by Carol Durand
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way, Melissa,” Drew sounded sad, but determined, as he moved down to her feet, removing her shoes and duct-taping her ankles together, rendering her entirely helpless. “You and that cop boyfriend of yours were getting a little too close for comfort.” He turned her over and helped her to sit up, her arms aching already from the restraints. She looked at him wild eyed, wondering exactly what he was going to do to her. He smoothed her bangs back from her forehead and she flinched away as if she’d been slapped.
“That’s what’s in the box you know,” he continued, conversationally, as if brutalizing another human being was an everyday occurrence for him. “All of Beckett’s notes, his laptop, everything. I couldn’t let the police get their hands on that stuff, because it turns out, Melissa, that he was investigating me, and was putting some things together that made it pretty obvious who snuffed Miss High-Falutin’ Marta. I couldn’t have that, nope,” he shook his head, lost in his own world. “Just couldn’t have that. So I figured, if I eliminated Beckett from the picture, took all of his research and made it disappear, then took the police’s number one suspect, that would be you, pretty girl, and made her disappear, well then life would suddenly get a heck of a lot easier for me,” he grinned and nodded, pleased with himself.
Missy broke into a cold sweat, realizing the implications of what he had said. Andrew Benson had killed Marta, he thought he had killed Chas, and now it sounded like the last step in his plan was to kill her. She tried desperately to think of some way to save her own life, but could come up with nothing that might appease this deranged man. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and noticing them, Drew tenderly wiped them from her cheeks and from the duct-tape covering her mouth.
“Now don’t you worry, pretty little Melissa, I’m not gonna hurt you. You can’t be a part of the outside world anymore, cuz you know too much, but we can figure out some way to make you useful,” he licked his lips and gave her a sinister grin. “It’d be a shame to let something this beautiful go to waste,” he drawled, leering at her in a way that made sour bile burn the back of her throat.
Chapter 15
Chas Beckett woke with a screaming headache and opened his eyes to find himself drifting in a sea of non-descript beige, with low lighting and a constant beeping sound.
“Rise and shine,” a lovely young brunette woman, dressed in fuchsia scrubs, said cheerfully, opening the curtains in his hospital room to let in the sunlight. “We’ve been waiting for you to come around,” she smiled. “I’ll let the doctor know that you’re awake. Are you hungry?”
“Thirsty,” Chas croaked weakly through the desert of his parched throat.
“No problem, I’ll bring you some ice water,” she promised, heading for the door. She returned moments later and was helping him to sip some of the water through a bendy straw, when the doctor came in.
“Good morning Detective Beckett, I’m Gordon Walsh, the neurosurgeon who took care of your head wounds last night,” the doctor shook his hand. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been hit by a truck…twice,” he winced, trying to sit up higher. The nurse took his cue and raised the head of his bed a bit.
“Well, you were certainly hit by something,” the doctor nodded. “Do you remember anything?”
“I was working on a case in my hotel room,” Chas began slowly, “and I heard the doorknob turn. I thought it was housekeeping, so I started to turn around, but before I could see who was behind me, I felt a hard blow to the back of my neck and shoulder.” He reached up to touch the tender area and winced again.
“Yes, I noticed the contusions when I examined you,” Dr. Walsh nodded gravely.
“I stood up, took a few steps and stumbled, falling between the bed and the wall, then I felt a searing pain in the back of my skull, and that’s the last I remember,” Beckett sighed, exhausted.
“Well, you sustained a concussion, and had to have quite a few sutures, but fortunately there was no skull fracture, so you should be back to normal relatively quickly as long as you rest and take it easy for a while,” the doctor advised.
“Easier said than done, Doc,” Chas replied. “The case that I’m working on can’t wait. In fact if the guy who did this to me is who I think he is, there may be a woman in grave danger as we speak,” he realized aloud.
“Melissa?” the doctor asked, alarmed. “The sweet gal who was here with you when you came in? Blonde, with huge grey eyes?”
“Yes, that’s her,” Chas nodded and winced again. “Have you seen her?”
Walsh shook his head. “Not since last night, but she was told that she couldn’t visit until standard visiting hours, which only started half an hour ago,” he said, checking his watch.
“No, Missy would’ve been here early, waiting to get in. She’s pathologically punctual,” he smiled faintly.
“I could ask the security detail that was stationed outside your door all night if they’ve talked to her,” the doctor offered.
“No, we can do better than that,” Chas said, determined. “Tell them to get Detectives Brasco and Ramirez in here to see me, and that it’s an emergency.” The doctor left quickly to deliver Beckett’s message and the two detectives arrived minutes later, looking rumpled and cranky.
“Late night?” Beckett asked, taking in their appearance.
“Thanks to you and your girlfriend,” Ramirez grumbled.
Chas gave her a look that would stop a clock and got straight to the point. “Look, detectives, I don’t know what it is you think you’ve got on Melissa Gladstone, but I can tell you this, not only is she completely innocent, I know who the killer is, and he probably has Missy right now. We have to figure out where they are so that we can collar the killer and protect Missy from harm.”
“Right. Now let me tell you something, Beckett. Aside from the fact that you are way out of your jurisdiction and have no legal right to take part in this investigation, we have evidence that points pretty conclusively to your girl being the murderer,” Brasco bristled.
“Pretty conclusive? That’s the criteria you boys go on down here? Give me a break. Okay, you think you have something, fine. Tell me what you’ve got,” Chas challenged.
“So that you’re privy to information gathered during the course of investigation before trial? Not a chance. You think you got something, Mr. Hotshot? You tell me why I shouldn’t go over to the hotel right now and arrest Melissa Gladstone,” he shot back, suspicious.
“Because she won’t be there,” Beckett ground out, his jaw muscles twitching. “You want the info that I’ve got – fine. If that’s what it takes to get your asses moving, so be it,” he growled in frustration. “Go to the locker over there by the sink and grab the jeans I was wearing when I came in last night,” he ordered. Brasco nodded at Ramirez to do it. Upset at being told what to do by an out-of-town cop who seemed to be in cahoots with a murder suspect, she roughly pulled the pants out of the locker and tossed them on the bed. Chas reached into the front, right pocket and pulled out a thumb drive.
“In case anything happens to my computer, I always back up my work on a thumb drive. All the research that I’ve done on this case is in here,” he held up the blue metallic stick.
“Yeah, so? Give us the Reader’s Digest version,” Brasco said impatiently. “What’s on it that’s so important.”
Beckett knew that time was flying and that the more time that passed, the less likely they’d be able to find and protect Missy, but he also knew that Brasco and Ramirez wouldn’t do anything to help if they didn’t believe his story, so he felt that he had no choice but to share everything he’d learned and hope for the best.
Chapter 16
Missy’s head ached and she was terrified beyond belief. At first she thought that Andrew Benson was going to kill her, but after the way he’d looked at and spoken to her, she was beginning to think that death may very well have been a much more merciful fate. Her eyes were swollen from crying in the back of the van as An
drew drove them into the night. She was thankful that she hadn’t eaten dinner, because her stomach churned with fear and disgust. Poking her tongue between her lips and wetting the duct tape with saliva, she had made some progress in unsticking it from her lips, but she had a long way to go before even thinking about being able to scream. She had tried to work her wrists back and forth in the tape so that she could free her hands, but her struggles were for naught, she was too securely bound to escape, making her wonder if Andrew had done this sort of thing before. The thought chilled her, and tears rolled down her face anew at the thought that the one person who would care enough to get her out of this mess was laying, hopefully conscious, in a hospital bed. She irrationally blamed herself, thinking that if she had only stayed overnight in the waiting room, Andrew Benson would never have found and abducted her.
Missy’s heart began to pound as the van came to a halt, the tires crunching on what sounded like gravel. She heard Andrew whistling cheerfully as he got out of the van and slammed the door shut behind him, chilled at his nonchalance. He opened the doors in the back and Missy could see nothing in the inky darkness.
“Hey, sweet Melissa,” he called out, hopping up into the van. “How you doing back here, did you have a good ride?” he asked, obviously rhetorically, given the fact that Missy couldn’t answer even if she wanted to. “Don’t be scared, pretty girl, I’m gonna take you into the house now. I’ll get you some food and you can have a good night’s sleep. You’re gonna need your strength for tomorrow, honey. Oh yes you will,” he chuckled, his voice dark with meaning.
Missy began to tremble violently, the shock of the day’s events finally taking its toll. She had no more tears left to cry, and was in a dangerous state of mind well beyond fear, edging from despair into acceptance.
“Awww…you cold, sweetheart? No worries, we’ll start a fire in the fireplace, get you wrapped up in some blankets and you’ll be comfortable in no time at all,” he reassured her, scooping her up in his arms and sitting down to ease out of the back of the van. He carried her effortlessly in his arms toward a structure that she could vaguely make out in the starlight. It looked like a small cabin surrounded by trees. Once inside, he set her carefully down on what felt like a cot, and she heard clanking sounds across the room as he lit a fire in a small black wood-stove that sat on a brick platform in a corner of the tiny room. The cabin was clearly built to be occupied by only one person, and had a cot, the wood-stove, a cooler and a two-burner propane stove in its one room. Missy didn’t even want to think about what would happen when she had to go to the bathroom, if she lived long enough for the urge to strike her. She flinched when Andrew came over to where she sat on the cot and rubbed her cheek with his thumb.
“Okay, pretty girl, I’m gonna lay you down and secure you to the cot so that you don’t hurt yourself, understand?” Missy nodded, only to keep from giving him a reason to be upset and kill her. He laid her gently down on the mattress, lifting her feet up for her, and then bound her to the uncomfortable thing with bungee cords that he had kept in the back of the van. The musty, dusty scent of unused camping equipment filled her nostrils, combining with the smoky odor of the wood-stove, and tears trickled from her eyes, wetting her hair and dripping into her ears.
“Hey, there,” Andrew said softly, “don’t be sad. I’m going to go get some food and supplies and I’ll be back in a bit. I’ll even get you a candy bar, cuz you’re so sweet. You like candy bars, don’t you?” he cooed, nauseating her. She nodded again, just to be safe, her mind racing at the thought that he was going to leave her alone for a while. If she was going to escape, now would be the time. When he finally left the cabin, the first brilliant purples and oranges of the Nevada dawn were beginning to light up the sky, and Missy wondered if she’d live to see another sunrise.
Chapter 17
Chas Beckett had a lot of details to share with Brasco and Ramirez and knew that too much precious time had passed, so he tried to summarize his findings quickly and concisely.
“From the very beginning, Missy and I looked at Taylor Whitcombe, the assistant, as the primary suspect. The details made sense, mostly. Marta Cambridge had cut him out of a sizable commission by going directly to Missy with her offer of a franchise opportunity, so it only stood to reason that she’d be planning to cut him out of the oversight of the new franchise as well, since it was located in her hometown and would give her an excuse to visit anytime she liked. The only thing that we couldn’t figure out is why someone with ‘old money’ backing, like Whitcombe, would take such a ridiculous chance over what amounted, to him, to pocket change – tens of thousands of dollars at most. He probably carries more than that in the change tray of his car,” Chas made a face.
“Yeah, he had an airtight alibi too,” Brasco nodded. “Could prove where he was at the time of the murder with witnesses, receipts and video – it was a dead end for us.”
“It was for me too, which is why, although I continued to investigate him, I also kept an eye out for anything else that was suspicious,” Beckett assured him.
“So what’d you find?” Ramirez butted in skeptically.
“There was this guy who kept popping up, everywhere Missy went. If she was at the pool, he was at the pool. Even when she changed hotels, he ended up at the casino, ‘coincidentally’ at the same time that she did. She had introduced me to the guy, and I just got a bad feeling about him, so I decided to check him out.”
“Some of my best cases have been cracked because I followed my gut,” Brasco mused, interested.
“Exactly.” Chas agreed. Missy said that she had met the dude a few years ago at another baking competition, so I did a little digging and found out that this guy’s business had been on the verge of bankruptcy for years, but suddenly had an infusion of cash from an untraceable source that helped put him back on the map in the industry. I wondered how a guy like that even got invited to a prestigious competition, so I explored a little further and found some tabloid photos of Marta Cambridge out on the town in Europe with a guy who looked suspiciously like my suspect.”
“So who’s the guy?” Ramirez interrupted again.
“Andrew Benson, owner of The Pastry Party, and secret lover of Marta Cambridge.”
“So what makes you think he did it? Wouldn’t that be like cutting off his nose to spite his face?” Brasco asked, puzzled.
“Not when you consider that, despite the fact that Andrew got back on his feet financially, Marta never offered him a very lucrative opportunity to join her franchise, but there’s more to it than that, which I’ll get to in a moment.” Chas saw the light beginning to dawn as Brasco absorbed the new info. Ramirez still looked skeptical, but he was beginning to think that that was just a personality trait for her. “Missy said that you were going to somehow try to nail her based upon the time and cause of death. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if that’s the angle you were taking, the death had to have occurred when Missy was with Marta, and since she obviously didn’t exact violence upon the poor woman, the cause of death had to be something much more subtle…like poison perhaps.” A look of begrudging respect crossed Ramirez’s face briefly at this revelation, but she shut it down quickly enough.
Chas continued. “So my first order of business was to pay a visit to your local coroner, who is quite a charming gal I might add, and quite talkative when business is slow. I told her I was doing a shadow investigation to assist you, and while she didn’t show me the report, she did let me know that I was on the right track with poison being the culprit and time of death being roughly nine hours after ingestion. From there I went to the Top of the World, where Missy and Marta had lunch and asked to review their security footage for the day and time in question. With just the tiniest bit of persuasive charm, the security guard on duty showed it to me, and I figured out everything I needed to know…almost. In the security film, there is quite clearly a moment where Ms. Cambridge reaches into her purse, pulls out a bottle of prescription medica
tion, shakes two tablets into her hand and takes them with some water. The water that she drank was poured from a pitcher by the waiter, who filled Missy’s glass from the same source, so we could rule out the water as being the source of the poison, which left the tablets.
Knowing that of course Marta’s medication wouldn’t be poisonous, I figured out that someone who had access to her room must’ve placed fake ‘medication’ into the bottle in order to poison her. I watched Benson’s room until he left, then I convinced the housekeeper on his floor that I had locked myself out, so she used her passkey to let me into his room. I slipped on some gloves and went through his belongings until I found a stash of some very interesting items. In his possession were the chemicals necessary to make tablets of the exact type that had poisoned Marta Cambridge. He also had duct tape, black clothing, two different ski masks, a bit unusual in 100 degree heat, don’t you think?” he asked rhetorically before continuing, “and probably the most interesting item that I found hidden in a secret pocket of his valise, was a pre-nuptial agreement that had been drawn up by Marta’s attorneys, which stated that if they ever divorced, for any reason, Benson would be left with nothing more than the clothes on his back and his cute little bakery. Apparently, even if she planned to marry him, she had no intention of going into business with him,” Chas concluded.
“Do you have proof of all of this? Brasco demanded, clearly believing him.
“I took photos on my phone of all the evidence and transferred them to this thumb drive. I also took samples of each of the chemicals and placed them in individual evidence baggies and photographed them as well, next to the bottles that they came out of. If he didn’t find them, the baggies were stuffed in the toe of my jogging shoe in my gym bag.”