“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I did see the body under the pier, and when I left to get help, it was moved. You and Toby were in the house, not at the restaurant, and you watched me. You knew I had seen the body and that it had to be immediately disposed of in a safe place.”
“Just like that.”
“Yes. You had twenty minutes or half an hour in which to do it. Hardly time enough to dig a grave … in the ground.”
“Under the snow,” Will said.
“Why don’t you call your men, Will?” L.C. said. “Get them out here with rods, have them pierce the snow banks, particularly the ones away from the Strickland house, perhaps over at the Bridgers’.”
The room was still. “Of course,” Will said. “The snow would be a perfect preservative until the boat arrived from Florida. Then they’d take it out to sea.” He picked up the phone on the desk in the corner of the room.
“Put that down,” Toby Strickland said. She had taken a small automatic from a table drawer and waved it back and forth from L.C. to Will. “Go on, you idiot,” she said sideways to her husband. “Get the shotgun.”
Herb lumbered from the room and they heard him rummaging frantically through a hall closet. He returned with a .12 gauge shotgun and rammed two shells into the chambers.
Toby gestured with the automatic toward the couch. “Sit together where I can keep an eye on you. See if he has a gun.”
“He never carries one.”
As they sat on the couch, L.C. could feel the muscles tense in Will’s legs. She put her hand on his knee. “Don’t do anything foolish,” she said softly.
“Good advice,” Toby said.
Herb looked imploringly toward his wife. “What are we going to do with them?”
“Kill them.”
“What about the pictures and fingerprints they’re sending to Florida?”
“They haven’t sent them yet. All they had were suspicions until she made a lucky guess. I guarantee they haven’t told anyone else about this.”
“You’re being very foolish,” Will said. “You’ve killed three people. You can’t kill two more and expect to get away with it. Someone else will begin to put things together just like we did.”
“He’s right, Toby,” Herb said. “We can’t bury them under the snow with Dad. Their movements will be traced when they’re missing, there will be a search.…”
“Shut up and let me think,” she snapped.
“Why did you kill your father?” L.C. asked.
“I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. It happened in the sunroom on the day he retired. He was sitting in the wicker chair as I worked on the pigs. He was telling me how things were going to be. He had always run my life, made Toby and me live with him, kept me as head teller for twenty years; and he said he intended running our lives in retirement and then from the grave. Raleigh was to be made president of the bank, and all Dad’s money was going into an irrevocable trust fund to be doled out monthly. It would be the same as if he were still here. We argued, and he only kept shaking his head until I threw the pig at him. Unfortunately it was a brass one. It hit him on the head, he gave one sigh, and died. I hadn’t intended to kill him.”
“You should have come to me then,” Will said. “It would have been a charge of manslaughter. You might have gotten off with a suspended sentence.”
“We would have been ruined,” Toby said. “Herb would have been let go from the bank, and spent the rest of his life polishing his silly pigs. I would have been known all over town as the woman married to the man who threw a brass pig at his father and killed him.”
“And so you tied him under the dock,” L.C. said.
“The boat had already been taken to Florida. As soon as we could get it back we were going to bury him at sea.”
“Then you dug Louis from his alley and convinced him to go to Florida in the place of Wadsworth.”
“Didn’t take much convincing, a promise of a warm place and all he could drink,” Toby said. “I took him down to the condominium and kept him locked in the apartment. We gave him all the liquor he wanted, probably more than he wanted.”
“Then Mauve Bridger had to die because she saw the body.”
“She deserved to die,” Toby said vehemently. “That whoring slut. I could watch men go into her house during the day. Sometimes even see her with them in the bedroom if she forgot to pull the blinds. She was an evil woman who flaunted her sex.”
“Toby was in Florida when I saw Mauve fall through the ice. She had to be killed,” Herb said.
“Since her clothes were wet, you put them in the dryer.”
“Yes. It worked out beautifully when you arrested Raleigh.”
“But you had been made president of the bank,” L.C. said.
Toby grimaced. “Which is why that thing with me in Florida couldn’t die too soon. It had to be timed perfectly. First we put out word that Wadsworth was ill, failing, unable to attend the board of director’s meetings. He would have to make his preference for his successor known by mail. The board was always a rubber stamp for Wadsworth. Once we notified them that Herb should be elected president, the vote was unanimous.”
“Forged letters?”
“It wasn’t difficult.”
“And then when Louis died in Florida and was taken to the crematorium, Hal Warren saw the obituary notice in the paper and went to pay his respects.”
“He came by the apartment and told me he knew it wasn’t Wadsworth and wanted to know what we were up to. He had to be disposed of.”
“So you stabbed him and put the body on the boat.”
“How did you get the body from the apartment to the marina?” Will asked with professional interest.
“I got a large box and rented a dolly. It wasn’t difficult. I took the food from the freezer and the money back with me when I left the body. Everyone down there knew that Hal kept large sums of cash around, and I wanted it to look like a robbery.”
“Poor Bennie,” L.C. said.
“What are we going to do with them?” Herb asked his wife with a further note of desperation.
“I think I know a way,” Toby replied. “A way that will make it appear completely accidental.”
L.C. and Will stood with their backs against the Bridger garage wall as Herb Strickland covered then with the shotgun. Toby drove Will’s car into the garage and shut the door. She left the motor running, ran a piece of garden hose from the exhaust pipe through the car’s right rear window and then chocked the wheels.
“I’m warning you not to touch the radio,” Herb said. “Are there any weapons in the car?” he called over his shoulder to Toby.
“No.”
“What makes you think I’m going to allow you to kill us?” Will asked. “I think I’d rather take my chances on getting shot.”
Toby stood in front of him and squinted. “You will get in that car and you won’t give us any trouble, because if you do, I shall start by shooting you in the leg, and then in the groin. While you bleed on the floor, we’ll do even worse to your mistress.”
“I think I’d rather die in the car,” L.C. said.
Herb smiled. “When they find the bodies they’ll think you pulled in here to be alone, left the motor running for warmth, and were asphyxiated.”
“Parked to do their dirty things,” Toby said. “Everyone in town knows you’re having an affair. We’ll remove the hose when they’re dead.”
“They should take off their clothes.”
“No!” Toby snapped. “I don’t want that slut undressing in front of you. I’ll do it when she’s dead.” She waved the automatic. “Get in the car.”
L.C. sat in the front seat next to Will and coughed as the exhaust fumes began to fill the car’s interior. “I told you this thing needs a valve job.”
“Did you know we were having a flagrant affair?” Will asked.
“No, but I know that everyone at the garage loses the pool.”
> “That’s one consolation.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I’ve got to take my chances rushing them.”
“You heard what she said, and I believe every word.”
Will coughed and looked at the Stricklands standing in front of the car with handkerchiefs held over their mouths. “I don’t see any alternative. In a few minutes we’ll lean back, close our eyes, and pretend we’ve lost consciousness. That might bring them near enough for me to rush them.”
“It won’t work.”
“You have a better idea?”
L.C. felt a well of nausea beginning to form in her stomach. “One. One long shot.”
She opened the investigatory file on the seat between them and rifled quickly through the papers. She found a copy of the autopsy report on Mauve Bridger, and smiled at the irony of using that particular piece of paper. She took the magic marker from the sun visor and wrote a few words on the back of the report. She beckoned through the window to Herb Strickland and held the paper, with the note she had written outward against the windshield.
Herb held the shotgun in firing position as he approached the car. He had to bend over the hood to read the note.
He shook his head violently and backed away from the car.
Toby Strickland walked around the car and squinted at the note before she tapped on the window glass with the barrel of her automatic. L.C. could see her mouth the word, “window,” and rolled down the side window far enough to slide the note into Toby’s waiting hand.
L.C. broke into a coughing spasm and saw dark concentric rings approaching the periphery of her vision. She knew that it was a matter of minutes before she lost consciousness.
Toby stood at the far end of the garage reading the autopsy report with a puzzled look. She finally turned the paper over and read L.C.’s note. The Stricklands began to argue vehemently. From the car it was impossible to hear what was being said, but they could see Herb retreating from his wife while he shook his head. The argument seemed to increase in intensity.
The first two shots from Toby’s automatic tore small holes in Herb’s chest. The large, pudgy man looked at his wife in bewilderment and let his shotgun clatter to the floor. He looked down at his chest in amazement as small points of blood dribbled down his front.
Two more shots were fired and Herb slid to the floor.
Toby stood over the fallen man, extended her arm with an impassive look, and emptied the remaining bullets in the clip into the twitching body at her feet.
Will tore from the car and made a headlong dive toward the shotgun on the floor.
L.C. Converse stood at the window in her apartment and looked out over the dark water. It was over, and she was filled with a numbing fatigue.
The door of the apartment behind her opened and closed softly. She knew he was watching her, and she twirled the small ring on her hand and slowly turned to face him.
“It’s over,” she said.
“Yes. You know, you shouldn’t stand in the window in a sheer gown like that.”
“Only fish out there.”
“I left word at the station that I’d be here all night. I thought we might begin our flagrant affair, although I didn’t tell them that part.”
“What do they say when you leave a message like that?”
“Nothing, but they wink at each other a lot.”
“I put champagne on ice—to celebrate.”
“A beginning or an end?”
“Both.” She hurried into the small kitchen and took iced glasses from the freezer and the wine from the refrigerator. Will took the bottle and popped the cork. He poured two glasses. They clinked glasses and smiled into each other’s eyes.
L.C. hiccupped. “What time is it?”
“After two.”
“Do you know I haven’t been to bed in two days.”
“Shall we remedy that at once?”
“As soon as you tell me what Toby said.”
“Not very much. In fact, I’m not even sure she’ll stand trial. Noah’s going to represent her and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she went for an insanity plea.”
“The body?”
“Where we predicted, buried in a burlap sack under a snow bank in back of the Bridger house. I called the Florida authorities and had them release Bennie Filigree.”
“What about Dore Warren?”
“You hadn’t heard?”
“No, tell me.”
“Eddie Bennett returned her Bentley and that’s the last anyone has seen of the two of them.”
“Not another mystery?”
“No. This time it’s definite. Dore Warren has gone to California to enter the racing car business with Eddie as her number one driver—and companion.”
“Then I’ve lost a service manager.”
“Better for you to lose a manager than for me to win the Converse Motors pool. Did you put the ring on before or after you heard about Eddie?”
“Before. I hadn’t heard a word until just now.” He poured another glass of champagne. L.C. sipped hers and began to giggle. “I think I’m getting punchy.”
“Why don’t you get ready for bed?”
She kissed him on the forehead. “I am ready. You get ready.” She finished her champagne and went into the bedroom. “Hurry up now.”
Will smiled, finished his drink and rinsed out the glasses in the sink. He took off his jacket, hung it over the back of a chair and slipped out of his shoes. He crossed to the bedroom and saw L.C. face down on the bed on top of the covers snoring in a most unladylike fashion.
Perhaps in the morning, he thought. That is if the town didn’t experience a mass murder or huge natural disaster.
He had meant to ask her about the note that had saved their lives. He remembered stuffing it in his back pocket after diving from the car, grabbing the shotgun and cuffing Toby Strickland.
He sat at the small dining table, took the note from his pocket and smoothed out the paper. He found himself looking at Mauve Bridger’s autopsy report. He turned it over to read the single sentence that L.C. had so hurriedly written with the magic marker and which had so infuriated Toby that she had killed her husband.
“Did you rape Mauve before or after you killed her?”
About the Author
Richard Forrest (1932–2005) was an American mystery author. Born in New Jersey, he served in the US Army, wrote plays, and sold insurance before he began writing mystery fiction. His debut, Who Killed Mr. Garland’s Mistress (1974), was an Edgar Award finalist. He remains best known for his ten novels starring Lyon and Bea Wentworth, a husband-and-wife sleuthing team introduced in A Child’s Garden of Death (1975).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1980 by Richard Forrest
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3794-5
This 2016 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Killing Edge Page 16