THE SOUND OF MURDER (23 page)

CHAPTER 55

I
squealed into Marge’s drive, slammed the car into park, and jumped out, passing Roger’s car as I ran to the front door.

Locked.

Marge’s set of keys was separate from my car keys. I fumbled in my purse, pulled them out, and unlocked the door, but not before I realized I had a weapon in the bag. Good, I might need it.

I sprinted toward the kitchen, which was now empty of Pet Cam photos. And empty of my laptop. And, I realized with a start, empty of Lassie.

Yip!

Lassie. I ran toward the sound. As I flew out the open patio door, the nun’s habit twisted around my ankles and I tripped, smacking my chin on the rough concrete patio. I tasted blood. Must have bit my lip, but all I could think about was Lassie.

He was on the other side of the pool, struggling to get free from Roger, who held him tightly—too tightly—under one arm.

“It’s too bad.” Roger shook his head at me in mock sorrow. “Just too smart for your own good. You were almost on a plane to New York.”

I scrambled to my feet. “No, I wasn’t.” I’d been a fool but I wasn’t any longer. “All of this producer jazz, your mentoring—that was just to distract me, wasn’t it?”

“And hopefully get in your pants.” Roger gave a mean laugh and squeezed Lassie, who yipped in protest.

Why did he have Lassie?

I edged toward them, keeping my distance from the black expanse of water that separated us. Roger must have turned off the pool lights.

“You’re not that talented, Ivy.” Roger’s hair shone silver in the moonlight, but his face was dark. “You’re nowhere as good as me, and if I couldn’t make it, you don’t stand a chance.”

I crept closer. Under the black water of the pool, a blacker rectangle. My laptop. Underwater.

Underwater.

Water, over and on top, pressing down.

I couldn’t breathe. I stopped stock still, willing myself to not hyperventilate. Blood from my split lip filled my mouth.

“Pity about that little phobia you have.” Another laugh from Roger. “’Cause I thought we’d go swimming.” He held Lassie out over the water. “But come to think of it, pugs don’t swim.” He let go of him—a splash and the dark water closed over Lassie’s head. “They sink.”

CHAPTER 56

“You son of a bitch!” I shouted as I leapt into the pool.

Luckily Roger had thrown Lassie into the shallow end. My nun’s habit floated around me as I struggled the few feet to the middle of the pool, where the pug’s dark shape was just visible. I scooped him up. He coughed a little when he hit the air, then licked my face. I hurried to my edge of the pool, away from Roger, and bumped Lassie up and over onto dry land. Then I tried to do the same.

No dice. My wet nun’s habit weighed a ton.

I turned toward the pool steps. The pool steps that Roger, fully clothed, was slowly descending. Shit! I tried again to hoist myself onto the edge. Not a chance.

The ladder was the only other way out, and it was across the pool in the deep end. No way I could swim there with the dead weight of the habit dragging me down.

“I did think about using fire, given your propensity for it.” Roger took another step down into the pool. “I even gave it a little test run. Or didn’t you notice your car fires were getting worse?”

Another step down. “But fire is messy and noisy, and I didn’t want the neighbors to get wind of anything too soon.”

Having reached the pool floor, he walked toward me.

“Of course, I could have used the idling vehicle trick, but it was getting a little old.”

He was closing in. Where were the police?

“And then I thought, doh!’” He mockingly hit himself on the forehead. “Drowning. It’s nice and quiet and a completely believable accident.”

Shit. Roger had thrown Lassie in the shallow end to make me think I could get out. Instead, I was right where he wanted me—confined, terrified, and headed toward deep water.

“Your costume,” Roger’s teeth glinted in reflected moonlight, “is an unexpected bonus.”

As if on cue, my nun’s habit grabbed at my arms and legs like a fishing net. If it didn’t kill me, Roger would. I had no illusions about that. He was a murderer, after all.

I stepped backwards, out of my habit’s grasp, away from Roger, and into deeper water. “I think I know how you did it,” I said—Roger was the catalytic converter thief, landscaper, and killer. “But why? Why did you kill all those people you don’t even know?”

“I knew the last one I attacked. You know, the one who kept me from real fame? In fact, I saved Marge for last. Sort of like dessert.” Shadowed eyes in a grinning face, like a death head. Closer.

I took another step backwards, trying desperately to not think about the drop-off to the deep end, just a foot behind me. I had to keep Roger talking while I came up with a plan. “But why the rest of them?”

“Money.” Roger’s skull face loomed nearer. “You didn’t really think that house in Mexico was built on actor’s wages, did you? Oh.” His eyebrows shot up in mock amusement. “Maybe you did. After all, this house,” he gestured back at Marge’s house, “was built on theater.” His words dripped with disgust.

“I thought you loved the theater.” The water was up to my shoulders.

Roger snorted. “I gave my life to the theater and where am I? Fifty years old—”

“Sixty.” If I was about to die, I wasn’t putting up with any bullshit.

Roger took another step toward me. “And basically homeless, moving from town to town, living from paycheck to paycheck.”

I swore my costume was alive and trying to drag me down. “Who paid you to murder all those people? Bitsy? Arnie?”

“Bitsy? She’s just a malicious nymphomaniac. And Arnie…” Roger’s voice actually softened. “Arnie’s just a guy like me, duped by the illusion of theater. In fact, I don’t think I would have killed him even if I had been contracted to do it.”

The habit tangled itself into the purse slung across my body, threatening to throw me off-balance. “I’ve been duped by the illusion of theater too. How about not kill me?”

“Nice try.”

Balanced on my tiptoes, I desperately tried to untangle the habit from my bag.

Oh.

My bag.

“Who did contract you?” I grappled underwater with the bag’s clasp.

“Debra, my agent. She decided to quit show business and invest in real estate. Needed to make some real money. Then we both got a little drunk one night and started talking about how traveling actors have the perfect cover for crime. We have aliases—like ‘Ivy Meadows’—no permanent addresses, no long-term ties, and we’re in and out of a city in three months or less.”

I let Roger get nearer. He had to be close for my plan to work.

“We even have the perfect motive,” Roger said. “We’re always broke.”

He took another step toward me. I forced myself to stay where I was. “You killed all those people for your agent? Just for money?” I grasped the weapon inside my bag. The pool bottom sloped away beneath my feet. I struggled to stay upright. And to breathe.

“It’s not such a bad thing,” he said. “I only kill people over seventy. They’ve had their chance at life.”

I thought of Charlie Small. I thought of Marge and Arnie and my other friends over seventy. I thought of all the older performers who made me laugh and cry and dream. I looked at Roger, smug with his rationalized belief.

And I shot him.

CHAPTER 57

“Goo
d thing that worked after being submerged.” Hank pointed at the lipstick pepper spray I still held in my hand.

“Nice job with the pool toy,” I replied.

Hank had figured something was wrong when I ran offstage. Being a logical sort, he started his search for me at Marge’s house and arrived just after I’d shot Roger in the face with the spray. While Roger was still yelling and thrashing around in the pool, Hank grabbed an inner tube and shoved it over Roger’s head, pinning his arms to his sides and making him look like a big fat fool.

Hank helped me out of the pool and stood guard until official help arrived just a few minutes later. Now he stood (sans sunglasses for a change), in front of the patio chair where I sat with Lassie in my lap.

“Seriously, I’m fine,” I said to the young redheaded EMT who was kneeling next to me, checking me out. “It’s just a scrape.” I lifted a hand to feel the gash on my chin but Hank grabbed it. “Don’t. You probably have some pepper spray on your face.” There was no probably about it. I’d held my breath and closed my eyes when I shot Roger, but I could still feel a sting on my face.

The EMT straightened up. “Neither your chin or your lip look like they need stitches. You’re lucky, Sister.”

Sister? Oh, I still wore the habit. “Thanks be to God,” I said, with a sideways smile at Hank. He smiled back, a first.

“We do want to get that pepper spray off you, though. I’ll be right back.” The EMT disappeared inside the house, probably to get something from the fire truck parked out front. The police had already left, taking the dripping red-faced Roger with them.

Lassie, who had sat up straight in my lap while the EMT was near, now curled into a ball with a big doggie sigh. Poor little pug, all tuckered out.

Hank sat down across the table. “You know,” he said slowly, “when I found out you were investigating the suicides, I was really pissed off. Thought Bob wasn’t taking me seriously, you being so green and all.”

I didn’t tell him that my uncle hadn’t taken him seriously, or that he thought Hank was just being paranoid, or that he was worried about him acting “hinky.” I also didn’t tell Hank that the investigation would never have happened without Marge’s call to Amy Small. Which brought me to another question.

“How did you know it was Marge who had the accident? You know, that day at the 7-Eleven when you got the call from the posse?”

“You mean the day you followed me dressed in that nun outfit?” He nodded at the costume I still wore.

I cringed. “Yeah, then.”

“I recognized the address, because…well, it was sort of an unusual situation.” He looked at me, a question in those silvery gray eyes.

“I know about Marge’s confusion, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Yeah. Well, see, the posse has this program to keep watch on folks who tend to wander away. Works with a personal GPS unit they wear that connects to our computers at the station and to a home computer. It’s almost always a spouse or caregiver who requests it. Marge asked for one for herself. I admired her for that—thought it took guts to admit something like that—so I kept an especially good eye on her.”

Hank cleared his throat. “And, I, uh, admire the job you did too. Even though I’m pretty sure you suspected me.” Lassie, on the edge of sleep, snorted. “See,” said Hank, with a nod to the pug. “Even the dog’s smarter than that.”

I was about to protest when I saw the twinkle in his eyes. “You
were
always first at the scenes, and…” I decided to take advantage of our newfound camaraderie. “It was your sunglasses.”

He looked at me, his eyes flashing silver in the light from the full moon. If I had cool eyes like that, I’d show them off all the time.

“Uncle Bob thinks you wear them all the time because there’s something wrong with your eyes.” I took a deep breath. “I think you wear them to hide the fact you’re high.”

Hank paused, but his face didn’t change expression. “You’re both right. I have glaucoma, acute angle-closure glaucoma. Sometimes it hurts like hell. The pressure builds up in your eyes, and you feel like your head is going to explode. Painkillers don’t help. One day, my doctor said he’d ‘heard,’” he made air quotes with his fingers, “that marijuana could help with the pressure and the pain. It does. But…”

Good PI-in-training that I was, I waited for him to go on.

He sighed. “Medical marijuana may be legal now, but it’s not well-accepted yet. Hell, even my doctor was reluctant to write the prescription. Plus I shouldn’t be driving if I’ve…taken a dose.” Hank tipped his head back toward the sky. I wondered if he could see the stars above us. “I guess I need to quit the posse.”

The first time I’d ever heard emotion in Hank’s voice, and it was sadness.

CHAPTER 58

“But
Hank didn’t have to quit.” I updated Marge and Arnie over celebratory drinks at Marge’s house a couple of days later. “The posse said he could work dispatch when he was feeling okay. And his doctor’s looking into a new treatment.” I had told them about Hank’s glaucoma, not his pot use. Hadn’t told anyone, not even my uncle. Legal or not, it didn’t seem like something Hank wanted spread around.

The two lovebirds sat close together on Arnie’s sofa, Lassie snoring away at their feet. Marge’s doctors had determined that her dementia was medication-based, not organic. That’s what we were celebrating. Or so I thought.

“Time for a toast,” said Arnie, standing up and refilling our champagne glasses. “To Ivy, the great detective.”

“I’m not such a great detective.” I clinked glasses with them anyway. “I never even suspected Roger.”

“You thought it was Bitsy, didn’t you?” Marge smiled at the bubbles in her champagne.

“I thought she might have paid someone to do it. I couldn’t figure out her motive when it came to everyone other than you and Charlie, but I knew she had something to hide.” That something had turned out to be her husband in Nebraska, whom she had tried to ease out of this world a little early. No one had been able to prove what she had done, so she’d been let go with a slap on the wrist and the restraining order, courtesy of her now-estranged son.

“You suspected me too, didn’t you?” asked Arnie. My face grew hot, but he didn’t look the least bit offended. “I mean, I installed that security system to keep an eye on Marge, and I did commit fraud once.” He held up a hand in his defense. “Albeit for art, but fraud all the same.” I wasn’t sure a swamp-themed amusement park was art, but decided to give him this one. “Between my history, the theater being in trouble, and the life insurance policy, I made a pretty good suspect.” He managed to take a sip of champagne with his cigar still in his mouth.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “And speaking of insurance, I’ve been saving this for you two.” I put my phone on speaker so they could hear the voicemail I’d received a few hours earlier. “Guess what?” My uncle’s voice filled the room. “Carl Marks was picked up a few hours ago. Had the audacity to show up at a military funeral in Yuma. I guess he…” His voice took on the tone he had when he was reading, “‘Wore Ray Bans with a Class A uniform, which is not military protocol.’” Back to regular Uncle Bob voice. “A couple of real Marines took exception to an imposter at the funeral.” He chuckled. “He’s in the Yuma jail now.”

“Here’s to that.” Marge raised her glass. “Asshole.”

“And I have one more toast.” Arnie’s voice cracked as he lifted his glass too. “Damn it.” He swiped at his teary eyes.

“To Desert Dinner Theater?” I guessed. Once the local media picked up on the “Captain Vaughn Katt Tries to Drown Cabaret Dancer” news, the show was so popular the theater had to add two weeks to the run.

“That’s not it,” Arnie said with a sob.

“Aww, chickie.” Marge gave him a tissue. “Let me do it.” She clinked her glass with his. “To the new Edelweiss team.”

“The Edelweiss…? Oh!” I hugged Marge around the neck. Marge Weiss, that is, who sat next to the tearfully happy Arnie Adel. “The Adel-Weiss team.”

“Yeah.” Marge’s eyes glimmered too. “We’re getting hitched.”