Uprooting Ernie (Jane Delaney Mysteries Book 2)

by Pamela Burford

  Lacey said, “Jane?” I turned back. Her eyes glistened. She squeezed Porter’s hand. “Thank you for saving my husband’s life.”

  18

  Keep Your Eye on the Ball

  I tossed the pastry sack onto the passenger seat and pulled out of the parking lot. I did not, in fact, have to be somewhere, at least not until three o’clock when I was scheduled to meet with a new client about arranging a Dixieland jazz funeral, complete with horse-drawn carriage, a lively brass band, and all those saints who go marching in. The client’s recently deceased husband, a Chinese-American toy mogul, had never ventured farther south than Wall Street but had nevertheless been entranced by the idea of an authentic New Orleans sendoff. His devoted widow had mountains of dough and, more important, the willingness to part with a great big wad of it to honor hubby’s final wish, so the only iffy thing would be securing a parade permit. Luckily for her, the Death Diva was on pretty good terms with the town mayor.

  A spicy-sweet scent pervaded the car’s interior, vaguely familiar but no competition to the dizzying aroma of chocolate. My hand snaked into the bag as I turned onto the road. Steering one-handedly, I shoved a big, messy hunk of chocolate croissant into my gaping maw. “Oh… God!” I moaned as the intense chocolate filling—Susanne’s secret recipe, protected by a security system worthy of Fort Knox—erupted in my mouth like the veritable embodiment of the best sex and food and love and sex and spiritual awakening and sex the universe had to offer, all rolled up into one flaky, buttery, irresistible choco-bomb.

  Thank goodness I was alone in the car. I could create as much of a spectacle as I desired, with no appalled witnesses to concern myself with. No telltale crumbs either, once I’d sent in my intrepid poodle to hoover up the embarrassing evidence. Life was good.

  Until the dark steel of a gun barrel tapped my right hip. A male voice said, “Keep driving, eh, and do what I say.”

  Half-masticated croissant sprayed the dashboard. Automatically I jerked around to see who was back there, though the accent kind of narrowed it down. Not to mention the nauseating cologne, which I belatedly recognized. I’d been so fixated on those stupid croissants, it had never occurred to me to check the floor of the backseat for Canadians with guns.

  Plus it was a bright, sunny summer day. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen on bright, sunny summer days. They were supposed to happen in rainy, deserted parking lots at midnight. Wasn’t there some rule about that?

  “What do you want?” A stupid question, but I had to start somewhere.

  “Make a right at the corner.” Dean remained on the floor, out of sight of other drivers and pedestrians.

  I made the turn as my heart attempted to slug its way out of my chest. I’d tossed my purse, which contained my cell phone, onto the passenger seat. I watched Dean’s hand slide between the seats to snatch it. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “You did this to yourself. You just couldn’t mind your own business, could you? You had to go sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” He punctuated this statement with a hard punch to my seatback.

  “So what?” I said. “Nobody listens to me. Certainly not Bonnie Hernandez.”

  “Oh yeah? That bitch had me in for questioning again this morning,” he said. “All because of you and that demented old man.”

  A small part of me perked up at the thought that Bonnie had taken me, and Norman, seriously after all. Seriously enough to interview Dean again anyway. “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” I lied.

  “Like hell. I’ve been watching you. You really thought I’d just hang back, eh, twiddling my thumbs while you got me sent away for life?” he sneered. “Turn in at that strip mall up the road. When you get there, drive behind the supermarket.”

  I was tempted to leap out of the car and scream for help, but I couldn’t ignore that black semiautomatic pressed into my seatback. I wouldn’t get one foot out of the car before he dropped me.

  “Okay, what you need to do is stop this silly business—” I made an all-encompassing gesture meant to indicate the silly and ultimately homicidal business currently under way “—and hire yourself a good lawyer. The cops have DNA and, you know, all sorts of forensic stuff. I’m pretty sure they can prove you killed Ernie.”

  “Guy put up a hell of a fight for a homo,” Dean said admiringly, “I’ll give him that.”

  Oh, I would so love for this creep to spend the rest of his worthless life behind bars. Even better if I was alive to see it happen.

  “I was going to make it look like a robbery gone wrong,” he continued. “You know, sneak into the house through the back door, shoot Ernie, ransack the place, take a few valuables to make it look convincing.”

  “But Ernie wasn’t inside when you got there,” I said. “He was out back on the deck that morning, working on his music.”

  “Yeah, that threw me off,” he said, “but I got the job done, eh, that’s the important thing. Checked his pulse to make sure, then grabbed my gun and hauled ass out of there.”

  I envisioned Dean pulling a gun on Ernie, after having stereotyped and thereby underestimated him. I saw Ernie disarming his assailant, who, finding himself on the ground near the cat statues, made do with the weapon at hand.

  “Why didn’t you stay in Boston and hire a hitman?” I asked. “Less messy.”

  “I knew guys who would’ve done it,” he said, “but the thing is, someone’s always going to talk. Or shake you down for more money.”

  “So you leave Ernie lying dead in his yard,” I said, “and then what, just turn around and drive back to Boston?”

  “Like a bat outta hell, I don’t mind telling you.” Which is how he’d made it back in time to answer Sophie’s phone call to his hotel room that afternoon. “So there I am, up in Boston, waiting to hear that Ernie’s body’s been discovered. Nothing. Next day, what do you know, they’re saying he drowned himself.” Dean snorted. “It was all over the news. The boat off Montauk. The suicide note. And me thinking I’ve got some kind of guardian angel.”

  “So all these years you had no idea it was your buddy Porter who moved the body and faked the suicide?”

  “Not till a few days ago when his wife pointed the finger at him.”

  “That’s some way to repay your guardian angel,” I said. “By falsely accusing him of murder. But why accuse Sophie along with Porter? I mean, this whole story you spun about the two of them being lovers and killing her husband? He actually thought he was cleaning up after his wife’s crime. Why not just say it was Porter and Lacey who did it?”

  “I never knew Lacey,” he said. “Why would she confess to me? I was married to Sophie. More believable this way, eh. Plus she’s a cold, stingy bitch and I’ll be happy to see her rot behind bars.”

  “You don’t really think you’re fooling the cops with that story?” I said. “I happen to know they’re zeroing in on you as a suspect.”

  “Yeah, I’m shaking in my shoes. Thirty-two-year-old evidence and the rantings of that geezer Norman Butterwick? His story will be all hearsay anyway. Feeble old guys like that die peacefully in their sleep all the time.”

  I envisioned Norman dying peacefully in his sleep with a pillow held tight to his face.

  Dean confirmed my suspicions. “Only thing, this feeble old guy will have help. The killer will leave plenty of evidence that she was there.”

  She. Sophie. He was going to make it look like she’d killed Norman to eliminate a witness to the goings-on at her place the day her husband was murdered. That would be damning evidence indeed. Sophie even had an emergency key to Norman’s house. I doubted Dean would need it, though. He could probably break in to most houses as easily as he’d broken into my car.

  “Where’s that strip mall?” he demanded from the floor behind me. “You better not have passed it.”

  “It’s right here.” I turned in to it, passing Officer Geri Marvin behind the wheel of a black-and-white as she exited th
e mall. She lifted her cardboard coffee cup in a jaunty salute, pausing to squint in wonderment at the way my eyeballs kept jerking toward the rear of the car. A sharp nudge near the base of my spine got me moving once more.

  The supermarket anchored the far end of the strip mall. I drove as slowly as I dared past the shoe store, frozen-yogurt parlor, hair salon, and children’s clothing store. “Listen,” I said, “you still have a chance to beat the rap on Ernie. If you drop what you’re doing right now and focus on getting a good lawyer, like I said. I mean, no way am I going to mention our, uh, meeting like this. Who’d believe me anyway? Not Bonnie. She hates my guts. She’s after my ex, only he’s in love with me again and wants to remarry me, and she’s, like, oh no you don’t, that is not happening, you’re still mine. ’Cause they were, you know, engaged until she broke up with him a few months ago. Well, he says he’s the one who broke up with her, but please.” Speaking of focusing.

  Dean said, “I didn’t follow most of that.”

  I moseyed past the nail salon, coffee shop, pizza place, and liquor store. “My point is, if you… do anything to me, or to Norman, you can’t possibly get away with it. I mean, you’re already on their radar.”

  “Yeah, thanks to you,” he grumbled, “and my bitch of an ex-wife. I know the two of you have been conniving, eh, planning how to bring me down. Dammit, what’s taking so long? Why do you keep stopping?”

  “It’s a parking lot,” I said. “There are other cars around. And pedestrians. You want me to run them over?”

  “Get behind the damn supermarket!”

  “Okay, okay, we’re there.” Reluctantly I steered the car around the end of the mall and found myself in the bleak stretch of asphalt where the store took deliveries of everything from turkeys to toothpaste.

  Dean peeked above the seat at our deserted surroundings, then unfolded himself from the floor with a grunt of pain. His cologne assaulted me anew, along with the stale-tobacco smell of his breath. I took shallow breaths, wondering what he’d do if I vomited on him.

  He ordered me to wait while he stiffly exited the car. He was perspiring under a light windbreaker, which I assumed he’d donned for weapon-concealment purposes. Plus duct-tape-concealment purposes, I realized as he produced a roll of the all-purpose silver tape from a pocket.

  You can do anything with duct tape. That’s what they say, and sure enough, I’ve seen pictures on the web of wallets made from the stuff, a hammock, even a prom dress. Oh yeah, and you can also tie up a Death Diva with it before stuffing her in the trunk of her car. This clever idea occurred to me after he pulled me out of the front seat and popped the trunk.

  With swift efficiency he spun me around and taped my wrists behind my back, somehow keeping the gun pointed at me the entire time. It was an impressive maneuver that I would have appreciated more if I hadn’t been quaking in terror. Which didn’t keep me from babbling nonstop in a fruitless effort to change his mind.

  “Seriously, Dean, I’m not going to say anything to—”

  “You got that right,” he said as he taped my mouth. And when I say he taped my mouth, I don’t mean he placed a little strip of duct tape over just my mouth. I mean he wound that stuff around my head four or five times. He was taking no chance that I’d holler for help. Or kick my way out of the trunk. He wrapped tape around my ankles, as well, before lifting the trunk lid.

  “Are you kidding me?” he asked, peering into it. “I sold you this car, what, not even a week ago. And just look at this!”

  Okay, so I tend to use my car’s trunk as a sort of catch-all. You have a junk drawer? Well, I had a junk trunk. As opposed to junk in the trunk, which is something completely different.

  Oh, come on, be fair. What was I supposed to do with all the stuff that had piled up in my previous cars? Just throw it away? You never know when you’re going to need a reflective blanket. Or a table hibachi. Or a twelve-can carton of smoked oysters for my mom which I kept forgetting to give her and which might have, you know, expired. I kept meaning to check the sell-by date. Or a yoga bag, complete with mat, blocks, straps, and all those other weird accessories. I tried yoga once five years ago and got a little carried away with the fun stuff that goes with it. Haven’t been to a class since, but I could, any year now, and then I’d be ready.

  And yeah, I blushed behind the duct tape, embarrassed to have my prospective killer tsk-tsking over my slovenly trunk-hoarding habits.

  He lifted his free hand—the one not pointing that big old gun at my chest—and let it fall. “Is there even room for you in there?”

  “Uh-uh,” I grunted behind the tape, shaking my head vigorously. You’ll have to call the whole thing off.

  With a put-upon sigh he rearranged the junk, somehow managing to create a Jane-sized clearing right in the center. While I mentally debated my next move, he made it for me, lifting me and tossing me into the trunk in one smooth motion. I had time only for a startled Ooof! before the lid slammed shut, leaving me curled up in blackness, facing the rear of the car.

  A few seconds later, the vehicle rocked—Dean settling behind the wheel—then the engine started and we were moving.

  I thought of Sexy Beast. I thought of my parents. I thought of Dom and, yeah, of Martin too. Then I thought, All right, enough of that.

  My movements were of necessity limited due to the fact that my hands were bound behind my back and also that I was crammed in on all directions with My Stuff. It was impossible to say what all was in there, particular in the earliest, Mesozoic strata comprised of My Stuff that had accumulated in the third-hand Chrysler my dad had given me after my divorce and which had been tamped down in layers for ten years in said Chrysler before being blindly transferred to the trunk of my old Civic. There followed seven more years of further accretion, culminating in the latest transfer of My Stuff to the claustrophobic environs I now found myself in.

  Fossil records differ, but I had to hope that if I dug long enough in this hellish midden, I just might be rewarded with some useful artifact capable of helping me survive my dire predicament. A long shot, I know, but Plan B was to lie there patiently awaiting a bullet to the brain, so, well, you know.

  I wriggled to the extent possible, shoving my fingers into the mess behind me and scrabbling around for… I didn’t know what, but I hoped I’d recognize it when I felt it. Obviously Dean hadn’t considered anything in there to be of use to me, otherwise he’d have flung it out of the trunk before flinging me into it.

  Meanwhile I could only guess where he was taking me. Long Island, once you got away from the populous towns, boasted no shortage of secluded areas where a body could be dumped, not to be discovered for months or years, if ever. Especially if the killer took the time to bury it.

  Which would not be the case here, unless Dean had managed to conceal a shovel under that windbreaker.

  Wait. A shovel. That was just the sort of thing I could see myself tossing into my car trunk at some point. If so, it might be good news for the man behind the wheel, but perhaps better news for me. Shovels have sharp edges. I could use a sharp edge.

  I burrowed through the mess with renewed vigor, forcing my arms back at a painful angle. The temperature rose steadily in my cramped metal box. I blinked sweat out of my eyes—not that I could see a darn thing in the dark, but I felt the need to keep them open. I huffed through my nose, struggling to fill my lungs as the car ate up the miles between Crystal Harbor and whatever bucolic setting Dean had chosen as my final resting place. Occasionally the car stopped, for red lights, I assumed. I lacked the range of motion even to bang out an SOS signal with my cranium against the trunk lid.

  My fingers worked steadily, identifying and discarding objects too banal and/or ridiculous to mention. I’ll mention them anyway. There was the what-was-I-thinking booty-baring swimsuit I’d purchased a year or two back and kept meaning to return until it was too late. I found a snowbrush. Yeah, I know it was summer, but in a few months I’d need it again, wouldn’t I? And then I found another
snowbrush because I hadn’t been able to locate the first one in the mess. And okay, so I found four snowbrushes in all. Plus three pairs of sunglasses: a John Lennon, an Elton John, and a Jackie O. Shades for every mood.

  Then there was a doggie bag from some restaurant, mysterious leftovers still nestled in their Styrofoam box and enclosed in a plastic bag. Like most of the items in this trunk, I had no recollection of having lobbed it in there. I could only assume it must have been deep winter and snot-freezing cold at the time, otherwise the stink would have long ago caused me to root the thing out. By spring the freeze-dried contents had disappeared under mounds of other stuff.

  What I did not find was anything sharp enough to cut through duct tape. No knives, scissors, pruning shears, hedge clippers, axes, or wire snips. Not one razor blade, tomahawk, letter opener, scalpel, or saw. Why couldn’t it have been a Swiss Army knife I’d forgotten to return?

  At last my fingernails scraped against a hard, wooden something. The shovel handle! With great exertion, growling and puffing, I finally grabbed hold of the object. It turned out to be the short handle of a tiny, automatic umbrella—the fifth one I’d excavated so far. I accidentally pressed the button, causing the umbrella to spring open, a wacky mishap that somehow failed to lighten the mood.

  I lay there drenched in sweat, my lungs heaving as tears of hopelessness filled my eyes. Just then the ride grew rougher as the car left smooth asphalt and turned onto… what? A dirt road? I tried to calm my breathing and clear my mind as we slowly bumped along. Tree limbs scraped the sides of the car. I’d lost track of time during my ordeal. We must really be out in the sticks.

  Even if by some miracle I managed to free my hands and feet, what then? I was still stuck in this trunk, and it wouldn’t be long before Dean stopped the car, opened the lid, and—

  No. I actually shook my head. You are not giving up. Calm down and think, Jane!

  Okay, what did I know about the Easy-Bake Oven in which I currently resided besides the fact that an archaeological dig was long overdue? I thought back to the guided tour of my car that had been so thoughtfully provided by the man who was about to blow my brains out. I knew that if I managed to lift the floor mat beneath me, I’d find a spare tire and a tire iron. I knew I could change the taillights from in there.