Death of a Pumpkin Carver (16 page)

Hayley and Danny both stiffened as they slowly raised their hands in the air.

Shane pointed the gun at them.

His hand was shaking.

He was agitated and panicked. “Now just stand there quietly for a minute and let me think.”

His eyes darted back and forth.

Danny shifted a little to his right and the sudden move startled Shane, who thrust the gun out, his finger waffling on the trigger.

“I said don't move!”

Danny realized Shane was on the verge of hysteria and just might accidentally shoot without even meaning to, so he stood frozen in place alongside Hayley.

“Shane . . .” Hayley said softly and gently.

Shane pointed the gun at Hayley. “Shush! Please! I told you I'm trying to think!”

Hayley nodded and glanced over at Danny, who kept his eyes glued on the gun.

Finally, Shane made a decision.

With his free hand, he reached into his back pocket and whipped out his cell phone. He pressed a button and clamped the phone to his ear, waiting for someone to answer.

The wait seemed endless.

But it only lasted a few seconds.

Shane stood upright as someone picked up the call. He lowered the gun slightly but it was still pointed in Hayley and Danny's direction and Shane's finger still rested loosely on the trigger. “It's me. I've got a big problem. It's that nosy newspaper reporter Hayley something or other. She's here.”

“Actually I'm not a real reporter. I just write the cooking column so I really have no interest in what's going on here . . .” Hayley interjected.

“Shut up!” Shane screamed, getting more volatile and spooked by the minute.

Danny stepped partially in front of Hayley in an attempt to shield her in case bullets started flying.

“Yeah, that's the one. She's here with some guy. They just showed up unannounced and things kind of got out of my control and now we're up in Mr. Cross's bedroom and they know he's not here . . .

“Yeah . . . Uh-huh . . . They seem to know too much, if you ask me. What should I do?” Shane listened intently as he was given instructions. He nodded his head as if the person on the other end of the phone could see him. “Okay. I'll take them down there until you get here.”

He ended the call and stuffed the phone back into his pants pocket.

Then he waved the gun at Hayley and Danny. “Come on. Let's go.”

“Where are you taking us?” Danny wanted to know.

“The basement,” Shane said weakly, a bundle of nerves.

“Why?” Hayley asked, terrified.

“Because that's what I was told to do! Now shut up and go!”

Hayley and Danny, their hands still in the air, slowly headed down the stairs as if they were on a death march, in total silence.

Hayley had seen enough movies and read enough books to know this couldn't possibly end well.

She glanced at Danny, who seemed to be in a state of denial, like he couldn't comprehend this was actually happening.

They reached the foyer and Shane ordered Danny to open the door to the basement, and then he prompted them to descend down the steps.

They hesitated for a moment, but Shane pointed the gun directly at Hayley's head, and they both obediently turned and trudged down the wooden steps into total darkness.

There was a musty, dank smell as they reached the bottom.

Shane turned on a light, illuminating a water heater and some storage boxes and not much else.

“Over there,” Shane ordered.

They were herded to the far corner of the basement, which was cold and damp and quiet except for the sound of a squeaky mouse rushing away.

Shane pulled on another chain hanging from the ceiling and a bright light snapped on, blinding them momentarily.

When their eyes were able to adjust, they saw a half-bricked-up wall that someone was working on but wasn't finished yet.

There were tools and buckets of cement on the floor.

Just inside the makeshift wall Hayley spotted something.

Was it a pile of beams that were going to be used to support the wall?

Or was it . . . ?

Hayley screamed.

It was a body.

A dead body.

Shane jumped back, startled.

Danny seized the opportunity to make a move.

He lunged at Shane, who stumbled back and pulled the trigger.

The gun went off.

A bullet whizzed past Danny's head, missing him by a mere inch or two.

It was enough for him to abort his plan to try to disarm Shane.

Hayley was still staring at the dead body.

She could now see the face.

It was turned in her direction.

A pale, drawn face.

But she recognized it.

She had seen it on the back of countless book jackets.

It was Norman Cross. “He's dead,” she gasped, before turning toward Shane, her eyes boring into him. “You killed him!”

Shane shook his head vehemently. “No! How could you say that? I worshipped the man. I idolized him. I could never do him any harm. He was my friend. My mentor. I was devastated when he died.”

“Well, if you didn't kill him, then who did?” Hayley demanded to know.

“Nobody,” Shane said, tears filling his eyes. “He died of a heart attack.”

“That's a load of crap! You're obviously bricking up his body down here in the basement so nobody finds him. Why cover up his death if it wasn't murder?” Danny shouted angrily, shaking off his fear.

He was obviously tired of being ordered about by this pesky, irrational punk.

“It wasn't my idea,” Shane said ominously.

They heard a door slam and shoes clicking across the hardwood floors upstairs.

Shane kept his eyes trained on Hayley and Danny, pointing the gun at them with a shaky right hand while wiping his nose with the sleeve on his left forearm.

The door to the basement flew open and the high-heeled shoes clattered down the steps into the basement until the person appeared out of the darkness into the light.

“Crystal Collier,” Hayley hissed in a contemptible whisper.

She was still wearing that sharp, expensive business suit that Hayley could never afford with a matching clutch bag hanging from a strap over her right shoulder.

“They know, Crystal! They know everything!” Shane wailed, panic-stricken, gesticulating his hands wildly while holding the gun.

Crystal ducked out of the way as Shane waved the weapon too close to her face before she snatched it out of his hand. “Give me that, you imbecile!”

She then turned her attention to Hayley.

“You just had to come sniffing around here, didn't you, Hayley? You couldn't leave well enough alone,” Crystal yelled scornfully.

“You were the one who insisted I come over to your office to discuss Aaron,” Hayley said. “I never would have seen the manuscript if you weren't so paranoid.”

This stopped Crystal cold.

She went over the events in her mind and groaned, wanting to kick herself.

Hayley stared at the prone, lifeless body of Norman Cross. “I know what you were planning to do now. Spanky's manuscript. You weren't going to publish it as Shane's book. You were going to say it was Norman Cross's new book! If it came out as a Norman Cross novel, you knew it was guaranteed to be an immediate moneymaker! Even the crappy stories he pounds out in his sleep end up on the
New York Times
Best Seller lists for weeks!”

“Now I see why Aaron was so attracted to you. Your keen mind and impressive deductive skills. I knew it couldn't be your looks or sense of style,” Crystal sneered.

Bitch.

“But this isn't just about one lousy book. It's about so much more,” Crystal said, stepping forward, gun raised, pressing the barrel right between Hayley's eyes.

Hayley shuddered but stood her ground, even though on the inside she felt as if she was going to faint.

“What the hell is she talking about?” Danny murmured in Hayley's direction.

“Crystal was Norman Cross's lawyer, and when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack, she saw an opportunity. Power of attorney. Isn't that right, Crystal?”

Crystal kept the gun pointed at Hayley's forehead.

She flinched slightly.

She knew Hayley had figured it all out.

“The plan was to pretend he was still alive. Norman Cross was a recluse anyway. He rarely ventured out of the house or accepted visitors. Crystal could forge documents transferring power of attorney to her so she had complete control of his estate. Then she could just gradually funnel his entire fortune into her own accounts. To keep the illusion alive, she knew Cross had to put out a new book, so why not steal an amateur's work and publish it under Cross's name so the public would continue to believe he was still alive and working?”

Danny piped up. “Squeaky's book?”

“Spanky,” Hayley corrected him. “A naive fifteen-year-old boy could be dealt with before the new Cross novel came out. Some kind of believable accident. He'd be safely out of the way unable to alert anyone to the truth. That he was the
true
author of
The Devil's Honeymoon
. And then, after most of the estate was depleted, and all that money deposited into some kind of offshore account, a story would emerge about the reclusive author Norman Cross disappearing, never to be heard from again. It would be characteristic of him. He was an oddball, a kook, an unpredictable crackpot. No one would question it. And whoever would ultimately buy this mansion would never suspect his skeletal remains were behind a brick wall down in the basement. When I think about it, this whole despicable, insidious plot sounds just like one of Norman Cross's own stories.”

“I agree. It's a tribute to his legacy,” Crystal said, proud of herself for concocting such a diabolical scheme.

“I wouldn't go that far. You're not paying tribute to anyone but yourself. You're just a soulless, greedy killer,” Hayley jeered.

“Hayley, maybe it would be a good idea if you toned down the heated rhetoric. What do you say?” Danny mumbled, eyeing the gun pointed at them.

“I just have one question,” Hayley said, ignoring Danny.

“What's that?” Crystal growled.

“What about Otis Pearson? What happened that night? Did he see something he shouldn't have?”

“Yes,” Crystal said. “He saw a poor man have a heart attack.”

Shane finally spoke up, his voice quivering, his whole body wobbly. “He . . . he was here delivering his moonshine to Mr. Cross and they always had a good laugh and usually got drunk, but on that night Mr. Cross just sort of seized up and grabbed his chest and then he collapsed. Otis told me to call an ambulance, but I called Ms. Collier first and she told me not to do anything until she got here.”

“Maybe if you had, Mr. Cross would still be alive,” Hayley mumbled.

“I doubt that,” Crystal shouted. “The man survived on cigarettes, booze, and red meat. He was a walking time bomb.”

“You had no intention of telling the world Cross was dead,” Danny said, jumping in. “Why allow the estate to be settled while you watch helplessly as a bunch of literary societies and charities sucked up all the money? No, you had a better plan. Keep him alive in the figurative sense until you could bleed him dry. Am I right?”

“Yes, Danny, we've already established that,” Hayley said.

“Oh,” Danny said, a chastened look on his face.

“Cute but dumb,” Crystal said, smiling. “He must be a tiger in the sack.”

“Just like Shane, I'm guessing,” Hayley said.

Crystal bristled.

“Shane wasn't ever going to be a problem. You knew you had him right where you wanted him. Under your spell. I heard from his writing teacher Judith Ann Moore he had a taste for older women. You probably also kept him on a tight leash with empty promises of guiding his future to fame and fortune as a best-selling author. The next Norman Cross.”

Shane shifted from side to side, hands buried deep in his pants pockets, eyes downcast. He wasn't comfortable hearing about how Crystal had used him, but on some level he knew Hayley was speaking the truth.

“That left Otis Pearson. You couldn't just let him live to tell the world he had seen Norman Cross keel over with his own eyes,” Hayley said.

“No, we couldn't. I'll never forget that pathetic, almost comical look on Otis's face when he realized we were never going to let him leave this house alive,” Crystal said, laughing at the memory. “He was such a sloppy, sad drunk. He ran around in circles and then went screaming out of here, running for his life. He ended up next door in the House of Horrors trying to hide from me. But I found him easily enough, and then I clocked him over the head with a club and that was that.”

“That's how he got the green gunk on the bottom of his boots!” Danny exclaimed. “From the House of Horrors!”

“Yes, Danny, I know,” Hayley sighed.

“Then, with Shane's help, we drove over to the cemetery and dumped his body there for someone to find. He had been drinking. He could have tripped over a gravestone. It was meant to look like an accident.”

“You could have planned that part better. It didn't take the police long to figure out he didn't die out there,” Hayley said.

“
Que sera, sera
,” Crystal said, almost singing. “Now you leave me no choice but to shoot you two and brick you up in the wall with poor Norman. I really hate doing this.”

“How perfect. Now you know for certain I will never be a factor in your happy future with Aaron,” Hayley said.

“Who's Aaron?” Shane asked, suddenly confused.

“Nobody,” Crystal hissed at him, cursing herself.

“Her new boyfriend,” Hayley offered. “A real man. Not a boy who can be so easily manipulated.”

Shane's mouth dropped open as he turned to Crystal.

“Don't listen to her. She's just trying to get you to turn on me,” Crystal said evenly. “We'll talk about it later.”

“Aaron's a smart man. It won't take him long to realize you're a demented, psychotic monster,” Hayley said, seething.

“Who's Aaron?” Shane demanded to know.

“Never mind, Shane!”

“I'm sure it's been your dream to marry a doctor,” Hayley said.

“He's not a real doctor. He's just a vet,” Danny said.

Crystal glared at Danny and then she turned to Shane. “Shoot him first.”

But Shane was preoccupied with this Aaron person.

He wasn't listening.

“Shane, do as I say and shoot them already!” Crystal screamed.

Their time was up.

It was now or never.

Hayley glanced over at Norman Cross's body and cried, “He's alive! Norman is alive! I just saw his finger move!”

“What?” Crystal cried, whipping her head around in the direction of Cross's corpse.

Hayley plowed forward, and just as Crystal turned back around, Hayley head-butted her as hard as she could right in the face.

The jolt of pain from the impact was crippling.

Crystal toppled over backward, crashing into a pile of bricks and knocking them over.

Danny sprang into action, wrestling the gun away from Shane and cracking him over the head with it.

Shane went down.

Crystal, holding a hand to her head, scrambled to her feet and, shrieking like some kind of wild animal, lunged at Danny.

He fired the gun right at Crystal's face.

Everyone froze in place, motionless as if time literally stopped.

The gun was empty.

All four of them sized up the situation.

And then Crystal stared at Shane, eyes flaring. “How many times have I told you to put bullets in the gun?”

“I . . . I guess I forgot . . .” Shane said, looking away like a guilty puppy who just peed on the floor.

“Come on, Hayley, let's get the hell out of here!” Danny yelled, grabbing her hand and leading her toward the basement stairs.

Hayley twisted around to see Crystal upending the contents of the fancy designer clutch bag she had slung over her shoulder when she arrived. Lipstick, a compact, a set of keys, and a handgun all spilled onto the floor.

Crystal bent down and scooped up the handgun.

“Danny!” Hayley cried.

They had just reached the foot of the stairs as Crystal raised the gun to shoot.

Her finger wrapped around the trigger.

Everything moved forward in slow motion.

Crystal aiming the gun at Hayley.

Shane curled up on the floor like a baby rocking back and forth trying to shut out what was happening.

Hayley watching her life flash before her eyes.

Knowing there was nothing she could do as Crystal pulled back on the trigger and a shot rang out.

And then Danny suddenly hurling himself in front of Hayley to protect her as the bullet ripped through his shoulder and he fell back with a jolt, grabbing his arm, and then sinking to the floor.

Hayley screaming as she knelt down, horrified to see blood seeping through Danny's jacket.

And then Shane screaming “No!”, unable to take any more, wresting the gun out of Crystal's hand as she ferociously scratched his face with her long, sharp, painted fingernails, trying to get the gun back in her possession before Shane punched her in the face and she fell to the floor in a crumpled heap, moaning.

As Hayley grabbed her cell phone and punched in 911, she saw Shane standing over Crystal, angrily waving her handgun around and shrieking, “I want to know right now! Who the hell is Aaron?”

He was too distracted by Crystal's betrayal to hear Hayley alert the dispatcher to their whereabouts and within less than a minute they gratefully heard sirens in the distance.

Hayley leaned down and whispered in Danny's ear, “Hang on, Danny. Help's on the way.”

His face was pale and his body limp, but he managed a weak smile.

Hayley never expected much from her ex-husband.

But the last thing she thought would
ever
happen was that he would take a bullet for her.

For better or worse, Danny Powell was officially now a hero.