An Imitation of Murder (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 9) (18 page)

CHAPTER
44

I inched closer to the open door,
kneeling on the pavement and leaning against the front of the building. As I
crouched in the shadows, I heard Phil Bickerton again.

“…because there’s actually
something more,” he was saying. “Do you want to know now or after we hit the
road?”

Vito groaned and said something
that I couldn’t catch.

“You should wait,” Liza Canfield
said. “Let’s not waste time on—”

“Don’t say another word,” Vito
hissed in a cold, cruel tone. “I don’t give a damn if you are Pia’s sister. It
was your idea to keep her at the motel the other night instead of getting her
out of town like we’d discussed. If we’d done that, she wouldn’t know any of us
are involved in this thing. And she also wouldn’t have loosened the ropes and
beat Phil half to death! You should’ve considered all of the things that
could’ve gone wrong!”

“How could he know that Pia would
untie the rope?” Liza yelled, her voice quivering with rage.

A car horn blared in the distance.
I was afraid that someone inside might realize the front door was ajar, but
they seemed oblivious to the outside world. They continued bickering and
trading insults, one voice rising in volume to drown out the next. When the
shouting finally stopped, I heard Phil reveal something that sent a cold chill
through my entire body.

“They found her fingerprints,
Vito,” he said. “They were on—”

“They
what
?” Vito hissed.

“Found June’s fingerprints,” Phil
said. “On the picture frame that I dumped in the hole with the bodyguard.”

At the mention of her name, I
realized the other woman inside was June Calloway. For a brief moment, I
remembered my neighbor’s comment from the other day:
“…she’s probably the
last person in town that anyone would suspect of being involved with kidnapping
and murder.”
At that moment, I realized that June had probably made the
fake call to 911 using Eva King’s name.

I was thinking about her two-faced
deceitfulness when Vito yelled again.

“How’d you hear that?” he asked.

“I’ve got a police scanner,” Phil
answered. “It was on in the gallery office earlier right before you called me.
I heard two voices discussing what they’d found up on Morris Springs Road.”

“I told you that was the wrong
place to bury that guy,” Vito said. “People go by there too much.”

The room went silent for a moment
or two. I imagined Vito was sifting the possibilities in his mind, the logical
way they could outmaneuver the police and explain away the evidence.

“Fingerprints are meaningless,”
June said finally. “I’m your neighbor, Vito. I’ve visited your studio plenty
often in the past few months. I could’ve touched the frame at any point during
that time.”

“But that’s not my fault,” Phil
said. “You told me that you’d wiped everything clean.”

As Phil finished, Vito started
screaming again.

“How can you be so stupid?” he
demanded. “I told Liza to have you wipe everything down at least twice.”

“Don’t bring me into your mess,”
Liza said. “If you hadn’t lost your cool and shot that bodyguard, we wouldn’t
be arguing about any of this.”

“He was getting greedy,” Vito said.
“And I sensed that he was thinking about telling Dionne what we were all up to.
But if Phil hadn’t completely ignored what I’d told him to do with the body,
we’d be a thousand miles from here already.”

Phil began to mumble and curse
loudly. “I got…well, I was confused,” he stammered. “We were going up to where
you told us to bury him, but it seemed like it would take too much time. That’s
why I pulled over on Morris Springs Road. And we were going to do the rest of
it exactly like you wanted, but then a car came around the bend. We had to get
out of there fast, so we couldn’t dig very deep.”

“A car?” June said coldly. “You
bungled the plan because a
car
was driving on the
road
, Phil?”

“Yeah,” Phil muttered. “I was
afraid they—”

“But that’s what cars do, you
idiot,” June seethed. “They drive on roads. Unless someone witnessed you
carrying the body and dumping the frames in the ground, they didn’t see
anything at all.”

The voices dropped to muffled
murmuring for a few seconds. I heard chair legs scrape against the floor and
then the conversation stopped altogether until Phil Bickerton broke the
silence.

“Why’d you shoot that guy?” he
asked.

“Dionne’s bodyguard?” Vito’s voice
was flat and detached.

“The guy at your house,” Phil said.
“What did he do that was so bad?”

“Joey agreed to a fair cut,” Vito
answered. “When I told him we were splitting the profits five ways, he
threatened to go to Dionne and tell her everything.”

“Maybe he was bluffing,” Liza said.

Vito laughed. “Maybe, but I wasn’t
going to take the chance, okay? And I’m going to say it again—if Phil hadn’t
ignored my directions, we wouldn’t have had to worry about them finding the
guy’s body.”

“But I was nervous,” Phil
protested. “And Liza wasn’t helping much.”

“I carried the shovel,” she said
defiantly. “And I dug the hole while you—”

“I’ll show you
nervous
,”
Vito interrupted. “I’ll put this gun to your head and pull the trigger!”

I felt a cold lump of dread in my
stomach as I pictured the scene on the other side of the wall. A terrified Phil
Bickerton, cringing as Vito moved toward him with the weapon. June Calloway in
an argumentative and defiant stance. Liza Canfield watching in disbelief as the
conspiracy to profit from selling the stolen artwork crumbled before her eyes.
And Vito Marclay, in the center of it all, inexplicably unhinged by waves of
anger and resentment to the point that he’d been driven to commit murder, stage
his own disappearance and steal artworks valued at millions of dollars.

As I kept myself pressed against
the exterior of the building, I heard the sound of car wheels on the pavement.
I was starting to turn and look over my shoulder when Liza Canfield suddenly
began yelling inside the law firm offices.

“
Stop
!” she screamed. “How
is any of this helping? We need to get out of here, get the paintings from the
storage locker and—”

“Are you
kidding
me?” Vito
said. “You think I intend to take you three with me?”

“That was our plan,” Liza said.
“And if I hadn’t approached the rest of you with the idea, none of you would be
in line to split the ten million that our buyer has promised.”

Vito laughed. “Oh, is that how this
whole thing started?”

“Yes,” Liza said. “It was my
scheme.”

“Not so fast, sweetheart,” he said.
“I distinctly remember floating the idea a few months ago after Dionne Bach and
I visited your law firm in Denver. She’d embarrassed you in front of your
partners. I was sick of dealing with her nasty tone and the way she treated me.
Like I’ve been some kind of servant instead of a great artist. I could tell you
were inclined to do something drastic to get one up on Dionne and make some
cash for yourself. Too bad that’ll never come to pass.”

“But we’re in this together, Vito!”
Liza thundered. “You, me, Phil and June.”

Vito’s laugh was hard and cold, a
jagged reminder that he was the only one of the group armed with a handgun.

“Phil is an idiot,” Vito said.
“Thinking he could fool the police by pretending to be held captive in the
closet at the motel.”

“It worked,” Phil boasted proudly.
“They believed my story.”

“For now,” June said. “But they’ll
see through it at some point.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Phil said.
“We’ll be long gone by then.”

Vito laughed again. “Things
change,” he said. “I can no longer trust any of you. I’ve already been on the
phone with the broker in Brussels. I explained that none of you are working on
the project at this point. What we’re going to do is get in my car, take a
little drive and then you three can say nighty-night for the last time.”

“What!” Liza shouted. “You’re going
to…” Her voice cracked and she struggled to finish the thought.

As I waited for the next bombshell
out of Vito’s mouth, I felt a hand on my back and heard someone whisper my
name. I was so startled that I spun around with such force that I nearly
knocked Dina Kincaid into the row of potted fir trees in front of the building.

“Sorry,” she said quietly. “I
thought for sure you heard my footsteps.”

I shook my head. “Too busy
concentrating on the craziness inside.”

“What’ve we got?” she asked.

“Liza Canfield, June Calloway, Phil
Bickerton and Vito Marclay,” I answered.

Her eyes bulged. “Vito Marclay?”

I nodded. “I’m guessing that he’s
the mastermind behind this bungled art theft and his own staged disappearance.”

“Well, I sure didn’t see that one
coming,” Dina said. “Do you want to step around the side and wait while we go
in?”

“We?”

She motioned toward the far side of
the building and two uniformed CCPD officers stepped from the shadows. I
recognized Stephen Castle, but the second man was unfamiliar.

“That’s Mike Kramer,” Dina
whispered. “Joined the force last week.”

“A rookie?”

She shook her head. “Ten years in Grand
Junction. His wife was transferred to Boulder, so—”

“Are we going in?” Stephen Castle
called. “Amanda and Denny are ready at the back entrance.”

“Yes,” Dina said, giving me a
slight nudge toward the alley. “Let’s do this.”

CHAPTER
45

An hour later, I was leaning
against the trunk of my car sipping a bottle of water when Dina came out of the
Langhorn & Diebel offices.

“How’re you doing, Katie?” she
asked.

“I’m okay,” I said. “How’s Roxie? I
saw the paramedics carry her out on a stretcher.”

Dina managed a weary smile. “She’s
doing okay now. Apparently, she fainted when we stormed the building and hit
her head on a filing cabinet. They wanted to take her to the hospital, but she
refused the offer. They’ve got her down the block now sitting inside an
ambulance with an oxygen mask over her mouth and a blanket draped across her
lap.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said,
feeling a modest flicker of relief. “Do you know how she ended up inside with
June and the others?”

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Dina
said. “Vito saw Roxie when she was getting into her car. I guess he waited
until she got off the phone and then went back out to confront her. Roxie
attempted to play innocent, but Vito wasn’t buying it. He ordered her into the
law firm along with Phil, June and Liza.”

“Any news on Pia?”

Dina’s fatigued grin returned, but
it brightened so quickly that I knew it was good news.

“We found her at June’s house,”
said Dina. “She was in the little apartment above the garage, tied to a chair
and gagged with a dish towel. I guess they moved her there after she
overpowered Phil and tried to escape from the motel room.”

“And she’s unharmed?”

Dina nodded. “Other than a little
bump on her head, she’s fine physically. But we can only imagine how
traumatized she is at this point.”

I nodded, trying not to think too
much about what Pia endured after our final phone conversation. I imagined that
one day, if she wanted to talk about it, I might hear her version of the
events. In the meantime, I hoped to get at least an overview of what Dina had
learned during the past hour.

“Okay,” I began. “I know that you
can’t do a deep dive, but what do you know so far?”

She shrugged. “It’s pretty
tentative at this point,” she said. “But June Calloway can cover a lot of
ground when she’s amped up.”

I laughed. “Sounds like her motor
mouth kicked in?”

Dina nodded. “I had to ask her to
slow down about every five minutes,” she said. “But the whole thing started
with a simple plot to swindle Dionne Bach. At this point, it looks like the
scheme involved Vito, June, Phil, Liza and one of Dionne’s bodyguards. We’re
pretty certain that he’s the victim we found in the shallow grave on Morris
Springs Road.”

“How did their simple plan go
sideways?” I asked.

Dina smiled. “At some point,” she
said, “Dionne’s bodyguard got cold feet and asked Vito for more money. His
original role was to keep her in New York, away from what Vito and the others
were doing here. But Dionne’s a savvy character. She somehow figured out that
everyone had been deceiving her. Her bodyguard lied that he was trying to find
the paintings and Vito. Vito lied when he told her the original paintings were
taken during a break-in at his house. June and Vito were dating at the time the
plot was conceived, so he kept her in the loop so she wouldn’t alert Dionne.
And Liza cooked up a big stinking pot of sham stew when she told Dionne that
Vito was telling the truth about the burglary.”

“Okay, so…” I paused, considering
all of the players and potential motives. “In the end, this started with Vito’s
hunger for money?”

Dina nodded. “Yes,” she said. “At
least, that’s the way it looks based on June’s babbling and some evidence that
we’ve recovered from his house and car. It looks like  he was tired of
being associated with Dionne Bach. After having some success with his own
paintings, he wanted to spread his wings and fly without having to answer to
his benefactors. But if he was walking away from the monthly stipend he
received from Dionne, he’d need a nest egg to live on until his next gallery
show.”

“Okay,” I said. “How did Phil, June
and Liza get involved?”

“Phil was fed up with having Dionne
as a business partner,” Dina said. “I guess she has quite the reputation. Sort
of like Marie Antoinette, Attila the Hun and Coco Chanel rolled into one. She’s
wealthy, beautiful and the art world considers her a huge success, but she can
be pretty demanding and rude when things aren’t going her way.”

“What was she doing here in
Crescent Creek?”

“Following her instincts,” Dina
said. “She’d heard something during a conference call with Phil Bickerton and
Liza Canfield that didn’t sound quite kosher.”

“Liza Canfield?” I said. “How does
Dionne know her?”

“That’s simple,” Dina told me.
“Liza’s law firm in Denver represents Bickerton Gallery.”

“Ah, so Dionne met Liza at the
firm,” I said. “And that’s how Liza originally met Vito?”

“You got it,” Dina said. “After
Dionne started to suspect that something was going on, Phil called to say that
Vito’s house had been burglarized. He told her that the thief got away with all
of the paintings that she’d loaned Vito when he moved to town.”

“Okay, so then what?”

“Then Dionne, her son and two
security guys showed up a few days later,” Dina explained. “I think you know
the rest.”

“What a mess,” I said.

Dina groaned. “And we’ve only
begun,” she said. “I can’t wait to get in the room with Vito and hear his
version of things.”

I considered everything that she’d
just told me along with the bits and pieces that I’d overheard earlier. There
were plenty of lingering questions about the events of the past few days, but I
decided to ask one in particular before Dina went back to work.

“Had the bodyguard also been
stabbed?” I asked, remembering the evidence bag that Stephen Castle showed me
at Vito’s house.

Dina shook her head. “The residual
blood on the knife we recovered was from a deer. Based on June’s initial
statement, Vito shot the bodyguard at the house on Balsam Drive, hustled the
body outside and loaded it into the Aston Martin.”

“Speedy,” I said. “He was going out
the back that afternoon when Pia was coming in the front.”

“Guess so,” Dina said. “The bodyguard
had used the sports car to drive over and confront Vito, so it made sense to
drive him away in it.”

“And then Vito used it again when
he went to Pia’s later that night?”

She nodded. “Apparently. Our techs
found plenty of blood spatter on the passenger seat. We’ll know later if it
matches the body we recovered from Morris Springs Road.”

I felt my stomach drop. A foolish
plot to steal a few valuable paintings had ended with kidnapping, assault and
murder.

“I’m worried about Pia,” I said. “I
mean, the man she fell in love with turned out to be a two-faced monster.”

“I’ll bet she’s stronger than
either of us know,” Dina said.

“And where did you say you found
her?” I asked.

Dina smiled. “In the apartment
above June’s garage.”

“Was Stanley home?”

“When they brought Pia in to the
apartment?” Dina asked.

“No, when you found her after June
was in custody.”

Dina scowled. “Talk about out to
lunch,” she said. “Stanley was there in his lounge chair, eating a bowl of
chili and watching ESPN. He had no clue that his sister was involved in any of
this stuff.”

“That must be a huge shocker,” I
said. “The police knock on your door and ten minutes later you see them rescue
a kidnap victim and learn that your beloved sibling is one of the crooks behind
the whole thing.”

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘beloved’
with Stanley and June,” Dina said with a laugh. “I guess he had some choice
words to share with the officers after they got Pia to the hospital.”

“Goes with the territory,” I said.
“I mean, June was involved with stealing millions of dollars worth of art
before she kidnapped a good friend. That’s not the kind of thing most family
members would have to deal with.”

“I suppose,” Dina said. “But enough
about them for right now. How are you doing?”

“I’m good.” I raised my cup of
coffee. “I’ve got something to drink, a place to wait and a good feeling that
you’ll get a full confession before the sun comes up.”

She laughed at the prediction. “From
who?”

“June and her crew,” I said.

“I just hope she didn’t spend a
fortune anticipating a huge windfall,” Dina said with a wink. “There’s not much
room in a prison cell to store your belongings.”

“Speaking of which,” I said. “Have
the paintings been recovered?”

Dina nodded. “Denver PD has them.
The manager at the U-Store place on Colfax was more than happy to lend a hand.
I guess June showed up there with Liza recently and the guy was subjected to
Miss Calloway’s Medusa impersonation.”

“I feel so gobsmacked,” I said. “I
mean, did you
ever
suspect that June could do something like this?”

“I’ve never met her,” Dina said
with a shrug. “I saw her at one of Mayor Washington’s parties, but we didn’t
exchange more than a polite smile.”

“And she was really good at those,”
I scoffed. “Polite smiles and fluffy handshakes and a few words about her consignment
shop.”

“She’s kind of like Dr. Jekyll and
Mrs. Hyde,” Dina quipped. “Battling the good and evil in her heart.”

“Isn’t that a lyrical way to
describe a moral vagabond?” I said. “She knew all along that what she was doing
was illegal and unethical, but her desire for revenge and money was stronger
than her moral compass.”

“I don’t think she has one of
those, Katie. She said some pretty scathing things while I was talking to her.”

“Such as?”

Dina shook her head. “I can’t go
into most of it, of course. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize the investigation or
anything that we’ll need at trial.”

“Of course. I was just wondering if
any of her biting remarks were about me.”

A faint smile came and went on
Dina’s face.

“Oh, she didn’t say anything
bad
about you, Katie.”

I felt a tiny flicker of joy. “Really?
What did she say?”

“June told me that she felt
horrible fibbing to you about the burglary,” Dina began. “I guess she somehow
thought it would help slow the investigation once they’d left town.” She paused
and shook her head. “The poor, foolish thing. I guess Vito convinced her that
we couldn’t possibly know what we’re doing because Crescent Creek is such a
small town.”

We shared a laugh before I asked if
June had revealed anything else during their conversation.

Dina smiled. “Actually, there was
one more thing. She said that you make the best pies in town. But don’t you
dare tell a soul that I shared that with you.”

“Cross my heart,” I said. “What’s
the latest on Dionne Bach?”

“Still a grouch,” Dina said.

“Excuse me?”

“Tyler Armstrong found her and
Desmond at the Crescent Creek Lodge,” she explained. “Mrs. Bach was having a
hot stone massage in the spa while her son and the other security guy stood
watch outside the door. They planned to eat a nice dinner at Luigi’s later.”

“Ah, the life of the rich and
infamous,” I said. “Do you think she’ll keep Bickerton Gallery open now that
Phil’s going behind bars?”

Dina smiled. “I have no idea,” she
said. “But if she does, I hope and pray that she’ll feature less bizarre paintings.
I don’t ever want to see a purple poodle wearing sunglasses and heels again!”