Death By A Dark Horse

Chapter Twenty-Three

  When I was done dictating the evening's events I grabbed Juliet. She wasn't going to avoid talking to me again.

  "Tell me about the weeping with Detective Thurman. And do not blow me off this time."

  "Oh, I, uh --"

  "Spill it," I said, through gritted teeth.

  Juliet's flaming complexion was evident even in the poor light. She stuttered a bit more, then her shoulders dropped. "Oh, all right. When I went in to Detective Thurman's office to be interviewed I thought he was building a case against Eric."

  I narrowed my eyes at her. I knew there was more.

  "Okay, okay, I even thought Eric may have -- you know, by accident. Anyway, I had a story planned about how we spent the afternoon and evening together, but when I walked into that awful conference room I burst into tears. God, Thea, it was worse than you can ever imagine. I couldn't stop crying. Then I found out Eric thought I had done something stupid and was prepared to take the blame himself … I must have gone through a box and a half of tissue." She cringed when she looked at me.

  I skinny-eyed her. "Juliet, I can't believe --"

  I stopped as a familiar gray Honda roared into view. I nudged Juliet and she followed my gaze. Both the driver's and passenger's doors flew opened almost before the car stopped rolling. Paul and Eric jumped out and ran in our general direction, but before they had gotten far Paul stopped Eric, taking hold of his arm. He immediately jerked out of Paul's grip. They exchanged a few words before scanning the crowd.

  "'Bout time the cavalry got her," she said, and laughed. "Oh, no wait! We're the cavalry! She laughed again.

  Despite the hubbub of radio noise and people talking, Eric picked up the sound of Juliet's laughter. He slapped Paul's arm, pointed at us, and took off. Juliet grinned as she watched Eric run toward her. There were tears in her eyes. He swooped in and grabbed her in a crushing hug. Rapid Spanish spewed forth when he wasn't covering her face with kisses. I caught a few "Dios mios" and "queridas" but that was all.

  Paul cleared his throat, drawing my attention. The truth is, I was afraid to look at him. My heart thudded as if Greg still held his gun to my head. All I could think of were our parting shots on Tuesday.

  "You're okay?" he asked, eyebrows tilting up.

  "Yes, fine." My smile wobbled.

  We were saved from further conversation by the paramedics rolling a gurney past with a body bag. When the second gurney transporting the second body rolled past both Eric and Paul were visibly paler and identically slack-jawed. The third gurney, with a barely conscious Greg strapped to it, caused Eric to cross himself. Paul cleared his throat several times.

  Greg, if anything, looked worse than before. Cotton wadding filled his nostrils and was held in place with tape. An IV bag hung from a pole and bounced along with them. Blood soaked the front of his shirt. Each time the gurney hit a bump, he moaned. It hit lots of bumps.

  "Did you do that?" Eric asked Juliet.

  She looked at me and grinned. "Actually, Thea did."

  I held up my bloody hand and shrugged.

  "Holy shit," Paul said.

  "Juliet finished him, though." I smiled at my sister.

  "Yeah, we make a pretty good team." We bumped fists.

  "And the other two?" Eric asked.

  "Not our work," Juliet said.

  Eric looked relieved. Paul ran a hand over his mouth and studied the ground. Detective Thurman chose that moment to come by and give both Eric and Paul a professional once over. He scrutinized Paul an extra moment before turning to me.

  "Is this the one you dumped the other evening?"

  How he got wind of that I'll never know.

  "No," I said, then pressed my courage into service once again and turned to Paul. "It was the other one."

  Delores refused to ride in the ambulance to the hospital, so Paul drove her. Eric, after another lingering kiss from Juliet, took Delores's car back to Copper Creek.

  Shortly after nine we all sat down at the dining room table in my aunt and uncle's house. It felt like midnight. Aunt Vi had a large tureen of soup on the table and hot bread just out of the oven.

  "I knew Greg had to be involved all along," Delores asserted. Despite the cast on her arm, her appearance had improved considerably. So had mine, once I'd washed and put on fresh clothes.

  "How could you have known that?" Aunt Vi asked, ladling another bowl of minestrone soup and passing it.

  "It makes sense --"

  "Ha." Juliet snorted.

  "She must have pushed Frederick past his limit," Delores said. "When we got that description from the big fellow at the Broken Axle, I knew it was Greg and I really believed he killed Valerie." She turned her attention back to her soup.

  "I think I was so stunned at how the description fit Jonathan that I didn't think it through." I wasn't particularly proud of my assumption, but there was no point denying it. My blunder would come out sooner or later.

  Paul stopped eating -- as if swallowing was suddenly an issue.

  "What's the Broken Axle?" He asked, flicking at a bread crumb near his plate.

  "The local biker bar," Juliet said.

  "A biker bar," he repeated, and casually crushed the crumb. "You went to a biker bar. Why?"

  "To follow up on Miguel's lead, of course," I said. Hadn't he been paying attention? Oh yeah -- the sulking in his office thing.

  "A lead. At a biker bar." He nodded slightly to himself then turned to Delores. "You knew about this and just let her go?"

  "I didn't see you here trying to stop her. Don't get your tail in a knot. Miguel and I went along." She tried to ladle more soup into her bowl. Uncle Henry got up and took over.

  Paul's lips disappeared into a resolute line and his gaze moved slowly from his aunt to finally rest on me. I waited for a comment, but he just stared. I gave up and explained what we'd learned about Lee from the really big guy with tattoos who mooched our beer.

  Paul and Eric looked at each other. "John," they both said with a kind of sign afterwards.

  "You actually know that fellow?" Uncle Henry asked.

  "Everyone knows John," Eric said.

  Paul closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Why did you go to Valerie's this morning?"

  "I went to talk to Greg," Delores said, taking a bite of bread. "I knew he'd be there, from what he said at the funeral, and I thought there was a good chance I could talk him into turning himself in."

  Juliet laughed. "We can all see how well that turned out."

  "It was worth a try," she said. "I was fairly certain it was an accident and he didn't know what to do. Unfortunately, I hadn't figured in the business angle. He started hollering about how it didn't matter if he killed Valerie or not, if he was connected with her death it would ruin him financially. Then he shoved me down the basement stairs."

  "He was already ruined," I said. "I caught on to his Ponzi scheme. I just didn't connect it with Valerie. I was going to report him to the feds next week."

  Paul leaned a forearm on the table and addressed Delores. "Why didn't you tell me what you were planning? I've known Greg for a long time. I could have told you your approach wouldn't work." Delores's frown didn't stop him -- he leaned back and tossed his napkin on the table. "When I got out of the Army and went to college, I kept running into him. He beat up a friend of mine over a couple of dollars the guy owed him and the school kicked him out, even though my buddy refused to press charges. Not only that, I was the one who broke up the fight, and Greg tried to tell them I started it. He's a liar and a cheat. Always has been."

  "Thanks for the heads up," Delores said, trying to butter another piece of bread with one hand. "Maybe I could have been spared the broken arm."

  "And you could have kept me informed as to what was going on, Delores. I hoped we were rid of him once the medical examiner determined Blackie didn't kill Valerie. I hoped that was the only reason he was being a problem."

  "Was Lee dead when you arr
ived?" I asked Delores. My voice sounded high and a little frantic to my ears, but hey, somebody needed to break up the spitting and hissing contest the two of them seemed intent on. A half growl, half exhale came from Paul's direction. I didn't look.

  "No," Delores said, and tossed a cool look at Paul. "He arrived midafternoon. I couldn't hear everything they said, but it sounded like Lee was trying to get more money out of Greg--"

  "That would have pissed him off," Juliet interrupted, looking entertained.

  Delores raised an eyebrow at her. "That's a pretty accurate assessment, since he shot him over the issue."

  I stepped in again to deflect Delores's crankiness. "How did Sarah end up in the basement with you?"

  "When Greg shot Lee, I heard her start screaming. I don't know if she actually saw him do it, but she told me she didn't. She said she was upstairs in a bedroom when it happened. Greg told her he had to leave and her job was to keep an eye on me."

  "In the basement?" Juliet laughed. "What an idiot!"

  "The poor girl was totally cowed," I said, hoping Juliet took it as a reprimand.

  "If you'd spent the entire afternoon cooped up with that sniveling child I doubt you'd have a drop of sympathy left for her," Delores said. "Greg knew how unstable she was. I'm sure he figured the basement was his best bet to keep her under control."

  "I expect he didn't count on you girls showing up looking for Delores," Aunt Vi interjected in a hurry. "Speaking of which, how did you boys know to go to Valerie's?"

  "We didn't, we were out of options," Eric said, raising both hands. "When Juliet didn't show up at the soccer field tonight, Paul and I check places where she might be. We'd already been to Thea's house when you called and told us Blackie was going crazy, so we knew neither of them were there. We switched to trying to find Thea because of Blackie, but I had a feeling Juliet was with her. Valerie's was the last place we tried. We were getting pretty desperate at that point, what with you calling every five minutes."

  "I'd like you to know," Aunt Vi said, "that the minute Thea was all right, Blackie settled down."

  "You mean he stopped all his carrying on before we got there?" Eric asked.

  "Precisely." Aunt Vi nodded, self-satisfied.

  "I guess we should have followed the ambulance when we saw it," Paul said. "I'll know better next time." He looked pointedly at me.

  "There won't be a next time," Aunt Vi said, copying Paul's stern expression

  I should have laughed, but it wasn't happening.

  "How are we going to test the 'psychic horse theory' then?" Juliet asked.

  "We're not," Uncle Henry said, "I, for one, am unwilling to put that theory to the test any more. I'm quite happy to let it rest."

  "It was a good thing I went looking for you this afternoon, Thea. You would have been in worse trouble without me. When Delores still didn't show up after all that time I knew something was wrong. I knew it wouldn't take her so long to decide whether to buy a horse or not. But I can honestly say, it never occurred to me my sister and my boss would start playing detective." She crossed her arms and sighed at the ceiling. "If you two hadn't gone mucking around in things—"

  "Greg would be long gone and Frederick Parsons would have gotten away with murder," I finished.

  "You don't know that for certain. The police would have caught him. Anyway. I'm surprised at my responsible, mature sister stirring up so much drama."

  "Me? I was an innocent bystander"

  "You're not. We only wanted you to break up with Jonathan. We didn't anticipate having to solve a murder, too."

  "Nobody planned to solve --" The "break up with Jonathan" part hauled me to a stop. Particularly the "we" part. I couldn't be hearing that right, but each person at the table was looking somewhere else, except for Paul. He seemed to have lost the gist of the conversation entirely. What an idiot I'd been. I'd been suckered, set up, and manipulated. Juliet met my frown with defiance.

  "Hey now, you have to admit you needed a little push. That break-up was a long time coming."

  "A 'little push'?" I shrieked. "Is that what you call all the maneuvering that's been going on? 'Meddling' is a much better word."

  "Oh, come on. We've been waiting for months for you to shake loose of Jonathan. All we did was make sure you and Paul met."

  "Met? There wasn't one single 'meeting' you people didn't have a hand in, was there? I call that repeatedly throwing us at each other. Did you ever stop to think about what I might want? Or him?" I pointed diagonally across the table at Paul. "Well? Did you?" I turned on Aunt Vi. She leaned away from me. "That's what you meant the day Blackie was stolen when you said things weren't going the way you'd planned, isn't it?" I tried to stare down Uncle Henry, but he was rearranging his flatware. "Did you know about this?" I fired at Paul.

  His eyes widened. "No." Then his brows slammed down as he turned to his aunt. "I should have known you were up to something."

  She straightened and grumbled, but didn't meet his eyes.

  "Now Paul, dear," Aunt Vi said. "Don't you be thinking we didn't have your happiness in mind, too. You've been a bit lonely. Anyone could see that."

  I believe the comprehensiveness of the matchmaking conspiracy finally sank in for Paul. It certainly did for me. His narrow gaze took in each person seated at the table. Uncle Henry and Eric exchanged frantic, guilty looks. But Juliet, always confident, rolled her eyes.

  "Oh come on," she said, sweeping us all with a disgusted look. "Mission accomplished."

  I stared at her, slack-jawed.

  "Well, you did give Jonathan the old heave-ho. All we did was a little arranging." She fielded Paul's glare with a sniff and tossed it back. "Step up to the plate, mister. I'm good, but I can only stack the kindling -- I can't start the fire. You guys did that yourselves. Don't go blaming us if you've got the hots for each other and don't know what to do next. I'm done holding your hands. Figure it out on your own."

  I suddenly developed my own overwhelming interest in the table cloth. Uncle Henry cleared his throat and valiantly changed the subject.

  "Would anyone like more tea?" He was so British. I so loved him for it.

  "No thank you" was murmured several times around the table and chairs pushed back.

  "If you'll all excuse me," Delores said, "I'm going to hit the hay." She left for the guest room.

  Eric and Juliet moved quickly, gathering plates from the table and taking them to the kitchen where both Aunt Vi and Uncle Henry were bustling around cleaning up.

  Yes, I had unfinished business with Paul, but while I contemplated my apology he disappeared. I can't say I wasn't relieved. It would be awkward and embarrassing, and I was less than confident of the outcome. Tomorrow would probably be better. Or the next day.

  Who was I trying to kid? I was afraid. He'd passed judgment on me and I was afraid to hear it. My friends and family all knew about what happened between us, they all had expectations, they were all watching and I was afraid…and this pattern was so familiar. And it was time to break it. I went into the kitchen.

  "Uncle Henry?" He was putting dishes in the sink and glanced over his shoulder at me. "Uncle Henry, I'd like your help."

  "Of course." He wiped his hands on a tea towel and came over to where I was rooted in place. "What do you need?"

  I took a deep breath and bit my lip trying to figure out how to start. I met his eyes. He knew. He was smiling. How did he know?

  "I want to enter Blackie in a dressage show," I said on a single exhale.

  "I'll be more than happy to work with you." His smile broadened.

  "I may be terrible at it, you know."

  "It doesn't matter. What made you change your mind?"

  I shrugged. "I think I understand you have to take a risk sometimes, do something that scares you because the regrets would be worse. Or maybe I've been waiting so long I forgot what I was waiting for."

  "You'll do fine. You know I'll be there for you. It won't be all that bad."

  "I know that
now." I couldn't help grinning. It felt so good. "Besides, what's one more risk for an old veteran risk-taker like me?"

  He laughed and hugged me. I hugged him back and over his shoulder I caught Aunt Vi's wink.

  "We can take a look at the show schedule tomorrow and make plans. I think you'd best be going now, though." Uncle Henry loosened the grip I had on him. "I believe someone else wants a word."

  I looked out the kitchen door in the direction he inclined his head. Paul stood by my car. With my heart thudding, I hugged Uncle Henry again, kissed Aunt Vi goodnight, and walked down the path at a pace considerably slower than the hammering in my chest. As I approached Paul held his hand up. I stopped and bit my lip, bracing for the indignant, and rightful, complaint that was surely coming. He cleared his throat then swallowed before he met my eyes.

  "I owe you an apology," he said. "I am very sorry."

  Oh. This wasn't what I was expecting, but, on the other hand, I could live with it. "Apology accepted," I said. "I owe you one, too."

  He shook his head once. "I was hoping you might give me another chance."

  And the surprises kept coming. "I could do that."

  "Dinner? Next weekend?"

  "Next weekend?"

  "Yeah. If you don't have plans."

  I shook my head a couple of times then glanced over my shoulder at the house. Although I couldn't see her I knew Aunt Vi was watching.

  "I know a nice restaurant in Portland, short taxi-ride from the train station. Nice view of the river."

  "Portland?"

  He flinched ever so slightly and glanced at the house. "I don't think we'd run into anyone we know there."

  I did a quick mental survey of this proposed date: At least a four hour trip each way, plus a couple hours for dinner … didn't sound like a day trip to me. More like an overnighter. I sucked in my lower lip to hold down a smile. It kind of worked. "That's a long trip, just for dinner."

  One shoulder rose slightly and he had the grace to break eye contact.

  "How about Bellingham?" I asked. His gaze jumped to mine and held. "It's only a two hour drive, and I don't know anybody in Bellingham. Do you?"

  "A couple people. Wouldn't matter." His eyes smiled first, then his mouth. He opened my car door. "Maybe we can do Portland another time."

  I pulled the car keys out of my purse and slid behind the wheel.

  "Maybe we can," I said.

  There was a small chance Aunt Vi wasn't able to see the way we were grinning at each other. He dipped through the open door, brushed a soft kiss across my mouth, then closed the door, lifting a hand in farewell. I missed the ignition twice with my key, and completely forgot about my seatbelt.

  Aunt Vi would have had to have been blind to miss any of that.

  Special Bonus Section

  Excerpts from the next two

  Thea Campbell Mysteries

  Levels of Deception

  The second Thea Campbell Mystery