by Tracey Drew
Jennifer followed my gaze to Isabel, who glared at her in helpless fury. “Ool ever et uh-ay iv is.”
Brian uttered a smug snort. Yeah. Guess the dentist was in on the whole home invasion gig with his wife. Not that there was much doubt at this point. “Oh, we’ll get away with this. Don’t you worry.”
Points for understanding Isabel’s garbled protestation. But then, he’d had many hours of practice listening to effectively gagged patients.
“You’ll be joining your beloved Lucas soon,” Jennifer crooned so sweetly it made me want to take a drill to my own teeth.
Isabel arched her chin and glared at her captor with indignation. “I idn’t uv im.”
“Yes you did, you poor, pathetically lonely thing. At least, that’s what everyone in town will believe. More importantly, it’s what the cops will accept as the reason you killed him in a fit of jealous rage.”
“I id ot!”
“For Pete’s sake.” Jennifer strode over and yanked the scarf from Isabel’s mouth. “If you scream, Brian will hurt you. He’s a dentist; he knows how to inflict pain.”
Ain’t that the truth, lady.
I snuck a glance at Brian, who appeared somewhat taken aback at the thought of acting as his wife’s hired thug.
A bit late for that, buddy. You’re up to your eyeballs in this mess.
Isabel licked her lips and swallowed hard a few times. “I did not kill Lucas.”
“But you were at the store that night,” I blurted. “Ed Hanbury saw you leave the campground, and you were wearing a nice dress and heels, he said.” Much like the heels Jennifer wore now: shiny red pumps that coordinated with her crimson blouse. The shoes made her outfit a little matchy-matchy for my taste but were probably quite good for repelling and hiding blood splatter.
“Wasn’t me.” Isabel barked out a bitter laugh. “Definitely wasn’t me. Thanks to my sciatica, I haven’t worn heels since my wedding day.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes. “Before you two lose any more brain cells trying to Sherlock who the woman was—it was me. It’s easier to catch a fly with honey than vinegar, and I needed Lucas to want to talk to me. When he wasn’t in his RV, I figured the only other place he could be was the store, so that’s where I went.”
Where she’d found him.
As my brain rebooted, it started to piece together what had happened the night Lucas Kerr opened the door to the wrong person.
Forehead crumpling into frown lines, Isabel huffed out a sigh. “But why did you want to talk to him?”
“Because she’d discovered Lucas had sold drugs to her son.” My eyes flicked to Jennifer, and her hard expression confirmed my suspicions.
Her lips pressed into a thin line, she wrapped her arms around her torso. “I was picking up dirty laundry off his bedroom floor one morning—how the boy can shoot a basketball through a hoop but completely miss the laundry basket, I don’t know. I had to crawl under his desk to reach a sock that’d somehow tucked itself against the back wall. Under the sock, I found a dust-covered pill, which I thought was an over-the-counter painkiller at first.”
Jennifer shook her head. “But it was the wrong size and shape. So I did a more thorough search of his room and found what remained of his stash. There were only a couple of pills in the baggie, but I was angry. Furious, really.”
“You couldn’t believe Dylan would take drugs after what happened to your sister.” I infused my voice with as much empathy and understanding as I could.
“Exactly. I figured there must be peer pressure or some sort of extenuating circumstances—”
“Like the stress of exams,” Isabel said. “These days, kids have so much pressure on them to do well if they want to qualify for the top universities.”
Jennifer shot her husband a scathing look. “Brian had been on and on at Dylan since the beginning of the school year about buckling down and studying hard.”
“The kid needs more discipline in his study habits.” Brian threw up his hands. “Otherwise, he’ll end up in some dead-end job, flipping burgers.”
Or dealing drugs?
As angry and upset as Jennifer had been at finding out her son had taken illegal substances, murdering the person who’d sold them to him seemed a little excessive. But if she’d uncovered the possibility of Lucas coercing Dylan into selling drugs to his friends as study aids…
“How did you know Lucas gave Dylan the pills?” I asked.
She sniffed in disdain. “The baggie I found had a couple of stickers on it. To help identify which pills it contained, I’m guessing. Lucas sold the same stickers in his store; I checked. I also looked in Hanburys and the stationery section of the bookstore in case they carried those particular stickers, but neither stocked them. But I knew that wasn’t enough to convince the police of his guilt. There was only one way to prove the connection. I got chatty with Lucas—even though breathing the same air as him made me sick to my stomach—and faked being an anxious mumsy who needed something stronger than wine to take the edge off. He bought my act and offered a solution, which I picked up late the next night.”
She jutted out her chin as if daring anyone to judge. “I didn’t take any of the nasty pills, of course. I just wanted to know where he kept his stash.”
“In his back storeroom,” I provided helpfully. “He wasn’t the savviest of businessmen if he didn’t understand the unwritten rule of don’t poop where you eat.”
And while Jennifer bestowed on me the smile of a proud teacher whose slowest student has finally made a worthwhile contribution to an adult conservation, I continued to slowly rotate my wrists under the Violet Skies restraint. The thick but not particularly strong fibers frayed and began to separate.
“That first night, Lucas suggested I find out if any of my friends were looking for a similar solution. He offered to cut me in for any transactions I set up,” Jennifer said. “Flirting with me to try to drum up more business, can you believe it? Then he let slip that I wouldn’t be the only one in town helping him. He said he’d secured a teenager to cover the high school crowd.”
“He was grooming a teenager? At my high school?” Isabel’s formerly pale face flooded with color again.
If the cat-faced clock on Isabel’s living room wall was correct, by now, Harry would be getting irritated that I might not make it back in time for the first Crafting for Calmness member’s arrival. Irritated, but not yet anxious. But even when that irritation turned to anxiety and then to concern, he wouldn’t have the first clue where to look for me. Or that I was in danger. Nobody else knew either.
My stomach plummeted into my shoes.
Isabel and I were screwed. There was no doubt in my mind the Werths wouldn’t just let us go after this abduction and chat episode.
“For my son’s sake and for the other kids in town, I had to expose Lucas Kerr for what he really was.” Jennifer slid onto the couch, next to her husband, looking from Isabel to me with such arrogant certainty that I think I threw up in my mouth a little.
I swallowed hard, grateful for the cover provided by the rolled arms of Isabel’s comfy chair. Twisting my wrists, I tried to keep any movement below the elbow. “He was a lowlife, scum who preyed on the vulnerable.”
“Total dirtbag.” Brian, who’d remained silent during his wife’s diatribe, clenched his fists. “He would’ve ruined our live—” A blink-and-you’d-miss-it sideways glance at his wife. “Ruined Dylan’s life first and foremost, of course. I understood why Jen did what she did that night.”
“You weren’t there?” I asked.
“No,” Jennifer answered for him. “Brian wasn’t part of the plan.”
“And what was ‘the plan’? Murder Lucas and hope no one would care if there was one less deviant in the world?” Isabel asked with enough venom in her voice to make me flinch.
I gave her a don’t provoke the psychos stare, hoping that dealing with uncooperative young human beings meant she had some mind-reading skills.
“I’m sure that was
n’t Jennifer’s plan at all,” I said in my best soothing-counselor voice. “Remember, her intention was to expose Lucas’s illegal activities to the authorities. Right?” I directed this at Jennifer and Brian, who nodded in unison.
“You acted like a mother lion defending her cub; no one can fault you for that,” I continued. If she was anything like my eldest sister, she’d love being seen as a fierce protector of her kid. “I’m sure you just went to Lucas’s RV that night to get a confession out of him.”
“That’s precisely what I did,” she said.
“And dressed nicely and took a bottle of wine with you so that he’d assume you were flirting right back and invite you in without suspicion.”
“Yes. I had my phone all ready to record his confession, but he wasn’t in his RV.”
“So you went to the store, and it was dark in front, but the lights were on out the back. When you knocked, Lucas saw it was you through the windows. He opened the door, and you walked right in.”
“Told him I’d brought us a nightcap because I couldn’t stop thinking about him.” She gave a brittle chuckle and shuddered. “That much was true.”
“Lucas didn’t have any wine glasses, so you used coffee cups.”
“Tacky. But it made spiking his drink easy.”
“Spiking it with the pills he sold you? Poetic justice, right there.” Aiming to inject a tone of admiration into my voice, I kept my gaze level with Jennifer’s. “Then, after he succumbed to the pills and alcohol, you hit him with the wine bottle and posed his body on the floor with the chef’s knife and a note as a misdirecting flourish. Well played.”
I wasn’t certain that was how the murder took place, but I gambled on Jennifer’s pride insisting that she put all her homicidal little ducks in a row.
“No, no, no.” Jennifer sprang to her feet, her cheeks flushed bright red. “That’s not what happened.” She crossed the living room to pace behind the couch where Isabel sat, her heels tapping out a staccato beat on the hardwood floor.
So far, so good.
The Werths on opposite sides of the room meant I had a chance of escape. Not a good chance, but nevertheless still a chance.
By now, the loosely spun fibers of Violet Skies had stretched enough that, with one sharp tug, I should be able to free my hands. That would provide me with an element of surprise, but how I’d make it out of this room before the Hulk and his killer wife caught me remained a mystery. One I had no clue how to solve.
Fifteen
In the crime and murder mystery shows Harry watches, the detective often impresses his audience of suspects and the hitherto unknown killer with his brilliant deductions of how the crime was committed. My preference was when the detective kept their mouth shut and let the killer run theirs, giving them time to figure out what the heck to do next.
“Tell us what happened, Jennifer.” I leaned forward and dropped my hands between my thighs. Feigning interest in hearing her side of the story and hoping she wouldn’t notice how the thick yarn was now more fluff than binding. “Did he attack you?”
She paused in her click-clacking stride and turned, facing me from behind Isabel’s stricken face. The principal looked like she wanted to puke into one of the potted plants dotted around the room, but her eyes told me she trusted I’d somehow get us both out of this.
Preferably alive.
I hoped that trust wasn’t misplaced.
“As a matter of fact,” Jennifer said with a darting glance toward her husband, “he did. Yes, I was furious with him. And it did cross my mind to just secure one of his environmentally unfriendly plastic bags over his head when he slipped into unconsciousness on the couch. But I didn’t. Because I’m a good person. A good mother only doing what was necessary to protect her son.” She braced her palms on the sofa back and eyeball dueled with me.
“In today’s world, teenagers are equally as vulnerable as toddlers,” I said. “They think they don’t need their parents, but they do.”
Appearing mollified, Jennifer shot Brian another glance. This one seemed to say, ‘See? She gets where I’m coming from.’
I totally didn’t. I was merely utilizing one of the few weapons I had in my arsenal. Empathy. And years of practice in the subtle art of peacekeeping.
“That’s so true,” Jennifer said. “My son didn’t stand a chance against such a predator, and neither did my poor sister. I couldn’t help Julia, but I wouldn’t let what happened to her happen to my son. I’d no choice but to intervene.”
“You didn’t,” I said. “And that’s why you had to expose Lucas’s unsavory side business in such a way that he couldn’t weasel out of a prison sentence with a good lawyer.”
“Yes!” Jennifer resumed her pacing. “Once I’d found the hidden drugs on his premises, I’d arrange them out in the open, make it look like he was sorting them ready for innocent kids like my son to collect. Then I’d make an anonymous call to the police, who would find him passed out drunk amongst his horrible products.”
“Might’ve worked too, if Lucas hadn’t started to come round,” Brian said glumly.
“Would have worked.” Jennifer fired a ‘ye of little faith’ glare at him over Isabel’s head. “How was I to know he’d have a reaction to the pills?”
Brian rolled his beefy shoulders and crossed his legs, the whispery sound of his pants creeping me out once again. “I’m just suggesting if you’d consulted me beforehand about the dosage for an adult male and—”
“Shut up.” His wife’s face went an even brighter shade of scarlet. “If you hadn’t constantly badgered Dylan about grades, he wouldn’t have taken drugs. And I never would’ve been forced to take such measures to save him from someone like Lucas.”
A snort of derision from the dentist. “Nobody forced you to do anything.”
Dissension among the ranks? I liked it.
“He regained consciousness?” I prompted Jennifer. “Is that when he attacked you?”
She switched her attention to me. “Not exactly.” An impatient sigh. “I was in the storage room, going through endless boxes of stock, trying to find his stash. I’m not sure how long I’d been in there when I heard weird noises coming from the other room. Scuffing, gurgling sounds. I left the storage room and found Lucas half slumped, half sitting on the couch, retching.”
Her nose crinkled in remembered distaste. “I tried to remove the dishcloth I’d stuffed in his mouth—”
“You gagged him?”
“I couldn’t risk him yelling for help if he did wake up earlier than expected, could I? And I planned to remove the gag, novelty cuffs, and packing tape from around his ankles before I left and called the cops. It had to look as if he’d been at the store alone.”
Fat chance of that, really. Even if her harebrained scheme had gone off without a hitch, Detective Mana was no dummy. What sort of drug dealer doped himself up and then took a nap among a sampling of his own product? And while the novelty cuffs and gag hadn’t left a mark, the packing tape had done a brilliant impromptu wax job on Lucas’s hairy ankles. Show me a man who’d willingly do that to himself. However, I resisted pointing out this glaring obviousness and made a sympathetic sound.
“I bent over him and pulled the dishcloth out of his mouth, but Lucas managed to lift his cuffed hands and latch onto my arm. When I stumbled backward, he crumpled onto the floor. It was horrible, just horrible. He was wheezing and choking, wriggling around like an electrified worm.” She gave a delicate shudder and clasped her hands between her breasts. “I tried everything to help him, I really, really did.”
Everything but call an ambulance, which might have saved his life. If I’d had any sympathy for Jennifer Werth before, it vanished at that moment.
Her tear-shiny eyes—which to me seemed as sincere as a kid caught pinching his younger sibling and then pleading innocence—locked onto her husband’s. “I told you everything when I got home, didn’t I, Brian? How I got the handcuffs and packing tape off Lucas and tried to drag him into th
e recovery position, but then he lunged at my ankle, and I panicked.”
“And you grabbed the nearest object to swing at him. The bottle of wine you’d brought,” I said.
If Jennifer’s eyes had weapons capability, they would have sent heat-guided missiles soaring in my direction. “Don’t you dare judge me, I had to. I shudder to think what he would’ve done to me if he’d dragged me down to the floor.”
“No judgment here, Jennifer.” I thought my tone was actually quite neutral, considering I’d prefer a close encounter with a tarantula to spending a minute longer in this woman’s company. “I just want to understand. What happened next?”
“Well, he quieted down after I gave him a tap on the head.”
A tap? The damage she’d done with the wine bottle had looked more than a tap, but I wasn’t a coroner; so again, no judgment.
“And I was able to formulate a plan B,” she said.
I nodded. “The ‘get out of town’ note with a knife was to point suspicion toward a business rival or a rival gang, as you later suggested.”
“Bringing up the rival gang idea in the knitting class was my little gem,” Brian said with no small amount of pride.
What a peach Jennifer had married.
“And that could’ve continued to lead the investigation in the wrong direction, except you left the cup behind with your lipstick on it, and quite likely, your fingerprints.”
“Leaving the cup was her fault.” Jennifer glared down at the back of Isabel’s head. “I’d just picked them up to wash and return to the shelf when I heard footsteps on the driveway. I quickly set the cups by the sink, killed the lights, and ducked behind the island counter.”
“So I wasn’t imagining things. I thought I saw a brief glow at the back of the store before it vanished.” Isabel twisted around as best she could to find Jennifer. “You were still in there when I knocked.”
“‘Lucas? Lucas? I know you’re in there. Can we talk? Pleeeeease?’” She imitated Isabel in a high-pitched mocking tone then returned to her own I’m the victim whine. “She wouldn’t quit. Knocking and knocking, rattling the door handle. Pleading for Lucas to talk to her with absolutely no self-respect.” Jennifer curled her lip. “It was pathetic. I was terrified she was stalkerish enough to break a window and climb in. So I stuffed the dishcloth gag into my bra, tucked the wine bottle under my arm, and grabbed a cup. I could only carry one clenched in my teeth as I crawled out into the store. Isabel was still bleating behind me as I slipped out the front door and headed for home.”