Death Comes eCalling (26 page)

I could imagine Tommy’s face as I tried to sell him on that story. Something still wasn’t adding up.

I printed my fax log. Maybe I could find older fax logs that showed one Steve had sent me. I wanted to see if his number and ID were suppressed.

I flung open my file cabinet to search for an older log sheet. I grabbed a handful of my last twenty or so designs and started to flip through them, searching for the listing.

Could I really trust my instincts and let Nathan be alone, even briefly, with Lauren?

By God, I’d been manipulated enough. My loyalty for thirty years of friendship was not to be second-guessed. I owed her—and myself—at least that much.

“Oh my God!” I froze and stared at one of my designs. I had indeed missed a step. My subconscious had not. The answer was right there in one of my greeting cards.

My heart pounding, I called Tommy Newton and got his recording. I left a message saying to get over to my house the instant he got this message, that I knew who the killer was. As a precaution, I scanned and then sent him the eCard itself, along with a quick note of explanation. I had to get Nathan home safe behind locked doors.

I looked out the window and saw my son walking toward our house, hand in hand with the murderer.

Chapter 21

We’ve Got Each Udder

I rushed out of the house toward them, willing myself to stay calm. If I could just hang on and pretend not to be upset, maybe she’d go home.

After all, there had to be a simple explanation for her being here. Surely she hadn’t just shot Lauren dead at the bus stop. If that were the case, Nathan would’ve looked upset. Instead, he smiled and waved at me.

“Hi,” I said. “Uh, what happened to Lauren? She was going to wait at the bus stop till I could get there.”

“She got a phone call from her lawyer, who said it couldn’t wait.”

I stood directly in her path, but she walked around me as if she was supposed to lead the way into my house.

“I told Carolee I’d show her my truck collection,” Nathan explained.

“This isn’t a good time. The house is a mess, and—”

“I promised Nathan I’d see his trucks,” Carolee said firmly. “And there’s something important that you and I need to talk about.”

This is still going to be okay, I thought. In a few minutes, Tommy would get my message. As long as Carolee and Nathan weren’t left alone, everything would be fine. Besides, I knew Carolee was guilty, but was still extremely short on proof. Maybe I could trick her into saying something incriminating.

I let Nathan lead us into the house, watching Carolee.

Maybe I should send Nathan to Lauren’s house. No, that would mean that unless I could keep Carolee with me until she was arrested, I would eventually be letting both Nathan and Carolee out of my sight. Best scenario was Nathan and me getting rid of Carolee until the police arrived. Second best was me keeping Carolee far away from Nathan till help arrived. I left the front door wide open, shutting only the screen door, in anticipation of the troops arriving.

Nathan showed Carolee the trucks in the cabinets in the family room. She did an admirable job of feigning interest; a better acting job than my current nothing’s wrong routine, complete with a sweaty upper lip.

“There’s some more upstairs in my room,” Nathan said, rising to lead the way.

“That’s all right, sweetie. Why don’t you watch some TV while I talk to Carolee in my office?”

“But there’s nothing on.”

“Put a DVD in.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Then go to your room! Now!”

Nathan took a look at my face, which was no doubt showing my panic. He started crying and went up the stairs. Good. Soon there would be two whole flights between him and Carolee.

She narrowed her eyes at me but said nothing.

“I was a bit harsh on him. It’s hard to be a parent, let me tell you. Come on downstairs and we can talk.”

She dutifully followed me down the stairs, though turning my back on her even momentarily was scary in and of itself. I kept expecting to feel a knife between the shoulder blades at any minute. We reached the office.

“So, you said we had something important to talk about. What’s up?” I pulled my chair way back so that I’d be nearest the door and able to watch her, but she grabbed it from me and sat down, which meant I had to take the director’s chair in the corner.

She didn’t answer. She reached over and grabbed my stack of greetings. “I’ve never actually seen your cards before. Mind if I flip through these?”

“Not at all.”

The incriminating one was in the original document tray in the back of my printer. She would never think to look for it there. I hoped. While she read through the ones in her hand, I looked at my scanner, unable to keep my eyes off it, trying to calculate how visible the drawing I’d sent to Tommy was. It wasn’t in sight. I was fine. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The fax machine began to whir with an incoming fax. I cringed. Her attention was drawn to my all-in-one printer, with its original-document tray.

“So this is how your fax machine works?”

I nodded, knowing she knew at least as well as I how to operate a fax machine. My throat felt dry. My lips were sticking to my teeth as I tried to smile at her.

“Have you gotten any more of those threats lately?”

“Threats? You heard about those?”

“From Lauren.” She reached over and snatched up the faxed message.
Please don’t let this be a response from Tommy!

She glanced at it, then held it out toward me. “Here. It’s from someone named Mrs. Wesley Styler. You do Christmas letters for customers?”

“Uh, I, yes.”

She studied my face for a long moment I felt frozen to the chair, unable to move.

“You’re acting awfully strange, Molly. As if you’re hiding something.” She reached back and grabbed the original document out of the tray on my printer. “Is there something you don’t want me to look at?”

“That’s nothing.”

She glanced at it and narrowed her eyes. After a momentary pause, she said evenly, “Cindy the Locked-Nest Monster. It’s not all that good a likeness of me. The legs are right, but the hair is all wrong.”

She rotated it to read my note to Tommy. I had written that Carolee was the only person who could have seen when the Wilkinses weren’t home and gotten into their house without tripping the alarm. That
someone
had to have let himself into the house Saturday morning, for if Steve had known anyone else was in the house, he wouldn’t have been in his office chair with an embarrassing letter about leaving Lauren on his computer screen. As the “Locked Nest” had reminded me, Carolee had a key.

She looked at me. “You’re right. I was the only person other than the Wilkinses who had a key to their house and knew their security code. But so what?”

“You used their fax machine to send a threat to me. And probably their email to send two others. Every time I got one, nobody was home. Your front windows face their driveway. You could easily see when they were home and when they weren’t.”

“So fry my butt in a chair. What does that prove, Molly? That I might have sent you some threats? You’ve got diddly-squat on me.”

“We’ll see.”

“Right.” She stood up, and before I could fully come to my feet, she had me in that old schoolyard wrestling grip, twisting my right arm behind my back. Almost instantly I was in agony, and as I struggled to pull free, she twisted harder and slammed me face first into the wall.

“What evidence do you have?”

A smashed face and a wrenched arm, for one thing. Please God! Make Tommy hurry!
She tugged again on my arm. I had to tell her something. Anything. “A note written by Mrs. Kravett claiming you’d swapped her medications and were trying to kill her. She stored it on the school’s computer.” I was lying through my teeth, of course, but she loosened her grip.

“You’re lying. You didn’t have the password. That’s why I had to act fast. Steve wasn’t going to be able to get the password till Sunday.”

“He did, though. Just before you sneaked into his house and stabbed him. And then I figured out the code too.”

“When?”

“A few minutes ago.”

“Damn you to hell! That money was mine! I earned it! I sucked up to that old bitty and her goat of a husband for four years! They said I was the daughter they never had. When her husband finally kicked the bucket, it was my shoulder she cried on. Then the word spreads that Molly’s coming back to town. Everything changes. Suddenly, she starts talking about how this was the answer to her prayers. That
you
would have the energy and determination to head up a scholarship program in Bob’s name. ‘All our savings don’t need to go to waste now.’ Like I was a waste? Jesus. She cut me out entirely! I couldn’t meet my mortgage on my salary, let alone have a life!”

“But why—” I paused, answering my own question before it was asked. Rather than risk yet another murder, she’d hoped to scare me into leaving and giving my control of the money to Tommy. And someone, either Lauren or Mrs. Kravett, had told Carolee about my poem, so that was the Achilles’ heel she attempted to use against me. Then, intending to become the next Mrs. Newton, she could swindle that money into her own pocket.

“So how have you managed till now? Stealing?”

“Penny-ante stuff. A few dollars here and there when someone at the hospital was too careless with his wallet. The Kravetts were my ticket. I’d waited for someone like them, nurtured them, played them perfectly. When Mr. Kravett died, I became Mrs. Kravett’s dearest companion, ran errands for her, went shopping for her, took her to movies and out to dinner. She promised me she was leaving me her money. She would have, too, until you came along. The day Mrs. Kravett died, I went to visit her. She said she was on to me, that she finally realized I’d swapped her prescriptions and was going to her doctor. I denied it, of course, but she knew. I told her I had one last pill I wanted her to swallow, one which would kill her instantly.”

Carolee chuckled. “I didn’t, really. Just grabbed an ibuprofen tablet from my purse and made like I wanted to jam it down her throat. Scared the old bitty so bad, she went into cardiac arrest. She told me, as she was dying, that she’d already written about what I’d done. She said that her note would be read in the event of her death. It wasn’t in her house. When Steve said she had a secret password for the school’s computer, I knew that must be where she stored it. I had no choice.”

Dear God. Steve died for nothing. There was nothing incriminating on the disk.

She let go of my arm. “Sign on to the school computer using Mrs. Kravett’s ID and call up that file. Now! If I delete it, it’s just your word against mine, and
I
have the sergeant in my pocket.”

A staggering realization suddenly came too clear to me. Under imminent fear for our lives, Mrs. Kravett and I had pulled the exact same bluff about ail incriminating letter that never existed. Mrs. Kravett had been dead for almost three weeks. If she’d actually written such a letter, it would’ve surfaced by now.

How would Carolee react if I pointed that out to her?

“Think about this, Carolee. It won’t do you any good to—”

She picked up my heavy desk chair as if it were doll furniture and flung it at the door. The crash shook the entire house. “Do it! Now! Or I’ll kill you!”

So much for rational conversation. “Okay.” I desperately needed to stall. There was nothing on the disk that I could pull up to appease her. “We’ll have to call the school to get the phone number for their computer. Plus, you’ve made this harder. I’ll have to type standing up now.”

Shit! Where was Tommy Newton?

“Mommy?”

I gasped and whirled in the direction of Nathan’s voice. He had heard the noise coming from my office. He stood in the doorway, his little Wiffle bat in his hands.

“Go back upstairs!” I screamed.

Carolee swooped him into her arms and wrenched the plastic bat away from him. He kicked and screamed with all his might, but she lifted the razor-sharp arm on my paper trimmer. “Better get signed on to the computer quick, Moll.”

In one fluent motion born of desperation, I disconnected my keyboard and swung it at her head with all my strength. The impact of the blow reverberated through my upper body. She released Nathan and slumped to the floor. Blood oozed from a deep gash on her forehead, but I ignored it. I grabbed the phone, looped the wall cord once around her neck, and knelt with one knee on her back, gripping the phone cord.

“Go upstairs, Nathan. Lock yourself into my bedroom and don’t unlock it for anyone except me or the police. And call nine-one-one. Just leave the phone off the hook if you’re scared to talk.”

He just stood there, staring at Carolee.

“Go on, sweetie. It’s okay. Carolee is a very bad woman, and I had to hit her to get her to let go of you.”

“Is she dead?”

“No.”

“She needs to go on time-out.”

His innocence brought tears to my eyes.

“That’s right. Now go on upstairs.”

Carolee soon regained consciousness. She groaned.

“Move one muscle, and I’ll strangle you.” I’m sure the pain in her head let her know I meant it.

Within minutes, the police arrived. They banged on the door, and I yelled as loud as I could, “Come in. We’re downstairs.”

Only when three uniformed officers were in the room did I loosen my grip on the cord and let her rise.

“Jesus,” Carolee said as she got to her feet. “I’d never have believed you were that strong.”

“You made a stupid mistake when you grabbed Nathan. You don’t mess with my children. Nobody hurts them. Not now. Not ever.”

If it weren’t for the fact that an armed policeman was staring at my face, I would have told her honestly how lucky she was that I hadn’t killed her.

We picked up Karen from school. Tommy drove us from the station after I’d given my statement. I asked him if he could try to find out from Carolee where my parents’ DVR and brass candlesticks were, and he assured me he’d do his best to get them back. He took us all out to lunch at McDonald’s. When we arrived back home, Karen took Nathan’s hand, and he finally left my side as we opened the door.