Thai Coconut Murder: Book 6 in The Darling Deli Series (12 page)

Taking a deep breath, she told herself to calm down and listen. Maybe the noise she had heard was a rat, or even the wind blowing the door open. She closed her eyes, focusing on the sounds of the building: the soft hum of the air conditioner, the occasional creak from upstairs, the rush of a car passing by outside. She was just about to breathe a sigh of relief and tell herself she was being ridiculous when the door to the back room creaked open. Stifling a squeak of terror, Moira shrank further into the shadow cast by the register.

“Over here,” a rough voice whispered. “He said to take all of the ones on the top shelf.”

“Why couldn’t he do it himself?” the second voice grumbled. “I don’t want to get caught breaking into some kiddie toy store. Can you imagine what the guys would say?”

“Just shut up and start putting the bears in the bag. I don’t like that the door was left unlocked. When things are too easy, I get nervous.”

Moira realized that she had chosen the worst possible night to play investigator; she had somehow walked in on a burglary in progress. Not only was she now trapped in the building with two criminals, but she had made their job easier for them by leaving the back door unlocked—practically an invitation.

Just stay calm
, she told herself. They would be done soon enough, and the instant they left, she would go straight to the police with the evidence that she had uncovered. Even if they took all of the teddy bears on the shelves, she still had the one that she had cut open, along with the bag of drugs.

She was beginning to think that she just might make it through the night alive when one of the men kicked something with his foot. The back rectangle shot across the floor, coming to a stop inches from Moira’s leg. Her phone’s battery. She caught her breath, not daring to move even her eyes.

“What was that?” the other man asked.

“No idea. Hold on…”

A red light appeared, illuminating the space where Moira was crouched. There was silence for a second, all three of them frozen in shock.

“Grab her,” the first man growled. The other one leapt towards her, and before Moira could move, he had her on the ground and was tying something around her wrists so tightly she could hardly feel her fingers.

“Let’s bring her to Vince. We’ll see what he makes of this little prize.”

Moira came to slowly, feeling groggy. Her head was pounding, and her vision was blurred. She didn’t remember getting knocked out, but she knew she must have been unconscious for a while. The last thing she remembered clearly was the harsh feel of a bag being tugged down over her head and rough hands forcing her into a car that smelled like bad milk.

She looked around, trying to make sense of her surroundings. It looked like she was in some sort of mobile home. She was tied to a stool that was nailed to the floor. When she tried to free her hands, pricks of pain shot through her fingers, and she stopped. The ropes were brutally tight and the pain in her wrists, ankles, and head made it hard for her to focus. The piece of duct tape over her mouth wasn’t helping, either.

The curtains were all drawn, so she couldn’t see outside. At least they weren’t moving at the moment, but they could have traveled any distance while she was passed out. She couldn’t scream, she couldn’t even wiggle her toes without tingles of discomfort. What could she do, other than sit there and wait for her abductors to return?

A groan pulled her thoughts back to the present, and she craned her head, trying to see. A woman was hunched over the tiny table in the kitchenette, her head cradled in her hands. Moira tried to speak, but it came out in a muffled mumble, thanks to the tape. It served the purpose she wanted, though. A terrified Alice raised her head and looked directly at Moira.

Her eyes widened, but the tape across her own mouth kept her from saying anything. Moira held her gaze, her foggy mind trying to come up with a plan. No phone—she vividly remembered dropping it—and no way to free herself even if she had one. The only other person in the room was a woman who, until recently, Moira had been convinced was a murderer.

Did Alice’s presence here mean she was innocent? Moira wasn’t sure. It could be a trap, or some sort of trick, but she thought the fear in the other woman’s eyes was real.

When the door to the trailer cracked open, both of them craned their necks to see who was coming in. Moira wasn’t at all surprised to see Vincent approaching them. He held a gun loosely in one hand, and stared at each of them in turn with cold eyes, not a hint of compassion anywhere in his gaze.

“Both of you are more trouble than you’re worth,” he said. “I expected better of you, Alice.” He turned to look at Moira. “And you… I don’t even know where to begin. None of this had anything to do with you or that meddling private investigator, so why did you have to go and stick your nose in it?” He sighed and scratched the side of his leg with the barrel of his gun, ignoring the muffled mumbles that were coming from Alice’s gagged mouth.

“I really don’t know what to do with you,” he admitted, sounding almost regretful. “It would have been easy to make Henry’s grieving granddaughter disappear. Even easier thanks to the murder charges, really. Who wouldn’t believe that she ran rather than face life in prison? But you… you’re a bit more difficult.” He leaned uncomfortably close to her. His breath smelled like sauerkraut and sausages.

“When your body turns up, people are going to be interested. Your little private eye friend won’t let it rest—he’s relentless, isn’t he? And I’m sure your daughter won’t be easy to convince of your suicide either.” He shrugged. “Of course, by then I’ll be long gone, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

Moira stared at him with wide eyes, aching to see even a hint of humanity. She couldn’t die, not now. Candice still needed her; the thought of her daughter finding out her mother was murdered filled her with terror. She would do anything she could to protect her daughter from that pain.

“Of course, I could
not
kill you,” he continued, a small smile twitching at the corners of his lips. “But where’s the fun in that? Even if you promised not to tell anyone what you saw tonight, the truth would still get out. I know how you girls like to gossip.”

He looked at his watch, then turned to Moira again. Taking a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket, he gave a sharp whistle. The two men that had accosted her in the toy shop appeared in the doorway.

“Here, cuff ’em,” he said, tossing the cuffs to one of the men. “You know where to take them after that. Make them both look like drownings, no need to get fancy.”

He turned on his heel and walked out, leaving the two women alone with the men.

When one of the men, the one that was completely bald, untied her hands, her first reaction was one of relief. Once the blood flow started however, the temporary relief quickly gave way to incredible pain. While she was distracted, the man clipped half of the handcuffs around one of her wrists. He was just reaching for the other one when a howl of pain came from the table behind them.

In spite of herself, Moira turned to look and saw the other man clasping his hand to his ear. A trickle of blood was escaping, the red bead slowly rolling down his chin.

“What happened?” the man who had been trying to handcuff her asked.

“She bit me.” He sounded more shocked than hurt, and was staring at Alice in amazement. “Come on, help me hold her down.”

Leaving Moira, whose ankles were still tied to the chair, the bald man walked the short distance over to Alice and tried to wrestle an arm out from underneath her. She spit at him, her teeth bared like an angry dog. Admiring the other woman’s fighting spirit, Moira took stock of her own situation.

Her wrists and hands were untied, but her fingers were still in pain from lack of circulation for so long. She had no phone, no way to connect with the outside world, and even if she did, she didn’t know where she was so she wouldn’t exactly be much help.

Her ankles though—her ankles were duct-taped to the stool legs, and if she could get the tape off, she might be able to do something useful like run for help. She reached down, moving slowly both to avoid drawing attention to herself, and because her hands were still tingling painfully. The tape was tight, but she managed to undo first one ankle, and then the other. As an afterthought, she pulled the tape off of her mouth.

The bald man looked over at her and called out to his companion in shock. Realizing belatedly that the men were between her and the door, Moira had nowhere to go but back towards the small bathroom and bedroom on the trailer.

She scrambled away from the men, blindly tossing anything she could reach on the floor. The handcuffs that were snapped around one wrist caught on a closet handle and she panicked for a moment before the handle snapped off and she was free to barrel down the short hallway to the bathroom.

She locked herself in, knowing that the flimsy doors wouldn’t do her any good. Grasping at straws, she looked up, hoping against hope that there would be some sort of window or even a hatch in the ceiling. No such luck. She had just locked herself in what was essentially a closet with a toilet.

She pulled open the cabinet and looked for anything useful. There was a cheap plastic razor, but she would never be able to get the blade out in time. The stick of deodorant was useless, and so was the bottle of drain cleaner… or was it? She remembered all of the warning labels that had been on the last stuff she used. Maybe if she managed to squirt it in one of their eyes, it would stop them for long enough for her to get away.

A short scream outside the bathroom alerted her to the fact that, even if she wasn’t ready, stuff was happening outside of the bathroom. She grabbed the drain cleaner and yanked open the bathroom door just as one of the men stumbled past backwards.

Before she had a chance to second guess herself, Moira took aim and squeezed, squirting the drain cleaner right in his eyes. He gave a cry of agony and fell down, tripping over his own feet as he crashed to the floor.

Behind her, she heard a loud clang and looked back to see the other man stumble and weave until he hit a wall and slid down it. Unsure what had happened at first, she saw the frying pan in Alice’s hand and understood that the man had gotten a good whack on the head from the enraged shopkeeper.

“Come on,” Alice shouted as the man behind her stirred. “Let’s go!”

Moira dropped the bottle of drain cleaner and followed the other woman at a run. They slammed through the trailer’s screen door and ran past a shocked Vincent, Moira stumbling on feet that were still tingling from lack of blood.

When she saw the dimly lit sign in front of her, she knew immediately where they were; Sandy Dunes, a trailer park a few miles outside of town.

“Where to?” she asked Alice as they huddled against the side of a trailer.

“Anywhere,” the other woman gasped. “Just find someone with a phone.”

Moira nodded, and at the sound of footsteps pounding behind them, they took off again, not stopping until they stumbled into a circle of college kids gathered around a patio. The young adults looked shocked to have two panting, ragged, middle-aged women appear in the middle of their late-night barbecue, but soon enough cell phones were being offered from all directions and the calm voice of a 911 operator was speaking in Moira’s ear.

Rubbing her still-raw wrists, Moira leaned back in the hard plastic chair at the police station. Despite her exhaustion, she was still buzzing with adrenaline as she replayed the night over and over again in her mind.

The college students had been helpful once they understood the basics of the situation, but even surrounded by people, Moira hadn’t been able to breathe a sigh of relief until the first of the police cruisers pulled up.

Twenty minutes after Moira and Alice had stumbled upon the party, the entire trailer park had been crawling with police. The two women had been handed off to an ambulance team once the lead detective had heard their side of the story. A quick check-up had cleared both of them, but Moira still spent the next hour perching uncomfortably on the edge of the ambulance’s back door, huddling under a blanket next to the other woman, and sipping too-bitter coffee.

The interview had gone by in a blur. She and Alice had been separated as soon as they reached the station, and Moira had no idea what had happened to the other woman. Had she been arrested, or was Detective Jefferson still talking with her?

She got her answer a few minutes later. When she heard the sound of a door open, she opened her eyes to see Alice walking towards her, Detective Jefferson not far behind.

“Do you both have someone you can call to take you home?” he asked. They nodded. “Good. Feel free to use the phone. You’re both free to go. Take some time to rest and recover. I may ask you to come in again sometime in the next few days if anything else comes up that we need to go over.”

“All right,” Alice mumbled. She looked even more tired than Moira felt. “Thanks.”

They took turns using the phone behind the reception desk, then sat in the chairs to wait. Alice looked at Moira.

“I know you didn’t do it on purpose, but thanks for showing up. I wouldn’t have been able to get away if it wasn’t for you,” she said quietly.

“I’m glad we could help each other,” Moira said. “If either of us had been there alone, it wouldn’t have ended well.” She hesitated, staring at the other woman for a moment. “There’s one thing I don’t understand. Why did you lie to David about your grandfather being at his cabin?”

“I had to,” she said simply. “They told me they would kill me if I didn’t play along. I’ve known Vince my whole life, and I could tell he was serious.”

“Why did they kill Henry in the first place? Weren’t he and Vince friends?”

“My grandfather found out about the drugs one day, and instead of going to the police, he made the mistake of confronting Vince.” Alice winced. “It ended badly. I overheard the argument; he told Vince that he was going straight to the police in the morning. I guess Vince knew he was serious. He made me stay quiet and continue running the store as if nothing had happened.”