Crime & Punctuation Page 23

  “I don’t know anything.”

  The last word came out on a yelp when Mike tightened his grip. He shoved me forward. I tried to resist, twisting my body in his direction, but that made my arm hurt even more. I could see a small section of Mike’s face out of the corner of my eye. The look of grim determination I saw there scared me more than anything he could say.

  From the dining room Darlene called, “Is everything okay out there?”

  At the realization that we weren’t alone, Mike blanched. For just a second, his hold on me loosened.

  “Darlene, call the cops!” I shouted as I tried again to wrench myself free.

  Mike shifted, wrapping one arm around my neck and pulling me against his chest. I could feel him fumbling in the pocket of his coat with his free hand and the rush of air against my cheek as he shouted, “Don’t do it, Darlene!”

  The next moment, something hard poked me in the ribs.

  “One move toward a phone,” Mike yelled, “and I shoot your friend!”

  Chapter 43

  I don’t know much about firearms, except that you can kill people with them. My maternal grandfather used to go deer hunting with his pals, but if he ever kept a rifle in the house it was well hidden. Neither my father nor my husband ever owned any kind of gun. All I knew about the one Mike had was that it was deadly. It was probably just a normal-size handgun, but in my imagination it was enormous—big, ugly, and liable to go off at any second.

  He pushed me ahead of him into the dining room. Darlene was right where I’d left her, framed by tall windows as she sat on her scooter. When we came through the pocket doors, she lifted her hands to show they were empty.

  “I don’t have a phone on me. Sorry, Mikki.”

  “Damn it,” Mike swore. “This was supposed to be quick and easy.”

  “What was? Killing me? Forgive me if I’m not inclined to cooperate.”

  Although I was trembling all over and not entirely certain how much longer my legs would keep me upright, the sarcasm still leaked out. What was the point of beating around the bush? Mike’s intentions were obvious. He was only hesitating to carry out his plan because he’d realized he would have to deal with disposing of two bodies instead of one.

  “What’s this all about?” Darlene asked.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know. She probably told you everything.” He jabbed me again with the gun, this time hard enough to make me wince.

  “I don’t know everything,” I protested. “The least you could do is tell us what you think we know before you shoot us.”

  He released me and gave me a shove in Darlene’s direction. When I turned around, I got my first good look at the gun. It wasn’t quite as large as I’d envisioned, but it was big enough to terrify me. It took a concerted effort on my part to stop staring at it. The hand holding the gun was visibly unsteady, but that did not reassure me. If it went off by accident, I’d be just as dead.

  I started to speak.

  “Shut up.”

  “What? You think we should make this easy for you?” Darlene sounded more irritated than scared. Possibly that was the rum talking.

  “I don’t think you have a choice.”

  Whatever condition Darlene was in, I was now stone cold sober and desperately trying to think of a way to talk Mike out of this madness. He hadn’t shot us yet. I tried to convince myself that was an encouraging sign.

  “So what was the plan?” I asked. “Did you mean to stage an accident for me? A fall down the stairs, maybe? You can’t really want to shoot us. That will leave evidence for the police to find. They’ll have to investigate a double murder, and if they can trace the gun, you’ll be in big trouble.”

  “That doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you. Where are your backups? All of them this time.”

  So that was what had triggered this desperate move. I’d told him I still had copies of the files on Tiffany’s thumb drive. Then my eyes widened as the penny dropped.

  “You’re the one who broke in and stole my laptop.” It made sense. The break-in had taken place right after I told him that the files contained his father’s story. “Is this supposed to look like a second burglary, only this time with a fatality?”

  He was scoping out the room. “This is an old house. No one will be surprised when it catches fire and burns to the ground. The only change in my plan is that now two people will be trapped inside instead of just one.”

  “I don’t like that plan,” I said. “I just finished the renovations. They aren’t even paid for yet.”

  “Tough.”

  “Well, that’s mature!” I sent him a pitying look. “You’re a lawyer, Mike. Can’t you think of a way out of this jam that doesn’t involve more violence? I can’t believe you intended to kill Tiffany. You quarreled with her, right? Because she was blackmailing you?”

  I got a flicker of reaction to that. He hadn’t anticipated that I’d figure out the blackmail angle. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it. I should probably have stopped talking entirely, but what did I have to lose? The longer he delayed killing us, the better our chances that something would happen to prevent that from happening. What that something might be, I hadn’t the foggiest notion.

  “I can see how you might have lost your temper and pushed her into the water. If she accidentally hit her head on something, you probably left the scene without ever realizing she could drown.”

  “Nice scenario, Mikki. You should have been a writer. There’s only one little problem. It doesn’t explain the drugs in her system.”

  Oops.

  “You want to know what really happened? Fine. I’ll tell you. I intended to kill that blackmailing bitch all along. And I meant for Ronnie to be blamed for it, too, if the cops couldn’t be fooled into thinking Tiffany’s death was an accidental drowning. I knew she’d hire me to represent her. No matter how the trial comes out, she’s going to pay me enough in legal fees to replace everything Tiffany extorted. Only fair, right?”

  “What about your alibi?”

  He laughed. “No one ever asked me for one. Why should they? What possible motive could I have had to kill Tiffany Scott?”

  Darlene had been silent for quite a while, but now she spoke up. “Why did you pay her, Mike? Wouldn’t it have been better to tell her to publish and be damned?”

  “Not when my family’s reputation was at stake.” He snapped out the words in a cold, emotionless voice. His face was equally devoid of expression, showing no regret, no remorse . . . and no pity. “Too bad you had to figure things out. I can’t take the chance that anyone else will discover what my father did.”

  His confession and the plans he had for us should have paralyzed me, leaving me unable to move or speak. Instead, the more he admitted to, the angrier I became. “If you were so anxious to keep that skeleton in the closet, you should never have talked to Tiffany in the first place.”

  “She was just a kid. She was supposed to think I was making up scary stories to amuse her.”

  “And you might have been just a little the worse for drink at the time? Said just a little too much? Added just a few too many details?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “It’s ironic, you know. I don’t think I’d have looked so hard at the files and found the notes on the copycat killer if you hadn’t used some of the same tricks when you killed Tiffany.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I had his complete attention now. He had dismissed Darlene, our handicapped classmate, as a negligible threat.

  “Oh, come on, Mike. Surely you’re aware of the standard MO of Murder Incorporated—whack someone, tie up the dead body, weigh it down, and toss it in a lake. That’s how your father got away with the murder he committed. His crime mimicked a mob hit.”

  “She was alive when she went into the water, and she wasn’t tied up. She drowned.”

  “She drowned because you got her to eat or drink something that had been conveniently laced with one of Ronnie’s meds. What did you use? P
ainkillers? Sleeping pills?”

  “Enough talk,” Mike gestured with the gun. “Turn around.”

  “So you can knock me out?”

  My legs still felt wobbly, and there was a decided tremor in my voice. The determined look in his eyes warned me that he was done answering questions. I’d delayed the inevitable as long as I could.

  As I turned, I stepped farther away from Darlene. She was still sitting on her scooter. A low hum told me the motor was still running.

  The only warning Mike had was a slightly louder whirring sound. Then the scooter shot forward at what Darlene had once laughingly referred to as “ramming speed.” It blindsided Mike, knocking him off balance. When he lost his grip on the gun, it flew across the room and struck the stack of printouts I’d piled on a chair, scattering them and sending my brand-new laptop crashing to the floor. The weapon disappeared in a blizzard of white paper.

  I dove on top of the pile and began flinging loose pages every which way as I fumbled for possession of the gun. I didn’t want to touch the thing, but I couldn’t risk Mike getting hold of it again.

  On the far side of the room, Darlene continued her assault. Her scooter wasn’t heavy enough to keep him pinned down, but as long as she kept giving it power, hitting him with it again and again, he couldn’t regain his footing.

  He flailed at her, landing a few good blows, and finally succeeded in unseating her. Darlene didn’t perform the most graceful of dismounts, but she did manage to roll the scooter on top of him on her way to the floor.

  My hand touched cold metal. Panting, reeling a little as I staggered upright on trembling legs, I held the gun by the barrel, my finger nowhere near the trigger. I knew I’d never be able to bring myself to shoot anyone. I didn’t even want to point a deadly weapon at another person, but Mike was crawling out from under the scooter. In another moment, he’d be on his feet. I had to do it.

  An instant before I made my move, Darlene took action. She was still on the floor herself, but she’d landed within reach of my fallen laptop. Grabbing hold of it with both hands, she heaved it at Mike just as he came up on his hands and knees. It whacked him hard upside the head, and he went down with a crash.

  Cautiously, I stepped closer. He looked unconscious, but I kept a tight hold of the gun, just in case.

  Darlene used the chair to lever herself to her feet. Limping a little, she came over to stand beside me. “Do you think I killed him?”

  “He’s bleeding. Dead people don’t bleed.” I had no idea how I knew that. I suppose I read it somewhere.

  We stared down at him at a loss what to do next. Neither one of us had the presence of mind to find a phone and dial 911. In the end, it didn’t matter. No more than a few minutes passed before we heard a loud banging on the front door and the welcome words, “This is the police! We’re coming in!”

  Chapter 44

  Save for a few memorable highlights, the next couple of hours passed in a blur. I was exhausted, both mentally and physically, but once Mike regained consciousness and was arrested there were a great many loose ends to clear up. Darlene and I went down to the police station to give statements. It was only then that I learned how Detective Hazlett and his colleagues had come to arrive in such a timely manner.

  It was my neighbor, Cindy Fry, who saved the day. She’d gotten up for a middle-of-the-night glass of water and while standing at her kitchen sink she had glanced through the window that looked straight into my dining room. Since no one had thought to draw the curtains in the window alcove, she’d gotten an eyeful. The sight of a man holding two women at gunpoint had, quite naturally, prompted her to call the cops.

  Detective Hazlett himself interviewed me. Aside from asking questions, he didn’t say much. For some reason, that annoyed me, especially when I remembered that I’d left a message for him, and he’d never returned my call. When he appeared to be about to dismiss me, with no thanks for catching a killer for him, I’m afraid I reacted like a petulant adolescent.

  “All the clues to the murderer’s identity were right there on Tiffany’s thumb drive. If you’d taken the trouble to read her files, everyone would have been spared a lot of grief.”

  “Ms. Lincoln,” he said, “you should know that I took your suggestions seriously. I read every file and I had, in fact, already discovered that the amounts listed in ‘blackmail. doc’ match deposits to Tiffany Scott’s bank account. Given enough time, we’d undoubtedly have found the person who was paying her.”

  Mollified, I said, “You didn’t know the reason behind the blackmail. There was no way you could have, I suppose.”

  “Special knowledge is always helpful,” he agreed. “Most people wouldn’t have noticed the anomaly of the Oxford comma. Even fewer would have known enough about Mike Doran’s family history to make the connection between Tiffany’s anonymous source and the equally anonymous relative who committed a long-ago copycat crime.”

  The detective and I parted on amicable terms.

  When Darlene finished giving her statement, she phoned Frank. He drove us back to my place to collect Darlene’s gear and took her away with him afterward. I fell into bed and slept until midafternoon the next day. When I got up, I found I had a voice mail from Detective Hazlett. Ronnie North had been released.

  I debated with myself while I fueled up with ham and scrambled eggs, but I really had no choice. I drove to the mansion at the top of the hill. To my surprise, Ann showed me right in.

  “I just stopped by to see how you’re doing,” I said when Ronnie received me in her overly formal living room.

  “I’m fine. You needn’t have bothered.”

  “Mike fooled a lot of people.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Thank you so much for pointing that out. I am well aware that hiring the real murderer to defend me was not a good decision.”

  “I didn’t see through him, either. Not until I read the material Tiffany left behind.” At the odd look that came over Ronnie’s face, I added, “On the thumb drive. It was all there. It just wasn’t obvious at first.”

  Ronnie cleared her throat. “Do you have another copy?”

  “What happened to the one I gave you?”

  “I threw it away.” I could see it just about killed her to admit that.

  “I’ll get one to you. You might even enjoy reading Tiffany’s novel. The characters she based on Onslow and Van Heusen all come to bad ends.” I hesitated, then said, “I, uh, don’t know if anyone told you, but Alan Van Heusen has been arrested on numerous charges having to do with fraud. He was definitely up to no good at Mongaup Valley Ventures.”

  “So I’ve been informed.”

  Her closed expression did not encourage questions or comments, so I kept mum. I told myself, firmly, that it was none of my business what Ronnie’s relationship with Van Heusen had been.

  “A pity you couldn’t pin anything on Greg Onslow,” she said after a moment. “He still plans to build his infernal theme park right next to my property.”

  “Can’t you stop him? What about those shares Tiffany left you?”

  She made an inarticulate sound of disgust. “They’re in limbo until the courts decide which will is valid.” The disgruntled look on her face told me there might be some doubt about that. Only natural, I suppose, since it had been Mike Doran who’d produced the will in Ronnie’s favor.

  Since there didn’t seem to be much more to say, I told her to have a good life and left.

  Chapter 45

  Several days later, Greg Onslow called on me. At first, I was hesitant to let him in, but my guardian-angel neighbor was at home and had seen him arrive. Not only that, she went instantly on alert when she recognized him. I waved to signal that I’d be okay, but I made sure I had my cell phone handy when I escorted him into my living room. I had the police on speed dial.

  “I owe you an apology, Ms. Lincoln,” Onslow said once he’d settled himself on the loveseat.

  Since I was uncertain what it was he was apologizing for, I didn’t
respond.

  “I initially discouraged the murder investigation and accepted the verdict of accidental death because I thought Tiffany’s death was a suicide and that I’d driven her to kill herself.”

  This was a startling confession from a man of his I-can-do-no-wrong mind-set. I wondered if he knew that he and Ronnie had both, albeit briefly, shared the same suspicion and the same guilt.

  “I’m sure you were relieved to discover you weren’t to blame.”

  The platitude made me wince. What I really wanted was to ask him if he’d realized yet that his controlling ways and Tiffany’s subsequent lack of funds to call her own were what had driven her to try her hand at blackmail. I kept that question to myself.

  “I bear some responsibility for Alan Van Heusen’s activities as well,” Onslow continued, “although I can assure you that he acted on his own. I never meant you any harm, Ms. Lincoln. Never.”

  I took this claim with a grain of salt, just as I remained suspicious of his sudden need to confess his sins. It’s true that poor business judgment doesn’t equate to criminal behavior, but although Greg Onslow might have been conned and had come out of this whole mess looking like just another victim, he was far from innocent.

  “You’ll be pleased to know that I have fired Paul Klein. There is no place for such men in my organization.”

  Bullies? I let that thought pass unspoken, too. I had, however, reached my limit for listening to Onslow pretend to be pure as the driven snow. I stood.

  “If that’s all you came to say—”

  “There’s something else.”

  I remained on my feet.

  He got up and cleared his throat. “Tiffany and I didn’t always agree on everything, but I’d like to honor my late wife’s memory.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh that fell far short of convincing. “Once I learned that she’d hoped to have a career as a novelist, I took a look at her book. I’d like to see it published. I want to hire you to edit it.”