A Draw of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries Book 3) (23 page)

Helen knew how to slow the cat down. While waiting for the cat to be shooed out of the garage, she got out the tuna fish she'd brought as bait. She set the yarn bag on the van's hood along with her cane and placed the opened tuna can on the ground at her feet. She crouched down next to the food with the handles of the canvas bag looped over her wrist. A moment later, the cat emerged from the garage, dragging another red leather purse, this one shrink-wrapped. There was something odd about the purse.

Freddie appeared in the cat's wake to shoo it in Helen's direction, although it seemed to have been heading that way already. It spit out the shrink-wrapped purse next to the can of tuna and began eating. Helen talked nonsense to it, covering the sound of her arm moving closer to its back until she was able to grab it by the scruff of the neck where a mother cat picks up kittens. She managed to stuff the cat into the canvas bag and gather the fabric to secure the top. To her total surprise, the cat didn't even struggle, although that might change when she was ready to pick up the bag. It meowed its irritation with having its dinner interrupted, so Helen dropped the can of tuna inside the bag. After a moment, the cat returned to eating and even began to purr.

Freddie came out from behind the van carrying a cardboard box. "I hope you'll do a better job of keeping that horrible creature locked up than Vic did." She picked up the second red leather purse and tucked it beneath her arm before kneeling to slide the box under the cat's canvas bag. She wrapped the top with a bungee cord to keep it closed.

"It will be up to Art to contain the cat, I'm afraid. I'm just the animal-catcher, not the owner." Helen checked to make sure the bungee cord wouldn't come loose when she picked up the bag. As she did, she tried to figure out what was bothering her about the second purse the cat had stolen.

Stolen.

That was it. The red leather purse had been stolen before the cat ever got to it. Why else would anyone have two identical designer purses? Even if she could accept that three teenaged boys could save more than a thousand dollars over the course of a few months, she couldn't see them buying two identical bags. And then there was the shrink-wrapping. It wasn't the neat, custom job done at a factory but looked more like it had been wrapped by a vacuum sealer designed for food.

Helen was reasonably certain the bag was being prepared to sell on the black market. Where had it come from? Not from Vic's mansion, obviously, and the other neighbors weren't likely to have two identical purses. No, it was more likely stolen from a store. Maybe the outlet mall where Almeida used to respond to shoplifting calls. There was a shop there that carried products by the purses' designer.

The image of the day she'd met Freddie and the boys flashed through Helen's mind. Freddie had been overseeing a practice drill that consisted of handing off a small object as quickly and accurately as possible. What if they hadn't been practicing for a relay race, but had been preparing to shoplift? Nimble fingers, when added to their angelic, above-suspicion appearance, would make them ideal thieves.

Was Freddie acting as a real-life Fagan, sending her boys out to steal things for her to sell online? If so, it was no wonder she hated Vic so much and was so desperate to get him to move. The previous owners of the house had been too blind and deaf to notice that Freddie's business violated far more laws than Vic's poker classes ever could, but Vic's hearing and eyesight, if not his memory, were perfectly good. And then Vic had installed cameras. Freddie had to have seen Marty installing them on the side of the house facing hers, even if she couldn't see the cameras themselves. That could have been the last straw for Freddie, the thing that provoked panic and the need to get rid of Vic quickly instead of waiting for the legal system to work.

It was all just speculation, much like her theory that more than one person might have been involved in the murder. She needed more than that to convince Detective Peterson to look beyond his certainty that Stevie was guilty.

Helen might not have any solid evidence connecting Freddie to the murder, but if she could prove Freddie was selling stolen goods, even Peterson might be willing to consider the possibility that the woman had also committed murder.

But how to prove that Freddie was a thief? Freddie had put away the suspicious shrink-wrapped purse, so Helen couldn't grab it and race to the police station with it. As a private citizen, she couldn't get a search warrant to look for stolen property in the garage, and Peterson wouldn't be willing to apply for a search warrant based on Helen's suspicions alone. He'd want something concrete.

The cat meowed and scratched at the canvas bag that held it. If it weren't for the cat's medical condition and how difficult it could be to catch it again, Helen would have been tempted to help it escape so it would steal some more merchandise from Freddie's garage.

Wait. She didn't need to do that. Art had mentioned that there was a cache of the cat's stolen booty over at Vic's mansion. It probably included some of the items Freddie had said were missing from her house. Except they weren't items of sentimental value, they were evidence of her black market operation. The cat had probably dragged them over to lay at Vic's feet, the way cats often brought back their prey as gifts for their owners. If Art would let the police see those items and they could be identified as stolen like the expensive red leather purses, it might be enough for a search warrant and a more thorough investigation of Freddie as both a thief and a murderer.

Helen concentrated on picking up the box to see if the cat would panic when it found itself being carried. When it didn't, she propped the box against her more reliable hip. She grabbed her cane from the hood of the van. "I'd better get the cat home."

"And make sure Art keeps it locked up this time." Freddie returned to the garage, letting the overhead door drop with a crash.

Helen hurried down the driveway as fast as she could manage with the cat. One hand kept the box propped against her hip, and the other held her cane. If she had another hand or a voice-activated calling feature, she would have called the police and asked them to meet her at the mansion to discuss Freddie's criminal enterprise.

Maybe it was just as well that she had to wait until she got to the mansion, she thought. She needed the time to figure out how to convince the police to listen to her theory of the murder. Hank Peterson would just laugh, but Eleanor Almeida might listen. Stolen property was right up her alley, and she might still have contacts in the outlet mall's jurisdiction who could compare what the cat had dragged home with items reported stolen recently.

Helen reached the street, and Zee rolled down the driver's side window. "Do you need any help, Ms. Bee? Jay can carry the box for you."

Helen could use some help, but she was afraid the cat would panic if anyone else approached. "I'm all set. You can do me a favor, though, and call ahead to let Art know I've got the cat, and ask him to open the gates for me."

"Oh, we don't need Art to open the gates," Jay said. "We can do it remotely."

"That doesn't sound like something Marty would approve of," Helen said.

"Oh, he'll never know. I can erase the log entry."

Zee punched her brother on the upper arm. "You can, but you won't. Don't worry, Ms. Bee. We'll call Art to let him know you're on your way and get his permission to open the gates."

Helen kept walking, wishing she hadn't just heard that Jay could erase the system's log. If the police knew Jay and Zee could activate the gates remotely, they might look at the siblings' possible involvement in the murder a little more closely. Hank Peterson would definitely find it more credible that a couple of young Clarys had committed a crime than that a respectable parent of well-behaved young boys was the mastermind behind a theft ring that had branched out into murder.

As Helen passed the lavender fan-van, she nodded at Larry Warner and his friends. They were packing up to end their vigil. At least the on-site activities. They would probably still spend the rest of the weekend playing poker together, partly because that was just what they did, and partly because they were honoring Vic's memory in the only way they knew how.

The gates swung open, and Helen continued on up the driveway to the mansion, leaving Jay and Zee to wait with her car outside the gates so the engine wouldn't scare the cat.

Art was standing in the front doorway. As Helen climbed the steps, she thought she heard someone moving around in the back of the house, but she hadn't passed any parked cars on the way to the front steps. Then again, there was a five-car garage at the end of the driveway out back, so Art could have a houseful of guests without a single car being visible from the front yard.

"I'm sorry," Helen said. "I didn't realize you had company. I caught Vic's cat and wanted to get it secured as soon as possible."

Art glanced over his shoulder. "It's just me here. Ever since the renovations, the house has made some weird sounds. I think the new materials are settling in place."

At the sound of Art's voice, the cat howled and scratched at the canvas bag, desperately trying to escape.

"We'd better get the cat secured before it claws its way out of the bag."

"Of course, of course." He started up the stairs. "This way."

That could be a problem. Helen couldn't carry the cat, lean on her cane, and use the railing, all at the same time. The obvious solution would be to ask Art to carry the cat, except that was just asking for the cat to escape again. It had calmed down a bit once Art moved a few feet away, but it would probably go berserk if Art came close enough to hold the box. She wasn't sure if the bag would hold if the cat made a real effort to escape.

Helen was going to have to leave the cane behind and hope she didn't need to walk to the far ends of the mansion once they got to the top of the stairs. She set the cane down beside the railing at the base of the stairs, realizing only then just how dependent on it she'd become. She felt vulnerable without it. She didn't actually lean on it most of the time, but she could never predict exactly when she might step wrong and need the extra support. At her tiny, single-story cottage, there wasn't all that much damage she could do to herself if she fell on the relatively soft wood floors, but here at Vic's mansion, she felt like she should be wearing a helmet with knee and elbow guards. If she tripped at the top of the sweeping marble staircase, it would be a long, bumpy ride down to the stone floor at the bottom.

Art was most of the way up those stairs before he noticed her hesitation. "Aren't you coming? The cat's room is up here. I found where she was getting out before and blocked it up. She won't get out again."

The cat jumped a few inches into the air, taking the canvas bag with it and almost oversetting both the box and Helen. The only thing that saved her was that she'd already taken hold of the sturdy wooden banister, and even that wouldn't have been enough if she'd been in the middle of taking a step when the cat made its sudden move.

Helen gently pushed the cat and bag back down into the box. She stayed at the base of the stairs, uttering soothing nonsense for a few seconds, until the cat settled down enough for her to risk heading up to the second floor.

She was almost at the top when Art spoke again. "I set up the travel cage in the first room to the right."

The cat jumped again, and Helen's heart did at least as high a leap inside her chest. She clutched the banister and the box, steadying the cat and herself before taking the final step.

Only when she was safely on a level surface again did she look to see where Art wanted her to go. There was a large bedroom, empty except for a cage large enough to fit a Saint Bernard. Inside the cage were filled food and water bowls and a fresh litter box.

Art took a few steps past the door and spoke softly. "You'll have to lock the cat up, since it can get out of there otherwise. I'll stay out here in the hallway so I don't spook it."

Helen set the bagged cat inside the cage and locked the metal door before removing the bungee cord. The cat crawled out to glare at the wall as if it could see through the studs and plaster to where Art was standing in the hallway.

Helen checked to make sure the cage door was secure. Then she went out to the hallway and made sure the wood door closed securely behind her. "Before I go, I was wondering if you could tell me something."

"Of course," Art said. "I owe you for catching Broadway."

"You said the cat has stolen things. Do you still have any of those items, and would you mind if I took a look at them?"

"Whatever for? I mean, you're welcome to, but it's just a bunch of random stuff."

"It might help the police catch Vic's killer."

"If you say so." Art nodded toward the other end of what looked like a mile-long hall. "I've been keeping everything in another bedroom until I had time to look for the owners. Just follow me."

Young folks took physical activity so much for granted, Helen thought. Art looked down the hall and saw a short jog to the far end of the sprawling mansion. Thanks to her fatigue and the ache in her hip, what she saw was a marathon. And she didn't even have her cane. Helen wandered around her own cottage without it all the time, but her home was so small that she was seldom more than an arm's length from some sturdy piece of furniture she could lean on if her hip betrayed her. The lengthy hallway was wide and empty, with absolutely nothing for her to grab if she felt herself unbalancing. Her hip wasn't reliable on the best of days, and she'd been through a whole slew of days that weren't anywhere near her best.

Still, she needed to see the items the cat had stolen. Stevie's future might depend on convincing the police to investigate Freddie. Detective Peterson wouldn't rummage through the cat's booty simply because she asked him to, not unless she could tell exactly what stolen items she'd seen there. She had to risk the trek to the far end of the mansion.

Helen was relieved to find that the hallway wasn't as long as it appeared, her hip didn't give out on her, and she made it to the storage room without any incidents that would have required leaning on her cane.

Art waited patiently, holding the bedroom door open. The room was easily four times the size of the bedroom in her cottage. It was painted in primary colors to go with the Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper border that chugged around the room at chair-rail height. There was no furniture, just boxes and storage bins.

Art pointed at a row of three large blue Rubbermaid bins directly across from the doorway. "That's Broadway's stash." He looked down at the phone in his hand, which was apparently set to vibrate instead of ringing. "Sorry. I've got to call this person back. I'm going to step out into the hallway, but I won't be too far if you need anything."

"Thanks." Helen knelt with her back to the doorway and pulled the lids off the three bins. Inside was a collection of designer jeans, handbags with the same logo as the leather ones from Freddie's garage, and even a couple of bagged sets of expensive cosmetics.

In the background, she could hear the sound of Art's voice. She couldn't catch any of the words, but his tone was calm, so it couldn't have been too big an emergency. Of course, a calm disposition was probably a prerequisite for a personal assistant, especially one who worked with a celebrity who had an abrasive public persona. The only thing that had ever pierced Art's facade was seeing Vic's corpse, and only a psychopath would have been unaffected by that.

Helen focused on the contents of the bin. They were, as Art had said, mostly just clothes. They were new, though, and still had tags on them from a variety of high-end stores. Definitely nothing that could possibly have the sentimental value that Freddie had claimed.

Helen laid out a sampling of the cat's stash on the floor and pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket to photograph it. While she put the items back into the bins, she debated where she should send the pictures. Detective Peterson wouldn't believe any theory that Helen proposed, but Detective Almeida, with her recent experience with shoplifting and no experience with Helen, might be more amenable. At a minimum, Almeida would recognize the items as highly black-marketable merchandise, not the sorts of things that a single mother of four boys could afford in these quantities.

Would that be enough for a search warrant of Freddie's house? Unfortunately the cat hadn't taken anything that had been prepared for selling online so that it had information on it that could definitively be traced back to Freddie. Helen supposed the cat couldn't be expected to do all the police work any more than she herself could. It would be up to Detective Almeida to do the rest.

Helen found Almeida's phone number in her contacts list and sent the pictures with a note explaining that Vic's cat had stolen them from Freddie Ware, and suggesting that perhaps Freddie and her boys were part of a shoplifting ring. She then clicked the tops of the bins in place and backed out of the room, closing the door securely to make sure that the cat couldn't steal the items a second time.

She turned to see if Art was finished with his phone call so she could tell him he'd probably get a call from Detective Almeida. Art was at the top of the stairs, still talking into his phone.

Wait, that wasn't right. He had the phone in his hand, but he wasn't talking into it. And there was another voice, one that she hadn't heard from inside the bedroom. It came, not through the phone, but from somewhere down the stairs.

She couldn't see who was speaking, but it only took a moment before she recognized the voice. She knew exactly who it was, although it took a conscious effort to come up with the name. What was the mnemonic? GLasses, ENergetic, ANnoying. Glennon. Donald Glennon.

What on earth was a rabid opponent of gambling doing in the home of a gambling advocate?

Whatever the reason, it couldn't be good. Perhaps she'd been right when she'd theorized that Donald and Nora could have teamed up to kill Vic. Was Donald so far gone with his hatred that now he would kill Art simply for working for a poker player?

Art didn't seem alarmed. It was his job to remain calm when everything around him was in chaos, but no one could be that calm when facing a killer.

Unless the killer was working for him.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline of panic or the caffeine finally kicking in, but Helen's fog lifted just long enough for her to realize how much trouble she'd gotten herself into this time. With her mind clear, it was so obvious what had happened to Vic.

Freddie hadn't killed Vic to protect her shoplifting ring, although she might have rejoiced over his death. And it hadn't been Nora and Donald working together to kill Vic.

It had been a team, though. Two killers, each with an alibi for only part of the relevant timeframe. Donald was part of the team, but the leader wasn't Nora. It was the unflappable young Wharton native, Art, who'd been the mastermind behind the brutal death of his boss.

She should have figured it out when Marianne told her about two Lennias meeting near the library and talking about murder. Donald worked at the radio station across the street from the library. The co-conspirators wouldn't have wanted any phone records to give away their collusion, so they must have met in person. The library's grounds would have been a convenient location. If they were seen together, they could have claimed it was a random occurrence. Except Marianne had gotten close enough to hear what they were saying, and when they'd realized it, they'd tried to get rid of her. Marianne had put up a fight—her steel-toed construction boots probably explained why Donald had been limping when he came to confront Vic's fans. Marianne had been lucky. Art and Donald must have let her go, believing she wasn't a real risk to them, since no one would believe a crazy homeless woman. No one except Helen.