Down Among The Bones

by Vickie McKeehan

  “We didn’t count on that,” Josh mumbled, rubbing the back of his stiff neck from falling asleep at an odd angle. On four hours of shuteye, he yawned and added, “We thought it was probably a new acquisition. Why does she need a burner phone anyway? Why not just use her main phone?”

  “All great points of interest,” Leo replied. “Dani’s got to be into something else.”

  “Other than murder,” Skye snapped as she sipped her second cup of coffee. “Sorry. I’m a little edgy after not getting a lot of sleep.”

  “Told you so,” Josh muttered. “Morning came too early for both of us.” When the doorbell rang, he checked the security video app on his phone before setting down his coffee mug and heading out to the entryway to let Harry in.

  A few minutes later, he came back and pointed to the box of doughnuts Leo had brought. “Help yourself.”

  “Don’t mind if I do, even though I already ate the breakfast Deborah made me a few hours ago. I wouldn’t turn down coffee, either.” Harry helped himself to a mug out of the cabinet and then glanced from Skye to Josh and then Leo. “I guess you guys haven’t heard the news yet.”

  Josh picked up a coconut-topped vanilla doughnut. “Nope. We’re barely awake. About to get a sugar rush, though.”

  Harry cleared his throat. “Gil Monahan was taken to the hospital at 5:30 this morning. Gunshot wound to the head. His wife Diane took a bullet to the shoulder. She’ll survive. They’re not too sure about Gil yet.”

  A stunned Josh choked down his doughnut, “What happened?”

  “Police are saying a masked gunman entered the home, walked upstairs to the Monahan’s bedroom, and opened fire. Diane supposedly was in the bathroom at the time, heard the shots, and somehow got hold of a .22 caliber pistol. She came out firing. Police are calling it a botched burglary. I guess we know different.”

  “What hospital are they in?” Skye asked.

  “Harborview.”

  Skye traded looks with Josh. “We need to go talk to Diane. Now. Before she has any more time to think about making up a story.”

  “How do you suggest we get into her room?”

  Skye sent Harry a pleading look.

  Harry rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay. I get the hint. Yeah, I know the head of security at Harborview. I can get all three of us in the door if Sam’s on duty. But don’t embarrass me by going rogue.”

  Skye patted him on the arm. “We only go rogue when you’re not around to witness.”

  “Which is the reason I don’t want to know why Leo has his head buried in his laptop this early in the morning.”

  “You definitely do not want to know,” Josh said with a grin. “Let’s just get the interview with Diane done and overwith. She was rude the last time I saw her.”

  “Here’s your chance to shine,” Skye said to Harry. “Feel free to take the lead.”

  ****

  An hour later, the trio stood next to Diane Monahan’s hospital bed. Her shoulder was in a sling, but the wound didn’t look all that serious.

  “Can you take us through what happened again?” Harry asked, in his most serious detective voice. He held up his hand before the patient could object. “Yes, I know you’ve told others. Now, I want you to tell me.”

  Diane glowered over at Josh, frowned and pouted in her best imitation of a society matron. She narrowed her eyes to slits. “This is your doing, isn’t it? I knew you wouldn’t let this go.”

  Josh nudged past Harry to get closer to the bed. “Just tell us what happened, Diane. Don’t you want to find the man who shot Gil? Just tell us what the guy looked like.”

  “He was wearing all black, wore a ski mask over his face.”

  “When you fired back, did you hit him?”

  For the first time, Diane forced a smile. “No, but it surprised the hell out of him that I got a few shots off and got close. He ran out of the room like a little chicken. By the time I saw what had happened to Gil, he’d scurried out of the room like a rat. That’s when I picked up the phone and called the police.”

  Without feeling the need to pussy-foot around further, Josh caught her off balance and charged, “Look, Diane, we already know about Thurlow Cannady and Barbara Holder. What we want you to tell us is what was the link to the two, what’s the connection. And why you and Gil had both of them killed.”

  Diane paled, sniffed again, and looked around for a tissue. She snatched a couple out of a box, then finally met Josh’s eyes. “Very well. As you know, Thurlow was our longtime business partner in the law practice we shared. But there came a point when he, let’s just say, became a liability. Thurlow wanted to drag the firm down.”

  “How?”

  “Thurlow refused to participate in several lucrative business deals, turned them down actually. Because of his disloyalty, we failed to act quickly enough. We lost deals, started losing money. Gil and I couldn’t allow that to go on. We’d worked so hard to get everything we had. Why let a man like Thurlow take it all away?”

  “When did you decide to get rid of Thurlow? How did you contact this man you wanted to carry it out?”

  “Four years ago, we knew he had to go. We were fed up. Gil started, shall we say, putting out feelers, asking around, always covertly, of course. It wouldn’t do if people got wind of what we had planned. After several months we found this…man…through a friend of a friend.”

  “Why did Barbara Holder have to die?”

  Diane dabbed at her face with the Kleenex. “We didn’t know it at the time, but Thurlow had met Barbara through an online dating site, some little schoolteacher who became obsessed with him. After he disappeared, she suspected that the whole thing was under suspicious circumstances and started asking questions. After she came to the house, banging on the door during dinner one night, we realized we had to get rid of Barbara as well.”

  Harry took exception to that part of the story. “Wait a minute. Forensics say that Barbara died first, was buried in that hole near your house months before Thurlow was. Now, you want to contradict science. Your story is BS. We want the truth, and we want it now.”

  “Stop lying to us, Diane,” Josh pressed. “You’re in enough trouble already. The cops may think this was a burglary, but we know better. Think of it this way. If the hitman you hired failed to get the job done, he’ll be back. Make no mistake. Don’t you understand that? You don’t believe for a minute this was a burglary that went wrong. The three people standing here in front of you right now, may be your last line of defense at living a little longer.”

  Diane let out a sigh. “I’m not sure how it happened, but when Thurlow started dating Barbara Holder, this common little schoolteacher somehow managed to convince him that many of our properties didn’t meet basic housing regulations. Let me tell you that woman turned his head in more ways than one. We had to get rid of her first. Otherwise, our entire enterprise was at risk. It would’ve cost us millions to do all the upgrades she had suggested we do. No, Barbara Holder had to go. Our man got to her first. Then about two months later, an opportunity presented itself to get rid of Thurlow.”

  This time it was Skye’s turn to approach Diane. “Wait a minute. You’re saying you and Gil lured Thurlow to your house, using some pretense, dinner perhaps, concern over what had happened to Barbara. That’s how this guy was able to take care of Thurlow. That’s how he knew where you lived. He came back this morning to finish the job, take care of you and Gil once and for all so you couldn’t talk. You asked Thurlow to dinner that night, but it was a trap.” She pivoted toward Josh. “That’s why you had such a violent reaction in the foyer. That foyer is where Thurlow met his end.”

  “Who is this guy? What’s his name, Diane? I want to hear all of it. How did you pay him to kill Barbara and Thurlow? Wire transfer? We want the account number. I know you didn’t write him a check. You were so desperate to get rid of Thurlow that you invited a hitman into your home.”

  Weary now of the tale, Diane slumped into her pillows. “Yes, we were desperate. We al
lowed him into our home for that one event. But we weren’t there when he killed Thurlow. The plan was for him to wait in the foyer for Thurlow to ring the bell. That’s when it happened. Or so I was told. I swear we were not there the night it happened.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you,” Josh stated, his voice low.

  “I don’t care what you believe.” Through a storm of sniffles and tears, Diane buried her face in another Kleenex. “That’s what happened. As for payment, he instructed us to wire fifty thousand dollars for Thurlow, and half that for Barbara, to an account in the Caymans. We did all the communicating by letter, paid weeks in advance for both of their murders. That’s all I remember about the transaction.”

  “You call killing two people a transaction?” Josh retorted.

  Skye stepped closer to Diane. “Wait a minute. What did you just say? You didn’t use a burner phone or some other type of chatroom messaging to let him know who to kill and how to do it?”

  “No. It was all done by regular mail. I think he called it snail mail. Will you protect me? Will you do something to keep him from coming back to my house?”

  “Maybe,” Josh said, cutting his eyes to Skye. “One more thing, though, and a lot depends on your answer. Did you know this guy was burying Thurlow and Barbara so close to your Ames Lake home?”

  “No. That was ridiculous. He had no right to do that.”

  “You paid him seventy-five grand to take two lives. He might’ve thought it did.”

  ****

  That afternoon at the Artemis Foundation, the discussion was all about what Diane had said, what she had admitted doing. The group was still coming to terms with most of what had happened.

  “Let’s face it, this guy murdered Barbara first because he could get to her easier than Thurlow,” Judy railed. “After all, Thurlow lived in a mansion behind gated walls. Gil and Diane had to lure him out of there, make him vulnerable, so this guy could take him out.”

  “Is anyone gonna bring up how good this guy is?” Reggie prompted.

  “He’s not that good,” Brayden said in disagreement. “Gil and Diane had to serve Thurlow up like a sacrifice while this guy was lying-in-wait. That doesn’t take a great skill level. It takes a soulless killer.”

  “What about picking on a fifty-something schoolteacher?” Zoe pointed out. “He’s not much of a man if he gets her to open the door and then murders her right there in cold blood. That doesn’t take special skills, either. It takes a gutless guy who likes to kill. That’s it. We’ve seen countless murderers over the years. They kill. It doesn’t make them special or talented.”

  “Okay, okay, so I misspoke,” Reggie backtracked, beginning to rethink his praise. “Of course he’s a cold-blooded killer. But he’s also prolific. The numbers don’t lie.”

  “If we’re done banting around the praise,” Skye began. “We should get back to the most important thing Diane told us—he communicates via ordinary mail. Who among us would’ve thought of that? Snail mail, no less. Getting Dani’s burner phone is wasn’t as important as we thought. It might not even yield what we thought. If he uses these private mailboxes, then we need to go through the list of names again. He has to be on the list. We missed something the first time.”

  “But this guy used a phony name to get the boxes,” Josh stated. “What good will it do to somehow stumble on the name he used if everything else on the contract is phony? He obviously had fake papers and a fake driver’s license that allowed him to move about with a fake identity. Probably several identities.”

  Skye put her head in her hands. Feeling exhausted already and it wasn’t even five o’clock yet, she groaned out loud. “Then what do you suggest? Where do we go from here? Because I’m out of ideas. We could confront Dani just as we did Diane, try to reason with her. But I doubt Dani would reveal a whole lot.”

  Harry sat up in his chair. “I like that idea. We could confront Dani head-on and tell her the police are on their way to arrest her. Convince her we know about the murder-for-hire plot. Convince her that the only way to move forward is to give up everybody involved, then sit back and watch her squirm.”

  Brayden snapped his laptop shut. “Squirm? More like spew like a volcano erupting. I bet she’d try to throw everybody under the bus while minimizing her participation. Anybody wanna take that bet?”

  Leo turned his laptop around so everyone could see. “Looking through Dani’s burner phone, I started with the newest first. A message came in at ten o’clock last night. All it says is, ‘check your mail.’ That’s it.”

  “Check your mail? He’s setting up a meeting,” Skye concluded, alarm in her voice. “What if he’s planning to do to Dani what he did to Gil and Diane?”

  Josh got to his feet. “That’s a distinct possibility.” He angled toward Judy. “Where is she now? Where’s her car? Is it at the apartment complex?”

  “No. She’s been running errands all morning. She talked to Tony briefly, and they made a date to meet for dinner later. There’s been no other communication from her since lunchtime.”

  Skye exchanged looks with Josh then Judy. “Where is Dani’s Nissan now, right this minute, the exact location?”

  Judy showed them all the data from the tracker. “It’s been parked off 107th on a side street called Midvale for about two hours.”

  Josh was already moving toward the door. “That’s essentially a dead-end street before it turns left and dumps out on Aurora Avenue.”

  “There’s an empty warehouse along that route and a cemetery for veterans,” Skye added.

  “A cemetery?” Harry repeated, shoving to his feet. “What would she be doing there? I’m coming with you.”

  Brayden beat him to the doorway. “I’ll take my truck.”

  Zoe grabbed her phone and sprinted toward Brayden. “None of you are going anywhere without me.”

  Twenty

  Even in the crosstown, stop-and-go traffic, Skye tried to come up with a reason Dani’s car would be at that location. “Maybe she knows someone at the Veteran’s Cemetery. Maybe she parked her car behind what amounts to an alleyway while she’s laying flowers on a grave.”

  “Does Dani strike you as someone sentimental enough to visit a gravesite in the middle of the day?” Josh countered. “Emelia’s not even in the ground yet. Dani’s already put in a claim for the insurance money.”

  Harry shifted his weight in the backseat and leaned forward. “I know that area—lots of businesses along that alleyway. But there’s a stretch that where it’s closed off from view. If I wanted to meet someone in an out of the way location in broad daylight, where there’s no one around to notice, it’d be behind that cemetery. The spot’s perfect for a clandestine meeting. People are coming and going, but nobody pays much attention. Nobody likes to look at rows and rows of headstones. They don’t look twice at a person walking among the dead.”

  Skye twisted in her seat to look at Harry. “That’s true. People act like it’s bad luck or something eerie will happen if they go near a cemetery, let alone look at a headstone. So why would Dani agree to meet this guy out here?”

  Stopped at a red light, Josh took his eyes away from the road to answer. “She believes she’s got nothing to fear from him. He took care of Emelia, and Dani sees that as win. She’s relying on him to come through for her again with Brayden. Logically, she’d feel at ease, let her guard down. That’s my take anyway.”

  “And she wouldn’t see him as a threat. In a way, he’s her hero. I’m already getting a bad vibe about this.”

  The light changed, allowing Josh to make a left turn onto Midvale, a path that would take them on a winding route to the backside of the cemetery.

  “I don’t see Brayden’s truck anywhere,” Harry noted. “I think we lost him and Zoe when we took the shortcut.”

  “It’s just as well,” Skye said. “I’m not sure they should be here.”

  As they rounded a corner, Skye sat up straighter. Dani’s little sports car came into view. She’d left the veh
icle parked on a straightaway under a large oak tree.

  Josh slowed to a crawl and pulled up behind the Nissan, leaving several feet between cars.

  They piled out of the minivan.

  Harry tossed a pair of latex gloves to each of them. “Glove up. Be careful where you step. This could be a crime scene.”

  “But she could be off walking among the headstones. It’s possible,” Skye said in a half-hearted attempt to consider an alternative.

  “I think you’re overly optimistic,” Josh pointed out.

  Harry motioned to stay back while he did a slow walk around the car, bending down to look inside. “Purse is here. Keys are still in the ignition.”

  Josh spotted two shiny brass objects near the rear wheel. “Are those shell casings?”

  Harry bent down to get a better look. “Yeah. Better leave them where they are for now. The forensic guys will want to mark them and take photos.”

  “Is anyone thinking what I’m thinking? Should we pop the trunk?” Skye asked, all hope draining from her face.

  “I’d say those shell casings almost guarantee what we’ll find inside. Who wants to do the honors?”

  “Might as well be you, Harry,” Josh suggested. “You’re the pro.”

  “Oh, so now I’m the pro? Thanks,” Harry grunted as he reached in and pulled the lever for the trunk.

  With a gloved hand, Josh lifted the lid and winced. He stepped back to let Harry and Skye take a look.

  “Two shots to the head,” Skye muttered. “He sure didn’t waste any time tying up this loose end.”

  “We’re two steps behind him. Will he go after Diane next?”

  “Maybe we should keep an eye on her tonight?”