Deadly Décor (A Caprice De Luca Mystery) (21 page)

“All I can say is that if this leads to anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

“And the first to get an interview with your brother-in-law? I heard they were bringing him in for questioning again.”

“I don’t know how Joe would feel about that.”

“But you could try to convince him.”

“I could. But Marianne, this might not be anything at all.” Yet in Caprice’s gut, she had the crawling knowledge that this article was very important in this case.

“It’s a deal. I do have other work on my desk, but I’ll get to it sometime today.”

Caprice was just ending the call when her phone beeped because a text had come in. It was from Jackie.

Can you come to Connect Xpress? It’s important.

Caprice texted back, Be there in half an hour.

She had to stop at home and check on Shasta and her brood, to see if Nikki was bored with pup-sitting or if she was as enamored with the pups as Caprice and would stay for supper. They could cook up something together.

She considered Jackie’s text once more. Just what did the videographer have to tell her?

Forty minutes later—sure the pups were faring well under Nikki’s watchful eye, yet eager to return to care for them herself—Caprice noticed that only one car was parked in Connect Xpress’s side lot. She assumed it was Jackie’s.

Caprice parked in the first slot, closest to the door, eager to find out what Jackie had to tell her. But after she opened the door and stepped inside, she found Connect Xpress eerily silent. Maybe she should turn around and go right back out.

No, that was silly. This was a public business, and Jackie had texted her. Certainly she would be close by. Caprice remembered the last time she was here and how Jackie had been working at the computer.

She proceeded down the hall as she had before, hoping to see Jackie at the opposite end of it. But she didn’t see Jackie. Goose bumps broke out on her arms. One of those “signs.” Now she really should turn around and leave. But her middle name wasn’t “Curious” for nothing.

The taping rooms were just beyond the office. She went to the first glass window, and a gasp escaped her. There was Jackie on the floor! Blood dripped down her forehead. She looked as if she were unconscious or worse. Her hands were behind her back, secured with duct tape. Her ankles too were duct-taped together. Caprice rushed through the door and fell on her knees beside the young woman. Jackie was still breathing.

However, before Caprice could pluck her phone out of her pocket, she felt as if all the air had been knocked out of her, as if every muscle in her body was shooting pain to her brain. On top of all that, she couldn’t move. Yet she collapsed to the floor, stunned . . . and incapacitated.

Caprice had never felt that kind of pain—like a thousand knives slicing through her all at once. When the sensations stopped, she felt like a rag doll and out of breath. Yet she was aware that someone had pulled her arms together behind her back and secured them with . . . duct tape? She moved because she now could.

“There’s no point in fighting me,” Eliza said. “I’ll just tase you again.”

Caprice finally got her breath, finally could make her mind work.

Eliza was ranting. “You couldn’t stop snooping, could you? You and Jackie. You couldn’t take the warning when I tried to drown you.”

“That was you?” Caprice managed to say.

“I work out in my home gym, remember? And Shape Up has no security to speak of, except for an alarm when they’re closed. It’s easy to slip in and out of there. Jogging suit, baseball cap. No one knew who I was.”

“Why hurt Jackie and me now? I might never have found out who killed Bob.”

“Don’t play stupid with me. I’ve been following you. I had to keep track of what you were doing. I could hear you on the phone in Monty’s garage. I heard you call Marianne Brisbane. She’s a pit bull. I knew if she researched the tanning salon, you two would find the road to me.”

“What did Jackie find?” That was the only explanation for Eliza knocking her out.

“She found the video I took of the fire in Philadelphia at the tanning salon. I thought I’d buried it in the files.”

“Did you know she texted me?”

“After I tased her and she hit her head when she fell, I checked her phone. I knew you’d be coming.”

“Eliza, don’t make this any worse for yourself. Whatever you’re planning to do . . .”

“I’m planning to do the same thing I did to Bob, only in a different way.”

Caprice knew she had to buy some time. Maybe somebody would walk in. After all, Nikki knew where she was. Maybe she could get the drop on Eliza. Her feet weren’t bound yet.

But just as she thought it, Eliza came toward her with duct tape and the Taser gun. “Try to kick at me or prevent me from securing you, and I’ll zap you again.”

If she struggled, she knew Eliza would do what she threatened. If Caprice got tasered again, it would be easy for Eliza to wrap her ankles. Either way, she was going to get bound.

As Eliza secured her ankles, Caprice said, “I don’t know what you have planned, but I don’t want to die without having answers. Tell me who you really are and why you killed Bob.”

Eliza added another layer of tape and then smiled viciously. “Who I really am? You’re going to find out exactly who I am when I set a fire to this place, and you go up in flames with it.”

At first, all Caprice felt was panic, panic so horrifying she shook. But panic and fear were enemies now as much as Eliza was. She still felt exhausted from being tased, but her mind felt clearer, and she had to keep it that way.

Her thigh seemed to tingle, and she wondered if that was a leftover sensation from the Taser. But then her phone played “A Hard Day’s Night.” If only she could get to it!

After the music stopped, Eliza smiled with malice. “Your phone isn’t at your fingertips now, is it? Always chatting with your sisters or your doctor boyfriend. You’re as bad as Bob.”

Didn’t Eliza have family, either? Was she jealous of anyone who did? Caprice had to keep her talking.

“Why fire?” Caprice asked, trying to steady her voice.

That didn’t seem to be a question Eliza had expected. “You mean the first time or this time?”

“Both.”

Eliza had a huge ego, and if Caprice could just feed it and nudge it and paw at it, Eliza would tell her the whole story. Time was her friend. She needed the story.

“The first time, it was all about the insurance money. I needed it to start over. Starting over isn’t as hard as most people think it is. I knew someone who could find me an identity. All he had to do was use someone who was already dead. And it just so happened I could even keep my initials.”

“But why did you have to change your identity? You could have just started over with the insurance money.”

“If I’d stuck around Philly, my creditors would have moved in. I had a lifestyle to maintain, and I did it by borrowing to the max. But I owed everybody. I wasn’t going to give them that insurance money. Are you kidding?”

“So you just disappeared.”

“I did. I researched lots of towns, but Kismet seemed just right.”

“So in about five years, you became a multimillionaire, right?”

“On paper.”

“And you had a fling with Bob,” she guessed.

“I did. I wanted it to be more than a fling. I thought he really cared about me.” She stopped and seemed to think about that.

Caprice kept silent, waiting for Eliza to continue.

Finally, appearing to come back to the present, she looked down at Jackie, and her expression hardened. “Bob knew I was hurting for money and needed investors to expand. He promised me that once he sold his software app, he’d have money to throw away. But then Kent Osgood came to town and joined his crew. They got along well and decided to form a partnership. Lo and behold, suddenly last month, Kent confessed to Bob he was his half brother! You would have thought an old world ended and a new one began.”

Prompting Eliza when she stopped there, Caprice said, “I guess Bob decided family was more important than anything else.”

“I’ll say. Bob felt protective of Kent. So instead of giving me the money, he told me he was going to invest in a fund for Kent to go to college. College. When we both could have become rich. If only he hadn’t overheard my phone conversation after the June board meeting with my insurance agent—he’s on the community center’s board too—upping my fire insurance on Connect Xpress. If only Bob hadn’t rifled through my desk and found that newspaper clipping.”

“He went through your desk?”

“He was all over my house when he was painting, you know that. He seemed to think a lot of things about me didn’t add up. Like if I was going to leave Kismet for California, why would I up my fire insurance on Connect Xpress? When he checked into my background, the only Eliza Cornwall he could find was a sixty-year-old woman who’d died.”

“So he had questions, and I guess he came to you with them?”

Eliza’s eyes narrowed as if she were remembering exactly what Bob had said. “He asked me point-blank if I was using an alias. At first, of course, I denied it. But he showed me that clipping, and he wanted to know what it had to do with me.”

Caprice had read somewhere that criminals often keep souvenirs of their crimes. That clipping had been Eliza’s souvenir. So had her video of the fire.

“You told him the truth?”

“Not exactly. I just told him that, like Eliza Doolittle in
My Fair Lady
, I became a different person and started over. Was that so terrible? He even agreed that that wasn’t terrible, that he felt like starting over too. But he wanted to know what I did that I had to leave my old life. Of course I didn’t tell him, but I did invite him to go to California with me. I wanted him to so badly. I loved him. You understand, don’t you?”

Before Caprice could answer whether she did or didn’t, Jackie moaned and moved a bit. Caprice could see she was coming around.

Eliza could hear and see that too. She went over to Jackie and stood over her. “You know what Bob told me? He told me he loved Jackie. He told me he was thinking about asking her to marry him. He told me he was going to look out for his brother. Then he went out of town and left us both high and dry.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“I didn’t then. I do now. He went to Philadelphia. He asked questions. He even found an old picture I’d had taken for publicity for the tanning salon. After July’s board meeting that night at the community center, we went out back. He told me all that. He told me if my place here suddenly burned down, he’d know for sure what I did in Philadelphia. So I told him the truth. I told him I loved him. I told him again that I wanted him to go with me, that we could have a great life in sunny L.A. And do you know what he said? He said he’d made a mistake in ever going out with me, and ever getting involved with me, and ever sleeping with me. Him, with so many notches on his belt it would never be long enough to hold them all! I was so hurt, and so angry. When he turned around to pick up a can of paint to take back into the center, I picked up that hammer and I smashed him. Then I ran around the building to my car and drove away. I drove all the way to the reservoir and dropped the hammer from the bridge.”

Silence invaded the taping room, and Caprice could think of nothing to say. But her phone in her pocket played the Beatles’ music again.

Eliza looked at Caprice’s pocket. “I guess someone’s trying to get hold of you. That means I better hurry up.”

“Eliza. Don’t do this,” Caprice pleaded.

But Eliza had already left the room.

Caprice had missed the fact that Eliza was on the board of the center, along with Jeff Garza and Bob. Missing that important piece of evidence had put her in this danger.

She wiggled and wiggled and thought about screaming. But in the taping room, nobody would hear her. Her voice would never carry outside the walls of the building.

She called over to Jackie. “Jackie, are you awake?”

The videographer groaned and tried to lift her shoulders. But she flopped back down. “I’m seeing stars,” Jackie murmured.

“Take some deep breaths,” Caprice advised her, knowing they didn’t have much time before Eliza murdered them too. She was really trying not to panic. She waited a few beats, then asked, “What happened to you?”

It was a few seconds before Jackie answered. “Not so long ago, I asked Eliza if she had any gum. She said there was some in her purse and I could get it if I wanted it. So I did. When I pulled it out of this little compartment, an old business card came with it. It was for Tropical Tan, and it had the name Elizabeth Crandall on it. I didn’t think too much about it. But then this morning I was missing Bob and didn’t have a lot of work, so I was just looking through old videos on the computer. I found the video file of Tropical Tan burning down. It seemed weird. It seemed to be too much of coincidence. You know what I mean? So I wanted another opinion and that’s why I texted you.”

The smell of gasoline or kerosene or some such product became evident. How far away was the accelerant?

Caprice heard Eliza moving around outside the door. Then she was back inside the taping room. She spotted Caprice’s fringed macramé bag on the floor. Crossing to it, she delved inside and found what she was looking for.

“I’ll be driving your car around the back so no one sees it. It’s too noticeable. If the fire company doesn’t get here in time, it will go up with the rest of the place. I’ll be long gone on the private plane I chartered.” She stared down at Caprice. “It’s true what they say, you know. Nice girls finish last. You’re going to finish dead.”

Before Caprice could even register the fact that her car might go up in flames with them, Eliza disappeared out the door. Where had Eliza poured the gasoline?

She asked Jackie frantically, “Can you move?”

“I’m dizzy and I feel sick,” Jackie responded weakly.

“But can you move?” Caprice prodded her, using her hands and her feet as best she could to scrunch toward the door. “We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t know if she’s going to detonate the fire from afar or light it before she leaves. Come on, Jackie. Move.”

Jackie tried to push herself as Caprice had done. But she just couldn’t. “You go,” Jackie said. “Go as far as you can.”

Straight into the fire
, Caprice thought. Faces flashed on her mental screen—her mom, dad, Nana . . . Vince, Bella and her family . . . Nikki . . . Seth . . . Grant. She thought of Sophia and Shasta with her pups.

Caprice could move only an inch or two at a time, and she’d hardly made it outside the taping room when the smell of gasoline became stronger. Just what had Eliza doused? Wouldn’t Connect Xpress’s security system detect the smoke?

Not if she had turned the system off.

Caprice heard a noise, like a
whoosh
, then she smelled something burning.

She couldn’t move fast enough. She’d never even get down the hall into the reception area. It was silly to think she could save herself, let alone Jackie too.

She saw the fire now. It had started at the back of the building. Of course Eliza wouldn’t have splashed gasoline across the front. Someone might have seen her.

Caprice called to Jackie. “Try to get out here with me. Try.”

But Jackie didn’t respond, and Caprice didn’t know if she’d passed out again or given up.

Smoke filled the entire area, and Caprice could hardly breathe, let alone see. Yet she saw red-orange flames eating up the walls . . . eating up the ceiling . . .

“Caprice!”

She must be imagining things. That sounded like Grant’s voice. But imagination or not, she answered him. “Grant, I’m here. Down the hall.”

The smoke was like a thick, icky fog, and she didn’t even know if he’d heard her. She yelled again. “I’m on the floor in the hall. Outside the taping rooms.”

The next moment he was there . . . on the floor beside her.

“I’m bound . . .”

“I’m getting it,” he muttered.

Soon her hands were free. She saw he had a pocket knife and was slicing at the tape at her feet.

“Jackie’s in the taping room. We have to get her out.”

“I have to get you out.”

“I’m fine.” She wiggled her hands, shook her feet, got to her knees, and almost fell back down. But she didn’t fall because Grant’s arms were around her. He held her waist.

“You have to stay down so you can breathe. The fire started in the back. You can make it out. Go.”

“But Jackie . . .”

“I’ll get her. Go!”

It wasn’t the authority in Grant’s voice that made her find her feet, keep crouched down, and hurry out the hall. It was the fact that she trusted him. She trusted him to find Jackie and save her too.

And she soon realized she was right to trust him. She’d no sooner made it outside to the street than there he was, carrying Jackie in his arms, laying her down on the ground.

Caprice reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.

“I already called nine-one-one,” he told her.

“I’m going to call Chief Powalski.”

Five minutes later, Grant had carried Jackie across the street and Caprice had followed him. The three of them sat at the curb while sirens screamed and fire overtook Connect Xpress.

Jackie was leaning against Caprice, and Caprice had her arm around her. “The paramedics will be here soon.”

Looming above her, Grant hovered next to Caprice. “You need to be checked out too, and don’t argue with me about it.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Just because you saved my life, don’t think I owe you obedience.”

He rolled his eyes. “Obedience is one thing I’m never going to get from you.”

There was something in his voice, something in his eyes that made her ask, “What do you want from me?”

He looked as if he might say exactly what he wanted. But then the fire engine rolled down the street.

Grant answered her question with, “All I want for now is to know you’re safe.”

Without a doubt, Grant was the most frustrating man she knew. But without a doubt, she understood she’d always be grateful to him for saving her life.