Deadly Gamble

by Linda Lael Miller

  At least, I thought it was a he. Because of the distortion device, I couldn’t tell.

  I don’t need a key.

  “Heather?” She was in the hospital, wasn’t she? I couldn’t keep the quaver out of my voice, and that pissed me off even more.

  Another robotic laugh. “You have a lot of enemies, don’t you? I’ll have to hurry if I’m going to kill you before somebody else beats me to it.”

  I decided to brazen it out. “The police know you killed Lillian,” I said. “They know you tried to kill me, while I was in the hospital. They’re going to pick you up any minute now. It’s all over, you goddamned mother-murderer! You freaking cat-killer!”

  Yeah, taunted a little voice in my head. He’s going to be arrested. As soon as they get the analysis back on that IV bag, if it ever went to the police lab in the first place. Tucker lied about being a cop, so he must have lied about the investigation, too. Maybe he was just humoring me, all along. Maybe he never followed up.

  “I saw you at the funeral today,” Distorto went on. “I see almost everything you do.”

  I made a mental note to pick up a new telephone, the kind with a recorder. At least if he called again, I could play the call back for Detective Crowley. “Did you put flowers on Mom and Dad’s graves while you were there, Geoff?”

  Silence.

  Finally, he said, “You killed them, you know.”

  I knew he was jerking my chain, but a chill of dread went through me just the same. What if it was true? How the hell would I live with the knowledge that I was the shooter?

  “You killed them,” the caller went on, “and your brother took the rap.”

  “Right. I was five years old, and my brother loved me so much that he put an arrow through my cat in honor of my fourth birthday. I’m sure he would have done the noble thing and gone to prison to save me.”

  “You did it. You did the murders. Don’t you remember the blood?”

  I did remember the blood.

  I just didn’t remember the events that led up to the spilling of it.

  Had I shot my parents? Gotten hold of a gun somehow, and pulled the trigger? It happened all time.

  One victim? That could be an accident. But two? Possible, but not very likely.

  My stomach roiled.

  “Don’t call me again,” I said evenly, “and don’t come near me. I didn’t shoot Mom and Dad, but I won’t hesitate to shoot you if you come near me again.”

  “Sweet dreams, Mary Josephine. And remember what I said. There’s a way into your apartment. I’ll prove it.”

  The line went dead.

  I set the receiver down with a thunk.

  Call Detective Crowley.

  I thought Nick was back, until I realized the voice had come from within my own head.

  I dug out Crowley’s card.

  Stared at it.

  I couldn’t do it.

  Scared as I was, I couldn’t do it.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Crowley and I had been spending way too much time together lately. First, the incident with Bert. Then Sheila. Then Heather stabbing me.

  I had to be losing credibility with the guy, if I’d ever had any in the first place.

  Tell him about Lillian, the voice insisted, and Geoff’s note on the sign-in sheet at the nursing home. Tell him how Geoff tried to tamper with your IV bag that night in your room.

  I’d told Tucker those things, believing he was a cop. That he’d make a report. For all I knew, the police were still completely in the dark.

  Tell him.

  I dialed Detective Crowley’s number.

  “Guess who,” I said, when he answered.

  “I just saw you on TV,” Crowley drawled in response. “You’re that little girl who was abducted down in Cactus Bend, a month or so after the Mayhugh murders.”

  I bit my lower lip, closed my eyes. “Yes.”

  Long, pensive silence. “What can I do for you, Mojo? Or is it Mary Jo?”

  “It’s Mojo.”

  “Well, then, Mojo, what is it this time? Please tell me you haven’t stumbled across yet another crime victim, because that would make me feel real suspicious.”

  So much for the wisdom of the still, small voice.

  “My foster mother—Lillian Travers—was murdered.”

  “I see,” Crowley said. “She was buried today, wasn’t she? Saw that on the news, too.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you believe she was murdered.”

  “I know she was murdered. And I know who did it. Furthermore, the same person tried to kill me, too, while I was in the hospital.”

  “I’m listening,” Crowley said.

  I told him the whole spiel, and all the while, I knew he thought I was crazy as the proverbial tick.

  CHAPTER

  17

  A fter the phone conversation with Crowley, I was restless.

  He’d promised to “look into” everything I’d told him, but I wasn’t going to hang by my thumbs in the meantime, waiting for justice to be served. Lillian had already been buried, and unless the autopsy report showed something out of the ordinary, her body would have to be exhumed. That required a court order, at the very least; digging up bodies was drastic business. No judge would sign off on the heavy equipment without proof.

  I paced.

  Distorto’s words flowed ominously through my brain.

  There’s a way into your apartment.

  I don’t need a key.

  I imagined waking up in the middle of the night to find Geoff standing over my bed, and my heebie-jeebies came to a full boil.

  I reminded myself that I had some options.

  I could swallow my pride, brave Alex’s antipathy and take refuge at Greer’s place.

  I could rent a room in some motel.

  I could drive back down to Cactus Bend and bunk in with the Larimers.

  None of those things had much appeal. I was a private detective, I had money in the bank, I owned a biker bar. Time I started acting more like a Bad-Ass.

  I grabbed my purse.

  The first thing I was going to do was make a run to Sunset Villa and beg, borrow or steal that sign-in sheet, the one with the U.R. Dead signature and the smiley face. Maybe Geoff’s fingerprints were on the paper, or even some smidgeon of DNA.

  I considered giving the home a jingle first, but only briefly. A telephone call would give Rotika and the floral-scrubs bunch time to dispose of the sheet, recruit better security or simply have the cops waiting when I got there.

  Better to take them by surprise.

  I locked up, ran down the stairs and sprinted for the Volvo.

  Forty-five minutes later, I pulled into the lot at Sunset Villa, looked around to make sure Geoff hadn’t followed me and walked purposefully toward the entrance.

  Rotika was on duty at the reception desk, and her eyes went wide when she saw me.

  “You were on TV,” she said, sounding almost accusatory.

  I nodded. “I need that sign-in sheet, Rotika. You know the one I’m talking about.”

  “I chucked that out,” she said. Her face fell a little. “Looked like Mrs. Travers had herself a nice service. Wish I could have gone, instead of just catching it on the news. Lots of people there.”

  Was I the only person in the world who hadn’t seen the segment?

  “Yes,” I said. “It was—nice.” I paused, steered the conversation back in the original direction. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Rotika? Say you threw out the sign-in sheet when you didn’t?”

  “’Course not,” Rotika said. Something quickened in her round, earnest face. “Might as well give you Mrs. Travers’s stuff while you’re here, though.”

  I imagined Lillian’s blue chenille bathrobe, a Tarot deck with three of the seventy-eight cards missing, maybe her bridgework. And suddenly I felt a longing to wrap myself in the robe, breathe in the scent of the only mother I’d really known.

  I’d thought I was keeping it toge
ther pretty well, but tears came instantly.

  “We boxed everything up yesterday,” Rotika said sympathetically, hoisting her sizable backside out of the receptionist’s chair. “Let me just get it for you right now. You’ll have to sign for the stuff, of course.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Rotika disappeared through a door behind the desk, and I heard her rummaging and muttering.

  I leaned over the desk, snatched the clipboard and flipped through.

  There were pages for each of the last three days, but nothing before that.

  Rotika came out of the backroom lugging two boxes, one on top of the other. Her eyes narrowed when she caught me with the clipboard in my hands.

  “I done told you—”

  “I’m a private detective,” I said. “I have to be sneaky.”

  Rotika heaved the boxes onto the countertop; she looked at me, intrigued. Shoved a piece of paper at me, along with a pen. “You’re a private detective? I thought you worked in the medical field.”

  “It’s a front,” I whispered, scanning the form and signing off on Lillian’s things.

  She studied me. “Now that’s an interestin’ job,” she declared, tearing off a copy of the receipt and handing it to me.

  I nodded solemnly. So far, except for the botched visit to the art gallery in Scottsdale, my P.I. experience consisted entirely of Googling bimbos on the computer in my living room, but Rotika didn’t need to know that.

  “I guess it means you gotta do stuff like dig through Dumpsters,” she said speculatively. “Lookin’ for incriminating evidence and all like that. You ever been in a fight?”

  I thought of Heather, launching herself off my coffee table with manicure scissors in her upraised hand. “I was stabbed,” I said.

  Rotika goggled. “That’s why you was bleedin’ the other day, and they had to take you to the hospital,” she recalled breathlessly.

  “That’s why,” I confirmed.

  “Let me help you with them boxes,” she said.

  We loaded Lillian’s things into the trunk of the Volvo.

  I thanked Rotika, and we shook hands.

  She trundled back into the building.

  I went around back to do a little Dumpster diving.

  Private investigation is not as glamorous as it looks on TV. Suffice it to say, some of the things nursing homes throw away spike right into the red zone on the gross-o-meter.

  I made up my mind to die before I got old enough to be admitted as a permanent resident.

  And I didn’t find the sign-in sheet.

  I drove back home in a daze of thought and headed for the shower without even checking the place for maniacs first.

  I came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and found Nick sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, like a yogi perched on a panel of spikes.

  “Your shoes better not have grave dirt on them,” I said. I looked around hopefully, but there was no sign of Chester.

  “Sorry about your mom,” Nick told me.

  I sort of slithered to the dresser, careful not to turn my back on him, and plucked a nightshirt out of the top drawer, one-handed and without looking. I used the other hand to keep the towel in place.

  “Maybe you saw her—Lillian, I mean—in the train station?”

  He shrugged. “Lots of people come and go,” he said. “If she passed through, I didn’t see her.”

  I felt the walls of my heart teeter a little. “Oh.”

  “Good news about the cat, though,” Nick told me. “He’s living in a mansion with a sweet old lady who calls him ‘Baby’ and hand-feeds him sardines.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  Nick grinned. “Word gets around.”

  “What are you doing on my bed?”

  “I was meditating. You should try it. Very centering.”

  “Thank you, Sahib-Rosneesh-Whatever,” I said, scooting back toward the bathroom door.

  When I came out a minute later, wearing the nightshirt and a bathrobe, Nick was off the bed, gazing pensively out the window over the dresser.

  “You really need to move,” he said, without turning around. “The energy here is lousy.”

  “I own the place now,” I told him. “That puts a whole new light on the situation.”

  He turned, wearing an expression of amused disbelief. “You have got to be kidding.”

  “I inherited it from Bert.”

  “Bert’s not dead,” he said, sobering.

  “Maybe he got his ticket and boarded a train while you weren’t looking.”

  “He’s not dead,” Nick reiterated. He looked intense, and more than a little rattled. “I saved his life by telling you he was in trouble. It was part of my—”

  I’d been moving toward the hallway door, but at Nick’s words, I stopped. “Part of your what?”

  “I guess you could call it penance,” Nick said.

  “I thought getting me to forgive you was all you had to do.”

  “I asked for an extra assignment, since the main one wasn’t going all that well. They gave me Bert.”

  I started for the kitchen. I needed coffee with a splash of Jack Daniel’s.

  Or maybe just the Jack Daniel’s.

  “So now you’re off the hook?” I tossed the question over my shoulder.

  Nick practically stepped on my heels. “Not if Bert’s really dead, I’m not.”

  “Good news,” I whispered, in case the place was bugged. After all that had happened, nothing would have surprised me. Sometimes, paranoia is justified. “He’s a new man.”

  Nick gave a sigh of obvious relief. “Well,” he said, “that takes care of the tax issues.”

  I stopped again. In my mind’s eye, I saw my three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand smackers flying out the window. “What tax issues?”

  “Not to worry,” Nick said quickly, and with the flash of a grin. “It happened after we were divorced. Just a little figure-juggling. The IRS never caught me, but, wouldn’t you know, they have a branch office in the train station.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Nick’s eyes twinkled. “Never cheat on your taxes,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. What else do they have in this train station?”

  “Well,” Nick said, warming to the subject, “there’s a Bureau of Unreturned Library Books.”

  I laughed.

  “You’d better take back that copy of Catcher in the Rye,” he added, with a shake of his finger. “The one you swiped off the ‘forbidden’ shelf that time?”

  Shit.

  I had snitched the book when I was fourteen, and Lillian, Greer and I had hit the road before I could put it back where it belonged. I didn’t even remember what state we’d been in at the time, let alone the town or the name of the library.

  “What happens if I don’t?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Nick said, with a slight shudder.

  “Hell,” I muttered, trying to remember what I’d done with the slim volume.

  “Well, it’s not quite that serious.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said, and got the coffee started. “Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of yet another visit?”

  “Where’s the boyfriend?” Nick countered. He stood behind one of the chairs at the kitchen table, gripping the back tightly.

  “No idea,” I said. The reminder of Tucker touched some sore spots inside me. I’d kept thoughts of him at bay while I was busy digging through the Dumpster behind Sunset Villa, but now, thanks to Nick, he was right back in the forefront of my mind.

  “He’s not a cop.” Nick said this ponderously.

  “Have you been listening in on my voice mail again?”

  “No. I’m reading your mind.”

  “Well, stop. My brain is private. No trespassing.”

  Nick raised both hands, palms out. “Okay, sorry.”

  “Stay out of my head,” I said, in case he didn’t get it the first time.

  “It’s a pretty sc
ary place, your head. Especially when you’re dreaming.”

  I stopped everything. Set down the coffee mug I’d just taken from the cupboard and turned to stare. Suddenly, the library book was not an issue. “You see my dreams?”

  A muscle bunched in Nick’s jaw. “Sometimes,” he said.

  “When I was—when I was away, I had these nightmares—”

  Nick’s eyes seemed to glisten, and he looked infinitely sad.

  “I was terrified in those dreams, Nick,” I said carefully, “and when I woke up, I couldn’t remember them. I know they were about the murders, though, and if you saw anything—anything at all—you really need to tell me.”

  Nick murmured a word that would probably earn him another fifty years cooling his heels in the depot. “Moje,” he said, “maybe there’s a reason you’re blocking the memories. Maybe it’s better not to know.”

  “Tell. Me. What. You. Saw.”

  “You,” he said hoarsely. “I saw you, Mojo.”

  I closed my eyes. Forced myself to open them again.

  “Doing—what?”

  No answer. Nick stood as still as if he’d been carved out of wood and painted to look like a man.

  “Nick.”

  “You were little. And you were holding a gun.”

  For the next few moments, all I heard was the sound of my own blood, pounding in my ears, a steady, relentless, thud-thud-thud. Then I saw blood, smelled it, felt it, slippery and warm. Suddenly, I was five, and so scared that I’d wet my pants. I was going to get in trouble, I thought, for wetting my pants.

  I struggled to keep my grasp on the heavy gun, but it slithered out of my small hands, struck the floor and went off with a roar that made me shriek with renewed terror.

  I was still screaming when I morphed back to the grown-up me.

  Nick was gripping my shoulders.

  “It’s true,” I whispered, in agony. “It’s true—I killed them. I killed my mom and dad—”

  “Maybe not,” Nick said. “That was all I saw, Mojo. Just you, with the gun in your hands. You dropped it, and it went off. Maybe you only picked the thing up after someone else threw it down—”

  “And maybe,” I said, sick to the center of my soul, “I found a pistol lying around somewhere, and I—and I—”

  “I shouldn’t have told you,” Nick lamented. His hands suddenly felt stone-cold where they rested on my shoulders. I knew, even in the frenzy of remembering the weight of that gun, and the blood, that he was about to do another fade-out.