The Elizabeth McClaine Thriller Boxed Set

by Catherine Lea

  Elizabeth undid her seatbelt and opened her door with her heart hammering against her chest. “I told you to stay in your car. Why aren’t you in your car?”

  Oblivious to her annoyance, Nancy turned and drew the beam in a wide arc across the front of the building and into the surrounding bushes. “She’s not here. Car’s gone. I looked all around, but nothing. Not even a tire track. What did you find out?”

  The night air was even colder out here. With the chill biting right through to her skin, Elizabeth tugged her collar up and crossed her jacket lapels in front of her. Now she was wishing she’d worn something warmer than a skirt and jacket.

  “I found out that to get anything illegal into Carringway, you’d need Criss Angel and a prison riot.” When Nancy gave her a look, she added, “Apart from tossing a package over the fence and hoping it hit the spot marked X, I can’t see how you’d get a mouse in there. There’s security on their security.” She huffed out a breath that clouded in front of her. “That’s if you believe everything Jennifer Glassy says.”

  “Told you.”

  Elizabeth gave her a scathing look, then said, “So where did you look?”

  Nancy turned to regard the building again, directing the beam of the flashlight like a pointer as she spoke. “All around the back there, down the west side, tried the front door. Place is shut up tighter than a fish’s ass. There’s a door out back by the loading dock. With a bit of luck, I think we could get in through there.” She strode off.

  Horrified, Elizabeth shouted, “Wait! You can’t just walk in there. It’s private property.” When Nancy ignored her, she slammed her car door and went after her, talking to her back like an angry child following her mother through a shopping mall. “I thought you said the place was locked up. Did they leave one door unlocked?”

  “Nope.”

  Striding briskly to keep up with her, and glancing back over her shoulder in case of unexpected company, Elizabeth followed Nancy around to the rear of the building, where the thin circle of light from Nancy’s Maglite picked out a short stairway leading to a single wooden door, a glass panel in the upper half.

  Both women stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up.

  Elizabeth spoke first. “So how are you going to get in? Bust the door down?”

  Nancy fished in her pocket and produced what looked like a collection of dental tools attached to a ring, which she held up and jingled. “No need for any damage. I got these. Here, hold this.”

  She handed Elizabeth the flashlight, then mounted the stairs and ran her finger over the lock, studying the keyhole before selecting the right pick. Then she got to work.

  Elizabeth followed her up the stairs, angling the light down over Nancy’s shoulder while she worked. When something out in the surrounding darkness let out a howl, she whipped around, sweeping the light left and right, eyes wide and her heart thumping. All she could see were the gnarled and naked outlines of the boxelder and oak trees creating a twisted tangle of shadows in the distance.

  “Will you shine that thing over here?” Nancy snapped. “This is tough enough without doing it in the dark.”

  Elizabeth stepped in a little closer, hugging herself while she angled the beam down to where Nancy had her face two inches from the lock, her ear angled to the keyhole like she was breaking into a bank vault, while her fingers gently twisted the pick this way and that in the lock.

  It was taking longer than Elizabeth would have expected. “Where did you learn to do this stuff? Crime school?”

  It netted her a sharp look. “What? Not going fast enough for you? Do you want to try?”

  A deluge of caustic responses flooded Elizabeth’s mind, but she stuck with, “I’m curious, that’s all.”

  Nancy paused long enough to pass her a doubtful look, then continued on. “Hon, you been around criminals long as I have, you learn stuff.”

  Elizabeth gave the darkened landscape another scan. “But isn’t this breaking and entering? What if somebody comes? What if they have security guards stopping by at regular intervals?”

  The lock clicked and Nancy straightened to pocket the lock picks. “Then we can ask them where Trish is.” She snatched the flashlight back, twisted the handle, and shouldered the door open to peer in. “You coming?” she said, as she stepped over the threshold and into the gloom beyond.

  "You don't have a gun?" Elizabeth hissed at her back. “Why don’t you have a gun?”

  Nancy cut her an accusing look. "Nice spotting, Mrs. McClaine. And correct, right now, I don't have a gun. I was required to surrender it, thanks to you and Detective Pain-in-the-Ass Delaney. Now, are you coming or not?" she said, and disappeared inside.

  Elizabeth hesitated. The choices weren’t what she’d have wished for: unlawfully entering the premises Nancy had just broken into or staying outside in the cold and dark with whatever was howling out there in the woods. When a second howl wailed from the darkness, she flinched, then hurried inside after Nancy.

  “This is definitely breaking and entering,” she told Nancy in a harsh whisper. “We could go to prison for this. We could end up spending the next couple of years alongside whoever it was that taught you how to break into places. And Stacy May,” she added, and felt sick.

  Ignoring her, Nancy directed the light up to the ceiling, then all across to a wire-embedded window that looked out across the darkened loading dock. A desk sat against the west wall of the room, topped with an old computer, a stack of battered-looking files, and an old phone. It looked like the shipping office of a company straight out of the eighties.

  Nancy picked up the phone, listened, then put it down again. “These here are what you call exigent circumstances. I have probable cause to believe that Trish is somewhere on these premises, and in serious danger. You get in my way, she won’t be the only one,” she added, and pushed past her to exit into the next room. In here, Nancy ran her hand up and down the wall, then flipped on a switch. The single bulb hanging in the center of an empty break room illuminated the area with a pale, white light. The place smelled of garbage and refried beans.

  Nancy wrinkled her nose and sniffed. “Smells like a Mexican restaurant in here.”

  Elizabeth’s upper lip twitched at the dirt-encrusted surfaces. “I’m surprised they have electricity. Do they ever clean the place?”

  “They’ve probably got a generator housed somewhere close by.” Clipping the flashlight to her belt, Nancy headed for the only other door leading from the room. “This way,” she said as she pushed the door open and strode off into the darkness beyond.

  Elizabeth followed, figuring she had few other choices. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” she hissed at Nancy’s back. Even at a whisper her voice echoed off the grimy walls in the gloom. They walked past deserted offices devoid of furniture or fittings, graffiti across every surface in thick black lines spelling out illegible words that had been struck through in red, only to be overwritten with some other illegible message.

  “How can this be a legitimate business? Look at the place. How could they have gotten clearance to supply the prison?”

  Nancy said nothing, just kept walking, opening doors, flipping on switches, and peering into empty rooms before moving on to the next.

  Elizabeth followed close behind, almost running into her every time she stopped, then starting after her again. “You’d think someone would know something. I thought at least one of the women I spoke to at Carringway might have some clue. But nothing.”

  Nancy angled her head back to speak. “Who’d you talk to?”

  “Cissy Pettameyer.”

  A snort and a shake of Nancy’s head told Elizabeth she didn’t have to say more.

  “Then I spoke to Eileen Caston. She used to go by the name of Eileen Grant. A respected financial columnist—stuck in prison for…” Elizabeth cut herself off, realizing that she’d been on the verge of breaching someone else’s privacy. “…well, crimes.”

  “Whoa! Imprisoned for crimes, huh? Who’d’a th
ought?”

  Elizabeth could have done without the comments. “And as for Nyla Guthrie—she gave me the creeps.”

  Nancy stopped to regard Elizabeth. “Trish told me that woman was way smarter than anyone gave her credit for. What’d she have to say?”

  “Pfft. Nothing I’d consider smart.” A wave of anger swelled at the cruelty of Nyla’s words. But the feeling that something had snagged in the back of her mind surfaced again. Nancy had walked on. “No, wait a second,” she said, speaking to herself rather than to Nancy. “‘Amy got what she had coming.’ No, that wasn’t it.”

  Nancy had walked on. When she realized Elizabeth was no longer following, she stopped. “What are you doing?”

  “That’s not what she said.”

  “Who?”

  “Nyla. I thought she’d gotten the wording wrong—but what if she didn’t? What if she was trying to tell me something?”

  “Why? What did she say?”

  Squeezing her eyes closed for a second, Elizabeth ran the scene through her mind once more. Again, she could see Nyla Guthrie sitting across from her, her face creased into that ugly smirk.

  “I kept thinking she said, ‘Amy got what she had coming to her.’ And I remember thinking she didn’t get that right. But what she actually said was, ‘Amy’s got what she had coming.’” She lifted her eyes to meet Nancy’s. “What if it’s a message?”

  A shrug. “Saying what? That could mean anything. Could just mean Amy got what she had coming. Trish said Amy was a total train wreck. She’d have sold her own grandmother for one whiff of coke. Maybe she was saying her death wasn’t exactly a big shock to anyone.” And she walked on down the hallway

  “Maybe.” Elizabeth wasn’t convinced. She walked on behind Nancy. “According to Warden Glassy, Stacy was furious about Amy’s death. She insisted Amy had gotten clean. And Stacy wasn’t stupid. Surely she would have known if she was stoned or not. And besides, if Nyla Guthrie was half as smart as Trish says, how could she get a simple expression like that wrong?”

  “So?”

  “So what if she meant that Amy was supposed to get something, and now she’s got it.”

  “Same difference, isn’t it? She’s dead.” Nancy continued on down the hallway, opening doors, flicking on lights and peering in. “Trish!” she yelled at the top of her voice. The sound reverberated down the corridors.

  “Shhhh!”

  “What? You worried about the neighbors hearing?” Nancy snorted and pressed on.

  Irritated by Nancy’s flippancy, Elizabeth rolled her eyes and followed after her, still talking at her back. “No. What I mean is: what if she was due to get something, what if it was something that was put into her personal effects?”

  Nancy was leaning in through a doorway, hands rested either side of the frame. She cut a smirk back over her shoulder at Elizabeth. “Like what? Drugs? You think the releasing officers are gonna come across a bunch of drugs and go, ‘Oh, hey, this must have been Amy’s personal stash. Let’s send it to her folks?’ I don’t think so.” And she walked on.

  Elizabeth cast a sour look after her, but Nancy was right. The prison staff would check anything they sent home to the grieving family.

  It seemed like every time she got hold of a thread of information, it came to an abrupt end. “Okay, so what about money? What if Amy had money and that was what Nyla was talking about? What if she had a stack of cash due to her—or … I don’t know.” She raised both hands and dropped them in frustration.

  Another snort from Nancy. “Yeah, all that money would be really worth waiting for. Those women earn a whole twenty-five cents an hour. A king’s ransom,” she said, and chuckled. “Her folks are probably out looking at Trump Towers investment opportunities on the strength of it.”

  “Seriously? You’re giving me sarcasm?”

  “Listen, even if Amy was rolling in dough—which I seriously doubt—she wouldn’t have gotten paid out straight away. Takes weeks to work through all the bureaucratic bullshit that’s involved, if you’ll excuse my French.” She cast her eyes to a point above Elizabeth’s head and made a face, one side of her mouth hooked up in thought. “Only things they send back to the next of kin are their personal effects that they had in prison, and anything they came in with. That’s it. Anything weird would have been taken out.” And she moved on again. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Okay, so maybe I’m reaching, investigating all the angles and coming up a little short. But something was going on in that prison. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

  “Sounds like some of those angles you’re checking out are a little obtuse, if you ask me.” Nancy stopped in her tracks and spun around, eyes searching the hallway behind Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth also spun around and looked back. “What? What is it?”

  Pushing past her with her hand up like a stop sign, Nancy angled her head, listening. “Shh. I thought I heard a car.”

  “What? Oh, shit! I knew we were going to get caught. I knew it!” She could just see the look on her father-in-law’s face, on Walt Straussman’s face. On Penny’s face. “Oh, God, please don’t let it be a car,” she groaned in a tiny voice. “Please don’t let it be Penny.”

  Nancy strode off in the direction they’d just come from. “This way.”

  “What? Where are you going?”

  “To see who it is.”

  “No, wait!” Elizabeth hurried after her. Just as Nancy went to turn the last corner heading back to the shipping office again, Elizabeth reached out and grabbed the back of her shirt, halting her in her tracks.

  Nancy turned with a look that made Elizabeth snap her hand back and fold her arms protectively across her chest. “Listen, let’s think this through. If someone’s out there, why are we running out to meet them?”

  “Because it could be Trish,” she said.

  She leaned around Nancy to peer down the darkened hallway in one direction, then the other. “And what if it’s a security guard? Or … or what if it’s that woman coming back to check on the place?”

  Nancy jabbed a finger towards the office door. “And what if it is Trish? I left a message for her on the counter at home, and on the message on the phone saying I was coming out here. What if she’s driven all the way out here looking for me?” Without waiting for a reply, she marched off again.

  “Dammit!” Elizabeth spat out, then hurried after her, following along like a scolded puppy. “I’ll call Delaney. I’ll ask him to come out here, take a look around. I mean, that’s his job, right? We’ll go back to our cars, call him up—”

  “And say what?” Nancy stopped, hands on her hips. “‘Ah, listen, Detective, we just broke into this here building, and there’s no one here. But I think I heard a car, so would you mind driving way out into the boonies and checking it out for us?”

  Elizabeth stiffened. “You said we weren’t breaking and entering. You said this would be considered exigent circumstances.”

  Nancy shrugged and walked on. “I say a lot of shit. Doesn’t mean you had to go along with it. But I also said I need to find Trish. I want to know what the hell is going on just as much as you do. I want to know where her car is, I want to know where she got all that money, and why she hasn’t come home. Now are you helping me or not?”

  Elizabeth felt the words hit her like a slap in the face. She hurried after her. “All what money? You told me she’d saved up for that car.”

  Nancy turned down the next hallway, striding out and speaking over her shoulder. “All the money she’s been spending lately. She thinks I’m stupid. Thinks I don’t know. But I see her credit card bills. I see the payments going out.”

  Elizabeth grabbed her by the shoulder and jerked her around. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  Nancy’s eyes narrowed on her. “Because you would have thought she was guilty of something, of smuggling drugs or whatever. You’d have had her wrapping up stashes of heroin and smuggling it into that prison for a bunch of poor-as-shit prisoners
who’d roll on her quick as look at her. And she’s not stupid. She wouldn’t do any of that.” Then she walked on, shaking her head angrily and muttering.

  For a moment, Elizabeth stood there blinking at the woman in sheer astonishment. Then she hurried after her again. “So why didn’t you ask her where the money came from? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Before she could answer, two cracks like distant gunshot cut the air. Elizabeth gasped, both hands clapped to her chest. Then felt foolish when Nancy dredged her phone out of her pocket, saying, “Dammit, I thought I set that on vibrate. Cool message alert, though, huh?” She checked the screen and her eyes flashed wide. “Shit! It’s Trish.”

  “Trish?” Elizabeth leaned over Nancy’s shoulder so she could see the wording on the screen. “What did she say?”

  Nancy rocked her head back, pressed the phone to her bosom, and heaved out an enormous breath. “Oh, thank God. She says, ‘I’m home, I’m hungry and I’m … well, she’s home.”

  Elizabeth didn’t need the rest. The shake of Nancy’s head was enough. She watched as she began tapping out a reply.

  “Goddamn, that’s a relief.”

  “How do you know it’s her?”

  “It’s her usual message. It’s what she always texts.” She hit the send key, pausing while the message went out. When the phone bleeped, indicating the message was sent, she stuck the phone in her pants pocket again and rubbed her hands together. “Right, we’re outta here.”

  “What about the car you heard? You’re just going to walk out there?”

  “It was probably just the wind.”

  Elizabeth stood aghast, staring after her. “And that’s it? You don’t care that there’s something illegal going on in this place? That Trish could be involved?”

  Still walking back to the door, Nancy said, “Frankly, Mrs. McClaine, I couldn’t give a fat rat’s ass about this place. Not my job. All I know is that Trish is home, and that’s all I wanted. I’ll see you around.”