by Linda Reilly
“I’m fine,” Martha said crankily. “You don’t need to shine the light on it.”
Talia looked around to ground herself. How could she know the eatery so well and yet be helpless when the lights went out? She should have been able to navigate every inch of it in her sleep.
Whenever a transformer blew, there was no telling how long it would take for the power to come back on. It didn’t make sense for either of them to stay there. If the weather cleared up later in the day, they could always come back and reopen.
Talia opened the front door again. The rain was lashing the cobblestones in windswept blasts. She couldn’t ever recall seeing the plaza so thoroughly flooded. She turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED and pushed the door firmly shut.
Martha was fairly strong, but she didn’t walk fast. Talia hated the thought of her having to trudge to the town lot in this awful storm. They’d both get soaked to the skin. It made better sense for Talia to dash out to her car and then come back and pick up Martha in the service alley behind the eatery.
She told Martha her plan.
“Normally I’d say you were being ridiculous,” Martha grumped. “But my knee is throbbing, and I’m not the fastest walker.”
“It’s a deal, then,” Talia said, and handed her the flashlight. “While I’m gone, check to be sure everything is shut down and turned off. Once I’m at the back door, I’ll call you from my cell. And lock the front door after me, okay?”
“Sounds like a plan, ma’am. Wait. What about the food? If the power stays off too long, won’t everything spoil?”
Talia groaned. Martha was right. “It might,” she said, “but there’s not much we can do right now. I could take some of it home, but who knows if I’ll even have power there? If the rain lets up in a little while and I’ve got power at my house, I can come back and retrieve some of the perishables.”
Martha gave her a weak salute. Talia grabbed her handbag and her umbrella from her locker and seconds later was out the front door. She thought she heard Martha yelling something at her, but she was already being pulled into the storm by the fierce wind. She waved and put her hand to her ear to signal I’ll call you, but she wasn’t even sure Martha saw her.
By the time she reached the sidewalk, her umbrella was inside out. She shivered from the wet and the cold—it was chilling her right to the bone. How could the temperature have dropped so quickly since that morning?
Talia could barely see as she pushed her way along the sidewalk. Water sluiced over the sides of her Keds, and her feet began to feel like ice blocks. The storefronts had all gone dark and the traffic lights were flashing—sure signs that the power outage was fairly widespread. Only a few brave souls were out in the storm, most of them headed toward the town lot.
When she reached the lot, she saw one poor elderly man struggling to open his car door. His hat had blown away, and he looked as if he’d just been fished out of a lake. She slogged over to him and held his car door while he lowered himself inside.
“Ah, thank you, dearie,” he said. “Much obliged. Get yourself home safe, now!”
She closed his door and then trod over to her Fiat. At least a bucket of rain followed her inside, but she was grateful to be out of the deluge.
Talia’s thermostat was set on AC, but she quickly changed it to warm air and flipped on the defroster. She glanced to her right and spotted Martha’s monstrosity of a Chrysler, rain hammering its roof so hard that she thought the sheet metal might cave. Martha had been saving for a new car and hoped to have enough to buy one before the first snowflake of the season fell. For now she was content to cruise around in her old beater, as she called it.
Talia started her Fiat and flicked on her wipers. Even on high, they barely kept the windshield clear enough for her to see. She’d have to drive slowly, very slowly. Since she was picking up Martha in the one-way service alley, she exited the parking lot at the rear, onto Birch Street. That would bring her to the back of the arcade, and from there she could swing into the alley.
Her knuckles white on the steering wheel, she turned out of the lot. Almost instantly, a car was driving right on her tail, its headlights blurred and wavy in the punishing rain. A finger of fear stroked the base of her neck. Was it Dylan in his Merkur following her?
The car behind her turned abruptly onto a side street, and she let out a gasp of relief. Her imagination was going wonky on her. She needed to concentrate on the road in front of her.
She clamped her hands over the steering wheel and kept her grip firm. Even with her headlights on, she was terrified another driver wouldn’t see her and would slide into her car.
Finally—the ride seemed never-ending—Talia turned left into the alley. What should have been a two-minute ride had taken her almost nine minutes. When she’d almost reached the eatery’s rear entrance, she saw another car already parked there. Had Martha gotten impatient and called someone else to pick her up? The car was gray, possibly a luxury model, and had something stuck to the rear bumper. Stickers of some sort, one on each side. The car didn’t appear to be running, and Talia couldn’t see well enough to know if someone was inside. Had the driver flooded the engine and just abandoned it there? But why would someone have driven down the alley in the first place?
Talia parked about ten feet from the rear of the gray car and shifted her Fiat into Park. If the other car didn’t move, she’d be forced to back her way out of the alley—a near impossibility in zero-visibility weather. It was at that moment that she noticed the license plate. Squinting to make it out in the pummeling rain, she saw that the tag number began with HG7 . . .
Wait a minute. HG7. Why did that jog a memory?
The day of the festival, at the ball field! A young man reading from a slip of paper had asked three people to move their cars, saying they were blocking access. He went on to announce the offending plate numbers over the loudspeaker. The first one began with HG7. . . . She was almost sure of it.
She focused on the gray car again. It was tricky reading the bumper stickers through the heavy rain, especially with her wipers barely making a dent, but she was almost sure the stickers read: GO FAR WITH FERRINGER!
Ugh. Another Ferringer supporter.
But something else was sticking in her memory. What was it?
And then she got it, and her insides morphed from a solid to a liquid. High school chemistry. The periodic table of the elements.
That day, when Lucas mumbled “mercury” to the EMTs, it wasn’t because the killer drove a Mercury. It was because the killer drove a car with a tag number that began with HG. On the periodic table, Hg was the atomic symbol for mercury. And Lucas had just bought those book covers at Queenie’s Variety, so the periodic table of the elements had been fresh in his mind.
She scrolled the wheels of her mind backward in time, to the start of the festival. After the young guy had made the announcement, she remembered seeing Bruce Ferringer toss his car keys at his wife. Jodie had looked quite put out that he’d expected her to move his car. She’d stalked off toward the parking lot, pouting like a spoiled child.
But that hadn’t been Jodie’s only trek to the parking area that day. She’d had to go one more time so she could pull off her underhanded ruse.
Her fingers trembling, Talia pulled out her phone and rang Martha’s cell. It rang and rang and then defaulted to voice mail. Darn! Martha had probably gone to the ladies’ room and left her phone in the kitchen. She’d have to try again in a few minutes. She wanted to tell Martha to stay inside with the doors locked and also to call the police.
Never mind. She’d have to call them herself. Prescott still hadn’t returned her calls, so she started to dial nine-one-one. She’d gotten as far as the first “nine” when her passenger-side door was suddenly wrenched open. A bulky figure in a dripping wet raincoat bent low and then rushed inside. The intruder dropped onto the seat, then slammed the door shut. He plucked her cell roughly out of her hand.
Talia gasped. Her throat closed with ter
ror. Without a word, the man disconnected her call and then ripped the battery out of her phone. Talia noticed he was wearing tan leather gloves. Water trickled down his face, and his eyes shone with fury.
Ferringer jammed her cell phone into the pocket of his raincoat and pulled out another object—a small handgun. He pointed the gun at her heart. “Hands away from the steering wheel,” he ordered. “Turn off the wipers and shut off the engine.”
Cold shivers racking her limbs, Talia did as instructed.
Ferringer laughed, a grating sound that shredded her nerves. “By the way, if you were trying to get ahold of your Martha, you can forget about it. I sent her on a wild-goose chase.”
Talia stared at him. “But . . . but how did you—”
“I was driving down Main when I spotted you struggling against the storm to get to the parking lot. I watched where you went. I planned to follow you and get rid of you once and for all. When you turned left out of the parking lot instead of the other way, I figured you were headed back to your restaurant. You were driving at the pace of a turtle, so I quickly made a call to your eatery and pretended I was the police. I told Martha all businesses in the downtown area have been ordered to evacuate immediately. I even told her what route to take home, since some of the roads have been closed. She wanted to wait for you, but I put the kibosh on that notion. Told her you weren’t even going to be allowed to drive back to the arcade because roads were being blocked off. Right about now, she should be sitting in traffic backed up halfway to Mars, trying to get over the bridge on Railroad Avenue.” He chortled at his cleverness. “Oh dear, I guess I didn’t tell her the road is all washed out and traffic is at a standstill. Plus, there’s a fire at the abandoned coat shop, so no one is going anywhere too quickly. By the way, my call to Martha will prove untraceable. Every smart politician keeps a disposable phone or two on hand.”
You’re not smart. You’re evil, Talia wanted to say. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, trying to stanch the shaking in her body. At least Martha was safe, even if she was sitting in that big old Chrysler of hers, cursing at the traffic.
“After I hung up with Martha, I whipped onto a side street, took a shortcut to the arcade, and parked here. My Avalon handles like a dream, you know. Too bad you’ll never own one.”
Stay calm. Play dumb, she told herself.
She tried to avoid looking at the gun. “Um, Bruce, I’m still not sure why you’re so upset with me. Can’t you put the gun away so we can talk? Is it about that political luncheon? If it is, you should know that I’ve already changed my mind. I decided to let you have it on a Sunday after all. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Jodie. We talked about it only a short while ago.”
“Cut the crap,” he said in a dangerous tone. “You’ve been asking way too many questions about my wife. It’s time I put an end to your interference before you ruin me.”
“I . . . I’m sorry,” she said, trying to act confused. “I’m honestly not following.” And then, pretending the light had suddenly dawned, she widened her eyes. “Oh, is it because I asked about her new pendant, the one from LaFleur’s? Oh my, that was gorgeous, wasn’t it? So generous of you to buy that for her. I wanted to get something similar for my mom, but the price was way out of my league.”
Talia knew she sounded like a babbling boob, but she was trying to keep him distracted.
“You are one pain in my behind. You know that?” Ferringer’s eyes flashed with fury. “You and my wife, you’re like two bedsores on opposite sides of my butt. Her with her uncontrollable spending and you with your constant spying. What’s the matter with you, anyway? Can’t you leave well enough alone?”
Talia murmured a silent prayer, and then her ire flared. “Does ‘well enough’ mean letting Crystal Galardi go off to prison for a murder you committed? And leaving Lucas to languish in a hospital bed?”
Ferringer’s face reddened, and he swallowed. “I never wanted to hurt that kid. He saw me open my trunk with the rolling pin in my hand, so I had no choice. As for Crystal . . .” He shrugged. “I have nothing against the woman, other than the fact that she’s always peddling expensive cooking crap to my wife. Apparently she thinks I’m rolling in dough, and I don’t mean cookie dough.”
“Jodie has a shopping addiction, doesn’t she?” Talia said.
A harsh laugh escaped Ferringer. “My wife has what the experts call a compulsive buying disorder. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it?”
“Then it’s a sickness,” Talia sniped. “Maybe she needs help.”
“Yeah, everything’s a sickness these days. Everyone’s got a handy excuse for their lousy behavior.”
And what’s your excuse for being a monster?
Ferringer ranted on. “I’m trying to run a campaign, and she’s wasting money on clothes and jewels and all sorts of other trash she doesn’t need!” He curled his lip in disgust. “She finally confessed to me this morning that she’s been running up two secret credit cards in her maiden name—and I use the word ‘maiden’ loosely. Between the two cards, she owes about thirty-nine grand, plus interest up the wazoo.”
Talia stared through the rain-coated windshield. With the wipers off, it looked as if she was sitting under Niagara Falls. Ferringer had murdered Norma and had come closing to killing Lucas. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill again.
She was in bad trouble. Detective Prescott was right. The third time would not be the charm.
“That’s why Jodie needed the prize money from the Steeltop Foods competition,” Talia said. “Twenty-five thousand, minus whatever cut she was giving Norma, would’ve gone a long way toward paying off those cards before you found out.”
“So you figured out about Norma. Goody for you. Everyone said you were nosy but smart.” His grin mutated into a scowl. “It wasn’t just the credit cards. I found out she’d been tapping into my campaign account. The witch was even cleverer than I gave her credit for. She listed things under expenditures—a few hundred here, fifty bucks there—nothing to raise any red flags. Treated herself and her friends to a couple nice lunches at the country club. She made out the check stubs like they were for campaign events. Even Stacey didn’t catch on right away.”
“I still don’t understand,” Talia said. “Why did she need Norma? Why didn’t she just enter the competition under her own name?”
“Are you freakin’ nuts?” he railed. “Can you imagine how it would’ve made me look when she won? Everyone would think I’d paid off the judges or rigged the contest. I’ve got an election in less than three months, and I need to look squeaky-clean! She didn’t enter under her own name because she knew I’d kill her. You’re not as sharp as I thought.”
“Her chances of winning would’ve been one in six,” Talia said.
“Wrong. Technically she won, didn’t she? And you’ve obviously never tasted my wife’s cooking. Absolutely out of this world. No way she’d have lost. No way. My wife is a prime example of why women should stay in the kitchen and leave the business world to the men.”
You unenlightened creep.
“She’s been overspending for at least a year, racking up charges like she’s some kind of princess. She even had that dizzy dame at the jewelry store making up phony receipts so it would look like she was getting some real bargains.”
Talia’s mind darted back to what Dylan had told her, how he’d heard the radio go on in Norma’s cooking station that day. That had to be the moment when Jodie sneaked in to deliver her chicken stew. Her casserole must have been hidden in the zippered cooler, under all those stacks of brochures. That was the scent Martha had detected on the brochure—the aroma of Jodie’s delectable chicken stew. Jodie had either brought, or instructed Norma to bring, a radio, to cover up the sounds of their voices in case they drifted into the other cooking stations.
Talia’s voice rattled. “I still don’t understand why you killed Norma.”
“After the competition she came looking for me, said she had something urgent to talk to me about. I c
ouldn’t imagine what the old biddy wanted that was so important, but I agreed to meet her in her cooking station. Luckily no one was around when I got there. Otherwise I’d have been screwed. By then everyone was watching the softball game. Jodie had toddled off to meet up with a couple of her gal pals who were watching the game. I think they just wanted to ogle the ballplayers. Anyway, when I got there, the first thing I saw was the box of utensils sitting on the floor. At first I thought maybe she wanted help getting it to her car. But then she dropped a bombshell on me.”
“Let me guess,” Talia said. “She told you about the ruse and wanted more money. Whatever Jodie agreed to pay her wasn’t enough. Or maybe she wanted to keep it all—the whole twenty-five thousand.”
Ferringer shook his head. “No. It was worse. Much worse. Dear old Norma came down with a sudden attack of conscience. After she told me about the stunt she and Jodie had pulled off, she said she was going to confess to her role in the whole mess and forfeit the prize. She blamed it all on Jodie, said my wife nagged her until she agreed to do it, but she’d never felt good about it.”
Norma’s sister, Ethel, had been right. She’d sensed that something serious had been weighing on Norma’s mind. Despite her unpleasant and conniving ways, Norma had probably never done anything quite so devious. So she’d decided to confess—and signed her own death warrant.
Talia rubbed her arms. They were nearly numb from fear and cold.
“I flipped out,” Ferringer said. “My political career would’ve been over, flushed straight down the chute.” He turned to Talia, his eyes glazed. “I looked down at her utensils. She’d never even used them because Jodie had made the stew. Ironic, right?” He laughed, an awful sound that frightened Talia to the core. “When she turned to leave, I snatched up the rolling pin—it was right on top—and smashed her on the back of the head. The second she fell, I knew she was gone. Her eyes—” He swallowed. “There was a pot holder in the box, so I used it to wipe off the handle and bring it out to my car. I figured I’d toss it all in my trunk and get rid of it later.”