Building Blocks of Murder (16 page)

Lacy laughed, thinking again how glad she was that he had come into her life. “All right. I didn’t really want to move anyway,” she admitted. Lucinda smiled and stood to retrieve another cinnamon roll for Lacy, her third, but Lacy stopped her.

“They’re delicious, Grandma, but I really can’t. I have a meeting this morning.”

“You be careful,” Lucinda admonished. “I don’t like this business at all, Lacy.”

“Neither do I, Grandma.” She stood and kissed her grandparents goodbye before walking to her grandmother’s car. Anger fueled her steps, and she wished that she could walk to town, not only to burn off some calories, but to burn off some of her frustration as well. How dare someone vandalize her grandmother’s house?

She was a block away from home when she noticed the car following in her rearview mirror. All of her anger and righteous indignation returned and then exploded into something irrational. Instead of heading toward town and the mayor’s office, Lacy turned and headed out into the country. The car, of course, followed.

Once she was a reasonable distance from town, she attempted Keegan’s maneuver from the day before by speeding up, slamming her foot on the brake, and jerking the wheel a hard left. Her car fishtailed and careened a few feet, but finally she had it back on track. Instead of maintaining her lane to pass the car that had been following her, she got in the opposite lane and played a game of chicken, forcing the car to come to a screeching halt.

Lacy in a temper was a very bad thing because she lost all rational thought, including the possibility that the person in the car may be armed and dangerous. Instead of stalling and calling the police like a sane person, she erupted from her car and advanced on the driver’s side, jerking open the door and poking her head inside. There she saw a pale, trembling teenager with his hands clenched on the wheel. Beside him sat a paunchy, middle-aged man who looked equally as petrified.

“I don’t have any money, lady,” the kid said.

Lacy looked down at the open door in her hand and read the emblem on the side. “A-1 Driving School.”
Uh-oh.
“I’m so sorry,” Lacy said. She gently closed the door and took a nonthreatening step away. “I thought you were someone else.”

The kid nodded, still staring straight ahead as if afraid to make eye contact.

“Really,” Lacy began, trying to explain again, but her phone rang. She held up a finger for the kid to wait—the least she could do was give him some money—and pulled out her phone. It was Travis.

“The ballistics test came back this morning.” He was whispering, so she knew he was at work.

“What did it say?” For whatever reason, she whispered, too.

“It’s a match, Lacy.”

“What?” this time she yelled. Beside her, the kid and the middle-aged man jumped in terror.

“Drive, Andy, just drive,” the older man yelled as he gripped the dashboard. The kid, Andy, stomped his foot on the pedal and sped away, leaving Lacy standing in the middle of the road with her phone still pressed to her ear in shock.

Somehow, Lacy made it to the mayor’s office only a minute late. Perhaps she had sped. She didn’t remember. All she knew was that she had been in a stupor after Travis’s impossible announcement. How could the ballistics have been a match?

He couldn’t tell her, both because he didn’t know and because he wasn’t able to talk just then. They had disconnected and Lacy had gotten in her car to try and make her meeting.

Now she was in the mayor’s lobby, and some of the numbness was starting to wear away. Obviously there had been some sort of monumental error somewhere along the line. She would talk to Jason today and ask him how the mixup had occurred. Maybe ballistics tests weren’t as reliable as she thought. After all, lie detector tests had been repeatedly proved unreliable; maybe it was the same thing with ballistics.

Whatever the reason, she tried to force her mind to focus on what she needed to ask the mayor. When she was at last called into his inner sanctum, she realized he thought she was there to discuss the Stakely building.

“Well, Lacy, hello,” he said. He stood and leaned over his desk to shake her hand. “I had hoped you would come to your senses about that old monstrosity of a building. The good news is that the developers still want it, and they’re willing to pay exactly what you paid for it, so you won’t lose any money.”

Lacy blinked at him in confusion for a minute. He thought she was here to sell her building? “I’m not selling the Stakely building. I’m going to renovate.” She sank weakly into the proffered chair, and he did the same on the other side of the desk.

“Not selling? But I thought that was why you were here today.”

“No, I came to talk to you about something that happened in the Stakely building a long time ago.”

The mayor pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his upper lip. “I can’t imagine what you might be talking about.”

“The Susan Pendergast murder.”

“That’s an unpleasant topic I prefer not to revisit.” Dab, dab, dab.

“I realize it’s an unpleasant topic, and I am sorry to rehash it, but in light of current events, I really feel it’s important.”

“What current events?” He moved on to dabbing his forehead. If the conversation went on a long time, would he lift his elbow and dab at his armpits?

“Ed McNeil’s murder.”

“I don’t see how the two are connected,” the mayor said. He turned on a small fan and pointed it at his face. The humming noise was distracting, but Lacy was undeterred.

“I’m not sure I do, either, but there are too many coincidences to ignore. For instance, you.”

“Me?” the mayor said. He pointed at himself in case Lacy had made some mistake.

“You were a suspect in the original murder.”

“Now, see here, I was never a suspect. Susan and I were engaged, true, but things were going well.”

“Even though you cheated on her with her sister?” It was a shot in the dark, but apparently a correct one.

“Who told you about that? Did Sheila tell you that? Because she’s lying.” He gripped the edge of his desk and leaned forward, his face turning an ugly shade of puce.

“I really don’t care about that,” Lacy lied. In truth, she was deeply curious about it, but she had bigger fish to fry today. “My only interest here is in trying to figure out how these two cases are related and what they have to do with the Stakely building.”

“Nothing. There’s nothing suspicious about the Stakely building. Nothing at all.” Dab, dab, dab.

“Then why have I received two threatening messages? Why has a car been following me?”

“I really don’t know,” the mayor said. He picked up his phone and pressed a button. “Is my nine o’clock here yet?”

Lacy figured that was code for “Get me a nine o’clock, stat!” but still she persisted. “If you’ll just help me and answer a few of my questions, then I’ll go away.”

“I really don’t have time for this, Miss Steele,” he replied. He looked down and straightened some papers on his desk. Lacy noted that his hands were trembling. He cleared his throat and looked up, but his focus rested just slightly to the right of her eyes. “There’s no connection between Ed McNeil and Susan. The two cases are unrelated. There is no connection to the Stakely building.” His voice quavered and cracked on the word “Stakely,” and he cleared his throat. “Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have to get back to the business of running this town.”

“Fine,” Lacy said, standing. “But let me tell you that I own the Stakely building now with no intention of selling it. In fact, I plan to go over it with a fine-tooth comb until I figure out what is going on. I have the money and the time to do exactly as I’ve promised, and I have a connection to the paper that ensures that anything I find will come to light. If you think I’m going to give up and let this go, then you are sadly mistaken. Thank you for your time today.”

She turned to go, thinking the meeting was over, but the mayor called out to her. “Wait,” he choked. Lacy turned around in time to see him mop his entire face with the handkerchief. “I am telling you for your own good to let this go. Let the past stay buried, and move on with your future. The building is too much for a young girl like you, and you don’t want to get involved in the politics in this town. Believe me. Just let it go.”

Lacy tried to figure out if his concern was for her or for himself, but she couldn’t tell. “Maybe that would be possible if someone hadn’t involved my friends and family in this mess. Now it’s too late. I’m seeing this through until the end.”

“You’ve been warned,” the mayor said. Lacy watched as he swiped his face once more, and then she turned and let herself out.

Keegan volunteered to go to the Joe Anton interview with Lacy.

“He’s a convicted criminal. I don’t feel comfortable about letting you talk to him alone,” was his reason. Lacy wondered if he was simply curious. She took her grandmother’s car back to her house where Keegan was waiting and they drove to the jail together.

Lacy expected to have to wait a long time for Mr. Anton to arrive, but Travis had worked his magic so that the man was actually waiting on them when they entered the visitation room.

He was as small and frail as Lacy remembered, with lanky white hair slicked back from his head. His pallor was a sickly white, his watery brown eyes not quite focused, and his face covered with a not-so-fine layer of stubble. One side of his lip drooped and drooled a constant stream of saliva. Lacy forced herself not to stare at it.

“Thank you for seeing us today, Mr. Anton,” Lacy said as they sat down. The man nodded, and she continued. “I’m sure you know why I’m here. I have some questions about the murder all those years ago.”

“I dunno what help I’ll be. I barely remember what I had for breakfast this morning.” His hands trembled as he placed them in his lap, but, unlike the mayor, Lacy didn’t think it was from nerves. His body seemed worn out by so much drug use.

“Is it all right if we go over the facts of the case?” she asked. Her tone was naturally gentle with him because, even though he was a convicted murderer, he seemed small and helpless somehow. He nodded, and she continued. “The article I read said that you had a drug supplier who worked in the area of the Stakely building. Is that true?”

He nodded again. She wasn’t going to get much from him if all he did was nod, but this time he added words. “Yeah, but I hung out there because I liked it, too. There were lots of people and pretty things. I liked to look at the artwork.”

“You argued with Susan Pendergast shortly before her murder.”

“I don’t know if I remember this part, or if people have just told me about it, but I seem to recall arguing with her. She was upset ‘cause I was high again. She saw me hanging around the parking lot, shooting up, and she told me to go away.” He frowned, squinting as he tried to see through the fog of his memory. “No, that’s not right—she told me to go and get help, but she said it angry-like. I think maybe she was a do-gooder, but she was a large, powerful woman and everyone assumed she was angry ‘cause she was loud.”

Having met Sheila and seen her forceful personality up close, Lacy thought he was probably correct.

“Had you ever talked to Susan before?”

He nodded again. “I wouldn’t say we were friends because, truth be told, I was kind of scared of her. She was like a teacher I had once—strict and intimidating. But she was nice underneath it all. Sometimes she nodded at me or let me sit in her store when I was too stoned to be out walking around.”

“Did you ever see her sister, Sheila Whitaker, or the mayor, Hal Watkins?”

When he shook his head, Lacy was disappointed, but then he spoke. “I don’t remember, but I must have because after the police questioned me the first time, I told my sister about a fight I saw between the three of them.”

“You saw Susan, Sheila, and the mayor fighting with each other?” Lacy repeated. “What were they fighting about?”

“I don’t remember, but, according to what I told my sister, it was pretty bad. Susan slapped Sheila and Sheila punched her in the face. The mayor tried to intervene, and they both turned on him. Apparently it was a real cat fight.” He smiled with the good side of his mouth. “I kind of wish I could remember it.”

“Why did this information never come to trial?” The article had only said that they argued and never that Susan had told him to get help. “Did you ever tell your lawyer?”

Mr. Anton nodded. “I told him a few times, and my sister volunteered to testify about what I’d told her, but Mr. McNeil said it wasn’t important.”

Lacy was quiet a few beats while she processed that, but Mr. Anton didn’t seem to notice. He turned to stare at the opposite wall, apparently lost in a daydream. If what he said was true, then Ed McNeil was either the world’s worst lawyer or purposely incompetent. The prosecution had alleged that Joe Anton’s motive for murder was revenge for their argument, but if Susan had simply been urging the man to get help, then there had been no argument and there was no motive. And if there had been a physical altercation involving Sheila and the mayor then that gave both of them motive. “Mr. Anton, are you sure that you told Ed McNeil what you just told me, that Susan wasn’t angry and was trying to urge you to get help? Are you sure you told him about the argument between Susan, Sheila, and Hal Watkins?”

Mr. Anton nodded vigorously as droplets of spittle flew off his chin. “I told him back then, and I told him this time, too. He said it wasn’t important.”

The information was monumental, but Lacy didn’t have time to dwell on it right now. “Your alibi was what eventually led to your arrest. When you were interviewed at the time of the murder, you said you were at the races all day at the track a couple of hours away. Why do you think the officers at the time believed you?”

“Because I gave them a copy of my ticket stub, or at least I thought I did. I meant to. Maybe I dreamed it because when they opened the file and looked again, it was gone. There was no copy of the ticket and no mention of me giving them a stub. I really thought I did that, but sometimes I dream things, and I think they’re real. Maybe I wasn’t even at the track that day. I don’t know. All I know is that I never killed anybody. I might be a user and a drunk, but I’ve never been a violent one.” He shifted in his seat and leaned forward. “I went to court-ordered drug counseling once, and the therapist said that I was non-violent on drugs that usually make people violent. She seemed to think that was a big deal, and wanted to test my brain to see if my chemicals were off.”