1 A Small Case of Murder

by Lauren Carr

  Tess’s tears stopped. She shot him a crooked grin. “Amber did it.”

  “And you’re Amber.”

  “That’s not true,” Tess asserted. “You saw my interview with her where she told me on camera about what she knew and gave me the tape. Both of us were on camera.”

  “No one was there to see it recorded.”

  “It was two o’clock in the morning. Amber was scared.”

  “Tess, what’s one of the first things you learn in communications?” Joshua answered his own question while she gazed at him. “Film editing and special effects. One special effect, which is surprisingly easy anymore, is to make double images. To shoot one scene with an actor, and then shoot a second scene with the same actor and splice them together to make it look like you have twins.” He indicated his own twin sons.

  Jackie, the news producer, confirmed his statement with a nod of her head. “We have the software to do it in our own studio. You know how to use it, Tess.”

  Joshua plunged ahead. “You did so well in diverting suspicion from yourself for Diana’s murder that you tried it again by framing Reverend Rawlings of killing your blackmailer.”

  Tess was so shocked she didn’t wipe away the tears that soaked her face.

  Joshua said to her, “I threw a monkey wrench into your plan by refusing to accept the glove you had left behind as evidence. Unwittingly, I gave you the idea of using Amber as an eyewitness. I said bring me a witness and I’ll arrest Rawlings.” He laughed. “Suddenly, out of the blue, Amber showed up to say she saw it all.”

  “She did see it!”

  “You did. You saw everything except for Beth’s murder, that is.” Joshua observed how she held on tightly to her ribs. “You gave it away the night of the murders when you showed up before the police—”

  “Amber called me.”

  “You were shocked out of your gourd that there were two murders.”

  “Amber had only told me about Vicki.”

  “You had only killed Vicki. Bridgette showed up after-wards with Beth while you were changing out of your Amber costume. You gave yourself away in your special report by proving that you had been on the scene at the time of Vicki’s murder.”

  The news producer announced, “We gave the prosecutor the unedited tape of your report.”

  “You said that Vicki had been stabbed with a steel stake,” Joshua reminded her. “I heard you report that at the scene less than an hour after we found the bodies.”

  The sheriff told her, “The authorities never released to the media that the murder weapon had been a steel stake. We only said it was a stake.”

  Joshua shrugged, “Why not assume it was a wooden stake? That’s what they used to kill vampires, and Vicki was a bloodsucker. The stake was a symbolic gesture on your part. She was sucking you dry.”

  Her eyes wide to hold back the tears as best she could, Tess laughed. “Amber killed her.” She added desperately, “Amber told me it was a steel stake when she called me.” She rambled on, “Amber killed Vicki! She killed my sister and then she killed Vicki! She’s crazy and she’s setting me up!”

  “Yes, Amber killed your sister and Vicki.” Joshua pointed at the reporter. “And you’re Amber.”

  “You’re insane!”

  Joshua said, “The station sent the original tape you brought in of your interviews with Amber to the state forensics lab. They found where it was edited.”

  “Amber is real. People have seen her. Ask around.”

  “But no one has ever seen the two of you together.” Jackie looked for confirmation to the camera operator, who shook his head in response to her question. “You were so good that none of us even realized it until Mr. Thornton asked us. Every time Amber came in asking for you, you couldn’t be found. You wouldn’t even answer your cell phone.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.” Tess wiped her running nose on her sleeve.

  “Let’s look at your interviews.” Joshua went to the television and DVD player concealed in the entertainment center. As he spoke, the image of Amber in her reddish black hair and lipstick came up on the screen. “You were good, Tess. Amber had a different style and manner of speech. I was fooled for a long time—”

  “—I heard Vicki screaming at her old man! I could hear her fighting him. Then suddenly, it was quiet, and that was worse than the screaming because I couldn’t tell what was happening. Then-Oh,God!” Amber covered her face with her hands.

  The image on the screen froze with Amber, her bare shoulder peaking out of the black sleeveless top. Her hand with her claw-like fingernails covered her face.

  Joshua pointed to Amber’s shoulder. “Look. No tattoo. Now, I looked at all your interviews with Amber. She had a black widow spider tattooed on her left shoulder. But, in this interview with Morgan Lucas, she has no tattoo. The night she came to my house to give me her statement, the tattoo moved to her right shoulder.”

  Stepping across the room, Joshua reached down to take her hand. Wordlessly, he observed her fingernails, which were trimmed and painted a soft pink color. “You have pretty hands. I can see that you take good care of them. You keep your nails short. I noticed that the night you were here. My wife kept her nails trimmed, too. They’re easier to take care of, and you can do more when you keep your nails short.”

  The prosecutor pointed to the screen where Amber covered her face with her long claws. “But, that afternoon that I came to your studio after Amber told the valley about seeing the murders, your fingernails were long and dark like Amber’s. I wasn’t the only one who noticed that you had Amber’s fingernails. Morgan did, too. She had to notice. She was sitting three feet from you. When you were ranting and raving at her for stealing your source, you pointed your finger at her, and that was when she realized that you were Amber.” Joshua sighed, “That’s why you had to kill her.”

  Tess snatched her hand out of his grasp.

  “You had to glue Amber’s nails on over your real nails. In order to remove them without damaging your own nails, you have to soak them in a solution. You didn’t have the time, or maybe the means, to get those nails off before returning to the studio to go into your act about Morgan Lucas stealing your story.”

  Joshua looked down at the woman hugging her ribs that ached as she trembled in her effort to not sob.

  “When I met Amber up close, I knew she wasn’t the real thing, either.”

  Tess dropped her head.

  Joshua observed the pain on her face. “My daughter put up more of a fight than you expected when you came here to attack one of my kids to make me back off.” He looked at Tracy, who was watching from the kitchen doorway. “Tracy has a brown belt in martial arts. Her mother taught her well. She felt your ribs break when she kicked them in, and you knew better than to go to the hospital to have them treated.”

  Even as she felt jealous of the woman who had achieved her dreams of being a journalist, Jan felt sorry for Tess.

  Joshua bent down to whisper in her ear. “Take off your wig, Tess.”

  She grasped the crown of her honey blond hair. The wig came off to reveal closely cropped, reddish-black hair.

  “You’re wrong about one thing, Mr. Thornton.” Tess looked up at Joshua with a tear-soaked face. “Vicki wasn’t blackmailing me because I killed my sister. She saw me kill that pig that dumped me for her. The little slut was hiding in his closet.”

  Epilogue

  “Okay, we have the ice cream, the chocolate sauce—”

  “Hot fudge sauce,” Murphy interjected.

  “Is the hot fudge ready yet?” Joshua asked Tracy.

  “Oh, Tracy,” Sarah moaned, “can you get me a glass of iced tea while you’re over there?”

  “Sure.” After stirring the melting fudge sauce on the hot stove, Tracy yanked open the refrigerator door to retrieve the ic
ed tea pitcher.

  Donny came into the kitchen with a pillow, which he tucked in behind Sarah’s back at her seat at the head of the table. “Is that better, sis?” He adjusted the pillow for his sister.

  “Yes, much.” Sarah said.

  Uneasy, Joshua watched the scene. For his family, things weren’t quite back to normal. Sarah was enjoying the attention too much. He anticipated a war when her demands wore thin on her siblings.

  “Don’t forget cherries.” Curt diverted his attention from the scene of family harmony. “You can’t not have cherries.” He looked like a different man out of his sheriff’s uniform.

  Joshua double-checked the jar. “We always have cherries.”

  “I want mine without any sauce,” Tad reminded them from where he observed the making of the sundaes on the other side of the counter.

  Behind Joshua’s legs, Admiral was hiding from Dog, who was pawing and barking at him while wagging his bushy tail.

  “And you call yourself an American,” Curt cracked at Tad before telling the ice cream chef, “I’ll take his sauce.” He sat across from Jan, who was typing away on her laptop at the kitchen table.

  Tracy placed the pan containing the hot fudge sauce on the bar. “I think you’re ready to go. Serve ‘em up, Dad.”

  “Scoop.”

  Tracy slapped the scoop into her father’s outstretched hand, and Joshua proceeded to prepare the sundaes.

  “Dad, there’s something I don’t understand.” Sarah cleared her throat. “Why did Tess wait so long to kill Vicki, if she had been blackmailing her for years?”

  “Because she was crazy,” Murphy answered.

  “Crazy like a fox,” Tad said.

  “Are you saying it’s all an act?” Jan asked the doctor.

  “I’m not a psychiatrist,” Tad told them, “but those murders were too well planned to be the work of an insane person.”

  Curtis Sawyer agreed. “The boyfriend’s murder wasn’t premeditated. That was the first one. Tess hid his body right in the guy’s own basement. She planned all the other murders.”

  Jan asked, “What did she have in that safety deposit box? Was it drug money she stole from Vicki?”

  “Yep,” the sheriff answered, “over one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars that Vicki had picked up on the way home from jail.”

  Joshua said, “Of course, the Rawlings couldn’t report it missing because it was drug money. That’s what Tess was counting on.”

  “Why did Tess Bauer slice up that reporter’s face?” Donny wanted to know.

  “Jealousy,” Jan answered. “Morgan was pretty and Tess wasn’t.”

  “She wanted to make it look like some crazy person did it,” Joshua told them. “Tess said in her statement that Morgan did give her the opportunity to confess to the fraud, which would have put a bullet in her career. If she didn’t, Morgan was going to do it for her. Tess came up with another option.”

  Jan stopped with her fingers over the keyboard. “Why attack Tracy? The night of the attack, you were supposed to be dead. She had reported it herself.”

  The sheriff answered, “Tess had enough sources to know that the hit was a fake.”

  Joshua said, “She took the opportunity of everyone thinking I was dead to scare me off. The best way to do that would be to attack one of my kids. She would have attacked any of you kids who was in that bathroom that night.”

  “I knew there was something wrong with Tess Bauer,” Jan said. “I knew it.”

  “Get real.” Laughing, Tad took his bowl of ice cream and sat next to her. “You thought I’d killed Beth.”

  Jan flushed. “Who told you that?” She glared at Joshua, who turned away to look for something in the fridge. “Josh actually thought Beth Davis was Maggie’s mother.”

  “Did he really?” Tad gave an exaggerated scoff. His secret was safe for the time being.

  Joshua caught his eye from behind Jan. “I guess I was having an off day then,” he said with a hint of humility.

  “Did Vicki know that Amber was Tess?” Jan asked with her fingers poised over her keyboard to type out the answer.

  “I doubt it.” Joshua sat on a kitchen stool. “My guess is that Vicki didn’t know who Amber was until right before she killed her.”

  Curt eyed his host’s large ice cream sundae with admiration.

  Tad took rawhides out of the cupboard to serve the two dogs. “Tess probably would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for her ambition. She had to be the first one on the scene to scoop everyone else, and, in doing that, she gave away that she had been at the scene of the crime earlier.”

  Tracy said, “I can’t get over all the people Reverend Rawlings had killed in his life.”

  “But he wasn’t Reverend Rawlings,” Jan reminded them. “He was an escaped murderer.”

  “All those people he hurt,” Tad said, “and he was totally incapable of remorse. He rationalized that it was just what he had to do.”

  “Even killing his wife,” Tracy mused.

  Curt said, “Yep. And all those members of his church. They have hundreds of members, and they all believed Rawlings was a man of God.”

  “The church is already crumbling,” Tad told them. “The members are jumping ship like rats with all the evidence coming out about the Reverend Rawlings. Believe it or not, there are still some things that you can’t spin enough to cover up.”

  “That’s too bad. They were looking for direction in the right place, but from the wrong man,” Jan pointed out.

  Tad was somber. “Most of the people in his church were sincere in their faith, but because of Rawlings, who were as far from God as you can get, some of his followers may turn their backs on God forever, when God had nothing to do with the Rawlings, except maybe in exposing him for who he really was.”

  The sheriff scoffed, “What do you mean God exposed him? Josh exposed him.”

  “Yeah, but I think he had some help.”

  “From who?” Donny asked.

  “From God, you dummy.” Sarah slapped her brother’s knuckles with her spoon.

  “Stupid!” Donny flicked a spoonful of ice cream at her.

  The frozen propellant hit her between the eyes.

  Sarah dove for Donny, but Murphy separated them.

  “Dad,” she screamed, “did you see that?”

  “Yes,” Joshua chuckled. “If you two are going to kill each other, please do it in the other room so we don’t have to witness against you.” Everything was back to normal.

  “Slimeball!” Sarah grumbled while Tracy escorted her upstairs.

  When Donny saw the look directed at him from the kitchen counter, he swallowed his glee. Dropping his head, he turned his attention back to his sundae.

  “Come on, Tad,” Curtis returned to the subject. “If God wanted Rawlings exposed He would have done it like three decades ago, but He didn’t. What do you think, Josh?”

  Joshua answered, “I never would have been able to prove that Rawlings was Penn, even if I had it all figured out down to the last detail, if Bridgette hadn’t taken that very gun out of Wally’s collection to give to Hal to shoot at us and kill Wally with.”

  J.J. screwed up his face. “Why did she want to have Hal kill you guys? I mean, Wally had already hired Sheriff Sawyer to do it.”

  “She didn’t actually order Hal to kill anyone,” Curt responded. “She only told him to follow your father to make sure he didn’t find out anything that would interfere with their family performing their lordly duties. After Hal was dead and she discovered that Josh was still alive, she had no choice but to call in her old friend Scott Collins.” He turned back to Joshua. “Do you really think God helped you to nail Rawlings, I mean Penn?”

  Joshua asked between licks of his spoon. “How many guns
did Wally have in his collection?”

  Curt answered, “Thirty-two.”

  “Out of thirty-two, Bridgette selected the only gun, that could have exposed her father for who and what he really was, fifty years after he had committed his first murder. If his daughter, who grew up to be as evil as he was—”

  “Sins of the father,” Jan interjected.

  “—hadn’t picked that gun, Penn would have gotten away with everything, and we never could have proven anything.”

  “Yeah, but what good would it have done to have the gun if you didn’t have the brains to put it together,” J.J. said.

  “Well, Josh, three murderers in one day,” Curt said, “The attorney general is impressed. I know I am.”

  “You should be.” Joshua grinned.

  “What’s next?” the sheriff asked.

  “I’m taking the kids to the beach,” Joshua said. “For the rest of the summer, I’m going to be the father I’m supposed to be.”

  “What a swell guy!” Jan sighed dreamily, “Will you marry me?”

  “I’m still in mourning.”

  “You can’t mourn forever.”

  “As much as I hate to interrupt a marriage proposal,” Curt cleared this throat to ask Joshua once again about his plans, “What are you going to do after the beach? Are you going to run in this next election? Our county can use a good prosecutor working on our side.”

  “How about it, Josh?” Jan asked. “My book does need an ending.”

  Joshua finished off his sundae under the eyes of his sons, Jan, Curtis, Tad, and the two dogs.

  His answer was a mysterious smile.

  The End

  Lauren Carr

  About the Author

  Lauren Carr fell in love with mysteries when her mother read Perry Mason to her at bedtime. The first installment in the Joshua Thornton mysteries, A Small Case of Murder was a finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Award.