Death Comes to a Retreat (Book 4 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

  “Did you just say your ‘source,’ Officer Masters?”

  I got out of the car to stand beside him on the sidewalk. He opened the envelope. This was the fastest I’d ever seen Tommy look through evidence. He rifled through the photos as if he were shuffling cards, then returned them to the envelope. “You think Nancy killed both Allison and Richard?”

  I nodded. “Everything I’ve learned tells me that Richard was using these photographs to control Nancy. She killed him and thought she got away with it, only she found out that Allison had the negatives. Maybe Allison was blackmailing her, or maybe Nancy couldn’t take the chance that Allison might tell someone else what Nancy’ d done.”

  Tommy raised an eyebrow. “Yet Celia was the one sending threats to Allison.”

  “Nancy could get an almost hypnotic hold on you just by talking to you. She has this incredibly soothing voice.”

  Tommy was looking skeptical, but I continued with confidence. “She probably even convinced Celia to set up the greeting-card retreat. Then she killed Allison. Maybe she intended to get Celia’s fingerprints on the syringe, but couldn’t for some reason, so she got my fingerprints on it instead.”

  Tommy blew out a noisy breath. “This ain’t much, Molly. BPD’s gonna need way more evidence than this.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a start. With any luck, they’ll be able to get some more evidence, once they know Nancy’s the one they should be looking at.”

  We went inside the building, and a total of four officers listened carefully to my story and accepted the photographs. I talked at “length about how Maria Chavez desperately didn’t want to get involved and was afraid of deportation. I’m not sure if they believed me. Eventually, though, they said we could leave. Tommy kept glancing at his watch, but he stayed beside me, then followed me home.

  The house was strangely quiet, only our footfalls breaking the silence. I called hello as I dropped my keys on the counter, and Lauren called back, “Molly, is that you?” Her voice came from the basement.

  “Yes. I’m with Tommy;”

  After a pause, she called back, “Tommy, can you come downstairs, please?”

  He made a show of not being in a hurry, but he wasn’t fooling me for a moment. Unless I misjudged Lauren, Tommy’s mention that he’d gone out with a female officer had put a scare into her. With any luck at all, the wedding would be back on and two weeks from now, Lauren and Tommy would be marching down the aisle.

  The children were playing badminton outside, with BC keeping the stakes high. When they missed and didn’t retrieve the birdie quickly, she’d chomp on it. I called hello to them and sat on the deck, wanting to give Tommy and Lauren as much privacy as possible. Plus, I needed some time to think.

  The police had told me they would handle this, and I had to have faith that they’d do just that. I ran the whole scenario through my head, over and over, to see if there was any way I could be wrong about Nancy. Yet, try as I might, no other explanation made sense.

  Determined to distract myself, I thought up a silly cartoon that showed a recently robbed jewelry store. Lieutenant Columbo, wearing his trench coat over pajamas, is looking at a series of small circular markings. Columbo is saying, “What are the odds? The thief had not just one peg leg, but two. There’s no other explanation for all these little circular marks leaving the crime scene.” In the background, a street sign reads POGO STICKS: RENT OR BUY! and the markings lead directly to a pogo stick. The caption below the cartoon is: Lieutenant Columbo on an off day.

  The phone rang and I hurried into the kitchen to answer. A high-pitched voice asked if I was “Mrs. Molly Masters,” and then said, “This is Lucy Phillips, the owner of the Red Fox Resort. I’ve been talking to your associate, Celia Wentworth.”

  “Yes,” I said, “we want a refund on the rental of two cabins last weekend.”

  “I have a check here, made out to you, refunding your deposit in full. I just need your signature on a form stating that you received a refund and that you will not hold the Red Fox Resort liable for any additional monies.”

  “Okay. That will be fine.” Actually, it was almost an overpayment. The resort wasn’t even getting reimbursed for our meals. If it weren’t for the false advertising that got me and my group there in the first place, I’d feel guilty accepting the offer.

  “How would you like to do this?” she asked. “I can put the form in today’s mail for you, if you’d like, and can send you the check as soon as I receive the completed form.”

  “You’d send me the check afterward? That would mean I’d sign something that stated I’d received a couple hundred dollars yet to be mailed to me.”

  Lucy giggled. “Oh, dear. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Can you come down to Boulder?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t. My car is in the shop. I have no transportation this entire week. Can you meet me in my office at the lodge?”

  I felt uneasy at the concept of going back to “the scene of the crime,” but this time I could ask Jim to accompany me…which reminded me. Where was he? I wanted to get this financial matter handled and would be up there for all of five minutes. Although the drive itself would take forty-five minutes.

  “I can do that.” The sooner the better, I thought. “Would an hour from now work for you?”

  “Sure. I’m stranded till my husband gets back with the second car, so I’ll be right here.”

  Jim arrived just as I was hanging up. To my complete surprise, Jasper and Joey Newton, Tommy’s sons, were with him.

  My heart started thumping. I greeted the boys as calmly as possible. It seemed as if they had grown in the couple of weeks since I’d last seen them, turning into exact images of their father. They said nothing other than “Hi” from Jasper and “Hey” from Joey.

  “What’s going on, Jim?”

  He didn’t answer. The four of us stood staring at one another for a moment, my husband looking decidedly pleased with himself.

  The only possible explanation was that Jim and Lauren had teamed up during one of my absences to get the boys here, and Lauren was planning to elope with Tommy. Unless Jim had taken it on himself to do this without Lauren’s knowledge, which would be a fiasco. “Did Lauren help you arrange this?”

  “Is Tom here? His car’s out front,” he said by way of evasion. No sooner had I answered that he was downstairs, than the door to the stairwell opened and Tommy burst into the room. He had a goofy expression on his face. He looked at the four of us, blinked, then cried, “Jasper! Joey! You’re here!”

  Just then, Lauren stepped into the room behind him. She was wearing a white dress suit she’d obviously bought for the occasion. She looked absolutely stunning. My eyes misted at the sight, and I covered my mouth to keep myself from sobbing openly.

  “Guess what, Molly?” Tommy said. “We’re getting married today!”

  Lauren slipped her hand into his. Tommy pulled her into a deep embrace. Caught up in the joy and romance of all of this, I would have watched them, except Jim kissed me. Afterward, I studied his eyes, astounded that he’d managed to keep Lauren’s decision to suddenly get married a secret from me. Not to mention my surprise at Lauren opting to keep me in the dark.

  Reading my thoughts, Jim said, “Surprise. You’re not the only devious planner in the family.”

  “But how—”

  “Last night I arranged to fly the boys in and told Lauren to sleep on it, that I’d cancel at the last minute if she wanted me to. This morning, after you left, she told me she’d decided to go for it, if she could only find herself a dress. And, as you can see, she did.”

  While Jim talked, and I struggled to mentally work out the logistics of how this had all come together so fast, the younger set—Karen, Rachel, and Nathan—heard some of the commotion and slipped in through the back door. Karen and Rachel were soon squealing with delight and hopping up and down at the prospect of a sudden wedding. Nathan was busy yelling “No!” at BC, who was also hopping, barking, and dashing
through our legs. Meanwhile, we “adults” were engaged in a flurry of congratulatory hugs, explanations, and planning.

  Lauren announced that they had all of two-and-a-half hours, until they were scheduled to be in front of a judge at the justice center. First, they both had to be present to get their license.

  Tommy insisted on going out and getting a suit. He, Lauren, and the boys took off, telling us to meet them in the lobby of the justice center at 2:20, ten minutes before the ceremony. My own wardrobe was so limited by my packing job that I rushed upstairs to put on my one nice dress, while Jim said he would make lunch for himself and the kids.

  Fortunately, Lauren’s sandals, which I still wore, looked reasonably nice with my blue dress and my pantyhose; I’d forgotten to pack dress shoes. Just as I was struggling with the dress zipper, it hit me that I had to reschedule my trip to the Red Fox Resort. I trotted downstairs to use the phone.

  “Molly?” Jim said into my free ear after I’d dialed, “We don’t have anything left in the fridge for lunch. I’m taking the kids out to McDonald’s. Want to come?”

  “No, thanks,” I replied.

  No answer, though I’d let the phone ring almost twenty times. Lucy must be out cleaning the cabins. I hung up and said to Jim, “Don’t be late getting back. We all had better leave here at two, just to be on the safe side.” For all of Jim’s good points, tardiness was such a problem with him that if anyone could find a way to spend more than two hours at a fast-food restaurant, he could.

  The house seemed incredibly quiet all of a sudden. My best friend was about to be married. Everyone else was swept up in all the details, and I was alone, supposed to simply get dressed and show up. I felt a little left out. I glanced at my watch. Ten after twelve. Two-plus hours with nothing to do. It would only take me an hour and a half to get to the Red Fox Resort and back, and I would love to have that matter behind me.

  I jotted down a quick note to Jim about where I was going, and that if, for any reason, I wasn’t home by two p.m., I’d drive straight to the justice center and meet everyone at 2:15.

  I sped north, ambivalent about my decision to do this. There was no way I’d do anything to louse up this ceremony—such as being late. What if I got a flat tire? If that happened, I answered myself, it was downhill to Boulder. I’d roll as far as I could, then get a cab to the justice center.

  There was also the little matter of the killer possibly not being under arrest yet. I’d feel infinitely more secure if I knew for sure that Nancy Thornton was indeed guilty and had been arrested. However, it was probably safer for me to be driving to Evansville—where only Lucy Phillips knew I’d be—than to stay alone in my house in Boulder. And, after all, it had been my idea to head up there today, no one else’s.

  Despite my rationale, part of my mind kept nagging at the other part that I’d just made an unfathomably stupid mistake. I drove with one eye on the dashboard clock, and felt relieved as I spotted the wooden sign and saw that I’d made the trip in just forty minutes.

  A piece of paper slapped across the sign for the Red Fox Resort read: CLOSED. That was odd. Lucy hadn’t mentioned anything about their being closed or out of business.

  I pulled into the dirt lot by the front door of the lodge and got out. The place was quiet and deserted. I could hear nothing, not even the chirping of birds. I shut the car door behind me and looked around, hoping I hadn’t just driven up here for nothing. Surely this hadn’t been a prank—a fake phone call.

  I headed up the stairs to the lodge. A deep, rumbling growl erupted from the direction of my car. My heart pounding, I whirled around to look.

  There stood Nancy Thornton, one hand on the collar of her enormous Great Dane. She smiled. Sounding just like the high-pitched voice I’d heard over the phone, she said, “You made good time from Boulder, Mrs. Masters.”

  Chapter 18

  They Do… Don’t They?

  Dear Lord! Nancy had pretended to be the owner of the resort over the phone and had lured me here, probably to kill me! I decided to play dumb and hope that Nancy would let me near enough to my car to get safely inside. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said as casually as I could, though terrified out of my wits. “Great news. I got a call from the owner of the resort. She’s going to give us our money back.”

  “That is great news. Unfortunately, there’s nobody else here. Just you and I.”

  “Plus your dog.” I saw a sparkle of light reflect off an object in her hand. A syringe. She was trying to keep it hidden so she could get close enough to me to use it. One very large dog. One murderous psychologist with a poison-filled needle. Oh, shit!

  “Hi, Faldo.”

  “You’re not still afraid of him, are you, Molly?” she said, still using those hypnotic tones of hers. “He won’t hurt you, unless you should be so foolish as to try to hit me. Or to run away. He would simply chase you down and pin you, then perhaps bite clear through your neck.”

  She and Faldo moved between me and my car. Playing dumb hadn’t worked. Maybe appealing to her sense of logic would. “It’s too late, Nancy. I already gave copies of those photographs of you and Richard Kenyon to the police. So they already know everything. Killing me won’t help you.”

  Nancy’s eyes flashed with anger. “What exactly will they know? That I had an affair with someone who was tragically killed in a burglary. That’s hardly a criminal offense.”

  “Except when it provides the motive for murder. You wanted to call it quits with Richard, so he started sending pornographic pictures he’d taken of the two of you to your patients.”

  “He was a deeply troubled man. That’s how I got to know him, when he came to me for therapy. I thought I could help him. That is one of the common pitfalls of therapists, believing too greatly in one’s own abilities to heal.”

  “You told everyone you’d decided to let your hair go to its natural premature gray. You’re probably the only woman in America bleaching natural blond hair white. You knew Richard’s neighbor had seen you when you were blond. You never wanted the police to make that connection between you and the blonde that Richard had struck the night he died.”

  Her features clouded with anger. “Richard deserved to die. He thought it was funny that he’d sent the negatives of dirty pictures of the two of us to Allison to protect himself from me. I didn’t want to kill her, but I had no choice. Sooner or later, she’d have blabbed something to the wrong person… such as you.”

  Suddenly, thinking of Nancy as Catwoman in those damned photographs, it was all clear to me. “The cat killed curiosity,” I said in a near whisper. “That’s why you killed Allison. She’d said that at the retreat. She was referring to the photographs of you in that cat mask, in bed with Richard.” Allison’s words returned to me, now making perfect sense. I’d asked everyone to think of Christmas card ideas using cats, but Allison rattled off darker allusions—a cat burglar—another deadly role that Nancy had played. “She was getting too close to revealing that you’d killed Richard. So you wrote that threatening rhyme and tossed it in with the others to make it look like Celia was the killer. But why did you try to frame me?”

  “It was supposed to be Celia,” Nancy said with a hint of regret in her voice. “I even switched batteries in her flashlight to mess with her head. She and Allison were the ones who typically drank to excess, but Celia chose that weekend to go on the wagon. Then Allison went and screwed things up further when she took the damned bottle over to your cabin. You were the only one who drank the wine and knew Allison. You made a lousy suspect, and you kept asking too many questions. So I had to make an attempt on your life and then frame Celia, to make it clear it was Celia all along.”

  “And the Dobermans?”

  “I’d been keeping a watch on you. I spotted you leaving your house and walking toward Allison’s neighborhood, so I released the dogs in Allison’s yard. I just wanted to prevent you from talking to Maria.” She patted Faldo’s shoulder. “I have a way with dogs. They’ll rip somebody’s
throat out on my command.”

  She shook her head and smiled. “You see, Molly, maybe it is too late for me to get away with it, but I’m in too deep now to stop. Your problem is, you have no proof. It’s just my word against yours. And soon, it’ll just be my word.”

  “But I’ve already told the police everything I know. I’ve already given them your name. One way or another, it’s already over, Nancy.”

  My words only seemed to enrage her. She held up the syringe. “I can drug you and you’ll go peacefully and painlessly, or you can try to fight me, and I’ll have Faldo eat you alive. Any preference?”

  I eyed Faldo’s massive jaws. “Given the lousy options, I guess I’d rather go with the shot.” I held out my arm, but still stood on the top step of the porch.

  “Wise choice.” She took a step in my direction. “Don’t do anything foolish, such as push me down the stairs, or I’ll have to go with Option B.”

  Though I had no doubt she was correct, I couldn’t give up that easily. As soon as she was about to grab my arm, I push-kicked her. She went flying backward and landed with an oof.

  I tried to run to the corner of the deck to leap off but only got a couple of strides before I heard Nancy shout, “Faldo. Attack.”

  I dove between the middle and top railings, just managing to break my face-first fall with my hands. I tried to get up and run but was knocked flat by Faldo as he leaped on top of me.

  Then my leg was on fire. Faldo had sunk his teeth into my left calf.

  I screamed in agony and somehow managed to turn over, wrenching my knee in the process. I tried to pry Faldo’s jaws apart.

  “You idiot,” Nancy spat at me. “Didn’t you believe me?”

  The huge dog was actually in her way, but the pain was so all encompassing, I struggled in vain to escape from him.

  “Faldo, release!” she cried.

  He promptly did as commanded, but my leg still felt as though it was on fire.