Here Comes the Ride

by Lorena McCourtney

  Sterling looked at his watch again. “I have an appointment with the attorney at three o’clock. I want to be able to get out of here right after the service tomorrow. I can’t hang around for days.”

  I looked at Joe, the only one here who seemed inclined toward anything but total self-interest. But when it came to the bottom line, he flunked too, because he said, “I think the original plan is probably best.”

  I looked at them in mixed anger and dismay. Was I a hundred percent sure Uri and Cindy, and not this selfish, callous little triumvirate, were the killers?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I didn’t really know where I was going, but I headed out to the comforting, old-friend familiarity of the limo. Reluctantly I conceded that even though Forsythes & Son were greedy, self-centered jerks, they probably weren’t murderers. It was Uri and Cindy I needed to concentrate on.

  As I slid into the limo, my cell phone played its little hard rock tune. Fitz again, and now I had this ominous news about Pam to give him. I had to cut the call short, I told him, because I was expecting the call from the lawyer.

  “Okay, but call me back as soon as you can.”

  As soon as that conversation ended, the phone played again, this time lawyer Bloombarton saying he’d arranged for a criminal lawyer named Dietz Dietrich to represent Pam. He thought Dietrich would be coming over to Vigland this afternoon.

  “Is he good?”

  “You remember the burglar they accused of murdering the older couple in their house over in Bellingham? He got him down to a manslaughter charge.”

  “But Pam isn’t guilty of anything!”

  “I’m sure she isn’t,” he agreed soothingly, though I wasn’t convinced he meant it. “Dietz will take good care of her.”

  Okay, now what? I’d looked over that list of seized items rather hurriedly, but I hadn’t seen anything on it that would connect Uri and Cindy with either murder. Was whatever Shirley had found implicating them still in the house? No, surely they’d have grabbed and destroyed it after drowning her in the hot tub.

  A discouraging thought. But a second possibility. If they hadn’t had time or means to destroy it . . . lighting a bonfire in their room would have been a bit noticeable . . . and with no idea at that time that the house would be searched, perhaps they’d just hidden it somewhere.

  Whatever “it” was.

  So I needed to get into the house and do my own search, because the incriminating item was undoubtedly something Detective Molino and his deputies hadn’t even been searching for. I drove back to the house, hoping the police were through early there, but the crime-scene tape still fluttered in the breeze. I parked just outside the gate and used the time to call Fitz back.

  Three rings, and he said, “Fitz here. Available for romance, adventure, and fantastic food on the high seas. What’s your choice?”

  “Do you answer all your calls that way?”

  “Only the ones from beautiful limousine drivers.”

  I appreciated his attempt to cheer me up with a bit of frivolity.

  “I’ve got a lawyer for Pam, but I’m not sure what to do next. I’m almost certain Uri and Cindy killed Michelle for the partnership and the insurance money. I think they also killed Shirley because she came across something implicating them.”

  I prudently did not include my trellis-trip into their window. I couldn’t remember Fitz climbing trellises back in his Ed Montrose days. He’d operated on a more intellectual and dignified level.

  So now he surprised me by saying, “It sounds as if you need to do your own search in the house.”

  “But what do I look for? Michelle couldn’t have tucked away proof that they killed her.”

  “All I can say is that you’ll probably know it when you see it. It almost has to be something on paper, notes, or a document, something like that.”

  My thought too. “But I don’t think I can ignore the crime-scene tape and go digging around in there.”

  He paused just long enough to make me wonder if he was going to suggest a devious sneak-in, but finally, with what sounded like a twinge of regret, he said, “No, you can’t. Which means you’ll just have to wait until they release the house. If we get back to the marina by then, I can help.”

  “The deputy said this evening or tomorrow before they release the house. I don’t think it can wait longer than that.”

  “Then you have to make certain Uri and Cindy don’t get back inside the house. Not before you search it, and especially not while you’re searching it. If they killed Shirley because she found something—”

  Right. What’s a third murder when you’re already down for two? “I’ll be careful. Thanks, Fitz. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too.”

  ***

  With keep Uri and Cindy out of the house at the top of my priority list right now, I headed for the fitness center. The front door was locked, but I went around back and found a plumber’s van and an unlocked door.

  Inside, Uri, Cindy, and a guy in a khaki jumpsuit with DoneRight Plumbing stamped across the back were faced off by a treadmill. The plumber held some complicated looking piece of plumbing, Uri had another piece, and they all looked ready to start blows in the Great Plumbing Wars. Cindy spotted me and came over.

  “Would you believe? This guy crossed some of the hot and cold water lines, and now he wants to charge extra to make them right.”

  Plumbing problems were not a priority with me. “I thought you should know. Pam has been arrested for murdering Michelle. And Shirley too, I guess.”

  “Pam killed Michelle?”

  “No! They’ve just arrested her for it. She didn’t do it.”

  “So why did they arrest her?”

  “They found a knife similar to the one that killed Michelle in her room. And a . . . weapon that was used to hit Shirley with before she was drowned in the tub. That was in Pam’s room too.”

  Which you undoubtedly knew, since you planted them there. I waited for her to inquire what the weapon used on Shirley was. Wouldn’t an innocent person be curious? But she didn’t ask.

  “That’s funny,” Cindy said. “Oh, I don’t mean that the way it sounded! Not funny funny. Strange funny. I was sure Stan Steffan did it.”

  “You were? Why? Did Michelle mention being afraid of him?” I asked, momentarily distracted.

  “No, not afraid. She was just furious that he tried to pressure her into investing in his new movie. She said it was just like blackmail, that if she’d invest, then he’d give her a part in the movie.”

  “Was she considering it? She really wanted to be in it, didn’t she?”

  “I guess she did, though I don’t know why. Change Your World is going to be a big success.”

  But not enough if what you yearn for is bright-lights, big-screen success. And for the Hubbards, was there only enough success for two partners, not three?

  “So why did you think he’d killed her?” I asked.

  “Oh, I suppose it’s unfair, but he’s just kind of . . . creepy, you know? And Michelle and the Steffans went back a long way. Who knows what went on back then? But now to find out it was Pam, after all. I can’t believe it. Or maybe I don’t want to believe it.” She shook her head. “Weird, peculiar little Pammi. After all Michelle did for her.”

  I wanted to yell She didn’t do it again, but I realized there was no point in it. Because what I was getting here was an expert little acting job from Cindy. Maybe she should have been after a movie part too.

  “I also wanted to let you know that we can’t get back in the house for probably a couple of days yet. I was just out there, and deputies are still all over the place.” Both of which were only tiny stretches of the truth. “So we’ll all be staying at the inn again tonight. Pam had the charges fixed up to cover however long we need to stay. Okay?”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll tell Uri. What about Michelle’s services?”

  “Apparently they’re still on for tomorrow afternoon. Will you be there?”

/>   “Yes, of course. Michelle was my closest friend.”

  That old saying seemed appropriate here: With friends like this, who needs enemies? But I figured I’d done what I came for, which was to keep Cindy and Uri away from the house.

  ***

  I went back out to the inn. A peek in the casino showed Phyllis was back at the video poker, although she’d moved to a different machine. Neither Joe nor Sterling was around.

  I went up to my room and lay down. I felt as if I needed a nap, although I didn’t think I could actually sleep. But I did and felt mildly refreshed when I woke. I went early to the buffet for dinner, partly because I wanted to avoid the others, partly because I had a plan. Or at least a hope.

  Chapter Thirty

  Yes! The search had finished up early. The crime-scene tape was gone, along with the sheriff’s department vehicles. The gate stood wide open, although I found the door to the house locked. But I still had the key Shirley had given me. I let myself in, then locked the door behind me. I didn’t want to be unpleasantly surprised to find myself not alone in the house.

  Okay, where would Cindy and Uri have hidden “it,” whatever it was, the item for which they’d killed Shirley? Down there in the Fitness Room? No, assuming they had planned to get “it” out of the house as quickly as possible, most likely in their own room.

  I dropped my purse in the downstairs hallway and headed directly to their room. It wasn’t in disarray, but I could tell from open drawers and awry mattress that the deputies had been in there. However, I’d already decided we weren’t searching for the same thing, and I looked in and under and around everything. Undersides of drawers, back side of headboard, under lamps, inside the toilet tank. Nothing but some publicity-type photos of Uri in a body-building pose—leopard-print Spandex, muscles bulging. Not a sight for these sore eyes, thank you.

  Pam’s room? No. They’d hidden the items they wanted to incriminate Pam there, but they wouldn’t hide something that incriminated them in her room. I didn’t waste time there.

  I did peek in what appeared to be a catchall storage room on the attic floor. I couldn’t tell if it was already a mess, or if the deputies had done a thorough search. What I did do was nearly jump out of my shoes when the leopard skin Pam had stuffed in there fell on me.

  Between Uri in leopard-skin Spandex and a real leopard skin, I’d had enough of spotted creatures.

  My hopes were running out. The logical action would have been to destroy the crucial evidence, and that was probably what the Hubbards had done. Maybe they’d flushed it. I almost skipped Shirley’s room. Partly because I figured that if they’d killed Shirley for some piece of evidence, they’d surely have taken it, not left it in her room. And partly because poking around in her belongings made me feel queasy in a way that prowling in Michelle’s things didn’t.

  But I stiffened my nerves and opened the door. Little snippets of Shirley cut at my heart: photo of her granddaughter and a recipe for “rosemary chicken” clipped from a magazine on her nightstand, her scuffed old slippers by the bed. After fifteen minutes or so of searching, I found, tucked in a drawer under her IRA records and some medical reports, a newspaper flier for carpet cleaning.

  Odd, but probably it’s just something accidentally dropped in there, I thought at first. Then I turned the flier over and saw numbers scribbled on the backside.

  Shirley’s scribbling? No, it looked different from some other writing in the drawer. Some of the numbers had cryptic abbreviations beside them. Hon.p-off. Dscvr. Mstrcrd. Dr.D. And at the bottom of the page was an underlined, exclamation-pointed $1,000,000.

  Then my pulse jumped. I went back over the numbers and expanded on the abbreviations. Hon. p-off. Uri and Cindy had a Honda sedan. The amount it would take to pay off the Honda? Discvr. Easy! Their Discover credit card, with a whopping balance. Same with Mstrcrd. Their Mastercard credit card. And Dr.D. must be some medical bill. A couple of other unidentified big figures I recognized from the bills I’d seen at the cottage.

  This was Cindy and Uri’s solution for getting out of their financial hole. Using the insurance money from Michelle’s death!

  Then I hesitated. This looked meaningful to me, and Shirley must also have considered it meaningful to hide it in here. She must have found it in their room. But would Detective Molino see it as incriminating? Was it, in fact, strong enough evidence that Cindy and Uri would murder Shirley for it? And since they had murdered her, why hadn’t they taken this? Or had they not found it, and might be coming back for it. . .

  I was suddenly aware that it was getting dark, and I was alone in the house. Would Cindy and Uri ignore my effort to keep them away? It was possible Michelle had given Cindy a house key at some time, which could make her considerably more dangerous than a dead leopard skin.

  Okay, time to get out of here.

  I folded the flier and tucked it into the back pocket of my jeans, grabbed my purse where I’d dropped it in the hallway, and stopped in my room to pick up my New Testament and the printed guidelines for the Bible study we were doing at church. I desperately needed some study and prayer time with God. Murder and hidden secrets were getting to me.

  I was just locking the front door with the key when a car drove through the open gate and stopped at the curb below the steps. My own words came back to me: What’s a third murder when you’re already down for two?

  But the occupant of the car wasn’t Uri or Cindy.

  “Mrs. Steffan,” I said, surprised when the headlights went off and she slid out of the car. Sweetly grandmotherly in a summery dress flowered with purple and pink daisies on a sunny yellow background, looking as if she’d just stepped off the pages of a vintage fashion magazine.

  “We decided to rent a car so we wouldn’t have to bother you for transportation all the time,” she said.

  “Do you need something from your room?”

  “I was going to look for . . . earrings to match this dress. But if you’ve already locked up, it isn’t important. You came to look for something yourself?” She spoke offhandedly, but she eyed the folded papers in my hand rather sharply.

  “My Bible study lessons.”

  “You came all the way out here for Bible lessons?”

  The skepticism in her question nibbled at my nerves. The sun had dropped behind the forested hillsides to the west of Vigland. The inlet lay in blue shadows, the water calm at that dead point between high and low tides. We were alone, just Mrs. Steffan and me, on ten acres of woods and grass.

  I was almost positive Cindy and Uri had committed the murders. The numbers on the back of that flier put their motive in neon. But the back of my neck prickled as if it had a suspicion agenda of its own. Why was Mrs. Steffan skeptical about my papers? And what was that odd hesitation before she came up with earrings as the reason she was here?

  “They’re very important Bible lessons.” I thrust the pages under her nose so she could see. “We’re studying Romans.”

  She gave the lessons a cursory glance. Her sharp gaze spotted something else. “What’s that other paper, the one sticking out of your back pocket?”

  My instinctive reaction was that this was none of her business. I decided to pretend I hadn’t heard her. “I think I’ll be getting back out to the inn now."

  “May I see it, please?”

  The blunt request surprised me, her outstretched hand like some teacher demanding you hand over that note you were passing to a girlfriend. The nibble on my nerves escalated to shark bites.

  "Or maybe I’ll go by and see if I can visit Pam for a minute. You know she’s been arrested, don’t you?”

  “You have something to show her, perhaps? Her and her lawyer?”

  “I’ve never met her lawyer.” An irrelevant comment, but the best I could do at the moment, since I had no idea what she was referring to.

  “Actually, I think you’ve already found what I came here for, haven’t you?”

  The menace in her voice startled me. I made some murmured den
ial and tried to edge around her on the steps, but with surprising quickness and strength she yanked me around, slammed me against the railing, and snatched the flier right out of my back pocket. I was astonished. It was like your friendly teddy bear suddenly turning into King Kong.

  Before I could even yelp a protest, she said, “I knew that wicked woman kept the proof hidden away somewhere. I’ve looked and looked and haven’t been able to find it, but you—” She squinted at the flier, moving it back and forth for better focus in the dusky evening light.

  I had another thought. Mrs. Steffan had “looked and looked.” She was the one who had searched Michelle’s office that night, the one who had inadvertently locked me outside.

  “What is this?” She demanded indignantly, as if I’d cheated her. “It’s just an advertisement.”

  “That’s what I said it was.”

  She turned the sheet over, then sideways. “What are all these numbers? Some kind of code!”

  “I think it’s just scribbles.”

  She tossed the flyer away. “Where is it? I know you must have it! That’s why you’re out here sneaking around.”

  She grabbed at my purse, and the strap over my shoulder yanked me forward. She did a quick twist of the purse, and there I was, trussed up in purse and strap, our faces just inches apart.

  Too much purple-ish eye shadow for a daisy outfit, I noted. Although not particularly relevant at the moment. I gave a strangled glug as she yanked the strap across my throat with one hand and ripped the purse open with the other.

  “In here, is that where you hid it?”

  Still keeping the strap taut across my throat, she pawed through the purse, tossing items like confetti. Cell phone, address book, a handful of Andi’s Limouzeen Service business cards, a safety pin, breath mints, a coupon for a free latte.

  “You should be ashamed of this mess,” she muttered, still tossing. Pennies. Paper clips. Crumpled receipt. Oh, so that’s where the receipt for that hair coloring I wanted to return had gone. I’d decided Razzle-dazzle Blond was not for me.