See Also Murder

by Larry D. Sweazy

  “What if he’s not there?”

  “I don’t know, Guy. We just have to find him.”

  The windshield cleared enough for Guy to see, and he put the Ford in gear and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time but was confused by what he was seeing and hearing.

  “Head to the Student Union. Raymond lives across the street,” I said, not taking my eyes off of Guy, offering him the directions I was sure he was looking for.

  Guy nodded, glanced to the switch on the dash marked SIREN, then to me. “I think I’ll leave that off for now, aye?”

  “Probably a good idea,” I said.

  Guy coasted the police car to a stop kitty-corner from the walk that led up to the cottage. “You should probably wait here, Marjorie.”

  Like hell I will, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I knew he was right. I should probably wait in the car. I had no weapon with me other than a pack of cigarettes and an incomplete index stuffed in my purse. The Western Auto Remington was at home, behind the bedroom door, where it belonged.

  Guy shifted restlessly in the seat. “Hank would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you, Marjorie.”

  “He holds a grudge,” I said, staring at Raymond’s cottage through the rain. We parked even with a big oak tree. It hid us for the most part.

  The curtains were open. A Tiffany lamp burned warmly in the front window of the cottage. Across the street, at the Student Union building, people came and went like normal, some with umbrellas, most without, hurrying to dodge the weather.

  “We all have our grudges,” Guy offered, pulling my attention back to him. He glanced away from me quickly and looked down to his barren ring finger. The impression of a gold band was still there, like a scar that would never go away. Then he looked up, his jaw set hard, his eyes instantly scanning the landscape in front of him, calculating, judging, speculating, planning. I had seen the same look in Hank’s eyes just as he set out on a deer hunt. The smell inside the car changed subtly—musky, prehistoric, alive. I had to look away from him. My breath steamed up the window all over again.

  “I’m not staying here alone,” I finally said.

  Guy glanced back to the police radio. It was still off.

  I shook my head no. “We don’t have time for anyone else to come, for backup. I’m going with you.” Hank’s voice echoed in my mind when he told me he was going to the visitation. I still didn’t think it was good idea. He would be furious with me for not telling him where I was going, what I was up to. But Peter’s life was more important.

  Guy studied me, recognized my determination, shook his head with frustration, and sighed. “You’re something else, Marjorie Trumaine. Just something else. I’ve never met anybody quite like you.”

  “You’re not the first person to tell me that today, Guy,” I said, smiling secretly as I reached for the door handle, pulled it open, and stepped back out into the pouring rain. “I think we should check the garage first,” I offered over my shoulder.

  Guy Reinhardt acted like he hadn’t heard a word I said as he exited the police car, his right hand slipping to the .38 on his hip.

  CHAPTER 36

  The overhead garage door was locked up tighter than a parent’s closet at Christmas time, but that didn’t deter Guy. A side-entry door was hidden behind two well-manicured arborvitaes.

  I followed after Guy, staying in his shadow. He had his gun out of the holster, barrel pointed to the sky. He jiggled the doorknob with his free hand. It was locked, too.

  Instinctively, I searched the ground, spied a rock underneath the nearest shrub, and picked it up. A gold key sat pressed into the soft earth, perfect and dry as the day it had been put there. A darkling beetle scurried away, annoyed by the disruption.

  I handed the key to Guy, who had a why-am-I-not-surprised look on his face. He took it, stared me directly in the eye, and said, “Wait until I tell you it’s okay to come in.” It was his best cop voice. I had no choice but to nod, but if this were a kid’s game, I would have crossed my fingers behind my back.

  It was no game. Seeing Ardith Jenkins, collapsed and murdered behind the first barn had convinced me that the stakes were high long before today.

  Guy pushed inside the garage as stealthily and quietly as he could. A dim, bare light flipped on in the center of the room. He stopped just inside the door and blocked my view—but not all of it. I could see the taillight of a car clear enough to make out the color and model. The sight of it took my breath away.

  It was the car that I feared it would be, a green Chevrolet, exactly like the one that had stalked me, then zipped by me on my way back home from town—on the way back from Raymond’s, where I stood right now. My knees shook. A gunshot hole behind the driver’s-side headlight would confirm that my suspicion of my cousin was true. I was sad that I was right.

  Guy Reinhardt had not moved. He stood still, unmoving, like he was afraid to go any farther. “Marjorie,” he whispered.

  My knees still wobbled. “Yes?” I eased into the garage, accosted by all of the odd, expected storage smells: oil, gas, moisture, and mold, old things long forgotten, like a mouse had died, decomposed. I was close enough to Guy’s back to touch him, but I didn’t.

  “I really think it’d be best if you’d go back to the car right now.”

  “Why?”

  Guy turned to me, preparing to be more forceful with an order, but I glanced around him, saw what had stopped him, and I gasped, threw my hand to my mouth to prevent a scream from coming out of it. A high-pitched aria overflowed through my fingers.

  I clamped my lips together, swallowed the scream the best I could, and shut my eyes so tight that there was only darkness, the back of my eyelids. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make what I had just seen go away.

  A man sat in the front seat of the Chevy, slumped over the steering wheel. His skin was pale white, his eyes wide open. Blood had dried over his chin. July flies peppered the overhead light, then went back for him, revitalized, in squadrons and haste, taking advantage of a new found host. Our presence didn’t seem to concern or deter them at all.

  It wasn’t Peter Knudsen like I’d thought it might be, had feared it would be.

  The man behind the steering wheel was Raymond. My cousin, Raymond Hurtibese, and there was no question that he was dead, had been dead for a little while, but not too long. The smell of death hadn’t overtaken the normal smells—it was distant, small like that mouse I had thought about seconds before.

  Raymond had been taken from this world in the same way as Erik and Lida Knudsen, Ardith Jenkins, and Professor Phineas Strand. Surprised from behind, a sharp knife to the throat, a sudden, seamless slit from one side to the other, an open lapped smile. Quick, fast, and painless—I hoped his death, their deaths, had been painless.

  Tears burst out of my eyes, forced them open, as I fell forward into Guy’s waiting arms. I buried my face in his chest, stricken, afraid, and ashamed. I had thought the worst of Raymond, and I had been wrong. Woefully, completely, horribly wrong. I sobbed deeper, more pitifully than I ever had. I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to forgive myself.

  “Shhh . . .” Guy offered.

  I felt even worse because I found comfort in his embrace. I had longed to feel a pair of strong arms around me in the past few days. I wanted to be held, protected, told that this nightmare would end, that everything would be all right, even though I knew better. Every day brought something worse, more horrible, to life.

  It was like I was betraying Hank, but I couldn’t pull myself away from Guy. I cried harder, so hard that I didn’t hear anything around me. Guy, either. We were lost in a moment.

  At first, I thought it was thunder, a loud clap beyond my ears. I thought the rain had stirred up an angry storm overhead. But the sound didn’t come from the sky. It came from behind me.

  The door slammed shut, and the explosion of sound reverberated inside the small garage, echoed like the door of a tomb closing for the final time—infinite
, eternal.

  Guy gasped, drew in a deep breath, flinched, then opened his mouth like he was about to say something. But no words came out. I saw fear in his eyes, felt him tense up.

  The next sound I heard was a rush of wind, like a tornado spiraling toward me. Only it wasn’t a tornado. It was a piece of wood. A straight piece of wood, a two-by-four, aimed directly at Guy Reinhardt’s head.

  There is no other sound like a hard, fast-moving object smashing into bone and flesh, and I knew that it was something that I would never forget—if I lived to tell about what happened. It was a profane slap, kin to my scream and the slam of the door. Unexpected and still reverberating inside the garage.

  Guy’s head was an easy target, so much more so than mine. He toppled to the side, was torn instantly away from our embrace by the surprise attack, by the force of physics: energy plus matter equals sudden, intense pain. He fell to the cement floor with a thud, bounced so hard that it forced the .38 out of his hand.

  The handgun skidded to the opposite side of the garage, the forward motion stopped by an interior wall full of garden tools. A rake rattled, a tooth tinkled after the gun, and Guy’s blood sprayed the rear passenger window of the green Chevy. It was red rain, and I was trapped inside a storm that had obviously been brewing for a very long time.

  CHAPTER 37

  I blinked my eyes, got my breath, my balance, focused on the man who had slammed the door. “Hilo,” I said. “What are you doing?” I was relieved, hoped he had made a mistake, thought, perhaps that Guy was the killer, attacking me. Hilo had come to save me. My shoulders relaxed.

  Hilo stood there, barricading the door, like the sheriff that he was, holding the two-by-four with purpose, his face blank, staring at me as if I were a gang of strikebreakers, and he was the lone lawman sent to control them, to hold them—me—at bay. I was confused. He didn’t look like Hilo. At least the Hilo I had always known. His well-worn uniform was gone, replaced by stiff blue jeans and a thin red and white short-sleeved shirt. His hair was trimmed shorter than I’d ever seen it before. He looked like he was going to a picnic, not a visitation for two dear friends.

  “You best just stay right where you are, Marjorie,” Hilo said.

  “What have you done? Guy is here to help, to find . . .” And then I stopped, grabbed my mouth again, and started shaking my head no. No. It can’t be you. Not you, Hilo. Not you.

  “I was gonna come and see you in a little while, Marjorie,” Hilo said. “I guess you saved me the trouble.”

  “No,” I whispered, unable to contain myself.

  “You’ve been a great help.”

  “Why?” I checked out of the periphery of my vision hoping that Guy was okay, that he was moving, breathing, but he hadn’t stirred. His body was as lifeless as Raymond’s.

  “Now, don’t go gettin’ any funny ideas, Marjorie.” Hilo let the two-by-four slip from his grasp. It bounced off the floor in front of him, and he scooted it to the side with his boot. When I looked back to him, a knife had appeared in his right hand, like magic, out of nowhere. The long, slender blade glinted in the dim light, and I recognized the kind of knife that it was right away: a fillet knife, thin and sharp as a razor.

  “It’s you,” I said. “You’re Loki.”

  Hilo shrugged, didn’t respond, but I knew, now that I thought about it, processed what I was seeing. He was a Hilo I barely recognized. I had to dig back into my memory, my research, my index entries, for the keyword Loki to access the text, the truth of what I was seeing. Loki tricked Frigg by wearing a disguise, and asked Frigg directly what could harm Balder—and she told him. She told him, but she didn’t know it was Loki that she was speaking to.

  Hilo’s disguise was his uniform. He had tricked me into giving him the information he needed.

  “Who knows you’re here?” Hilo demanded, holding fast in front of the door, the knife gripped tight.

  “No one. Once I thought Peter might be here, might be in trouble, I grabbed Guy, and we came straight here.” Which was partially the truth. When Calla had agreed to watch after Hank, I told her where we were going, and if she didn’t hear back from me in a half an hour, to send help.

  “You just left Hank behind?” Hilo said.

  “I had no choice,” I said.

  “Of course you didn’t. Looks to me like you stole away to have some time with Guy.”

  “That’s not it, and you know it, Hilo.”

  Silence settled between us. The rain continued to come down outside. Flies bounced off the light. And blood flowed like a river out of the corner of Guy Reinhardt’s mouth.

  “Why, Hilo? Why have you done this?”

  “I’m not done,” he said.

  A shiver went up my spine. He meant to kill me, too. He had always meant to kill me and had just said so. I was gonna come and see you in a little while. I had to keep him talking—or figure out how to overpower him. I didn’t have the Western Auto Remington or Shep to protect me now. He was bigger, stronger, wiser at the ways of wrestling a man to the ground than I was. I had no chance against him, not physically.

  “You have something for me. The amulet,” Hilo said. “Do you have it, or did you leave it somewhere? Don’t lie to me, Marjorie. I’ve known you long enough to tell when you’re holding something back.”

  He’d believed me when I told him no one knew I was here. He didn’t know me that well. “That’s what this is all about? The amulets?” I said. “Why’d you bring it to me? Why’d you give it to me, Hilo?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I knew you would lead me to the last one. And you did.” Hilo nodded at the car, at Raymond. I gave him the information he needed, just like Frigg.

  I lowered my head. “He still had the one that Aunt Gilda had didn’t he?” I whispered in recognition. Raymond had lied to me, said he’d sold all of that costume jewelry, but that wasn’t the truth at all. He still had the amulet, and he knew what he had—just like the first edition of the Larsson book. Raymond knew value, worth, when he saw it. Aunt Gilda had taught him that—and it had killed him.

  Hilo nodded yes. “With the professor’s collection, and the one your cousin had, I finally had the full set. Do you realize how much they’re all worth together, Marjorie? Those amulets are museum quality. No one’s seen anything like them in years. Not all together. They’re my ticket out of here, out of this godforsaken place.”

  I wanted to throw my purse at Hilo. “You killed Ardith for money! What do you need that kind of money for?” I’d raised my voice, showed my anger more than I’d intended, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Watch yourself, Marjorie.” Hilo raised the knife, twisted his face, stung by the accusation, the truth. “You have no idea how difficult it was living with that woman all these years. Lazy as a sloth . . . She’d ramble on and on. My god, she never shut up. Never. But I took care of that. I killed Ardith so someone else would get the blame.”

  “Peter,” I said.

  “My little insurance policy. You can thank him for setting this whole thing in motion. He first sold your cousin a book he’d lifted from Strand.”

  “And then he stole the professor’s amulet collection,” I said.

  Hilo nodded yes again. “Peter wanted to give one of them to his mother to replace the one that Roy stole from her, and sell the rest. Bad luck for Strand, I guess. I wasn’t about to return his stolen property.”

  “Peter wanted the amulet that you never returned,” I hissed. “The one you never really showed to Professor Strand, and the one that was never really in Erik’s hand at all. That was just the story you told me . . . You killed Erik and Lida to find the remaining amulet, the one Raymond had, and I led you right to him.”

  “Yes, you did, much to my relief. Once I had the professor’s collection and the one I’d been hanging on to, I knew there was one more out there. I just had to find it.” Hilo paused for a brief second. “I see you’ve talked to Roy.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “M
y mistake, I guess. But here we are, so I guess it doesn’t matter much, does it?”

  “I never figured you for the type, Hilo,” I said, with as much disappointment as I could muster. “I thought your job meant everything to you. You didn’t have any worries. I thought you had enough money to get by.”

  “Enough to get by. You’ve been in my house. Ardith spent it as quick as it came in, packed that house floor to ceiling with knickknacks and crap. I was stuck there as much as I was in my job. No way out but to die.”

  I breathed deep, stared at Hilo.

  “I always said you were the smartest girl I ever knew, Marjorie.” He pointed the tip of the knife at me and stepped forward.

  I stepped back, raised my purse to defend myself. “I’m sorry. Stop, please, Hilo. I have Hank to see to, to take care of. You can’t do that to him . . .” My mouth went dry as the words came out. They bounced off the walls as loud as the door slam.

  “Hank’s had some bad luck, hasn’t he?” Hilo paused and cocked his ear to the door.

  I heard it too, a distant siren. It was too far away to know if it was heading this way or not, but there was no mistaking it for the wind.

  “Do you have the amulet?” Hilo demanded.

  I hesitated, looked at my purse, then back to Hilo. Fear grew in his eyes, the grip on the fillet knife tighter.

  “I do,” I said. “You can have it.”

  Before Hilo could move another step, I reached into my purse, wrapped my index finger around the amulet, and cupped the rest of it in my hand as tight as I could.

  Hilo was over six feet from me. The length of Guy’s body. I had no choice. The amulet was the only weapon I had. I hurled it as hard as I could at Hilo’s head.

  Luckily, he wasn’t expecting me to defend myself, didn’t have time to cower, to cover his face. The amulet hit him square between the eyes, at the bridge of his nose. He screamed in pain, dropped the knife, and staggered backward, to the side door.