by Leslie Kelly
She and Jennifer looked at one another, and in those clear eyes belonging to her niece, she saw no judgment, no condemnation as she had always suspected she would. There was merely calm acceptance. And definite sadness.
“You understand?”
“Better than you know,” Jennifer replied. “But Leo…”
“As I said, I knew where he was going. So later that night, when the firemen were working, I slipped away and confronted him. I used his own gun and shot him in the chest with it. Eddie’s best friend helped me get the body to a construction site, and we dumped it there, knowing it would be buried forever in the new foundation.” She shrugged. “Obviously, it was. Goodbye, Leo, may you still be burning in hell.”
Jennifer murmured something, but Ivy couldn’t quite make it out. Because she’d swear she saw a shadow moving past the doorway. She sat straighter in her chair, wondering if it was Eddie’s ghost, coming to visit again. Or her father’s. Or even wicked Leo’s. “Who’s there?” she asked.
Silly. The ghosts never answered.
But to her utter shock, this time it did. As the shadow moved closer, into the room, coming up behind Jennifer, a voice she had heard in her nightmares for decades replied, “It’s just me, Ivy. Satan gave me the day off to pay a call.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I have to admit it…. Not all men are going to cheat and not all women are going to kill the ones who do. That’s about the only thing that gives me hope for my own romantic future.
—Why Arsenic Is Better Than Divorce by Jennifer Feeney
AT FIRST, JENNIFER THOUGHT her aunt Ida Mae had come over. Ivy’s face had gone from sad-but-angry reminiscence to shocked confusion and even fear. Only one person had ever made Ivy fearful and that was her sister. But as Jen turned and glanced at the person who’d spoken from the darkness, she realized it was not her other aunt. “What on earth are you doing here?” Because, as bizarre as it seemed, she recognized the newcomer from her own building in New York. “Mr. Jones?”
Ivy confused the issue even more. “Leo,” she whispered with a long, ragged breath.
That was impossible. Leo Cantone, as she’d just learned, was dead. Her aunt had confessed to murdering him not two minutes ago. “What is this all about?”
“Shut up,” the old man said. It was then that she saw the gun in his hand. “You had to open your fat mouth, didn’t you?” he said to Ivy, malevolence dripping off him in waves.
“I killed you.”
“Not quite.”
“You’ve been dead for forty years.”
“Again…not quite.”
Jen took two seconds to make herself believe it was true. Her aunt’s supposedly dead husband was here. And he’d been her neighbor for the past month and a half!
There was another book in this. If she survived, she was going to have to write this story.
Or maybe not. Reviewers would crucify her, saying it was too far-fetched.
“It would take more than a bullet to the chest to kill me, dear heart. I crawled out of that tomb you dumped me in, only to discover that in the eyes of the world I was dead.”
Jen remained still, never taking her attention off the gun.
“It didn’t seem a bad time for me to be dead, you know,” he continued conversationally.
“Because all the people you cheated were after you,” Ivy snapped, having regained her composure a lot faster than Jen would have in her position. “Not to mention the police.”
“Right. Things like theft and embezzlement don’t go over too well with the police. I had the money in a safe place and was able to get to it, so I knew I could start over. There was no longer my beautiful house to go home to.”
Ivy smiled a little, her eyes glittering, as if that was exactly what she’d intended should her plan to kill Leo fail.
He shook his head, a humorless laugh emerging from that phlegmy throat. “Oh, I was tempted to throw my chance at a new life away, Ivy. I wanted you to pay. But you’d done a good job of giving yourself an alibi when your lover was killed. I knew it would be a fight to get you convicted of trying to kill me without getting myself convicted of killing Eddie.”
Ivy shot to her feet, showing no sign of her advanced age. “I’ll kill you again for that.”
“I could have taken you any time over the past forty years, but I let you alone,” Leo snarled. “You should be on your knees thanking my merciful nature.”
Jen suspected the man had been much more malicious than merciful. It wouldn’t have taken a stranger five minutes to realize Ivy would punish herself all the rest of her days over what had happened to Eddie.
Killing her might, in the end, have been kinder.
“Aunt Ivy, please sit down,” Jen murmured, still watching that gun and the way Mr. Jones’s—er, Leo’s—liver-spotted hand was shaking. “What is it you want?”
“What do you think I want, stupid girl? I want the box.” He cast an avaricious glance at Ivy’s knitting box, which sat on the floor by her chair. “You kept copies of his music in it. I knew you had them, and there was only one place you’d consider safe enough to put them.” He shook his head. “I thought that hideous thing had burned up along with the remnants of my old life.”
“The music,” Jen said, suddenly realizing why, after all these years, Leo Cantone had come out of hiding. “You took Eddie’s songs and sold them as your own, thinking the only other copies had been destroyed in the fire. Now you have to destroy them before anyone finds out.”
Leo looked at her and nodded, his saggy cheeks wobbling. “Not as stupid as you, is she, Ivy? Yes. That’s exactly what I did. I was the most prolific—but reclusive—music writer in history, living quietly in California. But when I saw you on that talk show, then got your book and recognized my own murder in its pages, I began paying very careful attention to you.”
Of course he had. After forty years, he must have thought he’d gotten away clean. He’d probably piled up a fortune off the money he’d embezzled, and Eddie’s stolen music. Then to see the possibility of exposure—to realize there might be proof out there of all that he’d done—he must have been in a panic.
“Seeing that ‘at home’ interview with you in the Times, I realized my worst fears had been realized. Imagine my shock, looking at your picture in the paper and seeing that hateful box right there in the background.”
She had totally forgotten she’d had the box out when the newspaper reporter and photographer had come over. Aunt Ivy’s knitting box had been, as Leo said, right there in the open for all the world to see. And the one person with a lot to lose because of its very existence had seen it.
“Been trying to find it ever since,” he admitted. “I looked here.” He glanced around. “Good God, Ivy, couldn’t believe it when I saw you’d become a crazy old lady living in a ruin.”
“You destroyed my life,” she mumbled.
He ignored her. “I couldn’t find it in your place, either,” he said to Jen. “I almost fell over in shock when I saw that blond bimbo friend of yours leave with it yesterday. I knew she’d brought it to you and that you’d bring it right back to Ivy, so I came here to wait.”
He headed for the box. “Now, I’ll have that.”
Ivy grabbed his arm, digging her sharp nails into it like a cat clawing with its talons. Jen launched off the settee, not sure if she was going for the gun or the man himself. But Leo was quick for an old guy. He swung the gun right into Ivy’s face a moment before Jen reached him. “Sit down,” he barked, “or I’ll kill you right now, as you once killed me.”
Jen stared at her aunt, silently pleading with her to do as Leo had demanded. Ivy’s eyes were sparking with rage, but she finally stepped back, lowering herself into her chair.
“Take it,” Jen said. “Take it and go. No one will ever know. Once the originals are destroyed, there will be no proof.”
She hoped he’d go for it—hoped he’d be so focused on the money he’d lose if it was proven he’d stolen someone e
lse’s songs that he wouldn’t think about the people who could accuse him of so many other, more recent, crimes.
His next words dashed those hopes. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I will not be able to leave any witnesses.” He cleared his throat and shrugged, not seeming terribly concerned about committing two more murders. “Goodbye again, Ivy.”
He lifted the gun. Jen tensed, ready to launch at him, but before she could do it, two shapes appeared from the hallway. They flew across the room in a flash of white and a flurry of silent motion.
Jen didn’t think, didn’t question, she merely leaped around Leo Cantone as he was tackled to the floor, and grabbed her aunt Ivy, dragging her toward the door.
“It’s all right, my dear,” she heard. “He’s quite subdued.”
Recognizing Mr. Potts’s voice, she paused and looked back to see the old man standing above Leo, gun in hand. Leo was prone on the floor, held in place not only by Mortimer’s foot on his forehead, but also by her very solid aunt Ida Mae.
Who was sitting on the man’s chest.
WHEN MIKE PULLED UP TO JEN’S aunts’ houses and saw there were no police cars in the driveway, he felt his heart double its rhythm. It had been pounding like crazy during the final twenty minutes of the drive—now it was ready to explode.
Hopping out of the Jeep with Mutt on his heels, he raced across the yard, scanning it for his grandfather but not seeing him. He hadn’t expected to. Mortimer Potts would never remain safely outside while womenfolk were being threatened.
When he reached the porch of Ivy’s place, where the door stood open, he heard voices coming from inside. Hell. His grandfather was probably now being held hostage, along with Jen and Ivy.
Pulling his service weapon from the holster on his hip, Mike proceeded into the shadowy house, following the voices. Trying to formulate a plan, he realized the best option was to free Jen first because, physically, she was the best equipped to help him deal with the thug. He knew what she was like when she was angry.
Strong. Tough. Fierce. All the things he loved most about her. God, he prayed he’d have the chance to tell her that.
His grandfather might never forgive him for relying on a lady rather than him. But he’d deal with that later.
Mutt, unfortunately, hadn’t been trained in police procedure. He raced down the hall, his nails slipping on the wood floor tipping off whoever was inside. Mike tore after him, erupting into the room where the voices had been coming from. What he saw stunned him.
There was no hostage situation, at least, not the one he’d expected to see. “Jen?” he asked, spotting her standing safely with her arm around her aunt Ivy.
When she saw him, she flew into his arms. “You’re here! Oh, Mike, I couldn’t believe it when your grandfather told me you were coming after me.” She pressed kisses to his cheeks, and his mouth, and she felt so damn good he wanted to haul her against his body and never let her go.
“Are you all right?”
“We’re fine, Michael, just fine,” Mortimer answered.
Needing to make sure, Mike looked Jen over head to toe, confirmed she was unharmed, then did the same with his grandfather. The white-haired old gentleman looked healthy and fit as usual. The only odd thing was the gun in his hand.
It was pointing directly at an elderly man sitting in a rocking chair, his arms and legs tied to it with velvet cords from the curtains. He looked familiar somehow, though Mike couldn’t place him at first.
“Put down the gun, Grandpa.”
“Don’t shoot me, boy, I don’t intend to hurt him now that he’s started to behave.”
“I wasn’t going to shoot you,” he said between clenched teeth. “I want you to put it down before you hurt yourself.”
“Bah. Have you forgotten who taught you how to shoot?”
His grandfather had him there. “Okay,” Mike said, calming his tone to reason with him. “I see you caught the bad guy and he’s tied up, so we can both put our guns down.”
Before somebody got shot. On purpose, or by accident.
Mortimer finally did as Mike had asked, bringing the weapon over and placing it on the top of an old-fashioned upright piano. Mike took a moment to study the old man in the chair and suddenly recognized him from the night outside Jen’s apartment. The man was her neighbor.
Mike could barely take it all in. “What is going on here?”
Mortimer, Ida Mae, Ivy and Jen all looked at one another and shared a moment of silence, as if they simply didn’t know where to begin. Then they all started talking at once, saying crazy stuff about murders that weren’t murders, arson, knitting boxes and stolen music. It took a good twenty minutes for him to make heads or tails out of any of it.
All he knew was that by the time their sketchy tale was done, he was looking at the man who’d been stalking Jennifer and making her life so miserable. That was enough to make him want to kill the son of a bitch, no matter how old he was.
“Hello? Miss Ivy? Mr. Potts?”
“Ahh,” Mortimer said as they heard a man calling from the front of the house. “The chief has arrived at last. I called him, just as you suggested, but unfortunately, he was out at his farm dealing with the early birth of a calf.”
“Why the hell do you live here again?” Mike muttered.
Mortimer shrugged. “Trouble’s my home, dear boy.” Offering both arms to Ida Mae and Ivy, he said, “Shall we go to the kitchen, ladies? I am feeling quite invigorated. Perhaps we could all have a spot of tea after our adventures.”
“I’ll make the tea,” Ida Mae declared.
Ivy shot her a glare. “You’ll do no such thing. It’s my house.” Then she turned and looked over her shoulder at the man tied up in the chair, who, if Mike was to believe their stories, was, in fact, the supposedly dead Leo Cantone. She stared fire at his head. “I’ll make you some of my most special brew.”
“Now, sister,” Ida Mae scolded, “you’ve just been cleared of one murder, don’t be so quick to commit one again.” That was about as tender a tone as Mike had ever heard come out of the stern woman’s mouth. The soft look the sisters exchanged convinced him that Jen was right about one thing: despite outward appearances, the old ladies did care very much about each other.
Over the next hour, Mike worked with the local police on the case, as well as calling his lieutenant back in the city. Knowing from experience how these things worked, he suspected Leo would be sitting in Trouble’s jail cell, charged with all manner of crimes against Ivy, before the paperwork arrived charging him with a forty-year-old murder in New York.
One thing was certain—the man wasn’t going anywhere.
Eventually, Leo was hauled away. Mortimer left, too, having basked in the glow of being a hero most of the afternoon. Ivy and Ida Mae were upstairs, going through the things in Ivy’s precious box—apparently she had some explaining to do about some of the things she’d been hiding for so long, even from Ida Mae.
And he and Jen were finally alone. With no more secrets between them. Nothing either of them could hide behind.
They had only to deal with their own feelings. “Jen…”
“Not here.”
He quirked a brow.
“Come on. Let’s go for a drive.”
She didn’t have to ask him twice. Without a word, he took her hand and walked with her out into the sunshine.
NOT EVEN KNOWING WHERE SHE wanted to go, but certain she had to get away from the suffocating aura of Ivy’s tired old house, Jen led Mike to his Jeep. Mutt followed, leaping easily into the back seat as the two of them climbed into the front.
“Where are we going?” Mike asked when he was inside.
“Anywhere. I just can’t do this here,” she murmured, glancing toward the house. “I know most of Ivy’s skeletons were brought out of the closet today. But it’s still too sad, too haunted. And I think there are still more mysteries left to uncover.” Shaking her head as she thought about everything the old woman had revealed, she murmured, “Mik
e, will you do something for me?”
“If I can.” He sounded on guard, which she understood. She hadn’t exactly been easy to deal with lately.
“If you can avoid it, please don’t ever tell Ivy what you told me about the autopsy.” Hot tears rose in her eyes as she thought of what Ivy had said…about the blood. And the kerosene.
And the way she’d kissed his still-warm hand.
“She loved him, you see,” her voice broke at the awfulness of it. “She was sure he was dead.”
Mike nodded slowly, giving her a sorrowful look out of the corner of his eye. “I won’t tell her, Jen. I can’t imagine how she’d ever live with that.”
Neither could Jen.
“If it makes any difference to you,” he added, “the coroner’s report also said there was no way Leo…I mean, Eddie, could have survived the blow to his head, fire or no fire. He was obviously unconscious—probably even brain dead given the viciousness of the blows—when the fire started.”
Thank heaven. That was small comfort, though Jen knew it would not be to Ivy. So she must never know.
“She didn’t kill her lover,” he continued. “And her husband is alive and well—there’s no way she’d be criminally charged with shooting him after all these years.”
“And Leo?”
“He’ll probably be charged, but I honestly doubt he’ll ever go to trial. I’m not sure if you noticed, but the man looks like he’s in bad shape.”
Jen had noticed that, hearing a rattle in Leo’s cough and seeing an unhealthy yellow tinge to his skin. Maybe the man’s crimes were finally taking their inevitable toll on him.
“Secrets, sadness, mystery…I’ve had enough of them all,” she murmured. Turning in her seat to face him as he started the Jeep and backed out of the driveway, she studied his handsome face, letting his warm, masculine scent engulf her. “I want to move forward.” With you.
He met her glance briefly, then focused on the road. When he turned toward the outskirts of town, Jen knew where he was taking her. “Good day for a swim.”