Black Princess Mystery (32 page)

Watkins
looked down the hall. “It’s in use at present, but there’s another bathroom
downstairs.” He showed her the landing door. “Turn right at the bottom and walk
past the spare bedroom. It’s the first door on the right.”

“Want me
to go down with you?” Thorston asked.

“No,” she
said bluntly. “I’m a big girl.”

“Yes, of
course,” he returned, almost apologetically.

Watkins
turned on the light and Tasheka walked down the stairs. The door, attached to a
spring, closed hard, the thud so loud that it startled her. She stopped and
looked back, the noise and voices upstairs suddenly becoming muffled. Tasheka
walked down the final few steps into the dim basement. Everything was stored
and arranged with German-like precision: shelves full of power tools, garden
implements, the freezer, and four tires.

Tasheka
walked to the spare bedroom and looked in the open door. Inside was a single
bed and Spartan furnishings. To her right, just ahead, was a tiny bathroom with
barely enough room to turn around. But what most intrigued her was another room
at the end of the hall. It was closed off with an old wooden door and a heavy
lock on the latch. Tasheka, curious as a cat, walked past the bathroom and
examined the lock. It was old and scratched. She looked back at the hall and
stairs, confirmed she was alone, and had an impulse she could not resist.
Lifting the chain from around her neck, she opened the container on it and
looked at several picks, removing the largest. She adeptly picked the lock and
it sprung open. Just at that moment, she heard the basement door open and the
noise of the party. Tasheka hurried toward the bathroom. Only then did she look
back and realize the lock was hanging open in clear view. Her heart pounded
wildly when she saw a woman turn the corner, suddenly stopping when she saw
Tasheka.

“Oh, I’m
sorry,” the woman said. “Are you using the bathroom?”

“Yes, I
was just going in.”

“I’ll wait
until the upstairs bathroom opens up,” the woman offered.

“Thank
you,” Tasheka said with a bright smile.

The moment
the woman climbed to the top of the stairs, Tasheka rushed back down the
hallway and removed the unsecured padlock. The door opened smoothly. Tasheka
stepped inside, but could see little from the ambient light cast by the hallway
lamps. She felt the wall and found a light switch. Checking over her shoulder a
final time and seeing no one, she flicked the switch and illuminated the room.
What she saw shocked her.

Detective
Bill McNab, known as a man’s man, had a locked room in his house that would
have appealed to the most feminine sensibility. There was a canopy bed
surrounded by lacy white curtains. On it was spread a pink blanket embroidered
with vibrant red roses. There was a green wicker chair, dainty lamps, a divan
covered with pink and yellow pillows, and a table with a pad of blue paper on
it, the same size and color as the paper she had seen in the rectory porch the
morning she discovered the body. There was also a computer in the far corner,
which was running, but it showed a screen saver. The room abounded with
feminine crafts and, most shocking of all, there was a female mannequin in the
corner.

The
mannequin looked incredibly lifelike and stared directly at the doorway, right
at whoever entered. Most amazing of all, the mannequin was incredibly
beautiful. Tasheka had seen countless mannequins while shopping, but this
mannequin was different. She was absolutely stunning. Wearing a silky black
dress decorated with a blue and gold floral pattern, the mannequin had a gold
chain wrapped around her sleek waist, and a bouquet of flowers in her right
hand. A gold necklace hung from her neck. There were turquoise earrings, a gold
clip in her long, raven hair, and a plastic tiara atop her head, like something
little girls would play with on rainy days. Her plastic legs were covered with
black nylons, the left one bent in a realistic pose, a gold ankle bracelet on
it.

Though it
seemed irrational, Tasheka was incredibly impressed by the mannequin and could
not easily turn away from the face made up with ruby red lipstick, blush on the
cheeks, and dark black mascara around the gorgeous azure eyes. Her eyebrows
were fine, her eyelashes delicate. Everything about her was perfect, and notwithstanding
the fact that she was a mannequin, Tasheka had to admit she was looking at one
of the most beautiful female forms she had ever seen. It seemed so utterly real
that she even had to continually remind herself it was not a living being, but
a work of art, a true masterpiece. Tasheka, fearing someone might come at any
moment, turned off the light, and then closed and locked the door. She went to
the bathroom and quickly returned to Thorston upstairs.

“That took
a long time,” said Thorston.

“Get used
to it,” Watkins warned.

Tasheka
smiled irreverently at both of them. “It’s not a woman’s right to keep a man
waiting,” she said, “it’s her obligation.”

Thorston
looked deeply into her eyes. “Which proves my point that some things are worth
waiting for.”

“You do
know how to play your cards,” she said flirtatiously, keeping her voice just
low enough so that no one else could hear.

He smiled
handsomely. “I do my best.”

Tasheka
turned away from him and spoke to another woman. He began talking to a few of
the police with whom he worked. A jovial atmosphere pervaded throughout the
evening and at ten minutes to eight, Thorston, obviously glad Detective McNab
was still passed out on the couch, suggested to Tasheka that they leave. He
seemed afraid that she wanted to stick around and cause a scene with McNab, but
she seemed just as intent on leaving as him.

“Come to
my place for a visit?” he asked as they pulled away in her car.

“Not
tonight. There’s something I have to do at home.”

“Okay,” he
said, straightening up with a deflated expression, “maybe some other time.”

“Definitely
some other time,” she assured him.

They spoke
pleasantly for the remainder of the trip and he kissed her when she let him off
at his place. She kissed him back. Tasheka could tell he desperately wanted her
to come inside, but she shook her head and then drove away.

As soon as
she got home, Tasheka sat at the computer and logged onto the Internet. Under
Search, she typed: ‘Mannequin.’ For the next hour she visited numerous
websites. Nothing stood out to her, but she continued scanning website after
website. Finally something caught her eye. It was a company called Becter, and
the company sold mannequins.

‘Becter’
and ‘Bexter’ were so close, she felt, that it could have been misspelled. She
perked up in her chair and looked through a gallery of faces, each with a name.
Those scanned, she moved to a section called ‘Sold’. Then, suddenly, she saw
the mannequin she was looking for, the one owned by Detective McNab. Tasheka
straightened up, her whole body energized. Without question it was the same
mannequin and Tasheka’s eyes opened wide when she saw the name: Natalie.

M-Bexter-Nat.

It
actually should have read: M-Becter-Nat, but Father Tim was notorious for his
poor spelling…Or he may have felt rushed. Yes, somehow Father Tim had seen
McNab’s mannequin and some reference to the website and her name. Tasheka
concluded that it must have been on the computer. He had surely written the
note on the blue paper, then made a copy later on for reference, and hidden the
copy in the secret place under the mat. He must have thrown the original out
and that’s the one she saw in the porch at the rectory.

The phone
rang and she distractedly answered it. “Hello.”

“Thorston
here,” he said in a subdued voice. “I’m calling from a pay phone.”

“Why?”

“I’m
creeped out that McNab might have my car and house bugged.”

Tasheka
suddenly saw the headlights of a car traveling along the logging road two-hundred
yards behind her house. It unexpectedly stopped and the driver turned out the
lights.“Thorston,” she said, “can I ask you a favor?”

“Anything.”

“My mother
is gone and I’m here by myself. Could you come for the night?”

“Seriously?”

“Yes,”
Tasheka said.

“When?”

“Come
right now,” she said, her heart pounding. “I’ll leave the back door open. Park
on the street fifty yards from the end of our driveway, walk to the back door
and enter without knocking. Do so as quietly as possible. I’ll be in the
kitchen. It’s down the hall and to your right.” She took a deep breath. “Bring
your gun.”

“What are
you talking about?” Thorston said with confusion.

“Bring
your gun,” she said mysteriously. “Enter the house in about thirty minutes.”

“I’ll be
there in thirty minutes.”

“Perfect,”
Tasheka said, hanging up and gazing out her window like a black widow waiting
for a little spider to enter its web.

Chapter
Twenty

Tasheka
went upstairs for a moment and then did a few things. Not five minutes after
finishing, a knock sounded on the front door. Tasheka opened it to Detective
McNab.

“Come in,
Bill,” she said casually. “I was expecting you.” She turned her back to him and
walked toward the kitchen. “Please close and lock the door. I do not want us to
be disturbed.”

A short,
surprised laugh escaped McNab’s lips, but he did lock the door. He followed
Tasheka to the kitchen and found her sitting on a stool and facing him with a
glass of milk in her hand. He stopped next to the refrigerator and stared at
her. She stared back.

“Take off
your gloves and make yourself at home,” Tasheka said.

“No, thank
you.”

She tossed
back her hair. “I purposely allowed you to overhear that my mother is away. I
knew you would come.”

“Am I
really so transparent?”

“Yes,
quite transparent.”

“You
understood that I would be livid when you dated Detective Henry, but to flaunt
it and come to my home, now that could not go unchallenged.”

“Save the
bullshit!” Tasheka snapped. “You don’t give a damn if I screw Thorston on his
office desk in front of the Executive Council of the Catholic Women’s League.
You came here for a much different reason.”

“I did?”
he said, shocked by her reaction. “Tell me why I’m here then.”

“You came
here to kill me.”

He made a
sour face. “You have an active imagination, little lady.”

“You came
to kill me because you know I figured out who murdered Father Tim.”

McNab
walked forward a couple paces. “You know who killed the priest? Since I’m the
chief investigator, you better tell me.”

“You
killed him,” said Tasheka, “and I suspected it right from the beginning, from
the very beginning. But even though the clues were all there, I couldn’t quite
believe it.”

“You’re
crazy.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “You’re the one who’s a suspect. Why
in the hell would I kill Tim Murphy?”

“When we
went to the party tonight, I knew you weren’t drunk, you weren’t even asleep.
You just lied there playing your little game. You drank pop from a bottle in
front of everyone, then dumped out the remainder and poured in rum. That’s the
bottle you laid beside the couch, the one that some of your guests smelled. You
haven’t consumed any alcohol at all tonight.”

He shook
his head. “That’s ridiculous.”

“My father
used to drink rum,” Tasheka said. “Even when the doctor ordered him to quit, I
could always catch him because of my great sense of smell. Tonight I pretended
to check to see if you were breathing, but I just wanted a little whiff. Guess
what? You had no smell of rum on your breath. It was all just a game, a
facade.”

“Now why
would I do that?”

“Really,
detective, please don’t be obtuse. If you were so dead drunk, as you wanted everyone
to believe, how did you drive here, walk through two-hundred yards of thick
forest in the dark, and how, pray tell, are you standing here as sober as a
monk?”

He said
nothing, his glare fixed on her.

“But why
did you fake being drunk, detective?”

“Yes, why
would I do that?”

“Simple.
If Tasheka Green showed up dead tomorrow, no one could ever suspect a man who
was home dead drunk with three dozen police officers as witnesses.”

“I was
drinking,” he said, “but anger has a way of sobering people up.”

“You came
here to kill me,” Tasheka repeated.

“You’re
delusional.”

“I’m not
delusional. You are. You’re the serial killer, Detective McNab.”

He
smirked.

“Tonight
at the party, one of the wives called you the Prince of Puns. I saw the picture
of you in the office with
POPS
written on it. The Prince of Puns! Apparently you can never resist a good pun.
It’s like a delicious habit you can’t break. That was such an interesting
observation. It just clicked into place like a piece in a puzzle. For you see,
Mr. McNab, the first thing that struck me as odd the morning of the murder was
the coincidence, the pun.”