Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 05 - Just Ducky (28 page)

“You’re damn right it was difficult to accept!” Now Tom was getting agitated. I casually took a small sip of coffee, which was just beginning to cool down enough to drink. I had a hunch Tom might say something I’d want to have Wyatt listen to later, so I acted like I’d felt my phone vibrate. I fiddled with it, pretending I wasn’t sure what I was doing. While I was fiddling with it, I opened the voice recorder app I had downloaded on the device and turned it on.

“Oh, well, I’ll just turn the silly thing off, and whoever was calling can call me back later. I just got this phone a couple days ago, and I’d have better luck sending and receiving smoke signals than I’m having sending and receiving texts and phone calls,” I said, as I placed the phone in the pouch of my sweatshirt, and looked up at Tom.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Melvard, now what were you saying?” I asked the tiny man, who was still obviously fuming.

Before Tom could respond, Paul spoke up, “We need to get going, Tom, and let Ms. Starr get back to what she was doing so she doesn’t get stuck here all day. I’ve got to meet my girlfriend for lunch, and you probably need to go too, before you talk Ms. Starr’s ear off.”

Tom nodded, his face flushing at Paul’s last comment. Paul had suddenly turned in to Chatty Cathy in his haste to get Tom to shut up and get both of them out of the library as quickly as possible. Thinking about Paul’s sudden ability to form full sentences, out loud even, made me think about something he’d said earlier in the conversation.

“Tom, I thought you were here to clean?” I asked. Tom just looked down at the floor. “And, say, Paul, did you happen to get a chance to read the suicide note Ducky supposedly wrote?”

“No, of course not. How could I have read it? I’m sure the detectives took it with them when they left the scene,” Paul said.

“Yeah, that’s what I assumed too. But, it’s odd how you just got Ducky’s grandkids names wrong, and, even more curiously, wrong in exactly the same way the person that really wrote the suicide note did, because we all know Ducky didn’t write it.” I had both men’s full attention now. Paul looked like he’d been beaned with a fastball thrown by Nolan Ryan.

“Huh?” He said, with a baffled expression on his face.

“Her grandkids are named Melissa and Barney. You just called them Marissa and Bernie, as they were mistakenly referred to in the suicide note. Which, incidentally, was one of the primary reasons I was convinced Ducky didn’t write the note. She would know her grandchildren’s names, even if she only saw them on rare occasions. And I’m relatively sure that Ducky did not have Alzheimer’s.”

“Well, I, I, I, um—” Paul managed to say, stuttering as he tried to come up with a response.

“And, Tom, I’m fascinated with that gorgeous Rolex watch on your wrist,” I said with a fake sweetness. I knew I was treading in dangerous water, but it had never stopped me before, and unfortunately, it didn’t stop me this time either. “Is it new?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be the Submariner model, would it?”

“Um, maybe. Why?” He asked.

“Just curious. It’s such an odd coincidence that your new watch is the exact same model as the Rolex stolen from the jewelry store the other night. I noticed it when we were chatting outside as Paul was unloading the boxes of books.”

“I’ve also noticed you limping, Tom, and rubbing your back. Do you have lingering injuries from a bad fall off a horse?”

“Well, yeah, several bad falls, but—”

“—and I’ll bet you have to take a lot of pills to control the pain, like Percocet, and the other narcotics taken from the pharmacy a week or so ago.”

“What’s your point, Ms. Starr?” Paul asked, with a threatening tone to his voice.

“Nothing, I just find it interesting,” I said, as innocently as I could muster. But I obviously didn’t muster up enough, because the looks on both men’s faces had turned menacing.

It had become obvious to both Paul and Tom that I was now putting two and two together, and coming up with twenty-five to life. The fact they were feeling the pressure did not bode well for me. They had nothing to lose at this point, and everything to gain. Tom stepped in front of me, pointing his finger right at my face. He was livid as he spoke to me.

“Listen, lady! I don’t know what you think you know, but I do know your luck is about to run out. You escaped death twice this week, but the third time is definitely not going to be a charm. Sit down in the chair, and don’t even try to make a move for your phone,” Tom said. “It’s off and it’s going to stay off while we figure out what we’re going to do with you. I knew you were not going to quit snooping around until you figured out what really happened to that old bitch. That’s why we’ve tried all week to shut you up for good.”

Only I knew my phone was actually still turned on and I hoped it would stay on long enough to catch as much of the conversation as possible. Because, if nothing else, when they discovered my body, no doubt hanging from the rafters, with any luck at all, I’d have proof of who killed me, and Ducky, in my pocket, recorded on my iPhone.

“If you try to carry me up the ladder to hang me from the rafters, I have to warn you, I’m younger and heavier than Ducky, and I’ll be kicking and screaming for all I’m worth, so I wouldn’t even consider it if I were you guys!”

“You won’t be kicking and screaming after I knock you out like I did Ducky,” Paul said.

“Oh, well, it was just a thought. So, how did you knock her out?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but I felt I had to ask to get it on tape, if nothing else.

“I’m trained in several forms of martial arts as a competitor in cage fighting,” he answered, boastfully. “And as good of a boxer as I am, I’m even better in the ground and pound game. My guillotine choke has even the best of them tapping out within seconds.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” I said, sarcastically. “How proud you must be. And I’m sure your mother is just as proud, and when she finds out you’ve killed me too, she’ll be even prouder. Trust me, Paul, she will find out! Even after you disable me with your choke hold, to make it obvious I was still alive when I hung myself, you’ll still have to carry a heavier body than Ducky’s up the ladder.”

“Lady, I can bench press four-hundred and twenty-five pounds. That’s just a few pounds short of the Missouri state record in my age and weight class. So, me carrying you up a ladder would be like you carrying a dead puppy up it. No big fricking deal.”

I didn’t like his reference to the dead puppy. I would never hurt anyone or anything, especially not a puppy. But it didn’t encourage me any to know he could lift three-and-a-half people my size.

“I don’t understand, Paul. Why would you want to kill Ducky to begin with?” I asked.

“It was Tom’s idea at first. He was still bitter about her rejecting him, and not ever even giving him a chance by agreeing to go out on one date with him. She ridiculed him, and called him ‘pipsqueak,’ saying she’d never consider dating someone tinier than herself,” Paul explained.

“Hey! I was a good inch taller than Ducky, and I know I had to have outweighed her too,” Tom rebutted, in defense of his size. “And besides, have you ever seen a jockey Paul’s size? The filly I rode,
Outspoken
, would have died of a heart attack trying to race other horses around the track if she’d had a three-hundred-pound behemoth on her back. So what Ducky found as unattractive, was very beneficial in the horse-racing world.”

“I’m sure it was, Tom. I can understand why you were angry with her. But what about you, Paul, why would you agree to help Tom kill her? What could you have against her that was so bad you wouldn’t mind seeing her dead?” I asked. Now that I had apparently pulled their chains, they didn’t want to shut up, including Paul, who rarely strung two sentences together during a conversation. I thought if I could keep them talking, I could use it as a stall tactic while I tried to think of a way out of my predicament.

“You said it yourself just a little while ago. Why wasn’t I considered for the head librarian position? I know the duties of the position as well as Ducky did, but she said I didn’t have the social skills I needed to interact with the library patrons. She had the gall to tell me she could hire a trained monkey to fulfill the duties of a librarian, but if they couldn’t talk and communicate with the patrons, what good would it do? How would you like be compared to a trained monkey? And I really needed the extra money the head librarian position would have paid me. First of all, I’d like to enter a cage-fighting competition where the entry fee is ten grand, but the winner claims a hundred thousand dollar purse. Plus, I’m tired of living with my girlfriend’s parents. We need a place of our own. And as much as I’d like to get engaged, I couldn’t ask her to marry me without an engagement ring. So I got her a really nice one the other night when Tom stole his Rolex, while we were robbing the jewelry store,” Paul explained.

I’d just discovered that once you got this man to speak, he was more than happy to spill his guts. Or, at least he was willing to boast about his crimes to someone he planned to do away with so they couldn’t repeat anything he said to the authorities. Little did he know his rambling speech was being recorded, and hopefully, even with me gone, his detailed admission would be preserved, and detected, on my phone.

I’d also figured out that not only did these two work in tandem to kill Ducky but they were also a team committing the burglaries all over town. The recording on my cell phone could incriminate these two men in both crimes, if my phone was still at the scene, intact and functioning, when they discovered my body. Surely, neither of these fellows would want my phone, if they even thought to take it out of the pouch in my sweatshirt in the first place. The way the small pouch was sewn on, the phone would probably not fall out, even if I were hanging upside down from the rafters.

“So, tell me if I’ve got this right,” I said. “You, Tom, have a key to all of the businesses you broke into because you do janitorial service for all of them, plus enough other businesses in town to not draw suspicion to yourself And, because you have to enter these businesses at night after closing hours, you already knew how to disable their security systems.”

“That’s right,” he said, puffing out his chest in pride. “I have all the pass codes to turn the systems off.”

“So, you came in the front door of the business using your key, and then you quickly keyed in the code to turn off the alarm. Meanwhile, Paul kicked the rear door in so no one would even suspect someone with a key to the store was involved.” I was now puffing my chest out a little too, proud I could accurately put all the pieces into place. I continued to surmise the details of their burglary spree as Tom nodded frequently, while listening intently, and Paul sat quietly in deep thought.

“Knowing the complete layout of the store, and much of its contents, made you privy to the information on what to take and where it was located. You knew which businesses kept cash in their cash registers, which ones had safes, and so forth. And then the two of you split the haul after each break-in,” I said. “So, how am I doing so far?”

“Pretty damn good!” Tom replied. Paul just sat on the corner of the couch and shook his head as the discussion between Tom and I went on. Tom seemed to be enjoying the game we were playing, and was beaming like a new father, proud of the clever plan he’d devised. I got the impression Tom didn’t partner up with Paul because he needed the money the way Paul did, as far as the burglary spree was concerned. I don’t think he minded the extra cash, but he appeared to enjoy the challenge more than anything.

So far, the stall tactic was working, and I was gathering important information for the detectives, but I could tell Paul was getting irritated and impatient with Tom. My time for coming up with an exit strategy was slowly running out. They’d confessed to their parts in both crimes, and there was no way they could allow me to live at this stage of the game. I was toast if I didn’t pull off a miracle soon.

“So, tell me, Tom, why did you call in the burglary yourself Wednesday night? You called 9-1-1 to report the crime that you two committed. I don’t get the reasoning behind that ploy,” I said.

Now Tom was nearly bursting at the seams with pride in his cunningness. “I thought if I called it in, after we robbed the gun shop, of course, it would throw suspicion off of us, just in the event anyone thought we might be involved. I even described the robbers as two medium-sized men to have them on the lookout for two guys with entirely different builds than Paul and I have.”

“Jesus Christ, Tom, you freaking motor mouth! We don’t have all night,” Paul said.

“All right, what should we do with her?” Tom asked. I’d hoped by drawing him into a conversation that I could build just enough rapport with him that he’d hesitate to kill me, but that plan bit the dust when he continued speaking. “I say we stab her. I have a big buck knife in my car.”

“Where are your vehicles?” I asked. Even on the precipice of death, I was still curious. The library parking lot had been vacant when I pulled in, and I wanted to keep them talking more about themselves, and less about ways to eliminate me from the picture.

“Down the street, parked in front of the dime store. We didn’t want anyone to see our trucks parked at the library since it was supposed to be closed until Monday,” Tom said.

“Which one of you drives a black one-ton pickup?” I asked, knowing that was the other vehicle that’d been parked in the lot with Ducky’s VW when I left the library the night Ducky was killed.