by Lane Stone
“Where are you?” He sounded like he was running. Without waiting for my answer, he said, “Mary Jane Kerwin has been murdered. She tried to call 9-1-1, but her killer was already inside her home.”
Suddenly the front door to the store closed, with enough force to rattle the glass, and when I heard the click of the lock, I knew who the killer was. Lady Anthea’s eyes met mine.
Peter Collins stood in front of us, holding a gun. Though he was holding the ugly thing two-handed, his arms, hands, shoulders, and the gun shook. He pointed it first at me then at Lady Anthea.
“Sue,” Lady Anthea said.
I took my eyes off the gun to look at her. She stood in front of the first of the Laliberte paintings.
“I’ve enjoyed every minute of this week. I wouldn’t trade this time for all the country homes in England.”
I smiled and hoped she could read my mind.
“Hang up,” Collins hissed.
I stared at him a beat before remembering that I still held my phone.
Rather than end the call, I held the phone out to him. He looked at it, like he’d never seen such an apparatus before. Then his eyes darted back to us. To the left at me. To the right at Lady Anthea. He had a decision to make. Should he reach for the phone or not? The effort made the gun quiver, in fitful jerks.
“Hang up the call,” he said finally.
I tapped the screen to do as he said.
“What are you doing?” he yelled at Lady Anthea.
She had backed up about two steps. I was only vaguely aware she’d moved because all I could see was the end of the barrel of that gun.
“Here’s the phone,” I said. I leaned over and with a flick of my wrist, sent the phone skidding along the floor.
His eyes tracked it for a few seconds before he brought his attention back to me. He blinked twice and took a deep breath, like there was a job ahead of him that he dreaded. Then he turned the gun on its side and moved it to his right hand. He was inspecting it. Was he looking for the safety? He slid a lever then went back to his two-handed grip. Damn, if I had known the safety was on, I could have run at him, but this was one in a long list of what I wish I had known when I needed to know it.
In my peripheral vision, I knew Lady Anthea had retreated another step farther back into the gallery. Was there a door in the back? I couldn’t remember. How far behind us would it be? She could go for help.
“You knew what Henry and Mary Jane were up to all along, didn’t you?” I asked as gently as I could.
Though I was looking straight at Peter Collins, I knew Lady Anthea was backing up again as I spoke. Right leg. Left leg.
She stopped when she reached the far end of the second painting. Now she was stock still. Maybe if I spoke again.
“They paid you chickenfeed for the first painting and then sold it to the highest bidder.”
Lady Anthea had reached her arm up to the painting.
I went on, “They were about to do it again.”
Collins’s eyes darted to the painting that would have been sold off next, and I realized my misstep. He eyed the painting then Lady Anthea, who froze in place.
“If I had them arrested, I would have to admit I didn’t know the true value of the artwork. I would have looked like a fool,” he yelled. He thrust a step toward Lady Anthea with the force of his anger, jabbing the gun at the air between them like a saber.
“Those paintings had been in your family, hadn’t they? For years?” My questions brought his attention back to me.
I heard metal clink to my left. Lady Anthea was doing something, but I didn’t dare look to see what.
“I didn’t know what to do!”
“Oh, but you did, Mr. Collins,” I cooed. “On Monday you went to New York City to investigate, didn’t you?”
He nodded causing his eyeglasses to slip down his nose a bit. Since he had gone back to holding the gun with both hands, there was little he could do about them.
When I stopped talking, Lady Anthea stopped whatever it was she was doing.
“You knew it was just a matter of time before the second painting went on the market,” I suggested.
“Yes! A dealer in Greenwich Village who has known my family for years, and who is very familiar with our art collection, became suspicious when he saw the first sale and the listing for the second. That’s who I went to see. He assured me the paintings were as valuable as my parents had told me they were! Henry and Mary Jane said no painting of a dog would ever be valuable to serious collectors.” He stopped to take a breath. The gun lurched up again. “You see?” he yelled at me. Then he turned to Lady Anthea and demanded the same of her, “You see? I had to kill both of them.”
When his eyes were off me, I stole a glance to see what she was doing. Her hand was practically behind the painting.
While I didn’t know what the hell Lady Anthea was doing, I trusted her. I had to do my part. I had to start talking again.
“When you got back to Lewes you went to see Dayle, your friend, didn’t you?” I asked. “On Monday night at Gilligan’s she said you had tried to call her.”
“Yes,” he hissed. His eyeglasses were bothering him more and he tried to readjust them with the side of his hand. This only added to his agitation. “She wasn’t home so I let myself in to wait. I heard a car pull up outside. I looked out the window and saw it was your van and Henry was bringing Dottie in. I couldn’t face him. I was afraid he would see by my expression how much I hated him and that I knew what he had done, so I hid in the kitchen. My intention was to leave her a note, but—” His voice trailed off.
“You saw Dayle’s sleeping pills on the table?” I prompted him.
“I did, indeed, on my way out through her kitchen. Henry had left the door to the van open. I reached in over the driver’s seat and dropped the pills into his water bottle. Then I came back here and waited to hear news of the driver of the Buckingham van being in a tragic accident.” As Collins talked, he got a faraway look in his eyes, and the hand holding the gun drooped once more.
The thought that this was not exactly a surefire way to kill someone crossed my mind, but I had better sense than to be argumentative with someone holding me at gunpoint.
He transferred the weight of the gun from both hands, to hold it in his right and reached up to push his glasses back to the bridge of his nose. The simple move caused him to list to port, then he corrected and was listing to starboard. I watched as the pistol barrel swayed, rose, and fell with his every move.
He made a sound that was some combination of a wheeze and a high-pitched laugh. Then he was talking again, and the gun was back up level with my heart. “The dosage wasn’t enough for someone his size. Instead of crashing the van, he came here. At first I thought he knew what I’d done and had followed me here to kill me.” He shuddered at the thought, and the irony wasn’t lost on me. I imagined myself back at Buckingham’s, telling Shelby what he said, that is if I ever got back there. Then I heard a metal click from behind Lady Anthea.
“He had the audacity to let himself in the rear door of my gallery. That’s how they treated me! I was afraid for my life until I remembered I had a steak knife in my desk drawer. Then I heard him call out for Mary Jane. He still thought I was away. I came out of my office and told him I heard a lot of noise coming from the back of van. He was stumbling around and still yelling for Mary Jane to help him. He kept saying he needed her.”
His words conjured a mental image of my employee. That thought brought me full circle to Monday when I’d found the body and committed myself to finding out who had murdered him because I hadn’t been there for him. I had listened to Collins’s ranting, but I’d had enough and now I had to speak up for his victim. “I’ll admit Henry was an unsatisfactory employee in just about every way possible, but he was part of the Buckingham Pet Palace crew.” I narrowed my eyes and dared him to do
his best.
Peter Collins was determined to make his point. “He didn’t deserve your loyalty any more than Mary Jane Kerwin deserved mine. He didn’t want to check on the dogs in that van. He said he didn’t care about them. I, I had to convince him to go to the van.” His voice was rising in volume and he was back to punctuating the words with juts in the air with the gun. “I climbed in behind him and then I stabbed him.”
“Brilliant,” a British accent whispered.
“Then I donned gloves to drive the van to Cape Henlopen Drive, and I walked back here.”
“Sue!” Lady Anthea yelled and I turned to her. She shoved the end of one of the paintings my way and I grabbed it. It swung out from the wall. Then she unhinged the other end and lifted it higher. “He won’t shoot the painting!”
Shielding ourselves and using the element of surprise, we charged him with the canvas, yelling at the top of our lungs. We had used his weakness, his love of possessions, against him. I couldn’t see Peter Collins as we ran at him, but I heard him bellow in mental agony. That’s when I heard someone banging on the glass of the front door. The door gave and seconds later we heard an “oomph.” From beneath the painting, we saw Collins in a heap on the floor.
“Take it easy, ladies,” said a now familiar baritone voice.
We lowered the artwork with its ornate frame. Thanks to the miracle of adrenaline, it had felt light, but it wasn’t. John Turner took it from us and leaned it against the wall. Two uniformed Lewes police officers, one female and one male, pulled Collins from the floor and led him, ranting and spent, out of the Best of the Past.
Lady Anthea leaned against the wall next to the painting. She was fighting back tears with one breath and laughing with the next. I heard her say something about being happy that we were still on this side of the River Styx.
John had been watching me to check my emotional state, but I had no intention of breaking down in front of him. Now he looked at me for translation of what she’d said. No idea.
“Right now I’m happy to be, well, anywhere,” I said and walked around him. There was a gala to get ready for.
Chapter 28
I stood in the receiving line next to Lady Anthea, Abby, Dana, Mason, Joey, and Shelby. The yellow orchids and coral roses in the pots glowed in the moonlight. Was it really just five days ago that I had chosen those?
The procession of Lewes citizens stalled regularly when a guest asked about our involvement in what Rick Ziegler had dubbed, “the gunfight at the O.K. Antiques Store.” This time it was Betsy Rivard who wanted to hear how we’d outsmarted Peter Collins.
“Sue and I yelled like banshees,” Lady Anthea said. “Which, as you know, is a Gaelic term referring to…” I intervened and got the line moving again.
Barb Moulinier, dressed in a floor-length, actually beach-length, white lace dress, made her way to the end of the buffet table and picked up the microphone. With one hand, she flicked it on, and with the other, she motioned for me to join her. The evening had begun with a welcome from me, and an introduction of Lady Anthea.
As the sun set, the guests ate their fill and then some. We’d enjoyed soup shooters, fried olives, and feasted at the raw bar. Wayne had wholeheartedly approved of the fare, particularly of the roast beef sliders with horseradish. The classical guitarist had started with “I Can’t Help Falling in Love”, and moved on to “Love Me Tender.” The waitstaff kept everyone’s glass filled with either Orange Crush, the state cocktail of Delaware, or with wine. Bartenders served craft beers on tap or in a bottle.
I left the Buckingham team and went to join Barb, and the guitarist joined us. “You clean up good, Ms. Patrick,” he said. I wore a yellow silk mini-dress and canary-yellow diamond stud earrings that had been my mother’s.
“You’re looking mighty sharp yourself,” I said. He wore a white tuxedo jacket over white bathing trunks, and a bow tie.
“Good evening,” Barb said to the two hundred-plus guests. “We’ll begin the entertainment part of this perfect night with a duet.”
She and I both looked around for my singing partner. Chief Turner was walking toward the stage. I thought he was coming closer to hear better, so my mouth dropped open when he walked up to me. I stared in shock. As Lady Anthea would say, I was gobsmacked. “You?” I whispered.
“Don’t look so surprised. I am a baritone, after all,” he said, taking the microphone from Barb. He was still in uniform. I had asked him about that when he came through the receiving line, and he’d said that even though the two murders had been solved, seeing him in uniform would make citizens feel better. I didn’t believe him for a second.
It wasn’t the time nor place to go into Elvis singing two and a half octaves, yada yada, so I took a deep breath and waited for the guitarist to begin the opening chords of “Today, Tomorrow and Forever.”
John started to sing the love song, looking into my eyes.
I sang when it was time for Ann-Margret’s part.
To my surprise, we harmonized pretty well.
“None of the dogs howled so I guess we did okay,” I said to him, over the applause and cheering.
Barb took the microphone and raised her hand to try to get order. No luck. Dana, Shelby, Mason, and Joey were jumping up and down, yelling, “Encore.” Then the lights on the beach lit up forming a perfect square with our local disc jockey, Awd-E-O, all set up and ready to go.
“Let’s dance!” Barb yelled to the crowd.
I was wearing white ballet slippers and I pulled them off and threw them under a table. Dogs and humans stampeded out as Awd-E-O started “C’mon Everybody.” The whole Buckingham team ran to meet Abby and me in the center. My toes sunk into the sand, which was still warm from the day’s sun.
Elvis sang, and we snapped out fingers.
Then I saw Lady Anthea was there, on the other side of Abby.
“You’re not wearing shoes!” I yelled.
She laughed. “The sand feels utterly amazing.”
When the song was over she, Abby and I walked to the side of the dance sand. “Lady Anthea, I need to ask you something. Were you serious about taking full-time responsibilities here? Do you want to stay?”
“I think I’d like that,” she said, then she looked around at Rick and Dayle, dancing with a barking Dottie, at Charles Andrews and So-Long moving more sedately, at Dana, Mason, and Joey with more up-to-date moves. “Would I fit in?”
“This might be the Orange Crush talking, but do you think you could hold back on the talk about operas, Shakespeare, and mythology?”
“Is that what those drinks are called? I had three and this might be them answering, but I doubt it. How about if I limit them to one an hour?”
“Deal!”
John Turner was walking toward us, sans shoes, and the next song was starting.
“I know just who I want to dance with for this number!” I said.
He reached his arms out but he wasn’t who I had in mind.
I leaned down and picked Abby up and sang “Hound Dog” to her.
He followed us to the dance floor sand and swayed and sang with us. “I hardly recognized you when I first saw you tonight,” I yelled over the music.
“Why not? I’m still in uniform, except for my shoes. I have no idea where they are.”
“It’s everything. You look more relaxed than you’ve been all week.”
“I haven’t relaxed since Walton ran you off the road. I was more than worried about you. I hated the way that made me feel.” He started to lean over to talk to me, but I was still holding Abby.
“I remember you storming off into the night. You didn’t seem concerned for me.”
“I wanted to stay there for you and I needed to do my job, both. Do you think you could put that dog down?”
“No,” I said.
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give dogs a chan
ce, if you give me one.”
I put Abby down to go play with So-Long, Dottie, Robber, and Paris then I shook John’s hand. “Deal,” I said.
Meet the Author
Lane Stone is a native Atlantan. She, her husband, and their dog Abby live in Alexandria, VA during the week and in Lewes, DE on the weekend. When not writing, she enjoys characteristic baby boomer pursuits: hiking in various countries and playing golf. Her volunteer work includes conducting home visits for A Forever Home, a dog foster organization, and media/ communications for the Delaware River & Bay Lighthouse Foundation. She’s on the Political Science Advisory Board of Georgia State University..