The Deadly Neighbors (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) (36 page)

But some voice in my head nagged me to get up one more time. Get the damned purse, it kept saying. Take out your cell phone. Make the call. Then you can collapse. Grimacing, unable actually to stand, I rolled off the sofa and crawled toward my pocketbook. I was halfway there when a dining room window smashed. I looked across the hall, saw a shape at the window, an arm reaching through to unlock it. Oh, God. They’d found me. I couldn’t run anymore. I kept low to the floor and grabbed my bag, dumped the contents onto the carpet, picked up my cell phone while watching the window lifting, Jimmy’s beefy bulk climbing into the house. Lettie followed, then Doug Morrison. I crouched behind the chair, waiting for them to spot me. But they didn’t come toward me into the living room. Jimmy went to the stairway; Lettie and the ADA headed for the kitchen. And as they swung the door open, I heard a howl, then a dull thwack, like the sound of a cracking skull.

I had no idea what had happened. All I knew was that I had a chance to bolt. Cell phone in hand, I hobbled to the front door, only vaguely aware of my body and my pain. All I could think about was escaping. I threw the door open and took a step, then froze. Dahmer and Bruno growled, jaws dripping, ready to attack. The gash on my foot came to life again, urging me to back into the house. Slowly, whispering curses at them, I backed inside and closed the door, expecting to see Lettie and her entourage waiting for me.

Instead, I saw my father. His cane was raised over his shoulder like a baseball bat, ready to swing. The ADA lay limp in the kitchen doorway, and Lettie was backing up, cowering, arms raised to fend off a blow.

O
H, GOD. MY FATHER
had come home again, still not grasping that he lived elsewhere. He swung his cane again, swishing it through the air. “Out. Out. Get out, all of you. I told you— I want nothing to do with you leeches—”

Lettie, meantime, was yelling back. “Settle down, Walter. Stop swinging that thing—”

“You no-good trollop. You killed Beatrice—” The cane made a whooshing sound as it missed Lettie’s head.

“Walter, stop—”

“I ought to smash your worthless skull in.”

Doug Morrison lifted his head and tried to get up but, dazed, sank back to the floor. My father kept swinging, moving around the dining room toward the hutch. Deftly, he opened a cabinet and, an eye on Lettie, reached inside, behind a stack of saucers. Lettie waited until he was off-balance, then lunged, grabbed his cane, raised it over his head, ready to strike.

“No! Stop—” I bellowed, limping, running to tackle her. She glanced my way, hesitating for just a heartbeat, long enough for my father to extract the thing he’d been reaching for. A gun? Another one? I’d never seen a gun in our house, had no idea he’d had one, let alone a whole collection hidden away. But there it was. Silvery and cold, aimed at Lettie’s chest.

She dropped the cane. It clattered onto the floor.

“Get the hell out.” Dad’s voice shook ominously.

“Walter, you’re not well.” Lettie adopted her soothing tone, acting the caring neighbor. “Put the gun away before you get in trouble. You’re losing your—”

The shot shook the walls, shattered the remaining glass in the already broken window. I jumped, ears ringing. Doug Morrison twitched to life in the kitchen doorway. Wobbling, he hurried to his feet, a purple welt rising on his temple. For a moment the four of us stood silent, stunned and waiting. And I remembered—the third man, Jimmy. He’d gone upstairs, must have heard the shot. I looked into the hall, expecting to see him creeping toward us, but he wasn’t there. Where was he? What was he up to?

Dad motioned with his gun, herding Lettie and Doug to the door. “Get out. If you ever set foot on my property again, I’ll kill you.”

Lettie opened her mouth to say something, and Dad fired the gun again. Again I jumped involuntarily. Splinters flew from the foyer wall, leaving a gaping white hole in the flowered wallpaper. I felt like I was going deaf.

Dad kept coming; Lettie and the ADA kept backing away until they were out the front door, where the dogs waited, barking and ferocious. My father fired through the doorway, and the snapping and snarling of the dogs became whining and wailing. Apparently at least one of them had been hit.

Lettie cursed, shaking a fist at my dad. He stood on the porch grinning, shooting at the bushes, and she, Doug and the whimpering dogs fled toward her house. My ears were ringing, and I didn’t notice the sirens until after I’d seen the flashing lights. I was puzzled at first. I remembered getting my phone, but after all the commotion, I couldn’t remember actually having spoken to 9-1-1. Obviously, though, I must have; the police had arrived, responding to the call.

D
AD’S SKIN WAS WAXY
and washed out. He sat down, deflated. But when Nick walked in, my father’s eyes lit up, alert.

“The press is outside.” Nick frowned.

Of course they were. The ongoing dogfights and related crimes hadn’t interested them; even the murders of Beatrice and Stan hadn’t made headlines. But the involvement of an assistant district attorney in such sordid crimes was a big story, bound to draw lights, cameras and TV crews.

“You’re not talking to them. I’ll have someone take you home and drive the car around back so you can avoid them.” Nick was angry. He felt blindsided. Ambushed. His pregnant spouse-to-be had once again endangered herself and their child. The man he’d hired to protect her was dead. And his soon-to-be father-in-law had brained an ADA and shot up the neighborhood.

I didn’t have the energy to deal with his feelings, though. I was spent. Hurting and exhausted. I wanted Nick to comfort me, but he was seething. I didn’t dare look at him, much less climb into his arms.

While I’d waited for Nick, the police went to work. The dogs next door and the bodies—Craig and Rudo Bachek—were removed. Lettie and Doug Morrison were arrested, the latter taken away in an ambulance with a skull fracture and dog bites on his legs. And though I’d told the police about him and they’d searched my father’s house, Jimmy had not been found.

“Walter, you’re going back to your place, and Zoe, you’re going to the hospital.”

I didn’t argue. I’d had about ten more contractions since the police had arrived and the EMT who’d treated me had said I’d need stitches to reconnect the torn pieces of my temporarily bandaged heel.

Nick headed outside to shoo away the media, but I stopped him. “Nick, wait—”

“What?” The expression on his face stopped me.

I fumbled for something to say, a reason for him to stay with me. “What about Molly? I mean, I was supposed to pick her up at Susan’s—”

“Don’t worry. I called. It’s fine for Molly to stay there.”

More blame. More guilt. I was a terrible irresponsible parent, not even remembering to pick up my child, too busy getting eaten alive by slobbering canines.

“Thank you,” I managed. But he was already gone.

I sat opposite my father in his living room; he was on a wingback chair, I slumped on the sofa.

“What the hell were you doing here, anyway?” my father growled.

“Sorry?”

“In my house. What were you doing here?”

I didn’t answer, didn’t know what to tell him.

“Somebody’s been in here, taking my stuff. Was it you? My kitchen’s empty—it’s all gone.”

I felt my face heat up, guilty again. I’d have to explain once more that he didn’t live here anymore, that Susan and I had been cleaning the place out. “Dad,” I began. “We have to talk—”

But he interrupted, his eyes sharp, mind lucid. “Somebody moved everything around. Look at this chair. It’s out of place. And who moved the couch? What the hell’s going on? That damned Lettie—she acts like she’s everybody’s favorite aunt, but trust me, she’s evil. It’s Lettie who got Beatrice into that vile business with the dogs.”

“The fights? Beatrice was betting on them?”

“Betting?” My father scowled, shaking his head. “It was a hell of a situation. Beatrice got in bed with the Devil. A while back, she borrowed a bundle from Lettie, and to pay it off she started working for them, helping Lettie run the fights. But then Stan the genius—he had an idea, and Beatrice and Stan put their sorry brains together and decided to start up their own operation.”

“But Stan was part of Town Watch. Wasn’t that Lettie’s group?”

Dad snorted with disdain. “Town Watch. Sounds like a legitimate oufit, doesn’t it? Like they care about the community. It’s a scam. Nothing but a cover. You join or they watch you. You join, and you get allowed into the fights. You get credit for your bets. You get hooked up with drugs or loans or whatever the hell you want. I don’t even know what all. I want no part of it.”

“So that’s who killed Beatrice? Town Watch?”

“Beatrice made decent lasagne. But she was a stupid woman. She and that dunderhead Stan.” Apparently he thought he’d explained everything. He pushed the coffee table, moved it about three inches, lost his breath. “This doesn’t belong here.”

“Leave it, Dad. Nick will help.”

He sat down again, breathless. It was just as Lettie had said. Beatrice and Stan had been part of Town Watch, Lettie’s gambling organization. But after a while they’d decided to develop their own dogfights, competing with Lettie’s.

“Dad.” I needed to know. “Did you gamble with Beatrice?”

“Do I look crazy to you? They came to me, those two. ‘Join in with us, get in on the ground floor.’ That’s what they said to me. ‘There’s lots of money to be made in this business.’ Can you imagine? The woman thought I’d be a part of that? I wanted none of it, and I said so. I told her not to do it, too. But Beatrice was stupid. She wouldn’t listen. She thought she’d get rich.”

“Did she?”

“Who knows. I broke off with her, didn’t want anything to do with a woman who’d be part of something like that. But then she turned up at my house, choking. It was Lettie who killed her, too.

Maybe not with her own hands, but she was behind it. No doubt about it. Lettie found out what the two of them were doing and put a stop to it.”

By having the betting slips shoved down Beatrice’s throat and having Stan shot.

Dad picked up his cane, waved it like a wand. Or a scepter. “But now she thinks she can come in here and invade my home. Lettie and her thugs. No, there are limits, and my house, well, that’s the limit.”

My father didn’t seem to grasp that Lettie and her friends were gone, but he was acutely aware of what they’d been up to. But I couldn’t help wondering…If he’d known how violent they were, why hadn’t he done something to stop them sooner? Why hadn’t he called the police? But then I realized what a ridiculous question that was. Walter Hayes was a man who’d never turn down a bet. For all I knew, he’d been involved with the gambling, maybe even betting on the dogfights. Even if he hadn’t, his former girlfriend had been. Maybe his relationship with Beatrice had been the reason he hadn’t gone to the authorities. Or maybe he’d feared for his own life.

“It’s a sorry thing”—my father was still talking—”when a man’s home isn’t private. When he finds gangsters and punks and half his neighborhood raiding the place.”

“Nobody was raiding it, Dad.”

“Says you.”

A question occurred to me. “Why were you here, Dad?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why did you come home?”

“Does a man need a reason to come into his own house?”

“How’d you get here?”

He looked confused. Didn’t he remember? His eyes shifted, avoiding the question. “I came to get some cash. I need some spending money.”

“For what? Everything’s paid for—your food, all the activities—” Somewhere in my mind, I heard my parents, arguing about money. “It’s gambling. You lost again, didn’t you. You’re over your head.” My mother’s accusation came out of my mouth.

“No. Who said that?”

“Dad, don’t lie to me—”

“Just nickel-and-dime. Some cards. Social. I bet a guy on a baseball game. The pennant.”

“Dad, you promised—”

“This is nothing. It’s just social. Friendly games.”

I shook my head. There was no point debating semantics; Dad wasn’t going to change. “How much? How are you going to pay?”

“Relax. I have plenty of cash here in the house.”

Of course he did. Hidden money. I’d found some of it with Susan. I took a deep breath, thinking of Dad’s secret guns. I remembered my mother stashing away cash and valuables, burying treasure in holes in the basement wall, under the floor. For all I knew, a fortune might be concealed in the house.

“Anyhow, I owe a guy, name’s Norton. Or Morton. I owe him fifty bucks, okay? Is that so bad? I came home to get some cash. Which, by the way, I have plenty of, and you don’t need to know where it is.”

In the walls? Near the cedar closet? Under a drawer? Behind a pipe? I shivered, images tickling the edges of my memory.

“And, for your information, Miss Smarty-pants, a taxicab.”

He was glaring at my eyes, pleased with himself.

“I took a cab. That’s how I got here.”

Nick came back from the dining room. “Okay. Let’s go.” He reached a hand out for me, and I tried to stand but my legs were limp. I couldn’t use my left foot, the rest of me wasn’t strong enough to get up. Nick’s arms enclosed me, lifting me, carrying me. I leaned against him, smelling fading soap and aftershave, exhaustion and stress. I closed my eyes, stretching out the contact, feeling his firm muscles, his body heat. I ached for him to whisper something private, maybe that he loved me, and I looked up hopefully. Nick’s lips parted, ready to speak. “Come on, Walter. You ready?”

That was all he said. I hung on, glommed onto him as he supported my weight. There was tenderness in his touch; that was enough for now.

“Walter?” He was impatient, peeved. “Let’s go. Now.”

“I need a moment. One moment.” My father used his cane and shuffled into the hall, watching us until we left. “I’ll be right out.”

“Hurry it up. Before the press sniffs us out.”

Nick hefted me into an unmarked car idling in the overgrowth outside the kitchen door. A moment later, even before I could tell Nick that I was sorry, my father joined us, a wad of twenties in his fist.