The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries

by Laura Belgrave

  Willing him not to say another word, Claudia shifted slightly, just enough to raise her lips to his. They kissed slowly, experimentally. She let his hands glide inside her blouse. One lingered at the silly bow affixed to the clasp on her bra. The other unlocked buttons, pushing the material of her blouse to the side.

  Leave now.

  But she didn’t, and after an agonizing moment her bra fell free. Cool air rushed in, and when his fingers slid across her breasts, then lower, the heat from his hands took her breath away.

  She thought she heard him whimper, then realized the sound was her own. She put a clamp on thought, took a ride on sensation.

  He had four hands, six hands, a dozen. They moved expertly, drawing her from the chair to the floor, finding and undoing buckles and zippers, tugging at elastic, inviting the cold air everywhere.

  And later, when she was putting herself back together, a little shyly, feeling rug burn, groping for her glasses, catching her breath, and raking a hand through her hair, she realized the tension was gone. They’d journeyed to another planet without leaving the room.

  Dennis freshened their iced teas and sat across from Claudia. “Want something to eat?” he asked. “I can throw a sandwich together fast enough.”

  “What? A sandwich?” Claudia showed Dennis a lopsided grin. “Doesn’t tradition call for an omelette?”

  “You watch too many movies,” Dennis replied.

  Claudia’s smile flickered and died. The reference to movies reminded her of the seance video and by extension, Donna Overton’s brutal murder. “Look, I really have to get going,” she said.

  “Things aren’t working out very well for you, are they?”

  “They could be better. The case isn’t going anywhere.”

  “I didn’t mean just the case,” said Dennis. He ran a finger along Claudia’s hand. “The job, the town, Robin. You’re going to bolt when everything’s over, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” Claudia said honestly. “I’m a fish out of water here. I didn’t count on that.”

  “It could be worse,” said Dennis. He smiled. “You could be in Vermont.”

  “That’d be worse? How?”

  “Not only would everyone know what you ate for breakfast before it was digested, but you’d be freezing your butt off on top of it.”

  “Something to consider.”

  “There’s more.” Dennis disappeared for a moment. When he returned, he slid an oversized painting in front of Claudia. “This is why you came here, isn’t it?”

  The picture was of Claudia and Robin settled companionably on lawn chairs in front of their Alice in Wonderland house. Laurel oaks towered beside them. Clouds like mountains rose up behind the house, stout against an azure sky. The painting suggested early morning, when everything still held possibility.

  “It’s beautiful, Dennis,” said Claudia. She’d seen his cartoons, his sketches, some of his book and album covers. But the mastery of what she saw now took her breath away.

  “Take it. It’s for you. I’m selfish and I’m hoping you’ll look at it now and then and still want what you see—and then be bullheaded enough to keep after it.” Dennis pecked Claudia on the cheek. “I hate the idea that you might just be a pleasant interlude in my life.”

  Was it possible to be seduced by a painting? Claudia sipped at her drink and scrounged for words. She thought of a response, discarded it, thought of another. Just as she began to frame an answer, her portable radio crackled from the table.

  Claudia grabbed it and fiddled with the squelch button. As usual, the garble was too indistinct to interpret. The thing needed more than a new battery.

  Dennis sighed and gestured toward a phone. Claudia set the painting down and called in. She listened silently when Peters’ voice came on.

  Eleanor Matheson was missing.

  Chapter 19

  A woman like Eleanor Matheson did not just walk away from her life. Oh, she might want to. She might even talk about it. But she wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it. Breeding, propriety—fear—she could no more dodge them than her own shadow under a full moon.

  Yet the Flagg County sheriff’s investigators were lapping it up. Like puppies at the master’s feet, they sat obediently before Richard Andrew Matheson while he spoke in hushed tones occasionally punctuated by a tremor in his voice. They sipped coffee from dainty cups and murmured sympathy.

  And Claudia had to hand it to the old goat. His performance was riveting, bolstered as it was with red, swollen eyes, uncombed hair, trembling hands. Had he begun to rent his clothes in grief, Claudia would not have been surprised. She wondered how long he had rehearsed, or if he had at all.

  She kept her mouth shut, though. Claudia hadn’t made friends with the Flagg County Sheriff’s Department. Its chief investigator, Monroe Spivey, could boot her off the estate anytime he wanted. Fact was, even though Claudia believed the performance was staged for her, jurisdiction gave all authority to Flagg and none to Indian Run.

  But it was all a load of crap. Matheson wanted them to believe that after an argument with Eleanor she’d surreptitiously packed a bag and slipped away without a word to anyone. Just up and took off.

  Worse, he told them, she’d left without her medication and, well, she simply wouldn’t be able to cope for very long.

  “It’s my fault,” Matheson said in a choked voice. He took a long pull on a cigarette, his face soulfully calculated when he turned tired eyes on Spivey. “I shouldn’t have argued with her. I know how brittle she can be. But she’d stopped going to her shri—psychiatrist. Said she didn’t need him anymore, didn’t need her medication, either. Eleanor had gotten really defensive about how she conducted her life ever since the Indian Run police badgered her about that dead woman. And we—me, mostly—traded a lot of hot words.”

  Spivey shot Claudia a dark look, then turned to Matheson and encouraged him to continue.

  “I didn’t know she’d left until yesterday—it’s a huge ranch and we have separate bedrooms—and then, well, something, pride, I guess, I figured she’d be right back.” Matheson’s eyes implored understanding. Spivey nodded again. “She took the Mercedes—the only car she’d drive and, well, you’ve got to find her, boys. She’s my life.”

  After a well-timed pause, Matheson’s eyes flickered to Claudia. “What worries me especially is that this guy who killed the psychics, the one I read about in the paper—”

  “Tom Markos,” Spivey offered.

  “Yeah, him,” said Matheson. “He’s still out there and from what I hear he’s capable of just about anything. What if Eleanor somehow runs into him? What then?”

  Heads turned toward Claudia. She spoke for the first time, picking words with the care of a homemaker examining tomatoes for bruises. “Mr. Matheson, Tom Markos is a suspect, but we don’t know for a fact that he’s the killer and—”

  “That’s not what your own chief told me, Miss,” said Matheson, a hard edge creeping into his voice. “Chief Suggs told me there’s a warrant out for his arrest.”

  Ah. So it had been Matheson who specifically called Indian Run.

  “The warrant is not a murder indictment,” Claudia said, “and at any event the likelihood of your wife encountering Tom Markos is as remote as a meteor hitting the earth. Markos is on the lam. Believe me, he’s traveling in entirely different circles than your wife.”

  Matheson scoffed.

  So that’s how it played, thought Claudia. Despite his distaste for politics, Suggs had made a point of keeping the Matheson name out of any press accounts of the murders. It simply would not do to rile the man. But word must have trickled out that the rancher and his wife had been questioned and Eleanor’s visits to the medium were probably corridor gossip all the way to Tallahassee by now. It would only be a matter of time before the Matheson name would surface next in the press, and an enterprising reporter could give it a lovely spin.

  But Matheson was no fool. Circumstance dictated that the best defense was a good offense
. Turning up the heat on Markos would deflect any suspicion of Matheson’s own involvement. Wife missing, killer on the run, give it a neat, tidy ending. And make Indian Run the heavy. The wife ran because she was demoralized, emotionally beat up by the Indian Run cops.

  Sure. If Matheson couldn’t keep the taint from his name, then by God he would turn things to his advantage. It worked for Betty Ford; she wasn’t a drunk, she was just overwhelmed by circumstance. In the end, she became an angel of mercy. People flocked to the clinic bearing her name. Drug addiction, alcoholism, dependency of any sort, they made for good public relations for those who knew how to work the media.

  Matheson did.

  Claudia suspected that when all was said and done, Eleanor Matheson would be “found” in a clinic somewhere, drugged to the hilt. Secretly and voluntarily—certainly under an assumed name—the story would be that she had checked herself in after a few tormented nights on her own—aware that her husband had been right, but too embarrassed to go to him. That’s how Matheson might play it, and he had enough connections to make it work.

  Or Eleanor would be found dead. If Matheson was skillful enough, she might not be found at all.

  Whatever the scenario, Matheson’s star would rise in a swell of public sympathy.

  While Matheson nattered on, Claudia excused herself. No one urged her to stay. Matheson’s eyes reflected triumph; he had made his point.

  Quietly, she headed toward the front entrance where her car was parked, but then circled around back, letting herself in through the French doors off the patio. The king would hold court for at least another thirty minutes, she figured. Plenty of time to peek into Eleanor’s bedroom.

  The room was something out of a doll house. Silk curtains, canopied bed, roman bathtub, a vanity with marble counters and gold fixtures—even the deliberate scent of lilac hung in the air.

  Claudia poked around. Cosmetics appeared untouched. Drawers showed neat stacks of undergarments and lingerie. Inside the closet, a climate-controlled room that rivaled Claudia’s entire bedroom in size, stood a six-piece matching set of Louis Vuitton luggage. Clothes hung precisely so, no untoward gaps between them.

  Nothing suggested flight.

  Of course, Claudia reasoned, Eleanor might have taken a suitcase from elsewhere. In an anxious state, she might easily have overlooked some essentials. Indeed, it was possible she intended to purchase what she needed when she arrived at whatever destination she had in mind.

  But this was a woman whose days drew shape from routine. She chaired community programs, organized events, planned major parties. Even her visits to Donna Overton had fallen on the same days at the same hours. Little about Eleanor Matheson reflected the kind of spontaneity her husband expected the police to accept.

  Trouble was, they would accept it. They would pursue the leads Matheson fed them. They would find Eleanor when Matheson wanted her found, if he wanted her found—and they wouldn’t start here. Claudia doubted they would even make the cursory check she was making now.

  Hell, Matheson was an important figure in Flagg County. His influence could mean the difference between a “yes” vote or a “no” vote on a fatter budget for the sheriff’s department. A carefully placed call could make or break careers.

  No one messed with Mr. Matheson, and certainly not when a scum bucket like Markos could take the fall.

  After skirting the Matheson entourage, Claudia returned to her car and headed back to Indian Run. She arrived in time to hear the news: Peters had come back with a warrant and with it, Suggs and Moody had tossed Markos’ trailer. Without even working up a sweat they’d found a blue jean shirt covered with what looked like crusted blood.

  Chapter 20

  The rest of the week dragged. By Friday, Chief Mac Suggs was throwing new work on Claudia’s desk. Peters, Carella, and Moody were returned to uniform and their regular shifts. Neither Tom Markos nor Eleanor Matheson had surfaced and as far as Suggs was concerned, all that remained to conclude the murder investigations was paperwork and, of course, picking Markos up. Suggs was confident that would happen soon.

  “The bastard can’t hide forever,” he told Claudia in a celebratory mood, his tone a little smug. “He’s hotter’n a jalapeno pepper.”

  That much was true. Markos’ scowling face appeared daily in newspapers and on TV. The poor quality of the photograph the media used—a 1990 jail mug shot—exaggerated the sinister lines around the man’s eyes, giving him a Charles Manson look. And though news stories carefully referred to Markos only as a “suspect wanted for questioning in connection with two murders,” no one doubted that the big man was anything but a brutal killer who was to be feared. The stories made much of his arrest record; they documented his role in the distribution of drugs through Indian Run.

  All that Suggs held back from the media was the stained shirt. Leuco malachite tests proved the stain was blood, and subsequent lab analysis matched it with Overton’s. In court, the shirt would become key evidence.

  Matheson scored headlines, too. In a news conference carefully timed to make the most of television’s six o’clock deadlines, the grieving husband immediately offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of his wife, plus a $10,000 reward for anyone who led arresting officers to Markos. He told reporters he had no reason to believe Markos had anything to do with his wife’s disappearance, but because he offered rewards for turning up both, the link was irrevocably established—and Matheson’s political position solidified. Reporters gave it great press. Precisely because Matheson denied a tie at the same time he offered a reward for Markos’ head, they were certain that Matheson—and the police—were withholding something that definitely showed the burly fish camp employee as responsible for Eleanor Matheson’s disappearance. Denial, to the press, was just another word for confirmation.

  Markos was a dead man. Matheson was a hero. Claudia was, well overrated.

  Suggs told her to leave things alone, and so she did.

  * * *

  “Isn’t this great?” Dennis asked as he looped their second bass of the day on a stringer. “Couple more of these and the heck with turkey for Thanksgiving. We’ll have stuffed fish instead.”

  Claudia murmured something appropriate.

  It was Sunday. They were in the heel of Little Arrow Lake on Dennis’ new bass boat, which he’d dubbed “The Hershey Bar.” Boats, he told Claudia, were supposed to have feminine names.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, a breeze was just starting to throw up a welcome chill. The fragrant scent of swamp lilies clung to the air. Now and then, a cormorant skittered by. Great herons took flight, their graceful necks like aerial steering columns. As she watched Dennis cast out again, Claudia thought it plenty sufficient to sit in quiet contemplation and allow the marshy environment to dispense its magic. But Dennis was here to fish, and Claudia struggled to get into the spirit of it, admittedly less awed by what the lake could produce from its depths than by what it boasted from its banks. She looked distractedly at her own line, but it wasn’t moving. It hadn’t moved in the last hour.

  Downright bored finally, Claudia gazed a half mile north across the lake. She and Dennis had scouted there earlier, and Claudia marveled now that from where she sat, nothing showed but dense forest that stretched the length of the lake. Distance rendered invisible the tangled water hyacinths that crept irrepressibly toward the bank. Nothing showed of the bank’s irregular hedges—massive thickets of horned beak-rush and sword grass, cattails and sawgrass, some towering to ten feet. The bank was at its most lush; in spring, a maintenance crew would be dispatched to harvest the foliage. Just enough would be cropped to allow anglers closer casting into choice fishing ground. The measure riled the alligators, but it pleased the paying customers and of course, that was the whole point.

  Right now, though, the foliage was thickly matted and tough. And even up close, if you weren’t looking you’d never notice that just beyond a particular wedge of nasty water weed was a small
recess that allowed access to the bank and a crude clearing among the trees some ten feet in. Claudia knew it was there only because Buddy Lindstrom told her about it. And the deal was, if Dennis wanted her to fish with him, he had to bring her there first.

  Like a tourist scouting shells along a beach, Claudia had sorted through the clearing, Markos’ place of business. The ground was trampled by footprints and littered with discarded cigarette butts and beer cans. Two glassine bags, empty but for powdery residue, were wedged into the fork of a red maple like coins jamming a vending machine. Claudia slid what she found into paper evidence bags for the lab while Dennis watched and kept an uneasy eye out for alligators.

  “Good place for commerce,” he commented at one point. “Your boy’s pretty clever. It’s not visible from the lake, and unless you’re willing to get your feet wet you’d never get out of your boat.”

  “Uh-huh,” Claudia said. She looked at her own sneakers, black with mud. “From what Buddy Lindstrom said, this is where most trading went on.” She pointed into the woods, past maples and oaks and a cluster of impossibly tall cabbage palms. “About a quarter mile through these woods puts you right on a secondary road that skirts the town. Whoever distributed to Markos would come in off the road, hide a vehicle in the woods, and meet him here.”

  “And Markos, I take it, was more than willing to get his feet wet?” Dennis asked. He watched Claudia slide a cigarette butt into an envelope. “He’d just motor on out here like he owned the place and make a pick-up?”

  Claudia nodded. “Hell, yes. There’s good money in drugs. Markos would pull his boat out of sight and cut deals over beers. Then he’d load the stuff in his boat, motor back to the fish camp and at a convenient moment put the drugs in his van. Later, they were stashed behind Donna Overton’s medicine chest.”

  “Nice racket,” said Dennis.

  “Probably small time by Miami standards, but sizable enough for a place like Indian Run.” Claudia watched Dennis slap something away from his neck. She hid a grin. “Buddy had no trouble giving up Markos in exchange for a plea bargain that’ll put him back on the streets in a year or two.”