by Diane Capri
“If I stand up, David, you’re not going to shoot me, are you?” Not that I would trust his answer, but I wanted to keep him talking while I figured out what to do.
“Madeline shot at you. I didn’t,” he replied.
David slid down the tunnel wall and sat on the slimy floor. That decided me. No one would sit on that floor if they had a choice.
“I’m going for help. Don’t move.” I patted around in Kemp’s pockets but didn’t find his cell. “I need a phone. Mine’s ruined. Do you have one?”
“Madeline does.”
“I’m coming to get it. Don’t shoot me.” I walked gingerly over the slimy cobblestones, holding onto the tunnel wall to keep my balance. The last thing I needed was to fall again.
When I reached Madeline Trevor I checked for her carotid pulse, but found none. I patted her pockets until I found her phone, pulled it out of her pocket and dropped it into mine.
I turned to look at David Mason. He seemed to have passed out.
“I’ll be right back. Kemp’s a police officer. If he dies, you’ll be in even bigger trouble than you already are. Stay put,” I said. Would he do it? I didn’t know. But I had to get help for Kemp. I had no choice.
I backed out of the tunnel, keeping a watch on Mason to be sure he didn’t raise the gun. When I reached Kemp, I stepped over him, pulled myself up the steps, keeping as low a profile as I could, both hands on the rusty rails, until I burst into the night air. I ducked inside again and called down.
“David, I can see you from here. If you move, I’ll turn off the light. You won’t be able to get away in the dark.” I flipped it off for a couple of seconds to prove I could and then flipped it back on. “Stay put.”
No reply.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out Madeline’s phone. When I pushed the button, her screen powered on and I almost whooped for joy. Until I saw the text notification that rested there.
I read it twice before the screen turned off. It was a text from her husband, Judge Randy Trevor. Only four words. “Is Mason dead yet?”
EPILOGUE
Two days later, George and I were once again seated at the back table at Eagle Creek Cafe, waiting for Marc Clayton. We’d taken a quick walk through the tunnels because George wanted to see where Madeline Trevor had died. The exit from the tunnels closest to the restaurant would have put her just inside the Cafe entrance. Her plan had been to leave Mason’s body in the abandoned east tunnel and then return to the Cafe to complete her alibi. A plan that would have worked if I hadn’t seen them across the parking lot that night.
Marc joined us, bringing hot coffee. “Sorry I’m late. I stopped off at the hospital to check on David Mason and Justin Kemp. They’ll both recover. Kemp’s shoulder surgery will take a little longer than David’s abdominal wounds, though both of them will be able to return to work fairly soon.”
“What about Randy Trevor?” George asked. He was still a bit angry about him and his wife. George is very protective of me and he takes a dim view of people trying to shoot me. Which I appreciate, of course.
“He’s been transferred to jail in Grand Rapids for now,” Marc said. “So, Willa, tell me what happened.”
I leaned in and folded my hands around the warm coffee mug and wondered if I’d ever be warm again. “When we saw Leo Richards in his Toyota, his skin was unusually pink. I’d seen that before and heard testimony from medical examiners about it, but I couldn’t recall the cause. It’s similar to the cherry red hue bodies have when carbon monoxide poisoning is the cause of death. Pink livor mortis results when a body has been frozen.”
“Ah,” Marc said.
“When I remembered that, I knew that Richards was colder than he would have been if he’d simply been sitting after death in the Toyota in winter weather.”
“Well, if he was already dead, why’d they shoot him in the head?” George wanted to know.
“To conceal the real cause of death.”
“Which was what?” Marc asked.
“According to the statement the police took from Leo’s wife, the cause of death was blunt trauma to the right temple. The bullet entered his left temple and destroyed the right side of his head with the exit wound. That obliterated most of the evidence that he’d been hit hard enough to kill him. A good forensic autopsy might still have found the real cause, but they had at least a fifty-fifty chance the coroner would miss it simply because the gunshot wound was substantial and sufficient.” I explained the rest of the story as we finished our meal.
The whole thing had been a family affair.
There was a big fight fourteen months ago, as Kemp had originally told me. But what the sisters left out at the time was that during the fight, Madeline had killed Leo Richards. He’d been out of control in an argument with his wife and her sister had bashed his head in when she hit him too hard with a heavy bookend to stop him.
The three sisters hid the body in Maureen’s basement chest freezer and concocted the disappearance story to cover up. Then they simply tried to carry on normally.
Until things began to fall apart.
When David discovered the extent of Leo’s gambling losses and damage to the hardware business, David hired a private detective to find him. David’s wife, the youngest sister Molly, begged him to stop looking for Leo, but David said he’d never, ever do that. That Leo needed to come back and face his responsibilities. So Molly told David about the murder to gain his cooperation.
Madeline was having trouble holding it together, too. Her behavior became so erratic that her husband, the judge, confronted her and she broke down and told him. Randy took control, which didn’t surprise me in the least. He held everyone together to cover up the crime until the snow sniper came along and gave them all a chance to end the charade.
Randy knew about the impending arrest of the snow sniper. It was his idea to set up Richards’ death as another snow sniper victim and to shoot Richards in the left temple to cause the exit wound to obliterate evidence of the blunt force trauma that had actually killed him. Madeline, Molly, and Maureen pulled off the setup and then attended the bridge club tournament to establish an alibi.
“Leo’s wife, Maureen, gave a full confession this morning,” I said, wrapping things up.
Marc pursed his lips and shook his head. George nodded. There was nothing more to say, really.
It was the pink skin that should have tipped me off to this elaborate cover up. Leo Richards’ body was too pink. I knew that pink came from being frozen and then thawed. But I missed it because the weather was so cold, I thought his body temperature was caused by the atmosphere. Turns out it was caused by his cold family.
George remained angry for a good long while, but his trademark sense of calm returned. We stayed to enjoy Pleasant Harbor for the full week and enjoyed a few of the cozy evenings we’d planned before we returned to Tampa.
I may not have owned a pair of ruby slippers and Madeline Trevor wasn’t the Wicked Witch, but the entire episode reminded me that there’s no place like home.
THE END
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The Hunt
for Jack Reacher Series:
Jack in the Green
Get Back Jack
Don’t Know Jack
Jack in a Box
Jack and Kill
The Hunt for Justice Series:
Fatal Distraction
Fatal Enemy
Due Justice
Twisted Justice
Secret Justice
Wasted Justice
Raw Justice
Mistaken Justice
Cold Justice
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Capri is a New York Times, USA Today, and world-wide bestselling author.
She’s a recovering lawyer and snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, Alliance of Independent Authors, and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers and is hard at work on her next novel.
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Table of Contents
Reviews
Additional Works
Copyright
Dedication
Cast of Primary Characters
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
Epilogue
About the Author