Designer Detective (A Fiona Marlowe Mystery) (24 page)

I made a wide cautious circle toward the back
of the garage and outbuildings. If I planted myself behind the old shed, maybe
I’d see them hauling out the rifles. Jake seemed awfully comfortable with
Ratko’s men. Maybe he was in on the heist. Maybe he was getting a cut. Maybe he
bought and sold on the black market for extra income. I’d read that anything
was for sale in the global arms bazaar, that you could even buy an F-16 if you
wanted.

I crouched in a laurel thicket behind the shed.
The furniture truck had arrived. Joey was leaning against the hood of the
Escalade, and Ratko was yelling at him. Two men who must have come with the
truck and the two men who had gotten from the car with Jake were carrying long,
narrow boxes from the shed.

I shook my head. It was so easy. The hiding
place was so easy. Jake must have figured it out in the investigating he had
done without me. Of course, he had never bothered to share that information.

I heard a crunch and froze. I was afraid to
look and tried to wiggle further into the laurel thicket. I stretched my neck
to see what had made the noise. Off to my left were four men in black
windbreakers with ATF in huge white letters across the back, crouching under
the pines.
 
I guess they wanted to make
sure they didn’t shoot each other. They eased closer to the rifle shed. One was
snapping photos with a fast action camera. They’d have Ratko dead to rights.
They could walk right into the clearing, say ‘Stick ‘
em
up’ and they’d have them red handed.

But then all hell broke loose.

A fireball exploded in front of the furniture truck.
Pops and flashes flew between the ATF guys and the men in the clearing. I flattened
out on the ground. The ATF guys ran in the other direction. The gunshots
continued. I was in a live action Hollywood movie.

As fast as the firefight started, it stopped. I
stayed down. Gunfire started up closer to the house then quit. I struggled up, inched
closer to the shed and peeked in the window. Someone was lying over a stack of
rifle boxes. I couldn’t tell through the dirty window
who
it was. Another man was down beside the truck. The front of the furniture truck
was black. In a half crouch I sneaked into the shed. I had to see if it was
Jake even though I didn’t know if the dirty rat was on my side or theirs. A man
in a furniture mover uniform lay on his stomach face turned away from me, his
head bloody.

My stomach turned upside down, and I thought
for a moment I’d lose breakfast. After a moment or two, I garnered my courage,
what was left of it, and said, “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

He didn’t respond. What did they do on those
television police shows when they found a body? Check for pulse. Tentatively, I
placed my fingers on his neck. He was warm, and I thought I could feel a pulse.

I heard shouting and eased out of the shed.
Only because I had seen it in the movies, I made a
zig-zag
run to the first garage. One of the bay doors was opened. I didn’t remember it
being open when we came in.

I saw no vehicles that would have signaled how
the ATF guys got there. But then they would have hidden the vehicles. I looked
in the bay door that was open. There was the banged up dark gray Suburban Hudson
had been using.
Hudson’s spy car.
It sat alongside the
Rolls, his butler car. He was a man of many talents.

“Hello?” I said in a hoarse whisper.
“Any body here?
Hello?”

I checked out the Suburban. My carryon luggage was
in the back where Jake had thrown it when we left the hotel. Hudson had
followed us here. But then he knew where the rifles were hidden. Had Jake
helped him organize the sting? How much had they both known about the set up? I
wondered if they had the bad guys in a room with their hands held high.

I could leave. I could take the Suburban and
leave. I checked for the keys. Not in the ignition. Not in the glove
compartment, nor the center console. They were under the floor mat. I had the
airline ticket to Sydney in my purse. I had transportation. I could be off in
an instant. As I was about to climb into the driver’s seat, I heard my name.

“Fiona, where are you going? I’ve been looking
all over for you.”

I paused in my getaway and looked around. Jake
came around the back of the car and stopped. We stood looking at each other.

“Jake Manyhorses, you have some explaining to
do.”

He nodded and his hands came out to embrace me,
but my lethal stare stopped him mid-air.

“Fiona,” he began but his voice trailed off.

“How did you know those rifles were in the
shed?”

“I helped Hudson put them there. The rifles you
discovered in the basement were half the cache. We had already removed most of
it to the shed.”

“You knew about the rifles. You led me astray on
a number of occasions. You used me.”

“It may look like that but really I was trying
to keep you out of harm’s way. But you kept getting in the way. I didn’t want
anything to happen to you. This whole thing kept playing like some bad movie.”

“Bad movie all right with live ammunition,” I
said. “Ratko said he’d been blackmailing Albert. Did you know that?”

“Not exactly.
I knew
Albert was being blackmailed but I didn’t know who.”

“But I did.” Hudson walked through the open bay
door and came to stand beside us. His hair wasn’t even disheveled. “I knew
someone was getting to Albert but I couldn’t find out who it was. When Cody
came into the picture and started helping him, he was freer with information than
Albert. I was able to get names. When they started showing up at the house
after Albert’s demise, we were able to close in. I had to hold back some of the
rifles so we could set up the sting.”

“What was the blackmail?” I said. I stood with
my arms folded tight across my chest, not feeling kindly disposed toward either
of them.

“Alice,” said Hudson. “She insisted on a cut
when she found out Albert was dealing arms. Instead of turning him in, she
wanted a cut. If she got a cut, she wouldn’t turn him in, would she?”

“And,” I said. “Albert was sleeping with her.
Maybe in love with her and married to another woman.”

“Yes,” Hudson said. “Albert had the hedged
clipped like a suit of cards for his love, Alice Wonderland. That’s when Olivia
knew Albert was involved with Alice because she was, too. Olivia knew the
connection with Alice in Wonderland. You cannot imagine the row that ensued in
the Lodge household. I think it ultimately caused Olivia’s stroke.”

“We are back to square one,” I said. “The
reason I got caught up in all this trouble. Who killed Albert?”

Hudson said, “Albert killed himself with an
overdose of his meds. He’d been despondent over Olivia’s death, and Alice’s
double cross. I found the empty bottle of medication he had mixed with his
evening toddy in the kitchen when I tidied up.”

“You didn’t share that information with the
family. Why?”

Hudson’s shoulders slumped. “I tried to tell Miss
Opal, but she was convinced that someone in the family murdered him and
insisted that Jake find out who it was. Then things started spinning out of
control. We had to set up the sting operation to break up this end of the arms
trafficking.”

 
“Then all
of this was an elaborate scheme about an arms deal. It wasn’t about people like
me and Opal and Jake.”

Hudson sighed and looked away over my shoulder.
“I know it sounds cold and heartless but Albert was mixed up in something that
sucked innocent people in.”

I shook my head. “We’re lucky none of the
innocents were hurt.”

Hudson gave a faint nod.

“Poor Albert,” I said. “Why would he get mixed
up dealing arms?”

“He had huge debts. You can imagine with two
women and one blackmailing you. Plus Ratko somehow found out about Alice’s
involvement. He started blackmailing Albert. Those were the entries that Jake
found in the ledger. Ratko had his men torch the study to burn the evidence.
I’m guessing the evening of Albert’s demise Ratko had demanded more money, a
lot more money. Albert didn’t have it. Ratko had slowly bled him to death, you
might say.”

“Where is Alice? What will happen to her?” I
asked.

“Alice is being held for questioning though she
will probably get off. There are entries in Albert’s ledger that showed
payments to someone, but he used a coding system, and we don’t know who. We
might not have enough evidence to charge Alice.”

“Ratko was extorting Alice, too, because he
said she wasn’t making payments.”

Hudson’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, Miss Marlowe.
That is valuable information. We will follow up. You are a superb detective, and
I heartily thank you for your valuable service to the cause.”

I smiled at the idea of being a superb
detective. I felt more like the superb bumbler. I turned to Jake. “And you were
nervous the night of the party because Alice was there and you knew who she was
and you didn’t want any of her ears to hear what we were talking about.”

“Yes. That was the problem all along. You were
good at figuring things out. I wanted you out of harm’s way, but I wanted you
close to me, too.”

“There is irony in that,” I said.
“And Cody?”

“He’s still on the loose,” Jake said.

 
“I guess
that’s the end for me then. I’ll leave Cody in your capable hands. I have a
plane ticket to Sydney, and I’m going to be on the flight.”

Jake exchanged looks with Hudson, who cleared
his throat.

“Miss Marlowe, I’m terribly sorry, but I need
to ask you for that ticket and the check that I believe you said you had. You
see, that is evidence against Alice. We’ll need your statement as to what
transpired in your conversation with her.”

There went that paid vacation. I searched in my
purse and found the ticket and voucher and handed it to Hudson. I felt
strangely defeated. The worse feeling was being a pawn in the game. “Let’s get
to the paper work. I’ll be free to leave then, won’t I?”

“Yes, I believe so. Shall we step into the
kitchen and have tea? Just like old times.” Hudson gave me that gallant little smile
that always won me over.

“Why not?
Tea is
always so civilized.”

“Right this way,” he said with a gentlemanly
flair of the hand.

We entered through the infamous back entrance
where it seemed all the real intrigue with the family took place. I guess,
though, that Hudson wasn’t part of the family as much as he was part of the
intrigue.

* * * * *

Jake gave me a ride home in the Rolls Royce
which was a nice touch since I had never ridden in one. The interior was all
burled wood and tan leather. It had that wonderful old car smell, but I hardly
could appreciate the luxury, I was so out of it. I had duly signed a statement
that might keep Alice on the hook. I signed a statement that I was a witness to
the happenings at the Lodge house that morning. My part in the whole woeful
affair was over.

I didn’t feel like talking, and Jake didn’t
either, so it was a glum ride. A ray of sun finally peaked through the
miserable overcast that had dogged the day. The clouds were breaking up in the
western sky. I took that as a good omen. Normal life as I knew it was
returning.

“Drop me in front, please,” I said when we pulled
in the circular drive to my building. The Rolls rolled to a stop at the main
entrance. As I grabbed the door handle, Jake put his hand on my arm. “Fiona, don’t
go like this. I’m sorry. I was trying to protect you. I didn’t want you hurt.
The more I knew, the more I had to cover up to protect you.”

“You keep saying that. Why did you insist Hudson
needed an alibi? That brought me back into danger.”

“I didn’t want you to leave. I was afraid I’d
never see you again. Hudson decided at the last minute that you’d fit into the
sting operation, that you and I were the perfect bait. We were the ones Ratko
and his men were following. I figured if I stayed with you, I could protect
you.”

I leaned back against the headrest. “Jake, I’m
so exhausted I don’t know which end is up. It has been a nerve wracking twenty-four
hours. You keep saying you were trying to protect me.” I looked into his big
browns. “Frankly, my dear Jake, I don’t need any more of your protection.”

I opened the car door and with carry on and
purse in hand walked inside my dear, familiar building to the elevator. On my
floor I stumbled down the hall, rummaging in my purse for the keys which didn’t
seem to be there. I stopped at my door ready to turn the darn purse upside down
when I noticed the door wasn’t latched. Then I remembered. Cody had the keys.

I eased the door open, hoping I had an ounce of
adrenalin left to flee, if need be. Maybe I had forgotten to latch it when we
left. There was a funny smell in the air, like burned toast. The venetian
blinds were closed. I always left them open. Someone had camped out in my
beautiful condo. Step by step, I inched to the living room. Cody sat spread leg
on the couch, the coffee table littered with beer bottles.

“Hello Fiona,” he said, slurring his words. “I
need a little help.”

I started to laugh, and then I couldn’t stop. Tears
ran down my face. I shook so hard with laughter I dropped my purse and carry on.

“Fiona, it’s not funny. I can’t find my wallet,
and I need money. I don’t have a cent. You don’t seem to keep any cash around
this place. I got guys on my tail. I’ve been waiting all night for you to come.
I’ll leave as soon as you give me money to get out of here.”

I had lapsed into hysterical giggles. “Sorry,”
I said between hiccups, “I don’t mean to laugh it’s just that . . .” I got
hysterical again.

Cody started yelling. “Stop it. Stop it right
now.”