by Blair Merrin
Suddenly it scoots forward a few inches, as if pushing itself into the frames, and I accidentally drop them. I back away from the counter.
“Oh… jeez… you’re not Bill at all, are you? You’re… Matilda.”
I fumble for my phone and call Dash.
“Hey. You know what? I’m going to bring this skull by the station right now… along with a few other things.”
CHAPTER 18
The next day I arrive at Tank’s Diner at twelve thirty, a half hour before my scheduled “interview” with Dennis Crane. I pull April aside and tell her about my charade as a reporter, and that under no circumstances should she let anyone else come over and bother us. She looks a little bewildered, but she nods. She probably doesn’t want to know whatever it is I’m into.
I take the rearmost corner booth of the diner, my oversized handbag sitting beside me and my phone out on the table, face-down. I sip a Diet Coke as I wait.
I don’t have to wait long. Dennis comes in at twelve forty-five. He spots me and makes his way back to the booth, his huge grin looking out of place on his gaunt face.
“Wow,” he breathes as he slides in across from me. “I tell you, this old town has barely changed at all in thirty-five years! It’s like stepping back into my childhood.”
“Yeah, we like to keep things simple and familiar.” I smile.
“And this place!” He looks around the diner. “They did some remodeling, but they really kept the spirit of it alive.” He glances up at April, who has sidled up to our table. “Oh, uh, just a soda would be great.” She nods and retreats, raising an eyebrow at me.
Dennis folds his hands on the tabletop. “So, what do you want to know?”
“Let’s see.” I take out a notepad and a pen from my giant purse. I feel like Curious Cassie again, intrepid reporter. “Your parents passed away in, what, 1975?”
“That’s right,” Dennis tells me.
“And Crane Bronze went out of business in 1979.”
“Um… yes.” He squirms a little in his seat.
“So it was four years before Jeffrey ran it into the ground—”
He holds up a hand. “I’m sorry, but these aren’t exactly the type of questions that I thought you’d be asking…”
“Oh, I’m just trying to get my facts straight, that’s all.” I flash him a bright smile. “So that same year, the Maximoffs offered Crane Bronze a loan, correct?”
He sucks in his lower lip and narrows his eyes. “Yes. And Jeffrey squandered it in less than a year. The business collapsed. The Maximoffs took everything we had. Is that what you’re after?”
“Partially,” I tell him. I pretend to read my notepad for a moment. My heart races. Sweat beads on my forehead, but I ignore it. As casually as I can muster, I ask, “Tell me, which one of you killed your sister?”
His jaw drops a little. The color drains from his face. “What did you just say?” he asks quietly.
“Was it you or Jeffrey that killed your sister, Matilda?”
“I… I don’t… wherever you got your information, it’s wrong…” he stammers. “That’s not at all what happened. Matilda left Bandit Hills with us after the Maximoffs took our home.”
“I don’t think that’s what happened, Dennis. Here’s what I think. I think that Matilda—” I reach into my big handbag and I pull out the silver eyeglasses. I set them on the table between us. “—was in love with Dexter Maximoff.” I put the love letter on the table next. “After the business went under, he proposed to her.” The diamond ring comes out. “The Maximoffs didn’t like that, so they offered you money to take her away. She refused. She loved Dexter and wanted to stay. You needed the money badly. So…” I take the three-foot length of twine out and I set it on the table with the other items. Quietly, I say, “You killed your sister. I’m guessing you strangled her to death. Then you took the money and left Bandit Hills.”
Dennis Crane’s knobby hands tremble on the table. “No,” he says hoarsely. “That’s not… you can’t prove anything.”
“You’re right; I can’t. But the Waverly house is demolished. It’s just a big hole in the ground. And I bet that if anyone went digging further into that hole, they might find Matilda.” I lean forward. “Is that right, Dennis? Will they find the rest of your sister down there?”
I reach into the great big bag and I pull out the last item—the bronze skull. I set it down on the table between us. Dennis Crane yanks his hands back, off the table, and shrinks to the corner of the booth. He looks around wildly to see if anyone else is watching, but we’re speaking quietly and no one else heeds us any attention.
“It wasn’t me!” he hisses. “It was Jeffrey! He was maniacal. He felt like a failure. We needed that money, and she wouldn’t go!” He holds his head in his hands. “She wouldn’t go. She wanted to stay with Dexter. I was still a teenager at the time. I loved her. I never would have done that. Never!”
“Was Jeffrey the one that bronzed her skull?”
He whimpers slightly and nods. “He was sick. Crazy with the loss of our parents and the business. And I was afraid of him.”
Despite the queasy feeling in my stomach, I press on. “How did you know that the Waverly house was being rebuilt? Why did you kill Bill?”
“Jeffrey is family. I had to protect him.” He looks up at me from between his fingers. “Who are you?”
“Me?” I say innocently. “I’m a secondhand shop owner.”
“You can’t prove anything,” he says again.
“I don’t have to. My cell phone has been on speaker this whole time with the Bandit Hills police department. In fact, our sheriff is waiting right outside the diner as we speak.”
CHAPTER 19
Phil arrested Dennis Crane, right there in the diner, and brought him downtown to the station. Once there, he completely broke down and confessed everything.
It seems that ever since Jeffrey Crane’s stroke, little brother Dennis became more and more paranoid over someone discovering their terrible secret. He started coming into town on a weekly basis, driving slowly by the Waverly place to make sure that no one was working on it… until the day that someone was.
Dennis’s intention had been to remove everything from the walled-off basement room that Jeffrey had left behind, but when he got there early one morning, it was already gone; Bill had brought the box to me the previous day. Dennis tried to sneak back out of the house, but Bill caught him in the act, and Dennis, in the heat of the moment and terrified that someone might recognize him, bludgeoned Bill with the only thing that was handy—the bronze skull.
Apparently Matilda’s spirit didn’t like Bonnie’s mantelpiece and had vanished to return “home,” or in this case, the Waverly house. Dennis claims it was just sitting there, in the kitchen, and he took it as a sign of aid from his dearly-departed sister. After Matilda’s skull became an instrument of murder, it took to the next-best place to seek help—her former lover, Dexter Maximoff.
Poor Dexter. I don’t know why, but I took it upon myself to be the one to break the news to him that his Matilda didn’t leave him, but was taken from him. He was inconsolable, sobbing into my arms as I hugged him. I returned the diamond ring to him, along with the love letter and the glasses. He thanked me and apologized for being rude.
The bronze skull went into evidence and stayed there. Forensic testing eventually revealed that it was, unfortunately, Matilda’s skull, filled in and layered in bronze. (That had just been a hunch on my part.) The rest of her remains were exhumed from the basement of what used to be the Waverly place three days after Dennis’s arrest.
Jeffrey Crane was also taken into custody. I don’t know what will happen to him, but I’m sure there are facilities that take care of people in his condition, but are far less friendly than Shady Acres.
As for Cory Wilkes… oh, sweet, idiotic Cory Wilkes. Turns out Cory was at the Waverly place the morning that Bill was killed. He’d gone there bright and early in an effort to dissuade Bill from doing t
he hotel job. See, Cory wanted to prove his love for Penny in the only way he could think of, which was to try to keep the hotel from happening—but with words. In fact, if the timeline is right, Cory and Bill were talking while Dennis was in the basement, trying to figure out where Matilda’s stuff had gone. Cory left, and minutes later Bill met his unfortunate end at Dennis’s hand.
Cory lied because he knew that if he admitted he was there, he’d be the prime suspect (which sort of backfired on him). Phil had every right to detain him for lying to the police, but decided against it because, in his words, “being darn foolish ain’t a crime… yet.”
* * *
About a week after Dennis Crane’s arrest, things finally settle down enough for us to get back to some semblance of normalcy… or whatever it is that passes for normalcy around here. That Sunday afternoon, Bonnie invites me, Dash and Mom up to the ranch for what she says is a surprise. Assuming it has something to do with food, we all climb into my SUV and head for the ranch—yeah, Mom, too. Apparently Bonnie’s newfound recipes have the power to peel Mom away from the computer.
What we find is indeed surprising. Bonnie set up a huge white canopy in the stretch of grass between her cabin and the parking lot, and beneath it sits four picnic tables, each with red-and-white checkered tablecloths, and upon those sits mountains of sumptuous food.
Already present are more than a dozen familiar faces; Phil and Sharon, Marla June and Mr. Spencer, Tank and April, Xander Cruz, Cory Wilkes and Penny, Steven and Vic, to name several.
“Welcome!” Bonnie exclaims loudly. She’s wearing an apron that says “Kiss the Cook” and holding long tongs.
“Bonnie… what is all this?” I ask.
“You’re witnessing the genesis of Bonnie’s Bodacious Barbecue,” she announces proudly.
I laugh. “Bodacious, huh? Okay, I can get behind that.”
“I thought about what you said, Cass, and I decided to give it a go, turn it into a little side business,” she explains. “We don’t know what we’re going to do with it just yet, but I figured this is a good way to get started, with friends and family. Have a seat and dig in—first meal’s on the house!”
She doesn’t have to tell me twice. We take a seat at a picnic table with Cory, Penny and Xander and start piling onto a plate. There’s tangy braised spare ribs, glistening corn on the cob, deep-fried onion blossoms, oh, and these candied yams that just melt in my mouth like tender, syrupy goodness…
No one talks for a good forty-five minutes. No one needs to; we just smile at each other, nodding occasionally, and enjoying the divine food. Bonnie stalks around the picnic tables like a hovering waiter, making sure there’s enough to go around for everyone.
We’re all so distracted by the food that no one notices another car has pulled into the lot. We don’t see the old man amble over to the canopy until he’s standing over our table.
Dexter Maximoff looks thin and almost frail without his wool overcoat. He stands there in a collared shirt and jeans, looking sheepish.
Penny narrows her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I invited him,” Bonnie cuts in. “Please, Mr. Maximoff, sit. Have something to eat.”
“Thank you,” he mumbles. He takes a seat beside me, and across from Penny, who eyes him with disgust.
After a moment, he speaks up. “Um, Penny,” he says, “I just want you to know that I canceled the loan. I’m not building the hotel.”
Her expression goes from angry to confused in a half second. “Why?”
“Well, mostly because that’s where Matilda… you know. I don’t want my legacy to have such a terrible past.”
“Does that mean you’ll still build one elsewhere?”
He shrugs. “Haven’t decided yet. But if I do, I’ll need someone to manage it.”
She almost smiles. “Well, maybe we’ll talk again when you’re ready.”
Full to the brim and then some, I groan loudly. “Bonnie, you’ve got to take my fork away, or else I’ll eat ‘til I explode.” I push my plate away. “By the way, did you ever figure out what those foreign languages were at the back?”
“Nope,” she tells me. “It’s all Greek to me.”
“May I take a look?” Xander asks. He’s Bandit Hills’ resident horse-whisperer—or, more aptly, animal-whisperer, since everything on four legs, two wings, or any other biological configuration, loves him. Bonnie hands him the book and he flips through the last dozen pages or so. “Very interesting,” he says. “This is Turkish… but this page is Korean… yet this page is Portuguese.” He hands the book back to her. “I could translate them, if you wanted.”
“You speak all those languages?” Bonnie asks incredulously.
He shrugs. “I’ve traveled.”
“Well, okay! But you gotta do it here… I’m not letting this book out of my sight.”
“Certainly. I’ll come by sometime this week.”
Ordinarily, something like that would seem very weird, but not only am I too full to care, but that’s Bandit Hills for ya.
Dexter Maximoff clears his throat and raises his glass of iced tea. “Here’s to new beginnings,” he says.
We all raise glasses with him. “Here’s to complex relationships,” Dash says, with a wink in my direction.
I add, “Here’s to hopefully going a month without a murder in Bandit Hills.”
Then Cory chimes in. “To quote operatic tenor Robert Brault, ‘Sometimes in tragedy we find our life’s purpose.’”
We all kind of blink at him for a long moment, and then we clink glasses and sip. I can’t help but notice that Penny seems a little impressed with Cory.
I sigh contentedly. It’s nice having everyone I know and love together in one place in harmony like this. It’s peaceful.
Bonnie calls out, “There’s only one spare rib left here… who wants it?”
Then all hell breaks loose as seven grown adults clamor over each other for a piece of meat.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MARINATED MURDER
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19