A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2)

by Lynn Bohart

  “Why was he eating it?” Blair asked, coming up behind me.

  I groaned. “Because Dana was eating chicken wings. And now it’s covered in dog slime.”

  “Turn it on,” Rudy said. “Maybe you’ll find something.”

  I wiped my fingers on my slacks to get rid of the slime and then clicked on the phone. When I swiped the screen, her last text message appeared. “Meet me in the back parking lot,” I read out loud. “We’ll bury our differences, and you can still be mayor.” I looked up at my friends. “It’s from Tony.”

  “Morales?” Rudy said. “We need to call the police.”

  “But how? I can’t get a call out,” I said. Just then, my own cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and clicked it on. “Julia!” David snapped. “Roger got away!”

  “What?”

  “He…away.”

  “David, your phone is breaking up. What’s happening?”

  “The electricity…he…out. We’re in Seattle…looking…him. Stay put…might come back.”

  Another blast of frigid air blew through my back lot, nearly blowing me off my feet. Twigs and leaves came with it. I had to lean against Doe’s car to steady myself. I shouted into the phone. “But David, it’s not Roger, it’s Tony. He has Dana!”

  “What?” he said.

  “Tony Morales has Dana. You have to find them!” And then my phone went dead. I shook it. Pushed buttons. The light stayed on, but there was no signal. “Shoot. It really went out this time. Try your phones!” I shouted.

  Everyone pulled out their cell phones, but no one got a signal.

  “Now what do we do?” Doe asked, hugging herself. The wind had whipped her hair into a virtual froth, and her crepe blouse was flapping to a quick rhythm.

  “Let’s go back inside,” I said. “I’m freezing.”

  We returned to the apartment and shut the door. I was shivering so hard, my teeth had begun to chatter. As the four of us tramped down the dark hallway, we met April coming the other way with the small lantern in her hand.

  “Dana is gone,” I informed her, rubbing my upper arms to warm up. “We think she’s been kidnapped.”

  “I saw something,” she said. “That’s why I came to find you. Here.”

  “What’s this?” I asked looking down at a piece of paper she’d handed me.

  “As soon as the lights went out, I…started getting something. A string of words in my head.”

  In the small halo of light from the lantern, I could see that she was kneading her temple with two fingers as if she were in pain. I looked down at the paper again.

  “Watchtower,” I read. “What does that mean?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know. But I kept hearing that word over and over in my head, followed by something about the wind howling.”

  Her comment reminded me of my mother’s phone call. “I got a call from my Mom earlier. All she said was that a storm was coming.”

  “I think we know that already,” Blair said.

  “Something about this sounds familiar,” Rudy said, stepping into the light.

  “Maybe the Inn is the watchtower,” Doe said, peeking over my shoulder.

  “No,” a deep voice said from the hallway behind us. Jason Spears stepped out of the shadows and reached out his hand. “Willow got a message, too. May I?” I gave him April’s note. “Willow got much the same thing,” he said, reading it. “This is from a Jimi Hendrix song.”

  “What the hell does Jimi Hendrix have to do with all of this?” Blair demanded.

  “It’s from All Along the Watchtower,” he replied, turning to her. “There must be some kind of way out of here,” he sang. “Don’t you recognize it?”

  “I remember that song,” I said. “Said the joker to the…to the…what?” I said, snapping my fingers trying to quote the next line.

  “Thief,” he replied. “Said the joker to the thief. But the last stanza starts with, ‘All along the Watchtower,’ and then ends with, ‘two riders were approaching and the wind began to howl.”

  “And Willow got the same message?” I asked.

  “Yes,” a light voice said from the darkness.

  Willow had appeared quietly behind Jason, her red hair glistening in the low light. Jason stepped aside so that she could move into the circle. She had much the same pained expression that April did. “I heard the lyrics in my head,” she said. “But I don’t know why or what they mean.”

  I sighed. “We think our friend has been abducted.”

  “She’s the one that had something to do with that guy who got arrested tonight, right?” Jason asked.

  “Yes. And April…” I said, gesturing to my partner. “Well, she’s a bit like you, Willow.”

  Willow turned an appreciative glance at April.

  “So, do we think this is all connected?” Jason asked. “Because something also happened in the living room. Your stereo suddenly went off. It started playing Purple Haze, another Jimi Hendrix song,” he said. “I don’t mean to make too much of this, but isn’t Hendrix buried in this area?”

  “Yes, he is. In Renton,” Rudy said.

  “Actually, right next to where Al Dente used to live,” I said, thoughtfully. “This keeps going back to Renton.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rudy said, snapping her fingers. “When we were at the restaurant yesterday, there was a Renton Reporter sitting on the table. I skimmed an article that talked about moving Jimi Hendrix’s grave. There had been some soil erosion under his memorial because of an underground pipe that burst. So they were going to relocate him temporarily until they could get it fixed.”

  “When?” April asked.

  “Tomorrow, I think,” she said with a shrug. “There was a picture of the skip loader and the area where they had already dug the hole.”

  “I don’t get it,” Blair said in frustration. “What does Jimi Hendrix have to do with Dana?”

  I looked down at Dana’s cell phone in my hand and read the text again. “Meet me in the back parking lot. We’ll bury our differences.” I inhaled a gulp of air and then looked up at the lamp lit crowd gathered around me. “What if he’s going to bury her?”

  “Seriously?” Blair said. “Why would he do that? He could just throw her into the lake.”

  “No, I think Julia’s onto something,” April said, turning to me. “Haven’t you noticed? Every time Roger is here working, he always has 60s and 70s rock music playing. I’ve heard Jimi Hendrix several times when he’s been here.”

  “So he’s a fan. So what?” Blair said obstinately.

  “So I bet Tony is setting Roger up again,” Rudy said, catching on.

  “But Roger just got arrested,” Blair countered. “He couldn’t have abducted Dana.”

  “But Tony wouldn’t know that,” I said. “And David just told me that Roger escaped when the electricity went out.”

  “Could they be working together?” Doe asked. “Roger and Tony?”

  I pulled my fingers through my hair in frustration. “I don’t know. They certainly know each other. But I still can’t figure out why in the world Tony would want to kill Dana in the first place.”

  There was a scream from the living room and then someone shouted, “She’s back! The ghost is back.”

  “We’ve got to go,” Jason said. He and Willow turned and disappeared down the dark hallway.

  “Listen,” Doe said, getting our attention back. “Jason said the next part of that Hendrix line was something about a thief. Didn’t Detective Abrams say that Dana’s first husband had been incarcerated for embezzlement?”

  “You’re right. You think this is all about him?” I asked.

  “It could also be Tony who is embezzling money,” Rudy said. “Remember, Doe, you told us your niece overheard the Mayor chastising Tony for having Trudy spy on Dana. Maybe the reason Tony spied on Dana was because she discovered something incriminating about him, and we just never got her to tell us what it was.”

  “Like stealing from the city?”
Doe asked.

  “Right.”

  “Okay, but regardless who has her, the question now is how do we find her?” I said. “Purple Haze came on when Blair and I were fighting with Big Al in his apartment, too. Somehow this keeps coming back to Jimi Hendrix and Renton.” I glanced at the text message again. “What if whoever has her is going to bury Dana in Jimi Hendrix’s new burial site?”

  “Then someone needs to stop them,” April said grimly.

  There was a short silence. I turned to April. “Can you take care of things here?”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  “Let me get my purse.” I ran into my apartment, threw on my coat and grabbed my gloves and purse off the counter. When I came back out, I asked, “Who’s driving?”

  Everyone looked at Blair. “I’ve got this,” she said. “But we need our coats.”

  We all hurried to the kitchen. Willow and Jason were in the living room, presumably recording Elizabeth. As the girls got their coats on, I spoke to April in the entryway. “Can you keep trying to get through to the police? Maybe even send someone down there to tell them what’s happening. I don’t know if David heard me when I told him about Tony, but even if he did, they wouldn’t know where to look.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Just get going. And be careful. It’s beginning to snow. Here, take this,” she said, quickly reaching behind the reception desk and grabbing my baseball bat.

  “Take this, too,” Jason said, coming in from the living room. “It’s the EVP recorder. It recorded the stereo when it came on. I don’t know if it will help, but Willow insisted I give it to you.”

  I looked past Jason to where Willow stood at the entrance to the living room. April had positioned a bunch of candles on tables, so Willow’s face was barely visible, her eyes mere pockets of shadow.

  “You need to hurry,” she said. “You don’t have much time.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  “They’re chattering…the spirits here. They don’t like what he’s doing. It’s an abomination.” She paused and then said, “He’s going to bury her alive.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Blair was forced to drive slowly off the island. Traffic lights swung back and forth, and broken branches flew through the air and rolled across the street as we headed for the freeway. We picked up southbound I–405 and passed patches of lit neighborhoods along the way. But once we left the freeway in Renton, a completely dark environment forced us to slow down even more.

  Headlights from a surprising number of cars cut through the darkness as their drivers carefully navigated the streets, stopping cautiously at intersections. Given our destination and what lay ahead, it was frustrating. We didn’t have time to waste.

  We wound our way up NE 4th and crested the big hill again. The darkened Renton Technical College campus appeared on our left. This time we turned at the McDonald’s Restaurant at the corner of Monroe Street, where a few patrons lingered in front of the fast food place, perhaps waiting to see if the lights would come back on. Greenwood Memorial Park Cemetery, where the famous rock star was buried, sat across the street on the corner.

  There were two entrances to the cemetery. The first entrance led to the chapel, but that was now blocked by a large tree branch that had come down. The grounds were surrounded by a fence, which was lined with bushes and trees. This made it difficult to see into the cemetery grounds. Blair cruised slowly down the street and paused when we reached the second entrance.

  The Hendrix memorial sat 100 feet inside the entrance in the middle of a circular lawn, clearly visible from the street, even with the power out. A tall marble pagoda with a domed top was surrounded by slabs of marble that seemed to glow in the dark. I had been there only once when Graham wanted to visit the memorial. As I remembered, all four panels of the pagoda had been etched on the inside with images of the famous musician, his signature head band tied around his forehead.

  Blair had turned off the car’s headlights. If, in fact, Tony had brought Dana here, we didn’t want to alert him. The wind had begun to subside, but now snow fell in soft flakes. While Blair concentrated on driving, the rest of us peered through the break in the trees along the street side of the cemetery.

  “Back there,” Rudy called. “That’s got to be him.”

  Blair slammed on the brakes. A tiny light flickered at the back of the property.

  “Okay, if that’s him, how will we get to him without him knowing?” Doe asked.

  There was a pause, and then Rudy said, “Blair, drive to the end of the road and turn left. The city’s maintenance yard is down there.”

  I swung my head in her direction. “How in the world do you know that?”

  “I did an article on the Hendrix memorial back in 2000, on the thirtieth anniversary of his death. This place was packed. I had to drive around looking for somewhere to park. I finally found a place down there and came in through the back.”

  “Got it,” Blair said.

  She passed the entrance and then flipped on the lights again. At the end of Monroe Avenue, she turned left. The line of trees continued all along the perimeter of the property, essentially blocking our view. A good thing, I thought.

  “We can park at the end of the street up here and walk in through the maintenance yard.” Rudy said.

  “We’ll need to be quiet, though,” I warned everyone. “If he hears us, he could take off.”

  “Or kill her first,” Doe said solemnly from the back seat. “If he hasn’t already.”

  Blair pulled to the end of the street and parked at the curb. She killed the engine. “You guys do realize it’s freezing cold out there?” she said. “And it’s beginning to snow.”

  “Do we have a choice?” I asked.

  Blair glanced through the driver’s side window. “Damn, I never thought I’d do something so heroic for Dana Finkle.”

  “I doubt any of us did,” I said. “I guess this is what it means to be a Mercer Island Hero.”

  “Funny,” she said. “But I left my medallion at home. Let’s get this over with.” She started to open the door when Rudy stopped her.

  “Wait a minute. We need a plan. He’s liable to have a weapon.”

  “What if we spread out and distract him?” Doe asked.

  “And then what?” Rudy countered.

  I sat back and unlatched my seat belt, a leaden feeling in my stomach. “No,” I said. “I say I go in there alone.”

  “What? That’s not safe,” Doe said.

  “None of this is safe. But if he thinks I’m alone, maybe I can stall him until the police get here. I told April to send someone down to the station.”

  “But that could take a while,” Rudy said. “Where’s that baseball bat?”

  I pulled it off the floor. “Right here.”

  She took it from me. “Okay. It’s the only weapon we have.”

  “What if he doesn’t buy that Julia is alone?” Doe asked “We’re pretty well known for going everywhere together.”

  “If he doesn’t buy it, then Julia calls the two of you out,” Rudy replied.

  “But not you,” Doe said.

  “No. I’ll hang back,” Rudy said. “I could be out of town or something.” Rudy turned to me. “You can do this, Julia. Tony is your friend. Play off that. Just keep him talking.”

  “What will you do?” Doe asked.

  We all turned to Rudy, who was staring out the window at the sliver of light, barely visible from this angle. She handed the bat to Doe.

  “I have an idea,” she said. “One of you should take the bat, and give me that recorder. Then, just look for my signal.”

  “Which will be what?” Blair snapped.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll know it,” she replied.

  Everyone paused and looked out the window towards the solitary light that we believed marked Dana’s forthcoming grave.

  “C’mon, let’s do this,” Rudy prodded. “We’ll cut through the maintenance yard. Then, Julia, you go first
. Doe, you cut around to the left and Blair to the right. You guys take the baseball bat. Maybe between the four of us, we can stop him, stall him, or do enough damage to hurt him.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Blair murmured.

  It didn’t really seem like much of a plan, but we didn’t have time for a better one. We climbed out into the cold and assembled on the driver’s side of the Mercedes. The wind had finally dissipated, replaced by light snowflakes. Somewhere a dog barked, and in the background, the sound of traffic on NE 4th Street was dulled, making it feel as if we were on another planet.

  I looked gravely at my fellow heroes in the dark, my nerves on alert. “You guys are the best friends a girl ever had.”

  “Oh, shut up!” Rudy snapped. “We’re all going to be fine. Use your flashlight only until you get onto the cemetery grounds. Keep it focused right at your feet, so he’s less likely to see it. Once you’re through the maintenance yard, you’ll have to turn it off.”

  I nodded and flicked on the small flashlight. We moved up the street to where a locked gate extended across the road. “Now what?” I said, reaching out and fingering a chain and padlock.

  “Hold on,” Rudy said. She moved to the end of the gate, where it butted up against a tall row of bushes. “Over here,” she whispered. “We’ll have to slip through.” She pushed the bush back, giving us about a foot and a half.

  “Are you kidding?” I said in a hoarse whisper. “I’m not that thin.”

  “Suck it in,” Blair said. “You can do it.”

  I stood up straight, pulled in my stomach and crammed into the narrow space. I got stuck. Rudy pushed, and I popped out the other side, leaving my wool coat a little worse for wear. One by one, the others followed.

  Rudy nodded for me to move ahead, so I began moving slowly up a dirt road that led into the maintenance yard, feeling very much alone and vulnerable. I left the hood on my coat down so that I could see and hear better, but my ears quickly started to go numb. The flashlight gave me enough light to avoid killing myself, but it wasn’t easy going. The ground was uneven, and I had to be careful I didn’t trip – not my strong point.