She’d never thought much about death but she knew, absolutely knew, that he was going to kill her without any mercy, without a thought for her pain or terror. If she could only stop him somehow, try to get him to ease up enough to let her twist free…
“Flour mill.”
It was all she could gasp out, but it stopped Charles in his tracks for moment.
“Well, you figured out something, didn’t you, girlie?”
As he stood still, she stopped thrashing, desperately hoping that her words could somehow stop him, could bring him back to reason. She tried to keep her voice even and calm.
“You weren’t at a conference on that Halloween. You were the one who told the police about my uncle yelling at Emmett, so you had to be in town.”
She gulped for air, dark spots swimming in front of her eyes, her nails digging into the hard flesh of the huge arm clenched across her neck.
“Emmett…you killed him. Somehow, at your family’s mill…”
“What if I did, huh?” he hissed in her ear, his hot breath smelling of peppermint. “You really think the world would miss a bastard like that, who think he owns the world, do ya? Suffocation in a flour bin was too good for him."
So that was how it had happened.
He began to drag her again, clenching her to him with nearly superhuman strength. Amanda’s oxygen-starved brain was weaving her thoughts together almost randomly as she struggled against the psychopath relentlessly pulling her toward the darkness, and towards her death. She struggled to stay alert, desperately searching for something that would make her murderer stop.
“You hated Emmett…why?” she ground out. “What was he doing to you?”
The arm of iron tightened around her chest. “Let’s just say I was tired of him bleeding me dry.”
He shifted the weight of her body against his, then continued dragging her down the warped planks of the pier. Amanda could hear the rolling waves crashing beneath the rows of pillars sunk into the sand so far below her. The darkness of the pier wrapped around them as he reached the end, stopping in front of abandoned boxes and broken crab pots.
“I had my reasons for doing what I did.” His voice sounded belligerent and defensive. “God only knows how many people Emmett was blackmailing.”
There it was. Blackmail was the reason Charles had killed Emmett.
“What did you do, Charles?” Her words must’ve struck a chord, because Charles suddenly clutched her so tightly that it felt as if her ribs cracked under the pressure. Amanda bit her lip to keep from yelping in pain.
“Not my fault that the new DA was over enthusiastic about the Jefferson case, or that my client needed a break to get acquitted.” He paused, breathing heavily. “Not my fault that I figured out how to get some of the evidence out of the locker or that Emmett found it in my office.”
“So you buried him at the Inn, hoping it might implicate my family.”
His grin was evil and full of teeth. “Extra insurance in case I needed it. I figured he’d be found some day and then there was no way your uncle could get around that. I wanted the inn and nothing was going to stop me.”
Oh God. She suddenly realized that under the seemingly-perfect exterior and public image of a kind small-town lawyer was a soul that was dark with greed and twisted hatred.
“I made a mistake putting him the ground. The sea should’ve eaten him.” His breath was coming fast and hard. She could feel his blood racing through the arm of iron that he had clamped across her neck. “I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
“Candy. You gave the mayor one of your mints at the party –“ Maybe if she kept him talking she could think of something.
“– And she still didn’t die!” Charles interrupted. “How can I get control of her estate if I can’t get that woman out of the way?”
His face was close to hers, the stubble on his unshaved cheek grinding into the soft skin by her ear. So close.
Close enough. She’d only get one chance.
She gathered every bit of breath she had, every ounce of strength and courage and twisted her neck enough that she could sink her teeth mercilessly into his florid face, biting down savagely.
His scream was wild and high, full of rage and pain as he adjusted his grip on her, but she slammed the heel of her riding boot backward desperately into his knee. With a yelp of agony, he lurched sideways and she squirmed away from him, under his arms and ducking forward, running for her very life.
She could hear him moving around, trying to leap to his feet to stop her from escaping. To kill her.
Her legs pumped wildly as she imagined his long fingers grabbing the air behind her, trying to catch her flying hair, closing in by inches. She had gotten only a few yards away when she heard a resounding crack and a loud thump on the creaky wooden floorboards.
A thump like a falling body. She took a couple more staggering steps before she realized that only silence was behind her, that no one was charging after her.
She turned her head just enough to see what had happened, and then skidded to a stop, her breath catching in her throat. Behind her, Charles was folded over on the pier, unconscious, a thin line of blood coming from his head.
And standing over him with a shovel in her hand was her Russian neighbor. She was breathing heavily, her legs splayed apart as if bracing herself from falling or in case of further battle, and her headscarf askew.
Amanda had never seen Mrs. Petrovski anywhere except in the Inn’s orchard or welcoming Jennifer into her home next door. She was absolutely the last person Amanda would’ve guessed would be inside the covered pier first thing in the morning. Scanning around her, Amanda could now see that there were mussels, probably freshly-gathered, scattered widely over the floor, and a place back behind a stack of boxes that was probably where her odd, old neighbor had been hiding.
Or waiting or reading, or whatever she was actually doing.
“Thank you thank you thank you!” The words were a gasping tumble from her mouth as she tried to catch her breath and thank the squat lady all at once.
In the distance, she could just hear the faint whine of a police siren, the noise ebbing and rising with the ocean wind. Mrs. Petrovski’s eyes went wide at the sound and she gripped her shovel tightly as she swiveled her head around toward the opening the floor. A rusted steel ladder dropped downward through the hole, probably toward a lower level of the cannery, hidden by the bulk of the pier.
“I…I’ll come talk to you later! I promise!” Amanda’s savior said, and then ran at the ladder to shimmy down as fast as possible.
Only…it hadn’t been the voice of a woman at all. The bundled up neighbor who’d helped save Amanda’s life had the gruff, deep voice of a man. A husky voice of someone who may have smoked for years, and who definitely did not have a Russian accent.
Even his running hadn’t looked like the gait of a woman. He had lumbered quickly toward the ladder with an absolutely masculine step. Mrs. Petrovski was absolutely, positively some guy who was hiding in broad daylight and living right next door to her Inn.
Someone who was desperately afraid of the police.
By the time James’ car skidded to a stop in the restaurant’s parking lot, Amanda had grabbed the heavy shovel and was standing over the unmoving lawyer, the adrenaline of the last ten minutes still coursing through her body. She kept glancing from Charles to the pier’s opening, praying that the big detective would get to her before the killer would wake.
James was coming toward her at a sprinter’s run, gun drawn. The moment he was able to grab her arm and pull her away from Charles, her defenses and all her panic suddenly collapsed, and she let James push her behind him, his gun still pointing toward the figure lying on the ground.
Amanda tried not to sob as James leaned over and pressed his fingers onto Charles’ jugular, checking for a pulse.
“I’ve called for backup but we’ll need an ambulance. Call 911!” he bellowed, and Amanda instantly remembered that her purs
e with her phone was probably still in her wrecked car.
She turned to run for her phone but at that very moment, Charles sprang upward like a man possessed and made a desperate leap toward the open hole in the pier’s floor, trying to dive toward the metal ladder. James lurched forward after him, his fingers inches from Charles’ coat, but just as he almost grabbed him there was a terrible crack of lumber and Charles screamed shrilly as the rotten flooring split in two under his driving footsteps. He slammed downward into the new opening, his fingers desperately scrabbling at the pitted boards, but it was futile and he crashed down, out of sight. Amanda stifled the small scream that she didn’t know came up in her throat, her hand on her mouth, as she heard the terrible, heavy thud of a body hitting the rocks and timbers far below.
James put a hand back to hold Amanda in place, maybe to protect her from falling or maybe to keep her from seeing the grisly scene beneath them. He leaned forward toward the broken edges of the hole carefully, and his expression when he looked down was grim.
“We won’t be needing an ambulance anymore.”
Amanda felt a surge of relief wash over her body, both at being finally safe after thinking her very life was going to be slowly squeezed from her and at never having to deal with such an evil man again. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps, and she could feel the first sting of tears around the edge of her eyes as James threw a warm arm around her shoulders, pulling her toward him.
“It’s okay, Amanda. It’s all over.”
“He…he smothered Emmett with flour at the mill and he poisoned the mayor, too! He gave her a mint after the potluck at the party, and it was poison. If you check that candy they found in the mayor’s stomach, I’ll bet you find that it’s the same type he always has with him in his office.”
James nodded in understanding. In the distance they heard the thin whine of sirens as all the police officers in the vicinity rushed to the site, and the crunch of gravel and slamming of car doors as they sped into the parking lot and hurried to help.
As James turned to the other cops crowding into the covered pier, warning them to watch their step for loose boards, Amanda realized that the murderer was now dead and that she was finally safe. The terrible mystery of how Emmet had wound up buried in her garden had now been laid to rest, and a man who had tried to kill three people and succeeded once wouldn’t be hurting anyone anymore.
By the time she’d been escorted to a warm cop car and a hot cup of coffee had been pressed into her hands by a concerned-eyed policewoman, Amanda had begun to think about her neighbor. Who was he, and why was he dressed as a woman?
Maybe she should tell James, but she felt a twinge of loyalty to the disguised man. Her neighbor, whoever or whatever he was, had saved her life. Perhaps his dressing as a woman was a choice of his, but somehow Amanda suspected that maybe his reasons for doing that had nothing to do with a lifestyle choice.
She was going to talk to her neighbor tomorrow, and get some answers, and then she’d tell James.
Chapter 31
The following day was gray and cloudy, raining again as the mist and fog crouched over the beach town. It seemed to take forever for Amanda to finally roll out of bed, groaning at the unexpected soreness throughout every muscle in her body.
Of course you’re sore, she thought as she shuffled toward the bathroom medicine cabinet, in search of ibuprofen. You were in a car accident and fought for your life. She hadn’t had much sleep, either, as the terrible events of yesterday kept playing through her mind. Over and over again she could hear that last scream from Charles, could see the wood cracking, could feel his deadly arm tight across her slim neck. In her fractured dreams she was at the police station again telling her story, signing paperwork, fighting with Charles, praying for the police to show up in time.
James must’ve apologized ten times to Amanda for leaving the Inn the night of the fire. At first he’d wanted to wring Robbins’ neck, thinking he must’ve fallen asleep on the job, but after talking with the young rookie and listening to his adamant denials, he’d come to realize that Charles must’ve crept onto the front porch just after daybreak, and shoved the note through the mail slot after Robbins had left.
At the deposition, Amanda hadn’t said a word about her ‘Russian’ neighbor, or to the cops she was actually a he, and that he had saved her. Maybe it was a mistake not to tell all the details of what had happened on that pier, but she felt that she owed him some sort of privacy, at least until she could talk with him.
Within fifteen minutes she was at the front door of her neighbor’s small bungalow, nervously ringing the doorbell. To her surprise, Jennifer Peetman creaked open the door. Her blue eyes darted around quickly, and without a word, she grabbed Amanda’s arm and suddenly pulled Amanda inside.
The room was warm and smelled of spiced tea. At the kitchen table, sitting with folded hands, was the man that Amanda had thought was Mrs. Petrovski. He was wearing the bulky clothes she’d seen him in before, when she had thought he was a woman, but had set aside the triangular headscarf.
Maybe that’s why the curtains were never opened in this house, Jennifer thought as she took the seat the middle-aged man offered to her. She just had one question.
“Who are you?”
The man sighed, as if deeply tired. “My name is Gordon Peetman.”
Jennifer nodded, cutting off Amanda’s next query. “He’s my father. He’s been hiding here in town to be near me. I grew up here and when my dad –“
Gordon interrupted her, putting a broad hand on her forearm. “I’d been away a long time, Miss Graham, living under an assumed identity. There were a lot of reasons I couldn’t come back home, but lately I’ve been dealing with some serious health issues, and well, I wanted to be here in Ravenwood. I wanted to spend my last days here where I was happiest, even if I had to be mostly unseen or wear a disguise to do it.”
“You’re sick?”
His gaze was unwavering. “The doctors say chemo would extend my life, Miss Graham, but I’m not willing to wrap up my time like that. If I have to make an exit, I’d like to have as many days where I feel good and get to be around my daughter as possible.” He paused and glanced at Jennifer, who was barely holding back the tears threatening to spill over her lashes.
“I came home to die.”
Amanda shifted in her chair, unsure what to say. The Peetmans both were looking at her, waiting.
“Thank you for saving my life.” As soon as she said it, she could see Jennifer relax a bit, even though the girl leaned forward, intent.
“So you’re not going to turn him in?”
Amanda’s gaze flicked to Gordon. He was sitting quietly, obviously wanting to hear her answer.
“Why are you hiding, Mr. Peetman? And why are you scared of the police knowing about you coming back to Ravenwood Cove?”
He gestured for Jennifer to bring the teapot and once she had set it on the tablecloth and slid a plate of ginger cookies in front of Amanda, he answered her question.
“Let’s just say that I used to do the books for some very unsavory characters, who really want me dead. I knew all about their dirty dealings for years, up and down the entire West coast, and they don’t much like the idea of me talking to cops. You see, if you’re an accountant who turns state’s evidence on this group of guys, you wind up disappearing.”
Amanda frowned, confused. “I thought they had witness protection programs and things like that for people who helped out the authorities.”
Jennifer poured Amanda a cup of tea while Gordon explained. “They do but it’s not foolproof and they definitely don’t want some old bad guy going home to see his kid and to die. Too many ways the guys who didn’t go to jail could find me. I didn’t tell the feds when I left, because I knew they would say not to come here. They don’t exactly consider Ravenwood Cove to be safe.”
“As if any of this is safe!” Jennifer stood up, the anger in her voice making it shake. “You doing what you did, you coming back
, you getting sick.” Amanda could see the strain on the younger woman’s face, and suddenly realized just how much she must’ve lost by having a parent who had had to stay out of her life for years.
Gordon laid a gentle hand on her arm, and slowly pulled Jennifer toward him into a hug, petting her head as she tried to gulp back her sobs of grief. Amanda watched the two of them for a moment, as the father rocked his daughter as though she was still just a little girl, comforting her.
She cleared her throat. “Why were you down on that dock?”
It took a few moments for Jennifer to pull herself out of her father’s arms, and to turn back toward the stove, dabbing at her eyes. Gordon watched her for a bit, then turned back to Amanda.
“I don’t get much chance to get out at all, you see, because of being dressed like I am and not being able to talk to anyone. I can’t exactly pull off a Russian woman’s accent,” he joked humorlessly, pulling his mug of tea closer. “Some mornings, especially when it’s raining and most people aren’t out, I can go down the abandoned cannery really early so I can have some time to watch the ocean and think. When the tide’s just right, I get a chance to gather up some mussels or clams and bring ‘em back home to make seafood stew.”
“He makes a great bouillabaisse. Always has,” Jennifer interjected.
“Some days, that is about as normal a life as I can get, and a bowlful of seafood and getting to see my daughter is what makes my life worth living right now.”
Amanda pressed him again. “Why did you help me?”
For a moment, there was a flash of anger across the man’s face, and Amanda could almost see a shadow of what his younger, healthier self must’ve looked like.
“So, I may have worked with bad, bad men, but just because I did that doesn’t mean I was one of them. I hated doing that work, but it was the only good money I could find. The more I knew, the deeper I got pulled into their world. When I saw you being dragged down that pier and heard that guy talking, I just knew he was going to kill you.”
BED, BREAKFAST, and BONES: A Ravenwood Cove Cozy Mystery Page 15