Mad Max: Unintended Consequences

by Ashton, Betsy

  I visited each of the three banks downtown near the corner Emilie remembered until I found the one where Merry rented the box. I was sure she hadn't emptied it yet because Hunter was still texting her about the money. I figured out how to talk my way into the vault to empty the contents of the box. Johnny and I discussed it over dinner, and he agreed with my scheme. We were the witch and the warlock, hovering over a bubbling cauldron, stirring and sniffing and muttering incantations.

  I decided to use a little social engineering and all of my acting skills. I'd forged Merry's signature all year on school forms for Alex and Emilie, so I knew I could sign the card without hesitation. I was worried, though. What if I met a bank attendant who knew Merry? I sure didn't look like her any longer.

  On the morning Merry was murdered, I wore a large floppy hat and huge sunglasses. Oh, and gloves. I made up a terrific story about a recent surgery, but the clerk didn't so much as look at me or say boo diddly. Had she looked closely, she would have been more than likely to remember the bold disguise rather than the face of the woman under the screaming pink polka dot hat.

  The box was in both Merry's and Hunter's names. No surprise there. She was so obsessed with the bastard she couldn't see how she was being manipulated. Hunter opened the box three times, leading me to think he'd siphoned off some of the money. I signed the card and followed the clerk into the vault. We inserted our keys, and she left. When I lifted the box, I damned near dropped the thing on my foot. Heavy son of a gun. I opened it and found bricks of money. Lots of bricks. A pile of unwrapped money too. I emptied everything into my oversized bag, replaced the box, and shrugged the bag onto my shoulder, all but falling sideways under the unaccustomed weight.

  When I returned home, I locked myself in my bedroom, dumped the contents of the bag on my bed and counted. And counted. Three hundred thousand. One hundred thousand plus short of the total I knew Merry took. A lot of the missing cash went into the new Hummer, but not all of it. I stuffed the money back into my tote and hid it in the back of my closet. Dumb maybe, but I couldn't think of a better place at the time. I would have to have it out with Merry when she discovered the empty box. We both ran out of time.

  Lucky for me, when the police searched the house, they didn't go into my bedroom. Finding the money would have been awkward. They searched Merry and Whip's bedroom and Whip's office but left the rest of the house alone. If I'd have been a cop investigating a murder, I'd have turned the entire house inside out.

  I couldn't help but wonder if Hunter had gone to the bank after I did. I imagined Hunter wild with rage if he looked at the signature card, which showed Merry visiting the box the day she died. Could finding the box empty have sent him over the edge?

  At the time, I never thought taking the money would cause Merry harm. I thought I was being extremely clever. In the back of my mind, I half-hoped it would provoke a final argument between my daughter and Hunter. Maybe it'd lead to the creep walking out. Maybe it would jolt Merry back to her senses. I'd have given the entire wad of cash to charity to see their confrontation. I never thought he'd kill her.

  I didn't have to think about who killed Merry and why she died. I knew it wasn't Whip. He'd have killed Hunter before Merry, yet he had already taken out his revenge on the bastard. Unless this was a random push-in robbery gone wrong, the killer had to be Hunter.

  I needed to talk with Whip. He didn't know I had the money. After Merry was murdered, the police arrested him before I had time to tell him anything.

  I woke up around four in the morning. I'd dreamed Whip was locked in a six-by-eight cage. It was no dream. I changed sopping wet pajamas and returned to bed, not to sleep but to plot.

  At first, I wasn't allowed to visit Whip. The police told him he could see no one except his attorney, but they relented and let him see me at least once a day. Then they let me come in whenever I needed to. Wonder if my call to the chief of police had anything to do with relaxing the rules.

  The police, all but his friend Jerry and maybe the chief, were certain he killed Merry. Case closed quickly and efficiently. Jerry knew he was innocent, but he was off the case because of a potential conflict of interest. They went to the target range together, and Jerry arrested Merry the night she stabbed Whip. Nothing, however, was going to get Whip out of jail.

  Neither Whip nor I knew squat about what evidence the police thought they had. We needed a criminal lawyer. I wasn't about to let the court assign a public defender, so I did some asking around. I called Whip's divorce counsel the day he was arrested. Mama Cass didn't practice criminal law, but she gave me the name of the best criminal lawyer in Richmond. Next, I called an old friend, the president of my bank, for a recommendation. Both the banker and Mama Cass recommended Vincent Bodine.

  “Don't let his mild looks fool you, Mrs. Davies,” the bank president said. “Vince is a wizard in the courtroom. Give him the right circumstances, and he's a piranha.”

  “I found a good attorney. Vincent Bodine is supposed to be the best in the town.” I blurted out the news as soon as Whip entered the interview room.

  “Wish his name ended with a pronounced vowel. Wish they called him Vinnie.”

  “Do you think you need a ‘connected’ lawyer? Vincent Bodine isn't Italian.”

  “Nah. Feeble joke. No mob lawyer needed.”

  “He's coming in to meet you this afternoon. I'll be back, if you like.”

  “I like.”

  I ran my usual errands before presenting myself to the desk sergeant again. Vince was already in the interview room when Pete, Whip's jailer, opened the door to let me in. I'd talked with him by phone, so we shook hands.

  I wasn't impressed with Vince's looks: middle height, mousy-brown, thinning hair, nondescript tan eyes, untanned skin. He was pale. No distinguishing features. Just pale.

  Whip came in five minutes after I did.

  “My sole responsibility is to prove the prosecution's case is wrong or expose enough holes in it to throw doubt on the jury.” Vince laid some colored file folders on the table. Each had Whip's name on the left side of the tab.

  “I didn't kill my wife,” Whip said.

  “Of course. I don't have to prove your innocence. I have to beat the DA.”

  “What about the possibility someone else killed Merry?” Whip's lowered brow warned me he didn't like what Vince said.

  “Not my job, Mr. Pugh.”

  “Whip.”

  “Okay, Whip. I don't solve crimes. That's what the police do.”

  “How do we expose the real killer?” I, too, didn't like where this was going.

  “You don't, Mrs. Davies. Leave Whip's representation to me. You could get hurt if you go chasing everyone you think may have killed your daughter.”

  Not everyone. Just Hunter.

  “I don't want to sit in jail waiting for my trial. I want out now.”

  “Not much chance of that until I find out what you're charged with. No court will grant bail if the district attorney goes for murder or even manslaughter. I'll press for a date to hear the indictment within a few days. Afterward, the district attorney will have to turn over their evidence. Then we'll see what they have.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Life didn't come with a user manual. When you faced something you'd never faced before, you made up the rules as you went along, but my family's future was too important to wing it.

  From what Whip told me, the police weren't looking for anyone else for Merry's murder. Jailhouse scuttlebutt and local reporters said the police had the right guy. Maybe I could get Jerry to help. Off the record, of course.

  I knew they were wrong. So did the kids. If the police thought they'd wrapped up the case with Whip's arrest, then we had to prove Hunter was guilty. We needed to find something incriminating in Hunter's background, but I had no idea what it would be, how to get it, or even where it might lead. Or what to do with it when, not if, we found the evidence we needed.

  Darla called to offer support. She was torn up over
Merry's murder, but I was clueless about how to use her. After Merry moved out, she called Darla several times, but caller ID helped Darla duck the calls. Listening to the voice messages she said was harder to avoid, though; the last one came in two days before Merry's murder.

  “How could I turn my back on my chosen sister?” She sobbed.

  I understood how she felt. “Who rejected whom? Merry dumped all of us after she fell under Dracula's spell.”

  “If only I'd talked to her. Maybe she was afraid. Maybe she was having second thoughts.” Darla snuffled.

  “Do you think she wanted to get away from Hunter?”

  “I don't know,” Darla wailed. “Likely not, but maybe I could have beaten some sense into her. It's probably wishful thinking. I always thought she'd realize what a mess she'd made leaving with that creep. What a horrible man.”

  Another stifled sob. Hunter killed my daughter, but outside of the immediate family, I thought I was a minority of one. I was relieved to find I had company.

  “I saw them together in the hospital before one of her early surgeries,” Darla explained, “when he put the move on her at her most vulnerable moment. I told Merry he was bad news, but she raged at me and told me I was jealous. She was going to be perfect, and I wasn't.”

  “I saw the same thing before the first surgery. She looked at him with big puppy eyes.”

  “Merry told me he kept correcting her manners, changing the way she dressed, telling her to go blond. He wanted her to change almost everything on the outside while he changed her face.”

  “He's a total control freak.”

  “It's more than that. He had an agenda and forced Merry to go along with it.” Darla stopped snuffling. “Everything he told her to do, she did.”

  “I got that too. When I called her on it, she told me to get out of her fucking face. Her words, not mine.”

  Hunter's motives were his alone. Merry was nothing but a blank canvas on which to create his version of the ideal woman.

  “Yes, she was totally under his spell.”

  “I've got to prove Hunter killed her.” My hands were clenched. I wanted to put them around his neck and squeeze the life out of him.

  “Whip had nothing to do with Merry's death.”

  “No, he didn't.”

  Whip took his revenge on Hunter, but I couldn't tell Darla about the fight in the alley.

  “Thanks for saying it, though.”

  I promised to call her soon. For the moment, I wanted to put dinner on the table. I hung up and called the kids. As usual, it took several hollers up the stairs to pry Alex from his computer.

  “We need to help get Dad out of jail.” Emilie piled salad in her bowl and selected a small piece of roasted chicken.

  Alex loaded chicken on his plate, along with a couple of pieces of lettuce. He started to say something when he caught my frown. He put some of the chicken back and added a scoop of salad. No matter how inadequate I felt as a detective, I wasn't inadequate in raising children. They needed consistency in my behavior, not a wishy-washy approach to house rules. I saved my uncertainty for the privacy of my bedroom. Echoes of Raney's earlier warning about not blowing this, my second chance at getting child rearing right, sounded in my head.

  “Yeah. They've gotta arrest Dracula. He killed Mom.” Alex's intense look scared me. I couldn't find the little boy in it. “Will Dad's new lawyer help?”

  “No. His job is to defend Dad. We have to find the murderer.”

  “Wow! That's going to be, like, so cool.”

  “What can we do? We're just two kids and a grandmother.” Emilie nibbled a piece of cucumber.

  “I beg your pardon. Since when did I become just a grandmother?” I flopped back in my chair, placed my hand on my forehead, acting highly insulted. “You guys named me Mad Max. Well, I'm mad as hell. Your dad's not going to get railroaded.”

  “So, what're we gonna do?” Alex mumbled around a huge bite of chicken.

  I wanted to remind him about not talking with his mouth full, but I decided to let it go. This time.

  “Beats the heck out of me. We need a plan. I'm going to talk to Dad's cop friend. We have to start somewhere.”

  “We'll help.”

  “How?” I didn't want them involved any more than Whip wanted Johnny and me involved the night we set up Hunter.

  “Well, we don't know much about Hunter. Alex, can you find out where he came from?” Emilie glanced at her brother, who smiled.

  “I Googled him once but didn't find much. I'll ask Freddie how to find him.”

  “Freddie?” I cut a bite of chicken.

  “He's my college mentor in my computer club. He was also at camp this summer.”

  “I see.”

  “We need to watch Dracula too. We don't want him to leave town or do anything stupid.” Emilie picked up a cherry tomato between finger and thumb and popped it into her mouth. “We need to find out who Kiki is too. Remember the napkins?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Let me work on that. It's important, but I'm not sure how.” Emilie selected a piece of carrot and scrutinized it for imperfections.

  I could do leg work; Alex could use his computer skills. Kids today were so much more resourceful than in my generation. They had to be, since they were bombarded with everything the electronic age could offer from the day they were born. Emilie could…do what? I decided to let her figure it out for herself. She'd come up with something. Maybe she could watch Hunter by what she was feeling. I was curious to see where it would lead us.

  We toasted with milk glasses. With my tiny army, I was more optimistic than I was a few days earlier.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  You'd think the police in this little upscale suburb in the middle of Virginia had a serial killer or a cold-blooded murderer in jail the way the media carried on.

  “Wife Murdered!”

  “Killed in Cold Blood!”

  “Shot at Point Blank Range!”

  I bounced between the jail and Whip and home and the kids. Emilie and Alex hid in their rooms, serious about their roles in our army, but they each spent way too much time on the computer. I listened when they wanted to talk, which turned out to be every night over dinner. On rare occasions, they actually found something to lead them in a new direction. I wished they'd spend more time with their friends outdoors, though. What an old fogey, thinking children play outside.

  I was going nuts being trapped inside the house or car or interview room at the jail. One Saturday morning, I rousted the kids out of bed before ten, told them to put on shorts, packed up our three bikes, and drove to the public park. We rode miles on the bike path, swung on the swings, burned thighs on what might have been the last metal slide still in use, and tossed a Frisbee back and forth. I treated us to ice cream afterward. Later, Emilie confessed she felt loads better having spent half the day outdoors. This from the child who used to spend every summer day in or by the pool.

  “We have to enjoy ourselves.” I wiped my sticky fingers with a too-thin paper napkin.

  “It's so hard,” Emilie said. “I feel guilty having fun when Mom's dead.”

  “I know, but not having fun just because we've all suffered a huge loss isn't healthy. Besides, it won't bring Mom back.”

  “Hey, there's always room for ice cream.” Alex polished off his double chocolate fudge cone.

  Emilie and I laughed in agreement.

  I had many loose ends to tie up, one of which was to clean out Merry's apartment. After Hunter told Merry she couldn't live with him, my daughter told the kids she had her own place. From the way she described it, it was a fabulous apartment. Emilie could visit “when it was convenient.”

  When the man from the rental office called, Emilie overheard the conversation and demanded she be allowed to go with me. I wanted to shelter her from the murder scene, but she gave me a look that was pure Merry and pure Emilie too. It was also pure me when she thrust her chin outward. I gave in. The force of her will made me wel
come her company.

  When I picked up the key, the agent told me to take Merry's junk away immediately, or he'd throw everything out. He had a crew coming in two days to scrub the place from top to bottom. He had a tenant ready to move in and every day was costing him money. Forget the fact Merry's rent was paid through the end of the month and it was only the twentieth. Forget the fact he had no right to tell me to clear the apartment out early. I'd be relieved to have this behind me, though, so I didn't argue.

  “Oh, and don't expect to get the security deposit back either.”

  I didn't care.

  We stood before the locked door, not knowing what to expect. The police seals were broken, so I didn't have to do that. I'd watched enough crime shows to expect blood stains, a room torn up, and fingerprint powder on every hard surface. I gritted my teeth and turned the key. The door stuck. I hugged Emilie for support before putting my shoulder against it. It swung open. Another deep breath, I clasped her hand, and we went inside.

  The apartment, shabby in that rent-a-room-fully-furnished sort of way, was neat and clean. No blood splatter on the walls, thank God. No big blood patch on the floor.

  “Not exactly the way your mom described it, is it?”

  My granddaughter was pale and trembling, her eyes half-closed, a bead of sweat on her upper lip.

  A chair rested on its side. Had it tipped over when Merry was murdered or when the police searched the room?

  “At first, she was surprised and happy to see Dracula, because she didn't expect him. She'd just finished a bath. She didn't stay happy long, though. They argued,” Emilie whispered. “Later they fought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A chill went through me. I shouldn't have brought her. If this haunted her, it'd be my fault.

  “Dracula shoved her against the wall over there. He yelled at her.”