A Darling of Death

by Gin Jones

  "I do know it was you who killed Danica," she said, getting to her feet, although she knew she couldn't outrun him. "You were in love with her, but she wasn't an easy woman to have a relationship with. She must have provoked you."

  "I never would have expected you to understand, but that's exactly what happened." Van gripped the opposite sides of his end of the picnic table as if he were planning to pick it up and throw it across the parking lot. He didn't, though. He just leaned forward, staring at the table top while he continued to speak. "I thought Dani would be pleased when she found me waiting for her in the locker room showers. I knew she was the only one in there and figured we might have some fun. But she said I was an idiot. That someone might have seen me, and then everyone would know about us, and my mother would find out."

  "Why would you care?" His mother had apparently been in denial about his domestic abuse. "Your mother wouldn't have blamed you. She'd have blamed Danica for seducing you."

  "That's what I told Dani. But she said she'd tell my mother that she'd been doing everyone a favor, getting me away from my wife. Dani was going to claim I was a domestic abuser, and I needed someone tough like her to keep me in line. I just kind of lost it when she said that. I couldn't believe she'd say that about me. I never even hit her."

  "Until then," I said. "Her head had a big gash in it."

  "I don't remember that," he said. "I was only trying to show Dani that she was wrong, and that she couldn't control me. Whatever I did, it was because she made me do it. I knew about her fear of water. She was always talking about her plan to fill in Neil's pool once she owned the Wharton B&B. So I pushed her face into a puddle on the floor. I gave her a chance to apologize for what she'd said, but she wouldn't."

  Of course she hadn't, Helen thought. Danica would never have admitted defeat.

  "I didn't want to hurt her, but she wouldn't apologize, and then she went limp, and it was too late for both of us." Van straightened and let go of the picnic table to stare at Helen. "Just like it's too late for you. I don't really want to hurt you, but now I have to, and it's all your fault. You wouldn't listen to my warning, and now I've got to keep you from telling my mother what I did."

  Helen scrambled onto the bench and then the top of the picnic table, intending to call through the opening of the dock doors for help. She could use her cane to beat at Van while she waited for rescue. It was a long shot, but she didn't have any other options.

  Once there, she could see that the gap at the bottom of the loading dock door was larger than it had appeared from the ground. Large enough that she might be able to slip through it, but not someone as muscle-bound as Van.

  "It's too late." Helen made a show of calling out to Kolya and Mia for help through the opening, although she doubted they or anyone else was in position to hear her. Mostly, she wanted to make Van think that her weak call for help was her only option, so he would become overconfident and not try to drag her away from the opening that was her true escape plan. "They're on their way."

  "You're lying. Everyone's busy with Ronny in the offices at the other end of the building, so they can't hear you." As Van spoke, he closed the distance between them. When he was next to the wall, well within reach of her, though, he stopped. The anger on his face diminished, replaced with amusement. "It's really too bad I have to do this. I like you. You're a lot like Dani, you know."

  Helen boosted herself up to sit on the ledge, as if she thought that would get her out of his reach. She needed to distract him from noticing the size of the gap behind her. She slumped until she was practically bent in half, closer to lying down than sitting, and said, "I'm not anything like Danica. For one thing, I can admit when I'm defeated. You've won. There's nothing else I can do to get away from you now."

  Her surrender seemed to have stymied him. He stayed where he was and said, "I'm really sorry about this. But you made me do it."

  Helen stifled the urge to roll her eyes, which would have been inconsistent with the image of abject despair that she was trying to project. "Just give me a moment to prepare myself."

  He peered at her suspiciously. "You're planning something."

  She took a calming breath, like Mia had taught her, and imagined her entire body as a beautiful lady's hand, perfectly straight and perfectly relaxed. She took one last breath in and released it while flinging her cane at Van in the hope of directing his attention away from her real escape plan. Then she dropped down to lie flat on the ledge and shimmied under the bottom of the door.

  She was almost through when Van caught her foot. She grabbed the bottom of the door to pull herself inside, and kicked wildly. Her foot caught Van somewhere vulnerable, based on his grunt of pain, and he let go of her. Apparently she was better at hitting things with her feet than with her hands.

  She scrambled to her feet and spun to face the far end of the building, just in time for Kolya to come running up and hit the button that raised the loading dock door.

  "I thought you had given up confronting villains," he said.

  "I thought so too." Her breath was coming fast and shallow, making it hard to speak. She gestured over her shoulder. "Van Taylor. He killed Danica. Stop him from running away."

  Kolya smiled. "That will not be necessary."

  Helen blinked. "Why not?"

  He gestured for her to look out the now-fully-open door. "As usual, the most amazing Mia has taken care of the problem."

  Helen turned to see Van face down on the steaming asphalt, unable to move, thanks to Mia, who was kneeling on his back, keeping him locked in a wrestling hold with apparent ease.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The heat wave broke the day after Helen's narrow escape, and there was even a hint of fall in the air two weeks later for the grand reopening of the Zubov House of Sambo. The event looked to be a success, since the massive parking lot was about half filled when Tate parked Helen's car in the handicapped space closest to the entrance.

  Tate waited on the sidewalk for Helen to climb out of the passenger seat. When she joined him, carrying her workout backpack, he said, "I'm still not joining the House of Sambo. I get enough exercise cleaning up your messes."

  "You'd get even more exercise if you cleaned up your own messes," Helen said, although amusement bubbled through her. The old Tate was back. He wasn't upset with her. It was more that he hadn't quite forgiven himself for arriving too late to help rescue her from Van. He'd gotten distracted by his work for Spencer and had left the law office later than planned that evening, so he'd arrived just in time to see Van being stuffed into the back seat of a cruiser by Almeida. "The drifts of sawdust in the garage are getting close to the ceiling in places."

  He held one of the glass doors open for her. "At least no one takes pictures of my messes and puts them on the internet."

  Van's mother had unwisely Tweeted a picture of Helen, blaming her for having misrepresented the politician's "darling" son's actions as murder instead of defending himself against the evil Danica. The internet had lost its mind, not just over Jane Silvia's state of denial, but also over the disrespect shown by using the victim's last name to describe the killer. Within twenty-four hours, Jane had resigned from her elected office.

  "You can't really blame that on me," Helen said on her way inside the House of Sambo.

  "Perhaps not. But what about what you did to my relationship with Spencer?" Tate nodded to where the paralegal was carrying a bottled sport drink over to his date, Rebecca Grainger. "Every time I go to the law office to see Adam, I have to listen to a pitch from Spencer about another potential client who really needs my services."

  "Spencer does enjoy telling lawyers what to do," Helen said. "And it wouldn't hurt you to take on the occasional legal case. Just to stay in practice."

  "For the next time you get into a mess?"

  "I can get myself out of them now." She nodded at where Kolya and Mia were talking to a crowd of prospective new members for the House of Sambo. The two weren't holding hands or doing anythin
g equally blatant, but it was obvious from how close they were standing to each other, and the natural way they brushed against each other, that Kolya had indeed "called the matchmakers," and they were now a couple. "I've finally mastered the Tai Chi forms and learned to breathe, so Kolya's going to teach me some self-defense moves."

  "Bad guys everywhere must be trembling in their boots."

  "You'll see," Helen said. "I've also been using the punching bag. I'm getting good at hitting things."

  "Just remember that I'm not your lawyer any longer," he said. "If you get arrested for assault, I'm not getting you out of jail."

  Helen no longer worried that Tate was pulling away from their relationship. On the way home after Van's arrest, while Tate had been intensely aware of how close he'd come to losing her, he'd finally forgotten to be nice to her. He'd given a long and pseudo-logical speech that sounded as well-crafted as a closing argument to a jury, about how he knew she'd been disappointed by the lack of answers to her lupus treatment during her recent trip to Boston, and he was disappointed on her behalf, but it wasn't going to scare him off. He hadn't been thinking she was too much trouble to be with; he'd been trying to figure out a compromise between smothering her with his concern and simply being there when she needed support.

  "I've got other plans for your time," she told him.

  "Nothing that will interfere with my woodturning, I hope."

  "Not for too long."

  Helen had just read about an October conference for lupus patients and clinicians that would be held in Boston. The last time she'd been in the city and Tate had visited her there, she'd been too irritable from all of her medical appointments to appreciate the time she spent with him. It would have been different if she'd invited him to go with her for a vacation filled with sightseeing and cultural events and other more intimate activities.

  She was hoping he'd agree to a do-over, spending a whole week together in Boston. She'd already made reservations at a nice hotel and acquired tickets to a play she thought he'd enjoy. She'd even compiled a list of galleries and museums with wooden folk art displays to inspire him.

  It wasn't exactly a coincidence that the reservations were for the week of the lupus conference, but she and Tate would never be an attached-at-the-hip couple, and he was more than capable of finding something to do while she attended workshops. And her evenings and nights would be free to spend with him.

  "In any event," she told Tate, "I promise to make sure the time away from your lathe is spent on something you'll enjoy at least as much as woodturning."

  * * * * *

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  * * * * *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gin Jones is a lawyer who specializes in ghost-writing for other lawyers. She prefers to write fiction, though, since she doesn't have to worry that her sense of humor might get her thrown into jail for contempt of court. In her spare time, Gin makes quilts, grows garlic, and serves on the board of directors for the XLH Network.

  To learn more about Gin Jones, visit her online at: http://www.ginjones.com

  * * * * *

  BOOKS BY GIN JONES

  Helen Binney Mysteries:

  A Dose of Death

  A Denial of Death

  A (Gingerbread) Diorama of Death (holiday short story)

  A Draw of Death

  A Dawn of Death

  A Darling of Death

  Danger Cove Quilting Mysteries

  Four-Patch of Trouble

  Tree of Life and Death

  Robbing Peter to Kill Paul

  Danger Cove Farmers' Market Mysteries

  A Killing in the Market (short story in the Killer Beach Reads collection)

  A Death in the Flower Garden

  A Slaying in the Orchard

  A Secret in the Pumpkin Patch

  * * * * *

  SNEAK PEEK

  If you enjoyed this Helen Binney Mystery, check out a sneak peek of

  FOUR-PATCH OF TROUBLE

  A DANGER COVE

  QUILTING MYSTERY

  by

  GIN JONES

  &

  ELIZABETH ASHBY

  CHAPTER ONE

  A year after I quit practicing law, I was still arriving early for meetings as if I needed the time to complete last-minute, on-site preparations for a trial. Today, all I had to do was introduce myself to the director of the Danger Cove Historical Museum, exchange business cards, and be personable enough that he'd hire me to appraise the quilts the museum was planning to acquire. I could do that in my sleep. And yet, I'd arrived twenty minutes ahead of schedule.

  Rather than lurk impatiently outside the director's office, I opted to go back down to the first floor and wander through the exhibits. I'd only moved to Danger Cove recently, and this was my first visit to the museum. Its collections were housed in a massive, two-story brick building that was itself of historical interest, having been built in 1898. The museum's mission was to preserve local history, with a particular emphasis on the Danger Cove Lighthouse, maritime artifacts, and pioneer settlements.

  Despite the building's age and size, the exhibits were fairly sparse, and I managed to visit all of the public spaces, not counting the tiny gift shop, and still make it back to the suite marked Gil Torres, Museum Director with a couple of minutes to spare.

  In the waiting area, six otherwise unremarkable wooden chairs had had the seats and backs upholstered with the museum's signature textile, a traditional paisley in red, white, and blue, reproduced from a quilt in its collection. The chairs flanked a small table nestled in the corner of the room, on which there was a collection of brochures and flyers. The walls were similarly decorated with promotional materials, most of them posters for the annual quilt show jointly sponsored by the museum and the Danger Cove Quilt Guild.

  I picked up a brochure just as a petite blonde woman breezed into the room. Except for her hair—mine was a deep chestnut, wavy and shoulder length, much longer than her wispy bob—and short height, the woman could have been me twelve months ago. She was about my age, maybe a year or two older than my thirty-eight, and she wore a pale linen suit much like mine, perfectly tailored, and in a style conservative enough to impress a jury. She was also in an obvious rush, radiating tension, something I'd been all too familiar with a year ago. Unlike me, though, she had perfectly smooth skin, somehow managing to avoid even the beginning signs of the deep age lines that stress was prematurely carving onto my forehead. She was also wearing spike-heeled sandals that were a great deal more flattering than my walking shoes, but now that I was no longer able to drive and had to walk everywhere, I needed to be practical about my footwear.

  The door to the museum director's inner office opened, and a stunningly beautiful dark-skinned woman who was at least three or four inches taller than me, putting her at six feet tall, emerged. She smiled in my direction and said, "You must be—"

  The blonde interrupted. "One of the vendors at the quilt show has a problem, and I need it resolved right now." She pushed her way into the director's office.

  The tall woman, presumably the director's assistant, smiled ruefully at me. "I'm terribly sorry. This shouldn't take long."

  I fought the impulse to jump to my feet, state for the record that I objected, and insist that my appointment should be honored. Standing quickly was no longer an option. It could trigger a syncope episode—and passing out, while dramatic, seldom helped to win an argument.

  I took a deep, calming breath. I wasn't in a courtroom, and I didn't need to defend my dominant status. I'd given up that lifestyle on doctor's orders, and a little rudeness wasn't worth my ending up in the hospital. I wasn't in that much of a rush, and it wasn't the assistant's fault that her boss didn't honor his appointments.

  "She's not worth stressing over," I told the tall woman. "I'll
go make another round of the exhibits."

  I went back downstairs to the lobby, where I heard my name being called. I turned around to see Lindsay Madison, once my paralegal, coming toward me.

  Lindsay was in her mid twenties and of average height but muscular from the weight lifting she did as training for ringing big bells, the multi-ton behemoths found in churches and other public towers. She wore a light-blue sweater set and navy tailored pants, but the professional image was marred by the way she'd absently misbuttoned the cardigan and gotten a smudge of white correction fluid near the right pants pocket.

  My biggest regret about retiring from the practice of law had to do with Lindsay. The law firm had promised to keep her on, subject to the usual employment terms for all its staff. Unfortunately, those usual employment terms were likely to get Lindsay fired within a few months. She was smart, well meaning, and hard working, but she just couldn't seem to focus on her work consistently. She could memorize hours-long bell-ringing patterns, but she couldn't remember to run spell check on every single document.

  "Why aren't you at work?" I was afraid I knew the answer.

  Lindsay glanced over her shoulder. "I sort of had some time off. I heard you were going to be here this morning, and I wanted to ask you for a favor."

  "You need a job reference?" I pointed at the misbuttoned sweater.

  "No." Lindsay peered down at her chest, for a moment uncomprehendingly, before running her fingers along the buttonholes and then fixing the misalignment. "I was sort of wondering if you would talk to someone about a legal question."