A Killer Kebab

by Susannah Hardy

  I couldn’t see a thing. Whoever had pushed me had closed up the panel so that no light penetrated the space. Had I fallen one story, or two, down to the basement level? There was no way to know. More important, how was I going to get out?

  Every movement brought a fresh wave of pain. My neck was already stiffening up, and my cheek throbbed from where I’d hit the wall. I reached up, thinking to grab the rope to help pull myself to a standing position. The rope, however, lay slack against the platform. It had either broken under my weight, or been cut. I thought of the razor-sharp chef’s knife I’d left in the hallway. Weapons only work, I chastised myself, if you actually have them in your possession.

  There had to be a way out of here. Brenda must be waiting outside. She would bring help when I didn’t answer the door, unless my assailant had hurt her too. But somehow, I doubted that. The person must have already been inside the building. I’d been here for less than ten minutes when I was attacked. So whoever it was had a key. And my guess was that he was long gone by now.

  Bracing myself against the walls of the shaft, I brought myself to a standing position. I hurt. A lot. Everywhere.

  Since I couldn’t see a thing, I reached out in one direction, then turned ninety degrees and reached out again. This time I touched something solid. A wall, but was it the wall with the door in it, or the other, solid one? I couldn’t find the opening, so I spun and felt the opposite surface. This time, I could feel the framing around the little door. I breathed a small sigh of relief, then began running my hands around the perimeter. There had to be a catch or a latch or a knob.

  But there wasn’t. Oh, there was one on the other side, I was sure of it. But the designers and constructors of this building had clearly not anticipated a person being trapped inside a dumbwaiter. I did my best to suppress the rising tide of panic. What if Brenda didn’t go for help?

  Putting both hands flat on the panel, I pushed, then pushed harder. It wouldn’t budge. Steeling myself, I rammed a shoulder against the door. Pain stabbed through my entire arm. Brilliant. Not only was I still in the dark, I’d just added one more body part to the growing list of ones that hurt like heck.

  I sat back down. My phone was still in my pocket, so I pulled it out. No signal, which shouldn’t have surprised me. But the light from the screen gave me a little hope. I shone it in a semicircle, then around the perimeter of the panel, which confirmed that there was no inside latch. I was in some sort of shaft. And I couldn’t go down, up, or to the sides. All I could do was wait.

  And kick myself for being stupid.

  And wonder who had done this, and why, and how he had known I’d be coming here today.

  Finally, after what was only a few minutes but seemed much longer, I thought I heard something.

  I put my ear to the frame. Voices! I listened harder. One of them was Brenda, I was sure of it. I pounded on the panel and called out, “Over here!” It was a matter of moments before the door opened and light flooded the chamber. I blinked rapidly until my eyes adjusted. Deputy Tim Arquette offered me a hand and helped me climb out into a space behind one of the movable cabinets in Franco’s kitchen. Based on how I felt right now, I was going to be hurting far worse tomorrow.

  “What happened?” Brenda demanded. “You called me to come then locked me out. We had to break a pane of glass to reach the lock and open the door.”

  I explained my reasoning. Brenda didn’t look convinced. Neither did Tim.

  “I figured I’d be safe, locked inside, and I’d hear you when you knocked on the door. The question is, how did someone know I’d be here, when I didn’t know myself until less than an hour ago?” There was only one answer, really. Someone was watching me. Or watching the Casa.

  “Do you need an ambulance?” Tim asked.

  Nothing appeared to be broken, or anything that over-the-counter painkillers wouldn’t address. Probably. And I’d seen enough of the Bonaparte Bay Volunteer Fire Department Emergency Medical Services personnel in the last few days to last me a lifetime. “No. I’ll be fine. I’ll get myself checked out in the morning.”

  Tim looked at me skeptically again.

  “Promise,” I said. I had to take Dolly to see Dr. Phelps anyway. I’d ask him to take a look at me while I was there. “But I will ask you to come back and check out the Bonaparte House again, if you’re still on duty tonight.” I was so, so tired of not feeling safe in my own home. In my own town. Anywhere.

  “I will, and I am,” he said. “Just let me know when you’re in for the night and I’ll come by, then you can arm your alarm. In the meantime, I’ll check out this place and get somebody to board up the window. Could you tell if anything had been taken?”

  I debated how much to say. Would he believe that someone would attack another person over a salad dressing recipe? It sounded ridiculous, even to me. And I actually had no proof, only an idea, based on the ramblings of a concussed man, that the tape I’d found under the dumbwaiter platform had once secured the recipe. Who knew what else Franco had hidden away here in these three floors and a basement that someone could have been looking for? “No,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t know if anything was taken. And let me take care of getting this boarded up. I’m helping Franco until he’s back on his feet.” I felt a little bit responsible for the break-in, even though it—probably—wasn’t my fault.

  Brenda looked at her watch. “The hardware store will be closing in just a few minutes, otherwise I’d go get a piece of plywood and we could do this ourselves.” “Ourselves” was stretching it. Personally, I wasn’t very handy like that. But Brenda probably was.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’ll call Dolly’s beau, Harold. He’ll have something in the barn.” I needed to check on Dolly anyway.

  “Then I’ll park the patrol car out here till you get back with him,” Tim said. “It’s close enough to my dinner break that I can take it now.” Tim went to his car and got in.

  Brenda walked back to the Bonaparte House with me and made herself at home in the kitchen while I spoke to Harold. Dolly had made significant improvement, and was on the mend, according to him. At least something was going right, something—someone—I didn’t have to worry about so much. Harold agreed to meet me at the Casa in half an hour.

  I called Marielle to let her know what had happened, downplaying my injuries. She had enough on her plate without wondering if I was going to sue her father.

  “What the heck is going on?” she said. “What’s in that place that people are getting hurt over? Dad doesn’t keep anything valuable there. How come no one else is getting broken into?” Clearly her father hadn’t told her yet about his discovery. Or she didn’t believe a piece of paper with a hundred-year-old recipe could possibly be the cause of all these crimes. Franco could tell her himself once he recovered. It didn’t seem like my place.

  “I don’t know.” And I didn’t, really. “But if you have an alarm system, maybe you want to use it?”

  “You’re telling me to be careful.”

  “Marielle, right now everyone in Bonaparte Bay needs to be careful.”

  She agreed and rang off.

  I reached into a drawer next to the point of sale computer and pulled out a bottle of painkillers. My muscles and tendons and ligaments and whatever else had gotten damaged in my short freefall were making their presence known. I took the maximum dose and downed the pills with a glass of water.

  Brenda was keeping herself occupied by looking at the recipes on the counter. “Wow,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many different kinds of gelatin molds. I’m pretty sure my grandmother made this stuff—the green kind, with the cottage cheese mixed in.”

  Probably everyone’s grandmother had made that salad—though there was nothing remotely salad-like about it, at least by today’s standards. Not that I’d had a grandmother I ever knew. “Yeah, I’m thinking those may be recipes whose tim
e is never going to come again and they’re just going to go back in the box. You ready to go? I appreciate you hanging out with me.”

  Brenda shrugged. “That’s what friends do.” She put her jacket back on and jammed her bright red toque over her bright red hair. “Besides, there’s not much to do this time of year. Not that I have to tell you that.”

  I bundled up again. “Let’s take my car and blast up the heater. The cold isn’t going to make these muscles feel any better.”

  “Cold doesn’t bother me, but sure.”

  We locked up and got into the car. I switched on the ignition and turned on the heater. It would take a few minutes to warm up. In the meantime, my teeth chattered and my muscles tensed painfully, just as I’d predicted. It was time to break down and get one of those remote car starters.

  The drive to the Casa parking lot took only a couple of minutes. Tim’s cruiser was still there, and through the side window I could see him throwing back a cola, as though he were in a commercial. I pulled up a respectful distance away. He got out of the cruiser and came over to talk to us through the window.

  “Report’s done, and so’s dinner. Harold’s on his way?”

  I nodded.

  “Then I’ll wait till he gets here. You’ve been through a lot today, but we’ll need you to come down to the station tomorrow and give a statement. I didn’t ask you this before, because I figured if you’d known you would have told me. But you don’t know who stuffed you into the wall?”

  Such a nice way to put it. “No. I’d say it was a man, but that’s all I can say. He came up from behind me, and it happened so fast.”

  “We really have nothing to go on. Could be anybody, a local or an out-of-towner.”

  “It’s somebody from Bonaparte Bay,” Brenda said decisively. “Why would somebody from out of town come back and hit the same place again?”

  She had a point. I was also inclined to think it was a local. Particularly if my theory that this was about Franco’s recipe was correct, though again I had to wonder why anyone would go to such lengths.

  A car pulled into the parking lot, lights blazing, and rolled to a stop just in front of the back door. Harold had brought Dolly’s metallic green Ford LTD instead of his own pickup truck. He left the lights on and the car running. The trunk lid swung open slowly, even dramatically. Which only made sense. It was a dramatic car. Harold exited, then pulled a full-sized sheet of plywood out of the trunk. I would have said it was impossible, but there it was. He could probably transport a couple of horses to the state fair back there if he wanted.

  Brenda and I got out of the car and, together with Tim Arquette, walked over to Harold. Tim offered to help hold the plywood while Harold nailed it down. It was a two-person job, so Brenda and I just stood back, shivering, out of the way. From where we stood, I could see the converted house where MacNamara and MacNamara had their office. The outside light was on, which wasn’t unusual. Lots of people left their porch lights on all night. There were also lights on inside the building. I glanced at my watch. It was after six. Junior must be working late.

  On the day of his father’s funeral? When his mother is in town?

  Or maybe that was the point, to get away from his mother, whom I’d never met but had heard was a controlling woman.

  A silhouette was framed in the window. Male. And was shortly joined by another silhouette. Female, with hair in a long braid that swung out as she moved. A tryst? Maybe, but they didn’t appear to touch each other.

  A thought emerged. If I could see into the law offices of MacNamara and MacNamara from here . . .

  Someone at the law offices could see the Casa parking lot from their vantage point.

  But that was making assumptions where they weren’t necessarily warranted. From where I stood, I could also see the house across the street from the MacNamaras’ and another next to that. I supposed I could check the addresses of those other buildings. See who lived there.

  The tap, tap, tap of Harold’s hammer continued. From wherever he was watching, the MacNamara law office or one of the other buildings, someone could have been watching the Casa without even braving the cold.

  One figure left the window at the law offices. A few minutes later, a car engine started up from that direction.

  I thought about following. Should I do it? I had only a moment to decide before the other car was warmed up and too far gone to catch up with. The last time I’d done this, with Kim Galbraith, we’d ended up at the River Rock. If I left now, Brenda with me perhaps, would it just be a repeat of the other night, with nothing to show for it? My guess was this was Jennifer Murdoch, maybe trying to extort money out of Junior, or still attempting to get the videotape back. Even if I could prove it was her, it proved nothing.

  But my nature got the better of me. “Brenda, you wanna ride shotgun with me?”

  “Yup.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  I called my thanks to Harold and Tim, then we jumped into the car, which I’d left running. I drove to the edge of the parking lot, then waited until I could see the taillights of the other vehicle. Pulling out onto the street, I waited another few beats, then followed.

  Was it the same car from the other night? I couldn’t tell.

  “Who are we following?” Brenda asked. “Not that it matters. As it happens, I don’t have anything better to do.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. Just being nosy, I guess.” Though it was more than that. The Law Offices of MacNamara and MacNamara were mixed up in some ugliness, ugliness that resulted in a man’s death, as well as affected my family. So it was personal to me. Sure, I could have left it all to the professionals. But so far they had arrested Russ Riley, on whom they had some moderately good evidence. So they wouldn’t be much inclined to look any further for the murderer of Jim MacNamara.

  And what did I know? Russ might very well have done it. But I hoped, for his mother’s sake, that he hadn’t.

  The car made a right turn by the public park that flanked the river and drove along it for a couple of blocks, before taking another right. Toward the River Rock. But instead of pulling in, the car kept going.

  “I’m going to pull a little closer. There’s a small notebook and pad of paper in the glove compartment. See if you can get the license plate.”

  What I’d do with the license plate, even if I had it, I didn’t know. I was pretty sure you needed a subpoena, or to be in law enforcement, to access DMV records. But it gave Brenda something to do.

  “Got it,” she said.

  I dropped back again, continuing to follow the taillights. The car took another right turn, which put it back out onto the main drag of Bonaparte Bay. I pulled over until I saw her clear the lone traffic light at the end of Theresa Street, then pulled out again. She took a left, then drove under the “Welcome to Bonaparte Bay” arch and out onto Route 12.

  If this was Jennifer Murdoch, she wasn’t going home. She was going out of town.

  “Should we go any farther?” I asked Brenda.

  “We don’t know who we’re following. Okay. But do we know why?”

  “Er, no. Well, maybe. That woman has met with Ben MacNamara twice that I know of since his father died. After hours.” I guess I had decided to follow her a little longer, because we were still going in her direction.

  “So are we just being nosy? Which I don’t have a problem with. You’d be amazed the kinds of personal stuff people throw away. Believe me, I know. She’s driving an older Ford Escort, silver or white.” She rattled off the plate number.

  “Have you ever seen that car while you’re making your rounds?” We were passing the Can-Am Bridge, which was beautifully lit up now that night had fallen. I wasn’t going to go too much longer, not without a clear objective. But the drive had been worth it just to see the bridge lights against the starless sky.

  Brenda paused. “I don’t think so,” s
he said. “Though that’s not a car that sticks out in your mind, like a jacked-up truck or a Corvette.”

  The car put its blinker on, signaling right. It was turning into a small community of riverfront condominiums that rented for a pretty penny during the summer. But this time of year, the rents might have gone down, letting her live in a nicer place than she could afford during the winter. But that was just speculation based on the age and style of car she drove.

  “Should I pull in?” I caught my lower lip between my teeth. Suddenly, this didn’t seem like such a great idea.

  “We’ve come this far. Might as well see it through,” Brenda said, ever practical.

  I put on my own blinker and pulled in. The car was maybe a hundred yards ahead now. “Watch where it pulls in,” I said. “I’m going to hang back a little.”

  I counted slowly to ten, then started driving again.

  “It’s coming up on the right,” Brenda said. “No garage. I can see the car parked in the driveway. She’s putting her key in the lock of the house.”

  Because her back was turned toward me, I risked a look at the woman. I could see the long braid, but not much else due to the long puffer coat and thick hat she wore. She was about the same height as Jennifer Murdoch, but Jennifer Murdoch would never drive a car that old. Unless she was trying to hide something.

  So who was Ben MacNamara’s mystery woman? I had no idea. I kept driving, past the rest of the condos, then back out onto Route 12 and back toward Bonaparte Bay.

  Brenda made a note of the house number on the mailbox.

  This little jaunt had raised more questions than it answered. I realized a couple of other things too. I wasn’t quite ready to go back home. And I hadn’t had dinner.

  “You hungry?” I asked.

  “Jo-Jo’s Family Diner is the only place open, and we’re headed that way.” Which was answer enough for me.