by Fran Stewart
The moment he heard voices, though, he moved as quickly and quietly as he could. The door to the showroom was ajar. He listened just long enough to hear what was happening. He stepped into the room.
“Police! Put your hands in the air.”
Chester—wait a minute—how could Chester be a woman?— raised her hands, but Peggy cried out, “Don’t come in here! Don’t! She’s the one who shot Karaline. She doused me with something deadly. Get away while you can.”
That was all Harper needed to hear. He strode toward the woman. He’d find out her name later. “You are under arrest for the murder of Marcus Wantstring. You have the right to remain silent. . . .” The words rolled out without his even having to think of them.
* * *
“Don’t come in here,” I said, but he didn’t pay any attention to me. He started that Miranda thing and stopped only when a voice from the front door said, “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”
Harper shifted to his left, swinging his gun between both of them. “Hit the floor, Peggy.”
Even as I dropped, I had time to register that I’d been wrong about the scarf.
“Like I said,” came PD’s voice from behind me, “nothing to worry about. I incinerated all your little microbes, Zebra, and substituted an ascosporogenous yeast.”
I lifted my head. “A what?”
PD ignored me. “Rather stupid of you not to notice the different color gradation.”
* * *
Harper didn’t know whom to trust.
Not until the woman flung herself forward. “You bastard! I’ll kill you!”
Harper couldn’t fire, not without the possibility of hitting the wrong person. But he needn’t have worried. The woman obviously didn’t know karate.
The other one did.
40
Time to Tell
Harper asked me to call an ambulance for the man behind the counter. He didn’t have time to say much more, though. I wondered vaguely if I’d be able to get Karaline’s SRM20, but Chester still looked in pretty bad shape when the ambulance crew took him away. There was a fair amount of blood where Stripe must have clonked him on the head. Poor guy. I hoped he’d be okay.
* * *
Wednesday morning, Harper picked me up early.
I let Dirk slip out the front door before I locked it behind me. But when Harper held his car door for me, he was standing so close I couldn’t figure out a way to let Dirk climb in.
Dirk held up the shawl. “Dinna fash. So long as I have my Peigi’s shawl, I will be content.”
I looked a question mark at him. I could tell Harper was wondering what the delay was. Dirk swept his hand around, narrowly missing Harper’s shoulder, and said, “The snow doesna bother me. I canna get cold. I will take a wee walk while ye are wi’ the constable.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess we can go. Bye.”
Harper looked at me, looked behind him. “Do you always talk to your house?”
“Only when it behaves itself. Otherwise I just fold it up.”
Dirk laughed and walked away.
Harper gave me one of those looks I was getting used to. I was going to have to tell him sometime, but I sure didn’t know how to begin.
* * *
Karaline had already pushed her hospital breakfast out of the way. “Tell me everything,” she said before we could even draw chairs close to her bed. “What happened, what did you find out, how did it turn out?”
“Well,” I said, “I had a lovely trip up to Winooski.”
“Margaret Walter Winn, if you don’t tell me right now . . .”
“Your middle name is Walter?” Harper sounded aghast.
“It’s Waltera; I was named for my dad. Karaline can’t remember the last syllable ’cause she’s senile.”
She threw a spoon at me.
“Okay. It started when I walked into Kittredge.”
“Having forgotten to take your cell phone with you,” Harper added. “I was worried about her because I’d figured out that Chester was the ringleader.”
“Chester?” Karaline put her thumbs up at her collarbones. “Suspenders?”
“Yep. Chester with suspenders.”
“Only I’d already figured out that PD was our murderer,” I said.
“Why?”
“Well, mainly because of the brown scarf he was wearing when we had lunch that day. It was Dr. W’s—Emily had given it to him years ago. I saw the brown stain on it, only I didn’t register the connection at the time.”
“He took Dr. W’s scarf?”
“No, Zebra took it and gave it to him to make him look guilty.”
“Who’s Zebra?” Karaline looked thoroughly confused.
“That’s why her nickname was Stripe.”
“Are you pulling my leg?”
“No, really,” I said. “The best we can figure out is that Zebra—Stripe—was in love with another grad student—his name was John Nhat Copley—and he recruited her into the ID theft ring. When John got caught by Wantstring and thrown out of the graduate program, she tried to track down any other documentation Dr. W might have made about the ring, but the real reason she killed him was as revenge for what he did to John.”
Harper patted his hands on his knees, as if underlining my words. “The funniest thing is that she was really upset when she found out the three-ring binder had a novel manuscript in it. She thought she should take it in case it contained some sort of code.”
Karaline sank back against the pillow. “Why did they do this whole ID theft thing to begin with?”
Harper leaned forward. “They were making a lot more money at it. That’s what it came down to.”
Karaline snorted, one of her less-endearing sounds. “Lots of good that’ll do them in prison.”
I thought Harper might agree wholeheartedly. Instead he just sighed and said, “What a waste.”
* * *
Two hours later Harper knocked on Mac’s door.
“It’s about time somebody came. I could have been rotting for all anybody cares. What have you found out?”
Harper closed the door and drew up a chair, one of those stiff, uncomfortable plastic ones—maybe they didn’t want visitors to linger—beside the bed, near Mac’s right shoulder. Of course, this put Mac in the position of having to turn his head at a sharp angle to look at Harper. Not that Harper was being vindictive.
“We have clear evidence that Wantstring—”
“Who?”
“The victim, remember? We’ve found evidence that shows he was aware of an identity theft ring.”
“What?”
“Identity theft. Credit cards and drivers’ licenses. There’s a group that’s bigger and better organized than most of the penny-ante groups we’ve come up against in the past. And Zebra Harvey killed Wantstring.”
“Killing somebody over credit cards? Zebra? What kind of name is that? You expect me to believe that garbage? Get out of here, Harper. Quit pulling my leg and do some serious work for a change.”
Pulling Mac’s leg? Great idea. Harper eyed the pulley that held the heavy cast up in the air. Sighing, he restrained himself. Probably not the best move, even though Peggy would think it was funny.
The thought of Peggy made him smile. He put both hands on his knees and pushed himself up to stand. God, he needed a good night’s sleep.
Mac would find out soon enough what had happened.
* * *
I thought I’d have to wait an hour. Luckily there was a chair in the corridor and I commandeered it. But it was only a couple of minutes before Harper came back out of Mac’s room.
He reached for my hand before I stood, and it felt good to have him help me to my feet. “Let’s go to the Logg Cabin for breakfast,” he said. “There’s something important I have to tell you.”
&
nbsp; I looked into his charcoal eyes. “There’s something important I need to tell you, too.”
“Good,” he said. “We’ll trade stories.”
“Pancakes first.”
“Whatever you want.”
About the Author
Fran Stewart is the author of the ScotShop Mysteries, including A Wee Murder in My Shop and A Wee Dose of Death, and the Biscuit McKee Mysteries. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Atlanta Writers Club, and the National League of American Pen Women, and lives simply in a quiet house beside a creek on the backside of Hog Mountain, Georgia, with various rescued cats. She sings (alto) with the Gwinnett Choral Guild, knits, reads, gardens, volunteers in her grandchildren’s school libraries, and manages quite happily without a television set. Visit her online at franstewart.com.
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