Authors: Mark Richard Zubro

Rust On the Razor (24 page)

BOOK: Rust On the Razor

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I said, “Maybe one of the hospital personnel dropped it.”

“No,” she said. “Daddy didn't want strangers touching him. We've cared for him. I've washed his hair and given him sponge baths. My children have changed the sheets and helped him up.”

I agreed it was probably one of her kids, but I couldn't absolutely rule out a doctor, nurse, or orderly.

She pulled another tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes. “I am going to question my children about this. I will know the truth.”

Nathan entered the room. “Mama, I found everybody except Hiram. They'll be along in a minute.” He saw her crying. “What's wrong, Mama? This guy trying to hurt you?”

“Oh, hush, Nathan.” A few minutes later, Nathan, Mary,
and Shannon stood in a circle staring at the razor blade. Mary called into the CCU and Scott came out. He sat down next to his mother.

Mrs. Carpenter told them of finding the razor blade. Shannon began to cry and slumped to the ground. Nathan caught her.

Hiram hurried in. “What's going on?” he asked.

“One of you killed the sheriff,” I said.

Hiram lunged at me.

Mrs. Carpenter stood up. “Stop it!”

Everybody stopped.

Mrs. Carpenter eyed each of her children in turn. She slowly sat down. “No matter what, I want the truth.”

Tears ran down Shannon's face. Her muffled sobs were the only sound in the room.

Nathan explained the situation to his brother.

Hiram said, “Anybody who came into the room could have put it there.” He pointed at me. “He could have.”

“He hasn't been in there since the murder,” Scott said.

I said, “Hiram, why did you tell Richardson you saw me with the sheriff? You know I wasn't. You're lying.”

He began to protest, but I cut him off. “I know you think it's going to be my word against yours, but I know I wasn't there. Therefore you are trying to save yourself or cover up for someone else.”

Shannon burst out sobbing.

“Peter raped me!” Her voice shook with rage. “He humiliated me. He demanded I see him again. I refused. I'd stolen money from my job. They made me quit. He found out. I don't know how. I had to put a stop to that horrible man.”

Scott gave me an agonized look. “I'm sorry,” he said.

Hiram slammed his fist against the wall. “Shannon, don't say anything!” he commanded.

“She's got to tell the truth,” Scott said.

Hiram looked like he might attack Scott.

Mrs. Carpenter said, “Yâall hush.” She moved to Shannon and embraced her distraught daughter. She glanced up for a moment. “Y'all should leave now.”

We left to the sound of Mrs. Carpenter murmuring to Shannon.

Three days later we said good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter in their front parlor. The prognosis for Mr. Carpenter's full recovery was good and the Carpenter home had survived the flood unscathed. This was tempered by the arrest of Shannon for the sheriff's murder.

Todd Bristol in Chicago and a team from Atlanta had been hired by Scott to defend his sister. He had paid her bail. That morning Mrs. Carpenter had gone with her daughter to the lawyers to find out what to do next.

Shannon had barely blinked in the past few days. She had refused to speak to Scott. He had tried talking to Hiram before we left. Hiram filled the air with a string of imprecations at his brother.

“It may have been self-defense,” Mrs. Carpenter told me over breakfast that morning. “That son of a bitch sure provoked her.” She was the only one in the family with whom Shannon had spoken in the last three days.

Shannon had not confessed any details to her. She was strong and athletic, and certainly had the strength to drag the sheriff around. A clandestine assignation, drugs or knockout drops in a drink, lots of forests and swamps around in which to do the deed. I suspected Hiram had helped herâif not in the killing, at least in the aftermath. Putting the body in our car had certainly been aimed deliberately to ruin one, or both, of us.

Scott had spoken to a few of his contacts in the press. After he recovered, Dennis would have a job far from Brinard. We'd stopped to see him each day and we promised
him a long exclusive on Scott's coming out.

One road had been opened out of town the night before. The water was receding slowly. We were headed directly for New York and appearances on news and talk shows.

Scott insisted we fly first-class so we wouldn't be bothered by tons of gawkers. After we took off, we settled down. I engrossed myself in
Dead Man's Island
by Carolyn Hart. I'd barely been able to get to sleep last night from reading it until Scott had finally ordered me to turn out the light. The book was so good it took my mind off the horrors of the past few days.

Now, Scott sat very quietly, hardly moving, mostly staring out the window. I looked up after twenty pages. Tears ran down his face. I pulled out my hanky.

“It's clean,” I said as I gave it to him. I put my hand on his arm.

He wiped his eyes.

He said, “I had a long talk with Nathan yesterday. I should have years ago. I should have gone home more. I should have made them accept me. I shouldn't have let it go so long.”

“What happened is not your fault.”

“I should have spent more time with them. I know most of my brothers and sisters have big hangups about you and me, but that shouldn't have stopped me from going home and bringing you with. They're my family. Wrongheaded as they might be, I love them.”

I held his hand for a long while. I saw his eyes begin to nod and close when suddenly he turned to me and asked, “I told you my fantasy as a kid. You didn't tell me yours. What was it?”

“When I was a kid, I dreamed of standing next to a professional baseball player. If he suddenly maybe wanted something, I'd run get it, and he'd be grateful, and he'd
thank me, and he'd talk to me, and he'd take me with him everywhere he went, and we'd be best friends. At the time it wasn't a sexual fantasy, just a kid's dream.”

He smiled and pulled me close and kissed me.

By Mark Richard Zubro

The “Tom and Scott” Mysteries

A Simple Suburban Murder
Why Isn't Becky Twitchell Dead?
The Only Good Priest
The Principal Cause of Death
An Echo of Death
Rust on the Razor

The “Paul Turner” Mysteries

Sorry Now?
Political Poison
Another Dead Teenager

Stonewall Inn Mysteries

Keith Kahla, General Editor

Sunday's Child
by Edward Phillips

Death Takes the Stage
by Donald Ward

Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Friend of Oscar Wilde
by Russell A. Brown

A Simple Suburban Murder
by Mark Richard Zubro

A Body to Dye For
by Grant Michaels

Why Isn't Becky Twitchell Dead?
by Mark Richard Zubro

Sorry Now?
by Mark Richard Zubro

Love You to Death
by Grant Michaels

Third Man
Out
by Richard Stevenson

The Night
G.A.A.
Died
by Jack Ricardo

Switching the Odds
by Phyllis Knight

Principal Cause of Death
by Mark Richard Zubro

Breach of Immunity
by Molly Hite

Political Poison
by Mark Richard Zubro

Brotherly Love
by Randye Lordon

Dead on Your Feet
by Grant Michaels

On the Other Hand, Death
by Richard Stevenson

Shattered Rhythms
by Phyllis Knight

Eclipse of the Heart
by Ronald Tierney

A Queer Kind of Love
by George Baxt

An Echo of Death
by Mark Richard Zubro

Ice Blues
by Richard Stevenson

Mask for a Diva
by Grant Michaels

Sister's Keeper
by Randye Lordon

Another Dead Teenager
by Mark Richard Zubro

Shock to the System
by Richard Stevenson

Let's Get Criminal
by Lev Raphael

Rust on the Razor
by Mark Richard Zubro

Time to Check Out
by Grant Michaels

RUST ON THE RAZOR. Copyright Â© 1996 by Mark Richard Zubro. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

eISBN 9781466804487

First eBook Edition : November 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zubro, Mark Richard.

Rust on the Razor : a Tom and Scott mystery / Mark

Richard Zubro

p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-15644-8

1. Carpenter, Scott (Fictitious character)âFiction. 2. Mason, Tom (Fictitious character)âFiction. 3. Baseball playersâIllinoisâChicagoâFiction. 4. Gay menâIllinoisâChicagoâFiction. 5. MurderâGeorgiaâFiction. I. Title.

PS3576.U225R87 1996

813'.54âdc20

96-4244

CIP

First Stonewall Inn Edition: July 1997

BOOK: Rust On the Razor

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