“Is … uh … Brad going to be coming home anytime soon?”
“He’s at the station.” Tammi’s voice sounded stronger now, as if her tears and shock were beginning to harden into fury. “He won’t be home until after the late news. And when he does come home I may meet him at the door with a … a butcher knife in my hand!”
“We’ll talk,” I said quickly. I figured Tammi was mostly bluster, but you never can tell. A woman scorned and all that. Maybe she would grab a butcher knife. “Don’t do anything rash, okay?”
“Oh, Aunt Ivy, how could he have done this?”
“We’ll talk,” I repeated. Another second thought on my part. “What about Skye? She’ll be getting home soon, won’t she?”
“She won’t be home until late. There’s a practice for graduation ceremonies. She’s going to be one of the girls holding the arches. It’s a very special honor. We’re so proud of her.”
“Oh, that’s nice.” An inane comment, I realized even as I said it, considering the bomb that was about to go off in Skye’s life. But we could tackle Skye later, after Tammi had herself more under control. At least Skye wouldn’t come strolling in while Tammi was having hysterics.
“It’ll take me a few minutes to get there. My car is … out of commission, and I have to get DeeAnn’s car out of the garage.”
DeeAnn’s Buick started right up, and I pulled into the Ridenours’ driveway a few minutes later. The drapes were drawn, as if Tammi was trying to keep the world shut out. Or maybe trying to keep the ugly knowledge within from escaping into the world. There was no car in the driveway.
I rang the bell. Muffled words that I took to be “Come in” came from inside, and I opened the door. Tammi and Baby were huddled on the sofa. Crumpled tissues littered the floor, and Tammi was just pulling another handful from the box. Puffy folds framed her bloodshot eyes, and mascara streaked her blotched face. Her usually fluffy hair was flattened in places, corkscrewed in others. If a dog can look troubled, Baby surely did. His mistress’s distress obviously distressed him. His soulful brown eyes never left her face.
There was an oniony odor in the air, as if she’d been cooking. Diet and exercise books covered the coffee table, that huge one open to a recipe page.
I rushed to her and put my arms around her. At least as best I could with half of a 260-pound dog draped over her lap. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue. I was 99.9 percent sure what was wrong here, but I wasn’t going to jump in just in case I was mistaken and this was some other disaster. It could be that Brad had plunged them into financial disaster by buying a Lamborghini. Or decided to leave TV and politics to take up designing flashy ties.
“You think you know someone,” she said, the hurt in her voice coming through in spite of the tissue pressed against her mouth. “You trust him with your life and your heart and then …”
“Maybe you should tell me exactly what this is all about.”
She looked up at me reproachfully. “Oh, Aunt Ivy, you know what it’s about.”
Okay, it was definitely Brad and Leslie. “How did you find out?” I asked cautiously.
“I was looking in Brad’s desk for something, and I found all these notes and pictures he had stashed away …” A fresh flood of tears.
“Of?”
“Leslie Marcone. Some of … of him and her together. I found records of where they’d stayed together in motels. They—they were having an affair! But you knew, didn’t you?” Now her swollen eyes held accusation, as if she thought I’d withheld information that I should have given her. “You found out when you were working for her.”
She phrased it as a statement not a question, and I didn’t feel obliged to contradict her assumption of how I’d acquired the knowledge. I didn’t want Sandy involved in this. “Does Brad know that you know?”
“Not yet.” The threat in her voice said he soon would, however.
So where did we go from here? “The … relationship is obviously over now. Perhaps … ?” I left the perhaps open-ended, on a cautiously upward swing.
“You think I should just try to let it go? Never let him know I found out? I do love him so much, you know. And he has been so sweet and caring lately. I—I might be able to do it.” She sounded hopeful as she lifted her swollen face to me again. The bloodshot eyes were suddenly beseeching. “You wouldn’t tell anyone, would you?”
I wanted to assure her, say, “No, I’ll never tell. The secret is safe with me.” But I couldn’t do that. Gently I tried to explain. “Tammi, there’s a murder investigation going on, and it was your husband’s—” I broke off, squeamish about using some ugly word. “Your husband’s friend who was murdered. I’m going to have to tell Sgt. Yates what I know about their relationship.”
“But why? This is none of his business! It has nothing to do with Leslie’s murder!”
“The authorities need to know everything they can about all aspects of Leslie’s life.” Neither did I honestly think Tammi and Brad could have a happy married life with this kept hidden between them, like something turning blue and moldy in the refrigerator.
“But if you tell Sgt. Yates, he might think Brad had something to do with Leslie’s murder! There’ll be terrible accusations and an investigation. Every newspaper and TV and radio station in the state will jump on it!” She sat up straighter, clutching Baby to her as if he were a big pillow. “It would mean the end of Brad’s political chances! It might even mean the end of his news career. And Skye. Think what it might do to Skye!”
Exactly what I was afraid of. Yet the suspicion I couldn’t escape, the suspicion that Brad might be more than unfairly accused of Leslie’s murder, that he might actually have done it, apparently hadn’t stabbed her yet.
“I’m sure, if you stand by him, as other wives have done in situations such as this—”
“So you are going to tell Sgt. Yates about their affair.” She sounded scornful, as if this were an ugly character flaw newly exposed. “Maybe you even think Brad killed her, and you’ll tell Sgt. Yates that too.” More scorn. She gave Baby another hug, then pushed him off her lap and stood up.
“I know that someone tried to kill me today. I found dynamite planted under my car. It was rigged to go off when the car started.”
Her dark eyebrows lifted in startled astonishment. “This is why you had to use DeeAnn’s car? Because someone put dynamite in your car?”
“Yes. The bomb squad removed it, but then the sheriff’s department took the ’bird away for examination. I don’t know when I’ll get it back.”
“But who would do something like that? It doesn’t make sense. People who set car bombs are in the Mafia or something!” She sounded quite aghast. Then the expressive eyebrows widened. “Surely you don’t think Brad—”
“At this point I don’t know what to think. I’m almost certain, from something Brad said when he came home last night, that he knows I’m aware of his relationship with Leslie. He may have decided he had to get rid of me before I could tell anyone. For the same reasons you would prefer I not tell anyone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “Brad is afraid of firecrackers. He had his hand burned on one when he was a kid. He hates to even light the barbecue. He wouldn’t go near a stick of dynamite.”
Did I believe that? Tammi could be lying to protect Brad. But the unnecessary details and another hint of scorn in her voice told me she wasn’t. I had the feeling this part of Brad’s character, with its hint of wimpiness, was a sore point with her, and she’d rather Brad were a man who could toss dynamite around like carrot sticks.
So it was the Braxtons after all. They’d found me. Not a surprise, but still a shock that they really were out to track me down and kill me.
Without waiting for a comment from me about Brad and dynamite, Tammi detoured past me on the sofa and disappeared down the hallway into the bathroom. Her step was surprisingly brisk and firm. Baby followed her. Tammi was, I suspected, a stronger and more resilient person than her adorable butterb
all appearance suggested. Maybe she could determinedly put Brad’s infidelity aside and go on with their life.
I heard water running in the bathroom sink. A few minutes later she returned, her hair fluffed, the blotches on her face receding, a hint of blush and lipstick brightening cheeks and mouth. But she had a hand behind her as if her back hurt. Which well it might, under the circumstances.
Yet it suddenly occurred to me that the oniony smell in the house wasn’t necessarily because she’d been busy cooking. Could she have used onions for another purpose? Like to make her eyes appear all teary and puffy and her nose runny? She seemed to have recovered from that teariness rather quickly. But why …
“I really can’t let you go to Sgt. Yates with this,” she said. “With the right guidance, Brad can make it beyond the legislature, all the way to the governor’s mansion, and I intend to see that he gets there. With me by his side. I’m putting big money into his political career, and I can’t let you destroy it.”
“I’m sorry, Tammi, I really am, but—”
I broke off when she pulled her hand out from behind her. She was holding a gun. Pointed at me.
My jaw dropped, but I finally managed to say, “Tammi, don’t do something on impulse that you’ll regret. I know how much you love Brad, but …” I tried to swallow, but my throat was suddenly too dry. The hole at the end of a gun barrel, even a small one, looks like a tunnel of doom. It’s even kind of hypnotizing.
“I don’t do things on impulse. I’m quite organized and methodical, actually.”
It took a moment for that to sink in. “You asked me to come over here with this in mind?” I gestured toward the gun. A jerky gesture, since my brain didn’t seem to be in close contact with my muscles.
“More or less. Depending on circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“I was fairly certain you knew about Brad and Leslie, but I thought I might convince you not to go to Sgt. Yates with the information. But since you insist on telling him, I’ll have to go ahead with my plan.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Although I’d probably have gone ahead with it anyway, just to be on the safe side.”
“What plan?”
She gave me a you’ve-gotta-be-kidding look.
“You’ll …” I gulped, again tried to swallow and couldn’t. “You’ll kill me to protect Brad?”
She smiled, that dimpled smile that added to her butterball adorableness. “That’s almost noble, isn’t it? Maybe someday I’ll even tell Brad all that I was willing to do for him. He was such a ridiculous emotional wreck after you found Leslie in the lake. I think he even went out there once before anyone knew she was dead.”
Brad crashing around in the woods that day I was also at the house, probably as afraid of encountering me as I was of encountering him!
“You didn’t just find out today about Brad and Leslie, did you? How long have you known?”
“For some time, actually. I followed him to a motel where he met her in Fayetteville one time.” Her smile was faintly superior. “I may be overweight, Aunt Ivy, but I’m not stupid. Oh, and I also know that Skye calls me the Dumpling.”
“If you’re planning to kill me, I’d rather you didn’t call me Aunt Ivy,” I muttered.
She lifted a shoulder in an indifferent shrug. “Whatever you say.”
“You hate her, don’t you? Skye, I mean.”
She tilted her head. “Actually, no. Oh, at first I was quite resentful about the situation. That witchy ex-wife of Brad’s pawning Skye off on us just so she could take her fancy job in New York! And it was upsetting when Sgt. Yates instantly brought her back when she tried to run away.”
“Sgt. Yates, the sweetie,” I murmured. How I wished he and his scarred eyebrow would come striding through the door at this moment.
“Then, when I bought the car for her, I thought surely she’d use it to take off and go to her mother.”
“How disappointing that she didn’t.”
“It was at the time, but I feel differently now. Skye and I are getting along much better. Things are going to work out really well for all of us.” She’d been talking with a distracted air, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. On this plan, no doubt. Now she focused on me again. She flexed her finger around the trigger of the gun. “Except for you, I’m afraid.”
“Tammi, he isn’t worth it! Don’t mess up your life protecting a man like this. Think about it. Brad was unfaithful, apparently for quite some time. He may have turned into a murderer when the affair became too big a liability—”
“Oh, please!” Small roll of baby-blue eyes. “Brad can’t even take a dead mouse out of a trap. He’d never have had the stomach or the nerve to kill Leslie.”
“So you think Leslie’s ex-husband or someone else conveniently got her out of the way for you?”
“Who cares? She’s dead. That’s all that matters. Except that I can’t let you drag Brad into it.”
I thought how irrelevant the Braxtons’ determination to kill me was at this moment, since Tammi apparently had the same goal. And she was now first in line.
“Into the kitchen, please.” She jerked the gun a fraction of an inch in that direction.
I didn’t move, not because I was brave but because my legs felt like frozen salami. It also occurred to me that if she wanted me in the kitchen, I definitely didn’t want to be there.
I eyed her warily as she stood there impatiently waiting for me to move, obviously confident the gun would bring compliance. I calculated my odds of making a run for the front door. Surely she was no expert with that gun. Although, in the confines of this living room, she wouldn’t have to be much of an expert to bring me down …
“Why?” I said warily.
“Why, what?”
“Why do you want me in the kitchen?”
“The garage is right through that door over there.” Another fractional wave of the gun. “We’re going for a ride.”
“That’s an overused line,” I muttered. How many times had I read it in a mystery novel or seen it in an old movie? “Very cliché.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Then get in there.”
“No.” I hadn’t planned the word, and it came out like a strangled gargle, but apparently the meaning was plain enough. To both of us. I repeated it in a stronger voice. “No.”
Tammi stood there frowning, her expression annoyed. I could see that, in her reasoning, I had no right to react so stubbornly. A gun in hand demanded compliance.
“You’ll just have to shoot me right here,” I stated with considerably more bravado than I felt. The coffee table was right behind me. My knees trembled, and I felt a huge urge just to plop down on it. I braced one leg against the corner of the table and forced myself to stay upright and sound coolly distant when I added, “And shooting me here will certainly leave a terrible mess. Even if you dispose of my body, how will you explain blood all over your carpet?”
She frowned again. This obviously was not in her script.
It was not, however, an insurmountable problem. The house had one of those open floor plans in which one room flows into another. Keeping the gun on me, she backed past the dining area and into the kitchen. There she reached into a cabinet and brought out a length of clothesline rope. She marched back to me, holding it in her hand like a lariat. It looked as if she had enough rope there to string me up from the nearest flagpole. I wondered if she’d acquired the rope purposely for me or if it had originally had some other purpose. Not that this mattered at the moment.
“I—I don’t know what you think you’re going to do, but your plan isn’t going to work,” I blustered. Baby was still following her like a faithful shadow.
“I’m going to tie you up, and then we’re going for that ride.”
She had another problem, however. With the gun in one hand, the rope in the other, how was she going to tie me up? Even Superwoman would surely need two hands for such a project. Tammi solved that with
unexpected viciousness.
She lifted the gun and crashed it against the side of my head.
Or she would have hit the side of my head except that faithful Baby, trying to get as close to Tammi as possible, pushed up against her legs at that moment. The gun hit my neck—painful, but not the knockout blow she’d intended.
I stumbled backward, reeling but not unconscious. I hit the coffee table, and it tumbled over, spilling its load of diet and exercise books. I grabbed one as it fell and slammed it into Tammi’s gun hand. The gun flew across the room. We both lunged for it.
Neither of us got it. Baby, thinking this was some fun new game, lunged with us. He landed right in the middle of us, and there we were—260 pounds of dog, two desperate women, a tangled length of clothesline rope, an overturned coffee table, and scattered books all churning around on the carpet.
A lamp crashed into the melee. The rope tangled around my legs. I tried to kick it free and at the same time stab a finger in Tammi’s eye. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a good Dilly bar stick right now! A tail swished in my face, and a spike heel—Tammi, planning to murder me, is wearing fashionable spike heels!—jabbed me in the calf.
I thought maybe Tammi would yell “Attack!” at Baby, and that would be the end of me, but what she yelled was, “Baby, go away!”
Baby, bless his heart, was obviously not an attack dog. He licked Tammi’s face, then mine. He obviously thought this was a great game. He wallowed around with us as if we were three pigs in a mud hole. I got a mouthful of dog hair.
But my flailing arms hit something metal. The gun! I closed my hand around it. I had the gun!
No, I didn’t. Tammi slammed her fist down on my wrist, and the gun flew again. Then she was on top me, her legs straddling my midsection, and I was very much aware that she was several decades younger and a whole lot heavier than I was. She picked me up by the shoulders and slammed my head against the floor.
Thank heavens for expensive carpet. The floor was too well padded for the blow to knock me out. But I was dizzy and rattled enough that stars rolled around in my head, and Tammi used the moment to grab the rope and stretch it across my throat, a hand on either side of my neck. I made a choked sound that came out gurk.
In Plain Sight Page 24
