by Ann Roberts
His joke sounded forced. She immediately sensed that something was off. Once they were seated he fidgeted in his chair. He didn’t ask his questions in rapid-fire delivery as he usually did, as if time was a valuable commodity that he couldn’t waste. Instead he seemed relaxed, almost chatty. He made small talk about the weather, asked her about business and engaged in pleasantries she thought he found tiresome. Suddenly his face turned stony.
“Ari, Candy tells me that you came back to the office after our little meeting the other day. You and your friend?”
The shift was unexpected, and she was momentarily caught off guard. “I did. I’d left a folder in your office.” She gazed straight into his eyes and didn’t let her voice waver.
He offered a sad smile. “I didn’t find a folder, Ari. I always check my office thoroughly before I leave.” His voice was disappointed, like a parent who just learned his kid was smoking pot.
“I assure you, it was there.”
He gave her a dark look. “I don’t believe you. I’d like you to be honest with me. I would expect nothing less of my real estate agent, the person I’m trusting with an incredibly important decision. You would agree, wouldn’t you? I should trust you implicitly?”
“Absolutely. And I would never lie to you about your transaction.”
“What about anything else?” he asked acidly. “Ari, my dear, I fear you’ve found yourself in the middle of something you can’t understand, and you’ve uncovered something that must remain secret. In essence, you’re a liability.”
She bolted from the chair and ran for the door. When she twisted the knob, she realized he had engaged a two-way deadbolt. She heard him jingling the keys as he approached, cornering her in the small entryway. She assessed her options while he stood there grinning with a small caliber revolver in his hand. There was no way out.
“Now why don’t we step back into the living room?” His voice was civil, almost kind. “It’s so rude to have conversations in the entryway.” He casually looped his arm through hers and led her to a wooden chair near the window. You’ll have to excuse me for tying you up. I’m rather certain our bond of trust is irrevocably broken.”
He reached behind the chair and withdrew a length of cord and duct tape from a nearby basket. He was clearly prepared and had plans for her. Her purse was over on the sofa and contained her pocketknife, but she didn’t know how she could get to it. She needed more time to make a plan.
“So what do you think I know, Stan?”
“I think you suspect that I killed Warren Edgington and Maria Perez.” Her surprise wasn’t lost on him. “Oh, so perhaps you didn’t know that I hired someone to kill that little girl. Even I have my limits, but I know you’ve been searching for evidence to implicate me in Warren’s death. Candy may be a little tramp,” he added, “but she knows when she’s being played. While your hussy friend seduced her, you searched my office. You left a few things out of place and I imagine you came across something important.”
He watched her closely and saw the truth before she could hide it.
He shook a finger at her. “That’s what I thought. You’ve been a bad girl, Ari. You see, I pay Candy quite well and satisfy her every kinky need. She’s more faithful than a dog.”
As he secured the final knots she found her hands and feet bound to the wooden spokes of the chair. The knots were complicated sailor’s knots—as a wealthy businessman he’d probably spent time yachting.
“There we go. That should hold you.” He moved to the couch and rummaged through her purse. “Now, let’s see what we have in here.” He quickly found her pocketknife, cell phone, nail file, and most importantly, the copy she’d made at his office. “Ah, this is what I need.”
He folded the pages and tossed them between the fireplace logs. She closed her eyes momentarily as he lit a match and destroyed the only physical evidence that tied him to the murder of Warren Edgington.
He clapped his hands together and smiled. “That’s done. There’s only one loose end—that’s you.”
Hoping to buy some time, Ari said, “Why’d you kill him? He was your friend, wasn’t he?”
“Because he got in the way,” he growled, “or rather his newly-found conscience got in the way. Before he got Candy pregnant he was the perfect stooge. Laws, codes and ordinances meant nothing to him. We had the perfect setup going. Then his lust for Candy turned into love,” he said mockingly.
Ari thought she was starting to see the whole picture. “So you brought Candy and Edgington together?”
He grinned. “It was brilliant. I wanted the land at that corner. I needed it, Ari. It’s going to make millions! FoodCo will lose its foothold in the east valley when I open the Hometown City Center. But timing was everything.” He sat down on the edge of the coffee table in front of her. “I had a very short window of opportunity, and I wanted to open at Christmas.”
“That’s impossible,” she said, knowing that it would take months just to move the plans through all of the necessary regulatory channels.
“Ah, but I have some powerful friends in the city planner’s office. Remember what I told you, Ari. Every man has his price.”
“Apparently you misread Warren’s,” she said, almost regretting the words as they left her mouth.
“Apparently,” he said. “After I introduced him to Candy he was willing to do whatever it took to sell me that land, cut whatever corners were necessary, including violating landlord and tenant laws with a little cash.”
“So you bribed the tenants into an early exit?”
He snorted. “The furniture guy was happy to go, and so were a few others. Those moronic manicurists couldn’t be convinced so their shop was going to have a little accident. That’s when Warren lost it. He refused to be a part of it and threatened to go to the authorities. He wouldn’t listen to reason.”
She tugged at the knots, but they wouldn’t give. “How did you kill him?”
He leaned forward. “I didn’t kill him. Technically he killed himself. After our little argument, which you unfortunately witnessed, I followed him out to his car. I was angry, and I shoved him against the wall. We were shouting. I thought we were alone.”
“But you weren’t,” she said, suddenly realizing why Maria Perez was killed. “That little girl saw you.”
He looked away momentarily. “Yes, it was a shame.” He sighed and continued his story. “I knew Warren wouldn’t relent, but he was a sucker when it came to friends so I said I was sorry and he forgave me instantly. He’d already had a few drinks, alcoholic that he was, and I coaxed him into the car and offered him the flask. We talked for a few minutes while he drank an incredibly lethal concoction that I’d created. I told him Candy didn’t love him and was getting an abortion at that very moment. He started to cry and drank more. Eventually he passed out, and his head hit the steering wheel. I left the note and got out quickly—and saw the little girl. I chased her, but she ran back to her group.” He stared at her, his eyes slits. “The rest I guess you know.”
“I can’t believe you killed two people over land. You’re the Hometown Grocery guy, for God’s sake!”
He just shook his head and chuckled. “Ari, you haven’t been listening to what I’ve tried to tell you all along. Competition is fierce and FoodCo has given me no choice. Their mission is to drive me out of business and take over the entire shopping industry. It’s so cliché, but this business is my life. Every day is about marketing the products, creating PR to draw in new customers, riding the tough times, profit and loss margins and so much more. People are counting on me. I took a little second-hand market and turned it into a corporation. You have no idea what that entailed or what I sacrificed. To lose it would be to lose my existence. It would mean that I have wasted my entire life.” He spoke slowly and paused for emphasis. “I’m not a murderer. FoodCo drove me to extreme measures.”
“That is such a pathetic excuse,” she whispered.
He glared at her. “That won’t be your problem
much longer. You’ll worry about very little.” He caressed her face and smiled. “I am very sorry that we never got to have our dinner. I’m certain that after a bottle of wine from my special collection, you’d have been willing to give heterosexuality a try.”
She bit her tongue and said nothing. Angering him further wouldn’t help her situation.
He went into the kitchen and when he returned, he carried a white rag in his hand.
“No!” she cried as the room went dark.
Chapter Twenty-Five
While Andre secured a warrant for Stan Wertz, Molly reviewed the Perez file. As was her habit she began drawing circles, working from the center out—the center being the victim, who no longer was Maria Perez but Warren Edgington. Since childhood she’d had an uncanny knack for creating nearly perfect freehand circles of many sizes. Now she filled the paper with several of them, drawing connecting lines, which represented the various people involved and the possible relationships that might exist.
“I’m glad you have time to doodle, Nelson,” Ruskin said sarcastically.
She looked up from her desk, so involved in her thoughts that she’d failed to notice him. She ignored his dig and held up the pad. “I’ve got a theory. Stan Wertz wants a Hometown Center. He wants property in Chandler and gets Edgington to sell to him.” She picked up a sheaf of papers. “These were filed with the Chandler City Planner’s Office and from what I can tell they skipped a ton of steps.”
“So what?” Ruskin barked. “What does that have to do with murder?”
She tried to remain calm. “I’m not sure what went wrong, but it all came to a head that day at the luncheon. That’s where Ari saw them arguing and then Maria Perez saw Wertz leaving the car. She and her boyfriend had gone back to their school bus for a little kissing action. Wertz didn’t realize that other people were around. According to Maria’s best friend, she saw him threaten Edgington, then act friendly with him, inviting him into the car. But when Wertz got out Edgington didn’t. I think we can assume that by then he was dying or dead, his head resting on the steering wheel and the car horn. So Wertz sees Maria Perez and chases her out of the parking garage, but she runs to her school friends. He knows she’ll eventually tell so he’s got to do something about it. Maybe he was too squeamish to kill a kid or maybe he didn’t think he could get close to her again since she’d seen him, but for some reason he hires a hit man who takes her out, and none of it can be traced back to him—”
“Except through a hearsay witness whose testimony will never be allowed,” Ruskin interrupted.
“That’s true,” she agreed.
He scratched his head and pointed at her. “Get the warrant and get out of here!” he barked.
He turned to go and nearly crashed into Biz Stone.
She swallowed hard as her anger swelled. “What are you doing here?”
Biz dropped into a chair across from her nervously tapping her foot.
“I’m sure you’re swamped with Maria Perez, but I’ve got something you need to know about Warren Edgington. That was originally your case, wasn’t it?”
At the mention of his name she sat up in her chair. “What do you know?”
“His wife thinks he was murdered so she hired me.”
She quickly flipped to a new page of her tablet, hiding her notes from Biz’s view. “Have you found out anything that would support that theory?”
“Possibly. You found a flask, right?”
“Yes,” she answered guardedly. “Where are you going with this, Biz?”
“I think the murderer tricked Warren Edgington. Did you know he was an alcoholic?”
She shook her head. “Nobody described him that way.”
Biz snorted. “That doesn’t mean anything. Alcoholics do a great job of walking the line.”
Her temper slowly burned. “So what do you think happened?”
“I think that the killer lured Edgington into the car, offered him a drink from a flask filled with booze and drugs and waited. It looks like suicide. It’s really murder.”
She looked at Biz, the thoughts coming at her from all directions, recognizing how neatly Biz’s explanation fit with her hypothesis and it totally jived with what Maria Perez told Selena Diaz. She tapped her pencil on the pad deciding how much she should reveal to a civilian. Finally she set the pencil down and folded her hands in front of her.
“Do you have any evidence to prove your theory?”
Biz shifted uncomfortably. “I do but unfortunately it wasn’t obtained using proper or legal procedure.”
Her face darkened. “Damn it, Stone! If you’ve screwed up my case, I’ll have you arrested!”
Andre burst into the room, waving the warrant. “I’ve got it, Mol. Let’s go get Wertz.”
Biz shot a glance at Molly. “Wertz? Stan Wertz? Is he the one who killed Edgington?”
“Very possibly. What do you know about him?” Molly asked caustically, leaning across her desk.
“I know that your girlfriend’s at his house right now.”
Molly threw the bubble light on the top of the Chevy Caprice and weaved through the noontime traffic. She’d already dispatched several units to Wertz’s house, but she’d instructed them to wait for her to arrive since it was most likely a hostage situation. She asked Biz a few questions, and it became clear that Ari and Biz had been investigating Warren Edgington’s death—and Ari had said nothing to Molly. Her emotions blended into a sick knot in her stomach, her anger swirling side by side with her fear that Ari was already dead or gone from the house.
She glanced at Biz, her jaw set into a serious expression. She could only imagine how well she knew Ari—she immediately chastised herself for letting her relationship paranoia surface at such an inappropriate time. Still, Ari had kept secrets. She also wanted to know how Ari had acquired the incriminating evidence against him, evidence she had withheld from her. That was a crime.
They whipped through the streets of Day Arbor, Molly watching for the inevitable small children who might be playing on their bikes in this overpriced historic neighborhood. She didn’t need to check the address to know which house belonged to Stan Wertz since three police cars had pulled up in front of the historic home and Ari’s SUV hugged the curb. She and Biz jumped out and found the first officer on the scene.
“No one has come in or out,” he reported. “What do you want us to do Detective?”
“I want to check the property first, then we’ll move in.”
She took three steps before an explosion shook the street and a ball of fire rose from the back of the house. Smoke filled the air, black and orange tongues licking the neighboring trees while flames engulfed the western side of the house.
“Ari!” Molly wailed.
She ran until two policemen grabbed her and forced her back to the sidewalk. Clouds of smoke masked the flames and the screaming sirens of the fire engines soon corrupted the quiet street. She focused on the west side of the house covered in thick, foggy air. Pieces of the roof dropped onto the grass and she saw smoldering Bermuda grass in the side yard.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t focus. She should be directing the officers but for some reason she was sitting on the curb, watching the firemen break down the front door, EMTs rushing into the house and Biz talking to an officer. She looked up at the sky, a mottled gray that eclipsed the sun. She found the effect mesmerizing.
“Molly! Molly, get up!” Biz was shouting.
She tilted her head in Biz’s direction, the private investigator’s silhouette hovering above her. “Where’s Ari?”
“C’mon. They found her. She’s alive! Molly, she’s alive!”
Biz pulled her upright and held her steady until her wobbly knees stopped shaking. “Look at me, Molly.” Biz stood in front of her, cradling her face in her hands. “Molly!” she barked.
“Yeah,” she replied. “I’m with you.”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Yeah. Ari’s okay,” she croake
d, the tears streaming down her face.
“That’s right. Now get it together. You need to check on your girlfriend and start acting like a police detective. This is a crime scene, Nelson. People are watching you.”
The lecture had the desired effect, and the haze lifted like the smoke rising above the trees. She quickly assessed the situation realizing the fire was mostly out and had not jumped the hedge.
“Over there,” Biz directed, pointing to the side of the house.
Ari was being led out by two burly firemen, an oxygen mask covering her face. It seemed as though she was floating and Molly realized the firemen were practically carrying her.
They took her to the back of an ambulance where several paramedics checked her vital signs. Molly’s knees went weak at the sight of Ari wrapped in a fire blanket, shaking and frightened. When she looked up and saw Molly, she started to cry.
Molly nodded at Steve Jones, a paramedic she knew well. “Detective Nelson, do you know this woman?”
“She’s my girlfriend.”
“How is she?” Biz asked.
“She’ll be fine,” Jones reported. “The perp knocked her out with chloroform. We found her tied to a chair in the house, but she hadn’t been harmed, at least not yet. I’m glad we got here when we did. Five more minutes and she might not have made it. Fortunately she’s just suffering from smoke inhalation.”
The paramedic taking Ari’s blood pressure nodded at Jones, who motioned all of them to step back. Molly knelt in front of Ari and took her into her arms.
“My baby,” Molly whispered.
“Honey, I’m sorry.” Her voice was raspy from the smoke, and she coughed violently.
“Shush,” Molly said. “Don’t say anything. All I care about is you. We’ll talk about everything else later.”
They gazed at each other and Molly caressed her cheek. “I have to get to work. If you’re strong enough, I need you to give your statement to Andre and I want Biz to drive you home. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
“Go,” Ari managed.
She lowered the oxygen mask over her beautiful face and stepped back.
