by Sandra Balzo
‘Quite the coup, too.’ I began backing away from the ‘collection’, not able to see where my own heels were landing. ‘I mean, your find and all.’
Even I could hear the panic in my voice. I’d confronted a serial killer outside and taken her down. Now I was with a man I suspected of mere fraud, but my knees were shaking.
‘Beautiful dress,’ Chitown said. ‘And you look lovely in it.’
‘Thanks, but since we’re probably late for the party, why don’t I meet you over there.’
He caught my arm. ‘I think we should talk here for a moment first.’
‘Here?’ The slaughterhouse, as before, was giving me incremental heebie-jeebies. I wanted to scream and run, but I’d have to take off the high heels first and they had ankle straps.
I doubted that Chitown would wait for me to squat down and undo them, even if I could make myself risk coming into significant personal contact with a floor that had absorbed the blood of countless animals. Even people.
And my hope was that yours truly would not be added to that last body count.
OK, I said to myself, enough mindless fear.
I took a deep breath. ‘Listen, I think it was a really clever stunt, and believe me, no one will hear about it from me.’
‘No?’ The word came from behind the concrete pillar, Deirdre Doty rolling her shoulders around it and coming into sight wearing the same outfit she’d had on earlier, sans jacket. The lacy little cami showed, as well as her toned arms, which I didn’t think I’d ever seen. Apparently, I hadn’t heard her come in over the beating of my heart.
‘Of course not,’ I said, trying to iron out my voice. ‘I spent a lot of years doing events and public relations. You pulled off the ultimate magic trick – nobody really wants to know how it was done.’
‘You did.’ The corners of Doty’s mouth lifted a fraction, but that was the extent of anything you could call a smile. Or even a grin.
Under the dress, I was sweating like crazy and the rash on my hand was itching even worse. I couldn’t resist scratching.
‘Oh look, Ward. She’s wringing her hands.’ Doty’s voice bizarrely reminded me of Barbara Billingsley, the actress who played the mother on the old TV show, Leave it to Beaver – probably because the father’s character on the program was also named Ward. But Deirdre Doty was no June Cleaver.
‘I wasn’t wringing . . .’ I started to say, then I caught a slightly different angle of light on her bare arm.
‘What’s that?’ I gestured toward a red patch on her forearm that looked an awful lot like the one on my hand.
‘Nothing.’ She hid it behind her like a kid caught stealing candy.
I felt the balance of power shift, if not reverse itself, though nothing had really changed except my attitude. There was probably a lesson in that. ‘It is too something. It’s a rash, like mine from a trumpet creeper. How’d you get yours?’
‘What do you mean?’ Now Doty was backing away from me.
I chanced an advance. ‘I got this when I touched the plant that was growing by the doorway of the so-called waiting room under the depot’s loading dock the day we discovered Brigid’s body. I could understand him –’ I pointed to Chitown – ‘maybe touching it, but you weren’t there then. You’d left to make some calls. At least, that’s what you told us.’
Her eyes went wide. ‘I . . .’
Chitown chimed in. ‘We have to be honest with her, Deirdre.’
I pivoted, careful to keep both of them in view. ‘So why don’t you start, Ward? Tell me about the money you planted. There was no hidden loot – you made the whole thing up.’
‘It was a stunt, as you said, but nothing more.’ All of a sudden, Chitown looked like a broken man. ‘The money was mine, Maggy.’
‘You sacrificed your own money? You may not even get it back.’
‘It’s a fifty-thousand-dollar investment, one that could bring me another show of my own, especially if our production clips go viral on the Internet. I could even launch my own webcast, which, believe me, is the future of this medium we’ve been calling television.’
‘You could have done that without spending a small fortune. Apparently even little me is all over the social networks.’ I’d have shown him, but I’d had to leave my phone in my purse. No pockets in slut dresses.
‘So I’ve heard.’ Chitown didn’t look happy.
‘OK, I think I buy that you didn’t mean any harm. But what about Brigid Ferndale?’
Doty said, ‘We found her here.’
A hollow tone. ‘When?’ I asked.
‘Monday night, when we came to scout the place.’
I thought I saw a chink in the armor of their new ‘truth’. ‘But Deirdre, Brigid didn’t leave Sapphire until after you did. How could the two of you have found her?’
Doty blinked three times in rapid succession. ‘I had to wait for Ward.’
Now Chitown was frowning at her oddly. ‘No, Deirdre, that’s not accurate. You called me when you left Sapphire and I was standing outside the Ristorante when you arrived.’
‘What did you do then?’ My question was directed at Chitown.
‘Deirdre undid the lockbox and we took out the key to the restaurant’s front door. We’d requested that the internal electricity be turned on, so we walked through the dining room, etc., deciding where to shoot what.’
‘And from there into the slaughterhouse. Is that when you planted the money?’
‘I did,’ Doty said. An offhand wave at her boss. ‘Ward was wearing a suit.’
‘Do you always do his dirty work?’
She shrugged.
‘Did you use a meat hook to lower the bag into the drain?’
She nodded, not looking at me.
‘Whose idea was it to use a plastic bag?’
‘Mine,’ Doty said. ‘That way the actual money would be protected and a small slit in the bottom would let people think the rest of the bills had been lost down the drain and into the sewer.’
‘Good plan, but unfortunately plastic grocery bags weren’t around in 1974.’ I threw Chitown a glance. ‘Next time you might want to conspire with someone who has a little more historical perspective. You know, like . . . Elaine Riordan? In fact, I’m surprised she didn’t catch the “paper or plastic” problem, herself. Or did she?’
‘If she did,’ Doty snapped, ‘at least she knew enough to keep her mouth shut.’
‘Of course she did,’ I said. ‘Elaine wanted not only to be like you, she wanted to be you.’
‘And why not? I’m damn good at my job. I do everything for Ward and he, he . . .’ Doty let it wither away.
‘And he doesn’t appreciate you, right? And to add insult to injury, you have to watch him charm other women. Is that the real reason Elaine didn’t give you away? Because she’s also crazy about Ward?’
Besides being just plain crazy.
I continued along the same tack. ‘I bet there are a lot of women who fancy themselves in love with the big man. That must be hard for you. You even tried flirting with the sheriff. Tell me, did Ward even notice?’
‘I don’t flirt.’ Doty had sunk into sullen now.
I changed it up. ‘So, where did you find Brigid’s body?’
Now, finally, Chitown spoke up. ‘Deirdre saw her after placing the money. The . . . corpse was hidden behind that pillar.’
‘That pillar?’ I pointed, remembering the stain I imagined was wet when I touched it. ‘Did Brigid hit her head, Deirdre?’
She shook her head, lips tight.
‘No, no,’ Chitown said. ‘You have it all wrong, Maggy. The young woman was already dead. We just moved the body.’ He actually seemed ashamed. ‘I’m not proud of it, but your Brigid simply couldn’t be found here. It would have ruined our whole plan.’
‘How did you know about the room under the depot?’
Doty fielded that one, if grudgingly. ‘Elaine told me about the waiting area, along with a million other “fascinating” factoids, when I me
t with her at the Historical Society. Honest to God, you couldn’t shut the woman up.’
Including the morning we’d found Brigid Ferndale’s body. No wonder Riordan had been so open about the room’s existence. She’d had no idea what awaited us inside. ‘Were you trying to frame Elaine? Did you know she’d killed the other women?’
‘Of course not,’ Doty said. ‘How could we? I just figured she was another whack job infatuated with Ward.’
Who the bigger ‘whack job’ was, remained to be seen. ‘So, you put Brigid’s body under the depot. And, if there hadn’t been a ventilation shaft allowing the stench of decomposition to waft up and we’d never gone to investigate, no one would have been the wiser.’ I paused. ‘Not even Brigid’s family.’
Doty just shook her head again, but Chitown replied to me, ‘Deirdre and I were well aware of the killings, if not the identity of the killer. When we found the body, we just knew your Brigid had to be another victim killed showing a property.’
‘My’ Brigid, again. Like a parent who, when the kids misbehaved, disclaimed ownership. ‘Look at what your son did’. Though in this case, ‘my Brigid’ – party girl, social climber, someone’s daughter – had simply died. And done so at the hands of somebody within ten feet of me. And I wasn’t going to let that pass.
‘But Brigid wasn’t “another victim”,’ I said. ‘Ward, you’re not thinking clearly. First of all, Brigid died from blunt trauma to the head. The other women were shot through the head. Second, witnesses say that Brigid left Sapphire a good twenty minutes after Deirdre, who supposedly came directly here. There’s only one conclusion.’
Make them wait for it. ‘One or both of you killed Brigid Ferndale.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ward Chitown needed only two strides to reach Deirdre Doty and shake her by the shoulders. ‘My God, Deirdre. Is Maggy right? Did you actually kill the Ferndale girl? Oh, you’ve ruined everything for me.’
Oh, boy. And I’d thought Elaine Riordan was a sociopath.
Doty held up both her hands, she now trying to back away. ‘I did not. She was going to ruin it, Ward. That nosy, greedy bitch caught me hiding your money. Said she’d tell everybody unless we cut her in.’
‘I could have handled that,’ Chitown said, giving Doty another shake, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. ‘Why didn’t you at least let me talk to her?’
‘I think I can answer that,’ I said to Chitown. ‘You never actually met her, Ward. In fact, the only reason you knew the “real estate agent for the Ristorante” was a lovely young blonde, as you put it last night, was that you had seen her dead. Here.’
I waited for a denial from either quarter but, getting none, pushed on. ‘Deirdre, though, did meet Brigid and it didn’t take thirty minutes to realize that the young woman was not only beautiful, but ambitious and utterly ruthless. Women like Kate McNamara and Elaine Riordan were always buzzing around you, but Brigid was different. Deirdre didn’t want her anywhere near you, much less as a partner.’
Deirdre Doty moved both hands to Chitown’s chest now, pleading. ‘She was a user, Ward. Yes, a star-fucker, like all the rest, except this one was smart. That bitch would have chewed even you up and spat you out.’ Doty dropped her chin to her chest. ‘She called you a . . . has-been.’
Chitown released her, then started to pace. Nervously now, unlike the measured showman on stage earlier that day. ‘Oh, God, Deirdre. What have you done?’
‘I did it for you,’ she said, trying to fall into step with him.
‘Did you push her, Deirdre?’ I asked. ‘Or maybe it was an accident? Brigid stumbled and hit her head.’
‘That was it.’ Now the poor producer was nodding like crazy, words suddenly tumbling out at a frantic pace. ‘We argued and I . . . When she called you a has-been, Ward, I couldn’t stand it and I pushed her. Brigid fell back and hit her head on the pillar there.’
Doty pointed and I wiped my hand on my dress, futilely hoping to forget the stickiness.
‘You’re going to jail,’ Chitown shouted. ‘Do you understand that you, little twit?’
The producer looked like she’d been clouted. Her mouth opened and closed like a dying goldfish before she finally turned to me. ‘Ward helped me with all of it, Maggy. Cleaning up the blood and loading the body into her car. We backed up to the depot’s loading dock and I took the flashlight and found the door and opened it. Ward helped me carry her into the bathroom, too. Then we left her car in your parking lot, after I wiped off all the places I thought we could have left fingerprints.’
Ward Chitown seemed stunned, as though he could never have imagined his producer would withdraw loyalty from him the way he just had from her.
‘Sounds like accessory-after-the-fact,’ I said, remembering the rut I’d noticed next to the sidewalk leading to the passenger platform stairs. One tire on the concrete and one on the grass.
‘You little bitch,’ Chitown now screamed, coming at her. ‘I’ll, I’ll . . . testify against you.’
Doty backed up and, finding herself against the wall of meat hooks, grabbed one. ‘Stay away from me, Ward, or I’ll finish things here.’
Uh-oh. I may have set all this in motion, but it was getting out of hand and I didn’t know what to do.
Where was the cavalry when you needed them?
Chitown either didn’t hear Deirdre or didn’t care. Like Pavlik had said about people who’d been foreclosed on and pushed into bankruptcy. When you’ve lost everything, you have nothing left to lose.
Neither of these people felt they had anything to lose. Which was a very bad thing for me. I turned to run, my heels making clickety-clacks on the concrete floor like a long-legged tap-dancer. Sprint-wise, though, a rather slow one.
From way too close behind me, Doty screamed. ‘Ward, we can’t let her go!’
Before I turned around, Doty must have broken free from a lagging, seemingly indecisive Chitown. And she was coming at me, meat hook raised high in her right hand, the rusty ‘business’ point of it about two feet above my eye-level.
I thought, Eric, I’m so sorry.
Then Doty was swinging the hook in a vicious arc toward my face.
Thankfully, my second thought was, Pavlik taught me what to do.
I ducked to the left and Doty’s follow-through sent her lunging, like a tennis player whose attempt at serving resulted in her racket missing the ball completely.
As Doty caught her balance, I cocked the heel of my right hand at the wrist and, before she could raise the hook again, I drove that heel up and into her nose.
And immediately realized that Pavlik had emphasized doing something else before heel-of-hand-to-nose.
I clamped my eyes closed. ‘Oh, shit, shit, SHIT!’
But, as soon as my lids flapped back open, there was Deirdre Doty, writhing at my feet, meat hook a leg-length away. Both her hands were held to her nose, trying unsuccessfully to staunch the blood.
Cool.
With adrenaline pumping so hard I was afraid my eardrums would blow out, I rasped – insanely, I might add – ‘Hey, Ward, you want a shot at me, too?’
Apparently he did indeed.
Since trying to run in these heels had proved futile, I stood my ground as Chitown easily closed the distance between us and grabbed me by the throat with both hands.
This time, though, I remembered exactly what Pavlik taught me.
I lifted my right knee about a foot, and Chitown dropped his left hand to his groin area, probably figuring I was going to knee him you-know-where.
Instead, using his own chokehold as support, I stomped my four-inch stiletto heel as hard as I could into and, hopefully, through, his supple Italian leather shoe and the tiny bones of the foot inside.
Chitown was still hopping on one foot as I bolted through the closet and straight into the man who’d taught me life-saving. Literally.
‘You got my text message?’ I asked, noting the gun in his hand.
‘I did,’ he said, signali
ng the deputies behind him to continue on into the slaughterhouse. ‘But apparently you didn’t get mine, asking you to wait until we arrived before you went nosing around.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, sheepishly, running my palms down my dress as if to straighten out any wrinkles. ‘No place for a cellphone.’
###
I never did make it to Sapphire that night.
Pavlik arrived at my place around 2 a.m. I’d waited up.
‘Everything taken care of?’ I asked as I poured wine into his glass and settled onto the couch next to him. Frank had fallen asleep on the floor in front of us, his big furry head using one of Pavlik’s feet as a crude pillow.
‘Ward Chitown and Deirdre Doty are both talking, non-stop though separately. Accusations against the other of everything including federal tax fraud. And apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You know that $50,000 they planted in the drain?’
‘Yes,’ I said, snuggling under his arm.
‘It really was the loot.’
That jolted me. ‘You mean from 1974? But how could that be? Where did Chitown find it?’
‘His father’s safe. Apparently the old man was a bent cop – or, in his case, FBI agent. Chitown Senior must have found the cash during the raid and squirreled it until he could return to the scene and retrieve it.’
‘The whole million?’
‘If that much was there. All Chitown Junior says he found in that safe was the fifty grand. He figured he’d use it to prime the pump on his new career.’
‘Career. What a—’
‘Hey, speaking of careers,’ Pavlik continued. ‘I hear you’re an online sensation.’
‘I look like a walrus birthing a baby seal.’
‘Perhaps, but you’re a gorgeous walrus.’ He tipped my chin up and kissed my lips.
‘Did you notice my red dress?’
‘Hard to miss it. It was rolled up around your waist when you burst through that closet back in the restaurant.’
Aww, geez. Good thing that photo opp wasn’t going viral.
Pavlik lowered his voice to a lion’s purr. ‘But maybe you’ll wear it for me another time?’