Last Resort of Murder (A Lacy Steele Mystery Book 9) (9 page)

There was no coffee at the resort.
As a cop, Jason knew what a travesty that was, especially for the detective who
had been there since early that morning. So he got in his car, drove until he
came to a gas station, and bought a round of coffees. It wasn’t blackmail, or
at least he told himself he wasn’t buttering up the cop to get information for
Lacy. He was being a good guy, paying it forward.

He arrived back at the resort and
handed out the coffees. “Ah, thanks, man,” the detective said with genuine
appreciation, and Jason tried not to feel like a fraud. The man’s name was
Green; he was a twenty-year veteran of his force. His reaction when Jason told
him he was also a detective was dismay mixed with a bit of amusement, as if he
thought Jason might still be an overeager rookie. The fact that he was hanging
around for hints of the investigatory process wouldn’t help that image.

“I know how these days go,” Jason
said.

“You see a lot of murders in your
precinct?” the cop asked, and the amusement was back in full force.

“More than I’d like,” Jason said.

“It’s getting bad all over, you
know? In the old days all you had to worry about were a few stray crack heads.
Now you’ve got heroin in the suburbs the way you used to have wine coolers.
Kids are sneaking opioids faster than the cartels can ship them. And then
there’s this mess.” He motioned toward the murder scene. “Twenty years and I’ve
never seen a cherry-red corpse before. You think you’ve seen it all, then some
chick gets poisoned. Not once, but twice.” He shook his head.

“You still like the other trainer
for it?” Jason asked as casually as he could.

“It’s a done deal. In addition to
the poison, we found a bruise on her chin. She’d been covering it with makeup.”

“So someone poisoned her twice and
clocked her in the face. That’s a lot of hate for one person,” Jason mused.

“You seen this Sven guy? He’s like
a walking mountain. If he’s not on ‘roids, I’ll eat my retirement.”

Jason agreed that Sven was huge,
and he agreed that it was beyond the pale to give someone poison as a
recreational drug. Still, the bruise did more to make him doubt than anything.
If someone were going to hit the woman before killing her, why stop at once?
Why not beat her to death? Why give her one pop and then poison her? Or poison
her twice and then punch her in the face? It made no sense.

“You waiting on the physical
evidence for a pickup?” he asked.

Detective Green nodded. “We
searched his place today and collected some things. As soon as the labs come
back, we’ll take him in. In the meantime, we’re dotting all the I’s, you know
how it goes.”

Jason did know how it went. It was
exhausting to do witness interviews, catalogue evidence, and create the
ever-growing paper trail. An officer’s worst nightmare was to have his work
revealed in court and be found lacking. Not just lacking, but negligent to the
point where someone guilty went free. He stayed up for days while working a big
case, going over and over the details in his mind to make sure he wasn’t
missing anything. And he didn’t need someone second guessing him, the same way
Green didn’t need him there to ask questions.

“If there’s any way I can help,
unofficially of course, let me know,” Jason said. He turned to go, but Green
hailed him back.

“Actually, your girlfriend turned
up on the trainer’s client list. It would be helpful if you could talk to her
and get her take on him—was he scary, did she feel threatened, that sort
of thing. We’re trying to build a profile and not having much luck.”

“I’m not sure Lacy would be much
help. She liked the guy a lot, thinks he’s the big teddy bear sort.”

Green blew out a breath. “Yeah,
we’re getting that a lot. I don’t get it with women. They see a huge hulking
beast of a guy and think, ‘Aw, what a sweetheart.’ It’s almost like they have
no sense of self-preservation.”

“According to Lacy, the vic was
universally hated.” He didn’t want to suggest there were other suspects, but he
wanted to hear Green’s take on Jill’s lack of popularity.

“Yeah, we got that, too. But Big
Guy seemed to have hated her the most. They had some sort of competition he
always lost, and she took great pleasure in rubbing it in. And he admitted to
giving her the poison. We’re keeping our ears open, but from where I sit it
looks like a slam dunk.”

“Hmm,” Jason said, nodding. He
didn’t disagree. In police work, the most obvious suspect was usually the one
who did it. Once again he turned to go. This time Green didn’t hail him back,
and he felt a bit relieved by that. He wasn’t comfortable sticking his nose
into another cop’s investigation. But now that he had done it, he had earned
the right to stick his nose somewhere else. And despite the fact that he didn’t
want to get involved in his girlfriend’s parents’ marital woes any more than he
wanted to get involved in the murder, it had to be done.

He found Frannie sitting at the
juice bar having a glass of mineral water. A lime rimmed the edge. She stared
toward the fire looking deep in thought. Maybe it was his imagination, but she
seemed lonely and a little bit sad. He sat beside her uninvited. She looked up
with a start and a smile, although a wary one.

“Jason, how nice to see you.” Her
tone lacked sincerity, but then it usually did. He wondered how often she was
real, and whom she was real with. Was she like this with Clint, or did she let
him see the heart of her? One thing Jason knew for sure—she was a woman
with secrets and she wore her iciness like a protective layer.

“Frannie, how’s it going?”

“Fine, just fine,” she said. She
sipped her water. He drew out his notebook. Since becoming a cop, he had gotten
in the habit of carrying it, along with a tiny pen. One never knew when one
might need to take notes.

“Goodness, this looks official. You
don’t think I killed that woman, do you?”

“Did you?” he asked.

She laughed stiffly. “Oh, Jason.”
Another sip of the mineral water.

“Let’s go back to high school and
the time you and Clint broke up.”

“I’d rather not.”

“I talked to the detective about
Sven. My part of the bargain has been upheld. Now it’s your turn. Lacy told me
you knew Bob, the mechanic who was murdered. Did he have anything to do with
your breakup with Clint?”

“Goodness, no,” she said, and now
her smile looked relieved.

She’s
telling the truth,
Jason thought. Still, there was something she was
defensive about, something she didn’t want him to know about that time in her
life. What could possibly be so secret this many decades later? According to
Lacy, Frannie took everything too seriously. She tried hard to be perfect, to
have other people think she was perfect. People like that took minor
infractions seriously. Could it be she got in trouble during that time and did
something she regretted? Did she get a tattoo? Get drunk? Fail a class? Get
suspended? What would make someone like Frannie cover her tracks for thirty
years?

“But you did know him,” he pressed.
“Were you friends?”

“I suppose we were acquaintances.
He called me under the bleachers once. I went out of annoyance, more to get him
to leave me alone. But we ended up having a real conversation. We talked a few
times, the way kids sometimes do when they’re thrown together. It was like that
movie Lacy likes, about all the misfit kids who become friends.”

“
The Breakfast Club,”
Jason suggested.

She shrugged. “I suppose. I could
never keep track of all those angst-ridden teenager movies and books that
seemed to mean the world to her. Maybe if she had spent less time in her room
and more time trying to make friends, she wouldn’t have been so unpopular.”

He decided to let that go. Frannie
would probably never see Lacy as she was; instead she was inclined to see her
as who she had tried—and failed—to make her. For his sake, he was
insanely glad that she had failed to make Lacy the popular princess she dreamed
of. He preferred his band geek as she was, thank you very much. “What did Clint
think of your friendship with Bob?”

“He never knew. He was busy with
football while I was busy with cheerleading. My friendship with Bob—if
you want to call it that—came at a time when Clint and I were having some
troubles.”

“And what kind of troubles were
those?” Jason probed.

“Typical teenage stuff. Petty
jealousies, arguments. We were both tired from our many extracurricular
involvements.”

“You eventually broke up,” he said.

“For a bit.” She withdrew her arms
into herself and crossed them. He was losing her. He must be getting close to
the heart of things. How much further could he push her?

“You broke up at the end of your
junior year and went away to summer camp. When you came back, you got back
together.”

“What is this about? I see no way
this has any bearing on anything. It was thirty years ago. We were kids. Kids
breakup and makeup. It was no big deal.”

Her tone and troubled expression
told him otherwise. Jason continued to write.

“What are you scribbling?” she
snapped.

“I’m making a timeline, trying to
sort events together to make sense.”

Frannie shot abruptly to her feet.
“I wish you wouldn’t. Some things don’t make sense.” With that, she turned and
fled. Jason stared after her for a long time, thinking. Frannie wasn’t the
easiest person to talk to, but it was still easier to ask a woman questions
than it was to ask another man. As much as he didn’t want to, he would have to
talk to Clint.

“I still don’t understand how we’re
supposed to know which one she is,” Kimber said.

“Sven said she takes a steam bath
every night,” Lacy told her. She was laboring to remove her clothes and put her
robe on again.

“I hate steam baths. Do you have
any idea what it does to my hair? I just had these braids done.” She lovingly
touched her braids, intricately done up in hundreds of tiny pieces. Lacy had envied
those braids in college until she went with Kimber once and watched the
tedious, painstaking process.

“I’ll pay to have them redone,”
Lacy offered.

Kimber gave her a look. It wasn’t
the money; it was the time and the pain involved in having bitty pieces of her
hair held tight for hours on end.

“Come on, you’re as vested in this
now as I am,” Lacy said.

“Not hardly,” Kimber said, but she
changed into her robe nonetheless.

The steam room was crowded and the
steam, predictably, made it difficult to see. “Sven said she’s unmistakable,”
Lacy said. His exact words were, “Thee’s like Bea Arthur from
Golden Girlth.
” She scanned the room for
a tall, powerful older woman and found her almost immediately, mostly because
she was the only naked person in the room.

“She’s unmistakable all right,”
Lacy said. Kimber followed the line of her gaze.

“Uh-uh. No way. Nope. You’re on
your own. See you, girl. Good luck.” She turned and practically sprinted out of
the room. Reluctantly, Lacy went forward and took a seat near the nude older
woman, but not too close. She was pruny, whether from age or too much time in
the steam room Lacy didn’t know and didn’t care. She made a concerted effort
not to look as she spoke.

“Crazy day, huh?”

“I’ll say,” Charlotte
Hester—AKA Mrs. Van Uppity—said. Her voice was booming and loud.
More than a few people turned to glance at them before looking quickly away.
“Do you know I was interviewed by the police today? The police! The resort will
positively be hearing from my lawyers about this. No one treats Charlie Hester
like a criminal and gets away with it, not even the police.”

Despite the angry tirade, she still
seemed open to conversation. “The police talked to you? What about?” It would
have been awkward not to turn in Charlotte’s direction, but Lacy made a
concerted effort to keep her eyes firmly on the woman’s widow’s peak.

“That woman who was killed, Jill.”
Charlotte waved her hand impatiently.

“Did you know her?” Lacy asked.

“Did I?” Charlotte harrumphed.

“Did you?” Lacy pressed when
Charlotte didn’t continue.

“They tried to assign her as my
trainer, but I was having none of it. Imagine a little chit like that trying to
boss me around and insult me. They may act like that on TV, but no one talks to
Charlie Hester that way.” She nodded emphatically, her limp gray curls bobbing
in half-hearted agreement.

“She wasn’t nice to you?” Lacy
said.

“Nice? Nice? That woman compared me
to a draft horse, said someone with my frame ought to be able to lift more,
even if I was old. So do you know what I did to her?”

“What?” Lacy asked.

“I pushed her down, that’s what.
That showed her. She looked up at me with eyes all big and shocked and I said,
‘You think I’m old, but I can still take you to school, little girl. Don’t you
ever talk to Charlie Hester that way again.’”

“What did she say?”

“Not a thing. Just laid there
looking stunned. Like most bullies, they cower pretty quick if someone stands
up to them. Well Charlie Hester always stands up for herself.”

“Is that why the police wanted to
talk to you?”

“Heavens no, they had no idea what
happened, and I didn’t tell them. I might be old, but I’m not daft.”

Charlotte definitely had enough
anger and strength to kill someone, but Lacy liked her in spite of it. At least
she was straightforward. You knew what you were getting in Charlie Hester.
“They say she was poisoned,” Lacy whispered.

Charlotte harrumphed. “Poison.
Nasty business. Sneaky badger, too scared to be forthright.”

“Did the police ask you if you knew
anyone who might have done it?”

“Yep, but I told them it could have
been anybody. She was a self-important little upstart, always hinting that she
was bound for bigger things.”

“Like what?”

“If she said, I didn’t pay any
mind. Charlie Hester doesn’t care for braggarts.”

“The police think Sven did it,”
Lacy said.

For the first time, Charlotte’s
face fell with something like guilt. “Sven’s a nice boy. I don’t want to think
he had anything to do with that business. But…”

“But what?” Lacy prompted when she
hesitated.

“But I saw him and the little chit
arguing, and he looked mad. Mad enough to kill.”

“Did you tell the police?”

She shook her head. “I could tell
they had it out for him. Charlie Hester doesn’t like to see anyone
steamrolled.” She bit her lip, uncertain. “I hope I did the right thing holding
it back like that.”

Lacy hoped so, too. She wasn’t
certain, and now that she knew, the ethical dilemma was hers to share.
I’ll tell Jason,
she thought. He would
know what to do. But first, she would find out all she could about everyone
else who might have wanted Jill dead. She would have to hurry, though. Her time
was short and the list was endless.

“I don’t want to see Sven go down
for something he didn’t do, either. That’s why I’m trying to help. Can you
think of anyone, anyone at all, who had a confrontation with Jill that day?”

“There was this other young gal,
statuesque like me. She was with her sisters and had one of those trendy names.
Started with a B.”

“Belle?” Lacy guessed.

“Weirder than that.”

“Bede?”

“That’s the one. She and Jill got
into it. She drew back a fist, and I thought maybe Jill was a goner.” She
paused reflectively. “I guess she is.”

“Thank you,” Lacy said.

“Never let it be said that Charlie
Hester didn’t help a big fella down on his luck,” she said as she closed her
eyes and rested her head on the wall behind her, effectively ending the
interview.

Lacy sat still for a moment,
thinking and remembering not to accidentally glance at Charlotte in all her
birthday suit glory. So far in the Steele vs. Underwood war of words, she had
managed to remain neutral. The Underwoods had been hazing Riley, as she was
sure they would do to anyone who married their brother. But how would things
change if Lacy implicated one of them with murder, however peripherally? There was
nothing else for it; she would have to find out.

She left the steam room and changed
back into her clothes, feeling wilted and exhausted. The sleepless night, long
day, and struggle to make her muscles work were catching up with her. There was
also the issue of food. The chalk drink had done wonders to fill her up, but it
couldn’t replace chewing and swallowing. She missed food, her old friend. The
weekend was almost over; she could make it. But did she want to? She shoved
that thought aside.

Bede and her sisters were walking
toward her when Lacy rounded the corridor.

“Hey, it’s the good Steele! Hi,
Lacy,” they greeted her, ever cheerful over the sight of her. They did it to
get under Riley’s skin, but there was a secret part of Lacy that liked it anyway.
So much of her life had been spent with peppy, outgoing Riley as the favored
one. Was it so wrong to take a bit of delight in the fact that someone liked
her better? Probably.

“Bede, I was wondering if I could
talk to you a few minutes.”

“Sounds serious,” Bede said.

“It sort of is,” Lacy said.

“Tell you what, I was going to sit
out and play the winner in their game of racquetball, but now you can play with
me and talk about whatever you want.”

“I don’t know how to play
racquetball,” Lacy said.

“It’s like tennis.”

“I don’t know how to play that,
either.”

“You seem like a fast learner. Come
on.” She grabbed Lacy by the upper arm and practically frog marched her to the
racquetball courts.

“My muscles hurt,” Lacy said.

“Working them will be good; keeps the
lactic acid from building.”

“I’m not wearing shoes,” Lacy
pointed out. After the steam room, she had put on shorts and a t-shirt, but she
was still wearing slippers with the resort’s emblem on the toes.

“Those will work even better. You
can glide.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.
I’m not what you’d call athletic,” Lacy tried.

“You’ll be fine,” Bede assured her
as she snapped a pair of goggles over her face and handed a pair to Lacy.

“Why do I need these?” Lacy asked.

“So a ball won’t blind you or knock
your eye out.”

“Uh…”Lacy stuttered, sounding
panicked.

“I’m joking. That almost never
happens,” Bede said. She opened the door to the court and waited for Lacy to
precede her inside. The court smelled like thousands of sweaty gym socks. Lacy
resisted the urge to put her hand over her nose.

“What am I supposed to do?” Lacy
asked. Her voice sounded as if she were talking through her adenoids, probably
because she was breathing through her mouth. Sweat was an unaccustomed and
unwelcome smell to her, but Bede seemed right at home.

“Hit the ball,” Bede said.

It seemed easy enough. The racket
was much larger than the small, blue ball. But when Bede smashed it against the
opposite wall and it came hurling toward Lacy’s head, she could only think to
duck and cover. Instinct took over and she crumpled to a flattened puddle on
the floor, much to the chagrin of her loudly protesting leg muscles.

“Good reflexes,” Bede observed. The
ball went flying toward her. She hit it again, adding momentum to the bounce.
Lacy remained cowering on the floor. Bede didn’t seem to notice as she hit the
ball over and over, dodging to each side of the court to reach it.

“So, did you know Jill?” Lacy
asked. She had to yell to be heard over the echoes of Bede’s grunts, foot
squeaks, and ball thumping.

“Who?” Bede said.

“The trainer.”

“The dead girl? No, I didn’t know
her.”
Grunt. Lunge. Dive.

“She never trained you?”

“She tried. It didn’t work out.
Does that qualify as knowing her?” She bashed into the wall, pushed hard
against it, and swung her arm wide to get the shot. Lacy crab walked to the
back wall and hugged the corner, making sure her knees were up to cover all her
vulnerable parts. Her racquet she used as an umbrella in case the ball had any
ideas about finding her head.

“What went wrong? Was it because
she was snarky?”

“Snarky is an endearing trait to
me,” Bede said as she slid on her knees three feet to make her shot.

“So why didn’t you like her?”

“She was a cheater.”

“How so?”

“She wanted…”
Grunt. Squat. Slam.
“…to show off her guns.”

“She had a gun?” Lacy said.

“Biceps,” Bede explained. She was
working up an extraordinary sweat. The fact that she was able to maintain any
conversation, regardless of how stilted, was a testament to her high fitness
level. “Talking trash about pushups. Pushups are my thing, ya know?”

Lacy didn’t, but if her chiseled
biceps were any indication, she was telling the truth.

“So I challenged her to a duel.”

“A pushup duel?”

“You betcha.”

“What happened?”

“She cheated.”

“How did she cheat?”

“She didn’t go all the way down. So
I told her that if she didn’t make her nose touch the ground, I’d do it for
her.”

“What happened then?”

She caught the ball and paused.
Lacy was glad. Not only could she drop the vigilant guard she was keeping over
her vital organs, but she had started to get seasick watching Bede dodge back
and forth.

“She blustered and folded, some
talk about how she didn’t need this job anyway because something big was coming
her way.”

“Did she say what?”

“If she did, I didn’t listen. She
was a lot of hot air.”

“Did you hit her?” Lacy asked.

“Almost, but she seemed the
litigious type. The last thing I need is another lawsuit. Why are you asking?”
She had been bouncing the ball on her racket. She stopped and faced Lacy.
“Wait, do you think I killed her or something?”

Lacy couldn’t think of a clever
reply that wouldn’t give her away.

Bede doubled over laughing. “You
think I killed some gym twit because she had a smart mouth and cheated at
pushups? That’s great.” She straightened and wiped her streaming eyes.
“Seriously, though, if I had killed her, I would have made sure that body was
never found.”

All of a sudden she was a little
too serious. Lacy shifted. Her foot fuzzed. It had fallen asleep. She jabbed it
in front of her and bobbed it up and down to restore feeling. “Duly noted. Did
you overhear anyone else interact with her or see anyone with her?”

“I don’t pay much attention to
people and their lives. I think there was a guy, though. I saw them smooching.”

“Sven?” Lacy asked, her heart
sinking. If Sven and Jill had been in a relationship, it would be one more nail
in his coffin.

“No, another blondie. He works the
desk a lot. I think his name starts with a D.”

“Derek?”

Bede shrugged. “Maybe. You want to
play some more or are you ready to call it a game?”

“I’m all played out,” Lacy said.
Both feet were asleep now. There was a good chance she might never get off the
floor.

“Good game,” Bede said. She put a
hand down and pulled Lacy up so aggressively that she bounced the landing a
couple of times.

“For sure. Next time I might let
you win,” Lacy said. Bede laughed and clapped her on the back. Lacy began
mentally reviewing the symptoms of a collapsed lung, in case that happened
later from the impact.