Evelyn David - Sullivan Investigations 01 - Murder Off the Books (27 page)

“Okay.” Jeff stuck the phone in his jacket pocket. “I could use some air myself. You’ll call me if–”

“Of course.” Mac watched him pick up Whiskey’s leash and open the main door.

The dog didn’t wait to be invited; she was out the open door in a flash, yanking the leash loose from Jeff’s fingers.

Jeff spun around and followed the dog down the hallway. “What the hell? Whiskey?”

“Damn. What’s wrong with her?” Mac ran after the two. “Whiskey! Get back here.”

The dog stood in front of the abandoned office next to the top of the stairs, waiting for them. When they neared, she began howling.

Jeff put out his hand, but before his fingers could touch the doorknob, Mac stopped him.

“What are you trying to tell us, girl?” Mac drew his gun and motioned for Jeff to grab Whiskey’s leash.

The door wasn’t completely shut, so he was able to push it open with his foot.

A body on the floor wasn’t what he was expecting to find.

“Oh, my God.” Mac rushed into the room and bent down. JJ’s face was waxy pale, her breathing raspy. “Hey, kid. Can you hear me? Open your eyes.”

“Jeff, call–”

“I am.” Jeff put his hand over the cell phone microphone, “I’ll get the paramedics on the way and then go get Tom.”

“Thanks. Tell him we need the whole building searched. Now!”

***

Whiskey padded into the room and lay down next to JJ. For the first time since Mac had released the dog from the bathroom, she was quiet.

“Sorry I wasn’t listening, girl. You did the best you could. I’m the one who screwed up.”

Mac lifted the jacket covering JJ, trying to see where she was hurt. Her blouse was soaked with blood, but none of it looked fresh. He decided not to risk moving the cloth and restarting the bleeding. As he laid the jacket back over her, he saw it.

A glint of gold on the dusty floor.

A bracelet.

He picked it up and squinted in order to read the inscription.
Rachel
.

***

“Get it.”

The three women had barely walked in the back door when Fieldstone prodded Rachel in the back with her gun.

“It’s–it’s upstairs. I’ll just go….”

The raised eyebrow of the woman holding the gun stopped Rachel in her tracks.

“Duct tape.” Fieldstone gestured for Rachel and Kathleen to move into the kitchen.

“What-what do you want?” Rachel turned.

“I want duct tape and I want it now.” The voice echoed in the narrow back hallway.

“I keep some in
….” Rachel pointed a shaky finger at the wooden hutch that was on the far wall of the kitchen.

“Get it.” Fieldstone shoved Kathleen down on one of the oak chairs that surrounded the round, claw-footed table.

Rachel jerked open the drawer, grabbed the all-purpose tape, and wordlessly proffered it to her captor. Fieldstone cocked her head towards Kathleen.

“Tie her to the chair.”

Rachel taped Kathleen’s arms and legs securely.

“That’s good enough.” Fieldstone prodded Rachel with the gun. “Now let’s go get my key.”

Suddenly the pipes rattled from the flush of a toilet in the front of the house.

Both women froze.

“Who’s here?” Fieldstone whispered angrily, pressing the gun next to Kathleen’s head, as she glared at Rachel.

Rachel paled, frantic that Sam had come home. “I-I don’t know. Maybe my son. Let me try and get rid of him.”

Fieldstone nodded.

Rachel sped towards the dining room, but Carrie entered the kitchen from the second doorway that led to the den.

“Did you get something to eat?” Stopped short when she spotted Rachel.

“Oh, Mrs. Brenner, I hope you don’t mind. I had to use the bathroom. I couldn’t hold it another
….”

Suddenly the teen realized that they weren’t alone. Her eyes widened as she finally comprehended that Mrs. O’Herlihy was sitting at the kitchen table with a gun pressed against her temple.

“What-what’s happening? Ms. Fieldstone, what are you doing here?” Carrie looked from Rachel to the Vice President, then back again. Confusion, then finally understanding, played across her face.

“It was you.” The words came out as a statement rather than a question, as the young woman started to sway uncertainly.

Rachel grabbed Carrie before she slid to the floor.

***

“Drink this.” Rachel handed Carrie a glass of water.

The teen sipped the liquid slowly, then cautiously dipped her fingers into the water and rubbed the back of her neck. The purple streaks in her hair stood in vivid contrast to her stark white cheeks. With shaky hands, she slid the glass back on the table, and looked wide-eyed from her boss to the Vice President of her school who was, at that moment, pointing a gun directly at her heart.

“Who else is here?” Fieldstone demanded.

Carrie was silent for a moment, then looked around the room. “You, Mrs. Brenner, Mrs
….”

“Not them, idiot. Who were you talking to when you came in here. Something about food.” Fieldstone waved the gun dangerously in the air. “Who else is in the house?”

“No one,” Carrie said forcefully. She sat up a little taller. “I was talking to Snickers–Mrs. Brenner’s cat. I knew she wanted to be fed. See….” Carrie pointed to the empty dish on the floor.

Fieldstone considered the explanation, then inched over to the den and peeked in. Satisfied that they were alone, she lowered the gun. “Okay, enough with the Dr. Doolittle stuff.” The Vice President shifted her attention to Rachel. “Tie this one to the chair and let’s get that damn key.”

“I’m out of tape.” Rachel held up the empty spool. “I have some more in the pantry.”

“I’ll get it.” Carrie started to stand.

“Sit down,” Fieldstone snapped. “I give the orders and I want Brenner to get the damn tape.”

Rachel patted Carrie on the shoulder, then moved past her to the pantry doors. “I’m pretty sure I have more duct tape, but if not, how do you feel about scotch tape?” She walked into the dark recesses of the storage closet. “Or forget the tape, how about just some scotch,” she added under her breath.

Rachel had inherited her Great Aunt Rose’s house. One of its best features was the oversized pantry. And although she didn’t keep the pantry as fully stocked as the former owner of the house, she was every bit as organized. Like her great aunt, Rachel believed that everything had a place and there was a place for everything. Not bothering to flick on the light, she reached towards the household supplies shelf.

Silently, a hand slipped across her mouth and stifled her scream. She started to struggle, bumping against the wall. A can crashed to the floor.

“What’s going on?” an angry voice shouted from the kitchen.

“It’s me,” Ray breathed in her ear.

Rachel slumped against him in relief.

“What are you doing in there?” The sharp tone of the voice brooked no nonsense.

Ray withdrew his hand and her eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, could make out his pale features.

“Nothing.” Rachel winced, her voice, at least two octaves higher than normal, sounded suspicious even to her. “I just knocked over a can of corn.”

Ray handed her a full roll of tape and nodded for her to go.

Rachel emerged shakily from the closet and held up the roll. “I’ve found some more.”

Carrie stared at the closet door. Rachel locked gazes with the teen, willing her to lower her eyes away from the pantry. ESP seemed to work because Carrie suddenly switched her focus to her lap.

“Tie her up fast. I don’t have all day.” Fieldstone grabbed two dishtowels from the rack over the sink. “And gag them both. I don’t want any chatting.”

“Tell me again–why did you kill Angela Lopez and Tia? What could they have possibly done to you?” Rachel tore off a piece of duct tape and wrapped it around Carrie’s wrists.

Fieldstone shrugged. “They knew too much about my dealings with Vince. Lopez found some vendor check stubs and a foreign bank account number taped to the bottom of Vince’s desk drawer. She would have turned it all over to the police after showing you. Luckily, I was in the hallway in the Administration building and overheard her cell phone call. It was a perfect time to tie up that loose end and acquire Vince’s secret stash. His trampy wife doesn’t deserve the money. Can you believe she’s having an affair with Jack Starling? Some people are beneath contempt. Her husband’s only been dead a little more than a week.”

“You’re a fine one to question anyone else’s morals,” Kathleen pointed out.

Fieldstone walked over and raised her gun, the barrel pointed directly at the redhead. “You really don’t have the proper demeanor for a hostage.”

Kathleen raised her chin and glared at the woman.

“What about Tia?” Rachel asked, trying to distract Fieldstone before she decided that Kathleen was expendable.

Fieldstone lowered the gun several inches. “What about the twit? The reigning homecoming queen was well on her way to following in Gina’s footsteps. I probably saved some young man a world of pain–and alimony.”

Rachel knelt and taped each of Carrie’s ankles to the wooden chair legs. “But why bother to kill her?”

“She saw me arguing with Vince late one night in his office. I wasn’t sure how much of our conversation she’d managed to overhear. When I needed to turn up the heat on your brother, it occurred to me that killing her and leaving her someplace you’d be sure to find her would solve two problems with one bullet.” Fieldstone laughed. “I didn’t even have to go find her. She came to me–wanted to get her work-study job changed to another office. I was happy to take care of that problem for her.”

“Are you the one that hurt Mac Sullivan’s dog?” Carrie asked, her voice shaking.

“Mr. Sullivan needed to be refocused. I thought if he believed Thayer took his dog, he’d go after him a little harder. I ordered Tia to move the dog, but she was worse than useless. Young people today have very few skills and even less imagination. She couldn’t get the muzzle on the mutt to save her life, even after the dog had gobbled down two hamburgers laced with sleeping pills.” Fieldstone laughed. “Not that it would have saved her life, but Tia didn’t know that.”

Fieldstone checked the tape around Carrie’s wrists. “Tie them tighter. Too bad the leash broke that night, Rachel. I was planning on you finding a dead dog along with Tia.”

“You’re sick,” Kathleen exclaimed, finally earning another rap on the head with the gun barrel.

“Shut up.”

“I hope you rot in jail, you crazy old–”

Fieldstone pointed her gun at Rachel. “I told you before to gag her. Gag both of them now. I don’t want to waste another bullet.”

Rachel complied, making sure to do it properly, knowing that Fieldstone would check her work.

Fieldstone tugged on the knots, then smiled in satisfaction. “My dear, you may not care for me, but I’m a product of my environment, no more and no less. I just do what I have to do to get what I need. And what I do, I do very well. My dead father could attest to that. He was taking way too long to die naturally. I had to help him along. No one ever suspected anything and I was able to make a small fortune selling the farm to a developer.”

“But you’ve made mistakes,” Rachel argued, wondering just how many people the woman had killed during her life? “You made a mistake hiring Dan. He was smarter than you expected and he’d stopped drinking. He figured out what you and Malwick were doing before you were ready, didn’t he?”

“No. I was the one who made the call to start the outside investigation.” Fieldstone shook her head. “My only mistake was in not realizing that Vince had a better developed sense of self-protection than I’d ever imagined. When that pompous fool demanded to meet me in the clock tower–like some scene from a B-grade thriller–I knew he was going to demand a bigger cut of the money. I just didn’t expect him to try to blackmail me. That was the final straw. Our partnership was over.”

Fieldstone laughed. “After I shot off his ear, Vince gave me the details about his little insurance package and where to find the key to a safe deposit box. But I’d had enough of him. When the clock struck midnight–his time was up. Too bad Dan had already given you the key. Otherwise none of this would have been necessary.”

“What kind of insurance?” Rachel made sure that her expression didn’t change while her mind was scrambling to understand what Fieldstone had just said. Dan hadn’t given her any safe deposit key. The only key she had of Dan’s was the one she’d found near Tia’s body. It was the key to the Warrenton house. She’d thought that was what Fieldstone wanted.

“Taped phone conversations about the fake invoices and the checks. Poor Vince. He spent the last few minutes believing that his hidden evidence would keep him safe.”

“But you killed him anyway?” Rachel wondered if Malwick had ever known how dangerous his boss was.