Death of a Cantankerous Old Coot (Lizzie Crenshaw Mysteries)

by Teresa Watson

  “You mean it used to be before you burned it down.”

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Apparently Earline believes you did.”

  Debra laughed. “Because it’s convenient for her to push the blame for the fire onto someone else.”

  “Are you saying it was Earline who burned down her own house?”

  “It wasn’t her house. It was the Gardner family house, and he never let her forget it. He made sure she knew everything she had was because she was married to him. She wanted to burn that house down for years.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She mentioned it in one of her letters,” Debra replied as she looked in the fridge. She pulled out a bottle of water and looked at me. “You want something?”

  “A bottle of water, please.” Debra tossed a bottle to me. “Thank you. So you’ve kept in touch with her all these years?”

  “Not me personally, at least not at first.”

  I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Maybe you better start at the beginning. I know that Amos was dating Earline and your mother at the same time. Did your mother intentionally get pregnant in the hope of trapping Amos into marriage?”

  “You don’t beat around the bush, do you? Yes, she did, but unfortunately for her, it backfired. Amos didn’t want any more children. He ignored the one he had, your mother. That should have been a big clue to my mother at that point, but apparently she saw the bigger picture and ignored that small detail.”

  “And what was the bigger picture?”

  “Money and power that came with being married to a Gardner, of course.”

  “What power? Earline has spent her life trapped in the house! Amos never let her do anything that he didn’t know about first.”

  “That was because he found out that Earline and Mom were in cahoots. He sent Mom away and told her never to come back. He married Earline and kept her under lock and key.”

  “If he watched her every move, how was Earline able to send letters to your mother? And how was she able to hide that pink Cadillac?”

  “She sent the letters to a post office box in Shreveport that my mother set up, under a different name, of course. They used the name of an old friend that died in a car accident when they were in college. Guess old Amos forgot to check that little fact out. As for the Caddy, you’ve heard of hiding in plain sight. She parked it at a neighbor’s house.”

  “But how did she pay for it?”

  “She had some money left from her parents’ estate.”

  “How come Amos didn’t know about the money?”

  “Earline gave the money to Mother, who put it in an interest-earning savings account.”

  “Obviously your mother did get married. Your last name is Cosgrove.”

  Debra laughed. “No, Mom never got married. I did. It didn’t work out, though. He left me.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “I’m not. Larry wasn’t a very nice man. He got what was coming to him.”

  “You mean someone killed him?”

  She laughed again. “Oh, someone killed him alright. Shot him right between the eyes.”

  Dumbfounded, I stared at her for a minute. “You killed your own husband?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t intend to confess to you.”

  “That’s fine with me. I’d just as soon not know.” I took a drink. “Why did you move here?”

  “To keep an eye on Amos, for starters.”

  “Did he know who you were? I mean, did he know you were his daughter?”

  “Yes, he knew.”

  “But he didn’t tell anyone?”

  “No, he didn’t. He felt like I was his ace in the hole with regards to the lawsuit between the two of you.”

  “In what way?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure. I never understood how his twisted mind worked. He wasn’t big on sharing things.”

  “What about the papers he had you sign?”

  “Oh, you know about that, do you? It was an agreement. I was supposed to help him get the land from you, and he agreed to pay me a set amount of money, with the stipulation that I leave town and never contact him again.”

  “Wow, he covered all his bases, didn’t he?”

  “Oh yes, he did. At least, he tried.”

  “What did he overlook?”

  “He was cocky. He overlooked the fact that people might conspire against him.”

  “I believe that, although I don’t know anyone who would have the nerve to stand up to him. Most people around here just let him bulldoze his way over them.”

  “I’m not most people.”

  “So I’m beginning to realize. You’ve been here two years, got a job, yet you’ve managed to keep to yourself.”

  “Part of the plan. Blend into the background, like a wallflower at a dance. It made it easier to move around and set things up.”

  “What exactly was the plan?”

  “Simple. To get what was rightfully ours from the man who cheated us out of it.”

  I almost choked on my water. “Rightfully yours?”

  “I’m his daughter. He owes me for thirty years of misery and suffering.”

  “What misery and suffering? You think being his granddaughter has been a barrel of laughs? I never got anything from him. I got the land from my grandmother. It was rightfully hers, not his. That is what it cost him for the public humiliation he caused her.” I stood up. “I don’t want to know anything else. I am pretty sure that whatever you tell me is going to be illegal.”

  “Oh, it is,” Debra said, finishing her water. “It can also get you killed.”

  Chapter 22

  “Killed?”

  “Ok, seriously incapacitated,” Debra shrugged.

  “You’d kill your own niece?”

  “Amos was my father, and it didn’t save his life, did it? And I knew him better than you.”

  I dropped into the chair. “You killed Amos?”

  “Guess the cat’s out of the bag, isn’t it?”

  “But why?”

  “He humiliated my mother, the same way he humiliated your grandmother. He wore Earline down until she was a whimpering fool. They played him, and he made them pay for it by making them miserable.”

  “So the three of you decided that it was time for Amos to pay his dues by killing him?” She nodded. “You do realize that in a court of law that is considered premeditation? You’ll get the death penalty.”

  “If they can prove it. There’s no evidence linking any of us to Amos’ death.”

  I put my face in my hands for a moment before speaking. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Granted, there was no love lost between Amos and I. He had never shown me any kindness, or even acknowledged me in public. But to hear that someone had actually planned his murder was something that…well, I just couldn’t find the words to explain the feeling.

  “It’s shocking, I know,” she said, breaking the silence, “to think that someone would willingly kill another person. But if there was anyone on God’s green earth that deserved to die it was Amos Gardner.”

  “Did you kill your mother?”

  “Good Lord, no! Even I’m not that heartless. No, that was Earline.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Mother asked her to.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “Technically, Earline didn’t kill her. Mother killed herself. But Earline is the one who set the fire and blew the place up.”

  I wondered if it was against the law to burn down your own house with your best friend dead in your car. I’m sure there was a law against it somewhere in the books, but that was someone else’s problem. “Why did your mother kill herself? If the three of you had this great master plan, why give it up when you were so close to achieving it?”

  “Because she was dying of cancer. She didn’t want to wither away into nothing. It was her decision. I didn’t know anything about it. It was something that she and Earline had worked ou
t between them.”

  “Earline wasn’t asking about hospice care for Amos. It was for your mother.” Debra nodded. “She was trying to help her, so why did you run over Earline?”

  “To keep up the appearance that someone was trying to kill her so they wouldn’t suspect that she had set the house fire.”

  “She accused me of setting her house on fire! But she made one mistake. She forgot to check if I had an alibi first.”

  “Small tactical error on her part.”

  “It might have been small, but it was significant enough that people started talking about who else in town looked like me. Of course, it led to you.”

  She shrugged. “A dye job will take care of that once I leave town.”

  “Just how far do you think you’re going to get once I tell Owen what you’ve told me?”

  “What makes you think you’re going to live long enough to tell him? I do have an escape plan, you know. I’ve learned to plan for all contingencies.”

  “And what is your plan?”

  “I’m going to call the sheriff, tell him I’ve got you, and that I’m willing to turn myself in.”

  “Sounds like a very simple plan. What’s the catch?”

  “I can’t tell you everything! Where’s the fun in that?”

  “I suppose you are counting on my cooperation.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll get you to go along with it, willingly or unwillingly,” she said, pulling out an old six-shooter. “I took this from Amos’ house before Earline burned it down. She said it used to belong to his father. Just think, I killed Amos, and I used one of his own guns to do it.”

  “You have a rather warped sense of humor about all of this, Debra.”

  “I’m easily amused. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “You’ll see. I can’t give everything away, now can I?”

  Chapter 23

  Debra’s warped sense of humor included tying me to the merry-go-round at the park. I cringed at the thought that Amos had bled to death right where I was sitting.

  “A bit ironic, I know,” Debra said as she put a piece of duct tape over my mouth. “But I thought it was an appropriate place to end things. Now just sit here quietly, and this will all be over before you know it. Don’t worry, I don’t plan to kill you. At least, not today.” She patted me on the cheek before walking off.

  Oddly enough, I felt a sense of relief that I would live to see another day. However, I was worried about what she planned to do. When we arrived at the park, she made me call Owen and arrange for him to meet me in the park in fifteen minutes. It had taken her five minutes to secure me to the merry-go-round, which left her ten minutes before they got there.

  It was the longest ten minutes of my life. I scanned the area, trying to spot her, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. Finally, I saw Owen pull up to my right and T.J. parked in front of the café, which was directly across from me. I heard other cars behind me, but I focused on Owen and T.J., who slowly made their way toward me.

  Halfway across the lawn, shots rang out. Owen scrambled for cover behind the trees, while T.J. jumped on the merry-go-round and squatted in front of me. Even with him there, I felt like a sitting duck. I hoped Debra was going to keep her word and not kill me today. Everyone had their guns pointed toward the top of the buildings to my left, but they didn’t return fire.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the shooting stopped. Owen moved out into the open, scanning the rooftop before coming toward me. “Ms. Cosgrove, you need to throw out your weapon and come down here so we can talk. I promise no one will hurt you.” He didn’t get an answer. “What the heck is going on, Lizzie?” he said, pulling the duct tape off while T.J. cut me free.

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “Did anyone get hurt?”

  Owen looked at the other men, who signaled they were fine. He pointed to the building where the shots came from and the men ran toward it, guns drawn and at their sides.

  “Are you alright?” T.J. asked as he helped me off the merry-go-round.

  “I’m fine. My legs are just a little numb.”

  “Tell me about Debra Cosgrove,” Owen demanded.

  I told him what she had told me. “These women waited a long time to get their revenge. I almost feel sorry for them.”

  “They plotted and carried out a murder, Lizzie. They started this mess, didn’t like the results and ended it,” T.J. said.

  “But why wait so long? Thirty years is a long time to carry that much hate and anger.”

  “Amos was no better than they are,” Owen pointed out. “Look how long he has been trying to get back the land he gave your grandmother. Mother would say that karma came back and bit them all in the…”

  “I get your point,” I said, cutting him off. “So what happens now?”

  “She couldn’t have gotten far. I’ll put out an APB for her…” The sound of squealing tires interrupted him. Debra waved as she drove by, lights and sirens going. “…and for my car.”

  We ran to T.J.’s car and sped off after her. Owen sat in the front, calling for back up. Dusk was setting in, but it didn’t seem to bother Debra. She drove the curving roads with confidence, and I remembered what she said about having a contingency plan. It must have included becoming very familiar with the county back roads.

  She had chosen a tree-lined road that people considered a rather scenic drive when the leaves changed colors. It also had one dangerous spot: a stretch of road that suddenly turned sharply to the left. Some people referred to it as Heaven’s Alley, and considering the number of fatalities at that spot, it wasn’t far from the truth.

  The only way to take the curve was to slow down to 20 m.p.h. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like Debra was slowing down. “How fast are we going?” I asked T.J.

  “About eighty. She needs to start slowing down or she’ll never make the turn.” He took his foot off the gas as he said it.

  Debra didn’t. She hit the turn and flew off the road. The car hit the edge of the ditch, rolled to the right, the driver’s side slamming into a tree before coming to a crunching halt. Our car skidded to a stop; he and Owen jumped out of the car, but I was locked in the back of the cruiser. Just before they dropped into the ditch, the car caught on fire. T.J. came running back for the extinguisher, stopping long enough to open my door.

  Owen tried to get around the car to the driver’s side, but the flames kept him back. T.J. tossed him the extinguisher and Owen used it all, but the flames spread. We jumped back across the ditch and watched helpless as the car burned.

  T.J. put his arm around me and pulled me close. “I’m sure she was unconscious, Lizzie. The impact was so hard, the airbags would have deployed, but the way the car rolled and hit the tree on her side, it would have knocked her out.”

  I could hear sirens behind us as the flames licked the branches, setting them ablaze. I hoped T.J. was right and that Debra didn’t suffer.

  However, I couldn’t help but wonder if Debra had managed to slide out of the car and get away in those few seconds between the time her car crashed and we stopped. Looking at the car, I seriously doubted it.

  There was a part of me that imagined her, standing in the dark nearby, laughing at us.

  Chapter 24

  By the time we made it back to town two hours later, Owen had arranged for a guard to stay outside Earline’s hospital room. As soon as she regained consciousness, she would be arrested for premeditated murder, arson, tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse, along with a long list of other charges.

  As T.J. drove me home, I wondered how I was going to explain the last two days to my mother: the death of a father who shunned her; the discovery of a half-sister she never knew she had, who turned out to be a killer. It’s not something you can just explain to a person over the phone. Thankfully, I had a few days to figure out what to say.

  “Are you okay?” T.J. said as he pulled into my driveway.

  “Fine. It’s not every day I find out that I have an
aunt who is a killer, been kidnapped, have shots fired at me, and watch my aunt burn to death. Overall, I think I handled it rather well.”

  He looked at me funny for a moment. “Would you like me to come in for a while?”

  “I’m really not in the mood to talk, T.J. Right now, I just need some down time to let all this sink in.”

  “Fine,” he replied, getting out of the car. “We don’t have to talk. There’s a baseball playoff game on. We’ll order pizza, watch the game and just sit there.”

  “No talking?”

  “We can do other things besides talk,” he grinned.

  It wasn’t an exciting evening: we ate pizza, we watched baseball, and I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning in my bed alone. There was a note on the table next to the bed. Never mind what it said. That’s private.

  You’d think since it was Sunday morning, everyone would be in church. Well, not this Sunday. The café was crowded; everyone was talking about the three women who had killed Amos.

  “I knew Earline was involved,” Gladys declared from her table. “What woman in her right mind dances around her dead husband’s body?”