by Amy Saunders
He gave her a boost and she grabbed the edge of the metal container, swinging her legs over it, which was harder than it looked on TV. She immediately sunk into the trash bags and scrunched her face, trying not to imagine what she was knee-deep in, though the smell gave her a clue. Maybe she should have left the cute shoes at home. She held her breath in intervals as she dug through, fortunately thinking to wear gloves.
“Anything?” Bennett whispered.
“Not yet,” Belinda said, gagging. She got more aggressive, realizing this could take all night, tossing stuff from that side to the other hastily, groping the bags for anything that felt worth examining.
Finally, she made out something underneath that was not a bag or scraps of this and that or packing materials, maybe leftover junk from auctions or something. It was a cardboard box, taped up. Belinda heaved it up, setting it on a pile of trash. She whipped out her trusty pocket knife and slashed the tape, tearing it open. Bennett struggled to see over the top.
Inside was the pretty blue vase with a delicate vine pattern, the mate of the one in Dinah’s closet, on top of some paint-stained fabric. Belinda’s heart pumped fast in anticipation as she carefully lifted it by the mouth, touching it as little as possible, and held it out in the light. She rotated it to see the base. On the blue was still a clear bloodstain on the edge, though it was faded. Some of the blood had transferred to the white cloth underneath.
Bennett felt his pockets and frowned. “I left my phone in the car.”
Belinda’s face fell. She had a pocket knife, a lock pick, gloves, and even some gum because she had room, but she’d left her phone behind too. “Well, we can’t just leave it here. You stay with this and I’ll run back and call the police.”
Bennett looked uneasy.
“I won’t be long.” Belinda smiled. He helped her down, and she pecked his cheek before running off toward the car. She wondered if Alec had lied and did know about the forgery and followed Kevin here and killed him before he could have the fake appraised. From the little she’d seen of him, Alec seemed conniving. He might have been able to pull that off, though it certainly came with logistical issues.
She got back to the park and inside the car to call Jonas with Bennett’s phone, which was on the charger. Probably why he forgot it. She locked the door out of habit and started to dial when she locked eyes in the rearview mirror with a man in the backseat. Before she could scream, he wrapped something rough around her throat from behind and squeezed her against the headrest. She couldn’t breathe and felt like her neck was on fire, and could feel her arms flailing and grappling at hands and arms and a face, but she couldn’t think straight to know what else to do.
She kicked at the dashboard, trying to rear up either for leverage or air, but his arms were too strong. Belinda started to see spots as she struggled, thinking she’d scratched her opponent, but it didn’t make the not breathing or the burning or the spots go away.
Then she heard a smash far away, and then a crash and a thud, and she could breathe again, and she coughed and coughed, putting her hand to her throat where it was raw and aching. An arm grazed her shoulder and her door opened, and another set of arms held her while she coughed and her vision returned.
Belinda could hear sirens and Bennett said, “You should go. You don’t need to get mixed up in this.” She was becoming more lucid and could make out another figure behind Bennett run off into the park. Bennett wasn’t talking to her apparently, so she stayed put, gripping his jacket for safety while he pulled her in closer.
“I’ve got you,” he said softly. “You’re safe now.”
By the time the sirens made it to their street, she could see clearly again–and breathe. She would never undervalue oxygen ever again. Her throat ached, outside and inside, and she finally saw what had been wrapped around it. A piece of stiff yellow braided rope. She looked back up in the mirror, and saw Adrian Leon passed out, his head lolling against the window and eyes flickering. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his face. She touched her neck, white specks of paint flaking off where he tried to strangle her.
Police and EMTs rushed onto the scene, and Bennett helped her out of the car and carried her over to the ambulance. As they passed the backseat of the car, Belinda looked down and saw the vase lying in the box they found it in.
“You knocked him out with the vase,” she said.
“He’s fortunate that’s all I did.”
Belinda leaned her forehead on his cheek, still gripping his jacket as he placed her on a stretcher. “Don’t leave,” she whispered.
He took her hand as she was strapped in and given oxygen. They watched from a little ways away as Leon was hauled from the car, now awake, and handcuffed.
Chapter 27
A few days later, Belinda was in her dining room having breakfast with her parents, who’d come to stay with them after Belinda’s near-death experience, along with Kyle and Bennett. Bennett had been there every minute he could, which gave her parents a chance to get to know him. It didn’t hurt that they were grateful he’d rescued her. It seemed like whatever reservations they still had dissolved after that. Victoria had made her and her mother cry, and even Colleen had dropped by, looking like herself again, just to see how she was doing. Belinda still wasn’t sure how she felt about their new evolving relationship.
She had to admit she was still just grateful to be alive. It hadn’t hit her until later how close to kissing the world good-bye she’d been, but she had been seconds from death. Adrian Leon had successfully killed three other people. She was almost his fourth.
After breakfast, Belinda and Bennett met up with Jonas on the Ocean Walk to get the rest of the story about Adrian Leon. Jonas was in casual clothes–shorts and a polo shirt. Belinda had to say that the whole J. Crew look really worked for him, and it worked within Portside. She was glad she’d steered him in that direction. For herself, she was grateful for body concealer. She needed it with the bruises left on her neck from the rope.
“Leon confessed?” Bennett said. The two of them were a little more formally dressed than Jonas, but they technically had a work-type meeting to go to after this. Bennett wasn’t sure they should yet, but Belinda insisted.
In hindsight, Adrian Leon as the killer made perfect sense to Belinda. He was in a perfect position to sell forged art, and he definitely had the strength to kill Kevin, Angie, and Dinah. He knew Dinah, and she had bid on the vase, which Belinda originally saw in Leon’s office. And his office had stunk of bleach that day.
“He told us Kevin Pratt came to him to get his opinion on the painting’s worth.” Jonas leaned back on the short stone wall as they talked in a wider section of the walk where you could afford to stop. Leon was arrested for attempting to murder her, but Belinda was worried he’d get away with the others since Kevin’s murder weapon was compromised. “Of course, Leon knew it was a fake, so he told Kevin a colleague would look into it while he figured out what to do. I guess he was torn between selling it or lying and getting rid of it. Either way, he was foiled when Kevin came back to say he met someone who knew Simone, so he wanted the painting back to get her opinion.”
“Ah,” Belinda said. “So then Leon was really trapped.”
“Yep. He lied and told Kevin the painting wasn’t there, but Kevin got suspicious and demanded Leon return the painting or he’d call the police. Leon panicked and when Kevin turned around, he grabbed the vase and…” Jonas shrugged. “He stuffed Kevin in his office closet until he figured out what to do with him. Leon thought about calling the police, or so he says, and say it was an accident, because he wasn’t positive Kevin was dead at first. But that would open up other inquiries, which he wasn’t prepared to deal with.”
Belinda figured that’s why the offices smelled like cleaning products. Leon was trying to clean up whatever blood there was, and probably wipe down evidence that Kevin had been there.
Jonas continued. “So Leon threw Pratt’s body in his trunk late that night and hauled
him onto his boat and dumped the painting with Kevin, thinking Kevin would just go missing and the painting would disappear forever. We have footage on Leon’s own surveillance system of him hauling the body out of his office and putting it in his trunk and tossing the vase in the Dumpster. Leon overlooked the cameras in his attempt to cover his tracks.
“Anyway, Leon got really worried knowing Kevin had told someone else about the painting. Kevin didn’t tell him who, so it took a little while for Leon to figure out it was Angie Chen. He actually overheard you talking about Angie to Dinah.” Jonas nodded at Belinda. “Leon saw Angie’s name on Kevin’s phone, and after he heard you, he put it together that Kevin must have told Angie. And, well, that was that. Unfortunately, I doubt Angie knew Kevin had left the painting with Leon.”
“Did Dinah know?” Belinda said, feeling guilty now for basically calling out Angie. Not that she meant to, and at the time, she’d suspected Angie of forging the painting and possibly killing Kevin.
“Not at first.” Jonas folded his arms. “But Leon had used the vase from that auction you went to to kill Kevin, and he needed Dinah to bid and get the other one in the pair to avoid a lot of questions about why the mate was missing. In the end, that meant telling her what happened. Not that it helped him.” Jonas winked.
Belinda turned her face into the wind, inhaling the salt air. “Why did he kill Dinah? Just to cover up everything?”
“Well, they’d been partners in the art forgery business for years and never had any problems. They met when Dinah was still in college, and when her career stalled, she agreed to work with him. But she got nervous, especially once Angie was dead and her daughter was under suspicion. He was afraid she was about to tell all. Then there was you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Though it’s partially my fault. When I showed him the photo of the forged Simone, it clicked why you were poking around, asking after that painting, and he got worried. Dinah was jittery, so he decided the best course was to get rid of her and destroy all the evidence. But then on his way home from the auction house, he happened to see you walking down the street, and he got even more nervous, wondering what you really knew. So he followed you, jimmied Bennett’s car door, and waited in the backseat.”
“Planning to kill us both?”
Jonas shrugged. “I really don’t think he thought it all the way through, or even realized Bennett was with you. Remember, this was after he killed Dinah. Every step he took got less precise and more desperate. But then, well, you kind of fell right into his lap as easy prey.”
Belinda frowned. She needed to keep working on that. “So were the paintings of Alec important at all?”
Jonas smirked. “Not as much as we thought, I suppose, though they did help expose Dinah.”
“Speaking of which, Belinda needs to delete those images from her phone.” Bennett gave her a pointed look.
Belinda smiled sweetly.
“We do suspect from Dinah’s e-mails,” Jonas said, “that Angie did know that Dinah was painting Alec and called her out on it. My guess is Angie found out via Kevin. We don’t know for sure, but it’s likely Dinah tossed the paintings to hide that fact.”
That would explain why Dinah disliked Angie so much. “So how did Angie know where to find them?” Belinda said.
“From one of Angie’s artist friends, who works in that area. She saw Dinah toss something into that Dumpster and mentioned it to Angie. The friend claims to not know anything about the fake or the Alec paintings, but I suspect Angie took the paintings to compare with the forged Simone. If Shelby’s telling the truth, Angie figured out it was Dinah, and probably called Shelby to tell her.”
Belinda nodded. Sounded plausible. “Why did Leon dump the vase he killed Kevin with in his own Dumpster? That was kind of dumb. Why not throw it in the water with everything else?”
Jonas smiled. “Leon’s actions were scattered after killing Kevin. He tossed the vase before putting Kevin in his trunk. He claims he didn’t really know what he was doing at that point, or going to do. I figure he never meant for Kevin’s body to be found in the first place, so throwing away the vase, making sure it was at the bottom of a pile of other garbage, probably felt safe at the time. Then, once the murder investigation was under way, it was riskier to move the vase out of the Dumpster. He felt it was safer to leave it be. They’d empty the Dumpster and all traces of his crime would vanish, or so he thought.
“In any case, we’ve got Kevin’s blood in Leon’s office and on his boat that he docks on his own property, and in his trunk, not to mention the vase. He’s the right height to have strangled Angie and hit Dinah on the head. Rope and paint found on his boat match what was found on Angie. His arm got burned by Angie’s soldering iron while strangling her. Plus, we have a witness who saw Leon go into the building where Dinah’s art studio was shortly before it was set on fire. More ties to both murders are probably forthcoming. And the FBI is investigating the art forgery, so I don’t think he has much of a chance of getting away completely free.”
“Guess that means you’re free to attend to other matters?” Belinda grinned.
Jonas returned it. “I took everyone’s advice and confessed to Ardith about the scuba diving.”
“Good boy. How did it go?”
“I guess it went well because we have a private lesson together this afternoon.”
Belinda arched her eyebrows. “Sounds watery.”
“Well enjoy it,” Bennett said, “though I have a feeling you’re going to impulsively get caught in another sticky predicament.”
Jonas smiled wickedly. “I do have a history of that when it comes to women. Based on the way you’re dressed, I foresee the same for you two.”
“You’re probably not far off,” Belinda said, glancing down at her outfit. “We don’t want to keep you from your date. Au revoir, then?”
“Or, good-bye.” Jonas smiled, a lightness to his step when he walked away that she’d never seen before. It was nice.
“Stop it,” Bennett said once Jonas was out of earshot.
“Stop what? I haven’t done anything.” She took the arm he offered and they strolled back to the beginning of the Ocean Walk.
“You’re picturing their wedding.”
“Am not. I’m picturing their children. They’re gorgeous, by the way.” She grinned, walking in front of him as the path narrowed and they came upon the arch, passing under it with hands clasped. Before they went by and while no one was right behind or in front of them, Bennett yanked her back and kissed her right underneath of it.
“I wanted to do that the first time we were standing here,” he said in his familiar velvety voice. He’d spoken to her like that almost right from the beginning, possibly even where they stood. It still made her feel swoony.
“I wanted you to, though I was simultaneously unsure what I thought of you at all.”
“That’s very flattering.”
Belinda laughed. “I’m just being honest. You know, the thing that you do all the time?”
His face became very serious, and she figured something was coming. They hadn’t really talked, just the two of them, since the incident. He wasn’t allowed in with her at the hospital and since then someone had been around every second. “Now that we’re alone, I have something to confess. I can’t take full credit for saving you.”
At first, she was confused. Who else was there? But then she remembered the figure disappearing into the park. “You told someone to leave before the police got there.”
“You got that? You were pretty loopy at that point. I was worried you’d black out.”
“No, I heard. I just couldn’t see the other person. Who was it?”
Bennett paused before answering. “It was Jarrett.”
Belinda blinked in surprise, then felt relief sweep through her. Maybe Jarrett hanging around their house that night was perfectly innocent. “What was he doing there?”
“I spoke to him later, and he said he’d followed you
since you left Shelby’s. He was tailing you when you left to go to the car, and he saw Leon attack you. He was trying to break through the window with a rock when I got up the hill, then he called the police.”
“You followed too?”
“I didn’t feel right separating. Something about the whole situation…I didn’t like it.”
She frowned. In hindsight, that was a terrible decision on her part. “I’m really glad you ignored me, even though you had to tamper with evidence to help.”
He cupped her face with his hands. “Are you kidding, Kittridge? I was relieved I’d brought it with me at the last second. Jarrett’s rock wasn’t making it through the window.”
Belinda was getting all teary eyed, and she had mascara on. “You do have a pet name for me.”
“How did we get from saving you to pet names?”
“Kittridge. Your pet name for me is Kittridge.”
“It’s just your name.” He seemed to be calculating what she said, though, unsure if she was right.
“Yes, but it’s my last name and it’s how you say it and use it. You don’t call me that all the time, so it’s kind of…special. It’s like you save it for special moments.” Like when he was emotional, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
“I guess so. I haven’t really thought about it.”
Belinda kissed him again.
They were forced to move on as other people came down the walk, but they would just make it back to the inn at the path’s official start point as it was, so she guessed they needed to move on. Still, it was nice to be there together again.