By Cook or by Crook (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) (21 page)

Chapter 22

Val searched the closet near the side door for something to hurl at the men and break up their fight. No wrench. No hammer. Her old tennis racket would have to do.

She opened the side door, flashlight in one hand, racket in the other.

“Look out, below!” Her grandfather yelled from an upstairs window. Whatever he threw made a volley of soft thuds at the front of the driveway, nowhere near the men fighting toward the back.

She aimed her flashlight at the fighters and crept toward them. The man in the turtleneck had his hands on the other guy’s throat. She couldn’t stand by and watch someone being choked.

Val gripped the racket to hit her target with the frame instead of the strings. She leaned over the men on the ground. Pretend it’s a first serve. Wham.

Despite a blow to the head, the big guy in the turtleneck still pinned the other man down.

Val swung again, a forehand to the husky man’s neck. Whack. The blow stunned him enough that the guy underneath pushed him off, scrambled up, and kicked the husky man in the groin. Turtleneck grunted and curled up.

Val trained her flashlight on the kicker. His face was smeared with something black. She couldn’t make out his features. He shoved her.

She fell backward. The racket and flashlight flew from her hands, and her head hit the soft earth of her flower bed. The man who’d pushed her disappeared into the night.

A startled cry came from the front of the house, guttural noises, and then a string of curses. The voice sounded like Gunnar’s though she’d never heard language like that from him.

“Gunnar?” she shouted.

“Val? What’s going on?”

She found her flashlight on the ground, stood up, and trained it on him as he sidled past the yellow car toward her.

“Hey, you’re blinding me.” He shielded his eyes with his hands.

A clean face, not blackened. She lowered the flashlight. He wasn’t the man who’d shoved her. “Two guys were duking it out in my yard. One of them’s groaning on the ground. The other one pushed me and ran off. Did you see him?”

“He fell in your driveway near the street. I tried to grab him. I fell too, and he got away. Did you throw tennis balls all over the front?”

“I did.” Granddad’s voice came from behind Val. “To trip you guys up.”

Gunnar stopped dead in his tracks. “Sir, is that thing loaded?”

Val turned to find Granddad wearing pajamas and carrying a shotgun. “Oh, shi—I mean, shoot.” She saw him raise the gun. “I mean,
don’t shoot!
”

He braced the gun against his shoulder and aimed it at Gunnar. “That other fellah got away before I loaded it. It’s ready to fire now, so don’t try to run. Call the police, Val.”

“I told
you
to call them.” Val could reach high C when she was angry. Never before had she hit high banshee.

“I had to go upstairs to find my gun and ammo. They were in the closet behind your bucket of old tennis balls.”

“I’m callin’ the cops now.” The bass voice came from the house across the driveway. “How am I supposed to sleep around here?”

Val could have asked her neighbor the same question when he ran a chain saw at dawn. “Thanks, Harv—” She broke off as he slammed the window down.

Val beamed her flashlight at the hulk on the ground. With the light on his face, she saw his dark mustache and bushy eyebrows.

“It’s the pirate.” Granddad swung his gun toward the man. “Avast!”

Gunnar leaned over the man. “You okay, Vince?”

The reply included a string of unprintable words. Val caught the gist. Vince was mad as hell, but not severely injured. Now that Val knew he didn’t need medical attention, she wanted answers from Gunnar. “What’s Vince doing in my yard?”

“I asked him to keep an eye on you today.”

“I saw him at the concert keeping an eye on me.” Though he’d disguised himself with glasses and powdered his mustache to look older. Had he followed her all day? “Does he drive a dark blue car with tinted glass?”

“Uh-huh.” Gunnar squatted next to the man. “Can you get up, buddy?”

“Stay on the ground,” Granddad said. “I have a gun on you.”

“What the hell’s going on?” Vince rubbed the back of his head. “I was on top of him, Gus. And then something hit me from behind.”

Val moved closer to Gunnar. “Why did he call you Gus?” Either her serve to the head had concussed Vince into a memory loss, or Gunnar had lied about his own name, along with probably a thousand other things.

Vince sat up. “First I got hit in the head. Next something hit me in the neck. Then the guy kicked me in the balls.”

“Why were you fighting him?” Gunnar asked.

“He was piling up paper along the foundation.”

Val aimed her flashlight toward the house. Sure enough, crumpled newspaper. “That was the crunching sound I heard. But why—?”

“He headed for the backyard and set something down.” Vince pointed over his shoulder. “Then the dogs started barking, and he took off. Check out the backyard. I bet you find a gasoline can.”

A gasoline can. “Arson?”

Val could hardly believe it. RoboFido had scared away an arsonist, and she had clobbered the wrong person. Or had she? Maybe Vince was the arsonist, trying to blame someone else for what he himself had done.

Granddad lowered his gun. “You can get up now. A pirate who saves my house from an arsonist can’t be all bad.”

“A pirate?” Vince scratched his head and stood up. “I was getting ready to tackle him when the dogs went crazy. He ran, and I jumped him. Man, that guy was strong. Built like steel. With all that barking, I expected a dog to bite me on the ass. Instead, somebody hit me.” He turned to Val. “You?”

Val chewed her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to stop the fight.”

“Why didn’t you hit the other guy?” Vince rubbed his neck.

She heard a siren in the distance. Lot of good it did to call the police. The fight was over, the arsonist gone. She turned to Gunnar. “All day I was afraid someone was stalking me. You should have told me about Vince.”

“I didn’t know how you’d react. I wanted you to leave town, and you wouldn’t go. I talked him into keeping an eye on you. You couldn’t object if you didn’t know about it.”

“If you thought I needed protection, why didn’t you do it yourself?”

“You blew me off this morning when I offered. And I tried to spend the evening with you, but you had other plans. I came here to relieve Vince.”

The siren cut off as the squad car pulled up in front of the house. By then Granddad had disappeared into the house with his gun. Wise man.

“Police! Don’t move!” The command came from behind a torch that turned night into day. “What’s the problem here?”

Val recognized the voice of the officer who’d responded to her car alarm two nights ago. “Officer, it’s Val Deniston. Watch your step in the driveway. Someone was sneaking around the house tonight, and my grandfather emptied a bucket of tennis balls to trip him. These two men tried to catch him, but he got away.”

“Which way?”

Gunnar pointed. “Across the street and between two houses. Five minutes ago.”

The officer approached. “What’d he look like?”

Val hadn’t noticed much about the man she’d seen only by flashlight. “Dark clothes, a tight cap. His face was smeared with charcoal or something.”

Vince piped up. “Height about six-two, weight around two hundred. Muscular build.”

“And who are you?”

Vince whipped a badge out of his pocket. “Vince Palminteri, Drug Enforcement Agency. Your chief knows we’re operating here.”

The policeman checked Vince’s ID and then eyed Gunnar. “Are you DEA too?”

“No. Here’s my driver’s license and government ID.” He surrendered two cards.

Lights blazed in two houses across the street. For the first time Val realized how little she was wearing. Her elongated T-shirt left lots of leg exposed. “Officer, I’d like to go inside and put on some clothes. The two guys know more about what happened here than I do.”

She left the men in the driveway, unplugged RoboFido, and patted him. Such a good watchdog. Her grandfather emerged from his bedroom in overalls and his pajama top. She told him his pirate worked for the Drug Enforcement Agency. He went back outside.

By the time she changed and returned to the driveway, another squad car had arrived with a policeman she didn’t recognize. The officer tagged a can of gasoline as evidence. Gunnar was still there, but Vince had gone.

“What weapon did you use on Vince?” Gunnar asked.

She spotted her racket near the flower bed and brandished it. “The only thing I could find.”

“He’s lucky you didn’t find a crowbar. I can’t wait to tell him what hit him. He left when the neighbors started coming out. He has to keep a low profile.”

Because he worked undercover. So how did Gunnar come to know him? Before she could ask, the cop with the weather-beaten face approached her. “You have a smashed lightbulb in your side fixture. That’s the one I tightened the other night.”

“Our visitor got tired of unscrewing it night after night. Any chance a police car can stay until daylight in case he comes back?”

“We’ll patrol the area, but if other calls come in, we have to respond. We’ve had a couple of arsons in the last month or so, but never more than one a night.”

She sighed. If the arsonist wanted to finish the job, he could call in a bogus emergency to get the police out of the neighborhood.

Gunnar touched her arm. “Go get some rest. I slept earlier. I’ll be on your front porch in case you need me. If the guy comes back, I want to be where I can see and hear him.”

She went inside, found a light coverlet, and brought it out to him. “Take this in case it gets cool toward morning.” She sat next to him on the porch steps. “Is your real name Gus?”

“A nickname. My initials are G.U.S.”

“You’re on nickname basis with a DEA agent?”

“I’ve worked with Vince on some cases. I’m with IRS Criminal Investigation. My job is tracing laundered money.”

Now that had the ring of truth to it. Unlike his other stories—opening an accounting practice, Great-Aunt Gretchen’s will, his acting ambitions. “Are you working with him now?”

“Not right this minute.”

An evasive answer, but she was too tired to care. “I’m going to sleep.” She stood up.

He held the screen door open for her. “See you in the morning.” He gave her a gentle kiss that left her disappointed.

Had she been too cool toward him? Not that she wanted the passionate kisses of last night. Tonight she longed to be cradled and hugged.

She turned on the motion detector at the back of the house. “Whatever your limitations as a pet, Fido, you will not be the dog that didn’t bark in the night.”

 

 

The next morning when she looked through the front window, she saw Gunnar stretched out in a makeshift bed—a cushioned chair, an ottoman, another chair. He’d kept his word and stayed all night. Reliable? Yes. Truthful? Not so much.

She made coffee and tried to make sense of last night’s attempted arson. Her house could have been the random target of the arsonist who’d started other fires near Bayport.

She didn’t buy it. Too many coincidences: the arson coming on the heels of the road bullying, the noises outside her house on Thursday night, and the brake tampering. If the same person had been responsible for all those incidents, he’d targeted her specifically.

The coffeemaker sputtered and gurgled. According to Vince, the would-be arsonist had been over six feet tall, around two hundred pounds, and “built like steel.” Three men she knew fit the description—Bigby the house builder, Darwin the bodybuilder, and Luke with his barbell and beer physique.

She reviewed her recent encounters with each man in the light of last night’s attempted arson. The coffee aroma cleared the cobwebs from her brain. She saw now what she’d missed previously. The man targeting her feared she could connect him to major crimes.

Before she went to the police with her conclusions, though, she’d try them out on Gunnar. He’d better not have woken up and sped away in his Miata while she was making coffee. Last night he’d given her only part of his story. He still had plenty to explain.

Chapter 23

Val took coffee and a plate of biscotti to the porch.

Gunnar was moving the wicker furniture back in place. His jeans and navy T-shirt didn’t look bad after a night spent on chairs, but his bloodshot eyes suggested he hadn’t slept much.

He smiled anyway. “Good morning.”

“It’s a great morning. There’s a cool breeze, and I think I know who last night’s arsonist was.” She handed Gunnar a mug and leaned against the porch railing. “The pro at the club, Darwin, owns the sporting goods store in town. When I was there Tuesday, he overheard me talking to a friend and got jumpy when I used the word
arson
. That would make sense if he set the fires the officer mentioned last night, the recent arsons around town. Also, he matches Vince’s description of the guy trying to set a fire here last night.”

Gunnar rubbed his stubbled chin and raised an eyebrow. “Overhearing one word—not much of a reason to target you.”

“Guilty people often overreact. The time line fits. Right before I was run off the road, my car was parked in front of Darwin’s shop. Easy for him to follow me. He’s supposed to be a car expert, so he could have tampered with my brakes. When that didn’t sideline me, he resorted to arson. He couldn’t do it Friday night because of the rain, but last night was perfect.”

“Too bad you didn’t see his face last night. Not that I’m disputing your post-game analysis. I’d still like to know what else you—” Gunnar stopped talking as a black Crown Victoria pulled into the driveway behind the yellow hatchback. “You have company.”

Chief Yardley climbed from the car. “Heard you had a spot of trouble here last night.”

Val set her mug on the railing. “I did, and you’re just the person I want to see about it.”

The chief mounted the porch steps and thrust his hand out to Gunnar. “Earl Yardley, Bayport police chief.”

“Gunnar Swensen. I’ve heard about you, sir.”

“Likewise. I just talked to your DEA buddy. He said I might find you here.” The chief sat on a wicker chair. “Where’s your granddaddy, Val?”

Uh-oh. Val hoped the DEA man hadn’t told the police about the crazy geezer waving a gun and calling him a pirate.

She opened the front door and peered down the hall to her grandfather’s room. “Sleeping in after last night’s excitement, I guess. His bedroom door’s closed.”

“How about some coffee?” the chief said. “I’ll have it black. And take your time in the kitchen. Give us five or ten minutes here.”

He was using the coffee as an excuse to get rid of her. Good to know that he had a reason other than Granddad’s shotgun for showing up here. She went inside.

Granddad emerged from his room off the hall. “Why didn’t you wake me up? I got stuff to do today.”

“Chief Yardley’s on the porch. He’s looking into what happened here last night.”

“Good. He’ll get the fella who tried to burn my house down. The two of us, we need to start cookin’. I got recipes due tomorrow.”

Never mind that Val had someone trying to maim or kill her. She followed her grandfather to the kitchen, took out the ingredients for banana muffins, and gave him some tips on mixing the batter. By the time she returned to the porch, only one man sat there.

She gave the chief a mug of coffee. “Where’s Gunnar?”

“I sent him to his B&B. He needed a shower and a shave. He’ll be back soon.”

“Did you vet him?”

“I know he works for the feds. You want to know about his personal life, hire an investigator.” The chief sipped his coffee. “He told me you suspect Darwin of arson and tampering with your brakes.”

She sat on the porch railing. “I suspect him of more than that. I asked Darwin if anyone had ordered a wood racket recently. He has some on display in his shop. I didn’t say anything about the weapon, but if he killed Nadia, my question might have panicked him.”

“First you tried to convince me Maverick Mott did it. Then Bigby O’Shay. I can’t keep up. Why would Darwin murder her?”

If the chief couldn’t keep up now, Val better not hit him with her suspicions about Chatty and Irene. She’d stick with Darwin for now. “Maybe Nadia found out he was the arsonist, and he silenced her.”

“You’re saying he committed murder to cover up a property crime?”

“Okay, it’s a feeble motive.” That wasn’t the only weakness in the case for Darwin as the murderer. He’d have needed access to the burned racket to make a murder weapon that resembled it.

The chief’s cell phone rang. He unhooked the phone on his belt. “Yardley . . . Oh, yeah? . . . I’ll meet you at the station. We’ll go there together.” He put the phone away and stood up. “Darwin owns a silver SUV. That doesn’t mean he was the one who ran you off the road. We’re going to talk to him and find out where he was that night and last night.”

“And the night of the murder?” She took the chief’s grunt as agreement. “Can you keep me in the loop? I’m scared of the guy.”

“I’ll put a patrol in the neighborhood.” He pulled a card out of his wallet. “Here’s my cell phone number. Call me in an hour or two, and don’t go anywhere alone. Not even to church.”

She spent the next ten minutes on the sidewalk fielding questions from neighbors about the night’s events. As they dispersed, she glanced at her watch. She’d better check on Granddad’s cooking project.

She zoomed into the house. Judging by the aromas inside, the muffins had baked long enough. She pulled the pan from the oven.

Granddad came into the kitchen from the back porch. “Hey, what are you doing? The timer didn’t go off yet. They’re not done.”

“The muffins were on the top rack of the oven, where it’s hotter, so they cooked faster than usual.”

He picked up her recipe card from the counter and waved it. “This didn’t say which rack to put them on.”

“True, but it’s a good idea to check baked goods five minutes before they’re supposed to be done because the baking time varies with the stove and the altitude.”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

After yesterday, when his joy over the recipe column made him gripe less than usual, he had plenty of pent-up grumpiness like a pressure cooker giving off steam.

“Here’s another tip. To test a muffin or a cake, press gently on top.” She demonstrated. “If it springs back like that, it’s finished baking. If it stays dented, put it back in the oven.”

“Those things should be written down.” He threw up his hands. “Where are the ten commandments of cooking? And can you boil them down to five?”

Val laughed. “You just taught me something. My recipes take too much for granted. When I write my cookbook, I hope you’ll tell me what’s missing.”

“I’m glad my ignorance is worth something to you.”

He sounded more like Eeyore than ever.

The doorbell rang. “That’s probably Gunnar.” She couldn’t let him see the kitchen. Eggshells, banana peels, and sugar sprinkles decorated the counter, along with batter drippings that a Jackson Pollack wannabe might envy.

Granddad waved her away. “Go sit outside with him. I’ll bring you some iced tea and muffins.”

“Thanks.” Her grandfather might still balk at welcoming Gunnar into the house, but at least he was willing to feed him on the porch like a stray cat. She left the kitchen.

Gunnar broke into a radiant smile when she joined him outside.

Her pulse sped up. She stepped down from the porch to the front yard. “I want to see what’s left of my flowers after last night’s fight. I’m almost afraid to look. Banana muffins are on their way.”

He followed her across the yard to the driveway. “I snagged a late breakfast at my B&B, but I’m always up for muffins.”

The yellow hatchback blocked her view of the garden. She walked past the car, surveyed the flowers planted in a bed beneath the dining room window, and yelped. “It’s like a battlefield the morning after the massacre. Not a daisy left standing. The daylilies are totally crushed too.”

“It could have been worse.” Gunnar didn’t show much sympathy. “The house might have burned up with you and your grandfather in it.”

“I know. I really appreciate what you and Vince did last night.” She resisted the urge to hug him and walked to the far end of the driveway to inspect the vegetable garden. “Oh, good. The tomato plants escaped destruction. Now I won’t have to kill Darwin with my bare hands. I can wait for justice to take its course.” She headed back to the porch.

Gunnar pointed to a plate of muffins, a pitcher of iced tea, and two glasses on the porch table. “Where did that come from? The elves?”

“Granddad elf. He’s busy in the kitchen this morning.” Val sat on the glider, hoping Gunnar would sit next to her.

He took a wicker chair facing her. “Before the police chief stopped by this morning, you were talking about what happened in Darwin’s shop. Tell me more about it, who was there, what was said.”

This sounded like a business meeting. No wonder he was wearing pressed khakis and a button-down shirt. Val felt underdressed in her jeans skirt and knit top, the same outfit she’d worn for her last interrogation. Better to have Gunnar than the sheriff’s deputy questioning her.

She gave him a detailed account of her visit to Darwin’s shop and her conversation there with Chatty. He didn’t react until she got to the part where the football star and Darwin came out of the backroom.

Gunnar sat forward in his seat. “Did the kid have a racket?”

Val closed her eyes and pictured the scene in the shop. “He was carrying something inside a zippered racket cover. I assumed it was a racket, but I only saw the cover. Right after that, Chatty and I talked about arson. Darwin looked startled.”

“Then what happened?”

“The other customers left the shop. Darwin tried to sell me a new racket. I said I might want to order an older model and asked about the kind of rackets people special-ordered from him.”

“The kind of rackets? Oh, you were trying to find out if anyone ordered a wood racket.”

“What?” Either he was psychic, or someone had blabbed.

“I called Vince when I left your house this morning. He and the police chief exchanged information on their cases. Vince told me about the murder weapon. He said no one knew about it except you and the police.”

At least Val wouldn’t have to dance around the subject of the weapon any longer. She reached for a muffin. “If Darwin murdered Nadia, my questions about wood rackets would have worried him. That might explain why he came after me.”

Gunnar frowned and shook his head. “Or he didn’t like your curiosity about his special orders, especially after the other things you said in the shop.”

“What other things?” Val munched on the muffin.

“Vince’s investigation involves an arson and a hit-and-run.”

“And when I said ‘hit-and-run’ at the sports shop, Darwin moved in closer. He looked as if he was waiting to hear more, but I stopped talking when I noticed him.”

“You also talked about backroom transactions. I’m beginning to think he’s the man Vince is after.”

DEA agents went after only one type of criminal. “You mean Darwin’s in the drug trade. Where does the hit-and-run fit in? The sheriff’s deputy kept bringing it up.”

Gunnar left the wicker chair to sit next to her on the glider. “A guy named Ramirez was hit and killed by a car a few weeks ago. He had no ID on him. The police ran his prints and found out he was wanted in Delaware for drug dealing, mostly steroids and party drugs. He lived in a house on a cove near here. It burned down the same night as the car hit him. Arson.”

Val felt as if she had random ingredients she couldn’t possibly combine into a single dish. A hit-and-run, arson, drug dealing, Nadia’s murder. How did all these things fit together? “Did Ramirez torch his own place to get rid of drug evidence before he was run down?”

“The arson came after the hit-and-run. The same person could have done both, possibly to destroy evidence about the suppliers and customers Ramirez had. The fire was started with wadded newspapers soaked in gasoline, same as what the arsonist tried here last night.”

“Assuming Darwin’s the arsonist, how do you connect him to the hit-and-run?”

Gunnar poured iced tea until it overflowed a glass, his mind apparently on something other than a cold drink.

He blotted the spill and chugged enough iced tea to give himself brain freeze. “Ramirez died on the way to the hospital. Before that, he was talking gibberish, half-Spanish, half-English. The EMT heard something that sounded like the number ten followed by the letter S.”

Why had Gunnar hesitated before mentioning this detail? “Ten-S. A license plate?”

“The police thought that at first, but it turned into a dead end.”

“Tennis. That’s the connection to Darwin.” But not just to Darwin. Val frowned. “Wait a minute. Is that why you turned up at the club?” And why he nearly drove off the road when she told him a woman from her tennis team was murdered?

“Vince was already working undercover as part of a joint task force investigating drug traffic on the Eastern Shore. He needed help to follow up on the tennis angle and the money trail. He knew me. We’d worked together once before. He requested I be detailed here.”

The phone calls that made him drop whatever he was doing had probably come from Vince, summoning him back to his duties. “So when you roamed the docks with Vince, you were both working undercover to find drug dealers.”

“Yup. He was checking on the boating traffic. The water route’s the obvious way for drugs to come into this area. The Chesapeake and its tributaries have thousands of miles of shoreline. Vince focused on this area because Ramirez was killed around here.”

The wind blew Val’s hair in all directions. She tucked it behind her ear and wished her churning thoughts were as easy to anchor. “I’m trying to make sense of all this. Assuming Ramirez was trying to say ‘tennis,’ Darwin’s a suspect because he’s a tennis pro and sells rackets. From that, you want to connect him to drug-dealing and the hit-and-run?” She shook her head. “That’s a
ten
uous chain of reasoning.”