by Anna Castle
I was safe.
I bent over, hands on my thighs, breathing hard, letting my heart rate slow. I stood up to call out to my friends in the kitchen when I felt a rustle behind me. I smelled roses and then something heavy whacked me on the back of the head.
Chapter 46
I came to briefly to find myself being dragged by the feet across my smoothly polished floors. My head cracked the threshold of the kitchen door and I blacked out again.
When I woke up, I was being hoisted onto a chair. Burrie clasped me firmly from the front, my head pressing into her body. She was a lot firmer than I would have expected. One of the rooms in her historic mausoleum must have been stocked with exercise equipment. She smelled of rose perfume, sprayed on heavily to cover the sour smell of sweat.
She was muttering to herself as she jostled me into position. “Good lord, you girls are heavy. What must you live on? The Judge was light as a feather, toward the end.”
She got me seated, picked up a hank of rope, and started winding it around me and the chair back. I tried to stand up, but pain blazed through my skull. I saw Tillie and Krystle in similar straits, bound to chairs by many rounds of rope with silver patches of duct tape across their mouths.
I needed to beg for mercy while I still had the use of my lips. “Burrie, don’t do this. We can help you.”
“Help me!” She glared at me with an enraged scowl on her face. She tied the rope behind me. I flexed, warily, because of my head. She’d made it good and tight.
She moved so I could see the kitchen table. She had laid out her tools for the evening, like the well-organized person she had been before she went batshit. She had duct tape, scissors, a bottle of Goo Gone, some cotton wipes, and some objects that filled my mind with blinding horror: three syringes, loaded and ready to go.
Tillie was making whimpering noises in a constant croon. Krystle was trying to say something that sounded like, “Mmmrrrmm. Mmmm Mmmm.” Her eyes were wide open and riveted on the syringes.
I managed to say, “Please, don’t,” before Burrie slapped a piece of duct tape across my mouth.
“You girls couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? You should’ve minded your own business. This would have blown over and nobody the wiser, but no, that wasn’t good enough for you little Miss Nosybodies. Sashaying around the town with that ridiculous petition. Humph! Did you think I didn’t know what you were doing?”
I made whimpering noises, too. Strands of hair were sticking up out of her formerly bullet-proof coiffure and she had a streak of something sooty on one quivering cheek. She stood for a minute, fists on her hips, her eyes darting spastically from us to the items arrayed on the table and then around the room. She gave a sharp cry and leapt past me, jostling Krystle’s chair. She snatched the plastic container from the top of the fridge and shook it me. “Why couldn’t you girls just eat the blessed cookies?”
Tillie’s crooning rose in pitch. She shook her head from side to side. Burrie pushed past Krystle to open the cookie container and place it squarely in the center of the table. Behind her back, Krystle was rocking her hips, trying to find a way to get out of her chair.
Burrie shot a disgusted glance at Tillie. “Stop that whining, you stupid slut. You’re all sluts, you Mexicans. Lazy, good-for-nothing…” The rant petered out as she studied the cookies.
She turned to me and smiled a smile so nearly normal it froze my blood. “I’ll give you each a nice shot of Fentanyl. A good strong dose. You should be gone in twenty minutes or so. I can wait: I brought a book.”
Such a relief to know she wouldn’t be bored while she waited for us die.
“Then I’ll untie you and remove the tape, wipe away any sticky residue, and put some cookies in your hands. They’ll never find out where they came from. Simple as simple can be!”
We started a round of furious humming and whimpering and rocking of chairs. Burrie smiled and reached for a syringe. She held one up, pressing the plunger lightly to produce a squirt of fluid. She came toward me. I opened my legs wide and planted my feet on either side of the chair legs. I surged forward and up, chair and all, facing the floor, and swung my butt sideways, slamming the chair into Burrie. She fell sprawling across the table with a scream of outrage. Her instruments went flying, clattering against the cabinets and bouncing to the floor.
Burrie got back on her feet, but by then Krystle had followed my lead and was hopping toward her, doubled over with her chair strapped to her back. We got her in a one-two, terror-fueled, chair-swinging, madwoman-bashing crash, sending her into a careening fall, arms flailing. She screamed and something went thwack and then she sank into a heap on the floor.
Tillie was making crowing noises. Krystle and I looked at each other sideways, eyes glowing, and said, “Mmmmm mmmm mmmm!!!”
Fists pounded on the front door. “Penny! What’s going in there?” Ty’s voice. How was that possible?
“Open up in there!” Another man’s voice, this time from the back.
A splintering crash rocked the front room. Boots pounded across the floor and Ty burst into the kitchen. “Penny!”
His eyes swept the scene and focused on me, doubled over with my new appendage. He reached me in two swift strides and bent to embrace me, chair and all. I turned my head and his lips met duct tape. I hummed at him passionately.
The back door crashed open as a well-built deputy sheriff delivered a powerful kick to its locking mechanism. Finley dashed in, gun drawn, crouching and pointing. He aimed the gun for two long seconds at the crumpled, mewling mess that was Principal Burwell-Jones and then traded it for a pair of cuffs. Having secured the bad guy, he picked up Krystle and set her down in a proper seated position.
Ty followed suit. He gently teased the duct tape from my mouth and covered my sticky lips with his. A minute later, he broke off and breathed against my cheek. “Oh, Penny. Penny. I am such a colossally big fat jerk.”
Dreams do come true.
I was pretty sure I was going to forgive him, what with the door-crashing and the rescue drama and everything.
I was cool, though. All I said was, “Help Tillie.”
Chapter 47
The trial was pretty straightforward, although the defense made a strong bid for an insanity defense. But Sheriff Hopper and his deputies found Burrie’s fingerprint on the cellophane wrapper of the cake that killed Jim and a stash of deadly pharmaceuticals in her mansion. She’d been planning this for a long time. They also found copies of her early attempts at the Connecticut law firm’s letterhead in the trash bin on her computer. She’d faked that letter and stuck it in the book to provide me with a motive, since she didn’t know about my photograph problem.
Jason went back to L.A. The producers for The Bachelor came to town and decided that Krystle was too short for this year’s gentleman. She decided to go up to Dallas and try to break into spokesmodeling some other way. Her divorce should be final in another month. Deputy Finley gave notice and found a job as a private security guard in a gated community north of Fort Worth. Krystle was confident that she could cure his gambling problem. My bets were on her.
I used the three thousand bucks from Greg’s stash to repair my front doors and kitchen window. Tillie agreed it was fair enough. Things got back to normal in Lost Hat, more or less, although we were looking forward to a record-breaking number of divorce cases for the year.
Ty had broken a record himself, driving from Austin to Lost Hat in two and a half hours without getting a ticket or hitting a deer. After that last phone call, he realized that his love life was in greater danger than his project at that particular point in time. He apologized very effectively for the twelve-year-old crack. I murmured something about Cancun and he said, “I’ve already got a reservation.”
For my part, I promised to talk to him in advance before submitting, displaying, or otherwise exhibiting any photos featuring any part of his handsome anatomy.
“I can’t really blame you,” he said. “I knew you were a p
rofessional photographer when I let you take those pictures. Your commitment to your art is one of the things I respect the most about you. It’s part of why I love you.”
The fact that he can say that and mean it is a big part of why I love him. That and the lean torso, the crooked smile, and the culinary skills. I wondered how he would look tied to a chair wearing nothing but a pair of python boots. The light in my studio kitchen was pretty sweet on a sunny afternoon.
THE END
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About the Author
Anna Castle holds an eclectic set of degrees: BA in the Classics, MS in Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics. She has had a correspondingly eclectic series of careers: waitressing, software engineering, grammar-writing, a short stint as an associate professor, and managing a digital archive. Historical fiction combines her lifelong love of stories and learning. She physically resides in Austin, Texas, but mentally counts herself a queen of infinite space.
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Books by Anna Castle
Keep up with all my books and short stories with my newsletter: www.annacastle.com
The Lost Hat, Texas Series
Book 1, Black & White & Dead All Over
What happens when the Internet service provider in a small town spies on his clients' cyber-lives and blackmails them for gifts and services?
Murder; that's what happens.
Penelope Trigg moves to Lost Hat, Texas to open a photography studio and find herself as an artist. Things are going great. She's got a few clients, some friends, even a hot new high-tech boyfriend. But when Penny submits some nude figure studies of him to a contest, she gets hit with a blackmail letter in her inbox. "Do what I want or your lover's nudie pix get splattered across the Internet." The timing couldn't be worse, so Penny is forced to submit to the blackmailer’s demands. Then people start dying and all the clues point to her. She has to rattle every skeleton in every closet in Lost Hat to keep herself out of jail and find the real killer.
Book 2, Flash Memory
Nature photographer Penelope Trigg has landed the job of her dreams: documenting the transformation of over-grazed rangeland into an eco-dude ranch and spa, owned by her boyfriend Tyler Hawkins. Then a body is found on the ranch and Ty is arrested. The victim was an aggressive real estate developer with his greedy eyes on Ty’s land and Ty’s sister Diana, who is almost engaged to the senior deputy sheriff. Clues put her at the center of the puzzle.
Determined to prove Ty’s innocence, Penny stirs up Diana’s old flames, trying to shed enough light to develop an alternative suspect. She mainly learns how to lose friends and annoy people, until she realizes someone has been manipulating the evidence. But is Ty the framer or the framee? Penny uses her eye for detail and her camera's memory to put the picture together and reveal the killer.
The Francis Bacon Series
Book 1, Murder by Misrule
Francis Bacon is charged with investigating the murder of a fellow barrister at Gray's Inn. He recruits his unwanted protégé Thomas Clarady to do the tiresome legwork. The son of a privateer, Clarady will do anything to climb the Elizabethan social ladder. Bacon's powerful uncle Lord Burghley suspects Catholic conspirators of the crime, but other motives quickly emerge. Rival barristers contend for the murdered man's legal honors and wealthy clients. Highly-placed courtiers are implicated as the investigation reaches from Whitehall to the London streets. Bacon does the thinking; Clarady does the fencing. Everyone has something up his pinked and padded sleeve. Even the brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss — and in danger — until he sees through the disguises of the season of Misrule.
Book 2, Death by Disputation
Thomas Clarady is recruited to spy on the increasingly rebellious Puritans at Cambridge University. Francis Bacon is his spymaster; his tutor in both tradecraft and religious politics. Their commission gets off to a deadly start when Tom finds his chief informant hanging from the roof beams. Now he must catch a murderer as well as a seditioner. His first suspect is volatile poet Christopher Marlowe, who keeps turning up in the wrong places.
Dogged by unreliable assistants, chased by three lusty women, and harangued daily by the exacting Bacon, Tom risks his very soul to catch the villains and win his reward.
Book 3, The Widows Guild
In the summer of 1588, Europe waits with bated breath for King Philip of Spain to launch his mighty armada against England. Everyone except Lady Alice Trumpington, whose father wants her wed to the highest bidder. She doesn't want to be a wife, she wants to be widow; a rich one, and the sooner, the better. So she marries an elderly viscount, gives him a sleeping draught, and spends her wedding night with Thomas Clarady, her best friend and Francis Bacon's assistant. The next morning, they find the viscount murdered in his bed and they're both locked into the Tower.
Lady Alice appeals to the Andromache Society, the widows’ guild led by Francis Bacon's formidable aunt, Lady Russell. They charge Bacon with getting the new widow out of prison and identifying the real murderer. He soon learns the viscount wasn’t an isolated case. Someone is murdering Catholics in London and taking advantage of armada fever to mask the crimes. The killer seems to have privy information — from someone close to the Privy Council?
The investigation takes Francis from the mansions along the Strand to the rack room under the Tower. Pulled and pecked by a coven of demanding widows, Francis struggles to maintain his reason and his courage to see through the fog of war and catch the killer.
Copyright Page
Black & White & Dead All Over
A Lost Hat, Texas Mystery — #1
Kindle Edition | June 2015
Discover more works by Anna Castle at www.annacastle.com
Copyright © 2015 by Anna Castle
Cover design by Renée Barratt at The Cover Counts
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9864130-3-2
Produced in the United States of America
