses. He was serious.

I reached into my pocket and tossed the phone to him, hoping he’d drop it, and we could rush him. But even though he had to reach for it, he was able to grab it mid-air.

Damn!

“Well, now that that’s done, what’s next? Oh, yes, I have to kill you.”

“But…” I blurted. “What about Tony? Is he part of this, or not?”

I needed to keep him talking. Time was our only ally at this point – well, that and Rudy, wherever she was.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. No,” he snarled. “I hacked his email, just like I did yours. It was the best way to get her outside,” he said, gesturing to Dana. There was a short, spritely jingle from Dana’s phone. He stopped and reached into his pocket and took it out. Even from where I stood, I could tell the phone had lit up. “What the…?” he said. As he studied the phone, Doe inched sideways toward him, while Blair stepped over to where the bat was and got it in between her feet. Meanwhile, Clay ran his fingers across the edge of the phone to turn it off again. “There,” he said, looking up. He was about to drop it in his pocket, when once again, it jingled. “Shit! What the heck?” He glanced at the screen and then up at me. “What game are you playing? What did you do to the phone?”

“Nothing,” I replied honestly. But I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who was toying with him.

“The text message just changed. It now says there’s a storm coming,” he said.

I smiled. And then
my
cell phone rang.

“Don’t answer that,” he ordered with a jerk of the gun. “Give it here.”

As I reached into my pocket, he stepped around the end of the grave toward me. He put Dana’s phone in his pocket and took mine, moving back to the end of the gravesite. Meanwhile, Doe and Blair had moved another several inches in his direction, Blair sliding the baseball bat along the snow-covered grass. He quickly turned my phone off. Almost immediately, it flicked back on and rang again. He glared at me. “What the hell game are you playing?” he screamed. “How are you doing that?”

“Doing what? You can see that I’m not doing anything.” I held my hands up as evidence.

“The same message just showed up on
your
phone.” His hand was shaking even more now.

“Oh, that. It’s not me,” I said, nonchalantly. “It’s my mother.”

“That’s a crock. Your mother is dead.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. She
is
dead.”

Doe’s phone rang. His head and gun jerked in her direction. She took a step back and raised her hands. “Careful! Do you want me to get it?” she asked with a nervous edge to her voice.

He was breathing hard now, his anger morphing into fear. “No. Maybe I’ll just kill all of you right now.”

“Better dig a deeper grave,” Blair said, nodding at the hole.

Dana tried screaming through the duct tape at that.

“Get over there next to your friend,” he ordered with a jerk of the gun. Doe and Blair looked at me and then back at him. “Go!” He jerked the gun again to indicate he wanted them to circle the other end of the grave. They carefully stepped around the hole, leaving the bat behind.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, stalling for time.

“I’ll figure something out. I haven’t come this far to let a bunch of old women stop me.”

There was a loud click. The lamppost at the back of the property suddenly burst into life, bathing the area right in front of it in light.

Clay spun around. “Shit.”

“The power is coming back on,” I said. “Better think quickly.”

We were still cast in deep shadow, but lights in houses on the far side of the cemetery had also come on.

“Yeah, Clay,” Blair said. “Pretty soon the whole world will be able to see what you’re doing.”

“Shut up!” he snarled, turning back. “I need to think.”

Clay glanced behind him. He was nervous. I wondered if it was the power company or my mother. The three of us now stood in a row on the north side of the grave. I was close enough to Doe to feel her reach into her left pocket. And then I felt something cold and hard being slipped into my hand. It was her cell phone. I wrapped my fingers around it and shot her a curious look. She nodded towards Clay.

She wanted me to throw it.

He was staring into the hole, concentrating on his predicament. So I wound up and threw the phone. Doe and I started forward, ready to rush him, but the phone flew right past his left ear, making him snap his head up. “That’s it!  I’ll just kill you all and leave you here,” he yelled, bringing up the gun.

Twang!
The opening chords of Jimi Hendrix’s iconic guitar reverberated out of the darkness around us, like something from a horror movie.

“What?” he cried, spinning towards the sound, the gun wavering.

A large rock whizzed out of a bank of bushes. He swerved to miss it, but it grazed his shoulder, knocking him off balance and dislodging his glasses. The gun went off, making us all flinch. Clay regained his composure quickly.

“Come out, or I’ll kill your friends!” he screamed, pointing the gun at the bushes.

A second rock came quickly on the heels of the first. I watched it emerge from the shadows as if in slow motion, praying that it would hit its mark. But it didn’t come slow. It came so fast, Clay didn’t have time to move. The fist-sized projectile smacked him right between the eyes with a sickening thud. His body stiffened. The gun dropped to the ground, and he toppled backwards into the grave.

“Whoohoo!” Blair shouted. She ran around and grabbed the gun and pointed it into the hole.

“Careful, Blair,” Doe warned her.

“I’m not going to shoot him. Just watch him. You guys get Dana,” she said.

Doe and I hurried around to the other side of the grave, just as Rudy climbed out of some bushes with a shit-faced grin plastered across her face. “Don’t tell me I haven’t got it anymore,” she said, rotating her shoulder.

We all laughed. “You have it in spades,” Doe said.

I had just taken the tape off Dana’s mouth when Rudy got there to help.

“Are you kidding me?” Dana blasted, twisting her head up to glare at Rudy. “Your plan was to hit him with a rock? What if you’d missed? We could all be dead.”

Dana rolled to one side, offering her hands to Rudy. “Here, get my hands first,” she ordered.

Rudy crouched down to remove the bindings, but glanced up at me with a look of resignation.

“Rudy,” I warned. “Don’t…”

But as the forlorn sound of a siren sounded in the distance, Rudy put both hands under Dana’s hips and rolled her face-first into the grave.

“Oops,” she said with a sly grin.

Blair watched and then spit out a laugh. “Good shot, Rudy.”

Doe and I stepped up to the grave. “Oh, dear,” Doe said.

“Get me out of here!” Dana gave a muffled cry.

Blair and Rudy gave each other a high five, as Dana cried out again from where her face lay nestled in Clay’s crotch.

“Just relax, Dana,” Blair said with a laugh. “You’re safe. I don’t think that gun will be discharging anytime soon.”

It was just a week after we’d hauled Dana out of her makeshift grave and helped to put her husband in jail. Roger had been found in a seedy motel in downtown Seattle and booked on conspiracy charges. And Goldie had offered to hold a kick-off party for Tony Morales’ campaign for Mercer Island mayor.

The gnome home was all lit up for the festivities. We were gathered in her enormous rec room on the ground floor that looked out on Lake Washington. Little red and blue gnomes peeked out from behind picture frames, canisters and clocks, while an entire army of them lined a three inch shelf that ran the perimeter of the room, two feet from the ceiling.

Goldie and Ben had traveled the world, making their home a virtual museum of collectibles from other countries. Everywhere you looked was something that could spark a conversation, including a set of beer mugs from the pub in Boston that had served as the inspiration for the TV show,
Cheers
. And the furniture was an eclectic mix of leather and upholstery, plus some odd pieces brought home from faraway lands. This included an ottoman I was sitting on, that had been made to look like an elephant’s foot.

Both Tony and his wife were there, along with their ten-year old daughter. Tony had purposely gone public with the news about his wife’s college employment to avoid any campaign shenanigans. In the end, no one cared. We’d also learned that he’d asked Trudy to spy on Dana, only to find out if she was going to oppose the Mayor’s proposal for an adaptive playground for both able-bodied and disabled children. Given her propensity to lavish her ill-will on Tony’s physical limitations, he wanted to be prepared.

While Dana had decided not to attend the party, she
had
publicly endorsed Tony’s candidacy. But besides that, she had largely gone underground. I suspected she would make good on her word and pull up stakes soon and move to another city, if not another country. I couldn’t blame her.

Once everyone was assembled, Mayor Frum stood up and tapped his glass to get our attention. I was holding a small paper plate in my hands, filled with veggies and dip. The ottoman had been placed right next to the end of the sofa, where Blair sat, her long legs stretched out in front of her. Sitting next to her on the strange ottoman, I felt like her little sister, relegated to the kids’ table at Thanksgiving.

I listened attentively while nibbling on a carrot, as Tony gave a short, scripted speech. Just as he was finishing, I decided to lean back and cross one leg over the other. Little did I know that the bottom of the elephant’s foot wasn’t flat
or
solid. It was slightly rounded. So, as applause rose to signal the end of Tony’s speech, I slowly rolled backwards into a potted plant.

I took the plant down with a crash and ended upside down with my butt in the air. Thankfully, I was wearing pants. There were gasps and cries of alarm, but I righted myself, popped up and assured everyone I was fine.

“Really, Julia?” Blair whispered. “This isn’t about you anymore. It’s about Tony. Get a grip.”

Doe and Rudy were on the other side of the room, and while Doe’s expression was one of concern, Rudy just shook her head as a nice gentleman helped pull me to my feet.

“Sorry, I said, blushing. “Please continue, Tony.”

“Well, Julia deserves a round of applause,” Tony said. “If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here tonight announcing my candidacy for mayor. So, thank you, Julia.”

Everyone joined in, making me blush even more. I leaned over to retrieve my plate and scattered veggies, when I noticed that David, Angela and Detective Abrams had just come downstairs. Thank God they’d missed my acrobatic stunt. I straightened my blouse and made my way over to them.

The girls followed me, and we took drinks and fresh plates of hors d’oeuvres upstairs to the living room.

“So Clay was the mastermind all along?” I asked.

We’d settled around a small table, ready to debrief. Detective Abrams had just grabbed a chicken skewer. “Looks that way. His collection agency was underwater, big time. Seems he overextended himself by opening two other offices – one in Renton and the one in Bellingham. Anyway, he needed an infusion of cash. But Dana controlled her own assets and refused to loan him any money.”

“Maybe that’s why she wanted a divorce,” I said.

“That, and he was having an affair with his controller,” David interjected.

Gasps all around.

“Anyway, he wasn’t about to let her get away with all that money,” Detective Abrams continued. “So he had to act fast. And…he knew about her first husband, the abuse, and the pictures.”

“He knew about the nude pictures?” Blair said in surprise. “And he never said anything?”

“Apparently he figured he could use that information to his own advantage at some point. He even had copies made, just in case Dana got rid of them.”

“Which she did,” I said.

“Well, his opportunity came when he met Al Dente at the Emory Auto Shop. It turns out Dente served prison time with Dana’s ex-husband.”

“Huh? No way,” Blair exclaimed. “What are the odds?”

“Prison is a small world,” Detective Abrams said with a shrug. “That kind of thing happens more often than you’d think.”

“Is that how Dente learned about the abuse?” Doe asked.

“I doubt it,” Detective Abrams replied. “Believe it or not, child abusers aren’t tolerated well in prison. They often end up dead. Remember that Vince Fragel went to prison for embezzlement
and
under a different name. So that’s probably all that Al Dente knew about him, at least until Finkle came into the picture.”

“But why would Clay Finkle ever become partners with Al Dente?” Rudy asked. “It’s not like the two could have much in common.”

“Actually, they had something very much in common,” David said, speaking up. “Finkle isn’t talking, but his girlfriend is. Apparently, he and Dente knew each other in high school. They lost touch, but when Finkle took his car into the auto shop a few months ago, the two got reacquainted. It wasn’t until Big Al saw Dana, though, that he made the connection to Vince Fragel, and he realized his old buddy Clay Finkle was married to his cell mate’s ex-wife,” Detective Abrams said. “It was probably Finkle who told Dente about the child abuse back in Vancouver.”

“But how did they find out about Roger?” I asked.

“As it turns out, Roger was being honest,” David said. “He
was
one of Vince’s boys, and Clay figured it out from a picture on Roger’s company website. When Roger was young, he had a recognizable birthmark on his cheek.”

“The swoop!” I said.

“Right. But he was in a car accident a few years ago and after reconstructive surgery, the birthmark disappeared.”

“And the picture on the website was before the accident?” Blair asked.

“Yes. But the birthmark matched a picture of one of the boys in Dana’s possession. And when Clay realized it, he had Dente try to recruit him.”

“So Big Al wasn’t one of Dana’s boys?” Doe asked.

“Nope. He only posed as one to gain Roger’s trust. They needed Roger for a couple of reasons. First, he installed the alarm system at the library, where they planned the murder. They wanted to use it as a means of escape. That’s why no one saw Dente leaving the property. He had dismantled the alarm and snuck inside, only to go out the backdoor. And secondly, they hoped to set Roger up for the murder itself. Remember the note we found at the library?”

We all nodded.

“It said, ‘Ain’t karma a bitch?”

“Meaning the child abuse,” I said.

“Right. They hoped to wrap this all around the fact that at one time Roger had been one of Vince Fragel’s boys. But Roger resisted getting involved, so Dente threatened to expose him and eventually wore him down. By the way, we also found an employee at a hardware store in Renton that recognized Dente. That’s where he bought the hammer that killed Trudy Bascom.”

“And for what it’s worth,” Detective Abrams said. “We not only found Dente’s fingerprints on one of those Smithwick’s bottles you found, we found the place where he bought them.” He suppressed a smile as he reported this.

“So we helped,” Blair said, prodding him.

He turned his dreamy blue eyes in her direction. “Yes. I have to admit that you did.”

Blair’s grin lit up her face.

“So what about Vince Fragel? Did he have anything to do with any of this?” I asked.

David shook his head. “We don’t think so. He’s been living in Kent and saw Dana’s picture on the news when Trudy was killed. It’s the first time he even knew Dana lived in the area. But he hasn’t been back to his house, so we still haven’t found him. We learned all that we know about him from one of his neighbors.”

“So Finkle recruited Dente, who recruited Roger, who never knew about Finkle?” Rudy said, trying to get it all clear.

“Right,” David said. “Clay Finkle kept in the background and used Dente for everything.”

“Where was Clay when Trudy was murdered?” I asked.

“He had an air-tight alibi for that one. He was in a restaurant with clients. But after that, he decided to be out of town,” David said.

“So he went to Bellingham,” I said.

David nodded. “Yes. And his controller went with him. She was prepared to be his alibi.” David sat forward to continue the narrative. “He drove down after the failed attempt to kill Dana in your car. I guess by that time he figured Dente had become a liability, and so he killed him. Then he used his own cell phone to text Dana to get her out into the parking lot the night of your séance. She must have lost her phone in the scuffle, and he didn’t have time to retrieve it in the dark. How did you find it, anyway?”

I laughed. “Mickey. He’s little, but he has a nose like a bloodhound when it comes to food. Dana took a call from Clay earlier in the evening when she had a greasy chicken wing in her hand. Anyway, who was it who climbed the trellis to Dana’s room at the Inn the other night?”

“We think it was Clay. There’s a record of a phone call to Dana that night from his cell phone. It pinged off a local tower.”

“I bet that’s how he figured out what room she was in,” Rudy said. “He just listened for the ringtone.”

“Well, the Medical Examiner estimated Dente’s death at some time earlier that evening, so Finkle probably figured that if he was successful in killing Dana, we would suspect Roger anyway, since Roger was the only person who knew the upstairs windows didn’t have alarms. He had also installed the Finkle’s alarm system, which would have pointed the finger at him for the theft of their guns.”

“Remember, one of their guns killed Dente,” Detective Abrams said.

“And since Roger knew nothing about Finkle’s involvement, he’d be left holding the bag for both murders,” David finished.

“Plus, if Dana had woken up and found Clay in her room that night,” Doe said, “it’s likely she would have been surprised, but not scared. He could easily have explained it away and gotten her into a position to strike her from behind and kill her. And then crawl out the window again and be gone.”

My eyes grew wide. “I wonder if that’s why Elizabeth appeared downstairs when she did that night.” I looked at Angela. “Remember the night the kids screamed because they saw a ghost? Typically, people see Elizabeth downstairs when she’s randomly walking through rooms. But when she appeared that night, she was pointing at something. I thought it was the kids. But now that I think of it, her arm was raised. I think she was pointing to the upstairs bedrooms. She was warning us that Clay was there.”

David and Detective Abrams shared a skeptical look.

“If you guys are going to date the Applegate women, you’re going to have to accept the fact that the Inn is haunted,” I said, bristling. “Why do you think Jason Spears was here last week to promote his book on ghosts?”

“You won’t win this one,” Angela said to both of them.

They both smiled, and Detective Abrams put his hands up in surrender. “Hey, someone grabbed my ass when I was in your study getting your computer, and there was no one around.”

“I told you it was Chloe,” I said.

“Humph,” Blair smirked. “Woman after my own heart.”

“Will Roger be convicted?” I asked.

Angela nodded. “Probably.”

“But he was forced into it,” I argued.

“I know, Mom. But it was his information that helped send Trudy to the library. And it was his information that allowed Dente to get away that night.”

I sighed with disappointment. “So, Dana is safe, at least?”

“For now,” David said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s face it…she’s made a lot of enemies in her life. This just may be the tip of the iceberg.”