The Purrfect Murder (23 page)

33

         

M
other!”
Brinkley put his paws on Tazio's shoulders and kissed her face as she bent her knees slightly to greet him.

Paul had wanted to go to the prison with Ned, and Big Mim thought that was fine. She could do with a day in the stables herself.

However, through Ned, Tazio had asked that Paul stay at work. She wanted to wash the stink of the prison off her, fix her hair, girly herself up.

Ned brought Brinkley.

On the drive home, Ned provided all the details he had of Mike McElvoy's arrest.

“Did he confess to the murders?”

“No. He swears he's innocent.” Ned couldn't help the irritation that crept into his voice. “So, kid, we're still not out of the woods yet, and it will be expensive.”

“At least I'm out of jail. How can I ever thank Big Mim for going to people and raising bail?”

“By being yourself. She likes you. Well, she'd have to, wouldn't she?” He smiled. “There is one thing.”

“What? A building?”

“Big Mim has wanted to create an orangery for years. Never got around to it. Perhaps you might surprise her with plans.”

Her eyes brightened, for Tazio had never designed an orangery.

Always up to a new challenge, she said, “I will. Wonder if I can create a misting system that won't be intrusive.”

Ned smiled broadly this time, because he knew Tazio was on her way back to the Tazio they all knew. This experience had bruised a sensitive soul.

Given what she considered her state of ugliness, it took Tazio two full hours to prepare herself. Then she hopped in her wheels—with Brinkley, the happiest dog in America, in the passenger seat—and drove to the stables.

Paul, in a back paddock, heard the engine. He quietly slipped the halter off the yearling, closed the gate, and burned the wind running to the parking lot, the halter flapping all the while, for he had forgotten to hang it up.

Tazio had no sooner taken three steps from the car than Paul smothered her in an embrace. Then she cried and cried. She'd known she loved him, even though she'd kept that to herself. But she hadn't known how much.

He cried, too.

Brinkley, respectfully seated, wagged his tail because he knew they weren't sad tears.

“I love you,” Tazio simply said.

Big Mim, who had just come out of the house to walk into the garden, saw them out of the corner of her eye. She thought she'd wait a little before going down there, but she did see Paul drop to one knee, take Tazio's right hand in his. She looked up to heaven and thought, truly the Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.

After Tazio agreed to marry Paul, the two of them, holding hands, walked up from the stables to the big house. Tazio wanted to thank Big Mim.

Big Mim waved from the garden as she saw them coming, took off her gardening apron, and opened her arms.

“Thank you. Thank you,” Tazio cried again.

Paul did, too.

Big Mim managed to hold it in, but she swallowed hard. “You'll be cleared. Wait until you read today's papers.”

Paul wiped his eyes with his hand, straightened his shoulders, and spoke with his seductive accent. “Mrs. Sanburne, Tazio has granted me the honor to become my wife.”

“Marvelous!” Big Mim kissed Tazio and Paul. “You couldn't have chosen a better partner, nor a more beautiful woman. You are a lucky man.”

Paul beamed and Tazio said, “I'm pretty lucky, too.”

Big Mim held Tazio's hands in hers, enthusiasm in her voice. “I know you two have a lot to do, people to call, but, Tazio, you have got to read this. Come on.”

In the kitchen, Tazio sat down and Gretchen made her coffee. Big Mim put the front page in front of Tazio as Paul sat next to her.

“Oh, my God.” Tazio enunciated each word slowly. “Oh, my God.” As she read, her breathing grew stronger and she couldn't stop interjecting phrases throughout.

“Isn't that the most incredible thing you have ever read?” Paul said as she put the paper down and picked up the coffee cup.

“Harry could have been murdered.”

“Would have.” Big Mim enjoyed her third cup today—one too many, but what the hell.

“He's claiming innocence. That will slow the process, but how many murderers confess?” Gretchen couldn't help but throw that in.

“State prosecutor will get him.” Big Mim hoped so, anyway. “Sixty-two thousand dollars in cash and all that jewelry. And he cataloged every single woman he had taken money, jewelry, and panties from. It's so bizarre. Why catalog?”

“Possession.” Tazio, with insight, said, “He still felt he possessed them.”

“The panties. How can anyone live that down?” Gretchen laughed.

“He'll be living it down in jail. And maybe this time he'll be the victim.” Tazio felt a flash of genuine hate for Mike.

“Noddy will bring him soap on a rope so he doesn't have to bend over in the shower.” Gretchen laughed.

“Gretchen.” Big Mim pretended to be scandalized.

“Noddy will divorce him if she has a grain of sense.” Tazio shook her head.

“I can't imagine the humiliation she feels.” Paul glanced at the article again.

“He was probably complicit in Will's murder, but it will take a great deal of work to prove it. The rub is proving he killed Carla. He was absent from his table, but so were others.” Big Mim folded her hands on her lap. “Rick will crack it. I have faith in him.”

34

M
ike McElvoy, in the cell next to Jonathan Bechtal's, talked to him over the days. When he was talking to him, he listened to Jonathan's delusions about being the hammer arm of God.

Neither man particularly liked the other.

A week had passed since Mike's arrest. Noddy refused to visit him. The guard gave him the daily papers. Each day his shame deepened—not guilt but shame.

“You're cooked.” Jonathan cheerfully read the papers, too.

“Shut up.”

“Don't tell me to shut up, you pervert. What do you do with those panties? Jerk off into them?” Mike ignored this. “Couldn't get enough from your wife. She's dumped you, too.”

“Shut up. No one visits you.”

Jonathan's face darkened. His beard, now straggly since he wasn't allowed any grooming implements, made him look fiercer. “My angel can't visit me. No one must know.”

“Married, is she?” Mike crossed his arms over his chest.

“You shut your filthy mouth. She's a pure, sweet angel. She's not married. She'll never marry. She's married to our great cause of saving lives. They'll kill me eventually, but I die a martyr. I die for the unborn.”

“She'll open her legs before your body is cold.” Mike could give as good as he got.

Jonathan slammed up against the cell bars between them. “I'll strangle you if you get near enough.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

As it was Monday, the usual medley of drunks from the weekend had been released. Only the two of them were incarcerated.

Jonathan, clever in his way, lowered his anger and his voice. “Why didn't you take the money and the jewelry and run?”

Mike got up, pacing. “Never thought I'd be caught. Every one of those women had something to hide. Affairs. Drinking or drug problems. The usual. I'd drop a few knowing hints, looks, and wait for a guilty flush. You'd be surprised how easy it can be. And you know, a few wanted it. Bored with their husbands.”

“You shouldn't sleep with a woman if you don't love her, if you don't marry her.” Jonathan truly was a Puritan.

“You say. You miss a lot, buddy.” Mike smiled sarcastically. “Why didn't you run? You might have gotten away with it. Killed more doctors.”

“I wanted to be caught. I wanted to be heard.”

“People think you're nuts.”

Jonathan's anger welled up again; he forced it down. “Saving lives, that's crazy now. You said you were a member of Love of Life. What's the matter with you?”

“I do think it's murder.” Mike paused. “And I didn't kill anyone.”

“I did,” Jonathan solemnly declared. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

“You helped it along.” Mike started to say, “And you hurt our cause,” but he didn't, because they'd had that discussion before, at high decibel level.

“I'd do it again. We planned it. We gathered a lot of money for the cause, and my angel is keeping it. Love of Life doesn't know of our great plan to shut down every abortion clinic and doctor in America. Those were my letters after I was in jail. I'd written them before. My angel thought of that so we'd get even more money for our cause. Killing Will would open their bank accounts to us. It would scare the money right out of them. We'd get everything out of those murdering women.”

“One of them turned out to be braver than you thought.” Mike meant Little Mim.

“God will take care of her in His own way and in His own time.” Jonathan, at first elated that a fellow traveler was in the cell next to him, had soured as he got to know Mike. “He'll take care of you, too.”

“When you go before St. Peter, you'll have bigger sins to confess than I do. I didn't kill anybody. And now that Penny Lattimore has come out of hiding, I hope she'll tell the sheriff that, yes, I put the touch on her, but I never threatened to kill her. I underestimated the sheriff. Pretending that Penny had disappeared scared some of the other women you'd blackmailed into going to him. At least that's what I think. And I never, ever, threatened to kill Carla or Penny.”

“She'll die.” Jonathan tightened his lips.

“We'll all die.”

“She's number two.”

Mike, stupid in some ways and no fool in others, pretended not to be galvanized by this information. “Carla was number one.”

“Was?”

“Refused to pay?”

“She paid, but after I was in jail she got hysterical. Carla got hysterical when Will was shot. My angel said you would have thought Carla'd been shot. Murdering woman.”

“Your angel?”

“My angel is doing God's work. God speaks to me and I speak to her. As you know, God doesn't speak to women. Carla had an abortion. She was a murdering woman. The only way these killers can atone for their monstrous sins is to give money to our cause so we can save more children. If they don't, they die. My angel took care of Carla.”

“Why does your angel keep the money?” Mike pretended not to care that he'd just heard who killed Carla, even though he could not identify the woman.

“Idiot! How would it look if large sums of cash were handed to the treasurer? Love of Life won't put the doctors out of business. Too scared. No real fire for the task. We need the money to complete our work. I'll die, and my angel will have her revenge.”

Mike leaned back on his bunk. How could he get to Rick without Jonathan knowing? The man never seemed to sleep. If Mike asked the guard anything, Jonathan would know. But he'd heard from this fanatic's own lips that his angel/accomplice had killed Carla.

There wasn't but so much Mike could do about his crimes, but he could at least clear himself of murder. In an odd way he was glad he'd been caught, because he would have killed Harry. And killing was never his intention.

35

R
ick walked with Coop across Jackson Park toward the courthouse downtown on Thursday, October 16. “What do you make of it?”

“He's trying to save his skin.”

“Yes, but it is plausible.”

“Then we'd better put security on Penny Lattimore.”

“Marvin is rich enough to hire his own. I'll call him. Remember, if we go over budget I have to face the commissioners; you don't.”

“If I did, I'd wear a low-cut dress and show cleavage. Works every time.”

Rick laughed. “How would I know? I've never had the privilege.”

She laughed, too. “Really. They've done studies to show that when men think of sex they can't think.”

“They needed to do studies for that?”

“Is pretty silly, isn't it? How many thousands of years have we known what we are?”

Rick pulled out a cigarette, stopping to light it. He handed it to her for a puff. “Best damned things.”

“I used the five dollars I won from you when Jonathan Bechtal turned himself in.”

“You used more than that.” He took it back, inhaling deeply. “Murder is a sin and a crime, but I'll be forced, on Judgment Day, to answer for leading you to cigarettes.”

“I smoke one a day.”

“You'll smoke more.” He closed his eyes in pleasure after another long, long drag. “Well, we have a fascinating situation on our hands.”

“What's funny is that Mike's panty fetish has people more in an uproar than the murders.”

“New news.” Then Rick smiled wryly. “And it's all about sex. That's a lot more interesting than crimes committed over ideology, money, property. Sex makes everyone perk up.”

“Does, doesn't it?”

“Lorenzo must have called.”

“You know,” she paused, “he did. I've seen him once for lunch, on my day off, and I like him. More than that I don't know.”

“But you know if you're attracted to him. You can't invent that. Either it's there or it isn't.”

“Sex.” Coop smiled. “I think that's why it's so difficult for women to understand men like Mike. Intellectually we know why he did what he did, but emotionally it doesn't compute. Never will.”

“Let me let you in on a little secret: it doesn't compute with a lot of men, either. I find Mike more disgusting than Jonathan Bechtal. Bechtal is a fanatic, a lunatic. Mike abused public trust as well as abusing women. He's a liar, a thief, in my mind a rapist, and a corrupt official. Anything that breaks down trust in government, to me, is a sin. And God knows, there's a lot of it out there.”

“I agree. Without trust you have nothing in any kind of relationship. You know what I see now that I didn't see before? I see the trust that Harry has with her pets and they have with her. Those animals may well have saved her life.”

“They did.” Rick's cell rang and he flipped it open, listened intently, flipped it shut. “Come on, partner.”

She followed him at a run.

Closing the squad car door behind her, Coop breathlessly asked, “Penny?”

“No.” He hit the sirens and roared off. “Mike.”

They reached the jail. Mike's crumpled body lay on its side in the outdoor exercise area. His bloodshot eyes testified to strangulation even before Rick knelt down to examine the bruises on his neck.

The guard, Sam Demotta, stood helplessly next to the body. “I turned my back for a minute. Chief, honestly. I heard a gurgle and Jonathan had his hands around his throat. I couldn't stop him. I blew my whistle. By the time Tom got here, Mike was toast.”

“Snitch,” was all Rick said as he rose, heading toward the cell block.

Coop followed.

No need to explain the judgment reserved for snitches in prison, or the armed forces, for that matter.

Smugly sitting on his bunk, Jonathan did not rise to greet them.

Rick said, “You kill him?”

“I did.”

“Would you like to give me a reason?”

“Oh,” Jonathan airily commented, “I tossed him a few morsels, knowing he'd run to you when he could, and that way I had reason to kill him. He was a pervert. He deserved to die.”

Coop said, “Couldn't you have killed him without tossing him morsels?”

“I could.” Jonathan spoke patiently, as though to a dim-witted child. “But it's boring in here. This helped pass the time, and he deserved to die. It's God's will, you know.”

The two law-enforcement officers walked outside the cell block, shutting the door behind them.

“Jesus Christ, he's crazy. He'll get off because he's crazy!” Coop uttered in total despair.

“He knows it, too. He'll be spared the death sentence and spend the rest of his worthless life in a high-security mental ward.” Rick appreciated the twisted prisoner's intelligence. “And there's not a damned thing we can do about it. But I am going to do something he doesn't like, even if we have to strap him down, and I bet we will.”

He did, too. One hour later, Sam Demotta had the honor of cutting off Jonathan's beard, then shaving him. Tom had to hold his jaw tight, but they did it. A few cuts appeared on Jonathan's good-looking face.

“I should have done that when we first arrested him,” Rick declared. “All right. I want photographs and, Sam, the best one better be in tomorrow's paper. I'll call them right now.”

“They won't run it,” Coop told him as they hurried to the jail office. “Newspapers always use their own photographer.”

“They'll use this, because I am going to tell them that the prisoner is far too dangerous for anyone to be near him and he has killed again.”

The next day, Friday, October 17, the newspapers, the television news, and the radio carried the story of Mike McElvoy's murder.

The photo in the paper startled Benita Wylde. She remembered where she'd seen Jonathan Bechtal.