Murder for Millions (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 7) (18 page)

CHAPTER
42

When Ira Pemberton lurched into the
open doorway a few minutes later, I focused first on his eyes: ghostly black
beads rimmed with red, glaring at the world from beneath the frayed bill of a dark
blue cap. Then I noticed he was wearing the same clothes from the other night
at the Minimart: scruffy overalls, gray sweatshirt and the blue jacket that was
missing one button.

“What the bull hockey is this?” His
voice nicked the fragile silence like a jagged blade sliding against the skin
of a ripe peach. “Some kind of intervention? Y’all think I’ve been drinking too
much since I lost everything in the fire?”

Trent was up and moving in a flash,
his hand outstretched and his smile bright. He invited Ira into the room before
offering tea, water, juice or coffee.

“How about beer?” grunted the newcomer.
“In one of those frosted mugs they use in the bar.”

“I’m afraid that one’s not on the
menu this evening,” said Trent, lightly cupping Ira’s left elbow. “How about a
chair over here at the table?”

“And how about you go fly a kite?”
Ira hissed.

He took a couple of tentative steps
forward and then did a hurried pivot back toward the corridor. As he turned,
his eyes locked on Herman Bright.

“What
is
this, Herman? You
said we were getting together to talk about my settlement.”

The insurance broker opened his
mouth, but nothing came out. He tossed a concerned look at Trent, who managed
two thumbs up before quickly walking over to close the door.

“Have a seat, Mr. Pemberton,” he
said, nodding at Dina. “Detective Kincaid’s going to walk us through some—”

“Herman?” Ira rasped. “You going to
tell me what’s going on here?”

Dina got up from her chair and moved
toward the bewildered man. “I’m going to take care of that,” she said. “As soon
as you get comfortable, we’ll go through all of—”

Ira lurched for the exit, crossing
the narrow strip of carpet with three oversized steps before his gnarled
fingers found the knob and wrenched open the door.

Officer Denny Santiago from the Crescent
Creek PD stood in the corridor. He had one hand on his hip and the other raised
to chest height.

“Sir,” he said. “It’s in your best
interest to hear what they have to tell you.”

Ira’s voice came out like a strangled
growl. I couldn’t catch the first part of what he said, but the tail end
involved something Nana Reed always referred to as the “naughty, filthy and
foul lingo of heathens, rogues and fools.”

“You plan on cuffing me, Santiago?”
Ira sniped. “Rough me up and throw me in the back of the patrol car?”

Denny’s expression remained calm.
“Not unless you’d like me to, sir.” He took one step toward Ira. “Now, if you
don’t mind, I’ll go ahead and close this door again so you and Deputy Chief
Walsh and these other good folks can have a little chat.”

The cranky body shop owner spun
around again to face the room. He sneered at Trent and Dina before gliding his
angry gaze to Herman Bright and Marla Soble. When he got to me, his mouth
flopped open and he said my name with an even sharper edge of disdain.

“What’re you doing here?” he said
after I smiled and nodded. “This one of your Dudley Do-Right jaunts?”

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

He flashed an icy grin. “I know
about you, Miss Reed. Snooping around. Asking questions. Sticking your nose
where it doesn’t belong.”

“I’m just a concerned citizen, Mr.
Pemberton. And like all such local residents, I believe in supporting the
efforts of our police officers and the—”

“Save it!” he snarled, turning to
Trent and Dina. “Why am I here? What’s this all about?”

Trent gestured at an empty chair in
the middle of the conference table. “Why don’t we all take a seat?” he said
warmly. “There’s coffee and bottled water if you’re so inclined.”

“I’m not,” Ira said, finally moving
toward the table and sitting down. “I’m packing up my truck tonight and heading
west. I’ve got lots to do, so let’s see if we can make this snappy, eh?”

Trent slowly lowered into a chair
across from the enraged man. He opened a folder, sifted through the enclosed
pages and pulled out a large index card inscribed with a few notes in heavy
black ink.

“Alright, Mr. Pemberton,” he said.
“You want snappy? How about we zip right to the conclusion? How about you
confess to the murder of Jacob Lowry and the intentional fire that you set to
defraud your insurance company?”

Ira’s face registered a quick storm
of emotions: shock, anger, fear and contempt. His eyes widened, the corners of
his mouth trembled and he leaned forward while one fist thundered on the
tabletop.

“I’m not confessing to a single
thing!” he said in a crusty tone. “Because I didn’t
do
a single thing!”

Trent checked the index card.
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, sir. We have evidence that connects you to
both crimes as well as some shenanigans that we believe you carried out to
somehow implicate your daughter and her friends in the scheme.”

Ira scoffed. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“What evidence?” Trent said calmly.
“Is that what you’re asking?”

“Well,
duh
!” Ira jeered,
sounding more like a middle school student than a man in his sixties.

“Sure thing.” Trent smiled,
squaring his shoulders and inching his chair closer to the table. “Our friends
at the PD in Provo sent us some compelling videotape earlier today. It very
clearly shows you at a filling station in Provo a few minutes before a set of
license plates were stolen from a car that had been left overnight for repairs.”

Ira snorted. “That doesn’t prove a
thing, Deputy Dawg.”

“We also have your bright, smiling
face on another recording,” Trent continued. “It shows you buying gas cans at a
Walmart not too far from the aforementioned filling station. They were the same
type of containers found in the office of your body shop after it was severely
damaged by a fire that appears to be an act of arson.”

Ira sighed loudly, put his elbows
on the table and dropped his chin onto both hands. “This is fascinating,” he
said. “But it doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

Trent’s grin expanded. “We also have
a witness who saw you assaulting Jacob Lowry in the front parking lot of your
body shop, Mr. Pemberton. At the time of that incident, your business was
already in flames.”

“Who’s to say that little jerk
didn’t take a swing at me first?” Ira demanded. “Maybe I was defending myself,
not the other way around.”

Trent shrugged. “I can see how you
might like that to be the case,” he said. “But our forensics team also learned
something very interesting when they paid a visit to Bernice Sinclair after the
fire.”

Ira scowled. “The old witch that
owns the property across the way?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Trent. “Mrs.
Sinclair owns three hundred acres directly opposite your body shop on the other
side of Dunkirk Road.”

“It belonged to her husband,” Ira
said. “She probably killed the poor idiot with that spicy fried chicken she
used to try and get me to eat.”

“She was just being neighborly,” I
interjected. “My mom and dad were good friends with Bernice and her husband.
She maybe went a little heavy on the paprika, but it—” I noticed the look on Trent’s
face, so I dropped the defense of my parents’ friend and went back to listening
carefully.

“Anyway,” Trent continued, “Mrs.
Sinclair installed a fairly sophisticated security system on her property a
couple of years ago. She suspected that some kids from town were going out and
using the barn for their own private late-night clubhouse.”

“So?” Ira said. “What’s that got to
do with me?”

Trent smiled. “Quite a bit,
actually,” he said. “Because the sophisticated system includes high-definition
video cameras. Do you want to guess what we found on one of those cameras, Mr.
Pemberton?”

“Sasquatch?” Ira muttered. “Or
maybe Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa singing ‘Love Me Tender’?”

The sly grin on Trent’s face
disappeared. He tapped the edge of the index card on the table a few times
before slipping it back into the folder.

“I’m not even going to acknowledge
that attempt at humor,” he said. “But I will be happy to ask Detective Kincaid to
fire up the projector so everyone can see you assault Mr. Lowry as he stood in
front of your building with both of his hands at his sides.”

“Bull crap!” Ira shouted.

“It’s on the tape, sir. And
evidence doesn’t lie.”

“But you do!” Ira said, lurching
from his chair. “None of that is true. I was the one attacked that night. The
firemen found me on the ground. They took me to the hospital with a head wound
and—”

“
Enough
!” Marla Soble
suddenly screamed, getting to her feet and moving toward Ira with one
red-tipped nail pointed at his chest. “It’s over, Ira!
Over
!”

Pemberton’s eyes flared with anger.
“Sit back down, woman! Nobody here is interested in anything you’ve got to
say!”

By the time he finished the
sentence, Marla’s finger was grinding against his breastbone. She pushed and
glared and cursed him in a voice that grew in volume with each passing moment.

“I told them everything, Ira!” she
shouted. “I told them that you set the fire to get the insurance money. I told
them about how you tried to frame your daughter and her friends. And I also
told them that you wanted my son and I to help you cover it all up in exchange
for part of the profits.”

For a split second, Ira Pemberton
stared silently at Marla Soble. There was a cold glint in his eyes, the spark
of swagger and superiority. But then he began to chuckle, filling the small
meeting room with ripples of callous laughter.

“And so what?” he hissed finally.
“Do you think anyone’s going to believe you, Marla? Do you think they’ll take
your word over mine? Do you think there’s even one person in this town who
considers you a trustworthy witness against me?”

He inched closer, but she held her
ground. The room was silent as Ira grinned and repeated his tirade.

“Do you,
sweetheart
?” he
seethed. “Can you imagine that one actual human being will stand up and say
they think you’re telling the truth?”

I was so focused on Ira and Marla
that I didn’t notice Trent walking around the table at first. But as soon as I
heard his voice, my eyes rotated away from the troubled couple toward the
opposite side of the room.

“Mr. Pemberton?”

Ira’s head snapped to the left.
“What the hell do you want?”

Trent smiled. “I do,” he said
calmly.

“You do
what
?” Ira fumed.

“I’m standing up,” Trent said,
moving closer to Marla and Ira. “I’m standing up to say that I believe that
Mrs. Soble is telling the truth.”

CHAPTER
43

“Is that right, Deputy Dawg?” Ira
reached out and took Marla’s arm.

Trent ignored the question. “Let
her go, Pemberton,” he warned. “There’s no need for this thing to escalate. Why
don’t we all sit down and talk like adults?”

Marla tugged free of Ira’s bony
grip. She stepped away from him, one hand instinctively rubbing the spot where
he’d grabbed her.

“I feel like such a fool,” she said,
keeping her eyes on Ira. “I will never forgive myself for listening to your
nonsense.”

He sneered. “What nonsense?”

“All of it,” Marla answered. “Going
to Utah to beg your daughter’s husband to loan you the cash to save your
business. That must be when you stole the license plates that you—”

“I went to Salt Lake City for a
couple of days to see an old friend,” Ira said. “I ran into Velma’s husband at
a bar. It was a complete fluke. He’s the one that suggested I approach Carter
Devane for a loan. Told me the chump had just made forty million by selling
some company that makes dog thingies. I knew that my daughter and Carter were
friendly, so I figured it was worth—”

“How many lies are you going to
tell?” Carter interrupted. “I’ve talked with Velma at length about you and your
recent financial desperation. We know that you specifically drove to Utah to—”

Ira disrupted Carter’s impassioned
claim with a loud, sharp whistle.

“You’re the one that started all of
this,” Ira told Devane. “If you’d just given me the money, none of this would
be happening.”

Carter scowled, but held his
tongue. I saw Dina and Trent exchange a frustrated glance before Marla launched
back into more of her rant about Ira’s desperate financial straits.

“I wasn’t the one gambling,” she
said. “I wasn’t the one throwing good money after bad. I went on those trips to
Las Vegas because I thought we were in love. I didn’t know you were sneaking
down to the casino when I was sleeping to try and win back the money you’d lost
during the day. You’re sick, Ira! You have a disease!”

He cursed and laughed. “Yeah? Well,
as far as I can see, my disease is you! Trying to keep you happy with your
fancy wardrobe and all the jewelry that you begged me to get for you.”

“That I
begged
for?” Marla
shouted. “That I
begged
for?” Her face was contorted with rage and her
hands trembled violently. “I
never
once begged you for anything, you
disgusting…” She stopped to catch her breath. “You disgusting cretin! My
girlfriends warned me about you. They said you never treated your wife with
respect. They told me about your gambling problem, but I thought that I could
help you. Or maybe I thought that I could fix you somehow.”

Ira smiled, taking one step toward
her.

“I’m no angel,” Marla continued.
“But I had no idea you were capable of doing such horrible, vicious things.”

“Like what?” Ira hissed.

Marla moved back a few feet,
keeping her eyes on Ira as if she feared the anger in his voice would transform
into something physical.

“Like what?” she asked. “Like Boris
Hertel. You beat that poor man to within an inch of his life, Ira. And killing
that young man, the one who accidentally caught you pouring gasoline all over
your body shop.”

Ira laughed. It was a cold,
lifeless sound that made my stomach shudder.

“You’re insane, Marla. Why would
you accuse me of doing those—”

“Accuse you?” she blurted. “Those
are things you told me that you did!”

He laughed again, but shook his
head silently instead of taunting her again.

“When you came up with the idea to
blackmail Mr. Devane,” Marla said, her voice dropping in volume, “I didn’t
think you were serious. It seemed like a fantasy, the kind of thing someone
would daydream about when their financial situation became as distressed as
yours. But when you actually made those phone calls and broke into his house to
get the earrings and that old book…” She stopped as her eyes began to fill with
tears. “After that,” she said, pressing one hand to stop the rivulets on her
cheeks, “I wasn’t surprised when you burned down your body shop and told the
police that someone had attacked you. I’d known for a long time that you were
comfortable telling lies, Ira. I just never knew you could actually kill
another person.”

“
Nonsense
!” Ira screamed.
“You’re absolutely
insane
, woman!”

Marla whisked away more tears. “The
police said they found one of my ex-husband’s old guns in the car with that
poor dead man,” she said.

“What?” Ira rasped.

“The gun that was in the car with
the man who’d been murdered,” Marla said quietly. “It belonged to Archie
Morris, my ex-husband.”

“So what?” Ira said before he
unleashed another string of obscenities. “I’ve never met either one of your
ex-husbands. You’re the one that had his old boxes in the attic.”

“Yes,” Marla replied. “Because I’m
sentimental. And I hate to throw away things that once belonged to someone I
cared about.”

“You’re not making any sense,
woman!”

“Yes, I am,” Marla said defiantly.
“You went up into the attic a couple of weeks ago, Ira. You were looking for
the fishing poles that I’d stored up there.”

“That proves nothing,” he muttered.

“Well, I also told them about the
duffel bag you asked to leave at my house.” Marla lifted her chin slightly,
gaining confidence with each revelation. “Are you going to say the things
inside of it prove nothing as well?”

Ira’s eyes flashed wide with rage.
“You searched my
bag
?” he demanded. “After I specifically ordered you
not to?”

“Yes, and I found the gun,” Marla
answered, glancing quickly at Trent. “The police took it, Ira. They’re running
tests to see if it was used to shoot that innocent young man. Although they
told me that you’d also strangled him with a piece of wire, so...”

Before she revealed any additional
details about the evidence she’d provided to the police, Trent cleared his
throat to get Marla’s attention. “I think our conversation would be—”

Ira raised one hand. “Can’t you see
we’re talking?”

“Yeah,” Trent replied. “I think we
can all see that. But the reason we invited you here today wasn’t to entertain
us with—”

I’d just glanced down to check my
phone when I heard Ira yell. I instantly looked up again as he bolted for the
French doors on the far side of the room. Beyond the doors, beckoning him like
a mirage glimmering in the distance, was a small courtyard connected to the
hotel’s landscaped gardens. His move to escape came without warning. It was a
powerful lunge that took him from the conference table to the exit so quickly
that no one in the room could react for a few seconds.

“You won’t make this stick!” he
shouted, yanking on the locked doorknobs. “There’s nothing you can prove!”

I was still staring at him in
silent disbelief when Denny Santiago rushed into the room from the hallway. He quickly
scrambled around the table, grabbed Ira’s arms from behind and ordered him to
give up the attempt to flee.

“Go on and use your Taser!” Ira
shouted, moving over the line from ranting curmudgeon to outlandish nutjob.
“Cuff me! Zap me! You’ll never take me alive!”

Dina Kincaid pulled out her phone,
dialed the police dispatcher and asked for another patrol car. Marla Soble
began whimpering into a handful of white cocktail napkins that she’d found on
the credenza. And Trent grinned joyfully at me, raising both thumbs and
mouthing silent praise for helping them with the case.

“You’re a real Crescent Creek
treasure,” he whispered across the table as Ira Pemberton finally slumped
against the wall and Denny Santiago slipped on a set of handcuffs. “We’re lucky
you came back home.”

“Thanks, Trent. But I’ve been back
for several months now. I think the local treasure accolades can be retired.”

“Never!” he said, waving two more
uniformed officers into the room. “I’m thinking about asking the mayor to have
a ceremony and give you the keys to the city.”

I laughed at the thought of it.
“That’s sweet, but I’d probably just lose them like I do my own every so
often.”