Shoes and Baby: Women Sleuth

by S. Y. Robins

  4

  Jade curled under the covers and listened to the wind howl around the cottage. The rain had not returned, but the countryside had managed to produce a storm nonetheless, and she was beginning to worry that it would blow the thatching right off the roof.

  That, however, was the least of her worries. Jade had been driven home by one of the police officers, a man who managed to make it seem like he both suspected her and considered her far too weak to bludgeon anyone to death. She had limped out of the car on her blistered feet with as much dignity as she could manage and slammed the door to the cottage, which relieved her feelings somewhat.

  The indignity of being accused had, as she prepared tea and a sandwich for dinner, turned into full-blown fury. Maddox had accused her of being the murderer? Her? She hadn’t even known Vera Acker! She showed up one day earlier and he thought she’d gone tramping across hill and dale to, what, beat an old woman to death, not thinking for a moment that she would be suspicious for showing up only one day earlier?

  She hadn’t thought before that she might seem suspicious. She decided to hate Maddox for that, too. And anyway, she told herself, it wasn’t as if he actually thought she was the murderer. He was trying to cover his tracks, nothing more. He wanted her to take the fall for his murder and then he’d sell off the paintings he had. Or something.

  That didn’t worry her much. What really worried her was the idea that he might have found out she turned him in. She hadn’t thought that through. She should have stayed at the little bed and breakfast in town for the night, where there would be plenty of people around to hear her if she screamed. Now she was very aware that she was stuck in the wilderness with a potential murderer as her closest neighbor and a dead woman as the next closest.

  She didn’t want to go to bed. On the other hand, there was only so much to do now that she had no TV or computer, and her body was beginning to yawn traitorously. Sooner or later she was going to fall asleep and she’d be defenseless.

  Well, not if she had anything to say about it. Jade switched off the lights and dragged the heavy armchair across the floor so she could wedge it into position by the door. Whoever tried to open the door would at least make a lot of noise. Of course, there was also the back door. She put a bunch of spoons on one of the little tables and set it just where it would tip over and make a large crash.

  Of course, a few moments’ notice was hardly going to save her if someone was really determined. Jade rummaged through the drawers until she found a steak knife. It was very old, and looked better suited to cutting butter than steak, but it would have to do. She grabbed the phone and crept to bed, her finger poised over the buttons.

  Now was the most dangerous time, wasn’t it? She had just switched off the lights, and any killer would wait a while to see if she was going to go to sleep. Jade snuggled under the covers and tried to tell herself that she was being crazy, but the adrenaline was pounding through her veins nonetheless. Even as her eyelids drooped, she felt herself trembling with anxiety.

  It was useless to try to resist her body, however. The cottage was cozy and dry, and the howl of the wind was making everything paradoxically comfortable. At least she wasn’t out in the storm. Jade tried desperately to keep her eyes open, but at last she felt herself slip off to sleep, the phone still in her hand, and the knife under her pillow.

  The crash came an hour or so later, hitting the door with a massive thud and sending Jade scrambling for the other end of the bed.

  “Open the door!”

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Jade fumbled for the phone. There was the sound of a fist hitting the door over and over, a man’s yell coming over the howl of the wind.

  “Open the door!”

  No, no, no. The latch jiggled and met the resistance of the chair and Jade bit back a scream. She had left the knife under her pillow and she was frozen, her fingers on the numbers and her eyes on the pillow. She had to choose. What if he came through the door? Panic was making her lose her focus. She gave a whimper, and started to dial again. She’d memorized the strange emergency services number that evening, while pondering all of the various ways Maddox could break in and kill her.

  “It’s Maddox!” the voice called.

  “I know!” she called back, before she could stop herself. Oh, good, now he knew she was here. Oh, no.

  Lights flickered around the road and Jade wished for any way to show them that she was here, that she was in trouble. But they passed by without stopping, and she managed at last to get the call to work.

  “Emergency services.”

  “I’m in the cottage on upper road,” Jade whispered desperately. “There’s a man trying to get in. I think he wants to hurt me.”

  “We’ll be right there, ma’am.”

  “Hurry,” Jade whispered. To her shame, she was crying as the phone clicked off. She was suddenly very aware of how long it would take them to get out to the car, drive out into the wind and dark. It would be five minutes before they were here, if not more, and what could happen to her in that time. She dived for the end of the bed and snatched up the knife in shaking fingers.

  That was when she realized that the pounding on the door had stopped. She hadn’t even noticed it in her panic, but the sound had gone. She looked desperately around the cottage. Was he going to the back door? She tumbled off the bed and crawled for the alcove by the back door. There would be the whole room in his way if he came in the front door, and if he came in the back, maybe the crash of the spoons would startle him and she could leap out and hit him on the head with something. She didn’t actually want to stab him.

  How long she waited in the dark, she did not know. It seemed like hours before she heard the wail of sirens and saw the multicolored lights by the door. She waited while the car doors slammed, and another hand banged on the door.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  “I’m all right!” Jade called back. Her voice cracked. “Have you found him? Is he out there?”

  “We’re looking now, ma’am. Can you open the door?”

  Carefully, Jade edged across the room—no need to crawl now, she supposed—and pulled the heavy chair out of the way. When she opened the door and saw the policeman’s eyes widen, she realized she was still holding the steak knife.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t have any other weapons.”

  “I see.” He didn’t look entirely convinced. “Well, Constable Jones is searching, ma’am.”

  “Tell him to be careful,” Jade whispered. She was just leaning out into the wind, shivering in her pajamas, when another car pulled up. To her surprise, the door opened to reveal Jack Eason.

  “Mr. Eason.”

  “Miss Ruiz! Are you all right?”

  “I…” Jade felt her chin tremble. “Now that the police are here, yes.”

  “What happened? I saw the police cars and I was worried.”

  “Someone was pounding on the door, asking to be let in.” Jade felt her voice shake and she looked at the policeman defiantly. “It was Maddox.”

  “Ma’am…” The policeman gave her a look that said she was either crazy, or a terrible liar. “How do you know that?”

  “He said it,” Jade said, affronted.

  “Well, he doesn’t seem to be here now,” the policeman said.

  “Officer, a moment?” Jack waved the man away. His eyes were concerned. “Miss Ruiz, I have to leave, but here—here’s my number. If you hear anything, call me there and I’ll come back, all right?”

  “You don’t think I’m crazy?” Jade tried for a smile. She was well aware of how disheveled she looked.

  “Not at all.” He squeezed her hand. “Be safe, Miss Ruiz.”

  As he got back into his car with a little wave, a shout came from the side of the house.

  “There’s no one here!” The woman who must be Constable Jones came into sight, shrugging her shoulders.

  “Have a nice night, ma’am.” The other policeman gave a nod to Jade.

  “Wa
it! He could just be waiting until you leave. Are you actually going to go?”

  “Ma’am, you probably just heard the wind.”

  “I didn’t!” Jade said, stung. “I swear to you—”

  “Ma’am, you seem very determined to accuse Maddox Smith of—”

  Jade screamed. A moment later, Constable Jones saw it, too. They ran, Jade dropping the knife into the grass, and skidded to a halt at the bushes by the road.

  There, bleeding heavily from wounds in his torso, lay Maddox Smith. He seemed to have hidden himself as best he could, and though his eyelids flickered when they shook him, he was unconscious.

  “Oh, no,” Jade whispered. There was a murderer on the loose—and they’d just taken out another one of her neighbors.

  5

  “Miss Ruiz?”

  There was a hand on her shoulder, and Jade woke with a start. Fluorescent lights buzzed and she squinted against the glare, peering up at the police officer who stood above her.

  “What is it?”

  “Mr. Smith is expected to make a full recovery.” He looked at her awkwardly. “Given that you stayed here all night, I thought you might want to know.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Relief coursed through her, and Jade shook her head in wonder at the news. “How is that…he was bleeding so much…how is it possible?” She shook her head again. “It’s a miracle. Was he able to tell you who did it?”

  “No. He hasn’t woken up. In the meantime, miss, you should get some sleep.”

  “I should.” Jade sank her head into her hands.

  “Miss, are you all right?”

  “I’m perfectly okay.” Jade stood up, and felt the guilt shining on her face. “If I hadn’t been so short-sighted…if I hadn’t locked him out…”

  “You couldn’t have known,” the police officer said diplomatically.

  “It was stupid,” Jade said flatly. “Did I think I was in some movie? I thought I was the only one who could see the truth, and there were a hundred reasons he might have been out there that night.”

  “Miss.” The police officer crouched next to her chair. “We understand why you thought what you did. We were skeptical when Mr. Smith came to us with suspicions about you, and your suspicions about him…complicated things.”

  “Why did he think I did it?” Jade demanded. Now that it seemed Maddox wasn’t to blame, there were more questions she needed answered.

  “Well, it’s in today’s paper, so I guess it wouldn’t hurt to tell you.” The man took a seat across from Jade and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Mr. Smith was going to visit Ms. Acker on the night of the murder. They studied together—you knew that, yes? So he walked to visit her, with one of his paintings, and when he arrived, he saw someone emerging from her house. The person was about your height, Miss Ruiz, and in the shadows and the rain, he couldn’t see anything other than that the person had dark hair. He called hello, and the person ran at him. They fought, and the person had their face hidden in their hood the whole time. Mr. Smith escaped, but on a hunch, thought that the murderer might have been you. He went to your cottage, and tried to see through the window if you were injured—at which point you apparently came out and pursued him down the road.”

  “Oh, no.” Jade sank her head into her hands. “That’s why he looked so afraid! He thought I’d just attacked him, and I kept saying we had to get the scratches taken care of and call the police, and he must have thought it was a trap.”

  “He seemed to think so, yes,” the policeman said.

  “Oh, God.” And then she’d gone and chased him down the street. Jade squeezed her eyes shut in embarrassment.

  “But as we now know the killer returned to hunt for Mr. Smith, and that you are not responsible for his injuries…”

  “How do you know that?” Jade asked. “I could be. I could have a bloody knife at home.”

  “Ah.” The police officer cleared his throat uncomfortably. “We, ah…had your cottage searched.”

  “You what?” Jade felt anger give way to resignation a moment later. “And?”

  “We found several spoons on a stool, but nothing else odd.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, those.” Jade flushed. “I was trying to make sure anyone sneaking in the back door would make a lot of noise.”

  “Apparently, it worked.”

  “Mmm.” Jade nodded. “So does this mean you’re back to the nephew as a suspect?”

  “I can’t comment on that.” But his eyes said that her guess was quite correct. “Get some sleep, miss.” The man clapped her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Quite a vacation you’re getting, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh.” Jade managed a smile and made her way out of the hospital, blinking in the morning sunlight. She shivered; she was still wearing a sweater over her pajamas. She needed to go home and change. She slid into the driver's seat and turned the key, listening to the tiny engine chug to life.

  She needed to wake up. She held her eyes as wide open as she could, focusing on staying on the left side of the road, and tried to follow her hastily scrawled instructions from the night before…backwards. The highway wound through hills and little forests, and Jade smiled at the greenery. Although the skies were oppressively leaden again today, she had to admit that the profusion of green was wonderful.

  She thought back to Mrs. Collins, saying confidently that the nephew wouldn’t hurt a fly. The woman would be scandalized to hear that he was the top suspect in the case—and happily scandalized, Jade suspected, that her own tenant had been a suspect, however briefly. She smiled slightly. After everything, this murder was just another boring case of a family member wanting an earlier inheritance. Possibly a very sizable inheritance, if Mrs. Collins’s information about the art show in London was correct.

  And the nephew, upon being spotted by Maddox—who might have recognized him, after all—had gone to finish the job. Jade shivered. She could not reconcile the quiet, dignified man she’d seen in the teashop with her mental image of a man who would bludgeon an old woman to death, and stab Maddox two days later in a premeditated attack. Apparently, it didn’t make much sense to the townspeople, either.

  Jade frowned at that. It really didn’t make sense to her. Maddox had no proof of who it was he had seen in the forest. If he’d recognized Vera’s nephew, Jade was sure he would have been in jail now. And she remembered, suddenly, that the policeman had looked troubled when he nodded slightly at her guess. Vera’s nephew was their only suspect…but even they did not seem to think he was guilty.

  She pulled off onto the exit ramp, checking the wrong blind spot and getting a honk for her troubles. Waving tiredly in apology, she turned onto the little road that led to her cottage. Almost home. Then she could rest. Her agent was never going to send anyone away to finish a manuscript again. She steered the car down a fork at a Y intersection and her lips quirked in a tired smile.

  She realized she’d taken the wrong fork in the road a few moments later. The open fields she should be passing were instead more forest. Sighing, she looked for a place to turn around. The road was narrowing and she didn’t want to get it mired in the mud at the side of the road. Just as she was thinking she might need to resort to a fifty point turn, her car came out of the trees and she frowned at the sight ahead of her: a secluded little house, sitting as picture-perfecta as a gingerbread house.

  It was the piece of caution tape stuck in a nearby hedge that showed her what this must be: Vera Acker’s house. Jade shuddered instinctively, her hands frozen on the steering wheel. The fact that it was so beautiful made everything grimmer, somehow. That someone could die in a place like this…

  She was almost asleep at the wheel. Jade turned the car off and stepped out to stretch. She only had a couple of minutes left and then she’d be home. She needed to get it together. She walked in a slow circle around the end of the drive, sank her face into her hands, and sighed.

  The sounds of crunching gravel recalled her. Frowning down the driveway, she watch
ed as another car drove up: shiny and sleek, with tinted windows. She was still frowning when the door swung open and Jack Eason stepped out.

  “Hey there.” Her welcoming smile, however, quickly changed when she saw the knife in his hand—stained with dried blood.

  6

  “Did you think you would keep playing detective?” he asked her. “Think you would figure it out all on your own?”

  “What?” Jade asked him. He’d pulled in between her and her car, and she did not like the look in his dark eyes.

  “Why do you have a knife?”

  “To deal with one more loose end, of course. There was always the possibility that you might put two and two together. And that, my dear, I could not allow.”

  “What?” Jade managed. As he advanced on her, she looked desperately for some way to keep him talking. “But…why would you kill Vera? No one would have suspected you.”

  As she suspected, appealing to his cleverness—however insincerely—made his chest puff up slightly. His advance slowed, and he gave her a truly chilling smile.

  “Vera took something that was mine.” He waited for Jade to get his implications.

  Jade could think of nothing.

  “The…cottage?”

  “The gallery,” he spat at her. “I had waited for years for an opportunity like that, and when I finally got it, they told me they were splitting the display with her. Her! Some backwater little painter doing pieces of sunsets and swans. Typical, trite garbage.”

  Jade, having seen the gorgeous swell of the hills and the verdant flush of greenery in Vera’s paintings, could not agree—but she sensed this was not the time to say so.

  “Your sculptures…”

  “Are art. Real art. My sculptures would have sold for millions—except for those stupid watercolors making everyone talk about colors and pastoral themes. I had to stand there and watch them talk about how quaint it was that some old lady out in the middle of nowhere was doing paintings. As if it’s unusual! As if her pieces were anything to look at, at all.”