An Excuse For Murder, page 23
“You hit me, pal, I hit you.”
His hand snagged in her hair, yanking her head back, forcing her to look up at him. The tendons in her neck strained against the force. Her hair felt like it was being torn out at the roots. She flinched, but looked at him steadily and noted with satisfaction that the blood still ran freely from his nose.
****
Gary approached the store, scanning the perimeter. The glass reflected the street behind him like the surface of a mirror. He cupped his hands on the surface, his breath fogging up the glass.
What he saw within had his blood running cold.
The man’s back was to him, but his shoulders were curved forward and straining with barely restrained violence. Kate was pressed against the counter, her head yanked back, trapped by the hold he had on her hair, the vulnerable line of her neck exposed. She glared up at the man, equal parts fear and defiance in her expression.
Gary’s vision went dark at the edges. His muscles went rigid, then loosened and warmed. His nerves sang.
He tried the door handle. Locked. That wasn’t surprising, only horribly inconvenient.
Gary hammered his fists against the door. “Kate!” His voice was a hoarse shout.
****
For an instant Delaney’s grip on her hair loosened. Kate didn’t hesitate. Her fingers scrambled over the counter, searching, then closed around cardboard. She smiled.
And flung the contents of the paper cup into his face.
He let go abruptly and cursed. Delaney swiped at his eyes, the hot liquid running down his face, dripping from his hair.
Kate dodged past him, toward the door, stumbling on legs stiff with tension. Her eyes met Gary’s through the window.
Then a hand clamped over her ankle as Delaney threw himself after her. She hit the floor, pain flaring as her elbows met the ground. Kate twisted, writhing, and lashed out at him with her foot, aiming for his face.
He ducked. “You fucking little bitch,” he hissed, and yanked her toward him. He loomed above her, drew back his hand, his fingers curling into a fist, dark intent in his eyes.
Kate drove her knee upward, into his groin. Direct contact.
From behind them came an explosion of sound. Debris rained over them. Splinters of glass pricked her skin.
Delaney’s eyes rolled back and he wheezed. He tumbled off her, knees curling involuntarily to his chest. He rocked back and forth, whimpering.
Kate clambered to her feet, staggering slightly, and breathing hard. “I warned you,” she gasped.
Chapter Forty-Four
Kate brushed her hair out of her eyes and stared at Gary standing in the doorway. Blinked. It took a moment for her to register exactly what she was seeing. “You broke my door down?”
Then she couldn’t say anything because with two strides, Gary had pulled her into his arms in a bone-crushing embrace. His heart raced against hers.
Kate gasped. “Ribs! Careful with the ribs.”
He loosened his hold a little, only to run his hands over her, down her arms, over her face, lingering gently over the angry red mark on her cheek.
“I can’t believe you broke my door down!” Kate complained, straining to look at the destruction over his shoulder. “I was handling it.”
“Whose blood is that?” His voice was clipped as he gestured at her t-shirt. “Yours or his?”
Kate looked down at herself. “His. I think.” She suddenly felt queasy. “I look terrible.” Her ears started to buzz as she gazed the red splatters on her top.
Gary took one look at her face before lifting her so that she was sitting on the counter. He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“I’m fine,” Kate said through suddenly chattering teeth.
“’Course you are.” He pulled the lapels closer around her. Held on for a second before letting go.
A moan from the man balled on the floor made him turn. Gary tugged his belt from the loops and secured the man’s arms roughly behind his back. Delaney cried out and struggled, but Gary’s hold on him was like iron. He lashed Delaney’s arms behind his back with the leather belt. Then he grabbed a fist of Delaney’s hair and yanked the man’s head backward.
Delaney’s eyes were wide with terror.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Gary growled.
He towered over the man and looked like he would give anything to finish the job right there and then. “Gary—” Kate said involuntarily.
The muscles in his arm strained. Then he released him and Delaney’s forehead smacked back onto the floor.
“Hey!” Delaney yelped and rolled onto his back, his face contorted with fear and pain.
“You’re not worth it.” Gary stepped over him, disgust on his face.
He glanced back at Kate. Whatever he saw in her eyes seemed to cut him to the bone. “You thought I was going to kill him?”
No. Yes. “I wasn’t sure.” Quiet. Truthful.
“Why would you be?” Gary looked down at his hand, his eyes shadowed and unreadable. “Why is his hair wet?”
“It’s tea.”
Gary snorted, half amusement, half disbelief. “There’s no avoiding tea when it comes to you, is there? Where’s Percival?”
“I have no idea. He wandered off a little while ago.”
“That doesn’t sound like him.” Gary frowned. “I can’t believe Delaney risked coming here.”
“He wanted the laptop.”
Delaney glared at them in sullen fury.
“What is that noise?” Gary suddenly blurted, looking around the store for the source. Then asked, “California surf songs?” His voice was incredulous.
“It’s not nice to judge.” Kate turned the music off and the store was silent.
“Murderer.” Delaney spat at Gary. “What do you think is going to happen when the police come? I’ll tell them everything.”
Gary opened his mouth to reply but Kate cut him off. “Tell them what?” Her cheek throbbed painfully. “What do you really know? How did he kill Wendell then?”
“I don’t know. Some sort of poison. I know he did it. One look at him and they’ll know too.”
“That’s your proof? Any cop worth his shield will laugh in your face. Give it up. Face it. You’re the villain here, Delaney.” She grabbed a roll of packing tape sitting at the far end of the counter. She tossed it to Gary. “Shut him up, will you? He’s giving me a headache.”
“With pleasure.” Gary tore off a strip and plastered it over Delaney’s snarling lips. He straightened. “You’re going away for a very long time, Delaney.”
“Whoa.” At the sound, Gary and Kate turned to look at the entrance.
Tim and Will stood in the broken doorframe, staring wide-eyed around the store, taking in the mess, the trussed-up figure on the ground. Tim turned to Will. “I told you Kate was awesome.”
“Even after I cracked your case?” Kate asked dryly.
“Yeah. If anyone could figure out we’d done it, you could. You know how it works.”
“It?”
“Mysteries.”
“Crikey,” Will breathed, gazing at the scene with blatant admiration. “She clobbered him.”
“Completely.” Tim stepped into the store and peered down at Delaney’s nose knowledgeably. “That’s a gusher.”
“Is he dead?” Will asked curiously from the threshold.
Delaney scowled back at Tim furiously, his shoulders working as his wrists strained at the belt tying his hands together.
“No.” Kate clapped a hand over her mouth, to stop herself from laughing. If she started, she didn’t think she’d stop.
Through the window, a figure staggered into view. He grasped at the broken frame and stumbled into the store, his shoes crunching across broken glass. One hand was cupped to his chin.
“Percival.” Gary greeted his employee with relief, but his voice was brisk when he continued. “Where the hell were you?”
The large man maneuvered past the boys with barely a glance at Delaney and stopped in front of the counter. He addressed a spot in front of Gary’s feet. “I didn’t judge the situation properly and sacrificed the entire assignment. I should have seen it coming.” He muttered the formalities in an unhappy slur. “Shouldn’t have been so damn cocky.” Suddenly his expression changed. “The tosser clipped me one in the alley!”
“Really?” Gary glanced at Delaney with a faint hint of respect in his eyes.
“With a bleeding wheel brace. I’ll tender my resignation tonight,” he rumbled.
“The hell you will. You did your best. Can’t ask any more than that. Just don’t let it happen again.”
Kate watched the exchange curiously. Turned out Gary was more forgiving when it came to other people’s failures than his own.
“Now make yourself useful and ring up the police.” He glanced at Delaney. “And an ambulance.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Blue and red lights pulsed and flashed over faces and shelves, shimmering through the windows in ghostly hues. Percival stood on the pavement outside, doggedly refusing to let anyone through. He crossed his arms over his chest and shifted slightly on his heels. If Gary wasn’t completely off the mark, Perce was quietly whistling the Prelude to Wagner’s Lohengrin.
Gary stood to the side and watched. It was only a matter of time before Kate revealed the truth.
“Let me get this straight.” Marcus leaned against the counter next to Kate and blinked slowly. He had arrived at the store in record time and hadn’t left her side since. “Ryan Delaney is married, but was a member of a gentleman’s club that provided costly services catering toward nympholepts with a propensity for violence. Our pseudonymous friend Mr. Wendell—gambler, weak-willed and morally challenged scoundrel—gathered evidence of this unfortunate fetish in all its digital, inkjet glory and reaped the benefits of his fortunate happenstance for a year, using and losing it to finance his love for the game.”
“Right.”
Marcus continued, “Finally Delaney snapped, and spiced up the old pickle stock with deadly flair. When lo and behold Wendell’s vitality was arrested by a timely heart attack as he was unscrewing the very lethal concoction meant to sever his mortal coil. Coincidence or fate, Delaney thanked his lucky stars, before being seized by the fear that those documents of shame would return to haunt him again by falling into the hands of another—specifically yours. He followed you to see what you knew. Luck was on his side yet again when he cleverly convinced Roselyn to turn over Wendell’s belongings to him. However, there was no laptop. Knowing there had to be a computer on which the pictures were stored, he broke into the house to search for it, only to come upon an empty room. There is no longer so much as an incriminating crumb of pulverized potato crisp dust or an empty can of cheap beer, let alone negatives of the blackmailer’s prized photographs. You came upon him and he bopped you over the head. Fearing for your safety, Gary cornered him in an alley, appearing from the darkness like a well-dressed vigilante, and gave him a two-fisted warning, impossible to misinterpret. Our desperate villain, however, was not easily frightened, or simply daft beyond all belief—”
“Pissed off.”
“Or that. Either way, he decided to seek you out, throwing caution to the wind. Our villain performed the ultimate faux pas and entered your store after closing, bent on—”
“Burning my store to the ground and killing me in the process of taking the laptop back.”
Marcus blanched. “Quite so. Destroying evidence, the cretinous poltroon.”
Kate laughed, then winced. Every muscle had begun to ache. “Poltroon?”
“A coward.”
“I’ll have to remember that one.” She rubbed chilled fingers against her jeans. Her voice sounded detached, as if she was watching something from a long way off that had nothing to do with her. Delayed shock.
“With your usual panache, you beat him to a bloody pulp,” Marcus finished. He looked like his mind was reeling.
Gary said, “Money and fear are strong motives, and he had both.”
“This could only happen to you, Kate.” Marcus gazed blankly at the entrance to the store. “When exactly did he break your door down?”
“He didn’t. That was Gary.”
Marcus’s eyebrows arched to an impossible height and shot a glance at him. “What?”
“The door was locked from the inside and Gary broke it down. I had it covered. I don’t need anyone to save me or Sir Percival over there.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Gary said dryly. Tonight proved that she did need to be protected. The hero just wasn’t meant to be him.
Marcus looked from the gaping doorway to Gary and back again. “I’m impressed at the valiant attempt nonetheless.”
The store had quickly filled with a small crowd. Tim and Will had their backs pressed up against a shelf to the side, hoping to remain unnoticed. They gazed at the activity with unabashed delight. “The door is shattered,” Tim murmured. “Kate is going to be so mad.”
Dr. Garreth stood in the center of the store, feet planted firmly, hands on hips, and scowling. His head swung from side to side, taking in the situation with open disgust. When he dropped his leather satchel at his feet with a bang, splinters of wood and glass rippled outward across the floor.
A figure jogged across the road toward the store, was about to enter the store when an arm, the size and width of a tree branch blocked the way.
Jeremy glared at Percival. “I’m with the doc.”
“Credentials,” Perce demanded.
“Ow! God damnit!” The exclamation exploded through the store.
Delaney was on his feet, hands cuffed behind his back, and was scowling and swearing furiously. Henry held onto him with one hand while a strip of packing tape dangled from the other. He looked at him patiently.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Henry rattled off Delaney’s rights as he marched him to the door.
“You’re arresting the wrong person.” Delaney spun suddenly, staring straight at Gary. “He’s the one you want! He killed him!” He all but spat the words at him. “He killed Wendell!”
Tim and Will gasped. “So cool,” Tim whispered on a sigh of sheer bliss.
“Ace,” Will agreed.
Gary’s face remained impassive, giving away nothing. He could feel the tension radiating off Kate.
Henry looked at Dr. Garreth questioningly. “It would mean a lot of paperwork, if what he’s saying is true.”
Dr. Garreth stared at Delaney. Then he slapped his thigh and broke into raucous laughter. “That’s a first!” He wagged his finger at Delaney. “Trying to turn a natural death into a homicide. If the fellow died of anything other than a heart attack than I’m John bloody Wayne. Better stage a postmortem because I must have missed the bullet.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Anyone want to exhume the body? Be my goddamn guest.”
“But—”
Henry pushed Delaney roughly toward the door. “I don’t want any more stories from you. Wait until the lads at the Yard hear about this,” he muttered happily. “Ha! Always bragging about gang wars, brawls, and murder. This’ll wipe the smirk right off their faces. Culpam poena premit comes.”
“Huh?” Will frowned.
“‘Punishment presses hard onto the heels of crime.’” Tim translated the Latin without a second thought, it being obviously a well-worn phrase in the Smith household. Something casually used over the mashed potatoes and gravy.
Tim suddenly squinted at something over Will’s shoulder. He gasped, eyes alight with excitement. He stretched on his toes and gingerly removed a book from the shelf the way an archeologist would remove a fossil from the earth. He brushed over the cover, then held it aloft for Kate to see, a triumphant grin crossing his face.
From where he was standing, Gary could see the blue and brown cover, with bold white typeface and two boys deciphering mysterious symbols carved into a stone slab.
“The Mystery of the Mayan Warrior,” Will breathed reverently. The boys sat on the floor, backs to the shelves, and Tim flipped the cover open. They leaned over the book in anticipation.
Delaney limped past them as Henry led him out. Jeremy stared openly at Delaney’s blood-stained face and his crooked nose. “What happened to him?”
“Kate did,” Gary said.
“Blimey.” Jeremy shook his head pityingly. “Let’s patch you up then, shall we?”
“Jeremy,” Dr. Garreth barked. “Take care of his face. And twinkle toes,” he added to Kate, “you’ll need to be treated for shock. You can go to hospital with us via ambulance or by a designated driver of your choice. Take your pick.” He hefted his bag, glanced once more around, harrumphed, and followed Jeremy out.
Marcus jingled his keys in his pocket. “I’ll take you.”
“No one gets in there,” Percival rumbled suddenly. He braced his hands against the doorframe, blocking the way.
Neil simply pushed the other man aside with one hand as if he was brushing aside a curtain, and barreled his way through. In the other hand, he was carrying a take-out cup from the Old Firehall Café. Percival had met his equal when it came to size and stature. After a moment’s shock, Percival swung around, stretched one giant hand out, and grabbed a fist-full of Neil’s shirt.
“It’s okay, Percival,” Gary said.
Percival released his captive abruptly.
Neil glared at Percival before crossing the room. He shoved the paper cup into Kate’s hand. “Hot toddy from the café,” he said gruffly. “Thought you’d need it.”
Kate cupped her hands around it gratefully. “Thanks, Neil.” She took a sip.
Rubber soles clomped over shards of glass and wood. Percival pushed the intruder out onto the sidewalk and barricaded the doorway with his bulk. “No.”
