Designed for Death (27 page)

“You won’t kill me. You haven’t got it in you.” He took a tentative step forward.

The fear had fled. Just holding the gun calmed me. I was ready for anything. If I died, I’d see Jack; if I lived, I’d see justice for Treasure. Never had I killed anyone. I didn’t want to start with Neal, but if I had to, I would.

“Stay where you are. That was no lucky shot. If you come any closer, I’ll take out your knee caps. What about your golf game then?”

To my surprise, that stopped him cold. I guess he didn’t understand that even with two intact knees, he’d played his final round. Even his head games were over.

Or so I hoped. With the .38 snug in my hand, I held a killer at bay. But how long could I hold out? His hands were lethal. One false step and I’d share Treasure’s fate. Other than shooting him where he stood, I had no choice but to force him outside and get help. “Head for the door, Neal. We’re going out.”

“In the middle of
this?
” He pointed to the fury outside the glass wall. At the trees rocking in the wind, the rain lashing the panes. Still, I’d be safer out there than in here.

As if that were a lie, a window suddenly shattered in one of the bedrooms. A second later, Carolyn’s feral breath blew through the condo.

“See!” Neal shouted. “It’s not over. It smashed a window. We can’t go outside. We’ll be killed.”

Storm or no storm, I couldn’t stay locked in alone with a murderer.

“Out,” I ordered, keeping the muzzle of the gun pointing at him. “Out.”

“Please, Deva,” Neal begged. “Don’t force me outside. It’s not over.”

“It
is
over.”

His eyes were pools of fear. “You’ll tell them I did it, won’t you?”

He had retreated to the soft-spoken, gentle man I’d worked with and liked so very much. A spurt of sympathy welled up, but no way could I give in to it.

“They’ll put me in prison.” He shuddered. “Do you know what happens in there?”

I held the gun steady. “You killed a woman.”

“She was no woman!” he screamed.

The sound of breaking glass had stopped, but I heard another faint noise. For an instant, it caught my attention. As my glance wavered, Neal lunged for the gun. The second he moved, I shot, instinctively, without thinking, just a wild aim at his left knee. This one
was
a lucky strike, and with a yowl of pain, he collapsed on the floor.

“Freeze! Police!”

Relief like I’d never known rushed through my body.

Rossi.

Dripping wet, his back hugging the wall, his weapon out and ready to fire, he came barging into the room like a TV cop, his gun sweeping the space, his jaw clenched, his eyes darting from Neal writhing on the floor to me standing over him with the Cobra.

“Get her gun,” he said. No “Hello, Mrs. D.” No nothing.

The tall gray-haired man who’d come rushing in behind him jammed his weapon back in its holster and took the pistol out of my hands.

“Check him, Chris,” Rossi said.

The older man crouched beside Neal and patted him down. “He’s clean. Leg’s bleeding.” He snapped a pair of cuffs on Neal’s wrists before saying to Rossi, “Looks like she shot out his kneecap.”

“Kneecap, eh?” A wide grin began slowly and Rossi’s eyes met mine in an admiring sweep.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m all right?” My adrenalin hadn’t run out quite yet.

“You all right, Mrs. D?” Rossi asked, his gun still cocked at the ready.

“Of course I’m not all right.” I pointed a trembling finger at Neal. “He killed Treasure. He confessed.”

Rossi holstered his gun, sighing as though what I’d just told him was old, stale news.

“How did you get here in the middle of the storm?” I asked.

“I get around.” As usual, he wasn’t going to tell me a damn thing.

Chris rolled Neal onto his side. “Can you hear me?”

Neal nodded and moaned weakly.

When Chris’s monotonous intoning of the Miranda rules ended, I said, “You’ve been following me.”

“That’s right, ma’am.”

“Why?”

“I put him on your tail, Mrs. D,” Rossi said. “Meet Detective Chris Harrington.”

We gave each other wary nods as Rossi spoke into his cell phone. “We need an ambulance. Victim with a gunshot wound to the…ah…kneecap.” After listening a moment, he said, “No, he’s stable. As soon as you can, then.” He flipped the phone closed and put it in his pocket. “It’s going to be a while. The streets are blocked.”

Even without the gun, I felt like Annie Oakley. I got my man, and in my heart I knew Jack would have been so proud of me.

Neal began to whimper. “It’s all her fault. She didn’t have to shoot me. I wouldn’t have hurt her.”

“Save your strength.” Rossi took a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and slashed open Neal’s pants leg. Neal didn’t move. He’d passed out.

“Lucky for him it’s a clean shot,” Rossi said. “Not much bleeding. Chris, you want to glove up and wrap it? There must be a towel around somewhere.” Rossi’s eyes took on a shine as he looked up at me. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?” He stood and gave me what for him passed as a smile. “Another thing. You got a permit to carry?”

“Not so fast.” I waved a finger at Detective Harrington. “Why did you have him follow me?”

Rossi gave me another look of grudging approval. “I know, you made the tail.” He glanced over at Chris and gave him a roll of the eyes.

“An answer, Lieutenant.”

“For your own safety. We knew you were in danger.”

“How?”

“The van tipped us off.”

“The van?”

He nodded. “Your neighbor’s across the street. It was used in that kidnapping attempt at Kmart.”

“But the paper said the girl didn’t make the license plate.”

“That’s correct,” Rossi said, satisfaction coloring his voice.

“But she did.”

“Correct again.”

Neal had begun a low moaning.

Rossi glanced down at him. “He used to take the van out occasionally, to keep the battery charged. A good neighbor act for the snowbird owner.”

“But that didn’t mean he killed Treasure.”

“No, that made him a person of interest. Special interest. Then, thanks to you, we learned about that sighting at the Island Grill and—”

“You mean the Hawaiian shirt?”

A crease furrowed Rossi’s brow. “What Hawaiian shirt?”

“The one Neal wore the night Treasure was killed.”

Rossi shook his head. “No, I don’t know anything about that. It was the sunglasses at night. Could have meant nothing, but the Kmart mugger also had them on in the dark. We were pretty sure Tomson here was our man that time. So when the witness from the Island Grill said she saw sunglasses on a guy who was with the victim the night of the murder, well…”

“You suspected it was Neal.”

“Exactly.”

“So you
had
connected the dots. But you didn’t warn me.”

Rossi had the grace to look guilty. “You’re hitting all the wrong notes, Mrs. D. Yes, we suspected him, which is why Harrington’s been following you. If we had picked Tomson up for attempted abduction, we would’ve tipped him off. We wanted him for the big one.” He paused. “The hurricane complicated things.”

“So you used me as bait?”

“Noooo. Don’t go there. That’s not the way it was. But you didn’t help when you ran into his condo. I thought I told you not to trust anybody.”

I sighed. He had, over and over again. Why tell him I had also twice tapped the wrong guy for the crime? And that he was one of them. He’d only laugh.

“By the way,” he said, “this Simon Yaeger, he’s been burning up my line asking about you. Said he couldn’t reach you. Sounded frantic. Cell phone towers are coming back on. Maybe you should give him a call. Take him out of his misery.”

“My phone’s dead.”

“Use mine.” He held it out, and I dialed Simon’s number. I must have known it by heart. He answered instantly, his voice strong and clear.

When I said, “Hello, this is Deva,” he said the most perfect thing.

“I knew it was you. I can always tell your ring.” Then, “Thank God you’re safe. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

Home.
I said goodbye, hung up and handed the phone back to Rossi, who treated me to the full impact of his liquid brown gaze. “You two a number?”

“Is this an ongoing investigation?”

“Just thought I’d ask.” His eyes swept over me, taking in my beat-up jeans, my stained sweatshirt, my unkempt hair, and I swear, every single one of my two thousand freckles, before saying, “I hate to tell you, Mrs. D, but you look like hell.”

The nerve of him. Wet from head to foot, dark circles ringing his eyes, a two-day growth of beard, and in one of his hideous Hawaiian shirts, he didn’t look so hot himself.

“Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“Like what?”

“Like who picks out your clothes. Your fiancée? You look like an ad for Dole pineapple.”

He glanced down at his shirt and grinned. “I pick them out myself. I don’t have a fiancée.”

No question about it, my jaw dropped. “You said you were going to Hawaii on your honeymoon.”

“I also said stay out of the investigation, Mrs. D.”

“Rossi, you’re avoiding the question. Are you engaged or not?” For some reason, I really wanted to know.

“Not.”

“Then you—”

He threw up his hands, palms out, showing me that long lifeline again. “I did not lie. I am going to Hawaii on my honeymoon. Waikiki Beach…when I find the right girl.”

“So why did you let me think you’d already found her?”

His grin broadened. “I do that so the women’ll leave me alone.” He rubbed at his beard with the back of a hand. “Otherwise they’re all over me.”

“What! You egotistical, arrogant, macho jerk!” I put my hands on my hips and thrust my chin at him. “You know something, Rossi, I could kill you.”

He laughed, showing me his big white teeth. “Too late, Mrs. D. You slayed me the first day we met.”

And then he winked.

Deva Dunne has an eye for design and a nose for deceit. If you enjoyed
Designed for Death,
you’ll love
The Monet Murders,
the next book in Jean Harrington’s Murders by Design series.

Coming soon!

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About the Author

Jean Harrington lives in Naples, Florida, with her husband, John (no cat, no dog, no children anymore). After teaching English lit at Becker College in Worcester, Massachusetts, for seventeen years, she now spends her days writing and rewriting and loving every minute of it.

Jean has had two Irish historical romances published,
The Barefoot Queen
(2007) and
In the Lion’s Mouth
(2009). Her work has won prizes in several Romance Writers of America contests.

Designed for Death
is the first in Jean’s light-hearted, decorating-diva murder mysteries, and she’s having great fun wallowing knee-deep in fictional dead bodies.

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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9296-7

Copyright © 2012 by Jean Harrington

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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.