A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2) (16 page)

“Yes, but something’s wrong,” my mother said.

“Like what?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Not a big help, Mom,” I replied as I followed Blair to hide behind a car. “But you might want to stick around in case there’s something you can do.”

“I’m not supposed to get involved,” she said.

I threw up a hand. “Then why do you keep calling me?”

She sighed on the other end of the line – wherever that was. “I fudge a little, that’s all. Now don’t do anything stupid.” And she hung up.

“What are you doing?” Blair whispered, turning back to me. “Let’s go.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you sure we should be doing this?”

Blair gestured around us. “There are several people out here in the parking lot,” she said. “What could go wrong? We have witnesses.”

I turned around. A woman was just getting out of her car, while a mother and daughter were coming out of a nearby apartment. At the far end of the building, a maintenance man was fixing a window.

I turned back. “Okay,” I said nervously. “I’ll dial David.”

My fingers punched in David’s cell phone number as we approached apartment 12. We got right up to the door and stopped. Blair turned to me with her hand poised ready to knock. I nodded. As she pounded on the door, I put the call through. I had the phone to my ear when Big Al threw open the door. The look on his face said it all. We were the last people he expected to see on his front doorstep.

“Shit!” he exclaimed again.

He tried to slam the door closed, but Blair stuck the pointed toe of her high-heeled boot in to stop it. The door bounced open again, and she burst through the door. At that moment, David answered the phone. I said hello and then heard, “People come and go so quickly around here. Squawk!”

It was Ahab in a small cage on the counter in the kitchen.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Ahab’s little tinny voice squawked.

Al was reaching for the cage as Ahab bounced back and forth on his perch. Blair didn’t miss a beat. She grabbed a golf umbrella from the kitchen table and began hitting Al over the back of the head with it. He turned around and grasped the umbrella and tried to yank it away from her, but she was stronger than I thought. They started a tug-of-war game, while David was trying to get my attention on the other end of the phone.

“Julia! Julia!” he kept saying.

But I couldn’t answer, because it was pandemonium in Big Al’s apartment.

Ahab had begun screeching. Al and Blair knocked furniture over as they swung each other around the room, yelling obscenities at each other. I dropped the phone and began looking for a weapon of my own. I finally grabbed a lamp, ripped the cord out of the wall and began following Al around the room from behind. I kept trying to hit him over the head with it, but two things prevented me. First, he was too tall, and second, he kept moving.

Al finally swung Blair up against a bookcase, and she let go of the umbrella just as his stereo suddenly began blasting
Purple Haze
. Startled, he stopped and looked around, allowing Blair to grab a beer bottle that was sitting on an empty shelf behind her. She raised it to strike him, but he whirled around and lunged for her, forcing her sideways and over a chair. Since she was momentarily incapacitated, he turned and went for Ahab. But this time, I was quicker. I rushed over and grabbed Ahab’s cage and ran for the door.

“No you don’t,” Al growled.

He grabbed me from behind and yanked me off my feet. I dropped the cage and the cage door flew open. Blair came out of nowhere and swung the umbrella at the side of his head with all her strength. The force of the blow knocked him to one knee, just as a blender, the TV and the coffee grinder all started whirring. Lights flashed on and off and his phone started to ring. He pulled himself up and glanced around in confusion.

“What the…?”

It had to be Mom. She’d somehow learned to manipulate electronics from the other side during the last murder investigation; apparently, she was getting better at it.

Blair took the opportunity to grab her purse from where she’d dropped it and started swinging it at Al. It was a big purse and made him duck twice. Then, he caught it, ripping it out of her hand.

I scrambled off the floor and grabbed a small potted plant. I heaved it at his head. He ducked, giving Blair just enough time to wield the most lethal weapon she had. She kicked out with one of those 3-inch heels and caught him in the crotch. He let out a yowl and doubled over just as Ahab flew the coop. Literally.

I tried to grab him as he flapped past me, but he was heading for the open door. Before I could stop him, he was gone.

I ran outside, for the moment forgetting Blair. I cried out Ahab’s name, but he was already up and over a nearby tree and out of sight.

“Damn!” I cursed. I’d forgotten to clip his wings the weekend before. Too late now.

As I turned back to help Blair, Al barreled out the door knocking me into a planter. With a few choice words, he jumped into his truck and peeled out of the parking lot.

I groaned as I extricated myself from a prickly bush, and hurried back inside. Blair was on her hands and knees, breathing hard. Her bleached blonde hair had been pulled out of her pony tail and looked like she’d styled it with an egg beater. Her face was flushed. Her lipstick smeared. And one crimson fingernail was hanging off her finger. But she was smiling.

She took a deep breath and sat back on her heels. “God that was fun.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I admonished her. “Ahab is gone!”

Her smile disintegrated into a frown. “Oh, no,” she cried. “Won’t he come back?”

“We’re in Renton,” I snapped. “As far as I know, Ahab has never
been
to Renton. And I doubt he knows the freeways.”

Her shoulders slumped. “I’m so sorry, Julia. But at least we know he’s okay. Can’t the police put out an APB on him or whatever they call it?”

“For a
parrot
?”

“Why not?” she said. “If not the police, maybe the Humane Society.”

“Oh, no. Speaking of the police, I forgot about David. He’s on the phone.”

I looked around and finally found my phone under a chair. I picked it up and spoke into it. “David? David?”

No answer. It didn’t matter. The sound of sirens told me all I needed to know.

“Oh, dear,” I said, dropping into a chair. “I have a feeling this won’t be good.”

When a police squad car pulled up, I assumed one of the neighbors had called them. After all, there was now a small crowd of lookie-loos craning their necks to see what was going on in apartment 12. I hadn’t even tried to call David back. I felt sure I’d get a lecture from him soon enough.

Two officers emerged from their squad car – a good-looking black man and a stocky Caucasian woman with short blond hair and a burly demeanor. They hurried over to the open door, where I was attempting to pull a twig out of my hair.

“Everything is okay, officers,” I said casually, grabbing the twig and yanking it free. “The man is gone.”

“What man?” the male officer snapped, his hand on the butt of the gun at his hip.

“The man who lives here,” I replied innocently.

He gave me a quizzical look, his dark eyes shifting between me and the interior of the apartment. “The man who lives here is gone. But you’re here. What happened?”

Blair appeared in the doorway behind me, trying to adjust her hair and her boobs at the same time. She took a deep breath and said, “There’s been an altercation.”

“With who?” the female officer asked. “And why?”

“That’s kind of a long story,” I said.

The two officers motioned us to step aside and strode past us into the apartment. We followed them.

The male officer turned to me. “I’m Officer Mosley, and this is Officer Hager,” he said, gesturing to his female partner. “Now, did someone try to rob you? Something obviously happened in here,” he said, taking in the mess and over-turned furniture.

“Well, no, no one tried to rob us. We don’t actually live here,” I said.

His confused expression melded into a look of irritation. “Then what are you doing here?”

“The man who lives here stole something from me.”

The officers shared a look and then Officer Hager snapped. “You just said no one tried to rob you.”

Officer Hager stood with her feet planted firmly apart, one hand on the club strapped to her belt. She looked like she was ready to take down someone twice her size and I stepped back.

“Uh…no, not here,” I replied.

“Then where?” Officer Mosley asked.

“From my home on Mercer Island.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“We came to get it back,” Blair said, sitting down on the arm of the couch. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law, you know.” She was focused on her broken nail, as if having two police officers interrogate us was no big deal.

“Look, one of you needs to start making some sense,” Officer Hager said. “We got a call from one of the neighbors that someone was in trouble here.”

“Yes…that would be us,” Blair said, flipping off the broken nail and looking up. “But we’re okay now.”

Officer Hager glanced at her partner again and rolled her eyes. “Whose apartment is this?”

“Um…we don’t actually know that,” Blair replied, twirling a strand of hair around her finger.

The female officer stepped brusquely forward. “What are your names?”

“I’m Julia Applegate and this is my friend, Blair Wentworth.”

“And you both live on Mercer Island?” the officer asked, eyeing Blair’s high heels and cashmere sweater.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Do you know the person who lives here or not?” she asked.

“No,” we said in unison.

“Then how do you know he stole something from you?” Officer Hager asked. “And the answer better make sense.”

I glanced down at the now empty bird cage lying on its side. “Because the thing he stole from me used to be in that cage,” I said, pointing at it.

Both officers followed my gaze. Officer Hager sighed and whipped out a notepad and pencil, her lips drawn into a straight line. Her patience was wearing thin.

“Let’s step outside,” she ordered.

We moved to the walkway by the front door. The group of lookie-loos had grown.

“This is all a mistake,” I said nervously, conscious that we were being watched.

“A misunderstanding,” Blair clarified, leaning against a pole.

“Which is it?” Officer Hager asked.

“Both!” we said in unison again.

Officer Hager sighed loudly.

Officer Mosley had been eyeing me and finally asked, “So, you’re Julia Applegate? Any relation to…”

“Yes,” I replied. “He’s my ex-husband.”

He shot a warning glance to his partner, who was oblivious to this new piece of information.

“Okay, Mrs. Applegate,” he said, with a slight emphasis on my last name.

But Officer Hager was flicking her pencil, ready to write. “Why don’t you start from the beginning,” she said. “And don’t leave anything out.”

Her partner sighed and folded his arms across his chest.

I explained what happened at the Inn the night Big Al had taken Ahab, and then how Blair and I had identified him. I spoke a little too fast and little too loud, but at least everything made sense this time. When I was done, I looked over at Officer Mosley in anticipation, as if he would be grading my performance.

“So this guy broke into your home and stole your…parrot,” Officer Hager said. “And you figured out who he was and followed him to this apartment, where you found your parrot. Do I have that right?” she said, reading back from her notes.

“Yes,” I replied.

“But there’s no parrot here now?” Officer Mosley said with a tilt to his head.

“No. But he
was
here,” I assured him. “I dropped the cage and the door popped open. He flew away.”

Blair must’ve thought it was time to take over. She leaned forward, inviting Officer Mosley’s gaze.

“Officer,” she said sweetly. “Let me explain.”

He glanced at her chest and then quickly away, his face a blank canvas.
Uh-oh
, I thought. What were the odds that we’d encounter the 10% twice in one afternoon? Blair must have known it too, because she quickly leaned back again.

“At first, all we wanted to do was to find out who this guy was. But then we hoped to find out where he lived,” she said. “When we did, we heard frantic squawking coming from this apartment. We thought he was killing the bird to get rid of the evidence. So we had to do something.”

I glanced at her in surprise. In what universe had we heard frantic squawking before we knocked on the door? Somehow lying to the police didn’t seem like such a great idea.

“But we didn’t break in,” she said defensively. “We knocked on the door, and he opened it.”

Officer Mosley’s expression seemed to balance precariously between the serious and the comical. “Go on,” he said simply.

“Well…
then
we might have overstepped our bounds,” Blair said with an apologetic nod. “He swore at us and tried to slam the door in our faces.”

“But before he did, I saw Ahab in the background,” I added quickly, pointing through the open door to the kitchen counter. “The cage was in complete view of the front door.”

“And you’re positive it was your parrot, not just some other parrot?” Officer Hager asked, the cynicism practically oozing from her lips.

My eyebrows shot up. “Of course it was my parrot! I would know him anywhere.”

“How?” she asked. “What color is he?”

“Gray,” I replied, immediately realizing I had just exacerbated the problem. Ahab didn’t really have any distinguishing marks. He kind of looked like any other gray parrot. And then I remembered. “But he greeted me.”

Officer Hager looked surprised by that. “By name? As in, ‘Hello, Julia?’”

“Well, no. He quoted a line from the Wizard of Oz,” I said, as if that was as good as giving his Social Security number.

There was a long pause, during which both officers merely stared at me, their expressions blank. Finally, Officer Hager furrowed her brow and said, “You’re kidding, right?”

“She
never
kids about the Wizard of Oz,” Blair said with a toss of her head.

Officer Mosley used his right hand to rub his forehead as if he had a headache. “Okay, what happened next?”

“The guy who lives here tried to grab Ahab,” I said.

“The guy you followed?

“Yes, and so I hit him with an umbrella,” Blair said.

Officer Mosley turned and leveled a curious look at Blair. “And you thought that would stop him?”

“Yes, but instead he came after me,” she continued. “We struggled over the umbrella, and then all the electronics in the apartment started going off. The TV, the stereo, the blender…”

“Why?” he asked.

We both stopped short. I glanced at Blair. Her pert mouth was halfway open, as if she was about to say something, but then stopped.

“Uh…I don’t know,” she finally said, glancing at me.

I had nothing to say.

“What happened next? Did Santa Claus show up?” Officer Hager asked. Her bland features were riddled with sarcasm.

“No,” I snapped. “I grabbed Ahab’s cage, but Al threw me on the floor and the cage flipped open. Ahab flew out the open door.”

She stared at me, suppressing a smile. “He just clicked his heels three times and flew away, is that it? Cuz, you know, there’s no place like home.” A single chuckle erupted from her throat.

I straightened up. “This isn’t a joke. That man almost killed me last night.” I pulled down my turtleneck to expose the bruises. Her eyes flinched, and she sucked up her laughter. “Call Detective David Franks at the Mercer Island Police Department. He’ll confirm my story,” I said. “I was on the phone with him when this all began.”

“No need to get upset. We’ll call Mercer Island and clear this up,” Officer Mosley said.

Officer Hager glared at him, but he pulled out his cell phone and gestured for her to follow him. They stepped to the side as he whispered something to his partner. She glanced back at me. She’d just been put on notice that she was insulting the ex-wife of the Governor.

Officer Mosley talked to someone on his phone for a few minutes and then put his hand over it to relay some information to his partner. He spoke once more into the phone and then turned and came back to us.

“Detective Franks would like to speak to you,” he said.

I felt suddenly cold all over. But I stepped forward and took the phone.

“Detective Franks,” I said into the phone. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“Give it a rest, Julia. You shouldn’t have gone after this guy alone. You should have called me first.”

“But we didn’t have time, David.” I noticed the look of surprise on Officer Mosley’s face at the familiar use of David’s first name. I turned away. “He recognized me,” I said in a softer voice. “He knew who I was. I was afraid he was going to kill Ahab.”

“It doesn’t matter. You need to leave these things to the police. And you need to stop following after Blair.”

“It wasn’t her fault,” I said.

“Look, they could charge you both with trespassing, maybe even breaking and entering. Leave this to us. Now go home and take care of the business you’re actually in.”

He hung up and I could feel the sting of his last remark as if he’d slapped my face. I handed the phone back to Officer Mosley.

“What now?” I murmured.

“We’re going to let you off with a warning,” he replied. “And we’ll try to track down the gentleman who lives here and…”

“He’s no gentleman,” Blair interrupted him. “He could’ve killed us.”

“You
were
standing in
his
apartment when we got here,” he reminded her.

Blair shrugged. Officer Mosley continued. “We’ll see if we can verify that he’s the one who took your parrot,” he finished.

We thanked the officers and left, climbing back into the BMW. We drove slowly back to the island, feeling chagrined and defeated.

“Sorry about that,” Blair said after a while. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

I sighed. “It’s not your fault. But I don’t think I’m destined to have a relationship with a cop.”

“Well, not if you continue to get involved in murder investigations.”

I gave her a weak smile. “What are the odds we’d go right from one murder investigation to another? Dead women are piling up all around us.”

I told Blair about meeting for dinner the next night as she pulled down the Inn’s drive. She said she would call Rudy and let her know about the dinner.

I dragged myself through the front door feeling on the verge of tears. I had not only embarrassed myself in front of my new boyfriend, I had lost my one chance to rescue Ahab. Now he was out in the world alone, using quotes from old movies to fend for himself. I pictured him flapping his wings, staring down at the freeway and saying, “Just follow the yellow brick road. Just follow the yellow brick road.”

Despite the loss, the thought brought a smile to my face.