Tough Cookie (Maggie Sullivan mysteries)

by M. Ruth Myers

  “Can’t I trust you on anything?” Hill asked crossly. He started to round on his cronies, remembering me just as my finger began to move on the trigger. He swung back, keeping his gun aimed at Wildman’s head. Smug superiority had replaced the deference he’d worn as Wildman’s right hand man. His eyes dared me to try anything.

  “Gus and me had the blonde tied up fine,” the giant said angrily. “Put her in a closet just like you said. The dame’s lying!”

  “Mrs. Tarkington threw a pillow at you. That’s when you beat her.” I heard Wildman suck in breath.

  The best chance I had at the moment was keeping the foursome off balance, spooking them with knowledge I shouldn’t have. It still wouldn’t take long until one of them figured out odds were on their side, at which point I would run out of time. I took another sideways step.

  “Stay where you are!” Brutus warned. He worried me more than Gus with his busted pinkie, and a lot more than the kid, who’d let his gun hang down against his leg and looked like he might not be all there.

  Hill and his captives were too far away from the Kirkmann brothers. I needed to make him turn my way, get his gun away from Wildman’s head.

  “I’ve got more witnesses than I need to prove you’re a swindler, Hill – and that you killed Draper. Witnesses who saw the two of you meeting ... who know you own the maroon Ambassador where Vern left a locked bag.”

  “Already sold.” He smiled loftily. “Regrettable. I liked the car. Once that dithering old woman drew attention to it, I had no choice. As to the bag, I’m afraid it held only clean socks for the weekend hidey-hole I’d just rented in Cincinnati.”

  “Vern didn’t know what the bag contained, of course.”

  “Of course. I needed to keep his mouth shut while I planned a tidier exit than Draper had made. I paid him and gave him a meaningless chore. The only useful thing he’s done is put me in touch with these gentlemen.”

  The two nearest Kirkmanns had been exchanging looks. The one with the gift-wrapped pinkie tightened his grip on his gun like he meant to try something. I shifted my aim just enough to discourage him.

  “You really want to tangle with me again?”

  “Go on. If she attempts to shoot you, I’ll kill Wildman,” Hill said.

  “Yeah, but I’ll have killed Nine Fingers here, which means his brother will kill you.”

  I wasn’t sure family loyalty ran that deep in the Kirkmann clan, but Hill would be even less certain.

  “Crime’s not as tidy as business, is it, Mr. Hill? I also have witnesses at the bank where you passed yourself off as Draper several days after he died.”

  “So what?”

  I ignored him and spoke to the Kirkmanns.

  “He’s going to jail for a nice long time. You boys will too if you stick around.”

  “I don’t wanna go to jail!” whined the kid.

  “Smart boy, Ronnie. Jail’s nasty.”

  I heard what I hoped was a gun clatter to the ground. Ronnie took off.

  “How many times are you going to let her outsmart you?” Hill demanded. “A cheap little know-it-all like her?”

  I caught just enough of Brutus’ expression to guess he didn’t like being scolded.

  Time to switch tactics. Stop needling Hill with what he’d done wrong. Let him wallow in showing he was smarter than me.

  “For a long time I couldn’t figure why Draper would take you in as a partner. You threatened to expose his affair with Lucinda Graham if he didn’t, didn’t you?”

  “The scheme was my idea. All of it!” Hill corrected. “But yes, I had photographs taken of him and that - that scrawny little plucked chicken. He’d have done anything to save her good name. Oh, he liked the scheme well enough once he saw how much money we made. But the fool panicked when that bungler Vern saw us together and threatened to blab. He took off. We could have made half again what we did.”

  One shot. One clear shot was all I needed. One when Hill was shifted enough for me to take care of him without his reflex killing Wildman. What happened after that would be immaterial.

  I started to take another step sideways. Hill brought his gun closer to Wildman’s head.

  “Stay where you are!”

  “Why even bother with Draper if the swindle was your idea?”

  “Because he had the contacts.” Bitterness clung to each word. “I was just Ferris Wildman’s lapdog. Allowed to eat at the country club table with rich men because he might want a statistic coughed up, or something I’d read in a journal. Pretending delight at the size of my Christmas bonus while I saw him give that much every month to an irresponsible freeloader who does nothing!”

  Contempt boiling over, he spoke to Wildman now.

  “Did you really suppose I’d ask ransom for you like some common thug? I had you brought here because I want you to know who made a fool of you. I want you to sit there every second of every minute you have left and know!”

  Hate had started to gleam in his eyes. The arm that held the gun was straightening. I needed to derail him fast.

  “How did you get Draper back?”

  “What?”

  “How did you get him back? How did you know where he’d be so you could kill him?”

  He blinked as though awakening from a trance. His condescending smile reappeared.

  “You yourself made it possible, I’m delighted to say. The night I was told you’d been hired, I telephoned him in Kentucky to warn him he needed to come get his money before you started poking around.”

  It began to make sense. Draper had fled in such a panic he hadn’t taken the time to retrieve his money.

  “I suggested we’d meet and I’d give him the photographs – no hard feelings. He jumped at the chance. It was dark, of course. I had a very large flashlight. When I gave him the envelope of photos, I pretended to drop them. He bent to get them. I hit him on the back of the head.”

  “Thinking he’d have his share of the money somewhere in his car. But all you found was his safety deposit key.”

  “You’ve taken enough of my time already.”

  Hill raised his voice to the Kirkmann brothers.

  “Shoot her or tie her up. I don’t care which.”

  Gus looked at his brother, then at Hill.

  “You do it.”

  Wildman spoke softly.

  “I’m quite willing to die, Miss Sullivan. As long as you kill this bastard.”

  Hill’s gun began to waver uncertainly between me and Wildman.

  “It’s what I’m paying you for!” he snapped at the Kirkmanns. “What’s wrong with you? It’s three against one!”

  “Do the math again,” said a voice behind me.

  Forty-seven

  Only well-ingrained discipline kept my head from jerking around. Hill’s eyes jumped, but he kept the gun in his hand aimed at Wildman.

  The voice belonged to Rachel Minsky.

  While the men’s attention was fixed on her, I eased closer to the tires.

  “My, my, James,” Rachel chided. “You’ve been a naughty boy.”

  Hill looked livid. He brushed at his collar. He liked order, a commodity that was slipping away.

  I hadn’t been able to see Rachel, only hear her. Now she strolled into view. She’d probably come through a door in the wall behind me. The dark fur swaddling her from head to knees would have blended nicely into shadows. In addition to her usual hat and coat, her hands were tucked inside a matching muff.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked through clenched teeth.

  She was just enough ahead of me that I could see the side of her face without looking away from the three armed men.

  “Weren’t you listening just now? I’m evening the odds.”

  At the moment she looked more like a liability than anything else, standing there with no trace of a weapon. Then again, I couldn’t see Rachel Minsky walking into a place she didn’t expect to leave.

  Her light steps angled in my direction.

  “
Hold it right there, girlie,” snapped Brutus.

  She stopped.

  “That pile of dirt owes me money.” She nodded toward Hill.

  He’d turned some to watch her, eyes burning with outrage. His gun no longer pointed directly at Wildman’s head, although it could return in an instant.

  “You told me you’d gotten your money back,” I said.

  “Only half. Draper was supposed to bring the rest the day he disappeared. I knew from some of your questions you’d figured out who his partner was – or were close. I’ve been following you.”

  “I hope you brought your boyfriend.”

  “I don’t need him when I’m properly dressed.”

  She spared me a look. Her eyes were glittering. I hoped I read her correctly. I hoped she’d understand me. Wildman’s life depended on it. Thrown by our chit-chat, the Kirkmanns were juggling their attention between us. Hill opened his mouth to speak, as distracted as he was likely to be. I shifted my weight to my heels.

  “Then the only thing I see left is deciding who dates whom,” I said.

  Less than a second and she understood.

  “Right.”

  Rachel’s hand moved out of the muff. We fired at the same instant. I put one in Brutus first, then one in Gus, ducking and rocking my weight side to side as I fired. Something singed the air too close for comfort. I swung back and saw Brutus, in spite of a bleeding shoulder, drawing a bead on me. I shot him in the knee and heard him fall and drop the gun. I spun and saw Hill was down, shrieking in pain.

  “I’m all right!” Wildman shouted. His chair had tipped over. He lay on his side.

  Like that it was over. With nobody dead, not even the vermin. Before I could even determine the make of the gun Rachel held, she tucked it away.

  The big guy I called Brutus was pushing himself along the floor, trying to get to his weapon. I went over and kicked it out of his reach. Picking it up, I gave him a tap on the head to put him to sleep for a nice long time.

  The guy with the bandaged pinkie had a bad enough hole in his chest to keep him from making trouble. Hill appeared to be suffering equally from wounds in chest and crotch. He was mostly unconscious.

  Rachel and I pulled Wildman and the chair he was tied to upright again. He’d been planning, and pushed himself over when he saw Rachel’s gun emerge.

  “I can cut you loose – call Rogers to come and get you before I call the cops,” I said. “It might look better if they found you like this.”

  He nodded.

  “Thank you – both of you.”

  I gave Rachel an inquiring look. “Were you here?”

  “I already told you I don’t care for cops.”

  “One of the Kirkmanns must have hit Hill in all the confusion,” I said. “When I rolled that tire.” I’d never gotten close enough to shove it, but I would on the way out. “Or maybe a wild shot from the kid that ran. And that dark-haired woman they think they saw was somebody who stuck her head in. Maybe a girlfriend.”

  “Yes, that’s how I remember it,” Wildman said. His hawklike eyes were sharp and hard.

  To make sure no one put too much stock in whatever Vern said, but mostly because it was satisfying, I stepped behind him and gave him a whack on the head. I told Wildman I’d call his house and ask them to send his lawyer.

  “When the cops arrive, tell them the shoulder I hurt last week got roughed up again and I went home,” I said. “I’ll be in tomorrow to give them a statement.”

  “And if it’s convenient, please stop by for breakfast,” said Wildman.

  His sister and I were on good enough terms now I figured that might be safe.

  Forty-eight

  Rachel and I walked out into falling snow, thick, fluffy and clean.

  “That one place you shot Hill made it look kind of personal,” I said.

  She smiled her inscrutable smile.

  “Pearlie will have called this in,” she said. “As soon as he saw we were both standing. He didn’t like playing it that way, but he follows orders.”

  Our feet crunched on the cinder path leading out to the street. In the distance I caught the first faint wail of a siren.

  “There’s a place not far from here where we could have a drink,” Rachel said. “Warm up without being bothered. You could make your phone calls. They serve a good corned beef sandwich.”

  “The drink sounds good,” I said.

  My DeSoto had never looked better. I turned up my collar.

  Rachel noticed. She gave the muff she held a self-satisfied pat.

  “You know,” she said, “you really should consider fur.”

  The End

  Dear Reader,

  If you enjoyed this book, please consider posting a short review on Amazon. It can be just a few sentences.

  Reviews are greatly appreciated by independent authors and one of the best ways to show your support.

  I hope you’ll visit me at www.mruthmyers.com and drop me a line there or @mruthmyers. If you’d like to see more photos from the Maggie Sullivan era, stop by my Facebook author page.

  And enjoy the sample of NO GAME FOR A DAME, the first Maggie Sullivan mystery, which follows.

  M. Ruth Myers

  NO GAME

  for a

  DAME

  M.Ruth Myers

  One

  The guy with the bad toupee strolled into my office without bothering to knock. His mustard colored suit set off a barstool gut and a smirk that told his opinion of private eyes who wore skirts.

  “Maggie Sullivan?”

  I kept filing my nails. “Who’s asking?”

  “You’re bothering a friend of mine.”

  My legs were crossed on my desk. I have great gams. Sometimes I don’t mind displaying the merchandise, but Mr. Hair wasn’t my cup of tea so I sat up. I blew some filings off my pinkie onto the afternoon edition of the Dayton Daily News where a column predicted the French and the Brits would likely let Hitler have the Sudetenland. The wrong step to take with a bully, I thought, but no one had asked me. I made a couple more swipes with the emery board before I acknowledged my visitor.

  “Lose the stogie if you want me to listen.”

  I saw his jaw tighten. He didn’t like being told what to do. He looked around, saw the ashtray on the file cabinet by the door, and stubbed out his smoke. A top-of-the-line Havana by its smell, so the guy had money. Or knew people who did.

  “Who’s the friend?” I asked.

  “Elwood Beale.” He stood with his legs spraddled trying to look tough. Maybe he was tough. “Says you’ve been sniffing around asking questions. Mr. Beale don’t like that. Him being a businessman with a reputation to consider and all. Could give people the wrong idea.”

  “I thought businessmen liked to advertise.”

  The eyelids of the man in front of me lowered to half staff. “People who stick their noses in things get them busted. Even broads. Woody thought maybe you didn’t know that.” Leaning over he planted his hands on my desk and gave a grin as phoney as Houdini’s chains. “Woody treats girls right. Furs. Favors. Might take a fancy to a cute little brunette like you, smart mouth and all.”

  I picked the emery up and started on my nails again. “Anything else?”

  I knew one of his hands would move, and it did, smashing the emery onto the desktop.

  “Who hired you to snoop?”

  “Maybe you came in so fast you missed the ‘private’ part of Private Investigations.”

  He lunged for my wrist but I was too fast. I stood up, balancing on my toes. I wasn’t particularly scared. It was barely four o’clock and there were a couple of other offices down the hall from me if things turned nasty. All the same, Mr. Hair looked like the kind who might use his fists if he couldn’t bully you, and I liked my nose fine the way it was. He stood maybe five-eight so he had me by five inches and about seventy pounds, but a punch to the gut with all my weight behind it would probably topple him.

  He yanked my phone from the desk and rip
ped the line out of the wall, cutting off that help.

  “Smart girl, huh?” he said heaving it at a lamp and missing. The phone cradle hit the wall. The receiver bounced off a table and hit my umbrella stand. “WHO IS IT?”