by Jessica Beck
“Well, don’t let up just because I’m armed,” Jake said. “A weapon is just a tool. I’d like to think that I don’t have to rely on it to do my job.”
I didn’t want to be the one to remind him that he didn’t hold that particular position anymore, so I just nodded in the last remnants of daylight. Dusk was ending, and very soon we would be in darkness. That was going to add a whole new layer of complications to our task at hand, but I refused to worry about it, since there was nothing that I could do to stop it from coming.
Jake and I got to the front door, and I could see a light on somewhere inside. At first I thought that more than one person was inside when I heard the whispers of a conversation filtering through to us, but then I realized that a television was playing in the background, barely loud enough for us to hear.
“Kyle, this is Jake Bishop! I need to speak with you!” Jake commanded after banging hard on the front door three times with the flat part of his hand. His voice was even more intimidating than his knock, and I was glad that I wasn’t on the other side of that door.
There was no answer.
“Kyle, you don’t want me coming in there after you!” Jake boomed.
I heard something fall over inside just then, and I braced myself for a confrontation.
Instead, I suddenly heard the back door slam shut.
Kyle had been in there, but now he was running away.
“Stay here!” Jake barked at me as he started around back in the growing darkness.
“Not a chance,” I answered as I followed him. If something was about to happen, I meant to be a part of it.
Jake just shrugged and moved on. He was in full attack mode now, and it was a scary sight.
As we rushed around the house, Jake shouted again. “You can’t run forever. Stand your ground and face me like a man!”
I listened for a response, but I didn’t hear a word of reply.
In fact, I couldn’t even hear anyone ahead of us.
“Where did he go?”
Jake held up a hand, and we both stopped and listened.
There wasn’t a sound anywhere around but crickets chirping.
“We lost him,” Jake said softly, though I noticed that he still kept his gun by his side.
“Well, we certainly managed to get his attention. What do we do now?”
Jake shrugged. “There’s really not much that we can do here. Besides, I’m not in the mood to stand around and wait for him to show up again. At the very least, we’ve given him something to think about. Now let’s go find Amanda Moore and see if we can rattle her up a little, too.”
“I’m guessing that it won’t be as easy to do as it was with Kyle,” I said as we walked back to my Jeep.
“You never know. I have my ways,” Jake said, and I could barely make out his grin in the last vestiges of light for the day.
“I never doubted it for a second,” I said.
Grace was still on the phone when we got back, but she ended the conversation as soon as I closed my door.
“How did your conversation go?” I asked her.
“He’s fine. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll rise to the occasion. What was all the yelling about?”
Jake laughed. “That wasn’t yelling. I was merely announcing our presence on the scene.”
Grace grinned. “Well done, then, because it nearly scared the pants off me, and I was all the way out here. What did Kyle have to say for himself?”
“We never got a chance to find out. He ran like a scared little rabbit,” I replied.
“That’s pretty telling right there, isn’t it? Do we go after him in the dark?” It was clear that she didn’t relish the prospect of stumbling around in the darkness, and for that matter, neither did I.
“Without a search party, we’d probably never be able to track him down,” Jake said. “I say we go talk to Amanda again.”
“If you’re as forceful with her as you were with Kyle, you might just end the night with two confessions before the night is over,” I said.
“Actually, one is all we need,” Jake said.
It was Jake’s cellphone’s turn to ring as I pulled away from the cottage.
“Hey. Okay. Hang on. Give me one second.” Jake covered the phone as he explained, “It’s my friend from the force, Terry Hanlan. I told him that he could call me when he got the chance. He needs some advice about a case he’s working on. Do you mind?”
I knew State Police Inspector Hanlan pretty well myself. He’d been the one who’d first told me that Jake had been shot in the line of duty, and he’d become a friend of mine over time, as well as being Jake’s. “Go on. Tell him I said hello.”
Jake did as I requested, and then he got so involved with the conversation that he might as well not have been with us on the drive to Union Square.
As I drove, I asked Grace softly, “Is Stephen really okay?”
“He’s fine.”
“I’ll bet he’s glad that he won’t be the police chief in the morning,” I offered.
“On the contrary. It turns out that now he’s sorry to be giving it up. That’s why he called me. He wanted my opinion on why George didn’t choose him as chief, instead of bringing someone else in from the outside.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“Well, I tried to explain that if he’d only had more experience, he would have been the logical choice, since he’s certainly good enough at what he does. He wanted to know if I thought that his age was a factor, and I told him that it probably played a part in the decision, too.”
“How did that go over?” I asked. I knew that Officer Grant was a little sensitive about the fact that he was younger than Grace, and having it be an issue in his job as well couldn’t help matters between them.
“He said that he understood, but I’m still not sure. Anyway, I managed to convince him that no matter how brief it’s been, his time as interim police chief has been a good thing.”
“How did you manage to do that?” I asked, once again in awe of my friend’s ability to handle delicate situations.
“I told him that if nothing else, it would look great on his resume,” I said.
“And that actually helped?”
“Who knows? It got him laughing, and that was really all that I was after.” Grace looked out the window, and then she turned back to face me as I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Suzanne, how do we keep managing to get ourselves into these situations?”
“We care about the people around us,” I said after giving it some thought. “Can we help it if most of them are prone to getting into trouble?”
Grace laughed. “I don’t suppose we can.”
Jake wrapped up his telephone conversation, and after he put his cellphone away, he asked, “What have you two been talking about?”
“Life, the weather, and the crescent moon,” I said lightly, not wanting to reveal what Grace had just told me. “How’s Terry doing?”
“To be honest with you, right now he’s baffled. He sends his love, by the way.”
“Is it a tough case?”
“It sounds like it,” Jake said after a moment of hesitation.
“Is that a wistful note I hear in your voice?” I asked him.
“What? No. I just wish that I could help him, but without seeing all of the evidence for myself, there’s not much that I can do for him.”
“It’s still nice that you’re willing to lend a hand even after you’re gone,” I said as I patted his leg gently.
“You know as well as I do that Terry’s been there for me in the past. I’ll help him in whatever way I can,” Jake said.
“You miss it a little, don’t you?” Grace asked softly from the back. “Go on, you can admit it to us.”
“I miss some of the people, but if the bad guys didn’t end up killing me, then the stress probably would have. No, I’m ready to see what a calm, ordinary life is all about.”
“I hate to break it to you,” Grace s
aid, “but if that’s what you’re looking for, then you’re probably marrying the wrong girl.”
“Hey,” I said in jest. “You’re not helping.”
“What can I say? Is it true, or not?” she asked playfully.
“I refuse to answer on the grounds that I might incriminate myself,” I answered with a smile.
Jake grinned at me. “Don’t worry, Suzanne. It turns out that you bring just the right amount of crazy to my life.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“It was a compliment, I assure you,” Jake said.
We were in Union Square now, approaching the garage where Amanda worked. “I just realized that I don’t know where she lives,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. There are three cars out front, and all of the lights inside are still on.” Jake suddenly barked out to me, “Pull over and kill your lights!”
I did as I was told without question.
Once I was parked, I whispered, “What’s going on?”
“You don’t have to whisper. I doubt they can hear us from all the way over here. Look.”
I glanced over at the garage and saw that the front door had been cracked a bit earlier, but now it was beginning to open fully. How had Jake spotted that from so far away in the darkness? The man could teach me a few things about observation, that was for sure.
Two large and husky men were leaving the garage, but before they left, they were holding quite an animated conversation with their boss. Amanda was clearly upset about something, and once she gestured wildly at them both. To my surprise, both men flinched a little as they cowered and took a step back from her, though she was substantially smaller than either one of them was.
Evidently she had a bite that matched her bark.
“What should we do?” Grace asked from the back seat. “Do we go talk to them when they’re all together?”
“Hang on. Let’s not rush it, okay? We should wait and see what happens first,” Jake answered.
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” Grace said. “Those two men are being spanked pretty hard, and unless I miss my guess, they are about to slink off into the night.”
Sure enough, three minutes later, the men left, and from the dim light coming from inside, I could see that they were both clearly happy to be getting away. What would Amanda do next, though? Would she leave as well, or would she go back inside? I got ready to follow her just in case, but to my relief, she returned to the shop instead.
Thirty seconds later, Jake had his hand on the car door. “Let’s go. It’s showtime, ladies.”
Chapter 22
A minute later, Jake was knocking on the shop’s front door, using that same booming voice again, but this time, Grace and I both were beside him. “Amanda, open up! We know that you’re in there!” he said in his most officious voice.
Twenty seconds later, I whispered, “Why isn’t she answering? Should I go around back to keep her from running away?”
“She’s not like Kyle,” Jake said to me in his normal voice, and then he knocked again. “This is your last warning!” Jake said loud enough to wake the neighborhood.
I was about to suggest a new approach when the door finally opened.
“It’s you again,” she said, resignation heavy in her voice. “What am I going to have to do to get you off my back?” Then she took in the fact that Grace and I were with Jake. “What did you do, bring your cheerleaders with you this time?”
“We’re not cheerleaders,” Grace said indignantly.
“My mistake,” Amanda answered. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk about Rick Hastings,” Jake said.
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Amanda asked him. “It’s been a hard day, and I just want to go home.”
“Sorry, but it needs to be right now. Amanda, we know that you were at Spirit Night in April Springs the night Rick was murdered.” He dropped the fact as though it were a bomb, set to detonate on impact.
If it had any effect on Amanda, I couldn’t see it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There’s no use trying to deny it,” I said. “We have proof.”
“What proof?” she asked me, her gaze going instantly cold.
“It’s a photograph of you with smeared makeup on,” Grace said, clearly enjoying revealing the fact after the cheerleader crack.
Amanda knew that she’d been caught, at least attending the festivities. How would she react to that? After a moment, she must have made up her mind to go along with it. “So what? I was driving through town and saw the activities. Some clown wanted to paint my face, so I thought, why not? It must have smudged a little when I rubbed my nose.”
“Or it could have been from the sheet you were wearing when you killed Rick Hastings,” I said. “We found that, too. DNA is a wonderful tool these days, don’t you think?”
I wasn’t sure how she’d react to the direct accusation, but when she simply shrugged in acquiescence, it was a surprise. “You might as well all come in. I’ll tell you everything that really happened that night.”
I noticed that Jake’s gun was out as we all walked inside, but I never saw the thug waiting for us behind the door.
“Drop it, or I’ll shoot,” the man said, and Jake reluctantly did as he was told.
Chapter 23
“Just how stupid do you think I am?” Amanda asked as she retrieved Jake’s gun from the floor, being careful to skirt around us. “I saw you pull up in that Jeep you drive, and I had a hunch that you were coming after me. That’s why I sent Bruno here around the back so he could be waiting for you.”
“Where’s your other goon?” Jake asked as he looked around.
“Hey,” Bruno said as he shoved the barrel of his gun into Jake’s back. “Who are you calling a goon?”
“Bruno,” Amanda snapped, and the thug took a step back.
Evidently he was a pretty well-trained guerilla at that.
“I sent Hank to get some supplies,” Amanda said.
“What kind of supplies do you need this time of night?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, the usual assortment of things: shovels, tarps, duct tape,” she said with a smile. This was one wicked woman we were dealing with here. “In the meantime, we might as well spend our time wisely until he returns. Tell me, who else knows about this photograph?”
“The police have it right now,” Jake said, “so it won’t do you any good getting rid of us.”
She laughed at that. “What a lovely bluff. You’re very good at it, you know.”
“What makes you think that he’s bluffing?” Grace asked Amanda, her voice shaking a little with fear. And who could blame her? From where I was standing, we all had a sound reason to be afraid.
“Dear girl, if you had any real evidence against me, there would be more than the three of you knocking on my door. Some people might get a little suspicious after you all disappear, but nobody will be able to prove that I had anything to do with it.”
This sociopath was serious! She’d already weighed the risk of getting rid of us against being caught, and she had decided that it was her best course of action! We had to do something before Hank got back. We had the numbers on them, but we had no weapons, while they were both holding guns on us. Maybe it wasn’t an ideal situation, but we couldn’t just let ourselves be murdered without a fight.
The question was how best to attack. I glanced over at Jake, and I could almost see his mind working. Did he have a plan, or was he just going to spring on them without warning? I wished we had a way of coordinating our next move, but I didn’t see any way that could happen.
Maybe if I stalled Amanda long enough, Jake would be able to come up with a way to let Grace and me know his intent.
“Why kill Rick at all, Amanda? I understand what it’s like to be rejected, but it seems a little extreme to me.”
Amanda shook her head in disgust. “I could probably take being thrown away, but for a donut girl? Are you kidding
me? On the night I told Rick how I really felt, he claimed that he was seeing someone else, but when I pressed him on it, he said that she was just a distraction. Maybe she was, but she was still clearly more important to him than I was.” I saw Amanda’s hand tighten on the gun she was holding, and I wondered if I should push her any harder.
I was still thinking about how to deal with her when Grace spoke up. “I don’t approve of what you did in any way, but I must say, putting on that sheet was a pretty clever disguise.”
Amanda seemed pleased by the praise. “After I confronted Rick in the park, I was so angry! He pulled that stupid sheet over his head after he laughed at me, as if he were dismissing me as though I were some kind of pesky gnat! As I stormed away, I saw another sheet on the ground, and without thinking, I picked it up and put it on. He wasn’t going to get away with treating me like that! I followed him over to the bonfire and stabbed him through the heart. My only regret is that he didn’t know it was me the moment he died! He fell back into that pile of wood, I pulled the sheet off him, and then I dumped his and mine in the bushes nearby. I didn’t figure anybody would tie them together with the crime, and I made my way back here.”
The front door opened at that moment, and I knew that it was now or never.
I saw Jake brace for an all-out attack when I was shocked to see that instead of Hank, it was Kyle Creasy holding a hunting rifle!
As Kyle looked wildly around the inside of the garage, he shouted, “Where’s Emma! What have you done with her!”
Bruno swung his gun around at the sound of Kyle’s shouts, and Jake chose that moment and struck. He was grappling with the thug for the handgun just as Amanda shouted for everyone to put down their weapons. I was closest to her, but Grace wasn’t that far away, and I’m proud to say that we tackled her together at nearly the exact same instant, as though we’d somehow coordinated our attack.
The gun went flying, clattering on the concrete floor, and I dove after it.
When I recovered it, I looked up to see that Amanda was now sitting up with Grace directly in front of her.