Women could be anything. I slowed my pace.
They could even be killers.
Ideas exploded in my mind like Fourth of July fireworks. If a woman had hidden in the backseat of Dante’s car and stabbed him from behind, there would be no need to overpower him. Even a tiny person could be lethal in that situation, and it certainly didn’t take any amount of physical strength to drown a bleeding man who couldn’t swim.
I forced the grainy images from Mr. Peters’s hidden camera to mind. Could the other figure in the footage have been a woman? A tall woman? The killer had a hood over his or her head when the pack jogged by me that night. I’d paid no attention. I hadn’t known it was important. I pinched the bridge of my nose beneath my glasses. Think, Mia.
Dante’s crazy ex-wife was tall and angry. Could she have been behind this all along, and I’d discounted her at the start? Why had I done that? What was her alibi? She was working? That could’ve been faked. She could’ve left her phone at her desk. Why hadn’t I looked at her more closely? Was it because she was a woman and I was a hypocrite?
My head pounded with frustration. The weight of my investigation came crashing over me. Details presented themselves at will, as if I’d known them all along but hadn’t understood. The cabbie had picked up a professionally dressed woman. She’d had a story about a cheating lover, but that was smart, right? She’d even taken a ride to the airport to make it more real. She had a cover. The airport was the excuse Fifi had used when we needed a cover. Angelina was a professional. She was smart. She had a temper and openly loathed her ex-husband. She could’ve easily killed him from his backseat. The dagger was probably already in his car, a gift from Mr. Plotz.
I opened an internet browser on my phone. I needed a picture of Angelina that I could text to Calvin Besk. He might be able to identify her as the woman he’d picked up that night. I needed to call Jake, too, and tell him to forget his paperwork and get to my place fast. I knew who killed Dante, or I would as soon as I sent the text to Calvin.
A quick search of Angelina’s name brought up dozens of web articles about Happy Farmer. I scrolled through the results, seeking a clear photo of her face. An article on A-Res Labs stopped me short. Why did that sound so familiar? I tapped the phone to my forehead, willing the information to the forefront.
Fresh adrenaline flooded my system, and a curse popped out of my mouth. I jogged in place while I read the article at warp speed. I didn’t need to wait for confirmation from Calvin. I had her.
I dialed Jake.
“Archer.”
“Angelina killed Dante,” I nearly screamed. “She had a file on her desk from A-Res Labs when I visited her. A-Res Labs is a facility that breeds and distributes mice for testing. She had access to lab mice for her job at Happy Farmer. The mice started appearing after I questioned her. If she didn’t kill Dante, then why try to scare me? Dante was our only connection.”
“Slow down. Start again.” The carefree voice that had answered the call was gone, replaced by the business-voice of a Deputy US Marshal. “I’m on my way, but keep talking.”
“Okay.” I made a dash for my car and switched the call to hands-free. “According to an article I found online, Angelina partnered with Dante on a veggie-wash venture. She’d created a formula that consumers could spray onto vegetable plants to repel bugs and wildlife. The spray was supposed to wash away with water and leave the veggies safe for consumption. She parted ways with A-Res and Dante after they had a dispute about the test mice. I think the mice on my car were lab mice from A-Res Labs. More specifically, I think they were lab mice Angelina had preserved to support her side of the dispute.” I hit the highway and pressed the gas pedal to the floor.
“I’ll contact Dan.” Pride oozed through the phone to my heart. “We’ll have Angelina picked up. Test the fiber from Dante’s backseat against her. We’ve got some DNA from the dagger that didn’t match the victim. If it’s hers, she’ll have a tough time explaining her way out of it. I’ll be at your place in ten minutes. Stay put and lock the door. Call me if you need anything.”
The world blurred past my window at more than seventy miles per hour. “Got it.”
A round of clanging and banging rose from my backseat.
“What was that?” Jake asked.
Ice fingers slid down my spine. “My motion sensor monkeys.” I’d left the opened box in my backseat.
I raised my eyes to the rearview mirror.
Angelina Weiss stared back at me with seething unfettered hate. “Hang up the phone.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Mia!” Jake demanded. “Tell me what’s going on and where you are.”
I held Angelina’s heated gaze. I’d been down the hostage road twice before. In both instances, I’d had no choice but to cooperate with my captor. This time I was in control. I flicked my attention back to the road and repositioned my hands on the wheel in sheer defiance. “Angelina Weiss is in my backseat telling me to give up my phone. We’re approaching exit ninety-nine.” I shot her a look and arched my brow. She’d gotten into the wrong car.
Angelina’s eyes went wide before narrowing to slits. “You stupid cow!” she barked. She raised a Taser over the seat and pointed it at my head. “Pull over. Now!”
I glared at her in the mirror. “She has a Taser,” I tattled. “I’m not sure how she thinks incapacitating her driver on the highway is going to end well for her.”
“Mia,” Jake snapped. “Do not provoke her. It’s okay to pull over. I’m not far from ninety-nine. I’ll be there in minutes with backup. Don’t let her tase you while you’re driving.”
Anger spread through me. There weren’t enough words to explain how tired I was of being a victim. I steadied the car and caught her gaze once more. “My car is the size of a roller skate and you aren’t wearing your seat belt.” I yanked the wheel to prove a point and veered onto the rural exit.
Angelina nearly fell over sideways.
I slowed to adjust for the curved ramp and turned my focus back to Jake. “I’m getting off here. I’ll meet you at the police station.”
I disconnected. The overwhelming sensation of euphoria and satisfaction warmed my bones. I lifted my cocky eyes to Angelina. “I’m turning you in myself.”
She pressed the button on her Taser. “We aren’t on the highway anymore.”
Electricity jolted through my body. Pain pulsated like a thousand muscle cramps. My arms drew in. My legs flexed out. We peeled rubber through the intersection at the bottom of the off-ramp. My world went dark.
* * *
“Wake up!” a woman’s voice screeched in my ear.
My face hurt. My body hurt. I dragged my eyes open.
Angelina stood outside my open car door, wild-eyed and spitting mad. Her hand whipped out and cracked my cheek. “Wake up!”
I opened my mouth to complain, but drool coursed over my chin instead. My wrists ached and burned. My thoughts were fuzzy. My heart banged painfully.
She fisted her hand in my tunic. “Not so smart now, are you? Wrecked your little car. Smashed your face. I knew I hated you the minute you walked into my office. Get up. Come on.”
I forced rubbery legs out the door. She’d untethered my seat belt and bound my wrists with a zip tie while I was unconscious. “What are you doing?” The words slurred. My tongue was too big. I stretched and curled my fingers, taking a physical inventory. “I think you broke my pinky finger.” Sore muscles. Confusion. Fatigue.
“Shut up and move it.” She hoisted me to my feet and shoved me toward the tree line. “We aren’t going to a police station.”
Cornfields and country roads stretched in both directions. “What are we doing? Where are we going?”
She wiped frosting off her face with the back of one hand. Her fancy jeans and blouse were ruined. “I’m covered in
cake. How am I supposed to explain that at the airport?”
“Bree’s going to be pissed about her cake.” Dad must’ve trusted me to bring the leftover foodstuffs from the shower. That was an unfortunate move.
Where was my dad? Where was my phone?
I blinked my swollen eyes, searching for clarity. “We’re nowhere near the airport. You made me wreck my car. What are we doing?”
“Your car probably had a tracking system. We had to ditch it. Keep walking.” She pressed the Taser against my back and shoved me forward. “I’m calling an Uber.”
My heels stuck in the ground with every step. The car grew smaller and smaller in the distance over my shoulder. Tree cover thickened overhead. “I can’t keep walking out here. My shoes are sinking. We need to walk on the road.”
“Yeah, right. Then take off the shoes. I’m not an idiot. We’re not walking along the road.” She made a hacking sound in her throat and muttered under her breath.
I hopped on one foot, then the other, removing my favorite black patent leathers.
“Hurry up,” she complained. “I’m on a schedule.”
I dropped one shoe immediately and held the other to my chest as we moved. The ground was bumpy and hot under my feet. I assessed my limbs once more. I didn’t like the disconnect between my thoughts and actions. The crash might have rattled my brain. I could have a concussion or worse. I needed to pull myself together. Jake would find the car, but we’d made good time through the woods, all things considered. She could get away if I wasn’t careful. I couldn’t outrun her, barefoot, in the forest, but maybe I could slow us down until help arrived. Maybe I could take her out. I ran my finger along the stiff spine of my last shoe. If I tried and failed, she might not let up on the Taser trigger next time. It was risky, but I had to try. As soon as I could hold my thoughts together.
“Put it down, Mia.” She jammed her weapon against my spine. The Taser dug into the tender skin at the back of my neck.
I flinched and stumbled. “What?”
“I know you still have one shoe in your hands. Don’t even think of using it to attack me. Drop it!”
I obeyed. I’d lost one weapon, but we were surrounded by more. Rocks. Sticks. Trees. Besides, if Jake found the first shoe and stayed on our trail, he’d find the next, and hopefully me. My beautiful patent leathers had become modern-day bread crumbs. Images of pet store mice chowing on food pellets came to mind. “Why were you sending me dead mice from your lab?”
She stepped wide, appearing in my peripheral vision. Following a half step behind and to my right. “You were supposed to be afraid, assume you’d upset a killer, and stop poking around, but you didn’t. I left more and more mice because you couldn’t seem to get the obvious message.”
“So, you just followed me around, leaving mice?”
“Yes!” she screamed. “I thought you were a cop, but the handsome one came to see me after you left, and he told me you weren’t who you said you were. You tricked me. I knew you were going to be trouble.”
I lifted my adjoined hands. “I never said I was a cop. You inferred that.”
“You let me believe it!” She made maniac eyes at me. “I looked you up after I got rid of him and do you know what I found? I found Mia Connors the little millionaire. A tech nerd. A hardhead who’d chased down two other killers in a year. Considering my whole alibi was the fact I left my phone in my office, I needed you to buzz off.”
I shuffled my tender feet, looking for safe places to step on the bumpy, stick-laden ground. “Yeah, well, I’m not easily diverted, and leaving the mice was dumb. The mice were what gave you away. I saw the A-Res file on your desk, and eventually I connected the mice on my car to mice from that lab.”
“Why wouldn’t you just stop snooping?”
An excellent question. “It’s not in my nature. Why’d you keep following me? Why leave more and more mice instead of fleeing the country?”
She held the Taser inches from my head. Madness darkened her eyes. “I like my life! I didn’t want to leave. I wanted you to stop poking around. Stop visiting Dante’s clients and office and friends.” Her voice screeched higher as her temper flared. “Everyone you talked to knew me. They knew how much Dante hated me. I imagined them all pointing at me. Every interview ending in my name. And all I had as a defense was a cell phone left on my desk all night.”
The scent of burnt skin stung my nose. My vision blurred. “Are you going to kill me?”
She shook fisted hands in front of her, waving the Taser wildly. “I’m not a killer, or you’d be dead.”
“Then can I sit down?”
She clicked the Taser trigger. Zzzz. Zzzz. “What do you think?”
I thought we were way too far from the car. I patted my pockets, recalling the phone call I’d been on when she’d appeared in my backseat.
“I took your phone. I pulled the SIM card, too, so there’s no tracing us.”
An old cemetery came into view at the crest of the hill.
Angelina laughed. “This is exactly what we need.” She shoved me in the direction of an old mausoleum. The stone slabs were covered in moss and dirt. Shards of light filtered through leafy treetops, flickering and dancing on stones and the forest floor. The words once etched in the mausoleum dormers were long gone, eroded by age and weather. A rotting iron gate stood guard over the small dank interior. “Get in.”
I grimaced. “I can’t. It’s locked.” Something ran over my bare foot and I kicked spastically.
She shoved a loose rock in my direction with her foot. “Use this to break the lock.”
Jeez, her feet had to be size ten. I blinked up at her face. Where did she find clothes? Where could she get shoes for those feet?
“Open it!” she screamed.
“I can’t.” I lifted my bound hands as evidence. My right pinkie finger was swollen like a sausage. “You’ll have to untie me.”
She rested her hands on her hips and examined the gate.
There was zero chance I was going willingly into a mausoleum this side of a personal invitation from my maker. “Why are you doing this?” I forced my marbles into order. The haze had lifted a bit, and my mind grew sharper by the minute. “Why are you abducting me? Why aren’t you already in another country? This is a huge waste of time, and you’re making everything worse.”
She seemed to consider the words a moment. “Never mind. Just sit over there.” She pointed to a large flat slab outside the rotting gate.
“You can leave. I won’t follow you.”
“Sit!”
I hobbled over broken twigs and discarded acorn shells, snagging the soft bottoms of my feet with every step and thoroughly ruining my pedicure.
She clicked the Taser trigger a few more times.
I sat.
Angelina lifted my joined wrists to the gate and liberated another zip tie from her back pocket. She connected the tie binding my hands with the new one on the gate and gave the connection a tug.
“Good enough.” She produced a cheap-looking flip phone from her hip pocket and made a call. “Pick up at Orchard and Applegrove.”
I jerked the ties, rattling the ancient gate. Reality sank in. She planned to leave me and make her getaway. No one would be looking for her at the airport. They’d be traipsing through the woods looking for us. “Why would someone as smart as you become a killer? Is it because you were jealous of Dante?” I braced for her retort. No self-respecting woman wanted to be accused of something as petty as jealousy, especially for an ex.
“Excuse me?” She cocked her head to one side and stowed the flip phone in her pocket. “Do I look like the kind of woman who gets jealous? I could have any man I want. I’ve got more than any man could give me, and I did it all myself.” Her eyes bulged. “Surely, you can see that.”
I wiggled my tie
s, testing the gate. Flakes of rusted iron fell away. “I don’t know. Stabbings are a crime of passion.”
“That was an accident. The dagger was already back there and I was mad.”
“You sure you weren’t hiding in his car to see if he was with another woman?”
She snarled. “I hid in his car because the jerk wouldn’t take my calls. He refused to see me,” she seethed. “He’d once professed his love to me in front of our families and friends, but suddenly he couldn’t be bothered to talk to me when my life was falling apart.”
“Do you mean because of your failed plant wash?”
Her expression turned droll. She walked a few paces away for a look over the hill in every direction.
I worked at the bars with all my might, wearing away the decrepit material and finding hope in the rot.
“My wash didn’t fail. He did. Dante promised to help me with the project, but all I needed from him was mice and a lab where I could run tests and document findings. He volunteered the mice. I thought it was a generous offer at first. I was wrong about him, as usual. Another client of his had a load of dying mice, already exposed to who-knows-what in a beauty supply lab. They offered the mice to Dante at a deep discount, so he bought them for me.” Her face turned red. She looked to the sky. “I thought my product was killing the mice. It didn’t make any sense, and I couldn’t take it to the FDA when it killed every mouse I tested it on, so I ran physical tests on the mice and found they were all defective. When I confronted him, he told me he was sorry. Sorry. Can you believe that? I demanded retribution for what he’d put me through, the time I’d wasted. I never asked him to buy mice!” She shook her head. “He didn’t have time to hear about the mess he’d made. He stopped taking my calls. I kept the mice as evidence. I wanted him to make it right.”
A Geek Girl's Guide to Justice (The Geek Girl Mysteries) Page 27
