Skinny Dipping with Murder

by Auralee Wallace

  She nodded. “Listen. Did Laurie come?”

  Ah! Now I knew what to do with my body parts. I held out the envelope. “She did. She gave me this.”

  “Good.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Is it good?”

  “You’re doing it again,” Candace said, squeezing her purse.

  “Doing what?”

  “Repeating back everything I say in the form of a question.”

  “Am I … I mean, I’m sorry.” Heat flooded my cheeks. I obviously hadn’t found my stride with this thing yet, but I was getting there.

  “You’re starting to freak me out,” she said.

  “I said I’m sorry!”

  She gave me a look, then asked, “Have you opened it yet?”

  Hmm, I hadn’t prepared for that question. If I said yes, she might freak out and kill me. If I said no, she might not confess to anything, just make a grab for it. I didn’t know what the right answer was, but I did know that Grady would be back soon, and I’d lose my chance to get this confession.

  “Candace, the jig is up,” I said, hoping I sounded tough.

  She tilted her chin up and to the side while looking at me with big, confused eyes.

  Oh, she was good. So very, very good. I pressed on. “I know it was you who killed Dickie.”

  “What?” Her hand flew to her chest.

  “I know it was you who attacked Harry.”

  “Erica!”

  I strode toward her. “And what have you done with Tommy?”

  She stumbled back.

  “Oh, stop it,” I said. “You don’t fool me.”

  “I … I thought we were friends.”

  “We are! I mean … it’s all right here,” I said, smacking the envelope against my palm. “In black-and-white.”

  Suddenly her lip quivered. “You are really starting to hurt my feelings.”

  “Ha!” I shouted. “You don’t have feelings!”

  “Erica, I’m going to call your mother,” she said, reaching into her bag. “I think you’re having some sort of stress-induced break with reality.” She dug further into her purse. Oh, God, what if it wasn’t a phone she was reaching for?

  “Drop it!” I screamed, cowering a little. “Don’t shoot me!”

  Candace brought out her cell so that I could see it, while at the same time allowing her bag to fall to the dirt.

  “Is this about Grady?” she asked, softly.

  “Grady?” I straightened back up. “What? No!”

  “I knew it the moment you said you were fine with us dating,” she said with a sad nod. “You weren’t fine.”

  Oh, God, this was about to get awkward. “This is not about Grady.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “I should have been more sensitive. I thought we were good, but with Grady and I spending more and more time together, well, I don’t think I really appreciated the effect it was having on you.”

  “This is not about Grady!”

  “I should apologize,” she said, pursing her lips with decision.

  “Please, no. I don’t want to feel sorry for you,” I pleaded. “Not when I’m about to take you down.”

  She raised her hands in a defensive posture. “Easy, Erica.”

  No. No. No. This was going all wrong.

  “Listen,” I said, taking a breath. “I have evidence. I know that you were paying Tommy, Dickie, and Harry to cause trouble around the lake so that the townspeople would be more likely to sell.”

  She closed her eyes. “You’re right.”

  “I am?” I flicked my gaze up to Freddie to make sure he was getting this. He gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Not about me, personally, but about the company.” She sighed heavily. “I just found out. I went to the cabin the other night. I know you said everything was fine, but I had to do my due diligence. I saw that someone had left a laptop there. I turned it on so that I could figure out who it belonged to and return it.” She paused, inhaling deeply. “And when I opened the browser, the e-mail came up. It was Tommy’s. I was going to shut it off, but I saw something in his in-box.”

  “What?”

  “An e-mail from Bryson’s secret account.”

  “If it’s secret, how did you know it was from him?”

  “It said it was from James Jones, but the e-mail address had the handle ThisGuy!” She shook her head again. “He has the same thing on the license plates of his Porsche.”

  For the first time, an uneasy feeling began to grow in my belly. I think it might have been doubt, but I wasn’t about to take a second look to be sure.

  “Anyway, he basically admitted that he had paid them to cause trouble. He also threatened Tommy.”

  “You swore though!” I said, pointing at her. “You were mad, crazy mad!”

  Thoughts traveled over Candace’s face. “How do you know that?” she asked, furrowing her eyebrows.

  “Not telling.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I was mad. I’ve worked long and hard on this development. I love the people of this town. I couldn’t believe he would do that. I wanted to kill him.” She sucked back some air. “I’ve prayed about it since then, though, and I’m in a much better place.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “Why didn’t you go to Grady with this information?”

  “I wanted to give Bryson the opportunity to turn himself in. It seemed the right thing to do. And then I heard you saying that Laurie might have evidence … and I’m still not sure who the killer is.”

  Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I did either. “You don’t think it was Bryson?”

  “No, he’s greedy and mean,” she said, shaking her head, “but those guys wouldn’t be worth it to him. And Bryson isn’t stupid. He wouldn’t leave any traces behind for something as serious as a murder.”

  “No, no. I don’t believe it.” I put my fingers to my temples. “You didn’t want me in your place! You went out of your way to stop me!”

  “I told you, it was messy! And I didn’t have snacks!” She was actually starting to sound a little angry herself.

  “Seriously?” I asked, dropping my chin. “Come on now.”

  “I like to be a good hostess!”

  “This can’t be right.” I had a real sinking feeling that I might be a bad person after all. “So then if you didn’t do it, and he didn’t do it. Then who did it?” I asked, still trying to think all of this through.

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking at me carefully. “There’s no chance you could—”

  “No! I didn’t do it!”

  “Then who?”

  A new voice joined the mix.

  “I did it.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Laurie Day.

  I turned to see Laurie behind me, anger carving deep lines in her face. Had she always looked so crazy? Yes, yes, she had. But I had refused to see it, instead opting to lay the guilt on a cute pair of dimples.

  My eyes flashed back to Candace. She looked even cuter scared, what with her big round eyes.

  Then something caught the corner of my eye.

  Freddie.

  His mouth was moving frantically, mouthing something over and over. It looked a lot like I told you so!, but it was hard to be sure. Thankfully, he was also rummaging through his bag. I knew he was going for his cell.

  All three of us had heard Laurie confess. Now, we just needed to live long enough to tell someone.

  “Erica,” Laurie ordered. “Go stand by Candace.”

  I licked my lips. “Laurie—”

  “Save it, Erica. There’s nothing you can say now.” She pulled a gun out from the back of her jeans.

  Maybe there wasn’t anything left for me to say, but that wasn’t about to stop me. I needed to stall.

  “None of this makes any sense,” I said, shuffling over to stand beside Candace with my hands up. “Why do you care about the guys taking money from the development company?”

  “I don’t,” she said, motioning me closer to C
andace with the point of her gun. “Other than the small fact that Dickie was supposed to use his cut of the money to buy me a ring. You know what he bought instead? Four paintball guns and a snowmobile with the Tasmanian Devil airbrushed on the hood.”

  “Then why would you want to kill all three of them?”

  “I didn’t want to kill them,” she said as though I were an idiot. “I wanted to kill Dickie, and I did.”

  “Over a ring?” I asked.

  The tendons in Laurie’s neck rippled. “I wasted way too many years on that lying, cheating bastard.”

  I sucked some air through my clenched teeth. Ouch.

  Laurie’s eye twitched.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. Here we were going all big picture, and it was you, staring me in the face the entire time.” I paused to lick my lips. “You chopping that chicken should have tipped me off. Nonmurderers, they don’t chop that way. Not with that kind of gusto.”

  Suddenly a female scream sounded in the distance. Oh man, Grady must have reached the tents. What had taken him so long? More importantly, how long would it take him to get back?

  Laurie’s eyes moved in the direction of the festival. She must have heard the scream, too.

  Now was my chance to risk looking at Freddie again to see if he had gotten through to the police.

  When my eyes found him, he was lying on his belly, straining his fingertips toward the platform below.

  What the hell was he doing?

  Was that his phone?

  Oh my God! He had dropped his phone!

  I let my gaze fall back to Laurie.

  “Erica, move away from Candace.”

  My heartbeat thudded painfully in my ears. Stalling was still my best bet. “You told me to stand beside her.”

  “And now I’m telling you to move away.”

  I stood my ground. “Why?”

  She planted her gun-free hand on her hip. “Remember how I told you the other day that if you weren’t careful, you were going to get yourself killed? Well, you should have listened.”

  “Wait!” I shouted, dropping the envelope and putting my hands up. “I gotta know! Why Harry? What did he ever do to you?”

  She smiled. “Don’t you remember? He came to the retreat that night? Pretending to be sympathetic with his big bag of weed. He knew something. I could tell. Those three told each other everything.” Her smile disappeared.

  “Or he was trying to be sympathetic!” I shouted.

  “But he wouldn’t die,” she continued, ignoring me. “That’s why I had to be more careful with Tommy. Go big or go home.”

  “Oh!” I pointed at her with frantic speed. “That was you that day slapping Tommy around in the bedroom … and … and you blew up my boat!”

  “I snuck around to the water while you and Tommy were in the front. I had actually planned to blow up Tommy’s boat. “Made one of those nifty magnetic bombs you just snap on. Had it all ready to go. You see, I was going to blow up his old boat, so it would look like an accident, but I confused your old hunk of junk for his. Can you believe that? Too much hurrying, I guess.”

  I scoffed.

  Candace placed a warning hand on my shoulder, but I ignored her. No way was I going to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. I had to keep stalling.

  “That’s when I got the idea of blaming it all on you. Poor, crazy Erica, coming back after all these years to exact her revenge. It was brilliant.”

  “Yeah, brilliant,” I muttered. “Hey! That was you running around town naked burning all the flyers!”

  “Enough. Stand over there.” She motioned to a spot a few feet from Candace.

  “No.”

  “Move!”

  “Erica,” Candace said softly, “don’t make her any more angry.”

  “Forget it,” I said, rubbing my feet into the ground. “She’s staging a freaking crime scene! She’s going to shoot you, and then shoot me in the head to make it look like some murder-suicide! And I say no! Move the freaking bodies yourself!”

  “You don’t have a choice!” Laurie shouted. “I have the gun!”

  “You’re going to kill me no matter what! Why would I make it easy for you?” Spittle hit my chin.

  Laurie straightened her back and leveled the gun at my face. “Fine. I should have known you were useless … just like your mother.”

  “Really?” A familiar feeling churned in my belly. “You want to go there?”

  She smiled.

  Oh, yeah. It was time to go there. “It’s on!”

  I charged Laurie. She didn’t shoot. The look of surprise on her face told me she wasn’t expecting me to launch a shoulder into her belly.

  We hit the ground hard, stunning us both.

  The gun! I had to get the gun!

  Laurie stretched the weapon over her head while I clawed my way up her body.

  A moment later, we were rolling. Rolling toward the scaffolding of the giant raspberry.

  With each rotation, I scanned the structure for Freddie. Finally, I got a glimpse of him. He was scampering back and forth on the platform. We were headed straight for him, and I could tell he didn’t want to make a run for the built-in ladder and leave us.

  We stopped when we crashed into a two-by-four.

  Laurie was pinned underneath me, but she still held the gun.

  “Give it up, Laurie!” I yelled, between gritted teeth. “You can’t stage a good enough crime scene to get away with this!”

  She stared back at me with crazy eyes, all the whites showing. Then her forehead rocketed toward mine.

  I pitched to the right to avoid the vicious head-butt, losing my leverage over her.

  I scrambled back on my hands and feet until I hit a plank of wood.

  Laurie was already getting to her feet, gun still pointed at me.

  “You’re done,” she said.

  Oh, God! This was it!

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  But instead of a bang, I heard a battle cry from above.

  I cracked an eye open to see Freddie’s form sailing through the air, hands outstretched in giant claws.

  Yes! He was going to take her down! She couldn’t stand up to his weight! She’d be—

  He missed.

  Freddie hit the ground … a foot or two shy of Laurie.

  “Freddie!” I screamed, scrambling over to him.

  I put my hands on his back, which still, thankfully, was heaving up and down.

  “You monster,” I said, snapping my face over to Laurie.

  She shook her head. “You two are something else.” She leveled the gun again. “Bye, Erica.”

  “Erica!” a voice shouted out. “I really tried to go through with it, but I ran into Mrs. McAdams. Kind of startled her and—” Grady suddenly appeared from the path at the side of the berry. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  All of us looked over to Grady, his lower regions barely covered by the hand clutching his boxers.

  Laurie cursed and swung the gun toward him.

  “I’m going to ask one more time,” he said slowly. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “We solved it,” Freddie called out, gathering himself up into a seated position. “Laurie’s the murderer.”

  “What?” Grady looked at Laurie, then Candace. “No, that’s not right. Candace is the murderer.”

  “What?” Candace shrieked.

  I looked over to Candace, but I couldn’t quite meet her eye. I cleared my throat and said, “As your friend, I was going to tell you—”

  “Oh, jeez,” Grady said, eyes flashing to Candace as the wheels in his brain gave a turn. “I mean—”

  “Yeah, Erica thought the same thing,” Freddie said, jerking a thumb in my direction.

  Candace charged our group, completely ignoring Laurie. “So the entire time we were dating, you thought I was the murderer?”

  “Dating?” Grady’s eyebrows shot up. “You thought we were dating? Oh, no
. I am so sorry. I never meant to give you that impression.”

  Candace’s eyes bugged. “How can you say that? We had lunch! We went out for drinks! You did all that smiling at me!”

  Freddie nodded. “Yeah, he does that.”

  “I was investigating,” Grady said, looking a little sheepish. “My smile always has been both a gift and a curse.”

  “This is happening,” Candace said, clutching at her hair. “This is really happening.”

  “I thought you knew,” Grady said, offering her an awkward pat on the shoulder. “All those things I told you about Erica? I kind of have this thing for her that I can’t seem to shake.”

  “Aw,” Freddie said, elbowing me in the ribs.

  Laurie cleared her throat. “Well, now you can die with her.”

  Candace shook an angry finger at Grady. “No! No. I don’t want to hear this from you right now.”

  “Is anyone even listening to me?” Laurie shouted. “The murderer with the gun?”

  “I am,” Freddie replied. “I have always found you fascinating.”

  A gunshot shattered the night.

  Once she had our full attention, Laurie brought the gun down from the sky and swung it around at each one of us. “I’ve had it! I’m going to kill you all now, if for no other reason than to shut you all up!”

  Freddie and I clutched one another.

  “Laurie,” Grady said, taking a careful step toward her with one hand up, the other still clutching his boxers. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “No. I think I do. And I’m going to start with you,” she said, finally settling her aim on Grady. “It makes sense that Erica would kill you first.”

  I took a breath and pried Freddie’s hands off me. I couldn’t let this happen. I slowly got up to my feet. My first instinct was to tackle her, again, but I was afraid the hit would make the gun go off.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” Grady persisted.

  The muscles on Laurie’s arm rippled. “You never know. I think I’ll take my chances with your idiot police department.”