Dying to Read (26 page)

So the ring was another of Willow’s lies. Although she was trying to make amends now. But would her change of heart last until she put that ring in the mail?

“Where is it?”

“There at the house. I’ve got it hidden.”

Cate reversed her previous decision. “Since I’m driving you over there anyway, why don’t I just pick it up? I can give it to Beverly, and you won’t have to bother mailing it.”

Willow actually smiled, as if getting rid of the ring would be a relief. “Hey, that’d be great! Beverly will be so happy, won’t she? But let’s hurry, okay?”

“You got a hot date tonight?” Cate grumbled.

Willow laughed as if Cate had inadvertently said something amusing. “Not tonight.”

Cate hurriedly changed into fresh jeans and a sweatshirt, and a few minutes later she parked in the driveway at Amelia’s house. Coop’s bike still stood in the driveway, chrome tailpipes gleaming under the streetlight, flashy helmet dangling from the handlebars. No lights shone from the house. Returning to a dark house where someone had been killed would fluster Cate, but apparently it didn’t bother Willow.

“There’s another reason you should go to the police before you leave,” Cate said.

With one hand on the door handle, Willow gave her a wary sideways glance. “Oh?”

“Willow, you know more about Amelia’s death than you told the police, don’t you? More than you told me. You know it was murder. And you’re blackmailing Cheryl about it.”

“Blackmailing Cheryl!” Willow echoed.

“I heard you talking with Coop about it.”

“Oh, Cate, you have the wildest imagination! I don’t know what you thought you heard, but no, I am not blackmailing Cheryl.”

“No?”

“No. And if you’re going to be a PI, you shouldn’t go around making outrageous accusations.”

True, Cate agreed reluctantly. “But you should still go to the police.”

“Sure.”

It did not sound like a written-in-blood promise.

Outside the car, Cate followed Willow to the door. Willow fumbled in her purse.

“I can’t believe this. Where’s my key? I know I had it, because I had to have it when I locked the door when I left—”

“I have a key.” Cate dug in her own purse and produced it.

“How come you have a key?”

“It belongs to a Whodunit lady. I still have to find out who and give it back.”

“Okay, use that one, then. But I must have dropped mine here somewhere . . .” Willow leaned over, hands on knees, and peered around the porch and steps. “Oh, I know! I’ll bet it’s on the floor of your car. I tossed it on the seat when I got in and it probably fell off.”

She ran back to the car. Cate already had her key in the lock and turned it. She stepped inside and fumbled for the switch to the outside light.

“Okay, stop right there,” a voice commanded from the darkness. “Stretch your arms out to the side and don’t move.”

Cate momentarily thought, Hey, shouldn’t that be “put your hands up”? But then she felt something cold and hard in the middle of her back and knew it was no time to argue semantics.

“Okay, we’re going upstairs now. Nice and slow and easy. Don’t try anything.”

“Look, I, uh, think you’ve made a mistake,” Cate croaked.

“The only mistake is the one you made, thinking you could get away with blackmailing me. I know our appointment was for tomorrow morning, but I decided I’d make a surprise visit and come a little early.” The gun prodded her lower back. “Get moving.”

The front door opened, briefly silhouetting Willow in the glow from the streetlight. “Cate, what are you doing here in the dark?” She flicked on the light in the living room.

With the distraction, Cate hastily stepped away from the gun. Which turned them into a tableau of three surprised people staring at each other. The gun in Scott Calhoun’s hand sagged only a fraction of an inch as his gaze jumped between them. Cate didn’t know much about handguns, but this one had a peculiar-looking something on the barrel.

“See,” Cate croaked at him again, “I told you you’d made a mistake.”

Willow spun on her heel toward the open door, but a swivel of the gun cut off her escape. “Stop. Right there.”

Willow crossed her arms. “You can’t shoot,” she scoffed with more bravado than Cate could muster. “The whole street would hear.”

“You’ve never seen a silencer, I take it. Well, take a good look.” He waved the gun like a magic wand, and Cate realized the peculiar-looking barrel must be a silencer. “I can shoot you five times and no one’s going to hear. So just close the door, nice and quiet.”

Willow hesitated. Scott spread his feet and added a second hand to the gun, putting him in a classic TV-shooter stance. Willow closed the door.

So, Willow had told the truth . . . in a way. She wasn’t blackmailing Cheryl. She was blackmailing Cheryl’s husband.

Cate’s mind whipped around the revelation that this meant Scott Calhoun had killed Amelia. But he’d been out of town when Amelia fell—

Cate groaned. Some PI she was. She’d simply accepted the out-of-town story and hadn’t even suspected him.

More three-way looking at each other. Whatever plans Scott had, Cate’s presence obviously complicated them. Then the frown left his face, and he smiled. Not a reassuring smile.

“How ironic. The cat, the house, you. So now we have the two birds with one stone thing, if you’ll pardon my cliché.”

“I guess I . . . uh . . . don’t get the connection,” Cate mumbled.

“You don’t know?” He eyed her with a tilt of head. But whatever it was she didn’t know, he apparently didn’t intend to enlighten her. “Okay, both of you, up the stairs. Drop the purses,” he added. “I don’t want you using up cell phone minutes.”

Cate reluctantly dropped her purse. With a show of defiance, Willow first extracted her wallet from the purse and stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans. “I don’t trust you with my cash.” In another show of defiance, she tossed the purse on a chair rather than dropping it.

They shuffled toward the stairway. Willow managed a fall on the stairs, though Cate didn’t know if it was a nervous stumble or an effort to sabotage Scott’s plan by tumbling into him.

If it was a plan, it didn’t work. Scott adroitly sidestepped her on the wide stairs. He prodded her with his foot. Nicely clad in expensive loafer, no sock. “Keep moving. Into Amelia’s room.”

Willow picked herself up. In the bedroom, Scott yanked the closet door open and took a quick look around. Checking for bad guys? He didn’t need to do that. The bad guy was out here. With a jerk of the gun, he motioned them inside. Cate planted her feet. The closet looked way too much like an oversized car trunk, and she’d already gone that route today.

“No,” she said. “I won’t—”

The bullet slammed into the carpet at her feet. The silencer didn’t shut off the bang completely but did turn it into a muffled whump. It also silenced her, because the message came across loud and clear. He hadn’t brought them up here to shoot them, but he would if he had to.

Which opened the obvious question. Why not shoot them? Why stuff them in the closet?

Willow, apparently with the thought that staying alive at the moment was more important than playing a quiz game, grabbed Cate’s hand and yanked her into the walk-in closet. Scott shut the door, and in the darkness they heard him drag something to the door. The knob squeaked when he jammed what Cate guessed was one of the wingback chairs under it.

Then, silence. And darkness. Cate felt the room close in on her, the car trunk all over again. Panic rose like a noxious cloud, clogging her brain and senses. Fear goose-bumped her arms and jellied her knees. Beside her, Willow’s breath came in heavy wheezes. The cash in her wallet wasn’t going to help them here.

Determinedly Cate shook off the panic. She wasn’t bound and gagged here. She could move. Speak. Yell. Not that anyone except Scott could hear. But she wasn’t helpless.

Lord, guide us! What should we do?

She tentatively reached into the darkness. Her fingers touched something furry. She yelped and yanked the hand back. Then she realized the furry thing was only Amelia’s fox fur jacket.

Okay, no time for over-the-top panic now. A fox fur jacket never bit anyone. They weren’t in any immediate danger, even if the closet was dark and claustrophobic. “I don’t get it,” she whispered, wondering if Scott was lurking and listening outside the door. “What’s the point in this?”

“There’s a light switch in here somewhere.”

An overhead light flared on. Cate blinked. Clothes surrounded them. The fur jacket. A suede jacket. Sequins glittering on a red cocktail dress. Full-length gowns. Sweatshirts. Slacks. Blouses. Sweaters. Suits. Nightgowns and robes. And scarves. Hanger after hanger of them, geometric and flowered, gauzy and woolen, long and short. Amelia must have had some sort of scarf fetish.

A mirror covered the inside of the door. With a jolt, Cate realized how sisterly she and Willow looked. Same height, same heads of wild red hair. And two sets of scared eyes staring back at her.

Shoes covered the shelf above the wooden rods holding the clothes. More shoes on the floor beneath the clothes. Tennies and boots, sandals and pumps, platforms, high heels of all colors and shapes. En masse, the shoes had a strangely disembodied look, as if they were awaiting a crowd of feet to arrive.

“Help me with the door,” Willow said. “It opens out so maybe we can shove the chair or whatever it is away.”

They put shoulders to the door and shoved. One, two, three grunting shoves. They shifted sides and shoved again with opposite shoulders. Which accomplished nothing more than a sharp crack that split the length of the mirror. Willow wound up the unsuccessful attack with a savage kick to the door. Which accomplished nothing except to add another crack to the mirror.

Again Cate asked, “What’s the point in this? He leaves us here to give him time to . . . what? Is he planning to just walk away from his life? Disappear?” She looked at Willow. “He did push Amelia down the steps, didn’t he? That’s what you were blackmailing him about.”

“It wasn’t really blackmail,” Willow protested. “It was more like a . . . business transaction. I just told him that I wouldn’t go to the police with what I knew if he made it worth my while.”

“What was worth your while?”

“A hundred and fifty thousand in cash.”

“Willow, that’s what blackmail
is
!”

Willow managed an injured look at this blunt statement. “It’s hardly a drop in the bucket compared to what they’re getting out of Amelia’s estate. There are stocks and bonds and CDs and annuities. At least a couple million dollars’ worth. They could afford a few bucks for me.”

“They? Cheryl was in on the murder?”

“Not to begin with. But she found out pretty quick. Scott was in real financial trouble. A while back he invested big money in some deal he thought was going to make a bundle—”

“The same deal Amelia talked the Whodunit women into investing in?”

“I think so. He must have thought it really was a great deal. He ‘borrowed’ a lot of money from clients’ accounts so he could make a big investment for himself. When most of it went down the tubes, he was frantic to get hold of enough to pay back what he’d taken before it was discovered.”

“So he decided killing Amelia was the way to get it, told Cheryl he was going out of town, and came here and pushed Amelia down the stairs instead. How’d he get her out there so he could do it?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t as if they gave me diagrams.” Willow sounded annoyed with Cate’s questions.

“What about Amelia’s jewelry?”

“Getting money out of the estate would take a while, and Scott needed money right away to pay back at least some of what he’d taken. So he grabbed the jewelry and took it back up to Seattle to sell.”

“And Cheryl didn’t know that at first. She was howling about the jewelry being missing. Accusing you. But when she found out what her husband had done, she covered for him by saying the jewelry wasn’t missing after all.”

“The couple that murders together stays together,” Willow muttered. “Ain’t love grand?”

“What about the engagement ring? Did Scott get that too? Or,” Cate said bluntly, “maybe you grabbed it?”

Willow didn’t protest the accusation. “I don’t know anything about that ring. I know you probably don’t believe anything I say, but—”

“Can you blame me?” Cate challenged.

“I suppose not. But this is the truth. I never even saw the ring. So I have no idea whether it’s Cheryl or Radford lying about it.”

Willow drew an
X
across her heart with her finger to emphasize her truthfulness, but Cate’s mind leaped over to the full saying. Cross my heart and hope to die. Which was way too close to the truth of what might happen here.

“You planned to collect the blackmail money at your meeting with Scott in the morning and then take off for Grandma’s?” Which explained that earlier air of excitement about Willow. Anticipation of a big blackmail payoff would do that.

“I didn’t see any point in sticking around here.”

“Or maybe you had some clever plan to sneak off and join Coop somewhere. You could live it up for a while on a hundred and fifty thou.”

Willow didn’t bother with an injured look. “I’m scared of Coop.” She wrapped her arms around her body in a protective gesture that made Cate think this was definitely the truth.

“Apparently Scott doesn’t see any point in paying you off when he can kill you and get you out of the way permanently.”

And me too, Cate added glumly to herself. Although the man seemed to have an unwarranted personal hostility directed specifically at her. He’d seemed quite pleased to include her in tonight’s plan. Although sticking them here in the closet did seem an inefficient method of murder. It would take a while for them to starve to death. Perhaps he just intended it as enough time to allow him to disappear? But that would mean walking away with nothing, and a no-payoff ending seemed unlikely for a man willing to push an old woman down the stairs.

Willow didn’t comment, and Cate asked another question. “How’d you find out about all this?”

“That day I found out Radford had come here about the engagement ring, I overheard all this other stuff too. Cheryl and Scott were in Amelia’s office, arguing and blaming each other. I heard enough to tell me what was going on, and then I guessed the rest of it.”