“Please help me. I have to get away from that man. He just killed my friend -”
“Yeah, like you killed mine! I heard your conversation upstairs. And the sheriff will hear about it too. What was I thinking? I should have let him catch you and take care of the problem.”
“It was an accident. Your friend, I mean. She just got too nosey, and I panicked. You have to believe me, I never meant to hurt her.”
Megan didn’t want to listen to her pleading. She used the light on her phone to locate the electric lantern she had seen on the center of the table and turned it on low. They were locked inside the lighthouse, and she didn’t think Henry could force his way in, but she didn’t want to draw his attention to their location. That is if he was even around. It had been a few minutes since she had heard his cries, and she was pretty sure he had followed the path back to the parking lot. As she kept distance between them, Megan pulled out one of the chairs at the table and sat. She rested the weight of the harpoon on the table, but still kept it firmly in her grasp. Setting her phone on the table, she noticed the battery was weak from watching the lighthouse cam for so long. She pushed the redial button, calling back the number that had broken the standoff between the two women, and then hit the speaker phone mode.
“Megan?”
She couldn’t hide the relief she felt when she heard Aiden’s voice, not wanting to waste a weak battery, she broke in before he could ask questions.
“Aiden, I’m at the lighthouse. I have Mary’s killer in front of me. Call the sheriff and get here as quickly as you can. There has been another murder.”
“I’m on my way, almost there. Are you safe?”
“Yeah, I think I’ve got the situation under control for the moment. Just get here fast, I need you.”
Before Aiden could answer her, the phone lost the signal, either from a weak battery or interference from the winds starting to pick up outside.
Megan glanced back over to the woman who is now sitting on the floor as directed rocking her body back and forth in pain. The woman looked up at Megan and tried a different direction to achieve her freedom.
"Look, Henry's gone. Thanks to him my friend is dead. But we still have all the money. You and I, we can split it. No one needs to know how you came to have all the extra cash, and I can just disappear, start over and have a new life. We can act now, fast before your friend and the sheriff get here. What do you say?"
"Oh, you don't want to know what I'd like to say to you. There will be no deals between you and me. But while we’re waiting for the sheriff to arrive you can tell me about the scheme you and your friend had going. What’s your name, anyways?"
Instinctively the other woman realized she would not get Megan to do anything dishonest. Thinking if she told her story in a way that Megan would feel sorry for her, then it would work in her favor.
"Hannah. Hannah Stone. My friend Helen, all of this was her idea. From the time we were little, she always bullied me into doing what she wanted. I never would've done any of this if it hadn't been for Helen pushing me."
Megan contemplated the woman’s words, and decided that the sincerity she was hearing was fake, but she played along with her, hoping to get the rest of the story.
"That must've been hard on you, Hannah. I heard Henry accuse Helen of blackmail. What did he mean by that?"
"A couple of years ago, when Helen was trying to work her way through school, she started working for an escort service a couple of weekends a month. After a while she’d made enough of her own contacts she decided to work on her own. It didn't take long for her to realize she was making more money as an escort, with more fringe benefits than she would have while going through school, or even when she had her degree. The only problem was she was getting too busy, so she called me in to help."
Megan shook her head in sadness that the two women were so greedy that they were willing to sell their bodies for money and material things. Hannah continued her story.
"We just kind of fell in to the blackmail. Helen and I were at a restaurant when we saw one of our regular clients. As we went to leave the restaurant, we stopped by his table to say hello. The man flipped out, pretended he didn't know us and then rushed his wife towards the exit. Unfortunately for him, she needed to use the restroom before they left. While she was busy, he came back to our table and handed us a wad of cash, pleading with us not to let his wife find out how we knew each other." Hannah laughed out loud and then grimaced from the pain the movement caused.
"Later that night, after we were back in her room, Helen and I took out our list of clients. We figured out who might pay the most to keep their dirty little secret quiet and away from their families. It wasn't long before we had a list put together, and the rest, as they say, was history. We were soon escorting only the men we figured would pay deeply to keep us away from their families and had the most to lose if their indiscretions became known.”
Megan stared at Hannah in amazement. She made everything sound so normal and common place. As if the art of blackmail was a job opportunity rather than a crime and morally wrong. The younger woman seemed proud of her accomplishments. Since she was in a mood to brag, Megan pushed for more information.
“How did you ever come to use Citrus Beach and in particular the Wheeler farm?”
Hannah laughed outright, then gasped in pain when the action jarred her arm. Taking a deep breath through her mouth, she steadied herself before answering Megan’s question.
“Crazy, huh? This is the last place anyone would expect to see escorts and blackmailers, right? We found out about it from an acquaintance. She couldn’t tell us enough about what a dull little town this was, no crime or excitement, just the tourists coming in and out to enjoy the beaches and fishing. The more she talked, the better it sounded. So we developed our own little plan to use Citrus Beach.”
As Megan listened, she had an inkling of who the girls had talked to, but said nothing. It had to be too much of a coincidence. She waited for Hannah to continue.
"It was perfect, really. The first time in Citrus Beach, we actually stayed at the bed-and-breakfast along the river. Later, we decided that it was smarter to stay out of town and come in for the day, pretending to be a tourist. Our target was directed to bring his payment to the lighthouse and drop it in the comment box. We were very specific on the date and time for the drop off, and we would come by that same evening and pick up the money. We didn't want to be carrying that kind of money around with us nor did we wanted traced, so we hid it in an old barn to be picked up later by a third party."
"Why would you get someone else involved, wasn't that risky?"
"You’re a smart one. Yes it would have been extremely risky, but we held information on this person as well, so he needed to keep us happy. We weren't greedy. We let him have a substantial cut of the money when he picked it up. After he took his cut, the rest of it would be run through his business and transferred into an off shore account. Untraceable and untouchable. It was a perfect plan."
Megan nodded her head, following Hannah's sordid tale. It appeared Aiden and the sheriff were also correct, the case involved money laundering too.
"Something went wrong, didn't it, Hannah?"
The younger woman lowered her head in defeat. She was in such pain, had just lost her friend, and her future was sure to be spent behind the bars of a jail cell. If she convinced Megan that it was all someone else's fault it could play to her benefit.
"Yes, it all fell apart when we took Henry DeChante on as a client. He couldn't come up with the money we requested and offered to use his wife's jewelry in exchange. We agreed and arranged to make a copy of her jewelry so she would never find the real one was gone. Not for a long time anyways since she never wore the stuff, it was some kind of family heirloom. So he agreed. Then when Helen was hiding the money in the barn, she must have dropped the ring."
"And that's when Mary found it?"
"Yeah. We were in the diner when we overheard her asking a co
uple of people if they had lost a ring. It didn't take too much to figure out what had happened. We often walked through the petting zoo to look more like tourist, and that's when Helen lost it. That night, Helen got panicky and said we had to check the last of our money that was in the barn waiting to be picked up. How were we to know that it would be the busiest day in town? Some kind of treasure hunt was going on the next day, so we had to act fast."
Megan was about to ask another question when they both heard the sound of running footsteps and the voice of Henry DeChante yelling for Hannah. Before she could get to the lantern to turn it down, Henry was pounding on the door like a mad man. Grateful that she had thought to slide the deadbolt into place, Megan cringed at the force the man was using on the door. It would be a miracle if he didn't break a few bones himself.
“That man is crazy!” Megan could hear the fear in Hannah’s voice as she visibly cringed with each pound of Henry’s fist.
“I know I’m not going to get away from the law, but I would rather face the sheriff than Henry. I hope he is caught red handed.”
Chapter 35
As the pounding on the door continued, so did Henry’s yelling. It was nerve-wracking to both of the women locked inside the lighthouse. Megan worried about Aiden walking into the path of a madman, and Hannah worried about him running off and not getting caught. If he wasn’t in police custody when she left this room, she knew his would somehow get to her and kill her like he had Helen.
The pounding stopped and they heard him run up the lighthouse stairs. It became clear that he was looking for a second entry as he pounded on the walls. He found the unlocked window at the same time that Megan remembered it. Before she could secure it, Henry had kicked it in and his head popped through the opening.
It was an eerie sight, only his head protruding into the room. His eyes glazed with madness and spittle could be seen in the corners of his mouth. Because the window was just a small porthole, he could not get any more of himself into the room. He glared at Hannah sitting on the floor and then got an ugly grin on his face. The table and chair that Megan satin was positioned on the same wall as the porthole, out of his range of vision.
Megan watched Hannah’s face and knew from her sudden change of expression that something was about to happen. She turned her glance upwards, just in time, and watched Henry pull his head back and then stick his arm into the window. The dull metal of a gun was pointed it right at Hannah. Megan had to act fast, and once again she picked up the harpoon and swung. The impact jarred her hands, but it was strong enough to make Henry drop the gun and pull his hand back in pain. Without thinking, he put his head back in the porthole to find out what had hit him. Megan showed him clearly enough, as she wound up and hit him again, this time square between the eyes. Hollowing in pain, the man staggered back. They could hear his curses and then a sudden yell. The sound of him falling down the stairs, hitting the side of the building as he went, was sickening.
Silence filled the air after he hit the ground at the base of the staircase. Megan stood up on shaky legs, knowing she had to find out if he was dead. Catching sight of the gun he had held, she picked it up and put the harpoon under the table out of Hannah’s reach. Not that the younger women would have been able to do anything with it, not with her injured arm. As she held the gun in one hand and the lantern in the other, Megan moved to the door, ignoring Hannah’s pleas to not open it until the sheriff arrived. She was so terrified of Henry, that she did not want to see him, even if he was badly injured or dead.
Megan opened the door slowly, afraid herself of what she would find on the other side. Not hearing any noise other than the surf hitting the rocks, she eased her way out. With the lantern held up high, she could make out the body of Henry DeChante at the base of the stairs in the beam of light. His legs sprawled at odd angles and his forehead was bloody from the blow Megan had dealt him with the harpoon. He lay motionless, and Megan crept forward to check if he was still breathing.
She let out a sigh when she found that he was breathing shallowly and had a heartbeat. Thank God. The last thing she wanted to have on her conscience was a dead man. It didn’t matter what he had done, Megan did not want to be the one to hand out his justice.
“Is he dead?”
“No, but he isn’t going to harm us either, not in this state.”
Megan reassured Hannah that the man was out of commission and was ready to walk back into the room when she heard the sound of sirens pulling into the parking area. Within moments, she heard car doors slamming and men yelling. Over the sounds she could have sworn she also heard dogs barking.
Chapter 36
Lucy stared across at Megan, not sure whether she was jealous of all the excitement Megan had had experienced or disappointed that she had been so wrong about Rita. She had been so sure that Rita had been the one to kill Mary. She had wasted yesterday following the woman around town and even the file she seen Rita take from Aiden’s office had been a dead end. He had explained that he had left the folder for her to verify some information he had found about Mary’s family, she had not stolen a thing.
Paul, Lucy, and Megan were sitting in the reception area of Aiden's office waiting for the arrival of the other guests he’d invited to join him this morning. Jake and Aiden were in the kitchen making coffee for everyone and the two dogs were curled up in one of the pink dog beds that Gypsy so loved.
Megan had filled them both in on and all that had happened the night before up to the point of the sheriff's arrival with Aiden close behind him. Paul was shaking his head, wondering how his cousin had gotten into trouble all on her own again.
"I don't know how you do it, Megan, but if there's trouble you find it. I can say this, I'm sure glad I made you learn how to play baseball when we were kids."
The three of them laughed and then turned their heads towards the door as it started to open. In filed Charlotte and Carol, followed by Emma and Taylor. Hearing the arrival of the rest of his guests, Aiden came out of the kitchen, carrying a tray of cups and the required additives for a good cup of coffee. Jake was right behind him with full pot of freshly brewed coffee.
As they all helped themselves to the coffee, Megan once again told every one of her adventures the night before. When she got to the point of Aiden’s arrival, he took over the narrative.
“Sheriff Green and I arrived at the same time and quickly ran down the path to the lighthouse.”
“But not as fast as our two little sweeties over there. I didn’t know Barney could run that fast,” Megan butted in.
“You’re right. They were out of the car and racing towards you before we had even gotten ourselves out of the car. It didn’t take long to reach you and find you had the situation well under control. There you sat with one killer crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, a knot on his forehead like I’ve never seen before, and another killer sitting on the floor with a broken arm, staring into the gun you held.”
“A gun, Mom?”
“Yeah, well it’s not something I usually hold, and I’m not planning on having one in my hands again.”
“But that’s not the best part. It seems your mother is pretty handy with a harpoon too. That’s the weapon she used to render both killers useless. I think that Hannah was relieved to be taken into custody. That reminds me, the sheriff said we could come by later to find out how his interrogation went this morning.”
The forceful opening of the front door cut off what he had been about to say, and they all looked to see who the new arrivals were. Entering as if she owned the place, Rita Thomas came into the room, followed by Kim Heart.
“Ahhh, I see you have brought in everyone Aiden. That’s good, because with the proof you have for me, I can evict these two squatters from my farm and put the town busy bodies in their place. I’ve brought along Miss Heart to record my story to be sure that the news media gets it right. Would someone please shut that mangy dog up?”
As Rita made her bold statements, Gypsy had stood
up in her bed and was growling, teeth bared. She barked shrilly at Rita in warning. Jake picked her up and grinned over at Megan as he whispered.
“See, I told you, the dog hates this woman.”
Jake opened the door to Aiden’s private office and shooed Gypsy in. Barney darted inside just as he closed the door, eager to comfort his pal. The room was silent as he turned back, and he apologized to Rita for the dog’s behavior. Now that Rita was once again the center of attention, she looked around at those in the room. A frown creased her brow when she saw Charlotte trying to hide her smile behind her coffee cup. Dismissing the older woman as unimportant, she turned to Aiden and waited for him to speak.
Lucy was having difficulty keeping her temper in check as Rita cast around her insults, but Paul had her hand in his and he was giving it a hard squeeze to remind her to behave.
“Well, Aiden? I’m assuming from your ungodly early call this morning that your trip to Jacksonville provided you with the proof to put this whole matter of my ownership of the Wheeler estate to rest. Let’s not waste any time here. I want to move forward with my plans to sell the property and get back to my real life in the city.”
Aiden could feel the tension build in the room as the others trying their best not to respond to Rita’s spitefulness. Finally Carol could contain herself no longer, and she spoke up.
“Rita, if I were to make you an offer on the property, would you consider selling it to me?”
“I don’t think you would pay the price I’m asking. Besides, I already have a buyer lined up. Progress will be coming to Citrus Beach. That whole area will be leveled and a high-end private community is to be built.”
Murder at the Geo-Cache...A Citrus Beach Mystery (Citrus Beach Mysteries Book 3) Page 21
