Circle of Influence (A Zoe Chambers Mystery) (31 page)

THIRTY

Matt Doaks made a ridiculous sight, propped up by crutches, his right leg and foot encased in that Frankenstein boot. Zoe might have found his appearance nonthreatening—bordering on humorous—except for those pictures on the computer, that empty pill bottle, and what Allison had just told her about his involvement in Ted’s death.

A gust of wind drove icy pellets of snow into Zoe’s face. She blinked and squinted, keeping an eye on her cell phone, cradled in Matt’s gloved left hand. “Give me the phone,” she said, keeping her voice low and calm.

“This?” Matt held it up. “What do you need it for?”

Her mouth had gone dry. Should she tell him the truth? That Allison lay inside, slowly going into shock from slicing her wrists? Not to mention possibly overdosing on his drugs? Did he harbor any real feelings for the girl? Or was what Allison claimed he said the truth? That her death would solve all his problems.

Zoe couldn’t take the chance. Best to pretend she didn’t know anything about any of it. “Just give me the damned phone.” She made a grab for it, trying to appear more playful than desperate.

As she expected, he held it out of her reach and grinned. That’s it. Let him think this was a simple game of keep-away. She jumped, making the attempt appear half-hearted. Let him believe the scramble was all in fun, keep him off-guard, and then kick that bad leg out from under the bastard.

At least that was her plan.

He laughed at her ineffective jump and twisted slightly to the right.

Now.

She shifted her weight to one foot and started to swing the other back. But before she could sweep it forward again, he twisted his body hard to the left, bringing his arm and fist around.

The blow sent Zoe sprawling. The impact of the frozen ground hurt worse than Matt’s punch.

“You bastard,” she sputtered, rubbing her jaw.  

As she watched, Matt dropped her cell phone to the ground and mashed it with the tip of one of the crutches.

“There are cops crawling all over my house,” he hissed. “Why do I think I have you to thank for that?”

She worked her way up to her knees. He
thought
he had her to thank. He didn’t
know
. Play dumb, Zoe. Find out what he
does
know. “Cops? Why the hell would there be cops at your place?”

“Gee, I don’t know.” Now he was the one playing dumb. “Maybe because some lying little brat decided to run to her Auntie Zoe and tell tall tales.”

So that was how it was going to be. His word against Allison’s. Zoe sat on her knees, touching her cheek with her fingertips. Her mind was too busy to register pain. How did he know Allison had come running to her? “I have no idea what you’re rambling on about. What are you doing out here, anyway?”

“You’ve seen the pictures,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “I knew that punk Logan couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

“Logan didn’t tell me anything. I found them myself. You really are a sick bastard.” She shifted off her knees, into a squat, keeping her eyes on those crutches. If she sprung at him, he might club her with one of them, but she should be able to tackle him and gain some control over the situation.

Matt’s laugh sounded like a cough. “Are you kidding me? You’ve seen how that girl dresses and struts her stuff. She came on to me, I’ll have you know. I was working on the addition to the high school, and she kept hanging around me, wearing those tight shirts that showed off her chest. And those tight jeans with that sweet ass.” He gave an orgasmic moan.

Sickened, she braced to push off.

But before she could spring, Matt reached into his coat pocket and brought out a revolver. “Don’t do it, Zoe.” He placed the tip of one crutch against her shoulder and shoved.

She toppled sideways, but caught herself before she hit the ground a second time. “Why don’t you just get the hell out of here, you son of a bitch?”

He heaved a melodramatic sigh. “Oh, but I can’t. Don’t you see? You’ve discovered my secret. I can’t—I
won’t
go to jail for sex crimes. You know what they do to guys branded as sex perverts in prison? Now get up. I’m freezing my ass off. Let’s go in the barn.”

Zoe obliged. Slowly. Her eyes were no longer glued to the crutches, but to the black handgun, barely visible in the darkness, except for the reflection from the light high on the outside of the barn. “Matt, you don’t need that thing.” She forced her voice back to its low, calming tones. Like she’d use on a scared colt. Or a psych patient.

“Shut up and move.” He motioned toward the barn door.

She took small steps. Time. She needed time to think. Allison was inside. Obviously, Matt held no affection for the girl. How would he react when he saw her? Could Zoe afford to risk finding out? What could she do to stop it?

She should have taken him out when she had the chance.

At the door, Zoe stopped. She turned to face Matt. And the barrel of the gun. For a moment her breath caught in her throat.

“Inside,” he said. “I’m freezing out here.”

She forced her gaze from the revolver’s muzzle to Matt’s eyes. Had they always been that crazed? She swallowed against a hard, dry lump in her throat. “Look, Matt. I don’t want to get you into trouble. No one else has seen the stuff on the computer. Let’s you and me go back to the house. I’ll give you the hard drive, and you can do whatever you want with it. That was you—breaking into my house that night—wasn’t it?”

He huffed. “Yeah. But you came home too early. I figured you’d be at the funeral home until they closed up. Then when I tried again, your nosy neighbor lady caught me on the porch. And I was going to give it one more try while you were on duty Friday night, but then…” He motioned to his leg.

“You were on your way here to break in when you wrecked?”

“Yep.” He grinned. “And you came to my rescue. You and Pete Adams. Ironic, huh?”

That would be one word for it. “Okay. So let’s do it now. I’ll let you in, and you can take the damned thing. It’s been nothing but trouble this whole week.”

He appeared to be considering it. Once she had him away from the barn and Allison, she could figure a way out of this.

“And you’d keep quiet?” he said.

“Absolutely. I mean, you’re right about Allison. Rose was telling me about finding some jock in her room and taking the door off the hinges. You can’t be blamed for being drawn to a sexy young thing like that. Especially when she’s throwing herself at you.” Gag. Zoe wanted to go home and wash her mouth out with Clorox.

Did he buy it? Maybe, maybe not. But the enticement of getting his hands on that hard drive might be enough to move this party away from the barn. And Allison.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Zoe fought to keep the relieved sigh from being too obvious. She moved away from the doorway.

“Except…” The chill in Matt’s voice made the bitter January temperatures feel balmy. “I want to know what you’ve got in that barn that you don’t want me to see.”

Zoe’s breath caught deep in her chest. “Nothing.” She feared she’d said it too quickly. “Come on, Matt. That hard drive is the only real evidence against you. Who’s going to believe a whacked-out Goth girl’s word against yours? You’re a respected businessman. A township supervisor.”

“But
you
know.”

“I know nothing,” she cried. “A lawyer would call it hearsay. Take the damned hard drive, and get the hell out of my life.”

Long seconds passed with only the sounds of the wind moaning and dead tree branches rattling. Zoe fought the urge to glance at the gun. Hold his gaze. Look sincere. She didn’t even blink at the burst of wind-driven snow crystals that pelted her in the face. 

His expression wavered. Softened. For a moment, Zoe clutched at the hope that she’d reached him. But then he gestured at the barn with the gun. “Inside.”

A sob threatened to break free from Zoe’s chest. Defeat weighed heavy on her sagging shoulders as she turned. Matt propped both crutches under one armpit to keep the gun leveled at her.

As the barn door creaked open, Allison’s plaintive voice called out, “Aunt Zoe?”

“I’m here, honey.” Zoe stepped inside with Matt right behind her.

“Allison? What the—?” Matt halted for a moment, apparently startled by the lump on the ground covered by a horse blanket. “What happened?”

Allison made a feeble attempt to turn her head. “Matt? Is that you?”

He crutched past Zoe, keeping enough distance that she dared not attempt a tackle. Not when he had the gun aimed at the girl under the blanket. He stopped next to Allison and looked down at her, his mouth pressed into a questioning frown.

“It is you,” Allison said. “You came to save me.”

“Not hardly.” The words slipped out before Zoe could catch them.

Matt shifted the gun into the same hand as the crutches. But it was still aimed precariously at Allison. He leaned down, and with his free hand, swept the blanket aside. He straightened and laughed. “What the hell do you call this? You bandaging a kid or a horse?”

While his attention was locked on the bizarre sight of a young girl with Vet Wrap and splint boots on her arms, Zoe edged closer. Not that she had a clue as to what she’d do, but she needed to protect Allison. Somehow. “Because of you, she cut herself.”

“You slashed your wrists?” he said to Allison.

She struggled to sit up. Wiggled and strained, but couldn’t lift herself up. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” Matt grunted. “You should have done something that would’ve worked.”

Gun or not, Zoe considered jumping the snake.

He held up the revolver. “See? This would work much better than a knife.”

A knife? Zoe’s mind flashed on the knife dropping from Allison’s hand into the dirt of the barn floor. Where had it gone?

Allison started weeping. “You’re going to shoot me? I thought you were here to save me. I thought you loved me.”

Matt shook his head and looked at Zoe. She snapped her attention from searching the ground to him. “Kids,” he said. “Where do they come up with these stupid ideas?”

She’d had the same stupid idea once.

“So what’s your plan?” Zoe said. “You’re going to kill both of us?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“You could let us go. I’ll still give you the hard drive. Without hard evidence, no jury will convict you. But you kill us? Then you’ve got murder charges to deal with.”

He studied Allison who was growing paler and shivering harder by the moment. Zoe took the opportunity to inch a little closer to where she thought the knife had fallen. Unfortunately, Matt happened to be standing at that spot. With her luck, he was standing on the damned thing.

“I’m afraid it’s too late. Maybe before Ted Bassi stuck his nose in my business. But now?”

Allison’s weeping became louder. Matt lifted the gun, pointing the muzzle at the girl.

“No,” Zoe said in her best authoritative voice. Keep him talking. Keep him off kilter. “If you’re planning to kill both of us, you’d damned well better shoot me first.”

“Huh?”

“Because the second you shoot her, I’m going to jump your ass and beat you to death with your own crutches.” She’d told him a lot of lies that evening. This, however, was gospel.

His hand lowered a bit.

Now for the buying-time part. “If you’re going to kill me anyway, I’d like to go to my grave with some answers. I know you didn’t plan to kill Ted, but if it was an accident and not murder, why not just call 9-1-1?”

Matt swung the gun toward Zoe. “Do you honestly expect me to fall for the oldest ploy in the book? Keep me talking until help arrives?” His deep laugh carried to the barn’s rafters.

She stared at the gaping black muzzle of the gun. As angry as she was about Ted, about Allison, about every time Matt or any man had betrayed her, at that moment, the only thing she could process was she did not want to die. “It’s no ploy.” Stay calm. Play to his ego. “I know you’re smarter than that. Or are you? Everything would have been so much simpler if you’d just called the cops in the first place.” 

“Simpler? Are you kidding? I could just hear the questions.
What was Ted’s daughter doing there? What were you and Ted arguing about?
” Matt shook his head. “I couldn’t let the cops find his body at my place. So I enlisted Allison’s help and together we loaded Ted’s body into my trunk. She followed me in her dad’s pickup over to Jerry’s place. At least, she followed me until she ran the thing off the road.”

Just when Zoe thought Matt couldn’t sicken her any more. Not only had he killed Ted in front of his daughter, he’d made her help him dispose of the body and cover up the crime.

Zoe risked looking away from the gun to check on the girl. How was she reacting? She wasn’t. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were tinged with blue. She wasn’t shivering any longer. Allison needed an ambulance. And she needed it now.

Zoe forced down the rising panic. “What about Jerry McBirney? I thought you were friends.”

“No. You thought I was his lap dog. Isn’t that what you said?”

The menace in his voice brought her focus back to the gun still aimed squarely at her head.

“After the incident at the supervisors’ meeting, I figured Jerry was an easy alibi. Everyone would believe he’d killed Ted. The investigation wouldn’t go any further.”

Matt had been the one to feed her the information about Ted and Marcy’s affair. And Zoe had swallowed it whole.

“If only I’d gotten my hands on that computer.” A wistful note crept into Matt’s voice. “Stupid girl. I can’t believe she didn’t erase those e-mails.”

For a moment, Zoe thought he was going to kick Allison’s unconscious form. Gun or no gun, she braced, ready to pounce on him. Instead, he gave a little hop on his good foot. As he moved, Zoe spotted it. He
had
been standing on the knife. Half buried in the dirt floor, only the brown leather hilt was exposed.

Don’t look at it. Don’t draw his attention to it.

“Then what?” she said. “Did Jerry find out you were framing him so you had to kill him, too?”

Matt kept the gun aimed at Zoe, but shifted his gaze to Allison. “He called me. Said he wanted to meet me at Rodeo’s, but this one…” He nodded toward the girl at his feet. “This one phoned me and insisted we get together.”

Matt’s gaze stayed on Allison. The gun drifted off target. Zoe eyed the knife on the ground and inched closer, hoping he wouldn’t notice and bring a sudden and deadly end to his reminiscences.

“I called Jerry and told him I’d be late,” Matt went on, “but the son-of-a-bitch apparently couldn’t wait. He showed up and caught us.”

“You really ought to lock your doors,” Zoe quipped and regretted it immediately.

Matt swung back to her, and once again, she stared down the gun’s barrel. “You’re a smart ass, aren’t you, Zoe? You’re right. Allison isn’t about to cause me any more problems. Hell, look at her. She’s probably dead already. You, on the other hand…I should definitely shoot you first.”

The combination of cold and terror seeped through Zoe’s coat. She hugged herself to quell the shivering. If she had any fragment of hope to save Allison and herself, she had to stay steady. Matt was right about the girl. She looked dead. Except for the miniscule movement in her chest. Whatever Zoe was going to do, she had to do it soon.

And she had to
not
get shot.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said.

“Oh, yeah, I do. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. You don’t even know how bad or how long I’ve hated you.”

“Huh?” This wasn’t going in a direction she expected or liked.

“I’ve despised you from the moment you walked out on me.”

“Me? Walked out on you? You cheated on me. Hell, you didn’t lock the doors back then, either.”

“I told you that girl meant nothing. I loved you. But you were so high and mighty. You refused to forgive me. Instead, you started seeing other guys. Ted. Jerry. I wanted to strangle you every time I saw you with someone else.”

The man was certifiable. Zoe wanted to tell him so, but the words froze in her throat.

Matt laughed. “You wanna hear the funniest part? I got you back and you didn’t even know it was me. You blamed good ol’ Jerry. See? He’s been my scapegoat for years.”

Her eyes fogged for a moment as the realization of his words sunk in. “What do you mean?”

“That precious horse Jerry bought and boarded for you. He didn’t poison her. I did. I was sick of seeing you shacking up with that old reprobate. All because he bought you a fucking horse. Hell, I’d have bought you a whole herd if I knew that’s what you wanted. Getting rid of her wasn’t hard. I’d trimmed my hedges—our hedges—and snuck a handful of the clippings into her hay. A tasty treat.”

Matt’s hedges. The toxic Chinese Yews at the base of his steps where Ted had died. Where she’d found his eyeglass lens. McBirney may have been a pig and a scoundrel. But he wasn’t the monster Zoe had always thought. Matt Doaks was the monster.

Her knees gave out on her, and she sunk to the dirt. Her stomach heaved, but she swallowed back the bile. Her vision cleared, becoming sharper than she’d ever known.

The knife lay only five or six feet in front of her. Matt stood another foot or so away. Allison’s skin was turning gray, her breath barely discernable. Somehow, Zoe knew Matt was watching her every move.
Look away. Just one second, that’s all I need. Look away
.

“So what happened when Jerry walked in on you and Allison?” she said.

“Oh,” Matt said, reminded of the story he’d been telling. “The old cuss wanted a piece of the action. Can you believe it? He’d figured out about how his car came to be found with Ted’s body in it and was furious. But he had a price for keeping quiet. He wanted to share the girl.”

Okay, so Jerry was a monster, too.

“He was all set to do sweet Allison when Logan walked in. That kid was ready to hand me my head, but then he saw what Jerry was doing to his little sister. It kind of distracted him if you know what I mean.” He laughed again.

Through the laughter, Zoe heard something. A car. The distant crunch of gravel in the lane. Not close to the barn. Not yet. And Matt apparently hadn’t noticed.

“But Logan didn’t kill Jerry. You’re the one who stabbed him,” she said.

“Who told you that?”

Zoe wasn’t about to give up Allison. “The coroner’s report. You stabbed him with a Philip’s head screwdriver. The cops know, Matt. You aren’t going to get away with it this time.”

His eyes were on her. Damn it. Look away.

“It wasn’t me.” Gone was the lilting laugh. Instead Matt’s voice became shrill, reeking of guilt. “When they find that screwdriver, my prints won’t be on it.”

“What did you do? Wipe it clean and then hand it to Logan?”

All signs of good humor had vanished. Dragging the crutches with him, Matt took an uneven step toward her, his face ugly in its rage. But all Zoe saw was the yawning maw of his gun.

The sound of tires on gravel grew louder. Zoe willed her hands to be still. No trembling. Her muscles tensed. She knew she’d only get one chance. To Matt, she hoped she looked like she was collapsed on her knees. In reality, she was crouched and ready.

The vehicle outside pulled up to the barn. Matt’s eyes shifted. A car door slammed. Matt wheeled toward the sound. The gun barrel followed his gaze.

And Zoe sprang.