I wondered who the man in the DA’s office was. Hopefully Mike. To Madge I reacted, “Wow! How’d you expect to get away with killing her then?”
She glanced around the almost-empty mall area. That made me a might nervous. I was afraid she’d be suspicious if she saw Ben, but he was sipping his coffee at Uncle Charlie’s behind us and ostensibly had his nose buried in a newspaper.
“I figured they’d think Vern found her and did it. He had enough motive.”
“God, Madge! Doesn’t anything bother you? You’d have let Vernon Spencer take the rap for her murder?”
“He’s nothing but a dope dealer and a double-crosser, Mavis. He deserves to be punished!”
“And you don’t?” Her logic was astounding.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” she said almost convincingly.
“Nah! The panty hose just wrapped itself around her neck by itself.”
“Oh, forget it! I thought you’d understand. She was going to take Robert and my girls away from me. I’m their real mother. Not her. I’m the one who took care of them. Not her. I told her I had the files, and that she couldn’t come back, but she just laughed at me. Laughed at me! After all those years we’d been friends.” Madge was fidgeting with her purse. “She said the Texas Rangers had a copy and that it wouldn’t be too much longer before it would all be cleared up.”
Madge was getting a kind of crazy, glazed expression in her eyes. My stomach flip-flopped again. It was time to bail out. I nodded my head slightly at Ben, and then kept my eyes on Madge’s. I’d always seen in the westerns that if you watch their eyes, you can tell when they’re going to draw their gun. I hoped I could tell when she was going to fire hers.
“Come on, Mavis. No more stalling,” she said, and her eyes grew as round as silver dollars.
“Don’t look now, Madge, but my boyfriend is right behind you.”
“Sure.” She gave me a disbelieving look. “Let’s go, Mavis. Stand up.”
I looked at Ben, who had almost reached her, and shrugged my shoulders.
“Don’t try anything, Mavis,” she said, standing up again. This time her right hand was inside her purse.
“I’m not going to do anything, Madge.” I put my hands in the air. “But you better put your purse down. You’re covered from several angles and shooting me won’t do you any good.”
“She’s right, ma’am,” Ben said in his husky voice as he came up behind her. He grabbed one of her wrists in each hand. The purse fell away, and sure enough, she did have a small pistol in her hand. “Drop it, lady,” Ben ordered, and his knuckles turned white as he squeezed his hand tighter on hers and forced the gun downward, much to my immense relief.
She let go of the handgun and struggled, her face contorted with hatred as she glared at me, and Ben cuffed her hands behind her back. Then another man walked up, flashed a badge at Madge, and said “Texas Department of Public Safety, ma’am.” As he took her away, he was reading from a card with the Miranda warning on it, advising her of her rights.
“Sit down and have a doughnut, Ben. We have some time before we have to be at the district attorney’s office.” I smiled up at him. My hero.
After he got another cup of coffee, Ben sat with me, his huge brown eyes shining as he smiled and shook his head at my obvious glee.
“This is fun, isn’t it, Ben?”
“Sure, Mavie,” he said, and, reaching over, stroked the bandages on my face. “If you like people wanting to shoot you. And if you like getting all messed up.”
“It’s not so bad. Is it?” I wished I’d stopped to put on some makeup. I knew there were ugly scratches on the parts of my face not hidden by bandages.
“I guess not. I just keep wondering what you would have done without me. She would have shot you.”
“I know. I wouldn’t have met her like this if you hadn’t turned up. I suppose I would have had to go to the grand jury.”
“Suppose you had talked to the wrong DA about it?” He cupped my cheek in his hand. “Suppose they decided to get rid of you?”
“I know. I’ve been doing a lot of supposing. I guess I could have called you for advice. I did call you, in fact.” I grinned at him. Up to then we hadn’t discussed our personal lives.
“When?”
“Three times. Twice before you called me and once after. You were never there.”
He grinned, his eyes creasing at the corners, the lines around his mouth becoming smile wrinkles. “I’m glad to hear that. Maybe I’m making some progress with you.”
“Maybe. Want to make some more?”
“Sure,” he grinned.
“Don’t give me a hard time the rest of today. I know you don’t like what I’m about to do, but don’t fight me. I know what I’m doing and, with the men you’ve lined up, everything will work out.” I held his hand and stared into his eyes with my best pleading expression.
“You’re hopeless, Mavis.”
“I know, but I’m cute. Right?”
“Yeah,” he said and sighed exaggeratedly. “Dangerous, but cute.”
“Hey, did you hear what Madge said about the Texas Rangers?”
He had just swallowed from his cup and shook his head. “She said Elizabeth was in touch with them and that they have a man in the DA’s office.”
“If that’s the case—”
“No you don’t, Ben. We don’t know who it is, and we’re all set. No stalling.”
“But if I call their local office, maybe I could find out.”
“Sure, and if they’re as slow as they’ve been for the past year, we’ll miss our chance.”
“We really should.”
“I thought you had no great affection for the Texas Rangers,” I said with a smirk.
“I don’t.”
“Then don’t call. They’ll just screw things up. Or worse, order us to stay out of it.”
I could tell Ben didn’t really want to contact them. He just felt a moral obligation. I, on the other hand, didn’t have any morals. “Please?” I asked again in my little girl voice.
“O—kay. Let’s go get Spencer.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Is Doyle Proctor in?” I asked the receptionist behind the window at the entrance to the district attorney’s office.
“Yes,” said the young lady, the glass enclosure making her voice sound hollow. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name.”
“Mavis Davis.” She didn’t know it, but her statement made my day. I watched while she picked up the phone, punched a button, and said something.
“You can go on back,” she said when she hung up.
I passed through the second glass door and found Proctor’s office. “Hi,” I said as I entered.
He was standing next to his desk. “Hello, Miss Davis. Have a seat. I’ve been expecting you.” He was dressed in a brown silk suit with a brown and blue paisley silk tie knotted loosely at the neck of his button-down collar shirt. On his feet he wore what looked like $500 cowboy boots, made of some kind of reptile. Poor thing.
“You have?” For a minute I thought he was onto me. I studied his face for a moment. It wouldn’t do to let on how nervous he made me. I’d just have to go on with my charade. I smiled nonchalantly. The little voice in my head was telling me to turn and run out the door. I even went so far as reaching for the door before I recovered my composure. “Oh, you mean because of last night. You’ve been in touch with those nice deputies, I guess. May I close the door?”
“Be my guest.”
I shut the door and we both sat down. I took the chair directly opposite him. “Yeah, it was pretty scary last night, both times, but I think I’ve got this thing figured out, and I need your help,” I said as I looked as earnestly as I could into his eyes.
“I’ll do everything in my power,” he said.
“And that’s saying a lot, I know, because as the chief assistant district attorney you’re one of the most powerful men in the county.” I prayed that he was as susceptible to
a snow job as any other man.
“It’s kind of you to say so,” he said, a pleased expression on his face.
He was. “Not at all,” I said with a small smile. “Now, let me tell you what I’ve figured out about this thing.”
“Please do.” He sat back, making a tent with his fingers.
“Well, at first, I had a tendency to believe the Houston Police Department’s theory of how Elizabeth was murdered or, rather, the why of it, except that I found out from a friend that the other women who were victims of the serial killer had been raped, and she wasn’t. That’s what convinced me that I should look into the case.”
He didn’t say anything. He stroked his chin and nodded like Soloman listening to testimony in the temple.
“The most puzzling thing has always been why she would hide out. Why would a married woman with two children, especially a successful lawyer, run away and hide out? Of course it took me a little while to figure out that she was married and all. But then I eventually found my way up here and found out all that stuff. Prior to that, though, I learned that she had a safe deposit box to which one of the keys was missing. I gave it my best shot, but never turned up the second key. Neither did Houston’s finest.” I grinned as I thought of the exchange I’d had with Lon Tyler. “Are you following me?”
He nodded again, his eyes watching me.
“Anyway, the box was oversized for what it contained, which indicated that it must have been leased for something larger, which must have been removed at one time or another. I put that together with the fact that one of the keys was missing, and I concluded that she had given the key to someone that she trusted—just in case something happened to her.”
His poker face remained expressionless. He was totally cool. He didn’t even doodle on his desk pad.
“So I had to figure out who would get the key. Not her family, ’cause if she ever came into contact with any of them, they were likely to try to persuade her to come home, and there was a sound reason why she couldn’t. Whatever she was hiding was her protection. I believe that she was working on finding someone honest that she could trust. Are you following me? I know I’m rambling, but you need to know all this.”
He nodded again. “I’ve got you so far. Go ahead.”
I leaned back in my chair and pulled out a cigarette. It was a long story. I might as well enjoy the telling of it. I lit my cigarette, smiled at Proctor, and continued. I don’t need to mention how excited I was.
“So anyway, I figured whoever she had trusted had turned on her for one reason or another and I had to figure out who that person was. Right off, I was suspicious of Vernon Spencer. The first day I was here I met some people who had known Elizabeth for years, and they didn’t like him. Of course I wasn’t sure if their dislike was connected to a particular incident or his race or whether they truly had a valid reason that involved Elizabeth.
“A bit later, a former client of Elizabeth’s told me he suspected her of stealing his dope. Shocked me, I can tell you. Remember I told you about him? Anyway, I checked that out, and there was no way. I mean, she just wasn’t the type, what with her history of fighting against it and all, so I figured that she suspected that Spencer was into dope. For a long time she must have documented what Spencer was doing. I believe he was taking dope instead of fees and selling it. Probably charging more than he would have if the fee had been cash since he still had the risk of selling it.” There were a few ideas that I had that I didn’t reveal. I was hoping for confirmation of that later on. “I think that Elizabeth must have confronted him and he must have threatened her, either go in with him or else, so she ran.”
Proctor sat up in his chair and leaned at me. “Can you prove that? If so, we’ve got him. I’ve suspected something like that for a long time. He just seems to be doing too well financially.”
I put my hand up to halt his enthusiasm. “Hold that thought. I’m getting to that. The deal was that she had this client that thought she was the one who he’d heard made dope deals to get people out of jail, but it was Spencer instead. It was an easy mistake. I figure from what the client, Thompson, said, that he left a message at her office and Spencer got it instead of her. Tammy may have known that. Anyway, when Elizabeth realized it, that was when she confronted Spencer and that’s how it all began. But, as I found out later, Spencer was in trial against you at the time of the murder. He could have killed her except for that. Catherine, her daughter, had told her dad that she was writing to her mom care of general delivery in Dickinson, which is south of Houston. Robert thought Spencer could do no wrong and spilled the beans to both Spencer and Madge. It would have been easy for anyone to have gone down there, if they had the time, and wait for her to show up, and follow her. It would have been boring and tedious, but easy.”
“But you say Spencer wasn’t able to because he was in trial with me?”
“Yeah, his secretary told me that he’d been in trial for weeks. I checked the monthly docket sheet, and it’s true. In fact, you two were still at it when I got here, remember? Elizabeth was killed the first part of the week before I arrived. Spencer couldn’t have been down there waiting for her.”
“That’s right.”
I put my cigarette out and smiled at him. “But don’t worry, the best friend did it. Madge Hennesey. That’s what I’m getting to.”
His face showed mild surprise, but then he reached for the phone. “Let me get an investigator in here, and I’ll have her picked up.”
“No, no, you mustn’t do that,” I said as I jumped up and put my hand on his. “If you do that, we may never flush Spencer out over the drug thing. And what about Tammy Bradley? I don’t figure that Madge killed her. And then, too, there were at least two people shooting at Mr. Thompson and me last night.”
He released the phone and let it fall back into its cradle. “You have a plan?” His smooth complexion actually wrinkled a bit as he waited to hear me out.
“Yeah. See, I figure that Spencer thinks that Willard Thompson now knows that he took his dope. The way I figure it, Spencer stole Thompson’s dope and then the court appointed Spencer to represent Thompson.” I sat back down across from him and took a deep breath. “It said so on Thompson’s docket sheet. It was awkward, at best, but Spencer made him plead out for pen time. Then, when Thompson found out that it wasn’t there anymore—the dope, I mean—and when he recently found out from me that Elizabeth probably hadn’t taken it, he figured out that it was Spencer who took it.” I pounded on his desk. “That’s why Spencer tried to shoot him last night, and me, too, coupled with the fact that he has to know that we now know that he’s into dope dealing. Spencer probably thinks Thompson told me. So what we have to do is try to trick Spencer, and then we can catch him and Madge at the same time. Understand?”
“I think so, but how will you do that?” He looked at me with one eyebrow cocked. It seemed he was human after all. Did I have him worried?
“I think Madge has been blackmailing him with the stuff she got out of Elizabeth’s safe deposit box. He probably thought it was Tammy, and that’s why he killed her, but it was Madge.”
“Jesus Christ! I never would have suspected Vernon Spencer of murder.”
“Yeah, right. So, here’s the deal. I figure that Madge has the evidence hidden somewhere in her house. Spencer still thinks it was Tammy. He’s probably worried now about where Tammy put it. I’ll call him and tell him to meet me. I’ll disguise my voice. I’m sure that’s what she did, because one night I got a call like that. Anyway, then I’ll call Madge and ask her to meet me, but I won’t be there. I’ll be at Madge’s and I’ll get in and get the evidence I need against Spencer. It’ll also be what we need to convict Madge of murder. Spencer will show up to meet whoever the blackmailer is, and Madge will be there, because that’s where I’ll send her. If I find the evidence, we’ll have enough to arrest and convict both of them.”
“That sounds awfully complicated. Why don’t I just get a search warrant and go out to her
place and see if it’s there?” he asked, his voice and face passive again.
“Because if it’s not, she’ll be on to you, and be able to destroy it, and then we’ll never get her or him.”
“That’s true, but if I authorize you to do this, that’s burglary of a habitation.”
“So don’t authorize me, Mr. Proctor. Just don’t stop me. I’m a private citizen. If I find the evidence, it can be used in court. I’m not asking your permission and you aren’t directing me. I’m just letting you in on what I’m going to do. Your people can’t go in without authorization and expect to use it against them, so it has to be me. If I get caught, you don’t want the blame, do you?” I maintained as serious a look as possible.
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