“Except that this mentally ill person tried to kill Annie.” Tyler didn’t need to point this out to Eve, who already felt bad enough that her future daughter-in-law had nearly murdered her best friend. Of course, that’s exactly why he’d mentioned it. “We found the gun,” he added, looking past Eve to where I stood. “The ballistics match. Lorraine Mercy is definitely the one who took the potshots at you outside the restaurant. Lucky for you she was in a moving vehicle. I’ve talked to the folks over at her country club. She’s a champion skeet shooter. They say she has a dead-eye aim.”
“And all this because she didn’t want anyone to know about her husband’s affair with Sarah.” I shook my head—carefully. “It’s really sad, isn’t it? She’s a brilliant woman. She had an impressive career and a successful business.”
“And, Dougy Mercy? We’ve learned that he’s had a string of these affairs.” Tyler supplied the information. “As long as he was discreet, Lorraine never cared. But this time, you two…” He barely spared Eve a look before he turned back to me. “You two might have ruined all that. You found out about Sarah and Dougy, and she was convinced that was going to hurt Dougy’s image and his chance to follow in his father’s footsteps.” The smile Tyler aimed at Eve was as sleek as a sharpened knife. “In the senate, Eve, honey, not with you.”
I sidestepped the sarcasm. Eve could give as good as she got, and I didn’t have the energy to get tangled in the Eve versus Tyler mess. “And do you think she killed Dylan, too?” I’d been trying to think my way through this part of the mystery ever since I heard about Dylan’s death.
This time, Tyler didn’t even bother to glance at Eve. He kept his eyes right on me. “He was investigating Sarah’s death, too, and Lorraine must have known that meant the truth was going to come out. A news reporter was even more of a threat than you. She had to kill him.”
“But she couldn’t have, could she?” I tipped my head, thinking this through. “Killed him, I mean. Lorraine was at the fund-raiser.”
“Coroner’s not exactly sure about time of death,” Tyler said. “Monroe could have been dead long before the fund-raiser ever started. And we already know Lorraine was a crack shot, so there’s no problem there.” Tyler narrowed his eyes and studied me. “You don’t look convinced.”
Didn’t I? I chewed over the thought and realized that for once in his life, Tyler was right. I dropped into the chair across from his. “You think she killed Sarah?”
“Do you?”
I knew better than to be fooled into thinking Tyler might actually be asking my opinion, detective to detective.
“Why didn’t she admit it?” I asked Tyler.
He, of course, didn’t have an answer to this, but fortunately, Tyler didn’t have to worry that anyone would think less of him because of it. Before he could say a word, Eve’s cell phone rang. She answered it, listened, and smiled.
“Uh-huh. Yes. I understand.” I knew something important was up because Eve was using her best beauty pageant voice and her thickest Southern accent. “Of course. We’d be honored. We’ll be there.”
Before she’d ever hung up the phone, she was across the room and pulling me into a hug. “That was the producer from Oprah,” Eve said, laughing. “They’ve invited me and Doug and Doc to Chicago. They’re calling Doc a national hero. And doing the show live in his honor. We’re all going to be on TV tomorrow!”
Nineteen
“I’M SO NERVOUS, I CAN’T SEE STRAIGHT!”
This was news to me, because Eve didn’t look nervous. In fact, in a pink suit and a choker that matched Doc’s collar (I hoped hers was rhinestones), she looked like a million bucks. She set Doc’s carrier down on the floor outside my Bellywasher’s office. “I had to stop and see you before I left for the airport, Annie. Doug is used to this kind of publicity, but me…” She squealed and jumped up and down. “I feel like I’m gonna burst!”
“You’ll do fine. Really.” It was early, and Bellywasher’s wasn’t open yet. I’d stopped in early on my way to the bank to catch up on some of the work I’d left undone, thanks to my hospital stay and recuperation. As it happened, it worked out perfectly, because Eve and I just had to see each other before she left for Chicago, and it was more convenient for Doug to pick her up in Alexandria. Perfect, all the way around.
“I’ll be watching,” I told Eve. “Pioneer Savings and Loan or no Pioneer Savings and Loan. I already called my supervisor and told her I’d be taking my lunch break late today. Just in time for Oprah.”
“I wish you could come, too.” Eve sighed. “It would be so much fun.”
“But more romantic if it’s just you and the senator.”
She blushed. “I’m nuts about him, Annie,” she said. She dug around in her Kate Spade bag and made a face. “He may not be so nuts about me if he realizes I left my driver’s license at home.”
“Here.” Eve had her raincoat over her arm, and I took it from her so that she could look through her purse more easily. She unloaded her wallet, a comb, a compact, and three tubes of lipstick, then came up smiling.
“Got it!” She held up her driver’s license. “And I’ve got what I need for Doc, too. I think. I hope.” She had a small package of dog treats in her purse, a new chew toy, and a tin of doggy breath mints. She bobbled them in one hand.
“You know, there’s plenty of room in Doc’s carrier for all this stuff.” I took it all from her, and while she worked on getting her things back into her purse, I stepped into the restaurant. There was a snap-to-close compartment on the top of the carrier, and I opened it. “Right in here,” I said.
Except that there was already something in there.
I peered at the eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph.
It showed two men on a park bench, their heads bent toward each other, deep in conversation. The man on the left was handing a thick manila envelope to the man on the right.
The man on the right was Douglas Mercy.
The man handing the senator the envelope looked vaguely familiar. He was a hefty guy with heavy jowls, a wide nose, and eyes that were too small for his face. The hand in which he held the envelope was as big as a ham. His fingers looked like fat pork sausages.
Ivan Gystanovich. I recognized the man who owned our linen service company—who was also reportedly the head of the Russian mob in the area—from the picture Eve had once pointed out in the newspaper.
And the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, along with the truth that had been staring me in the face since the night we found Sarah’s body in the bathtub. My heartbeat sped to an improbable rate. My head spun, worse than it had when I had the concussion.
I stared at the photo, wondering how to break the news to Eve, and oblivious to where I was and what was going on around me.
Too bad.
It meant that when the front door opened and Senator Douglas Mercy walked in, I wasn’t ready for him.
“Good morning!”
At the sound of the senator’s voice, I jumped. I hid the photograph I was still holding behind my back.
“Is Eve here? Is she ready?”
My mouth opened and closed in response to the senator’s questions, but I couldn’t get any sound out.
“She is going to Chicago with me, isn’t she?”
I managed an anaemic laugh and closed in on the senator. “She changed her mind. She’s too nervous. She says she just couldn’t do it. She—”
“Annie, what in the world are you talking about?”
Eve came up behind me. “You’re talking crazy, girl! Of course I’m going to Chicago. And what is that you’re holding behind your back?”
Before I could react, Eve snatched the photo out of my hands.
My formerly racing heartbeat stopped cold; I swear it did. The blood drained from my face. By the time I spun to warn Eve to keep quiet, it was already too late.
“It’s you,” she said, turning the photo so the senator could see it. “And some other man. Look, Annie.” Eve pointed. “H
e looks just like Ivan Gystanovich, the guy who owns the linen service. You remember him. Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all.” In an attempt to order her thoughts, Eve shook her head. “Why would you and Ivan Gystanovich be sitting on a park bench in the middle of nowhere? And why would somebody take your picture?”
“Not just somebody; it was Sarah.” It was too late to bluff, so I didn’t even try. I turned to the senator. “That explains the money, and once the money is explained…” I would have slapped my forehead if not for my recent head injury. “It all falls into place. Sarah loved to spend her lunch hour roaming around town taking pictures. And one day, she just happened to come upon you and Gystanovich. She was a smart woman. She knew exactly what was going on. She also knew this picture was going to mean a lot of money to her.”
Eve still wasn’t getting it. “A picture of Doug and this Ivan guy? But that doesn’t make any sense, Annie. Why would Sarah care? And how could it get her any money? I mean, yeah, maybe it would if she was blackmailing Doug or something. Like if Doug was meeting with Gystanovich secretly and taking payoffs or…” Eve blanched. Her voice faltered. When she looked at her fiancé, there were tears in her eyes. “Doug? Tell me we’re wrong, will you?”
I knew we weren’t. And I couldn’t bear the thought of Eve hearing it from the senator, so I spoke before he could. “In case you’re wondering,” I said to him, “the photograph was in the dog’s carrier all along. That’s probably the one place you never thought to look.”
“Thanks for saving me the trouble.” His smile was sleek. “Now, honey…” His words were sweet, but the look he aimed at Eve was anything but. “If you’ll just hand over that picture…”
“Don’t.” I stopped Eve before she even had a chance to think about it. “It’s proof that the senator is taking bribes from the mob. No wonder you didn’t recognize Doc’s collar when I wore it to the fund-raiser. You didn’t give it to her. Sarah took the money you were giving her and bought it herself. That’s why your initials were inside it. It was Sarah’s way of sticking it to you, a little reminder that you were under her thumb.”
“She always was smart.” The senator snapped his fingers, motioning for the picture, but Eve was still too stunned and too confused to move. All she could do was twist her brand-spanking-new engagement ring around her finger.
“Tell me we’re wrong here, Doug,” Eve pleaded. “Please! Tell me we’re making some kind of mistake.”
“The only mistake you two made was not keeping your mouths shut.” The senator moved quickly. He yanked the photograph out of Eve’s hands so violently she gasped. “This would have been a whole lot easier—for all of us—if you never found out what Sarah was up to.”
I suppose I should have been surprised when the senator pulled a gun.
Not too surprised to stop talking, though. “You gave Sarah plenty of money, and my guess is you finally got tired of it. That’s why you killed her, isn’t it?” I asked the senator.
“Shut up!” He aimed the gun at me, then slid it in Eve’s direction.
Staring down the barrel, she finally came to her senses. She sniffled. “But, Doug, you said you loved me!”
“I loved the idea of a wife not being compelled to testify against her husband in a murder trial even more. Now, if you ladies will get moving…” With the gun, he directed us back to the kitchen, far away from the front windows and anything a passerby might see.
I stood my ground. “It’s why you killed Dylan, too. It wasn’t Lorraine. Oh, she might have tried eventually, when she realized Dylan’s information would expose Dougy’s affair. But you realized first that Dylan was looking into Sarah’s death. He found out, didn’t he? About the payoffs from the mob.”
“He did.” The senator’s smile was sleek. “And I couldn’t let word get out. Now, if you two will get moving…”
Again, he tried to point the way with the gun.
Again, I wasn’t about to budge. I wasn’t about to give up without a fight, either. The trick was figuring out how. Until I did, I had some major stalling to do.
“There was nothing wrong with Sarah’s work, was there? You put the word out that her work was suffering. So people would start talking. So when you killed her, they’d think it was because she was depressed because she might get fired. And Dylan? Did you put the word out about their breakup, too?”
“Didn’t need to.” The senator’s smile was as sleek as a knife. “She broke up with him, you know. Hurt his ego. That’s why he lied to everyone and told them the breakup was his idea. And it was all because of that harebrained son of mine. If Sarah hadn’t started an affair with Dougy and then made Dylan angry, he never would have started looking into her death.”
“A death you engineered.” Just thinking about what must have happened at Sarah’s that night made me shiver. I wrapped my arms around myself. “You gave her extra Valium, right? In the wine. Then you dragged her into the bathroom and—”
“No.” Eve sobbed. “It isn’t possible. Doug, there’s no way you—”
“Shut up! And get moving. Get into the kitchen.”
“Sure. But you’re sadly mistaken if you think that’s the only copy of that photograph there is.”
The senator called my bluff with a smile. “It’s the only copy of the photograph there is. I know; I took apart Sarah’s apartment. If there was another picture, I would have found it.”
“Just because there’s not another picture doesn’t mean nobody’s going to know what happened,” I told him. I hoped the edge of defiance I added to my voice was enough to fool him. “After the drive-by,” I said, “we had security cameras installed.”
Just as I was counting on, this was something he hadn’t thought of. The senator looked in the corners near the ceiling and over near the bar. “You’re lying.”
“You willing to take that chance? They’re hidden.” I backed up a step. We were standing near where a green plaid kilt was draped over one of the sandalwood screens.
“Over there,” I said, and I played my trump card. If I was right, Eve and I would live. If I wasn’t…I gulped in a breath for courage. “Right by that red kilt.”
Just as I’d hoped, the senator looked at the green kilt. His head wasn’t turned long, but it was long enough. The instant he looked away, I darted to my right. I grabbed Grandpa’s walking stick from its place of honor on the wall and whacked the senator over the head with it. Too bad I didn’t remember my broken arm first. A pain like a thousand bolts of electricity shot up my arm, but hey, the strategy worked. The senator staggered and went down in a heap.
“Annie! Annie!” Eve crumpled to the floor, but I didn’t run to her. Carefully—just in case he wasn’t as knocked out as I thought he was—I looked at the senator. When I was sure he was out cold, I kicked the gun across the room. Then I called the cops.
“EXPLAIN AGAIN.”
I groaned and dropped my head into my hands. Or more specifically, into one hand. My other hand—and the arm it was attached to—hurt like hell. It was being looked at by a paramedic, who was making tsk-tsk noises that did not sound promising. “I’ve already explained,” I told Eve. “A thousand times. I told the uniformed cops who came when we called. I told the detectives who interviewed us. I told—”
“Annie!” Jim burst through the kitchen doors, got past the cops there with a quick, “I own this place,” and raced across the room. He looked at the paramedic, who was kneeling on the floor next to where I sat.
“Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right!”
I wasn’t, not exactly, anyway, but I popped out of my chair, and when Jim pulled me into a hug, I didn’t object. And I only winced a little.
“They told me there had been an incident. That’s all they said. They mentioned two women and—”
“We’re fine.” I wasn’t sure how long I’d remain fine, since I couldn’t breathe with my nose pressed against Jim’s chest. I backed out of his arms. Since there were cops and paramedics milling around insi
de and lots of people out on the sidewalk ogling the scene and I wasn’t sure who knew what, I kept my voice down.
“They came and took the senator away,” I said.
“Mercy?” Jim looked as surprised as I must have when I first found the picture of the senator with Ivan Gystanovich.
“He killed Sarah. Because she knew he was taking bribes. She was blackmailing him.”
“And Annie hurt her arm again,” Eve explained, even though Jim surely had that figured out. There was an ambulance waiting outside, and the paramedic said I had to have more X-rays taken of my arm.
“But before she goes to the hospital…” With one look from Eve, the paramedics backed off. “Explain it again, Annie. How did you know Doug would look the wrong way?”
“Don’t you remember? At the black-and-white ball. The senator said he was grateful to Lorraine for coming up with idea. He said he was always afraid he’d tell some constituent her gown was aquamarine when it was really some other color. At the time, I thought he meant shade. He’d tell her it was aquamarine when it was really some other shade of blue. But he didn’t mean shade, he really did mean color. He’s color-blind.”
Eve sniffed. “Huh?”
“He was the one who messed up the clothes in Sarah’s closet,” I explained. “He put a green jacket in with the red ones. Only a color-blind person would have done that.”
“So you told him red because you knew he’d look at the green kilt and when he did…”
“Exactly.” The paramedic would no longer take no for an answer. He took me by my good arm to lead me out to the waiting ambulance. Jim walked at my side.
“And if you weren’t right?” he asked.
I didn’t want to think about what might have happened, so I didn’t answer him. At least not directly. I got into the ambulance, and Jim climbed in next to me. I rested my head on his shoulder.
“I’m glad everything at Bellywasher’s is back to the way it used to be,” I told him. He knew I wasn’t talking about the food. Or the decor.
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