A Rendezvous to Die For (31 page)

Chapter
27

Wednesday—Week
Four

Jack’s warning was too late.
When Steve returned his call, it was to report bad news. The
Wisconsin authorities had already answered a neighbor’s 911 call on
a similar matter. Virgil’s house was fully engulfed in flames by
the time they got there. Although a vehicle was in the garage
unharmed by the fire, when they extinguished the raging house fire,
they discovered the badly burned body of an adult male in the ashes.

“
That poor man,” I said when
Jack delivered the news.

“
Steve told the police we may
have a lead for them, if they determine the fire was caused by arson.
Of course, we have no proof it was Strothers. He may simply have been
on his way back to Chicago. He’d probably take the highway that
skirts Madison.”

“
Strothers is too slippery,”
I said. “He’ll have an airtight alibi. If only we had tipped off
the authorities sooner, maybe Virgil would still be alive.”

“
Don’t beat yourself up over
it, Cass. It’s not your fault. It’s for the Wisconsin police to
solve.”

“
But, if they—”

“
We were simply too late, Cass.
I regret it, but we tried.”

My
heart was not in my work the rest of the day. I stumbled through my
appointments, trying not to think of how one more life had ended in
tragedy, most likely at the hands of Guy Strothers, who didn’t want
a repeat of the Chicago property fiasco in his Colton Mills dealings.
Marty stopped me later that day as I was driving into my garage. He,
too, had heard about the Wisconsin fire.

“
I seem to remember your saying
there was a connection between that man Virgil Dewitt and Strothers,”
he said, frowning. “Was this fire good news or bad news?”

“
Bad news for Virgil and
possibly bad news for me, too,” I said. “I think Strothers was so
focused on getting to Virgil, he didn’t have time to bother me in
the past couple days. But now that he’s dispatched Virgil, it’s
only a matter of time before I hear from him again. Deputy Shaw
hasn’t forgotten me either. This isn’t Wisconsin, Marty. This is
Minnesota and he’s got three murders of his own to solve. I found
all three bodies. Strothers or no Strothers, Cassandra Cassidy is his
prime suspect.”

“
I’m still on that list,
dear. Deputy Shaw is coming to pay me a visit tomorrow. He knows more
than he’s letting on. It was Abraham Lincoln who said, ‘
You
can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all
the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.’”

Over and over again, I pondered those words, until I finally drifted
off to sleep around two o’clock in the morning. I also wondered
what would become of Midnight. Would some unknown relative claim
ownership of him? Maybe I should get a dog. A dog was man’s best
friend. I needed a good friend.

Chapter
28

Thursday—Week
Four

It was Thursday already. I placed
an X over the past two dates on my wall calendar and thought about
all that had occurred in Colton Mills during the month of June. Since
I had no reason to drive into town, I brewed my own coffee. While
sipping it at the counter, I reached into the basket where I’d
deposited the contents of my pockets after visiting Kathleen’s
apartment. I pulled out the picture I’d taken from her bedroom. A
young woman, comfortable with the camera, gazed confidently into it.
“You must be Kathleen,” I said to the picture.

But I wouldn’t know for sure if
it were Kathleen until I saw the picture at Shannon’s wedding,
still two weeks away. Yielding to a perverse need to tie up loose
ends, I tried to think of how I could find another photo of her. The
Internet. School yearbooks. Drive out to Shannon’s house. The
library. The library article! I had completely forgotten the clipping
about Kathleen’s accident I had copied at the library before
meeting with Stacy! Perhaps a photo accompanied it.

I pulled off my Levi’s from a
hook in my closet where I had hung them. The article was in the back
pocket. I unfolded it and brought it back to the kitchen. Just as I
had hoped, the picture of a young woman was a dead ringer for the one
in the frame in front of me.

I poured myself a second cup of
coffee, feeling relieved. Now I could put that mystery to rest.
Virgil, grieving for his daughter, had kept the apartment and visited
it each month to maintain his connection with Kathleen. Now the
apartment was vacant, and Virgil was lying in the ashes of his home
in Wisconsin.

I idly scanned the rest of the
article as I sipped my coffee. It was a familiar story of too much
speed on a too-slippery road, the driver losing control, and the
passenger getting the worst of the accident. In the next paragraph, a
name jumped out at me so unexpectedly, I spilt coffee across the
counter. “The driver of the vehicle, Eric Hartfield, escaped with
only minor injuries.”

Eric Hartfield!
There was
more. According to the article, the accident was compounded by a
series of errors, causing enough delay to prevent Kathleen’s swift
transport to the hospital. The dispatcher had sent the ambulance
driver in the wrong direction. The ambulance driver had taken too
long to call for a helicopter evacuation. Then the helicopter pilot
was late in arriving. The article quoted the dispatcher: “We did
the best we could, but our best wasn’t good enough to save her.”
The dispatcher’s name was Jim Tuttle.

So many terrible thoughts crowded
my mind, I had difficulty separating them into something that made
sense. I was willing to bet Randy Pearce was the ambulance driver and
Marty the helicopter pilot. Before I could change my mind, I punched
in Jack’s number and got his voice mail. “Jack, I need to know if
Randy was the ambulance driver for the accident that killed Kathleen
Dewitt last year. It’s important.”

Then I punched in Marty’s
number. Busy. I tried again. Still busy. I ran down the stairs and
across the yard to his house, ignoring the sound of my ringing cell
phone. The caller would leave a message. Marty’s vehicle was in the
driveway. Not surprisingly, he didn’t respond to a knock on the
door, so I headed around the house to the back yard. Dashing down the
sidewalk, while ignoring the increasing pain in my ankle, I called
out to him as soon as I spotted him. He was standing near the table
where he always placed his tomahawks before throwing them. “Marty!
Marty!
I have to talk to you!” I shouted, while sprinting
toward him.

“
Go back!
Go
back!”
he shouted at
me.

I was already halfway across the
yard. “Marty, I have to ask you something important.” At that
moment, I saw a movement under the house’s second-floor balcony
from the corner of my eye. Willis Lansing stepped out of the shadows.
He held two black powder pistols. Both were pointed at me!

“
Cassandra, dear, you certainly
have a nose for trouble. Now I shall have to deal with you, too ”
He motioned with the pistols for me to move closer to Marty.

“
What’s going on?” I asked.
“Is this one of your reenactments?”

He laughed. “Your coming here
is a most unfortunate happenstance. I have grown quite fond of you.”

I cast a quick glance at Marty.
His face was white under his beard. I turned to face Willis again.
“Unfortunate? This . . . this isn’t a reenactment for another
Rendezvous, is it? This isn’t an . . . an act.”

“
You are an unusually bright
young woman, Cassandra. Now I have no choice. There must be two
victims to an accident.”

“
What do you mean . . .
accident? What accident?” My head swiveled back and forth between
Willis and Marty. Marty seemed incapable of speaking. I turned my
questioning eyes to Willis.

“
Before
you dropped in, Marty and I were having an interesting discussion.”
He smiled at his friend. “Tell Cassandra the nature of our
discussion, Marty.”

I turned to Marty, but he didn’t
respond. His eyes seemed to be apologizing to me.

“
Come, come, Madigan. Tell this
young lady what we were talking about.” Willis waved one of the
pistols at him. “It would be most upsetting, if I have to discharge
this weapon before I am ready.”

Marty didn’t move a muscle. His
eyes never left Willis as he spoke to me. “He says his real name is
Virgil Dewitt and not Willis Lansing, Cassandra. His daughter
Kathleen was killed in a car accident last year. It appears he blames
the driver of the car and the emergency crew for her death. He’s
set on revenge.”

“
But, Virgil is . . .” My
mind was spinning. “I . . . I thought Virgil DeWitt was killed in a
house fire on Tuesday. The police found his body.” I turned to face
Willis. “It was his . . . your house . . . in Wisconsin,” I
stammered.

He laughed, the sound harsh and
hideous to hear. “As you can see, my dear, I am very much alive.
The body they found among the ashes was the body of a nemesis of
mine.”

“
Strothers!”
I gasped, finally understanding.

“
Ah, yes,” Virgil said,
poker-faced and showing no signs of remorse. “I anticipated the
arrival of Guy Strothers and met him with a welcoming party he did
not expect. I torched the house and drove away in his vehicle.
Fortunately, the police believe I was the ill-fated victim of the
fire.” His voice was cold and I started to shiver uncontrollably. I
had never met a serial killer face to face before. Is this what
happens to a person who loses a loved one?

“
How much of this did you know
about?” Marty spoke to me, but his eyes never left Willis.
Virgil.
I was so confused.

“
Part of it,” I said, staring
directly at the pistol pointed at me. “Did . . . did he kill Eric
and try to pin his murder on you by using your tomahawk?”

“
I applaud your detection
skills, Cassandra,” Virgil said. “Too bad you will not have the
opportunity to share your findings with law enforcement.”

Law enforcement.
Marty had
said Deputy Shaw was coming to his house today. A glimmer of hope
stirred inside. Maybe, if I could keep Virgil talking, we would have
a chance to . . . .

Virgil was about ten feet from
us. Neither Marty nor I would be able to reach him in time to relieve
him of his pistols. “You were the man in the parking lot
photograph, weren’t you?”

“
Indeed, I was. Thank you for
tipping me off about its existence. It prompted me to speed up my
plans.”

“
And Kathleen’s apartment?”
I continued, trying to stave off the inevitable. “Were you paying
the rent in cash every month and visiting here?”

His frowned. “How you managed
to put these pieces together, I don’t know. But yes, you have
figured out most of it.”

“
What are you going to do now?”
I wanted to wrap my arms around Marty and weep for those who had lost
their lives because of Virgil DeWitt’s sorrow, but I stood frozen
in place.

DeWitt took a step forward. “You
and Marty are two remaining loose ends. You will walk toward the
target and be killed when Marty accidentally discharges his
black-powder pistol, Cassandra. Overcome by what he has done, he will
turn the second weapon on himself.” As if he could read my
thoughts, he waved the pistols at us. “But before you go, please
secure Marty for me. I don’t trust him.” He threw me a set of
handcuffs and a roll of duct tape from a patio table next to him.

I cuffed Marty’s hands to the
arm of a cast-iron patio chair and covered his mouth with duct tape.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. “I should have figured this out
sooner.” I desperately tried to think of a way to stop Virgil. He
only had two shots. One from each weapon. The possibility remained
that I could somehow distract him—at least long enough for the
deputy to arrive. But how?

Virgil continued his diatribe.
“Once I have dispatched the two of you, I will take care of the
other interloper.” He gestured with his head toward a chair in the
shadows of the patio roof.

Dear God! It was Deputy Shaw! He
was bound hand and foot and duct tape was plastered across his mouth,
too. My heart sank and acid rose in my throat. I had been counting on
Shaw to rescue us. Now, with those hopes dashed, I steeled myself for
what was to come, closing my eyes and breathing a prayer for help. I
wanted to leave this earth standing tall and being the brave young
women Mrs. A had loved.

Virgil was ready to begin his
last murder spree. “Now,” he said. “Walk slowly toward the
target, Cassandra, and don’t try any tricks. I’m not in the
mood.”

I took one last look at Marty and
turned away to head for the target. My feet felt like lead. My ankle
chose this moment to shoot sharp reminders of my past indiscretions.
With only one shot, Virgil couldn’t afford to miss. I already knew
he was an ace shooter. A million thoughts raced through my memories.
Mrs. A would be furious at me for putting myself in this predicament.
All her training had been for naught. Would he shoot me in the back?
On impulse, I whirled around and faced him. He had one of the pistols
aimed directly at me.

Suddenly, a figure emerged on the
balcony behind him.