“Blackmail?”
“That’s right. Why she had to go and do that after all these years is beyond me.”
“Why didn’t you just pay, instead of killing her?”
“I did pay, but my daddy didn’t raise no fools. I knew it was just a matter of time before she came back to the well, and with the resort project, I didn’t have it to spare. Besides, there ain’t nothing on this earth lower than a blackmailer.”
“Not even a man who’d push a woman down a flight of stairs?”
“Hell, you have worked it all out, haven’t you. I knew you was going to cause trouble when I saw that you’d figured out Miss Barth used to pose for the camera clubs.”
“Did you think I had more photos of you? Is that why you pushed me into Boylston Street?”
“Yep, that’s what I thought. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt, but I had to get a look at those pictures you had sticking out of your bag.”
“Oh, please, you didn’t care if I got hurt or not. Besides, the pictures I had were no big deal anyway.”
“No, they weren’t, so I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about you after all. You sure had me buffaloed.”
“Not really. I didn’t know much then, and what I did know, I wasn’t planning to tell anybody. It was you going after the photos that made me wonder about the ones that had gone missing from Sandra’s apartment, and that led me to finding pictures of you as a young man. You know, Miss Barth had me convinced that she didn’t know who you were. She really was a good actress.”
“She was the best I ever worked with, and the finest lady, too, no matter what she had in her past.”
“So why did you kill her?”
“You think I wanted to? She’d been with me and Hoyt since the beginning. I’d have done just about anything for that woman. And here she was going to turn me in to the police!”
“She realized that you killed Sandra.”
He nodded. “She knew I’d gone out alone for a while that night, and she knew Sandy knew my old name. I guess they’d been in touch, and when you showed her that picture of me and said it came from Sandy’s apartment, she put all the pieces together. She could of just gone to the police then, but she came to me instead, there at the fund-raiser. She felt like she owed it to me to give me time to turn myself in, because it said so in the Cowtown Code. Do you know that one? ‘Always give a man the chance to do the right thing.’ She lived by the Code.”
“And died by it. Though I don’t remember murdering old ladies being part of the Code.”
“Don’t you sass me—I loved that woman like a sister. It was all that blackmailing bitch Sandy’s fault. She’s the one to start all the trouble—I only wish she hadn’t died so quick.”
Tilda knew she should stay calm, but him saying that about a woman he’d beaten to death infuriated her. “Here’s a newsflash, cowboy. Sandra wasn’t blackmailing you.”
“The hell she wasn’t! She had me mail the money here to Boston, and there ain’t nobody else living here who’d know who I was.”
“What did the blackmail note look like? Was it handwritten?”
“No, printed, like on a computer.”
“Then it definitely wasn’t Sandra. She couldn’t type.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Did you bother to look at her hands before you killed her? She had wicked bad arthritis. She could barely dial a phone, let alone use a computer.”
“There was a computer in her apartment. I saw it!”
“It was hers, but she didn’t use it. Her Webmaster used it for the site. Whoever it was that was blackmailing you, it wasn’t Sandra.”
“No, it was Sandy I tell you. It had to be her.”
Of course Tilda knew the blackmailer must have been Lil. Lil, who’d been out of work for so long. Lil, who took care of the mail and scanned the photos that Bill Hawks had sent in. She’d seen what Cooper had seen, that Wilson had put something in Virginia’s drink, and of course, she was the only one Sandra would have told who the mystery photographer was. But Tilda wasn’t going to tell Tucker that.
What she said was, “Then explain this. Why would a blackmailer agree to see you alone?”
“She didn’t know I’d figured it out.”
“Yeah, right. Face it, asshole. You killed an innocent woman.”
Tucker just blinked.
“Of course, I suppose killing women comes naturally to you. You got started early, didn’t you, with Esther Marie Martin. Or did you call her Virginia Pure when you were banging her?”
“I never touched that girl!”
“I didn’t think they had artificial insemination back then.”
“It wasn’t me. It was Hoyt.”
“Hoyt got her pregnant?”
“And he was going to marry her, too, and give up everything to raise that kid of hers! We had plans! Even then, we were aiming for Hollywood, but he was going to tie himself to that slip of a girl for the rest of his life and throw all that away. Not just his future, but mine, too. He needed me, and I needed him. We didn’t need no wife and baby. It was her or us.”
“Don’t you mean that it was her or you? I don’t fucking believe you. You murdered three women, not to mention your brother’s unborn child. And it wasn’t to cure cancer, or save the world. It was so you could make lousy TV Westerns.”
In retrospect, Tilda decided she shouldn’t have said “lousy.” That’s what got him mad, not being accused of the murders.
He stood slowly and deliberately, and pulled a gun out from the back of his Levis. It was so bright and shiny, it looked like a prop, but Tilda had no doubts that it was the real thing. “I think I’ve heard enough from you.”
She didn’t move. “Do you really think I came here alone? After two murders—three, if you count Esther. Plus an attempt on my life? In the middle of that, you call me out of the blue and say you want me to write a book, but don’t want me to tell anybody where I’m going. You thought I believed it?”
He blinked some more.
“I’m wired, asshole, and the cops are right next door.” Hearing noise from the hall, she said, “Correction, I think they’re on their way to join us.”
“Then I may as well shoot you, just for the satisfaction of watching you die!” he snarled. “They can only hang me once.”
“Dude, you watch way too many Westerns. One, we don’t have the death penalty in Massachusetts, and two, a jury might let you off with manslaughter for killing somebody you thought was a blackmailer. You could make up something about Miss Barth, too, if you’re low enough. But kill me, and you spend the rest of your life in prison. And you won’t be the cowboy—you’ll be the horse, if you know what I mean.”
Tilda counted out the fifteen seconds it took for him to make up his mind. Finally, he carefully handed her the gun and put his hands up in traditional cowboy fashion.
“I’ve got the gun,” she said, to let the cops know what was happening, but kept an eye on Tucker as she went to open the door.
She’d expected Detective Salvatore to be front and center, but instead it was Hoyt who stepped past her and toward his brother. The two men stared at each other for a long moment before Tucker said, “Hoyt—”
Before he could go further, Hoyt slugged him in the jaw, knocking him clean off his feet. “That’s for killing the only woman I ever loved.” Then he kicked him viciously in the belly. “And that’s for killing my baby.” He would have kept going if Salvatore hadn’t pulled him away.
Chapter 38
We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
—WILL ROGERS
“THAT’S incredible, Tilda. I cannot believe you were brave enough to face a murderer.”
“All in a day’s work,” Tilda said, without the slightest trace of modesty, and leaned into Quentin’s arms. “Besides, it’s not like I didn’t have backup.”
Quentin had heard a TV news bulletin about Tucker’s arrest Wednesday n
ight, before she’d had a chance to call him. She would have, but was too busy dealing with the police and then writing up the story. Jillian and Bryce had gone into what could only be described as a tizzy when the news broke, and were frantically working to distance themselves from the deposed Cowboy Kings. An article implying that they’d known all along that something was fishy would go a long way toward that. Of course, it wasn’t really an Entertain Me! kind of piece, but the magazine’s parent corporation also published a news weekly that would be delighted with the grittier version Tilda had pounded out. Plus she was going to be reworking the whole Cowtown series, including the guest star interviews and the interview with Sandra, for a less gruesome version for Entertain Me!.
Tilda really hadn’t been sure how Quentin would react, given their previous discussions, but when he showed up at the police station with an enormous bouquet of flowers, she figured that was a good start at an apology. When he drove her back to Malden, she decided it would have been churlish not to invite him in, especially when he mentioned that he’d be calling in sick the next day.
In a surprise twist, Colleen was not brimming with questions. By the time Tilda got back home, she’d seen the TV news and gone online for more details. All she did was stare at Tilda with wide, alarmed eyes. For once, there was something in her roomie’s life that she just didn’t want to know about. Tilda had a hunch that they’d both be looking for new roommates before their lease was up.
Come late Thursday morning, after a nightmare-free night, Tilda and Quentin were cuddling on the couch of her apartment while she told him everything. The further she’d gone in her story, the closer he’d held her. It made her wish she’d been in more danger, just to see how he’d have reacted.
“A couple of things I don’t understand,” he said. “How did you know that Tucker was lying about the book project?”
“I didn’t, not right away, but I thought something was off, and it wasn’t too big a leap to think that a phony cowboy might have a phony name. I mean, the names Tucker and Hoyt were just too perfect for a couple of cowboys. So I called the guy who’d told me that they weren’t real cowpokes, and asked if he’d ever heard them calling each other by any other name. It turns out that one time Tucker got thrown by a horse, and Hoyt yelled out ‘Art!’ when he was running to see if he was okay.”
“And that’s all you needed.”
“Oh, that was the easy part. The hard part was convincing Detective Salvatore that I wasn’t a nut job. Once that was done, we had to get the sting set up in a hurry. My chest is still itchy from the tape they used to hold the mike on.”
“I’ll be happy to rub something on it later. And you said Sandra’s niece was the blackmailer?”
“That’s right. She spotted Wilson drugging Virginia’s drink in the picture right off—I think it was because she had personal knowledge of men drugging drinks. Given her experience, she assumed it was date rape. She said she would have gone to the police, but she knew it would do no good because of the statute of limitations, plus flimsy evidence and not knowing where the victim was. Besides, she had no particular reason to trust the police after what happened to her. She wanted the money, of course, but part of it was wanting to get back at a rapist, even if she couldn’t do anything to her own.”
“Except he wasn’t a rapist—he was a murderer.”
“But she didn’t realize that. Of course, when Sandra was murdered, she should have talked to the cops, but for one, she didn’t want to be arrested for blackmail and for another, she was in denial that she could have caused her aunt’s death. I suspect there was some posttraumatic stress going on, too. Detective Salvatore says he can give her a pass on the blackmail if she testifies and gets some therapy, and I think my sister, June, will be able to find her a therapist who’ll work cheap.”
“How did you know Hoyt wasn’t in on it, too?”
“I didn’t until I saw that it was just Tucker in the hotel room,” she admitted. “Tucker had sent Hoyt on some errand, expecting to take care of me before he got back. When Hoyt showed up early, the cops grabbed him and had him listening in on Tucker’s confession.”
“Hoyt really didn’t know Tucker had killed Virginia?”
“He didn’t have a clue. Tucker, or rather Arthur, was really thorough. He went to that shoot without Hoyt—whose real name is Cecil, by the way—just to take care of Virginia. He was convinced he needed Hoyt to have a career, and if that meant getting rid of Virginia, then so be it. When Virginia came out of the shoot, obviously ill, he offered to get her to a doctor. Since she knew him through his cousin—”
“Cousin?”
“Did I forget that part? The Ambrose brothers not only weren’t named Ambrose, they weren’t even really brothers. They were first cousins.”
“Whole levels of deception.”
“Oh, yeah. Anyway, Tucker got Virginia into his car, supposedly to take her to a hospital, but instead drove her around for hours. By the time he finally took her to an emergency room, it was way too late to save her. He told the nurses at the hospital that he’d found her on the street, and when they found the vial of poison he’d planted on her, they assumed it was suicide, especially when they found she was pregnant. Of course, Arthur had already stripped her of all ID, but he thought he better give them a name for the death certificate. He wasn’t going to give her real name, of course, and started to say she was Virginia Pure, but knew that sounded phony. So he switched to Virginia Pearl. Then he went to her apartment and packed up all her stuff, making it look as if she’d gone back home.”
“What a bastard!”
“The one thing he hadn’t counted on was that Hoyt would take it so hard. He went into a deep depression, so Arthur suggested that they get out of town for a while. They’d always liked cowboy movies, so Arthur picked out a dude ranch out west. It was while they were there that they came up with the idea of reinventing themselves to make an impression in Hollywood, and they spent a year or two working at various ranches to get enough local color to fool people. They pretended to be brothers because they thought it sounded better.”
“What about Miss Barth?”
“She knew them in New York, when they were still Arthur and Cecil. Even though she recognized them when she found them in California, she didn’t mind keeping their secret—I’ve gotten hints that she had a secret or two in her own past.” Of course, Tilda knew one of those secrets, but she was still keeping it. “When I showed her the picture of Tucker as a young man and tied it to Sandra’s death—”
“How did Miss Barth know Sandra?”
“They were friends in New York, too.” That was true enough, if not complete. “Miss Barth knew that Sandra knew Tucker, and she’d told Tucker herself that Sandra was living in Boston. She also knew that Sandra had been murdered, so she confronted Tucker at the fund-raiser. He admitted he’d killed Sandra, but Miss Barth wanted to give him a chance to go to the police himself. It never occurred to her that he’d kill her, too.”
“Even though he’d already killed two women?”
“She didn’t know about Virginia, and Tucker fed her some tale about Sandra’s death being an accident. So it wasn’t as stupid as it sounds.”
“I guess not. But still . . . Wow. And you put it all together.”
“I had help.”
“But you were the one who wouldn’t give up.” Quentin kissed her thoroughly, and Tilda was about to suggest they relocate to her bedroom when he pulled back.
“What about the Cowtown resort?”
“It’s officially in a holding pattern, but unofficially, it’s dead.”
“And the job at Entertain Me!?
“I turned it down.”
“Good. I don’t want them getting you into trouble again.”
“They didn’t get me into anything,” she said with a trace of irritation. “The investigation was all mine. That’s part of why I said ‘no.’ If I’d been working nine to five, I never would have been able to put in the hours to pul
l it together, and Tucker would still be free. When I thought about it that way, it was a no-brainer.” She’d expected Jillian to at least be disappointed when she told her, or even to threaten to stop using her as a freelancer, but in fact, all she said was, “Whatever. Don’t think you’re getting higher rates now.” She left that part out of her story, as well as the look of joy on Nicole’s face when she heard the news, because she didn’t want to clutter up Quentin’s head with too many details.
Instead she concluded with, “So this cowgirl is going to keep riding the range alone.”
“You might feel differently about that when I tell you my good news.”
“Did you catch a murderer, too? I’d be happy to reward you the same way you did me.”
“Well, I did have a minor success in the lab earlier this week, but that’s not what I’m talking about. We had our board meeting yesterday, and after all the press the foundation got because of the event at Hillside—”
“Not to mention the bucks.”
“Oh, the bucks were mentioned, I assure you. The upshot of it was that the board is convinced that we need a stronger media presence. They’ve approved the hiring of a full-time public relations writer.”
“That’s good,” Tilda said, not sure why he was so excited.
“Don’t you see?” he asked. “The job is yours for the asking!”
“Excuse me?”
“You can stop living hand to mouth, writing about TV trivia. You can work full time doing something worthwhile. The pay isn’t great, but it’s steady and you’ll have benefits.” He displayed the dimples. “Plus, of course, you’ll be working with me.”
Tilda sat up, inhaled deeply, and let her breath out slowly. “No, thank you.”
“What?”
“Number one, I don’t live hand to mouth. I’m doing fine, thank you very much.”
“But Tilda—”
She ignored him. “Number two, if I wanted a full-time job, I would have taken the one Jillian offered. Weren’t you listening just now? I freelance because I like it that way.”
Who Killed the Pinup Queen? Page 25
