by Karen Harper
“I’d like to have your promise to be a good neighbor to—”
“I took them baked goods, pecan rolls, a touch of Southern hospitality. I have some left, if you’d like one.”
Nick was starting to sweat. Not from the afternoon heat and humidity, but from having to deal with this old woman, who seemed as sticky and nutty as pecan rolls. Besides, he kept recalling the story Claire had related to him in too damn much detail about how the old ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace had murdered people and hidden them around their house. Ridiculous, Nick scolded himself.
“Oh, by the way,” she told him, popping up and holding the dog close, “I forgot to tell you I copied down the license plate numbers of everyone who doesn’t live around here who parked on this street the evening of the fire. I could work for the police or a criminal lawyer like you, really I could. I’ll get it for you—a pecan roll too.”
Nick sighed as she disappeared into the house. That’s all he needed, though maybe a list of cars could show others were around then, not just Dale. He needed everything he could get his hands on to get Dale’s defense together now that he’d been indicted.
She came back out and handed him a paper plate with a roll and an index card—no, a recipe card. In large handwriting, she had indeed recorded a list of license plate numbers, nine of them. No doubt some would turn out to be curious onlookers who smelled the smoke, or TV or newspaper reporters, but he would give Jensen a call to run these numbers.
“I appreciate this, Betty. And I’d sure appreciate your building up Nita and not scaring her, okay? They’re still kind of newlyweds and can use the time alone.”
“All right, my favorite real-life Perry Mason. By the way, those reruns are on TV all afternoon—and, you know, that famous lawyer had a female helper named Della, his secretary, someone who knew how to dress, not like those girls in pants sitting at office desks today. Why, I told Cyndi she dressed like a tramp with those little shorts and bra-type things!”
“Did that start an argument?” Nick asked, still thinking that maybe there was a glimmer of a chance that this eccentric little sneak had gotten into a fight with the conniving Cyndi. He was grabbing at straws, but that’s where he was at in preparing to defend Dale. And darned if he was going to eat this pecan roll since the title of that old movie had the word arsenic in it.
“Cyndi called me an old bat and used that other b-word right to my face!”
“She shouldn’t have done that,” he said as she kept nodding.
But, Nick thought, if Betty had somehow strangled and frozen Cyndi, no way she’d tell him all this—although he had seen some criminals who like to boast about what they’d done, loved telling it all to a cop or psychiatrist or lawyer. Yeah, it was kind of like those old Perry Mason reruns where the guilty party no one suspected stood up in court and shouted, “Yes, I did it! I killed so-and-so and here’s how and why!”
* * *
With her heart beating hard, Claire stood still in Brad’s office, holding her breath. She sucked in a huge gasp. A drone, so much like the piece of one Jace had pulled from the wreckage of the chopper, hung from the ceiling in the corner. Was it also like the drone that had exploded the glass window and ruined their reception? Of course, so what, lots of people had drones today, but—
“Find the photos?”
She spun to see Brad standing in the doorway. He seemed to fill it, block it.
“I—No. I looked out there. I thought you might mean this desk. I saw the sign,” she said pointing.
“And, of course, saw my drone. Just a hobby. Or did Kris tell you I used to use a drone to view the excavations here since I couldn’t stand the closed-in feeling the bog always gave me? But with the low-hanging trees, it got snagged and sank—down in the peaty depths forever, so I got a new one and don’t use it for that anymore. Yi Ling borrows it sometimes.”
“Sad she’s leaving so suddenly.”
“Some things, as sad as they are, are necessary. Well, confession time all around. Yi Ling has done several odd jobs for me.”
For some reason, it was then that Claire’s brain made the connection. That androgynous person who had followed her and Kris that time—so thin, face mostly covered, not a limp, but a hesitation with one leg. And the way Yi Ling had walked away out into the bog today... Could it have been?
“Confession time all around, for what?” she asked, edging toward the door. He did not budge.
“I hope the third time’s a charm, but you do understand that this precious work for all mankind we are doing here must be protected at all costs.”
“I’ve kept the secrecy agreement.”
“It isn’t enough. I was uneasy about having Andrea and Kris put you on the team, but I couldn’t protest too much about your husband and your high media profile or they would have been upset. So I took a gamble, but you’ve rocked the boat, been in the wrong place too much, hanging out with the wrong people, lawyers, law officers. Getting in the newspapers. Damn, but people should have listened to me. Sad, but you’ll be in the media this time too. Well, go ahead and open that drawer with the arrow pointing to it,” he said.
“I’m leaving, Brad. Perhaps leaving for good.”
“I’ll second that.”
He pulled a gun and pointed it toward her. Startled, she stepped back. The black end of the barrel loomed large.
“Open the drawer, then we’ll discuss your leaving.”
Starting to shake, she stepped back and pulled the drawer open, expecting to finally see a petroglyph of an ancient woman with her arms raised. But within it lay a folded faded flag, smudged with dirt or ashes, but she could see the swastika on it. And next to that was a photograph of Hitler with Eva Braun.
She gasped and looked at Brad. He was smiling.
“No, I’m not a neo-Nazi. But I am looking for things to sell on the international black market to help keep this place afloat, and I regret that you seem to be onto me for that, with your own visit to our antique shop in town and then sending someone across the state. I got a phone call from there while they were visiting, and it didn’t take much to put two and two together. I regret the drone Yi Ling used only brought them down but didn’t get rid of them. Now, don’t you think I know you broke your contract to send them on that little dead end hunt?”
“There was nothing in the contract about that. Just let me out of here,” she demanded. “My husband knows I’m here and so do your staff.” She suddenly felt so nauseated she could have thrown up.
“Let you out of here?” he said. “Oh, I plan to. As much as I hate that bog, let’s just go out there to see what we can find. This won’t take long and then you—like two other smart-mouthed women who tried to pressure me and ruin this momentous work—will be on your way. This time, no strangulation needed at all. Now let’s move.”
35
“Hey, Detective Jensen, Nick Markwood here,” Nick said, glad he’d picked up on the call.
Nick was sitting in his car in the driveway of Claire’s sister Darcy’s house. Claire had said she’d meet him here around four. He glanced at his watch as he killed the engine: four fifteen. Darcy had picked up both Jilly and Lexi at their schools and had brought them here, so it was probably a noisy place inside.
“Counselor,” Jensen said, “how goes your Monday? Got a dynamite case together to defend Mr. Braun?”
“Speaking of that, remember the old lady who lived next door to the house where we found the woman in the freezer, the one who ID’d the deceased from your photograph? The night of the fire and second murder, Betty Richards evidently went up and down their street with a flashlight, writing down license plate numbers of cars that didn’t belong. I could probably find a way to have the owners identified, but I’d like to hand that over to you. We defense attorneys like to do everything on the up-and-up.”
“Yeah, I hear you. And we detectives who work for prosecuti
ng attorneys aren’t supposed to make friends of defense attorneys and their wives. Okay, read me the list, and I’ll check those out. Too many dead ends in this case, pardon the pun.”
“And you’ll get back to me with the names, in case anything clicks? I may have to share them with Dale to see if he can place any of them.”
“Okay. Just don’t rat me out so someone thinks I’m helping the opposition when we go to trial. Give Claire my best—and when she gets done with whatever private assignment she’s on, I’m telling you, the department could use her for a forensic tech, part-time if she wants.”
“You know, if it was just an office job, I’d say that sounds great—if she could work from home and not go out to interview possible would-be criminals.”
“Dream on.”
“Yeah. At least she has a temporary gig where she’s only consulting. Thanks, Ken. I’ll wait for your call back.”
Taking his cell with him, Nick got out and walked toward the house. He could hear Jilly’s and Lexi’s voices from here. It was great being a dad as well as a husband of the woman he loved.
* * *
“I’m not going out to the bog,” Claire insisted as Brad gestured with the gun that she should precede him out his office door. “I’m going to get my purse and leave. I’ll keep this quiet, just as I have what’s really going on here.”
“Meaning what?” He moved aside for her to pass, but when she tried to squeeze through the doorway, he yanked her back against the open door. “I said there’s something I want to show you outside. Move. Right ahead of me.”
“No,” she insisted, desperately trying to sound defiant and unafraid when she wanted to scream and explode in tears. This was so perfectly set up. No one was here. When would Andrea be back? But was she in on this too?
“Look, former state Senator Bradley Vance,” she said, fighting to keep her voice from quavering. She had decided to try a different tack. “You have evidently murdered two women so you’d better take off before the police find you. My husband and his contacts will—”
“No way they can pin this on me. I have no obvious connection to Cyndi what’s-her-name. Would you believe the little slut hung around our beach house, wanted to sell the place for us instead of our real estate rep, then she actually followed me here and threatened to blow the lid off this project? She went on and on about how she could get funding for the bog work by selling passes to a mansion with a Nazi connection, so I drove her to her friend’s house and had to shut her up—stop her there before she went public with too damn much.”
“I’d say strangling and freezing is one way to keep someone quiet.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, he went on, “I did have a business relationship with Marian James, though unlike Cindi, she had the moxie and power to expose everything here—take it from my control. Those two women could have blown everything, but I’ve covered my tracks. Haven’t even tried to sell that Nazi stuff I took yet—and could have paid dearly for, since that idiot Braun started a fire when I was there meeting with Marian James.”
She almost bluffed that her husband knew of the Marian–Nazi connection and would pursue him. But then—whether he killed her or not—would he go after Nick? And the children could be endangered. She had to stay calm. She had to find a way out of this. She feared he was going to try to stage a fatal accident.
“You know,” he said, sounding almost wistful, “what really matters above all is eventually sharing my American Adam and Eve burial spot with all mankind. I’ll get the rights to publicly and legally sell copies of the artifacts. As for you—I knew you were far too clever from the first. And now,” he repeated as he shoved her out of the lab and down the hall with the gun barrel pressed between her shoulder blades, “our very own Over-Reaching Woman Claire Markwood will get a close-up and personal experience of what our Black Bog people went through.”
* * *
“Claire’s late,” Darcy told him, wiping her wet hands on a dish towel. “Probably got involved in something. I can’t believe wherever she’s working they don’t have a phone.”
“Too far from a cell tower,” Nick told her, pushing Trey gently in the infant swing. “Traffic’s probably bad. She’ll be here, and if she’s late, she’ll call when she gets in tower range.”
“I don’t see why her work has to be such a big secret,” Darcy groused. “You okay with Trey? I’m going to check on our angels—far too quiet in Jilly’s bedroom.”
“Sure,” Nick said with a glance at his watch. Twenty-five after four. She’d be here soon.
Trey gurgled and cooed something when the music for Nick’s phone went off. Hoping it was Claire, he checked the caller ID. Ken Jensen.
“Nick here.”
“Fast work, huh? Listen, one of the plate numbers was of interest. You sitting down? Former longtime state senator Bradley J. Vance.”
Nick jerked erect on the ottoman where he sat. His brain raced. His gut wrenched. He stopped swinging Trey, steadied him with one hand.
“Nick, I gotta tell you, he does have a connection to Marian James, but I can’t say more.”
“Was he one of the silent partners underwriting her Endangered Properties Committee? We thought maybe so but couldn’t turn it up.”
“All right. Yes. And he was at her funeral with another of her cronies—”
“Harmon Kingsdale. We saw them together.”
“Damn, you and Claire have been overstepping again!”
“I hope not. Got to go.”
“Nick, wait! Is there some connection now? I mean, Claire’s been really secretive about who she’s working for. If she was advising that committee in any way, she may be subpoenaed at the trial, and that won’t look good with you as defense attorney. I need to talk to both of you—”
“I’ll call you back soon.”
Nick punched off his phone. Brad was near or at Twisted Trees the night of Marian’s murder. So he knew the area, maybe had been there before. Dale may have set the place on fire, but someone had killed Marian first, just the way someone had killed Cyndi. Could the former senator have had any connection to Cyndi? No, too far out—unless, as Claire surmised, she had visited them at their beachside home to have that picture taken. No, he was thinking in circles.
Damn, he had to get to Claire, even if he got in trouble driving into Black Bog, if the guard she’d mentioned would let him in.
“Darcy!” he shouted, and Trey startled and fussed. Nick bent to hug and kiss him. “You need your mom and I do too,” he told the baby.
“Nick, what?” she said, running in. “Was that Claire who called? Is she all right?”
“Of course she is, but I’m going to go check on why she’s late. If she shows up here after I’m gone, call my cell.”
He didn’t say or do more, didn’t even kiss Lexi. Something was so, so wrong.
* * *
“Are you really claustrophobic?” Claire was desperate for calm talk—for distractions. Maybe she could play on his phobia. Brad shoved her toward the door to the bog. Her pulse pounded, and her mind raced. She had to find a way to knock that gun out of his hand before they walked the planks over the bog. She could not go out there with him. Should she risk taking a bullet instead, so she could maybe fight back on dry land?
“Damn, I am paranoid about being shut in,” he said, giving her a little shove again when she hesitated. “My older sister used to lock me in a big cedar chest when she had to stay home with me. Dark, hard to breathe. Everyone in the family thought she was Miss Perfect, pretty and blonde. But she was selfish and pushy.”
Claire almost asked him if Cyndi had reminded him of his sister.
“But what must be done must be done,” he added with an even more trembling voice.
“No one will believe I came out here alone, against the rules, when I should be heading home.”
“Yeah, and no on
e will believe I finally came out here again.”
“Andrea called and will be back soon. Is she in on all this too?”
“You’ve had too much contact with a lawyer. That’s a lie about Andrea calling, because I talked to her on our house phone—the only outside line that works around here—just about when you went in my office. She’s been diagnosed with breast cancer and is in the hospital for treatment. I’m going there when I close up—end things—here.”
“I’m sorry for her. She didn’t have any part in the murders, did she?”
“Just shut up. I said you’re sounding like a lawyer.”
“And they as well as the police will be all over this when I go missing,” she insisted, then regretted bringing Nick into this. He would be insane with grief and rage, endangering himself to learn what happened to her. Then this warped bastard would get rid of him too. Somehow, she had to save herself, turn the tables here. She’d walked these planks recently and he had not. There must be a way to knock that gun into the bog, maybe to knock him in before he did her in.
Lexi’s sweet face floated through her panicked brain. Trey’s. Nick’s. Barely minutes now until this monster made his move. She knew his plan now: he was going to bury her in the bog with the ancients, and maybe someday someone would find her deep in the muddy peat, reaching out for help.
* * *
Early rush hour traffic in Naples slowed Nick down. He’d taken back streets out of Darcy’s neighborhood. At least she lived in the southeast part of town. Damn, but he wasn’t even certain where to turn off the Trail to the bog. Claire had said it wasn’t marked, but he knew about where it was and would look for an unpaved road. Hopefully Kris was with her, other members of the staff too. If Brad was a suspect in some way, was Andrea too?
He tried to settle his panic. Keep calm. So what if Senator Vance and his wife had hired Claire to keep their secret? They were public figures, dedicated, trustworthy, but who trusted politicians these days?
