Voice Mail Murder

by Patricia Rockwell

  The only thing she knew for certain was that something she had done—or said—had frightened the killer and caused the person to target her by cutting her brakes. That was a message, for certain. The killer wanted her to stop—but stop what? And why? What did she know? Or what did the killer think she knew that would cause the person to risk exposure in order to send her that message? She racked her brain trying to figure out what it could be—but nothing became obvious.

  The late afternoon sun dipped behind a cloud and her office filled with shadows. Joan had left earlier and she no longer heard Willard typing away next door, so she assumed that he too had headed home. She hadn’t seen a student in over several hours so she figured it was probably time to gather her belongings and head home herself before her husband became worried. Besides, he had said he was making a pot roast tonight and that sounded perfect for this bleak day—all warm with mashed potatoes and gravy.

  With books, clipboard, and thermos in hand, she slipped on her jacket and placed her purse over her shoulder and headed out the side entrance into the parking lot. When she’d arrived in the morning, her little white rental car had been one of just a few vehicles in the lot. Now, the small white Fiesta looked isolated between two large SUV’s. She hiked up all of her paraphernalia and reached in the side pocket of her purse for the key chain. Giving a push on her automatic door opener, the car beeped and she grabbed the door and opened it, tossing her belongings across the driver’s seat to the passenger’s side. As she stood up and was almost ready to slide into her seat, a soft swishing sound behind her caused her to turn abruptly.

  A huge pair of what looked like scissors was rapidly descending towards her face.

  Chapter Thirty

  A woman held a large scissor-like tool above her head and gave a grunt as she started to plunge the weapon down towards Pamela’s head. Grabbing the car door for leverage, Pamela ducked quickly to the side and knocked the woman into the car, where she tripped and dropped the shears. As she hit the seat, her hand shot up, trying to pull herself out of the car. Pamela quickly slammed the car door onto the woman’s wrist which was just starting to protrude from the car. With her wrist caught between the door and the door frame, Rosemary Ellis screamed in agony.

  “Please!” she cried, “Please, that hurts!”

  Pamela continued to maintain pressure on the door, squeezing Rosemary’s wrist between the door and the car frame and making it impossible for the woman to free herself.

  “Like it hurt the Coach?” she asked Rosemary, now trapped inside the car. “Like it hurt Skye Davis?”

  “Please!” she continued to scream. “Can’t you please just not press so hard? Please!”

  “You were going to kill me, Rosemary!”

  “I’m sorry,” declared Rosemary Ellis, whimpering, her face getting redder by the moment. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “I find that hard to believe.” She leaned her back against the door to help maintain pressure on Rosemary’s trapped hand, glancing over her shoulder to be certain that the woman could not escape. That seemed unlikely as the woman’s wrist was securely locked between door and door frame. Ignoring the woman’s cries, Pamela carefully scrounged around in her purse still hanging over her shoulder and brought out her cell phone. She quickly tapped in “9-1-1.”

  “Operator, I want to report an attempted murder. The Blake Hall parking lot on campus. Please contact Detective Shoop with the Reardon Police and tell him that Dr. Barnes is waiting for him there.”

  The police operator took the information and quickly began contacting the authorities. Pamela replaced her cell phone in her purse and checked over her shoulder on the condition of Rosemary Ellis inside her little rental vehicle. The woman was blubbering, tears streaming down her face, but she was alive, although in obvious pain. Pamela realized that if she released her pressure on the killer’s wrist, Rosemary Ellis would probably seize the opportunity to run.

  “Rosemary,” Pamela called out in a conversational voice. “Why don’t you tell me how all this happened—while we’re waiting for the police? They’ll be here in no time.”

  “I didn’t want to involve you, Dr. Barnes,” sobbed the woman, “truly, I didn’t. But I was afraid you heard my voice on the recording.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Pamela mystified.

  “I didn’t know how many messages you had on your original recording. I know how many you played for us in my office, but you never really said if those were the only messages. I was afraid you might have earlier messages from previous years. Coach never did throw anything away—I always had to clean out his office for him. It would be just like him to save his voice mail messages for years and years.”

  “You left some voice mail message for Coach that you didn’t want anyone to hear? You were willing to kill me to prevent me from identifying it?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was several years ago.”

  “Go ahead. Tell me.”

  “I met Coach at a motel over a year ago—just like all those other women,” she said, bitterly. “He did the same thing then—I registered and called him and left a voice mail message with the room number and then he showed up.”

  “You had an affair with Coach Croft?” asked Pamela, incredulous.

  “Is it so hard to believe?” the woman in the car cried, “I’m not so old—or so terrible looking, am I?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Pamela, “I just didn’t imagine that . . . “

  “Yes, you can imagine it,” she whined. “He entranced me too. I fell for him and he seduced me. Then as soon as he had me, he dumped me!”

  “I’m sorry,” Pamela said.

  “It was one thing to be faithful to his invalid wife. I understood that; I admired him for that. But, after just one time together, he called it off. I thought I wasn’t good enough for him. Oh, he gave me this line about how it wasn’t right because of his wife and how we had to work together and it would make it difficult—but he never said any of that before he slept with me. “

  “I’m sorry,” Pamela repeated. The woman obviously wanted to talk. Maybe talking kept her mind off of her sore imprisoned wrist.

  “Then, slowly over the summer, I started to notice things—little things. You know, he’d go out on errands and I’d have to cover for him—which I was always doing and I normally didn’t mind, because he usually was running errands for the team. But sometimes, he’d come back and he’d be a little different. He’d smell different—perfume. One day, I decided to follow him and he went to a motel and was there for over an hour. I didn’t stay to wait for him because I had to return to work. Somebody had to take care of the team—of the office.”

  “So, you discovered that he was having an affair,” she said.

  “I discovered that he was cheating on me—and on Sheila, his handicapped wife.”

  “Why didn’t you just confront him?”

  “He broke my heart! Don’t you understand? I thought I was the only one. He made me feel like I was the only one. When he said we couldn’t see each other again after just that one time together, I thought it was because of his wife and he felt guilty because he didn’t want our sexual relationship to ruin our working relationship. Now, I see it was just an excuse so he could go on having sex with all these other women.”

  “But because you were one of these women,” said Pamela, trying to follow the woman’s logic, “you knew what he was up to; you knew what he was planning, so . . . “

  “Right,” agreed Rosemary, twisting her wrist. “Please, please, Dr. Barnes. Please release my wrist. It hurts so much.”

  “It won’t be long, Rosemary,” said Pamela, consoling. “The police will be here any minute and then I’ll let you go.”

  “It hurts so much,” she cried.

  “So, you went to the motel room that afternoon when you were sure Coach was meeting with one of his mistresses,” continued Pamela.

  “Yes,” she sa
id, nodding her head inside the car. “I waited outside in my car for her to leave. I knew she would because that’s what I had done—leave first, I mean. That was the protocol.” She cried in agony. “When that Davis woman drove off, I walked up the side stairway of the motel, knocked on the doorway where I had seen Coach say good-bye to her. He answered the door, annoyed. He didn’t even seem surprised to see me, just peeved. It infuriated me! When he turned away, I stabbed him with my pruning shears.”

  The shears that now lay on the ground beneath her feet outside of her car door. She would bet they’d prove to be the murder weapon.

  “What I don’t understand, Rosemary,” said Pamela, “is why did you feel you had to kill Skye Davis?”

  “I think she saw me.”

  “You mean when you were waiting outside of the motel?”

  “Yes,” sobbed the secretary. “She stared right at me as I sat in my car outside that motel and I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but I think she remembered me later—after Coach was gone. I think she figured out who I was. I don’t know where she knew me from. I don’t think she’d ever been in the building, but maybe Coach mentioned me. Then last week, she called me and asked me to meet her at her office.”

  “What?”

  “Yes,” said Rosemary, “that just seemed too suspicious. I figured that she might be going to blackmail me and I decided I’d better jump the gun and get rid of her before she could pull any tricks, so I waited for her in my SUV in her parking lot of that real estate agency and when she arrived early that morning, I sneaked up on her from behind . . . “

  “Like you were going to do with me?”

  “Truly, Dr. Barnes,” explained the woman, “I have nothing against you. I was afraid you had that voice mail recording that I’d left on Coach’s cell phone last year . . . “

  “You needn’t have worried, Rosemary,” said Pamela, softy, “evidently Coach Croft cleared his cell phone at the beginning of the year. Any messages before January were deleted.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know. When you brought that recording in and I had you play it again and again, I just couldn’t believe that my voice wasn’t on it. I figured you were only playing a small portion of it and you were keeping the part with my voice on it a secret.”

  “No,” said Pamela, “you heard all we had.”

  The secretary winced as a new burst of pain ran through her arm. A siren sounded nearby and a police cruiser pulled into the driveway of the small lot. All four doors of the vehicle opened at once and Shoop led three uniformed officers towards Pamela’s car.

  “My, oh my,” exclaimed Shoop as he surveyed the scene. “What have we here?”

  Pamela stood up and released her pressure on the car door. The three officers carefully opened the door and gently helped Rosemary Ellis out from the car.

  “I think you’ll find Ms. Ellis willing to admit to both murders, Detective,” said Pamela.

  “And just how did you manage to capture our killer, Dr. Barnes?”

  “Through devious subterfuge,” exclaimed Pamela. “Actually, I just happened to turn around as she was about to stab me with those pruning shears that you see on the ground by my car door. I’ve been holding her captive by the wrist for the last several minutes. You may not want to handcuff her until you have her wrist looked at by a doctor.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Barnes,” called out Rosemary, clutching her wrist with her other hand as the three officers guided her away and into the back seat of the cruiser.

  “I suppose you managed to extract her motive while you held her hostage,” noted Shoop to the professor.

  Pamela proceeded to inform the burly man the specifics of Rosemary Ellis’s motivation and methodology. By the time she had concluded her explanation, it was dark. The officers had placed the pruning shears in an evidence bag and were standing beside their vehicle with Rosemary in the back seat.

  “You’d better get home to that jealous husband of yours,” said Shoop, glancing at his watch. “I hate to be the object of his wrath when you get too involved in one of our investigations.”

  “When I get too involved?” she cried, affronted. “Who dragged me into this case?”

  “Now, Dr. Barnes,” said Shoop soothingly. “Look, it all turned out all right. The guilty party has been caught—and you are none the worse for wear—well, with the exception of that ugly scar on your forehead.”

  “It’s really ugly?” she asked, reaching unconsciously to touch the scab.

  “Just think of it as a battle wound,” he suggested. With that, he folded up his small notebook that he had been jotting squiggles in while she spoke. Tucking it in his overcoat pocket, he gave her a brief bow and headed over to the cruiser and slid in the front passenger seat. She watched the car drive away with Rosemary Ellis in the back seat looking stoic.

  Her phone in her purse gave out its merry jingle and she answered it, guessing who the caller was.

  “I’m on my way!” she said breathlessly to her husband.

  “It’s after six o’clock!” he cried. “I have pot roast!”

  “I know,” she replied, sliding into her car. “I can hardly wait!”

  ###

  Rocky’s Chicken Enchilada Casserole

  24 corn tortillas

  4 chicken breasts (cut in small pieces and sautéed until golden brown)

  2 cans of cream of chicken soup

  1 cup of sour cream

  1 small container of green chilies

  1 cup of white wine

  4 cups of shredded Monterrey Jack cheese

  Grease a rectangular baking dish and line the bottom with 6-8 tortillas. Mix in the cooked chicken pieces, the soup, sour cream, chilies, and wine. Ladle a layer of the mixture over the tortillas. Follow with a sprinkling of shredded cheese. Place a second layer of tortillas on top of this and repeat the chicken mixture and cheese. End with a final layer of tortillas and top with a thick layer of cheese. Cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until the cheese is brown and bubbling.

  Milk Ambrosia

  (Rocky makes this special drink for Pamela which sometimes causes her to have strange dreams. He likes to reward her with this unique beverage when she has been really, really good—or on occasion—really, really bad.)

  1 cup of skim milk

  1 TB grenadine or maraschino cherry juice

  Add the flavoring to the milk in a saucepan and heat until lukewarm. While heating, use an electric latte frother to foam the milk until frothy and creamy—but not until stiff. Serve immediately.

  Voice Mail Murder is the third in the Pamela Barnes acoustic mystery series by Patricia Rockwell. The first book, which is entitled Sounds of Murder, introduced the Psychology professor and acoustics expert heroine. It was followed the next year by FM for Murder.

  Patricia Rockwell has spent most of her life teaching. Her Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees are from the University of Nebraska in Speech, and her Ph.D. is from the University of Arizona in Communication. She was on the faculty at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for thirteen years, retiring in 2007. Her publications are extensive, with over 20 peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals, several textbooks, and a research volume published by Edwin Mellen Press. In addition, she served for eight years as editor of the Louisiana Communication Journal. Her research focuses primarily on deception, sarcasm, and vocal cues. Dr. Rockwell is presently living in Aurora, Illinois, with her husband Milt, also a retired educator. The couple has two adult children.

 

 

 
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