The Pawful Truth

by Miranda James

  I expressed these thoughts to Kanesha.

  “Interesting,” she said. “Dr. Lamont never admitted to me that she was in love with Carey Warriner, or Irene Warriner, for that matter. Not something I considered, really. Is there anything else?”

  I’d been so caught up in my thoughts I’d nearly forgotten she was still on the line.

  “There are a couple of things. Have you found any trace of Dixie Compton’s alleged current husband? And when do you think Haskell might be home again?”

  “Still no trace of a current husband,” Kanesha said. “We’re working another lead, however, that may explain that situation with regard to her source of income.

  “Now, for your second question,” Kanesha said. “Bates won’t be home until the business at the police department is done. He’ll be keeping an eye on Bellamy and will escort him back to your place.”

  “Good,” I said. “I wasn’t looking forward to facing him on my own.”

  “What do you mean?” Kanesha asked.

  “I’m going to ask Dan to leave my house and go back to his place,” I said. “I don’t feel comfortable with his staying here after what happened tonight.”

  “I see. Can’t say I blame you,” Kanesha said. “Frankly, I can’t understand why he wanted to rent a room at your place. Can’t be just to eat my mama’s food.”

  Had Kanesha made a joke? I wasn’t sure, given how she felt about her mother working as my housekeeper.

  “He told me he needed a quiet place to work while he’s having renovations done to his house,” I said. “He’s working on a book, and he doesn’t want to be distracted by the commotion that comes with renovations.”

  “That’s interesting,” Kanesha said.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “That isn’t what he told me,” she said. “He told me, twice, that he was in the process of selling his house. The new owners would be moving in soon, but he hadn’t had time to look for a new place.”

  “Maybe he’s having renovations done that the new owners insisted had to be finished before they took possession,” I said, though I thought that a bit far-fetched.

  “If that was true,” Kanesha said, “why didn’t he tell us both the same thing?”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I felt a sudden chill.

  Why, indeed, had Dan told Kanesha and me different stories about his reasons for renting a room in my house?

  “I think maybe I should come back to your house,” Kanesha said, “and wait for Haskell to bring Bellamy back there.”

  “I think you should, too,” I said. “When you get here, I’ll tell you the slightly crazy idea I came up with to explain what’s behind these murders.”

  “I’ll be on my way soon,” Kanesha said. “I’ll probably be there before Haskell gets back with Bellamy. Is Stewart still there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He just walked into the kitchen.”

  “Stay together, just in case.” Kanesha ended the call.

  Stewart set down the containers he had brought from the dining room.

  “Was that Haskell on the phone?” Stewart asked.

  “Kanesha,” I said.

  “What did she have to say about Mrs. Warriner?” he asked as he looked for lids to the pots. When he didn’t find them, he used the plastic film to seal the pots.

  I relayed to him what Kanesha had told me about Irene. Then I told him about the discrepancies in what Dan had told Kanesha and me about his reasons for renting a room here.

  “That’s strange,” Stewart said. “Why would he lie about it? Or fail to tell the whole truth about it? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I can’t imagine why he would want to be in my house, particularly. I suppose you and Haskell had talked about where you lived, and he thought it was a good option. Maybe it’s no more than that.”

  “We did tell him about you,” Stewart said, “and what a great landlord you are.” He grinned, but the grin faded quickly. “Still, something doesn’t feel quite right about it.” He looked at me oddly, I thought.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Surely it can’t have anything to do with your penchant for getting involved in murders,” Stewart said.

  “Unless he was planning to murder two people that he thought I was somehow connected to,” I said, “I don’t see how that would play into it.”

  Stewart frowned. “Hang on a minute. Didn’t the first murder take place before he moved in here?”

  “I believe it did,” I said after thinking about it briefly, “but he asked you about the possibility of living here before the first murder, didn’t he?”

  Stewart nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I’d forgotten. Still, it might have been premeditated. His intention to live here, that is.”

  “Like the murders were premeditated?” I asked.

  “I guess so,” Stewart replied.

  Diesel could sense my unease. He stirred restlessly on the floor and meowed. I tried to reassure him with a few pats on the head, but I wasn’t sure it worked.

  “I’m going to take Dante a few bites of pork chop if you don’t mind,” Stewart said.

  “Of course not,” I said. “He’s welcome to them. Don’t be upstairs too long, though. Kanesha said we should stick together, just in case.”

  “In case of what?” Stewart asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied. “She ended the call before I could ask her.”

  “Surely she doesn’t think Dan is going to attack you.” Stewart shook his head in disbelief. “He’d have to get away from the police department and Haskell first. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  I felt reassured by Stewart’s certainty. “No, you’re right. But don’t take too long, anyway.”

  “All right,” Stewart said. “Back in two minutes, promise.” He moved quickly out of the kitchen, and moments later I heard him run up the stairs.

  I relaxed slightly, feeling better. Then I heard the front door open, and I tensed up again. I turned to see who came into the kitchen, hoping it would be Kanesha.

  I was shocked to see Dan Bellamy. For a moment I couldn’t catch my breath. Haskell appeared behind him, though, and I relaxed again.

  “Have you heard anything?” Dan demanded. “How is Irene? I haven’t been able to find out.”

  I caught Haskell’s eye. He made a slight movement of his head. Hoping that I followed his cue correctly, I said, “No, I’m still waiting to hear from Kanesha.”

  “That’s not good,” Haskell said. “Kanesha would have called by now if Mrs. Warriner was going to be okay. EMT told me she looked like a heart case.”

  Dan looked almost panic-stricken at our words. He stumbled to a chair and dropped into it. “Oh God, don’t let her die. She can’t die.” Elbows on the table, he cradled his head in his hands, palms against the eye sockets. He trembled, obviously in great distress.

  “I hope it isn’t her heart,” I said. “She’s so young, but of course anyone can have heart problems.” Diesel moved closer to me, obviously unsettled by the tensions in the room.

  Dan lifted his head and stared at me. “No, she can’t, she just can’t.”

  Was he playing the role of a distraught lover? I wondered. Trying to convince us that he was terrified of losing her?

  Terrified of losing her money.

  The thought came unbidden to my mind. I was convinced that the motive was nothing more than greed, pure and simple. Dan had been willing to murder two people to get to Irene Warriner, not only for what she would inherit from her husband but also for the money she would earn through her new contract for more books.

  With Haskell there to protect me, I decided to gamble. The more I had thought about what lay behind the murders, and the contemptible way in which Carey Warriner must have been manipulated, the angrier I had bec
ome.

  “It’s a shame, isn’t it?” I said with faux sympathy. “With Irene goes all that money.” I shook my head. “The Warriners will get to keep it after all.”

  Dan looked at me, uncertainty in his expression.

  I nodded. “All your planning, all that work, going down the drain when Irene kicks the bucket. You didn’t count on her having a bad heart, did you?”

  “What do you mean?” Dan glared at me.

  “Exactly what I said.” I tried to inject as much contempt as I could into my tone. “You weren’t thorough enough, though, were you? Didn’t do all the research you should have, covered all the bases. You didn’t think to look into Irene’s medical history, and it’s blown up in your face.”

  Dan laughed. “You’re crazy, you know that? You think you’re that old bat on TV, the one who’s always finding dead bodies wherever she goes. You need help.”

  “Jessica Fletcher?” I laughed. “Well, maybe, but in this case, I’m not the crazy one. How on earth did you think you were going to get away with it? You’re smart, I’ll give you that. You couldn’t have earned a Ph.D. without some intelligence. But you’re not smart enough to get away with murder.”

  “So explain to me—if I really am a murderer—how I went about it,” Dan said, seemingly oblivious now to Haskell’s presence, he seemed so intent on me.

  “Charlie, don’t,” Haskell said in a low voice, his tone harsh. I paid him no mind.

  “I haven’t completely figured out your relationship to Dixie Belle Compton,” I admitted. “I suspect there was more to it than her having been married to your brother. Your brother, by the way, not your half brother. It wasn’t too hard to find that out.” I shook my head. “Really, you should have foreseen that one.”

  “Go on,” Dan said.

  “The way I see it, you promised her a cut of the proceeds, once you had Carey out of the way and managed to talk Irene into marrying you,” I said. “But maybe she decided not to play along, or maybe she wanted a bigger cut. Anyway, you got angry and struck her. You probably didn’t intend to kill her, but that’s the problem with you guys who take a while to boil over. When you do boil over, you don’t know how to control yourselves.” I shook my head again. That gesture appeared to annoy him. I knew I was taking a risk, but I was relying on Haskell if Dan tried anything.

  Dan laughed. “Interesting story. Obviously there’s more.”

  “At some point, you must have read Othello.” I paused to see if that struck home. His jaw tensed ever so slightly, just enough for me to think I was on the right track. “When you first began to think about how to screw up the Warriners’ marriage, you thought about Iago. You had already seen that Carey could be a little possessive of Irene. Then along comes Armand d’Arcy, who is way too obvious in his adoration of her. But that fit your plan all too well, didn’t it?

  “All you had to do was feed Carey’s possessiveness by convincing him that Irene returned d’Arcy’s feelings. You assured him that all you and Irene talked about was her research in your period, but she had let on to you that she was interested in Armand.” I paused for a moment. “Let me know if I’m going too fast for you.”

  Dan’s jaw tightened again. “Please, continue.”

  “All was going well,” I said. “You got Dixie Belle to enroll in both their classes. I’m sure before they finish with you, they’ll find out you paid for her classes. She referred to you as her husband, did you know?”

  Dan breathed a little harder. I had to wonder if they had indeed been married. Well, Kanesha would have to find that out.

  “But there was a hitch with Dixie Belle. She was willing enough to seduce Carey Warriner. After all, he was an incredibly handsome guy, with lots of charm. He probably had to fight off students all the time, and not just the women.” I shrugged. “By then, you’d poisoned him enough against Irene that he must have thought he might as well screw around with Dixie and get back at his faithless wife.”

  “Charlie,” Haskell said in a warning tone. Again, I ignored him.

  “You ought to write fiction,” Dan said, trying to sound contemptuous but failing.

  “You’re disappointing me, you know,” I said, “with these lame, predictable comments. But I shouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, back to the story. For whatever reason, Dixie Belle started giving you problems, you got angry, lashed out, and suddenly had a dead body on your hands. You panicked, not so much about killing her, but losing your bait with Carey. Probably you’d never intended to kill anyone, but at some point, you must have realized that Carey’s widow would get a lot more money than if he’d simply divorced her. Am I right?”

  He ignored that. He continued to glare at me. I could feel the hatred emanating from him. That disturbed me, but it also convinced me I was right.

  “So then you had to murder Carey, too, if you were going to end up with the big prize. He really played into your hands by attacking d’Arcy after your presentation with Irene that night. I wonder if you put that into his head.” I shrugged. “No matter, he would have erupted sooner or later. He ended up being hauled to jail, and you, playing the loyal friend, stayed until you could take him home. Now, here’s where I get a little fuzzy on the details. You didn’t kill him before you took him home, because otherwise Irene would have figured that out. So you took him home but counted on him to be too angry to talk to his wife. Carey left the house; you said you’d go look for him. You found him and killed him. End of story.” I was vaguely aware that Stewart had returned to the dining room, and I felt, rather than saw, Haskell move closer to me.

  Dan continued to look at me, cold rage in his eyes.

  I decided to push a little further. “What I don’t understand was why you wanted to rent a room here. You obviously knew about my past experiences. You should have realized I’d be smart enough to catch on to you. So what made you do it? It really was the stupidest thing you could have done, you know.”

  He caught me completely off guard. Haskell, too. Dan had his hands around my throat before I even realized he had launched himself at me. Haskell reacted quickly, but it was really Diesel who saved me, I’m convinced. I heard the cat scream with rage, and the next thing I knew, Dan stumbled back, yelling that Diesel had clawed his eye out. Haskell felled him with one blow before he could retaliate, and Diesel climbed into my lap, anxiously meowing and chirping.

  EPILOGUE

  I caught grief from everyone over my stunt. I shouldn’t have done it, I knew, but my temper got the better of me. Once I’d had my wild idea about Dan’s playing Iago, I got angry. I thought of poor Irene Warriner. I was convinced that, at some point, she would go the way of the hapless, loyal Desdemona if Dan managed to get her to marry him. Somehow, I felt sure, he would have, though he’d have had to get Armand d’Arcy out of the way to do it. From what I’d seen, though, Irene hadn’t been enamored enough of d’Arcy to make him much of a threat.

  I also thought about Carey Warriner, a promising career cut short, the students who would be deprived of his eloquence, his passion. Such an obscene waste.

  There was also poor Dixie Compton, used by her brother-in-law in tawdry schemes to bilk married men out of money, jewels, cars, and whatever else she could get. Evidently his salary as a college professor wasn’t enough, so he basically prostituted Dixie in order to earn money for them both. Kanesha had dug deep enough into both Dixie Belle’s and Dan’s past to discover that Dan had used his sister-in-law coldly, and she had, sadly, been willing to let him. I felt angry on her behalf. She had deserved better. I still felt a bit guilty over turning down her offer to study together. She was looking for a friend, I thought, and I hadn’t been willing to be one.

  I had driven myself nearly around the bend trying to figure out why Dan had come to board at my house. I figured Dixie must have told him she had met me and probably even that she had asked me to be her study partner. Perhaps he had feared she had told me som
ething and decided he wanted to be able to keep a closer eye on me. Then, too, after her murder he had definitely put himself in the right place to keep tabs on the investigation. He had already known about my connection with law enforcement through his connection with Haskell and Stewart at the gym.

  I had come to the realization, almost too late, that Dan was a sociopath. He had charm, otherwise Stewart and Haskell wouldn’t have befriended him, nor would Stewart have recommended him as a boarder. He had carried off the nice-guy routine pretty well, though when he had tried to implicate Irene Warriner in the murders, he had made me uneasy. Like most sociopaths he had also overestimated his intelligence, his ability to con me and those around him. I figured he had thought that, despite my involvement in previous investigations, he was far too canny to allow me to catch on to the truth about him.

  He had been busy with various plans to spread confusion. Not only had he tried to implicate Irene Warriner—a shrewd move to throw me off the scent that he really was interested in her—but he also had told Armand d’Arcy about the dinner with Irene at my house. He had admitted as much to Kanesha. Ultimately, of course, his attempts to throw me off base had failed. I had goaded him beyond bearing by taunting him.

  Once my family found out about what had happened, Sean actually yelled at me, and for once in her life, so did Laura. That shook me pretty badly. Helen Louise didn’t yell, but she wouldn’t talk to me for three days after she found out what I’d done. Stewart and Haskell wouldn’t look me in the eye. Kanesha had lost her temper, and I felt like I’d been skinned alive by the time she finished.

  Azalea didn’t fuss at me, but she did manage to work my grandchildren into several conversations, telling me how important it was that I stick around to see them grow up. What a shame it would be if I did something foolish to keep that from happening.

  For a few days there, I felt friendless. Even Melba got mad at me. Diesel and Ramses were my only companions. I was thankful for my cats, and I was rethinking my idea about giving Ramses to Azalea. I might change my mind again at some point, but for now, he was going to stay with Diesel and me.