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

by Laura Belgrave

  The Imperial’s brakes felt mushy, but otherwise the car impressed her. It soldiered through flooded intersections like a humvee, and twice she used it to nose stranded motorists in lesser vehicles onto safer ground. It wasn’t a cocoon, however. Rain spilled through a back window that in the absence of air conditioning had to remain cracked open to minimize condensation on the windshield. The car smelled like a locker room. Claudia wrinkled her nose and peered past the shuddering wipers, cursing the meteorologists who had predicted light showers, but inching forward, always inching forward.

  * * *

  Lights glowed dimly from inside some of the estate homes in Feather Ridge, but most appeared uninhabited—and probably were. The houses in Indian Run’s most exclusive community were typically winter retreats for those who could afford them, and few of its residents chose to stick around in the sticky summer. Claudia drove slowly, studying street signs and navigating around puddles that in some cases flowed curb to curb. Her last visit to Feather Ridge had ended in an arrest. This one wouldn’t, not yet, but a reconnaissance on the location would reduce the likelihood of trouble when it did.

  She pressed her lips together. The explanation sounded good to her ears and she’d sold the chief on it, too. Time wasn’t on their side. They needed to be ready to move on events soon. Logic dictated extraordinary caution. Blah, blah, blah—she almost bought it herself. But coming here . . . the idea had seized her in Hemmer’s house and gripped her with an intensity that only in the solitude of her car would she concede smacked dangerously of obsession. Point of fact, she was here because she wanted to see where the psycho son of a bitch behind the dead bodies lived.

  The homes in Feather Ridge had little in common with those in Willow Whisper. Residents weren’t required to choose from among model homes. They hired their own architects and were governed by their own unspoken assumption that rich people understood aesthetics in a way that less moneyed people did not. If squabbles arose over colors or landscaping, they rose unobtrusively and were settled quietly. Homeowners association? No, thank you. Not here. Gates? Declasse.

  Far from the street, Boyd Manning’s estate erupted from the ground between pine trees and artificial hills that must have cost a fortune to build and sod. It stood three stories tall, a modernistic structure of glass and sharply angled balconies, apparently designed to simulate a mountain view. A man-made stream wound around the hills, which may have been pleasant on pristine days but now overflowed and made passage treacherous.

  Claudia took it painfully slow, giving the car just enough acceleration so that it wouldn’t stall out. For a hundred yards from the street Manning’s driveway stretched straight and true, but then abruptly began to angle up to follow the path of the stream. She held her breath and inched the Imperial through water that at times crested to her door. Once again she toyed with a retreat, but turning around would be next to impossible except from higher ground.

  Neighboring structures weren’t visible from Manning’s property. Feather Ridge estates claimed two to four acres, but even if his house sat on a patch of earth only large enough to contain it, a barricade of ten-foot hedges concealed the property. The hills, the trees, the hedges—all of it cast shadow that contributed to the gloom of the day. It was five-fifteen, but might just as well have been midnight.

  Manning’s driveway ended in the shape of an inverted Q, allowing for parking in front of the estate and discreet access to a garage at the side. By the time Claudia got there, her hands were cramped from clenching the steering wheel. She idled for a minute to get her bearings, then parked on soggy grass behind a cluster of trees at the edge of the driveway. She sat and flexed her fingers. The house was dark except for a dim glow from the first floor on the side farthest from her. Kitchen? Dining room? Clearly it wasn’t an optimal day for entertaining, but three cars were parked in the driveway. She immediately recognized Gloria Addison’s Alfa Romeo. Another car looked vaguely familiar, but the rain obscured detail and she could tell only that it was light in color. The third looked dark blue or black, but brought no recall whatsoever.

  Claudia picked up her camera. She fiddled with settings and focused at the vehicles through the Imperial’s window. She snapped a few pictures, then put the camera down, careful not to set it on the damp bandanna still on her seat. As visuals went, she now had some. The house. Cars in the driveway. But she couldn’t make out the license tags and those she wanted badly. She sighed. A rain slicker was balled up in the trunk, but she’d be soaked by the time she retrieved it and anyway, it was orange, with the word “police” emblazoned on the back. If anyone peeked out Manning’s windows, it would signal her presence as effectively as a knock on the door.

  Wind whistled through the rear window in the Imperial. Claudia listened to it for a moment, muttering at her folly. Then she squirmed against the seat and awkwardly stuffed a small notebook and pen in her pants pocket, hoping they’d stay dry long enough to scribble the tag numbers. On the count of three she thrust the door open and half ran, half skidded toward the vehicles, hunched to protect the notebook.

  She squatted behind the dark car, worked the notebook and pen from her pocket, and wrote down the license number. Before she was even done the characters began to bleed on the page. Quickly, she duck-walked to the lighter car and started to scrawl the tag when she realized where she’d seen the car before. Her heart banged so loudly in her chest she was surprised she couldn’t hear it. But then, the rain impeded all sound but its own, including the swish of footsteps behind her and the thump of something hard against her head. She slipped noiselessly to the slick pavement, not hearing. Not feeling.

  Nothing.

  Chapter 34

  “You’re an uninvited guest, and an unwelcome one.”

  Claudia lay prone on a couch in clothes still wet. She didn’t know the voice, but through eyes glazed with pain recognized the silver-haired man speaking. Lyle Hendricks.

  “I didn’t know who you were when I hit you, but I do now.” He gestured toward Boyd Manning, who stood rigidly a few feet away. “My stepson isn’t good for much, but he was able to tell me that.”

  Incredibly, she wasn’t bound, but when he saw her struggle to sit he said, “Careful, careful. Give it a minute. Your head’s not bleeding anymore but if you move too fast you’ll feel a stab of pain that’ll make you wish you were dead. I did a tour of duty in Vietnam with the Marines—early Vietnam, before the public understood the atrocities on both sides. I learned how to inflict pain. I learned how to receive it. Incidentally, my name is Lyle Hendricks, or is that redundant information?”

  Now, when it no longer mattered, every sound seemed magnified. She heard a clock ticking, classical music turned low, and against the windows the steady drum of rain, always the rain. She didn’t feel capable of words yet, but slowly nodded a yes to Hendricks’s question. He wouldn’t have identified himself if he thought she didn’t already know who he was. No point in lying. Not yet.

  “I imagine you haven’t fully absorbed how it is you’ve come to find yourself in surprisingly familiar circumstances. What was it? A week ago Hemmer had you hostage? Two?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “There’s a sensor built into the driveway. And cameras discreetly placed on the property as well. When someone drives over the sensor, an alert sounds in the house. The rain defeated the cameras, but not the sensor. We knew someone was coming.”

  “The chief of police knows I’m here.” Claudia didn’t know if she actually spoke the words or just thought them, but Hendricks chuckled.

  “No, actually he doesn’t. He thinks you tried to come out, even sent an officer to check, but . . . well, look. You’ve been out for a while. We had time to conceal your car. Actually, all but Boyd’s have been hidden away and when—”

  “They looked for me?” She struggled to push to an elbow. The pain nearly blinded her, and she fell back.

  “Shh, shh, shh . . . you need more time,” Hendricks said.

  The e
ffort to talk pushed the taste of vomit to her throat. She swallowed thickly. “They’ll be back,” she managed.

  “Oh, I don’t know that I would count on that. Phone lines are down all over. Drivers are stranded everywhere. And the officer who came—some kid named Richardson?—he told me your own radios are hit and miss, even in good weather.” Hendricks paused. “Nice boy. He left with the impression you’re stuck somewhere and can’t get in touch. So there’s some concern, but not alarm. And by the time they are alarmed? This’ll all be over. Now close your eyes and sleep.”

  She did.

  * * *

  When she came to the second time she heard the same sounds as before, but also voices murmuring in the background. Despite their low tones, the voices carried urgency and Claudia struggled to play possum against an impulse to open her eyes and shift her weight. She resisted, buying time to think and assess her injuries.

  Deja vu, her head throbbed. Hendricks had nailed her in nearly the same spot as Hemmer. Her right knee hurt as well, probably from the fall. Surprisingly, the nausea had subsided. She drew some comfort from that, though not enough to believe that when she stood—if she ever did again—the urge to vomit might not return.

  What role Hendricks played in Willow Whisper’s horrors remained an unknown. The state’s Division of Corporations indirectly revealed him as the majority owner of Hercules, but it was a distinction so veiled by layers of AfLUX holdings that it would never leap out—not without tediously linking one business to another, reading through lists of filings, company officers, and agents of record. Claudia had Hemmer to thank for pushing her to the task. Notes in his Twister box showed that during his skirmish with the homeowners association he contemplated suing the builder. He never followed through, but one cryptic note he’d written to himself said, “Conspiracy? Corruption at top? Trace true ownership.” In light of Hemmer’s final actions anyone else would see his note and others like it as the twisted ramblings of a sick mind. Claudia had learned better.

  “I see you’re awake.” Hendricks’s voice was smooth and unhurried. “Sit slowly.” As if concerned for her well-being he talked her up with “easy, easy—not too fast,” and then after she complied said, “There you go. Already the color is returning to your face.”

  He seemed pleased, and Claudia sensed that her longevity might depend on her ability to downplay weakness. And she did feel stronger, more than she expected to, but less than she hoped.

  She zeroed in on the gun in his hand, a .45 held casually at his side. She spotted her .38 second, parked on a handsome wet bar made of cherry wood beside him. He saw her looking.

  “My stepson has good taste in furniture. He has lousy taste in women. If he had listened to me on the second, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. Or at least we’d be in less of a mess. Or do you know that, too?”

  “Enlighten me,” Claudia said.

  Hendricks smiled. “Don’t feel you need to hide your fear on my account. Nothing personal, but you’re going to die in a tragic car accident today. If not for the rain, you’d already be dead.”

  No regret in his words. No anxiety. If anything, just a hitch of annoyance in his tone. She’d blundered onto something and now he had to deal with it.

  Tragic car accident.

  Claudia felt her breathing go shallow, opening the door to a full-scale panic attack. She fought it, took deep breaths.

  Think, think, think.

  In a way, he’d delivered good news. The gun was for control, but he didn’t want to use it; too much blood, too much forensics evidence. No. Better to wait out the storm and stage a car wreck when the roads had gone from flooded to merely dangerously slick. Sure. Wrap the Imperial around a tree or ditch it in a canal—something like that. But it was good news, good news, because it bought more time. Time was advantage. She shuddered once more, then stopped.

  Hendricks was frowning toward a window. “I control a lot of things. I’m accustomed to it. Unfortunately, no one can control Mother Nature.” His eyes settled on her again. “Would you like something to drink, Detective Hershey? Scotch? Bourbon? Wine?”

  Alcohol might ignite the nausea. But Hendricks wasn’t a man to ask for milk.

  “Wine would be nice,” she said. “Red, if you have it.”

  Claudia watched him casually set his gun on the wet bar and pour two glasses of wine from a decanter. He hummed lightly to the classical music. To look at them, her on the couch, him at the bar, you’d think they were friends. But if she tried to spring at him he could retrieve the .45 with leisure and still shoot her before she was fully on her feet. It might be his last recourse, but he would use it.

  Hendricks took his gun from the bar and crossed the short distance to the couch. He handed her one of the glasses, then offered her a cigarette. She accepted and he lit one for both of them, then stepped back, once again set his gun on the bar, and leaned against it. He watched while she inhaled. He ignored Manning completely, who stood as silently to the side as before. Claudia took a small sip of wine and blanked him out. She had one enemy in the room.

  “The wine’s excellent,” she said. Smoke curled from her cigarette. She held it up. “I take it this is the proverbial last cigarette before execution?”

  “Detective, you’re getting way ahead of things. And who knows? Maybe I’ll find some reason not to kill you.” He smiled. “Maybe you’ll kill me first, eh?”

  Claudia pointed at their guns on the bar. “You have all the toys.”

  “True. I have something else, too.” He turned to Manning. “Get them.”

  “Lyle, we don’t have to—”

  “I said get them!” he roared.

  Manning froze momentarily, then murmured, “All right, all right.”

  “And Boyd,” said Hendricks, just as his stepson moved to leave, “don’t challenge me again, understand?” His voice had dropped back to a conversational tone, but his eyes stayed cold with anger as he watched Manning stalk into a hallway.

  “Kids,” said Claudia. “They can twist the screws better than anyone.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Hendricks replied. “This one—” he nodded toward the hall—“he’s a real piece of work.”

  Claudia nodded encouragingly. There they were, just two soccer moms at a match, discussing their obstinate children. “You’ve got other sons, right?”

  “Three real sons, all of them carrying my blood, all of them in my businesses now. Boyd’s mother—my second wife, dead now—she spoiled him. It’s why he’s like he is.”

  “Mmm.”

  She waited for Hendricks to continue. When he didn’t she dropped the topic and asked for an ashtray. Now was not the time to push. Later, though? Maybe. Hendricks treasured control, but he’d lost it for a second, hinting at a vulnerability. She thanked him when he gave her an ashtray, then settled back into the couch and waited for whatever came next.

  * * *

  That Manning returned with Gloria Addison was less a revelation than an expectation. Claudia had seen her car outside. But she didn’t expect to see Addison with a gag in her mouth and her hands tied behind her back. It stunned her, though not with the impact of seeing the mayor beside her, likewise tied and gagged. She felt fear percolate into something close to terror. On her own, she had a chance. But the last time she had the responsibility of victims . . .

  Don’t go there.

  Hendricks instructed Manning to seat Addison and Lane in opposing arm chairs beside a fireplace. He regarded them dispassionately, then took a swallow of wine and turned to Claudia. “I’ve surprised you,” he said.

  She shrugged, fought for composure. “A little,” she said. “I get Addison, sort of. But the mayor . . .”

  “He’s a Judas.”

  Lane vigorously shook his head, but Hendricks brushed him off with a wave. “I’ve been his biggest campaign contributor—not directly, of course, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, he’s profited politically and he could’ve continued to.�
� He gestured at Claudia with his wine glass, already nearly empty. “I’ve put more people in positions of power than you can imagine.”

  “I have no doubt.” And she didn’t.

  “But this little son of a bitch, would you believe he had the audacity to come here and whimper about the negative impact I’m having on him?” Hendricks’s eyes flashed. “I gave him Willow Whisper. I gave him my dickhead stepson to run it. But the minute there’s pressure? He folds, and . . . well, you’ve heard the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?”

  She said yes.

  “Well, that’s the situation with Lane. He knows just enough to be dangerous. I can’t have him shooting off his mouth about things.”

  “Like the building inspector. Frank Tinnerman.”

  Hendricks snorted. “There’s another loser.”

  “You mean ‘was.’”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “He’s under the patio, isn’t he? It’s why no one dared let Hemmer tear it up.”

  “It was expedient. In business, you learn to do what’s expedient. Tinnerman was squeezing us for more money.”

  “Why didn’t you just stay with the town’s original building inspector?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.

  Hendricks scoffed. “Because, Detective, we needed someone with a less critical eye. The state’s gone way overboard on building requirements. They’re expensive. That old guy—what’s his name?”

  “Edgar Wiles.”

  “Right. He’d of held us up for months, dickering over every board, every nail, every pipe. Time is money.”

  “Ah. That’s where Mayor Lane came in. He eased Wiles out for you, and eased Tinnerman in. Then Tinnerman got too pricey.”

  The delight on Hendricks’s face seemed genuine. “You’re bright and straightforward. You would’ve been an asset in business, Detective.” He glowered at Manning. “Pay attention, Boyd. You could learn something from this woman.”