Death Takes No Bribes: An Endurance Mystery (Endurance Mysteries Book 3)

by Susan Van Kirk

  The bolt moved another precious inch as Terry’s voice brought a wave of adrenaline to Grace. Taking another deep breath while holding the bolt handle as tightly as she could, she pushed it with both hands, hard enough to clear the bracket in the wall next to the door. Then she grabbed the handle below the bolt with both hands and the door slowly opened, screeching in protest.

  Suddenly, Grace was hit by arctic air, nearly knocking the breath out of her.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  TJ looked at her phone, gauging when a break might come so she could walk down the aisle and find out Grace’s whereabouts from Jeff. She hated to walk in during the play, but she couldn’t wait. Just as she was about to start down the aisle, she heard something from the stage which startled her and stopped her in her tracks. The teenager playing Martha Brewster brought out her elderberry wine, explaining its contents: one teaspoon of arsenic, a half teaspoon of strychnine, and a pinch of cyanide.

  TJ took in a deep breath. This cinches it, she thought to herself: Ellen Terry is turning art into reality. She hiked silently down the aisle and got Deb and Jeff’s attention, motioning them out. Heads turned to see why a police detective was in the auditorium, but TJ simply walked back up the aisle, speaking to no one. Deb and Jeff followed her out the double doors.

  “Where’s Grace?”

  “She left to go to the restroom, but it was maybe fifteen minutes ago. I was getting worried, but figured she might have run into you and the two of you were out here in the hall talking,” said Jeff.

  “You didn’t see her, TJ?” asked Deb.

  “Haven’t seen her. I just got here. Knowing Grace, she decided to take things into her own hands.” TJ’s muscles tensed and she gave a disgusted sigh. Someone called out her name. Turning, she saw Jake Williams coming around the corner from the ticket office.

  “Got the warrant?”

  “Right here,” Jake said, pulling a paper out of his coat pocket. “What’s up?”

  TJ turned to all three of them, saying “It’s Ellen Terry. She’s the killer. Can’t give you all the details, but I’m afraid Grace decided to investigate herself. Where might she be? We need to split up and try to find them. Jake and I will look for Terry since we don’t know if she’s armed. We need to find Grace too.” She looked at each of them, planting her feet, taking charge of whatever the plan would be. “What do we know for sure?”

  “Terry has a director’s office down below the stage. Grace might have gone down there,” said Deb, quickly pointing in the direction of the left stage wing.

  “Where else could she be?”

  “Backstage?” said Jeff.

  Deb shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. My guess is she would search Terry’s office. TJ, do you know where the theater office is?”

  “I think I remember well enough to find it.” She pointed to each of them, focused and direct. “Deb, you check backstage for Terry. If she is there, don’t do anything except try to stay out of her range of sight. We don’t want to spook her. Then find me in the theater director’s office. If she isn’t backstage, come down there anyway to let me know she’s on the loose. Jake, you and Jeff come with me.”

  The three of them ran quickly through the hallway, moving around to the back of the stage. The lights were on throughout the hallway, and no one slowed their progress or even noticed. Closer to the office, they stopped. Then they moved more cautiously, using hand signals to communicate. Jeff prudently hung back a bit. Both detectives checked their guns, moving deliberately toward the door of the office. All the lights were on, but the office was empty. TJ cleared the main office while Jake pulled open the closet. Nothing. About that time, they heard footsteps running down the hallway outside. Jeff stuck his head in, saying, “Deb’s back. No Terry backstage.”

  TJ glanced at Jake saying, “Great! Where would she have gone? Where could she have Grace?”

  Deb pointed at a doorway. “Grace was examining articles on the high school and found one about an underground area they sealed off years ago. That padlock’s hanging open. It’s probably the opening, since I know the pictures showed that the area went under the new auditorium.”

  “You remember anything about the pictures?” TJ asked.

  Deb thought for a moment. “I remember seeing storage rooms under the new, higher stage, and the old auditorium with two aisles and seats and debris. It’s possible they could be down there.”

  TJ examined the open doorway, moaning, “Geez. Why did she have to go to ground, underground?” She shook her head, giving Jake a resigned look. “Okay, Jake. Let’s do a quick check first. Deb, you and Jeff stay here. She could be armed.”

  TJ put her foot on the first step down, moving very slowly as she pulled out a flashlight. She held up the light, scanning the area, and returned, walking backward, up the steps. “Looks like aisles on either side. No lighting, probably been turned off for years, and definitely no heat. Which way you want to do this, Jake?”

  “I was about to say, ‘you take the left while I’ll take the right.’ However, stands to reason if she’s armed, these flashlights will be a dead giveaway. Not sure I want to be a sitting duck.”

  “Another option is to smoke her out, so to speak. Hit those hallways with a smoke bomb or pepper spray. Don’t think the smoke would set off detectors because this auditorium wouldn’t have ’em.”

  “But what about Grace? If she’s down there, she’ll end up in the smoke or pepper spray, and you don’t know if she’s alive, conscious, unconscious, or what,” said Jeff.

  “Did I hear someone call my name?” Grace’s voice came out of nowhere.

  All four of them turned, staring at the strange being standing in the office door.

  “Grace?” said Jeff. “Is that you?”

  “In the flesh, although less of it than an hour earlier.”

  TJ looked out the doorway at her friend, her face registering shock. She figured Grace was in the thick of this mess, but it was hard to recognize her. She appeared to be a giant gray blob, covered with dust, dirt, soot, and what could be dirty, blackened spider webs. Her face was plastered with gray patches of dust, dried blood was visible on her forehead, and strands of gray webs with dead, dried bugs were everywhere. Her pants were torn, hanging in shreds near her knees.

  TJ gave her one of her sternest looks. “I don’t even want to know what you were doing. Are you alright? Where is Ellen Terry?”

  “I think I may have bruised or fractured a rib falling down the stairs. It hurts to breathe. As for Terry, last time I heard her she was down in what she calls ‘hell.’ Down there.” TJ watched Grace point to the stairway into the underground auditorium.

  “Armed?”

  “Yes. She had a gun earlier. I got out before she got to me. She’s crazy, TJ. You should hear her singing childish songs. She was planning to make me victim number three.”

  “Jeff, you better get Grace to the ER and see what they can do for her. She may need to have her ribs checked or stitches in her forehead. On second thought, maybe she should go through the car wash first. Deb, you go too.” Then she paused, adding, “Grace, how did you get out?”

  “Magic,” she said, smiling through the gross bugs and dust.

  “Seriously?”

  “They left doors to the outside at the end of the aisles. Locked on the inside, they lead to the outside in the back parking lot. Also, ridiculously hard bolts lock the doors, but it’s amazing what fear can do for weak arms.”

  TJ wrestled with yelling at Grace or chiding her more softly. She settled for in between. “Okay, get her out of here. Soap, water, blankets, ribs.” She shook her head. “You could have been killed here.”

  She watched her friend meekly turn, leaving with Deb and Jeff on either side of her.

  TJ looked at Jake. “So, who’s going to do outside duty, and who’s going to go underground? Want to flip for it?”

  “You can stay, TJ. I’ll keep an eye on the outside doors. She should exit into the back lot. I can
spot her, either door,” said Jake, zipping up his jacket.

  “Call the station for backup. I’ll stay and see if she emerges.”

  “Got it.” Jake left, hurrying out, and TJ settled in to keep an eye on the door. She decided to shut it to within four inches, leaving the lights on in the office. Then she positioned herself outside the office door, her eyes and gun on the opening to the underground. A voice startled her, and she turned her head.

  “Whoa!” said Del Novak, backing away. “What are you doing here, TJ?”

  “Watching for Ellen Terry. Need to keep my eyes on the door, Del. You might want to back out.”

  Del craned his neck to look around TJ. “She’s down there?” Novak asked.

  “Yeah. Jake’s got the outside doors covered. We’re waiting for her to emerge for air. Not good for you to be here, Del. She may be armed. We’re waiting because it’s too dark in the underground.”

  “They left lights in the underground area,” Del said.

  “Really? Where do they turn on?”

  “They don’t.”

  TJ gave him an exasperated look. “Why did you tell me about lights then?”

  “They’re on a breaker. It’s turned off since we don’t use that area. But I can flip the breaker so it will turn them on…well, only some of them since the bulbs are replaced occasionally for inspections by the fire chief and all. They’re pretty dim. Want I should turn them on?”

  “Yeah,” said TJ.

  “The bat-crazy play director down there?”

  “She is, we think.”

  “She the one who killed John and Evan?”

  “We think that too.”

  “You get her, TJ. Alive, if you can. I’d like to see her stand to judgment.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Anything I can do to help besides flipping the circuit breaker?”

  “Nah. We have backup on the way, and Jake’s here too.”

  “You got it,” said Del, leaving to go to the breaker box, just down the hall.

  TJ waited a few minutes until she saw dim lights go on down the stairway. She sent a text to Jake, telling him she was going in. Then she made sure she had extra ammunition within close reach.

  Carefully, she took one step at a time down the stairs, her gun loaded and aimed ahead. Her eyes narrowed, scanning the huge area, noting hiding spots behind debris, and alerting her trigger finger to any possible movement. Figuring out which aisle to go up was another problem. The detective studied both, and seeing no one, figured Terry was hiding behind some of the debris piles. Could flip a coin to determine which aisle, she thought.

  The lights were faint, as Del had said, and TJ’s body was at full alert, moving cautiously, straining to listen for any noise. She stepped toward the left, careful to watch for sudden movements, peering into the dim wasteland of discarded chairs, wood, and debris. Adrenaline pumping, she heard her heartbeat racing, felt her muscles tense and her breath move quickly in and out.

  She was only a few feet away from the stairs when she heard a shot and felt its impact on her left shoulder, spinning her around. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she realized she was hit, fired a return shot, and felt her gun leave her hand. Dimly, she thought she heard a voice, and then she heard nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Lettie opened Grace’s kitchen door and backed in with two bags of groceries plus muffins from Mildred at The Bread Box Bakery. Grace was up making coffee, fully dressed and somewhat functioning, which seemed an odd situation for a Saturday.

  “You’re up?”

  “Sure am. Ready to greet the day.”

  Lettie looked at her suspiciously. “It’s Saturday, Grace. The last time you were up this early, the Civil Rights Act had just been passed by LBJ and you wanted to watch the signing.” She walked over to Grace. “What’s going on?”

  She turned to Lettie after pushing the “on” button on her coffeemaker. “I had a rather long night. I’m surprised you don’t already know.”

  “Oh, I know about TJ. Got shot in the shoulder by that crazy woman. She gonna be all right?”

  “Yes, the prognosis for TJ is a full recovery. We’ll have to feed her and help her recuperate.”

  “Sounds like I need to go back to the grocery store.”

  “I’ll tackle the wine shop.”

  “What about Maitlin? Where’s he?”

  “He’s been at the Register most of the night, writing the story about the capture of Ellen Terry by the intrepid detectives of Endurance. Should show up on the doorstep this morning.”

  “Humph! The crazy drama director. Well, I’ll be. How come you weren’t in the thick of it this time the way you usually are? In fact, I don’t see any bullet holes or puncture wounds in you. No bandages. Just a tiny butterfly bandage on your forehead. Does this mean you finally decided to leave it up to the police for a change?”

  Grace turned her head this way and that. “Well…I have a few scrapes, lacerations, and a bruised rib. I had to sleep in the recliner all night because it hurts to breathe or turn over in bed. I also have a huge pile of clothes which may have to be burned.”

  Lettie stopped, coffee cups in midair. “Burned? What are you talking about?”

  “Open the muffins. I’ll get the coffee and tell you what I know.”

  Lettie set down the coffee cups and rubbed her hands together. “Oh, good!” Then she stared at Grace, a strange look on her face. “Clothes? Burned? Grace, what did you get into this time?”

  Later that afternoon, Grace was at the hospital sitting in a chair next to TJ’s bed.

  “Man, you didn’t tell me it hurts to get shot, Grace,” said TJ, lying in bed, surrounded by pillows. “Now we’re tied for gunshot wounds.”

  “Going into an underground tunnel by yourself with minimal lighting does not seem to me like a smart thing to do.”

  “It was the only choice, Grace. It’s my job.”

  “You could’ve had Jake back you up.”

  “He did. I should have waited for him before I went in. Didn’t quite happen like I’d envisioned it. Jake and I managed to hit her with two bullets as she came to finish me. Terry’s in the hospital too, under guard. She’ll survive.”

  Grace’s eyes widened. “So, has Jake had time to interrogate her? Is she talking?”

  “All morning. She waived her right to counsel. I think she was interested in an audience. You know, she’s quite the diva. We’re working with the police in Nebraska, but they may never find the real Ellen Terry.”

  Grace could tell her friend was on pain pills; she talked far more than usual about her job.

  “The ‘real’ Ellen Terry? You’d better start at the beginning. Why did these horrible things happen? Why would she kill two good men and almost kill you?”

  “Me? I was collateral damage. But Ellen Terry and I have that in common. I guess, in a way, so does Amy Deffly.”

  “Amy Deffly? Who is she?”

  “Ellen Terry. It’s quite a winding story. She told Jake some of it—once we sort out the truth of the statement—we’ll trace much of the rest in legal documents. Amy Deffly—who you know as Ellen Terry—was born in 1980 in Minnesota. Her father was a Viet Nam vet who had lots of mental problems both from his drug use and his war experiences, while her mother had a heroin dependency. They married—a lethal combination when you think about it—after he returned from the service in ’75. They had a daughter, Amy, and two sons.”

  “She has brothers?”

  We’ll need to trace them. Once her father came back from the war, the family took up a nomadic life with the parents still involved in drugs and legal problems. The three children were eventually taken away from them by a court, split up, and placed in foster homes, none of which were nurturing or kind.

  “Her own psychotic episodes began in her teens. She ended up in a series of mental hospitals, wandering off from the last one in 2005.” She looked at Grace and held out her good hand. “Mind you, a lot of this still has to b
e checked. Somehow, she got from Michigan, where she was picked up for vagrancy, to Nebraska. As far as we can verify, she was homeless for a while, but then was taken in by a church group who managed to find her a job as a cashier in a grocery store.”

  “Sounds like a lot of links to connect, TJ. Did she tell you this in her usual rambling style?”

  “Well, in a roundabout way. You must remember, she needs medicine for her mental difficulties regularly, but can’t always afford it. On the other hand, she’s very smart—and cunning. A great deal of this can be verified by various kinds of records, but some of it may be a product of her unmedicated mind.”

  Silence for a few moments. Then Grace furrowed her eyebrows. “Someone else was the real Ellen Terry? How did this Amy meet her?”

  “That part of the story is pretty clear. They met in a drug dependency group. Ellen Terry was a drama teacher in a local private school who was making excellent progress getting off painkillers. She had been in the accident which killed her parents, and her injuries left her dependent on pain medicine. The real Ellen Terry was interested in murder mysteries and was writing a mystery herself, researching poisons. Again, from what we can check, the two of them moved in together in the fall of 2010, possibly to save money. Terry had no idea Amy Deffly had psychotic episodes, and they bonded through this drug group.”

  “So, let me get this straight. The real Ellen Terry was an orphan. She did get her teaching certification and was hired by the private school you’ve checked with in Nebraska.”

  “Right. We don’t know what happened, but at some point, Amy began shadowing Ellen Terry, watching her, listening to her, fixated on her, often going to the school to help her with plays. Perhaps the real Ellen Terry began to be afraid of Deffly. We don’t know the answer yet to that and maybe never will. The one thing Deffly couldn’t do was go to Ellen Terry’s classroom and observe her teaching.”

  “Oh,” said Grace, thoughtfully. “That would explain why she had such strange questions about teaching.”