The Marquesa's Necklace (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1) (24 page)

I wished the house sat closer to the street. If I could time my kick to the passing of a large truck or a noisy car, maybe the noise would go unheard. Who was I kidding? I took a step away from the window, mentally measured the distance, and took a deep breath.

The gunshot covered the shattering of the glass. I crumbled to the floor amid the shards that had fallen inwards.

I moved each limb, testing for damage. If someone had been shot, it wasn’t me, so I crawled out of the glass debris, trying to protect my hands with the sleeves of my coat. With the rope still binding them and blocking me from pulling the sleeves all the way down, the glass slivers cut me more than once. My back to the wall, I peered out of the window, trying to find a sign of the shooter. The morning sun lit the side yard, but I didn’t find a shadow that didn’t belong. Maybe the sound had come from somewhere else.

I took the rope off my ankle. I could use it to help knock out the remaining glass from the window frame. Tension kept me warm, but I wished I had a blanket or something because I was worried about Eli getting cold. The faster I got help for him, the better.

Loud voices from downstairs stopped me in my tracks. Shouts of “Freeze!” and “Drop your weapons!” Amid the cacophony, I heard someone calling my name. No, two different voices called for both me and Eli.

I cracked open the bedroom door to see Mr. Almost-On-Time Stangel charging up the steps, gun in hand.

“Harmony,” he called, worry evident in his voice. “Hennessey. Are you here?”

I opened the door an inch more. “Stangel,” I hissed. “In here.”

He rushed down the hallway. For a big man, he moved faster than expected. He grabbed me and hugged me—Mr. Show-No-Emotion hugged me!—before noticing the blood on my hands and clothes.

He cursed as he grabbed my hands and examined them. “We need to get you to a doctor,” he said, his deep voice a growl.

“Don’t worry about me. It’s Eli that needs help.” He looked past me and cursed again when he noticed the unmoving figure on the floor.

We stood outside watching Eli being loaded into an ambulance while one of the paramedics wrapped my hands in gauze. I was flanked on one side by Mr. Stangel, and on the other by Freddie, cane and all. Half of the Oak Grove Police Department milled around the yard, and in and out of the house. Once the ambulance holding Eli pulled out of the driveway, sirens screaming, another pulled into its place. The second group of paramedics was in no great hurry as they wheeled their stretcher up to the house.

Junior, with his shoulder, chest and upper arm wrapped heavily with gauze, was escorted to the ambulance by two uniformed officers. I turned inquiring eyes towards Freddie. “Shot in the shoulder,” he said. “He pulled a gun on one of ours.” I grinned as they handcuffed the thug to the stretcher before loading him in the ambulance.

An older man, his hands already handcuffed behind his back, was the next one to be escorted out. “That’s Stephen Sallis. He’s been a big name in crime for a long time, but no one has ever been able to make a charge stick.” Freddie chuckled. “We may not be able to get him on anything huge, but he’ll be spending more than a few nights in custody. We think he’s the one behind all the attacks on you. Can’t imagine our judge will grant him bail.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before,” I said. “Can you make him say something for me? I want to hear his voice.”

Freddie raised one eyebrow, but didn’t question me. “Hey, Felton,” he called. “The lady wants him to say something.”

Officer Felton and his partner prodded the man my way, stopping about ten feet away. Close enough, in my opinion. Sallis and I stared each other down for a long moment. He broke first.

“You weren’t worth it,” he snarled, then spit on the ground. “Shoulda’ had you wiped out a long time ago.”

“Not what I wanted to hear,” I answered. My eyes didn’t leave his face. “But it will do. It’s not the voice I expected,” I said turning to Freddie. “Where’s the other one?”

He waited to answer until Sallis, screaming about how his lawyers would sue the city into oblivion, had been pushed into a police car and the door closed. “There were only two, Harmony.”

I shook my head vigorously. “No. There’s another one. I didn’t see his face, but I’d know the voice.”

About that time I saw a man in street clothes come around from the back yard. Freddie saw him too. “Hey Bill, come here a minute.”

I thought he looked familiar. Of course, I called him Officer Clearmont. He seemed reluctant and took his time making his way towards us.

“The house has been thoroughly searched, hasn’t it?” Freddie asked.

Clearmont hesitated before answering. “Yes. We looked everywhere. No more bad guys.”

The back of my neck prickled. “Did you check the attic?” I asked. He was close, too close, but my bodyguard stood beside me.

“Not sure. I’ll check with Sergeant.”

“Never mind.” I gulped. “This is the third man, Freddie. I recognize the voice.”

Chapter Thirty-One

I waited for Freddie to call me crazy, or at least tell me I was mistaken. He didn’t have a chance.

The next thing I knew Freddie was in a pile on the ground. An arm squeezed around my neck, and the barrel of a gun was poking into my back. “You don’t know when to keep your trap shut, do you?” Clearmont snarled in my ear. “But now you’re my ticket out of here.”

Mr. Stangel looked like he was about ready to explode. When our eyes met, I read the despair in his. He was helpless to stop Clearmont, and he knew it. And once Clearmont got out of town, and my usefulness as a hostage was over, I was dead. Only one person could save me. Me. Harmony Duprie.

Clearmont roughly shoved me towards the driveway and I pretended to fall. But I caught myself, and whipped my head back. Clearmont and I were about the same height, so my head hit his nose.

The hand holding the gun involuntarily jerked to his face. Ignoring the major headache the move graced me with, I took the opportunity to grab the arm around my neck and fall forward for real, dragging him with me. As I hoped, the gun went flying when we hit the ground. I rolled over, putting me on top, and then scrambled to stand.

Bless his heart, Mr. Stangel was Mr. Johnny-On-The-Spot. He had his revolver trained on Clearmont before I jumped away. He kicked the crooked cop’s legs wide apart. “Put your hands behind your head,” he ordered. Just like a TV show.

By now every cop still hanging around had rushed over, their guns out and aimed at Clearmont. Freddie, with the help of Officer Felton, struggled to his feet. I wondered if he had re-injured his ribs. Sarah would kill me.

“I thought you were imagining things,” Freddie said, frowning, as one of the policeman cuffed Clearmont. “I suspected someone was leaking information to the bad guys, but I didn’t expect it to be Bill.” He shook his head and sighed as we watched a handcuffed Clearmont being loaded into a police car. “We’re going to have to ship these guys off to Pittsburgh. Oak Grove doesn’t have the facilities to hold this many high-profile suspects.”

Officer Felton coughed. “Don’t worry, the feds will be glad to assist.” He put away his gun, pulled out his wallet, and retrieved a card he handed to Freddie. “Agent Marcus Felton, FBI.”

After a quick visit to the ER to have my cuts looked at—no stitches needed, only cleaning and bandaging—we ended up in conference room at the police station. It barely contained all of us. Well, all of us but Eli. He was in the hospital, conscious off and on, and he would be there for several days. The docs wouldn’t let him have visitors yet, but they said he’d be okay, and not to worry. Yeah, right.

Outside, Oak Grove enjoyed a pre-Thanksgiving cold snap, but inside, the room was stifling from the warmth of all the bodies. The Chief of Police sat at one end of the table, with Officer—excuse me—
Agent
Felton seated right beside him. I don’t know how we all missed the signs that he was a Fed. Freddie came next and then Officer Smith. I sat on the other end, with Mr. Stangel beside me. Other men, including a couple more FBI guys up from Pittsburgh, stood around, leaning against the walls. I wondered if anyone was left to chase down the reports of backfires and kids skateboarding in front of the stores downtown. I started calling them by numbers in my head, because I hadn’t caught all the names.

The chief asked the questions, but I did most of the talking. Since he’d assured me I wasn’t facing any charges, I held nothing back. Well, almost nothing. I didn’t tell him about the string of thefts we’d tied to Jake’s travels.

“We’ve had our eyes on Hennessey for quite a while,” Agent Felton explained when I finished reciting my story.

So much for trying to protect him.

“But we couldn’t get enough evidence to bring him in. So when he started to spend time with you, Miss Duprie, naturally we assumed you were in on his schemes.”

Mr. Teddy-Bear-In-Wolf’s-Clothing beside me growled softly, and I stopped fiddling with the gauze wrapped around my wrists long enough to pat his knee.

Agent Felton cleared his throat. “Even after the jury cleared you, we had our doubts. That’s when we came up with the scheme of having me join the force here, with the Chief’s knowledge, of course. Gave me a good way to keep my eye on you.”

“So the FBI was behind the break-in and George being blown up?” I asked.

“George?”

“My old car.”

“I remember,” he grinned. “You named your car.”

Why do people find it so funny that I name everything?

His grin disappeared in a second. “We didn’t have anything to do with either of those,” he said. “Or of any of the other things that happened to you. And it wasn’t us following you in D.C.” His face turned a little red. “Well, that’s not exactly true. We did track you during your visit, but it was Sallis’ people you caught following you.”

Leaning back in his chair, Agent Felton continued, “I started to believe you were clean when your apartment was trashed. That’s the same time I started to suspect someone on the local force was working with Sallis. For a while I suspected Detective Thomason, but when he got run off the road I changed my mind.”

I snuck a quick glance at Freddie. His mouth was set in a tight line, but he kept it closed.

“I still can’t figure out where Elijah Hennessey fits into all of this,” the FBI man said. “He’s got DoD security clearance, so I can’t imagine him being involved.”

Why would Eli need Department of Defense clearance? “He’s doing this as a favor to his cousin.” No amount of dreaming on my part would change that. “Jake asked him to check up on me.”

Agent Felton didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t argue with me. “It’s a good thing he did. If Hennessey hadn’t put the tracking app on your phone, you might be dead now.”

I shivered. I’d come too close to dying too many times.

“If you have any idea where that necklace is, Miss Duprie,” Felton said. “Now’s the time to tell us. We can make sure any charges are minimal based on your cooperation in recovering it.”

I sat in stunned silence for a moment and then shoved my chair back and abruptly stood. I would never forgive Jake for putting me in this spot. “No necklace is worth what I’ve gone through, Agent Felton. I really hope you find it. I don’t want it.” With Mr. Stangel on my heels, I stormed out of the room.

Hospital policy wouldn’t allow me to stay in Eli’s room, so I sat in the waiting room with Mr. Stangel—Bob. I told Bob that since the danger to me was over, he might as well go home, but he wouldn’t leave. He felt as guilty as I did that Eli had gotten hurt.

After all, he’d woken up when Eli left the hotel. But his job was to guard me, not Eli. When he got to my place to bring me the paper, and realized I was gone, he figured we were together. When he couldn’t reach either me or Eli on our cell phones, he started to worry and called Freddie, who got the rest of the police involved.

After getting checked out in the ER and released, Freddie stopped by. Yeah, the chief heard him complaining about his ribs hurting, and made him see a doctor. The doc said there was no new damage, but he would need to take it easy for a few days because he aggravated the old injuries. It upset Freddie that Felton still thought I was involved in the jewelry heist somehow. None of the local cops believed it anymore. At least that’s what Freddie said.

The good part was, now that Felton’s cover had been blown, he’d be leaving town. That would leave Oak Grove down two cops, but I suspected the crime rate would go down too. After all, with any luck, I shouldn’t be creating any new cases for them.

I got to see Eli later. He woke up and asked for me sometime in the middle of the afternoon. He wouldn’t believe I was okay when he saw my hands and wrists wrapped in gauze. To prove to him the cuts were minor, I finally had to unwrap one.

I didn’t get to stay with him very long because the cops wanted to interview him, and didn’t want me there. Something about making sure our memories were untainted when it came time for the trials. Warned us not to talk about it later on. However, I did hear through an unnamed source—cough, Freddie—that Eli didn’t remember much. Sometimes the Oak Grove grapevine worked against you, sometimes it worked for you. And sometimes it helped to have friends in the right places.

Like when I went back to visit Eli after supper. He was sleeping again, so the nurse on duty wouldn’t let me go sit in his room. I wasn’t family, after all. But somehow, a solitary red rose ended up in a vase by his bedside.