Worst Laid Plans (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 1)

by Claire Robyns

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Principal Limly said.

  I swallowed past the lump of fear as my gaze swerved to him. His eyes were on me, and he seemed really tired, weary and exhausted as he stroked his beard and looked at me.

  I inhaled deeply, released slowly.

  This was Principal Limly.

  Of course he wasn’t going to kill me.

  But he had walloped me over the head. Knocked me out with chloroform. Brought me to this dank cement room. Tied me to a chair.

  My gaze returned to that brown bottle as a host of far-stretched ideas strung together inside my head. Was he hunting for Ms Daggon’s murderer? Did he think I knew something and wasn’t telling? Worse, did he think I’d done it?

  Crazy, sure, but given my current situation, maybe not so crazy.

  “If that’s truth serum.” I nudged my chin at the bottle. “It’s not going to work, Principal Limly. I don’t know anything, seriously, and I didn’t murder Ms Daggon.”

  He looked at the bottle and gave a hoarse, scratchy laugh that seemed pulled from his gut.

  “This was supposed to be finished.” He cursed. “I thought it was over back then, but then Belinda found that photograph, and now you…”

  “Are you talking about Mr Biggenhill?”

  His eyes returned to me.

  “What’s going on?” I prompted when he didn’t reply. “What was supposed to be finished? Talk to me, Principal Limly.”

  His shoulders stooped. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “How about at the beginning?” I said, suspecting I’d already surmised most of that worry weighing on his shoulders. All these years he’d carried Mr Biggenhill’s secret, maybe even helped him escape his life. “That photo places you and Mr Biggenhill at The Lounge, a show bar at that ranch establishment.”

  “The ranch… If I’d known…” He stood and paced in front of the table, no longer looking at me. “Harold was driving the Thruway every weekend, stalking butterflies on the outskirts of Montezuma National park.”

  “Harold? Oh, Mr Biggenhill?”

  Principal Limly nodded absently. “He passed me filling up with gas, apparently, saw me standing there right out in the open. Didn’t think anything of it at the time, but that spot with the colony of butterflies was just off the main road and when he saw a car similar to mine pass by again and again, regular like clockwork, every Saturday afternoon…”

  He trailed off, paced the floor.

  I rotated my ankles to ease circulation. I badly wanted to demand he untie me, but he was clearly unhinged, desperate and depressed. A combination I wasn’t qualified to mess with. Maybe once he’d talked it out, he’d realize I couldn’t help him find whatever answers he was looking for.

  I wasn’t so much scared anymore, just uncomfortable. In all honesty, I was more afraid he’d harm himself than me. He’d brought a shotgun, after all, and he’d said it wasn’t to kill me.

  “What happened then?” I prompted again, mimicking the sort of tone a psychiatrist would use.

  “Not much.” He laughed. “Not until after I accepted the position of department head and Harold decided to follow me, in the name of looking out for public interest. If I’d known he’d seen me driving that road, I wouldn’t…”

  He paced to the wall, the one with the window slit just below the ceiling, and stood there with his back to me.

  Shoulders slumped.

  Arms hanging limply at his sides.

  In that moment, he really did look like a wreck of a man, apt to do the unimaginable.

  “The funny thing is,” he went on, “that was going to be my last performance. Final show. I was getting married the next weekend and I’d already made the decision to put that part of my life behind me.”

  Wait!

  What?

  I gulped the words down before I could spit them out. This demanded a little more tact than that.

  “Harold followed me to the ranch. He didn’t come inside The Lounge, told me he couldn’t stomach it once he’d seen the kind of people milling around, realized what kind of place the ranch was.”

  I was still a couple of revelations behind. “Principal Limly, are you saying that you’re the one who liked to visit at the ranch?”

  He turned from the wall to me. “You’re an actress, Maddox, you know that feeling. The glamour. The make-up. Wigs. Glittering dresses. Sliding between the tables and captivating every person there—man and woman—with my voice, my style, my performance.”

  “You were a drag queen?” I whispered in disbelief.

  I had absolutely nothing against drag queens. One of my favorite movies ever was Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

  But this was Principal Limly!

  And if he hadn’t been aiding and abetting Mr Biggenhill’s escape to an alternative lifestyle…?

  “Did Mr Biggenhill confront you?” My voice was suddenly squeaky and I didn’t, not right then, even know what I was really asking.

  “He waited in the car and took that photograph of me leaving after the show,” Principal Limly said. “It was a couple of days later before I knew anything about it, when he confronted me, threatened to expose me unless I gave up my position at Silver Firs High. Gave up teaching altogether. My sort wasn’t fit to mold young, innocent minds.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” But I guessed that kind of thing did happen back then in the dark ages. “I’m so sorry, Principal Limly, and I know that’s not true at all. You’re a wonderful principal, always motivating and encouraging us.”

  “I’m afraid he may have been right.” Principal Limly sighed and took up his pacing again. “I talked Harold into coming with me to the ranch, told him it was the right, honest thing to do, to see and judge the truth for himself before he ruined a man’s life over it. I didn’t mean to, Maddox, I didn’t. It was an accident.”

  “A car accident?” I asked, confused.

  Principle Limly dropped into the chair and crunched over, head hung in his hands.

  “He walked out five minutes into the show, disgusted. He wouldn’t listen to reason. We were arguing and I shoved him. I didn’t mean to…” He peered up at me. “Harold hit his head on a gate spike. He died almost instantly. It wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d taken him to a hospital. He was gone.”

  “Mr Biggenhill is dead?” I gasped.

  “It was dark and halfway through a show, not many people about,” he went on. “I carried him to the old storm tunnel at the edge of the ranch and hid the body there. I knew it would be safe. No one ever ventured out that way and the mountain end of the tunnel had been clogged for years, so he wouldn’t be washed out into the open.”

  A shower of ice cold prickles covered every inch of my skin. “You murdered Mr Biggenhill?”

  “That.” He stabbed a finger at me. “That’s why I couldn’t go to the police or say anything. Who would believe me? But I didn’t murder him, Maddox. It was an accident. A few years went by and I thought that was it. Then Belinda found that photograph when she broke into the Biggenhill’s cottage.”

  I stared at him in dread.

  This man was a psychotic maniac.

  “You murdered Ms Daggon as well? Why?” My voice pitched in terror. “Did she know what you’d done?”

  “She didn’t need to know,” he said. “She threatened to show the photograph around and if the police started asking questions and looking at the ranch, it would all be over. Belinda didn’t even know how much power she had. She thought it was all about my position at the high school and my image. Still, she blackmailed me for years, to keep me in line and secure her job.”

  Good, God. “You got tired of the blackmail and killed her.”

  “I’m not a monster, Maddox.” He shook his head. “She could have blackmailed me until my deathbed. But I couldn’t get the board to keep her on anymore and I didn’t trust what she’d do with that photograph out of spite.”

  My gaze flew to the shotgun.

  I’d gotten it a
ll wrong. This Principal Limly was a cold-blooded murderer. Of course he would kill me.

  He must have seen where my eyes were glued, because he said, “I told you, Maddox, I’m not going to kill you.”

  “Then why have you brought me here?” My voice was choked. My heart raced.

  Stay calm.

  Focus.

  I started hyperventilating. “What are you going to do?”

  Principal Limly straightened and pointed at the brown bottle. “You’re going to take another nap, Maddox. When you wake up, it will be just you and that shotgun in this cellar. No one will hear you shout. You should understand that. We’re at the Mason Creek house and it’s been cordoned off with a high fence for the renovations, and they’re not due to begin until the summer. No one will come, Maddox, not in time.”

  I blinked hard and saw Principal Limly tugging at a chord dangling from the ceiling. I was pretty sure I’d blanked out for a minute or so. All that hyperventilating.

  A ladder dropped as the hatch opened.

  “You can’t leave me here,” I screeched.

  He hushed me, climbed a couple of rungs to reach for something on the floor above, then hopped down again. “I found this when I went to your bedroom for your keys.”

  I frowned at what looked like my cell phone in his hands. “What keys?”

  “I drove you here in your car.” He returned to the chair by the table and sat. “I don’t have it in me to kill again. Maddox, I am so sorry, but this is going to have to be suicide. You’ll die of dehydration before you starve.” He waved a hand at the shotgun. “There’s one bullet. You’ll want to save it for yourself.”

  I stared at him. “You’re a certified loon.”

  “I’m trying to help you.” He shrugged. “Do you know what happens with dehydration? Your organs begin to shrivel. It’s a terrible way to go. Use the shotgun.”

  “I won’t.” I’d gone beyond shock. Beyond fear. Suddenly I was thinking crystal clear. Maybe that pep talk I’d given myself was finally kicking in. “I would rather die any other way than shoot myself and let you get away with another murder. This is never going to look like suicide.”

  “That’s your choice entirely,” he said. “I’ll come back after a couple of weeks and clean up, Maddox. Shift the chest I’m going to move over the hatch.” He pointed to the slit window in the wall. “Break that window and toss the padlock keys through. It will look like you locked yourself down here and threw the keys out.”

  “You’re missing the most important part. I don’t have any reason to kill myself.”

  “Everyone has a reason to end it all at some point in their life, even if most don’t actually do it.” His saddened gaze settled on me. “You came home, bought Hollow House. What were you running from?”

  I clamped my mouth and raised my chin a notch.

  “Hollywood is a fickle place,” he answered in my stead.

  Broadway! Why did everyone refuse to remember I’d run away to Broadway, not Hollywood? I resisted the urge to correct him, though.

  Principal Limly stroked his beard, regarding me thoughtfully. “Dreams that never materialized. The realization that you weren’t good enough, that you’d never make it. You have reasons, even if you don’t know it yet.”

  Sweat broke out on my forehead. “Please, don’t do this.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to,” he said, sounding so full of regret, I puked a little in my mouth. “I will grant you one last call, though.”

  He held up my phone, smiling.

  It was a trick. “I’d shout for help. We both know that.”

  He dragged the shotgun onto his lap, aimed at me. “You’re dead anyway, but hope is a curious condition of the human mind. You think you still have a chance, but there’s no chance if you do anything stupid. I’ll blow your head off.”

  I wet my lips. My throat was parched. “Okay, give it to me.”

  He raised a brow. “I’m not untying you. I’ll hold the phone for you.” He glanced down at the screen, then back to me. “What’s your passcode?”

  A feeling of unease stroked my spine as I called out the four digits and watched him unlock my phone. Then again, I had a million reasons to feel uneasy. I might even get a chance to list them all while I wasted away to a horrid death.

  Oh, God.

  I gritted my teeth. I had to think about whom I’d ask to call. What I would say.

  And then it came to me.

  It had to be Jenna. She was the only who’d get the reference to Mason Creek.

  I rehearsed my words while Principal Limly tried to figure out how my phone worked.

  “Jenna, hi, it’s me, Maddox.”

  She’d know something was wrong at once. I never introduced myself like that when I called her.

  “I was just recalling that day we went cycling. Summer break, our junior year. You. Me. Billy. Thomas. Jason. Remember that? I won the dare and went inside, bold as anything, and Billy was so embarrassed, he chased after me and claimed he’d won first. And then you and Thomas came inside as well, but Jason ran away?”

  It was perfect. We went cycling almost every day in the summer breaks, no reason to remember one specific day. And none of us had ever been brave enough to come inside, although out of all of us, Jason had been the closest. He’d once touched the front door.

  “I’d like to call Jenna,” I told Principal Limly.

  He glanced up from the phone. “You’ve separated from your husband? Joe?”

  “How do you know that?”

  He looked down again, his thumb scrolling the screen. “These messages between you and Jenna are incredibly informative.”

  “How dare you,” I bit out. “That’s private.”

  He totally ignored me. “That’s why you fled New York? This is interesting, Maddox, I think we should use it.”

  His finger punched as he spoke, dictating the message he texted.

  Feeling down.

  Can’t do this.

  Back to NY.

  Speak later.

  I knew I had worse things to worry about, I really did. Especially as it dawned on me that he had tricked me after all—there’d be no last phone call—and I’d fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

  But the way he’d copied my text-speak felt like a violation that touched my soul.

  “I hate you,” I rasped bitterly. “I hope you burn in hell.”

  “You may well get your wish,” he said sadly.

  He slid my phone into his windbreaker pocket, extracted a linen handkerchief and picked up the brown bottle.

  This was it.

  I supposed I should struggle, scream, fight until my last chloroformed breath. But all I could do was gape at him and think about how foolproof his plan was.

  Jenna was the first person anyone would ask when they couldn’t find me. And New York was a big place to lose oneself in, if you wanted to be lost.

  Just like Mr Biggenhill.

  FIFTEEN

  I came to on the cold floor, curled into a ball. The sound of a car engine faded from somewhere outside, so very far away. My temple throbbed to a dull beat, but I wasn’t stunned senseless this time. My mind was clear and I assumed that car was Principal Limly driving off.

  The inside of my nostrils stung. My mouth tasted acrid sweet and foul. My throat was so dry, it hurt to swallow.

  Ironic as it was, I think I might have killed for a drink of water.

  I uncurled and shoved up against the wall, hugging my knees to my chest as I took stock. Two chairs, the table with the shotgun, the slit window, the hatch in the ceiling, four solid cement walls buried underground.

  That’s what I had to work with.

  Quite a lot, if my name were MacGyver.

  It wasn’t.

  My breath hitched and it took a long, endless moment to pull myself together.

  “Your name is Maddox Storm,” I told myself, aloud and firm. “You are not going to die in this hole.”

  It sounded totally fake and I did
n’t care. I knew about this stuff. The more you said it, the more you pretended to believe, the more true it would become.

  Oh, God. I sighed heavily and slumped back against the wall.

  Who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to talk or act my way out of this one.

  I put a hand to my throbbing temple and felt an unholy-sized bump. Great. If the shotgun, dehydration or starvation didn’t kill me, the swelling on the brain probably would.

  “Stoppit!” I lurched to my feet and went to examine the shotgun.

  To my surprise, the barrel cracked just like the prop from acting class. If it cocked the same, I may just have a chance at firing the thing. I snapped the barrel closed again and propped the shotgun up against the wall in a corner before turning my attention to the hatch above.

  The padlock had a brand new shine, but the wooden slats looked kind of the rotten. Hope burgeoned like a balloon inside me until I remembered what Principal Limly had said about dragging a chest over the top. There may come a point when I’d still attempt to claw my way through it, but I wasn’t there yet.

  I dragged the table over to the wall with the window and climbed up. I had to keep hunched, or my head would have hit the ceiling, but the slit was big enough for me to get a good look outside.

  Well, I was definitely at Mason Creek. I recognized the old water tank that stood on stubby steel legs about fifty feet away. And I couldn’t see it, but I knew the road topped the hill just behind the tank. Not one of the main arteries into the vineyards, but it did still carry traffic.

  Encouraged by my new plan, I jumped down and grabbed a chair. A force of power broke open inside my chest as I smashed the chair against the wall and made bits of wood fly. I could do this. I really could.

  I found a decent piece of leg, scrambled onto the table again and started swinging.

  Nothing happened.

  Not even a crack.

  I didn’t have the best position to maximize my strength, since I had to hunch over and the narrow strip of glass was right up against the ceiling, but this was ridiculous. How was I going to save myself if I couldn’t break through a pane of stupid, fragile glass?