Murder on the Bucket List (24 page)

thirty-five

Francine shoved Charlotte out
of Darla's path. As she did, she snatched the cane and aimed it at the oncoming sensei. It connected with a force that knocked the cane out of Francine's hands, but it also momentarily stunned Darla.

Darla landed on her knees in front of the chair Charlotte had been tied to. She gripped the chair legs and jerked her head in Francine's direction. Francine could see the shock in Darla's eyes. Apparently she had expected this to be a lot easier than it was proving. Francine tried to yank the chair out of her hands to hit her with it, but the younger woman was stronger. Francine felt herself losing the tug of war and waited for Darla to tug again. She moved with it this time and used the momentum to shove the chair into her and knock her over. Darla pushed the chair to the side and rolled to a standing position. She kicked at Francine, who had already backed out of range.

Francine knew she couldn't keep this up. She turned toward the door. Then she noticed Charlotte, hobbling in obvious pain, already ahead of her. Charlotte would reach the door in a moment.

Darla crossed the distance in two leaps and knocked her hand away from the knob with a chop to the wrist. Charlotte yelled in pain and sank to the floor. Darla attempted to grab her from behind, but Charlotte threw an elbow into Darla's knee in the same place she'd whacked her before. Gasping, the sensei gripped Charlotte's shoulders. Charlotte did her best to hit the bruised knee a third time.

Francine could see it was only a matter of time before Charlotte would be taken captive. She knew she needed another weapon and needed it quickly. She glanced around the trailer and spotted the tools hanging from the pegboard. A crowbar could do a lot of damage to Darla's knee, but the rolling tool chest stood between her and it. Francine made a run for it.

Darla seemed to sense that Francine was looking for a weapon. She let go of Charlotte and dashed to make a cutoff, but she glanced back to make sure the door remained closed.

With Darla distracted, Francine went for the rolling tool chest instead, thinking she could push it in Darla's way. She reached the chest and gave it a shove. No movement. She pushed again, this time with everything she had. Still nothing. The effort unbalanced her. She fell to the floor.

Her hand landed near a plastic barrel. In it were ten or so cylindrical rods of varying lengths.
Like long ball bearings
, she thought. She looked up. Darla was going for the crowbar, but hadn't reached it yet. There was still time.

She upended the barrel, pointing it toward her nemesis. The rods spread out and covered the floor, rolling.

Darla stepped on them. Her feet started to skid. Her arms flailed. She attempted to regain her balance but banged into the tool chest. She tried to grab on to it. Her feet slipped out from under her again and again, but she remained upright. Francine began to wonder if Darla would ever fall.

The rods won. Darla's legs couldn't move fast enough. She crashed to her knees and gasped in pain.

The door to the trailer opened. Francine prayed it was help coming. “Careful! Watch the rods!” she shouted.

“Okay,” the voice shouted back. Francine recognized it as Toby's. The stream of radius rods rolled out the door and onto the ground. Toby stepped in carefully, avoiding the few that remained. Jonathan was with Toby.

On the other side of the room, Darla let loose a string of profanities fly, not all of them in English.

Before Darla could regain her composure, Toby ran over, flipped her on her stomach, and sat on her back. He pulled her chin back in a chin lock.

“Nice crab hold,” Charlotte said. “Where did you learn that?”

“World Wrestling Entertainment. I play it on my Xbox.”

“Be careful,” Francine said. “She's a black belt.”

Jonathan hurried to check on Francine. “Jud will be here any minute. He got the truth out of Vince Baggesen about the car. Fortunately Toby remembered about the Baggesen's second trailer and where it was. But in the meantime,” he pulled a gun from behind his back under his shirt, “I suggest you don't try anything, Darla. I know you're a killer and I won't hesitate to use this.”

Francine gaped at the gun. She had no idea Jonathan even knew how to shoot, let alone owned a gun.
Another
of his little secrets,
she thought. But much as she hated guns, she was not upset to see him holding one right now.

Jud and Larry arrived together. Larry shoved his way to the spot where Toby had Darla's head tilted upright. He knelt down and got in her face. “I will sue you for every last thing you have,” he said, practically spitting at her. “You tried to sabotage my son's car.”

Francine could hardly believe what she heard. “Your son?”

Jonathan nodded. “It's true. It's time you all knew. Jake Maehler is Larry's son.”

thirty-six

“So I told Darla
about the video, not realizing she was the killer, and that set everything into motion?”

Francine hoped Charlotte felt squeamish asking the question. Though everything had turned out all right, she'd put a lot of people in danger. Charlotte seemed to contemplate that as the two of them and Jonathan sat in hard chairs across the desk from Jud at the Brownsburg Police Department headquarters. Having been through the formal questioning period about everything that had happened in the trailer, he seemed willing to share information, especially since the culprit in the murder of Friederich Guttmann had been caught.

“We had warned you to keep us informed and not get into it yourselves,” Jud told them. He swiveled to face Charlotte. “You, especially, should have turned in the iPod. It turned out to be the key piece of evidence. Had you done that, none of this would have occurred.”

“I know I shouldn't have taken it, but on the other hand, I had no idea you could store video on it. Who knew?”

“I did,” Francine admitted, “but not until that moment in the Bob Evans parking lot did I realize what you might be sitting on, and even then we couldn't be sure until Toby reset the password. Jud, if we had to do it all over again, we would have called you the minute we were in possession of the iPod.”

“She's speaking for herself,” Charlotte said. “I would still have made sure before I told you.”

“What was the video of ?” Francine asked.

“There are a number of things on it. One of them was what you suspected. Darla and Frederick making love. We're still putting things together, but here's what we think. The relationship was a complete secret. Darla saw Friederich as being beneath her standards, and she was afraid someone would clue him in that she was using him. Friederich was inexperienced enough with women to see Darla as a godsend. But Friederich wasn't stupid, and once he realized she would dump him as soon as he finished outfitting Sara's car, he borrowed Larry's idea of hidden cameras. He had a couple of places rigged, one of them in the basement. He'd figured out how to get down there. After he had a couple of segments filmed, he told her what he would do if she left him. I don't know if she had considered killing him up to that point, but it was in her mind after that. When she snapped, she knew she needed to find the video.”

“What I want to know,” Jonathan said, “is why Darla thought Larry would be a serious murder suspect?”

“She'd seen the secret staircase. Friederich had even shown her how he was getting around Larry's surveillance cameras with a rogue remote. Since she knew about Larry's love of secret passages and snooping, she figured she could keep us busy checking him out. She lucked into his lying to Alice about being in Las Vegas when he wasn't.”

“So that night when Friederich died, Larry had been trying to meet with Jake to tell him that he was his son?”

“He had arranged for it to take place outside Friederich's workshop because he knew Jake was familiar with it. Except Sara had slipped out that night to meet secretly with Jake, so he brought her along. Jake only knew that the person who had called him claimed to be the sponsor who had been footing his bill, nothing about parentage. When Larry spotted Sara, he recognized her and didn't reveal himself. After Jake left, he waited a couple of hours, hoping Jake might be curious and return without her. Eventually he gave up and went back to the hotel.”

“What did Jeff Kramer see that got him killed?”

“After killing Friederich, Darla came to get the car Friederich had been working on for Sara. She spotted Larry outside the building and had to wait for him to leave. During that time Kramer saw her and wondered what she was up to. He saw her take the car and confronted her about it. He then became a liability she needed to get rid of.”

Francine leaned forward. “How much did Vince know? Darla must have persuaded him to cooperate.”

“Vince only cooperated because he didn't want Sara to turn into another Darla. He had learned that Jake and Sara were having a tryst, and he was angry. Darla convinced him that if they could just get Sara on a winning track, Jake would break up with her because she was a threat. Vince was struggling with how to be a good father. He said Sara's having sex with Jake made him feel like he had failed her.”

“Sixteen is so young,” said Francine.

“But here's the thing,” Jud said. “Jake really is in love with her. He's standing by her through all this. I don't know if Darla or Vince can stop it, but the two of them are serious about being together.”

“Joy has already done the interview with them for ABC News,” Charlotte said. “I think she's a lock for the
Good Morning America
position.”

Francine asked, “How did Friederich know Larry had been funding Jake's rise in NASCAR?”

“We're piecing that together too. Here's what we know. Larry's great-grandparents left him a lot of money, but thanks to a codicil, he could only access it on behalf of an offspring. He'd had a brief affair with a woman after he married Alice. He didn't know until later it had produced a son. Alice was too old to have children, so he began a secret campaign to finance his only child, Jake, who was then into midget cars. Larry worked with a lawyer to unlock the trust fund and funnel it to an offshore account. Then the lawyer approached Friederich to ‘anonymously' fund Jake. That's how it all that started.”

Jonathan said, “Larry finally admitted everything to me on the way over to the track. There had been quite a bit of money in the account, but it was running low. He figured by that time Jake was established well enough he should be able to make it. But he couldn't. Without more money, Jake couldn't buy track time and he struggled. It's why Jake focused on exploiting his looks. He needed sponsors, and he needed attention to keep him going.”

Jud continued that thread. “By this time, Friederich had figured out who was behind the anonymous money going to Jake and deduced that Larry was Jake's father. So when Darla seduced Friederich and got him to help Sara, Darla knew just enough to ‘encourage' Friederich to stop paying rent and put more money into Sara's car.”

“And Larry couldn't make much of a fuss because he wanted to keep Alice from learning about the long-ago affair?” Charlotte asked.

Jud shrugged. “Larry and Alice had accumulated a lot of money through their real estate business. If Alice divorced him because of the affair, it would cost him.”

“Why did Friederich abandon helping Sara for Jake?”

“Partly, it had to do with his discovery of the Sara and Jake affair. Sara was the one who'd pursued Jake, much like Darla had pursued Friederich. By the time Jake returned to the midget races looking to regain the magic, Friederich had realized Darla would likely leave him once she had the technology to ‘cheat legally.' So he told her he needed to help Jake. And Darla snapped.”

Francine shifted in her chair. “Could Vince and Darla use the legal system against Jake, considering Sara is only sixteen?”

“Sixteen is age of consent in Indiana, and Sara was that age when she hooked up with Jake. So no, likely they can't.”

“Surely Vince suspected that Darla had killed Friederich,” Francine said.

“Not at first. He says he suspected something wasn't right when she brought him the unmarked car. But even as Friederich's murder became more and more of a news story, he claims he still didn't believe his ex-wife would kill somebody.”

“I don't think he knew her very well,” Charlotte said.

“Or he was afraid of Darla and doesn't want to admit it.”

Charlotte nodded. “She's always been a scary person. I suspected she had a closet full of whips and chains. Didn't I say that, Francine?”

“You've said that about the pope.” She addressed Jud. “You could have at least told us what was going on.”

“We weren't certain what was going on. It had us stumped. The only thing we knew for certain was Larry Jeffords was being framed, and if we played along, the killer would relax a bit. We also knew that if you and Charlotte continued investigating—and we were certain you wouldn't stop, despite our best efforts—you'd either figure it out or get yourselves in trouble. Who knew it would be both? At the track we planned to have our force watching all of you. Joy's cameraman was even one of our officers. But when it was clear Sara had Friederich's technology and we were investigating her after the qualification run, and the two of you split up, we couldn't manage it. Thankfully you managed to stay safe.”

“Alive, maybe, but not safe,” Charlotte said. “I've got so many bumps and bruises I'm popping pain pills like they came from the fountain of youth.”

“It's a good thing Toby knew about the Baggesens' second trailer,” Francine said.

Jud nodded. “But it looks like you were doing pretty well for yourselves.”

“The best part,” Francine interjected, “is that Charlotte solved this mystery even before you police.”

Charlotte's face sagged. “Not true. Only when Darla discovered the video and grabbed me did I know it was her for certain. No, this is a lot like the
last
mystery. I was close, but not quite there.”

Francine reached over and gave her friend a huge hug. “No, you figured it out and you beat Darla at her own game. In detective novels, complete understanding often comes after the sleuth has solved the mystery. You did it, Charlotte, and I'm here to make sure this time you check it off your Sixty List.”

Jud stood up. “I won't disagree with Francine's assessment. You are to be congratulated on having solved the murder of Friederich Guttmann. Really, we couldn't have done it without you.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Though we would have liked to have tried.”