I chuckled. “No, dear. We need to be a little more inconspicuous. We’re taking the Mini Cooper.”
Years earlier, my sister had won two Mini Coopers and ten grand in Las Vegas. She’d given one of the cars to me as a thank-you for my help in getting her out of a sticky situation that had nearly gotten us both killed.
In the years since I’d owned the Mini, I’d barely used it, but I couldn’t bear to part with it because, truth be told, that week in Vegas with my sister had been one of the most thrilling of my life.
As Gilley and I approached the car, Gil said, “Is there room enough for the both of us?”
“Ha, ha,” I said, opening the door and slipping behind the wheel. Mini Coopers are deceptive—they’re actually quite roomy inside. “I haven’t started it in months. I hope it still runs,” I said, turning the ignition and smiling when the engine turned over. “Ahh,” I said, petting the dashboard appreciatively. “Who’s a good little Mini? Hmm? You are!”
“Wow,” Gilley said, looking around the interior. “There’s more legroom in here than I thought.”
“Buckle your seat belt,” I told him, and we set off.
It took a good hour and a half to reach West Hempstead—a community not far from JFK Airport. We had to rely on my app to locate Sasha’s address, and after several turns and what felt like a few misdirections, we came upon a duplex that’d definitely seen better days.
A gutter hung down from the roof, draping itself like a dead snake across the front of the garage. The windows were covered by blinds that had whole sections missing—giving the house the impression of a gap-toothed old man, and an orange flowerpot still holding some sort of long-dead plant gave the only spot of color to an otherwise dreary scene.
“Yikes,” Gilley said, looking out at the house.
I sat in the car, parked at the curb, and worked up some courage, then tapped Gil on the shoulder and said, “Come on. We might as well get this over with.”
We walked up to the front door, and Gil depressed the doorbell, but no sound came out. “Did it ring?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Yeah, maybe it’s best to knock.” I rapped on the door three times, and we waited. And waited. And waited.
“Nobody’s home,” I said.
“Ugh. We drove all this way too.”
“We could wait,” I suggested.
“We could,” Gilley agreed, but I could tell he didn’t really want to.
“Just for a little while,” I told him.
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
We got back to the car, and Gilley reached into the rear seat and pulled out his drone. He’d been fiddling with it and putting it together since we’d started our journey. “I think it’s ready for a test flight,” he said.
“What? Here?”
“Sure,” he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t fly it far.”
Gilley opened the car door and set the drone on the sidewalk; then he closed the door and opened the window. Next, he propped his iPad against the gearshift and used the remote control to launch the drone.
“That’s a nice picture quality,” I said, eyeing the screen as the drone lifted off into the sky.
“It is,” Gil said. “I upgraded to more pixels.”
“Good choice.” I was fascinated by the bird’s-eye view. “How far is the range?”
“On this model it’s fifteen hundred meters, or about a block and a half.”
“That’s not very far,” I said.
“Yeah. The price jumps significantly once you get above two thousand meters.”
I put my hand on Gilley’s arm as his drone looped around a tree and started coming back to the car. “Wait. Go back.”
“Go back?”
I pointed to the screen. “Yes! Go back!”
Gilley pivoted the drone around and directed it away from us again. “Why?” he asked, working the joystick.
“Stop!”
“What?!”
“There!” I said, pointing to a car on the street. “Can you move the drone lower?” Gilley did and I gasped. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“That’s the car that I saw Carmen jump into!”
“That beat-up rust bucket?”
“Yes! I remember the gray paint on the back quarter panel, and the dented front fender! Quick, lower the drone to the license plate.”
Gilley lowered the drone to the rear of the car, and I lifted up my phone and scrolled through my notes until I found the plate number. It matched. I then looked down the street, but I couldn’t make out the drone. “How far away is that?”
“Seven hundred meters,” he said.
I started the engine and pulled out into the street. There was no traffic either coming or going, which was good, because Gilley’s drone was now hovering about car height, and an oncoming car could’ve taken it out. “There!” I said, pointing to where the drone hovered in the street.
“Uh, Cat?” Gil said, his voice unsteady.
“Hang on,” I said. “I gotta find a parking spot.”
“No . . . Cat . . . you should really look—”
“There’s a spot!” I said, zooming past the drone to a small space that would just fit the Mini.
“Cat!” Gil said, as I slipped into the space.
“What?”
“Look!”
I glanced to where Gilley was pointing, down at the screen of his iPad, and for a moment, I couldn’t really tell what I was looking at.
“Is that . . . ?”
“Yes. Yes, I think it is,” Gil said, a wobble still in his voice.
“Oh . . . my . . . God,” I whispered. “She’s dead, right?”
“I don’t think there’s any question.”
With shaking hands, I parked the car and sat there silently with Gilley while we stared at the iPad in stunned silence. Slumped over to the side in the front seat of the vehicle was the figure of a woman, her clothes stained with dried blood, her hair covering her face, and her blue and bloated hands limp at her sides.
“What do we do?” I whispered.
Gilley maneuvered the drone away from the car, sending it up before bringing it straight back to us and in through the window, to settle gently in his lap. Rolling the window up, he turned to me and said, “We get the hell out of here.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. Not even remotely. We need to go.”
“We need to call the police!” I said, reaching again for my phone.
Gilley slapped it out of my hand. “Cat, listen to me! If we call the police, that makes three murder scenes that you’ve been involved in. Given that statistic alone, I think it’s only a question of time before you land not only back in jail, but are accused once again of murder and held without bond.”
I winced. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“I know. So put this car into gear, and let’s get the hell outta here!”
With mounting panic, I pulled hard on the wheel and zoomed out of the space, bolting down the street, past the sedan with the dead woman’s body. I didn’t even break for the stop sign at the end of the block.
And that was a rather unfortunate maneuver, because no sooner did I blow the stop sign than I saw flashing reds in my rearview. “Oh, no!” I cried.
“Really?” Gilley said, craning his neck to look back. Turning to me, he said, “What karmic goddess did you piss off to have this kind of run of bad luck?”
“I don’t know!” I wailed. “What do I do?”
“What do you mean what do you do? You pull over!”
“But the dead woman!”
The burst of a siren accompanied the flashing red lights behind us.
“That cop doesn’t know about the dead woman!” Gilley yelled. “Pull over, tell him you didn’t see the stop sign, and take the ticket!”
I nodded and flipped on my turn signal, but I was shaking so hard it was difficult to ease the car over to the c
urb. “What do I say if he asks what we’re doing around here?”
“He won’t,” Gilley said, although his voice had gone up an octave, which meant he too was nervous and scared. “He’ll ask for your license and registration and write you a ticket. Just chill.”
“My registration should be in the glove box,” I said.
Gilley opened the box and began to rummage around. “Where?”
“I don’t know!” I snapped, leaning over to push his hands out of the way and search myself.
A hard wrap on my car window caused both Gilley and me to shriek. I sat up more calmly, my registration in hand, and rolled down the window.
“Ma’am,” the cop said, “do you know why I pulled you over?”
“Um . . . no?” I said meekly. “Was I speeding, Officer?”
“Yes. And you ran a stop sign.”
“I did?” I asked, maybe a weeeeeeeeee bit too forcefully.
The cop gave me a look that said, Really?
I dropped the innocence act. “I’m terribly sorry, Officer. Here are my license and registration.”
I handed over the docs, and the cop walked back to his car, got in, and proceeded to run my information. I tried not to stare anxiously into the rearview mirror as Gilley and I waited in silence, but it was really hard. My heart was thundering in my chest, and I felt a trickle of sweat at my temple. “Come on,” I muttered. “What’s taking so long?”
“Be cool,” Gilley said. “Just be cool.”
Finally, the cop got out of his car, and I could see the ticket in his hand, flapping in the breeze. I had an almost overwhelming urge to put the car in gear and take off at top speed; the anxiety of the moment was really getting to me. At last, the officer reached my window and handed back my identification, the registration, and the ticket.
“Again, I’m very sorry about that, Officer,” I told him after he’d given me instructions about how to pay the fine.
He nodded and started to turn away when a garbled message came over the microphone, attached to his lapel.
I didn’t catch all of it, but the dispatcher clearly said “body” and “automobile,” and I thought I heard the name of the street we were on.
In that moment, the cop’s eyes met mine, and I knew immediately that he saw the guilt in my expression. Standing at my window, he spoke into his microphone. “Unit seven eighty-two responding.” And then he stared at me for a little while longer, as if trying to memorize my face.
I tried to cover for myself by pushing a shaky smile to my lips and offering a, “Well, you seem busy. Have a good rest of your day!”
With that, I rolled up the window and eased forward a bit, my hands gripping the wheel so tightly they hurt. “Does he look like he wants me to stop?” I whispered to Gilley.
Gil was looking back at the cop. “No, keep going, Cat. Keep going!”
I put a little more pressure on the accelerator, and we moved slowly away from the officer. “What’s he doing?” I asked, keeping my eyes forward.
“He’s watching us.”
“Dammit!” I swore. I pushed the accelerator a little bit more, and we continued to move slowly away from the officer. “Has he turned away yet?” I said, a bit too loudly, my nerves sending tremors through my whole frame.
“No,” Gilley squeaked. “He’s still watching us!”
“Why?” I cried, not to Gilley but to the universe. “Why did that stupid call have to come in right before he was letting us go?!”
“Oh, no!” Gilley gasped.
“What?”
“He’s raising his hand! He’s waving to the curb again!”
“Do you think I can pretend not to notice?” I said, the tremors leaking into my voice.
“No! He sees me looking right at him, Cat!”
“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!” I exclaimed as I pulled over to the curb again.
Looking in the side mirror, I saw the cop trotting toward us. I took several deep breaths and let them out slowly. When he was at my door, I lowered the window again. “Yes, Officer?” I asked, adopting the innocent routine again.
“Quick question,” he said. “I noticed your address is in East Hampton. Want to tell me what you’re doing in this neck of the woods?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Is that so?”
“We’ve been scouting the neighborhood,” Gil said. “Catherine is thinking of investing in some rental properties, and there’s quite a few for sale around here,” he said. And then, like a blessing, Gilley offered up the screen of his phone to the officer. “I’ve tagged all our favorites on Zillow.”
I don’t know how he managed to do that so quickly, but I was incredibly thankful.
The cop surveyed Gilley’s screen for a long moment. Then he said, “Why didn’t you want me to know that?”
I opened my mouth, but Gilley was quicker. Picking up his drone he said, “We were using this to scout out the houses we’re interested in. It’s just under the half-pound limit, so I don’t have it registered, but I think we might be too close to the airport to fly it, even though I’ve kept it at twenty feet or lower.”
The cop’s eyes flickered from Gilley to me and back again. Finally, he said, “Keep the drone inside the car. If I see it flying around, I’ll cite you another ticket.”
“Yes, Officer,” Gil and I said together.
“You can go now.”
With that, he trotted back to his car.
I blew out a huge breath of relief. “Ohmigod, Gil. That was some incredibly quick thinking.”
“Thanks,” he said, and I could tell he was proud of himself. “M.J. and I used to get ourselves into all kinds of pickles. I learned to think fast on my feet.”
I wiped away the beads of sweat on my forehead. “Which is what makes you a terrific sidekick. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
Gil and I arrived back home and walked into Chez Kitty spent and hungry. Neither of us had the energy to cook, so we had Sebastian order us a carryout. While we waited for the delivery, Gilley and I sat at the table and talked about the body in the car. We were both also thoroughly convinced that Carmen and Sasha were related.
“Was it Sasha or Carmen dead in that car?” I asked Gilley.
“It could have been either, with the other in the trunk,” he said.
I made an eww face. “Why would someone be trying so hard to kill Heather’s housekeeper?”
“I have no idea,” Gilley said. “Why would someone want to kill Heather?”
“Because she was hateful,” I said. “And underhanded. And her husband was supposedly tied to the mob.”
“Yeah, but didn’t he die a few years ago?” Gilley asked.
“He did. And he was shot, like Shepherd’s ex-wife. But Heather wasn’t shot. She was poisoned.”
“With some unknown toxin,” Gil said, “that the coroner can’t detect.”
“It’s all so strange,” I said. “According to Marcus, the only thing Heather had in her stomach were traces of the three martinis, Cobb salad, and some of my punch, but there was no sign of any toxin in any of that. Although Marcus did note that my punch was the last thing Heather ingested before she died, but the M.E. tested all the ingredients, and there was nothing toxic or poisonous in it.”
“What if someone spiked your punch with an untraceable toxin?”
“If that happened, then why was Heather the only one who died? Why didn’t at least someone else get sick?”
“Maybe no one else drank it after it was spiked,” Gilley offered.
I pointed at him. “See, but how likely is that, Gil? I bring the punch to the party, and the killer simply hopes that no one but Heather drinks the punch? Plus, she was hammering away on those three martinis throughout the luncheon. Heck, she even had one in hand when she and I were trading words. Anyone who drinks a martini as an appetizer to lunch is a pretty hard-core drinker. No way could the killer have anticipated that Heather would’ve swapped the martinis for punch
later. Although . . .”
“Although what?” Gil asked.
“Although there’s the very odd occurrence that Carmen was all over me about the punch from the moment I arrived, but not in the way I suspect you’re thinking. She wanted to know if I followed the recipe exactly to the letter, and then she taste-tested it in front of me like she was making sure I didn’t spike it.”
“Okay, now that is weird,” Gil said.
“Right?” I said. “If Carmen wanted to poison Heather, why would she grill me about the punch being made exactly to spec?”
“That almost sounds like someone who would want to make sure Heather wasn’t poisoned,” Gilley joked.
I eyed him keenly. “Exactly,” I said. “Yes, Gilley, that’s it exactly!”
“That’s what exactly?”
I began to pace back and forth, tapping my lip as I thought. “We need to talk to Carmen.”
“We might as well call Heath then, Cat, because if that body in the car was Carmen, the only way to reach her would be through a medium.”
I eyed Gilley sharply again. “Would he do that?”
“Oh, he might, but M.J. would kill him . . . and me, if she found out. She wants the both of them out of the murder-solving business.”
“Hmm, we probably don’t want to upset M.J. during her pregnancy, do we?”
“We don’t really want to upset her at any point, actually. The only person scarier when they’re angry may be your sister.”
I laughed. “We’ll call it a tie. Still, I wish there was some way to know if it was Carmen in that car, or if maybe her cousin was the one murdered and Carmen is still on the run.”
At that exact moment, there was a knock on the door. And by knock I mean that someone took their fist and pounded Chez Kitty’s door hard enough to rattle the hinges.
Gilley and I traded looks of alarm. “That can’t be good,” he said softly.
I tiptoed to the door and squinted through the peephole. Shepherd’s angry face glared back at me. “Uh oh,” I said softly.
“Who is it?” Gilley asked, just as softly.
“It’s Shepherd!” he yelled through the door.
Gilley made a yikes face. “Should we pretend we’re not here?” he whispered into my ear.
“Don’t even try pretending you’re not here!” Shepherd yelled.
Coached to Death Page 24