Mother Knows Best (A Margie Peterson Mystery) (25 page)

It wasn’t long before the steps drew even with us. The flashlight came within inches of me, and I cringed, trying to stay still so that the bags wouldn’t crinkle. I followed the beam with my eyes. Unfortunately, it landed right on Becky’s pink-clad rear end.

The footsteps stopped, and the beam lingered. “Get up,” a male voice rumbled. Becky turned, looking terrified, and stood up slowly, hands in the air, squinting into the light. “Come here.”

She took a step forward, and I panicked. What now? I felt for the bags, trying to find the gun. The crinkling of the plastic drew the man’s attention, and the flashlight veered away from my friend, searching for me. My hand closed on the gun just as the beam found me. I pulled it out of the trash bag and leveled it at the man with one hand while I searched in my purse for my penlight with the other.

“Leave her alone,” I warned him. I located the penlight and aimed it at his face. It was the janitor, the scar on his cheek looking particularly scary now that we were alone in the dark woods.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Going for a walk,” I told him. “What about you? Working the late shift?”

“I heard there was a break-in,” he said. “I was coming to check it out.”

“Well, go check it out, then,” I said.

“What happened to your friend’s pants?”

“Bathroom accident,” she said. “You really need to do a better job cleaning.”

“You broke in,” he said in a menacing voice, turning on Becky. His hand snaked out and grabbed her throat. She let out a strangled cry, and I saw his other hand dart for his pocket. “That’s against the rules,” he hissed.

The gun was heavy in my hand, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. Instead, I lurched forward and brought the butt of the gun down on his head as hard as I could.

His hand slithered away from Becky’s throat, and he fell to the ground like a sack of rocks.

“Thanks,” Becky said, massaging her throat and looking down at the custodian. “That really hurt!”

“That’s one scary dude,” I said as we both contemplated the unconscious man on the ground. “Thank God I grabbed his gun before we left.”

“No kidding,” she said. “Although I think most people shoot them instead of using them as blunt weapons.”

“It worked,” I said, “and we won’t go to trial for murder.”

“Well, not for murdering the custodian, anyway.”

I sighed. “What do we do now?”

“What was he reaching for?” she asked.

I knelt down and poked at his pockets. In his left-hand pocket was a small, gun-shaped object. “I think he was going to pull a gun on you.”

“I think we should call Peaches,” Becky said as I fished out the gun. We both looked at it; the dull metal gleamed coldly as I shone my light on it. I handed it to Becky and reached for my phone, then realized I didn’t have one.

“Can I borrow your cell phone?” I asked.

“It’s in my purse,” she said, tossing me her enormous handbag as she pointed the gun at the back of the custodian’s shaved head. I fished her phone out from a jumble of lipstick tubes and dialed Peaches’s cell phone.

“Yeah?” Peaches answered in a gruff voice.

“It’s Margie,” I said. “I just knocked out the custodian of Holy Oaks.”

“You what?”

“We broke in and set off a silent alarm. When we snuck out of the building into the woods, we had a run-in with him.”

“Why did you knock him out?”

“He attacked Becky,” I said. “I found a gun and some packets of drugs in the custodian’s closet.”

“What was he doing at the school?”

“He knew we’d broken in. He had a gun on him; he attacked Becky when we were walking back to the car.”

“How would a custodian know the security alarm went off?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I think we need to find out. I’ll be right over,” she said. “Can you tie him up?”

“Tie him up?” I asked.

“I thought we’d bring him back to the Pretty Kitten and ask him a few questions,” she said. “I’m on my way.”

“Umm . . . could you bring some spare clothes?” I asked, glancing at Becky.

“Why?”

“Becky fell into a toilet.”

“I’m not even going to ask,” Peaches said, and hung up.

The shopping-center parking lot was empty when we pulled into the Pretty Kitten an hour later. I’d attempted to hog-tie the custodian with Becky’s wet jeans. By the time Peaches had arrived with a pair of yoga pants and some slippers for Becky, we’d dragged him out of the woods to the side of the road.

Now, the three of us stood a few feet back from the trunk, aiming the two guns we’d commandeered as Peaches prepared to hit the trunk button on her key fob.

“If you have to shoot,” she said, “try to get it in the trunk. I just spent three thousand dollars getting the exterior cleaned up.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Ready?” she asked.

I nodded, hoping my hog-tying job had held, and she popped it open.

Thankfully, the man was still passed out. Peaches handed Becky the keys to the storefront; as Becky unlocked the door, Peaches grabbed the janitor beneath the arms and I took hold of his legs.
We’re getting the hang of moving bodies,
I thought. Was that something you could put on a résumé?

“They don’t have security cameras here, do they?” I asked, thinking of Wanda—and Detective Bunsen.

“I disabled them,” Peaches said.

“Good,” I said. I didn’t want to know how.

We pushed through the doorway into the darkened waiting room of the Pretty Kitten. I turned right, heading toward Peachtree Investigations, but Peaches pulled to the left.

“I thought you wanted to question him,” I said, trying to tighten my grip on his ankles.

“I do,” she said, steering the body toward one of the waxing rooms. “Let’s get him up on the table in here, and then we can strap him down.”

“Strap him down?” Becky asked.

“I’ve got some tie-down straps in my desk drawer,” she said. “They come in handy for lots of things.”

We slid him onto the table as Becky hurried to retrieve the tie-downs. “You got a gun?” Peaches asked me.

“Two of them.”

“Point one of them at him while I untie him,” she said.

“Got it.” I fished the gun out of my pocket and aimed it somewhere toward him but away from where Peaches was inspecting my handiwork.

“This looks pretty good,” she said, “but you didn’t use a square knot.”

“How do you know about hog-tying?” I asked.

“I did 4-H as a kid. Plus, Jess has some hogs; I gave him a hand with them a few months ago.”

“How is Jess, by the way?”

“Shut up and I’ll teach you how to do this,” she said. She untied the big knot I’d made in Becky’s wet jeans and showed me the proper way to do it. I had just practiced what Peaches had showed me when Becky came back in with an armful of blue straps.

“Are these what you mean?” she asked.

“Exactly,” Peaches said, sniffing her hands. “You might need to burn those jeans,” she told Becky as she untied the knot, leaving the custodian spread-eagled on the table.

“And you might want to bleach your hands,” Becky said, her nose wrinkled.

“Once we get him secured, I will,” Peaches said, reaching for a tie. “Man,” she said. “This guy’s thumbs are like cucumbers.” She glanced at his fly. “I wonder if the old saying is true.”

“Peaches!” I said . . . and then something clicked. “Thumbs,” I said. “When we were at the Sweet Shop, Marty Krumbacher was threatening to set someone named Thumbs on someone else if they didn’t do what Marty wanted.”

“You think this is him?” Peaches asked.

“Have you seen his hands?” I said. “Still . . . why would he be working as a custodian?”

“A custodian with two guns and a bunch of drug packets,” Peaches reminded me. “Who has a gang tattoo and showed up when there was a security breach. Ever thought maybe custodian wasn’t his only job?”

Now that she mentioned it, it made sense. “Even so, it doesn’t mean there’s a connection between him and Krumbacher.”

“The good news is, we can ask him all about it in a few minutes,” Peaches replied, cinching the guy’s hands together under the table. Within moments, she had the custodian completely incapacitated. Not for the first time, I reflected that I hadn’t seen a lot of Peaches’s investigative techniques in the official private-investigator handbook. I was a little worried about what she had in mind now that she had him laid out on a table. Could we be arrested for kidnapping? He had tried to go after Becky, but . . .

Peaches turned to the sink and scrubbed her hands. As soon as she finished, I squirted a glob of soap into my palms and shoved them under the water, glancing over as my boss flipped the switch on what looked like a little Crock-Pot. An orange light glowed on it.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Wax,” she said. “It’s still pretty warm; it shouldn’t take long to get to temperature.”

“Why do we need wax?” Becky said as she picked up her jeans with a wad of tissues and carried them to the trash can in the corner of the room. It was a very serene space, very spa-like, with relaxing bluish walls and a comforting minty scent that almost eclipsed the smell of Becky’s wet jeans.

“We’re going to use it to convince our friend to tell us what he knows,” Peaches said, giving the wax an experimental stir with a small wooden paddle.

“You’re going to wax him into talking?” I asked. The bad feeling I had grew abruptly worse. Interrogation with waxing definitely wasn’t in the handbook. Was involuntary hair removal a prosecutable offense?

“That’s the plan,” Peaches said, giving the wax a final stir and turning to the custodian. She pulled up his faded red T-shirt to expose a hairy, muscular stomach. “This guy works out,” she said admiringly. “Look at those abs.”

“He is pretty ripped,” Becky said, staring at the man’s stomach. “How do you think he does it? I do all the custodial work at my house, and my abs don’t look anything like that.”

“You can ask him in a minute,” Peaches said. She eyed the wiry hair covering his six-pack abs. “At least we’ve got plenty of hair to work with. I’ll be right back; I just have to go get the smelling salts.”

She sauntered out of the room, and Becky and I looked at each other. “For before she waxes him, or after?” Becky asked.

“Let’s just hope she doesn’t decide to give him a Brazilian,” I said, and Becky winced. As the smell of melted wax filled the room, we both turned to look at the unconscious man strapped to the table.

“Is it legal to tie someone down and wax him without his consent?” Becky asked.

I was pretty sure it wasn’t, but I didn’t know what our other options were. “He attacked you,” I reminded her. “Plus, the guy kept a gun and drugs at my daughter’s school, in an unlocked closet.”

“True,” she conceded.

“And more importantly, if we don’t find out what happened to George Cavendish, one or both of us may be going to jail for a murder we didn’t commit.”

She bit her lip. “When you look at it that way . . .”

Peaches bustled into the room with a tiny blue jar. She looked at both of us. “Ready?”

CHAPTER THIRTY

B
efore we had a chance to answer, Peaches had whipped the top off the jar and jammed it under Thumbs’s nose. He jerked awake and started swearing.

“Good morning!” Peaches said in a cheery voice as his head rolled around on the spa pillow. He strained against his bonds, but Peaches evidently had the tying-up thing down pat.

“Untie me, you fat bitch!” he commanded.

“That wasn’t very chivalrous,” Peaches said, unperturbed, as she walked over to the wax warmer. His eyes followed her, then darted to me. For a moment, he was confused; then I saw the recognition click.

“Hi,” I said, giving him a small wave.

“Your kid goes to Holy Oaks,” he said.

“Yeah,” Becky piped up. “Speaking of Holy Oaks, you need to step it up a bit. The sanitation in the boys’ room is disgusting!”

“Becky,” I warned her. He’d accused us of breaking into Holy Oaks—and to be honest, why else would we be running through the woods behind the school after dark?—but that didn’t mean she needed to spell it out for him.

Peaches pulled a wheeled stool out from under the counter and sat down on it, then rolled over next to him, kind of like a doctor about to examine a patient, if the patient were tied up and the doctor were dressed in a green spandex minidress. “So,” she said. “If you’re a custodian, why were you racing back to the school when an alarm went off?”