The Prey Bites Back: A Jesse Watson Mystery Book #8

by Ann Mullen

  Out of the blue, Helene ran over and stomped the foot Mom had just shot, and then quickly backed away.

  Gavin Preston squealed in agony and tried to lurch at her, but couldn’t. All he managed to do was turn over the chair. In one swift movement, Jonathan snatched him upright, drew back, and slapped him across the face. He then turned and said, “Maybe we should let the women have a go at him. We’re not getting anywhere.”

  Mom stepped forward, but Jonathan held up his hand. “I was just kidding, Minnie. Stay back. He looks like he’s harmless in this condition, but he’s not. If he got loose, he’d rip your guts out.”

  “Let him try. I got some pepper spray in my purse. I’ll squirt his eyes out.” She looked at me. “Give me back my purse, Jesse.”

  “What has gotten into you?” I asked, surprised at her behavior. “You’re starting to act like… me.”

  Mom had never been violent to anyone in her whole life, so her actions were a shocker. I dug around in her purse until I found the pepper spray, and then searched for more weapons. After the gun incident, it would not have surprised me to have found a knife hidden amongst her possessions. Finding nothing else, I removed the pepper spray, and handed the purse back to her.

  She innocently took the purse, and before anyone had a chance to stop her, she lunged at Preston and smacked him across the face with it.

  “Geez, Minnie,” Shark said as he grabbed her and tried to pull her away from Preston. “Enough! I think you got your payback, don’t you?”

  Gavin spit blood at Mom and some landed on her arm. “Aids!” she screamed. “I’ve got aids now!” She leered at Gavin and said, “You’ll pay for this young man. If I get aids, you’re going to burn in Hell. God is going to get you for what you’ve done to people. You killed Mae!”

  “I haven’t killed anyone!” Gavin fired back. “You people are crazy!”

  Mom wasn’t herself. She was defiant and ready to do battle. She tussled with Shark, trying to free herself. “Let me go, Shark! This man needs to be taught a lesson, and I’m the one who can do it. I’ll show him what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the stick.”

  “What stick?” Helene asked. “You don’t have a stick, Minnie.”

  “This is like something out of a bad movie,” I said, shaking my head. I looked at Shark. “Would you please escort Mom and Helene out of here before they get us all killed?”

  Before leaving, Mom looked back at Gavin and said, “Go brush your teeth and gargle with some Lysol. Your breath smells worse than donkey do-do.” She laughed and then was led out of the room.

  Once Mom and Helene were gone, we all looked at each other and smiled… well, except for Gavin Preston. He was in too much pain. Between Mom, Helene, and the guys, he’d been worked over. He moaned and groaned like a wounded animal.

  “Wow, Jesse,” Jonathan said. “Your mom has gone off her rocker. I’ve never seen her like this. Normally, she’s so nice. What happened? I think I like her better this way. She’s got spunk. She kinda reminds me of you.”

  “She’s a spitfire all right,” Billy added. “She sure surprised me. Maybe we should let her interrogate Mr. Preston.” He looked in Preston’s direction. “I bet she could do things to him that he’s never had done before.” He sneered at the man. “It’s the quiet ones who’re the most dangerous.” Billy laughed. “Yep, we need to turn her loose on him.”

  “Phew!” I said, looking at Preston. “What’s that smell? You need a bath, and that breath almost makes me gag.”

  The door clinked again and Shark walked back in. “I left your mother and Helene with Gator. He’ll keep them busy with all those monitors. They can see everything that’s going on, and maybe at the same time he can talk them down. They’re both wound up and I didn’t think they needed to be around the kids.” He looked at Jonathan. “What did you give her, man? That pill has made her crazy. Did you give one to Helene, too?”

  “Oh, my God!” I said. “I forgot about the trank. What did you give her?”

  “Tramadol,” Jonathan replied. “It’s a pain killer. Tranks make you feel hung over the next day, but a pain killer usually doesn’t, so I gave her the pain killer. I didn’t know it would affect her like that.”

  “Maybe you should leave the dispensing of medication to someone else,” I joked, and then commented. “Mom obviously shouldn’t take drugs.”

  “I think she did pretty good,” Shark said, looking over at Preston’s foot. “I like your mother.”

  “She can’t see what’s happening here, can she?” I asked. “I mean, if you guys plan to…”

  “No, she can’t,” Jonathan replied. “So don’t worry. Even if they want to see, they won’t be able to. Besides,” he pointed to Preston, “we got everything from him we could. He’s sticking to his story. He says he didn’t kill anyone, and get this, he said Dakota poisoned him.”

  “What?” I questioned, looking back at Preston. “He doesn’t look dead to me. Guess the poison didn’t work.”

  But actually, Preston didn’t look too good. Underneath the bloody face, his skin had grown ashen, he drooled, and his head bobbed. Blood pooled around the foot that Mom had shot. He looked like he was just about done in. His moaning and groaning had slowed down and was now barely a whisper.

  “Why would she poison him?” Billy asked. “They were lovers.”

  “They were,” Shark said, “but that flame started to flicker quickly after Dakota asked him to kill Jesse and Minnie. He claims he was floored by her request, but he loved her, so he agreed to do it. He had a bad feeling, but he went along because he needed time to think. After that, it didn’t take him a minute to wonder if there was any truth to Mae Bridges’ accusation. He now had his doubts about the woman he loved. Then, when he set out to kill Jesse and Minnie, he couldn’t do it. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with assaulting people, but when it comes to murder, he draws the line. He doesn’t have the stomach for it. And he swears he didn’t kill anybody’s husband for Dakota.”

  I gasped. “Are you saying he was supposed to kill my mother?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Eddie? What about him?”

  “A little icing on the cake,” Jonathan interjected. “Eddie was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got what your mother would’ve gotten if she’d been home.” He looked at Preston. “What kind of man beats up on a little old lady? How sick is that?”

  “What about me?”

  Jonathan grinned, ignored my question and said, “I have to give him credit for one thing—he had a lot of nerve to think he could kill someone in jail and get away with it—stupid, but nervy. I don’t think he’d make a good killer. His technique sucks.”

  “When he failed to kill his second target,” Shark said, “Dakota was furious and called him incompetent and useless. That’s when she told him she had poisoned him with antifreeze. She said she had made up a special bottle, and then she set the bottle down in front of him. She said she knew she had chosen the wrong man when he started asking questions about stuff that was none of his business, and when he botched killing Jesse and Minnie, that was it. He had failed her, and now his time was up. She laughed at him as he walked out of the shop. He panicked and came here to warn us. He now thinks she killed those men. He sure didn’t do it. When I asked him why he took a shot at us in the hospital parking lot, he denied it. He was too sick by then. He could barely make it here. It had to be her. Dakota Stone is the killer.”

  We all turned back to look at Gavin Preston.

  “Antifreeze?” I questioned. “Are you serious? How… I mean, wouldn’t he be able to tell?”

  “Antifreeze has a sweet smell and taste,” Billy said. “Put some in a soda or a glass of wine and nobody would be the wiser.”

  “Is he dead?” I asked, nervously, noticing that Preston was sitting completely still with his head hung down off to the side, the crotch of his pants was wet all the way down his legs, and there was a poopy smell coming from his direction. />
  Everyone knows that when a person dies, the bladder and bowels are the first to let go.

  After a moment of silence, Jonathan spoke, “He’s dead.”

  “He was almost dead from the poison when he was captured,” Shark added. “A man who is about ready to die usually tells the truth. He had nothing to hide anymore. He probably knew more, but didn’t get around to telling us.”

  “What a mess,” I said, turning away from him. “What are we going to do with his body?” I turned and stared back at him. His face was smeared with blood, gook seeped from his body, and the odor coming from him was worse than anything I’d ever smelled. He was a testament to the fact that death wasn’t pretty—especially the kind of death he had experienced. He had been poisoned and then beat up. Those were his last moments of life. The thought of it made me sick. I was sure I was going to puke, but I didn’t. I managed to put that awful image of him out of my mind and move on.

  “That’s a good question,” Billy said, pondering for a minute, and then he came back with, “He has no family, so I say we bury him somewhere. It would be the right thing to do.”

  A thought occurred to me, and a plan began formulating in my head. “Why don’t we take him to The Body Shop and leave him with Dakota? Let her explain his death. We can sneak in after dark, disable the alarm, dump the body, and then get out.” I looked at Jonathan. “Are you the security alarm buster expert, too? You do everything else.”

  “Shark’s our man,” Jonathan said looking over at Shark. “But he’s doped up. Shot him full of antibiotics and pain killers, and he needs to take a break.”

  “No way, man,” Shark said. “I’m good to go. It was only a flesh wound. Nothing keeps me down for long.”

  “Actually, we don’t need to do that,” Jonathan said. “We have our computer geeks, Mason and Gator. They should be able to handle the alarm system from here. What was I thinking?”

  “Do you think they can pull it off?” I asked. “I don’t want to get caught again. Jail isn’t my thing. I’m not going back.” I looked back over at Gavin and thought about Mom. “Lord. What are we going to tell my mother? She’ll never forgive herself for shooting him in the foot now that he’s dead. She’ll hate herself for what she did.”

  “Don’t worry, `ge ya,” Billy replied. “We’ll tell her the truth. Dakota poisoned him and he died. We didn’t kill him.”

  “We’d better do something fast. He’s starting to get ripe. Hey, what about the bullet in his foot? I don’t want it traced back to Mom when they find him.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Shark said, looking around. “We need to wrap him in plastic before we dump him. Don’t want any DNA left in the car.”

  “Speaking of car,” I said. “What about his? What are we going to do with his car?”

  “You let us worry about that,” Jonathan replied, motioning to Shark, who then turned and walked out of the room.

  “Wait a minute,” I came back with. “His car should be parked at The Body Shop. You can’t leave it in a parking lot somewhere, or abandoned on the road. When they find his body, the first thing they’ll look for is his car.”

  “His car won’t matter. It’s registered to the business. Anyone could be driving it. Trust me, they’ll never find it. When we dispose of something, nobody ever finds it, whether it’s a car or a body. It just so happens that we want Preston’s body found, otherwise…” Jonathan’s voice trailed off.

  “I know this probably won’t happen, but what if we get caught dumping his body?”

  “We’re not going to get caught.”

  “But just say we do. When the police question us, what are we going to tell them? That he walked to your house? How can we get the cops to believe our story, if we don’t have the car?”

  Billy looked at Jonathan. “She does have a point,”

  “Our mission is to succeed, but…” Jonathan thought for a second, and then smiled. “Good girl, Jesse. I’m glad you brought up the subject of the car. We’ll park it in Beth’s garage. She won’t mind, since she doesn’t live there anyway.”

  “She’ll never have to know.”

  “And if we need to produce the car as evidence, we’ll be able to, and if not, we’ll dispose of it later. Smart thinking, Jesse.”

  “Now that the problem with the car has been settled,” Billy said, looking at me. “Let’s go tell your mother about Preston.”

  Billy and I walked out of the room and went across the hall to the security center. Mom and Helene sat glued to the computers. They both rose when we walked in.

  “Did you get the truth out of him?” Mom asked. “Or did he tell you more of his lies? He’s a dirty, rotten…”

  “He’s dead, Mom.”

  “What?” Mom had a bewildered look on her face. “How… what…” She glared at us. “Y’all didn’t beat him to death, did you? Oh, my God! What have we done?”

  “Of course we didn’t,” Billy said. “He was almost dead when he got here. Dakota poisoned him just like he said. Jonathan and Shark worked him over until they realized he was telling the truth about being poisoned. That’s when they stopped and tried to get as much out of him as they could.”

  Helene made a good point when she asked, “If he was about ready to die and didn’t have much time left, then why didn’t he just call you? It surely would’ve saved time… since he didn’t have much left.”

  “That’s a good question,” Billy said, “one I can’t answer, but it’s irrelevant now. What we have to do is get rid of the body and lay the blame at Dakota Stone’s feet.”

  Mom didn’t look so good. She was pale and seemed disoriented.

  “Mom, are you all right?”

  “I just need to sit down. I feel so bad about shooting the poor guy in the foot when he was so close to death.”

  “Don’t feel too bad for the guy,” I said. “Look at my face and remember what he did to me. Look at Eddie. Gavin Preston beat the crap out of him, too.”

  Billy put his arm around Mom and led her back over to the computer chair. “Sit down, Minnie,” he said.

  Gator got up from the computer screen and walked over to a water cooler to fetch a glass of water. He handed it to her when she sat down. “Here, drink this, Minnie,” he said. “It’ll refresh you. I find that a drink makes me feel so much better after I’ve shot someone.” He chuckled, and after a gulp, so did Mom.

  “You’re such a comedian,” she said to him, and then looked back at us. “He’s so funny. He’s been cracking us up with all his stories. Did you know that he used to be a sumo wrestler?”

  I glanced at Gator, who was snickering, and then back to Mom. “You don’t believe that, do you, Mom? Look at him. He weighs less than I do. Sumo wrestlers are huge. Is he huge?”

  “Well…”

  Gator laughed out loud.

  “I guess not,” Mom murmured. “He sure fooled me.”

  “He didn’t fool me,” Helene boasted. “I knew he was making up all that stuff. No one escapes death that many times. He’s a jokester.”

  “Some of my stories were true,” Gator said, defending himself.

  “Which ones?”

  Billy interrupted their chitchat. “We have things to do, so I want everyone to stay here until we’re finished.”

  “But Gavin Preston is dead,” Mom said. “We’re safe now. He’s not going to hurt us anymore, so it’s time to get back on the case and bring down Dakota.”

  “Yeah… well… he’s never been the real problem,” Billy explained. “Oh, he was ruthless when it came to cracking skulls, but he wasn’t a killer. No, that title belongs to Dakota Stone, and it’s time she got her due.”

  “She killed those men, didn’t she?” Helene asked.

  “It sure looks that way,” Billy replied. “And I’m betting she was the one who killed Mae. She dressed up like a nurse, went in and bumped her off, and then went her merry way. No one thinks anything about a nurse going into a patient’s room. It was a perfect disguise.”
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  “But Preston was at the hospital when Mae was murdered,” I said. “We saw his face in the photo.”

  “Maybe he was Dakota’s lookout,” Helene suggested. “Yeah, he kept watch while Dakota killed Mae. It all makes sense now. Cunning woman.”

  “She just didn’t plan on us being so smart,” Mom added. Out of the blue, Mom looked up at me and said, “It’s time to tell Billy about the shampoo. Maybe there really was something wrong with it. If Dakota is capable of murder, putting poison in shampoo ought to be right up her alley.”

  I was hoping Mom would forget about the bottle of shampoo and her idea that it was tainted, but I was wrong. She had opened the flood gates and it was now time to come clean. I looked up at Billy and said, “Mom thinks Dakota put poison in your mother’s bottle of shampoo. I tried to tell her there was nothing wrong with the shampoo except the smell, but she’s convinced otherwise. I was going to get it tested, but I forgot about it, what with my being in jail and all.”

  “You saw how Dakota reacted when you doused her with it,” Mom said, defiantly. “She knew there was something wrong with it, because she was the one who put the poison in it. It was probably the kind of poison that’s absorbed through the skin. Yeah, that’s how it worked.”

  “It wasn’t poisoned,” Billy said.

  Surprised, I asked him how he knew about the shampoo.

  “I’m an Indian,” Billy confessed. “I have excellent hearing. I heard you talking about it when you thought I wasn’t listening, and after your little fiasco with Dakota went down and you were thrown in jail, I went through your purse and took the bottle. I gave it to my friend at the lab and she checked it out. She sent me a text a couple of hours ago and said it was clean. She explained that sometimes, because of equipment malfunction at the factory, the mixture isn’t just right and can cause the odor you smelled, especially if it’s dandruff shampoo… which is what Mom’s was.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Hmm. Snared like a rabbit in a trap. What could I say? I should’ve confided in Billy from the start, but I was afraid he’d go off if it turned out to be true. The Blackhawk boys would’ve taken matters into their hands and busted into Dakota’s shop, killing the evil witch on sight. They take care of their own. Kill one of them and you might as well have killed the President. They’d come after you with a vengeance, and wouldn’t stop until they got justice. I would’ve done the same thing. If someone killed my mother, they might as well have killed me, because I’d put their lights out and take great pleasure in doing so. I would… I was getting riled just thinking about it.