A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2)

by Lynn Bohart

  Blair and Doe followed at a good distance. When I hit a break in the fence, where the paved cemetery road came into the maintenance yard, they held back. I extinguished my small light and walked through, keeping to the edge of the drive.

  Tony’s light flickered some thirty yards in front of me, partially hidden by a bank of bushes. On the far side was a towering line of trees, now flecked with white. The area was eerily quiet, as the snow picked up and began to blanket the ground.

  I took a calming breath and crossed an intersecting road, stopping at the curb on the other side. I turned and glanced behind me. Two shadows followed me through the opening and then split up. I could just barely make out a third shadow in the background, waiting.

  My body was humming with adrenalin. This seemed crazy, but what else could we do? At least we all wore dark clothes, and except for Blair, sensible shoes. Perhaps we could at least surprise Tony. But what then?

  I turned back to where the light now flickered a short distance in front of me. The bulky outline of the skip loader sat off to the right, like some monster waiting in the dark. Through breaks in the bushes, I could see someone bending over and then straightening up.

  Tony was shoveling dirt.

  My heart sank, and I swallowed a ball of spit at the thought that this was really happening. Someone I trusted and cared for was a ruthless killer. This had happened before – after Martha was murdered. How could I keep misjudging people so badly? But then the realization that Tony might already be shoveling dirt back into the hole made my chest muscles clench.

  I had to hurry.

  I stepped up onto the curb and almost met with disaster. My foot twisted into a hole, making me bite off a cry of pain. I stopped, my heart beating wildly. I took a breath and tried it again, stepping up onto the grass. All was okay, and I continued forward.

  My feet whispered through the growing layer of snow. I snuck forward until I was standing behind the bank of bushes. I flexed my fingers, feeling the cold through my leather gloves. I leaned over and peered through the branches, hoping to see Tony. There was a pile of dirt, now covered in white, and the small light that sat on the ground. But no Tony.

  I tip-toed to the south end of the bushes and then stopped to listen. I was going to have to get up the nerve to step out and reveal myself, but the thought nearly short-circuited my breathing. I closed my eyes a moment to gather strength, and then offered a silent prayer to keep us all safe. But a shiver ran the length of my spine, as if in warning. When I opened my eyes, I noticed a car parked on the far side of where I stood. My brows clenched in question.

  It was a Saab.

  “Well, what do we have here?”

  I spun around with a gasp. A small figure draped in shadow stood behind me, holding something in his right hand.

  “Step around into the light, Julia,” he said. “I have a gun.”

  He gestured with the hand that held the gun. My heart rate went into overdrive, but I turned my back on him and walked into a small clearing surrounded by trees and more bushes.

  A hooded camp lantern sat on the ground next to a deep, oblong hole, surrounded by piles of dirt and mud. A large marble monument sat at the corner of the clearing. On the other side of the hole, Dana laid on her stomach, trussed up like a turkey, snow layering the back of her coat. A piece of duct tape kept her mouth shut, but she saw me and started squirming. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I turned to the man with the gun.

  “Why are you doing this, Clay?”

  “What do you care?” he snarled. “You hate her almost as much as I do.”

  “You hate Dana?”

  “Oh, God, yes,” he replied. He came up to my left side. “She’s the most awful person I know. But, I suppose after I bury her alive, I’ll be the most awful person I know.” He chuckled as Dana whimpered and squirmed frantically.

  “But why bury her alive?”

  “Because she was going to divorce me and leave me penniless,” he roared. He leaned into me, and in the dark, his eyes gleamed with a seething hatred. He took a breath to calm himself down and a leering grin spread across his face. “Don’t you see? This way, I’ll have revenge and her money.”

  I glanced at Dana and finally felt sorry for her.

  “That’s what this is all about? Money. Where’s Tony?”

  “Tony? Oh, the message. That was a ruse. But first things first. I know you’re not alone. So where are the others?”

  “I am alone,” I said unconvincingly. “It’s just me.”

  “No,” he snapped, pointing the gun at my chest. “It’s never just you. You always have your little entourage with you. So where are they?” He stepped back and glanced around, keeping the gun pointed at me. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he sang.

  There was a long pause as the silence of the falling snow seemed to engulf us. Nothing happened.

  “Honestly, I came alone. They’re all back at the Inn.”

  “You’re lying. Come out,” he shouted. “Or I’ll kill Julia now and bury her with Dana.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long cylinder and screwed it onto the tip of his gun. “See? I even brought a silencer, just in case.”

  A few seconds ticked by, and I began to shiver, but not necessarily from the cold. Clay moved over and placed the tip of the silencer against my temple. I flinched. A moment later, Doe stepped out from behind a tree on the other side of the newly dug grave.

  “No need for that,” she called out. “C’mon, Blair. The jig’s up.”

  Blair finally emerged from behind the large marble headstone. She stepped into the shallow light carrying the baseball bat, snow blanketing her blond hair.

  “Drop the bat,” he ordered. She tossed it forward, and it fell to the ground with a soft thud.

  “Get over here next to your friend,” he said, gesturing with the gun.

  He stepped back, while Blair moved next to Doe on the other side of the hole.

  “Okay, now hand over Dana’s cell phone,” he said, holding out the flat of his hand to me.

  I looked at Doe and Blair, thinking this was the one piece of evidence we had that could tell the police who did it. “I don’t have it with me,” I lied. “I left it at the Inn.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he snapped again. “And if you don’t hand it over, I’ll shoot you in the knee and then various other parts of your body, until you do.”

  His hand shook as his anxiety rose. I took a deep breath. His face was like an iron mask in the low light, and his eyes bulged behind those coke-bottle lenses. He was serious.

  I reached into my pocket and tossed the phone to him, hoping he’d drop it, and we could rush him. But even though he had to reach for it, he was able to grab it mid-air.

  Damn!

  “Well, now that that’s done, what’s next? Oh, yes, I have to kill you.”

  “But…” I blurted. “What about Tony? Is he part of this, or not?”

  I needed to keep him talking. Time was our only ally at this point – well, that and Rudy, wherever she was.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. No,” he snarled. “I hacked his email, just like I did yours. It was the best way to get her outside,” he said, gesturing to Dana. There was a short, spritely jingle from Dana’s phone. He stopped and reached into his pocket and took it out. Even from where I stood, I could tell the phone had lit up. “What the…?” he said. As he studied the phone, Doe inched sideways toward him, while Blair stepped over to where the bat was and got it in between her feet. Meanwhile, Clay ran his fingers across the edge of the phone to turn it off again. “There,” he said, looking up. He was about to drop it in his pocket, when once again, it jingled. “Shit! What the heck?” He glanced at the screen and then up at me. “What game are you playing? What did you do to the phone?”

  “Nothing,” I replied honestly. But I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who was toying with him.

  “The text message just changed. It now says there’s a storm coming,” he said.

&n
bsp; I smiled. And then my cell phone rang.

  “Don’t answer that,” he ordered with a jerk of the gun. “Give it here.”

  As I reached into my pocket, he stepped around the end of the grave toward me. He put Dana’s phone in his pocket and took mine, moving back to the end of the gravesite. Meanwhile, Doe and Blair had moved another several inches in his direction, Blair sliding the baseball bat along the snow-covered grass. He quickly turned my phone off. Almost immediately, it flicked back on and rang again. He glared at me. “What the hell game are you playing?” he screamed. “How are you doing that?”

  “Doing what? You can see that I’m not doing anything.” I held my hands up as evidence.

  “The same message just showed up on your phone.” His hand was shaking even more now.

  “Oh, that. It’s not me,” I said, nonchalantly. “It’s my mother.”

  “That’s a crock. Your mother is dead.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing. She is dead.”

  Doe’s phone rang. His head and gun jerked in her direction. She took a step back and raised her hands. “Careful! Do you want me to get it?” she asked with a nervous edge to her voice.

  He was breathing hard now, his anger morphing into fear. “No. Maybe I’ll just kill all of you right now.”

  “Better dig a deeper grave,” Blair said, nodding at the hole.

  Dana tried screaming through the duct tape at that.

  “Get over there next to your friend,” he ordered with a jerk of the gun. Doe and Blair looked at me and then back at him. “Go!” He jerked the gun again to indicate he wanted them to circle the other end of the grave. They carefully stepped around the hole, leaving the bat behind.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, stalling for time.

  “I’ll figure something out. I haven’t come this far to let a bunch of old women stop me.”

  There was a loud click. The lamppost at the back of the property suddenly burst into life, bathing the area right in front of it in light.

  Clay spun around. “Shit.”

  “The power is coming back on,” I said. “Better think quickly.”

  We were still cast in deep shadow, but lights in houses on the far side of the cemetery had also come on.

  “Yeah, Clay,” Blair said. “Pretty soon the whole world will be able to see what you’re doing.”

  “Shut up!” he snarled, turning back. “I need to think.”

  Clay glanced behind him. He was nervous. I wondered if it was the power company or my mother. The three of us now stood in a row on the north side of the grave. I was close enough to Doe to feel her reach into her left pocket. And then I felt something cold and hard being slipped into my hand. It was her cell phone. I wrapped my fingers around it and shot her a curious look. She nodded towards Clay.

  She wanted me to throw it.

  He was staring into the hole, concentrating on his predicament. So I wound up and threw the phone. Doe and I started forward, ready to rush him, but the phone flew right past his left ear, making him snap his head up. “That’s it! I’ll just kill you all and leave you here,” he yelled, bringing up the gun.

  Twang! The opening chords of Jimi Hendrix’s iconic guitar reverberated out of the darkness around us, like something from a horror movie.

  “What?” he cried, spinning towards the sound, the gun wavering.

  A large rock whizzed out of a bank of bushes. He swerved to miss it, but it grazed his shoulder, knocking him off balance and dislodging his glasses. The gun went off, making us all flinch. Clay regained his composure quickly.

  “Come out, or I’ll kill your friends!” he screamed, pointing the gun at the bushes.

  A second rock came quickly on the heels of the first. I watched it emerge from the shadows as if in slow motion, praying that it would hit its mark. But it didn’t come slow. It came so fast, Clay didn’t have time to move. The fist-sized projectile smacked him right between the eyes with a sickening thud. His body stiffened. The gun dropped to the ground, and he toppled backwards into the grave.

  “Whoohoo!” Blair shouted. She ran around and grabbed the gun and pointed it into the hole.

  “Careful, Blair,” Doe warned her.

  “I’m not going to shoot him. Just watch him. You guys get Dana,” she said.

  Doe and I hurried around to the other side of the grave, just as Rudy climbed out of some bushes with a shit-faced grin plastered across her face. “Don’t tell me I haven’t got it anymore,” she said, rotating her shoulder.

  We all laughed. “You have it in spades,” Doe said.

  I had just taken the tape off Dana’s mouth when Rudy got there to help.

  “Are you kidding me?” Dana blasted, twisting her head up to glare at Rudy. “Your plan was to hit him with a rock? What if you’d missed? We could all be dead.”

  Dana rolled to one side, offering her hands to Rudy. “Here, get my hands first,” she ordered.

  Rudy crouched down to remove the bindings, but glanced up at me with a look of resignation.

  “Rudy,” I warned. “Don’t…”

  But as the forlorn sound of a siren sounded in the distance, Rudy put both hands under Dana’s hips and rolled her face-first into the grave.

  “Oops,” she said with a sly grin.

  Blair watched and then spit out a laugh. “Good shot, Rudy.”

  Doe and I stepped up to the grave. “Oh, dear,” Doe said.

  “Get me out of here!” Dana gave a muffled cry.

  Blair and Rudy gave each other a high five, as Dana cried out again from where her face lay nestled in Clay’s crotch.

  “Just relax, Dana,” Blair said with a laugh. “You’re safe. I don’t think that gun will be discharging anytime soon.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  It was just a week after we’d hauled Dana out of her makeshift grave and helped to put her husband in jail. Roger had been found in a seedy motel in downtown Seattle and booked on conspiracy charges. And Goldie had offered to hold a kick-off party for Tony Morales’ campaign for Mercer Island mayor.

  The gnome home was all lit up for the festivities. We were gathered in her enormous rec room on the ground floor that looked out on Lake Washington. Little red and blue gnomes peeked out from behind picture frames, canisters and clocks, while an entire army of them lined a three inch shelf that ran the perimeter of the room, two feet from the ceiling.

  Goldie and Ben had traveled the world, making their home a virtual museum of collectibles from other countries. Everywhere you looked was something that could spark a conversation, including a set of beer mugs from the pub in Boston that had served as the inspiration for the TV show, Cheers. And the furniture was an eclectic mix of leather and upholstery, plus some odd pieces brought home from faraway lands. This included an ottoman I was sitting on, that had been made to look like an elephant’s foot.

  Both Tony and his wife were there, along with their ten-year old daughter. Tony had purposely gone public with the news about his wife’s college employment to avoid any campaign shenanigans. In the end, no one cared. We’d also learned that he’d asked Trudy to spy on Dana, only to find out if she was going to oppose the Mayor’s proposal for an adaptive playground for both able-bodied and disabled children. Given her propensity to lavish her ill-will on Tony’s physical limitations, he wanted to be prepared.

  While Dana had decided not to attend the party, she had publicly endorsed Tony’s candidacy. But besides that, she had largely gone underground. I suspected she would make good on her word and pull up stakes soon and move to another city, if not another country. I couldn’t blame her.

  Once everyone was assembled, Mayor Frum stood up and tapped his glass to get our attention. I was holding a small paper plate in my hands, filled with veggies and dip. The ottoman had been placed right next to the end of the sofa, where Blair sat, her long legs stretched out in front of her. Sitting next to her on the strange ottoman, I felt like her little sister, relegated to the kids’ table at Thanksgiving.


  I listened attentively while nibbling on a carrot, as Tony gave a short, scripted speech. Just as he was finishing, I decided to lean back and cross one leg over the other. Little did I know that the bottom of the elephant’s foot wasn’t flat or solid. It was slightly rounded. So, as applause rose to signal the end of Tony’s speech, I slowly rolled backwards into a potted plant.

  I took the plant down with a crash and ended upside down with my butt in the air. Thankfully, I was wearing pants. There were gasps and cries of alarm, but I righted myself, popped up and assured everyone I was fine.

  “Really, Julia?” Blair whispered. “This isn’t about you anymore. It’s about Tony. Get a grip.”

  Doe and Rudy were on the other side of the room, and while Doe’s expression was one of concern, Rudy just shook her head as a nice gentleman helped pull me to my feet.

  “Sorry, I said, blushing. “Please continue, Tony.”

  “Well, Julia deserves a round of applause,” Tony said. “If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here tonight announcing my candidacy for mayor. So, thank you, Julia.”

  Everyone joined in, making me blush even more. I leaned over to retrieve my plate and scattered veggies, when I noticed that David, Angela and Detective Abrams had just come downstairs. Thank God they’d missed my acrobatic stunt. I straightened my blouse and made my way over to them.

  The girls followed me, and we took drinks and fresh plates of hors d’oeuvres upstairs to the living room.

  “So Clay was the mastermind all along?” I asked.

  We’d settled around a small table, ready to debrief. Detective Abrams had just grabbed a chicken skewer. “Looks that way. His collection agency was underwater, big time. Seems he overextended himself by opening two other offices – one in Renton and the one in Bellingham. Anyway, he needed an infusion of cash. But Dana controlled her own assets and refused to loan him any money.”