Grand Prize: Murder!

by Vivian Conroy

  “I refuse to comment on speculations.”

  “Is it true that he asked for money to keep quiet and you refused to pay and in the heat of argument…”

  “No comment.” Bella turned away.

  “It could have been self-defense!” Grace called.

  People had already come in and stood in groups watching the exchange in fascination.

  “Miss Brookes made it clear she does not wish to comment,” DuBree said. His face was flushed. “Her lawyers have advised her not to. I urge you to contact them if you wish to hear…”

  “Nothing at all.” Grace laughed disparagingly. “They will just stonewall me. But I have my own sources and I know all about Bella Brookes. About her past, when she had wealthy lovers pay for her cruises, while she scraped by on the royalties she made of her dime crime novels.”

  “Enough.” DuBree stepped forward. “Either you go voluntarily, or I will have you removed.”

  “Afraid of the truth?”

  “It is not the truth!” DuBree shouted now. “Bella has too much integrity to ever let herself be bought, by anybody!”

  Even Grace inched back under the violence in his voice and manner.

  DuBree yelled on, “Stop throwing dirt at her to sell your stories!”

  There was a moment’s silence in which everybody was too stunned to speak.

  Bella blinked in disbelief, and even Vicky was not sure how the cold, collected Paul DuBree could have said something like that. Was there, somewhere deep inside of him, a soft spot left for this woman whom he had once loved and wanted to marry?

  Grace Dinks’ face contorted into an ugly grimace. “Fine with me. Matador.”

  The last word was charged with a playful tone inappropriate to the scene. DuBree’s purple face turned ashen in a heartbeat. Grace Dinks was already on her way to the ladies’ room. DuBree pushed after her. He caught her arm and spoke to her, so low nobody could hear it. Grace replied tossing her head back and laughing at him. The tall man seemed to shrink where he stood.

  “I wonder what she is telling him,” Michael said close to Vicky’s ear.

  She turned her head and looked into his deep brown eyes. “Probably that he had an affair with her without him even knowing it himself. Remember how he kissed Lisa Coombs in the conservatory at the party? Just picture Grace with a black wig.”

  Michael’s jaw sagged. “She is…”

  “Yes. But I swore to keep it to myself. So not a word about it. It was part of a deal to get her to lay off of Bella.”

  “She is not exactly keeping her end of it,” Michael said between gritted teeth. He stared at Grace and DuBree with a tight look.

  Vicky’s heart clenched, but she needed to know and there might not be another convenient moment to ask.

  She looked for the right words to address the topic. “Grace is a very attractive woman, and she can play nice if she wants. I can understand men falling for her. Perhaps the time in Mexico when you did not yet know her as you do now, you’ve also …”

  Michael’s eyes flashed at her. “What are you thinking? That I had a relationship with that woman?”

  Vicky said in a hoarse voice, “That is what she told me.”

  “And you just believed her?”

  “Well, I know nothing about your life in all the years you were away. Maybe she was nice and considerate at first and worked her way into your confidence. Grace seems able to play any part she wants.”

  Michael huffed. “She’s all lies. I can’t believe you’d take one word she says seriously.”

  “And I can’t believe you’d just assume I’m dating Cash or I kept the murder a secret from you for any other reason than my given word and the absolute need to protect Bella. I wanted to share with you, Michael, more than I can tell you. But it was all so complicated.”

  Michael held her gaze. Suddenly he looked tired. He said softly, “Everything always is, isn’t it?”

  Vicky studied his expression. “Why did you send me that postcard?”

  “On a whim, and it might have been a bad idea.” He held out his arm to her with the angry reddish line. “Sailing is not without risk.”

  Vicky held her breath. Spending time with Michael was not without risk. Whether they’d be in a sailing boat or sitting easy over a quiet dinner, she’d run a risk of getting hurt.

  And she wasn’t sure she was prepared to take that risk. Somehow it seemed much easier not to. Life was throwing enough challenges at her as it was.

  The sound system beeped, and Paul DuBree’s assistant was already behind the microphone, welcoming everybody to the meeting. DuBree himself came to him in a rush to take over, still looking startled and disbelieving.

  Grace Dinks was in the back of the crowd, smiling like a barracuda.

  DuBree explained that there were just some dozens of participants left who had found the right coordinates the other day. Now they were asked to display their navigation skills in the surroundings of Glen Cove. They received minimal leads to work out a location.

  Leads would be given in the form of riddles, numbers, references and multiple choice questions in which the correct answers would form a lead word designating the location where the alleged killer fled to and where the confrontation with the amateur sleuth was to take place.

  People looked at each other excitedly, and sheets were handed down in a hurry.

  Vicky spotted Cash in the back of the room and went to talk to him while the meeting was still going on. He told her with a wide grin he was still in it, something not too surprising considering his great sense of place. This navigation thing would be a breeze for him too.

  He held her gaze a moment. “Now if I win… You have always been one of my best friends. It will be great to get away from all this murder business and have a nice little vacation in your favorite city. You can show me all the sights. What would be the best place for dinner?”

  “Never mind about that now. Anything on the fingerprints?”

  “Huh?” Cash looked stunned.

  “On the envelope with the money.”

  “Oh, that.” Cash seemed to have to refocus a moment. “Like you suggested to me, Bella’s were on it. Then three pairs of unknowns.”

  “One of those three should be Sydney’s, I guess, the second possibly DuBree’s. That leaves just one that is really unknown to us.”

  “Well, to be on the safe side I sent all of them through the computer. And guess what? One of them came back at once, as being the prints of a con artist who tricked women in Michigan. A marriage swindler. A real mystery man. They have no photos of him or good descriptions of his looks, his age.”

  “What?” Vicky stared at him.

  “Yes.” Cash sounded excited. “My money is now on DuBree. He has to have some shady past he is eager to hide. The guard was about to expose him and that is why he killed him. He was so eager to defend Bella against that Dinks woman just now, because he knows she is innocent. He is guilty himself.”

  “So you are here to take him in? I mean, if you suspect DuBree of being this wanted marriage swindler…”

  “Just for questioning of course. And I will wait till the crowd has dispersed. I have no need for some hysterical item in the local paper.” Cash nodded in the direction of Grace Dinks. “Fake local paper or not.”

  Michael passed them with his sheet. “I’m still in.” His brown eyes sparkled. “I guess it’s going to be one of us, huh, Cash? We can’t let some little blue-haired lady beat us to it.”

  He nodded in the direction of Ms. Tennings’ close friend Agatha. “See you at the big reveal.”

  Cash fumed. “He is so cocksure of himself. But I’m going to win this.” He started to walk off right away.

  Vicky grabbed his arm. “Wait a sec. I thought you had to question DuBree.”

  “Uh, well, I can do that tomorrow. He is not going anywhere. I have his fingerprints now.”

  “If he is the wanted con man. You don’t even know that yet.”

  Cash pushed
his hat onto his full head of hair. “Enough time in the day. Right now I am on lunch break, my own time. And I want those tickets to London.”

  Vicky shook her head as she watched him rush off. It was unbelievable what a little competition like the scavenger hunt did to normally sane and collected people.

  Then she walked back to her friends. Paul DuBree was answering a few questions from a young reporter of a regional paper who seemed genuinely interested in the principle of the scavenger hunt.

  DuBree was polite and even charming, with a witty remark here and there. Vicky could easily see how he melted women’s hearts. He had recovered fast from his shock of discovering that he had passionately kissed the terrible Grace Dinks.

  He probably told himself he had been drunk, and that if he had not been, he would have seen through her designs.

  As Marge left with Bella for the book signing at two, and Ms. Tennings returned to the store, Vicky lingered with DuBree. He got his briefcase from the side room and stopped short as he spotted her waiting for him. “Anything wrong?”

  “I just want to ask you a quick question about the night of the party.”

  “I don’t see why I should answer any questions. If the police want to know something they should ask me.”

  He looked her over. “I just saw you with the sheriff. I understood you are a couple? If he wants information, he should come straight to me and not go via his girlfriend. It is so unprofessional.”

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” Vicky said icily. “And he will come for you. Soon enough.”

  She let the words hang a few moments. “An envelope with money has been found in the conservatory where the dead man lay. Your fingerprints are all over it.”

  It was a gamble, but it paid off. DuBree flushed and looked down. “That is natural enough. I handled it. But it has nothing to do with the murder, I assure you.”

  “You handled it in the fight with Bella.”

  “She told you about that?” He glared at her. “I believed she’d be more careful. You are a perfect stranger. Although I expect this murder business has shaken her.”

  He frowned. “What did she say? That it was all my fault? That I insulted her? Yes, I did. But I just want her to see that it is never ever going to work between us again.”

  He rubbed his forehead. Suddenly he looked tired and almost old. “I can’t convince her that it is really over. She keeps coming up to me and telling me to change my lifestyle. Like we could suddenly go marry and live in a cottage in the country. We would bore each other to death.”

  His face was exposed for a moment, the mask of arrogance slipping away. “It would never work. We would just hurt each other even more.”

  In the silence Vicky understood that perhaps once, in his own way, Paul DuBree had loved Bella Brookes. And because he had known that it would pass and he would only hurt her, he had left her before the marriage. Maybe it had been the only way to save something that had been a clean and pure feeling, something special for a man who was so self-absorbed and after superficial things like fame and fortune.

  She smiled at him. “I understand.”

  DuBree pulled back his shoulders. “Oh, do you? What was between Bella and me is nobody’s business. We had an argument at the party, and in the course of it, I handled the envelope with money.”

  He swore under his breath. “Now you tell me where a woman gets eight thousand in cash at a party.”

  Vicky smiled again. “Perhaps in an illegal poker game on the second floor?”

  DuBree stared at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He thought for a few moments. “There were a lot of people going up and down, and Bella is great at poker.”

  He smiled involuntarily, a flash of admiration for her guts. “I should have known.”

  The smile faded, and he said softly, “I should not have suspected her of any…” He pushed his hands to his face for a moment. “Why does that woman bring out the worst in me?”

  “Maybe because she knows you better than anybody else in the world?”

  He looked up. “Maybe.” He held his head back and took a deep breath. “Anyway, Miss Simmons, I had the envelope after the argument, as Bella left me standing with it. She insisted I should accept the money to settle an old score between us. I fully intended on giving it back to her, but…”

  He looked down.

  “It could be important,” Vicky urged. “How did it end up in that pot in the conservatory?”

  “I don’t know. A man came up to me and said he knew that we planned a scam with the scavenger hunt. I have no idea what he meant exactly, but he wanted money to keep his mouth shut. So I gave it to him. The eight grand in the envelope. I had no use for it anyway and I doubted that Bella wanted it back, after what I had said about it.”

  The con man, whose prints had been on the envelope. That fit.

  DuBree breathed deep. “I didn’t tell the police about it, because once I had heard there was somebody dead, they might think I had killed him to keep the secret about tampering with the scavenger hunt. I can tell you I will pay money to buy people off, but I do not kill to shut them up forever. Too messy, and you always get caught.”

  “That man asking you for money, how was he dressed? Did you know him? Would you recognize him again?”

  “He wore a tuxedo, like most men there.” DuBree shrugged. “It was not that guard. Therefore, I figured it had nothing to do with the murder and I kept my mouth shut. I hired the best lawyer there is for Bella, to make sure she’d get out and would never be convicted.”

  “But this man who confronted you, can you give any clues as to his identity?”

  DuBree shook his head. “I did not know him, but then I didn’t know most people there. They were all locals, except for our party.”

  “But there is no con man living in our town. It must have been someone from the outside, someone…”

  Crashing the party?

  Vicky stood motionless.

  Bob Jones.

  Uninvited.

  Why had he come to the party at all? She had thought he was curious about it, had wanted some fun for an evening. Or that he had even disliked Lilian’s snobbery in not inviting him and had wanted to show her he could get in anyway.

  But now Vicky saw it all in a different light. Bob could have come to see things. To put pressure on people. Get money. Not just from DuBree, but from anyone else he could find. If he was a con man, with a record of swindling all over the country…

  Then he would have been eager that his real identity remained hidden.

  But Bob Jones had been in one of the photographs the guard had taken. If he had seen him snap the shots, he might have been worried his identity would come out now. He might have looked for a chance to confront the guard and delete his picture.

  Mrs. Jones had said she had not known Bob before this summer, as he had suddenly written to her. Claiming to be a relative.

  He was so nice to the customers.

  And he delivered groceries to their homes.

  Who knew what he took there, whether he had already stolen, cheated, blackmailed people…

  It had to be him.

  But how to convince Cash of that?

  Cash, who was not even interested in the murder case right now, as he hunted the tickets to London.

  “Are you?” she heard DuBree say.

  She stared up at him. “Sorry?”

  “Are you through with me?”

  “Yes, thank you for your time.”

  DuBree shook his head. “Never mind. This whole stay here has been one major headache. I’m glad to be leaving again.”

  He walked away, a handsome successful man, but deep down inside lonely and aware he could do nothing about that. He would forever fall for women like Lisa Coombs alias Grace Dinks, for the cheap thrill, the feeling he was still young and masculine. He would never acknowledge he needed something else.

  Or maybe he had acknowledged that long ago, but rejected the possibility of it.

>   For fear that it would be too big for him and he’d handle it wrong.

  Vicky stared after him, surprised that suddenly in a strange way she had a new respect for him. Because he had decided not to hurt Bella Brookes even more by giving her what she wanted of him. The hurt Bella was feeling now was in a way not so bad.

  Vicky snapped her mind back to her focal point. The murder.

  And Bob Jones. From the store, before coming here, she had seen him pack the van to do deliveries. That meant he’d be on the road for some time. She had to get something in the general store that had his prints on it and deliver it to the police station, to compare to the ones found on the envelope, which belonged to the con man. That could prove Bob Jones and the con man were one and the same person.

  It could also prove Bob Jones had handled the envelope that Paul DuBree had given to the guard.

  It might be enough to take him in on a murder charge.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It wasn’t hard to find a bottle of soda that would certainly have Bob Jones’ fingerprints on it. Vicky jealously guarded it so Mrs. Jones would not smear the prints. As she paid for her purchase, her heart hammering, she innocently asked where Bob was.

  Mrs. Jones, taking her interest as personal, frowned in disapproval, but said Bob had driven out to the Rowland estate.

  “I was very surprised when he said they had ordered at our place. Lilian Rowland is so very fussy. She complains about everything. I always thought she felt she was too good for us. But no, suddenly she orders here and so much it has to be delivered. Now I am asking you…”

  Vicky thanked her and ran out with the bottle, holding it by the neck to save the prints. Bob Jones had no doubt lied about a delivery to be made to the Rowland estate. He was going there to get his envelope from the conservatory. The envelope with his money and his fingerprints.

  Vicky looked around for some way to get to the Rowland estate at once and saw the truck of one of the hardware store brothers parked in front of his store. She ran over and asked if she could borrow it as it was an emergency. He gave her the key at once. She dived in, put the soda bottle in the passenger seat and started the engine. Of course she needed backup on this one, but she would arrange for that once she was at the Rowland estate and had made sure Bob Jones was really there. There was no point in alerting people and possibly driving him into flight.