String of Lies

by Mary Ellen Hughes

  “Right.”

  Funny.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jo sat in her car for several minutes, thinking, then finally turned on her ignition and pulled away from the curb. She had gone halfway back to the Craft Shop when she abruptly made a left turn to do a backtrack of sorts. Jo passed the turn-off for TJ’s and continued on for a few minutes until she pulled up in front of Hollanders, the restaurant where Lucy Kunkle said she and Mallory were lunching.

  “Good afternoon,” a mustached man in a dark suit greeted Jo as she entered the foyer. “Do you have a reservation?”

  “I’m looking for Mallory Holt’s party.”

  “Of course.” He turned to a woman who stood nearby clad in dark slacks and white dress shirt, topped with a red bow tie. “Mrs. Holt’s table.”

  Jo followed the woman who had picked up a menu and obviously assumed Jo was a late-arriving guest of Mallory’s. They wound their way through widely spaced tables that were topped with vases of fresh flowers and seated several well-dressed patrons. Soft music floated through the air along with muffled conversations, but most of that barely reached Jo’s consciousness. Her mind focused on the questions she wanted to ask Mallory.

  “Ms. McAllister!” Lucy Kunkle looked up in surprise as Jo approached their table. She managed to add ‘pleased’ to her expression, unlike her niece who only looked annoyed. The other two women, closer in age to Lucy than to Mallory, glanced up with interest.

  The waitress immediately brought a fifth chair to the table, although Jo explained she didn’t intend to stay. “I’m very sorry to interrupt your luncheon, but I have something important to ask.”

  “If it’s about your shop building ---” Mallory began, but Jo stopped her.

  “No, it’s nothing to do with that.” Jo sat, deciding she’d be less conspicuous and could speak more quietly if she did. “Can you just tell me, was your husband a good friend of Randy Truitt’s when they were teenagers?”

  Mallory’s eyebrows shot up, and Jo could imagine her thoughts regarding Jo’s mental state.

  “I’m not asking this idly, believe me. Was he?”

  “Well, yes,” Mallory admitted. “Parker did tell me they had been friends as kids. You know how it is,” she smiled deprecatingly to her other tablemates, “when you’re that age. I’m certain the draw was the fact of Randy’s having a car to drive. Parker’s parents were terribly strict at the time about allowing him access to theirs.”

  “So Parker and Randy did things together, outside of school, I mean?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m puzzled because Randy told me he barely knew Parker, and only from having shared a single class together in high school.”

  “Well,” Mallory laughed, “you can understand why, can’t you? I mean, how could the paths of two former friends have diverged much farther? It must be humiliating. But Parker, despite Randy’s, ah, shortcomings, never forgot his old connection. He gave Randy jobs off and on, that is, when he felt Randy was sober enough to handle them.”

  Lucy Kunkle crooned softly, obviously adding the information to her long list of Parker’s saintly qualities.

  “Yes,” Jo said. “Randy mentioned having worked at your new landscaping last summer.”

  “Did he? I really don’t keep track of that kind of thing.”

  “He said he almost toppled the table in your back hallway when he came in to wash up, and nearly broke the glass candleholder you have on it.”

  “Not last summer, surely,” Lucy Kunkle spoke up. “He must have been thinking of some time more recently. You only got that piece two weeks ago, Mallory, didn’t you? From the Women’s Club – in honor of your first year of presidency.”

  Jo suddenly remembered Sharon Doyle having come into her shop shortly after Christmas looking for a gift item, and buying one of the two glass candleholders Jo had in stock, the second going only recently to Loralee. Sharon hadn’t mentioned at the time who the gift was for. Once again Jo was amazed at what a tangle of connection things in Abbotsville so often turned out to be.

  “Yes, you’re right about when I got that gift,” Mallory said to her aunt. “However, I don’t recall having had work done at the house since then. But,” she shook her head impatiently, “who can remember every little thing. Was there anything else, Ms. McAllister?”

  Jo stood up. “No, that’s all I need. Thank you.” She vaguely heard Lucy Kunkle imploring her to stay and join them, with faint echoing murmurs added by the other two women at the table. A social lunch, however, was the last thing on her mind at the moment, as she made her way out of the dining room. The bright sunlight Jo encountered as she stepped outside, would have normally been cheering on a mid-winter day. But all she was aware of was the cold.

  <><><>

  Jo slowly pulled away from Hollanders and headed back to the Craft Corner. Traffic was light, which was fortunate, since she drove on autopilot, her thoughts far beyond traffic lights and stop signs.

  Had she been focusing in the wrong direction all this time, she wondered? Had Parker Holt’s murderer – and Alexis Wigsley’s – been under her nose the entire time? Fixing her shelves? Clearing her walk? Or was she overreacting to the lies she had just caught Randy in? They were certainly nothing that would hold up in a court of law. A lie about how well he knew the victim, plus one concerning when he had last been in the victim’s house? What did they, in actuality, add up to?

  The thing was – Jo braked as she realized the traffic light before her had turned red – the thing was, why would Randy need to lie at all unless he had something to hide? Jo supposed it was possible that, as Mallory claimed, Randy simply hated to invite comparisons between his life and Parker’s, and so had denied their past connection.

  But Jo couldn’t buy that. Randy’s general history was well known in the town. He must have been aware that Jo, though new to the area, would have eventually learned at least the basics of his background. So pretending little connection to Parker Holt, Jo felt, must have sprung from guilt.

  Randy surely knew that Xavier was strongly suspected by the police, and that Carrie and Dan were suffering severe damage by association. Jo’s concerns, he would have seen, would clearly have been for her friends. Randy may not have been aware of the extent of Jo’s investigations, but he would have realized she was someone to be careful around.

  But his lie about when he was last inside the Holt’s house was, for Jo, the most incriminating one. Randy’s comment on the glass candleholder, she figured, must have slipped out before he realized its possible significance. When he did, he clearly tried to cover by changing the time he had nearly broken the piece. Except he unwittingly trapped himself by not knowing how recently Mallory acquired the candleholder.

  Jo sighed deeply. She had liked Randy, had felt he had potential for getting his life back on track. She would never had thought him capable of murder. What had derailed him so completely? Neither of the murder victims were sterling characters, but what about them could have drawn such violent actions? She arrived at Main Street and gradually braked as she approached her shop’s parking lot. Jo signaled for her turn, then slowly drove in, feeling as weighted as if she were the one carrying her car instead of it carrying her. Uncovering the dark side of a liked and trusted individual, she was finding, was not a particularly satisfying coup.

  Jo parked next to the Craft Corner’s building and she opened her door. Engrossed with her dour thoughts, she stepped out, then remembering her lunches, leaned back for the paper bag. As she did, a voice spoke chillingly close to her ear: “Just stop there.”

  Jo felt the pressure of the knife before she saw it. She froze, then turned her head slightly to see Randy inches from her, his breath puffing into her face. He pressed a very large, very lethal-looking knife against her side.

  “Be quiet, or I’ll have to use this,” he warned, and reached past her into the car, grabbing her keys from the ignition. He gripped her arm tightly with one hand, the other holding the
knife, and jerked her toward the battered pick-up that Jo had failed to notice as she pulled in, parked as it was beyond a large van.

  “Randy ---” she began, but he showed he meant what he said by pushing the knife into her jacket enough that she heard its nylon fabric pop.

  “Just move,” he repeated, and Jo did.

  Randy pushed her toward the passenger’s side of his pick-up, Jo’s eyes searching the lot for someone, anyone, who could help, but without success. He yanked open the door and shoved her forward.

  “Get in,” he said. “All the way over.”

  Jo climbed up and into the truck, then scrambled awkwardly over the console to get to the driver’s seat as Randy pushed, while at the same time gripping her tightly. Randy took the passenger seat and pulled his door closed.

  “Drive out onto Main,” he said, his knife still pressing at her side. “And don’t try to signal anyone or I will use this.”

  “Where – ” Jo began, the knife instantly stopping her. Her foot fumbled for the pedals which were out of reach until she yanked the seat forward. Then she turned the ignition and put the truck into reverse.

  When Jo turned her head to look back, she got her first full look at Randy’s face. It wasn’t the face of the man she knew, the man who had come to her shop that first day, nervous and grateful for the promise of a job. This was the face of a total stranger. Though the features hadn’t changed, the person behind them definitely had. The fear Jo had felt from the first, suddenly tripled.

  “Turn right,” Randy said as they approached the street. He held the knife against her with his right hand and gripped the collar of her jacket with his left. Jo checked in each direction, but could see no pedestrians who might see them and help her. The drivers of the few passing cars kept their eyes on the road ahead of them, Jo and her captor apparently catching no attention. She turned the truck onto the street and pulled away from the Craft Corner, feeling her heart sink with every inch of road she put between her and all reasonable hope of aid.

  Jo drove up Main, staying, at Randy’s orders, within the speed limit, while at the same time her mind raced, searching for a means of escape. Any scenario she came up with, though, ended with the high probability of her blood fatally spilling over the inside of the truck, so she drove on, hoping against hope that she’d still find a way out of this.

  Jo drove straight when Randy told her to, and turned when Randy told her to turn, gradually suspecting where he was taking her. This was confirmed when they pulled onto her street. He told her to slow down as they approached her house. Banks of snow lined the curbs, but the laughing children that had so recently played in them, building snow forts and tossing snowballs, had gone off to school, their parents most likely away as well at their jobs. The street was empty of both neighbors and traffic, and Jo turned into her driveway without, she feared, a single eye witnessing it.

  Randy switched hands on his knife and fumbled in his pocket. Jo glanced over to see him pull out her automatic garage door opener, which he had snatched from her car’s visor when he grabbed her keys. He pressed the button to raise the garage door, and when it reached its top, grunted, “Go.” Jo did.

  As Randy closed the door behind them, Jo stared forward, hearing the noisy clang behind her as the door hit bottom. It sounded like the clang of a prison door, which was what her once cozy home had just become– her prison. But what was her sentence to be?

  Life, or death?

  CHAPTER 25

  Randy got out of the truck and raced to the driver’s side. He pulled Jo out and dragged her over to the connecting door, unlocking it with her keys, then pulled her into the kitchen. Randy stopped, glanced around, then dragged her through the small kitchen into the living room. He pushed Jo onto the sofa as he remained standing. It was a relief for Jo to at least have that knife out of her side, but it flashed menacingly as the steel caught the sunlight beaming through her windows.

  “Don’t move,” Randy warned. He lurched over to the nearby windows to pull her blinds closed, after first checking the window locks, until Jo sat in murky dimness. He then did a rapid run-through of the other rooms of her small house – her bedroom, the spare, and her bathroom, all mere steps from where she sat, before returning to the living room. He sank into a chair facing her.

  “Randy, this is crazy and you know it.”

  “Shut up!”

  Jo noticed for the first time that he was sweating. Beads of it had formed on his forehead despite the cold they had just come in from. His eyes twitched nervously as his gaze darted about the room, and the heel of one foot bounced against the floor. He pulled a small whiskey bottle out of his jacket pocket, uncapped it and put it to his lips. He evidently had been drinking from it already, as he tipped it high for a final swallow.

  “Randy, this won’t solve anything. You’re only making it worse.”

  “What do you know about making anything worse?” he shouted. “I’ve killed two people already! I can go to the chair for that. Do you know that? One more won’t change anything. But you’re the only one knows I killed the other two. I get rid of you, I’m home free. You’re my only problem.”

  Jo waited, giving him time to calm a bit. What was his plan for getting rid of her? Did he have a plan? His edginess suggested he hadn’t formed one yet. If she could keep him talking he’d have less time to come up with one. She quietly asked, “How did you know I’d figured it out?”

  Randy stared at her, scowling. “Lisa. I went to pick her up and she told me about you asking questions. She told me what she said about Parker and me being friends.” His mouth twisted contemptuously. “Friends – hah!”

  “Parker wasn’t a good friend to you? I mean back then?”

  “Parker was a leech. A one hundred percent, effing, blood-sucking leech.”

  This was good; he was talking. Jo needed to keep him going. “You mean Parker used you?”

  “Yeah, he used me. Just like he used everybody his whole life. Only I was too dumb back then to see it.”

  “You were a kid, then, Randy. Kids don’t pick up on things like that. Not right away.”

  Randy scowled at her. “Maybe. He was scum, though.”

  “But there’s more to it, isn’t there? You didn’t kill Parker because he made you feel used. What did he do to you?”

  Randy’s foot began bouncing again. He got up and began pacing Jo’s small living room, the knife gripped tightly in his hand.

  “You got any beer here? Anything to drink?”

  “No, I don’t.” Jo knew there was an unopened bottle of wine in one of her cupboards, a birthday gift from Carrie and Dan, but she didn’t mention it.

  He stared at her as if searching her mind, then said, “Shit!” He pulled out his whiskey bottle, tried for a few last drops, then threw it across the room. He got up and walked to a front window, pulling the drapery aside an inch and looking out, then went to Jo’s back door whose window looked out into her back yard, and did the same. No one knew they were there, so what was he expecting to see? His fear, Jo suspected, was probably as great as her own, but for different reasons.

  Randy returned to his chair, and sat down, holding his knife across his lap.

  “You want to know what Parker did to me? Why I killed him? I’ll tell you. You’ll see why he deserved it.” He looked past her and his gaze turned inward, to the past. His voice took on an odd, deadly tone.

  “We used to go out in my dad’s old Chevy,” he said. “It was a piece of junk, but it rode, and that was all we cared about. Parker didn’t have wheels – his folks were too tight – and I did. I shoulda known that was the only thing mattered to him, but all I knew was I was having the kind of fun I never had before and that was great.

  “Then one night, Parker was home on spring break, his first year at college. We went out and got some beers. We’d driven around thinking we might pick up a coupla girls, but that didn’t work out. So Parker starts asking stuff like how fast would that Chevy go. He’s daring me, you k
now? Like, ‘think it’d make a hundred before it shook apart?’, things like that. I’d been working on it, replaced a few parts, and that kinda bugged me ’cause it was like he was saying I hadn’t made the car any better. So to prove him wrong – and I wasn’t thinking too clear with the beer and all – I drove out to Route Thirty which I figured would be pretty empty then – and I revved it up.”

  Randy stopped, wiping sweat out of his eyes. Jo waited, sitting as still as she could, not wanting the slightest rustle of her jacket’s nylon fabric to distract Randy. After a moment he resumed his story.

  “The Chevy was doing good. I got up to eighty, ninety, and it was running smooth. Then, out of nowhere, this car pops up, I dunno, from some side road or something. I swear I didn’t see it until it was too late. I tried. I swerved, but I clipped him on the side, hard, and ran him off the road.”

  Randy’s voice had become shaky.

  “I kept on going, at that speed it was all I could do to stay on the road. But the other guy – I heard later it was some kid coming home from working late at Burger King – he lost control and flipped over into a ravine.

  “I started slowing down. I was going to go back. But then Parker says, ‘What’re you doing? Keep going! You’re just gonna get us in big trouble! Don’t worry about him. He’ll be okay.’ I was scared, I couldn’t think straight so I kept on going, and got home, and hid the car in the barn hoping I could fix the damage to it before my pop saw it.”

  “Was the other driver killed?” Jo asked, guessing as much.

  Randy nodded, rubbing his free hand over his face. “Not right away. He died in the hospital.”

  “But they never found out it was you?”

  “No. Parker said I should keep my mouth shut, and I did. He said I’d go to prison if I turned myself in. It wasn’t long after that my pop had his tractor accident. I kept the Chevy hid in the barn. I didn’t even have time to fix the damage on it. I was scared, ’cause the paper kept printing stuff about how they were still looking for the hit ’n run driver, and putting in stuff about this kid that was killed, how his family was all broken up. It was pretty bad. Then my mom got sick, and I had to get her taken care of.”