A Treasure to Die For (14 page)

Margot and her son, Jonathan, were already at the hospital waiting room when I arrived. I had called Margot right after the ambulance left, and then rushed down the mountain leaving Fred home alone. They couldn’t  have beat me there by more than a few minutes, for I saw a young Hispanic man get up and offer his chair to Margot when I walked in. All the others were taken.

“Hello, Margot,” I said after walking over to her. Then I turned to Jonathan, but before I could do more than nod my head, Margot spoke.

“I suppose we should thank you for saving Bonnie’s life.” Her makeup was smeared from wiping her eyes with the handkerchief she had in her hand.

“Thank the 911 operator. She told me how to give Bonnie CPR until the ambulance arrived. It’s what kept her alive until the paramedics took over.”

Jonathan looked up from the cell phone he had been texting with, despite the signs asking visitors to turn off their electronic devices. “We wouldn’t have to thank anyone if you hadn’t gotten her so upset. What kind of neighbor are you? Walking in here like everything is fine and dandy. You didn’t even ask how she’s doing.”

My first instinct was to tell him where he could put his cell phone, but I didn’t want to make any more of a scene than necessary. Evidently, we had become better entertainment than the magazines that people near us were reading. They didn’t even bother to pretend they weren’t listening.

“I asked at the desk. They said she’s going to be okay.”

“Why wouldn’t you let me get my lawyer involved instead of making her face the police by herself?” Margot asked. “She’s nearly seventy years old, my God. I’m surprised she didn’t die during the interrogation.”

I felt a rage building inside of me that counting to a hundred wouldn’t quell. They had just accused me of giving Bonnie a heart attack. Now I knew why Cain had killed his brother. But when I looked down to tell Margot off, I couldn’t. After she had wiped off her smudged make-up, she looked just like Bonnie. The only difference between the twins was their hair color.

“I’m sorry, Margot. I had no idea she had a heart condition.”

Her eyes darted from me to someone at the receptionist’s desk. She was so obvious that both Jonathan and I turned to look. A uniformed police officer had been talking to the receptionist and turned to look our way at the same time we had turned to look in his direction. Jonathan quickly looked away.

The officer left the desk and made his way over to us through the crowd. “Mrs. Scott?”

Margot looked horrified. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Scott, I need to ask you a couple questions about your sister. Would you mind following me to the hospital’s security office? It’s just down the hall.” Now we had the attention of every person in the room, and no one pretended to read their magazines anymore.

Margot got up slowly and turned to her son. “Jon, you better go with me.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I need to speak to you alone.”

It was all he needed to say. Suddenly, the color was back in her face and the old Margot was back. “It’s either my son or my lawyer. I’ll let you choose.”

“Uh, well I guess it will be okay.”

She turned to me. “Come and get me if you hear anything before this keystone cop is finished, will you, Jake?” She said it so nicely that no one would have guessed she had just chewed me up and spit me out. “I’ll leave word at the desk to get you if the doctors come out before I get back.” Her face exposed her joy of being in charge again; she had that smug smile that set her apart from her sister.

***

Margot and Jon weren’t gone five minutes before a nurse came looking for me. “Mr. Martin?” I could tell without asking that it was good news. I spent enough time in hospitals last year when Julie was dying to be able to read a nurse’s face.

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Jones would like to see you.”

***

I had expected to see tubes sticking out of Bonnie’s head like a mythological hydra. All she had were a few wires leading from something in her gown pocket to the inside of the gown. She wasn’t even hooked up to an IV.

“How you doing, Bon Bon?” I asked with a forced smile. “Fred said to say hi, and wants to know when you’ll be home to feed him your leftovers.”

She wanted to answer, but her tears wouldn’t let her. I cautiously reached out for her hand to hold it, and waited for the tears to stop.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” Margot had thrown open the curtain that separated Bonnie from the other ER patients, and she was furious.

“I told you to come and get me! Haven’t you done enough damage for one day?”

The policeman from the waiting room was standing behind her, so I didn’t bother to tell her off. Instead, I turned back to Bonnie without answering. “I better be going, kid. Freddie will be happy to hear you’re doing so well.”

I gave Bonnie’s hand a little squeeze and stood up to face her sister. “Please call me with her room number when they move her, Margot. I’d like to send some flowers to cheer her up.”

“Like hell I will! Get out of here before I have you arrested.”

***

Jonathan didn’t see me when I walked past the waiting room. His thumbs were working the virtual keyboard of his cell phone and it took all his attention. I wanted to ask him what the police had to say, but didn’t need another confrontation so I kept on going.

***

I tried to call Bonnie the minute Fred woke me, but had to wait. Margot had left instructions at the switchboard not to put me through, or give me Bonnie’s room number. If she didn’t call me soon, I would call back pretending to be Jonathan.

Fred didn’t seem to mind that my scrambled eggs were no match for Bonnie’s. He scarfed them down, his and mine, even though they were burned beyond recognition, and wanted back out before I could finish my first cup of coffee.

I checked the time on my cell phone while watching Fred sniff ground he had smelled a thousand times. It was too soon to impersonate Jonathan, so I decided to sit out on my back deck with my notebook and do some work. No sooner had I sat down than I saw a car on the lower part of the road.

With only four other houses on Columbine Circle, I rarely see any traffic, so it’s always a good excuse to stop writing whenever a car drives by. However, this time I didn’t recognize the car that pulled into Bonnie’s drive. Fred must have heard it too, and was now barking to be let back in. I ignored Fred and waited to see who got out of the car.

Bonnie’s house was just too far away to make out the driver, other than it was a woman. The same was true for the car. I could see it was a dark blue, or black, late-model crossover, but that’s all I recognized. Ever since someone got the great idea to mate an SUV with a mini-van, I haven’t been able to tell one from another. I lost sight of it after she parked in the driveway, but saw her again when she started up Bonnie’s front stairs. Unless it was a guy in drag, there was no doubt that the driver was a woman. She was short with gray hair and wasn’t more than a couple feet taller than the stair railing.

She disappeared again when she reached the deck and headed for Bonnie’s front door. Usually, it is possible to hear people talk on the lower road, so listening for Bonnie’s bell, or a knock on the door wasn’t out of the question. Fred ruined that for me with his insistent barking to come in.

I gave up trying to listen and went to let Fred in. He looked at me, barked, and ran down the stairs when I opened the door. “It’s not Bonnie, Freddie, but let me put on some shoes and we’ll go down there and see who it is.” He seemed to understand, and sat without another bark.

We should have gone straight down the path between the two houses, as it was the shortest and quickest route, but I didn’t want to be seen trespassing in case the woman had been sent there by Margot. I would have to stay on the road and take the long way down to her house. All I got for being so cautious was a glimpse of the woman’s car in a cloud of dust when we finally made it to the lower road.

Fred and I continued on the road until we reached Bonnie’s house. He ran up her stairs to the front door, so I followed. I checked the lock and peeked in the windows while he paced back and forth sniffing for odors undetectable to the human nose. The door and windows were secure and nothing I could see through the windows seemed to be out of place. We left taking the shortcut up the hill to call Bonnie. That’s when I found out why the Lakewood cop had wanted to talk to Margot.

Beethoven was playing on my cell when Fred and I made it back to my cabin. Bonnie had left several messages for me to call her back. I punched in the hospital’s number after listening to the first message and heard the urgency in her voice.

“Jake! Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get you all morning,” she said when she heard my voice.

“I’m sorry, Bon. Fred and I went on a walk around the circle. You know what lousy reception we get up here. I didn’t get your calls.” I neglected to tell her why we went on the walk. “How are you doing? I wanted to check earlier but figured you needed your rest.”

“Don’t worry about this old broad. It’ll take more than a little heart attack to keep me down.”

“So it
was
a heart attack?”

“So they say. They also say you saved my life. I don’t know how…”

Her voice broke up, and I thought I heard a muffled sob. “Bon, are you sure you’re okay?”

I waited what seemed like minutes for her to come back on the line. In reality, it was only a few seconds, but if I were a nail biter, my fingers would have been bleeding.

“Oh, Jake, I hate to ask you this after you’ve done so much for me, but I think they’re going to arrest me.”

“Is that why the cop was there? To arrest you?”

“No. He wanted to know if I had a personalized manicure kit. I need you to get the kit from my bedroom and put it someplace where it can’t be found.”

“Did he mention your initials on the file?”

“No, but I’ll tell you, Jake, I came this close to confessing.”

I could imagine her holding her thumb and index finger to the phone. “Well, don’t you worry, that kit is as good as gone once I get back inside. Do you still hide your key under the flowerpot on the porch where every burglar would look? I locked up after the paramedics left.”

I thought I heard a stifled laugh. “Yes, silly. Can you…”

“That’s not Jake, I hope.” It was Margot’s unmistakable voice.

“I’ve got to go now, Patty. Thanks for calling,” Bonnie said before the line went dead.

***

Fred and I went back down to Bonnie’s the minute she hung up. It was reasonable to assume the police might get a warrant to search her house for the manicure kit, so I needed to get it before they did. We were down the path and up her stairs in record time. Fred must have thought I wanted to play, for he hadn’t seen me run so fast since he was a puppy. He nipped at my heels on the way down, nearly tripping me. He was the first one up the stairs, and I expected him to continue the game he liked to play of pretending he was a fierce guard dog and growl at me when I would come up our stairs, but this time he lost interest in the game and was sniffing the flower pot. I tensed up when I saw the circular stain where the pot had been. Someone had moved it.

I tried in vain to remember if I had seen the stain earlier. Was it the old lady who moved it? I peeked through the beveled glass window of the door in case she had brought someone with her I hadn’t seen; someone she dropped off to do the dirty work, while she drove away to divert suspicion. My heart was beating so fast that I was sure whoever might be in there could hear it.

Then Fred, who had lost interest in the flower pot’s new location, turned and barked. The bark was short and to the point, not his repetitive alarm bark, but his, “What’s up?” bark.

I held a single finger to my lips, telling him to be quiet, and went back to checking for the intruder. The beveled glass made it too blurry to see inside, so I slowly crept over to the next window. I saw nothing unusual, and no movement inside, so I went over to the flower pot. I half expected the key to be missing, but it was there when I looked under the pot. Perhaps it was one of the paramedics who had moved it, and my paranoia had gotten the better of me.

“Stay out here, Freddie, and warn me if anyone shows up,” I said, turning the key in the lower lock; the one I had set from inside before closing the door after they took Bonnie away. But the door still wouldn’t open. Someone had used the key to lock the deadbolt. It could only mean that the old lady had moved the pot, used the key to gain entry, and locked everything after she left. Which also meant, she had to know the key was there in the first place.

Once inside, I went to Bonnie’s bedroom where she said I would find the manicure kit in her top vanity drawer, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. She had one of those old vanities you see on late-night television shows from the thirties. It was complete with a round mirror and little padded stool. I quickly looked in the mirror to see if I was being watched. That, too, was something I’d seen in one of those black and white movies.

Relieved, but disappointed the trick didn’t work when the only apparition I saw was myself, I opened the top drawer. Bonnie’s kit was there, exactly where she said it would be. I opened it half expecting to see her nail file, or what was left of it. In the back of my mind I imagined the old, gray haired lady had planted the broken handle where the police could find it.

I took the kit and checked the rest of the house looking for the file in case Gray Hair put it somewhere else. I looked in the dresser drawers, the bathroom, and even under the bed, but found nothing. If it was here, she did a great job of hiding it.

My next stop was the kitchen, where I knew Bonnie kept a box of doggie treats for Fred. I didn’t think she would miss one or two. I was ready to leave with Fred’s biscuits when I saw a copy of
Tom Sawyer
on the table. That was weird, for Bonnie never mentioned having a copy. It had to have been put there by the intruder, and the only reason I could think of was that I had been right about someone trying to frame Bonnie. I stuffed the book in the plastic bag with the manicure kit, and was about to leave when I noticed the sink cabinet was slightly ajar.

Bonnie always chided me about leaving cabinet doors open, so it struck me as odd that she would do it herself. I went over to close it, and discovered it was the trash can she kept there that was keeping the door open. I looked inside and saw a blood-soaked, paper towel. Inside the towel was the broken, glass handle from Bonnie’s nail file. Even without the benefit of six years of college, I knew it was hers, because her name was printed on the protective sleeve.

***

Fred was waiting quietly when I came back out. To my surprise, it looked like he was obeying orders and sitting where he could see anyone coming up the road. “Good, boy,” I told him, and gave him one of Bonnie’s treats.

It was gone in a millisecond and he looked up at me begging for more. He ate the second one even faster, but instead of asking for another, he turned toward the road and cocked his head to the side. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could see a big cloud of dust down toward Upper Bear Creek Road. Someone was headed our way. I didn’t have to guess who. If the book had been left to frame Bonnie, it would be the cops with a search warrant.

We made it back to our cabin in time to see two sheriff’s SUVs pull into Bonnie’s drive.

***

My first instinct was to hide the evidence in my cabin, but the devil’s advocate inside my head whispered that my place was probably next on the sheriff’s search list. Fred and I could try to make our escape in my Jeep, but the voice in my head said I’d be caught before I got off our road. Fred solved my dilemma by running toward the trail leading up our little mountain. The hill behind my cabin was part of the Denver Parks system. Technically, it was out of the jurisdiction of Jefferson County, though, I had a feeling that wouldn’t stop them from coming after us no matter who owned the property. There were over five thousand acres up there, so I was sure to find someplace to hide the manicure kit and book where the cops couldn’t find them, assuming they didn’t bring out the bloodhounds.

Fred was halfway on his way to the top of the hill when I caught up with him. Any other time I would have never caught up to him but he had stopped to sniff out something. When I got closer, I saw a dark hole under a rock ledge. Fred had found some critter’s den. I was afraid he would run into it and wake a sleeping bear or mountain lion. I wanted to call him back, but didn’t want to chance being heard by the deputies below. Sounds up here could travel for miles.

I walked over to Fred and whispered, “That’s not a good place to hide the bag, old boy. The owner of that den might eat it for breakfast.”

My fears were allayed when he didn’t go into the den, and ran over to a rock pile several feet away. He looked at the rocks then looked back at me and barked. “Shh, Freddie,” I whispered.

He barked again, so I rushed over to see what was so important before he did it again. He’d already started digging by the time I reached him. At first I thought he’d found another creature. I wasn’t worried about snakes because I’d never come across one in the twenty years I lived up here. And I knew it couldn’t be a large animal, so I assumed it was a marmot or chipmunk. It was neither. There was no hole, just a pile of rocks. Then it hit me. He had found the perfect hiding place. I could bury the plastic bag under the pile of rocks. Any bloodhounds should be distracted by what was hiding in the larger den. I looked at Fred in amazement. He sat there with a huge grin on his face. His dumb human finally caught on, or so I thought. Maybe I was imagining things; no dog is that smart.

***

The cops were gone by the time we’d finished hiding the evidence, and returned to my cabin. My fear that I was next to be searched turned out to be unfounded. The cops were nowhere in sight, so Fred and I went down to see if they had gone into Bonnie’s house.

The flowerpot didn’t look like it had been moved, for it was still covering the stain on her deck. Then I noticed a latch and padlock on the door. On closer examination, I saw where they had forced the door open, making it impossible to lock securely. At least they had the decency to jury rig a lock so no one could simply walk in. The key under the flowerpot would be of no help now, so all I could do was peek through the windows to confirm what I already knew. They had gone through her kitchen cabinets, and moved the living room furniture. I couldn’t see into the bedroom, but could imagine the mattress on the floor, and all of her dresser drawers open. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that someone was trying to frame Bonnie by planting the copy of
Tom Sawyer
. I had a feeling once I checked into it, I’d find it belonged to Shelia.

***

I sneaked into Bonnie’s hospital room early Saturday morning, and told her about the sheriff searching her home.

“Someone is trying to frame me?” she asked. I had guessed correctly that Margot would not be up this early, though, I didn’t count on the head nurse at the nurses’ station telling me to come back at visiting hours. I had pretended to leave, then came back from the hall on the other side of Bonnie’s room, bypassing the nurses.

I held my finger to my lips in the universal sign to be quiet when she had asked the question too loudly. “It’s the only logical explanation,” I whispered. “Why else would they put the two things in your house that can tie you to Shelia’s murder and then call the cops telling them where to find the evidence?”

“That sounds like my nail file, but are you sure it’s her book?”

“She wrote ‘Property of Shelia Clancy’ on the inside cover.”

Bonnie squirmed in an attempt to get comfortable and knocked a pillow on the floor. “Clancy? Oh, that must have been her maiden name. I wonder who’s doing it. It can’t be the kids or Appleton. They’re all dead.”

There was an extra pillow on the empty bed next to her, so I took it, and the one on the floor, and put them behind her head. “I’m pretty sure I know who the gray haired lady is, and you’re not going to like it,” I said once she’d settled back down.

“Oh, and who would that be?”

“I think you already know.”

Bonnie reached for her water bottle and took a sip from the straw. “No, Jake, it’s not Patty, if that’s what you’re thinking. She was with me the night Shelia was killed.”

“I didn’t say she killed anyone. I still think Craig did those dirty deeds. But she fits the description perfectly of the person who broke into your house to frame you.”

She put the bottle back on the bedside table before answering. “It’s not her, Jake.”

I took a deep breath and held it for a minute. “Okay, Bon Bon, I really don’t care anymore. I just need to get Julie’s book and ring from whoever took them.”

“What about Shelia’s book? You’re not going to leave it out in the weather are you?”

“It’s wrapped up in the best plastic money can buy. I buried it in a grocery bag. Those bags are supposed to last a thousand years in the landfill, so it should be okay for a few days. I’ll get it when I’m sure the cops aren’t coming back.”

I expected her to mention the nail file, too, but she caught me completely off guard. “I need you to do me a couple big favors, Jake.”

“The last time you asked that I committed a crime hiding state’s evidence. What kind of felony do you want me to commit this time?”

It was good to see her color had returned along with her smile. “Would you fix my front door for me?”

“Consider it done. What’s the other favor?”

“Sneak me in some cigarettes. I’m going to die if I don’t get one soon.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I lied. I had no intention of feeding her addiction. “Now tell me all you know about Patty.”