Color Me Murder

by Krista Davis

“They left the hospital? Where are they going?”

  “I have no idea. But . . .”

  “Tail them! Can you follow them?”

  “It’s too late for that. What’s going on, Florrie?”

  “I think Scott killed Delbert. We have to get Veronica away from him.”

  “Whoa! Not the answer I expected. They’ve got a big head start. It would be a fluke if we saw them.”

  “Let me know if you do.”

  I hung up. Where was Jonquille? I was about to call him when my phone rang. Veronica was calling. Thank heaven!

  “Veronica! I was worried when I didn’t hear from you. Everything okay?”

  “Listen carefully, little Florrie.” I recognized Scott’s terse voice. “Veronica is with me. Bring Jacquie to the tow path on the canal, and you can have Veronica.”

  My heart raced but I tried to play it cool. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t play stupid with me. I know Jacquie is there.”

  “You mean Maxwell’s second wife? I haven’t seen her.” I could hear my blood pounding in my ears.

  “Then say bye-bye to your sister.”

  Someone near him made muffled sounds. He must have gagged her!

  “Wait! I’ll find Jacquie, but I don’t know where she is. I need some time.”

  “Well played, Florrie. But I’m not giving you time to call your cop friend. If a single police officer or cop car shows up, it’s curtains for Veronica.”

  He hung up.

  My hands were shaking when I phoned Jonquille.

  “Hi, Florrie! I’m on my way.”

  “I think Scott murdered Delbert. He has Veronica and wants to trade her for Jacquie.”

  “Slow down. Where is Scott?” Jonquille sounded calm but serious.

  “In his car. He said to meet them on the tow path.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. How are you supposed to find Jacquie?”

  “He thinks she’s here. And if any cops show up, Veronica is dead.”

  “Listen to me, Florrie. Let us handle this. There’s nothing you can do. Stay put, okay? It will only make things worse if you’re running around down at the tow path.”

  In my heart, I knew he was right. But I didn’t want to wait at home wringing my hands like some maiden in distress. “Eric? You’ll save her, won’t you?”

  “I’ll do my best, Florrie.”

  I ended the call feeling helpless. I barely had time to pace to the French doors and back when I heard a knock at the front door.

  “Florrie?”

  That was Veronica’s voice!

  “Florrie, let me in. Ugh.”

  I peered out. Veronica stood on the other side of the door. Where was the guard? I was 100 percent certain that she wasn’t alone. Scott must be with her. I had to let her in. But before I did, I tucked a chef’s knife into a partially open kitchen drawer where I could reach it easily.

  The second I unlocked the door, Scott pushed it open. Veronica stumbled inside, one high heel on, the other missing. Her eyes expressed her terror.

  I shoved her behind me and backed away from Scott. While his frantic gaze darted around the carriage house, I backed slowly toward the fireplace. Keeping my eyes on him, I gently prodded Veronica to shuffle backward. My hope was to reach the French doors and escape into the garden. The odds of us getting out of the gate to the driveway were slim, but I didn’t see any other way.

  Veronica sniffled behind me, murmuring, “What are we going to do? We need time to find Jacquie.”

  That gave me an idea. It was a long shot at best.

  “Jacquie, run!” I screamed, hoping he would turn long enough for us to hurry out through the garden.

  He fell for it and ran to the door, his back to us. He paused, and my hope faded. But then he dashed outside, and I knew I had to get Veronica out of there.

  But as I turned, a hand reached over my mouth and tugged me backward.

  Jacquie’s voice whispered in my ear. “Don’t make a sound. Hurry!” She pushed me into a tiny space, and I found myself climbing down a ladder. Jacquie closed the door above, and I heard the latch slide in place.

  It was a tight spot for the three of us. Jacquie Liebhaber placed a finger over her lips in a signal not to make any noise. Veronica looked terrified. Peaches was nonchalant.

  I made the universal okay symbol by making a circle with my thumb and forefinger so Veronica would know we were safe. At least I hoped we were. I untied her hands.

  We could hear Scott roaring. Books flew. I suspected some of my beloved clocks crashed to the floor.

  He stomped up the stairs, screaming, “You can’t outfox me. I know you’re here.” Moments later, he pounded down them. “Jacquie told me about the hidden passage. Come out, come out,” he sang. “You have two minutes to produce Jacquie. Two minutes.”

  There was silence. Jacquie, Veronica, and I gazed at one another.

  “Time’s up! Send Jacquie out or die in flames.”

  Seconds ticked by.

  “Okay, so that’s how you want to die. You see, I don’t have to produce Jacquie, all I have to do is make sure she’s dead. With all this wood, the place ought to go up in flames very quickly. I’ll look the hero for trying to rescue you. And it will save me the trouble of killing you individually.”

  I turned to Jacquie and pointed back. It seemed like a good time to head through the tunnel to the mansion.

  But at that very moment, we heard music. More specifically “Love Me Tender,” sung badly off-key to a strumming guitar.

  If our situation hadn’t been so dire, we would have been trying to stifle laughter.

  And then it stopped.

  We waited for an eternity that was probably only minutes. I sniffed the air fearing Scott had started a fire and left. But I didn’t hear crackling or smell smoke.

  The next sound was truly music to my ears. Sergeant Eric Jonquille called, “Florrie! Florrie! Are you here?”

  Jacquie winked at me. When we heard Jonquille dashing upstairs, Jacquie urged Veronica, Peaches, and me out of hiding.

  Jonquille ran down the stairs, swung me up in his arms, and held me tight. “I thought I’d lost you,” he breathed into my ear.

  It wasn’t until he released his grip on me that I saw Scott through the open door.

  He lay on the ground outside, being handcuffed by a cop, while Norman and Jim looked on.

  I scooped up Peaches so she wouldn’t run out to the street and walked outside clutching her in my arms.

  “Norman? Jim? What are you doing here?”

  Jim beamed at me. “I sure am glad to see that you’re all right.”

  Norman appeared somewhat confused.

  A cop helped Scott to his feet. Scott wasn’t my type to begin with, but I couldn’t help thinking how much anger distorted his face. If Helen or Veronica had seen him like this, neither one would ever have been attracted to him.

  Veronica walked up to him. “How could you do that to me? I thought . . . I thought you were special. Did you only go out with me because my sister worked at Color Me Read?”

  Scott said, “I thought I would marry you.”

  “Oh please!” she cried. “Did you intend to carry me off to the altar bound and gagged?”

  Scott sounded sincere when he said, “Delbert told Lance and me what he did to some woman at work using her social media accounts to bad-mouth people and get her fired. He thought it was brilliant of him. One night we were at Club Neon, and he pointed you out to me. I couldn’t believe he would be that cruel to someone so beautiful. I bought you a drink, and we hit it off. I didn’t know anything about your sister.”

  “You thought I was beautiful?” asked Veronica in a wistful voice.

  Was she nuts? “Veronica! He was going to kill you! You never mentioned to her that Delbert was your roommate?” I asked.

  “I’m not stupid! She never would have gone out with me if she knew that.”

  “What I’d like to know is why
you and Delbert went to Color Me Read that night. What did you want there?” I asked.

  “Jacquie used to talk about the emerald and diamond necklace that she wore when she was Mrs. Maxwell. She said it was like being royalty. I found an old picture of her wearing it. It looked to me like the stones would be worth a lot if I broke down the necklace and sold them individually. Plus, they would be impossible to trace back to the necklace. I was planning to use one of the diamonds in an engagement ring for Veronica.”

  “Aww,” Veronica cooed. “How romantic.”

  “A stolen diamond. That’s what you find romantic?” Good grief! I hated to think what might have happened if Veronica had married Scott.

  Scott continued, “And then when I lived with Delbert, he bragged about that necklace and how he would inherit it someday. He thought it was worth millions. I talked to my dad about it, and he thought it was probably hidden in the hooch hatch in Color Me Read. His company did some work there a long time ago and he remembered it. So I stopped by the store to scope it out and met Helen. It was easy to get her a little loaded at a bar and swipe her key to make a copy. I figured there was a code to shut off an alarm, but after a little wine, she blabbed that.”

  “You fought with Delbert over the necklace?” I guessed.

  “No. It wasn’t that way at all. That night, I dressed in black and let myself into the store. I found the hatch and opened it. I jumped in, and suddenly, a spear barely missed me.” He shook his head.

  “It was really close. It was almost my corpse you found there. The tip stuck in the floor. For a second, I thought the professor had booby-trapped the place until I turned around and saw Delbert above me. Lance and I had kicked him out of the house, and I knew he wasn’t going to have a beer with me and laugh about finding me there. He was holding a vicious-looking hatchet.”

  Looking at Jonquille as he talked, Scott said, “He pulled his arm back like he was going to throw it, and I instinctively grabbed that spear and let it fly. It was me or him. I knew it was a fight to the death. Delbert was seriously crazy. At the precise moment that I threw the spear, he turned to run, and it hit him in the back. He screamed and kept going up the stairs and along the hallway toward an office. He was bleeding something awful. He fell face-first in the hallway, moaning. I took the hatchet away from him, wiped it off, and put it in the office. When I came back, he was dead. By that time I was panicking. I dragged him to the hatch, threw him inside, and tried to tuck the carpet back in place. I got out of there in a huge hurry.” He sniffled.

  “I didn’t know what to do. Dad had gone out of town to try to win enough money to keep the creditors at bay. Gambling is addictive, and he was sick. He thought it was the only way he could get back on his feet. He had mortgaged everything, hadn’t made payments in months and months, and he was so desperate that he was borrowing money from scumbags. That’s when I got worried. They started coming around demanding payments of usurious loans. They took advantage of him and were charging 50 percent interest. It’s impossible to pay back that kind of loan. I had to do something.”

  He locked his eyes on Veronica. “I was a little hysterical. I mean, I never killed anyone before. Dad had come home early because he lost again and had nothing more to bid with. He hoped I had found the necklace, but I had messed up big-time. And then a really nasty guy came by to collect what he was owed. To get rid of him, Dad told him about the five-million-dollar insurance policy he had on Jacquie. The guy said he’d do the job, but he’d better get the money he was owed. Jacquie never came home that night. We were afraid he had kidnapped her and killed her.”

  Scott took a deep breath and released it slowly. “The next day, Dad went online and found out Jacquie had emptied bank accounts. She had wiped them clean. We didn’t know what to do. Did she take the money on her own? Or did someone force her to take the money? So I started nosing around her desk and found her book of Internet passwords. I logged on as her and used Find My iPhone. Surprise, surprise. Turned out she was at the Maxwell mansion.”

  “So you knew where she was?” I asked. “Then why did you hire a private investigator?”

  “We didn’t. Things were getting worse and worse for Dad. We didn’t even have the money to hire a decent PI. When Dad’s girlfriend was visiting, I borrowed her car and drove over to Georgetown. I figured Jacquie was staying in the carriage house in back of the mansion. She loved that place. I got rid of the guard by paying some kid to deliver a pizza to the mansion, bumped the lock, and switched the wires on the refrigerator. Then I waited to hear if she was dead.”

  Chapter 38

  “So it was just plain greed?” asked Jim.

  “Don’t you understand? It was never about the money,” said Scott.

  Jonquille and I shared a look.

  “It wasn’t like I was greedy or needed to be super rich. The money was only a vehicle to save my dad. Like Veronica wound up as a commodity that I could exchange for Jacquie. I didn’t want to hurt Veronica. But I had a hunch that Florrie would do anything to save her, just like I would have done anything to save my dad. But I wasn’t able to protect him from those goons. When Dad called me this afternoon, he could barely speak. I drove to his house and found him on the floor, beaten to a pulp. He was barely recognizable, but still breathing. I called the ambulance, and while I was at the hospital, I knew what I had to do. There was no choice. I had to strangle Jacquie and dump her into the river. It was the only way I could get that kind of money.”

  An ambulance arrived to whisk the guard to a hospital.

  “Is he going to be okay?” I asked Jonquille.

  “I hope so. Apparently Scott pretended to be your friend, and when the guard walked to your door, Scott choked him from behind. But he only succeeded in knocking him unconscious.”

  The ambulance backed out of the mansion driveway only to be replaced by a police car that took Scott to the station.

  Jonquille ushered us all inside.

  I couldn’t help myself. I boiled water for tea to soothe our nerves and brought out the strawberry cream torte while Jonquille tried to piece everything together.

  He pointed at Veronica. “I think this story probably starts with you.”

  “I should have listened to my big sister. I went to the hospital to be with Scott. His father was a mess. I’ve never seen anyone look like that. They’re not sure if he’ll survive the night. So we were there in the waiting room when Helen and Bob found us. I didn’t want to believe Florrie when she told me Scott was dating Helen. Well, Helen was furious and gave him an earful—in the waiting room in front of everyone! Scott said we were leaving, but when we got in the car, he bound my wrists and put a gag over my mouth.”

  She closed her eyes and heaved a heavy breath. “I thought it was the end. I was so scared. When we got here, he took the gag off, but told me if I screwed up, Florrie would be dead. He choked the guard and forced me to ask Florrie to let me in.”

  Jonquille gazed at Norman. “Who are you?”

  “Uh, I didn’t know anything about any of this,” said Norman. “I just came to woo Florrie.” He gestured toward the guitar he brought with him.

  Jonquille smiled. “So you’re Norman Spratt.”

  Norman blinked repeatedly as though he was having trouble figuring out what was happening.

  Jim stopped eating for a moment. “I was walking along the sidewalk when I saw Scott drive by with Veronica gagged and looking scared. He turned up the mansion driveway. Never trusted that guy. He always looked shifty to me. I eased up the driveway pretty slow because I wasn’t sure what was going on. And then Norman came along with his guitar, and I thought the whole thing kind of peculiar, so I followed Norman. I spotted the guard lying on the ground right away, so I knew something was up. Then old Norman here ignored the guard and commenced to playing his guitar and singing ‘Love Me Tender’! I stood next to the door, expecting Scott to open it to see who was singing, and sure enough, he did just that. I jumped him and punched him in the head a few tim
es to take him down.”

  “What were you doing up this way?” I asked. “I thought you always headed for the canal at night.”

  “There’s a bakery a few blocks away that gives away all their stale bread on Sunday nights. I never miss it.”

  I looked at Jonquille. “How did you know to come here instead of going to the tow path on the canal?”

  “I’d like to sound brilliant, but I didn’t know. We put everyone on alert and sent extra cops down that way. But I had a feeling Scott was craftier than that. He knew you would call me. When you said the name Emily Branscom, I knew it rang a bell. I went over to the district police station tonight and did a little digging. I wrote Emily a ticket for parking in a no-parking zone right down the street.”

  I shrugged. “So?”

  “It was on the day someone crossed the wires of your refrigerator.”

  “So it was her?”

  “Not exactly. She was also issued a parking ticket the night of Delbert’s murder.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Veronica.

  “Scott drove the car of his father’s mistress when he committed crimes. That’s also why he stole her gym club membership and left it behind the refrigerator. He was trying to make her look guilty.”

  “So Emily wasn’t involved at all?” I asked.

  “Looks that way,” said Jonquille. “And now, I’m sorry to have to do this, but I need statements from all of you.”

  We piled into cars and drove to the police station. It was a long night with terrible coffee. But I was determined to spring Professor Maxwell as soon as possible. I phoned Ms. Strickland and woke her with the good news that an arrest had been made in the murder of Delbert Woodley.

  While we sat around at the police station, I sidled over and sat down next to Jim. He smelled a little rank, but I took his hand into mine anyway. “Thank you. If you hadn’t been looking out for us, there’s no telling what might have happened to Veronica and me.”

  “It was nothing.” He squeezed my hand. “You’ve been watching over me for a long time. It was the least I could do.”

  I had no idea how to begin. Subtlety clearly wasn’t one of my strengths. “Jim, what happened to you? Why do you live on the street?”