A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2) (19 page)

I arched my eyebrows in disbelief. Her motives were as false as Blair’s breast implants.

“And besides,” she continued. “Tony doesn’t like me.”

“
No
body likes you!” Blair said.

“Let’s face it Dana, if disliking you was the prime motive for wanting you dead, then half the island would be under suspicion,” Rudy said.

“So, if Tony isn’t the killer, it means the killer is still out there,” Doe said quietly.

Dana slumped back into her chair. “I don’t know if Tony is the killer or not. But if the police think he is, they might stop looking, and then what? That’s why I need you guys.”

Rudy had gotten up and wandered over to a floor-to-ceiling bookcase that flanked the fireplace. She seemed to be browsing the books, but suddenly turned to Dana. “Listen, Dana, it’s time to cut the crap. What’s the deal with your ex-husband and little boys?”

Well, that sucked all of the air out of the room. I thought Dana was going to turn blue, since she had her mouth shut so tightly.

Count to three.

She finally exhaled and said, “Oh, look at the time. I’m supposed to be meeting Clay.” She started to rise, cutting our meeting short.

Crash!

Everyone jerked around to where a glass frame had fallen off the fireplace mantle and shattered on the flagstone hearth. Dana’s hand flew to her mouth, and she ran over to scoop up the broken pieces. Rudy stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest.

“You did that on purpose,” Dana said to her, placing the broken pieces back onto the mantle.

Rudy shrugged. “I must have bumped it by mistake.”

“If I were you, I’d answer the question,” Doe said, throwing a warning glance at Rudy. 

Dana paused and looked around the room. “How did you find out about the boys?” she finally asked. The look of fear in her eyes was palpable.

“Again… It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We know.”

“Actually, you were quite the media darling in Vancouver,” Rudy said, running a finger along the spines of the books. “Tell us now, or I’ll just do more digging,” she said, picking up a heavy cut glass vase from one of the shelves.

Dana quickly reached out and took the vase out of her hands and replaced it on the shelf. “Okay, okay, just leave my things alone.”

Rudy put up her hands in submission and backed away, while Dana returned to her seat, looking back every few seconds to check on Rudy. Finally, convinced that Rudy would behave, she began to speak very softly.

“When I was married to my first husband, we found out that I couldn’t have children. He came from a large family, and so he talked me into fostering kids. But…he only wanted to foster boys. He said he’d always wanted a son, so that he could teach him how to play baseball and soccer.” She paused as if the memory were painful. “Anyway, we had a large basement, which he outfitted with pinball machines and other kinds of games for the kids.”

She looked genuinely uncomfortable as she relived the memories. I almost felt sorry for her. Then I remembered who was doing the talking.

“And that’s where he would abuse them,” Rudy stated.

It looked like Dana was going to deny it, but then she changed her mind. “Yes,” she said in barely a whisper. “Eventually rumors began. Then we were visited by the state office, and then by the local police. It was humiliating.” She dropped her head.

“And you knew about it? The abuse?” Doe asked.

Again, she inhaled as if to deny it. But then she exhaled. “Not in the beginning. But finally, like everyone else, I suspected it. When I confronted him, he blew up.”

“Have you told Detective Abrams or Franks about this?” Doe asked.

“Of course not. Do you think I’m crazy? I’d never live it down.”

“Are
you
crazy?” Blair blurted. “Someone’s trying to kill you.”

“Dana,” I said in my most reassuring voice. “Haven’t you considered that perhaps the person trying to kill you is one of the boys abused by your husband?”

She looked up and put her hand to her throat, as if she were having trouble breathing. “That was so long ago. And the boys were so young.”

“But they wouldn’t be young now,” Doe said. “I think you need to talk to the police.”

Now she was wringing her hands. “I…I can’t. What if it became public?”

“That’s the least of your worries,” Doe said.

“But I had nothing to do with harming those boys. Honest. So why would one of them come after me?”

“Why indeed,” Blair murmured.

“Don’t you understand? If this comes out, it will ruin my life,” she said to Blair in a pleading tone.

Her expression was pitiful. She actually believed her reputation was more important than her life – or, apparently, more important than the lives of Trudy Bascom and those abused boys.

“Dana, it’s better to be embarrassed than dead, don’t you think?” I said to her.

She looked at each of us in turn and then seemed to make a decision. “Okay, I guess you’re right. I’ll go talk to them first thing in the morning.”

“So what else?” Rudy said. “We want it all.”

“That’s all,” she said. “There’s nothing more. You have it all. The lawsuits. Tony’s wife. And my husband’s indiscretions.”

She didn’t look anyone in the eye, but instead, glanced toward the hallway and then down to her hands again. Doe picked up on the cue.

“You’re lying,” she said.

Dana’s head jerked up. “I am not!”

“Yes, you are,” Rudy said. “You’re so obvious.”

“You’re hiding something,” Doe kept pushing her. “What else are you afraid we’ll find?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. And if you don’t believe me, you can search my house. Any time.” She stood up, facing Doe and me on the sofa. “Now, I really
do
have to go.”

“What?” Blair exclaimed, standing up. “You’re the one who invited us over here.”

“Yes, but I told you all that I know. I have to pick Clay up in Bellevue. His Saab is in the shop. And then we’re grabbing a late dinner.”

She glanced at her watch and began walking toward the front door. Behind her, I saw Rudy fade back into the hallway that led to the back of the house. Rudy and I locked eyes, and she nodded for us to follow Dana out the front door. Then she disappeared into the darkened hallway.

We converged by the front door, everyone grabbing coats and purses, including Dana. Dana was in such a hurry to get us all outside, she didn’t even notice Rudy wasn’t with us.

“Well, thank you for coming,” she said, locking the front door and turning toward her car. “I hope I’ve been helpful. Now I really have to go.”

With that, she left us standing in a huddle on her front step while she scuttled down the brick path to where her car was parked next to Doe’s Mercedes in the driveway. She opened the door, got in, and left.

We all just stood there watching her tail lights disappear up the street.

“What a witch,” Blair said, turning to look at us. “Wait a minute, where’s Rudy?”

She and Doe both looked around as if they’d lost something. Just then the front door opened, and Rudy emerged with a Cheshire cat grin spread across her face.

“Why don’t you girls come on in from the cold?” she said.

Doe nervously glanced up the street, as if Dana might come back. “But…what if…”

Rudy swung the front door wide. “You heard her. She said we could search her house anytime we wanted. I choose now.”

Blair clapped her hands together like a child at Christmas. “Oh Rudy,” she exclaimed. “You are a devil in disguise.”

We all quickly climbed the steps and reentered the home, closing the door behind us.

“So what’s the plan?” Doe asked once we were inside with the door closed.

We shed our coats and threw them onto a bench by the front door, draping our purses over the side. I glanced at my watch.

“If she’s really going to dinner, then she’ll be gone at least an hour and a half. That should give us enough time to search,” I said.

“Okay,” Rudy said. “We need to find out what else she’s hiding. Knowing Dana, she could have things stuffed almost anywhere. So, Doe, you take the kitchen and the hallway. Julia and I will take the living room and the study. And Blair…”

“I’ll take the bedrooms,” she said with a wave of her hand. “After all, I know my way around a bedroom better than most people know their way to the bathroom.”

“She has us there,” Doe said. “Let’s just make sure to leave things exactly as we found them.”

We nodded and split up. We spent the next 45 minutes opening and closing drawers, looking under cushions, looking into jewelry boxes, magazine holders, closets, and wastepaper baskets. It was almost 9:00 when we heard Doe exclaim from the foyer, “Aha!” Blair ran down from the second floor, while Rudy and I hurried in from other areas of the ground floor.

“Look at this,” Doe, said with enthusiasm, holding up a manila envelope in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other.

We met her at the base of the stairs and she handed the piece of paper to Rudy. Rudy glanced at it briefly and handed it to me. Doe looked over my shoulder as I read the note.

Leave $25,000 in cash under the baseball bleachers at Liberty Park in Renton tomorrow afternoon at 3:30. Come alone. If you don’t, more than your life will be in jeopardy.

It looked like a threatening note from an old Charlie Chan movie. Each letter had been cut out from either a magazine or a newspaper and pasted onto a blank sheet of paper. It would have been comical if it weren’t for the message itself.

“Why wouldn’t Dana tell us about this?” Doe asked.

“The bigger question is why wouldn’t she tell the police?” Rudy said.

“Well, technically we don’t know that she hasn’t,” I said.

“Yes we do. If she’d told the police, they would
have
the note.”

“That’s true. Where did you find it?” I asked Doe.

“In the drawer in that table,” Doe said, pointing behind her to a sleek table set against the staircase.

“But now what do we do?” Blair asked. “We have the note, but we don’t know who it’s from or why it was sent.”

“And we just got our fingerprints all over it,” I said dismally.

Doe leaned in over my shoulder and said, “Wait a minute. Hand it back. Let me smell that.”

I handed her the note, and she took it by its corner. She waved it back and forth in front of her nose. We watched curiously.

“What are you doing?” Rudy asked.

“Don’t you smell it?” she said. “It smells like barbeque sauce.”

As she waved it, I stuck my nose up and inhaled. It actually did smell like barbeque sauce.

“You’re right.”

Blair reached out and grabbed it and stuck it to her surgically enhanced, perfectly shaped nose. “I can smell it, too.”

“But how is that going to help us?” Rudy demanded. “How in the world are we going to be able to tell who sent it?”

“Because I recognize the barbeque sauce,” Doe said with confidence.

Rudy threw out a narrow hip and put her hand on it. “Seriously? There are maybe a million different barbeque sauces in the world.”

“Exactly. That’s what I mean,” Doe said, her dark eyes glowing. “I could swear this comes from a little restaurant up in Renton. I had lunch there last month. It’s well known in the area for their special barbeque sauce because it has some secret ingredient in it. Trust me. It’s a smell you don’t forget.”

I looked up at my elegant friend. “I can’t picture you eating barbeque.”

Doe was a picky eater and almost obsessive about how she looked. Her thick, salt-and-pepper hair never seemed to move, even in a stiff breeze. Her clothes were always perfect – never a button missing, a stain, or a wrinkle. And when she ate, she never dribbled, spilled, or shed a flake. It was hard to picture her eating greasy barbeque. But I also remembered that she was a wine expert and could tell the bouquet of certain wines just by smelling them. She had a good nose.

She smiled. “Don’t worry, Julia. I didn’t eat the barbeque. We have a satellite office over in the Highlands in Renton. My manager selected the restaurant, and I had a salad. But I asked them about the sauce, and they told me they use a flavored liquid smoke. I didn’t even know there
was
such a thing.”

Rudy stepped in and took the threatening note. She held it to her nose as she said, “And you can tell that this is the same barbeque sauce?”

“I’d bet on it,” Doe said. “It’s distinctive. So distinctive that the smell was trapped in my car for days.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s take a picture of the note with one of our cell phones and then return it to its hiding place.”

“And then what?” Blair asked, as Rudy pulled out her phone and clicked a picture.

“Then I say that tomorrow a couple of us take a trip out to Renton for lunch.”

As Rudy snapped a picture of the note, a car’s headlights flashed across the front window. Fortunately, the drapes were closed. The four of us froze.

“What do we do?” Blair screeched.

“Shhh,” Rudy hushed her.

She returned the note to its hiding place and gestured all of us to follow her back into the living room.

“Okay, everybody take your places exactly as you were before Dana left.”

“But…” Blair started to say.

“Just follow my lead,” she said.

It wasn’t 10 seconds before we heard someone stomp up to the front door and throw it open.

“What the hell are you still doing here?” Dana demanded, coming into the living room.

Doe and I were sitting placidly on the sofa, while Rudy stood near the bookcase with an open book in her hand, and Blair sat at the piano picking out a tune. We all looked up.

“You left us here,” Rudy said calmly.

Dana’s eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open. “Whaaat? I left you all standing on the front steps.”

Rudy glanced over at us, her face a picture of angelic curiosity. “No… I don’t think so. We’re all still right here, where you left us.”

I smiled inwardly. I’d hate to play Rudy in a game of poker.

“That’s right, Dana. We were wondering what time you’d get back,” I said. I glanced at my watch. “You said you were going to dinner in Bellevue, but you’ve been gone less than an hour. Where did you eat? Jack In The Box?”

Her beady eyes narrowed, if that were even possible. She wasn’t buying it. And coming in behind her was Clay. His face lit up with surprise at seeing us.

“Nice to see you, Julia,” he said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to see me in his living room uninvited. He hung his coat and climbed the stairs.

Dana watched him disappear at the head of the stairs and then her head swung back in our direction.

“You’re not fooling me,” she said. “How the hell did you get in here?”

Rudy snapped the book closed. “You’re the one who told us we could search the house at any time,” Rudy said innocently. “Perhaps we took you up on your offer.”

Those beady eyes flew open in surprise. “You wouldn’t!”

She glanced at each of us, as if to see if we were holding onto any secrets. Then she spun around and marched toward the hall table that held the note. She opened the drawer and pulled out the envelope and glanced inside without saying a word. She was about to replace it, but quick as a wink, Rudy scooted across the living room gesturing for us to follow. By the time Dana was ready to slip the note back into the drawer, we were all standing right behind her. Blair tapped her on the shoulder. She whipped around with a look of surprise that almost made me laugh.

“What’s that?” Rudy asked innocently. She snatched the envelope from Dana’s stubby fingers with lightning speed and pulled out the sheet of paper. She allowed her eyes to scan the page. “Oh look you guys. It’s a threatening note.”

Doe grabbed the note and held it to her nose. “Gee, it has a funny smell,” she said. “I do believe that’s barbeque sauce.”

Dana reached for the note, but not before Blair grabbed it, turned and walked away with it. While Dana protested from behind, Blair read the note out loud, and then she whipped around to face Dana. “Dana, this could be important evidence. Why haven’t you given it to the police?”

Dana snatched the piece of paper away from Blair. “Because I just received it yesterday afternoon,” she said. “And…and I hadn’t decided what to do about it. Besides, it’s none of your business.”

“What do you mean it’s none of
our
business?” Rudy demanded coming up on the other side.

We had formed a complete circle around Dana now, and she was looking mighty uncomfortable.

“You’re the one who asked us to help investigate Trudy’s murder, and you’re the one who invited us over here tonight to discuss it,” Rudy said.

“That’s right,” Doe said. “You promised that you had told us everything.”

Blair leaned in and wagged her finger at Dana like a nasty teenage girl. “You’re holding out on us, Dana. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Dana backed toward the staircase and bumped into a wastebasket, knocking it over. Some loose paper fell out, along with a big wad of cash.

“What’s that?” Rudy said, quickly slipping behind Dana. She grabbed the roll of bills before Dana could stop her. “Well, I guess we missed this,” she said. “Is this the blackmail money?”

Dana stared at Rudy, her lips pressed together. She glanced nervously up the stairs, as if afraid that Clay might hear, and then finally exhaled like a deflating balloon.

“Yes. That’s what I was doing this afternoon. Like I said, the note just came yesterday. I don’t know who it’s from… I…there’s no stamp or return address on it. Someone must have just left it in the mailbox.”

“So you withdrew the money and were going to hand it over?” I asked in surprise.

“Wouldn’t you? Whoever this is, is trying to kill me.”

“And you think by paying them off, they’ll stop?” Rudy asked.

She slumped back against the table. “I don’t know. Probably not. That’s why I wanted you to keep digging.”

“Oh, save it, Dana,” Rudy snapped. She handed Dana the money and marched over to the bench where our coats and purses were. She grabbed her coat and threw it around her shoulders and then grabbed her purse. “You’ve been wasting our time from the beginning. And I for one have a whole lot of other things I could be doing rather than sitting around your house on a weeknight waiting for you to come home. Let’s go, girls,” she said, starting for the door.

The three of us swept past Dana and also grabbed our coats and purses. Rudy had the door open, and we were just about to leave. Dana stopped us.

“Wait!” she said with a raised hand. “Don’t go. I do need your help. This note scares me. This whole thing scares me. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. I’m not making good decisions.”

Rudy used one hand to swing the front door closed again. “Okay. Then besides the abuse, why else would someone blackmail you?”

Dana’s eyes shifted from one to the other of us as she contemplated her answer. Then her entire body relaxed in defeat.

“Because when I was very young…I was responsible for someone’s death.”