Bound by Suggestion

by L.L. Bartlett

  Maggie had the knife, palming it to keep it out of sight.

  I walked back to Timberly, who snatched the key ring from my hand, shoving it into his own pocket.

  I still had Sam’s gun under my jacket. If I could just get to it without him seeing

  “Now, we’re going to take a nice little walk down to the boat,” Timberly said. “Jeff, open the French doors.”

  I took a step forward.

  “You,” Timberly told Maggie. “Stand up.”

  Don’t, Maggie. Wait. Please wait.

  I unlocked the doors, throwing them open to the wind and lashing rain. Waves crashed against the breakwall below. Turning, my back against the door, I, too, waited. I’d only have one chance.

  Turning his attention back to his prisoners, Timberly waved the shotgun. “Move it. You first, Dr. Dick.”

  I inched my right hand behind me. In one fluid motion, I grabbed the gun, crouched and fired.

  The shot caught Timberly in the right shoulder. He staggered back, the shotgun exploding.

  Richard went down.

  Maggie screamed a Kamikaze shriek, her arm raised, the knife glinting. She lunged at Timberly.

  Timberly whirled, blocking Maggie before she could connect, sending her flying back to the floor.

  “Hold it!” I yelled.

  A panting Timberly staggered back against the couch, the shotgun still firmly in his grasp.

  “Rich? Maggie?”

  “I’m okay,” Richard said, rolling onto his stomach and looking up at me. “You could’ve let a guy know.”

  “We . . . seem to . . . have a standoff,” Timberly said, panting.

  I shook my head. “Why don’t you just go.”

  “What?” he gasped.

  “Go! Get the hell out of here!”

  Richard and Maggie gaped at me like I was crazy.

  “I don’t want to die, and I don’t think you do, either. So get the hell out.”

  A growing scarlet stain seeped through Timberly’s jacket. He looked down at himself and made his decision. He kept the barrel trained on me while he struggled to his feet. Moving with exaggerated care, he backed out of the room, the shotgun dipping lower, his breathing growing ragged.

  For his every step backward, I crept forward, Sam’s gun still trained on Timberly.

  He paused at the room’s arched entrance.

  “You’re a fool, Resnick.”

  “Maybe. But I’ll still be alive tomorrow.”

  Timberly’s glare was murderous, but he backed down the hall.

  Richard helped Maggie up, then rushed to join me.

  “Stay here.” I crept forward, waiting in the shadows until I heard the front door slam, then flew for the kitchen, arriving as the Lincoln roared to life.

  Out the window, I saw Timberly pull a U-turn, spinning the car’s wheels on the damp grass, then peel off down the gravel drive.

  I ran back to the great room.

  “Rich, get on the phone, or Brenda’s going to have this place crawling with cops.”

  He hauled out his cell phone, already dialing. “You wanna tell me what that was all about?”

  “First things first.”

  “Brenda,” Richard said.

  I tuned out that conversation. “Are you okay, Maggs?”

  “I think so.” She looked down at Doug, seething with contempt.

  “I don’t suppose you have keys to his car,” I asked

  “I think he gave them to Krista. Her purse is still in the kitchen. I saw it when I got the knife.”

  “Terrific, but before we go anywhere, we’ve got some clean-up work to do.”

  “I’ll call back,” Richard told Brenda and hung up. “What are you talking about?” he asked me.

  “Fingerprints. None of you has a criminal record, but my prints are on file with the Pentagon. If the cops figure out what went on, they could come looking for me.”

  “What should I do?” Maggie asked.

  “Tear more strips from that sheet. We’ll dust every surface, clean up the blood, and sweep the place of glass, Then we’ll take everything with us and dump it at a McDonalds.”

  “Give me a hand, will you?” Richard asked.

  I helped him move Doug to the couch, watched as he gave the man a cursory examination.

  “Looks like a nasty concussion. We ought to get him to an ER.”

  “Is he in any danger?”

  “I don’t think so, but it’s better to be safe.”

  “We won’t be safe until we get back to Buffalo. It’s only an hour delay. Can he make it?”

  Richard frowned, unhappy with my proposal. He studied my face. “There’s something else you aren’t telling me. What do you know?”

  I found it hard to meet his gaze. “You’re going to need a new car.”

  Chapter 23

  “We’re going to have to stop again,” Brenda said, her voice strained.

  The windshield wipers thump, thump, thumped as mercury vapor lamps strobed overhead. The back of Doug’s BMW felt claustrophobic with Brenda, Doug, and me squashed in it. Maggie refused to sit next to her former beau. As that kind of pleased me, I didn’t complain.

  “Did anybody hear me?” Brenda asked. “A McDonalds, Burger King—even a Taco Bell. Just please, let’s stop soon!”

  “You just went fifteen minutes ago,” Richard said.

  “Yes, but I’m pregnant, and I drank four cups of decaf coffee in an hour, waiting for you guys.”

  “We’ll be back in Buffalo soon. We’ll find a crapper there,” I teased.

  We’d already stopped at three fast food joints’ trash bins to spread out potentially incriminating evidence across the city of Niagara Falls. Hopefully the cops wouldn’t find it.

  A police car blocked the entrance ramp for I-190 and the Grand Island bridges, and I could pretty well guess why.

  “Pull over and I’ll find out what’s going on.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Richard said, and parked the car along the side of the road.

  The two of us got out. The rain had slowed from a downpour to a drizzle. We pulled up our collars and hoofed it back to the Niagara Falls Police cruiser. The bored cop rolled down his window. “Sorry, the bridge is closed,” he said.

  “Big accident, huh?”

  “Car went over the guard rails.” He shook his head.

  “Holy shit,” Richard breathed.

  I could just imagine the gumball lights of dozens of police and fire rescue trucks strobing atop the north Grand Island Bridge, the track of skid marks, automobile parts and shattered glass littering the bridge over the Niagara River and the choppy black water below.

  “Thanks,” I told the cop and we headed back for Doug’s car.

  “Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” Richard asked.

  “I’ve had a bad feeling since the minute I shot Wes Timberly.

  He stopped walking. “And what aren’t you telling me?”

  “I’m picturing a mangled silver Lincoln Town car sitting at the bottom of the river, that more resembles a piece of modern sculpture than an automobile.”

  I glanced at Richard’s pale, stricken face.

  “You did say you were thinking of trading it in.”

  He huddled inside his jacket, hunching his shoulders against the wind and rain. “Do you think it was the power steering?”

  “Heavy rain . . . a shoulder injury . . . loss of blood . . . . Yeah, I’ll bet it was a contributing factor.”

  Had Krista been conscious when the Lincoln skidded on the bridge, flipping and tumbling the hundred or so feet down to the river? Unforgiving bastard that I am, I hoped to God she was. I hoped she’d known with certainty she was about to die. In those last, terrifying seconds, it probably never occurred to her that fate might be punishing her for the misery she’d caused Grace, and me, and God knows how many others.

  “Shouldn’t we do something? Help them identify the bodies?” Richard asked and looked back at the patrol car blocking the e
xpressway on-ramp.

  I shook my head and motioned for him to follow me. “When they get those two in the morgue, they’re going to find gunshot wounds. Do we really want to point the finger at ourselves—me in particular? As it is, we’ve got to come up with a convincing story as to why Timberly was driving your car.”

  Richard paused, his expression thoughtful as he looked over his shoulder back at the cruiser. “It just doesn’t seem . . . right.”

  “Was it right for Krista to mess with Grace’s head—to drug me and use me to do the same thing? Was it right for Timberly to steal millions of dollars from sick people? He was prepared to kill us in order to hide his larceny, then dump our bodies in Lake Ontario.”

  “Do you have to sound so goddamned logical?”

  “It’s justice, Rich. Maybe not according to the law, but it is cosmic justice.”

  He nodded grudgingly.

  We got back in the car.

  “What happened?” Brenda asked.

  “Seems our friends took a dip in the river.”

  “Oh my God!” Brenda breathed.

  “Shhh!” Maggie admonished. “Don’t talk about it front of you know who.”

  Thanks to two whacks on the skull, Doug appeared to be suffering from time-specific amnesia. He couldn’t remember anything past picking Maggie up for lunch. If our luck held, his memories of what had happened after that would be gone forever.

  “We’ll have to go through Tonawanda and get back to 290,” I said.

  “That’s going to take at least an extra half hour,” Richard said, and flicked a glance at his rear view mirror, no doubt thinking about Doug’s concussion.

  “At least we can hook Brenda up with a bathroom.”

  “Thank goodness,” Brenda breathed.

  We stopped off at a McDonalds and welcomed a considerably cheered Brenda back into the car.

  “Where to?” Richard called.

  “Home, James, and don’t spare the horses,” I said.

  “I’ve got a great idea,” Doug said, sounding like a happy drunk. “Let’s sing ‘Ninety-Nine bottles of Beer On The Wall.’“

  “Oh, please, take me home,” Maggie begged.

  Richard started the engine.

  Chapter 24

  “Looks like you’ll have to order one,” I told Richard, following a step or two behind as he charged along the Mercedes-Benz dealership’s wide aisles. He’d never be satisfied with something right off the lot.

  Richard slowed, gazed longingly back toward the showroom window where the sweet red two-seater gleamed under a hot white spot.

  “Forget it,” I told him. “You can’t get a baby’s car seat in one of those. And that’s what you’ll have to contend with for the next five or six years, Dad.”

  “True. But I wonder if they’d lease it short term?”

  “Stick with the four-doors,” I said, grabbing his arm and turning his attention back to the boring old sedans.

  Boring? At a fifty grand base price—no way!

  I watched with amusement as Richard darted from car to car, looking at the interiors and inspecting the lists of options posted on the windows. It felt good to smile again. I hadn’t had much to smile about lately.

  Timberly and Krista dying hadn’t ended our problems. The night of the accident, Richard and I donned latex gloves and visited Krista’s house. It wasn’t breaking and entering—we had her house keys. Her stash of homemade pornos starred more than just Grace and me. We made off with stacks of jewel cases, and spent a good few hours the next day destroying every one of them.

  Meanwhile, Richard worried about the millions Timberly had siphoned from the Foundation. He called his pals, Michael and Artie in Pasadena, and put them hot on the electronic trail. I don’t know how they did it, but three days later, the money was back in the hospital accounts. It seemed like a miracle, but I’d had other more pressing matters on my mind.

  The cops.

  When they came to deliver the bad news about the Lincoln, they were surprised to find its owner alive and well. They grilled us on more than one occasion, but everyone—including Doug—remembered his or her rehearsed lines. The police backed off after a couple of days.

  We were home free, but not unscathed.

  It would take a long time—maybe forever—for me to come to terms with what that bitch made me do to Grace. That poor young woman deserved so much more from life, and because of Krista I took everything away from her.

  Everything.

  Richard held a glossy pamphlet at arm’s length, comparing the photo with a lesser version sitting before him. “I like this one, but Brenda would hate the color.”

  “You can’t have that,” I agreed.

  He frowned. “Have you got something against German engineering?”

  “Not a bit. These are probably the safest cars in the world. And nothing will be too good for Betsy Ruth.”

  His brow wrinkled. “How did you know?”

  “The baby’s name? I offered to tell you weeks ago.”

  “But we only decided last night.”

  “I could have saved you a lot of time.”

  He frowned. “Then what’s bothering you?”

  “Okay, I admit it—I loved that old silver boat of yours. I was hoping that when you got sick of it I could buy it off you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  He was quiet for a moment. I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind.

  “Brenda and I never did give you a birthday present. There’s a Lincoln dealership next door. We can go right over—you can pick what you want.”

  I shook my head.

  “It would give me pleasure to do it,” Richard tried again.

  I turned to face him, my gut tightening with a remorse I knew too well. “Don’t you get it? It would make me even more indebted to you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything.” He sounded hurt.

  “I owe you my life—and more—how many times over? And then there’s—” I cut myself off. A week later, I still wasn’t sure I could face, let alone express, just what it was that had been eating at me.

  Richard waited for an explanation.

  I took a breath to calm myself. “At Timberly’s command, I fired a gun at you.”

  “It was empty,” he protested, annoyed.

  “I’m not sure I knew that at the time.”

  “I did. I saw you unload it.”

  I looked away.

  “Besides,” Richard tried again, “if you thought for one second that gun was loaded, you wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.”

  “That’s just it, I didn’t stop to think. I just did what Timberly told me to do.”

  “But you were faking it,” he insisted. “You—”

  I shook my head. “Not at first. When Timberly said that word, I was sucked back into the darkness.”

  Richard sobered. His gaze seemed focused on the car in front of him, but I’m not sure he saw it. “If we’re comparing guilts, Brenda was right. You could’ve died when you took those pills. Any doctor worth his salt would’ve called an ambulance. I should have—”

  “If it was anyone but me, you would have. You did what was right for me. It wasn’t my idea to pull that asshole stunt. The last thing I’d want is a documented suicide attempt trailing me for the rest of my life. Uh-uh, you kept my credibility intact.”

  We glared at each other for a long moment.

  “Then I guess that makes us even,” Richard said.

  No, but I was more than willing to drop it.

  Forever.

  Richard looked down at his brochure. “I still owe you a birthday present.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” I repeated. What part of ‘no’ didn’t he understand?

  “How about Brenda and I take you and Maggie out for a nice dinner?”

  “I don’t know. We’re not exactly back together yet. We’re still . . . negotiating.”

  We would get back together again. I knew it, but M
aggie was still smarting from betraying me . . . from being betrayed by Doug. She was fragile and afraid to trust—herself, and me. We had a rocky road ahead of us, but ultimately we would be together again—in mind and in spirit. It would just take time.

  “There must be something I can do for you,” Richard said.

  I studied his earnest blue eyes. It would please him to do something for me.

  “Let’s go seal the deal on your new car, then hit Premier Liquor and buy some pâté, crackers, and the best bottle of single malt they’ve got. What do you say?”

  The corners of Richard’s mustache quirked upward. “That sounds like a plan.”

  About the Author

  The immensely popular Booktown Mystery series is what put Lorraine Bartlett’s pen name Lorna Barrett on the New York Times Bestseller list, but it’s her talent -- whether writing as Lorna, or L.L. Bartlett, or Lorraine Bartlett -- that keeps her there. This multi-published, Agatha-nominated author pens the exciting Jeff Resnick Mysteries as well as the acclaimed Victoria Square Mystery series, and now the Tales of Telenia saga, and has many short stories and novellas to her name(s). Check out the links to all her works here: http://www.lorrainebartlett.com

  (You can also find her on Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter.)

  Also by

  L.L. Bartlett

  The Jeff Resnick Mysteries

  Murder On The Mind

  Dead In Red

  Room At The Inn

  Cheated By Death

  Bound By Suggestion

  A Leap of Faith (2013)

  Short Stories:

  When The Spirit Moves You (A Jeff Resnick novelette)

  Bah! Humbug (A Jeff Resnick story)

  Cold Case–A Jeff Resnick Story

  Abused: A Daughter’s Story

  Writing as Lorraine Bartlett

  The Victoria Square Mysteries

  A Crafty Killing

  The Walled Flower

  One Hot Murder

  Recipes To Die For: A Victoria Square Cookbooks

  Tales of Telenia (fantasy)

  THRESHOLD

  JOURNEY

  Short Stories:

  An Unconditional Love

  Love Heals

  Blue Christmas