by Amy Vansant
“Yes, I think so. You know, I think I forgot something in the car—”
“I don’t think so,” said Simone, pulling a gun from behind her back. She pointed it at them. “Put your hands up where I can see them.”
“What’s this?” asked Declan, raising his hands.
“And where is Seamus?” asked Charlotte.
Simone reached up with her free hand and pulled the dark wig from her head, revealing blonde hair beneath pinned in a flat bun. She motioned the gun at Stephanie. “You too.”
“Declan, I’d like you to meet my mother, Jamie Moriarty,” said Stephanie, raising her hands.
Charlotte stared at the striking older woman pointing the gun at her chest. “Moriarty?” she asked, looking at Stephanie. “So you’re technically Stephanie Moriarty?”
Stephanie shrugged. “I suppose so. For as long as I’m alive.”
Charlotte closed her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What?”
“You know, the whole Sherlock’s arch nemesis thing.”
Stephanie scoffed. “My, don’t we have an inflated sense of our detective abilities—”
“Shut up!” barked Jamie. “All of you. Empty your pockets to the floor.”
Charlotte made a show of checking her pocket while trying to find a way to dial the phone inside. There wasn’t much room to work, and she made a note to wear looser shorts in the future.
“Pull it out,” said Jamie, nodding the gun in Charlotte’s direction.
She pulled out her phone. “Can I throw it on the sofa? If I drop it on the hardwood it will break and I don’t have insurance.”
Jamie scowled. “On an iPhone? That’s crazy.”
Charlotte tossed her phone onto the sofa, trying her best to make it land face down. If a phone call was in progress, she didn’t want to telegraph it.
Jamie walked past the group and stood behind them.
“Eyes forward. Walk down the hall. First room on the right.”
The three looked at each other and Declan took the lead. As they passed the entrance to the kitchen, Declan glanced to his right and paused. Tight on his heels, Charlotte followed his gaze and spotted Seamus splayed on the tile floor. She watched his back, hoping to see it rise and fall with his breath.
“Keep walking!” snapped Jamie.
Stephanie jumped forward and smacked into the back of Charlotte. Charlotte caught her balance against Declan and then followed him into the first room on the right.
The room was empty but for what looked like a ballet bar mounted waist high on one wall.
“Line up against the bar,” said Jamie, motioning with the gun. Holding the weapon aloft in her left hand, she rummaged in the closet across from them, her gaze on them never wavering. After a moment, she pulled two pairs of handcuffs from the closet and threw them to Stephanie.
“Cuff them both to the bar.”
Stephanie grabbed Charlotte’s raised wrist and pulled it down until it was close enough to snap the cuffs to the bar.
“You maybe could have argued with her for a second,” whispered Charlotte.
Stephanie ignored her and moved to Declan. Before she could cuff him, he grabbed her and pulled her arm behind her back.
“Ow!” she protested.
“Drop the gun or I’ll snap her neck,” he said, his arm around her throat.
“She’s the one who wants me dead, genius,” said Stephanie. “Remember?”
“You wouldn’t kill her anyway,” added Jamie, staring pointedly at Stephanie. “He’s too nice, right? He’s Superman.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Declan asked.
“Let’s put it this way, Superman. Let her go or I’ll shoot your girlfriend.” Jamie moved the gun to point it at Charlotte.
Declan released Stephanie. She snapped the handcuffs shut on his wrist, locking him to the wall.
“Sorry.” She turned to her mother. “Now what?”
Jamie sighed. “Now we talk. Come with me.” She left the room.
Stephanie looked at Declan. “I won’t let her hurt you,” she whispered.
“Um, hello,” said Charlotte, waving the hand that wasn’t cuffed.
Stephanie turned and walked out of the room. “Of course; I’ll do my best for you.”
“And Seamus!” called Charlotte after her. She turned in time to see Declan slide his cuff to the end of the bar and begin tugging on it. It didn’t budge.
“Help me,” he said, grunting.
She slid beside him and they counted to three before yanking on the bar. Still, no movement.
“Does she have this thing anchored to the earth’s core?” said Declan, panting from the effort.
“Drop it or I’ll break her neck,” said Charlotte, imitating Declan’s tough-guy voice.
He rolled his eyes. “What was I supposed to do?”
She hugged him with her free arm. “I’m just kidding. It was a nice try. Thank you for not letting her shoot me just so you could break Stephanie’s neck.”
“Very funny. This is serious. This woman is the Puzzle Killer. She won’t have any qualms about killing us.”
“I know. I know. This is how I deal with stress.”
“And what about Seamus? Could you see anything?”
“I think I saw him breathing. I didn’t see any blood, did you?”
Declan shook his head. “No.”
“Is it me, or did she have a French accent that has since disappeared?”
“Like her dark hair.”
“What are we going to do?”
Declan kissed her on her upturned forehead.
“Really? We could die and I get the mom-checking-for-a-fever kiss?”
He leaned down and gave her a lingering kiss on the lips.
“This is how I deal with stress.”
She smiled. “Thank you. Much better. Now, pull?”
He nodded and wrapped his hands around the end of the metal bar.
“Pull.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Following Jamie, Stephanie returned to the living room. As she passed the kitchen she saw that Seamus remained motionless on the floor.
Her mother stood behind the sofa, in front of the door, gun at her side. “We need to talk.”
Stephanie scoffed. “I’d say.”
“Let’s make a deal. Help me get rid of the three in there and I won’t kill you. Is body dumping covered by attorney-client privilege?”
Stephanie stared at her mother. “I can’t trust you as far as I can throw you. I help you get rid of those three, and when we’re done dumping them, you’ll push me in behind them.”
Jamie shook her head. “Look, I only told Alex I’d kill you to buy some time. I need to find and kill him.”
Stephanie put her hands in her pockets and felt a smooth object. She felt the stress building inside her give way, as if the breeze ruffling the surface of her waters had suddenly died. She felt calm.
She noticed a liquor cabinet against the wall. “Do you have any more of that bourbon?”
“I’m sure I do.”
Stephanie walked to the cabinet and retrieved a bottle while her mother stood guardedly, a few feet away.
“Glasses?” she asked.
“Kitchen.”
“Two?”
Jamie stared at her as if considering the offer. “Sure. I could use a drink.”
Stephanie walked into the kitchen and, stepping over Seamus’ motionless body, found two whiskey tumblers in the cabinet. She returned to the living room, poured, and handed one to her mother, who took it with the hand not holding the gun.
“Cheers,” she said, holding up her glass.
Jamie tapped hers, raised the glass to her lips, and shot it back.
“Funny thing about death,” said Stephanie after finishing.
“What’s that?” Jamie set her empty glass on the cabinet.
“It makes you do things you never thought you would.”
“What are you
talking about?”
“Take Debbie, my adopted mother, for example. She hid all your secrets from me my entire life. I didn’t know I was adopted. I didn’t know my mother was alive. And I certainly didn’t know my mother was the Puzzle Killer.”
Jamie pursed her lips. “It’s not the sort of thing we felt was appropriate to share with you.”
“Naturally. But the thing is, dying Debbie was on so many drugs. Drugs that made her very chatty. That’s when she told me about you.”
“So you knew I existed before Alex sent me to you?”
“I knew much more than that. When I went through Debbie’s papers, I also discovered how to contact you myself. You know, that emergency number you gave her for when she needed money?”
“The money I gave her was for you.”
“Right. I’m sure I got every penny. But imagine my surprise when I discovered that you were nearby.” Stephanie grit her teeth. “You were right here. For years. And you never visited me.”
“You weren’t even in town most of that time. You were at school...and then you ran away with that golf pro—”
“I was here most of the time. I needed you, and you were a few miles away. This may come as a shock, but the on-again, off-again meth head you left me with wasn’t exactly winning any Mother of the Year awards.”
“She did her job—”
“And now I find out you’re a Federal Marshal? A Federal Marshal who sent every sicko on the East Coast to the town where she hid her daughter?”
Jamie chuckled. “What better way to hide from the law but under its nose?” She sighed. “Look, we have a lot to do. Is there a point to this story?”
Stephanie nodded. “Oh there is...if you haven’t figured it out already.”
“Figured it out?” Jamie’s head tilted and she squinted at her daughter. “You said you discovered how to contact me, but you never called me as my daughter. In fact, I contacted you, after seeing Alex’s ad in the paper.”
“Quite a coincidence, don’t you think? That the guy trying to find you would use your daughter as a go between?”
“I, I assumed he’d found out about you somehow. It’s the only reason I took him seriously—” Jamie’s voice trailed off.
“Come on, use that big brain of yours, Mom. You can put the pieces of this puzzle together.”
“It’s something that’s been bothering me. How could he have known about you? Did Debbie—?”
“The fact Debbie never did tell anyone is a miracle. You left me with a bit of a wild card there, but no. Not Debbie. She was terrified of you.”
Jamie put her free hand over her open mouth. “You?”
“There we go.”
“You’re Alex?” Her gaze dropped to the floor and then rocketed back to meet her daughter’s. “You killed someone with an alligator?”
Stephanie smiled. “This little knife didn’t fall far from the drawer.”
“No.”
Jamie dropped the hand covering her mouth and Stephanie realized her mother had been hiding a smile of sheer delight. She couldn’t have looked happier if she’d just won the lottery. Or whatever news might make her mother happy. Probably not the lottery. Maybe a shiny new knife or something.
Her mother pointed at her. “You’re Alex!”
“I’m Alex.”
“Stephanie! That’s wonderful!”
Stephanie jumped as her mother moved forward and embraced her. She pulled away and took a step back.
“You think it’s wonderful that I was taunting you? Blackmailing you?”
“Yes! But wait, how did you know my whole resume?”
“I followed you to your storage locker after you killed the landscaper.”
“That was you?”
“That’s where I found your journal.”
Jamie grinned and slapped her thigh. “And my cypher key is Stephanie.”
“Yes. That made it easy. And how heartwarming.”
“But why get my attention with murders when you could have contacted me any time?” She coughed and placed her hand on her chest.
“It was a test. You failed.”
“I failed because I didn’t figure out it was you all along?” She looked around the room and wiped her brow. “Is it hot in here?”
“No. And no, you didn’t fail because you didn’t realize I was the killer. You failed because you agreed to kill me to save your own hide.”
“In my defense, I didn’t know how interesting you’d turn out to be. I even killed a guy for you. Sort of. Because you told me you wanted no harm to come to Charlotte.”
“What are you babbling about?”
“Nevermind. It’s a long story. I kept a baseball. I’ll show you some time.”
“Let’s get back to the problems at hand. Bottom line—you were going to kill me.”
Jamie shrugged. “Guilty as charged. You knew too much.”
“I’m your daughter.”
“I—” Jamie swallowed and a spasm rippled through her body. She reached for the cabinet and knocked her empty glass off the edge. It shattered on the tile floor.
Stephanie watched. “Something wrong?”
Jamie fell to her knees and the gun slipped from her hand. She looked up. “What have you done?”
Stephanie squatted and stared into her mother’s watering eyes. She pulled the empty vial from her pocket. “I’m pretty good with poisons. That one’s cyanide. Like it? Looks like I had just enough left, I wasn’t sure.”
“You—” Jamie shuddered. “But now I can teach you how to stay free, alive, we could be...partners—”
She collapsed forward, reaching for Stephanie’s foot.
Stephanie took a step back. “I have a question for you, Mom.”
Jamie rolled on her back, her eyes narrowing. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have poisoned me,” she whispered.
Stephanie’s hands curled to fists on either side of her body and she braced herself. “Why let me live at all?”
Her mother took a ragged breath. “What?”
“Why let me live at all? Why have a baby?”
A smile curled on Jamie’s lips. “It was an accident. And then an experiment.”
Stephanie crouched to better hear her mother’s weakening voice. “An experiment in what?”
Her mother’s eyes shifted to the left and she stared out the window for a moment before answering. “I wanted to know if a baby could make me feel.”
Stephanie pushed the side of her mother’s head with her finger to force her to make eye contact. “Should I assume since you gave me away that the experiment failed?”
Jamie nodded, her breath steady but belabored.
“Why give me away? Why not kill me? Toss me in a river?”
Stephanie thought her mother was choking. It took her a moment to register the sound was wheezy laughter. With her limited breath, Jamie had begun to chortle, her mouth open, smiling like a carnival clown.
“What’s so funny?” asked Stephanie, rising anger causing her head to ring with a high-pitched whistle.
Jamie coughed and then stopped laughing long enough to answer.
“The hard part was over. And...and I thought you’d make a great organ donor.” She burst into another cluster of coughs mixed with peals of laughter.
Stephanie felt the blood drain from her face. “You what?”
“You know, in case. A liver...a heart...a living donor...a not so living donor. We have a history of cancer in the family, you know.”
“How would I know about my family?”
Laughter bounced inside Stephanie’s skull. She stood and put her hands on either side of her head, covering her ears, trying to drown out her mother’s merriment.
Even through her self-imposed ear muffs, Stephanie heard the crash in the back bedroom. She dropped her hands and oriented herself. She was in the living room. She looked down. Her mother was still, her chest unmoving, a smile still on her lips.
There was another crash.
Stepha
nie ran down the hall.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Charlotte and Declan were on their butts. They had succeeded in pulling the bar from the wall, but the chunk of wall that fell with it made it impossible to slide the cuffs off the end.
Declan kicked at the drywall from the end of the pipe as Stephanie ran into the room.
“Stephanie!” said Charlotte, spotting her.
Stephanie remained silent, staring at them. Her body was standing in front of them, but to Charlotte, it seemed her mind was elsewhere.
“Where’s your mother?” asked Declan.
“She’s...” Stephanie looked back toward the living room. “She’s dead.”
“Dead?” echoed Charlotte.
Stephanie looked at her. She cleared her throat and her lost expression hardened. “Hold on.” She moved to the closet and searched the shelves there. “I’ll find the key.”
Declan continued to stomp at the end of the metal bar as Charlotte did her best to give her wrist slack to avoid the cuffs jerking at her flesh. The drywall gave way and they could see the metal plate attached to the end.
“That’s not going to work,” said Charlotte.
“Wait! I found it,” said Stephanie. She moved to Declan and unlocked his cuffs. He rubbed his wrist and strode out of the room as Charlotte was released. She stood and followed Declan into the kitchen. He knelt beside Seamus, lifting his uncle and propping his torso against the kitchen cabinets. He slapped him on the cheeks.
“Seamus. Seamus. Wake up.”
Seamus’ head began rocking from side to side and he jumped, raising his fist to strike as his eyes popped open.
“Whoa! Whoa!” said Declan, throwing up his open palms and leaning back.
“Declan!” said Seamus. “Where am I?” He looked around. “Simone.”
Declan stood and held out a hand to help up his uncle.
“What happened?” asked Charlotte.
Seamus rubbed at his head. “She told me to turn around. Held a gun to my head and a rag to my face.” He nodded toward the counter where a small brown bottle sat next to a green kitchen towel.
Charlotte bent down to peer at the label without touching the bottle. “Chloroform.”
“Where is she?” asked Seamus.
All gazes moved to Stephanie, who stood just outside the kitchen in the hall.
