Single Elimination: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 4) (20 page)

I’d seen the effects of poison first hand, when another unfortunate murder occurred in “peaceful” Bonney Bay, just a few months ago. I should take him down now. Unless…unless I was imagining all this craziness. Maybe I had murder on the brain. My perception of my fellow man was getting warped. Just yesterday, I was convinced Gunter Hatton was the guy. If I assaulted Zack without cause, I’d be in big trouble.
 

“What’s in your pocket, Zack?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What’s in the pocket of your hoodie? What did you put in my drink?”

“You’re crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His eyes darted back and forth. He hesitated, and then he threw the cup aside and bolted for the door. I chased after him, yelling, “Police! Call the police!”

Doors flew open and college kids stood there gaping, but no one tried to stop Zack. Instead, a big guy in a holey T-shirt jumped in front of me. “What are you doing here? What are you doing to Zack?”

“Get out of my way! He’s getting away. He’s getting away with murder!”

“Hey!” Holey T-Shirt Guy called over his shoulder. “Help me with this crazy girl! She’s trying to get Zack.”

Fantastic! Zack was pretty popular, I guess. Six years at the same school will do that for you.

I tried to dodge the guy, but the hallway was narrow and he was huge. So much for the path of nonviolence. This guy was going down. He came at me, and I scooped around his waist and hurled him over my hip, to the ground. I tried not to kick him in the face as I leaped over his prone, stunned body and down the hall.

“Brody, are you okay?” One of the other students asked him.

Most of them crowded around him, but no one else got in my way. I pushed through the door at the end of the hall. It led to a smaller set of stairs, down to the end of the building. I caught sight of Zack on the lawn surrounding the dorm, with his phone out, ready to make a call. I turned up the heat and sprinted to him. He saw me just before
 
I could make contact, and let out a wail. I caught his arm and swiftly forced it behind his back. He cried out like he was in mortal agony.

After what happened with Gunter, I was afraid to choke him out again. Campus Safety! I saw the sign for their office at the opposite end of the building, on the bottom floor. I had to drag him there.

“Don’t move,” I said. “Your arm might break.”

Of course Zack began to flail and scream.
You’ve got to be kidding me!

I was just about to let him go, for fear of breaking his arm, when he said, “Why couldn’t you just stay out of it! Just drink the lemonade and get out of my life!”

I reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a little bottle. I looked him right in the eye. “Were you trying to poison me, Zack?”

30

“It’s just roofies,” Zack told me.

Just roofies!
The date rape drug. I think it’s safe to say that at that point I didn’t give a rip anymore about hurting Zack. Clearly I had a case for self-defense. What a scumbag.
 

“I was going to knock you out with it, and then I was going to kill you.” His lip curled up, and I glimpsed, for the first time, the evil in his eyes.
 

Of course he’d have to knock me out before he killed me. Zack knew he was no match for me otherwise.

“I can’t believe I ever felt sorry for you! You’re a disgusting little weasel!”

“I had no choice. If you told the police Dalton and maybe Aaron were involved, those two would turn on me. They’d turn me in.”

“You killed your own grandmother?” I twisted both of his arms behind his back, hard this time.

“She started listening to my sister. She was going to cut me off, and she was going to tell my parents to do the same thing. My dad does whatever she says. What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, maybe get a job like all the other grown-ups?”

“You’re just like them!”

“Well, I’m certainly not like you, Zack. You threw your own sister under the bus. You planted all those hints about her killing your grandmother in your own ‘confession.’ And she was willing to take the blame for you!”

“Because she felt bad about how she’s treated me. And she should! I hope she feels bad for the rest of her life!”

What a creep. I wanted to throttle him. Instead I just gave his arms another jerk.

He cried out, but this time it wasn’t just a scream. “Dalton! Help!”

An athletic-looking young man started in our direction, then stopped short.

“Freeze!” Two campus safety officers were headed our way, tasers drawn.

“He tried to drug me!” I called out. “He tried to kill me.”

Dalton pivoted and took off in the opposite direction. Why was he running? Because he was involved in this, somehow. He had to be. I threw Zack toward the officers and took off after Dalton. I had to get him before he got away—and before the real police arrived with their firearms. I’d be face down in the grass once they got here.

Dalton was a pretty big guy, and tackling him wasn’t likely to bring him straight down. I wasn’t down for a struggle with this guy, if could avoid it. I gained on Dalton and hooked Dalton’s ankle with my foot, from behind, pulling hard. My timing was spot on, and he sprawled onto the ground.

“I didn’t do it!” His shouts were muffled by grass and dirt. “I didn’t kill anyone. I just helped him get rid of the evidence.”

“What evidence?”

“His clothes. He had blood on his clothes.”

I turned him to his side a little, so I could understand him better. I pinned his arms to his sides and put my knee in the small of his back. You know, to discourage any sudden movements. “Why would you do that?”

“Ow! Me and Aaron went to the barbecue to tell his grandmother she better keep her mouth shut about our deal with Gunter Hatton. She was just a little old lady. We figured we could scare her pretty easy.”

I snorted at that. Dina had been a tough lady. I’d love to know what words she had for those two thugs.

“So you killed her? You and Aaron and Zack?”

“No way! We didn’t even get a chance to talk to her. We saw her alone with Zack and we thought that was our chance, but they were fighting. And then, Zack did it. He stabbed her right in the neck. Aaron yelled, and Zack saw us. He said he’d turn us in for the fake art. He said he’d make sure we took the blame for the murder. We had to do what he said. We had to help him. He made Aaron switch shirts with him. He made us take his bloody shirt and go before anyone found the body.”

I glanced across the lawn. After what must’ve been quite a struggle, the Campus Safety guys had Zack under control. One of them advanced on me, blood streaming from his nose.

“Let that man go!” he ordered me.

“He’s an accessory to murder! And that guy over there is the murderer. He tried to drug me with roofies. I took the bottle from him. It’s in my pocket.”

“I said, let him go.”

“Fine. But if he tries to escape, I’m taking him down.” My threat was meant for Dalton, and he groaned in despair.

I let go of Dalton, slowly raised my hands, and stood up. “There’s no use running, Dalton. Your only hope now is to tell the police everything. Let Zack take the heat for what he’s done.”

Dalton lay there in the grass, eyeing me and the Campus Safety Officer, considering his options. If you could call them options at all. Across the lawn, a scuffle broke out anew between Zack and the officer who’d been restraining him. The two of them were a tangle of limbs and shouts. Students stood by watching the display, gasping in shock, but not moving to help. I stood there helplessly with my hands in the air like a good little citizen.

And then Zack broke free.

I broke my stance of surrender and took a leap after him.

“Freeze! Freeze, or I’ll taze you!”

I froze. “Taze
him
! Taze the bad guy, for goodness sake!”

The officer watching me and Dalton did nothing, but the one who Zack had just beat up heard me, and it was as though my words jolted him from his stupor. He aimed his tazer at Zack, and glory of glories, he zapped him. Electricity buzzed through the air, reaching out to grab Zack with its fingers of pain. Zack convulsed and collapsed on the ground.

“Yes!” I cried. “Do it again!”

The officer beside me eyed me like I was some kind of freak.

“Hey, he tried to kill me. I told you.”

The real cops arrived then, and I repeated the story about the roofies in my pocket.

“Which pocket?” a police officer asked. He looked older, experienced. Hopefully he’d understand this wasn’t just some juvenile misbehavior.

“My right front pocket.”

I kept my hands up as he reached into the pocket of my denim shorts and pulled out the bottle.

“There’s more, spilled all over his dorm room.”

“Did you ingest any of this?”

“No, officer. Look, the Bonney Bay PD is investigating the murder of Dina Hermiston.”

“Yeah, we saw that on the news.”

“Well, these are their guys.”

They didn’t cuff me, but the officer did take me to his car and have me wait inside while he contacted the Bonney Bay PD. I got out my phone and called Blythe.

“Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?”

“Bad news,” she said.

“I’m not going to make it to class. I think I have a few lovely hours of giving statements to police ahead of me.”

“Are you okay? Is Zack okay?”

“I’m okay. Zack, not so much. But that’s actually the good news. I caught the killer, and it was Zack.” Blythe gasped. Just wait until she heard the rest of the good news—that I’d survived another attempt on my life. I had a feeling
that
conversation was going to be bad news for me.

31

Blythe and I sat on Will’s porch swing, sipping lemonade—no roofies included—enjoying the sunny afternoon with Chloe. Chloe made a happy sound as I rubbed her belly with my foot. She lay in a splash of sunshine, belly up, paws curled.

Will was due home any minute, and Blythe had helped me pull together a dinner for all of that would hopefully cross beyond edible to tasty.
 

“Well Brenna, I have to say, this is a nice change from chasing murderers.” Blythe leaned back and swung her feet.

“I think Will’s happy to be done interrogating people.”

“And filling out tons of paperwork, I’m sure.”
 

Blythe and I both sported
I voted
stickers. Will was placing his vote right now, on his way home from work. I couldn’t wait to hear how this whole art fraud and murder thing came together.

The headline in the
Blaster
last night was:
Random exonerated! Grandson charged in murder of Dina Hermiston
. I just hoped and prayed those charges would stick. If not, at least we had his attempted murder of Bonney Bay’s favorite sleuth. I’d tried to emphasize to Blythe how that might come in handy, but she’d just given me a glare. What? No silver lining?

Will pulled up, and Chloe abandoned her lazy pose to tackle him with doggie kisses.

“Hello, ladies.” Will gave Chloe hugs, then me and Blythe.
 

It was so good to see his smile—a tired smile, but a satisfied one.

“Good day at the office?” I handed him the glass of lemonade I had waiting for him on the little table between the porch swing and a set of adirondack chairs.

“Definitely. We have physical evidence.”

“Really?” Blythe and I said at once. I’d been worried that all three of those boys would point the finger at each other. If, for some reason, the jury didn’t believe my story about the confession Zack had made to me, they could find reasonable doubt.

“Yep. Aaron and Dalton kept that bloody shirt of Zack’s.”

“They did?” Blythe’s eyes lit up like it was Christmas. She always loved to see the good guys win.

We all sat down, this time me and Will on the swing and Blythe and Chloe in one of the porch chairs.

Will said, “They’ll make a plea deal, and Zack will get put away.”

“Did you find out why Zack had roofies in his room?” Blythe asked.

“And did Gunter Hatton know about what those guys did?”

Will held his hands up. “Hold on. One at a time. Apparently the roofies was for ‘recreational’ use.”

Blythe made a face. “Did he use it on women? Without their consent?”

“We’re looking into that possibility.”

“I have to say, I feel a lot better about him getting put away for a long, long time now than I did when he first confessed,” I said.

“Yeah,” Will said. “Me too. As for Hatton, nothing indicates he knew about the murder. The boys say they didn’t want him to find out they’d blabbed about making the artwork for him.”

“What about Harvey’s property?” I asked. “Why was Hatton so set against letting him keep his sidewalks the same size?”

“As far as we can tell, there’s no conspiracy there. Just plain old animosity.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“Yep. He just said, ‘that guy needs to understand that the rules apply to him too.’”

“Wow. That’s a lot of nerve,” said Blythe.

Will said, “That’s Gunter Hatton.”

“What about Zack’s alibi?” Blythe wanted to know.

“It was his father. Zack convinced him to cover for him. Zack told him he was in the bathroom, and he begged his dad to say he was with him, since no one could prove he was in the bathroom.”

“And it was so close to the murder scene,” I said.

“What a sad time for that family,” Blythe said.

“And a good time for the Random family, finally.” I sipped my lemonade and leaned my head on Will’s chest.

I’d told Will what Walter’s wife, Evelyn, had told me. He’d shared with me that Walter and the whole police department had suspected Gunter Hatton of involvement in drugs, but they had nothing to go on, other than the strange, late-night deliveries reported by his neighbors. They’d decided to develop a plan for tracking and even staking them out, but then the murder investigation took over.

And Will assured me that Tony Pfeiffer, while a colossal jerk and probably the leaker of information about Herbert Random’s questioning, didn’t show any signs he was on the dole. The anonymous tip implicating Herbert was still a mystery, but I suspected it came from either Gunter or Jessie Pakowski.