“Oh, please! He’s not a journalist!” Susanne spat, her lips thinning. “He’s a lowly cameraman who worked on the crew of some of my movies—and his name isn’t Ben, it’s David, but you already know that, don’t you?”
David smiled at both of us, his lips lifting in a macabre grin. “What can I say? I lied,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “She’s right. My name really is David. I just wanted to know if you knew where she was. I saw you with her the night I killed her husband, and then I found out you owned the tattoo store, got your name, and followed you to your big, scary ex-cop friend’s apartment. So I took a shot in the dark and asked you some questions, and it paid off. After that, finding Suzanne was easy. Then I followed her here tonight.”
I pretended to be shocked he’d duped me, even though I already knew. “And you followed her here tonight to what, Ben? Why are you here? What do you want?”
His face went from pleased with himself to irate in two seconds flat as he rocked back and forth on unsteady feet. “I was going to find out why she wouldn’t answer my calls…but now I’m going to kill her, of course. She lied to me, Miss Lavender!” he reasoned. “She promised me we’d be together then refused to take my calls! I thought it was because her husband was keeping her from me. I thought she couldn’t get to me because of him, so I eliminated the problem!”
“I can’t believe you killed Agnar!” Suzanne shrieked as though David had inconvenienced her by giving her exactly what she’d wanted to begin with—Agnar dead. What difference did it make to her who’d done the deed?
But I ignored her and my clammy hands and racing heart. “By shooting him with a dart laced in curare, right, David?” I asked, taking a small step back.
I don’t know why I did that, it just made sense to put space between us. Everything was closing in on me, overwhelming me.
Suzanne gasped, her mouth falling open. “How do you know that?”
“Well,” I drawled, trying with every ounce of restraint I had not to let her know how terrified I was. “You’d know that, too, if you gave a fig! Higgs told me just a little bit ago they figured out the substance used to kill Agnar was curare—a poisonous plant found in Brazil. You know, where you filmed Born in Blood 2?”
“Hah! See, Suzanne?” David yelped in desperation. “I do love you—more than anything! Way more than whoever this is! I’d do anything for you! I killed him. I researched forever, and I would have killed him in Brazil, but he left before I could figure out how to use it—so I brought some back with me, and it was all easier than you think.”
I’m not sure I want to know how he got past customs or whatever with that plant, but he sure appeared pretty pleased with himself.
“You killed him with a dart!” Suzanne ground out, and I wasn’t sure if she was impressed or disgusted.
He grinned, boyish and evil as he held the gun up. “I shot that dart laced in curare from at least a hundred yards away. Totally nailed him!”
Suzanne’s eyes went wide and for the first time, I saw her hands tremble. “You’re insane…” she murmured.
He quivered, his eyes searching her face. “Insane? What’s insane is thinking I’d let you get hurt. How could you think I’d let you go back to that tyrant? I love you. I trusted you!”
“Join the club, kid,” Mathew muttered, his eyes capturing mine in desperation, but I instantly looked away.
Oh, no sir. There’d be no hostage sympathy from me, pal. He may not have done the deed, but he tried. In my book, that made him a killer, too.
Now Suzanne wavered, her eyes flashing her anger. “How could you think I’d ever run away with you? You disgust me! You were nothing more than something to amuse me—to occupy me during the boredom of that dreadful shoot!” she said cruelly, crushing David, whose face crumpled right before my eyes.
So here’s what I was up against. Three killers: one poor, misguided child, blinded by puppy love; one middle-aged man (I think), blinded by lust and greed; and one rabid nut of a woman who aged like a vampire and had used her body and charms to seduce men into killing her husband.
To say the odds were stacked against me was an underestimation of my snafu. What to do? I could only stall so long. If Tansy and company didn’t get here soon, I was a goner, for sure.
Still, there was one little fact nagging at me, and if I was going to leave this place in a body bag, what did I have to lose by asking?
“But why did you ask me to help you find who’d killed Agnar, Suzanne, knowing what you knew? Why would you do that?”
She rolled her eyes at me and huffed. “Because I had to throw the scent off me, you fool! The first person they suspect is the spouse. Would the woman who tried to have her husband killed actually ask someone to help her find his killer? It was hiding in plain sight, of course! I mean, I’m an actress, for heaven’s sake. If anyone could pull that off, it was me. So I did a little improv.”
Except, I never totally fell for it. I’d been suspicious all along, but kudos to her for being so brazen. Though, I don’t suppose I should share that with her while she had a gun pointing at my face, but I was impressed by the size of her ego and her faith in her acting skills.
I raised a finger, blindly jumping into this cesspool of murder folk with both feet, and said, “So in summary, Suzanne paid Mathew to kill Agnar. Mathew tried to kill Agnar with his car and failed. David, a.k.a. Ben, succeeded with a dart laced in a substance that’s poisonous. Do I have that right so far?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “Now what we have is a dilemma. I know a secret I shouldn’t, and the rest of you are guilty of committing, at the very least, a class one felony. Where do we go from here?”
“You die!” Suzanne yelled, as she backed away from us and aimed the gun in my direction. “You have to die! You’re nothing but a nuisance, hovering over Donald all the time!”
“But wait!” I yelled into the cavernous interior of the room, holding up my hands as my pulse pounded in my ears. “Let’s look at the odds here, Suzanne. What if David’s a faster draw than you, and he takes you out first? He did hit Agnar in the rear end from a hundred yards while he was on a bike. That’s a pretty good shot. Then what? Or what if Mathew, who’s the size of an oak tree, overpowers you, gets the gun from you and kills you instead?”
Everyone stopped doing anything at that point, making me wonder if these two meatheads could get a clue. I’d basically handed them a shot at getting away, and no one bit. No. They just stood there like we were playing a game of freeze tag.
Suzanne was the first to speak, her eyes cunning and full of hatred. “They won’t hurt me, Tipsy. Because they love me—”
And that was when Mathew took his shot. While Suzanne was in the process of gushing over their admiration, he steamrolled her, catching her on her side and knocking her to the ground with a grunt.
She screamed her outrage, the sound ringing in my ears.
It happened so quickly, I reacted on what I have to guess is instinct. I dropped to the ground and flattened myself, trying to crawl to the other side of the room on my belly. But in the pool of light, I saw Suzanne still had the gun, and man, I bet she works out, because she held on to that gun like she was hanging on to her youth.
Kneeing Mathew in a very private place with all her might, she managed to make him scream in pain as he fell off her and she rolled away. Then she held that gun up and pointed it at a surprised David, who’d suddenly become frozen in place while he watched the ensuing chaos.
She fired off a shot, hitting him square in the kneecap, making him howl in agony as he crumbled to the ground, dropping his gun.
When she realized I was making my getaway, she came after me while David screamed in agony on the floor, firing off a shot I, there but for the grace of the universe, managed to escape.
Just as I was about to seek solace behind the pallets, she fired off another shot and I tripped over my two left feet—one still remembering the sting of being shot. That was when Suzanne dropped her gun, and I thought for s
ure I could get away. But she came up behind me, grabbing me by the back of my T-shirt. I heard the rip, felt the tug of material against my flesh, and immediately rolled over only to find she’d managed to get her sticky fingers back on the weapon.
In the tussle, I happened to get a peek at where David’s gun had landed, and if I could somehow buck her off me, if I could push her far enough away, maybe I had a chance at grabbing it…but it was a really long shot.
Her hair was wild, her expression filled with fury as she looked down at me, her shaky hands wrapped around the gun. Pointing it at my head, her lips thinned as she jammed her beautiful face in mine. “You animal! You tried to kill me today!” she hissed, making me cringe at her rage.
“Suzanne, no!” someone yelled from somewhere that sounded very far away, distracting her—and that was when I took my shot.
As her head turned, I knocked her arm up and out of the way, sending the gun flying, and then, using the heel of my hand, I gave her an uppercut to the chin, using all my might.
When she fell backward, I sat up, only this time I didn’t struggle. No. In fact, I rolled forward and got on my knees, grabbing hold of her shapely leg.
But Suzanne was far craftier and probably in better shape than I’ll ever be, and with one impressive lift of her hips (I’m voting Pilates, but it’s painfully obvious I know nothing about exercise), she wrapped both her legs around my neck and began to squeeze until I almost couldn’t breathe.
In a panic, unable to get air, scratching at her legs to no avail, I began to feel around for the gun she’d lost. But instead, my fingers found a discarded glass bottle. With my heart crashing against my ribs, I did the only thing I could do.
I lifted my arm high, smashed the bottle on the ground, felt the crunch of glass then rammed the jagged edge into her leg and twisted with all the energy I had left in me.
Suzanne’s howl of pain rang in my ears as she let go of my neck.
I pushed myself back up on my knees, my breaths coming sharp and painful, my chest heaving as I gasped for air.
And just as I was about to ensure Suzanne was down for the count, Higgs was there, hauling me upward, pulling me away.
“Tansy!” he shouted. “Over here!”
Then Tansy and Oz were there with a bunch of police officers swarming the building as I let Higgs help me to the corner of the room. Flashlights swirled around, footsteps pounded while Suzanne’s high-pitched screams for mercy rang out. Oz gathered up David, who howled in agony, too, and some other officers hauled Mathew up and helped him hobble off.
I heard Mathew scream, “I chickened out—I swear! I didn’t hit him! I didn’t hit him!”
I fell against Higgs in relief, letting my forehead rest on his chest, forcing the air back into my lungs, sweat dripping from my hair.
“Trixie?” he said, his voice chock full of concern as he cupped my cheeks in his hands. “Are you okay? Holy cow, what happened? I got your text and flew over here as fast as I could!”
“I came to prove Suzanne was a horrible person. I swear on my morning coffee for the rest of my life, I didn’t intend to get involved. The plan was to hide while I videotaped her meeting. I had no idea Suzanne hired a hit man and that was who she was meeting. I thought she was meeting the next guy she was going to bilk for some cash, not a murderer. I told you she was a horrible person,” I said on a ragged breath.
Higgs laughed, pulling me into his arms to give me a hug—a hug that left me feeling secure, safe. “I’m guessing you’re going to tell me all about how right you were?”
When I pulled away, suddenly unsure about these strange feelings I was having for Higgs in the middle of such a crisis, I poked a finger into his hard chest. “Oh, you bet I am, buster. Man, am I ever.”
“You know, you have to stop scaring the life out of me, Sister Trixie. You’ll give me a heart attack before I’m forty this way.”
“Oh, no. That’s not going to have anything to do with me, Higglesworth. That award goes to all the cheeseburgers you eat. You do know red meat is bad for you, right?”
“How can a cheeseburger be so wrong when it tastes so right?” he teased, brushing my hair from my face with his fingers.
Suddenly, I was depleted. My bones felt like butter and my eyes were grainy. “I think I’d like to go home now, Higgs. I promise I’ll explain everything when we get there, okay?”
“You got it, Sister Trixie. While we’re going over why you came to an abandoned building this late, all alone, with no backup, let’s discuss those rules we never went over, okay? Rule number one: Do not chase after a suspect in a murder investigation alone. Call Higgs so he can talk you out of such nonsense.”
I sighed and let Higgs wrap his arm around my shoulder as he helped me through the throng of people. “Rules, shmules. I swear on Angela Lansbury, I already told you, I wasn’t doing anything dangerous.”
“Really, Nancy Drew? How do not one, but two guns and three bad guys constitute not doing anything dangerous?”
“Oh, peeshaw. That’s nothing. You should have seen the time Sister Francis Marie and I went to the penitentiary in Salem to meet Big Wallace Farber…”
Higgs’s laughter echoed on our way out the door and into the cool night air.
And once more, I found myself grateful for these new people in my life.
So very grateful.
* * * *
After Tansy and her detectives finished questioning me and left our house, I sat out on the deck with Higgs, who waited with me so we could talk to Knuckles about what had happened tonight. My heart ached for what he’d hear, and I hated that I was going to be the one to tell him about Suzanne’s awfulness again.
He’d been out of touch all day long, and I was beginning to think maybe he’d gone somewhere out of town, until I heard the rumble of his bike in the driveway. Higgs had sent him a text when he couldn’t reach him by phone.
I guess he got the message, and now I had to face him after he’d been so upset with me and tell him his one-time love was a murderer—or had hired a murderer.
“Trixie!” he called, running up the stairs to scoop me up in a tight hug. “Gravy, girl. Are you okay?”
Higgs slapped him on the back. “Question is, are you?”
Knuckles nodded his head, his eyes full of pain. “I’m okay, you mind if I have a minute alone with our girl?”
“I don’t mind at all,” Higgs said softly. “I’m going to head out. Call me if you need me.” He gave us both a smile and a wave, likely knowing everything was going to be all right between us, and left.
I squeezed Knuckles back hard before I asked, “Like Higgs said, the question is, are you okay?”
He set me away from him but I saw his eyes—and they held shame. I hated that. “I’m fine, Trixie girl. Just fine.”
I knew Knuckles was embarrassed. I knew his pride was aching from the sting of Suzanne’s behavior, but that was unacceptable to me. He was kind and gentle and no way would I let him gloss this over. I wanted him to know how special he was, and that his longing for Candice was no reason to accept the kind of cruelty Suzanne had doled out.
I pulled him to the edge of the deck where we’d spent many nights, staring up at the stars while we let our legs dangle over the edge, and sat down, taking him with me.
“I don’t believe you. Talk to me, friend,” I said, tucking my arm into his and resting my head on his broad shoulder.
“Me? Don’t you worry about me, little lady. It’s you I’m worried about. She could have killed you, and I’d have never forgiven myself. I’m sure sorry I didn’t listen to you and Goose.”
I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes. “Forget it. Long since a faded memory. But please, talk to me about how you feel about this. Please.”
He looked up into the sky. “Nothin’ for you to concern yourself with, kiddo. I’m a big boy. I can take a hit with the best of ’em.”
“Suzanne hurt you, that makes me concerned. I don’t like to see my friends hurt.”
“I’m not hurt so much as my ego, I s’pose. I was a dang fool to believe her—again. I really wanted to believe she’d changed, Trixie. I fell for it like the old fool I am. Hook, line and sinker. Nothin’s been right since Candice has gone. I think single’s the way to go from here on out. Best part about my life is you girls and the shop these days. I’ll be fine. Don’t you worry.”
My heart clenched and tightened in my chest. “Oh, I’m not worried about you, mister. You’re awesomeness times a fajillion. You know what I’m worried about? I’m worried someone as awful as Suzanne has jaded you, that because Candice was one in a million, you think you’ll never be able to find another like her. But don’t you see, you shouldn’t think that. Candice was…well, Candice. Her memory should be treasured, honored—always. How can you ever forget the woman who so adored you? She was a wonderful, loving, amazing part of your life, and she always will be. But I’d like you to consider something, if you would.”
“What’s that, Trixie?”
I squeezed his arm and gripped his beefy hand. “Consider that maybe there are two in a million. That maybe there’s someone else out there who’s just as special in her own unique way, and when the two of you collide, the world will implode from so much awesome in one stinkin’ couple.”
Knuckles, my dear, kind, sweet friend, let out a breath that shuddered ever so slightly. I know he hated to appear vulnerable. I know his longing for Candice outweighed his need to show everyone that vulnerability because in his day, being a man meant showing no weakness.
Yet, it was this very vulnerability, seeping through his cracks, that made him the kind of man I’d come to look up to—a man with a heart he might not like wearing on his sleeve, but he wore it there anyway.
Hit and Nun (Nun of Your Business Mysteries Book 2) Page 19