“No, and I’ll deny any knowledge of it.”
“Exactly.” I was sure he would.
“Okay. Have you got your timing down? When do you expect to pull this off?”
“I’d say around dinner time. Just after dark. I only hope she hasn’t hidden the evidence elsewhere.”
“Right. And then if you find it, you’re going to give me a call so I can have some men pick them up?”
“Yes. As soon as I get it and get clear of the house, okay? You’ll be here when I call?”
“Right here waiting,” he said. “I won’t leave until I hear from you.” He stood up and held out his hand for me to shake. “Miss Davis, you’re a genius.”
I took his hand. I didn’t want to, but I did. “So nice of you to say so.” If I was right about what I really thought, he probably wouldn’t be saying such complimentary things about me later.
We parted company. When I got downstairs, Ben picked me up. He’d been busy lining up a few more guys. I have to admit that having Ben around does come in handy sometimes.
We found Madge’s address. It was a little house just outside of Richland Hills, an exclusive subdivision for the wealthy. It wasn’t difficult to position our men around the neighborhood, on the streets, and in driveways. Everybody came in unmarked cars.
Ben and I sat in the front seat of his Ford in the driveway of a house across and down the street from Madge’s. We sipped soft drinks while we waited.
“I still hope you’re wrong, Mavis,” he said. His mouth formed a grim line. His eyes darted up and down the street.
“So do I, Ben, but everything points to it. Proctor may not be as deeply involved as Spencer, but he’s got to be the one. I just hope Miguel Mirales, the investigator, isn’t in on it, too. I kind of liked him.”
“Oh, yeah?” He rolled his eyes as he said it, feigning jealousy.
“Not like that, Ben.” I gave him a playful poke in the arm. “I liked his handshake, and he treated me nicely—like he believed me and that what I was saying had some value.”
“You and your handshake theory.”
“Well, I’ll admit it’s not a foolproof method, but most of the time I can tell about people like that. I did like Madge, though, too. She was quite a character.” I shrugged and stared out the window.
“Sometimes this isn’t fun, is it?”
“Nope.” I lit a cigarette, but Ben didn’t say anything this time. I rolled down the window, and we waited. It was approaching noon. The air was still and hot. An old man in the next block was cutting his grass, his power mower making us speak loudly.
“I still hope it’s not him,” Ben said again later. “A prosecutor.” He shook his head.
“Don’t you see? It has to be. Why else would Elizabeth have been so scared? If she knew it was someone else, she could have gone to Proctor—reported Spencer, but with Proctor being chief assistant, she didn’t know how much it had spread or who she could trust.”
As if to confirm what I’d just said, a familiar dark sedan turned down the road. Ben radioed to the other guys, and we slid down in our seats. The car slowed as it approached Madge’s house, then turned into the driveway and stopped.
Vernon Spencer got out on the passenger side.
“That’s Vernon Spencer,” I whispered to the back of Ben’s head.
Doyle Proctor got out on the driver’s side.
“Doyle Proctor,” I whispered.
The back door to the sedan opened, but it wasn’t Miguel Mirales who got out. It was Ray something-or-other, Mike’s office mate. Ben turned his head toward me and caught me grinning.
“That’s not Mike Mirales.”
Ben smiled and whispered, “You’re just lucky sometimes.”
We waited and watched as they fooled with the front-door lock for a minute before going inside the house. A while later they emerged. Proctor was carrying a long, thick, manila envelope. They were grinning. Spencer laughed at something Proctor was saying.
They returned to their car, backed into the street, and started off down the road. A white sedan pulled out of a driveway in front of them, blocking their exit. A blue sedan pulled up from around the corner behind them. Two men got out of each car and stood behind the doors, guns drawn. Somebody hollered.
We were too far away to hear exactly what was being said, but we knew the general content. The doors of the black sedan opened and the three men got out with their hands up. It was over.
Later that afternoon, I found out that Mike was the Texas Ranger inside. I was glad. He tried to be angry that we didn’t include his agency, but he got over it. After all, the Texas Rangers are sort of the elite of the Texas Department of Public Safety, so they sort of were included.
We also found out that Spencer was into three separate things: taking dope in exchange for legal services, selling dope, and, if he heard of a particularly nice cache, setting up the other dealers for a bust. Ray and Spencer were in on that together: Ray would be in on the bust, with a few other cops, and they’d skim some drugs off the top before they filed the official inventory. For example, if it was coke worth a mil on the street, by the time they got through with their inventory, it was worth half. Good deal if you can get it, I guess.
Mike had been real close to completing the operation when Elizabeth was killed. Her death complicated things.
Tammy Bradley was just an error all the way around.
Unhappily, that’s the way it goes sometimes.
Later that afternoon, I checked in with my office.
“Good afternoon. Mavis Davis Productions is our name, creative solutions is our game. What may we do for your edification today?” came the high-pitched voice over the wire.
I cringed. What had I done? Created a monster? I wanted to hang up, crawl away, and change my name. How could Margaret do this to me? I started counting backwards from ten. I knew the girl was sensitive, and I was about to lose all control.
“Hello? Is anybody there?” she sang out.
Three, two, one. “If you ever answer the phone like that again, Margaret Applebaum, I will kill you,” I said into the phone. “And there won’t be any mystery about who did it either.”
“Gee, I’m sorry, Mavis,” she whined. “Candy and I thought it would add character to the place.”
“Believe me when I tell you that the office has enough character already.”
“Okay. I was just trying to help,” her voice had taken on a nasal quality.
Tears, I didn’t need. “Margaret, listen to me carefully. I’ve finished with the Elizabeth Reynolds case and will be coming home tomorrow after I talk to a few people, make some phone calls, and tie up some loose ends.” And get my tires replaced, I wanted to say. But I wasn’t going into that right now.
“Elizabeth Reynolds. Who’s that?”
Saints preserve us. “Doris Jones, Margaret.”
“Oh! You found out who killed her, Mavis? Gee, that’s really great!”
“Yeah. Right. Will you call Carl and tell him, and tell him that I’ll get together with him after I get home and explain it to him?”
“How can I explain it to him, Mavis, when I don’t know what happened?”
I shook my head before I continued struggling with the conversation. It was a good thing that I was over two hundred miles away.
Thank you for reading!
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MY FIRST MURDER
Copyright © 1989 by Susan Baker.
ISBN#978-0-9962021-6-9
Interior formatting by Laurie Barboza
Originally published by ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, INC., NEW YORK in 1989.
Produced in the United States of America.
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
For information and/or permission to use excerpts, contact
[email protected] or
P.O. Box 3937 Galveston, TX 77552.
http://www.susanpbaker.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the (first) Galveston Novel and Short Story Writers Group for their support and friendship throughout the writing of this novel.
Books by Susan P. Baker
Novels:
My First Murder
No. 1 in the Mavis Davis murder mystery series
The Sweet Scent of Murder
Mavis Davis No. 2, Mavis’s search for a missing teenager turns into a murder investigation in Houston’s Ritzy River Oaks.
Death of a Prince
Mother & daughter criminal defense lawyers defend the alleged murderer of a millionaire plaintiff’s attorney
Ledbetter Street
A mother fights the system for guardianship of her autistic son.
Suggestion of Death
A father who can’t pay his child support investigates the mysterious deaths of other deadbeat dads.
UNAWARE
Attorney Dena Armstrong is about to break out from under the two controlling men in her life, unaware that a stranger has other plans for her.
Nonfiction:
Heart of Divorce
Divorce advice especially for those who are considering representing themselves.
Murdered Judges of the 20th Century
True stories of judges killed in America.
www.susanpbaker.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Susan P. Baker, a retired Texas judge, is the award-winning author of seven novels and two nonfiction books, all related to the law. As a judge, she dealt with a wide range of cases from murder to divorce regarding adults and children. Prior thereto, she practiced law for nine years and, while in law school, worked as a probation officer. Her experience in the justice system is apparent in her writings. Currently, she has three novels in progress.
Susan is a member of Texas Authors, Inc., Authors Guild, Sisters in Crime, Writers League of Texas, and Galveston Novel and Short Story Writers.
She has two children and eight grandchildren. She loves dark chocolate, raspberries, and traveling on and in every mode of transportation. An anglophile, she likes to visit cousins in England and Australia. On her bucket list are a trip to New Zealand, a long trip back to Australia, living in England for several months, visiting all the presidential libraries and authors’ homes in the U.S., and driving Route 66.
Read more about Susan and sign up for her mailing list for newsletters and other offers at www.susanpbaker.com
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