Corrigan thought about it for a moment, then a memory surfaced. “Your name is Fred. You liked baseball. We snuck into a game one time.”
“I don’t want to talk about that now! You tricked my mother! You said you’d marry her. You were supposed to protect her. You’re the father of the baby which finally got us kicked out of that rat hole apartment.”
Mikey shook his head, then got dizzy from the motion. “Your mother and I were never anything other than friends. I don’t know who that baby’s father was.”
“Liar!” There was a frantic energy to Tanner which made him all the more dangerous. He was pacing back and forth, waving his gun. “She loved you!”
“I cared for your mother,” said Corrigan carefully. “I cared for all of you. But when she was pregnant that last time, she said she was taking all of you to family in Oklahoma.”
“Liar!”
“It’s the truth. I gave her a few bucks for the trip, then I never heard from her again.”
“And you never thought to look for her?”
Corrigan shook his head. “I was too busy tryin’ not to get killed.”
“You don’t know what happened afterward. We moved to Oklahoma, but there was no marriage. We stayed in one fleabag hotel after another. She started drinking and never stopped. She was killed by one of her dates, and the rest of us were split up. I’ll spare you the details of what happened to me.” He raised his gun.
Josie stepped in front of Corrigan, who tried to pull her out of the way. “No!” she said. “If you shoot him, everyone will come running. Your best chance of getting out of here is if you leave now.”
“Getting out of here isn’t nearly as important as killing him.”
Josie had to keep him talking. Someone had to come back to the house eventually. “Why did you kill Delores Spencer? She was your partner, wasn’t she?”
“I was always going to kill her. I met her on the carnival circuit in Oklahoma all those years ago. She was a first-class grifter. Earlier this year, she saw my picture in one of the gossip magazines and figured I’d be good for a buck or two. She tracked me down in Hollywood and told me to introduce her to some stars she could blackmail. If I didn’t, she said she’d tell everyone in town where I came from. I couldn’t allow that to happen, but I figured someone like her could be useful for a while. I’d hired a P.I. in Chicago to follow Corrigan. When I heard about this party, I knew it’d be the perfect chance to kill him without his goons hanging around. I got Kurt and me invited.”
“And you made sure Delores Spencer left behind an incriminating piece of evidence at the boarding house.”
Tanner smiled. “You found the ticket?”
Josie nodded. “You’ve done a good job framing Kurt Franklin. Between that and the bogus bio about him growing up in Chicago, some people might believe it was him. But not us.”
“It’s not going to matter what you think because you’ll be dead.”
“You really think Agent Barker will let you go?”
“I’m not going to be here when he returns. I’ve got enough dough to disappear. They’ll never find me.”
Josie had to keep him talking. “Why did you kill Delores after she gave you an alibi by shooting Mr. Corrigan?”
He shrugged his shoulders, as if killing her had meant nothing. “She would have bled me dry. I knew she had to go sooner rather than later. So, I slipped into her room and killed her. Fortunately, this blackmail business took the attention away from what I did.”
“Why’d you kill Farnsworth?”
“He’d seen me that night and wanted payment.”
“Constance?”
“That was bad timing. She ran outside just as I was about to scale the wall to kill Corrigan in his bed. So I killed her. Just like I’m going to kill you.”
“The hell you are,” said David Remington from the entrance to the ballroom. He was a welcome sight, though he looked unarmed. He wouldn’t have come in here without a way to defend himself, would he?
Oh, dear. Josie got the terrible feeling that’s exactly what he’d done.
“Time is running out, Tanner,” said Josie. “Get out of here and run.”
“Not until I finish what I started.” He suddenly aimed his gun at Corrigan, but David started toward him at the same time. Tanner shot David who went down, blood shooting out of his chest.
Corrigan shoved Josie out of the way as he rushed Tanner. Josie lost her balance and fell into the Victrola just as she felt the strongest earthquake to date. The room began to spin as she fell to the floor in what felt like slow motion. She hit her head hard and as the room grew darker, the last thing she saw was a lifeless David Remington bleeding profusely on the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Josie woke up with a massive headache – again – and an aching body from lying on the cold, hard, dusty floor. She opened her eyes to find herself in the partially restored home she’d purchased. At least she hoped it was present day and she hadn’t shot forward in time to some point when someone else had bought the house hoping to restore it.
She got up as quickly as she could, with one thought in mind. She had to go back to see what had happened. She had to go back to David Remington even if she’d never return home again. But as she turned, she saw the Victrola was in pieces scattered across the floor. She hadn’t known exactly how she’d travelled back to her own time, but she was almost certain there was no going back now.
And no one could follow.
She didn’t know how long she’d been gone, but she ran through the house until she found her tablet in the kitchen. She plugged in the charger then quickly Googled the Remington Mansion murders.
What she saw made her gasp.
Tanner had been shot dead by Grant Barker that night, who apparently must have arrived just as Josie had gone. David Remington had been shot, but not killed.
Her eyes filled with tears of relief.
According to the articles – each more lurid than the last – Senator Farnsworth, Delores Spencer and a woman claiming to be Constance Andrews had all been killed. Josie wondered if she had an obligation to locate Sue Bergstrom’s next of kin to tell them what had happened, but then she thought about what that conversation would sound like. The last thing she wanted was to be accused of murdering someone and no other explanation would be plausible.
Kurt Franklin had miraculously survived his own gunshot wound, and even had a scar which his fans claimed only made him more handsome. A quick search of IMDB.com showed that Franklin had actually weathered the storm of sound technology, thanks in large part to a movie he starred in written by Lawrence Henry and Dora Barnes. It was a sophisticated drawing room comedy from 1933 about a time traveler.
She was definitely going to have to stream that film.
She searched for David Remington, glad that he survived, but not looking forward to reading about him marrying and eventually dying. But what she found was even more worrisome.
Shortly after the murders, he’d quit Wall Street, then become a recluse. There were scattered sightings of him, most of them were unverified. And once America headed into the Great Depression, people were less interested in what had happened to an eccentric millionaire.
Josie didn’t think she’d ever stop being interested. She’d finally met the man of her dreams, and he’d likely been dead for a couple decades.
She put her head down and cried.
* * *
Five days later, with her beautiful dress stored in her closet, Josie was trying to get used to her life again. She took several long, deliciously hot showers and enjoyed the conveniences of her modern kitchen, though she wouldn’t have minded having one of David’s cooks. The workers still weren’t back from their job in Portland – it turned out she’d only been gone four days. So she wrote up detailed notes about what the house had looked like in 1929, hoping she could one day recreate it.
There was a knock at the front door and she opened it to find Janice. Josie had felt guilty about the unanswered
texts Janice had sent her while she’d been gone. Josie had invited her over, asking her to keep a very open mind. An hour later, the two of them were drinking tea on the porch while Josie gave an accounting of her days away.
“So, you time travelled,” said Janice.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure you didn’t just dream this?”
“Yes.”
Janice considered it. “Well, it is odd. But there are a lot of things in life I can’t explain.”
“You believe me?”
“I think I do, though you might not want to tell everyone what happened. It could raise questions.”
“About time travel or my mental stability?”
“Both,” said Janice with a grin. “It sounds like this David Remington was a pretty great guy.”
“He was. Too bad I’ll never see him again.”
“If nothing else, you learned that you can love again. It never hurts to get that reminder after a terrible break-up.”
Josie knew her friend was right, but it didn’t do anything to ease the pain of losing him. She just hoped it would in time.
* * *
Three weeks later, Josie drove up to the house from her latest trip to Hammond’s. The workers had made significant progress, which was good since Oregon’s rainy season was fast approaching. And after that would come the skiers and, hopefully, some needed income as she started getting guests.
She waved to Manuel, as she got out of the car. “The house looks great.”
The foreman looked to where his men had just put on a fresh coat of paint. “Does this mean we’re not redoing it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your partner said he thought it should be darker.”
“Who?”
Manuel pointed toward the house. “He showed up about an hour ago, walking around like he owned the place. I figured you and he...”
Josie didn’t hear what else Manuel had to say. She ran to the house, hoping against hope. She opened the door and looked around the foyer. No one was there.
She ran through the first floor, then was hit with the horrible possibility that her “partner” might be her awful ex-husband, who might have flown up from Los Angeles. She pushed that thought out of her mind as she ran upstairs. She looked in her room, but no one was there. Then she heard a noise down the hall.
She didn’t bother with a fireplace poker this time. She walked down the hall, slowly this time, praying for a miracle. The noise was coming from David’s bedroom and the door was slightly ajar.
She opened it to find David Remington, dressed in jeans and a crisp button-down shirt, looking around the room, which was mid-renovation and covered in dust. “What did you do to my house?” he asked.
But the smile he gave her sent heat all the way through her.
“It’s my house now,” she said.
“And this is the way people treat their homes in 2018?”
“Yes,” she said, as she folded herself into his open arms. “Dusty and unfinished are all the rage. And my exterior paint color is just fine, thank you very much.” She’d been waiting a long time for the kiss which followed. Not just through the years of a difficult marriage. Not just all her life. In some ways she’d been waiting for that kiss for almost a hundred years. And now Josie was exactly where she belonged.
They finally pulled back but stayed in each other’s arms.
“Your Twenty-First Century is like something out of science fiction,” he said. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“I believe you have a certain amount of explaining to do, as well. Like how you got here, for one thing. Not that I’m complaining, of course.” She kissed him again. “I’m not complaining one bit. So, how’d you get here?”
“As I lay on the ballroom floor, bleeding, watching you fade away, I knew I had to do whatever I could to find you. You see, I couldn’t let the only girl I ever loved go back to the future without me. What’s wrong?”
“I love you, too.” She kissed him, then again for good measure. “But we generally call a female over the age of eighteen a woman, not a girl. There’ll probably be other things like that which come up, but keep talking because this is getting good.”
He kissed her. “Anyway, I decided to find you. I found Wells’s notebooks in the attic.”
“I thought Sue took them to her house.”
“She did that in 2018. But in 1929, they were still in the trunks. I had one shot of finding you, but before doing that I had to make some preparations.”
“You had to say good-bye to everyone.”
“Yes, that, too. Grant and Lydia wanted me to stay for their wedding, which I did, and I finally convinced Mikey to retire to Florida with Lucy. But I also went to New York and closed out my firm. I gave healthy bonuses to my employees, then I took my money out of the stock market.”
Josie stilled. “Before the crash?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. Then I left instructions to invest all my money in IBM when the market started up again, payable to my grandson – also named David Remington – who’d cash in the stock at some later date. I’m now one of those billionaires you mentioned.”
It took a moment for Josie to take all of that in. “Okay, that’s a little thing called insider trading, so you probably shouldn’t tell anyone that story again. But, good job. What are you going to do now?”
“Well, we’ll need to fix up this house. I really thought you’d be further along than this. Then we can do whatever you’d like. We could even go on a trip through time.”
He was looking at her, unsure of what her reaction would be.
But she knew she’d love this man for the rest of her life.
She kissed him again.
“Why don’t we stay in for at least a little while,” she said. “Then we can go from there.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you for reading my first time travel romance/cozy mystery. I’ve always been fascinated by the 1920s, especially the clothes and the music. I also love the idea of time travel, though I could never imagine staying somewhere without the benefits of modern dentistry.
I spent New Year’s Eve leading into 2018 watching The Thin Man marathon on Turner Classic Movies. I’d seen all the movies before, but they were especially inspirational to me this year. Myrna Loy and I are from the same town in Montana and I just love the art deco era. I thought of those movies a lot as I was putting the final touches on this book.
I am once again indebted to several great people. My editor Melanie Friedman very gamely came along for this ride, which was very different from my usual genre of Regency Romances. As of this moment, I have fifteen of them available from a digital bookstore. Her terrific blog can be found at bookworm2bookworm.wordpress.com. Jennifer Omner at ALLpublications.com did another great cover. I loved it so much that it was the reason I pushed through to finish this book, because it was a hard one to write.
Janice Minsberg was her incredibly kind and patient self to read this and give me her cozy mystery advice. As always, I have the trio of believers, Amal Chaaban, Anabel Vazquez and Linda Thurmond DeCristofaro. Thank you, ladies.
And thank you to all my readers who have given me a chance. I really appreciate it.
Keep going for your dreams and push harder when things get tough! I know it’s easier said than done, but always have faith in yourself.
Best,
Maureen
Copyright © 2018, by Maureen Driscoll
Cover design by Jennifer Omner, Allpublications.com
Author photo by Joanna DeGeneres at JoannaDeGeneresphotography.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
It is also a violation of copyright law to place any copyrighted document on a file sharing service without express permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons liv
ing or dead, business establishments, events or locales are strictly coincidental.
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The Tycoon Murderer Page 22
