A Cereal Killer (A Sibyl Potts Cozy Mystery, Book 1)

by Morgana Best

  "Thanks," I said, mustering up all the mental endurance I could for this next encounter. No matter how this played out, no matter how civil Andrew was, this wasn't going to be pleasant for me.

  The elevator music was infuriating. It was as if Andrew had discovered the perfect frequency to annoy me, then decided to play it on an incredibly short loop. I was going to get Max and then get the hell out of here as soon as possible.

  The elevator doors opened to the most stereotypical office I could imagine. There were tiny cubicles lined along the walls, with a few bigger closed-off rooms for the more senior management. Andrew worked in one of these, which was easy to find thanks to the massive obnoxious sign on his door.

  I took a deep breath and knocked. Within seconds he opened the door and greeted me with a thin-lipped smile. "Sibyl. I wasn't sure if you were going to make it."

  I clenched my fists. I'd been angry on the way here, but seeing him face to face brought it all back.

  "I'm on time, Andrew. Where's Max?" I pushed my way into his office and looked around for Max. Andrew’s office was clean, almost sterile. He had a picture of some woman on his desk, which he flipped over as soon as he saw me looking at it. I caught sight of Max in a cage by the far wall. I ran over. "Max," I cooed. Max was clearly happy to see me again and he did a little dance in his cage.

  I picked up the heavy cage and walked around to the front of the desk. "Now where are my photo albums?"

  "Just on my desk," Andrew said, as he walked over to the albums and picked them up. "You could have just waited for me to send them to you, you know," he said, still smiling.

  "I've waited months!" I barely managed to bury the urge to slap him. "Four hundred dollars later, I had to come and pick them up myself! More than that, even, since I couldn't do any work today."

  "It isn't as easy as that," he retorted. "I can't simply leave work to mail you some photos. I had to wait until I had free time."

  "You haven't had free time once in all these months? It would've literally taken you a few minutes. Just give me the photos and I'll be leaving." I was shaking.

  "Fine, fine." He threw them at me half-heartedly, and I had to lurch forward to catch them. "Is there anything else?" he asked, sitting down.

  Without answering, I shoved the albums into my duffel bag and turned around and left, slamming his door behind me.

  On my way down to the lobby in the elevator, that same infuriating tune took on a whole new meaning. I hadn't beaten him - this wasn't a competition, and he'd been exactly as I remembered - but I wouldn't have to see him again in the foreseeable future, and I'd gotten Max and my photos without too much hassle. I smiled at the receptionist as I left, before I noticed a photo hanging on the wall.

  I took a closer look at it - several people were kneeling in front of the chemical facility, smiling. It was a typical work photo, with each participant smiling awkwardly and desperately wanting to be anywhere else. What caught my eye was the woman kneeling at the front, smiling what seemed to be a genuine smile. She reminded me of someone I knew. Still, the photo appeared to have been taken years ago. Frustratingly, there were no names: the photo wasn't labeled at all.

  I deposited Max's cage and my duffel bag on the floor and snapped a quick photo with my iPhone, before turning to the receptionist. "Do you know who this woman is?" I motioned to the picture as I did so.

  He simply shrugged. "Someone upstairs probably does."

  My smile faded.

  I found myself knocking on Andrew's office door again, that awful elevator music fresh in my mind. He opened the door - no smile this time. "What is it now? Sibyl, we don't all have time for conversation."

  I ignored him, and showed him the picture I'd taken. "Do you know who this is?" I asked. I jabbed my finger at the woman.

  He frowned for a moment, staring at the image, and his face blackened. "How the hell should I know? Why do you -"

  Before he could finish his question, I had closed the door in his face and was heading back in the elevator, struggling with the cage and the duffel bag. Who was this woman, and why was she so familiar?

  I didn't know why, but I knew this was important. Whoever she was, she at one time had access to the chemicals here - including cyanide. And I know I had seen her in Little Tatterford.

  "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."

  (Will Rogers)

  Chapter Nineteen.

  I thought so hard all the way on the expensive taxi ride from the factory to the airport that I had to take two headache tablets as soon as I arrived. I was itching to google the woman's image on my iPhone but, out here in the middle of nowhere, the 4G phone service was sketchy at best.

  When I finally arrived at the airport, I had a long wait before my return flight, so I settled down on a spare seat to find out as much as I could about the mystery woman. There was free WiFi at the airport, and it seemed to be working well. I opened the photo of the woman, tapped the screen, and then selected, "Search google for this image."

  It brought up several images. I wished I was in front of my computer; it was difficult on the phone. Some of the images looked completely different, and were clearly of different women - in fact, that was the case with pretty much all of them - but I found one that was very similar indeed. I clicked on the photo to go to the page. The page was of an old issue of Antiques and Arts Collectors magazine. The photo was of a woman with a man, and the caption read, "Antique dealers Tim Higgins and his partner, Cathy Bradshaw."

  The penny dropped. Now I knew who the woman was. She looked so different from the woman at the boarding house with a different hair color and cut. It was obvious that no one else at the boarding house had known the connection between them.

  I had discovered the murderer.

  I at once called the police station, but Blake was out. I left a message on his voice mail, giving as much detail as I could before it cut me off. I tried several more times, but each time got voice mail. That was so frustrating, but was one of the drawbacks of living in a small country town, I figured.

  I tried calling my ex-husband, Andrew, to ask him if he had heard of Cathy Bradshaw, but he hung up on me.

  I was awfully tired by the time I got back to Little Tatterford. I'd had coffee on the plane, but it hadn't helped much. I put Max and his cage inside the van, climbed in after him, and headed straight to the police station. Of course, it was shut as it was after 5 p.m., but I hoped someone would be working late. No such luck. Plus Blake had not called me back. I didn’t know what to do next. I sat outside the police station in my van thinking over the possibilities. There weren't many. Either I went back home, or I stayed in the van all night, or at least until Blake called me back.

  I was tired and was longing for a long, hot shower, so I decided to go home. Besides, Max had been in that small cage for hours. I was safe from the murderer, surely; she was in the boarding house and had no reason to suspect that I was onto her.

  I drove past the boarding house slowly and stared at it. There was nothing out of the ordinary; I don't know what I’d expected to see. I drove to my cottage and parked outside it. I sat there for a few moments collecting my thoughts.

  After five or so minutes, I tried Blake's phone again. This time, he answered. "Blake!" I exclaimed. "Did you get my messages?"

  "Sibyl, whatever you do, do not-" His voice broke off.

  What on earth was he going to say? I figured he must be out of range on his cell phone. Surely that meant he was heading back to town.

  There was nothing else for it; I would go into the house, lock all the doors and wait until Blake called me. As I got out of the van, I was unprepared for the blast of icy cold that hit me. I wrapped my coat tightly around me, huddled down into it, and sprinted for the front door as fast as possible while carrying the cage. I turned the key in the lock, hurried through the door, and then shut it behind me and locked it. I bent down and opened the cage so Max could get out, and then I stood facing the
door and rested my head against it, letting out a long sigh of relief.

  I flipped the light switch and turned around. To my horror, Alison was sitting on the sofa. Worse still, she was pointing a gun right at me.

  "Pretty, pretty," Max said, from his position behind Alison/Cathy on the sofa.

  "Alison," I said. "Why are you sitting on my sofa pointing a gun at me?" My voice was shaking.

  Alison stood up. "I'm sure you've figured it all out by now, Sibyl. It's nothing personal, mind you. I think you're a nice girl, but you're in my way." She laughed in quite a scary way, as if she was mentally unbalanced. "Let's go; we're going for a drive."

  "Going for a drive?" I repeated. "Where?"

  Alison simply waved the gun at me. "Outside now; you're driving."

  "I'm driving my van?" I said. "You want me to drive you somewhere?"

  Alison shook her head. "You can’t be that thick, Sibyl. You've watched a lot of crime shows, you’re always saying. Come on, move. Outside, now."

  She crossed over to me and shoved the gun at me. I walked slowly to my van, hoping to delay until Blake could get there. Mercifully, the van did not start first go. I was sorry when it did finally start after a few goes; I knew she intended to take me somewhere and finish me off.

  "Turn right here," she said, after we had driven for about a minute.

  "What?" I asked. "Turn right onto Wheatfields Lane?"

  "Yes, turn right and then right again onto the New England Highway," Alison said. "Are you deaf?"

  "Why can’t you tell me where you’re going?" I asked. "It’s not as if I'm going to tell anyone else."

  "To Ebor Falls," she said.

  "Ebor Falls," I repeated. "I've been there before. I suppose you want to go to the viewing platform at Ebor Falls?" I said each word loudly and clearly.

  Alison nodded and I shot a glance at her. "Yes," she said. "The waterfall's flowing well, especially this time of year."

  I shuddered and did my best to stay calm. I had been to Ebor Falls before. There was an enormous, fast flowing waterfall, and a viewing platform jutted out over it. It would be easy to throw someone over the platform into the fast flowing water, and they would never be found. At the thought, I shook violently and the car veered off the road.

  "Don’t get any ideas." Alison waved the gun at me. "And don’t slow down; stay on the speed limit."

  "Alison, I know you killed your husband," I said, but she interrupted me.

  "He was not my husband. We were living together, but he refused to marry me." She sounded furious.

  "You killed him because he wouldn’t marry you?" I said.

  Alison snorted. "Hardly. He was a two-timing, cheating pig. We moved to Cressida's to rob her. That place has so many antiques; we didn’t think she'd notice a few missing. We've been stealing her stuff on a regular basis, but in the last few months, Tim got cold feet and didn’t want to steal any more from Cressida. I figured it was because he was falling for her."

  "I see," I said, slowing down slightly and hoping she wouldn’t notice. "So you killed him because you were jealous?"

  Alison laughed for some time before speaking. "For someone who watches crime shows, you're as thick as a brick. Fancy yourself as Miss Marple, do you? I've got news for you; you haven’t figured any of it out."

  "I haven't?" I slowed down a little more. I had to delay her to give help time to come. "Why don’t you tell me why you killed Tim Higgins?"

  "I wasn't jealous because I was having an affair; in fact, I’d been having an affair for some years." Her tone was triumphant, and I wondered what was coming next.

  "With Andrew."

  "Andrew?" I parroted. "My ex-husband?" I was beyond shocked; surely this couldn’t be true. "You were having an affair with Andrew?"

  "And you had no idea," she sneered.

  "No," I said. "I knew he was having affairs, but that was all."

  "Not affairs," she snapped, and waved the gun in front of my face. "Only one affair, with me. You’re due to get a fortune in the property settlement, and we can’t have that."

  I was struggling to come to grips with the truth, and a dark thought descended on me. "You don’t mean that Andrew was in it with you?"

  "You're slow to catch on," she said. "Yes, it was my idea to dispose of you, but Andrew agreed readily enough. You didn’t think it was strange that he was so generous as to find you the cottage for rent and pay the first six months?"

  I gripped the wheel. I had thought it strange, but my lawyer had told me that Andrew was trying to look as if he were contributing to me, in case we did end up in court. That would then go in his favor in the eyes of the judge.

  I tried to put the pieces together, but it was hard to think clearly under the circumstances. Alison planned to shoot me and throw me into a river, after all. "So, you and Andrew were in it together?" I asked.

  "I've already told you that. We wanted to get rid of you so Andrew wouldn’t have to pay you out in the property settlement. I killed Tim to cover up the fact that we were going to kill you."

  I didn’t think I could be any more shocked, but this latest revelation left me bowled over. "What? You killed Tim Higgins just to cover up the fact that you were going to kill me?"

  "Yes," Alison said, her tone smug and self -congratulatory. "And it was quite a clever plan, if I do say so myself. The police would be focused on Tim's murder, and they would think your murder was tied to that, that you knew something. They would never see you as the primary target."

  "But if I hadn't arrived when I did, and hadn't smelled the cyanide, they may have put it down to death by natural causes."

  "That didn’t matter," Alison said. "They would think his death suspicious after you were murdered anyway, what with two deaths in the same small town; that was enough. We didn’t want them to know he was killed by cyanide though; they never test for it in the usual tox screens, and if they did exhume his body, any traces of cyanide would've been long since gone."

  "So I stuffed things up for you by arriving when I did and smelling the cyanide."

  Alison snorted again. "Yes and no. Cressida had told me that you were arriving the following day, but she often gets things mixed up. On the one hand, cyanide was a possible link to Andrew, but on the other hand, it was good for us that the police realized that Tim was murdered, as your death would then be more obviously linked to that."

  I tried to follow her reasoning, but I was in a state of panic. My palms were sweaty and I had to keep taking each hand off the wheel in turn and wiping it on my jeans. I was shaking so much that I thought I'd be sick.

  "I'm just turning off onto the Ebor Road now," I said.

  "I don’t need the running commentary now; you can shut up," Alison said.

  As we drove right away from the town lights, I swerved hard to miss a kangaroo, and Alison screamed and held the gun to my head.

  "It was a kangaroo," I said, my voice shaky. "It jumped right in front of the van; I don't know how I missed it."

  "Just don’t try anything."

  I did consider whether I should run off the road, but I decided against it, figuring that Alison would just shoot me anyway. We were approaching Ebor Falls, and I was running out of options.

  “To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.”

  Aldous Huxley

  Chapter Twenty.

  "Turn left just ahead," Alison said.

  "What, at that sign that says 'Ebor Falls'?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  "Ok, I'm now turning my van off the main road and entering the little lane that leads to the viewing platform at Ebor Falls."

  "You’re nuts with your running commentary," Alison said. "Perhaps the strain has affected your head."

  I pulled the van into the car parking area, as far away from the viewing platform as possible. Despite the full moon, it was quite dark as there were no street lights, and there were thick bushes everywhere. I turned off the lights, killed the engine, and just sat t
here.

  "Get out of the car."

  I looked at Alison, and in the moonlight could see her pointing the gun at me.

  "Get out," she continued, "and walk around the front of the van to my door. Don’t try anything."

  I did so, and could see she had the gun trained on me the whole time. I approached her side of the van and stood still, in front of the van. I watched as Alison got out of her door, her gun trained on me.

  The next thing I knew she was on the ground, people were calling out, and lights came on.

  I felt as if I would faint, and a strong hand grasped my arm and led me away, to a police vehicle. I was still shaking violently, and gratefully accepted the blanket someone put around my shoulders. I vaguely watched the commotion as vehicles appeared as if from nowhere, their bright lights streaming into my sore eyes.

  Someone slid into the driver's seat beside me, and I didn't look at him until he spoke.

  "Sibyl, are you okay?" It was Blake's voice.

  I turned to look at him. "No, not really; it’s quite a shock."

  "Just as well you texted me to say that you were turning your iPhone on, and putting it on speaker," he said. "Whatever gave you the idea to do that?"

  I sighed long and hard. "I know you'll laugh at me," I said, "but before I got out of the van to go into my cottage, I had a vision of me doing just that. I had no idea why, but I knew it was important, so I did it."

  "Well, err, just as well you did."

  I couldn’t see Blake's face in the dark, but I knew his tone held skepticism. Not that I could blame him, of course. "I know you don’t believe me," I added.

  Blake chuckled. "It’s not as bad as what Cressida told me."

  "What did she tell you?"

  "Cressida said that Lord Farringdon told her to look out the window. She saw Alison sneak out to your cottage, and then sometime later she saw your van drive away. She called me at once."