* * *
Sarah hit the landing and skidded to a stop, panting for breath. Above, she could hear the gun-toting Amazon in hot pursuit. To the right was a large open space—probably the dining room. No cover there, and no time to find a way outside.
Sarah darted through a door to the left and slammed it behind her. She was in a pantry of some sort, with a counter running along one wall. She heaved three heavy boxes off the counter and shoved them against the door. A pair of plaster buckets followed. Her impromptu barricade had only taken a few seconds to construct, but Marlee Sue was already thundering down the last steps.
A swinging door at the far end of the pantry led to a hotel-sized kitchen. Sarah tossed a saw horse at the door as it flopped shut behind her.
Marlee Sue grunted as she slammed into the unyielding outer door.
Across the kitchen was a doorway leading to the patio. Sarah sprinted to it, but the door was secured with a deadbolt lock that required a key, and there was no key hanging on a convenient nail. What’s with these security conscious people?
Her escape to the outside blocked, Sarah looked around. There were too many big, open spaces in this house, and they would be fatal if Marlee Sue caught up with her.
Sarah ran back across the kitchen to a pair of doors and opened the first. Cellar stairs. She grabbed one of the ubiquitous cans of paint and rolled it down the steps, leaving the door ajar.
“You’re TOAST, Cassidy!” Marlee Sue yelled from the other room. She was hurling herself against Sarah’s barricade, and it sounded as though she had almost worked her way through.
Sarah wished she had a floor plan of the place. The adjacent doorway opened into a room with a pair of laundry sinks that looked like they were being used by the workmen to wash up. Nearby was hookup for a clothes washer. She opened the valve and was greeted by a torrent of water. A utility cord was draped over the counter. Most unsafe. Sarah dropped the cord end into the growing puddle and ran to the far end of the room, where a short hallway led to more stairs. She headed up them as silently as possible.
“I know you’re down there, Irish. Come on out and let’s talk about this.” Marlee Sue’s voice was muffled as it reached Sarah. She must be aiming her blandishments down the cellar stairs. It wouldn’t take long for her to realize that was a false trail.
This part of the house was the servant’s quarters. A doorway led from the servant’s wing to the main upstairs hall, and Sarah sprinted down the hall towards the Grand Staircase. With luck she could get out the front while Marlee Sue was sweet-talking the cellar. Gasping for breath from all the running, she reached the balcony and swerved towards the stairs.
It was the scaffold, reaching from the entrance hall past the balcony, that saved her life.
With a vicious whine, a bullet ricocheted off the scaffold’s metal leg inches from her ear.
Sarah caught a glimpse of Marlee Sue, and ducked out of sight against the wall. Her pulse pounded in her ears, but fear gave way to fury. She was not going to be hunted down without a fight.
A pile of paint cans sat on a tarp against the wall. Sarah hurled one over the balcony towards the foot of the staircase. A second and a third can followed.
The trouble was, she couldn’t see what effect they were having.
Sarah grabbed another can and ventured a peek. The missiles had burst as they hit, splattering the floor and Marlee Sue with a pale taupe color. Marlee Sue had swerved to the far side of the hallway to avoid the barrage and try to get a glimpse of Sarah. They spotted each other at the same instant, and Marlee Sue snapped off a shot as Sarah launched her paint can and ducked out of sight.
“YOU BITCH!” thundered through the hall.
Gathering up another paint can, Sarah risked quick look. Marlee Sue was swearing and holding her left leg. The last missile must have hit the floor just short, bounced, and struck her shin.
The next can ricocheted off Marlee Sue’s right hip and sent her sprawling. The gun skittered across the floor.
Sarah reached for another can, and realized there were none left. Marlee Sue had lurched to her feet, and was hobbling towards the gun. There was no way Sarah could get to the weapon first.
A plank, extra flooring for the scaffold, lay against the wall. Sarah snatched it up and used it like a battering ram to charge one of the extension ladders leaning against the railing.
The ladder sprang away from the balcony, scythed towards Marlee Sue—and hung up on the chandelier with a clang. A hailstorm of glass pendants rattled to the floor.
Marlee Sue looked up at the wildly gyrating chandelier, slipped in a puddle of electric blue paint and fell headlong.
Sarah wondered what they were going to paint that color as she backed up with her trusty plank and charged the second ladder, sending it after the first.
She swore as it too hung up on the chandelier.
Marlee Sue was on her feet again and reaching for the gun, her face and front a startling shade of blue.
Sarah tried to throw the plank like a javelin, but it was too heavy and fell a few feet short with a crash that made Marlee Sue jump and skid in the wet paint. She recovered, picked up the gun.
The chandelier screeched like a wounded animal as it tore from the ceiling.
Marlee Sue looked up again. She had just enough time to leap clear before the tangled ruin crashed down.
But she didn’t move. Instead, she raised the pistol and fired.
Sarah ducked or fell, she wasn’t sure which, as the wreckage hit the floor.
* * *
Sarah staggered to her feet as the Grand Entrance door crashed open, and Eldon Tupper, one of the few people who could make the Borofsky’s front hall look cramped, hurtled onto the scene.
He spotted Marlee Sue under the wreckage and bent over her. Glass beads from the chandelier lay on and about the body like diamonds. “Christ,” he said as he stood up.
Oliver sprinted through the door, nearly colliding with Eldon in his rush. “How is she?”
“Dead as a haddock,” Eldon replied. His face was gray and he looked wobbly on his feet.
“Where’s Sarah?”
Chapter 31
Sarah stumbled down the Grand Staircase, leaning on the railing for support. The steps were steeper than she remembered, and she seemed to be having trouble controlling her feet.
Oliver looked at her worriedly. “Are you all right?”
“I think so.“ She couldn’t stop shivering.
Eldon looked down at the body. “Was she the one?”
Sarah nodded, tore her eyes away from Marlee Sue, clambered around the wreckage.
Oliver held out a hand to steady her.
“What happened to your arm?” he said.
She looked and saw blood dribbling down her left hand onto the floor. “I must have scratched it.”
Eldon came over. “Let me take a look. I trained as an EMT.”
“I was a nurse,” Sarah countered.
“Then you know I’m an expert at this,” Eldon replied, gently lifting the arm. The blood-soaked sleeve of her sweatshirt had two holes in it. “Looks like you’ve been shot.” He produced a bandanna handkerchief from his pocket and tied it around her arm, sweatshirt and all. “That should stop the bleeding ’til the EMTs get here.”
Eldon reached for his cell phone.
“It’s just a scratch. Everything works fine,” Sarah said.
There was a screech of tires on the cobbled driveway, and Claude appeared at the door.
“How the hell did you get here so fast?” Pearly said, still panting after his run up from the pier.
Claude’s face was flushed with excitement. “There’s a cop-car about a mile behind me.”
“Good. Flag it down,” Eldon said. “Tell them we need an ambulance.”
But Claude stood frozen, spellbound by the scene of destruction. A trail of black smoke rolled like an oily serpent down the Grand Staircase.
He turned to his ex-wife with a look of awe and said, �
��Jesus, this is way worse the dining room suite thing.”
The wail of sirens echoed through the hall.
“For God’s sake don’t say anything about Owl,” Oliver said urgently as a State Police cruiser pulled up to the door.
“May I ask why not, Mister Law-and-Order?” Sarah retorted.
“Because Sam—”
“Considering all this,” Claude interrupted, waving his arm expansively, “you’d be well advised not to tell them anything without a good criminal lawyer present. They’re going to think you’re the queen of doom as it is.”
The next few hours passed in a blur of police, firemen, EMT’s, and technicians, all adding to Sarah’s feeling of unreality.
The bullet had carved a deep furrow across her upper arm, and the EMT’s grumbled disapprovingly when she refused a trip to the hospital.
“I’ll come down later and have it stitched up,” she insisted firmly. They applied a bandage, put her arm in a sling, and made her sign a form. They warned her about the potential dangers of her stubbornness, to no avail. Sarah was convinced that Oliver knew something about this affair that she didn’t—an unacceptable situation.
Sarah gave the police an abbreviated version of what had happened: she came across the other half of Gerhard Burndt’s gravestone, found it had been moved illegally, and encountered Marlee Sue, who took her at gun-point to the Borofsky’s house, locked her in a room, and tried to shoot her when she escaped. Beyond that she pleaded shock, confusion, and ignorance—all of which were true.
Claude, no doubt mindful of his various past traffic violations, behaved with uncharacteristic tact, assuring the police in his capacity as an attorney that Sarah was trustworthy and would be in the next morning to make a formal statement.
Pearly stepped in too. “She needs to have that arm patched up and get some rest. I’ll see that she comes down tomorrow to make a statement.” He had been sheriff in town for years, and his nephew, Charlie Howes, was sheriff now, so Pearly’s words carried weight.
* * *
It was late afternoon before they were free to leave. With the excitement over, Claude suddenly remembered Lurlene, loose in Freeport with his credit cards. Burdened with a pricey assortment of traffic citations, he beat a retreat under the watchful eye of the law.
The remaining four walked slowly down to the dock through a cool, fog-laden mist.
“We’ll tow Owl and what’s-her-name’s boat back,” Pearly said. He looked at Sarah’s pallor in a fatherly way. “Then you’re going to the hospital, young lady.”
“I need to look at something first,” Sarah said.
“Maybe two things,” Oliver murmured.
They peered into Owl’s flotation tank with the help of a flashlight from Roaring Whore.
“I don’t see anything,” Sarah said.
“Myra wouldn’t just drop it into the bilge anyway,” Oliver said. “Feel around under the deck.”
“I can’t quite get my hand in there. The hole is too small. Exactly what am I looking for anyway?” she demanded peevishly.
“Photographs,” Eldon said.
“Shouldn’t the police be doing this?”
“No,” her three companions said in unison.
Sarah seethed. Was she the only one who didn’t know what was going on? She ran her fingers as far as they could reach and felt a lump of plastic.
“Wait. There’s something there. I can feel a thumb tack.”
She removed a packet sealed in layers of plastic wrap.
“Is that all?” Oliver said.
Sarah glared at him venomously. “What the hell else did you expect me to find?”
“What is it?” Pearly said.
“They’re Eldon’s photographs,” Sarah snarled as she began to unwrap the bundle.
“We can look at those later,” Oliver said. The urgency in his voice made her pause and jam the package into her pocket.
“That’s all there is,” she repeated, glaring at Oliver again.
“That makes sense,” Oliver said, in a way that further infuriated her. “We need to look in your car.”
“Let’s go then,” Eldon replied, heading for Roaring Whore.
“Her Studebaker,” Oliver said.
* * *
Sarah was exhausted and her arm was throbbing painfully by the time they had walked the short distance to Myra’s backyard.
Eldon jerked at the car door. “It’s locked,” he said.
“The keys are probably in there,” Pearly said, cocking a thumb at the cellar hole. “Nobody has been in the car for years anyway. Look at the trees all grown up around it.”
“Not on the passenger’s side,” Oliver pointed out.
He was right; the saplings on that side had been trimmed.
“There’s a hatchet over the lintel inside the chicken-coop door,” Sarah said. “Myra kept it there to encourage the hens.”
They stared at her.
“It’s my car, break the window,” she commanded.
Eldon swatted the passenger-side glass with the hatchet and unlocked the door.
They were greeted with the smell of mold and rotting fabric. The headliner had come unglued at the front end, and it hung down from the dome light like a malodorous curtain, blocking off the rear seat.
Sarah leaned in and pushed the headliner aside. The back seat was covered with a rotting assortment of men’s clothing, while the floor area contained enough empty beer bottles to send Ziggy into an ecstatic fit. Evan’s legacy, she supposed.
“Nothing back there,” she said.
“Try the glove compartment,” Oliver suggested.
The smell made her gag and the sling on her left arm kept Sarah from slipping into the seat. She gestured to Oliver, who got into the car.
The glove box was locked, but Eldon and the hatchet dealt with that problem.
Inside, was an envelope with Myra’s name on it, with a return address of “C. Jamison Kincaid, Esq., Attorney at Law.”
“That’s why the Missing Ring picture,” Sarah mused.
“The what?” Oliver said.
“One of Myra’s pictures showed me digging potatoes, with a saucepan full of them on the hood of the Studebaker. At first I thought the photo had to do with Marlee Sue, but Myra was showing me where the will was hidden—insurance in case Cathy wasn’t around to tell me something important was in here.”
“I can’t believe she’d use a car glove compartment to store something like that,” Pearly said.
“It worked for her,” Oliver said. He opened the envelope while Sarah looked over his shoulder.
“That’s just another copy of Myra’s will,” she said. This was a total waste of time. She was tired and sore. And it was starting to rain.
“Kincaid already gave me one,” she snapped as Oliver scanned through the document.
“Is the copy he gave you dated December 20th of last year? A week before she died? Does your copy leave the house and land to Doctor Ziegfield Follies Breener? Or if he should predecease her, the Spruce Cone Camp? No wonder your friend killed Myra. Imagine what Ziggy’s Zoo would do to the value of her land.”
“What are you talking about?” Sarah demanded.
Oliver looked up at her, his face a mask of confusion. “I thought you knew. You found the key—the connection between Grinshnell, Kincaid, and what’s-her-name—”
“Marlee Sue. And this is—” she pointed to the document in his hand.
“This is the real will,” Oliver said. “Kincaid must have told Marlee Sue about it.”
“I bet she went ballistic,” Sarah said. “She must have bribed Kincaid to make a phoney version with Cara as the beneficiary.”
“Cara was probably the beneficiary in the original will anyway,” Oliver replied.
Sarah nodded. “They must have planned to burn down Myra’s house after she died to destroy the real will.”
“Kincaid knew Myra didn’t believe in banks,” Oliver said, “so he probably figured she would keep he
r copy in a drawer somewhere, leaving him with the only other copy in his office safe.”
“It helped that he was executer,” Sarah added. “I suppose there was a chance that someone would discover the change, but not such a big one, considering Myra’s secretiveness. A little fraud to protect the neighborhood.”
“His civic duty, even,” Eldon said sarcastically.
“So why kill anyone?” Pearly said.
“Marlee Sue had two problems,” Oliver replied. “First was the possibility that the real will, this will here, would turn up and show Ziggy inheriting the place. The bigger worry was that Myra might sign her house over to Ziggy right away, instead of waiting until she died, or had to go into a nursing home.”
“Myra would have blown her own head off before she went into a nursing home,” Eldon said.
Oliver nodded. “Myra must have worried that she’d have to sell the place to pay for a nursing home, and went to Kincaid to have him transfer ownership to Ziggy before that happened.”
“Just like she gave her car to Cathy in advance,” Sarah said. “And Kincaid stalled Myra long enough to tell Marlee Sue.”
“He could have said he had to contact Ziggy,” Oliver said, “which would take time, since nobody knows where Ziggy spends the winter.”
“I can see her killing Myra to keep the place from going to Ziggy, but why kill Cathy?” Eldon said.
“Killing Myra raised the ante,” Sarah said. “If Kincaid had just been caught swapping the wills, he could have blamed it on a clerical error—the wrong revision pulled out of the file. But things got a lot more serious once Marlee Sue killed Myra. Marlee Sue couldn’t take a chance that Cathy knew about Myra signing her land over to Ziggy.”
“If Cathy had gotten suspicious, she could have had the cops look into Kincaid, Marlee Sue, and the fire,” Oliver added.
“I suppose Ziggy would have been killed too if he wasn’t away,” Pearly said.
“I talked to Ziggy,” Sarah said, “and he had no idea about the will. He was assuming the place would be sold.”
“It must have been a question of which was worse for Marlee Sue, anyway: Ziggy, or a camp for troubled teens,” Oliver said.
Gravely Dead: A Midcoast Maine Mystery Page 21