Two Sleuths Are Better Than One

by Elizabeth Ashby

  "A set of jumper cables, a bottle of water, and most especially a flashlight. A great big one, like the kind cops carry."

  After a quick glance at Keely, who was watching Cary thoughtfully, I turned my full attention back to my assistant. "A flashlight? Did you see one in Scott's vehicle?"

  Cary nodded. "Not this week, but last week. It was amazing. Huge and red, so it's easy to find. I need to get one just like it."

  Lots of people kept a flashlight in their cars, but fewer had an oversize one and even fewer yet had a bright red one like the killer had used.

  Still, it had to be a coincidence, didn't it? Scott couldn't have had anything to do with Coach Andy's death. For one thing, why would Scott have wanted Andy dead? And for another, Scott had been busy packing the deliveries into his vehicle at the time of the murder.

  Unless…

  "Do you remember packing the deliveries last week?"

  "Of course," Cary said.

  "Was Scott with you the whole time?" They'd been almost done when I'd arrived, but I didn't know how much of the work Cary had done and how much Scott had done. I'd never thought to ask about an alibi for Scott since he hadn't seemed to have any motive for killing anyone.

  "Scott Ingell had to take a break to use the porta-potty right after we got started," Cary said after some hesitation, as if worried about tattling on a friend. He hurried to add, "He's a good worker, and I didn't mind helping. I could have done all of the packing by myself."

  "I'm sure you could have."

  Keely had been listening intently. Once she'd heard that Scott didn't have an alibi, she'd pulled out her phone. "I'll call Detective Marshall."

  I held up a hand. "Wait a minute." We needed a new plan, now that I was reasonably sure I knew who we were hunting. But first I needed to get Cary out of harm's way. "Why don't you go find Officer Fields for me and ask him to call me?"

  "Don't forget that Scott Ingell is waiting for you in the parking lot," Cary said before racing off.

  Keely snorted. "I don't think either of us will forget that Scott's waiting for us."

  "He's been in my nightmares for the past week," I agreed. "He just didn't have a face until now."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Keely Fairchild

  I'd been having my own nightmares, but I thought they were going to be worse once my subconscious fully absorbed that the nice man whose car I'd ridden in alone with once or twice a week was a killer of not just one person but two and was possibly looking for more victims. My stomach had started roiling as soon as Cary had mentioned the red flashlight.

  After a moment of shared silence to let the latest information sink in, Maria said, "We need a plan for what to tell Fields, and I'd rather not discuss this in public. Not after what happened with our trap. There are still too many people in the vicinity who would love to help bring down a killer. They're more likely to get in the way or get hurt if they know what we're planning."

  By unspoken agreement, we walked over to where we'd had our fake meeting with the mayor. It was out of easy sight and hearing of the beach, the market, and the salsa contest but still perfectly safe while our prime suspect was over in the parking lot. Everyone who'd turned up to see the arrest of a killer had left, and the remaining people on and around the beach and up on the cliff were simply enjoying the day, not paying any attention to us.

  "We need something more than just conjecture." I was still having a hard time imagining the polite, professional man who'd driven me around town on countless occasions was a killer. "Scott had both means and opportunity for killing Coach Andy, but I have no idea what his motive might have been. He told me he was a fan of the coach's."

  "How did he feel about Gabe?" Maria asked. "If Scott had a motive to kill him, then we were right that the coach died in a cover-up of something about Gabe's murder."

  "He told me he didn't know Gabe, but now I have to wonder if he was lying about it," I said. "Gabe didn't drive and Tess didn't have a car, so perhaps they hired Scott to get around town. And from what I've heard, anyone who met Gabe, except his wife and Tess, came to hate him. Scott could have been cheated out of his fare by Gabe. There are a number of businesses here in town who got stiffed by him."

  "But the ride-service apps make it virtually impossible to cheat the driver."

  "Normally," I said. "But big spenders expect the rules to be bent for them. It's probably how Gabe got away with not paying people, by convincing businesses to give him goods and services without paying before delivery. He could have hired Scott the first time he was in Danger Cove and then arranged for a ride off the books this time. Maybe all the way from Seattle and then around town all weekend. With a big enough fare, it would have been tempting to cut out the middleman."

  "Tess might know." Maria peered past a boulder to search the beach. Eventually she leaned back with a sigh. "She left, I'm afraid. I don't suppose you have her contact info."

  "No, but I might be able to find out another way if Scott drove Gabe around town. Emma should know. The guild paid most of his travel expenses."

  I texted her, and while we waited for a response, I asked, "What do you know about Scott from hiring him for the market?"

  "Not much. The mayor recommended him when I first mentioned adding a delivery service, and I didn't see any reason to look for anyone else. Apparently Scott used to have a business and it failed, so he turned to driving to make ends meet."

  "He mentioned something to me about being in construction before and preferring the people he worked with now to some of his previous clients."

  "He worked in construction?" Maria asked.

  I nodded. "He was a general contractor, I believe."

  "I didn't know that," Maria said, her words slow and thoughtful. "For some reason, I always thought he'd had some sort of retail business. He seemed to know a lot about showing products to their best effect. I got a number of compliments about how he always made sure the deliveries looked nice and weren't just thrown in a heap."

  "I'm pretty sure he said construction. I remember thinking that working outside for most of his life would explain the weathered skin on his face."

  "If you're right…" Maria pulled me out of our secluded spot. "We've got to find Jack Condor. He may be in danger."

  "Condor?" I dug in my heels. "I thought he was a suspect."

  "Not anymore," Maria said. "Look, it still probably doesn't rise to the level of admissible evidence, but if Scott worked in construction in this town, he probably had some run-ins with Jack Condor. Possibly even leading to whatever caused Scott to lose his business. Condor told me that anyone who went bankrupt deserved it, and he sounded triumphant, like he might have caused it to happen to someone."

  "Like Scott." It was definitely possible. "If you give me a minute, I can check the bankruptcy court records online to see if Condor is listed as someone who owed Scott money."

  "We don't have time for that," Maria said. "Scott could be targeting the person he blames for his bankruptcy right now. Remember how Condor told me he felt like someone was watching him last week? And he was near the murder site. We already thought about the possibility that Andy might have been killed because he'd been protecting someone else. So what if he caught Scott preparing to attack Condor and intervened and then got killed himself?"

  "It makes more sense than anything else I can come up with," I said, my voice sounding steady even as I could feel my hands shake and my stomach resume its roiling.

  "We can't wait for Fields to call us," Maria said. "I'm not sure how long Scott will wait for me in the parking lot before he goes hunting for Condor again."

  I looked around, and the uniformed officers who had been loitering near the beach for our failed trap were nowhere in sight. There were plainclothes officers somewhere, but I didn't know who they were, and if we started shouting for help, it would cause a panic. Then everyone else's stress would magnify my own, and I'd pass out.

  "You go get Merle, and I'll get Matt. The guys can keep an ey
e on Scott while we find Fields or one of the other uniformed officers to take him to Detective Ohlsen for questioning."

  "If Cary can't find Fields, we certainly won't be able to. But there should be another half dozen uniformed officers around who can get the rest of them to help with the search. Looking for them would be better."

  "Got it."

  Maria moved faster than I could. She jogged across the sand to the grassy area between the beach and the salsa demonstration. I followed more slowly, since speed would only cause me to pass out, and it was more important that I stay upright than that I save a few seconds of time.

  She stopped abruptly about twenty feet onto the grass. I caught up to her, grateful for the chance to rest since my head was spinning. "What is it?"

  She nodded straight ahead, toward the crowd at the salsa contest. "Scott's over there. In the back. And he's got Cary with him."

  "I'm texting Matt," I said, noticing that for once Scott wasn't hunched over, looking defeated. His sudden confidence seemed to confirm our suspicions and made the situation even more worrisome.

  "Send one to Merle too," Maria said before rattling off his number. "I'm going to go talk to Scott and buy us some time."

  "I'll be right behind you."

  Maria took her eyes off Scott briefly. "Will you be okay?"

  Good question. The roiling had turned into full-on nausea, and even as I thought about it, I felt the first throb of the headache that was often among the last warnings before I passed out. "I'll be right behind you." On my feet, I hoped, and not stretched out on the ground.

  Maria headed off around the back of the crowd while I quickly texted the two men. With my hands shaking, it took longer to key in the message than it should have.

  Scott is killer? Can't find cops. I'm at back of salsa crowd.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Maria Dolores

  "Hi, Maria Dolores," Cary said as I approached. He was standing right next to Scott, cheerfully unaware that the situation might be fraught. "I didn't find Officer Fields yet, but Scott Ingell said he'd show me where he is."

  "That was kind of Scott." I stopped about ten feet away from the two of them and thirty feet from the closest people in the salsa contest's audience. "Why don't you go finish putting away the crates from the deliveries now?"

  "Cary wants to stay with me," Scott said, wrapping a seemingly friendly arm around Cary's neck to pull him closer. "He's been asking me to show you my pocketknife so you can see why he needs to get one."

  Scott opened the hand that was draped around Cary's neck, revealing a four-inch, steel-colored knife. He waited for me to look into his eyes before flicking the knife open, exposing a three-inch, razor-sharp blade.

  "I can see why Cary admires that knife," I said. "May I take a closer look?"

  "I really don't think you want that," Scott said. "It never leaves my hand unless it's stuck in something."

  "Maria Dolores," Cary said, "you can see mine when I get it."

  "Thanks, Cary. But you know how impatient I am. I don't want to wait that long. Why don't you swap places with me? Then I can see the knife without its leaving Scott's hand."

  "Oh, no," Scott said, tightening his grip on Cary but keeping a teasing tone in his voice as if we weren't talking about a life-or-death situation. "I've heard all about how you manipulate people into doing what you want. Cary here would never lie to me or try to trick me. You would."

  "Look," I said, searching for words that Scott would understand but that wouldn't scare Cary unnecessarily. "I've already told the police what you did. It's just a matter of time until they show up to finish this."

  "I can handle fat old Freddy Fields."

  I wasn't so sure about that. Fields was a lot tougher than his sometimes-goofy personality led people to believe. "You might be able to take on one officer, but he's not the only one here today. I arranged for extras. Some in uniform and some in plainclothes. They could be listening to us right now and you wouldn't know it. You don't want to do anything that will upset anyone."

  That seemed to worry him. He looked toward the nearby audience, where a few people seemed to have picked up on the emotional vibe behind them and turned around to watch us. They were still about thirty feet away from us, too far to do anything, but Scott started backing away, keeping Cary tightly pressed against his side. I followed, keeping the same distance between us as when I'd first confronted him.

  My only plan was to keep Scott focused on me and not on Cary until help arrived. In the back of my mind, I wondered where Keely was. Had she passed out from the stress? And if so, had she managed to send the texts for help before then? There wasn't time to look behind me. The people who were watching us from the salsa audience didn't seem to know quite what to make of us, and anyone who might be qualified to help, like an undercover officer, was apparently still focused on the mayor's patter, teasingly drawing out the winners' announcements to increase the suspense. So far, I'd heard him announce the last runner-up in each category, along with the applause as he gave them their ribbons. Kallakala had just asked the two remaining finalists in the traditional category to come up to the front to find out who'd won.

  "I understand why you did it," I told Scott, trying to keep him off-balance. "Gabe was the kind of guy who was just asking to be killed, the way he stiffed everyone."

  "I've dealt with worse," Scott said. "I should have known better than to let him run a tab instead of going through the app."

  "So you went to the cottage to collect, and he refused to pay."

  "Worse than that." Scott stopped walking backward, his anger taking over. "I only went to tell Gabe he needed to pay something on account before I drove him back to Seattle, and he laughed in my face. Said he didn't need a ride back to Seattle since his wife was going to pick him up. He'd said all along he couldn't get a ride from her because of his mistress, but he'd come up with the idea of sending his mistress home on a bus with some story to convince her it was for her own benefit, not his. And then since he didn't need a ride back to Seattle, he didn't feel he'd gotten his full value for our deal, and he wasn't paying any of it."

  "You didn't have to kill him," I said. "You could have sued him."

  "Yeah, like that worked so well the last time I got stiffed and ended up in bankruptcy because the court proceedings took so long." He glanced down to check on Cary, who looked confused now but wasn't actively struggling. "It would have been worse this time. I couldn't even sue because I'd agreed to go off the books for him, so there wasn't any independent record of all the driving I'd done. Just my handwritten odometer readings. Gabe even threatened to report me to the ride services for taking off-the-books passengers and cheating them out of their cut."

  "I understand why you were angry with Gabe," I said, doing my best to ignore the increasingly perplexed look on Cary's face. "But what about the coach? He never cheated anyone."

  "No," Scott said, clenching his fist around the knife too close to Cary's chest. "I'm sorry about that. I probably should have let it go when no one arrested me the first time. But I couldn't stop thinking about how easy it was to get away with murder, and if anyone needed killing, it was Jack Condor."

  "But you got Andy instead," I reminded him.

  "Yeah, well, it was him or me once he caught me stalking Condor. I had a weapon with me, so I didn't back down. Told him to stay out of it, but he wouldn't do that."

  Cary began to struggle against the arm holding him. "Scott Ingell, did you kill Coach Andy?"

  "Relax, kid," Scott said. "This isn't anything for you to worry about."

  "You didn't answer my question," Cary said, grabbing the man's arm with two hands and tugging at it, not dislodging the hold but causing the knife to graze his chest. "Did you kill Coach Andy?"

  "Stop wiggling around, or you'll get hurt." Scott adjusted his grip, tightening his arm across Cary's chest before addressing me again. "We're leaving now, me and Cary, and if I see any cops, well, you know what I'm capable of."


  "No, wait." I spoke automatically, with no plan for what else I could say to convince Scott to turn himself in. I hated improvising, but I had to do something.

  A feedback screech from the salsa contest's microphone startled me, causing a brief flashback to the first concert at the market on my first day as manager. It had been plagued by that kind of noise. The mayor was a pro and hadn't had any trouble with the sound system before now, so I automatically looked in his direction to see what the problem was.

  Matt Viera had the microphone, not the mayor.

  "Drop the knife," Matt shouted into the microphone, which he'd apparently adjusted to maximum volume. Keely was standing next to him, looking a bit limp and leaning against him for support, but at least she was conscious and on her feet. "We know what you did, Scott Ingell."

  There was a brief frozen moment that felt like it was going to last forever until it became obvious that Scott wasn't going to surrender easily. Cary must have reached the same conclusion, because before I could do or say anything, Cary's head bent, his mouth latching on to Scott's arm and biting down.

  Scott shouted in surprised pain, dropping the knife and clapping his other hand over his forearm. "You bit me!"

  By then Cary had dropped to the ground like a marionette with the strings cut, landing on the blade that was flat on the grass and settling in with a look of determination that told me Scott had no chance of reclaiming his weapon. Cary was small with little visible muscle, but he was determined and never gave up.

  Scott would have had a better chance of escaping if he'd accepted me as a hostage. I might be good at convincing people to do my bidding, but Cary's simpler and unplanned approach had turned out to be remarkably effective at disarming a killer.

  *

  It took a moment for Scott to realize he should run, but by then Fred Fields and three other uniformed officers were racing toward him. Scott heaved a long sigh, hunched himself into his usual defeated posture, and then weakly raised his hands in surrender.