Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers

by Diane Capri

Both Williams and Strickland were dead. Ruby, however, survived. The short trip to University Medical Center and UMC’s trauma surgeons made the difference. It would be some time before Laura and Anthony could interview her—she had a long road ahead.

  It had been a long night that rolled into the early morning. Laura was questioned at the scene by TPD SIU and turned her duty weapon over to them as required. Soon after, DPS SIU arrived, debriefed her, and issued her a replacement weapon. Laura was placed on paid leave. There would be an administrative investigation. She would see a psychologist in two days. This was all standard procedure, but that didn’t make her feel any better.

  Laura was positive Ruby had no part in Sean’s murder. It was far more likely that Ruby had been used by both Strickland and Williams. The two of them had conspired to kill her before she could remove Strickland from her will.

  Turned out that Alex Williams had a safe deposit box, which she’d kept under the name Madison Neville. The number and location had been among her personal effects. There was one lone possession inside the safe deposit box; a Ruger LCR-22 revolver, one shot fired. Apparently, Alex couldn’t part with the one keepsake that could have implicated her.

  That was a moot point now.

  Laura had no sympathy for Williams. She wished she could dredge up some, but she couldn’t. She thought about the cold-blooded way Alex shot Sean Perrin. How she’d tried to kill Ruby Ballantine.

  Laura didn’t feel vengeful, though. She just felt … tired.

  So many homicides, most of them sordid, ugly, and small. The reasons people took a life were so often mundane. Violence came first to solve their problems.

  Williams was a schemer. She had planned everything and executed well. But there was nothing inside her but a void. At the moment when Laura got to her, when she saw Williams crammed up against the dash, Laura had thought of it as a cheap nightlight going out.

  Money and violence.

  Sometimes it sickened Laura so much she wanted to march in to the office and hand over her badge and her weapon and find something else to do.

  But she didn’t.

  She’d made a promise to Sean Perrin that she would find his killer, and she did. That was the reward. That was what kept her going.

  Sometimes it was a gift to the people left behind. A gift to the one who died. And other times, it was just plain vengeance.

  EPILOGUE

  Fall stayed around for a long time, and turned into Indian Summer.

  One night, Laura couldn’t sleep. She’d been having nightmares, mostly of the shootout and the chase down Hoff Avenue. She opened the sliding glass door and walked out onto the terrace. From where she was, she could look out at the lights of the city sprawled out far below in the Tucson valley. She was surprised how many lights were on at two in the morning.

  A cool wind rattled the palm tree above.

  She saw a shape on the path down by the horse corrals.

  Frank Entwistle.

  Or maybe it was nothing at all.

  He was just a shape, insubstantial, maybe just the side of the water tank up against a mesquite tree.

  But she heard his voice, as if he were right beside her.

  “Looks like we’ve come to the end of the line, Kiddo.”

  She could see him now, looking as unhealthy in death as he did in life, his face red, his jowls sagging above his open-necked shirt.

  “End of the line?” Laura didn’t believe him. He had been with her all this time. Years. He had always been her sounding board, always been with her.

  “When you was a kid,” he said. “I bet you got a bike for your birthday.”

  “Didn’t everybody?”

  “And if your parents was smart, the bike had training wheels.”

  “Uh-huh. What are you getting at?”

  But she knew.

  “Kiddo, you don’t need me. You never needed me.” He looked down at the cigarette between his fingers, the cherry glowing red in the dark.

  “I know that,” Laura said.

  “But you keep holdin’ on.”

  “Some would say you keep holding on.”

  “It’s all in the way you look at it.” He squinted at her. He smelled of Tanqueray gin, cigarette smoke and fast food hamburgers. “I may just be a figment of your imagination, but the fact is, you’re not taking credit. I don’t know why that is. Maybe you need a psychiatrist to help you out.”

  “I’m perfectly fine.”

  “Uh-huh. At least your love life got straightened out.” He threw the cigarette on the dirt and toed it out. “I just wanted to say. You don’t need me. You need to take credit for the work you do, Kiddo.

  “I do.”

  “No you don’t. You’re a strong gal, and you don’t need anyone between you and what you can do. You don’t need no cheerleader and you don’t need no help from me.”

  He started to fade. Laura realized at that moment that she didn’t want things to change. Maybe she didn’t need him to help her, maybe she didn’t need training wheels, but she needed him. Not as her mentor, but as her friend.

  “Frank, wait.”

  He stood there, mid-shimmer—kind of like the old snowy picture on her grandfather’s TV set. She said, “What’s wrong with just your company?”

  He materialized a little more. Some of that red color from his high blood pressure returned to his ghostly cheeks?

  “Company?” he asked.

  “Yes, company. Why does it have to be either/or? Why do you have to do anything? Is that part of the contract?”

  “Contract? I don’t have no effing contract. I just like to help out, is all.”

  Laura spoke quickly, the words coming in a flood. “You say you’re a figment of my imagination. Maybe you are. But it’s my imagination. Which means you’re there for me, and I don’t want … I don’t want you to go.”

  “But what about your fiancé?”

  “Apples and oranges. Unless you’re a peeper.”

  He glared at her. “I ain’t no peeper! I got my standards. You ought know that. You oughta know me better!”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Realizing she was stiff as a board, her fingernails digging into her balled fists. She didn’t want Frank to go. “I’d … miss you.”

  He thrust out his palms, as if he were trying to ward off a punch.

  “Okay, okay. It was just an idea. I don’t want to hang around where I’m not wanted—” He caught her look and added hastily, “And I guess you like me around. So’s okay. I’ll pop around once in a while.”

  “Damn skippy you will.”

  Laura realized she was speaking to air. He’d already skipped out. He liked to do that.

  The cool desert wind rattled an ocotillo branch, rippled over the hairs on her arm. She shivered. All that was left was the trace of cigarette smoke.

  She heard the sliding glass door and looked toward the dark house. The Love of Her Life—right in the here and now—stepped out onto the terrace. “Hey. You okay?” Matt asked.

  Laura never saw herself as one who held on to the past, but it came home to her that that was exactly what she’d been doing. Right now, in this moment, she was looking at Matt, who was her future.

  Frank knew. He’d tried, in his clumsy way, to tell her that.

  You don’t need me anymore.

  He was right. She didn’t need him. But she wanted him around.

  And he’d promised her he’d show up from time to time.

  “Lor?”

  The breeze blew up between them, shuttling dirt and leaves across the terrace. Matt looked at her quizzically, waiting for an answer. “You okay?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Laura said.

  “I’m better than ever.”

  THE END

  #

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  About the Author

  Hailed by bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker as “a strong n
ew voice in American crime fiction,” J. Carson Black has written fifteen novels. Her thriller, THE SHOP, reached #1 on the Kindle Best Seller list, and her crime thriller series featuring homicide detective Laura Cardinal became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. Although Black earned a Master of Music degree in operatic voice, she was inspired to write a horror novel after reading The Shining. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

  Facebook: J Carson Black Author Page

  Also by J. Carson Black

  The Laura Cardinal Novels

  Darkness On The Edge Of Town

  Dark Side of the Moon

  The Devil’s Hour

  The Shop

  Icon

  The Survivors Club

  The Maggie O’Neil Mysteries

  Roadside Attraction

  Writing as Margaret Falk

  Darkscope

  Dark Horse

  The Desert Waits

  Writing as Annie McKnight

  The Tombstone Rose

  Superstitions

  Short Stories

  Pony Rides

  The BlueLight Special

  NIGHT WIDOW

  THE NIGHT SERIES

  CAROL DAVIS LUCE

  Copyright 2011 by Carol Davis Luce

  Sudalu Media publication 2011

  http://caroldavisluce.com

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Where Are They Now? Washed up? Hiding out? Dead?

  SYBIL SQUIRE…

  Not dead yet. This stunning platinum blonde will be forever ingrained in our hearts for her femme fatale role in the 1950 Oscar win, The Shady Lady. One flash of her pale blue eyes and men were putty. Seems she hasn’t been hiding all these years. She surfaced briefly this year after police and paramedics were called out to her mansion in the Hollywood Hills. A housekeeper found the Golden Age screen idol unconscious at the bottom of her staircase with a blood alcohol level above .10.

  Rehab again or the old folk’s home?

  —WashedUpStars.com

  Piper Lundberg rushed through the ultra-modern house with the last of her personal possessions. No time for sorting and packing, it was grab and dump into whatever was handy. Almost done, she couldn’t get out fast enough. Gordon was supposed to be boarding a plane for Europe at this very moment, but knowing her soon-to-be ex-husband, she wouldn’t be surprised if he canceled his business trip to ambush her in their Santa Monica home.

  Through a front window, she saw her best friend across the street stuffing shoeboxes into the back of her SUV. Lee’s Escalade was already stacked to the ceiling with Piper’s clothes, books, CDs and laptop.

  Sweat beaded on her forehead and upper lip. Her heart raced. It was a race to be free. Rounding the corner with the cumbersome recycled carton, Piper slipped on the polished hardwood. The box caught the edge of the doorway between the living room and dining room, spewing its entire contents across the floor. She groaned in frustration, wiped her sweaty palms on the front of her jeans, and dropped to her knees to retrieve the dozens of old video cassettes, DVDs, and mementos. Of all her possessions, this collection meant the most. As her fingers wrapped around a cassette, a black leather dress shoe pressed down on her hand, pinning it and the cassette case to the floor.

  Piper jerked her head up. Gordon looked down on her. She expected to see that sanctimonious smirk that had, over the years, come to define him. His expression was hard, stony. When she tried to free her hand, he increased the pressure. She should’ve known it wouldn’t be easy. Gordon didn’t play fair.

  “In a hurry, are you?”

  She yanked her hand out from under his sole.

  Gordon kept his foot on the cassette. He turned his head to stare out the window at Lee who was still struggling to load the SUV.

  “Brought the dyke for moral support? Or is it the muscle?”

  She bit down on her lip. Gordon knew she hated it when he called Lee it. A transsexual, Lee had made the full male-to-female transition several years ago. Lee Sikes, formally Leroy, was Piper’s first husband.

  “I don’t want any trouble.” Piper tried to control her anger. “I don’t want anything of yours. I just want to go.”

  Gordon pinched the fabric at his knees, lifted his slacks, then squatted down and picked up the cassette case. He’d just had a haircut. She could see the red skin above his collar where the electric shears had chaffed his neckline.

  On his haunches, level with her face, he pinned her with his gaze. “You’ll regret this.”

  #

  Piper and Lee, with the help of Belle Vogt, had unloaded her belongings from the two cars and carried everything upstairs to the Vogt’s guesthouse above the garage. Piper left Belle and Lee in the driveway talking shop and hurried upstairs. She wanted a few moments to herself in her new home. She crossed the room, dropped an armful of clothes on the pulled-down Murphy bed, and glanced around. Assured she was alone, she made a beeline to the northwest corner window.

  The late afternoon sky, recently purged by the hot, dry winds of the Santa Anas, was clear of smog. A red-tailed hawk soared high above hills thick with vegetation, casting a sharp eye below to the yucca plants, greasewood and royal palms for signs of prey. The hawk continued upward, growing smaller, following the winding road to the top near Mulholland where Brando once lived. The hawk dove, disappearing into the thick brush.

  The hawk held little interest for Piper. What did interest her was the Mediterranean mansion on the huge lot next door. That she would have a birds-eye view was beyond her wildest expectations. Closest to the six-foot property wall was the pool. A small rose garden in full bloom extended off a brick patio at the rear of the stately house. The house belonged to Sybil Squire.

  She scanned the grounds, looking for a glimpse of the owner. Someone was in the pool. Piper leaned closer to the glass. The old woman with platinum hair executed a strong, yet graceful, backstroke across the rectangular swimming pool. Except for a pair of black swim goggles, she was as naked as a newborn.

  “What’s got your attention there, Piper? As if I didn’t know.”

  Piper spun around.

  Belle nimbly leapt over a pile of shoeboxes blocking the entrance. With her pale complexion and dark hair cropped close to her head, her root-beer-brown eyes, innocent and childlike, dominated her China-doll face.

  “Busted. I was spying on our neighbor.” Piper turned back to the window. “Did you know she swims in the nude?”

  “Really? I can’t see the pool from the house.” Despite a quarter century of living in the US, Belle’s British lilt infused her words. “Is she alone?”

  “In the pool? Yes.”

  Belle wove her way through the boxes and bags to stand alongside Piper.

  “Oh, my, not bad for an old babe, eh?” Belle peered down. “But those goggles … what is that? Sort of spoils the au natural effect, don’t you think?”

  “Um. Maybe she doesn’t expect an audience?”

  “Are you kidding? Everyone in these hills has a telescope, and believe me, they’re not pointed at the stars. At least not the heavenly stars.” Belle chuckled. “Bet you didn’t expect to see her so soon, now did you? Or so much of her.”

  “I expected her estate to be a fortress, hidden behind towering walls and gates, like the one in her movie, Black Ribbon.”

  Belle bent at the waist and picked through the carton of old video cassettes. “All of her flicks? Impressive. Some of these you can’t even get on digital download.”

  “They were my grandmother’s. Instead of the family flatware, I inherited her collection of Sybil’s movies. I’ve had them all converted to DVDs, but I can’t part with these original cassettes.”

  “You must have every film our platinum widow made.”

  “Not quite. Every one but Judgment Day.”

  “That was, what, her last one?”

  “Yes. It was pu
lled right after its release.”

  “Maybe out of respect for the loss of husband number three.”

  “Four. He was her fourth husband.”

  Belle sorted through the cassettes. “What is it about her, Piper, that you fancy so much?”

  Piper took a moment to answer. “She helped my grandmother Ruth through a very hard time.”

  “Helped her how?”

  “Sybil took her in after the fire. Gave her and my mother a place to stay when they had nowhere to go. Nana was a seamstress in the fifties there at RKO where Sybil worked.”

  “They stayed there, next door?”

  Piper nodded. “It was a long time ago. My mother was eight. All she could remember about the house was the swimming pool. Nana thought the sun rose and fell on Sybil. Said she was her savior.”

  Piper looked out at the pool. It was empty. A trail of wet footprints darkened the concrete and bricks leading to the back door.

  “Belle, has she been alone all these years, hiding out?”

  “I wouldn’t call living in the Hollywood Hills hiding out exactly. Of course, from the main house we have a different view than from here. And see there, her house sets cockeyed on the corner, so our front entrances aren’t even on the same street.”

  “You live next door to her. You must know something about her.”

  “She fancies birds. Canaries. Keeps them in the sunroom, there … off the patio. Dr. J tries to imitate them. It’s not a pleasant sound.” Dr. J, short for Dr. Jekyll, was the Vogt’s twelve-year-old Goffin cockatoo.

  Piper put her ear to the open window and closed her eyes. Yes, she heard them, a chorus of songbirds.

  “Does she go out? Have people in?”

  “I don’t know, Piper darling. She keeps to herself and even if she didn’t, I’m not one for coffee-klatches or chitchatting over the fence. Following the lives of tragic former leading ladies is not my bag.”

  Belle gathered up a half dozen cassettes. “Where do you want these?”

  “On the bookshelf. Where’s Lee?”

  “She made her excuses and dashed.”

  “Manual labor is not Lee’s bag.”