Buck was even farther away, digging a hole on the opposite property line. A balled up Blue Spruce was lying on its side near him. I was happy to see him showing a little interest in the landscaping of the yard, which was bare and unattractive. The back of his t-shirt as he leaned into the shovel was soaked in sweat. He was deeply engrossed in his work.
“They are both in the back yard, and involved enough in what they’re doing to give us a few minutes in the garage. Let’s hurry in there and get out quickly,” I whispered to Sheila.
She nodded her head and followed me to the side door. She stepped back and let me enter first, perhaps afraid there was a dog resting in there. That thought had crossed my mind too, but I was relieved when we were met by silence as we stepped over the threshold.
Sure enough, the black Mustang was parked inside. I motioned for Sheila to follow me around to the front of the car, and when we got there I pointed at the red and yellow bumper sticker on the front of the car.
“Is prayer your steering wheel, or just your spare tire?” The sticker read.
“If I remember right, that’s a quote by Corrie Ten Boom,” Sheila said quietly.
“Who?” I was always amazed by the treasure-trove of fascinating, and sometimes useless, information Sheila carried around in her brain. I’d often encouraged her to try out for Jeopardy, hoping some day her knowledge of little-known trivia would pay off.
“Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch holocaust survivor who spent time in a couple different concentration camps. She helped a lot of Jews escape the Nazis during World War Two. I remember she wrote an autobiography which was later turned into a movie,” Sheila explained.
“You really do need to get out more,” I told Sheila. I liked to read too, but memorizing the Encyclopedia Britannica was not my cup of tea.
“Hey, it’s interesting stuff.”
“It is interesting, I’ll admit. I’m just blown away by how much you’re able to remember. I can’t remember if I brushed my teeth this morning.”
“You did. Now let’s get out of here. We’ve accomplished what we came to do.”
“Okay. I’ll call Wyatt and let him know what we’ve discovered after we get back in the car. We should probably just tell him we saw Buck’s car on the road, not in his garage, because that would involve a lot more explaining than I’m prepared to do.”
Walking back around the side of the car, I happened to glance inside the cab of the Mustang. My eye caught a reflection of light glinting off an object in the little cubbyhole located in the center console of the car. Out of curiosity, I leaned over to take a closer look. Among other small items in the compartment, including a paper clip, a lighter, and about a dollar’s worth of change, was a Black Hills Gold ring, very similar to my engagement ring, except for the absence of a diamond with flanking rubies.
“Sheila! I can’t prove it, but I’m almost positive that ring belonged to Pastor Steiner. He had it on his right ring finger as he lay in the casket at his funeral. I assumed it was his wedding band because it was such a close match to the ones Stone and I bought. We wanted something different, and I was surprised at how much Thurman’s ring looked like ours.”
“But if he had it on at his funeral, how can Buck be in possession of it now?” Sheila asked. “Could he have removed it from Steiner’s hand before they closed the lid on the casket?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I remember seeing Buck and his wife at the funeral. I guess it’s possible he slipped it off the pastor’s finger when he walked up to view the body, and nobody noticed it was missing when they closed the lid to lower the box into the ground.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s possible. Ballsy, but possible.”
“Do you think there’s any significance of this discovery? Or could Buck just have coveted the ring, and wanted to steal it to make it his own? I’ll have to run the matter by Wyatt when I call him about the bumper sticker. I think it’s an odd coincidence, don’t you?”
“Well, you know how I feel about coincidences.”
Just as we stepped around the car toward the side door, six fluorescent lights on the ceiling of the garage flicked on. Sheila gasped behind me. I froze in my tracks.
“What are you two doing snooping around my wife’s car?” Buck asked, clearly angry. “I heard voices in here as I was coming to get a spade. What are you even doing in our garage?”
“Uh, well, we’re just, uh—”
“Yes?”
“We knocked on the front door and no one answered, but we could hear voices so we thought you might be in the garage when we saw the door was open.” It wasn’t much, as excuses go, but it was the best I could come up with. I could hear Sheila breathing heavily behind me.
“What did you want to see me about?” Buck asked.
“Actually, I just wanted to ask Sandy if she remembered me depositing a check from my former bank last week. I can’t find it and thought maybe I’d already deposited it, and then forgotten I’d done so in my haste to get everything ready in time for my wedding this afternoon,” I explained feebly. “Oh, my, look at the time! The ceremony is at three, so we’d better get going. I’ll speak with her next time I’m at the bank. Sorry for the intrusion, Mr. Webster.”
“No, just stay right here,” Buck demanded. I wasn’t sure if he believed my flimsy story, but the stern expression on his face had softened some. “Sandy is right out back on the patio. I’ll get her. It will only take a few seconds. Since you’re already here, you might as well speak to her.”
When Buck walked out the door, Sheila exhaled noisily. “Oh, my God! I knew this was a bad idea. I don’t suppose we could make a run for it now without looking suspicious. Did you really deposit a check at the bank?”
“Yes, fortunately I did. I recently closed my account at my bank in Shawnee and the check was for the balance of that account. I was transferring it to my new account at the bank where Sandy works. She was the teller at the drive-through window that day.”
“Oh, good, then maybe your story will ring true.”
Within seconds Buck re-entered the garage, followed by his wife. I greeted her warmly, and introduced her to Sheila. I then explained to Sandy my plight about having misplaced my check, and she replied, “Yes, you brought the check to my window to deposit. I remember you telling me you were somehow involved with investigating the death of Thurman Steiner.”
The tone of Sandy’s voice alerted me. Just then a light bulb went on in my brain. “Buck, did you say this Mustang was Sandy’s car?”
“Yeah, I hardly ever drive it. Only on days like today, when my pickup’s in the shop. My truck’s at Boney’s Garage getting a new fuel pump put in it.”
“Why did you want to know whose car it is?” Sandy asked. She sounded suspicious of me, and my interest in her car, and now I was suspicious of her, as well. If this was her car and not her husband’s, was it Sandy who had sped off down Cedar Street shortly after the estimated time of Steiner’s murder? Did she have a connection to the pastor, and if so, what was it? I didn’t recall ever seeing her at the church, or any of the church-related events.
“Oh, no reason, really. I just think it’s an awesome-looking ride, and I was wondering what kind of fuel mileage you got in it. I drive a sports car myself, but I get amazingly good mileage with it.”
“That’s nice,” Sandy said. I could tell she really didn’t give a damn if I got two miles to the gallon, or ninety, but I pretended I really believed she was being sincere.
“I also noticed you have a ring very similar to mine lying in the storage compartment in your console. See?” I held my left arm out for her to admire my ring, which I’d picked up at the jewelers on Thursday after it had been sized. Even though my wrist was in a cast, my fingers were exposed. “I just love Black Hills Gold, don’t you?”
Buck glanced at my ring, and then peered into the cab of the car to look at Sandy’s. “They are a lot alike, aren’t they?”
“I suppose,” Sandy said. She glared at me, a
nd then turned to glare at Buck, as if suddenly convinced we were involved in a conspiracy against her. She never blinked once as her husband spoke again.
“Isn’t that the ring you used to always wear around your neck all the time? Why’d you stop wearing it all of a sudden?”
“Don’t know. Just did.”
“That’s funny,” Buck continued. “I never saw you take it off even once for four or five months, and now you’re not wearing it at all. Where did it even come from?”
“I got it from a friend,” was all Sandy said in response to his question.
“Want to know what’s even funnier?” I asked. “Pastor Steiner had a ring just like it too. Same two-toned gold colors, and same floral pattern. Isn’t that odd? He was actually wearing it in his casket at the funeral. I assumed it was his wedding ring and his children wanted him buried with it out of respect for him and their mother.”
“That really is funny,” Sandy said. She was not laughing, or even smiling. She appeared to catch on to the fact I was putting two and two together. “Hang on a second, Lexie. I have something in the house I want to give you.”
I watched her turn and walk through the doorway that led from the garage into the house. That bad feeling I’d had when we’d entered the vacant warehouse the day before had come back. I didn’t much like the look in Sandy’s eyes when she’d said she had something she wanted to give me. But there was little I could do but stand there and wait.
I glanced from Sheila to Buck. Sheila looked alarmed, and Buck looked perplexed. I would have loved to know what was going through his mind. Before I could dwell on it, however, Sandy rushed back out the door brandishing a very large handgun. I didn’t know if it was a forty-five, a nine-millimeter, or what, only that it reminded me of the pistol Clint Eastwood had carried in the Dirty Harry movie Stone and I had watched recently on HBO.
“What the hell—?” Buck said, as he took a step backward and stumbled over a water hose lying on the floor of the garage. Sheila fell to the floor behind me and began to crawl behind the front right wheel of the Mustang in an attempt to put a ton or two of metal between her and any flying bullets.
“Listen, Sandy,” I said, as calmly as I could manage under the circumstances. “Please put the gun down. Whatever’s bothering you can be discussed and dealt with accordingly. There’s no need to hurt anyone. I’m sure there’s a good reason for whatever you’ve done. I’m going to step over there, and you can hand me the gun. You don’t want to do anything you’ll later regret, and make matters even worse for yourself.”
I took one timid step toward her. She waved the gun at me, and with steel in her eyes, said, “Stand back! If you get any closer to me, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes!”
I had no reason to doubt her. I took a step backward and looked behind the car to see if there was room next to Sheila for me.
“What’s going on?” Buck asked hysterically. “Talk to me, Sandy. Why are you holding my gun?”
Sandy waved the gun my way. “She knows what’s going on. Ask her!”
“No, I don’t know, Sandy,” I confessed. “Please put the gun down and we’ll all pretend this never happened. No one else needs to know.”
“It did happen. And there’s no way you’ll pretend it didn’t, Lexie,” Sandy said. “All three of you, stand together next to that back wall while I think about what I’m going to do with you. Make any sudden moves and I’ll start shooting!”
“But honey—” Buck began.
“Don’t honey me, Buck! I’m sorry, but when you started caring more about winning the state football championship than you cared about me, I decided to have an affair. I met Thurman Steiner at a non-denominational prayer meeting. He was kind and gentle, and not hard on the eyes. He showed a genuine interest in me, and in what I had to say. I decided then and there to make a move on him. He was not opposed to my advances, I might add.”
Buck gasped in pure shock. It suddenly occurred to me that Sandy was about to confess to her part in the death of the pastor, and that Buck, Sheila, and my lives were in imminent danger. I reached in the pocket of my jacket and pressed the “send” button twice on my phone. This would cause it to dial the number from the last call I’d made, which had been to my home phone to speak to Wendy. Hopefully, she or Stone would pick up the phone, figure out where we were, and what was happening, and notify the police.
“I have never cared more for football than you, honey, I swear—”
“Shut up!” Sandy replied. She brushed her long, beautiful red hair back off her shoulders using the barrel of the gun, and then flipped it back around to point at us, aiming it at each one of us in turn. “Anyway, we were having an affair until Thurman tried to break it off with me a couple of weeks ago. He suddenly felt remorseful, and as if he had turned away from God by ‘coveting thy neighbor’s wife,’ being involved in an adulterous affair, and all that crap! He told me he was going to confess his sins to the congregation at church this Sunday. I couldn’t let that happen. It would soon have been all over town, and I’d have ended up jobless, divorced, broke, and desperate. Our marriage wasn’t ideal, Buck, or even particularly happy, but at least it was comfortable financially, and I wasn’t anxious to see it end unless I could’ve convinced Thurman to marry me after the divorce. He refused to even consider it.”
“My God, Sandy!” Buck exclaimed. “What are you saying? Did you kill Pastor Steiner?”
Sandy just stared at her husband as if she were talking to a moron. What part of “I couldn’t let that happen” didn’t he understand? I decided I better get involved in the conversation in case someone was on the other end of my phone call, waiting for a clue to where we were. I was holding the phone in my hand, aimed right at Sandy, because she was too wound up to notice, and I wanted her words to be as clear as possible on the other end of the line. I was praying somebody would be listening to them and send help before it was too late.
“Look, Mrs. Webster, Sheila and I didn’t come over here to your house on Mulberry Street to confront you or accuse you of anything. I’m sure whatever it is you did, a good lawyer will be able to get you off on an insanity plea. It was obviously a crime of passion, and you went temporarily insane. Please put the gun down. If you were to kill all three of us off now, you’d never see the light of day again. In fact, I would be terribly surprised if they didn’t just give you the needle.”
Sandy stopped swaying the gun back and forth from one of us to the next and seemed to reflect for a moment. “You’re right,” she finally said. “My life as I know it is over no matter what I do now. There’s no point in even living.”
She looked down at the gun in her hand for a few seconds and then pointed it at her own temple. She wore an expression of resignation.
“Sandy! Wait!” Buck and I yelled out in unison. Sheila had closed her eyes and placed her hands over her ears. She was probably hoping Sandy would pull the trigger before she changed her mind again and aimed the gun back at us.
“No,” Sandy said. “There’s nothing left for me to do but to end it all. I killed the man in cold blood. I parked my car a couple of blocks away and walked to his house in the dark, wearing my driving gloves. All I could think about was the humiliation and embarrassment it would cause you and the entire town of Rockdale when you found out about my affair with Thurman. I truly loved him, but he’d already made it clear we weren’t going to end up together, and I couldn’t bear to let him confess his sins in church, and bring my world crashing down around my feet.”
“But, honey,” Buck pleaded. “I would have been there for you. I would have forgiven you. I love you more than anything in the world.”
“Yeah, right,” Sandy said, sarcasm dripping off her tongue. She had started her story and was determined to finish it before she committed suicide right in front of us inside the garage. “So, anyway, I knocked on Thurman’s back door and after he’d let me in the house, I hit him on the head with the tire iron out of my trunk. He hollered out, and then s
taggered a bit before falling to the floor. After he lost consciousness, I held a sofa cushion over his face until he stopped breathing. I turned off the outside floodlight and looked out the kitchen window. I saw a car running in the driveway across the street. A man started to get in the car, but then walked back into his house. I didn’t see a sign of anyone else who might witness my departure, so I raced out of the house with the tire iron and back to my car to make a quick get-away. Until now, I actually thought I was going to get away with it and no one would be the wiser. I hadn’t counted on a nosy bitch like you, Lexie, interfering in my business.”
“So where does Steiner’s wedding ring fit into all this?” I asked. After all, I’d already been classified as a nosy bitch, so why not delve even deeper into the situation. I was still confused about the ring and how it ended up in the console of Sandy’s car. “Did you wear it around on a necklace for a while and then give it back to him when he called off the affair? Then, for some reason, you removed it from his finger at the funeral? Didn’t it feel a little weird to you to wear his wedding ring from his marriage to Stella?”
“It wasn’t his wedding ring. He bought us matching rings to wear as a symbol of our love. He found them at a crafts fair when he attended a religious conference in Montana. His wedding ring from his marriage to Stella is in his lockbox at the bank, I think, to pass down to one of his daughters some day. He was wearing his ring like mine when he was buried. I don’t know why he continued to wear it even after he broke it off with me. I stopped wearing mine that day, and it’s been in my car ever since.”
“Where was I during all this?” Buck asked. I could tell he was trying to find a broken link in her story, making it all a gory and vivid figment of her imagination.
Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 04 - With This Ring Page 21
