Death by Jury (Alo Nudger Series Book 9)

by John Lutz

  Only when she opened her eyes did he recognize Joleen Witt.

  “What are you doing here?” Nudger asked in a stunned voice.

  Joleen put her feet on the floor. The chair eeeeked for her just as it did for Nudger. Her broad face had looked peaceful and unguarded in the instant before the light had awakened her. Now she blinked a couple of times and became the wary, scornful woman he’d come to know.

  He took a step toward her. Her hand went into her coat pocket and came out holding a gun. She pointed it at Nudger. He froze with the proper respect. It was a small target pistol, a .22 caliber. Like the gun that had killed Blaumveldt.

  Or maybe it was the gun that had killed Blaumveldt. Nudger’s thinking had been all wrong. Joleen was the murderer.

  Nudger stared helplessly at the gun muzzle and waited for the bang and flash. His mind went blank, except for a forlorn wish that he’d called Claudia when he’d had the chance.

  But the gun didn’t go off. Instead, Joleen started talking, in her usual irascible tone. “What am I doing here? Where else am I going to go? I’m a fugitive, thanks to you. I’ve got a police scanner in my car. I found out I was wanted for murder as I was driving to work. Try that some morning and see how it ruins your mood. I knew I had to dump the car, right away. I rode the bus here.”

  In his mind Nudger took a step back from the abyss. Joleen wasn’t going to shoot him, at least not immediately. She was talking like an innocent woman. He wanted very much to believe in her innocence.

  “How’d you know where my office was?” he asked.

  “You gave me your card last summer, remember? I didn’t even have to break in. You left the door open.”

  “Oh,” said Nudger. He’d have to reconsider that policy. Better to lose a client than what he might yet lose tonight.

  “I didn’t kill my sister,” Joleen said. “I didn’t kill Blaumveldt. His charges were so ridiculous they made me angry, that’s all. Certainly not angry enough to kill.”

  “In that case the safest thing for you to do is surrender to the police,” Nudger said. “I know a lawyer who can help arrange it. Want me to call him?”

  He took a step toward the desk.

  Joleen raised the gun and shook her head.

  Nudger stopped in his tracks. He said, “That’s an unfortunate choice of gun. Blaumveldt was killed with a twenty-two handgun.”

  “Not this one. I use it for shooting at tin cans. You’re the first person I’ve ever aimed it at.”

  Not an honor Nudger would have chosen. He noticed now that the office had been searched. The file drawers were open and there were piles of paper on the floor and desk. He said, “What were you looking for?”

  “You and Blaumveldt claimed to be detectives. I wondered if you’d done any work on the lead I gave you this morning. About my sister’s place in the country.” Joleen glanced ruefully about the office. “It took hours, and I didn’t find anything. God, your files are a mess. And then I thought to check that.”

  She lifted her free hand and pointed at the answering machine on the edge of the desk.

  So Nudger’s hunch had been right: Blaumveldt had called. He said, “What did you find out?”

  “That your ex-wife hates you, for one thing. Are you really that bad?”

  “No, I’m not. As a matter of fact, Joleen, if you’d put down that gun and let me talk for a minute, you might find out I’m on your side.”

  “You’d better be,” said Joleen dryly.

  “No, really. I think you’re innocent. I think Blaumveldt was killed by Roger Dupont, or at his orders. Because Blaumveldt located Karen’s cabin. I came here to check the machine, to see if he’d called me.”

  Joleen’s face seemed to soften a bit, though he couldn’t be sure of that. But she did lower her gunhand. Nudger could no longer see the hole in the muzzle and he felt a lot better.

  “Maybe you’re not so dumb after all,” she said. She switched on the machine. “Listen to it yourself. It’s the last message. Don’t rewind too far or you’ll get your ex-wife.”

  Nudger stepped over to the machine and pressed the button. The tape whirred and gabbled. He pressed Stop then Play.

  “Looks like you win, Nudger,” said the dead man’s voice. “I just got off the phone with the Goshen Land Title Company, over in Illinois. Karen bought a place on Chatwin Bottom Road outside town last May. I think we ought to take this to the cops. What do you think? Call me at the office.”

  With a click the phone went down. Nudger stopped the tape. “This is evidence,” he told Joleen. “It corroborates your story. If we take it to the authorities—”

  She was shaking her head. She propped her elbow on the desk and aimed the gun at Nudger’s sternum. He could see down the barrel again. The small black hole down which his life would vanish if Joleen tightened her finger.

  “I’ll tell you, Nudger. I’m kind of fed up with the authorities. I’ve known for seven months that Karen was dead and Roger Dupont killed her. And for seven months the so-called authorities have been botching the case. Now I’m taking matters into my own hands.”

  Nudger swallowed hard. He didn’t want to ask the next question. Didn’t need to. Joleen went on.

  “We’re going to the cabin. Now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Roger doesn’t want us to. He was willing to kill to prevent anyone from finding that cabin. If we go there we’ll find the truth. I’m sure of it.”

  “If that’s your plan, what do you need me for?”

  “You have a car the cops aren’t looking for.”

  “I’ll give you the keys.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t very well leave you here. Anyway, you might come in handy searching the cabin. You’re supposed to be a detective, aren’t you?”

  Nudger tore his eyes away from the gun muzzle. But he found himself looking into Joleen’s wide-set green eyes, and that was hardly reassuring. She’d been put through months of frustration. Now she was on an adrenaline high, thrilling to the release of action, and the risks. She was flying. If the cabin didn’t supply the answers she was counting on, she would crash. Might explode. Nudger didn’t want to be around if that happened.

  He decided to stall.

  “Let’s wait until daylight. It’ll be easier to find the place.”

  But she was already getting to her feet. As she backed up, she straightened her arm, bringing the gun muzzle level with his eyes. For a person who said she’d never pointed a gun at a human being before, Joleen certainly wasn’t squeamish.

  “Turn around.”

  He turned to face the open door. He could hear her coming around the desk. “Down the stairs, slowly,” she said.

  Nudger descended. The wooden steps creaked behind him as Joleen followed. Fear was scraping and burning his stomach. He wondered if he could take the roll of antacid tablets out of his pocket without getting shot.

  “Stop!” Joleen called out, when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  He stood staring at the peeling gray paintwork of the door as she came down behind him. The gun barrel with its hard blade sight nestled intimately into his backbone.

  “Out.”

  Nudger opened the door and stepped out on the sidewalk. Joleen stayed right with him. There didn’t happen to be a police car passing at that moment. There was no one on the street at all.

  When they reached the car she said, “You drive.” She stationed herself by the passenger door as he walked around the car. He fumbled his keys out of his pocket with cold, stiff fingers and unlocked the door. When he got behind the wheel, he could see the gun, aimed through the window at him. He leaned reluctantly toward it to unlock her door. She got in.

  “Let’s move!”

  Nudger twisted the ignition key. For the first time in weeks, the Granada’s engine started on the first try.

  As he pulled away from the curb, he noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head slightly. Through the doughnut shop window
he could see Danny coming out of the back, behind the counter. He was looking down, wiping his hands on a towel.

  Look up, Danny! Nudger silently begged.

  But in a second Danny was lost to his sight as the car accelerated away. Nudger didn’t think he’d looked up. He checked the rearview mirror, hoping to see Danny step out onto the sidewalk and look after him. But it didn’t happen.

  “Those doughnuts sure smelled good,” Joleen remarked beside him.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  They got on the highway and drove through the sleeping city and across the Mississippi. Soon they left the lights of the suburbs behind them. Every few minutes a big tractor trailer rig would appear in the rearview mirror, gain fast, and whoosh by them. Otherwise there was hardly any traffic.

  Joleen relaxed somewhat. She even put the gun down in her lap to unfold Nudger’s well-worn road map of Illinois and look for the town of Goshen. She eventually located it, some fifty miles to the east.

  “Is Chatwin Bottoms Road on the map?” he asked.

  “No. But the Chatwin River is. It should be near there.”

  “Well, we can always knock on doors and ask directions,” Nudger said. “Of course, Walter didn’t give us a house number.”

  “Shut up!” Joleen said. “I’m right where I want to be—in a car the police aren’t looking for, getting farther and farther away from St. Louis. I like your car. As for you . . . well, if we can’t find Karen’s cabin, you’re no use to me. So think positive, Nudger.”

  She was looking sideways at him across the dark interior of the car. Nudger tasted bile and swallowed. “I’m going to have to take something out of my coat pocket, okay?”

  “What?”

  “Antacid tablets.”

  Joleen sighed. “They don’t make tough private detectives like they used to.”

  Nudger got one of the chalky white disks from his pocket and chewed. Another semi thundered past them, buffeting the Granada. He gripped the wheel tighter and glanced in the rearview mirror. Then looked again.

  There was a pair of headlights far behind him. Too low to the ground for a truck, they had to belong to a car. Nudger might have been imagining things, but he thought he’d noticed this car before. Noticed it keeping a fixed distance behind him. It would disappear from view as a truck pulled between it and Nudger, then reappear when the truck passed him. Was it possible that Danny had seen the car pulling away from in front of the doughnut shop, that he’d grown suspicious and called the police?

  Possible, but unlikely.

  “Maybe it’d help if you told me your story.” Nudger said, swallowing the jagged fragments of the antacid tablet.

  Joleen remained silent.

  Not Nudger. “You said this morning that Karen came to see you after she’d caught Roger and Vella together at the house.”

  “She didn’t catch them,” Joleen corrected. “Roger set up the whole thing. He wanted to hurt Karen. And it worked. She was devastated.”

  Joleen put the map aside and turned sideways to face him. The pistol was still her lap. He was relieved that she didn’t pick it up.

  “You have to understand how much home meant to Karen. She was the complete opposite of me. I used to tease her because she was always comparing fabric swatches and reading up on window treatments. It wasn’t a status thing with her; she just liked to make herself and other people comfortable.”

  Nudger was thinking of Effie Prang’s house in Ladue. “Roger likes to be made comfortable.”

  “Oh, yes. We’re simple people, Nudger. Not sophisticated Ladue types like the Duponts. And he made the most of that. Over dinner at the country club, when his friends’ wives got to talking about their careers or their charity projects, he liked to say that Karen’s big concern in life was keeping the coffee hot and fresh flowers on the table, and that was what he wanted in a wife.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. And after he got tired of sleeping with her, when her body wasn’t a novelty anymore, he made it clear to her that homemaking was all she was good for. He was getting his excitement with other women, and he didn’t think she had any right to complain. He’d bought her the house she wanted, and he was paying the bills. What he did outside the house was none of her business.”

  Nudger nodded. “So when she saw Vella in her house . . .”

  “That was Roger’s way of letting her know she didn’t count for anything anymore. That he had no respect at all for her. And she got the message. When she came to my place that night, she was ready to fall apart.”

  “Did you suggest they get a divorce?”

  “Oh, Roger didn’t want a divorce. He didn’t want to lose Karen, not when he had her where he wanted her. Roger likes to rub it in. If I was going to describe him in one sentence, that’d be it. He’s a guy who likes to rub it in.”

  Nudger remembered that the same description had once occurred to him as he observed Dupont. “But Karen must have wanted a divorce.”

  “She wasn’t ready yet. She didn’t think she could earn a living on her own. He’d completely destroyed her confidence. ‘Codependency,’ the psychiatrists call it. Whatever it’s called, Karen was a victim of it and was psychologically incapable of leaving her oppressor. ”

  “So you decided the way to start rebuilding her confidence was to make her financially independent of Roger.”

  “That’s right. She had to put away a little money of her own.” Joleen was smiling. “We enjoyed selling things behind Roger’s back. Karen had devoted herself to furnishing the house, and he didn’t care anymore, so it seemed like poetic justice. And I’m pleased to say it wasn’t just the silver, the jewelry, and the painting. We sold a lot of other stuff Blaumveldt didn’t manage to trace.”

  “And you helped Karen build up this slush fund without ever asking her what she was going to do with it?”

  Joleen shrugged. “Just having it made her feel stronger, and that was good enough for me.”

  “When did you begin to think she’d bought a place in the country?”

  “Not until later. When she disappeared, and I didn’t hear from her, I figured right away that Roger had killed her. But after he was acquitted, and Blaumveldt kept coming around, telling me he was sure Karen was still alive . . . well, like I said, my hopes got the better of me.”

  “But you still didn’t believe Roger’s story that she’d gone off to Chicago.”

  Joleen gave a quick, decisive headshake.

  “Why not?”

  “It was just wrong for Karen. She wouldn’t want to lose herself in a big city. She wouldn’t simply run away. She’d have prepared some kind of refuge she could run to.”

  “A home of her own,” Nudger said, nodding. “One Roger couldn’t bring one of his girlfriends into.”

  “One he wouldn’t even know about.”

  A big semi roared past on the left. The Granada shook in the wind of its passage. As the behemoth went on its way, Nudger checked his mirror.

  The headlights he’d noticed before were still there, the same distance behind him. It could be another car that happened to be traveling at exactly the same speed, or it could be the police. Or—

  Joleen’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Take the next exit.”

  He nodded. “What exactly are you expecting to find at the cabin,” he asked?

  “I’ve told you. Answers. I’m sure this is where Karen was between the time she disappeared and the time she died. The answers will be here. Between us, we’ll be able to figure out the whole story.

  He nodded, hoping again Joleen wouldn’t be disappointed, in the cabin or in Nudger. The exit ramp was before him. He signaled and tapped the brakes. At the bottom of the ramp, Joleen told him to turn right.

  As they drove away into the darkness, he glanced in the mirror and saw another pair of headlights descending the ramp.

  Joleen spread the map over her knees and held a flashlight on it. She gave terse directions, which he followed. They didn’t see the town of Gos
hen at all, but took a road that led downhill through the woods. He kept checking the mirror, hoping to see headlights flickering through the trees. But whoever was following them had switched off their lights.

  Or there was no one following them except in Nudger’s imagination.

  Joleen instructed him to make a right. As he turned, his lights swept over the street sign. They were now on Chatwin Bottom Road. She told him to go slowly so she could get a good look at the houses they passed.

  It was an unnecessary instruction. The road hadn’t been plowed, and it was only by staying in the ruts other cars and tractors had made in the snow that he was able to keep going at all. The Granada lurched and bounced along at a walking pace.

  Joleen was leaning forward eagerly, peering out the window, but there were no houses to see, only fields and fences half-buried in snow.

  Then they heard the barking of a dog. Over the next rise they came upon a house and barn. The space between them was brilliantly illuminated by a spotlight, and in it stood the dog, a big German shepherd. It barked furiously at them as they went by. Nudger looked for lights to come on in the house, but it stayed dark.

  He could hear the dog barking for a long time after they’d passed the house. Then they went down another hill and all was quiet again. The going was even slower now. Nudger was struggling to keep the Granada’s wheels in a set of distinct herringbone-patterned tracks. Only one vehicle—obviously a tractor—had passed this way before them.

  After another mile or so, the tracks turned off. Nudger looked down the drive and saw in the distance another house and barn. This farm didn’t have a dog, apparently, but it did have pigs. Their pungent reek came to him across several hundred yards of snowy field and through the closed windows of the car. It was a warm intimate smell; it almost made him envy the pigs, who were in no imminent danger of being shot.

  No one had been any farther down this road since the snow had fallen. The Granada would get no more help from the ruts left by other traffic. Nudger shifted into low. They wallowed on for as long as the downhill lasted, but the next rise, slight as it was, turned out to be too much for the car. It stopped, its rear wheels whirring. He took his foot off the gas.