“And, Tom, I’m fascinated with that gorgeous Rolex watch on your wrist,” I said with a fake sweetness. I knew I was treading in dangerous water, but it had never stopped me before, and unfortunately, it didn’t stop me this time either. “Is it new?”
“Uh, yeah,” he said.
“It wouldn’t be the Submariner model, would it?”
“Um, maybe. Why?” He asked.
“Just curious. It’s such an odd coincidence that your new watch is the exact same model as the Rolex stolen from the jewelry store the other night. I noticed it when we were chatting outside as Paul was unloading the boxes of books.”
“I’ve also noticed you limping, Tom, and rubbing your back. Do you have lingering injuries from a bad fall off a horse?”
“Well, yeah, several bad falls, but—”
“—and I’ll bet you have to take a lot of pills to control the pain, like Percocet, and the other narcotics taken from the pharmacy a week or so ago.”
“What’s your point, Ms. Starr?” Paul asked, with a threatening tone to his voice.
“Nothing, I just find it interesting,” I said, as innocently as I could muster. But I obviously didn’t muster up enough, because the looks on both men’s faces had turned menacing.
It had become obvious to both Paul and Tom that I was now putting two and two together, and coming up with twenty-five to life. The fact they were feeling the pressure did not bode well for me. They had nothing to lose at this point, and everything to gain. Tom stepped in front of me, pointing his finger right at my face. He was livid as he spoke to me.
“Listen, lady! I don’t know what you think you know, but I do know your luck is about to run out. You escaped death twice this week, but the third time is definitely not going to be a charm. Sit down in the chair, and don’t even try to make a move for your phone,” Tom said. “It’s off and it’s going to stay off while we figure out what we’re going to do with you. I knew you were not going to quit snooping around until you figured out what really happened to that old bitch. That’s why we’ve tried all week to shut you up for good.”
Only I knew my phone was actually still turned on and I hoped it would stay on long enough to catch as much of the conversation as possible. Because, if nothing else, when they discovered my body, no doubt hanging from the rafters, with any luck at all, I’d have proof of who killed me, and Ducky, in my pocket, recorded on my iPhone.
“If you try to carry me up the ladder to hang me from the rafters, I have to warn you, I’m younger and heavier than Ducky, and I’ll be kicking and screaming for all I’m worth, so I wouldn’t even consider it if I were you guys!”
“You won’t be kicking and screaming after I knock you out like I did Ducky,” Paul said.
“Oh, well, it was just a thought. So, how did you knock her out?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but I felt I had to ask to get it on tape, if nothing else.
“I’m trained in several forms of martial arts as a competitor in cage fighting,” he answered, boastfully. “And as good of a boxer as I am, I’m even better in the ground and pound game. My guillotine choke has even the best of them tapping out within seconds.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I said, sarcastically. “How proud you must be. And I’m sure your mother is just as proud, and when she finds out you’ve killed me too, she’ll be even prouder. Trust me, Paul, she will find out! Even after you disable me with your choke hold, to make it obvious I was still alive when I hung myself, you’ll still have to carry a heavier body than Ducky’s up the ladder.”
“Lady, I can bench press four-hundred and twenty-five pounds. That’s just a few pounds short of the Missouri state record in my age and weight class. So, me carrying you up a ladder would be like you carrying a dead puppy up it. No big fricking deal.”
I didn’t like his reference to the dead puppy. I would never hurt anyone or anything, especially not a puppy. But it didn’t encourage me any to know he could lift three-and-a-half people my size.
“I don’t understand, Paul. Why would you want to kill Ducky to begin with?” I asked.
“It was Tom’s idea at first. He was still bitter about her rejecting him, and not ever even giving him a chance by agreeing to go out on one date with him. She ridiculed him, and called him ‘pipsqueak,’ saying she’d never consider dating someone tinier than herself,” Paul explained.
“Hey! I was a good inch taller than Ducky, and I know I had to have outweighed her too,” Tom rebutted, in defense of his size. “And besides, have you ever seen a jockey Paul’s size? The filly I rode, Outspoken, would have died of a heart attack trying to race other horses around the track if she’d had a three-hundred-pound behemoth on her back. So what Ducky found as unattractive, was very beneficial in the horse-racing world.”
“I’m sure it was, Tom. I can understand why you were angry with her. But what about you, Paul, why would you agree to help Tom kill her? What could you have against her that was so bad you wouldn’t mind seeing her dead?” I asked. Now that I had apparently pulled their chains, they didn’t want to shut up, including Paul, who rarely strung two sentences together during a conversation. I thought if I could keep them talking, I could use it as a stall tactic while I tried to think of a way out of my predicament.
“You said it yourself just a little while ago. Why wasn’t I considered for the head librarian position? I know the duties of the position as well as Ducky did, but she said I didn’t have the social skills I needed to interact with the library patrons. She had the gall to tell me she could hire a trained monkey to fulfill the duties of a librarian, but if they couldn’t talk and communicate with the patrons, what good would it do? How would you like be compared to a trained monkey? And I really needed the extra money the head librarian position would have paid me. First of all, I’d like to enter a cage-fighting competition where the entry fee is ten grand, but the winner claims a hundred thousand dollar purse. Plus, I’m tired of living with my girlfriend’s parents. We need a place of our own. And as much as I’d like to get engaged, I couldn’t ask her to marry me without an engagement ring. So I got her a really nice one the other night when Tom stole his Rolex, while we were robbing the jewelry store,” Paul explained.
I’d just discovered that once you got this man to speak, he was more than happy to spill his guts. Or, at least he was willing to boast about his crimes to someone he planned to do away with so they couldn’t repeat anything he said to the authorities. Little did he know his rambling speech was being recorded, and hopefully, even with me gone, his detailed admission would be preserved, and detected, on my phone.
I’d also figured out that not only did these two work in tandem to kill Ducky but they were also a team committing the burglaries all over town. The recording on my cell phone could incriminate these two men in both crimes, if my phone was still at the scene, intact and functioning, when they discovered my body. Surely, neither of these fellows would want my phone, if they even thought to take it out of the pouch in my sweatshirt in the first place. The way the small pouch was sewn on, the phone would probably not fall out, even if I were hanging upside down from the rafters.
“So, tell me if I’ve got this right,” I said. “You, Tom, have a key to all of the businesses you broke into because you do janitorial service for all of them, plus enough other businesses in town to not draw suspicion to yourself And, because you have to enter these businesses at night after closing hours, you already knew how to disable their security systems.”
“That’s right,” he said, puffing out his chest in pride. “I have all the pass codes to turn the systems off.”
“So, you came in the front door of the business using your key, and then you quickly keyed in the code to turn off the alarm. Meanwhile, Paul kicked the rear door in so no one would even suspect someone with a key to the store was involved.” I was now puffing my chest out a little too, proud I could accurately put all the pieces into place. I continued to surmise the details of their burglary spree a
s Tom nodded frequently, while listening intently, and Paul sat quietly in deep thought.
“Knowing the complete layout of the store, and much of its contents, made you privy to the information on what to take and where it was located. You knew which businesses kept cash in their cash registers, which ones had safes, and so forth. And then the two of you split the haul after each break-in,” I said. “So, how am I doing so far?”
“Pretty damn good!” Tom replied. Paul just sat on the corner of the couch and shook his head as the discussion between Tom and I went on. Tom seemed to be enjoying the game we were playing, and was beaming like a new father, proud of the clever plan he’d devised. I got the impression Tom didn’t partner up with Paul because he needed the money the way Paul did, as far as the burglary spree was concerned. I don’t think he minded the extra cash, but he appeared to enjoy the challenge more than anything.
So far, the stall tactic was working, and I was gathering important information for the detectives, but I could tell Paul was getting irritated and impatient with Tom. My time for coming up with an exit strategy was slowly running out. They’d confessed to their parts in both crimes, and there was no way they could allow me to live at this stage of the game. I was toast if I didn’t pull off a miracle soon.
“So, tell me, Tom, why did you call in the burglary yourself Wednesday night? You called 9-1-1 to report the crime that you two committed. I don’t get the reasoning behind that ploy,” I said.
Now Tom was nearly bursting at the seams with pride in his cunningness. “I thought if I called it in, after we robbed the gun shop, of course, it would throw suspicion off of us, just in the event anyone thought we might be involved. I even described the robbers as two medium-sized men to have them on the lookout for two guys with entirely different builds than Paul and I have.”
“Jesus Christ, Tom, you freaking motor mouth! We don’t have all night,” Paul said.
“All right, what should we do with her?” Tom asked. I’d hoped by drawing him into a conversation that I could build just enough rapport with him that he’d hesitate to kill me, but that plan bit the dust when he continued speaking. “I say we stab her. I have a big buck knife in my car.”
“Where are your vehicles?” I asked. Even on the precipice of death, I was still curious. The library parking lot had been vacant when I pulled in, and I wanted to keep them talking more about themselves, and less about ways to eliminate me from the picture.
“Down the street, parked in front of the dime store. We didn’t want anyone to see our trucks parked at the library since it was supposed to be closed until Monday,” Tom said.
“Which one of you drives a black one-ton pickup?” I asked, knowing that was the other vehicle that’d been parked in the lot with Ducky’s VW when I left the library the night Ducky was killed.
“I do. Why?” Paul asked, his interest piqued.
“When I left to go home last Tuesday evening, you were downstairs lifting weights, weren’t you? And you were just waiting until Ducky was alone to come upstairs and kill her. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “So what?”
“And, Tom, you weren’t really here today to do some light housekeeping, were you?” I asked.
“Not hardly. You’re a smart lady, aren’t you?” Tom’s question was meant to be sarcastic, but I felt flattered anyway. Even though it was most likely going to cost me my life, I was getting to the truth of the matter. “Paul told me to come here after he finished his workout on the Nautilus. We were meeting to discuss our final job before we call it quits. We want to make one big final heist, and there’s some valuable art in the new antique store across from the coffee shop on Locust Street. I don’t clean there, but it has the identical security system as the pharmacy where I do have a cleaning contract. So I know how to disable it, and we can kick in the back door like we always do. We’ll have thirty seconds to disarm the alarm, and I can do it in less than twenty, even without a pass code.”
“You going to talk all night, or we going to get this done before we get caught red-handed?” Paul asked his partner. He was getting nervous and anxious, and I knew I couldn’t put off the inevitable much longer.
“Okay. So you want me to stab her with my buck knife, or what?” Tom asked. “I could also slice her throat, just to make sure she’s good and dead.”
“No, I think it’s best if we hang her the same way we did Ducky,” Paul countered. “That worked well, I thought.”
Even though I didn’t particularly have a preference for being stabbed and my throat sliced over being hung, I couldn’t help but point out to them that one small-town librarian hanging herself in the library was an anomaly, but two of them hanging themselves in the same town, in the same library, was a serial killer on the loose who was targeting librarians. Who’d have ever thought being a hooker in Rockdale was a safer occupation than being a librarian, as least as far as serial killers were concerned?
While they discussed the best way to do away with me, who was the only current threat to their freedom, I was trying to think of a way to defend myself. Two men against one female did not put the odds in my favor. I’d barely been able to walk up the stairs to enter the library, but I’d heard of mothers lifting cars off their children after adrenalin had kicked in during a life or death situation. In a fight for my life, I felt sure I could hold my own with the aging jockey until the cows came home, but a cow wouldn’t have time to pass gas before Paul would have me in a guillotine choke, leaving me defenseless within seconds. And the big hulk was standing within two or three feet from me, so I tried to start mentally boosting my adrenalin level by visualizing having to lift my new car off my daughter, Wendy. I don’t know if it did anything for my adrenaline level, but it did help keep my mind off being carved up like a jack o’lantern with Tom’s buck knife.
“She’s right, you know,” Tom said. “I think we need to think of a less obvious way to whack this broad. I still vote for the buck knife.”
“Either way, whacking this broad will make it obvious both of them were murdered, not suicidal,” Paul said. “But stabbing her would leave a bloody mess where it’d be easier to leave footprints, fingerprints, and other evidence. We weren’t prepared for this, so we didn’t bring gloves with us like we did when we hung Ducky, and when we robbed the local stores.”
“And think about it, Tom. If, by some very slim chance, your prints weren’t discovered in the blood bath stabbing me is sure to cause, as the janitor you’d probably be asked to clean up the ‘bloody mess’ that would result from the brutal slaying,” I said dramatically.
“Shut up lady!” Paul said. “I’ve got to think.”
“Okay, fine,” I said. “I’ll go sit out in my car, so as not to disturb you two, and you can come get me when you’ve made up your minds. You wouldn’t want to make the wrong decision, so take your time, talk it over, and maybe take a vote after you’ve debated the pros and cons of each method of killing me that’s under consideration.”
“Lady, what part of ‘shut up’ didn’t you understand? I’ve made up our minds, and we’re going to do it my way. Tom, do you have more rope in your truck?”
“Yes, I always carry plenty of it in the back tool chest. It comes in handy for a lot of things,” Tom replied.
“Go get the ladder and some rope while I knock her out, and we’ll go from there. Try not to draw attention to yourself, because we don’t want any witnesses. Wait until the coast is clear before you go outside. At least with these dark-tinted windows in the library no one can see inside from the street.”
I knew that to be true. The windows were not only tinted, they also had a reflective finish that reminded me of those one-way mirrors in interrogation rooms. I was getting very frightened now. Paul could overpower me and choke me into unconsciousness within seconds. And whether or not these two buffoons ultimately got away with killing both Ducky and me was really not an issue to me anymore. Saving my ass had taken precedence.
I watched Tom
scan the entire street before letting himself out the front door to run to his vehicle, parked in the dime store parking lot down the street. With a determined expression on his face, Paul stepped toward me. I put my hand up, and said, “Wait! Since I don’t get a last supper, like most people do who are about to be executed, can I at least have one last swallow of my drink? I deserve that much, at least. My throat is so dry I can’t even swallow.”
“Being able to swallow won’t be an issue in about 10 seconds. But, what the hell, go ahead. Just make it quick. We haven’t got much time,” Paul replied.
Wrong answer, I thought, as I picked my coffee cup off the table, where I’d sat it down to mess with my phone while I turned on the recorder. I flung my still reasonably warm coffee in Paul’s face, scrambling for the new gun in my fanny pack, as he cursed and wiped the tepid liquid away from his eyes. Before he could regain his vision, and reach out for me, I’d taken a couple steps backward with my brand new pink-handled pistol in my hand. I pointed it right between his eyes, with a steely resolve I had no idea I possessed. I was angry, and found I didn’t even need to fake the bravado I was exhibiting.
I was almost relieved the gun had no bullets in it, or I might have been tempted to blow the scumbag away, for taking one human being’s life, and threatening another, just so he could get revenge on Ducky, and also speed up the process of moving into his own apartment. Well, he’d be moving all right, but he might not like his new eight-by-ten foot home.
“Whoa lady! Be careful or that thing might go off!” He hollered, his eyes as big and fixed as a hoot owl’s. For a moment I thought he might turn his head around a hundred and eighty degrees, looking for a way out of the mess he’d just found himself in.
“Don’t get any stupid ideas, Paul. I am very proficient with this weapon and I can guarantee you I won’t hesitate to shoot you if you make one sudden move. Get down on your knees with your hands behind your back, right now, before I blow your worthless head off! Try anything stupid and I’ll turn your brain into gooey confetti and scatter it all over this room!”
Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 05 - Just Ducky Page 20