Detweiler’s speed dial was number 9 on my keypad. It’s pretty tough to push the 9 with your right hand and drive with your left. I set down the phone to turn onto Conway and make the nearly immediate left into the parking lot of St. Luke’s.
Bill was standing beside his car, and he waved to me. As I pulled to a stop beside him, I grabbed my phone and hit number 9. The ringing was accompanied by Bill’s gesturing for me to roll down the passenger window. I unlatched my seat belt and leaned over to hear what he had to say.
“Kiki, I’m afraid I have bad news. Open the door.” He straightened to wait for me, his hand on the door latch. Bill was standing right up against my car.
“Detweiler,” said the detective as the phone connected.
Bill filled my passenger side window: he was that close. I was trying to juggle the phone and unlock the door. “Just a minute,” I told the policeman.
Bill hadn’t heard the detective’s greeting—or my response. He started to climb into the Beemer. My purse was in the passenger seat. I reached awkwardly over the gear shift to move my things. My left arm held my phone down by my side like the tilted pole of a tightrope walker, adding balance and keeping me from tumbling into the passenger seat.
“Where is—”
I glanced up and froze.
I was staring down the barrel of the gun. I raised my eyes to Bill’s face. He smiled, settled into my car and slammed the passenger door.
“Scream and I’ll kill you.”
“Anya? Where’s Anya?”
“Forget Anya.”
“Where’s my daughter?” I insisted. My hand touched the top of the driver’s door map pocket and I dropped my open phone inside it.
My guts went liquid, and my legs felt weak.
“But you called and said Anya was hurt—”
“Drive or I’ll shoot you.”
“Not without my daughter.”
“She’s fine. But you’re going be dead if you don’t drive.” Bill shoved the gun into my ribs.
“Umph.” I gasped at the sharp pain.
“Get on 40.”
My hands were shaking. I thought I was going to puke. I was trying to turn the wheel but the ache in my side made it hard. Calm down, I told myself. Think! Cars passed us, their drivers on cell phones or talking to passengers. Clearly, I could not signal anyone for help without alerting Bill. Was this the end? Was I going to die? I gritted my teeth and made a decision: I wasn’t going down without a fight. I had to let Detweiler hear what was happening!
“Tell me where Anya is!” I rolled to a stop.
Bill rammed the gun against me—hard.
I tried not to react because he seemed to be getting off on seeing me in pain. That, at least, I could control. If my pain excited him, I’d bear it stoically.
“She’s skating with the girls. Now drive or I’ll shoot.”
“You’d shoot me?” I repeated this for Detweiler … if he was listening. I prayed he was.
“In a heartbeat.” Bill jammed the gun into my side again.
“Umph.” The sharp pain made me catch my breath. “Please, Bill. I’ll do whatever you say. Don’t shoot.”
I prayed Detweiler was still on the line and could hear me. I repeated, “Please Bill. Please put the gun down. Don’t shoot me.”
“That’s it. Beg. You wanna live? Do what I say. Or I swear I’ll put a bullet in you.”
“Promise me Anya’s okay. Where is she?”
“As long as you do what I say, Anya’s fine. She’s with the other girls at the skating rink off of Manchester.” He relaxed the pressure on my side a little. “But cross me, and I’ll kill her. Got it?”
“Yes, Bill. Whatever you say.” I figured my best bet was to make him feel powerful and in control. Without resistance, he’d let down his guard.We idled at the light before the ramp onto Highway 40. “Which way?”
“Babler State Park.” As he spoke, he pressed down the door lock mechanism. I was locked in my car with a killer. But all I had to do was pull on my door handle and the lock would open. I realized that my knowledge of my old car was a point in my favor.
I played dumb. “I don’t know the way to Babler State Park,” I said the last three words extra loud.
“West on 40, exit Long Road.”
“West on 40 and exit at Long Road,” I repeated in a flat voice. I wanted to sound as obedient as possible. Acid rose in my throat. I swallowed hard. I had to think. Leaving St. Luke’s had been a mistake. Dodie knew I was heading to St. Luke’s. No one knew I was going to Babler, unless Detweiler was listening in. And I couldn’t really count on that. As much as I wanted to cry, wanted to break down, I couldn’t. This was a life or death situation—my life and my death.
“Why Babler State Park, Bill?” I tried to talk loudly. “What’s at Babler, Bill?”
Bill pushed back the passenger seat and shoved the barrel of the gun into my side. “Don’t mess with me. I’m not playing games. Roxie tried to mess with me, and I put a bullet through her head.”
“You shot Roxanne?” Boy, and we had thought Linda Kovaleski was involved. Now curiosity competed with fear. What was this all about? Were they—he and Linda—in this together? Suddenly small clues formed a trail of bread crumbs: Bill saying he was buying the gift certificate for Tisha’s birthday gift when she’d said her birthday had already passed, Bill foisting an attorney on me who conveniently “forgot” to tell me about the buy-sell, and Bill pretending his screensaver was a memorial to Roxanne.
His grin was cold and his eyes dark slits. “Yes. And she cried and begged just like you will. Don’t mess with me.”
The cruel timbre of his voice cut through me. “But why?”
“Why?”
“Was Roxanne a threat to you? Was she going to tattle on you to Tisha?”
“You are so stupid. I don’t give a rat’s rear end about Tisha. She’ll do exactly what I say. She believes whatever I tell her, like when I said I was going to a conference last January and took off for the islands with Roxanne.” Now he sat back, relaxed his shoulders and neck, and beamed with smug self-satisfaction. “Didn’t you hear the news?”
“What news?”
“Tisha’s pregnant. Again. So, she’s decided to forgive me.” The way he spat it out, the word “forgive” left a bad taste in his mouth. “She wants us to be a family.”
Tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t help myself. What, I thought, is so bad about being a family? Wasn’t that all that really mattered in life? Being connected to other people by blood or love or both? I sniffled.
“Cut the waterworks.” Bill rammed the barrel into my ribs again. He smiled as I winced. “Families. Kids.Who needs them? You wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for your precious little Anya.”
I said quietly, “I don’t understand. How did Anya get me into this mess?” Fortunately, Bill wasn’t paying much attention to what I said. He was lost in a self-congratulatory fog.
He grinned. “Yeah, someone ought to appreciate my brilliance. Might as well be you, right?”
He was at ease in the passenger seat, moving it back to accommodate his long legs. Reaching over, he flicked the air conditioning to high, turned off the vents trained on me, and basked in the cold air. What a jerk.
“See, I’d been siphoning off money for years, a little at a time. A handful of small accounts won’t raise red flags like large ones do. I set up a variety of accounts in the Cayman Islands. By the way, good call about me going there with Roxie—but that’s getting ahead of myself. I’ve been building a bankroll and biding my time. Dimont has done okay, but we haven’t hit the big one, you know?” He laughed. “At least we hadn’t hit the big one until now.
“Along came Beth. I met her at the gym. Does she have a body that won’t stop or what? Wow. It gets better. Beth has a doting daddy. And her daddy is a farmer who owns fifty prime undeveloped acres.”
“Babler Estates, right?”
“Yep. Bingo! Soon Beth is eating out of my hand. She’
s talking about getting hitched. I tell her how I’d leave the old ball and chain, Tisha, except for the money. Beth says that’s no problem. She introduces me to Daddy. Daddy, George, and I put together a deal. George goes to all those stupid zoning meetings. He figures out the utilities and yada, yada. We’re ready to roll, except we’re undercapitalized. George and I scrounge up two million each. He goes to Sheila and I hit up Tisha’s father. Life is good … then Tisha’s dad gets a wild hair. He wants an outside firm to audit Dimont. To protect his investment,” Bill said and shook his head. “This is bad news. The company’s nearly two million light, and the whistle is going to be blown on my creative accounting unless I come up with the money fast.”
We were driving along the western edges of St. Louis County, passing dense native greenery and occasional road kill. Those flattened, bloodied bodies gave me the creeps. They never knew what hit them. And neither did I, really. I’d never liked Bill, but I hadn’t suspected him of all this wrongdoing, this depravity and deceit.
I wanted to live, and I was fast formulating a plan. For it to work, Bill needed to be involved in his story. “And you couldn’t let that audit happen, right?”
“Right. But here’s where Lady Luck winks at me. George and I hold two-million-dollar life insurance policies on each other—the buy-sell agreement. All I have to do is turn George into a corpse. I was working on a plan when Roxie came crying to me.” Bill waved the gun at an overhead sign. “Get off at Long Road.”
“What does any of this have to do with Anya?”
“Your little princess didn’t like sharing Daddy. Anya asked George if he was planning to leave you. George said no—in front of Roxie. Told your kid he’d stay with you forever. Man, that ticked off Roxie something fierce. She and I bump into each other at a bar. Roxie spills her guts over a beer. Make that a case of beers. She’d turned into a sloppy drunk. But I’m always thinking.” Bill tapped his temple. “I figure she and I’ve got a mutual problem.”
Bill grinned. “I mention Roxie to George. He tells me he’s going to give her a lump sum. A goodbye gift. I encourage him. I tell him that’s a great idea. He does and she goes ballistic.”
Wow, I marveled at how manipulative the man was. And he’d been my husband’s best friend!
Bill continued his story. “Roxie’s so angry, she’s a nutcase. I’m seeing how this is good. Really good. I go comfort her. Let her cry on my shoulder. Tell her she deserves double what George offered her. I tell her he’s done her wrong, wasting the best years of her life.”
“So you killed your best friend.” The words were out of my mouth before I had the chance to stop myself. A chill of fear ran down my spine. But I needn’t have worried. Bill wasn’t the sensitive type.
“Huh. Friendship is overrated. That and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee,” Bill smirked.
He hadn’t reacted to the sarcasm in my voice. I reminded myself that I had to keep Bill happy for a while longer. The happier he was, the more he’d relax. The more relaxed he was, the better chance I had of escaping.
He turned cold eyes on me. “I didn’t kill George. I just helped Roxie along. She decided to give George a goodbye party he’d never forget. Did you know her old man was this genius plant-guy? And he was always yakking about plants to her. She knew a lot of poisons almost impossible to trace. Oleander. That’s what she used. She slipped it into his drink at lunch.”
Detweiler had been right. My husband had been poisoned. I’d read an article on a parenting site about oleander. A group of kids used the twigs for roasting hotdogs. They all died. Horrible deaths. I shuddered, thinking of the pain George must have felt. I mumbled, “So Roxanne murdered him.”
“Yep. I didn’t have to lift a finger.”
“But she left her scarf behind.”
“What a moron. I had to cover that up. See, hotel security pulled George’s business card out of his pocket. They called me to ID the body. The manager pulled me aside. Said he wanted to protect Mr. Lowenstein’s reputation. Showed me the scarf. I paid him to keep quiet. Couldn’t take the chance of the cops leaning on Roxie.”
“But she got away with it. And you got the buy-sell money. So why shoot her?” I managed to sound interested, not shocked. If I lived through this, I deserved an Academy Award. I had a plan, but it wouldn’t work unless Bill was distracted.
“I had to. After George died, Roxanne got all weepy on me. She sobbed how she missed George. I had to shut her up. I took her to the Cayman Islands. I opened an account so she got a taste of the money coming her way. I promised her a payoff when the Babler Estates deal went through.” He turned away from me briefly as we pulled onto Long Road. “Right at Wildhorse Creek.”
Good. He was getting more and more confident.
“That picture of the two of you? Who took it?” I prayed Long Road was a long road. It isn’t. Some jerk who names roads must have had a warped sense of humor. We passed McDonald’s and a gas station, and idled at a light while my heart raced along with the car engine.
“The whole time we’re in the Caymans, she was snapping pictures. She was as nuts over taking photos as my wife. Then this tourist wanted to be a hero. He offered to take a picture of the two of us. I complained, but snap! Now I had trouble. Couldn’t get the camera away from her. She kept teasing me about how it was her security. And she was broke. Constantly. Always hitting me up for more cash. I mean, that woman could go through money like it was blow.”
“So she blackmailed Linda Kovaleski.”
“Hey, how’d you know that?” He was mildly surprised.
“I just guessed.”
“Can’t be because you saw her camera. I got it right here.” He pulled Roxanne’s missing Canon from his pocket. “She just couldn’t wait for the real money. And I couldn’t let her ruin my forty-million-dollar payday. She was a loose end and I needed to tie her up.”
A thought struck me. I said, “George didn’t steal a half a million from the company, did he?”
Bill threw back his head and laughed. As he did, the gun moved away from my ribs. “You are so gullible. I should have told you it was a million.”
My stomach lurched. This guy was a real whacko. I was alone in a car with a psychopath who had a gun.
My plan had to work. I couldn’t trust Bill to leave Anya alone. He was well along the path to being a serial killer.
“Yes, I sure am dumb.” I nodded weakly; my legs felt like Jell-O. My heart was going double-time and banging against my ribs. With each mile, I became more and more lightheaded. How was I going to save myself—much less make sure Anya was okay?
Bill’s attention drifted toward the scenery. He stared out the window at the rolling hills, the spreading trees, and an old train car parked by the side of the road. The gun muzzle drifted from my ribs. His expression turned dreamy.
“What changed, Bill? It was all going so well for you. All that hard work and planning was starting to pay off.” I wiped sweat from my chin. I could smell the fear oozing out of my pores.
“The cops started nosing around. They asked me how well I knew Roxie. Security cameras showed me visiting her condo.” He ignored the scenery to give me a big smile. “But I’m one lucky guy. You showed up asking about the buy-sell. One look at your blank little face, and I thought, bingo! Then you noticed the screensaver. That sealed the deal. Do you know every lighthouse is different? It’s so guys out at sea can tell where they are.” He sighed. “You came along just at the right time. This will be so sad. The police will find your dead body. You’ll be holding the gun that killed Roxie. And her camera will be in your car.”
I fought the nausea rising within me. I tasted acid in my mouth.
Bill sighed but didn’t notice my distress. He was happy with himself, pleased with his progress. “It’s a slam dunk. You lost your kid. Your life is in the toilet. You killed Roxie and you couldn’t take the guilt. You decided to end it all.”
“Right. That’s my life in a nutshell.” Oh God, I prayed, I know I�
��m a miserable excuse for a person, but please help me anyway. Help me be smart and strong. Help me find a way out of this. I want to live to raise my daughter.
“Turn onto 109.” Again he waved his hand and the gun drifted from my ribs.
“Um, which way?” I had to keep him thinking I was clueless.
He waved his right hand to the south. The gun moved a little farther away from my ribs.
“I’ll take Beth with me when I leave. I’ll keep her as long as she’s a good girl. The minute she gives me trouble, I’ll ditch her. The stop sign is Babler Access.”
As we turned onto Babler Access Road, Bill pointed to the sign. “See that? ‘Dimont Development’s Babler Estates. Luxury homes in a beautiful setting.’ Right. Ha!” He threw the sign a big kiss.
While he looked away, I oriented myself. I had to get ready. I thanked Gracie that I knew the park well from our Sunday morning romps. My plan might work—emphasis on the “might”—if Bill continued to let his attention wander.
We passed the empty guard gate at Babler. It figured. Where was a guard when you needed him? What did he guard anyway? The trees?
“Tell me. Where are you planning on going? I mean, after you get the money from the development?” My fingertips set the cruise control at the twenty-five-mile-per-hour limit. Now I could take my foot off the gas pedal, and the car would keep going. I shifted my weight to the left very gently. I’d purposely left my seat belt unbuckled when Bill first hopped in. Slowly, imperceptibly, I leaned away from him and against my door. It was tricky because Babler’s rolling hills go up and down, twisting and curving like a roller coaster. I couldn’t lose control of the car—not just yet.
Paper, Scissors, Death Page 23