by Valerie Tate
“You won’t get away with this, you know,” Chris said, trying to buy time, hoping that Alex had called for help by now.
“Of course I will,” she said with calm assurance. “I returned home to get my wallet which I’d left on the kitchen table, and discovered you had broken into my house while I was out …”
“We didn’t break in, the door was unlocked,” Alicia corrected her.
“By the time the cops get here, all of the doors will be locked except for the one I came in, and there will be a broken window at the back. Anyway, after what had happened to my husband, I was scared. I thought you had probably killed him since you people so conveniently left your fingerprints all over the office, and I wasn’t taking any chances. I got my ax from the garage for protection and came in to ask what you were doing in my house. You attacked me and I struck you in self-defense.”
Alicia snorted derisively. “Why would we attack you?” she asked.
“Why would you kill my husband? Why would you break into my house?” Jennifer countered.
“The police will be suspicious when they find you’ve packed your bags and are leaving town.”
“I’ve let it be known around town that I can’t bear to be alone right now and that I’m going home to be with my family. I need support and comfort in this time of terrible loss,” she recited glibly. “There’s nothing left for me here now that Bill is gone. This house is too full of painful memories of him. After the funeral I’ll have my lawyer sell everything. I need to make a fresh start.”
Alicia could almost hear the violins. Surely no one would believe that story. “My friend Alex knows the truth.” She said confidently. “She’s outside in the car. She’ll have seen you return and called the police.”
“But she couldn’t have seen me. I made sure of that. I saw you drive up and park, just like you did yesterday.” Like a cobra mesmerizing its prey, she was looking them steadily in the eyes as she slowly moved towards them as she talked. “I thought you were going to follow me again. But then I got that call from the police. I realized it was a fake and that you were going to try to search the house, so I decided it was time to take care of you once and for all.”
Chris worked to calm his breathing. He knew she was about to make her move and he would have only a split-second to react.
“I drove around the block, parked and then walked around and in the back way. No one saw me.”
He braced for the blow, his heart pounding in his ears.
“There’s no help coming. Once your brains are splattered across my lovely hardwood, I’ll make a suitably hysterical call to that oaf Samuel. I’ll be found in tears and full of remorse for what I had been forced to do to save my own life. I’ve had plenty of practice ‘faking it’ over the years. It will be an Oscar-worthy performance, I assure you. It’s too bad you two won’t be around to enjoy it.”
She made her move with the speed of the cobra, so fast that Chris was almost caught off-guard as the ax came hurtling towards his head. Shoving Alicia backwards with one hand, he ducked and caught the handle of the ax, grappling with the enraged woman.
At that exact moment, a loud voice from the doorway shouted, “Police! Drop that weapon!” and Detective Samuel burst in, followed by two other officers, guns raised. Chris and Jennifer halted, frozen in a tableau of thwarted death.
Bloodshed interruptus!
“It’s all over, Mrs. Abbot,” Detective Samuel said. “Now, give me the ax.’ He spoke with the quiet authority of years of experience dealing with people in crisis, walking slowly towards her with one hand outstretched. Seeing no way out, she reluctantly let the ax be taken from her clenched hands. One of the officers put handcuffs on and she was led away, all the while protesting her innocence.
Chapter 58
Alicia collapsed against Chris and hugged him with relief. “My hero!” she said in all seriousness, clutching him fiercely with all the fear she had felt watching him battling for their lives.
Turning to Samuel, she added, “Thank God you got here when you did,” thinking she would have liked to hug him too. Catching murderers was a lot scarier in real life than in books.
The detective smiled a little apologetically. “Well, actually, we’ve been here a while, listening at the door. We’d hoped she would incriminate herself and she did.”
“So Alex was able to reach you. She must have seen Jennifer after all.”
“No, she hadn’t seen anything until we pulled up. She’s waiting for you outside.”
“Then how did you get here?”
“We have been watching Mrs. Abbot ever since the murder.” Seeing the look of surprise on their faces, he added, “Contrary to what you read in popular fiction, the police do know what they’re doing, most of the time. We’ve been watching you, too.”
“Us?” Their faces mirrored outraged disbelief.
“Yes, and it has been quite interesting. You and your family and friends have been very busy: the APS shelter, Ray Price ...” he gave her a thoroughly disapproving look at that one, “... the hairdresser, the insurance company and even the dress shops in Toronto. I must admit, that was a new one on me. Very good thinking. An extremely thorough investigation.”
“Thank you,” Alicia said, still shocked that he knew about everything they had been doing, and especially about Ray Price. “You must have had our phones tapped as well.”
“We did. Oh, and by the way, the guys said to tell you that we liked your paranoia joke. We made a banner of it and put it up in the station.”
She looked triumphantly at Chris. “And you thought I was being paranoid.” She turned back to the detective. “If you knew all this, why didn’t you stop us?”
“I think I know,” Chris answered, looking thoughtfully at the detective. “Because the evidence against her was all circumstantial and he was hoping that we would do just what we did do, bring Jennifer Abbot out into the open, get her to confess, force her to take some action to stop us. Am I right?”
“Just so,” Samuel smiled approvingly. “And thank you. Although we don’t condone vigilantism and amateur sleuthing, in this case we’re grateful. It was a ‘perfect storm’ for her – your …” looking sternly at Alicia, “fingerprints on the murder weapon, blood evidence on the volunteer’s smock, any other physical evidence easily explained by previous visits to the shelter, no witnesses and no way to prove she didn’t go straight home to bed as she claimed. If it hadn’t been for you two and your ‘team’ rattling her cage, she would have flown the coop, free as a bird, and there would have been nothing we could have done about it. We couldn’t even prove she was complicit in her husband’s fraud and the kidnapping. Thanks to your interference, we’ll have no trouble getting a conviction.”
“But we could have been killed,” Alicia protested, unfairly.
“You were never in any real danger.” Remembering the flash of steel as the razor-sharp ax blade flew towards his head, Chris wasn’t so sure about that. “As I said, you have all been under surveillance. The officers watching the house saw Mrs. Abbot leave and you two go in. Then the officer who followed her reported that she had gotten out of her car around the corner and that she appeared to be heading back to the house. We came immediately, just in time to overhear her confession.”
“Lucky for us,” Alicia said, shuddering at the memory of Chris grappling with the deranged woman.
He fixed a sober look on the two of them. “Yes, it was. It was very foolish of you to think you could do our job better than we could. You could have been killed if we hadn’t been watching you, and we would far rather she got off Scot free than have that happen. And then there is the little matter of the breaking-and-entering,” another stern look, “which we are prepared to overlook since you have been of some help. But don’t let this happen again, understood?”
Chris and Alicia both nodded humbly.
“Good. Now, we’ll need a statement from you both, and you will probably need to testify, unless she shows sense and pleads
guilty. But otherwise, you are out of this. It is over for you. Go home and get back to your lives. And remember, no more playing detectives. In the future, leave it to the professionals.” He dismissed them with a final, grateful smile, and was turning to his men and the task of clearing up the last of the case, when he stopped and looked at Alicia once more. “I suppose we’ll find both your fingerprints all over the house.”
“Not this time,” Alicia said proudly, pulling the latex gloves from her pockets.
Samuel just shook his head and walked away.
Chris chuckled and, putting his arm around Alicia, led her to the door where Alex could be seen, standing by the curb, watching anxiously for them.
They waved reassuringly and Chris turned to Alicia. “What do you say, Nora? Shall we go home?”
“Anything you say, Nicky dear. I’d say this case is a wrap.”
“A good thing too.” He pulled her close, oblivious of the grins of the officers and the spectators who had gathered outside by the road and were craning their necks for a better view. “He’s right. It’s time we forgot about sleuthing and started planning our wedding.”
“You’re right. We do need to start planning the wedding,” she said, admiring the glittering ring on her finger. “We’ll forget about detecting.” She reached up and kissed him. “For now. Right now I could use a martini, and then I think I’ll go to the Community Center and sign us up for Karate or perhaps Tae Kwon Do, or ...” she took a quick, excited breath, “kick-boxing. Do you suppose they have kick-boxing at the Community Center?”
Epilogue
Two nights later they had another combination celebration and farewell party. Shae and Alex were leaving early the next morning to return to their homes and get back to the routines of their normal lives, but both promised to return in the spring for the wedding.
It can’t be said that life completely returned to normal after that. The town of Dunbarton would never be quite the same. The year of the ‘catnapping’ and the murder would be a milestone that they would measure time by for many years to come. But the media circus did finally move on, the pickets disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, and P.A.W.W. quietly slunk away, their lawsuit canceled as well. Jennifer Abbot pleaded guilty in return for a reduced sentence, and so Alicia and Chris were spared the ordeal of having to testify.
What had been the norm for the Dunbar family was no longer the case. And it was a good thing. With James’ blossoming business success and Alice’s widening social life, the citizens of Dunbarton were somewhat embarrassed at how ready they had been to believe the worst of the family and went out of their way to make amends. James and Alice finally became the happy couple the world had expected them to be when they married all those years ago.
Alicia and Chris made plans to be married in the spring. They had decided on the Driftwood Inn, up the lake from Dunbarton. A family-owned inn, it had grown out of a summer place on the lake and boasted one hundred rooms, a head chef stolen from a four star city hotel, a spa, a fitness center, a golf course and banquet facilities. They would be married under a rose-arbor in the gardens overlooking the water, with the reception later in the banquet hall. Alex had promised to be her maid-of honor come hell or high water, even though the Olympic trials were being held that spring.
Chris was given the back-pay he’d lost during his suspension and a sizable bonus, and so they set about looking for a house. They found it one day when they were out rambling. It was an old stone farmhouse a few kilometers out of town on about fifty acres with a pond and a stream, a small hardwood bush and a stone bank barn. It had been empty for many years and had a rather lonely, melancholy look about it, but it was solidly built and with a little, or maybe a lot, of T.L.C., it would be the home they wanted.
Not that they had much free time. The idea of the little theater led to plans by the Town Council for the formation of a Theater Festival such as those found in Blyth, Collingwood, Jackson’s Point and many other small towns in Southern Ontario, and they had the outstanding good taste to ask Alicia to head up this fledgling enterprise. And so, along with rehearsals for the first season’s production, a small but truly dedicated group met regularly, planning for the following summer season. And since they had a strong commitment to foster local talent in all stages of production, from scripting through final performance, they had been overwhelmed with community support, including plans for the theater pavilion by the lake that was Alicia’s dream.
Even the APS found itself in surprisingly improved circumstances. When the Provincial Board learned they were going to need a new Regional Director, they had the good sense to offer the position to Hugh who, in turn, had the good sense to accept with the provision that it would be a more hands-on job than it had been in the past so that he could continue to investigate abuse and neglect, a condition that was readily accepted.
News of the change in administration, the hiring of a local hero, and of the dire financial situation at the shelter, brought out the best in the animal loving citizens of Dunbarton, and money and offers of help poured in. Heading the list of donors was the newly established Marmalade Fund, whose substantial donations allowed for the much-needed new addition to the shelter, as well as the purchase of a small farm adjoining the shelter which gave them more room for larger animals. Not long after his promotion, Hugh proposed to his girlfriend, and the happy couple made plans to move into the small house on the farm where they would dedicate their lives to the challenging job of restoring the physical and emotional well-being of their four-footed charges.
Chris and Alicia never gave up on finding Horace, and were finally rewarded for their persistence when he was found and turned in at the shelter, a little worse for wear and missing the tip of one ear, but otherwise all right. They decided to adopt him and he happily traded his wandering ways for a steady diet and a warm bed by the fire.
It seemed that old Mrs. Dunbar’s crazy will had had the unforeseen effect of healing the wounds and malaise that had plagued them all for years. Chris liked to think that somewhere she knew and was happy - and perhaps a little surprised - about it.
As for Marmalade, if possible he became even fatter and sassier than ever, and since, as we all know, for the well-heeled cat-about-town no door is ever closed, the feline population of Dunbarton grew to astounding proportions. They really must make that trip to the vet.
It is said that cats have nine lives. If that is true, Marmalade has used up at least four of them: the time before he climbed in Amanda Dunbar’s window, the years spent with her, the harrowing months following her death, and then the kidnapping.
His fifth life began with his release from captivity and the solving of the murder of Bill Abbot that finally put an end to all suspicion of the Dunbars. And it would appear that, for the time-being at any rate, it would be purr-fect in every way. One might even say, as Chris had once predicted, only days of cream and catnip for the rest of his nine lives.
The End
About the author
Valerie Tate lives in a 19th century heritage cottage in Ontario, Canada. She has a degree in English Literature and a teaching degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto.
When not working on her mystery novels, she can be found at the barn with her horse and her Jack Russell Terrier.
CATNIP is the first in the series of Dunbarton Mysteries.
www.valerietate.weebly.com
Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
/> Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Epilogue
About the author