Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 04 - Chocolate Mousse Attack

by Sally Berneathy

  If Dr. Dan grew up in an environment like that, no wonder he was a psycho killer.

  I folded the scarf, tucked it under my arm and went back downstairs. Henry and Fred were both waiting at the front door. Fred’s clothes were liberally sprinkled with white cat hairs.

  I let one guy outside and asked for car keys from the other. Fred shook his head. “I don’t think it’s worth it. Even if you drive fifteen miles over the speed limit the entire way, we’ll only get there six and a half minutes faster.”

  “It could be a critical six and a half minutes.”

  “I was rounding. It would really only be six minutes and twenty-one seconds.” He grimaced, sighed and handed me the keys. “You’ll hit some heavy traffic, so you’ll have to go more than twenty miles over the limit on the highway to make up for lost time.”

  I smiled. “Not a problem.”

  We were walking across my yard to his car when a dark sedan pulled up in front of my house and stopped. The back passenger door flew open and a small figure that was becoming way too familiar tumbled out and ran toward me.

  Rickie.

  That wasn’t possible. I was hallucinating. Somebody put something in that last Coke.

  A man and woman stepped out of the car. John and Cara Ferguson. Rick’s friends he’d entrusted with his son. I’d glimpsed them briefly at the police station when the cops had dragged me in for questioning.

  “Aunt Lindsay! I’m home!” Rickie ran up and threw his skinny little arms around my waist. “I missed you so much.”

  “What’s going on?” I tried to loosen Rickie’s grip, but he held on like a demented tick.

  John took the bulging canvas bag from the trunk of his car, and the couple approached slowly. They looked different than they’d looked at the police station, less like a preppy couple living the good life and more like parents. Cara’s short blond hair was no longer perfect and her makeup was smeared. John’s immaculate white shirt was streaked with something. Dirt? Chocolate? His eyes bulged slightly and he had a scratch on one cheek.

  John set the now-familiar canvas bag down in front of me, and Cara smiled tightly. “You’re Lindsay Powell?” she asked.

  I looked at Fred, hoping he’d come up with a good story to get me out of the current situation.

  “She is.” He sold me out. “Who are you?”

  “He’ll be better off with you.” John took his wife’s arm and tugged her back toward their car.

  “No!” I tried unsuccessfully to push Rickie away. “He’s supposed to stay with you! I got in trouble for letting him stay with me. The cops tried to arrest me for kidnapping. It’s illegal for him to stay with me!”

  “But you told them you’re his stepmother. It’s okay for you to keep him.” Cara turned to leave.

  I tried to stumble after them but found it difficult to make progress with a nine-year old succubus attached to my body.

  “Fred, help me!” I pleaded.

  “You told them you’re his stepmother?” Fred was visibly astonished. That doesn’t happen often.

  “I was desperate.”

  “Why would you do something like that?”

  “You had to be there.”

  The Fergusons slid into their car, slammed the door and laid rubber as they drove away.

  I gave up the attempt to catch them and merely watched their departing car in horror, my heart sinking to the bottom of my big toe. That was probably the fastest they’d ever driven in their orderly lives. Where was a traffic cop when you needed one?

  With his mission accomplished, Rickie detached himself and started toward my house.

  I grabbed his shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I told them I wanted to stay with you. I missed you.”

  I narrowed my eyes and fixed him with a cold stare. “Bullshit. You were so awful, they dumped you on me.”

  “Whatever.” He turned away but I held onto his shoulder and looked at Fred.

  “Will Sophie keep him while we’re gone?”

  “She’s still at her shop, trying to get everything set up.”

  “Paula’s not home yet. If you’ve got some handcuffs, I could lock him in the basement.”

  “No time. We’ll take him with us. Rickie, get in the back seat of my car.” Fred motioned toward his white Mercedes.

  Without another word, Rickie walked toward Fred’s car.

  “How do you do that?” I asked.

  “Vulcan mind control.”

  We headed across town and hit road construction. Kansas City highways always have at least one and usually two lanes closed at any given time. During the winter it’s due to ice and snow, and during the spring and summer, it’s due to construction to repair the damages of all that ice and snow.

  Nevertheless, we made it across town and out to the country in record time, thanks to my driving skills and whatever modifications Fred had made to that engine. I prefer my smaller car because it’s easier to slip in between other vehicles, but the power in Fred’s car made it a good tradeoff.

  Of course I didn’t get a ticket, not with Fred along to put a protective Vulcan shield around the car.

  Following his directions, I drove from the highway to a paved road to a dirt road. I was forced to drive slow, very slow. Even so, we bounced over the rutted road in a way that made my teeth rattle. In the summer drought, the dust enveloped us. Fred would doubtless be up all night washing his car.

  “Pull off the road in that clear area.” He pointed a couple of hundred feet up the road.

  I followed his instructions then looked around. Nothing but trees and weeds. “What’s going on? You’re not planning to dump the kid here, are you? Not only will we get in big trouble with Social Services, but he’ll just follow us back home anyway.”

  “I’m not getting out in the middle of nowhere,” Rickie said. Obviously he was concerned about Fred’s plans to dump him.

  “We have to walk the rest of the way to the farmhouse,” Fred stated emphatically.

  “We do?”

  “These people are paranoid. The road doesn’t go up to their houses. Put on your scarf. You can’t let anyone but your husband see your hair.”

  “All these women have bad hair?”

  “It’s a sign of submission. We have to blend if they’re going to talk to us.”

  Reluctantly I wrapped the scarf over my head. Just what I needed in the August heat. “What about him?” I nodded to Rickie in the back seat who sat there quietly in his blue jeans and a T-shirt with zombies on it. He wasn’t going to blend.

  “We’ll explain him. Rickie, hand me that box in the seat beside you.”

  Rickie obediently handed him a rectangular carton about the size of a shoe box. Fred opened it and took out a dead albino creature.

  I shuddered. “What are you going to do with that?”

  He attached it to his face. A beard. “Think I should grow one?”

  “I promise to buy you a lifetime supply of razors if you don’t.”

  We left the air conditioned car and trudged out across the field in the afternoon heat.

  Three hours later we arrived at Dr. Dan’s home place. Fred said it had been only twenty minutes, pointing to the sun which still occupied roughly the same position in the sky as when we’d left the car, but I figured if he could manipulate Rickie’s mind, he could manipulate the sun. I’m sticking with my estimate of three hours for that hot, dirty walk in those stifling clothes.

  As we approached the house, I began to comprehend the real meaning of self-sustaining farm. If they couldn’t build it or grow it themselves, they didn’t have it. Whoever built the house might have constructed buildings of Legos in his childhood, but he’d never taken a class in architecture. The porch listed to one side, and the house listed to the other. The wood was rough and desperately needed a coat of paint. The screen on the front door was rusted and torn and sagged from one hinge.

  Another building that could be a barn or a guest house crouched nearby. P
lants in the vegetable garden on one side of the house were withered and sere in the late summer drought. A drooping clothes line supported several black garments and pairs of overalls ranging in size from small to huge. Kids must live there, but they were not outside laughing and playing.

  The yard was closer to my style than to Fred’s, and a few chickens wandered around, pecking here and there. As we crossed the yard, I realized the chickens were fertilizing as they went. Not a bad idea if you had a sidewalk. Maybe I’d get a few for my yard. Fresh eggs, fried chicken and free fertilizer. But I didn’t want to think about how the chicken made its journey from the yard to the frying pan.

  Before we reached the porch, the screen door opened and a thin older woman stepped out. She wore clothing similar to my outfit with a utilitarian apron very like the ones Paula and I wore at work except hers didn’t have chocolate stains. Her scarf (she had to wear it in the house too?) revealed the roots of steel gray hair pulled back tightly from a face that was a road map of wrinkles coated with sweat. Her dark eyes were tired. “What do you want?” She didn’t smile. I wondered if she ever had.

  “Are you Esther Jamison?” Fred asked.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Jacob Sommers, this is my wife, Abigail, and our son, Hezekiah.”

  I heard Rickie’s sharp intake of breath at the name Fred had given him, but he remained silent. That Vulcan mind control was an amazing thing.

  “Your sons, Daniel and Joshua, asked us to stop by and see you on our way home.”

  The woman’s thin lips parted and her eyes widened in surprise. “Daniel and Joshua? You saw Daniel and Joshua? Are they okay?”

  Fred nodded. “We just talked to Joshua today. He’s a lawyer. Our son ran away to the city, and Joshua helped us get him back. When Joshua found out we live on a big farm a ways down the road and were going to travel past your house to get home, he asked us to drop by and tell you they’re doing fine. Daniel’s a doctor. You have grandchildren.”

  “Grandchildren? Did Daniel marry Sarah?”

  Fred shook his head slowly and the beard moved across his chest as if it was alive. Creepy. “No. He didn’t marry her.”

  “What about the baby, the little girl?”

  The baby. Carolyn?

  “She died.”

  Esther’s eyes misted and she blinked a couple of times, but this was not a woman accustomed to showing her emotions. “It’s just as well. What chance did that poor little thing have without a daddy? What about Sarah?”

  “She died too.”

  Esther nodded. “I’ll tell her mother when I see her.”

  “Has she heard nothing from Sarah in all these years?”

  “Of course not. When they leave, they’re dead to us.”

  “I’m sorry to bring bad news.”

  “No good can come of going out into that world.” She shook her head. “I wonder if Matthew knows Sarah’s dead? He left home to look for her years ago. He may be dead by now.”

  Matthew? That got my attention. True, it’s a common name, but this wasn’t likely a coincidence.

  “Who’s Matthew?” I asked.

  Esther looked at me as if surprised I was able to speak. “Sarah’s brother. He was just a little boy when she took her baby and left home to find Daniel. It was rough on her, having a baby with no father. Then Ezekiel offered to marry her after his wife died. He was a lot older, but it was the best she could expect since she had that baby. But she didn’t want Ezekiel. She wanted Daniel. I hoped she’d find him and…” Her voice trailed off and she looked away into the distance. Whatever she’d hoped, she knew it hadn’t happened. Likely most of her hopes hadn’t happened.

  An older man with a white beard that looked like it had been dead even longer than Fred’s stepped through the door and aimed a shotgun at us. “Who are you people?”

  I took that as a sign we were not welcome there and should leave immediately, but Fred introduced us as if social interaction at the end of a gun was perfectly normal. I watched Rickie from the corner of my eye. He made a face at the repetition of his new name but he didn’t react otherwise. Was I the only one who thought that crazy man could squeeze the trigger and blow us into the next county at any moment?

  “They live on a farm down the road,” Esther said meekly. “They brought word from Daniel and Joshua.”

  The man moved closer to the edge of the porch and lifted the gun higher. He was old…probably not as old as he looked…but he stood tall, and his chest was wide beneath the overalls and dingy white shirt. I would not want to meet him in a dark alley. “I don’t know anything about another farm down the road, and Daniel and Joshua are not our sons anymore.”

  Esther dropped her gaze. A properly subservient wife.

  “I didn’t know you could divorce your kids.” The words just slipped out of my mouth. Shotgun or no shotgun, I was tired of listening to that rude man mouth off.

  “You need to control your wife,” the man said.

  I changed my mind. I did want to meet him in a dark alley. At that moment, I felt sure I could take him down even without my iron skillet.

  “Our community allows women to express themselves during the days when the moon is waxing gibbous,” Fred said.

  The man blinked a couple of times but had no response to that statement.

  “We have miles to go before we sleep.” Fred turned and strode away.

  Rickie followed immediately.

  “If we don’t get to express ourselves, we’ve been known to murder our husbands in their sleep.” I shot Esther a suggestive glance. “And we alibi for each other.”

  I yanked off that suffocating scarf, stomped through that yard as if the chicken poop didn’t bother me, and hurried to catch up with Jacob and Hezekiah.

  “I get it,” I said as we walked through the fields away from Dr. Dan’s parents. “Now I understand how two people could disappear off the face of the earth without anybody knowing.”

  Fred pulled the beard from his face. “Nobody but Sophie, her parents and the murderer.”

  “I want a Coke,” Rickie said.

  For once, Rickie and I were on the same page.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fred’s immaculate car was not immaculate when we got back to it. A thick layer of dust had turned the gleaming white to dusty beige.

  “Car’s dirty,” I said, just to see how he’d respond. I half expected him to freak out.

  He gave it scarcely a glance. “It’s washable.” He unlocked the doors and we all got in.

  After sitting in the sun with the windows closed, the car was probably twenty degrees hotter than outside which was already pretty hot.

  “Hey, my window won’t go down,” Rickie complained from the back seat. “There’s no handle.”

  “You’re correct. I control the windows.” Fred started the engine. “It’ll cool down pretty fast. In the meantime, just sweat. I’m sure you know how to do that.”

  The car did cool down amazingly fast as Fred ambled along the dirt road. Really, that’s the only way I can describe his driving. Made me want to open the door, put my foot on the ground and push.

  “What do we do now?” I asked. “We know Dr. Dan did it.”

  “Do we?”

  “Who’s Dr. Dan?” Rickie asked.

  “Nobody you know,” I assured the kid, then turned back to Fred. “Okay, we assume Dr. Dan did it. Will you go with me on that?”

  He nodded. “I will agree that it is possible Daniel did it.”

  “He ran away from home to go to school, to escape from that house and that grumpy old man. Had a promising life ahead of him. Even married a rich woman so he didn’t have to struggle so much to get through med school. But then his past catches up with him. His girlfriend from back home shows up with a baby.”

  Fred nodded. “That fits with the data. Sarah left the farm and came to find the father of her child. Daniel felt a sense of responsibility, so he tucked her away in an old house in Pleasant Grove where his rich
wife and his new friends would never find her. But then something happened.”

  “What?” Rickie asked.

  “That’s what we need to figure out,” I said. “Maybe the rich wife finds out. Or maybe Sarah wants to get married. With her background, it’s got to bother her that she’s a single mom. Remember, she did tell the Murrays Dan was her husband.”

  Fred squinted as he stared through the haze of dust stirred up by his car. I was amazed he could see enough to keep the car on the road. “That’s one possible scenario. He killed them, disposed of their bodies, sold the house, and there’s no evidence they ever existed. The family back home has already written them off. Who’s going to file a missing persons’ report? They don’t even have birth certificates on file. The doctor is home free, able to live out his dreams and be a physician to the wealthy. No bodies, no murder weapon, no fingerprints, no DNA.”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. Rickie was leaning forward, eyes wide, completely absorbed in our discussion. Considering the life he led, I doubted anything we said was going to shock him or give him nightmares so I continued.

  “But there was a witness. Sophie saw it happen. She ran out of the closet and Dr. Dan followed her home, probably intending to kill her too.”

  “That wouldn’t be easy with her parents there. Maybe he bribed them to move out of town and keep quiet. Remember the hundred thousand dollars deposited in their account?”

  I considered that possibility. “You think he killed them after they moved to Nebraska? Why would he do that if he’d already bribed them?”

  “Maybe they changed their minds and were going to talk. Maybe they wanted more money and he couldn’t get it without his wife finding out. Maybe their deaths were an accident after all.”

  I gave a snort of derision. “And Sophie almost died from the same cause after she came back to town. That would be a major coincidence.”