Twenty-three
“I SAW YOUR VAN parked out front and was worried about you. Is everything all right, my dear?”
She swallowed. Prentiss was the last person she wanted to see, given what she now believed, so she needed to stay focused and get out. His face was obscured by the shadows and he emanated heat and a musky odor.
“I was just here to make sure the alarm system was up and working, but it seems that the electricity is out, and I… I can’t remember what the security expert said about power outages,” she lied. “I guess I’ll call Haskell and ask him.” If only she had her cell phone in her hand.
“Now, why would you want to do that?” he asked, his tone mocking. “You’re far more clever than that rooster Haskell Lockland. In fact you’re far too clever, aren’t you?”
“Not really,” she said feverishly. If only she was as clever as people seemed to think she was.
If she was quicker on the uptake she would have figured out right away that the “lady client” Prentiss was claiming to see as a therapist must be Cynthia Turbridge. The tricky part was that she understood that Cynthia’s alibi to the police was that she was home alone that night, but Jaymie had since remembered one small phrase the chief used; everything turned on that. He’d said that she had claimed to be home at first; that implied a change of story, which telling the police that she was actually meeting her therapist would cover. Judging by what Jaymie had witnessed at the meeting, Prentiss seemed to have her securely in his pocket. But if that was true, and that was what he told the police—that he was busy that evening counseling Cynthia—Jaymie knew what no one else did, that Cynthia was in no shape that night to be seen or counseled by anyone.
“I had, uh, better go back to my van,” she said uneasily, but when she moved to go around him in the dark, he blocked her. Her nerves hummed with anxiety, the beeping of the alarm system in time with her thumping heart.
Prentiss had lied, but because Jaymie had not told the chief everything she knew, the police didn’t know that Cynthia, in backing up his story, had told a whopper. A lie about an alibi was no big deal, she supposed—even innocent people lied, as Chief Ledbetter had told her once—but in this case, if Jaymie was right, Prentiss Dumpe needed to conceal where he was that night. But why would Cynthia say what wasn’t true? The easy answer to that was that when the police confronted her with the fact that her car was gone out of her driveway that night, she likely saw it as a way to conceal her own whereabouts.
It was a foolish thing to do, because she was pretty sure Prentiss was here at Dumpe Manor killing a pesky troublemaker, Theo Carson, either to conceal what he and his son were up to or to keep the wrong person from finding the will. By propping up his alibi Cynthia had become an accessory to his crime. And now he was here again, with yet another pesky troublemaker… herself. She did not want to end up like Theo.
“I really need to go,” she said, shivering with a mixture of fear and cold. She again moved to get past him, but he put out one arm. She no longer wanted to disarm the alarm system. In fact, it might just be her best chance at getting out of this dangerous spot she had gotten herself into.
“I think I ought to explain my son to you, Jaymie,” he said, his tone oily with attempted charm. “I know he makes an unfortunate impression, but he is just acting out his anger at a system that doesn’t value his unique perspective on life.”
“There’s no need to explain Iago, Prentiss,” she said, an edge in her voice. What a load of rot. “He’s a thief. That’s no reflection on you. Now… I’m cold. I need to get back to my van.” She steeled herself to push past him.
He grabbed her arms, his grip surprisingly strong. “You’re not going anywhere. I don’t appreciate that you got my son in trouble. He was picked up for questioning this afternoon by some damn nosy woman detective who asked all kinds of questions about stolen property. I have no doubt that came from you. I’ve heard about your little excursion out to the root cellar. When are you going to learn to stop snooping? It’s almost pathological, this need you have to know everyone’s business.”
She tried to hold her tongue. The biggest misperception folks had of her was that she must be a busybody, since she had found three—make that four—dead bodies in such a short time. She’d been jokingly called Nancy Drew and Jessica Fletcher. Even Daniel had told her to “try to keep out of trouble.” But she didn’t go looking for trouble, it just found her!
Holding her tongue wasn’t her nature. She squinted, trying to see his eyes in the dimness of the cavernous entrance, the cold wind sweeping in the open door, as his grip began to numb her. “You wanted me to snoop, though, right? You depended on me finding that fake will. The will that’s going to put you in jail for fraud, if not murder!” Her voice was trembling by the time she was done. She tried to wrench her arms from his grasp, but he was too strong.
“You just won’t learn, will you?” he said, his breath minty from chalky antacid. “That was Theo’s problem. Thought he could blackmail me.”
“Blackmail?”
“Greedy son of a… wanted in on poor Iago’s little business venture.”
“That’s where he got Brock Nibley’s tablet,” Jaymie said.
“Among other things.”
Jaymie was startled. Theo had tried to bargain with this sociopath and his wastrel son?
“If he had abided by my rules he would have been just fine, but no, the weasel had to keep snooping!”
“You didn’t have to kill him! Murderer!”
“Why are you calling me a murderer?” he said with a sneer. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
If she was going to live to snoop another day she needed to get out of this fix. In a situation like this—and she had been in a couple—it was always difficult to know whether to be aggressive or placating. She took a deep breath, steadying her nerves. “Let’s just agree to disagree, shall we, Prentiss? I have to go.” She tried to push back, but suddenly there was someone else in the doorway. It was Dick Schuster! “Dick!” she cried in relief, as the doctor finally released her from his grasp. “Prentiss seems to have a problem with me. Will you walk me out to my car?”
“Yes, Dick, why don’t you do that?” Prentiss said with a smirk. “Or is that too difficult a task for someone of your limited abilities? Look what happened the last time I asked you to perform the simple task of keeping Theo Carson out of my house.”
That was the exact moment when Jaymie knew she was really in trouble.
Dick whined, “I wish you wouldn’t treat me like that, Dr. Dumpe.”
They were in it together. Prentiss was the person Dick had been texting or calling minutes ago, no doubt. It was dark and getting darker, and there was no way she was going to let these clowns take her hostage or worse. Talk or action—which was better? “So, Dick, you’re the good doctor’s lackey?”
Prentiss spoke up. “Poor fellow lacks impulse control, and that’s how Theo died, isn’t it, Dickie? He was supposed to knock Carson out to keep him out of the house, not kill him!”
A chill raced down her back. “Like he did with me,” she said.
“Yes, indeed… like he did with you. Even though if he’d had a lick of sense he would have just waited until you left the house on your own.”
“But that darned writer… he stole my work!” Schuster whined. “You told me I needed to assert myself with him, Doctor. Said I needed to be firm.”
“Dick, I’m sure you didn’t mean to do it,” Jaymie said, her teeth chattering. “Help me out of this and I’ll tell the police that!” As if.
He made a noise in his throat, a kind of anxious humming.
“Don’t be ridiculous! You’d lose everything, Dick, as if you haven’t already. You need me to help you get your life back!” Prentiss said.
Keep them talking, keep them talking… the alarm beeped on. “So you had Dick kill Theo, is that it? He used you,
Dick!” she said. “He wanted you to kill Theo! It’s his fault!”
There was a pause, and she thought she might have him, but then Prentiss spoke again.
“He did it, and I have his bloody clothes to prove it. Common sense and self-control are problems stemming from your lack of confidence, right, Dick?” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “Or so your wife has always told me.”
So why confront me tonight? Jaymie wondered, her gaze shifting from shadowy figure to shadowy figure. Why not let her just snoop around and go away, now that it was all out in the open? There was only one answer: they had been looking for a way to dispose of her troublesome self, and she had just given them that opportunity. She would be dead, and everything she had learned, every single thing she had speculated in the last hour, would be lost.
Or not! There was a time for negotiation, and a time for action.
She shoved Prentiss into Dick and pushed past them, dashing out the front door, down the steps and to her van, jumping in and turning the key. Thank heavens she was not in some horror flick, because the motor leaped to life right away and she began backing down the driveway, only to find that she was hemmed in by both Prentiss’s car and Dick Schuster’s. “Damn!” she shouted, hammering on the steering wheel.
As the two men raced toward her van, Schuster carrying a baseball bat, she quickly considered her options and thought of a great one. She urged her van forward, up the lane, and managed to swerve to miss Schuster, though he swung the bat and connected with her left front headlight. She drove up onto the lawn and around the back of the house. The beam from her one remaining headlight bobbed crazily, a slice of light flickering across the siding of the house as she jounced over bumps, ran down a bench and raced through a fledgling garden, then into the field beyond the expansive yard.
As she drove with one hand, she got her cell phone out of her purse and dialed 911, forgetting, of course, the method Daniel had input for her. It was simpler just to remember 911. Connected, she babbled as much of the story as she could, but she had to swerve to miss a fencepost, and the cell phone was knocked out of her hand and slid off the seat onto the floor. A swift look in her rearview mirror told her she was being followed, but by only one car. Hoping her cell phone was still connected she shouted out her direction. As she turned to the road and aimed for the access area that bridged the ditch, she saw why only one car had followed. The other was poised on the road, ready to cut her off if she decided to go that way, toward town.
She did her best to crank around the wheel of her van and start the opposite way, but the vehicle that had followed her was circling to the road in that direction. Her thoughts darted this way and that as she looked for a way out. Though it went against everything she had originally thought, these two were working together.
She had been thinking Prentiss and Iago Dumpe were the only culprits. Iago had been using the attic as a storage spot for his stolen goods empire and had been in the midst of moving it all to the root cellar when she found it. Prentiss, she figured, or Iago, had been the one to hide the fake will in the kitchen cupboard, not realizing that the Snoop Sisters had already searched it thoroughly and could attest that there was nothing there when they looked.
But in reality Dick Schuster, under Prentiss’s control either by psychological manipulation or drug-induced exploitation, was the doctor’s right-hand man.
There was no time to figure out the rest of the story now. Every action movie she had ever seen flashed through Jaymie’s mind; this was the point where the action suspended for a brief moment, and everyone held their breath. She assumed the other two drivers were trying to figure out what she was about to do next, and she had only moments to make a decision before one of them forced her hand. One car was behind her, and one was in front.
She was a very good driver, much better than anyone else she knew, but the van was lumbering and not in the best condition. Still, the fact remained: she was a very good driver. There was no time for her to turn, to point the car back to Queensville. So her best option was to charge through and get to the highway, then circle back to town. She gunned the motor, clutched the wheel and charged. This was going to be a game of chicken.
She drove, drove, drove… and the other driver—Prentiss, she thought—gave in, swerving into the ditch as she charged down the gravel road away from town. She floored it.
Prentiss had made it clear that Dick had killed Theo. Jaymie had conjectured, from their interactions, that he loathed the doctor, but just because Dick was working for Prentiss did not mean that still wasn’t true. Valetta had let slip that in her opinion Prentiss overmedicated his patients. Was that one of the charges that had gotten his license suspended? Some medications caused paranoia, and Dick did seem paranoid; he was a classic example of someone who was fragile and fell under the influence of a stronger, more devious mind.
She drove. It was dark now, but there were still headlights in her rearview mirror. If she could just get to Marsh Road she could double back and get to the Queensville police station on the riverside highway on the way to Wolverhampton. Her heart was still thudding, but she forced herself to breathe deeply and plan ahead. As if sensing her intention to drive her way out of trouble, the driver behind her roared up and she felt an awful, shuddering bump to her rear, like a clumsy attempt at a PIT maneuver.
She struggled to regain control and clenched her fists tighter on the wheel, her breathing quickening. They were not going to best her; she’d been in tight situations before and always got out. Still… doubts assailed her. Yes, she’d been in tough situations, but never on the road in a vehicle and alone. She checked her rearview mirror; damn! She hammered the wheel. The driver was still following, and the car seemed closer than it had been a few moments ago.
Forget about the police station or Queensville; she just needed to find a house with people, but it had to be the right place. There had to be someone home, or she would be putting herself in jeopardy for nothing. She sped up and navigated a tricky corner onto the highway with ease, the van’s back end sliding just a bit before she stopped it from fishtailing. She was quickly leaving behind the area she knew best, but she had been driving since before she was legal and knew she could handle it, come what may. There was a side road that she hadn’t been down in some time… maybe it would be just as mystifying to her follower.
She swung onto a gravel road. She was used to gravel roads, but a lot of townsfolk wouldn’t drive them; it was all too easy to skid out of control if you didn’t know what you were doing. Her van was clumsy, but she knew it well. There, ahead… she could see a dwelling with faint light showing through curtains. She sped up to get some distance between her and her follower, then abruptly slowed and swung into the driveway, bouncing down the slope and skidding on the gravel drive as she jammed the brake. The other car rocketed past, and she flung herself from the van and ran to the door, beating on it. “Help, I’ve been followed! Call the police!”
At the last minute she thought… What if they don’t let me in? What then? If she lived in the country would she let someone in if they were beating on her door and shouting? No. They might be in the sticks, but stuff still happened in the sticks.
However, the door was flung open and a big, dark-haired fellow in jeans and a flannel shirt with a dish towel slung over his arm stepped out and said, “What’s going on?”
She looked up into dark brown eyes set in a stubbly, masculine face. Trembling all over, she said, “I don’t have time to explain.” Her tone was too close to hysterical; she could hear her pursuer coming back along the gravel road toward the house. “I’m being followed. I need to come in to use your phone to call the police. I called on my cell, but I’m not sure I got through and I don’t dare go back out to get it.”
He appeared indecisive for a moment and looked back over his shoulder.
A child’s voice called out, “Daddy? Who is it?”
Just then
the car pulled into the drive, not quickly but as if the driver were coming for a visit, with all the time in the world.
“Please!” Jaymie pleaded, grabbing the man’s forearm. He was reassuringly solid. “This guy is crazy and he’s a killer,” she muttered, pitching her voice low so as not to alarm the child. “Just let me call the cops from here!”
The car door slammed and Prentiss’s voice cut through the night. “Jaymie, this is Doctor Dumpe. Let me help you, my dear! We need to get you back to the psych ward so you won’t hurt yourself… again.”
Twenty-four
JAYMIE’S HEART THUDDED and she looked over her shoulder.
Prentiss strolled toward them from the gloom, his hands out in a beseeching gesture. “I’m so sorry you’ve been disturbed, sir, but this young lady needs my help. I’m her psychiatrist; she’s suffering a psychotic break after a prolonged period of stress. My apologies, but I really need to take her to the hospital so she can be treated properly before she becomes a danger to herself or others.”
“Please don’t believe him,” Jaymie murmured, looking up into the brown eyes.
A child appeared beneath the man’s elbow, blond curls drooped over an adorable elfin face. “Who are you?” she asked.
She took a deep breath. “My name is Jaymie. What’s yours?” She tried to calm her trembling, but it didn’t help. She could hear Prentiss walk on the gravel path toward the porch. As long as she had been in her van, she had felt in control of her fate, but she couldn’t drive forever.
“Jocelyn Eleanor Müller,” the child said, no hint of baby lisp, even though she looked about three.
Victoria Hamilton - Vintage Kitchen 04 - No Mallets Intended Page 24