When she rejoined Fair and they walked back to his truck, she asked, “How are Susan and Ned?”
“Fine. Susan told me how badly our two little girls behaved yesterday.”
“They still aren’t speaking.”
“Ned said they’ve made bail. Big Mim will have all the money together. He’ll go down Tuesday.”
“Oh, thank God.” Harry’s right hand flew to her breast. “Does Paul know?”
“Ned called him this morning before Mass. The paperwork this takes.” He furrowed his brow. “Ned was telling me and all I could think of is that it doesn’t matter what profession one’s in, we’re drowning in paperwork.”
“Wasteful.” She wrinkled her nose.
“It is that, but on the other hand, it creates a lot of paper-pushing jobs, which means fewer people are unemployed, more people are paying mortgages and have a stake in the system, hence political stability.”
“Aren’t you smart.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it.
“Just realistic. He said Little Mim has come through the firestorm and he thinks, although she’s lost the support of groups like Love of Life, she’s gained more from others. He thinks she can run for governor maybe in six or eight years.”
“He wants it first.”
“He did, but this first year down in Richmond has been a real eye-opener for him. I would guess any first-timer to politics faces entrenched interests and even more entrenched egos. Given his touch of idealism, it’s hard for him.”
“There’s where Little Mim shines. She inherited her mother’s hardness. But Big Mim does have a vision, and I suppose it’s progressive. Just no illusions about how you get things done.”
“She’s an honorable woman, but she knows you crack eggs to make an omelet.” He smiled.
“I’m proud of Little Mim.” Harry waited as he opened the door for her. “Any word on Penny Lattimore?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Ned called Rick, who said they hadn’t heard from her.”
“I hope she’s not dead. This scares me. When someone like Penny disappears, it’s…” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Events were spinning out of control, and apart from Tazio’s bail, she perceived little progress.
“I don’t know how much more of this our little community can stand.” He echoed her worry.
32
Monday felt like the freight train that pulls all those cars behind it. Harry stoked the engine. She’d whipped through her basic farm chores like the proverbial tornado and then she gathered up her buddies—the cats still on the outs with each other—cranked up the F-150 enhanced by a new alternator, and drove to Woolen Mills.
At two-thirty in the afternoon, she figured Mike would be on a job site, Noddy would be at the office, and she could sneak into his shed.
Mike could come and go as he pleased, as long as he got to the job sites on his list for that week. She didn’t factor his flexible schedule into her plans.
She parked the truck down the street. Most of the neighbors worked. A few dogs barked, but quiet reigned.
She carefully walked up the front walk, flanked by those beautiful English boxwoods, then ducked between them. As she did, the peculiar odor of the plant rubbed on her. The cats and dogs scooted through, as well.
She walked around the shed, hoping there’d be a door in the back, but there wasn’t. She tried the only door. Locked. No surprise.
However, she had a thin file, a cigarette lighter, and a pocketknife. She kept the lighter in the truck, because she’d learned that sometimes you need to light a candle, burn off the end of a rope.
Given that the house sat at the end of the road and the shed reposed on the back of the lawn, she didn’t worry about anyone seeing her.
The lock, although simple, resisted her clumsy attempts at picking with the file. Exasperated, she opened the long blade from the pocketknife, wedged it in, and began slowly urging the tongue of the lock to move it back. Sweating, cursing, she finally managed to press it back after fifteen minutes, and she swung open the door, closing it behind her.
“Wow,” she exclaimed as she admired the organized work space, tools hung up on Peg-Board, nails in jars, all marked in a row. The gun parts fascinated her. He’d know how to procure a silencer, she was certain, but a hunch wasn’t hard evidence. Still, it spurred her on. At the back of the work space rested a large red metal toolbox, about four feet high. She pulled open one drawer. Again, every implement was clean, carefully laid in place.
She walked around the space. Nothing indicated wrongdoing. She tried the door to the office. Fortunately, it was unlocked. The cats scooted in first. Once inside the room, she unlocked the window, in case she needed to make a quick escape.
“She’s more curious than we are,” Pewter grumbled. “And not as smart.”
Tucker sat inside by the office door, which Harry had closed, watching, listening with those marvelous ears.
Harry opened Mike’s desk drawers, checked the shelves. She checked her watch. Three forty-five. The trip to Woolen Mills from Crozet had taken forty minutes, thanks to traffic. She picked up the pace. She rapped on the walls. She located the studs, but nothing sounded as though it was filled with treasure. She hoped to hear that thunk.
She rolled the chair away and pulled back the heavy rubber mat. The trapdoor ring, black, caught her eye. Eagerly, she pulled it upright, tugged, and the door swung up, a musty smell rising with it.
“Aha.” She climbed down, the cats readily following her, since they climbed the wall ladder at the barn daily. Harry pulled the string on the overhead light, which revealed rows of boxes. She began opening them.
She found the jewelry, the money, and the panties. “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!”
As she put the lids back on, closed up the metal box, too, they heard Tucker barking in the toolshed.
“Dumb dog.” Pewter’s eyes widened.
Mrs. Murphy quickly said, “Pewter, jump on a shelf.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Mike!” Tucker warned.
“Shut up, Tucker.” Mrs. Murphy commanded, but it was too late.
As Mike ran toward his shed, Harry climbed up the ladder. But before she could reach the window, Mike blasted into the room.
Without a word, he hit her hard across the face.
Tucker jumped out from behind the door and bit his leg. He shook the dog off, grabbed a heavy coffee mug, and slammed Harry on the side of the head.
It didn’t knock her out, but it made her woozy. He quickly kicked her down the hole, climbing down after her. Even the cats jumping on his back didn’t stop him. He stuffed his handkerchief in her mouth, whipped off his belt, and wrapped it around her hands behind her back.
He climbed back up, slammed the door down, pulled the rubber mat over it, and rolled the chair back on the mat. He had forgotten to switch off the light, although no one would see it.
He tried to catch Tucker, but those long fangs and her quick maneuvers prevented that. Instead, he shut the door behind him, leaving the dog inside.
He hurried back to the house. He didn’t know what he was going to do; Noddy would be home soon. She left work at four every day because she went into the office at seven-thirty in the morning.
“Lick her face,” Mrs. Murphy ordered Pewter.
The two cats licked, their rough tongues providing what a facialist would term “exfoliation.”
Harry’s eyes fluttered. She grunted a little. “Damn, my head hurts.”
“Tucker,” Mrs. Murphy meowed as loudly as she could. “Only bark if someone comes back.”
They heard the claws click across the boards then soften as the dog walked on the heavy mat.
“I drew blood.” Tucker wished she could have reached his throat.
“So did he,” Pewter called up.
“Is she all right?”
“Cut on her forehead and temple. A lump is coming up, but she’s all right. We have to get the handk
erchief out of her mouth so she doesn’t choke on it.”
“I will, Murphy, I will,” Pewter said.
The mighty little dog sat down, deeply worried. Their only prayer was that Mike wouldn’t shoot. Too many people in the neighborhood would hear him, even if he closed the trapdoor. A gun makes a smart report. He probably wouldn’t slash her throat in his shed, because of the mess. He would have to get Harry out after Noddy was asleep.
All three of the animals figured that out, and so did Harry.
She struggled to free her hands from the belt. The cats bit on it. They might be able to bite through enough of it to weaken it, but it would take maybe a half hour, maybe an hour.
Fair called her cell. She didn’t answer. He called home. He called the barn. Finally, he called Susan.
“Susan, is Harry with you?”
“No.”
“It’s four-thirty. She’s a creature of habit, and on Mondays she’d be putting back bedding in the stalls she stripped and aired out yesterday. I think she’s done what you predicted. She’s not answering her cell. Something’s wrong.”
“I’ll call Coop.”
“Good. I’m going to Mike’s.”
Susan gave him directions, and it took him until five-thirty to get there, because of rush-hour traffic. Fortunately, most of it was heading west, but there was enough to make him truly worry.
Fair saw Harry’s truck parked on the street, and he hoped he was in time. He was so scared he wasn’t even mad at her.
He parked, hurried out, but didn’t go up the walk, because Susan had told him where the shed was.
Tucker barked, “Fair! It’s Fair.”
Dogs and cats can identify footfalls and tire sounds, but humans can’t.
Hearing the corgi, Fair ran. The door was locked. He slammed his shoulder against it and broke it down.
Mike heard the dog, then saw Fair. Noddy ran to the back kitchen window, too.
“What is Fair Haristeen doing?” She put her hand on the doorknob.
He covered her hand. “You stay here.”
He ran outside just as Fair, who now could hear his wife and the cats, reached the desk. Frantically, Fair kicked the chair back, pulled the mat off, and flipped up the trapdoor as Mike barreled through the shed door.
Tucker cunningly hid behind the office door. As Mike opened the door, ready to brain Fair with a crowbar he’d snatched off his workroom wall, the corgi sank his fangs all the way into Mike’s calf.
Fair spun on his heels and hit Mike with a right cross, using all his weight and six feet five inches. Mike’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell clean backward, half out the door.
The crowbar hit the floor with a heavy clunk.
Noddy ran in after him, shocked at what she saw.
“Noddy, stay right there.” Fair scared her. “The police will be here in a minute. Don’t try to run.”
“Why?” She hadn’t a clue.
Fair slid down the ladder like a fireman and quickly undid the belt, which the cats had worked on.
“He was going to kill me,” Harry, shaken, gasped, but she kept possession of herself.
Fair spied the handkerchief on the floor and knew what Mike had done. “How’d you get the handkerchief out of your mouth?”
“The cats pulled it out, or I’d be dead. It was slipping back in my throat.”
Fair picked up Mrs. Murphy in one arm, Pewter in the other, and kissed their heads, then kissed his wife. Noddy had crept to the opened trapdoor and knelt down.
“Don’t shut that, Noddy.”
“I didn’t even know it was here,” she, bug-eyed, answered Fair.
“Help her out, will you?” Fair boosted Harry up.
Noddy gently lifted her out.
Mike rolled over, shook his head, spit out some teeth, just as Fair came up behind Harry.
Lightning-fast, Fair put his knee on Mike’s back, yanked his arms behind him, and used his own belt to tie him up. Then he kicked him over, as Noddy grimaced.
“You killed Carla, and Penny, too, didn’t you?”
“They found Penny?” Noddy slumped in the office chair.
“No,” Fair told her. “Not yet.”
Even though her head was splitting, Harry thought she had never heard a sound so sweet as Cooper’s squad-car siren, followed by another.
Within minutes Cooper and Rick hurried into the shed.
“Down there.” Harry pointed to the opened trapdoor.
“Penny?” Noddy feared the worst.
“No. No bodies, Noddy, but enough to send your husband down the river for a long, long time.”
She put her head in her hands and wept.
“Did you know?” Fair asked.
She shook her head no, as Rick bent over and dropped down into the space.
Cooper read Mike his rights.
Another squad car arrived, and the officer stood patiently in the office doorway.
Rick’s head popped up, his hands on the floor. “Doak, cordon the place off. I want everything photographed, cataloged, tabulated. There’s enough here to convict him.”
“For murder?” Dooley hoped.
“For theft, extortion, and maybe even rape. With luck, murder will follow.”
“Rape,” Noddy wailed.
“I didn’t kill anybody!” Mike’s broken teeth made him suck in air. He shut his mouth in a hurry after he spoke.
“That’s what they all say.” Cooper wanted to kick the rest of his teeth in.
After Harry provided what information she could, she and Fair left. “Ride with me. We can come back for your truck tomorrow.”
A grateful and chastened Harry cuddled the cats and dog. As Fair drove them home, she said in a small voice, “I’m sorry. If you hadn’t saved me he would have killed me tonight.”
“Susan told me about your drive by. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where you were. She called Coop.”
“I’m sure he’s Bechtal’s outside man. I just know. Crazy ass, to do what he did to those women. He had money, he had jewels, you wouldn’t believe what he had down there.”
“He almost had you.”
“I thought about that, too.” She rubbed her temple, then winced. “You know, these cats and dog would have died to save me.”
“I know.” Tears came into Fair’s eyes.
“I was a fool.”
“Yes,” he quietly said. “And you were very, very lucky.”
“Well, maybe we can celebrate that.” She sighed, feeling both guilty and vindicated.
Not quite.
33
Mother!” Brinkley put his paws on Tazio’s shoulders and kissed her face as she bent her knees slightly to greet him.
Paul had wanted to go to the prison with Ned, and Big Mim thought that was fine. She could do with a day in the stables herself.
However, through Ned, Tazio had asked that Paul stay at work. She wanted to wash the stink of the prison off her, fix her hair, girly herself up.
Ned brought Brinkley.
On the drive home, Ned provided all the details he had of Mike McElvoy’s arrest.
“Did he confess to the murders?”
“No. He swears he’s innocent.” Ned couldn’t help the irritation that crept into his voice. “So, kid, we’re still not out of the woods yet, and it will be expensive.”
“At least I’m out of jail. How can I ever thank Big Mim for going to people and raising bail?”
“By being yourself. She likes you. Well, she’d have to, wouldn’t she?” He smiled. “There is one thing.”
“What? A building?”
“Big Mim has wanted to create an orangery for years. Never got around to it. Perhaps you might surprise her with plans.”
Her eyes brightened, for Tazio had never designed an orangery.
Always up to a new challenge, she said, “I will. Wonder if I can create a misting system that won’t be intrusive.”
Ned smiled broadly this time, because he knew Tazi
o was on her way back to the Tazio they all knew. This experience had bruised a sensitive soul.
Given what she considered her state of ugliness, it took Tazio two full hours to prepare herself. Then she hopped in her wheels—with Brinkley, the happiest dog in America, in the passenger seat—and drove to the stables.
Paul, in a back paddock, heard the engine. He quietly slipped the halter off the yearling, closed the gate, and burned the wind running to the parking lot, the halter flapping all the while, for he had forgotten to hang it up.
Tazio had no sooner taken three steps from the car than Paul smothered her in an embrace. Then she cried and cried. She’d known she loved him, even though she’d kept that to herself. But she hadn’t known how much.
He cried, too.
Brinkley, respectfully seated, wagged his tail because he knew they weren’t sad tears.
“I love you,” Tazio simply said.
Big Mim, who had just come out of the house to walk into the garden, saw them out of the corner of her eye. She thought she’d wait a little before going down there, but she did see Paul drop to one knee, take Tazio’s right hand in his. She looked up to heaven and thought, truly the Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.
After Tazio agreed to marry Paul, the two of them, holding hands, walked up from the stables to the big house. Tazio wanted to thank Big Mim.
Big Mim waved from the garden as she saw them coming, took off her gardening apron, and opened her arms.
“Thank you. Thank you,” Tazio cried again.
Paul did, too.
Big Mim managed to hold it in, but she swallowed hard. “You’ll be cleared. Wait until you read today’s papers.”
Paul wiped his eyes with his hand, straightened his shoulders, and spoke with his seductive accent. “Mrs. Sanburne, Tazio has granted me the honor to become my wife.”
“Marvelous!” Big Mim kissed Tazio and Paul. “You couldn’t have chosen a better partner, nor a more beautiful woman. You are a lucky man.”
Paul beamed and Tazio said, “I’m pretty lucky, too.”
Big Mim held Tazio’s hands in hers, enthusiasm in her voice. “I know you two have a lot to do, people to call, but, Tazio, you have got to read this. Come on.”
The Purrfect Murder Page 22