I can’t tell if David got either of my messages. He has no idea what’s going on with me. He doesn’t know where I am. No one does. I’m sunk. I ought to turn around and beat it back to town where I belong, but one nagging thought makes me stay.
If Tana is the killer, if she did keep all the evidence of her guilt in this cabin, only I can catch her in the act. No one else knows where she is, either, and no one else possesses all the disparate pieces of the mystery. If anyone ever has a prayer of solving this case, I have to be the one and it has to be now.
While I dither about what I should do, Tana switches off the light and comes out of the house. She marches a few paces into the woods and squats down. I can’t see what she’s doing, but I never doubt she’s about to destroy the book.
I take a step forward to stop her. Then I think better of it and stumble back. In my panic to make up my mind, I step on a dry twig. It splits with a loud snap that echoes far and wide.
Tana’s head shoots up. I can’t see her eyes in the dark, but I stare at her in stark terror for my life. Then I scramble to my feet and dive into the trees. I lose the path in my floundering hurry to get away, but she knows exactly where she is. Her footsteps crash through the forest, coming closer all the time.
I wheeze for breath and plunge right and left. I try to run toward the highway. It isn’t far away, but I get turned around so I don’t know which way to go. All at once, a thunderous weight plows into me from behind. I pitch flat on my face in the dry leaves and musty soil.
Powerful hands flip me over, and I come face to face with Tana. She glares down at me from on high. The moon lights up her features turned black with menace. “You!”
I struggle to get away, but she wrestles me down flat. I make a wild kick to propel her off me. She topples sideways with her thighs still straddling me. I make a dive to slither out, but she grabs a huge rock nearby and raises it above her head.
My life flashes before my eyes. What did I have to go solving crimes for? Why couldn’t I be satisfied with my humble candy store existence? I should have known getting too big for my britches would lead me to a sticky end.
I raise my arms in front of my face in a pathetic attempt to protect myself, but I already know it’s hopeless. Tana’s mouth twists into a hideous mask of murderous fury. All her muscles tense to smash me to smithereens.
At that moment, something whizzes past my face. A blazing white light lights up the night and dispels all the shadows. The next instant, I stare in mute shock as David Graham lands on top of Tana and flips her over onto her stomach. “Get down on the ground! Hands behind your head! You’re under arrest for the murder of Jose Santiago and the attempted murder of Margaret Nichols.”
I hardly dare believe my eyes. My heart won’t quiet down, and a sick feeling creeps into my stomach, now that it’s all over.
David rears up with his knees planted on either side of Tana’s back. He wrenches her arms behind her back and handcuffs her. Police officers flood the area and set up their spotlights around the cabin.
David manhandles Tana to her feet and hands her over to one of the other officers. He comes to my side, panting hard. “Are you okay?”
I nod, still too shocked to speak.
“I got your texts. I tried to reply, but it said ‘No Service.’ I got here as quick as I could. Did she destroy the book?”
I swallow hard. “Not that I saw. But she was inside the cabin for a few minutes, so I don’t know what she did in there.”
“Over here,” someone calls.
We return to the cabin, where one of the officers crouches over something on the ground. His flashlight illuminates a can of gasoline and a lighter resting in the dirt.
“You idiots!” Tana splutters. “You’ll never pin this on me.”
David saunters to her side. He sticks his hand into her back jeans pocket and pulls out an old leather-bound book. “This should help.”
Tana snarls. She yanks ineffectually at her handcuffs and tries to shrug off the officers’ grip. She glares daggers at everyone she sees.
A plainclothes detective comes up to David. “You were right. She’s got four of those plants inside. They match the description you gave us, and one of them is sitting on the kitchen counter with most of its leaves cut off.”
David turns to Tana. “Do yourself a favor and just admit you killed him.”
“Of course I killed him!” she spits. “I would have killed him a dozen times over if he wasn’t already dead. He had no reason on Earth to turn me down. I was closer to his own son than he was, and he didn’t give a fig about his son’s education. When I tried to suggest he send Michael to art school, he told me to mind my own business. Then he tried to accuse me of using Michael as a pretext to rope him into some sort of sexual arrangement. He fell short of flat out calling me a prostitute.”
“So you propositioned him,” I say.
“Propositioned him!” She snorts. “Is that what you call it? I was in love with him. He would have been so much better off with me than he was on his own, but he was too stubborn and pigheaded to realize that. He was a filthy, pigheaded man just like all men. He deserved to die.”
David chuckles to himself, and a few of the other officers suppress grins. “We may be stubborn and pigheaded, but we don’t go around killing people who reject us.”
“What about Horace Bentley?” I ask. “He doesn’t strike me as stubborn or pigheaded, and he never did anything to deserve you stealing a valuable book from his store.”
She huffs to herself and jerks her head away. “It doesn’t matter,” David tells me. “We have enough to hold her for murder and attempted murder. That’s enough to keep her occupied for a long time.” He slices his finger at his fellow officers. “Get her out of here.”
After they march Tana away, David sidles over to me. He keeps his voice low so no one can hear him but me. “Are you sure you’re all right? You had me worried.”
“I’m okay.” I press my hand to my forehead. Now that the excitement has died down, the full weight of dread and fear of death hits me like a ton of bricks. I can’t stop my voice shaking. “I’m just so grateful that you showed up when you did. I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t.” I press my lips together to stop them trembling.
He slips his arm around my shoulders, and I was never so glad to huddle in the protective warmth of his chest. He kisses me on the forehead and murmurs into my hair. “Don’t tell Tana you were grateful to see a stubborn, pigheaded man like me.”
I try to hold back my laughter, but it bubbles out against my will. I bury my eyes in his shirt and laugh all the tension out of my bones. “You are one of the more stubborn and pigheaded ones I’ve ever met.”
“And that’s what makes me so loveable, right?”
I look up to find his eyes shining. All at once, this subject turns deadly serious. “That’s right.”
This time, he bends down and kisses me on the lips. He lets his mouth linger on mine, and the rest of the world, the officers racing around securing the scene, the forest buzzing with night noises—they all disappear.
When he straightens up, he isn’t smiling anymore. His eyes glow, and his cheeks radiate light in the dim shadows. “That’s what makes you so loveable, too. I guess that makes us perfect for each other, so we can be stubborn and pigheaded together. What do you say?”
“Sounds perfect to me.”
He wraps his arm around me again. “Come on. I’ll drive you home before Zack decides to ground me.”
We laugh all the way to the highway, where he opens the squad car door and shuts it for me. I put on my seat belt and sink into a pool of blessed safety, now that no one is trying to kill me or anybody else in this town.
David gets into the driver’s seat and motors into town. West End lies under a blanket of slumber. Hardly any of the houses and none of the buildings on Main Street show any sign of activity or even a light in the window.
I can’t say the same for my house. E
very light in the place beams warmth and activity to the dark night. Figures flash across the panes, and their long shadows flit across the lawn.
“It looks like they’re waiting up for you,” David remarks. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Sleep well.”
“Good night.” I lean across the seat and kiss him again. “Thank you again for tonight.”
“I should be me thanking you for doing my job for me. Margaret Nichols strikes again. You caught the killer—signed, sealed, and delivered, along with all the pertinent evidence conveniently gathered in one spot. Who could ask for more than that? Maybe you really should become a PI. You were born for this stuff.”
I give him a playful swat on the arm. “Don’t start that again. We can talk about this another time. See you later.”
I get out and wave to him from the porch. He drives away, and I turn my weary tread toward the house.
When I open the door and slip into the entry, voices accost me from all sides. Shrieks and peals of laughter echo down the stairs. While I stand there, the two children tumble down almost on top of me with Zack in hot pursuit. He growls and bares his teeth in animalistic glee. The three of them don’t look sideways at me before they tear off somewhere else.
Cheryl’s voice drifts out of the kitchen calling to her husband, who peruses the books on my bookshelf in the living room. I catch the tail end of their conversation. “If that’s the way you feel, why don’t you look into licensing as an independent contractor? I’m sure you can find plenty of independent work online, or you could set up your own web service. You could be doing the same work and be your own boss.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Oscar replies. “Oh, hello, Margaret. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“How are you all doing? I’m sorry I sort of disappeared tonight. I hope you don’t think I was neglecting you as guests.”
“Not at all,” he replies. “Zack cooked us a wonderful dinner, and we’ve been occupying ourselves since then. We wondered where you were, but I can assure you no one felt the slightest bit neglected. On the contrary.”
Cheryl meanders into the hall drying her hands with a dishcloth. “There you are, Margaret. Where have you been?”
I beam at her. “Good news, Cheryl. We caught Jose Santiago’s killer, and she was no one from your coven. She’s not even from West End.”
Cheryl’s eyebrows fly up. “Who is she?”
“She’s a schoolteacher from Peterborough. She’s Michael Santiago’s art teacher. She fell in love with Jose and got her nose bent when he didn’t return her feelings. She fabricated the murder scene to throw suspicion on the coven, and she used the town’s anxiety to cover up her own activities. That’s what made everyone so jumpy about the coven in the first place.”
“Thank Heaven!” she breathes. “I can’t tell you how much not knowing weighed on my mind. I truly hoped it wasn’t someone from my group.”
I squeeze her shoulder. “I could tell. You’ve been really tense since it happened. I knew all your friends were innocent, and now everyone else will know it, too.”
She cocks her head and studies me with those searching eyes of hers. “Tell me one thing. When you say ‘we’ caught Jose’s killer, you really mean you caught him, don’t you?”
I blush and look away. I can’t stop shuffling my feet. “Well, not really. I had some help from a few people.”
“You can admit it, Margaret,” Oscar adds. “We all know you’re a crackerjack investigator.”
I deflect the praise by addressing Cheryl. “You gave me the most important clue when you pointed out the killer couldn’t have been anyone from West End. I never could have solved the case without that. Detective work is a team effort. No one person can do it alone.”
Her face lights up like I’ve never seen before. She bestows a broad smile on me that speaks volumes of buried happiness and friendship under that tough exterior. She inclines her head back to the kitchen. When I follow her there, she returns to the sink full of soapy water. “We saved your dinner for you. It’s in the oven.”
I retrieve a plate loaded with meatloaf, steamed broccoli, and mashed yams. I lean against the counter and eat while she finishes the dishes. This is just like having a real family around, and I like the sensation. I especially like the sound of so many voices in the house. “So what’s this I hear about Oscar becoming his own boss?”
She flashes me a glowing grin over her shoulder. “We were just talking about the future. There’s no high school in West End, so if we decided to stay, we would have to commute to take the kids to school. That’s one of the reasons we were talking about moving even before all this harassment started. Oscar doesn’t want to work in Peterborough. He’s already stressed out enough working in an office without a twenty-minute commute with two teenagers in the car. Besides, he’d have to leave work early to pick them up every day, and most employers would not be cool with that. That’s why I suggested going out on his own as an independent contractor. He could make a decent living working from home.”
“Good idea. Does that mean you’re planning to stay?”
She shows all her teeth smiling again. I can barely believe she’s smiling so much. She looks like a completely different person. She is a completely different person, now that the shadow of a murder no longer haunts the organization of which she is the designated leader.
“Let’s just say we’re thinking about it,” she tells me. “You made us think about it, Margaret. I hesitated to say you changed our minds, but if we do change our minds, it will be thanks to you. You proved to us that West End is still a good place with good people in it. We love West End. It’s our home and we never wanted to leave. We just never wanted people vandalizing our house and harassing our kids in school. We never wanted anybody looking at us sideways and thinking the worst of us.”
“Of course you didn’t,” I exclaim. “No one wants that, and you would have no reason to stay in West End with those things going on. I hope it all dries up, now that the murderer is behind bars.”
“The murderer is behind bars because you believed in us, Margaret. You defended us when no one else would, and you kept searching for the killer until you found her. If all this harassment does dry up, it will be because you kept your head when all around you were losing theirs.”
My cheeks flush and I lower my eyes to my plate. “It was the least I could do.”
15
I pat Michael Santiago on both shoulders. “Are you sure you have everything you need?”
“I’m sure,” he replies. “You can stop asking that.”
I do my best to keep my face from twisting the wrong way. One part of me wants to laugh and the other wants to cry, now that I’m losing him. “I can’t help it. I’m a mother.”
“It’s all right,” he tells me. “It was kind of nice having a mother around to nag me all the time.”
I keep one hand on his shoulder and walk him outside. A cab waits at the curb. I don’t need to ask if he has all his luggage packed. I helped him and Kyle put it in the trunk.
The driver opens the door for him, but Michael hesitates to get in. He takes a long, lingering look around West End. “I’m kind of sorry to be leaving this place. It’s a good place. I sort of wish I had a chance to live here longer.”
“You can always come back,” I tell him. “You’ll have vacations and holiday weekends off from art school. You’re always welcome here. You know that. West End will always be your home.”
“Thanks.” He coughs to hide his emotions. “Thank you for handling the sale of the house. I couldn’t have done it.”
“You’re still a kid,” I remind him. “There are some things you shouldn’t have to handle yet, and since I’m standing in as your mother, I might as well do that, too. The good news is you’ll never have to worry about paying for art school. You won’t be graduating with a cloud of debt hanging over your head, either, and you’ll never have to set foot in that house again. By the time you come back for your first visit, some
other family will be living in it. They’ll transform it and make it fresh and clean again.”
He nods and whispers, “I hope so.”
“Go on,” I tell him. “Get out of here. You’ve got the rest of your life waiting for you.”
He lunges forward and kisses me on the cheek. Then he dives into the cab and the driver slams the door. In a few seconds, the car carries him out of West End toward the life waiting for him.
My eyes mist over watching him go. I only got to mother him for a little while, but now I’ll miss him for the rest of my life. I wish now I could have done more to help him when I had the chance.
I drift back into the candy store. Cheryl Whitfield meets me at the counter. “We’ll take off, too. We’ll stop hanging around like jobless bums and get back to our own life.”
I hug her. I never thought I would live to see the day when I said those words, but now it’s happening. I hug Cheryl Whitfield, and when I push her back, she smiles at me with that glorious, shining countenance. “Thank you, Margaret. Thank you for everything.”
“Anytime,” I tell her. “I’m just glad it all worked out for you guys. I hope you won’t be strangers. You should come over for dinner again. We’d love to have you.”
“We’d love that, too,” she replies, “and you and Zack have to come over to our house, too.”
“That would be great. I’m sure we’ll see you guys around a lot.”
She turns to her side. Zack stands a few feet away with Joey sitting on his shoulders. Emily leans against Zack’s side with her arm around his middle.
“Come on, munchkins.” Cheryl claps her hands. “Let’s go home.”
Zack swings Joey off his shoulders and sets his feet on the ground. “See you around, rascals.”
Emily clings to him. “Aw, Mom, can’t we stay just a little longer?”
“No, we can’t,” Cheryl returns. “Zack has work to do, and tomorrow’s a school day. Come on. Let’s go. You can see Zack again when you come to buy candy.”
The Sweets of Doom Page 10