by Jessa Archer
“Be careful. I’ll be listening. As soon as I can get through the woods from Ben Faircloth’s place, I’ll be watching, too. I’m guessing four or five minutes at most. I called Billy Thorpe, too, and he’ll let Blevins know.”
I hadn’t believed for a single second that Ed would stay put, but it still worried me knowing that this was exactly what Sam Winters had warned me not to do if I wanted Cassie to stay safe. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“On Blevins, I don’t know. But he won’t come in guns a blazin’. As for me, I’ve done this kind of thing before, okay? I promise you that I will do nothing that would endanger you or Cassie. Do you trust me?”
My throat clenched tight, but I managed to croak out an answer. “Yes. I do.”
The cabin looked the same as always. I didn’t even see the other car until I reached the end of the drive. A silver BMW was parked in front of the shed, with Nick Winters leaning against the hood.
Cassie was on the grass with her hands bound. With duct tape, most likely, because a piece was over her mouth as well. Probably a good thing I didn’t have Ed’s pistol. It would have been really hard not to shoot someone when I saw her like that, and I suspected I was not the only one armed.
Sam Winters sat in a chair, looking uncomfortable, although that might simply be because it was one of the cheap plastic stacking chairs I kept under the deck. I was a little surprised to see that Sam was the one holding the gun. It wasn’t aimed directly at Cassie but simply pointed in her general direction.
I cut the Jeep’s ignition, grabbed the diary from the passenger seat, and began walking slowly toward them. As I passed the deck, Cronkite startled me, jumping onto the table with a plaintive meow.
Cassie stared up at me with wide eyes. She’d been crying, and there was mud on her clothes from the ground, still wet from the recent rain.
“About time you got here,” Nick said. “Give me your keys.”
“They’re in the Jeep.” I held the diary out toward him.
“This thing is kind of a moot point now,” Nick said, but he snatched it anyway and put it next to the roll of tape on the hood of the car.
“Not moot,” Sam said. “We don’t want to leave any loose threads hanging.”
Cronkite hissed from the deck.
“Tell that cat of yours to get inside,” Nick said, “or I’ll kick him again.”
Another hiss.
I dutifully told Cronkite to go inside and he, being a cat, ignored me. Nick reached down and picked up a chunk of rock. It wasn’t much bigger than my thumb, but he had decent aim. It hit the picnic table. Cronk gave an angry screech, shot across the deck, and fishtailed through the pet door.
“You’ve got the diary now. If you and Sam are planning on making an exit, you should get a move on. Ed Shelton is coming for dinner. He’ll probably be here soon.”
“At three forty?” Nick snorted.
“We eat early,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “So, did you sneak in planning to shove Edith down the stairs, or was killing her a spur-of-the-moment thing?”
That got his attention. Sam’s, too.
“It was an accident,” Sam said, although I could hear a touch of doubt in his voice. “Edith fell when she saw him. The whole plan was ill-conceived, which he’d have known if he’d bothered to run it past me first.”
“Because Edith never actually blackmailed you, did she? I guess you could call it hush money, but you chose to make those payments because you felt guilty about Carlos.”
Sam’s thick eyebrows shot up, and he pointed the gun at me. “Should have known you’d be a busybody. Too curious for your own good. Sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
“You should put the gun down, Sam. Steve Blevins isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but there’s enough evidence in my office for him to put the pieces together. And I emailed the evidence files to three other people earlier this afternoon.”
All of that was a lie, but Wren knew most of what I did. So did Clarence, and I was sure both of them would have already given Ed the details I didn’t have time to share before I left.
Sam’s hand started to shake. On the one hand, telling him I knew about Carlos might not have been the best idea. On the other hand, I had to let him know that I wasn’t the only one with this information, just in case he and Nick decided their best option was to shoot me and Cassie before hitting the road.
“That boy’s death was an accident!” Sam said. “I gave Edie Morton a job. A good one, too. Even took Carlos on when she asked me to. She repaid me by fooling around with that piece of Mexican trash. And then he had the nerve to tell me I was out of line in how I spoke to her. My own employee. In my own factory.”
“We don’t have time for this, Grandpa. Give me the gun.”
Sam whipped the pistol toward Nick. “Don’t you push me, boy. This is all your fault for being so greedy. You’d have had a nice little nest egg when I died. Heck, I’d have given you money now if you really needed it, and all of my secrets would have stayed buried in that backyard. I didn’t mean to kill that boy. I was just going to turn him in, say he’d lied about his work status. Then he went and smacked me upside the face with a broom handle. I tried to get it away from him, and he slipped. Whacked his head against the warper.”
“Enough!” Nick said sharply, and then his voice softened. “Come on. Let’s just go, okay? If you want to do the whole true confessions thing, you can send her an email once we’re safely out of here. Let’s get you into the car…”
Sam looked momentarily torn. Then he nodded, and Nick went to help him up from the chair. I yelled out a caution, but it was too late. Nick ripped the pistol out of the old man’s hand and shoved him back into the chair, which rocked backward, nearly toppling Sam onto the lawn.
Nick pointed the pistol at me as he backed toward the car. He grabbed the roll of tape from the top of the car and tossed it to me. “Tape his hands to the chair. Not that he could exactly chase after me,” he said with a dark chuckle.
I ripped off a piece of tape and walked toward Sam. As I knelt down by the chair, I cast a quick glance at the tree line on the side of the house, which was where Ed would be approaching if he was coming in from the Faircloth place. The top section of the underbrush twitched to the right. Not much, though.
Could be Ed sneaking through the woods as backup, I thought. Could also be squirrels.
“I really am sorry about this, Grandpa.” To my surprise, Nick actually sounded sincere. “You know this wasn’t the way I planned it. All I was trying to do was get back some of the money you threw away paying off Edith. That way, I could leave you with a bit in the bank. But since everyone had to go and stick their noses in, I don’t have a choice. You would just slow me down, so I’m taking the cash and the car. You’ll still have your Social Security, and the house, and who knows, maybe someone will buy the land the old factory is on.”
As I finished taping off Sam’s arms, I saw Nick’s shadow behind me. He yanked the tape out of my hands and shoved me to the ground. “You should have minded your own business.”
Cassie cried out, but the sound was muffled by the tape over her mouth. I turned my head to the other side so that I could reassure her that I was okay. That this was all going to be okay. Her eyes were wide with fright, so wide that I knew instantly she wasn’t just reacting to the fact that Nick had shoved me down and was about to bind my hands.
It was more of a look that said he was about to shoot me.
✰ Chapter Twenty-Two ✰
I braced for the sound of a gunshot, but instead I heard a roar as a giant mass of black fur hit Nick from behind. Nick made an oof sound, then stumbled forward and tripped over me. One arm flailed, grabbing at Sam’s chair and knocking it over in the process. Then Nick face-planted on the lawn a few inches in front of his grandfather.
He’d managed to hold on to the pistol, though.
Pushing myself to my knees, I crawled forward as Nick tried to get up. But then
Remy was back for another go. The bear swatted Nick hard across the side of his neck. Nick howled and fell onto his forearm, trying to angle the gun to get a shot at his attacker. I raised my leg and brought my foot down on his wrist as hard as I could. Nick’s fingers flew open, and I lunged forward to grab the gun.
I rolled to my side, pulling the gun away. At that instant, Remy froze. His head jerked up, sniffing the air. The bear met my eyes for an instant, and then he was off, tearing toward the woods on the far side of my house. Just as he disappeared into the underbrush, I picked up what his more sensitive ears had noticed a few seconds earlier—the sound of sirens heading our way.
A shadow was coming through the trees that separated my property from the Faircloth place. Ed was moving much faster than I’d have thought possible for a man with a bad hip walking over uneven ground. I suspected he was going to be feeling it tomorrow.
I scooted backward toward Cassie, keeping the gun trained on Nick, who was now clutching his bleeding neck with both hands. The cuts weren’t especially deep, but I thought it quite possible that he’d need a few stitches. Sam Winters was still tipped on his side, arms bound to the chair, staring into the rear-left tire of his grandson’s car.
Ed emerged from the woods, his phone in one hand and his gun in the other.
“What was that thing?” Nick croaked.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “But it looked a lot like justice to me.”
“Well, somebody just ended her fifty-year streak of never touching a gun,” Ed called out, giving me a smile as he raised his pistol toward Nick. “I’ve got him covered. You take care of Cassie.”
I hugged her first, then pulled the tape from her mouth. “Thought you said Blevins was smart enough not to come in with sirens screaming?”
“Yeah,” Ed said. “Apparently I underestimated his stupidity. Something he and I are going to have words about later.”
The sheriff’s cruiser screeched to a halt next to Nick’s car. “What in blue blazes is going on here?” Blevins asked, whipping out his pistol. “Put the gun away, Shelton.”
Ed, who was already doing precisely that, said, “Cassie here was out with Nick and figured out that he killed Edith Morton.”
“So, it’s a mother-daughter act now? I told Ruth that she needed to let that go. There’s no…story…here…” He frowned, looking from Sam to Nick, and then he picked up the radio to call for an ambulance and backup.
“What happened to him?” Blevins asked when he finished the call.
I looked toward the woods where Remy had vanished. I wasn’t sure how much Ed had seen, and later, I would tell him the entire truth. He already knew about Remy and had even seen the cub briefly one afternoon when he helped me look for the trophy hunter that killed the bear that I’m pretty sure was Remy’s father. I didn’t know if Nick had been planning to shoot me or not, but there’s no doubt in my mind that things could have gone very badly if the bear hadn’t acted when he did. And I was a little worried about the ramifications for Remy if I didn’t lie my pants off. The man he’d attacked had almost certainly killed Edith Morton, but it was still a case of a bear attacking a man, and I didn’t think the police would simply let that go.
Cassie must have been thinking the same thing. “Cronkite jumped him,” she said in a shaky voice as I pulled the last of the tape from her wrists. “He’s our cat. Nick threw a rock at him. Kicked at him earlier, too. And then he jumped Nick from the top of the car because he shoved my mom to the ground.”
Sam, who was still lying on his side, said, “Looked a little large for a cat.”
“That was no cat!” Nick said.
“I didn’t see it,” Ed said, peering at the scratches on Nick’s neck, and then glancing over at me. “But Cronkite’s part Maine coon cat. Weighs at least twenty pounds. He’s feisty, too. Guess Nick shouldn’t have messed with his family.”
“You have an attack cat,” Blevins said, looking at me. “Why am I not surprised?”
“It wasn’t a cat!” Nick said. “More like a giant dog. Or a bear.”
I laughed. “You think I have an attack bear?”
“Could the two of you put Sam right-side up?” Blevins said to me and Cassie. “And then somebody needs to start explaining exactly what happened.”
“I had Edith Morton’s diary,” Cassie said, giving me an apologetic look over Sam’s head, although I wasn’t sure if it was another apology for taking the diary or for the fact that she was confessing it to Blevins. But she was right. We needed to tell the truth. I was pretty sure that Clarence wouldn’t press charges, under the circumstances, and the odds of us being able to sync up the truth were a lot better than us syncing up lies.
“I saw the diary when I was at Edith’s funeral…or wake, or whatever you call it,” Cassie said, “and I knew Mom didn’t think her death was an accident. We were going to mail it back to her son tomorrow.”
Ed and I exchanged a look, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. Returning the diary by mail would have been the logical, sane thing to do. Yet it hadn’t occurred to any of us—I’m guessing even Cassie—until that moment. Of course, if it had occurred to us, I’m not sure that I would have figured any of this out. And Nick might still have nabbed Cassie, assuming that she still had the thing.
“That’s probably what we should have done,” I amended. “But I was worried that Clarence might miss it. So, I borrowed a key from Wren and returned it last night. I’m sure you’ll want a full, official statement from us later, but to give you the general overview, I believe that you’ll find Nick has been using the closed-off entrance inside the garage to get into Edith’s house on the nights that Clarence spends up at his cabin. I suspect he was calling her, too. Maybe even making her think she was seeing the ghost of a young man named Carlos.”
“Carlos who?” Blevins asked.
“I don’t know. He was Edith’s boarder in 1955. If Sam kept employment records at the factory going back to 1955, he might be able to give you the last name. Or you could check dental records and DNA, because you’ll find him buried in Edith’s backyard. Sam can probably give you a precise location, although at this point, I think Clarence would be willing to let you just dig around until you find him.”
“So…Edith Morton rented this guy a room and then killed him?”
“No. Sam killed him.”
“It was an accident!” he said. “But no one would have believed that. A couple of girls on the line had overheard us fighting. He was an illegal. I gave him a job, the ungrateful whelp. No one even knew he was gone. No one missed him.”
I glared at Sam. “Edith did, apparently. And you couldn’t stand that.” I turned back to Blevins. “Sam paid her hush money for years to keep it quiet. When Nick took over Sam’s finances, he figured that out. He may have tried to get the money from Edith directly. Eventually, though, he settled on trying to see if he could rattle her enough to get her committed. But she caught him in the house.”
The ambulance pulled in as I was speaking, followed by a second cruiser. The two EMTs spoke briefly with Blevins, then went over to help Nick and Sam into the back of the ambulance.
“Is that everything?” Blevins asked.
“Well, except for the fact that I think Nick pushed her. I’m sure he’ll deny it. But I guess I’ll let you figure that out.”
“Thank you,” Blevins said. There was a sardonic note to his voice, so I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
“You should thank her,” Ed mumbled. “She just solved two murders you didn’t even know happened.”
“True. And now I’ve got all the paperwork to deal with, not just for Edith, but for a murder that happened more than sixty years ago. But, hey—you got your story, didn’t you, Townsend?”
Shaking my head in disbelief, I said, “You know, that really wasn’t my primary motivation, Steve.”
I glanced over at Ed and Cassie. Ed was pacing around, shuffling his feet as he dialed someone on the phone. The foot shuf
fling seemed odd, but then I noticed something in the mud directly in front of me—a bear print—and realized what he was doing. I rubbed my shoe across it quickly, glancing around to see if there were others.
Cassie’s eyes looked a little glazed over. I’d seen that look on her face twice before. Once was when she fell out of her treehouse and broke her arm in two places. The other time was at my parents’ funeral.
“I’m going to get my daughter inside,” I told Blevins. “She’s just been through quite an ordeal.”
I half expected Blevins to object and say that we needed to come down to the station immediately to give our statements. But there must be at least a small bit of decency in the man, because he nodded.
“Come on, sweetie.” I wrapped an arm around Cassie and pulled her close. “You’ll feel better once you’re in dry clothes with a mug of tea in your hands.”
“I’ll expect the two of you at the station tomorrow morning,” Blevins called out. “And you, too, Ed.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Ed told him.
As the three of us climbed the steps onto the deck, he added, “Hope they don’t inspect those scratches on Nick’s throat too closely. Or the prints on your lawn. Because that was not a cat.”
“Cronkite is big,” I admitted, “but I doubt he’d have been able to knock Nick off his feet.”
As soon as we were inside, I reached into my pocket for my phone. “I need to call Wren and let her know we’re okay.”
Ed shook his head. “Already taken care of. Texted her while you were talking to Sheriff Nitwit. You couldn’t call her anyway,” he said.
Glancing down at the display, I realized he was right. Completely out of juice.
“I just charged this thing!” I said.
Ed rolled his eyes. “Either spring for a new phone, or I’m going to buy you one.”
“I’ll chip in,” Cassie said. “As long as you make it one of those cheap flip-phones.”
“You mean the ones with extra-large buttons for seniors?” Ed asked, grinning.
There was no doubt about it. The two of them were definitely ganging up on me.
