Claw & Disorder

by Eileen Watkins

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Course I am. I woulda come out and helped, but you and Sarah had stuff under control. I figured I’d just get in the way.” He edged nearer to view the unconscious man and called him a few names. “Some friend and neighbor! Visiting with me, askin’ me all kinds of questions about my career, famous people I’d met and my sports souvenirs. Is he the one who’s been sneakin’ in here to steal my stuff?”

  “I’m afraid it looks that way.” Robin grabbed some of the leftover rope and started to bind Smiley’s wrists and ankles, which must have been especially satisfying for her.

  She and I went through Bob’s pockets, and in one I found a microcassette recorder. When I pushed Play, it produced a few seconds of the cat sounds, followed by some saxophone music. Chester listened with a satisfied smile, and I handed him the device. “Just in case anybody else tries to tell you that you’ve been imagining things.”

  From the fallen man’s sweatpants, Robin withdrew the semiautomatic pistol. “Beretta, .22 caliber.”

  “You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you, instead of just tying you up!” Sarah told her.

  “Yes, it’s strange,” she said. “I think he was really shocked to find me here. He kept warning me to cooperate so he wouldn’t have to hurt me.”

  “Maybe he was just hoping to steal some more stuff while Chester was asleep,” I guessed. “He didn’t have a plan, though, for dealing with you.”

  A car door slammed outside. We all flinched. Robin peered out through the front window blinds and visibly relaxed. “Better late than never!”

  I checked for myself. A police cruiser, but not from Chadwick. White, with the Dalton shield. And if the cops suspected a break-in, or any other dangerous situation, wouldn’t they send two guys?

  Only one tall, lean figure got out of the vehicle and approached the house. Officer Marty Brewer.

  “Chester,” I said, “can you go back in your room for a while and pretend to be asleep? We don’t want you to be accused of anything we did!”

  He looked about to protest, but Sarah backed me up with a nod and a finger to her lips. Silently, the older man retreated down the hall once more.

  When the doorbell rang, Robin answered it. I heard Brewer, on the stoop, ask her, “You reported an intruder?”

  “Yes, I did.” She let him into the living room and stepped to one side. His long face registered shock as he took in me, Sarah and the balding man who lay trussed and unconscious on the floor.

  “What the hell?” said Brewer.

  “He broke in here, pulled a gun and tied me up,” Robin explained. “Fortunately, my friends arrived and were able to disarm and subdue him.”

  “But how—What did you do to him?”

  “Does that really matter?” I countered, not trusting Brewer as far as I could hurl him. “He’s alive, though he probably should get medical help. But most likely, he’s the one who’s been sneaking into this house and making off with the collectibles. This proves Chester wasn’t imagining things, after all.”

  “Okay, okay.” The young cop seemed to be reassuring himself, rather than us. “How about you ladies tell me exactly what happened here, step by step?”

  “Shouldn’t you call an ambulance for him, first?” Sarah asked, as if she shared my misgivings about Brewer. “Cassie gave him a pretty hard whack on the head, and he’s already been out for at least ten minutes.”

  Brewer seemed reluctant to make the call, though. Instead, he just crouched next to Smiley and took his pulse. That finally brought the other man around, though Bob acted disoriented.

  “Where . . . How did I . . .” He tried to roll to one side and howled in pain. “Jeeeez, my shoulder!”

  “Take it easy there, pal,” Brewer told him. “These ladies have made some pretty serious accusations against you.”

  Smiley’s baffled expression confirmed what I’d thought. He knew Marty Brewer; they were in it together. But Brewer had to go on acting like a cop.

  “Ladies, this man obviously is in a lot of pain,” he said. “I think we can untie his feet, at least, don’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, but keeping an eye on us at whole time, Brewer tugged those knots loose. “What did you catch him stealing?”

  “He didn’t get that far tonight, I guess,” Robin admitted. “As soon as he got inside the house, he saw me.”

  While Smiley rubbed the circulation back into his ankles, Brewer faced us with a patronizing air. “I think this is probably just a big misunderstanding. Most likely, Bob here just dropped by to check on Chester. But because of all the crazy stories the old man’s been telling about burglars and break-ins, one of you got excited and clobbered him.”

  “It was no misunderstanding.” Robin’s sarcasm told me she was finally catching on. “He brought these ropes with him and tied me to that wing chair. My friends can testify to that.”

  While Smiley still sat with his hands bound, the cop appeared to frisk him. He looked unnerved to find Bob’s pockets empty.

  Robin must have hung on to the Beretta.

  “Just your word against his, isn’t it?” Brewer told her. “Still, I’ll go with yours, for now.” He hauled the injured man to his feet, while Smiley moaned in misery.

  “I screwed up, Marty. I didn’t know she’d be here. I thought he’d be alone . . .”

  “Shut up,” Brewer growled.

  “You were late! That’s why I had to tie her up.”

  The cop pulled his service revolver and trained it on us. “You shoulda just shot her, you loser. Saved us all this trouble.”

  “You said you’d deal with the old man, so I figured you’d handle her, too. I might be a thief, but I’m not a killer.”

  “Oh, you aren’t, huh? What about the old lady?”

  “That was an accident! She woke up, and I couldn’t let her see my face. I just tried to cover her eyes . . .”

  Smiley’s lids fluttered and he sank to his knees again, jerking Brewer off-balance. I saw Sarah edge nearer to the cop and wondered what on earth she was up to. Maybe she figured if the three of us spread out, he’d have a hard time knowing where to aim?

  Ready to do my part, I slipped my hand into the pocket of my soggy fleece jacket.

  “Grow a spine, will ya?” Brewer snarled at Smiley. “You made this mess, and now I’m going to have to clean it up.”

  In the corner of my eye, I saw Robin take a couple of steps forward, too, flanking the two men on the opposite side from Sarah. Brewer caught her stealthy movement and shouted, “That’s far enough!”

  From the kitchen behind him rose an unearthly series of high-decibel caterwauls, like a whole feral colony in heat. Startled, Brewer threw a glance over his left shoulder.

  I lunged forward to blast him with the pepper spray. While he flailed in agony, Sarah grabbed his gun arm and dropped to the floor, pulling the tall man down with her. His weapon discharged into the dingy shag carpet, then bounced from his hand.

  I rushed to grab it, and Robin finally produced the Beretta.

  Sarah backed away from Brewer, who still crouched on the floor, coughing and wheezing. I remained awestruck by the way my rather petite, sixtyish assistant had disarmed the young cop. “Where did you learn that move?”

  “When I was still teaching middle school, we had active-shooter drills,” she told me, a little short of breath herself. “Lucky I never had to use it . . . before now.”

  Chester shuffled out from behind the kitchen counter. “Anybody shot?”

  “Nope,” I reassured him, my gun trained on Smiley. “Just one blinded cop and one disabled burglar.”

  “Burglar, my ass!” Chester, his face a scowling mask of vengeance, loomed over Smiley. “It was you that killed Bernice! Wish t’ God somebody’d put a bullet in you!”

  “I’m sorry,” Bob wailed from his seat on the floor. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “An’ even after that, you kept coming back to rob me? You—!”

  Sarah clutched Chester
’s arm gently but firmly. “Take it easy. Bob will pay for what he did. Brewer, too.”

  The tall cop staggered to his feel, still wiping his eyes, while Robin pinned him with the Beretta. “You th-think anybody will believe your story?” he screamed at us between coughs. “I’ve got twelve years on the f-force, and Chief Hill is my father-in-law. You’re the ones who’ll pay, for interfering with an ar-rrest and as-saulting a police officer! Who’s going to take the testimony of three hysterical broads and a c-crazy old man over mine?”

  The rotating lights of another cruiser appeared through the living room window. My heart sank, and Brewer smirked, when a male voice outside bellowed, “Police!”

  Sarah opened the front door. In walked officers Mel Jacoby and Chris Waller of the Chadwick PD . . . with Detective Angela Bonelli.

  Chapter 23

  The Chadwick cops took Brewer and Smiley into custody. They interviewed Chester at his house, then called his caretaker and arranged for her to watch over him for the rest of the night. Robin, Sarah and I went to the police station for debriefing.

  Bonelli told Officer Waller to interview my friends and dealt with me herself. The day’s events had left me drained, but I took courage from the sound of the detective’s Keurig coffeemaker burbling on top of her file cabinet. As soon as it stopped, she poured us two mugs of Green Mountain Nantucket Blend. It was yummy, and comforting, and I didn’t expect to sleep that night, anyway.

  I explained that Sarah and I had our suspicions about Brewer for a while, but no concrete reason to accuse him of anything.

  “He and Smiley are cousins, by the way, which is how they ended up in this mess together,” Bonelli told me, settling behind her Spartan desk with her aromatic brew. “Marty’s not talking, but Bob spilled his guts. His reward was a trip to the ER, to see whether or not you gave him a concussion. What the heck did you hit him with, again?”

  “A toaster oven. Not even a very big one.”

  With an amused shake of her head, the detective consulted some notes. “He admits he was ‘between jobs’ for several months, and while visiting with Chester he started to wonder what those sports collectibles might be worth. He researched different sites online, and found out that even some of the old toys and vinyl records sold for many hundreds of dollars to collectors. Because the Tillmans’ place was so messy, and Chester’s eyesight was poor, Bob started to slip things into his pockets during his visits.”

  “Including, I’ll bet, that baseball signed by Roger Maris,” I said.

  “Probably. Of course, then he set his sights on some of the larger stuff, which he couldn’t smuggle out so easily. He told me that once, while Bernice was right in the next room, he filled a whole trash bag with cassettes of video games, then offered to take it out to the garbage pick-up for her. Of course, he just brought it to his house.”

  Slime! I thought.

  “He noticed that the Tillmans always left their back door ajar, for the cats, so he began slipping in at night. He concentrated on things in the front rooms, so he’d be less likely to wake anybody. But I guess Bernice had mentioned the unusual doll that she still kept on her closet shelf because her daughter never liked it. Smiley looked that up, and found out it could be worth several hundred dollars. He knew Bernice took medication to help her sleep, and that she snored. He gambled that he could sneak into her room and get the doll without her ever knowing. But the three cats fussed and woke her up.”

  I remembered Bob’s admission earlier that evening. “He knew she would recognize him, so he pressed the pillow over her face. He told Brewer that he was just trying to cover her eyes, but I’m sure he was desperate to keep her quiet. Maybe he thought she’d just pass out, though, not smother to death.”

  “After that, Bob said, his guilty conscience made him stop visiting Chester,” Bonelli continued. “He might have stopped stealing from him, too. But by that time, he’d bragged to Marty about how much he’d made selling these collectibles. Chester had complained to the cops that someone was breaking into his house, so Brewer knew his cousin had to be the burglar. He threatened to expose Smiley unless he kept pulling the mini-robberies and cut him in on the profits.”

  I sipped my coffee, as most of the puzzle pieces started to fall into place. “Since they were getting away with all this, though, why pull that prank of trying to lure Chester out of the house at night? They had to be intending some harm to him.”

  Bonelli held up one finger. “That’s where the renovator, Dan Pressley, comes in. After Bob went to work for him, they got chatting about the Tillman house and how run-down it was. Apparently, Pressley had approached the old couple, offering to buy it. But especially once Bernice was gone, the decision lay with Chester and he wouldn’t budge. Bob told Pressley that he was friendly with Chester and maybe could talk him into selling. Pressley said that would be great, and if Bob could help there might be a nice bonus in his next paycheck.”

  “But by then, Bob wasn’t visiting Chester anymore, right?” I reminded her. “Couldn’t look him in the eye, I guess.”

  “Hence, the scheme to either frighten him into selling, or injure him so he had to move elsewhere. After all, if Chester went outside at night to check out the weird sounds, he might fall down the back steps or hurt himself in the woods. Brewer was glad to help with that scheme, too, because he thought Pressley was upgrading the community with his renovations.”

  I marveled at the complicated plot, which sounded pretty straightforward when you broke it down. “Seems like Smiley has given you everything you need to wrap up the case.”

  “He and Brewer might have gotten away with it, though, if not for you, Robin and Sarah. Those are a couple of tough ladies! I’ve always had the greatest respect for nurses and schoolteachers, but I didn’t realize they also had commando skills.”

  I laughed ruefully. “Schools aren’t the safe havens they used to be, I guess. Robin told me she’s never fired a gun, but kids sometimes try to bring the small-caliber ones to school, so she knows one from another. It was Sarah who really astonished me!”

  Bonelli agreed. “She said in her last year of teaching, mass shootings already were becoming a concern. The teachers and students were taught how to hide, but the adults also learned how to disarm a shooter in a real emergency—grab his gun arm, point it at the floor and fall, taking him with you. Since Sarah’s no spring chicken, I’m just glad she came out of it okay, barring a few bruises.”

  The detective added that she still had to sort out the case with Chief Hill, but if he gave her any trouble, she was prepared to go over his head to the county Internal Affairs Bureau. If Brewer continued to claim innocence, she warned, we all might be required to testify in court somewhere down the line. For now, though, the plot against Chester seemed to have been successfully foiled.

  As I rose to leave, Bonelli added, “By the way, I guess I never answered your question about the shoes Gillian Foster was wearing when she died. Yes, they did have thick, rubber soles.”

  I lingered by her desk. Even though it was so late and I was so beat, I started to sit down again.

  She waved me along. “Another time. Let’s just say that I can see where you’re going with that idea, Cassie, and you could be onto something. I’ll do some more checking and let you know what I find.”

  * * *

  Though the next day was Thursday, I gave Sarah some well-deserved time off. We had no important groomings scheduled, and no pick-ups or drop-offs, so I also intended to do as little work as possible—at least cat-related.

  When I checked the latest issue of the Chadwick Courier online, I found a belated story about Gillian Foster’s demise. It stated that “the proprietor of a pet boarding facility, who came by to return the family cat, noticed the smoke and called the fire department.” The reporter probably got his information from the police, and I appreciated their efforts to keep my name out of the story, though some folks probably would suspect my involvement, anyway.

  The only person in my circ
le whom I hadn’t yet told about the incident was Dawn, and after seeing the news item, she e-mailed me. “We’re due for a dinner together,” she wrote. “Let me know when you’re free, and we can catch up.”

  The story also triggered a call from my mother, who fretted about the fact that this was the second time I had stumbled over a client’s dead body. I pointed out that, since I was unable to go down into the Fosters’ cellar, I had not actually stumbled over, or even seen, the deceased Gillian.

  “Do they think there’s any foul play involved?” Mom asked.

  “I guess they’re not sure yet,” I told her.

  “Because the other day, after you’d been asking all of those questions about wills, and when a spouse could or couldn’t inherit,” she said, “I remembered one very nasty divorce I heard about. Not handled by our firm, fortunately!”

  “Oh?”

  “A wife suspected her husband was fooling around, but couldn’t prove it. She also wanted his money, and thought she deserved it, so she tried to kill him. He was a do-it-yourselfer with a workshop in their backyard shed. I don’t remember the details, but she rigged one of his tools to short out.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Fortunately, not the way she’d hoped. He only got a slight shock, noticed it had been tampered with and called the police. She got her divorce, but also a prison term.” My mother chuckled ruefully. “I don’t know why that case came to mind, though. It’s not very similar to the one involving the Fosters.”

  “On the contrary, Mom, I think it might be,” I told her. “Thanks for your input and your good memory!”

  I hung up without telling her anything at all about the showdown at Chester Tillman’s house. That shock to her system could wait for another day.

  When I needed to brainstorm, I preferred to do it on paper rather than electronically. I sat at the front counter, with a notepad and a pen that we kept by the shop phone, and began to jot some of the most recent clues regarding the fire at the Foster house.