Guilt Trip

by Donna Huston Murray

  “Don’t think about doing what you came to do,” I clarified as much as I intended to.

  “And what is that?” he asked, rhetorically, I assumed.

  Jerry had appeared in the doorway of his kitchen. When he sensed the motion, Frank turned and said, “Hi, Jer.”

  Jerry chose not to reply. He had something in his hand. A kitchen knife would be my guess.

  During a brief silence we took turns looking at each other, which was when I realized something was off. My flight-or-fight system hadn’t flipped on. I decided maybe I should lighten up a little, at least until I figured out why.

  “So Frank,” I began as if I were opening an ordinary conversation. “I guess you must be aware of my visit to your antilock brake company, and I can think of only one reason why you’d ditch your bodyguard and rush up here to see Jerry. Why don’t you tell me why I’m wrong.”

  “Are you sure I ‘ditched my bodyguard?’”

  Involuntarily, my eyes jerked toward the front door, making Frank chuckle.

  “May I?” He gestured toward Jerry’s chair too suddenly for me. As he sat down, I dropped my purse on the floor and showed him the Glock.

  He stared. “What would you have done if the pilot found that before the flight?” he wondered.

  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that Frank knew the gun was with me on the trip. Lyle would have told him about giving it the sniff test the night Mike pulled his stupid stunt.

  “Stayed home,” I admitted, which made Frank shut his eyes and wave his head with regret.

  Jerry had eased himself into the living room. Now he stood toward the window, making a triangle of the three of us. At his side a hunting knife of frightening proportions glittered in the flickering daylight, adding yet another worry to my lengthening list.

  “How are you?” Frank inquired of his old friend.

  “She already asked that.”

  Frank switched back to watching me. “What was the answer?” Unconsciously, he rubbed his hands along his thighs, a good place for them in my opinion.

  “Lousy,” Jerry said. “Worse now that you’re here.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “She thinks you want to kill us.”

  “Is that true, Lauren? You really think that?”

  I wiggled the Glock in lieu of an answer.

  Frank suddenly rose again and stuffed his hands into his pants pockets. Not a good place for them, in my opinion. I adjusted my aim accordingly.

  Turning his head toward Jerry just as nonchalant as can be, Frank remarked, “We go way back, right Jer?”

  No answer. Just a quick glare—at me.

  “And we’ve always looked out for each other, right?”

  A quick nod.

  Frank rocked back and forth on his heels. “After the sensor business, when you got…sick…I funded your early retirement, didn’t I?” The way Frank italicized the word sick led me to believe he referred to a nervous breakdown.

  Hey! HEY! Now who’s the bigger threat? my psyche yelled into my ear so insistently that I almost switched my target.

  Jerry shot me a glare newly laced with distrust.

  “…so why would you think I’d harm a hair on your head?” Frank finished.

  “You…you wouldn’t,” Jerry stammered.

  His point made, Frank raised his hands in surrender. “Lauren, please,” he said, “put down the gun. I’m afraid it might go off.”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Really? Aren’t your arms getting tired?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Frank sucked his cheek. “Just before I left to come up here,” he began, “I did something that will interest you, Jerry. You, too, Lauren, since you seem to be so worried about the so-called faulty part from the Sykes lawsuit.”

  Jerry and I were back together again, if only because both of us were thinking, What the hell…?

  Frank folded his arms smugly and squared his feet. “I phoned Nolan’s biggest customer, the one we were so desperate to keep, and told them a bad batch of sensors got used by mistake and they should enact a recall.”

  “But…but that’s…” I thought Jerry was going to say ‘wonderful,’ or ‘fabulous’ or even ‘about time!’ After all, anxiety over the potential fallout from his and Frank’s mutual decision had literally made him ill. Instead he said, “…financial suicide!”

  Potato/potato.

  “Maybe not,” Frank allowed. “Nevertheless, it’s done. Now will you please put that gun down, Ms. Beck?”

  I did as he asked.

  Chapter 44

  Twilight in Brunswick, Maryland, and the air had turned cool and damp. Frank and I strolled out to our cars over Jerry’s bumpy sidewalk, both of us acting as if we hadn’t been frightened half to death by our just-ended, unbelievably delicate rollercoaster of a conversation. Since Frank was exceptionally good at being in charge, it’s possible he wasn’t acting. Me, I was quaking inside from adrenaline withdrawal.

  In parting, the two men had hugged, and I sensed a bond so deeply established that no newcomer could completely appreciate it. My closest comparison was me and Corinne, my cancer counselor and recently deceased landlady. We had recognized each other’s voice with one word. We finished each other’s sentences. We knew what the other needed on levels nobody else could, and we’d only known each other for six and a half years. What must it be like to have a lifetime connection? I doubted I would ever experience a friendship that close and wondered if it would be worth changing who I was to try.

  “Where’s Chantal?” Frank inquired, perhaps to rebuke me for abandoning his pregnant daughter. …you work for me, and please don’t forget it.

  I said she was with my family.

  “Where?”

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  Frank’s expression said, “Ha,” in the sarcastic way.

  “Speaking of killing people, why did you have to ditch your bodyguard to come up here and tell Jerry the good news?” In other words, why the secrecy if you didn’t plan to kill anyone?

  An ominous silence fell, and the cogs in my brain began to mesh. Maybe the Glock had been more persuasive than I thought.

  The turning gears gained traction. “You didn’t call your customer about the recall yet.”

  Frank shot me a glance, and I realized there hadn’t been time. I had just visited Nolan Company spouting nonsense that happened to be true. If I also found my way to Jerry, the possibility that I might learn the rest of the story must have motivated Frank to get himself up here to make sure Jerry and I were contained.

  The question was had he done what he originally planned, or had my preemptive approach been a game changer? Alone out here on a darkening street I realized I was no longer sure.

  “You will make the call, right?” I asked with more hope than certainty.

  Frank’s lips compressed into a sour moue. “My arrangement with Jerry must remain private,” he warned. “Understood?”

  I breathed again.

  “Meaning you’ll tell the customer he was merely following orders.”

  “That’s right, and you won’t tell anyone otherwise.” I thought of U.S. presidents taking the blame for things they didn’t directly do. It was the-buck-stops-here scenario, the way things worked.

  “Jerry’s that fragile?”

  Without a sidewalk we’d been walking down middle of the street, and the halogen lamp overhead suddenly revealed the lifetime of struggle on Frank’s face.

  “Jerry’s father was a mean sonovabitch,” he seemed to think aloud. “Mine was gone, which was for the best.” He kicked at a piece of cardboard lying in the way. “My mother had a steel backbone. Jerry’s was a born victim.”

  “Jerry took after her?”

  “No,” Frank decided. “No. Instead he developed an overly acute sense of right and wrong.”

  “Was it the Luanne Sykes case what broke him?”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed as he paused to think. “
No,” he decided. “The ruling was driver error, and all that happened later anyway. Jerry ‘broke,’ as you call it, because he was torn between loyalty to me and fear of potential disasters—Luanne Sykes, but with only us to blame.”

  “Was he worried about what would happen to your company?”

  The beleaguered CEO waved his head. “To my family and by extension to him.”

  “No more jewelry money?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Will the company be okay?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  We’d arrived at the Miata. In the lamplight it looked even worse than Frank. “This is my car,” I admitted.

  He gave it the once over and smiled.

  “See you back at the estate?” he inquired mildly.

  Stunned as I was that he expected me to return, I still managed to reply. “Not if I see you first.”

  Frank huffed out a little laugh, stuffed his hands back into his pants pockets and sauntered along down the street.

  As I steered the Miata out of its slot and turned back in the right direction, I thought about Frank’s mother and her steel backbone. Maybe Frank was doing the same. When I drove past, he was staring out the front window of a monstrous black SUV.

  Chapter 45

  “You got any chili?” I quizzed Lyle as soon as he opened his door. Chantal had texted me that she’d returned to the estate late this afternoon, and I had assured myself that the Mercedes was tucked safely in the garage before I wandered down to the barn.

  “Nope,” Lyle lamented, “but I bought peanut butter. Lucille likes peanut butter.”

  “Who’s Lucille?”

  “The dappled mare.”

  “I’ll buy her more. Where is it?” I sidled past the Roitman’s head of security and over to the kitchen nook. The drive back from Brunswick had been easy except for the demons in my head and my hunger. The empty beer bottle in Lyle’s tiny sink reminded me I was thirsty, too.

  “How was your day?” I asked as I bit into calorie-laden bread.

  Lyle kissed me with my mouth full. Then he said, “Fine. And yours?”

  I swallowed and sipped the beer he handed me. “It was two days, actually. Miss me?”

  “Sure. What have you been up to?”

  “Toby Stoddard was murdered. What do you think of that?”

  “Not much. You got proof?”

  “Yes I do.” I explained about the rug and Sheriff Troxell’s disinterested approach to it all.

  “You messed up his suicide,” Lyle observed.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  We smiled at each other.

  “I don’t have a motive though. Not for sure anyway. So I don’t have the killer either.”

  “You will.”

  “You think?”

  “I’m beginning to suspect you get whatever you want.”

  I grinned a little wider, perhaps because of what he was doing with his hands.

  “Hurry up and finish that, will you?”

  “Itz peanub budder,” I said. “I cand eab any fastr.”

  I’d parked in the estate’s front circle and had no interest in hauling any of my stuff back to the pool house. I would probably have to haul it all back to my car tomorrow anyway. With no food in the bungalow and no idea what my reception would be at the main house, I’d gravitated down to the barn where a warm welcome was more assured.

  “Tom’s here?” I presumed as Lyle tugged my shirt over my head.

  “Obviously.” If the night man hadn’t been on duty yet, Lyle wouldn’t have been free to lead me up to the loft. We made ourselves comfortable on the bed.

  “Ouch! What is that?”

  “A band-aid, you big baby. I cut my finger.”

  “Who’s calling who a big baby? Wait a minute.” I sat straight up. “You got another one of those?”

  “Fingers?”

  “Band-aids. I’ve been trying to figure something out since yesterday.”

  Lyle looked crestfallen, grumpy even, but he climbed down the ladder and headed toward the tiny bathroom.

  “Hold it,” I called after him. “I’m coming down, too.” I pulled on my jersey and followed him barefoot.

  He handed me a band-aid from a box in a drawer and folded his arms to watch me unwrap it.

  “Got a match?” I inquired.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t bother to ask why, just limped four steps around the corner to the kitchen nook, opened another drawer, and extracted a small green box from a restaurant called Antlers. Inside were mini wooden matches that lit on the first strike.

  I held the band-aid over the little stainless steel kitchen sink and carefully waved the flame under the latex. When stinky melted rubber dripped into the sink, I blew out the match and the smoking band-aid and proudly announced, “Mystery solved.”

  “Swell. Can we go back to bed now?”

  “Don’t you want to know why I gunked up your sink?” I held up my trophy.

  “No.”

  “It tells me who murdered Toby Stoddard.” Then I thought twice and added, “Probably. I found something in the fireplace of the hunting lodge.” I hustled over to my purse for the plastic bag containing the burned stitch holder. Then I held the opened bag under Lyle’s nose.

  “Smell familiar?”

  His eyes widened, and I was pleased to see he was finally taking me seriously. “Okay, explain. What’s this have to do with Toby Stoddard?”

  I said it bothered me that the string the killer tied to the trigger of the shotgun released so easily. “If the knot had been tight enough to fire the shotgun from outside the gun room, how could the string have come free for the killer to reel it in? He’d have had to open the door, walk in and untie it himself.”

  “Or herself.” Lyle ran the back of his hand down my cheek. “Women can be lethal, you know.”

  “Right. But there weren’t any footprints in the blood spatters and really no time to go in and get out before people in the house came running.”

  “So you think it was this thing.” He pointed at the sandwich bag containing the J-shaped stitch holder.

  “Yup.”

  “And the band-aid?”

  “Knitting needles are smooth, otherwise you couldn’t knit with them. This hook thing is slippery, too, so the string wouldn’t stay on it with just a knot. He or she needed to attach it with tape, and when I searched the hunting lodge there wasn’t any, just band-aids in the bathroom next to where Toby died.”

  Lyle rubbed the stubble on his chin. “So how’d the killer get rid of the string?”

  “When Frank and Chantal ran back to the gun room, nobody else was there. I figure the killer took the string out the bathroom window, hurried around to the kitchen—which would have put him or her behind everybody else—then tossed the string in the fire while the others were freaking out in the back hall.”

  “Before the sheriff arrived.”

  “I guess. Although I’m not sure Troxell’s team did much of a search.”

  This displeased Lyle, and I couldn’t blame him. “Okay,” he said finally. “Who did it?”

  “Let me get back to you after I return this.” I held up the baggie.

  “And when, may I ask, do you plan to do that?” His hands were rocking my hips, and I could think of no reason to disappoint him.

  “In the morning,” I said. For my plan to work I needed to behave normally, and waking up my suspect wouldn’t exactly seem normal.

  There was also the matter of motive. Until tonight I’d bet heavily on Frank for business reasons. Toby’s family had described him as a goodie-goodie, a guy with a conscience, as it turned out probably a fatal flaw. If he’d learned about the use of the faulty part, he would have insisted on telling Nolan’s customer immediately. Every day of delay would strengthen any suspicion that the substitution was deliberate and make the legal and financial exposures for Roitman Industries much much worse. Since Frank seemed resigne
d to do the right thing now, I regarded him more as a gambler owning up to a loss than a murderer protecting his assets at any cost.

  Gavin and his investments, his jealousy? Never a strong enough story to persuade me, and his wife’s volunteered alibi upheld my earlier inclination.

  I did have a first choice, but without convincing physical proof, and the entire witness pool potentially hostile, securing a confession would still be best.

  A good night’s sleep was in order, but it wasn’t about to happen.

  Two hours later Tom shouted from the bottom of the loft’s ladder. “Hey, up there. Wake up.”

  “What you got?” Lyle called back as he switched on a light and tugged on some jeans.

  “Intruder. Just entered the pool house.”

  That got me moving, too. To my own jeans I added the closest decent thing I could reach, one of Lyle’s sweatshirts, then clambered down the ladder after him.

  Tom had returned to the monitors. On the main screen, one of six, he pointed at the door to the sauna, an indirect and quieter way to enter the cottage. “Entry,” he confirmed.

  A moment later a figure in loose clothing emerged from the lighted front door. The person wore a floppy hat that hid her face, but the shoes and overall shape suggested a woman. The monitor’s clock read 2:10 AM and counting.

  “You recording?” I asked Tom. He wore an Atlanta Braves warmup jacket in the chilly security cubbyhole.

  “You betcha,” he replied. “Whatdaya think, Lyle?”

  Lyle glanced at me. “I think we got ourselves a murderer.”

  Tom’s unshaven face recoiled in shock. “Somebody else was in there?”

  “Nope. Long story,” Lyle clapped his associate on the shoulder.

  “I got all night to listen,” Tom reminded us as the shadowy silhouette hustled up the brick walk toward the main house.

  “Can you replay it for me?” I requested.

  Tom did. Then he did twice again.

  I thanked him after I’d gotten what I needed. Then I took Lyle’s hand and tugged him back to the ladder.

  We’d just gotten back to sleep when Tom woke us again. “Car’s leaving.”

  “One of ours?” Lyle called down.

  “The Volvo.”