Murder in Cottage #6 (Liz Lucas Cozy Mystery Series Book 1)

by Dianne Harman

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Liz said. “I think I better call the police in a little while. Roger gave me the number when I talked to him last night, and Judy, here’s something I’ve been thinking about.”

  “What?”

  “Isn’t it coincidental that it looks like she’s planning to, and I hate to say it, kill her mother, and someone was murdered at the spa while she worked there? If your daughter’s theory is correct about using phenol on us because we remind her of her mother, do you think she killed Barbara because she was about her mother’s age? And something else occurred to me during the movie.

  “When Stephanie and Nikki came to talk to Bertha and me yesterday morning, one of them mentioned Gina had said that one of her clients really looked like her mother. They said she was laughing and saying her mother would get hers too. They didn’t know what she meant by that, but they thought it was kind of weird. She very well might have murdered Barbara, and now she plans on killing her mother.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “Take a seat,” Sgt. Driscoll of the Bellingham Police Department said to the men and women in uniform who stood in front of him in the squad room.

  “Here’s what we’ve got. There’s a woman, Gina Anders, who’s been traced to this general location from San Francisco. Looks like she wants to do a number on her mother. The captain got a call last night from a San Francisco policeman, and he passed the information on to us. Evidently this Anders woman worked as a facialist at some spa not too far from San Francisco and did a real number on the faces of a couple of older women. She smeared some type of caustic gel on their faces when she gave them a facial. The daughter of one of the victims is a psychologist, and she thinks this Anders woman was taking revenge out on the women because they’re around the age of her mother. That’s the background.”

  “Sarge, what in the devil does some spa have to do with us?” Jim Armstrong, a rookie cop asked.

  “Hang on, Armstrong, I’m getting there. Gina’s mother called her the night before she did a number on the women at the spa and told her she’d married Gina’s boyfriend. Her roommates told the spa owner that several times Gina said she wished her mother was dead. She hitched a ride with a spa employee to the Red Cedar bus depot and told him she was going to San Francisco and then flying to Seattle. We got her phone records and found out the call Gina received was placed from a number here in Bellingham. We traced it to her mother’s home. We also got Gina’s credit card records and found out she did fly to Seattle from San Francisco night before last. She rented a car and made reservations for two nights at the Day and Night Inn near SeaTac airport, but the trail’s gone cold since then. The captain said we were getting this a little later than he would have liked, but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. He’s put a high priority on it now.”

  “Do you have any photos, Sarge?”

  “Yeah, the spa scanned her photo from their employment records and sent it to us, but I imagine she’s in some type of disguise. We have the make and the license number of the car she rented. I’ve already sent out an APB to all the jurisdictions surrounding Bellingham. For their own safety, I’m going to have Anders’ mother and her boy toy husband removed from the house, but I want round the clock surveillance on the house. It looks like that’s where this Anders woman is headed. Since we can’t seem to locate her, I think we need to stake the house out in shifts. If she plans on doing something, it will probably be done at her mother’s home. It’s a pretty rough area, so a couple of under covers sitting in an unmarked car won’t be noticed. Here’s the information on the vehicle Anders is driving. Memorize it and let me know immediately if you see it.

  “Rick, Louie, you take the first shift. Here’s the schedule and the address of the mother’s house. If something’s going down, I’d bet it’s going to happen in the next twenty-four hours. According to her roommates, it didn’t look like she took anything with her. They also were worried about her mental state. The spa employee who took her to the airport said she looked like she was on drugs or something.

  “There’s one other problem. The information the San Francisco police officer gave us was passed on to him by a criminal law attorney in one of the largest law firms in San Francisco. His girlfriend is one of the women this Gina did a number on. She and another woman who was at the spa with her flew to Seattle to see if they could find Gina. They knew they could ID her. We’ve been requested to keep an eye out for them as well. Here are their photos, but I guess their faces are dark reddish purple and swollen from what Gina did to them at the spa. You can probably ID them from that alone. From what I’m told, these two women don’t have a clue about what they’ve gotten themselves into. I just hope they don’t get in the way or get hurt. Any questions?”

  “Yeah, what do you want us to do if any of them show up at the house?”

  “Let me know immediately. I’ll make a decision on what action to take at that time.”

  Several hours later Rick and Louie were drinking coffee from a big thermos jug, parked about half a block from Gina’s mother’s home, debating the Mariners’ chances of making it to the World Series. From their position, they could easily see if anyone entered the house as well as any cars traveling on the street.

  “Louie,” Rick said, putting his coffee in the cup holder. “Check out that grey car. Can you make the plate?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” He called Sergeant Driscoll and told him they’d spotted the car Gina Anders was reportedly driving. While he was talking to the sergeant, he noticed another car not too far behind the grey car. “Sarge, looks like Gina’s being tailed, and from the looks of the two purple balloon faces in it, they must be the two broads you told us about. What do you want us to do about them?”

  “Watch both cars. Try to keep them in your sight. Gotta go, got another call.”

  Two minutes later the sergeant called Rick back. “Believe it or not I just got a call from the two broads following Gina. I spoke with some woman named Liz. Turns out they’ve been tailing Gina all day, and from what she told me Gina’s purchased during the day, I think she might be planning to blow up her mother’s home. The items she purchased are clearly bomb-making materials including eight pounds of gunpowder. That’s enough to blow up the entire house and maybe a couple of others. Liz told me she remembered reading about the Boston Marathon Bomber and wondered if Gina was trying to make a bomb like those two psychos in Boston used. Bomb squad’s on its way. Here’s what the broads saw.” He related the conversation he’d just had with Liz, telling him what Gina had in her car.

  “I told her I had boots already on the ground at the mother’s home, and that I wanted her and her friend to stay in their car and not go anywhere near Anders. Make sure they don’t. Don’t want to have to answer to a bunch of San Francisco mouthpieces and ambulance chasers from some fancy law firm. Call me when you know something.”

  Rick listened to the sergeant. “Okay, Sarge, we’ll keep an eye on the two plum balloons. I know our shift has been over for awhile, but I think we’d both like to see how this is going to play out. We could probably use some more muscle. Have them stake out the south side of the house. We’ll follow this Gina broad and see what happens. FYI, Sarge, I got a bad feelin’ about this.”

  “Me too. By the way,” Sergeant Driscoll said, “I just got confirmation that the mom and her boy toy were taken out of the house before you arrived. If what I think is going to happen, happens, they’re gonna be glad we got them out.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Earlier, when she was at the rest stop, Gina had spent almost half an hour assembling the things she’d taken from the trunk of her car. She was ready for payback time. She parked her rental car about a block from her mother’s house.

  It was twilight and normally the street lights would have been on, but the city workers tended to put new bulbs in street lights that were located in safer neighborhoods, and the streets in this neighborhood were usually on the tail end of their list. It was rapidly
getting dark.

  “Doesn’t look like any lights are on in the house even though their cars are out in front,” Rick said. “Probably wanted the perp to think they were still in there. I can see our backup down the street. Wait, the perp’s getting out of her car. Darn. The two plum balloons just got out of their car, too. Okay, Louie, you take the two balloons, and I’ll take the perp.”

  They radioed for the backups to follow them. Gina was so intent on blending into the shadows she never noticed the men or Judy and Liz. She carried the Sears sack by its handles. Large trees cast long, dark shadows, making it difficult to see Gina, who was dressed in black. Rick and Louie struggled to keep all three women in sight as darkness rapidly fell. All of them moved from tree to tree, hiding behind first one tree and then another. Fortunately the Sears sack that Gina carried was white, so it acted as a beacon in the darkness.

  When she got close to her mother’s home, Gina stepped between it and the neighbor’s house and entered her mother’s unfenced back yard. She ran up the steps leading to the raised deck, took the pressure cooker out of the Sears sack, and set it on the deck.

  Louie nodded to Rick. Both had their guns drawn as they crept close to where she was standing. However, before they were able to take Gina into custody, Liz and Judy suddenly bolted into the backyard and started running towards Gina to try and stop her from doing whatever it was she had in mind. The two of them were forcibly intercepted by Louie who shouted at Liz and Judy to stay back. “Don’t move!”

  Gina heard Louie’s shout, whirled, and took off, but Rick was faster. He caught up with her, slammed her against the house, pulled her hands behind her back, and handcuffed her. The two backup officers arrived within moments and surrounded Gina. Liz and Judy stared in disbelief, not realizing how dangerous the situation they’d placed themselves in had been.

  Rick was talking on his handheld police radio with Sergeant Driscoll. “We’ve got the perp and the two plum balloons. Looks like she may have made a bomb and put it in some kind of metal container. It’s sitting on the outside deck in the back of the house. When’s the bomb squad gonna get here? Don’t know how much time we have!”

  He turned to Louie and the other men. “Bomb squad’s on its way and more backup too. Sarge said to get out of here in case it’s set to go off momentarily.”

  Rick yelled at Judy and Liz to run as fast as they could away from the house. Louie and Rick raced towards the front yard, half pulling and half dragging Gina. Loud sirens filled the air. Tires squealed on the street as the bomb squad truck pulled to the curb. Four men wearing heavy bomb protection gear got out of the truck along with a big German shepherd dog.

  “It’s on the deck in back,” Louie yelled to the bomb squad, as they raced to the rear of the house. He turned to Gina and pointed his gun at her. “When’s it set to go off?”

  “You’d like to know wouldn’t you, fuzz? If I were you, I’d say goodbye to your friends ‘cuz they’re on their way to meet their maker.” She turned to Judy and Liz. “Look at you. You’re just like my mother, only now you’re even uglier than she is.” She laughed maniacally.

  One of the bomb squad members, who was carefully inspecting the makeshift pressure cooker bomb, cried out, “Evacuate the neighborhood. There’s enough gunpowder in here to blow it to kingdom come.”

  “Louie, go on. I’ll get the perp and the plum balloons out of here,” Rick yelled. Louie and the other men began frantically knocking on the doors of nearby homes, urging the residents to leave immediately, that there was a bomb threat.

  Just then one of the bomb squad members screamed from the back yard of the house. “Take cover. The bomb’s on an automatic timer, and we can’t disarm it. It’s going to blow any second.”

  Seconds later a huge blast came from the rear of the house. A massive fireball shot up in the air as the house exploded. The members of the bomb squad had instinctively run away from the explosion, years of training kicking in. Even so, all of them were blown to the ground by the blast and suffered minor burns and injuries.

  Rick yelled into his radio. “Officers down. Get ambulances here ASAP.”

  Three more police cars raced up, and a few minutes later they were joined by several ambulances and fire trucks. Whirling blue and red lights were everywhere, lighting up the area. The police put yellow tape up at both ends of the street and blocked it off to all traffic and pedestrians. Officers yelled into bullhorns telling people to evacuate their homes immediately.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the firemen got a handle on the blaze, and the remains of the house could be seen. The injured bomb squad members were rushed to the hospital by ambulances, sirens blaring. Rick had called Animal Control, and the bomb squad dog was on his way to a veterinarian for emergency treatment.

  When the firemen had the situation under control, several backup members of the bomb squad went to the rear of the house to determine if there was any risk of further explosions. A few minutes later, one of them returned and said to Rick, “You can let the people back in their homes. Apparently she didn’t know what she was doing, and that’s a good thing. It looks like there were enough explosives in the bomb to blow up the neighborhood, but from what we can tell, the bomb sort of fizzled and didn’t go off with its full force.”

  A policeman began shouting through a bullhorn. “It’s safe to go back to your homes. The danger is over.” A steady stream of residents began making their way back to their homes, several stopping to thank the police and stare in disbelief at the destroyed house.

  Rick was on his cell phone with Sergeant Driscoll. “It’s over. The house is still smoldering, and it’s a total loss. Fire Department has it under control and mop-up’s begun. The backup bomb squad guys said she didn’t know what she was doing, and that turned out to be a lucky break for everyone. Four of our bomb squad guys have been taken to the hospital, but they should be okay. The dog is going to be fine. We’re bringing Gina in. What about her mother and the guy?”

  He listened and said, “I think it’s probably a good thing they don’t see one another. We’re on our way. Want us to do anything with the two purple balloons? Just a sec. I’ll get her.” He walked over to where Judy and Liz were standing and handed Liz his phone. “Sergeant Driscoll wants to talk to you.”

  “This is Liz Lucas.” She listened to the sergeant for a few minutes. “Well, I began to wonder if she was planning on making a bomb when I saw what she was buying. Like I told you earlier, I remember reading about ingredients like that after the Boston Marathon bomb attack. The more I thought about it, I decided I better call you. I’m glad we were able to help.”

  “Liz, why did you come all the way up here to Washington from California and do this?” Sergeant Driscoll asked.

  She took a deep breath. “I know it’s going to sound strange, but I had what I call a niggle, a feeling, that I should come. It was pretty insistent. It niggled me where to park our car in the motel lot, so we could see Gina coming out and could follow her.”

  Sergeant Driscoll was quiet for a few moments. “I usually don’t believe in that kind of stuff, but in this case, I’m going to have to. Tell you what. If you ever need a reference for your niggle, use me. And I may be calling you to help us in the future with some dead end unsolved cold cases. Thanks again!”

  “Sergeant, there was a woman murdered at the spa I own in California. The woman who died was staying in one of the guest cottages, and according to the coroner, was poisoned. I have reason to believe that Gina might have been the one to poison her. When you question her, would you see what you can find out about that? I’d really appreciate it, because I’ve talked to everyone else who might be a possible suspect, and I’m not connecting the dots.”

  “Happy to. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  Rick and Louie drove to the police station with Gina in the back seat guarded by a policeman who sat next to her. She was booked for attempted murder, illegal possession of bomb-making materials, arson, and a host of
other charges. Even with a good attorney, Gina was headed to prison for a long time.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Judy, let’s get a bottle of wine and go back to the motel. I’m exhausted. We can fly home tomorrow.

  “That sounds wonderful. I know I’m a little shaky, and I know I was as close to dying tonight as I’ve ever been, but I’ve never felt so alive. This was absolutely the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. You mentioned something about a niggle when you were talking to the sergeant. What was that all about?”

  “Well, it’s kind of a little voice in my head that tells me things. It’s been talking to me since I was a kid. It tells me things like, ‘Lock the car door, or don’t eat that.’ I can’t help but listen to it, and I usually do what it says. It told me to wake you up early this morning and where to park in the motel lot so we could watch for Gina. I’m wondering if I have a little ESP, you know, some kind of an extra sensory perception thing.”

  “What other things have you noticed?”

  “Once when we were living in San Francisco, I decided to take a class on ESP. The instructor told us to bring a metal spoon to the second class. He asked each of us in the class to take our spoon and try to bend it with one finger by simply concentrating on bending it. Well, guess what? I was the only one in the class who could bend it. I bent the poor spoon almost in half with just one finger. Maybe I do have some sort of extrasensory power going on. I really don’t understand how it works, but it does. When I was younger I thought everyone probably had a niggle that told them what to do or not do. Kind of like a conscience. But over time I’ve come to realize that it seems to be kind of unique to me.”