“Sh,” Mary hissed, and Lucas backed away, saying, “Okay, okay. Calm down.”
I rubbed my arm, knowing it would bruise. I slid a foot backward, easing toward the locked door. “Look, what you two get up to is your own business. You’re consenting adults. I don’t care—”
“We’re not really—” Mary Stewart began, at the same time Lucas said, “She’s not my sister.” He crossed to Mary and took her hand in his.
With a deep breath, Mary said, “We’re married.”
My jaw dropped. “What?”
“Eight months and three days ago,” she said with a besotted look at her groom.
“Then why—”
“Can we trust you?” Mary asked, widening her eyes at me.
“We shouldn’t tell—” Lucas started, but Mary talked over him.
“It’s all because of Eloise,” Mary said. “Eloise Hufnagle.”
I was thoroughly confused. “Huh? What does she have to do with you being married or not?”
“It’s a long story,” Mary sighed. She let go of Lucas’s hand and dropped into a chair. “I’ll try to make it short. Lucas used to work with Eloise Hufnagle.”
I edged another step closer to the door. “I thought he was a bodyguard.” This story didn’t jibe with what I knew about Eloise working at the CDC.
“He’s a bodyguard now,” Mary said, “or at least he will be when he finds someone to hire him. But before, he was a security guard at the CDC. That’s where he met Eloise.”
“She was a nice woman,” he said, also sitting. “We used to chat when she swiped in or left for the day. Who would have guessed that she’d go all Fatal Attraction on me?”
“What does this all have to do with you pretending to be brother and sister?” I asked. Sandy would be waiting; I needed to get going.
They exchanged a glance, and then Mary took up the story. “He’s too much the gentleman to say it. Eloise had a crush on Lucas. He tried to be kind without encouraging her, but some women can’t take a hint. She talked all the time about this book she had written, going on and on about it. We were dating then, and he told me a little about it. From what he said, I could tell it had some similarities to the book I was writing, so I asked him not to talk about it anymore, to keep away from Eloise.” Her fingers played with a couple of white rose petals that had fallen from the flower in the bud vase and she didn’t meet my eyes.
“When Blood Will Out debuted, she went bonkers, railing that someone had stolen her book. I mean, she totally went off the deep end.” She looked at Lucas for corroboration and he nodded. “When she started talking about a lawsuit, it made me nervous. We decided on the spur of the moment to get married, but decided to keep it quiet for fear Eloise would read something totally not true into the total coincidence of her knowing Lucas and him knowing me.”
Mary held my gaze with great earnestness, but she totally failed to convince me that there was anything coincidental about the situation. “So, what you’re saying is that Lucas romanced Eloise to steal her book and you wrote it up as if it was your own? It probably started out like you said, with Eloise attracted to Lucas, but I’ll bet when he mentioned the book to you, Mary, you told him to find out more, maybe even get a copy of the manuscript. Maybe he even took her on a few dates. Am I warm?”
The startled and hostile expressions on both their faces convinced me I was. Maybe he’d even slept with her, possibly with Mary’s approval. Beyond sleazy. I felt sorry for Eloise. I thought of the vector charts in her motel room. “And now you’re keeping your marriage secret and Lucas is ducking the limelight, so that Eloise won’t make the connection between you.” She’d probably already put it together. I remembered her saying something like “What are you doing here?” at the costume ball before flinging her red goo. I hadn’t known what she meant at the time, but now it seemed clear that she’d spotted Lucas and been shocked to see him. “Because if she does, you lose the lawsuit and it’s bye-bye, fat royalty checks. In fact, it’s probably sayonara, writing career.”
“I told you we shouldn’t tell her,” Lucas said. He was looking less handsome by the minute with a scowl on his brow and his upper lip drawn up in an ugly sneer.
“What do we do now?” Mary asked.
I’d been carried away with my deductions, but now a feeling of uneasiness crept over me. I was locked in a room—admittedly a room in a B and B with several other people around—with a couple who might well have murdered a man to keep their secret. If so, they’d managed that with hundreds of other people right down the hall. “Sandy’s expecting me,” I said, walking to the door with an unhurried and confident gait. If I acted like I was just going to walk out of there, maybe they’d let me.
“Not so fast.” Lucas’s hand fastened on my shoulder.
I wrenched away and spun to face him, wishing I knew tae kwon do or krav maga or any useful self-defense technique. My gaze darted around the room, searching for a weapon. My choices seemed to be fork, butter knife, or bud vase, none of which would have much impact in my hands. Kinsey Millhone probably knew eight different ways to kill or disable someone with a bud vase, but I would likely only cut my hand. “Is this what happened with Trent Van Allen?” I asked, hoping to distract them.
“What?” Mary was so surprised she let go of her robe and it gaped, showing a very sexy white teddy beneath it.
“He found out your secret and tried to blackmail you, didn’t he? You met him at the party and one of you”—my gaze went from Mary to Lucas—“stabbed him to death.”
“We’re not murderers,” Lucas said, taken aback. “Why would you think that? We didn’t know Van Allen and he didn’t have anything on us. The idea is ludicrous.”
“You locked me in here. You keep grabbing me.”
“I locked the door to keep other people from coming in. What—you thought we would hurt you?”
He seemed genuinely offended, to the point that I almost apologized.
He blustered on. “How would some ex-con know about me knowing Eloise Hufnagle? You’re full of it.” He crossed back to Mary and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
She bowed her head, red hair draping her face. “It makes me want to cry,” she said, forcing out a couple of tears, “to think that you would think such vicious lies were true. I never stole Eloise’s story, and I certainly never killed that man. I could never kill anyone—well, only in a book, but not in real life! I don’t even squish spiders, and they give me the willies.” She looked at me from under her lashes, perhaps to see how her story was going over.
She reminded me of the women in some Southern gothic classics: a core of steel veiled by fluttery lashes and a veneer of wide-eyed innocence. They usually managed to flirt and tease their way into getting a man to do their dirty work for them. Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. I decided some strategic dissembling was in order. “I can see that now, Mary. I was just thinking aloud, a stream-of-consciousness thing. It’s a bad habit.” I fumbled with the lock and it finally turned. It was like the turning lock opened my lungs and I could breathe deeply again. I sucked in a rib-cage-stretching breath and let it out slowly. Safety lay on the other side of the door.
Before I could pull the door open, Lucas said, “Wait.” He held his hands up at shoulder height to show he wasn’t going to harm me. “We want your word that you won’t say anything.”
“To Eloise,” Mary clarified.
“Or her lawyers,” Lucas said. “About us being married.”
“I don’t even know Eloise Hufnagle,” I said, conveniently not mentioning that I’d followed her to her motel yesterday. “I’ve got better things to do with my time than hunt her down.” True, but not the promise they were looking for.
A light footstep sounded in the hall and the door swung inward, almost clipping my face. I jumped back and Sandy stepped in, bringing the faint aroma of yeast with her. “There
you are,” she said. “I wondered where you’d gotten to.” She noticed the Stewarts. “Good morning. Breakfast will be up in about ten minutes. Pecan waffles this morning. I’ll bring some juice while you wait, if you want.”
“Cranberry, please,” Mary said with a smile. Her gaze swiveled to me and I couldn’t quite read it. Plea? Warning?
I exited into the hall while Sandy promised Mary her juice and Lucas a mug of coffee. Throughout my meeting with Sandy, conducted in the cozy environs of the B and B’s kitchen, part of my mind mulled over what I’d learned from the Stewarts. Hm, what was Lucas’s real name? Maybe he had taken Mary’s last name when they married? Beside the point. Lucas had seemed surprised and offended when I accused them of murdering Van Allen. I hadn’t been able to read Mary as well. It seemed to me that she was the driving force in that partnership. I’d have bet my last nickel that she egged Lucas on to steal Eloise Hufnagle’s novel, and she was clearly the one dictating that they not reveal their true relationship.
When I had wrapped things up with Sandy and reviewed all my notes, I went to the police station. They operated with a skeleton crew on nights and weekends, but Hart had told me he was working today. In addition to telling him about the Stewarts, I wanted to pick up the copy of Trent Van Allen’s file he said he’d give me. The female officer who had come to the Columbine when the brick got thrown through the window was sitting at the desk. She had short black hair tucked behind her ears, and a smattering of freckles across a pug nose. Her name tag said HARDAWAY. She perked up when I walked in, and I figured she was bored with the Saturday morning shift. I’m sure Saturday nights had a bit more action in Heaven.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” she asked.
When I told her I wanted to see Detective Hart, she said he was out. I was disappointed, but thought to ask her if he’d left a file for me. “I’m Amy-Faye Johnson.”
Interest sparked in her eyes and I knew she’d heard rumors. Oh, the joys of small-town life. She dug through a pile of envelopes and folders in a tray, and extracted one. “Here you go, ma’am. Should I tell Detective Hart that you came in?”
I was shy about saying I’d just call his cell phone, so I said, “Have him call me, please.”
With nothing much on my agenda for the rest of the morning, I decided to continue the hunt for Van Allen’s station wagon, which had been interrupted by tailing Eloise Hufnagle yesterday. Lola’s plan was still a good one, and I called her to see if she wanted to join me. She was busy, as was Kerry. Brooke didn’t answer her phone, but Maud did and said she’d love to go treasure hunting with me. I told her I’d swing by her house in five, and rang off.
Maud was waiting outside, dressed in her usual multipocketed pants and henley shirt, topped with a Windbreaker. Her gray, white, and silver hair was loose today, and she brushed it off her face impatiently as she got in the van. She folded her lanky frame into the seat, and asked, “What’s the plan?” I filled her in on Lola’s idea, and she said, “Good thinking. Brooke and I struck out yesterday.”
I headed down Paradise Boulevard toward Jubilee Mansions, barely concentrating on my driving as I filled Maud in on my encounter with the Stewarts. When I got to the part about seeing them in a clinch, she observed, “Very Faulknerian.”
I choked on a laugh. “Yeah, but it turns out they’re not sibs. They’re married.”
Maud’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “Married? Really?”
“So they say. But wait—there’s more.” I finished telling her about their shenanigans with Eloise Hufnagle’s manuscript.
“So Lucas slept with Hufnagle and stole her book,” Maud mused.
“That’s how I read it,” I admitted, “although they didn’t cop to it.”
“It sounds like they have a doozy of a motive for murdering Trent Van Allen, assuming he knew their secret.”
“That’s the kicker.” I glided through the gates of Jubilee Mansions with a wave to the gate guard. That’s one of the (few) benefits of driving a van with “Eventful!” swirled on the side: People like gate guards assume you’re on your way to set up an event and don’t hassle you. I’d done an event up here a bare two weeks ago, and the guard remembered me and my van. “Keep your eyes peeled,” I said.
Maud scanned the streets. There were few cars parked at the curb, either because the HOA covenants forbade it or because people liked to keep their Escalades and Infinitis safely tucked away in garages. “How much do you suppose Stewart’s book is worth?”
“I don’t know. It’s been on the New York Times bestseller list ever since it came out, hasn’t it? And there’s undoubtedly a movie deal in the works. And it’s not just Blood Will Out, either. I mean, this is her whole writing career at stake. If it comes out that she stole a manuscript, no one will ever buy another of her books, I wouldn’t think. So, potentially high six figures, or even a few million?” I didn’t know enough about what authors made to feel sure of those numbers, but it felt like enough to commit murder for.
“Many a murder’s been done for less,” Maud concurred. “Look—isn’t that the turnoff for the staff lot?”
I swung the van to the right, taking the unmarked side road that led toward the small lot. A scrim of trees veiled it from the main road, probably so the rich homeowners could maintain the illusion that house elves and yard fairies kept their homes and acreages clean and mowed. We came around a bend, and the lot lay in front of us, shielded by another thin belt of trees from the golf course. It contained a black scooter chained to a pine tree, a grimy pickup truck with plastic sheeting duct-taped over the broken passenger window, an ancient sedan plastered with bumper stickers promoting everything from Save the Manatee to the right to life, and a station wagon. A tan station wagon with Illinois plates. Satisfaction and anticipation rose in me. We’d found it.
Chapter 19
“There it is,” Maud said. She unbuckled and started to get out of the van before I’d come to a complete stop.
“Wait,” I said. “We have to call Hart. I promised him.”
She made a face, but stayed put. I dialed Hart’s cell phone number and when he answered, I told him we’d found the station wagon.
“Great work,” he said. “I’ll be there in fifteen. Don’t touch the car. Where did you say this lot is?”
I gave him directions and hung up to see Maud giving me a sly grin. “You slept with him.”
My face warmed. How could she tell that from the thirty-second conversation I’d had with him?
“There’s something in your voice,” she answered my unspoken question. “Good for you. He seems like a stand-up guy, for a cop.”
“I like him a lot,” I said, not able to keep a big smile off my face. Not wanting to get into a discussion about Hart and our relationship—talking about it might jinx it—I leaned over to pick up Trent Van Allen’s file from the floor. “Here.” I handed it to Maud. “Something to entertain us until Hart gets here. It’s the dossier on Trent Van Allen. Read it out loud—I haven’t had a chance to look through it yet.”
Her long, tanned fingers flipped quickly through the three pages the file contained. She returned to the beginning and began reading. “Trent Van Allen. Born Pocatello, Idaho, April 12, 1973. That makes him forty-three. His Social’s been blacked out—too bad because I could have discovered everything there is to know about him with that.” She rubbed her long nose with her forefinger and resumed reading. “Enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1990. It says here he was infantry. Saw action in Kuwait during Desert Storm. Purple Heart, Commendation Medal. Two lines blacked out here, too. Transferred to Camp Pendleton. Honorable discharge in 1996.” She looked up from the folder. “I wonder why he left the marines. It seems like he was good at it.”
I shrugged. “Tired of getting shot at? Tired of taking orders?”
“He got a job at Jose’s Repair and Body Shop in Barstow. Desolate place, Barstow. Hot, dry, windy, where
I-40 and I-15 hook up. Two years after he shed his uniform, he got busted for drugs—cocaine. Possession with intent to distribute. A few more drug busts after that, a two-year stint in a California prison, and then he relocated to the East Coast, looks like Virginia for a while and then New Jersey.”
“That’s probably where he met Sharla,” I said. The greenhouse effect was warming the car, so I opened my door to let a breeze in. A slightly noxious smell came with it and I wrinkled my nose.
“Looks like he got mixed up with stealing cars for chop shops, maybe mob-related, if the names of his known associates are anything to go by: Louie ‘Big Lou’ DiLuzio, Andreas ‘the Carp’ Fezatte, Gina ‘Mama G’ Umstine.” She looked at me. “What would my mob nickname be, if I were a ‘made’ woman?”
I laughed at the idea. “Fast Fingers Maud?” I mimed typing on a keyboard. “We could shorten it to an acronym: F2M, or F-Squared M.”
“You could be the Organizer. Amy-Faye ‘the Organizer’ Johnson. It sounds sinister in that context.” She resumed reading. “He did three years in a New Jersey prison for grand theft auto. He got a light sentence because he ratted out his partner, the aforementioned Big Lou. When he got out, he apparently drifted to Illinois, where he resumed his old activities and added some armed robbery—a couple of banks. Back to prison he went. Did four years. Got paroled five weeks ago. It says here he never met with his parole officer. Must have skipped town immediately, a violation of his parole.” She shook her head.
“So where did a guy who’s been in prison or hanging with lowlifes and stealing cars most of his adult life get something that he thought he could sell to someone associated with the Celebration of Gothic Novels?”
Before Maud could speculate, Hart’s Tahoe came around the corner in a cloud of dust. He parked beside the van, on Maud’s side, and got out, wearing a sport coat and olive green slacks. The wind riffled his brown hair. He greeted us. The smile in his eyes as they met mine made me tingle and I almost forgot why we were there. I remembered when he pulled a crowbar out of the back of the SUV, and disposable gloves from his pocket. He didn’t object when Maud and I followed him to the car. As we got closer, the stench I’d noticed earlier got stronger. Uh-oh.
The Readaholics and the Gothic Gala Page 16