by Nic Saint
“Oh, that’s right, you’re a reporter as well as a police consultant. Please take a seat.”
She did, seating herself in an overstuffed chair near the window, while Angelique took the second chair across from the small antique table and Trey remained standing.
Suddenly Odelia felt a little uncomfortable and crowded, but she bit back the sentiment. “We talked to your ex-husband’s publisher,” she began, “and he confirmed that he saw you leave as he arrived.”
“That’s great news,” said Angelique, glancing up at her son. “That means we’re finally off your radar, right?”
“Well…” She swallowed, then decided to take a different tack. “Malcolm Buckerfield also confirmed that he offered Mr. Ackerman a new contract, and that Chris was seriously considering his offer. So it looks like Mr. Buckerfield is off the hook as well.”
“But as I understand it you have other suspects, right?” said Trey. His mother had reached out a hand and he pressed it. “This, um, robber, and then there’s the crazy stalker and of course you have met the fellow who insists he’s my father’s son.”
“Which is nonsense, of course,” said Angelique. “If my husband had an affair with this woman he would have told me.”
“Yes,” said Odelia. “I suppose he would have. Only, it’s all about motive, isn’t it? That’s what it all comes down to, over and over again.”
“Motive and opportunity,” Trey agreed, nodding. “So these three men, they had both. And now the police has the unenviable task of figuring out which one of them is the real culprit.”
“I very much doubt whether Sasha Drood had sufficient motive,” said Odelia. “He’s a thief, not a murderer, and even though he’s been in jail plenty of times, he wouldn’t want to go to jail for murder. Not a man like him. Then there’s Aldo Wrenn, who claims Mr. Ackerman was his father. But why would he kill him? All he had to do was prove his claim and he would be set for life.”
“You’re forgetting that if he really is my father’s son he stands to inherit a part of the inheritance,” Trey pointed out.
“My uncle talked to Chris Ackerman’s attorney this morning, and according to the stipulations in his will your ex-husband left the bulk of his fortune to Stacey Kulcheski.”
This was clearly news to Angelique and her son. “What?!” cried the woman.
Odelia nodded. “I’m afraid so. And Aldo Wrenn knew about this. Chris’s lawyers told him as much. Aldo wouldn’t get a penny, even if he was his son. So Aldo knew he’d never benefit from his father’s death. Only in the event that Chris stayed alive could he hope to effect a reconciliation, get into his father’s good graces and possibly earn himself a place in his will. So there goes his motive as well.”
“He could have flown off the handle and committed murder out of spite,” said Trey.
“He’s not the type,” Odelia said.
“So what about this stalker? He’s obviously crazy and extremely dangerous.”
“We’ve just received confirmation that Darius Kassman is actually Stacey Kulcheski’s cousin. He developed an obsession with your ex-husband after being introduced to him by Stacey at her home. Darius may have been obsessed, but he isn’t dangerous. Stacey vouches for him. Said he would never hurt a fly, and most definitely not her future husband.”
“Nonsense,” Angelique exclaimed sharply. “Of course she would say that. You want to know what I think? Stacey put him up to this. This Darius Kassman is a vulnerable young man and she manipulated him into murdering my ex-husband. Especially considering the information you just gave us concerning his will.”
She clearly wasn’t happy about this turn of events. Odelia leaned in. It was now or never. “Mrs. Ackerman—can I speak to you in private?”
Trey got the message. “I’ll be in the next room,” he said, swiftly removing himself.
“What is it you wanted to talk to me about?” asked Angelique, a little stiffly.
“It’s about your son,” said Odelia. “We found a discarded pizza delivery outfit in a trash can near the library. We found blood on the shirt that we think matches your ex-husband’s blood type. A DNA test will be carried out, both on the blood and the shirt, which I believe will put Trey at the scene of the murder. Which means… he killed his father.”
“What are you talking about? What preposterous nonsense!”
“I’m only telling you for your own protection, Mrs. Ackerman. Trey killed his father and I’m afraid your life may be in danger as well. Which is the real reason I came here.”
Angelique stared at her for a long moment, then suddenly burst into laughter.
“Oh, you’re such a naive little wench, aren’t you, Miss Poole? Trey—come back here!”
“No!” Odelia said, jumping up from the chair. But Angelique pushed her back down.
“You’re not going anywhere!” the woman snapped, and suddenly Odelia discovered that she was holding a small silver revolver in her hand, with the barrel pointed at her heart.
“Silly, silly girl,” said Trey, who’d come up behind her and now placed his hands on her shoulders. “Did you really think I’d go to all this trouble without talking to my dear, sweet mother first?”
“Trey adores his mother, don’t you, Trey?” asked Angelique, still pointing that revolver at Odelia. “So when he saw that I was suffering such terrible abuse at the hands of his father, he suggested we do something about it. And so the plan was hatched, and carried out to perfection.”
“Thank you, mother,” said Trey appreciatively.
“You should have burned that outfit, though.”
“Beginner’s mistake?” said Trey, a smile sneaking up his pale face.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be out of here and on our way to Mexico before these silly little small-town cops put it all together,” said Angelique. She directed a mocking look at Odelia. “Of course I knew Chris didn’t leave me a single penny. He told me. Which is exactly the reason we emptied out his bank accounts last week, transferring all of his money into an account Trey set up in the Cayman Islands. I had to pay Chris’s accountant a hefty sum but it was definitely worth it. Chris was the one who didn’t have a penny, not me. If he was going to leave me for that stupid editor of his I was going to make him pay. Big time.”
“Let me guess. You left Chris that night, making sure you were seen,” said Odelia, “only for Trey to return later, dressed as a pizza guy. Where did you get the outfit?”
“Stole it from some local pizza parlor that same night,” said Trey. “Easy peasy.”
“Weren’t you afraid to get caught?”
“Nah. Nobody pays attention to the pizza guy. I could just as well have been invisible. I saw that Drood creep on my way out, but I quickly ducked into an empty room and waited him out.” He chuckled—a terrifying sound. “I figured he’d make a perfect scapegoat and he did.”
“Too bad about the outfit,” said his mother.
“Can’t be helped, Mom. If I’d burned it, someone would have seen.”
“You could have brought it back here. We could have disposed of it together.”
“What’s done is done. Next time we plan a murder we’ll pay more attention to the details.” A slow smile crept up his pale face. “So how do you want to die, Miss Poole?”
Chapter 43
Odelia sat trussed up in the small bedroom. Two piglets were staring at her. Unfortunately for her she could speak feline but she couldn’t speak pig. Not that it mattered, for her mouth was taped up with heavy-duty electrical tape and her hands and feet were tied up as well. She’d read somewhere that pigs have very sharp teeth, so they could have set to work freeing her of her restraints. Instead, they just sat there on the bed staring.
She sincerely hoped that Trey Ackerman had been kidding when he told her that parting gag about murdering her. She did not feel like dying, especially now that her life was slowly coming together. Chase was moving in, her cats were all in good health, and she still had both her parents and her crazy
grandmother.
Speaking of Gran, she suddenly thought she heard her voice.
Then the door was thrust open and Gran came walking in! More accurately put, Gran came flying in, landed on the floor and then the door was closed behind her.
“Hey, you brute!” Gran cried, balling her fists. Then she spotted her granddaughter. “Odelia! There you are! I thought they’d already filleted you like a fish.”
She crawled to an upright position and crossed the room.
“Are those pigs?” she asked.
“Get me out of this tape!” Odelia cried. Though it sounded more like, “Wepmeouoheeape!” It’s tough to enunciate clearly when your lips are taped up.
“Hold your horses,” said Gran. “I’m getting there. This tape is pretty sticky.”
It took the old woman a while, but finally she managed to yank the tape off.
“Owowoowwww!” Odelia cried.
“Oh, don’t be a baby. Just think of it as a lip waxing. Saves you the trouble to do it yourself. Now how the hell did you get mixed up with those murdering bozos?”
“I could ask you the same thing!” said Odelia, removing the tape from her around her feet.
“I came here to save you, little missy. I didn’t think they’d have a frickin’ gun.”
“You should have called Uncle Alec. Or Chase. Now we’re both going to die.”
“I don’t think so. When I arrived they were packing up. I think they’re moving out.”
“Trey asked me how I wanted to die!”
“He was probably kidding. He looks like a kidder.”
“Gran, he dressed up like a pizza guy then killed his own father in cold blood.”
“Yeah, well, that wasn’t nice,” Gran admitted.
“We’ve got to get out of here. Let’s check the windows.”
They checked the windows. The room they were in was located on the second floor facing the back wall of another building. Too high to jump, and no one in sight they could shout for help at.
“Terrible view,” said Gran. “If I were the Ackermans I’d have lodged a complaint. Who wants to look at that horrible wall all the time?”
“I’m sure they don’t mind!”
“And I’m sure they do. Even killers mind about stuff like that, honey.”
“New plan. I’ll hide behind the door, and when they come in to kill us I’ll rush them!”
“They won’t come in. They’ll pack up and get out of here and by the time housekeeping finds us they’ll be long gone and on their way to Mexico.”
Odelia had to admit her grandmother was probably right. Why add two more murders to their resume when they could simply flee and live out their lives spending Chris Ackerman’s millions?
She sank down on the bed, causing the two piglets to bob up and down.
“They are pigs,” said Gran, taking a seat next to her. “How about that?”
“Hurry up, will you?!” Angelique shouted. “If they catch us they’ll put us in jail and throw away the key.”
“Relax, Mom. They won’t catch us.” Trey gestured with his head to the connecting door. “What about those two?”
“Leave them.”
“We could shut them up forever.”
“When did you suddenly turn into a character from a Quentin Tarantino movie?”
“I guess it’s true what they say about murder. You develop a taste for it.”
“Yeah, well, better develop a taste for escape. I want to go now!”
Suddenly he pricked up his ears. “Do you hear that?”
There was a sound outside unlike anything he’d ever heard. It tickled his funny bone. It sounded like Ed Sheeran but not. More like someone was murdering the ginger singer.
“I love that song,” he said. “But whoever is singing it clearly hates it.”
He moved over to the window and looked out. Down below, some musclebound moron was belting out the notes like nobody’s business. He didn’t seem to care that traffic had ground to a halt and that people were leaning out of their windows to gawk at him. Hecklers were shouting abuse at the guy and children pelted him with rocks but he just kept on singing, oblivious.
“Probably thinks Carson Daly is staying at the hotel,” chuckled Trey.
‘You suck!’ someone shouted, and Trey thought those were his sentiments exactly. This dude, whoever he was, would never get a four-chair turn. Not even a one-chair turn.
“Let’s go!” his mother bellowed again.
“All right, all right, all right!” he said, tearing himself away from the scene down below. “What about Kevin Bacon and Miss Piggy? We can’t leave without them.”
“You should have thought of that before you locked Miss Amateur Sleuth and her granny in there. Now are we leaving or what?”
He hated to leave his pigs. He loved the little cuties. And as he moved to the door to the other room, suddenly the door to this one exploded and before he knew what hit him a bunch of cops stormed in and the atmosphere erupted into a free-for-all of shouts and screams and pounding boots and angry faces hollering at him to ‘GET DOWN NOW!’
So he did. And briefly wondered who was going to take care of his piglets.
Chapter 44
Odelia was still a little dazed as she was escorted out of the hotel and onto the sidewalk. Cop cars blocked traffic and she watched in confusion as the handcuffed Angelique and Trey were escorted into a squad car and driven off at a high rate of speed, sirens blaring.
“How—what—when—” she stuttered.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said Gran. “Before I left the house I instructed Marge to wake up Chase and send in the cavalry. I figured he might do what he could to save his sweetheart.”
Chase came hurrying up to them, and she jumped into his arms, happy to be alive.
“For a moment there I thought I lost you,” Chase intimated.
“For a moment there I thought so, too,” said Odelia.
“Oh, don’t be a bunch of saps,” said Gran, which was rich for a woman who loved her soap operas more than anything else. “We’re all fine and the bad guys will be punished so all is well that ends well. Now what’s going to happen to those little guys?”
She was pointing to a cop who was holding two piglets in his arms. He had a mustache and his name tag indicated that his name was Jackson. Odelia recognized him as the cop who wouldn’t let her into the library the night of Chris Ackerman’s murder. He didn’t look happy to have been awarded the particular task of taking care of Trey’s piglets. Especially since his colleagues were busy snapping selfies with him. He was going to become the latest Hampton Cove PD social media sensation, that much was obvious.
“Don’t worry about the pigs,” said Chase. “We’ll find someone to adopt them.”
Uncle Alec walked up, looking distinctly unhappy. “Odelia Poole,” he said gruffly. “What part of ‘I’ll handle things’ don’t you understand? You could have gotten yourself killed, young lady, and your grandmother in the process.”
“I just figured Angelique was innocent and wanted to warn her.”
“Next time do as you’re told,” he said sternly. “When Marge called me with the news that you were in trouble I almost had a heart attack.” He wagged a stubby finger in her face. “Never again, all right? Have mercy on your uncle’s poor ticker.”
“I won’t do it again,” she promised, seeing now how foolish her actions had been.
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist, Alec,” said Gran. “I was there. We were fine.”
“They had a gun!”
“I’m pretty sure they weren’t going to use it.”
“You don’t know that, Ma. They could have shot you both.”
“Well, they didn’t, so now are you going to stop crying in your milk and congratulate Odelia instead? She cracked this case.”
Marge and Tex also joined them on the sidewalk, while rubberneckers all around stood taking in the scene. “Honey, I’m so glad you’re all right,” said Marge, en
veloping Odelia in a hug. “When your grandmother told me to wake up Chase, I feared the worst.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” said Chase, a little indignant. “In fact I’d been up for hours.”
“He’s right,” said Marge. “He was in the shower when I arrived. Gave me a shock.”
Chase grimaced at the recollection and Odelia suppressed a grin. She would have loved to have seen the look on Chase’s face when Mom walked in on him in the shower.
“The important thing is that the bad guys will get what’s coming to them,” said Gran.
“How did you find out?” asked Chase. “I mean—how did you know where to find that pizza guy’s outfit?”
A momentary silence descended over the small company. Chase was the only one who didn’t know about the cats. “Just one of those hunches, I guess,” said Odelia. “I suddenly wondered about the pizza guy. See, the weird thing about the pizza boxes that we found at the library was that they were clean. Pizza boxes usually have leftover pizza or ketchup smears or chunks of cheese stuck to them. These boxes were brand new. Never used. So that got me thinking. What if the pizza guy wasn’t a pizza guy? What if he was the killer and he’d only dressed up as a pizza guy to throw us off the scent?”
“And then we took things from there,” said Uncle Alec. “In all fairness, though, Odelia found the outfit.”
“And a good thing I did. Today is collection day in that part of town. A couple of hours later and the outfit would have been gone forever.”
“And along with it the blood stains and DNA that will show beyond a reasonable doubt that Trey Ackerman killed his father,” Uncle Alec finished the story.
“Hard to believe that a son would kill his father,” said Chase, shaking his head.
“I don’t think he devised the plan,” said Odelia. “Angelique did. Trey just went along with it and did the actual deed—wanting to spare his mother the more gruesome aspects of the scheme she’d hatched. In fact she probably decided to kill her husband months ago, when she discovered he was planning to leave her for Stacey Kulcheski.”