Cliff Roberts Thriller Box Set

by Cliff Roberts

  It would take weeks to get the poison from Southeast Asia and to come up with a plan to cover his tracks. No, they weren’t here to get her stuff. April had said she and her sister had come here to talk to Tyler about the divorce. How did Danny Conners get in the picture?

  If Danny wasn’t here, how would Mr. Stone be able to bury him in the garden? Was it Mr. Stone who dropped off Danny’s car at the train station? If not then who? And why?

  It then crossed Carpelli’s mind Tyler may had have planted the evidence in the apartments. Other than the apartments looking staged, he did a good job. He left no trace of himself behind. There just wasn’t quite enough evidence to be convincing. But how had he gotten any of Danny Conners’ things to plant? According to April, Danny wasn’t here and if Danny wasn’t here, then where and when did April kill him?

  Carpelli was thinking in circles when he heard a car door slam, and he quickly found a hiding space on the first floor in the closet of the spare bedroom. If he hadn’t left any evidence of being here, he’d be a sudden surprise for Mr. Stone when he greeted him in a few minutes after he got in the house and was relaxed.

  Carpelli waited until he heard the shower running upstairs before he came out of the closet and went to the front windows and stealthily looked out. Down the block was the night shift of the police surveillance team. He’d have to make sure when he left, he went out the back.

  Looking around the living and dining rooms he found there were three dark corners, and thought he might hide in plain sight in one of them. There was the front living room corner, but if Stone turned on the hall light or a lamp it would disappear along with the second corner in the rear of the living room. The left corner in the dining room next to the china cabinet and the kitchen door was the only place he could see himself being able to hide. The only way Stone would see him there was if he turned on the living room light and looked up into the mirror which would show him sitting there. Before he sat down to wait, he looked over Mr. Stone’s book collection. Carpelli guesstimated there were at least four dozen books on the shelves and every one was about murder. They were all murder mysteries.

  Yeah, he’d take the dining room corner. It would provide the right touch of melodrama and frighten the hell out of Stone to find a stranger in his dining room. Especially since the stranger would be holding a gun on him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Tyler Stone took a long hot shower and Carpelli was growing restless so he checked out Stone’s refrigerator while he waited. All he found were a couple of cans of Foster’s Lager, a half-eaten canned ham, some mustard and a jar of mayo. He took one of the Foster’s and returned to his chair to drink it. After finishing the beer, he sat quietly contemplating Tyler Stone’s choice of reading materials. A sharp prosecutor would have a field day with the book collection. They harp on it again and again, pounding into the jury members’ heads how it demonstrated malice of forethought. He obviously read all those murder mysteries in an effort to learn how to commit the perfect crime.

  After his shower, Tyler dressed in a pair of shorts and t-shirt then sat down at his computer. Clicking the space bar to wake it up, Tyler was surprised by what popped up on his monitor. It was the pictures of the garden he had taken, just before digging the hole. He’d taken the pictures to try and ensure he returned the garden to its pristine condition after burying his wife in it. He was shocked to see it and couldn’t help but wonder how the file had come to be open. He hadn’t opened the file. Then it occurred to him someone had been on his computer.

  He glanced about the room but couldn’t see anything out of place. Fighting his growing panic, Tyler checked his computer search history and discovered that someone had scrolled through his files and had opened several of the picture files, as if looking for the garden shots. He hit a few more keys and found they had accessed the date and time information concerning when the pictures were taken. He saw that whoever it was had been there just minutes before he arrived home.

  Tyler sat trembling with fear. He’d made a mistake, shit! It wasn’t his first, but it was probably his last. He should have deleted the files right away. But that wouldn’t have helped. It would have only made him look guilty. When the police were here, they hadn’t connected the two, the pictures of the garden and the disappearances. In fact, he’d stuffed the pictures into a crack in the door frame of the garage and the police hadn’t found them. But someone had. Why else would they leave it on his computer so it would pop up the moment he started the thing up.

  Who could have done that? Not the police, they would have needed a search warrant and they wouldn’t have hid when he arrived home. No, it had to be someone else? Could it have been April? No, it wasn’t April; she wasn’t computer savvy enough to search for them on his computer.

  Then it occurred to him that it had to be that guy who had stopped in his front yard a couple of Saturdays ago. What was his name? Harcat, Horcort, Harcare, Hartcore, no it was Harcorte, yeah, Harcorte. Yeah, it had to be him. Tyler went to his sock drawer, pulled out his thirty-eight special handgun and headed downstairs.

  Meanwhile, Harcorte aka Carpelli had taken the liberty of closing all of the drapes in the house, so when Tyler came back down to the first floor, he was in pitch blackness, the only light being that which filtered downstairs from the master bedroom. At the bottom of the stairs, Tyler flipped on the hall light and went towards the back bedrooms.

  He hesitated for a moment before crouching down and slipping into the bedroom on the left. He flipped on the light, but saw nothing. He then stepped over to the closet, stood off to the side of the door and pointed his gun at it, before he spoke.

  “Okay, you can come out. I know you’re there. I have a gun pointed at the door and I’ll shoot if you don’t just walk out slowly, with your hands up,” Tyler stated and then waited for a moment before yanking the door open. The closet was empty.

  Tyler repeated the process in the second bedroom turned exercise room and again no one was there. Carpelli was getting quite the kick out the guy acting to be all tough and searching his house for an intruder.

  Tyler checked the bathroom, then checked the kitchen and that was as far as he got. From the corner of the dining room, Carpelli saw Tyler tuck the gun in his belt as he stood at the top of the basement stairs pondering for a moment whether he should search the basement. In the end, he decided not to and pulled the sliding door closed, blocking it off.

  Apparently, it made him feel safe enough to go to the refrigerator for a beer to strengthen his resolve for searching the living room. As he opened the door to the refrigerator and started to bend over to get his drink, Carpelli made his move. It wasn’t what he’d planned but he hadn’t planned on Stone having a gun, either.

  Carpelli stepped into the kitchen right up behind Stone, who was bent over and looking in the refrigerator. Obviously, he noticed one of his two Foster’s oil cans was missing. They are referred to as ‘oil cans,’ because they looked like old oil cans.

  Before Tyler Stone could stand back up to ponder the missing beer, Carpelli stepped up and shoved him into the refrigerator. He banged his head on the rear interior wall of it, knocking out the main shelf and everything on it, before stumbling back out of it.

  When he finally straightened up again, Carpelli shoved Tyler face first against the refrigerator and jammed his gun, a forty caliber Sig-Sauer with silencer, into Tyler’s ribs while grabbing the thirty-eight from Tyler’s waist band.

  Carpelli stuck the thirty-eight in his own waist band then said, “Good evening Mr. Stone, I told you we’d meet again.” He slugged Tyler in the kidneys as hard as he could with the butt of his gun. Tyler collapsed to the floor as he clutched his back and groaned. “I also told you that you wouldn’t like it the next time we met. Was I not right?” Carpelli offered.

  “What do you want?” Tyler groaned.

  “I still want answers,” Carpelli stated and then kicked Tyler in the back.

  “Ow, all right, all right, what do you want to
know?” Tyler asked through gritted teeth.

  Carpelli stepped back a step and Tyler instantly tried to jump up and run into the hallway. Being athletic he was pretty quick, but Carpelli was expecting it and jammed his foot between Tyler’s feet tripping him up.

  Tyler slammed into the wall next to the door opening, bounced off it and fell to the floor. Instantly, Carpelli pounced on Tyler, letting his two hundred pound bulk force the air out of Tyler’s lungs, while driving his knee hard into his kidneys.

  “Kid, if you keep making me hurt you, you’ll be pissing blood for a month. In fact, it just might kill you.”

  “Was it you who accessed my computer?” Tyler gasped, while trying to regain the wind that Carpelli had knocked out of him.

  “Do you see anyone else around, Mr. Stone? But in case you still don’t get it, I’m asking the questions here.” Carpelli rose up, lifted his knee and quickly drove it back down into Tyler’s kidneys again. Tyler howled in pain but after another minute he started right back talking again.

  “They’re just pictures I took. I was trying out my old camera, I hadn’t used in some time. I couldn’t remember how good the picture quality was,” Tyler lied straight faced to Carpelli.

  “I see we still want to play games, don’t we?” Carpelli delivered another sharp knee plunge to Tyler’s kidneys. Tyler groaned loudly and tried to wiggle out from under Carpelli, earning him yet another blow to his kidneys.

  “Stone, you’ve got to learn how to cut your losses. This refusal to cooperate is only going to get you beat up and maybe killed. You can’t win this. All you can do is break even or lose big time. Right now, you’re about to lose big time.

  “The way I see it, I can either share what I’ve figured out with the police or I can keep it all to myself. The determining factor is whether or not you cooperate.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. The client I represent has decided you’re guilty in the death of his son and he’s hired two hit men from Detroit to take you and Miss Jennings out.

  “I normally don’t tell the mark they’re about to be whacked, but the way I figure it, Miss Jennings, despite being a bitch, doesn’t deserve to be jailed or killed. After all, she is a victim of circumstances created by you.”

  Tyler remained quiet and stopped struggling to get away. Carpelli, instead of asking questions, continued sharing what he had figured out.

  “You see, Mr. Stone, it only takes one mistake to get caught when you commit murder, but the police don’t always discover the mistake. In your case, you’ve made several mistakes.

  “The biggest one was planting the evidence in the apartments and your second major mistake was dropping off the victim’s car at the train station. There are just too many cameras there and by doing so you created a way out for the person you tried to frame. At the time you dropped off the car, she was stoned out of her mind and stuck in a ditch across town.

  “When you planted the evidence, there wasn’t enough blood to convince anyone that a murder took place, plus the blood spatter was clearly thrown rather than spattered.”

  “You see, there wasn’t a break in the pattern caused by the victim’s body on the headboard; and even worse, there wasn’t any spatter on the floor or the rest of the bed. That’s a dead giveaway that it was planted,” Carpelli stopped and took a deep breath before he continued.

  “You got a minute?” Carpelli asked Tyler, not really expecting to have him answer. “If you do, I can spell out exactly how you committed the crimes,” Carpelli then stated.

  “Whatever. Do I have a choice?” Tyler snarled.

  “Well, no, actually you don’t. So here’s what I believed happened.” Carpelli pressed the barrel of his gun against Tyler’s head. “You need to pay attention, in case I get something wrong.

  “Okay, your wife, Wendy, you dumped the little sister April for her, thinking she’s the better of the two but shortly after marriage you figured out she was only here because you might someday be rich. When that didn’t happen fast enough, she leaves you for this other guy who has money and lots of it. You’re pissed about her leaving but not that much. She’s turned out to be such a bitch that you’ve been studying how to commit the perfect murder for the last couple of years. You’ve read hundreds of books about murders to hone your skills, and when she leaves you, you put that knowledge to work.

  “You must have decided months ago that the best way to do her in would be poison because with poison there’s no blood and no mess. You even planned ahead by purchasing the poison from a source overseas with a prepaid debit card in anticipation.

  “You then had it shipped to an anonymous post office box at some out of the way store front post office, in an attempt to ensure it couldn’t be traced back to you.

  “You knew you would need an alibi, so you use your computer skills to alter your work’s time clock computer program, making it appear as though you were working at the time of your wife’s disappearance. You then dig a hole in the garden ahead of time, even taking pictures of the garden to ensure you could make it look as good as new afterwards.

  “When the big night came, you were expecting your ex-wife to come alone but she showed up with her sister in tow and you nearly called it off. But the fates blessed you when April unwittingly poured her own cup of death from the iced tea you had waiting to serve your wife.

  “The problem was that April is one of those women who drink in little tiny sips rather than in mouthfuls. So while Wendy took a big swing, dooming herself, April took a small sip or two and didn’t get quite enough to kill her. When they both got sick, you went to prepare the final details outside.

  “Now, this is where you have to fill in the details for me. You see, I still can’t figure out how Danny got into this and ended up dead. What do you say? Help me out here. How about filling in the details for me about how Danny Conners was killed.”

  “I don’t know,” Tyler stated curtly. His mind was swimming from the detail of Harcorte’s understanding of what happened. How had he figured this out?

  “I don’t believe you, Mr. Stone. I believe Danny is buried out in the garden with Mrs. Stone. I believe you buried them there, but you didn’t kill Danny Conners, April did. But you are an accessory after the fact in his death. So why subject yourself to more pain? To avoid it, all you have to do is tell me how Danny Conners came to be dead.”

  “I am telling you,” Tyler stated gruffly giving in and accepting his fate to avoid the pain. “I don’t know how he came to be here or how he died, other than he was stabbed with my carving knife.”

  “Really?”

  “I went out to do the final prep work like you said, and when I came back in, April was gone and Danny was there on the floor next to Wendy. I don’t know how he got there, but his car was out front and Wendy’s was gone.”

  “I see. So, it sounds like Danny showed up after the fact, only to be killed by April, who thought she was killing you.

  “Talk about a tough broad. She was poisoned and suffering hallucinations, yet she managed to stumble out into the kitchen thinking there would be a phone there to call 911 but she couldn’t find the phone.

  “She then remembered there was a drawer full of knives and she grabbed the biggest one she could find. Goes back to her dying sister’s side to wait for you, but Danny showed up first.

  “April, drugged out of her mind, thought he was you and stabbed him. Then, in her hallucination, went looking for help. Very interesting. It must have been quite a shock for you to return and find a different person lying dead on the floor than the one you’d left there. Why did you bury him?” Carpelli asked.

  “What was I going to do, call the police?” Tyler curtly replied.

  “I can see your point. You had a dead body in the living room that wasn’t your fault right next to the one that was. Did you wonder about what happened to April?”

  “Duh! She was a huge loose end but what could I do about her? I couldn’t go chasing after her. I had no idea where she had gone. I thought
she’d gone to the police. So I got rid of the evidence and made it look like she had never been here,” Tyler shared.

  “I take it you had planned to drop off your wife’s car at the train station but when you were left with Danny’s car you just substituted his for hers and continued on with the plan.”

  “It was a good plan but it went sour due to your sister-in-law’s interference. If she hadn’t come along with your wife, it would have worked probably perfectly.”

  “I do have to commend you for the quick thinking and for keeping your cool, despite one major obstacle after another being put in your way by fate or whatever. So, now the question becomes, what do we do with you?”

  “I thought you were doing this to make your client happy?” Tyler offered.

  “Well, that was what I started out doing, but things have changed. There’s no big reward for you, and the police have actually written you off as a suspect. So, except for me, you’re a free man.”

  “What do you want? If I can do it, I’ll do it,” Tyler groveled.

  “Now, let’s not be so hasty as to think I would be so easily deviated from the truth and seeing justice done.”

  “It’d be your word against mine and I have the bruises to show for it. I’ll claim you hurt me so bad, that I would have said anything to stop the pain.”

  “That’s true. A good defense attorney might be able to get the court to throw out your confession and everything that was found because of it. They call it the fruit of the bad tree or poisoned apple, something like that. But then, I don’t work for the police, I work for an attorney who works for the mob. You know, the same mobsters, who are sending the two guys from Detroit to kill you and April because they have decided you’re a loose end.”

  “So what can I do?” Tyler whined.

  “Well, you could go to the police who might do more than park two guys down the block to keep an eye on you. They might even do something to try and keep the hitters from coming through the front door, but not likely. Or you could team up with me to capture them and make sure they inform on the big boss, Anthony Conners.”