Worked to Death (Working Stiff Mysteries Book 2) (22 page)

"Let's get back on track here." I tried to steer us out of that which had nothing to do with Mick's death.

"Yeah, since I didn't kill him, who did?" Teensy said, her plan to escape the room forgotten at the moment.

Silence fell on the room.

"I did," Matty's voice came out in a breathy admission.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh," Teensy's voice screeched as she lunged for Matty, pinning her to the sofa and wrapping her hands around Matty's neck.

The room went into motion. Randall grabbed for his daughter, trying to dislodge her from her attack. Ms. Jamison jumped up, screaming at her daughter. And me, I reached for my phone, but right then I saw lights come up outside the window.

Finally. I ran to the front door and saw Ty exit his cruiser.

"Hurry up! What took you so long?" My voice was shaky yet demanding.

The sound of screams pierced the night air, and Ty ran past me and into the house. I followed suit to find pretty much the same thing I'd left behind—except unfortunately, Randall's bathrobe had ridden up over his backside, and a naked, hairy male butt greeted us.

I let out a scream of my own, but no one else seemed to notice.

In just a few seconds, Ty had removed Randall and Teensy from the pile up and was holding Teensy in an arms-behind-the-back maneuver. Randall was sitting on the floor trying to catch his breath. Ms. Jamison was sobbing nearby.

I rushed to Matty and found her unconscious but breathing. She'd have a nasty bruise, not unlike my own, around her neck come tomorrow, but I was pretty sure her windpipe was still intact.

I looked up at Ms. Jamison, "Go call for an ambulance." My voice was strong, clear and demanding. She left the room without argument.

"What the hell is going on here?" Ty looked from Randall to me, and back again.

"Don't say a word, Teensy," Randall advised from the floor. The attorney inside him had finally arrived, and he was stopping the conversation from going further.

"A word about what?" Ty looked at me.

"I'll fill you in later," I said as I held Matty's hand in mine.

"I'll follow you down to the station, Ty, if you'll just give me a moment to get dressed," Randall instructed.

Thank God.

"Fine. I guess." Ty was still trying to assess the situation.

"Will you be pressing charges as well," Randall looked at me. "About the drugs and all?"

"I don't think I'll have a choice. There was the bomb threat, too." I bit my lower lip. I hated to cause more problems, but Teensy needed help, and maybe some time behind bars was just what the doctor ordered.

He gave a nod and then disappeared down the hallway.

"Let me guess, you decided to come here and confront her before we could get a warrant ready?" Ty was not a happy camper.

"This whole bomb thing is connected to Mick Thibault's death," I told him.

He grimaced. "What the hell did I just walk in on? Why was Teensy trying to choke the life out of Matty Thibault?" He pulled his cuffs out and fastened them around Teensy's wrists. She'd finally stopped struggling and was just glaring at Matty's unmoving body.

"It's a long story. What took you so long to get here anyway?" I was so glad he'd arrived when he had. I never would have forgiven myself if the crazy teen hopped up on drugs had more seriously injured Matty after I'd brought her here and forced the confrontation.

"I got your text, but it took me a minute to figure it out." Ty led Teensy toward the door.

"What's so hard about 'need backup' and this address?" I asked.

He turned to look at me. "Your message said 'feed bad duck' don't you proofread?"

Who had time for proofreading when you were trying to solve murders? Dang auto-correct.

*  *  *

The next morning, I was sitting by Matty's hospital bedside when she awoke. She gave me a soft smile, and I stood to offer her a sip of water.

"Why didn't you just let her finish the job?" she asked.

"Oh, please. One dead high school friend is enough for this year at least, don't you think?" I asked.

Her eyes teared up.

"Well unless it's Allyson, maybe," I quipped.

She hiccupped a small laugh, through her tears.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." Ty had walked into the room, stopping just inside the door.

"Mandy has filled me in on the conversation from last night, but I need you to tell me what happened with Mick. You feel up to it now?" he asked.

I moved to sit on the edge of her bed.

"I think that she was just doing what he asked," I said.

"Let her tell it, Mandy. I need to hear it from her," Ty instructed.

I opened my mouth to argue, but Matty tugged on my arm.

"It's okay. I need to tell it."

Ty and I exchanged a glance.

"Well, after he figured out what was going on with the drugs and all, he decided that he needed to infiltrate the organization. And he did. He even convinced them to let him sell the next shipment. But after he picked it up, he hid it in his trunk. He knew he'd gone too far. He was losing his objectivity as a journalist. He was afraid he was putting me in danger."

I nodded. "And you and he planned the whole body in the trunk and then into the pool scenario," I filled in the blanks.

"How did you know?" Matty asked.

"I remembered thinking that you'd have to drive that car really hard to get it through that fence at the back of the carport, by accident anyway. That is—unless you'd loosened the boards on the wooden planks with a crowbar and hammer—just like the ones I saw on the lawn that day."

She cleared her throat and then pressed her hand to her throat.

I knew how bad it hurt. I had almost the same injury. I touched my hand to my throat in commiseration.

"But Dr. C. says the body was in the water longer than just that morning when you called for the tow," I said.

She hung her head, shame across her face.

"I didn't like it, but he wanted it that way. He wanted to be sure…"

She let out a sob and then tried to shake it off.

"He wanted to be sure that he was dead—
after
the overdose," I added.

I made eye contact with Ty. His face looked distraught.

"He made me promise to leave him there overnight," Matty continued. "He didn't want to risk getting found too soon and coming back a vegetable or something—hooked up to machines."

I handed her a tissue as she cried.

"He really planned all this out, didn't he?" I asked, knowing the answer.

"Yeah, that was his dramatic going-out-in-style idea. He thought that if he was found in the trunk that the cops would figure out it was sort of a professional hit kind of thing. He wanted you to figure out the whole thing, but he thought it made a better story if he didn't give you all the answers." We both looked at Ty.

He straightened up from where he'd been leaning on the doorframe. "Hey, we could have figured it out. We only got the autopsy results last night. But Mick died of a drug overdose, and that's not necessarily murder."

"Was it murder?" I asked Matty, not sure I wanted to know the answer really. "Why did you write 'you must die' on that note? That really threw me."

"He took the pills himself. But I let him. I still feel responsible. That note. I don't know. I just wrote it and read it out loud to myself over and over again. I just couldn't stop trying to convince myself to go through with it. But he gave me little choice. It was that, or who knew what he'd do?" She hung her head again.

"Matty, you couldn't have stopped him. If someone wants to go, they'll find a way. And from what Dr. C. tells me, he was in for a miserable end," Ty said, trying to reassure her. He'd cared deeply for Mick as well. They'd known each other their whole lives.

"He wanted to go out on his own terms. We talked everything through. I think he did leave that note for me, Mandy. Your explanation about it being a love letter for me makes much more sense. He never planned to leave me. I was his true love," her voice had turned hoarse with tears.

"But he never told you about Teensy? And that was why he came home smelling of perfume?" I added in the details.

"Yeah, I trusted him. But there was a small part of me that wondered who his informant was and what he'd had to do to get her to trust him."

"So, you just ran with that. You used that as an excuse for driving the car in the pool?" I tried to play through the scenario.

"I should have just stuck to his plan—make it look like a professional hit. That 'other woman' twist was something I threw in at the last minute. I did it so that you'd help me find her. His source. I just needed to know."

I offered her another sip of water, but she refused.

She continued, "He left that list of chemicals and made me promise to bring them to you after the fact. I'm sorry that I lied to you about all that."

"My attention?" I asked, pressing my hand to my chest.

"Yeah, he knew you'd help me. He always said you were the smartest one of all of us."

"He wasn't wrong on that," Ty added.

I smiled. "But that's a lot of trouble. Why didn't he just report all this to the police first? Before taking the pills?"

She sat up a little. Stretching her neck back and forth. "He just—he wanted this to be a big story. But I couldn't get over the fact that he would never tell me who his confidential informant was—and I just wanted to know. I never dreamed it was Teensy. He really was protecting her until the end. He was a good man." She looked at Ty. "Will I go to jail?"

I looked at him, too.

"I'm not sure. We'll have to sort all this out with the District Attorney. But probably not," he offered.

"We'll get you a good attorney if you need one." I stood and returned her water cup to the bedside table.

She wiped her eyes, and then she said, "I guess Randall Jamison is out of the question?"

I laughed. "Yeah, he's got his hands full with Teensy."

"I guess Mick kind of used her, but he knew in the end that bringing down Brown's organization was the only way to save her. Teenagers are so emotional. I'm sorry about what she did to Paget." Matty rubbed the side of her face, looking tired.

"You don't have to tell me about emotional teenagers. And she's not all that innocent. I still have a bone or two to pick with her, and I'll make sure she gets help and maybe a little punishment, too."

"Speaking of that," Ty interrupted. "She's admitted that the gun came from her father's collection and that the only reason she chose to involve you and Paget was to plant something in your house. She thought she could push all this off on your sister because she was easily manipulated. Plus, she knew how Paget felt about Adam and knew she could use that to convince her of anything—like taking the drugs and taking the gun."

"Plant something in the house? Like what? Not a bomb?" I twirled my hair around my finger.

"No…this…" He held out a slender metal box.

I blinked at it. "What is it?"

"That's Mick's box," Matty said, sitting up in the bed. "What he took from the drug people. What he was supposed to sell—it had drugs in it. I tore the house apart looking for it after he died. When I couldn't find it, I figured he'd left it in the trunk with himself. I never knew what happened to it."

"So, how did Teensy get it?" I pondered.

"She told us that he'd given it to her and made her promise not to open it unless something happened to him and then to give it to the cops. After he died and Brady Blue got arrested, Teensy feared what Hank would do to her if he found out she had it. It was then that she decided to plant it on Paget and leave it at that. She thought it was the drugs that he'd taken from Tumpka Brown. It was locked. I watched it being opened. But it didn't have drugs in it."

"What was in it, Ty?" I asked—pointing to it in frustration. He was really dragging this out.

"The article," he said.

"The what?" I asked, still not following.

"His article, Mandy. The last story he wrote," Matty said and then burst into tears. "He did want us to find it, but on his terms. He knew you'd figure it out. And she had the story all along. Until the very end. He wanted to go out, his way. He wrote his own death as a mystery."

I pulled her into a hug, looking at Ty over the top of her head.

He nodded.

*  *  *

"So you're telling me that we still don't know what happened to all those drugs? The ones that Tumpka Brown kidnapped you to try and find?" Ms. Lanier asked as she packed clothes into a duffel bag.

"That's right. Maybe they'll turn up somewhere. Matty swears that she doesn't know, and supposedly Teensy thought they were in that box she left at my house. I think Mick destroyed them. Well, other than the ones he took to end his life," I said, a little sadness creeping into my bones at the thought. He'd wanted to go on his own terms before his cancer became too unbearable for himself and his wife. I don't agree with his choice, but that's what had happened in the end. "Why are you packing?" It occurred to me that Ms. Lanier's duffel bag was getting fuller by the minute.