by Bill WENHAM
When Cardilli got home, he went into the kitchen and popped open a bottle of Budweiser and took it out to his front porch. He sat down in his favorite chair, one that had also been his mother’s favorite as well. It was an old, white-painted wicker rocker with deep and soft cushions.
He leaned back, relaxed and planned the murder of Angela Gerrard.
So far, he’d done the car, the boat, the bathtub and the swimming pool and now for the fireplace! But this time, unlike all the others, this one would be on Paul Thatcher’s property.
It would need some careful and perhaps critical timing but it really wouldn’t matter if the fire was alight or not. It was merely a place for the body to be discovered, just like all the others. If the fire was alight it would be more effective perhaps, but it wasn’t essential.
First of all he had to abduct Angela Gerrard and poison her with some of his father’s cyanide. It had worked on Santini and it should work again so that part would be easy enough.
The second, gaining access to Thatcher’s house would also be easy. Thatcher, like Factor, spent every day in his office, located on the grounds of his Easy Green Garden World franchise. And built on the land I was cheated out of, Cardilli thought bitterly.
Thatcher went there every morning as regular as clockwork, leaving his big and empty home at 8.30 a.m. each morning.
Like Factor’s house, the area where Thatcher lived also had several unfinished houses. They would probably stay that way now unless the economy improved dramatically, which suited Cardilli’s purposes perfectly.
He would park in Thatcher’s driveway, with the pickup’s license plates removed just for the occasion. Then he would walk around the back and carefully force one of the large basement windows open to enter the house.
From there he would make his way to the garage and open it from the inside. Then, if no one was visible in the area, he would drive his pickup, containing Angela’s body, into the garage.
She, at forty five, like most of the executive’s wives, had kept herself in good shape and was slim, trim and attractive. Because of that she wasn’t very heavy for Cardilli to carry.
The essential part of his plan would be to get her into position prior to rigor mortis setting in. In order for everything to work properly for him, her body had to remain flexible.
Once inside the garage, he’d leave the door up and carry her body into the family room. Then he would force it up the chimney and wedge it there with a couple of pieces of two by four.
He realized there would probably be some fallen soot so he would have to remember to take a vacuum cleaner with him as well. He wouldn’t be able to waste time looking for Thatcher’s.
Next he would have to go back and fix the forced window so that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious to Thatcher, given a casual glance. The police would most likely find it later but it wouldn’t have any connection to him, would it?
All Cardilli needed to do after everything else was completed was to drive the pickup back into the driveway, hit the inside garage door closer and duck under the door as it came down. Then he’d drive away.
When he was far enough away from Thatcher’s place, he would put the plates back on the pickup. From then on, it would be up to Thatcher to start the show.
He would probably do one of two things, it now being late fall. He would either light his fire or he would not. Either way it wouldn’t really matter because the end result would be the same.
The family room would immediately fill with smoke from the blocked chimney if he did light it. Even if he didn’t light it the body would just remain right where it was until it started to smell.
If Thatcher got down on his hands and knees and looked up the chimney, he would easily see what was causing the blockage. He would then have to call the police and try to explain how the body of the poisoned Angela Gerrard just happened to be stuffed up his family room chimney.
Smiling, Cardilli finished his beer and went back into his kitchen for another. When he returned to his porch chair, he went over his plan in his mind again to check for any faults in it. As always, it depended on a bit of luck going his way, but then, so did everything, didn’t it?
His plan was really quite straightforward except for one thing.
If Thatcher didn’t light his fire, and really, as a man alone in the house, it was extremely unlikely that he would, it could be some time before the body was discovered.
There would naturally be an enquiry into Angela’s disappearance because her husband would obviously wonder where the hell his wife had gone, just as Factor had. But there would be no reason at all for the police to even think of looking for her in Thatcher’s house.
The main reason for that being the fact that the Gerrards didn’t even live in the same state! Their home and franchise was located west of Toledo in Ohio. It would be a long drive for him in both directions and he would have to keep Angela alive and undetected until he got back to where Thatcher lived in Flint. But the end result would be well worth it.
That, essentially, was Cardilli’s plan for his next murder but whether or not he would even get to carry it out was already way beyond Cardilli’s control.
Cardilli was no longer the hunter seeking revenge.
Little did he know it as he sat comfortably on his porch drinking beer, but he was now the hunted. He was not the only one seeking revenge either.
The father of one of the women he’d killed had no intention of letting Cardilli get away with killing his only daughter.
Chapter Twenty Two
When Paul Thatcher was advised his wife, Patti, was the ‘burning car’ victim in Dean Factor’s driveway he was both shocked and devastated, saddened and then, as the reality of it soaked in, furious. He was pretty well convinced Factor, friend or not, had murdered his beautiful blonde Dandy Yankee Doodle.
He had no idea what Factor’s motive could possibly have been. In fact, Paul himself might have had more of a motive if that’s what the police were looking for.
One week earlier, at one of the Thatcher’s even more lavish pool parties, at his now bigger home, Patti had gotten herself fairly drunk. She had flirted outrageously and had been all over Dean for the whole evening. Dean’s own wife, Dellie, had looked on disgustedly at her good friend’s amorous performance with her husband but had said nothing.
On the following morning, when Thatcher had taken his wife to task about her behavior, she’d just laughed it off. She said she was at her own goddamned party, having fun and there was no harm in a mild flirtation with a good looking man, was there?
“Mild flirtation! You were half naked, for God’s sake!” he yelled at her.
Patti shot back with, “As I recall, it was your damned bed I ended up in though, wasn’t it? I wasn’t too drunk to see that you were no saint either, my dear devoted husband. It was sickening the way you were drooling all over Dellie Factor in her skin tight white swimsuit like a lovesick teenager all evening. And you’ve got the bloody nerve to stand there and chastise me, you great jerk! Why the hell do you think I had fun with Dean?”
She flounced out of the room and didn’t speak to him again until the following evening. This time she didn’t spend the night in his bed either.
With their eyes on each other’s ladies, neither Dean nor Paul had noticed an older couple who had come to the party supposedly as friends of a friend who was also there
The Thatcher’s parties, now they were very wealthy, sometimes catered to a hundred or more guests these days. It was easy for a couple of strangers to get lost in such a gathering, just as though they weren’t even there at all, in fact.
It was at this party, earlier in the summer, that one of the ‘strangers’, Vinnie Cardilli, saw his two first victims for the first time and had seen Dean Factor close up. He had also seen Willoughby as well but Willoughby didn’t even give Cardilli a second glance. That was understandable because ever since he’d changed his name, Cardilli had also changed his appearance. He now wore a neatly t
rimmed beard and had a shaved head.
Then, in November, Factor came home to find a car blazing away in his driveway and it had Patti’s body inside it.
From the day of that party onwards, even though Factor was exonerated from any involvement in Patti’s death, Paul Thatcher was very cool and distant with him. It wasn’t until Factor’s own wife was found murdered as well that they became friendly again.
When Thatcher had thought about it, it didn’t make sense to him that Dean would murder either of the women and he asked same questions Streeter had asked herself.
Why do something like that in your own driveway and in your own, or at least Dellie’s, brand new Cadillac and then follow it up by doing it again on your own boat?
Only a complete idiot would do something like that. Whatever else he might be, Dean Factor was no idiot and Thatcher believed his story, even if no one else did. Only someone with a death wish would do a dumb thing like that.
Then Thatcher suddenly thought, maybe that’s exactly what it was – a death wish. But not for Factor and caused by himself as well, but what if someone else wanted him dead for some reason.
Paul Thatcher was a smart guy and was used to figuring out problems in his own large and successful business, so he started to ask himself a few questions. He asked the traditional questions to solve problems. The answers needed to solve a murder must surely be obtained the same way.
There was a name for this, he thought, a rhyme of some kind but he couldn’t remember it and the rhyme wasn’t important anyway – the questions were.
Those questions were: Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?
And probably the most important one of the lot was – Why?
Paul already knew the how and the when and that just left four questions left to ask. If wasn’t Dean, and he was sure it wasn’t, then who really did it? And if Dean didn’t have a motive, who did and why did they?
What could be the motive for killing two beautiful and perfectly innocent women? Both of them had to be connected to Factor in some way but what was the connection?
Thatcher got a pen and a sheet of paper and sat down at the table in his kitchen. Tears came to his eyes as he thought; I owe it to Patti to sort this awful mess out because the police were getting nowhere. They had tried to pin the murders on Dean but they had absolutely no evidence against him.
Thatcher was basically a ‘list man’, that is to say he would create a list of everything pertaining to the problem and then, by a process of elimination, he would scratch out all those items that he believed had no bearing on the problem.
He started this list the same way.
What did Patti and Dellie have in common? Easy answer. They were both women.
What else? They were both beautiful.
What else? They were both married.
What else? They were friends.
What else? They were once neighbors and could still be considered to be.
What else? They were roughly the same age.
Thatcher pondered on that for a few minutes and decided he had nothing more to add at the moment. He went on to the next track.
Why were they friends? They were once, and still were, neighbors and they worked together.
Why else? Because their husbands were also friends.
Why were their husbands friends?
Thatcher thumped the table with his fist before he wrote down the answer.
“That’s it!” he said aloud, and then wrote his answer down.
Why were their husbands friends? Apart from going to school together and later being neighbors, it was because they both worked for the same bloody company, that’s why!
There was the connection. It had to be because there was no other obvious reason to connect all four of them to something like this. He sat back and started to think of whom in the company all this mess could possibly be connected to.
It seemed it was all aimed primarily at Dean. So who was Dean on the outs with? Again, it was an easy answer because Dean had told Thatcher frequently lately that he thought Jim Willoughby was having an affair with his Dellie.
Could Willoughby and Garden World be the link that connected him and Dean to these murders? But why murder our wives? What could they possibly have done to cause someone to murder them?
Thatcher was on the right track, making the connection to Garden World but he was missing one very vital piece of information. Not so much missing it, actually, as misinterpreting what he was seeing when he looked at and talked to Jim Willoughby.
Though Dean had no proof of an affair between Jim and Dellie, he had to agree with him it was possible, maybe even probable. He realized, as everyone did, that Jim was a real smooth operator, but he was also Dean’s friend and business partner. At least, at the time, that was what Dean, Thatcher and everyone else thought.
It wasn’t until Jim himself was murdered in Switzerland that Thatcher realized someone else had to be involved.
Later, when Wanda Fullerton was found dead in Dean’s house, Thatcher then knew two things for certain now. One was that the key was still somehow a connection to Garden World and the other was that Dean, whatever the ‘evidence’ was, couldn’t be guilty.
For all his lists and his whens, hows and whys, Thatcher was still missing the major key piece of the puzzle. All along he had never been given any reason to believe that Jim Willoughby was anything other than what he said he was. When Dean told Thatcher about Willoughby absconding with Garden World’s funds before the franchisee’s meeting, it made the man a thief certainly, but it didn’t make him a murderer.
Jim Willoughby was dead now and the murders continued. Thatcher was about to admit defeat, when Dean was arrested for yet another murder, that of Enzo Santini.
Thatcher was actually so close and yet still so far because, had he realized it, it was his own Garden World franchise, and the acquisition of the land for it, that was the cause of all the trouble. Also, because the land purchase had been made by Willoughby on behalf of a holding company called Terra Trading, Thatcher had never been in actual contact with the seller.
He had erroneously believed, as Factor had also done, that Terra Trading was a land acquisition branch of Easy Green Garden World set up and run by Willoughby. And as Factor knew, Willoughby had been adamant, right at the beginning that he would handle all the land purchases.
It was his money, Factor had thought, so he never bothered to question his actions. It was his baby, so let him handle it.
Thatcher, although a friend of both men, was still only a franchisee and as such, was not privy to Easy Green Garden World’s executive policies and decisions.
But now, with Willoughby dead and Dean in jail charged with Santini’s murder, and probably destined for Death Row, it was time for Thatcher’s elusive mystery person to switch gears.
Without him even being aware of it, Paul Thatcher had just become Vinnie Cardilli’s number one target! Cardilli would now involve him in the murder of Angela Gerrard, the wife of Truman Gerrard, Easy Green Garden World’s third franchisee.
But Cardilli had already made two fatal mistakes and was about to make his third and last one. He was about to discover he wasn’t going up against the members of the Easy Green Garden World Corporation at all.
He was about to take on Max Torrance, head to head, and there could only be one outcome to such a contest. Cardilli would lose and he would die!
It would be up to Torrance to decide exactly how hideously painful his death would be.
Chapter Twenty Three
The two New York enforcers, Lawson who had garroted Tom Dalton, and Maxwell, his partner, were in the kitchen of Vincent and Nellie Cardilli’s modest three bedroom home. Although the house itself was modest in size, it was located on two acres of land just outside Saginaw.
Because of this, the Cardillis had no close neighbors.
Once Torrance had made the connection of Nellie to Factor, locating them was simple. Her address was on file in Easy Green’s emp
loyment office and all those files were also duplicated in New York.
The two men had broken into the house at about 2 a.m. and had easily overpowered the sleeping Cardillis with a good old fashioned dose of chloroform. They stripped Cardilli naked and tied him to a wooden armchair in the kitchen. His wrists and elbows were bound to the chair arms with plastic police restraints. Duct tape covered his mouth.
Nellie Cardilli, also secured with plastic restraints and duct tape, was laid out on the living-room chesterfield. She was still fully clothed and unconscious.
Lawson and Maxwell waited patiently for Cardilli to awaken from the chloroform. Eventually he shook his head and opened his eyes. As soon as his eyes focused, he saw the two men, realized his nakedness and his situation and he started to struggle.
He had no idea who they were but he knew immediately that he was in big trouble. Seriously bad and probably deadly trouble.
These men were there to absolutely terrify Cardilli, himself a mass murderer. They were masters of their art and nowhere is it written in the Murderer’s Handbook that murderers, themselves, must be courageous people. Vicious, devious and sadistic even but bravery is not a requirement for murder.
Lawson and Maxwell’s orders from Torrance insisted there must not be a mark on Cardilli when they were finished. Not even a needle mark, which was why they’d used chloroform. Nellie Cardilli would be a different matter altogether.
Lawson pulled another chair over in front of the struggling Cardilli and sat down in it to face him.
“We need a confession from you, sir,” he said.
Cardilli shook his head violently.
“As we see it, Mr. Cardilli, you have two choices. You can confess to all the murders and take your chances with the cops, the law and the lawyers….”
He paused and removed several 8 ½” x 11” color photos from a briefcase on the kitchen table beside him. He laid them face down on the table. The man moved very slowly and deliberately in everything he did.