Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (23 page)

“You were the one calling them that evening!”

“You betcha! Anyway, Ruby asked, could I just make sure Garnet knew about the note she had left on the kitchen counter. So I asked her to come wait for the ferry in my office so no one would see her, and I drugged her iced tea with some of m’ wife’s sleeping meds. Then I put some rocks in Ruby’s pockets, put her in the water, went up to her cottage, and read the note; if it wasn’t right, I was gonna rip it up, but it was perfect. I moved it to her room.”

“But . . . why? Why Ruby? What did she ever do?”

“Why do you think?” he yelled. “You kept snooping around, and I’ve heard about those other cases, the ones you’d solved. I figured between you and the cops, you’d dig and dig and dig and sooner or later, you’d get to me, so I figured if you all thought Ruby had done it, and then committed suicide, you’d just damn well leave it alone! It’s all your fault; she lived, and that spoiled that, so this is Plan B. Now,
move
!” He jabbed the gun in her ribs.

She started up the stairs again, almost to the top. She had to steel herself. A half measure would be worse than no try at all. If she just managed to push him down one step, all it would do was piss him off. Was he holding on to the railing, she wondered, and glanced over her shoulder. Oh Lord, he was! That complicated matters. She paused.

“What’s wrong now?”

“My shoe is undone. Can I see with your flashlight?” she asked, tucking Hoppy under one arm.

“Geez, like it matters!” he complained. “Keep going.”

“I can’t, Will. I’m . . . I’m afraid of falling.”

“Cripes, what a baby.”

It was as if time stilled; she saw him let go of the railing, and switch the flashlight on, pointing it toward her slip-on shoes. If he’d been more observant, he’d have known she didn’t have laces. She turned and, with her one free hand, shoved him, hard. He began to flail his arms, going back.

Twenty-two

S
HE BOLTED UP
the last step as Hoppy barked and squirmed. Will yelped in dismay, and there was a clatter and a grunt, then silence. She could taste a metallic tang in her mouth, as she paused at the top and panted, bent over, not sure she could move another step. Some scuffling from below warned her, though, that she may not have solved her problem. Had Will grabbed the railing and saved himself? She wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

“C’mon, buddy, we have to run,” she whispered, as she put her little dog down and took off, threading through the trees along a dimly perceived path, illuminated by the one weak light at the head of the steps.

Will shouted, “Come back here!”

He was close, too darned close! Even with three legs, Hoppy was faster than her. She paused, unclipped his lead, and screamed, “Run, Hoppy,” as a paralyzing stitch in her side shot a bolt of pain through her. She began to run again, but Will wasn’t far behind, and he shot; somewhere close to her the bullet found a mark with a
thunk
.

“You’d better stop,” he yelled, “or next time it’ll be square in your back.”

She stopped, terrified. Hoppy was running, but he paused and looked back at her, barking. “Run, Hoppy, run!” she shrieked. For once the little dog obeyed, and took off like a shot, his loping, wobbly gait making him weave.

“I’ll shoot that friggin’ mutt!” Will yelled. They were on the edge of the wooded area, on the lonely loop of dirt road that rose and dipped on a bend.

Hoppy was somewhere ahead, out of sight, barking as loudly as a dog so small could. She turned, shivering, to see Will, gun stuck out, emerging from the shadows.

“You almost ruined everything,” he said, panting. “Almost, but not quite. The dog doesn’t matter. March, and stay quiet, or get a bullet in the back. My house is just beyond the bend.”

She stilled, evaluating her options. She could still hear Hoppy barking somewhere, and someone yelling for him to shut up. If she screamed, if she
dared
yell, “Help,” how long would she live? Would he really shoot her, or would he just run? She didn’t like her odds, which she would have placed at fifty/fifty. The road was enclosed by shadow, the light from the few yellowish streetlights illuminating the leaves and casting a weird greenish glow all around them. Could she make a break for it?

“Walk!
Now!
” he hissed, coming up and pushing the barrel of the gun into her back.

She did as she was told, looking around, trying to figure whether she’d have time to dive into the bushes or not. He jabbed again, so close behind her she could hear his grunting breaths. Something rustled in the bushes close at hand. She hoped to heck it was not Hoppy, who had now stopped barking. Damn! Was her brave little Yorkie-Poo stalking his prey? Yorkies were little dogs who thought they were big dogs, and poodles had long ago been hunting dogs, before they retired to the laps of the chic. So she had a lionhearted little pooch who was a hunter at heart.

“Will, please . . . think about what you’re doing!” she said, her voice thick with fear. “This is not necessary. Just let me go, and we can talk. I’ll give you a head start. You can take a boat and leave!”

“Shut up!” he growled. “This is gonna go my way or not at all. We’re gonna walk to my house. You’ll shut your mouth, or take a bullet in the back. We’ll circle to the back of my house, and go in. I’ll stage the scene, and then you’ll kill my stupid wife.” He sobbed. “It wasn’t supposed to go this way! Why did Barb have to ruin everything? I had it all under control.”

“So why should I go along with this?” she asked, her voice trembling. She turned slowly under one of the weak streetlights and met his gaze. “If you’re going to kill me anyway, why should I go along with it?”

He smiled, and shrugged. “Anything can happen, right? I could change my mind. My wife might have escaped. Who knows?”

He was right; given the choice between eventual death over immediate death, she’d take eventual death every time. “Where are we going?” she asked, resigned to going along with him until she could figure a way out.

He pointed up the lonely road, which rose to a peak. There was a rustic cabin there, Jaymie knew, from her walks around the island. That must be Will’s home. It was perfectly situated to look out over the river, and she’d always thought it must have a great view. She doubted she’d have a chance to check that out.

“Walk,” he commanded.

She did. It was dark, and he flicked on his flashlight, playing it over the ground in front of them. The road rose, but they were coming to his house all too soon. It was a kind of ramshackle cabin, with redwood siding. It looked like nothing from the roadside, because all of the windows were concentrated on the other side, overlooking the river, Jaymie knew from boat trips along the St. Clair.

Her mind worked furiously. Was she going to have a chance to ditch him? Was there a spot of uneven ground ahead, or someplace for her to dive into protection? But the front of the house was barren, no porch, no trees, nothing. Maybe at the back, then. She knew one thing: she was not entering that house, because to go in was to give up and die.

Her heart pounded, and her senses became preternaturally aware. Every sniff of wood smoke, each rustle of the wind in the treetops and noise in the bushes, every voice at a distance: it all was music, a tune she was using to figure out what to do. If she could just get away from Will, she was not that far from people, folks she might even know and who would help her.

She took deep breaths, willing herself to be calm. She had been in tough situations before, and had come out of them because she was willing to do whatever it took to stay alive. There was clearly no reasoning with him; she’d tried that and failed. So she was going to have to be patient enough to wait for the right opportunity, and gutsy enough to take that opportunity when she saw it.

It was darker near his house. That was good and bad. Good, because it gave her some hope of hiding, but bad because in the dark she could stumble and or fall, and because he had the flashlight. The flashlight. She needed to knock that out of his hand, if she could. Grabbing it was no good. Carrying it lit would make her a target. It would be quicker if she just knocked it away from him. He might even lose time looking for it.

“There . . . go that way, along the path to the back of the house,” he said, playing the swath of light from the flashlight along the side of the redwood cottage.

Soon, soon, soon, her heart thrummed in beat with her muttered repetition. Soon. He was right behind her, the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other. Which was which? She glanced back. Gun in his right hand, flashlight in his left. Good. The flashlight was in the hand that was farthest from the house wall.

She waited, but as they reached the lip of a dip that would then rise up to the back of the house, she knew it was the moment, maybe her last chance. She whirled and chopped awkwardly at his left hand, giving it every bit of force she could, and he let out a surprised
Ugh
and a yelp of pain. He staggered, but didn’t lose hold of the gun or the flashlight. But it was just enough of a distraction, and she hopped down the small rise and darted into the wooded ravine that ran close to the house. Branches scratched at her legs and she tripped, flying into a pile of dead wet leaves, her leg caught on a branch.

But then a miracle happened, and she heard a shout.

“Will Lindsay, drop your weapon and put your hands up! You are under arrest for the murder of Urban Dobrinskie!”

It was Zack’s voice, and a moment later she heard another welcome voice. Garnet said, “Go find Jaymie, Hoppy! Go on, boy!” And her little dog yelped.

Weeping, Jaymie cried out, “Hoppy, I’m here, sweetie. Come on!”

A moment later her Yorkie-Poo was leaping wildly around her, as a flashlight played into the woods, and Garnet’s voice came to her. “Jaymie? You okay? Say something!”

“I c-can’t,” she wailed. “Hoppy keeps sticking his tongue in my mouth!”

A shot rang out.

“Damn!” came Zack’s voice.

“You okay, Zack?” Garnet yelled through the woods as various voices came toward them with cries of “What’s going on?” and “Was that a gunshot?’” and “Yeah, thought I heard one earlier. What’s going on?

“I’m okay,” Zack called out, “but Will Lindsay is dead. He shot himself.”

“Zack, Will’s wife is inside the home,” Jaymie yelled. She scrambled to her feet. Garnet reached her, Hoppy leaping around her feet, and with her friend and neighbor’s help she shakily found her way through the woods and out to where Zack stood, his service revolver in one relaxed hand, over the dead body of Will Lindsay. The killer still had his own gun in his hand, but his face was bloody. Jaymie turned away before she could see too much, a sob in her throat, as Hoppy sniffed curiously at the body. She reached down and picked her little dog up, turning her back on the scene and hugging her pooch to her.

“I think Barb Lindsay’s alive—at least Will said she was—but she might be tied up,” Jaymie said, a sob tightening her throat. “We’ve got to help her!”

“One second,” Zack said. He pulled out his cell phone and with the keyboard glowing faintly, made a call. He muttered tersely, then clicked it off. “Garnet, can you stay here with the body? I’ve got backup coming. Jaymie, you don’t know Lindsay’s wife, but you’re a woman, and she must be terrified. Will you help me?”

She looked up into his brown eyes and liked what she saw. He was finally comfortable with her, enough that he trusted her judgment. “I will,” she said, proud that her voice trembled only a little.

• • •

THE HOUSE WAS
dark. Zack knocked first, hoping the woman may have freed herself from her constraints. When that didn’t work, he said, “I have reason to believe she is in danger . . . Who knows how he left her? So I’m going to have to do this.” He placed one well-aimed kick at the lock near the doorknob, and the door ripped open with a loud scraping noise.

When Jaymie entered behind him, she heard whimpering close by, and let Hoppy loose. The little dog dashed through the dark and barked. Jaymie followed, as Zack, behind her, searched for a light switch. Hoppy was sniffing intently at a pantry door in the kitchen. She was there; Jaymie could hear her frightened whimpering.

“Barb Lindsay,” she said, loud enough to be heard through the wood door. “Just hang on. My name is Jaymie Leighton, and you’re safe. I’m with the police, and everything is going to be all right. You’re safe now.” She didn’t think it would help to tell the woman her husband was dead; not at this point, anyway.

She tried the knob, and found, to her relief, that it was not locked. She opened it, and there, on the floor of the tiny pantry closet, was a dark-haired woman bound with zip ties, and with duct tape over her mouth. The wide, pleading eyes made Jaymie sob with relief that they had found her in time.

“Just relax,” Jaymie said. “I’ll get some scissors or a knife or something.”

Zack came back from searching the house, and stuck his gun in the back waistband of his jeans. “It’s good . . . There’s no one else here.”

Jaymie cut the zip ties as Hoppy danced around, happy now that the tension was gone. She then sat on the floor next to the woman and said, pulling at the edge of the duct tape, “This tape is going to hurt if I take it off. Do
you
want to do it?”

The woman nodded, trembling and rubbing her wrists, easing the cricks out of her shoulders and back. She got hold of one end of the tape and wrenched it off, crying out in pain, then sobbing in relief. “Where’s Will?” she cried, as dots of blood oozed on her upper lip. “Has he been arrested?”

Jaymie looked up at Zack, who nodded. For her own peace of mind this woman needed to know the truth. “I’m sorry, but . . . Will is dead.”

Ten minutes later she had made Barb Lindsay a cup of tea, and both women sat at the kitchen table. From being horrified at the outcome of her husband’s crimes, she calmed, and now seemed resigned. The police swarmed her home, searching, now that they knew Will was Urban’s murderer.

Zack was in command of the scene and didn’t tell her to leave, so Jaymie stayed, as he and Will’s widow chatted. Gently, he led her on to her story about Will’s downfall.