Murder Once Removed

by S. C. Perkins

  A dark cloud came over his face. “Because they all went up in a fire caused by my meth-head cousin. That’s just one of the reasons why Mark owes me.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Wait. Mark—your cousin, the FBI agent—was addicted to meth?” I couldn’t imagine it, until I remembered Mark’s smile and his very even teeth. One of many side effects of a methamphetamine addiction was severe tooth decay, wasn’t it? Those perfect teeth had to be caps.

  But Jesse was scowling as he rifled through the dark soil, which had recently been watered. It was nothing but soil. Fury came into his eyes. He pulled off the base to check it, too, then dropped the pot to the ground. He’d gone so still I felt myself draw back. The only things that moved freely were the leaves on the tree.

  Finally, he said, “Do you know that, while I want all the Ayers land returned to my family, I would have been happy if the senator just turned over one property in particular?”

  “Which one is that?” I whispered through dry lips.

  “It’s a large piece of land in South Texas. About five thousand acres. Great for hunting.” He paused, smiled at me. “And I’m one hell of a hunter.”

  So fast I hardly saw his hand move, he pulled the knife from its scabbard at his hip and threw it with the lightest flick of his wrist at the tree. I saw its sharp point glint in a ray of sunshine, then I heard two things almost simultaneously: the light thunk of the knife entering the tree and the spitting hiss as it narrowly missed NPH.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “Don’t you dare hurt him!” I screamed. I lunged at Jesse, the heels of my hands landing just below his rib cage, making him utter, “Oof.”

  Yet, like I often did, I’d forgotten how short I was. Jesse was taller and stronger. Much stronger. With quick, harsh force, he pushed me back with one hand, shoving me onto the wood floor of my balcony, knocking the wind out of me.

  I blinked up at him, eyes watering, gasping for air. He was bending over me, his right arm swinging, the back of his hand ready to slam into my face in an almighty slap. I closed my eyes, tried to protect myself by turning away. I heard the rustling of leaves and a guttural scream.

  My eyes flew open. Jesse was stumbling sideways as eighteen pounds of furry orange beast leaped off his back, landed next to my feet, then sprang up to the balcony railing again and streaked away into the safety of the tree.

  Holy blue blazes, did NPH just sneak-attack him? By the way Jesse was wiping blood off the back of his neck, the answer was hell, yes—and this time the cat had brought out the claws.

  I scrambled backward like a crab as Jesse sent the knife from his boot flying into the tree with such force I heard the wind whip. My back hit the French door and it swung open. All at once, I was over the threshold. I jumped up and slammed the door shut, locking myself inside and Jesse out. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I glimpsed a bottlebrush orange tail disappearing into a set of bushes near the fence line.

  For one short moment, Jesse was stunned at the change of events, but he looked out over the balcony at something, then back at me, and his lips contorted into a menacing grin. Opening his canvas bag, he pulled out what looked to be a black tactical vest full of pockets and put it on. I gasped when I saw at least ten sleek knives, ready for the pulling by an expert thrower. When he turned around, two more were positioned on each side of the small of his back. Twisting to look at me, his maniacal coppery eyes bored through the glass and into mine.

  “You can’t save the senator now, Lucy,” he said. “The wrongs of the past are about to be righted.”

  Then, much like he did at Serena’s Halloween party, he grabbed onto the railing, hopped up, and balanced on it, reaching for a long limb of the pin oak. He held, then let go, dropping onto the ground by a row of variegated pittosporum bushes.

  I craned my neck toward where he’d been looking and my blood ran cold. Twelve-year-old Diego, jamming out to the music pumping through his headphones, was walking toward the locked gate that separated us from Little Stacy Park and the stage where Senator Applewhite was giving his speech. Standing up on a stage, the senator would be a perfect target for the knife-throwing psychopath who was now quietly sauntering after my young neighbor.

  I didn’t think. I turned and ran to my door. As I yanked it open, something red, metal, and the size of a wine bottle caught my eye.

  My little fire extinguisher. I grabbed it and sprinted for the stairs, taking them by twos, too single-minded to scream for help. I barely heard the sounds of Senator Applewhite’s amplified voice coming from the park. I saw Diego, unaware of anyone around him, unlocking the gate door. He hadn’t seen me, and neither had Jesse.

  I was five feet away.

  “Jesse!” I yelled.

  He turned. Slowing, I aimed the nozzle straight for his face, ready to squeeze the trigger and blind him with white chemical foam. I pulled on the trigger as hard as I could.

  Nothing happened. Oh, god, the pin. I hadn’t taken out the pin.

  Jesse lunged at me, grabbing my arm in a crushing hold. I saw him pull a sleek, pointed knife and I braced myself to feel its blade in my ribs.

  Then all of a sudden, there was no one gripping my arm. I stood, flat-footed, for a moment as Jesse took off, sprinting toward the park through the open iron gate, the sharp blade of the knife almost sparkling in the bright sunshine. The open gate was held by Diego, who hadn’t heard the kerfuffle between Jesse and me over the music booming in his ears.

  “Luce, are you okay?” Diego shouted at me, his eyes wide with surprise.

  “Stay there, and call the police!” I ordered as I ran after Jesse. I saw red as I ran, but it wasn’t anger. Somehow, I still had the little fire extinguisher clutched in my right hand.

  By the time I’d reached the gate and raced through it, Jesse was already a hundred yards or more in front of me, running under trees filtered with dappled sunlight. In the near distance, I could see the crowd of people listening to the speech. The senator was up on a temporary stage, standing at a podium. All around him were posters that read RE-ELECT SENATOR DANIEL APPLEWHITE and flags that waved in the slight breeze.

  “Senator!” I screamed. “Senator! Get down!” My footsteps sounded like thunder in my head as I tried futilely to catch up to the man who had murdered Winnie, and who now wanted to murder the descendant of C.A.

  But no one heard me as I watched Jesse’s elbow cock back, ready to let the knife fly.

  “Senator!” I screamed again, just one split second before a large, hurtling object slammed into Jesse, knocking them both several feet sideways, but not before Jesse’s knife flew out of his hand and headed over the crowd in the direction of Senator Applewhite.

  “Oof.” I tripped over a tree root at full tilt and went down, somehow landing on a swath of leaves that covered the ground. The air rushed out of me, and the extinguisher flew out of my hand, but I lifted my head enough to recognize Ben. He’d come out from behind the tree and had thrown himself at Jesse in a football-style tackle.

  It was amazing, truly.

  Even more so was how he, in one swift move, had Jesse pinned on his stomach.

  Screams were piercing the air as some of the audience scattered and others dropped down to the ground. I got up. A few feet away, Ben was struggling to wrangle handcuffs onto a combative Jesse’s wrists. Running over, I ripped out the extinguisher’s pin with gusto and pulled the trigger, spraying Jesse fully in the face. I caught a glimpse of Ben’s grin and heard the cuffs snap closed as I raced to the stage.

  Damn it, with the crowd and my lack of height, I was too short to see anything.

  “Senator!” I yelled as I planted my hands on the stage and half-hopped, half-clambered up. “Senator!” My eyes were blurry with frantic tears.

  Over sounds of yelling and police sirens in the distance, I heard a voice.

  “Ay, chiflada, Lucia. You really know how to get yourself into trouble, don’t you?”

  Standing over Agent Mark Ronten was Flaco, looking mean and scary despi
te his cheery pink-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt. My jaw dropped.

  I looked at Agent Ronten. He had blood flowing from his head, but otherwise, was out cold after Flaco had done a flying tackle of his own.

  “He must have hit his head on that thing,” Flaco said with a shrug and a twitch of his handlebar mustache. He was pointing to the downed podium. Helping the senator up a few feet away was Agent Koblizek, who’d protected him with his own body when the knife came flying through the air. Senator Applewhite was okay, thank goodness. I whirled around in panic for a victim of Jesse’s knife until I heard Flaco’s voice again.

  “Mira, Lucia.” He tapped the podium with his foot and I focused on the spot he’d indicated. Stuck in the center was the knife, still and rendered harmless. I finally let my knees buckle, sinking down on the stage floor in relief.

  THIRTY

  Once again I was in interrogation room three of the Austin Police Department, waiting to give my statement.

  I’d been in the station for well over an hour and I was starting to think Ben had arranged this so that I had time to think about how stupid I’d been trying to play the hero with a dangerous man.

  Back at Little Stacy Park, before being whisked away to safety, Senator Applewhite had thanked me over and over, given me a hug, and called me “dear girl.”

  “You might not feel the same way when I tell you what I’ve found out,” I’d told him as we watched Ben, dirtied and looking a little sore from his tackle of the senator’s would-be assassin, put a handcuffed and foam-covered Jesse into a police car and drive away.

  First, I explained to him that his great-great-grandfather was Albert Tanner, née Albrecht Gerber, then broke it to him that he was related to the man named Jesse who had just tried to kill him. I explained about Mary-Eliza being forced to sell her Ayers land to Caleb, and how Jesse was determined to get them back into Ayers-related hands. Lastly, I gave the hardest truth to him straight and without preamble, telling him that the contents of the still-missing letter Jeb Inscore wrote would reveal that Caleb Applewhite, his three-times great-grandfather, was indeed the man who ordered the death of Seth Halloran.

  The senator looked pale for a few long moments, clutching at an unopened bottle of water that had been in his hands. Then he straightened and said with great dignity, “Then so be it. I will schedule a private meeting with the Hallorans as soon as they are willing and some long-overdue apologies will be made.”

  Looking around to make sure no one was listening in, I said, “Senator, may I ask you one thing about that, ah, special information you told me?”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  “You mentioned you told only one other person. Was that other person Winnie Dell?”

  “It was,” he said. “What gave it away?”

  I sighed, fiddling with the top of my own bottle of water. “I kept wondering why Winnie would fight so hard to protect the daguerreotype and the letter, and the only reason that made any sense was that, when she read Jeb Inscore’s letter and all it contained, she did so to protect your secret.”

  Senator Applewhite nodded, but was silent for several more moments, guilt making his face look more haggard than it had a few minutes earlier. Finally, I gently took his bottle of water, opened the top, and handed it to him. We both sat quietly, drinking our water, looking out at the green trees of Little Stacy Park.

  “Lucy, I’d love to hear all about how you made your discoveries,” he said finally. “Would you be willing to relive your ancestry-investigating adventures with me again before I leave?”

  We arranged to meet at Flaco’s for breakfast the next morning instead of at the law office.

  Ben, busy with official matters, had come up to me only for a minute on the stage to ask if I was okay. He was streaked with dirt and had abrasions on his face and hands. It made him look like Indiana Jones and my heart danced a little polka in my chest.

  “I’m good,” I said. “I might have a bruise or two developing, but I’d do it all over again. What about you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m a little banged up, but I’d do it all over again, too.” Then he smiled. That incredibly charming smile that I’d only seen a couple of times and it reached into his eyes as they looked into mine. I had to order my heart to cool it.

  “Did you or Flaco ever get the email I sent?” I asked. “With the recording of my conversation with Jesse as he drove me to my condo?”

  “Flaco got it first and called me. Dupart and I were already here at the park for the speech. I was actually running toward your gate when Jesse burst through it with you hot on his tail.” His smile got wider. “It was smart thinking of you to record that, Lucy. Completely, utterly, and totally dangerous … but smart.”

  “How did you get that recording out?” Detective Dupart asked me later as he put me in the interrogation room. He’d been kind enough to let me call my officemates first to let them know I was all right.

  “I’ve done those motions so many times, I can do them in my sleep.” I smiled. “Which probably translates to ‘just dumb luck.’”

  The detective laughed. “Maybe it was luck, Lucy, but not dumb at all.”

  Now, as I waited not so patiently, one of his young officers brought in a paper bag and a drink in a to-go cup.

  “A big Mexican guy in sunglasses brought you these,” he said. “They smell awesome. We aren’t supposed to deliver stuff like this, but I wasn’t going to argue with the guy. Are they from Big Flaco’s Tacos?”

  Four foil-wrapped tacos were in the bag. They were the kind I always ordered when I’d had a hard day. Simple stuff. Two beef tacos al carbon and two chicken fajita tacos. Four small plastic tubs at the bottom of the bag contained my favorite sides: refried beans, shredded cheese, chopped fresh jalapeños, and salsa fresca. Flaco had added in some plastic silverware and an extra handful of paper napkins. In another extra bag were three mini-sopaipillas with a little tub of still-warm honey.

  Pure heaven.

  “They’re Flaco’s all right. Feel free to have one.”

  He took one of the chicken fajita tacos and a sprinkling of cheese. Wrapping it up again, he took a big bite, and his eyes rolled in pleasure.

  “Weally good,” he said through his mouthful as he left me once more. “Thanks.”

  I ate, then it was back to waiting, and waiting some more. An officer had confiscated my cell and iPad—“Procedure,” he’d said—so I waited with nothing to do but think about what happened and stare at myself in the two-way mirror.

  Exactly as Ben had wanted, I was sure, the sneaky rat.

  The door finally opened again and the sneaky rat himself, in a change of clothes after his impressive tackle earlier, walked in carrying two extra chairs.

  “You have visitors, Ms. Lancaster,” he said.

  Behind him was Gus Halloran with an impishly grinning eighty-two-year-old woman on his arm.

  “Betty-Anne! Gus! What are y’all doing here?”

  Betty-Anne rushed over to hug me, giving me a sweet smack on the cheek, smelling of Shalimar perfume and reminding me of my own grandmother.

  “Lancaster,” Gus boomed, “while you were out saving the life of a United States senator and solving the mystery of who wanted to kill him and why, the lovely Betty-Anne and I got to solve another mystery.”

  There was already a second chair across from me. Ben placed the extra chairs on either side of the table and encouraged Gus and Betty-Anne to sit. He came and sat down in the chair next to me. I gave him a glance to ascertain his mood, but all he did was stare back at me before giving our two elders his attention.

  “Lucy,” Betty-Anne began, putting her handbag in her lap. “This afternoon, while you were being held captive by that awful young man, I received a call from your building manager, Mr. Jackson Brickell.”

  I frowned. “How would Jackson have your phone number?”

  “Well,” Betty-Anne said, “he told me you’d asked him to plant a gardenia bush, but when he went to pick it up, the a
ttached drip dish on the bottom fell out and with it was a small plastic package with an airtight seal. Within the package was a note from your Dr. Dell. She said if the package was found, to call you, me, or Gus here, and left our numbers.”

  She reached out to pat Gus on the arm. He beamed, his mustache fluffing up in the process. “Jackson said he called you first, but when you didn’t call back, he assumed you were busy and called me,” she said. “I was out at lunch with Dolores, though, and didn’t hear my phone ring, so…”

  “Jackson called me,” Gus finished, tapping himself on the chest.

  Betty-Anne patted his arm again. “Bless him, Gus knew it was important and drove right over to pick it up.” Her eyes brightened. “Lucy, shug, do you know what was in it?”

  “The missing journal page, Lancaster!” Gus barked before I could say anything. “He found the ever-lovin’ journal page. And do you know what?”

  “It was a letter, to Jennie Epps Halloran,” I said.

  Gus looked deflated for a moment, then grinned and slapped the metal table with the palm of his hand. “I’ll be damned, Lancaster. I should have known you’d figure it out.”

  “When will we get to see it?” I asked, excitement coursing through me.

  “Do you really think we could have waited?” Betty-Anne laughed. “Taking a page from your book, I asked him if he could scan it and email it to me. When I read it, I called Gus here immediately. Can you believe it, he flew in his private plane to San Antonio to get me and he brought me here so we could surprise you.”

  “Little did we know you were going all Miss Marple-slash-Rambo on us in the meantime, Lancaster,” Gus said.

  I turned beet red, especially when I felt Ben’s frowning, sidelong look.

  I turned to him. “What?

  “Your Miss Marple-slash-Rambo moment could’ve gotten you killed.”