Grace Against the Clock (A Manor House Mystery) (27 page)

Chapter 34

Police spotlights rendered the streetscape bright as day, making the area look like the final scene from a blockbuster disaster movie. The authorities had arrived en masse, quickly taking over, quietly assuring us that they had the matter under control.

I glanced up at where the clock had been, where two jagged, empty arms now reached for each other across a giant, gaping hole.

Time had stopped, at least for the Promise Clock. Along with killing Keay, Wes had managed to carry out that part of his quest for vengeance.

Bennett was fine. Except for having lost a shoe in the wreckage, and having the back of his suit singed from the heat of the blast, he’d managed to escape with a pair of sore wrists and bruised knees.

The blood that had soaked my shirt and hair was beginning to dry. Parts were getting crusty. Some of that blood, we’d discovered, was mine. The single shot Wes had discharged had skimmed me, directly above the left ear. Had I been positioned one centimeter to my right, the bullet would have missed completely. One centimeter to my left? I preferred not to think about that.

Bennett and I sat next to one another sideways on a low gurney, blankets wrapped around our shoulders, even though we weren’t cold. Someone had handed us each a water bottle, and it took a while before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to grip it until my knuckles turned white—I was supposed to drink from it.

Joyce had suffered scrapes, which had left her knees bloody. She screeched a lot and insisted on being taken into the hospital for observation. We were happy to see her go.

I watched as she was carted away, her shrill complaints cleaving the night air, drowning out the hum of conversation. When the ambulance shut the back doors, silencing her nonstop wails, I turned to Bennett. “You went on a
date
with her?”

His cheeks reddened ever so slightly. “I have no romantic interest in her, you know that, Gracie.”

“Then why did you agree to it?”

“Joyce and I have been colleagues for many years.” He took a long drink from his water bottle. “I surmised her intent, but a gentleman doesn’t act on romantic presumptions.” He eyed the bandages on the side of my head. “How are you feeling?”

“You can’t change the subject.” I nudged him with an elbow. “What happened?”

“Always curious, aren’t you?” He took another drink. “I decided that if she made an advance, I would be kind but clear in letting her know that I had no interest in changing the nature of our professional relationship.”

“And did she?” I asked. “Make an advance?”

“My goodness, Gracie.” He took a deep breath. “She did.”

I twisted so I faced him fully. “And?”

“When I told her we had no future together, she waved a hand in the air, quite dismissively. She told me it had been worth a try, and then invited me to join her to see what amazing artifacts Wes McIntyre had discovered at the Promise Clock.”

“You didn’t think it was odd to be meeting him there so late?”

He shrugged. “I did, but after having dispelled any romantic notions she may have harbored, I believed it would have been ungentlemanly to allow her to venture out on her own.”

“Being a gentleman almost got you killed.”

A corner of his mouth quirked up. “One of the hazards of the job.”

A second later I jumped to my feet. “Tooney!” I said when he came into view from around the front of the ambulance.

After having assessed that none of his injuries were life-threatening, the paramedics had taken our favorite private eye away for closer examination of the cuts and bruises he’d sustained. His regular shirt was gone and he stood before us in sagging slacks and white undershirt. There were blood spatters all over him and a bloody handprint across his T-shirt’s chest. A wad of white bandaging encircled his neck like a clerical collar.

“Oh my gosh, Tooney,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly fine. They want me to go in for a few stitches.” He pointed a thick finger. “Back of my neck got sliced up pretty good.” He turned and I saw that the paramedics had piled on the gauze. “That’ll hold for a while, but I’m taking their advice and going in. They insist on driving me. Said I might have lost too much blood to go on my own.”

I reached out and touched his arm. “Thank you,” I said. “You saved me.”

As if to punctuate my statement, the coroner’s van pulled up at that moment. They waited for authorization from the police before moving to collect Wes’s body—what was left of it, anyway.

“I thought I could get him out of there,” I said quietly.

Bennett had gotten to his feet. He stood next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “There was nothing you could have done.”

I swallowed, thinking differently, but it wouldn’t do to argue.

A paramedic called to Tooney. “Let’s get you in,” he said.

My hand was still resting on the private eye’s arm. “Gotta go,” he said with a sad smile as he pulled away.

“We’ll go with you,” I said.

“Nah, I’ll be fine.”

Bennett adopted his most authoritative voice. “Mr. Tooney, are you telling us what we can or cannot do?”

Tooney’s eyes went wide. “No, sir.”

“Then we shall accompany you. We Marshfields don’t allow our friends to sit in the emergency room by themselves.”

Tooney’s mouth tightened. He gave a brief nod.

As we walked over to the ambulance’s wide open back doors, I pointed to the center of his shirt. “That’s an awful lot of blood.”

He smiled a little. “That’s your handprint,” he said.

“From when you picked me up?”

Another quick nod.

My heart twisted. This man had risked everything to save me. Gratitude welled up from a place so deep inside, I couldn’t speak.

Tooney added, “I was really glad when it turned out that most of it wasn’t your blood.”

I brushed hair out of my eyes with the back of my hand as the whole horrible sequence of events replayed itself in my mind. “Why were you here?” I asked. “How did you know?”

He climbed into the back of the ambulance and offered me, and then Bennett, a hand up to join him. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

Chapter 35

I didn’t know what aggravated Flynn more: the fact that he’d arrested the wrong person—twice—or that he’d missed all the action under the Promise Clock.

He met us as Bennett, Tooney, and I were leaving the hospital. He wanted to talk right then and there, but I told him we’d meet him later and suggested he come by the following morning. “It is morning,” he said, banging an index finger against his watch. “It’s three in the morning.”

“Tomorrow afternoon, then,” I said.

“But I need to know what went down.”

“And you will,” I said. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

Bennett had called for a car to pick us up, and I’d arranged for Tooney to stay at Marshfield’s Hotel tonight. We’d also engaged a nurse to stay with him there. She’d keep an eye on him, just in case. Tooney had suffered a concussion in the blast and we didn’t want him going home alone in case he needed medical assistance overnight.

We pulled away from the hospital with Flynn pacing angrily outside its front doors.

Tomorrow the detective would have a thousand questions, and as I settled into the soft backseat of Bennett’s gorgeous Packard Phaeton, I studied my companions. Bennett, hands clasped in his lap, had shut his eyes and lowered his chin to his chest. Tooney stared out the window opposite mine, his thumbs twiddling. He worked his bottom lip.

The doctors had removed three pieces of shrapnel from his back. I reached over and touched his knee. “Are you in pain?”

“Nah. My hide is tough. Plus, they numbed me up pretty good.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

He nodded. “You’re not mad at me?”

“For saving my life?” I laughed softly, so as not to wake Bennett. “How could I be mad at you for that?”

“You used to accuse me of stalking you. I kind of did tonight. You have to know it wasn’t like that.”

“I do know,” I said.

On our way to the hospital, as promised, Tooney had told us how he’d come to be in the right place at the right time. He’d thought long and hard about something I’d said—that the killer might have gotten into Todd Pedota’s house in order to frame the man for murder—and believed my idea had merit. It dawned on him that someone might have used the secret passage between our homes to accomplish that, and he came to my house to share his suspicions with me.

I hadn’t been there. He started asking people where I might have gone and was about to give up when he tried the historical society. Even though it was closed for the night and the lights were dark, the front door was unlocked. With a sneaking suspicion that something was not right, he went inside and found the ripped-up duct-tape bindings and my abandoned purse.

The problem was that no one had any idea where I’d gone. No one, except the man at Joyce’s place of business, who’d called the police to report a crazy woman banging at his office door. When the cops heard the man’s story, they knew I was that crazy person.

Tooney talked to the guy and discovered which way I’d run off. Thank heavens for easily irritated, nosy people.

I’d asked Tooney how he’d known to come to the clock. He’d shrugged his big shoulders and told me that it was a hunch. “Remember I told you that I paged through that missing newspaper when I got that replacement copy?” he’d said. “The only mention of Dr. Keay in that whole edition was in the caption under the clock. I don’t know. It clicked, I guess.”

Now, in the back of the quiet car, I said, “You’re a treasure, Tooney. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to thank you enough.”

Tooney offered a lopsided grin. “You put me on retainer, remember? That’s like having my dream come true. Told you I’d always be there for you, Grace.” He flicked a glance at my boss, who—I suddenly realized—may not have been slumbering after all. “You and Mr. Marshfield.”

As we sped through the quiet streets of Emberstowne, I thought, not for the first time tonight, about calling Adam.

As much as I wanted to, however, I knew I wouldn’t. Not yet. When that day came—if it did—I wanted to do so without hesitation. Without holding back. I wasn’t there yet. Adam had been right again. I needed time. And after all that had happened this evening, I needed sleep, too.

*   *   *

The following afternoon, Bennett, Tooney, and I shared our overnight adventures with Frances, who listened without interrupting, her lips pursed, her eyebrows jumping up as the story unfolded. We sat in my office, overlooking the south gardens, where the tree leaves were beginning their slide from green to gold, orange, and red.

Instead of taking my seat behind my desk, I’d arranged a circle of chairs. Frances had taken the one I’d have chosen, with its back to the window and face to the door, but that didn’t matter. My purple-clad assistant was in a wholly cheerful mood. After we’d brought her up to speed, she chortled, “That’ll show Flynn, won’t it?”

When Flynn showed up, he seemed far more eager to share what he’d learned than to hear the details of our story. After demanding an update on Rodriguez, who, he assured us, was recovering extraordinarily well, we let him talk.

“McIntyre was Wes’s wife’s maiden name. He adopted it when he moved here to exact his revenge on Keay. Wes’s real name, as Grace discovered in the newspaper caption, is William Reed. He changed that and his appearance so no one would recognize him from his original visits here with his wife. They came twice. Once for consultation, and several months later for the surgery.” Flynn shook his head. “That whole disguise and name-change thing was overkill. Nobody remembers random visitors.”

“Maybe you should start paying closer attention,” Frances said.

I shushed her.

Flynn seemed not to hear. “Wes, or William, apparently shadowed Dr. Keay for some time. He discovered that the man had returned to his old drinking habits.”

“I can only imagine how much that infuriated Wes,” I said.

Flynn nodded. “The doctor, of course, didn’t want anyone to know that he was still getting drunk, so he began buying his supplies from a local distillery.” He held up a finger. “An illegal one. We believe Wes threatened to blackmail Keay, and that’s how he arranged to have the doctor meet him in secret at the fund-raiser. He really planned this one down to the smallest detail.”

“I’m not surprised. Wes was a methodical guy,” I said. “He didn’t take any chances.”

“He did by letting you live.”

I turned to stare out the window. If I hadn’t hit him so hard with the brick, Wes might have been able to escape the blast. He might have made it out alive. I worked my fingers in my lap and said nothing.

Tooney reached over and covered my hands with his. He leaned to whisper, “You saved Bennett, you saved Joyce. You did what you had to do.”

I could feel heat in the back of my throat. “And you saved me.”

Frances piped in, breaking the moment. “Hey, Flynn.”

“
Detective
Flynn,” I corrected.

Frances lifted her chin, leaning forward. “
Detective
Flynn,” she said with exaggerated deference, “did you hear that Joyce called here this morning? Told Grace that if she ever needs legal assistance, it’s on her. For the first time in that woman’s life, she seems grateful for something.”

Having delivered her pronouncement, Frances straightened her shoulders and sat back again.

“That’s something at least,” Flynn said, not at all impressed. “What does she plan to do with all the money that was raised to refurbish the clock?”

Bennett took that one. “The Chamber of Commerce will discuss it further, of course, but that area is still in need of improvement. They’ll come up with a plan. I highly doubt, however, that their vision will include replacing the clock, now that it’s been destroyed.” He held his hands out, as though open to suggestions. “They’re also discussing the idea of using some of the money to help fund additional programs at the hospital, in Leland’s name.”

“What kind of programs?” Frances asked.

“A couple of ideas being bandied about are to either provide more resources for those battling alcoholism, or to increase funding for heart disease research.”

Frances shifted her shoulders.
“Hmph.”

“I’ll let you know what the chamber decides,” Bennett said.

I had a question to ask that I hoped Flynn knew the answer to. “Todd Pedota has been released, hasn’t he?”

“First thing this morning,” Flynn said. “He said something about wanting to move out of this lunatic town before he goes crazy himself.”

Bennett pointed to Frances. “Keep on top of that. If Mr. Pedota puts his house on the market, I want to buy it.”

“What would you do with another house, Bennett?” I asked. “You’ve already set Hillary up in one of the neighboring homes. I know it’s none of my business. But I am curious.”

“Consider it another mystery to solve,” Bennett said with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m betting you’ll have it figured out in no time.”