The Magic of Murder (20 page)

It was Kevin.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Roger said. “Do you have a death wish? Get inside!”

Two rather large officers, one young and dark, the other blond and considerably older than Roger, pushed the much shorter Kevin through the French doors. Their coats were matted with snow.

Roger followed them in. “Park yourself,” he told Kevin.

One of the officers roughly turned my ex around and shoved him down on one of the wooden stools at the kitchen counter.

“Sorry ’bout the snow and mud on your carpet, ma’am,”
the other cop said.

I stared at their tracks, then at where the carpet had been burned. With a sigh, I said, “It needs to be replaced anyway.”

Rebecca took the policemen’s coats. “Come with me,” she told them, “I’ll make you some hot tea.”

For a moment, I wondered what my friend might mix into the tea, and whether the men would turn green and come hopping out of the kitchen. Silly thought, I know. But the sudden eruption of activity, the fear, then the relief when I saw my ex finally captured, had cooked my brain well past the point of done.

Roger hovered over Kevin. “You led us on quite a chase.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. His hands cuffed behind his back,
he dropped his head.

Kevin’s blond hair seemed stringier, dirtier than it had been when he cowered on my sofa a few days before. He had a three- or four-day growth on his round face. Though his face was pale, his cheeks were florid. His gray coat was torn at the elbows. Red lines radiated from his pupils, which told me it had been a while since he slept.

“Not sorry enough,” Roger said. “Do you know what you’ve put this woman through?” He pointed at me, as if there were several women in my living room to choose from.

Balanced now on my crutches with my right leg raised behind, I glared at Kevin. “How could you do this—” I pointed to my bandaged leg “—try to kill me?”

He let out a low groan. His eyes misting, he said, “It wasn’t me, I swear it. I’d never hurt you, Emmy.”

Roger’s face set, his eyes on fire, he asked, “Who is it, then? Who’s trying to hurt her?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“You know, dammit!” Roger took a half-step back and flipped his coat. With a hand on his holster, in a low, menacing tone, he said. “Tell me who, or I swear something to you, you little shit—I’ll put a bullet in your forehead, and say you were trying to escape—”

“Roger!” I shouted.

Chairs clattered. The two uniformed officers ran from the kitchen.

His eyes locked on Kevin, Roger raised his left hand as though he were directing traffic. “It’s okay, Matt, Ed.” He moved his hand from his gun. “The perp and I were just having a quiet conversation.”

My ex glanced from the cops, to Roger, to me, with a wide-eyed look of terror on his face. “I never…I couldn’t… Tell ’em, Em!”

I shook my head in disgust. “He might be a lot of nasty things, but he hasn’t got the gumption to kill. He nearly cried when I made him destroy a nest of wasps in the backyard.”

Roger dropped his face close to his prisoner. “Maybe, maybe not. Cowards do all kinds of things we never thought they could. Like blackmail?” He let the accusation hang.

Kevin averted his eyes.

“You were trying to blackmail Amy Woodward,” Roger
said.

Kevin clamped his jaw.

“I’ll take that as an admission. Then what? She wouldn’t
pay or couldn’t pay, so you killed her and ransacked her house?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Same reason you tried to get money out of Emlyn—to get out of town before the DEA caught up with you.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Kevin didn’t kill Amy,” I whispered.

Roger’s head swung in my direction.

I pointed with my crutch. “I know it wasn’t him.”

“How?”

I couldn’t tell Roger that while I flew in an out-of-body state above Niagara Falls, I’d seen a car drive up to the Woodwards’ house, seen the person who got out of the car and knocked on the back door. No, I couldn’t tell Roger without sounding like an escapee from an asylum. I especially couldn’t let the two cops in my house hear about my flight (at the moment I would have argued with anyone who told me I’d dreamt the episode).

With an impatient, “Uh-huh,” Roger dismissed what I said. Again he focused on Kevin. “And Detective Osborn—did you kill him, too? Were you trying to blackmail him?”

The two officers closed in. With Roger, they formed a
tight circle around the prisoner. Jimmy had been one of their
own.

The older cop elbowed Kevin in the ribs. “Did you?”

“Might as well give it up, Reinhart,” Roger said. “An hour ago the Feds raided the barn your playmates used as a drugstore. They reeled three of ’em in. Quite a crew you’re running with. Right now they’re probably singing the score from a Broadway musical, and guess who they’re gonna claim wrote lyrics?”

His head spinning from one accuser to the other, Kevin whined, “You…you’ve got it all wrong. I wasn’t blackmailing Osborn. He was bleeding me.”

Kevin’s words rang in my ears. My mind rotated like an out-of-control carousel. Ira Smith had told us a detective came to his office. Looking for Kevin, he said. Was the detective Jimmy Osborn? If it was, had Jimmy known it was both Ira and Kevin who supplied drugs to their clients? Was he the dangerous character Ira had suggested to Rebecca? Again, I thought of the Corvette in the Osborns’ driveway. Was blackmail how Jimmy got the money to buy it? Then there was the car I saw pull to the curb across the street from the Woodwards’ house—

It didn’t matter that I’d dreamed my flight; my mind struggled to make connections. Patches of a crazy quilt began to slide into place. They formed a pattern. I could almost see how everything on it would fit together. But, the quilt had a few patches missing. Critical patches. Like a motive for killing Jimmy then Amy. A motive for coming after me. Could it be there was a real motive for just one of the murders? Agatha Christie wrote a story about a man who slew three people to keep anyone from noticing the motive for the one murder he wanted to commit. Was that what happened here?

While I leaned on my crutches wondering what to do next and trying hard to conjure how I might find those last critical pieces of the pattern, Kevin leaned back and said, “Is…is there a deal here someplace?”

A slight smile danced on Roger’s lips. “What have you got to trade?”

Before my ex could answer, someone pounded on my front door.

Chapter Twenty-One

The Short Drop

            
 
S
ince the Molotov cocktail crashed through the window at Main Street Books and lit my leg like a Roman candle, a sudden noise had made me jump so far I might have qualified for the Olympics. This time I didn’t jump or even flinch. Elvira did. I was so lost in visions of patches
sliding over my imaginary quilt, which when finished would
reveal the entire picture of drugs, blackmail, and murder in my small city, I hardly heard knuckles beat a tattoo on my door.

Kevin heard the pounding, though. As if he guessed
who was outside, he whined like a child about to be spanked.

“I’ll see who it is,” Rebecca said.

“No. Please!” Kevin cried.

Clearly annoyed at the interruption, Roger grumbled.

“Stay where you are,” the younger, dark uniform instructed. “I’ll get it.”

His service revolver held at his side, the officer moved to the door and opened it the length of the chain.

“Is Detective Frey in there?” a harsh voice demanded from outside. The words were so loud, the entire neighborhood could have heard.

The officer at the door glanced over his shoulder.

Still hunched threateningly over Kevin, Roger shook his head.

“No, he ain’t here,” the dark officer said.

“Don’t give me that crap,” the voice shouted. “Open the damn door!”

Again the uniform looked over his shoulder.

Roger snapped his tongue. Then he gave an almost imperceptible nod.

The officer closed the door and slid off the chain. When
he opened the door again, two men burst in, tracking more
snow and mud across my floor. They pushed past the officer,
past Rebecca, past me.

Elvira swished her tail out of the way a nanosecond before one of the men stomped on it. With a screech, she leaped onto the kitchen counter and ducked behind a group of canisters where she became almost invisible in my white kitchen.

The man who had growled like a hungry wolf at my door, moved tight against Roger’s side, and so close to me I smelled stale smoke from the pipe shoved into the breast pocket of his overcoat. The man reached for Kevin’s lapel. “This him?” he said.

Both invaders of my home were similarly clad in dark gray coats, with trousers of the same color. On their feet were the same highly polished heavy black brogans. The five o’clock stubble on their faces gave the appearance they’d recently dug through a trash bin. The only difference between the two was that the man who clearly was in charge had very short black hair, while his colleague’s military cut was light brown.

Roger’s face turned bright red. He appeared too angry to speak.

As if he might hide, Kevin twisted on the stool and ducked his head toward the kitchen counter.

The cat poked her face from behind a canister and hissed. Elvira had no affection for my ex. I couldn’t blame her.

For more than a minute, everyone stared at Kevin.

At last, the man with the pipe in his pocket said, “This the way you cooperate on cases in Niagara Falls?” His eyebrows almost formed a
V
. He sounded as annoyed as he looked.

“What do you want from me, Agent Parker?” Roger said. “I got the call and came over here. Should I have waited for you while Reinhart took off again?”

It might have been a good bluff, if the cop who opened the door didn’t at first deny Roger was here, and if both cops didn’t look away when they heard what Roger said.

Elvira scampered across the counter. She stopped near Agent Parker. When the DEA Agent turned to her, she glared at him, as if she might freeze the man with her pink eyes then bend him to her will (that’s what she’d done to me months earlier when I refused to read about the Salem witches). Or maybe she thought she could make him disappear altogether. The only effect her stare had was to deepen the man’s frown.

“What’s with this damn cat?” Agent Parker said.

With one hand on a crutch, I scooped Elvira up in my arm and held her away.

Snorting at Elvira, at me, at Roger, or maybe at what he saw as our conspiracy to keep my ex out of his hands, Parker commanded, “We’ll take our prisoner now.”

I intended to inform him Kevin was our prisoner, not his, but Roger laid a hand on my wrist.

One of the federal agents grabbed Kevin by the handcuffs. The other latched onto his overcoat. With his shoulders hunched, my former mate looked as though he’d shrunken into himself.

“This will wrap up the drug ring in a nice tidy package,”
Parker said.

I pushed Roger’s hand away. “What about Detective Osborn and Amy Woodward?” I said. “Doesn’t the DEA care they were murdered?”

Halfway out the door, the second agent replied, “We’ll let you know if we get anything out of Reinhart.”

“I want a lawyer,” Kevin whined.

Rebecca slammed the door behind the agents and leaned against it. She seemed to be out of breath. Her braid had begun to come apart, long tendrils sticking out here and there. Over the past hour her hair had gone from tight curls to frizz. The damp air wasn’t the only cause. My friend got nervous around this many policemen. I knew why: in her teenage years she’d learned the art of reading cards and palms from women in a family that moved down from Canada. Eastern European—Romanian, she thought. The family had darker skin than others in the small mid-western town Rebecca came from. After 9/11, people became xenophobic, wary of accents. Germanic, Slavic, Arabic—to the simple folk she’d grown up among, they were the same.  Neighbors were suspicious of her new friends. So were the police. If a car backfired in the town, someone would call the sheriff’s office and shout about a bomber on the loose. Next thing, her new friends would be hauled in for questioning, harassed on general principles. Rebecca would be hauled in, too, since the townsfolk thought she’d been brainwashed by the damn foreigners.

Still leaning against the door minutes after the DEA agents left, she said, “What do we do now?”

“Get some sleep,” Roger said. “With Reinhart and the gang from the barn corralled, you won’t be bothered any longer.” His tone told me he was far from satisfied with the way his case ended.

I knew Roger wouldn’t sleep. He hated loose ends. In this, he and I are alike—I’m not done with a story until every subplot has been resolved.

“Aren’t you going to follow Agent Parker?” I asked. “
You
caught Kevin. Parker’s got to let you help question him.”

“What for?” Roger said. “We got the whole drug gang.”

“Because I’m sure he knows something that’ll point us toward the killer.”

“Still don’t believe Reinhart’s the one who pulled the trigger?”

I stooped and put Elvira on the floor. “Do you still believe Chief Woodward didn’t kill his wife?”

“Yes. I think your ex-husband did it.”

“Well then, if you want to get Woody off the hook,” I said, “you ought to force your way in while they question Kevin.”

“She’s right, you know,” Rebecca said.

The cat rolled over, then sat at Roger’s feet. Craning her neck to him, she let out a long
meeeow
.

Roger bent at the waist. With hands on his hips, he spoke directly to Elvira. “Of course, I want to do that.”

The cat cocked her head.

“Because the Feds won’t let me,” he said. “You saw how pissed they were when they left.”

I was surprised. When had Roger learned to speak cat?

“Keep arguing with us, and they’ll have Kevin halfway back to Washington,” I said. “Then you’ll never find out what he knows.”

Rebecca added, “And Chief Woodward will spend his life in jail for a murder you’re sure he didn’t commit.”

“Can you live with that?” I said.

Elvira’s
purrrr
echoed my sentiment.

His back to us, Roger muttered, “You’re a royal pain in my ass, all three of you.”

This was his way of admitting without having to say it, we were right. Men! But at least he stopped arguing.

No need to grab his overcoat before he stomped out my front door—he hadn’t taken it off since he arrived—without another word, Roger was in his Trailblazer and gone. I guess he found it easier to do what we asked, than to keep trading words with a stubborn cat…um, Elvira, I mean, not me or Rebecca.

***

Rebecca let out a long breath. “I thought he’d never leave.”

“I just hope the DEA lets Roger question Kevin,” I said. “But, even if they don’t—”

“You think you know who did it, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

During the past two days, my friend had shown little inclination to chase after the killer. From the time she appeared at Main Street Books, it seemed she sought only to keep me from becoming the third victim. Though I knew I would have been in rather bad shape if she hadn’t shown up, I’d grown a bit annoyed at her reluctance. Now, her posture was relaxed, her face calm.

“Good. Let’s get the bastard,” she said, at last ready to fight back.

“Don’t you want to know who I think it is?”

Her jaw slid from side to side and she shook her head. “I’ll find out soon enough. Where do we go from here?”

I looked around and saw Elvira on the coffee table, pawing at Sarah Goode’s book.

“The cat’s right,” I said. “What Sarah wrote has pointed
us in the right direction from the start.” I scratched the white
fur on the cat’s neck then picked up the book. “Where do I look?” I asked.

Her head tilted, Elvira gave me a quizzical look.

“
She
might not know what to do,” Rebecca said as she dropped onto the wingback chair. “But she knows Sarah does.”

I settled on my sofa and flipped the book open. Pages turned. There was nothing supernatural about this. It was the principle of friction or something such as that. What do I know?—in twelfth grade, my science teacher gave me a passing grade only because I helped his daughter with the essay for her college application.

I began to read from where the pages came to rest: “Third of July, by the grace of…I cannot call Him God.”

I glanced over at Rebecca. “Sarah can’t say God? Do you think a demon got into her?”

“This isn’t the time to worry about a demon eating your ancestor’s soul,” she said. “Keep reading.”

“Don’t worry about it? We’re practicing what she did. What if we’re following her down the dark road to hell? Maybe my leg got burned as a warning about where I’m headed.”

Elvira jumped on my lap and pawed the page.

“Your white fur’s going to get full of soot in hell,” I told her.

“Read,” Rebecca instructed.

This was a reverse of our roles the day before. Yesterday my friend had been loath to walk in Sarah Goode’s footprints. Today, I was the one who felt hellfire lick my back. Still, I knew Rebecca was right: if I were ever to put an end to the madness around me, we’d have to follow where Sarah led.

“Okay,” I said. “This is what she wrote:

“I am betrayed by all I have known, by all I have trusted. I have trusted my life to Him, and by Him, too, have I been betrayed. I have been tried and convicted by the words of simple children, who chew the wheat in the field instead of working it as they must. And when caught in their idleness,
they twitch and rant, and swear they are bewitched.
Swear before Him they are bewitched. Swear before the magistrates, it is I who bewitched them. It was not bewitching I did when I gave them an herbal tea to ease their brain fever. It was the work of Him who showed me I might cure the fever by such means. And now, oh, I am betrayed.

“At ordeal three days past, my young daughter, my Dorothy, testified I forced her also to partake of this tea. The Devil’s tea, Magistrate Corwin insisted she say. And my husband, William, swore, too, it was a Devil’s brew. He needed no prodding by Corwin or Hathorne to swear it is so. Why? In this dark cell I have asked God why. And God tells me it is an answer I know. He is wise.

“Though I sought to hide it among my candles
beneath straw in the loft, William has found this
book, and read in it my yearning after dear George
Burroughs. Jealousy brought from him the lies by which I am condemned to a short drop on Gallows Hill. William brought this book to me in my cell this morning and told me I have soiled his spirit
with so great a treachery only God’s wrath against
me will cleanse it. He said then he would swear an oath also against George, if Heaven permits. In this manner has God shown me it is by my own words, writ by moonlight, that I am condemned.

“I fear God’s retribution. Is there yet a way I may postpone His wrath and live to atone? Aye, there may be. Now must I use my herbs to save
myself instead of others. I will write on these pages
those plants I require for an amulet of truth. When my eldest, Emlyn, comes to me tomorrow, I will give her my book for safekeeping, and tell her how to tie those herbs in white linen. White is the color of truth. The herbs when combined will draw forth in public from the husband I have betrayed, the reason behind his lie.”