by Vicki Delany
An anonymous call to 9-1-1? That would work, but only if I could find a place to call anonymously from. Phone boxes were not exactly sitting on every corner as they’d been in the days of Superman, a.k.a. Clark Kent, and at this time of night, any teenagers hanging around street corners were probably not the sort to hand me their phones.
Even if I did place such a call, the cops might only get around to following it up in a week or two.
I groaned and shut the iPad. I couldn’t sit on this. A killer was out there; I knew who it was and why it had been done. I had to tell the police what I knew. If they laughed at me, so be it.
Violet leapt to her feet when I did.
“Okay,” I said, “you can come. Car!”
She danced in excitement.
I grabbed my keys and headed for the back door, but the bell rang before I reached it. West London’s a safe, low crime town. I never bother to check who’s there before opening the door, and my mind was so occupied, I didn’t even peek through the window next to it. I threw the door open. Violet dashed out, more excited about getting to the car and going for a ride than greeting a visitor.
“Sorry to bother you at home,” Ruby said. “But I have to talk to you.”
“I’m going out. Can this wait?”
“No, it can’t.” She pushed me aside and stepped into my house. “I quit.”
“Fine. You needn’t bother coming to work tomorrow. I’ll put a check for payment owed in the mail.”
“You don’t want to know why I’m quitting?”
“Not particularly.”
“Nice house.” She kept her eyes fixed on my face. The motion light over the garage had come on, and she was a black shape surrounded by a circle of harsh light, standing firm in my doorway. Violet yipped at me to hurry up.
“We like it,” I said.
“You live here alone?”
“With my uncle Arthur.”
“Who’s out of town, Fiona tells me.”
“Who’s out of town, yes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment at the police station, Charmaine.”
Her right eye twitched. She kicked back, and the door slammed shut behind her. “So you know.”
“Yes, I do. You’re Rebecca Charmaine Nichols, granddaughter of the late Kurt Kent Jr. I assume you paid me a visit in the early hours of this morning.”
She said nothing, but the edges of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. She didn’t look much like her uncle Colin or her cousin Sapphire, but I’d seen the family resemblance in the curl of the lip: Colin when he first had a look at my shop, then again at lunch; Sapphire as she faced down a pack of nosy reporters; Ruby when she could scarcely contain how much she disliked working in my shop. In my initial study of the affairs of the Kent family, I’d read that Kurt’s daughter, Judy, had a daughter of her own. I’d seen a photograph of Judy at a horse show, and I’d noticed that Judy kept the Kent surname after her marriage, but I hadn’t bothered to try to find out her daughter’s surname, nor had I tried to find a picture of the daughter. A serious oversight on my part. That Judy had no involvement or apparent interest in the Kent companies in no way meant that her daughter did not. Another bad mistake.
Ruby’s application to work at the Emporium and her supporting documentation had given her name as Rebecca C. Nichols. She preferred, she told me, to be addressed by her childhood nickname, Ruby.
“I assume Ruby is a play on your cousin Sapphire’s name.”
“Stupid name. Stupid spoiled girl. What little money my family has left goes to keeping her in party clothes and deluxe Caribbean vacations.” Sheer, unbridled hatred for Sapphire shone deep in Ruby’s eyes.
Violet finally realized that I wasn’t coming, and she barked to be let back inside.
“I thought it’d be fun to let you call me Ruby. No one has, not since a kid at school did. She said a ruby was much less valuable than a sapphire. Too bad about what happened to her face.” I couldn’t suppress a shiver. Ruby noticed, and her lip turned up in a grin. “I read in the paper that my dear cousin’s in the hospital. Poor Sapphire, she’s all alone. No one to fuss over her or pay attention to her. She must be so unhappy. I might pay her a visit, bring flowers maybe. Accidents happen in hospitals, or so I’ve been told.”
“What do you want with me?” I said. “I’ve no interest in your family’s problems.”
“The cops have been paying a lot of attention to you, Gemma. At first I thought that was good, so I hung around, figuring you’d let me know what they were thinking. But you don’t talk much, do you?”
“I talk when I have something to say. And someone interesting to say it to. You could have pretended to be a Holmes fan. When I interviewed you for the job, you told me your dad had taught you all about Sherlock and the Holmes canon and that you loved it as much as he did. I’m assuming you meant your grandfather, and that although he might have tried to teach you, you didn’t love it, did you?” I remembered the customer who assumed I had to be a Sherlockian since I owned a Holmes-themed bookstore. “He intended to leave you the Beeton’s, thinking you’d appreciate it. But it was all a pretext to get close to him, wasn’t it? Let him think you valued his collection, and you’d look after it once he was gone. You always intended to sell it the minute he was in his grave.”
“Stupid old man. Up there in his stupid library, chuckling over a stack of old books. He talked about Sherlock Holmes as though he’d been a real person. What was the harm? I played along. I told him I loved all that stuff. I could quote lines from the books, and he liked that. He wrote me into his will, with a special bequest. And then that woman, that nurse, came along and tricked him. Tricked me out of what’s mine.” As she talked, Ruby’s eyes widened and a light came into them. The light, I thought, of madness. Of jealously of the pretty, popular cousin, of plans thwarted, of years of pretending to care about her grandfather and his hobby coming to naught. Colin Kent had told me he suspected someone had caused Kurt’s death. Had that been Mary Ellen, as he thought? Or Ruby, a.k.a. Rebecca Charmaine, trying to hurry her inheritance along?
She stood between me and the door. Violet had stopped barking. She’d probably gone off to sniff under the bushes. My phone was in my pocket. I felt for it. I pressed the power button and swiped the screen to bring up the password page. I knew the location of the emergency feature, but without looking, I’d never be able to find the right places to type 9-1-1. The moment I pulled the phone out, Ruby would be on me.
That she had come here to kill me, I had no doubt. I kept my face impassive, and my breathing under control.
“I saw you and Jayne having your private meeting with that cop this afternoon. I saw the way you looked at me when you came back into the shop after he left. I knew you knew, Gemma.”
Ruby had interpreted my expression, but she’d gotten it totally wrong. I had been annoyed with her, but not for anything in particular. Most of all, I had been exasperated with myself.
I took a step backward. The kitchen counter was about six feet behind me. I hadn’t washed the dishes yet, and the chef’s knife I’d used to chop vegetables was resting on the cutting board. I could reach it in a few steps.
As if she’d read my mind, Ruby pulled a knife out of her pocket. It wasn’t very big, but it was sharp. I swallowed a flash of panic. I have a lot of skills, but knife fighting isn’t one of them.
“Give it up, Charmaine,” I said. “You’re right. I told Detective Ashburton who you really are. If you . . . hurt me, he’ll know it was you.”
“Then why hasn’t he come to arrest me?”
“Because he’s checking my story, of course. They don’t act without evidence. He phoned a few minutes ago and said he’s learned something important and is coming over.”
“You said you had an appointment at the police station,” she replied. Her voice was calm, and her hand did not shake.
I couldn’t believe I’d made such a stupid mistake.
Her eyes narrowed, her hand moved, and I knew I’d
run out of time.
I dodged to my right, moving forward as the knife swung. I lifted my left leg and kicked her, landing a solid blow in the center of her knee. She screamed and staggered, but she didn’t fall. The knife swung at my leg, but I pulled it back in time. Off balance, I stumbled across the floor. I reached the counter and lunged for the chef’s knife. My fingers closed around the handle, and I gripped it firmly. I whirled around in time to see Ruby’s blade descending toward my neck. I pulled back and held up my own weapon.
“Drop it,” I said. “You’ve lost. Get out of here.”
“I can’t let you tell them about me.”
“Are you crazy?” The question, I knew, was redundant. “Killing me won’t help you. Everything I know, the police will find out soon enough.”
I screamed as loudly as I could, hoping one of the neighbors would hear and call 9-1-1. This wasn’t the sort of neighborhood where people scurried away minding their own business at the first hint of trouble. We kept an eye out for each other. Unfortunately, these old houses were well built. Practically soundproof. Outside, Violet had started to bark, her tone getting increasingly hysterical. If someone heard her, they might come to see what was wrong . . . eventually. By which time it would be too late for me.
Ruby feigned a move to her left. I was watching her eyes and knew she planned to go right, and so I was ready for her and slipped out of the way.
We couldn’t stand here all night. One of us would soon get tired, and judging by the fire in her eyes, it wasn’t going to be Ruby. I had to make a run for it. I had the advantage of knowing the layout of the house. The loo had a lock on the door. If I could shut myself in, I could call for help. The question was, would I be able to reach it in time?
My back was pressed up against the counter; the knife was in my right hand. The top drawer held table linens. I might be able to throw a napkin over Ruby’s knife hand and disable her that way, but it was a long shot. I mentally pulled up a diagram of the counter top behind me. The plastic cutting board, cucumber peelings, carrot tops, the tomato core, an unused tomato. The glass bottle of dressing would have been a good projectile, but I’d put it back in the fridge. The tomato. I’d taken two tomatoes out of the bowl but only used one.
I couldn’t turn around, and I couldn’t hesitate or I’d be done for. I reached behind me with my left hand, and my fingers closed on the tomato. “Catch!” I yelled as I threw it at her head. Instinctively, Ruby ducked. I broke for the hall.
I’d only taken a few steps when I heard a shout, a scream, a bark, glass breaking, and the solid thud of a body hitting the floor.
I spun around, still gripping my knife.
Jayne Wilson stood at the mudroom door. A bottle of wine had shattered at her feet and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream rolled across the floor. She held her phone to her ear while Violet ran in circles around the kitchen, barking in a tone I’d never heard from her before.
Charmaine Nichols, a.k.a. Ruby, lay face down on the floor. Her arms were thrown out, and the knife was on the far side of the room. A man sat on her.
“Gosh, Gemma,” Robbie said, “looks like we arrived just in time.”
Chapter 19
I dropped into a kitchen chair. Violet licked my hand, and then she went to see what game Robbie and Ruby were playing. Jayne knelt in front of me. “Do you need an ambulance, Gemma?”
I shook my head.
“Why don’t you give me that?” Her voice was very calm, as though she were talking to a fractious toddler.
At the moment, I rather liked being spoken to as though I were a fractious toddler. I nodded.
“Gemma?” She stretched out her hand. I was gripping the chef’s knife so hard my knuckles were white. I handed it to her.
I gave myself a mental slap and took in the scene.
Ruby lay on the floor, face down and bellowing. Robbie sat on her while she buckled and screamed and her arms flailed. Violet ran forward and back, encouraging Ruby to get up and chase her.
“What brings you here?” I asked Jayne. “Not that I’m not pleased to see you.”
“You were so despondent this afternoon when you left the tea room, and then you didn’t want to come to the movies with us. I didn’t think you should be alone, so I said to Robbie, ‘Let’s skip the movie and surprise Gemma.’ We brought wine and ice cream.”
I studied the mess on the floor. “So you did.”
I leaned forward, and we wrapped our arms around each other.
Dear Jayne. I am an introvert. Jayne is an extrovert. When introverts are down, they need to be alone. When extroverts are down, they crave company.
Another aspect of extroverts is that they don’t understand introverts. If not for the not-incidental bit about needing to be saved from a knife-wielding, Holmes-hating manic, the last thing I would have wanted tonight was a visit from Jayne and Robbie. Even bearing wine and ice cream.
Sirens sounded in the distance, getting closer. Jayne and I separated, and we both got to our feet. Robbie put his hand on the back of Ruby’s head, and her screams were muffled by the kitchen floor.
“Help’s coming,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re good here, aren’t we, lady?”
I couldn’t make out what Ruby said, but it was unlikely to have been polite.
“I’ll go out and meet them,” Jayne said.
* * *
I suspected that Ryan wouldn’t let me sit in on the interview, but I figured it was worth a try.
No such luck.
“Why don’t you go to bed, Gemma?” he said. “You can come down in the morning and make your statement. You need to rest.”
“I’m hardly in the mood to sleep, Ryan. It’s obvious that Ruby, whose real name is Rebecca Charmaine, killed Mary Ellen to get the magazine and searched my house looking for it. But . . .”
“It’s not obvious to me,” Ryan said. “Or to Louise. Thus we have to talk to her, without you present.”
I ignored him, “What I don’t know is where Elaine Kent comes into it, or why she had to die.”
“Believe it or not, Gemma, we might get around to asking her that without you prompting us.”
We were in my living room. In answer to Jayne’s 9-1-1 call, uniformed officers had swarmed all over my kitchen, and a screaming Ruby was dragged away. I’d told the responding officers to call Estrada and Ashburton, as this was directly related to an active murder investigation. Jayne had taken a highly reluctant Violet to my office and shut her in to keep her out of the way of the police. I’d been offered medical attention but turned it down. A few deep breaths, and I’d been once again in control of myself.
Robbie puffed up his chest and explained to the police how he’d brought Ruby down with a tackle he’d learned on the high school football team while Jayne’s blue eyes glowed with adoration. My plans to convince Jayne to dump the flakey Robbie in favor of solid, respectable Andy were clearly suffering a setback.
Jayne put the kettle on, but we didn’t have to wait long before Louise Estrada arrived and ordered us out of my kitchen so the police could gather evidence. She was dressed in a black leather skirt that fell a couple of inches short of her knees and a frilly red blouse cinched at the waist by a thick black belt. The top two buttons on the blouse were done up, but they were in the wrong button holes, giving the collar a lopsided appearance. The third button had missed the hole all together. Her face was heavily made up, and her bright-red lipstick was smeared, indicating she’d tried to wipe it off without benefit of a mirror. Her hair had been pulled back into a rough ponytail and secured with a rubber band, but her bangs were so stiff with hairspray they didn’t move as she strode into my house, shouting orders. Her bare feet were stuffed into slightly dusty trainers. The rubber band would have been in her purse, and the shoes in her car for just such an emergency.
She’d been on a date. A date she’d gone to a lot of trouble to dress up for but to which she’d taken her own car.
She caugh
t me looking and gave me a ferocious glare. I smiled in return. She barked at Officer Johnson to get us out of the kitchen.
Ryan arrived a few minutes later and refused to allow me to go to the station with them. He and Estrada left Johnson to take photographs of the kitchen. Once they’d all gone, including Jayne and Robbie, I freed Violet and put the kettle on.
I looked at the fresh chaos of my kitchen. I still hadn’t tidied up the house after Ruby had tossed the place on Tuesday night and then the police had stomped all through it. No time like the present, I thought as I gathered together cleaning equipment.
* * *
My phone rang at four AM. I answered right away.
“I figured you’d be still up,” Ryan said.
I put down my book. The house was clean and tidy once again, and it was a good night to reread The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, an old favorite of mine. “Tonight’s events were not conducive to a proper night’s sleep.”
He laughed. “Gemma, I’ve forgotten how much I love the way you talk.”
“What about the way I talk?”
“Never mind. We’re done here, for now. If you put the coffee on, I’ll come around.”
“I can do better than coffee. Have you eaten?”
“No.”
I was in the kitchen, cracking eggs, slicing green onions, and grating cheese when headlights lit up the driveway, the motion detector came on, and Ryan’s firm steps crossed the courtyard. Violet and I met him at the mudroom door, and I handed him a mug of hot black coffee.
He patted the dog and accepted the drink with a smile.
“Have a seat,” I said. “Scrambled eggs and toast is about the best I can do at this time of night.”
He dropped into a chair. Stubble was thick on his jaw, and his eyes were rimmed red. I poured myself a cup of tea and joined him at the table. “Is Ruby talking?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s talking so fast, we’re having trouble keeping up. She’s a pile of grievances looking for a sympathetic ear to unload all her troubles on. Louise is good at making suspects talk, particularly women. She can play the best-friends card like I’ve never seen.”
