“So Fletcher was trying to find out who ghostwrote her advice column,” he said. “Why?”
“Because his wife, Ellen, wrote in to the column complaining about Burke, and Peaches’s answer broke up their marriage.”
“And he called you because...” he prompted.
“Because I kind of, you know, let it slip that I might know who her ghost was,” I said. “He knew I was never going to tell him, so he pretended to be Howie to get the name out of me.”
“I’ve got to hand it to him,” Martin said. “It worked.”
“Don’t remind me,” I said. “Now he’s going to come after Zak.”
“You mean...?” He mimed strangulation.
“No,” I said, “at least I don’t think so. He wants to get Zak, as the writer of the horrible so-called advice, to intervene with his wife. To try and save his marriage.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“You haven’t met Burke,” I said. “He’s a scary guy. Maybe.”
“That’s what most sensible people say about me. What are you doing?” he whispered, as I shifted SB in my arms and reached for the whimsical globe-in-hand door knocker.
“I have to warn him.”
First came Dylan’s deep, commanding barks, then the door swung open, revealing a frowning Zak Pryce.
“I just need to, um, warn you about something,” I said.
Dylan tried to squeeze past him to greet us all over again. His owner told him to sit, and he did, while still managing to scoot closer to us.
I said, “Okay, so the thing is, you and I talked about Burke Fletcher this morning, remember? I know you consider him dangerous.”
“What about him?” Zak asked.
“He, um, he might have figured out that you ghostwrote ‘Peaches Preaches,’” I said.
Zak stared at me as this sank in. His voice was flat as he said, “And how would he have figured out something like that?”
I took a deep breath, preparing to fess up.
“Listen, man,” Martin said, “it was me. Jane told me in confidence, and like an idiot, I let Fletcher trick me into telling him.”
“Padre,” I said, “you don’t have to—”
“I just wanted to give you a heads-up,” he said, “because I think he might be planning to pay you a visit.”
Zak gazed down the dark street as he processed this unwelcome information. Finally he said, “Got it,” and shut the door in our faces.
Martin and I descended the porch steps and crossed the street to my red Mazda, which I’d parked in front of Peaches’s house.
“So that was fun,” he said. “What do you want to do now? Get a root canal? Walk barefoot on some Legos?”
“Why did you do that, Padre?” I asked him, over the roof of my car. “I’m a big girl. You don’t have to take the blame for my stupid mistakes.”
“Maybe I like taking the blame for your stupid mistakes.” The corners of his blue eyes crinkled. “Even though, and I know you’ll concur, this particular mistake was so monumentally stupid, it put all your other stupid mistakes to shame. And that’s saying something. Because you’ve been known to pull some world-class doozies, am I right?”
I sighed in frustration. Okay, it might have been mock frustration. Between you and me, I was kind of thrilled by the padre’s gallantry, though I can’t say I was completely surprised. It’s not as if this was the first time Martin had performed a selfless act on my behalf.
Something besides Zak’s safety was gnawing at me. “You know,” I said, “assuming that actually was Burke on the phone...”
Martin finished the thought. “He now knows more about the murder investigation than anyone aside from the cops. Well, and us.”
“We sure fed him a lot of information. Which is to say, I did.” I grimaced, thinking about how many classified details I’d unwittingly supplied during that phone conversation. To a suspect.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “the guy really did sound exactly like Howie. But I agree. It wasn’t Howie.”
I beeped the car. “As soon as I get home, I’ll call him and tell him what hap—”
That’s when we heard it. An agonized scream—loud, prolonged, and coming from the direction of Peaches’s backyard.
We sprinted around the side of the house and behind it, while the anguished screams grew ever more shrill and frantic. I thought it sounded like a male voice, but I couldn’t be sure.
As I ran, I groped in my jacket pocket for the self-defense spike Dom had given me. Maybe I should have listened to him and applied for a handgun permit, after all.
The shrieks were coming from the domed, circular solarium, which was unlit, impenetrable darkness cloaking whatever horror awaited us inside. The moon had not yet risen. Weak starlight glinted off the glass structure and its door, which stood wide-open.
When we were a few feet away, Martin halted my progress with a stiff arm. My heart was a battering ram as I watched him cautiously approach the doorway, switch on the tiny flashlight he always carried, and shine it around inside.
“Who’s here?” he asked.
The screams turned to hoarse cries of “Help me! Get this thing off me!” It was a male voice.
I crept closer, clutching SB to my chest, trying without success to make out the action inside as the flashlight’s beam skittered around.
Before Martin could finish asking, “Where’s the light switch?” the room lit up.
Sean Moretti stood at the other end of the solarium, near the entrance to the dining room, his hand on the wall switch. He wore a T-shirt decorated with a cannabis leaf—yeah, yeah, Sean, we know you’re a fan—and striped boxers. “What the hell’s going on down here?” he demanded. “I was on level four of Viking Legionnaire Bloodbath.”
He seemed not to notice that his father, Carter Moretti, was lying faceup on the stone floor, pinned by the big potted yucca tree, which had toppled onto him. When I say pinned, I mean it in the literal sense. The tree’s crown of stiff, swordlike fronds had pierced his face, arms, and torso, and his struggles were only making it worse.
I joined the padre inside the solarium and, after securing SB’s leash under a chair leg, assisted him in trying to lift the heavy tree off of Carter, whose caterwauling continued unabated. I yelped as one of the razor-sharp leaves bayonetted my arm, slicing right through my brand-new white denim jacket. Dang, that hurt. No wonder Carter was screaming his head off.
“Careful, Jane, those things are like daggers.” Martin had been slashed a couple of times himself. “Grab the trunk lower down where it’s bare. Sean, give us a hand here.”
Sean ignored the request, instead padding barefoot through the scattered soil to examine an object lying next to the tree’s white, cubical planter, now tipped onto its side. I didn’t pay much attention to him, preoccupied as I was by trying to free his dad from the killer yucca.
“Whoa,” Sean said, as he examined his find. “No way.”
With a final, backbreaking effort, Martin and I managed to lift the tree off of Carter, whose shrieks gained fresh urgency as the lacerating leaves were yanked from his myriad wounds. The muscles in my arms and shoulders howled as we dropped the tree to the floor next to him. Carter looked like a knife thrower’s assistant—if the knife thrower in question was really out of practice. And drunk.
In the next instant, an enraged Sean was shoving something in his father’s face. “What are you doing with this, Dad? Huh? I recognize it. It’s Mom’s.”
The object he’d found was a purse, I now saw. A large, beige, hobo-style bag adorned with the Gucci monogram pattern. As we watched, Sean upended the purse and dumped its contents onto Carter, who flinched as Peaches’s wallet bounced off his nose. Her cell phone and keys fell on his chest, along with a pair of sunglasses. A lipstick rolled onto the floor.
A blister pack of pills landed next to Carter, a manufacturer’s sample by the looks of it. The card was labeled Zenaproche, and all ten plastic blisters were empty, the
pills having been pushed through the foil backing.
Sean’s normally pasty complexion had turned crimson by the time a coiled length of yellow nylon rope tumbled out of the purse. Spittle flew from his lips as he said, “You did it, didn’t you? You killed Mom!”
“Sean, I...” Carter mewled. “Let me explain.”
The yelling got Sexy Beast riled up. He strained at his leash, barking, until I freed his leash from the chair leg and picked him up.
The last item to drop from Peaches’s purse was a folded hunting knife. Martin lunged for it, but the fallen tree tripped him up. In one swift movement, Sean snatched up the knife, opened it, and pressed the four-inch blade to Carter’s throat.
“You were trying to frame me, Dad, admit it,” he growled. “You were going to plant this stuff here and then what, call in a tip to the cops?”
I eyed the tree’s tipped-over planter and the small spade lying next to it, and realized that Carter had, in fact, tried to literally plant the evidence, by burying it in the soil supporting the tree—in the pitch dark while his son was occupied upstairs with his video game. His digging must have unbalanced the yucca, which took its revenge in a most painful manner.
I knew the padre was itching to overpower Sean and disarm him, but he couldn’t risk it. It would take about half a second for the kid to slit Carter’s throat. I had a feeling he’d do it even if Martin and I simply bolted for the door.
Something crashed to the floor with a wet splat. All eyes turned toward the dining room entrance, where a stunned Audrey Moretti stood taking in the scene. A large plastic food container lay upended at her feet, having disgorged about a gallon of what looked, and smelled, like New England clam chowder.
“Carter?” she said. “Is it true what Sean said?”
“Aw, hell.” Carter angled his head to more fully expose his throat. “Do me a favor, son, get it over with.”
One might have expected the matriarch of the family to try and defuse the situation. One would have been wrong.
“You tried to frame your own son for murder?” She stalked over to Carter, glaring down at him while making not the slightest effort to pacify her knife-wielding grandson. Nor did I witness the slightest hint of concern for her son’s injuries. “You were supposed to burn this evidence, Carter. Isn’t that what I said? What did I say about the purse and the rope and all that?”
“You said to burn it,” Carter whimpered.
She crossed her arms. “And did you do as I said? Did you burn it?”
“Mom...”
“Answer me!” she barked.
“Okay, no,” he said. “But I had a good reason. I figured that stuff might come in handy.”
“Yeah.” Sean yanked on Carter’s hair, making him wince. “Handy for making your son take the rap for your crime. The cops barely had enough evidence to charge me. Because hello, I didn’t do it. I would’ve walked, no problem. But if they found all this crap here?”
“Blame your grandma. If she hadn’t opened her big yap to that one—” Carter cut his eyes toward me “—and told her all about the DNA and how I’m not your real dad, then her cop buddies wouldn’t have called me back in for questioning. They wouldn’t have decided I’m all of a sudden a suspect. And then I wouldn’t have had to, you know, do what I did tonight.”
Audrey rolled her eyes. “It’s always the mother’s fault.”
SB growled low in his throat. I followed his gaze and saw a cat slink into the room, drawn by the irresistible aroma of homemade clam chowder. It started lapping up the creamy soup and was soon joined by two buddies.
I said, “Listen, Sean, the best thing you can do is to let us call the cops. You haven’t done anything you can’t take back, not yet, and I know you don’t want to.”
“Oh yeah?” At that moment Sean Moretti appeared fully capable of murder. “There’s nothing I want more right now than to slit this loser’s throat with Grandpa Gillespey’s hunting knife and watch him bleed out. You gonna tell me he doesn’t deserve it?”
Martin said, “He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. You caught him hiding evidence, Sean. We witnessed it. You’re a hero, man.”
“Shut up,” Sean said. “You’re just trying to confuse me. I can’t think with all the yapping.”
Audrey tossed her hand toward the padre and me. “What are those two doing here, anyway?”
Sean shrugged. “Who knows?”
As if he hadn’t witnessed us laboriously heaving that lethal yucca tree off of his dad. I said, “We heard the, uh, commotion and rushed over to help.”
Sean nodded toward the wooden bench Dom and I had occupied nearly a week earlier. “Sit over there till I figure out what to do with you.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but since his knife never strayed from his father’s throat, we obediently sat, with the downed yucca tree forming a kind of barrier between us and the others. SB wanted to be let down to explore, but I kept him on my lap.
I noticed that all the wicker furniture in the room had been cleaned and the cushions replaced. The dead plants were gone, the glass was spotless, and the stone floor scrubbed. Considering the events of the last few minutes, Audrey probably regretted the effort she’d invested on that last part.
Her gaze flicked between the rope and us, as if calculating whether there was enough to tie us with. I felt the padre tense. While it was true both of us wanted Carter’s carotids to remain intact, there was no way we were going to sit still and let Audrey tie us up. Once we were helpless, what was to stop Sean from doing us in, as well?
“Why’d you do it, Dad? That’s what I want to know.” Sean punctuated this question with a tiny jab from the tip of the knife.
Carter stiffened, though no blood was drawn. “I— I didn’t— It was self-defense.”
His son uttered a ripe curse. “You tied her to a chair and strangled her. How is that self-defense?”
“Take that knife away and let me sit up,” Carter said. “I’ll explain—”
Sean pressed the knife blade more firmly against his father’s throat, but only after flipping it over so he was using the blunt side. Carter didn’t know that, though. He yipped in terror and said, “Okay, okay. The thing you have to understand is that she tried to kill me. It’s why she lured me up to that disgusting old attic.”
I looked at the padre. He looked at me, his skeptical expression mirroring mine. SB’s eloquent snort said it all.
Audrey, however, appeared unsurprised by this statement. She settled herself on a pretty wicker armchair, tsking at the clam chowder staining the legs of her bright pink slacks.
“You’re lying,” Sean said. “She already dumped you. Why would she try to off you, too?”
“Well, there’s something you don’t know about your mother.” Carter swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Now, don’t get upset and, um, do something rash. I swear what I’m about to tell you is true. Peaches... well, she wasn’t always what you might call an upstanding citizen.”
“I know she was a hooker when she was young,” Sean said.
Audrey leapt out of her seat. “What?”
“And I know about the customers she blackmailed, too,” he continued. “I hacked her computer when I was, like, ten. Who cares?”
“I care!” his grandmother said. “Carter, how long have you known about this?”
“Uh... it doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. “It was way, way in the past. And she was a high-class call girl, not a hooker. There’s a difference.”
Sean laughed. “Check it out, Grandma. Dad was one of her customers. That’s how they met.”
Audrey took a moment to let that sink in, then dropped back onto the chair. “She seemed like such a nice girl when you two started going out.”
“Yeah, well, that ‘nice girl’ promised me she stopped selling her body when we got serious,” Carter said. “And I believed her.”
“At least she was getting paid for it,” Sean said, “so I mean, good for her. But
then she started giving it away and turned into your basic slut.”
“Don’t talk about your mother that way,” Carter said.
“Really, dude?” Sean wiggled the knife.
Audrey said, “And blackmail on top of all that? So then, the money from her father...”
“There was no money from her father,” Carter said. “The old man didn’t have anything but the house. We lived on the, uh, the other.”
I said, “The detectives must have asked you where her money came from.”
“I told them Peaches took care of the finances and that as far as I knew, it was all from her dad. I acted like I had no clue—a total dummy.”
What a stretch, I thought. And they fell for it?
“Meanwhile,” he said, “I was collecting these blackmail payments every month.”
“Even after she died?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “I mean, no one knew she was dead. The guys kept coughing up the cash, right on schedule.”
Sean grinned. “Suckers.”
Audrey frowned. “How much money did you receive from these men while you were living with me?”
“Well, that first month, November,” he said, “after Peaches kicked me out, she collected it herself, so it went right into her bank account. But then after she was dead, before anybody knew she was dead, I started making the collections again. Only, I didn’t deposit the cash. I kept it. No way are those guys gonna keep paying now that she’s gone. I guess you could say I killed the golden goose.”
“How much?” Audrey demanded.
“Forty-one grand a month,” he said meekly. “A hundred sixty-four thousand total.”
His mother flushed a deep red. “Where was that money when you were eating my food, Carter? Sponging off my Social Security? Where was it when I wiped out my retirement savings to bail out your son?”
“He’s not really my—”
“You didn’t think I could have used some of that money?” Her eyes bulged in outrage.
“It would’ve drawn attention, don’t you see?” he said. “If I started throwing money around. I was gonna share it with you once things cooled down.”
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