Mayhem, Mystery and Murder

by John A. Broussard

  Boson Books by John A. Broussard

  Death and Near Death

  Dead and Gone

  Dead Before a Rival

  Expect the Unexpected

  Fifty-Minutes Flaherty

  Mana

  Mayhem, Mystery and Murder

  Murder at Milltown Junior College

  No Time for Death

  The Yoshinobu Mysteries: Volume I

  The Yoshinobu Mysteries: Volume II

  ___________________________________________________

  MAYHEM, MYSTERY

  and

  MURDER

  Short stories

  by

  John A. Broussard

  _____________________________________________________

  BOSON BOOKS

  Raleigh

  Published by Boson Books

  3905 Meadow Field Lane

  Raleigh, NC 27606

  ISBN 1-932482-39-3

  An imprint of C&M Online Media Inc.

  © Copyright 2006 John A. Broussard

  All rights reserved

  For information contact

  C&M Online Media Inc.

  3905 Meadow Field Lane

  Raleigh, NC 27606

  Tel: (919) 233-8164

  e-mail:boson@cmonline.com

  URL: http://www.bosonbooks.com

  Table of Contents

  DEATH OF AN AU PAIR

  A HOSTAGE SITUATION

  DUPLICATE COPIES

  BLOOD SPATTERS

  MURDER BY A BLACK MAN

  THE DROWNING

  GONE MISSING

  MAN OVERBOARD

  BACKFIRE

  BLACKBERRY SPRING

  BLOOD TIES

  BOMB!

  BREACH OF CONTRACT

  BRIGHTON BANK

  BYE, BYE, BIRDIE

  DÉJÀ-VU ALL OVER AGAIN

  DUMB LUCK

  FAST FOOD

  HEATSTROKE

  HOOF BEATS

  LOVE LETTERS

  MACRAMÉ

  MISTAKEN IDENTITY

  MONEY IN THE BANK

  MURDER CAN’T WAIT

  MY BROTHER, THE CLOWN

  PERFECTING A MURDER

  RED-CLAY COUNTRY

  RUCKY MAN

  SACRED MUSHROOMS

  SHOOT TO KILL

  SNAKE RIVER STALKER

  SPY LIST

  BIG-TIME SPENDER

  THE BLESSING

  THE CASE OF THE MISSING DEATH CERTIFICATE

  THE DAY THE FIREWORKS STAND EXPLODED

  THE DISAPPEARANCE

  THE FISHWATCHER

  THE LANDLADY

  THE LINEUP

  THE LOTTERY

  THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TENT

  THE NIGHT OF THE KILLER BEES

  THE PACEMAKER

  THE PERFECT CIRCLE

  THE SETTEE

  THE SHOPPING MALL KILLER

  TRIPLE PLAY

  TWO FLOORS UP

  WHO IS EUNICE LOUISE EUBANKS?

  THE KETCH

  DEATH OF AN AU PAIR

  Detective Jill Waliewiski wasn’t the least bit hungry. But Detective Sergeant Gina Nolan had insisted the quiet night could turn into frenzy at any minute, and it was never a good idea to go into battle on an empty stomach. They had been working together long enough to be on a first name basis, but Nolan could still pull rank.

  Waliewiski launched a protest. “You know, Gina, you keep fretting about your weight, but you just keep right on scarfing down cheeseburgers like they’re going out of style.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it. It’s all a matter of metabolism. Look at you. Thin as a rail, and you eat anything you want.”

  Waliewiski shook her head as she held up her Diet Mountain Dew. “That’s anything I want?” she asked, and at that moment her beeper went off.

  Nolan grinned. “Your turn to go out in the rain to check the radio. See, I warned you. Fill up while you have the chance. I’ll finish my burger while you take the message.”

  Within moments Waliewiski was back. “Homicide. Rocky Glen. Dispatcher will get us directions.”

  Grabbing a handful of paper napkins along with the remnants of her burger in one hand and her fries and Classic Coke in the other, Nolan made it out of the café, ducked her head in the face of the windswept rain and managed to open the door of the cruiser with minimal spillage and slipped into the passenger seat. “Miserable weather. Miserable place to go to in it. Whereabouts in Rocky Glen?”

  “First turn-off on Cove Rd. Collins Lane. It’s a dead-end that goes up to about four or five homes near the hilltop.” Waliewiski roared out of the parking lot as she passed along the information.

  “Yup. I know it. Couple of palaces up there built by Microsoft executives back when the money was flowing. Got a number?”

  “Huh-uh. But it shouldn’t be hard to find. First driveway on the right. Go through an iron gate and it’s about three or four hundred yards up from there. There’s a caretaker’s cottage just inside the entrance. He’s the one who called it in. A woman’s been shot. They’re trying to get details, but there isn’t much. He heard a shot, went up to the main house and found her sitting in a living room chair. Shot came through the window, according to him.”

  “The homeowner?”

  “Nope. An au pair. No one else home. Patrol car is on the way, but we should get there about the same time.”

  A porch light acted as a guide, and waiting in the shelter of the porch roof was an older man dressed in coveralls. He was talking to a police officer the detectives recognized—Lars Johnson.

  “Fast work,” Johnson commented to the new arrivals. “We just made it here ourselves, Sergeant, so it’s all yours.” He grimaced. “I’m glad I won’t have to do the cleanup. High powered bullet. Caught her in the side of the head. But you can see for yourselves. Coster is in there holding the fort.”

  The description of the scene awaiting them was apt. The woman’s rag doll body was sitting askew in a chair by a broken window and before a television set blaring the nightly news. Her face and blonde hair were drenched in blood, and a torn curtain flapped in the wind as the rain poured through the broken pane. After a quick inspection, Nolan turned to Johnson. “Grab a blanket and cover the window. Crew will be out soon. We don’t want the body drenched before they get here.”

  To Waliewiski she added, “Let’s get started. Bring the caretaker into the other room,” she indicated a small office next to the living room, “and we’ll see what he has to offer.”

  Gerard McKay was in his seventies and was showing signs of enjoying the break in routine. His answers to the sergeant’s questions pleased her in that he seldom rambled, and when he did, the rambling was still relevant. “Good witness,” she thought.

  “It was just after eight-thirty. I know, because I’d just turned on the weather news to find out if that hurricane was really going to miss us. We get bad mudslides on this road, and if it keeps raining this way, the whole mountain could start moving. Anyhow, I heard a shot just as the weatherman was saying the worst was over. I figured it might be nothing more than a poacher out flashlight-hunting for turkeys, but I put on a raincoat and came out looking. It was raining even harder than it is now, so I could barely see, and, as far as I could tell, there wasn’t anyone around, so I went up to the house to find out if it might have been Mrs. Codrington picking off a varmint.”

  “Mrs. Codrington is the owner?”

  McKay nodded. “She’d went out—musta been about six—along with her boy, but I heard a car come in around eight and figured it was her. Wasn’t though, pretty obviously. It was the au pair—Louise Duclos.” He pronounced it “the clothes,” and tilted his head in the direction of th
e living room.

  “So you didn’t expect the au pair to be here, right?”

  McKay nodded again. “That’s right. Her and Mrs. Codrington had a knock-down, drag-out three or four days ago, and Louise left—bag and baggage.”

  “Do you know what the argument was about?”

  “Not much question. Mr. Codrington was hot after Louise, and Mrs. Codrington found out. He was at work, and so far as I know didn’t come back, even for his clothes. She must have read the riot act to him.” He grinned. “She ain’t the kind of woman a man wants to tangle with.”

  Waliewiski was writing furiously in her notebook as Nolan made the most of her informant. At that moment, a commotion in the front room interrupted the questioning. It soon became obvious that Mrs. Codrington had arrived home, aghast at the events which had occurred in her absence. Nolan excused McKay, but said she would have more questions later.

  “Sure thing. Anything I can do to help. Drop by the cottage on your way out. The Missus will be overflowing with curiosity at all the fuss up here. She’ll have the coffee on, for sure. Meantime, I’ll see if I can rustle up a piece of ply to nail over that window.”

  Mrs. Janice Codrington seemed more upset about the mess in her living room and the trampling around by the scene-of-crime personnel than she was at the presence of a body. It soon became quite clear, in fact, that she didn’t regret the passing of Louise Duclos in the least.

  “What in hell was she doing here?” was her initial comment and question. Without waiting for an answer, she said, “I kicked that bitch’s ass out a week ago and told that no-good husband of mine I’d blast his off with a shotgun if he set foot on this place again.” Her anger at her husband seemed to take precedence over all other subjects.

  She barely took a breath before adding, “My first husband about cleaned me out. I didn’t take any chances with this one. I’ve got an iron-clad prenuptial agreement, and my lawyer’s going to see to it he doesn’t touch a penny of my money—and he won’t be worth shit once I pull our insurance business out from under his used car lot. That dumb s.o.b.!”

  Nolan finally managed to break in. “Where were you tonight?”

  “My partner and I—that’s Robert Payne—own an insurance company. We underwrite car loans. We had a bunch of unfinished business to take care of. Big backlog of paperwork. He asked me to get it out of the way tonight. So I left here—let’s see—half past five, quarter to six, something like that. Dropped my boy off at my sister’s place. He’s staying the night there. I’m just as glad he is. I sure wouldn’t want him to see the mess in the other room.”

  “What time did you leave the office?”

  “Eight or so.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Shopped. Window-shopped, mostly. Stores are open late tonight. I figured that as long as I was in town, I’d look around.”

  “Did you buy anything?”

  “As a matter of fact, no.”

  “We’d like to have a statement from you. If you can give us a list of the stores you went to and the approximate times, that would be helpful.”

  The times and places became increasingly vague after the eight o’clock departure from the office. She could remember some of the stores, but wasn’t sure what time she’d gone in, if at all. Waliewiski gamely took down what she could and made arrangements for a morning signing at the station.

  Once that matter was out of the way, Waliewiski joined Nolan who was watching the packaging of the body.

  Without turning to look at the Detective, Nolan said, “I wonder if someone outside could have seen enough to pick her off.”

  Waliewiski seemed puzzled. “You mean someone could just have randomly shot through the window, or been hunting—and the whole thing is an accident?’

  “Farfetched, I admit. But there have been deer around lately. It’s just possible someone was poaching. One way to find out is to see if anyone sitting in that chair could be seen through the curtains from the outside.”

  Surveying the blood-spattered chair. Waliewiski grimaced and said. “I can see what’s coming. You want me to pose while you go out and check.”

  “Right idea. Wrong person. I’ll take off the blanket, get the curtains back as best I can, and you can go out in the bushes to take a look. There’s high shrubbery less than twenty feet away from the house where the shot probably came from. Try not to mess things up anymore than necessary since I’m going to have the crew check out that whole area—not that they’ll find much after all this downpour. Everything’s about to float outside.”

  Waliewiski slipped on her yellow raingear and went out to the brushy area while Nolan arranged the curtains and sat in the chair. In a few moments, a sopping wet Waliewiski returned to announce. “Yup. The light in the room makes for a clear-cut silhouette. I could have picked you off easy with my handgun. With a rifle it would have been like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  “That doesn’t make an accident impossible, but it sure makes deliberate murder a distinct probability.”

  It was a relief to leave the mess to the scene-of-crime personnel and retire to the comfortable Payne cottage. Coffee was on, and Wilma McKay was relishing her role as hostess, with the obvious expectation that she would be brought up to date on all the gory happenings. The fact she was moving around with the help of a walker did nothing to diminish her enthusiasm, or prevent her from seeing to it McKay poured coffee and served butter-oatmeal cookies with accompanying paper napkins.

  With her guests comfortably settled around the cheerful fire in the large fireplace, Wilma, without being asked, informed them that the walker would soon be discarded since her hip replacement was coming along fine and went on to confirm her husband’s account leading up to the discovery of the body.

  “Did you know Louise?” Nolan asked, after consuming a couple of the rich cookies.

  “She came by a couple of times. Nice looking enough. Definitely what they call sexy, these days. Even Gerry, here, acted like a billy goat around her.” Gerald grinned at the description as his wife went on. “I might have worried if I didn’t know he’d hung up his spurs years ago. We’ve been married fifty-four years, by the way. Never had to worry about him all those years. Sure wouldn’t have been much concerned these days. Different with Mrs. Codrington, though. Her old man was panting after Louise from the word go. And so was that partner of hers—something Payne.”

  Nolan wasn’t about to interrupt. Besides, the cookies were too tempting to pass up. Waliewiski, on the other hand, was madly scribbling in her notebook, taking time out only to scratch a recurring itch on her ankle.

  “Louise said Codrington was going to divorce his wife and marry her, but I’ll give her credit. She wasn’t about to believe that old story. As for Payne, I think she really was interested in him. At least he isn’t married.”

  The obvious question popped out of Waliewiski’s mouth, since Nolan’s was otherwise occupied. “Did Codrington and Payne know about each other’s relationship with Louise?”

  Wilma paused before answering. “Do you mean was she playing one off against the other? Not according to her, anyway. Telling Payne while she was living in the Codrington house wouldn’t have been the best idea in the world. And telling Codrington might just have gotten her fired. What she didn’t count on was that Mrs. Codrington would find out about what was going on under her nose.”

  “Do you have any idea how far these relationships went?” This from Nolan, who had paused in her eating but was still eyeing the remaining cookie.

  “Young folks are pretty open these days. She definitely had sex with Payne, but not with Codrington.”

  Gerard, who had been silently listening to his wife, broke in at that moment. Surprisingly, his question had nothing to do with what was being said. Addressing Waliewiski, he asked, “I noticed you scratching your ankle. You ain’t been out in the shrubbery around the house by any chance, have you? Last few days, the ticks have suddenly showed up around there. Must be the deer brin
gs ‘em around. First time we’ve had any of ‘em in any numbers, and suddenly it’s like a plague.”

  Waliewiski checked her ankle and found an insect, no larger than a pinhead, buried in the soft flesh behind her ankle.

  “Young lady,” Wilma said, seeing the results of Waliewiski’s search, “you get yourself into the bathroom and strip. Look through every stitch of your clothing. Those bugs are nothing to fool with. My cousin Shirley came down with Lyme’s, and she lives only a few miles away. Been sick as a dog now for almost a year.”

  It took no urging for Waliewiski to comply, and Gerard filled in during her absence with his explanation for the infestation. “Previous owner had lots of garden help. We used to be able to keep things pretty shipshape. But now, with only me, the bushes have gone wild. I’m not complaining, though. But it’s sure a shame to see everything so badly overgrown. And that’s why the deer and mice have moved in. I hear they’re the ones that bring in the ticks.”

  Deciding to wait on the last cookie until Waliewiski emerged from her strip search, Nolan asked, “Is there any way for anyone to come onto the property other than through the main gate?”

  “Yup. There’s a path up from the main road. It comes through a small gate that hasn’t been closed for years. I suppose someone could crawl over the line fence anyplace, but it’s not easy what with barbed wire and briars and all.”

  Back in the car Nolan peered up the drive at the light in the main house. “I’ve got a couple more questions for Mrs. Codrington. This is about as good a time as any to ask them.”