Murder of a Small-Town Honey (27 page)

“When I tried calling you at school, they said you were out sick.”

Skye pushed the mess on her bed aside and curled up with her back against the pillows. “After last night I wasn’t up to crazy kids and demented parents.”

“Why did you go investigating without me? I thought we were a team.” Simon’s tone was only half kidding.

“I went to visit Vince in jail last night. After I talked to him I had a hunch.”

“So, did you find anything?”

Skye took the nail file she’d discarded earlier and ran it across her thumb. “Yes. I wonder if I interrupted someone else searching the station or what?”

“What did you find?”

“I think it would be better if you saw it rather than if I tried to explain it.” Skye put everything back into its envelope.

“Okay. How about if I come over now?”

“Ah, why don’t you give me an hour to . . . ah . . . do a few chores?” Skye stalled, realizing her hair was a mess and she didn’t have any makeup on.

“All right, but make sure your doors and windows are locked. That person who conked you on the head and set the fire didn’t just happen to be there. He must have been following you.”

Skye rushed around straightening up the cottage, doing her hair and face, and finding something suitable to wear. It was a tough choice, considering what an odd second date this was.

She settled on black leggings and a white oversized tunic top and was waiting at the door when Simon arrived.

He handed her a box of Godiva chocolates.

Skye led him to the sofa. “Thanks for the truffles. They’re my favorite.”

“Have one.”

“A little later. I haven’t eaten anything but toast since lunch yesterday. I’m afraid Godivas are too rich for me right now.”

“Why don’t I go pick something up?” Simon started to rise.

“That would be great, but I want you to see what I’ve found first.” Skye handed him the envelope and explained how it had come to be in her possession.

He looked through the contents. “So you had this the whole time you were hit on the head, crawled out of a burning building, and were found searching the police chief’s drawers?”

“Yes, what do you think of it?”

“I agree with you. It’s the same man all the way through but with different women. Although when there are three people, the second woman seems to be the same in all the pictures. Too bad we don’t have any way of running this film.”

“Yeah, I guess I’ll have to turn it in to the police after all. I can’t quite see anyone around here printing it for us.” She narrowed her eyes in concentration.

Simon thought for a minute. “Mike Young is the only person I know who has a darkroom.”

“That’s not a good idea. Mike is one of our top suspects.”

“True. How about the rest of them?”

“Okay, I’m pretty sure Darleen and Chief Boyd are in the clear. Her problem is with Mike, not Honey, plus she has an alibi. And since I only suspected him because of her . . .” Skye trailed off, having gotten lost in her own logic.

“That makes sense, although like you said earlier, I have to wonder what she was paying Honey to keep quiet about.”

“Charlie has an alibi. I checked with Fayanne and she backs him up. I’ll have to call him to find out what time the school board meeting ended last night. If it was after I was attacked, that would put Lloyd out of the running too.”

“I drove by there at ten, and the lot was still full of cars,” Simon said.

“Well, since we know it’s not Vince,” Skye looked hard at Simon and he nodded, “who is left?”

“Only Abby and Mike, if we’re still using your original list.”

“Abby is very strong and jealousy can be a powerful emotion. Or she could be the woman in these pictures, and Honey decided to start blackmailing her now that she was dating Vince again.

“On the other hand, Mike could be the man in these negatives. We know he was being blackmailed.”

“Could it be Darleen in the photos?” Simon took one out of the envelope and examined it again.

“I didn’t know her in high school, but unless she’s changed a lot, the body type is all wrong.”

They thought in silence, until Skye’s stomach growled audibly.

Simon got up. “This is silly. You’re hungry. Let me get us something to eat, and then I’m sure we’ll both think more clearly. What do you feel like?”

“Would you mind driving over to Clay Center? I’d love some chicken from their restaurant.”

“No problem. Clay Center’s only ten miles away. The restaurant you mean is the Shaft, right?”

Skye nodded.

“It shouldn’t take me more than forty-five minutes. Meanwhile, don’t let anyone in. I talked to Wally this morning. He said that if you hadn’t been hit with a cheap aluminum flashlight that broke open after the first whack, you could have been in real trouble.”

“I’ll lock the door as soon as you leave.”

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Skye decided to take another look at the police report on Mike Young. She grabbed an apple from the fridge and curled up on the sofa with the pages. The police had set up surveillance at the local drive-in and caught him selling marijuana, LSD, and heroin to a high school crowd. He never did admit who his supplier was.

His original sentence was three years, but he had been a model prisoner who attended church and took vocational school courses in photography, so he was released in little more than eighteen months.

She put the report down suddenly.
What was that noise?

Skye rose from the couch and looked out the window by the front door. The Impala was alone in her driveway. A breeze rippled through the leaves on the trees, but nothing else moved.

Sitting again, she looked at her watch. It was two-thirty in the afternoon. Simon had only been gone a few minutes.

This time the noise was louder and sounded like it came from her bedroom. Skye picked up the baseball bat Vince had given her as a housewarming gift and walked over to the half-shut bedroom door. She nudged it all the way open using her foot and, with the bat at the ready, looked into the room.

It was as she had left it. Sighing with relief, she let the bat down from her shoulder and relaxed. At that moment, someone wearing black driving gloves grabbed her arm, spun her around, and put a gun to her temple.

“You thought you were so smart, Miz Psychologist. Spying on people, searching places you had no right to be, sticking your nose where it didn’t belong,” Mike Young jeered as he dragged Skye through the great room, pausing only long enough to snatch the envelope containing the reels of film and the negatives from the coffee table. “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

“Mike, you sound angry,” Skye responded automatically.

He slapped her across the face with the gun, and she felt the pain explode in her cheek. “Don’t use that psycho-shit on me. They tried that while I was in prison. You’d better think of Matthew, chapter three, verse seven: ‘Flee from the wrath to come.’ ”

They were in the foyer now. Mike grabbed her purse and dumped it onto the hall table. He snatched her keys and pushed her out the front door and down the steps.

He wrenched open the passenger door and shoved her into the car. “Slide all the way over. I can’t be seen driving your vehicle.”

Afraid that another blow to the head would make her pass out, Skye scooted over quickly. “Why are you doing this, Mike?”

She threw both hands up to ward off the impact when he raised the gun to hit her again.

Mike pushed his face into hers. “Don’t ask stupid questions. You searched Honey’s condo and the old train station. This is what you found.” He held up the envelope containing the film and negatives.

“How do you know all that?” Skye shrank as far away from him as the seat would allow and attempted to get the keys into the ignition.

“Once the police had searched Honey’s condo, I placed a surveillance camera in the hall outside. I saw you pick that lock like a pro. You and that grave digger were in there a long time, but you didn’t come out carrying anything, so I had to follow you to see what you found.” Mike frowned. “Now start this car, and don’t forget to fasten your seat belt. We don’t want the cops pulling us over.” He buckled his own belt, then waved toward the road with his gun. “Drive down Stebler and take a left on Basin.”

As Skye backed the car out of the driveway, she quickly scanned the area, but the road was deserted. “That’s how you found me at the railroad depot.”

“Yeah, I followed you from the time you left work. Until you led me there, I had forgotten about Honey using that place as a hangout. I didn’t think you were going to find anything until you went back and crawled under that counter.” Mike slid down in the seat until he wasn’t visible from outside the car. His gun was now aimed at Skye’s heart.

“Why didn’t you take the envelope when you hit me on the head?” Skye turned her head to look at him, and the car swerved.

“Drive straight, or I’ll kill you right here.” Mike shoved the gun into her side. “I didn’t take the envelope because you didn’t have it in your hand. It was possible you hadn’t found anything. Before I could search you, I saw the police car cruise by and slow down, so instead I figured I would burn up whatever evidence there was. Better safe than sorry.”

Skye carefully made the turn onto Basin. She was looking desperately for some way to save herself, but made her voice remain calm and professional. “What exactly is the evidence?”

“You idiots are too stupid to live. I can’t believe you or your boyfriend couldn’t figure out what was going on in these pictures.”

“How do you know we didn’t figure it out? Simon’s at the police station this very minute telling Chief Boyd everything.”

Mike snorted. “Good try. Simple Simon has gone to get his poor sweetums something to eat, not to tell the police anything. No, Simon is no threat to me. Only you and these damn movies.”

When she had to stop at the light on Basin, Skye considered jumping out of the car, but there were few other vehicles and no pedestrians to try to signal for help. “How do you know that?”

“Turn right here.”

“Where are we going?”

Mike ignored that question and answered her previous one. “I know your boyfriend hasn’t got a clue because I bugged your house right after I saw the surveillance tape from Honey’s condo.”

Her mind frantically searched for a plan. “So, what was Honey blackmailing you over?”

“Nosy right up to the bitter end, aren’t you?” Mike never took his eyes off her. “If you must know, after Honey left town she hooked up with a bunch of other young girls who had run away. They all wanted to be actresses, so she brought them down here and she and I put them in the movies. I played the male lead, and Honey made an occasional guest appearance.”

Skye drove along Maryland until she got to Kinsman, where Mike told her to turn left.

He continued, “We sold those movies through ads in porno magazines. Then I was busted for drugs and went to prison. During that time Honey got a job at the Chicago TV station. She was a gofer for some local celebrity. The money wasn’t the best, but she was hooked on the idea of show business.

“When I got out of prison, we both wanted to go straight, so we parted amicably. Or so I thought. A few months later, just as things started going good for me with the studio and the church, Honey called me. She demanded money, or she’d show everyone in town the dirty movies we’d made. It seems she had gone to my apartment after I was arrested and taken all the negatives and reels of film.

“The amount of money she wanted wasn’t too much, so I paid.”

Skye frowned. “Was she willing to expose herself? She was in those pictures too.”

“Not in all of them. It would have been easy enough for her to pick out ones that only I appeared in.”

“So, you were behind all the Chokeberry Days pranks. You were trying to get them to cancel the festival, so Honey wouldn’t come back to town.”

“You need to show how smart you are to the bitter end too, don’t you?” Mike’s voice was disgusted. “You never did learn your place.”

Skye hardly heard his insults. She had realized they were coming up to a one-lane bridge, where Kinsman crossed over the river.
He’s going to kill me when we get to wherever we’re going or he wouldn’t be telling me all this. I’m a good swimmer and I’d rather die trying to save myself than be shot like a helpless little girl. I’ll have the element of surprise. If I drive off the bridge on his side, I can have my door open before he knows what’s happening.

“You were paying her for a long time, so why did you decide to kill her now?” Skye asked to keep him distracted.

“Because she raised the payment to fifteen hundred. She had found proof that some of those girls in the movies with me were underage.”

They were approaching the bridge. Skye asked one last question, hoping to keep him talking, so he wouldn’t notice her slipping out of her Keds. “Did you mean to implicate Vince by using his shears?”

“Nah. I didn’t go there to kill her, but she just wouldn’t back down. When I put my hand in my pocket and found the scissors I knew it was a sign from God. ‘My father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. ’ I had to kill her. She would have ruined me in this town. Then I searched the trailer for the film, but it wasn’t there and people started pounding on the door. It was easy to slip away without anyone noticing.”

As the car started over the bridge, its tires made hollow thumping sounds on the narrow planks of wood used to guide vehicles safely across. Skye had been going the legal limit of fifteen, but now she pushed the speed up to thirty-five. Taking one last look at the madness gleaming in Mike’s eyes, she said as she whipped the wheel to the right, “ ‘Don’t mess with a woman,’ Helen Reddy, nineteen seventy-three.”