“Joanna?” she said again. Something seemed off about the fragmented, one-sided conversation she was overhearing.
“Please… Don’t hurt…” Suddenly she heard a shriek, and the call was cut off.
Chapter Ten
Ellie tried calling her friend back, and when she got no answer, she decided to drive over. She wasn’t sure if she was overreacting or not. She had barely been able to make out most of the words over the phone. What she had heard hadn’t sounded good, but she also knew that she could be way off base. Still, she wanted to follow-up. If something really was wrong, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself for ignoring it. She wasn’t quite ready to call the police, though; she didn’t want to send them on a wild goose chase, and didn’t want to freak her friend out either.
She pulled to a stop in front of Joanna’s house. It was a large, luxurious house on the outskirts of town, in one of the newer, more touristy areas. Joanna and Steve had bought it only the year before. It had a circle drive, and Ellie was able to park right in front of the door. She left the engine running and got out, jogging up the front steps to the door.
Her heart pounding, she knocked. Joanna opened it a moment later.
“Ellie?”
“You’re all right,” Ellie replied, feeling relieved. “You called me accidentally, I think, but it sounded like something was wrong. I came over to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” she said with a tight smile. “Really, Ellie… I’m just tired. Sorry for worrying you.”
Ellie looked more closely at the other woman. She really did look tired. Her skin was pale, and there were bags under her eyes.
“All right,” Ellie said at last. “Sorry for bothering you. And Joanna, you know, if anything else is going on, you can tell me.”
“I know.” Her friend gave her a look that Ellie couldn’t quite identify. “I’ll see you later.”
Just as she was reaching to close the door, Ellie saw someone move in the shadows of the dark house behind her. “Is that Steve?” she asked.
Joanna shot a glance over her shoulder. She seemed to hesitate. “Yes. He’s tired, just got back from a long trip. I should get going.”
Then the door was shut in Ellie’s face, leaving her standing on the porch, confused, hurt, and worried. With a confused frown, she turned and walked back down the steps, getting into her car.
She was only a block away from the house when she took her foot off the gas pedal. Something was bothering her. The look in Joanna’s eyes. The shadowed form standing behind her in the hallway. Had it really been Steve? She didn’t think Joanna had mentioned him being on a trip. That was something they usually talked about, not that Joanna had been talking to her recently.
Ellie let the car come to a stop at the end of the block, then turned around. That niggling feeling wouldn’t go away, and she wouldn’t be able to rest until she convinced herself that everything was all right.
She parked in the same spot as before, marching up the porch steps and knocking on the door again, not really surprised when no one answered it. She waited a few seconds, then knocked again, this time much harder. Once again, she waited a few seconds with no answer. She looked around. Joanna’s car was still in the driveway. She had no doubt that her friend was still there.
Something was up. Not just today, but for the past few days. Joanna was hiding something, and Ellie was just beginning to realize that it might be something serious.
She knocked again, harder. “Joanna?” she called out. She tried the doorknob, but it was locked. After only a moment’s hesitation, she wandered slightly to the side, and standing in the bushes, she looked through the window. The interior of the house was dark, she couldn’t make out anything one way or another. She thought for a moment, then returned to her car to grab her phone. She tried calling her friend’s number again, but once more, it rang through to voicemail.
“What do I do now?” she muttered. She looked at the house again, then back at her phone, remembering the strange call she had gotten earlier. With a sigh, she decided to do just a little bit more investigating before reaching out to Russell. She walked around the house, heading for the sliding back door, which she knew for a fact that Joanna rarely locked. Once she was on the back porch, she peered in through the window again. The kitchen was dark. Nothing seemed out of place inside, so she reached out, meaning to knock on the glass of the door. Pausing, she thought better of it. She reached for the handle, pulled it open without resistance, and breathed a sigh of relief. One way or another she was finally going to be able to get to the bottom of all of this. Joanna owed her some answers.
She walked in, practically holding her breath in the silence of the house. She shut the sliding door behind her and looked around, listening for any hint of where Joanna or Steve – if it really was him – might be. At last, she got what she wanted. A thump sounded above her head.
She made her way up the stairs, going slowly in an effort to be quiet. The house was new, and nowhere near as prone to creaking as her own was. When she reached the top of the staircase, she could hear voices, and followed them down the hall to a wooden door that she recognized as the one that led to Steve’s home office. The door was shut only part of the way. Not even daring to breathe, she peeked around the edge of the frame.
The office was a large room, with bookshelves lining two of the walls, and a heavy wooden desk right in the center. An expensive rug adorned the floor, and behind the desk was a floor to ceiling window, giving a view of the trees out back. It was a breathtaking room, but Ellie’s gaze was focused on the people silhouetted against the window.
Joanna was in a rolling chair, facing the door as she leaned over the desk, a paper in front of her and a pen in her hand. Her face was flushed, and Ellie thought she saw tears in her eyes. As she watched, Joanna touched the pen to paper and slowly signed something.
She wasn’t alone, though. Standing on the other side of the desk, his back to the door, was a man. It wasn’t Steve, Ellie could tell that much. He was leaning on the desk, hands clenched into fists as he stared intently at Joanna, every inch of his posture screaming that he was threatening her. Ellie watched them, frozen for a moment, until her phone began to vibrate loudly in her pocket.
Chapter Eleven
The man’s head snapped around to look at her just as a Joanna’s face lifted. Her eyes found Ellie’s immediately and widened.
“Ellie, run!” Joanna shouted. She stood up, rising so suddenly that the rolling chair flew away from her. “Get out of here!”
Ellie, however, was frozen to the spot. She recognized the man now that he was facing her. It was the reedy man who was managing Ms. Maine’s All-American Buffet; Jason Hanks.
“You’re selling the hot dog shop to him?” The words were the first thing out of her mouth. She realized belatedly that in this situation it probably wasn’t exactly important.
“Not selling,” he said. “Already sold.” With a flourish, he took the paper that Joanna had signed and held up for Ellie to see. A nasty grin split his face. “Two restaurants down. Yours is next, Ms. Pacelli. The health inspector should be arriving in oh… about ten minutes. When he does, he’s going to find rat droppings all over the place.”
“What are you talking about?” Ellie asked, stepping into the room. “There aren’t any rat droppings in my restaurant. It’s cleaned thoroughly, every day. We haven’t ever had a rodent problem.”
“You do now. Trust me, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve gotten plenty of other restaurants shut down or fined. How do you think we did so well down in Portland? Our food is good, but not that good. Not good enough to bring in all those customers, unless I weed out the competition a bit.”
“What are you saying? Did you plant rat droppings in my restaurant?” she asked, finally getting it. “That’s just… that’s low.” Her gaze flicked over to Joanna. She saw how upset her friend was and immediately refocused on the situation that she had just walked into. “You didn’t wan
t to sell the hot dog shop, did you? He made you, somehow.”
Joanna opened her mouth, but the man turned back to her, raising a hand and wiggling a finger. “She doesn’t need to know. This contract is all that matters. Joanna signed the hot dog shop over to me. It’s mine now. And as soon as I get the insurance situated, it’s going to burn down in a nasty fire. It will be a shame, of course, but by then the town will have a lovely buffet to eat at instead. Who knows, we might even end up using some of her recipes. Some of her toppings seem to be popular.”
“You’re not going to get away with any of this. I’m not sure exactly what laws you’ve broken, but some of this has to be illegal. Fraud certainly is, and blackmail, or however you got Joanna to agree to all of this is too.”
“They won’t believe you,” he said, his trademarked sneer back on his face. “My nephew is a lawyer, and a very good one. Even if you try to sue me for something, your case will just get squashed. No one will believe you; you have no proof.”
“I’m pretty sure at least one person will believe me,” she snapped. “My husband is the sheriff, and I know all of the police in this town personally. At the very least they are going to trust me enough to investigate it. You’ve been harassing my friend and you just admitted to trying to sabotage my restaurant and get it shut down. That’s not something you’re going to get away with in a town this small.”
Something in the man’s face changed then. His expression darkened. “You’re the sheriff’s wife, are you? That’s a shame. That means I can’t let you go crying to him.”
“Ellie, get out of –” Joanna started to shout, getting cut off when the man lunged across the desk, reaching for her. She jumped backward out of his way. Taking a deep breath, she continued. “He’s the one who killed everyone on the boat! He is a murderer. He’ll kill us too!”
It took a moment for Joanna’s words to really sink in. Ellie’s eyes widened when they registered. Millions of questions rushed through her mind, but she knew that she didn’t have time for any of them. She saw fury flash through the man’s eyes and she stumbled backwards, tensed to run. The only thing holding her back was her friend. She couldn’t just leave Joanna there trapped in a room with someone responsible for two deaths and putting another woman in the hospital.
Jason picked something up off the desk; a heavy looking hammer. She remembered all of the blunt force trauma to his victim’s heads and gulped. The man’s eyes flashed back to Joanna, who was cornered in the room, then over to Ellie. She had no doubt that he was thinking the exact same thing that she was; there were two of them and only one of him, and if even one of them escaped, that he was done for.
Without warning, he lunged at Ellie, running across the room toward her. Ellie stumbled backward, turning around and taking off down the hall, heading for the stairs. The last thing she wanted was to get cornered in another upstairs room.
She heard him behind her, thundering down the hall after her. She had only been to Joanna’s house a couple of times, but thought that she remembered a heavy oak door in the living room. She made her way down the stairs as quickly as she dared and dashed toward the room, where she planned on locking herself in. The door was there, but to her horror she realized it didn’t have a lock on it. She could hear Jason coming down the stairs and knew she only had seconds to either hide or get out of the house.
The large couch was a good foot and a half away from the wall, leaving space for a lamp behind it, and she hurried toward it, somehow managing to squish herself between the couch and the wall. She froze as soon as she was out of sight, trying to calm her breathing and her pounding heart. She held her breath when she heard footsteps drawing closer. They paused, and she imagined the man standing at the entrance to the living room.
“I’m going to find you,” he said in a singsong voice. “And when I do, you’re going to regret ever stepping foot in this house.”
She didn’t breathe until she heard the footsteps fade away; he must have decided to look for her in other rooms. She let herself relax a little bit then, taking in a deep, slow breath and maneuvering so that she could see under the couch. She was able to see a little bit out into the hallway. When she saw someone approach the entrance to the room she tensed until she realized that it was Joanna’s socked feet that she was seeing.
Ellie popped up, waving her friend over frantically. The other woman hurried toward her and managed to slide in beside her, squished between the wall and the couch just like she was. Ellie pushed the couch out a couple of inches, trying to get them more room.
“We have to get out of here,” Ellie said.
“He’s in the kitchen,” Joanna said. “I saw him as he went through the door. He has my keys. We might be able to make it out the front door before he comes back, but only if you can get your car started the second we get out there. Where are your keys?”
Ellie felt her pocket and said, “I think I left them in the car. All I have on me is my phone.”
“Have you called the police yet?”
Ellie shook her head, realizing that she should have done that already. She took out her phone and looked at the screen. The missed call that had blown her cover was from Russell and she quickly hit the redial button. The sound of it ringing seemed frighteningly loud. She waited impatiently while it rang, but it went to voicemail. Hanging up, she dialed the number for the sheriff’s department.
This time, Ms. Lafferte picked up. Ellie raised the phone to her ear, about to explain the situation as quickly and quietly as she could, but Joanna put a hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide, and Ellie realized that she could hear footsteps again. Jason was back.
“Hello?” came the voice in her ear. “Is anyone there?”
The volume was too loud. Ellie scrambled to turn it down, but it was too late. Joanna shrieked and fell backward. Ellie looked up to see Jason standing over her, one hand tangled in her hair and the other holding the hammer, raised to strike.
Chapter Twelve
Joanna screamed, trying to twist out of his grip. Ellie was frozen to the ground, watching as the man laughed. It wasn’t until he tightened his grip on the hammer she saw his muscles tense that she realized she had to move. She did the only thing she could – she threw her phone directly at his face.
It hit him across the bridge of the nose, hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to do any real damage. Luckily, it made him loosen his grip on Joanna’s hair enough that she was able to slip out of his grasp. She kicked out at his shin and made him stumble back far enough that she was able to get up and run away. Ellie took the chance to stand up and jump over the top of the couch, following her friend. They ran toward the front door, only for something to catch Ellie around the legs when they were only feet away. She crashed to the ground, Jason on top of her. She let out a scream and saw Joanna turn around. Her friend’s eyes were wide and frightened. To her horror, she saw Joanna turn tail and disappear into another doorway. For a moment, hurt overcame her fear. She was shocked that Joanna would so easily leave her to her fate.
She didn’t have much time to think about it. The hammer crashed to the ground right next to her head and she screamed again, struggling harder than she knew that she should. She jerked her elbow back and felt a surge of relief followed by a sharp pain as it connected with his face. He let out a muttered oath and she managed to slip free of him again. She crawled away as quickly as she could, but he was hot on her heels. Then, all of a sudden, he stopped. Ellie slammed into the front door, turning around with her back to it and looking straight at him. He was only a few feet away, also on his hands and knees, but his head was cranked up and his eyes were looking up and to his left.
Ellie turned and saw Joanna standing there, a gun in her hands, pointing it right at him.
“Drop the hammer,” her friend said. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to.” The man looked at her for a long moment, then slowly released his grip on the hammer.
“Well, you got me now,” he said,
slowly raising his hands and getting up on his knees. Joanna tensed, but all he did was turn around so his back was to them. “What are you going to do about it? You can’t shoot someone in the back. They would never believe that was self-defense.”
Ellie realized they were at a sort of stalemate now. If Joanna was distracted for even a moment, Jason might be able to escape or attack one of them. Her cell phone was in the living room, and to get to it, she would have to go past him. She decided to take the time to ask some of the questions that were begging for answers.
“Joanna, I don’t understand what’s going on,” she said, slowly getting to her feet, her back still pressed to the door. “How do you know he’s the one who killed the others? Why were you about to sell the hot dog shop to him?”
“I know Susie,” Joanna said. “She told me about him. He stopped by her restaurant before he came to mine. After I spoke to him, I emailed her and we talked more about him. She said something about having dirt on him, told me not to worry about him. I warned her not to blackmail him – it just sounded like a bad idea all around – but she was adamant that she didn’t want to deal with someone like that in town for the rest of her life. The buffet is closer to Benton Harbor than it is to here, after all.”
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