Willis used his cell phone to call an ambulance for both the chief and Mary Mays. She was unconscious and her head wound was bleeding like – well, a head wound. I found a dish towel that I held to her head while we awaited the ambulance. The chief was sitting on the floor, next to Mary’s body, shaking his head.
‘Can’t believe she’s mixed up in this!’ He looked at me, a pitiful expression on her face. ‘She did real good at the academy. Top of her class.’
‘Whoever this guy is, it’s all his fault,’ I soothed.
‘Well, yeah, of course. But I thought Mary was smarter than fallin’ for some jerk-weed bad boy!’ he said, again shaking his head.
‘Did you get a look at him?’ I asked.
‘Naw, just the back of him,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t even tell how tall he was from up here. Not fat’s about the only thing I’m sure of.’
Willis, who had been out on the balcony that surrounded the second floor, stuck his head inside. ‘Ambulance is here,’ he said.
I helped the chief to stand up. ‘Hope she’s gonna be OK,’ he said, looking down at his officer. ‘She’s a good girl. Really.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ I said in a more patronizing tone than I’d intended. Considering the way she’d treated Willis and me lately, and the fact that she might be involved in the deaths of Diamond Lovesy and Humphrey Hammerschultz, I doubted she was that good a girl. I was thinking she was a stone-cold bitch – but I didn’t mention my opinion to the chief.
The ambulance attendants came up with the gurney and, after checking out Mary Mays, got her on it and out onto the balcony and down the stairs to the waiting bus. The chief was right behind them, holding tightly to the railing of the stairs. Willis was already down, waiting by the ambulance, as I came down after the chief. I saw the chief hand Willis a ring of keys.
‘Take my squad car back to the shop, OK?’ he said. ‘I’ll get a ride back after they patch me up.’
Willis nodded, patted Chief Cotton on his good arm and helped him into the back of the ambulance, where he sat down next to the stretcher that carried Mary Mays. I almost felt bad about Mary, seeing the look on the chief’s face. He looked ten years older than he had when we first met, and very, very sad.
Willis and I headed back upstairs to Mary’s apartment. The chief was otherwise occupied – both physically and mentally – and obviously hadn’t even thought about securing the scene or getting a forensic team in to check it out. Not that he actually had a team – there’d been that one lady with the bag at the Bishop’s Inn when we’d found Humphrey, and I’d seen the same lady at the scene of Diamond’s murder.
‘Maybe we should call the station and get that forensic woman out here,’ I suggested to Willis.
He nodded, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and went to the balcony to put in the call. I headed into the bedroom. If there was anything left of Mary’s ‘bad boy,’ I figured this was where I’d find it. And there was. Trying not to touch anything, I went back into the kitchen, found some tongs in a bowl of kitchen tools on the stove top and took them back into the bedroom with me, using them to move away scattered clothing. Some of the items were definitely larger than Mary’s clothes and looked more like those of a man than a woman. And there were male toiletries in the bathroom. I’m not sure what that told me other than the ‘bad boy’ was indeed shacking up with Mary, but I’d already figured that.
Willis came back in. ‘That old lady at the station—’
‘Mildred,’ I supplied.
‘Whatever. She kept bugging me to tell her what happened, but I didn’t!’ he said, like a little boy proud of his first major accomplishment. ‘She did say she’d send the forensic woman out, but kept insisting I tell her why I was calling instead of the chief.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘That he asked me to call,’ Willis said, and grinned. I hoped he was finally beginning to understand my penchant for things mysterious. Changing the subject, he asked, ‘What did you find?’
I shook my head. ‘Not much. A guy’s been living here, all right. There’s men clothes in the bedroom and a few toiletries in the bathroom, but nothing of any significance.’
Willis frowned. ‘Were they all new?’ he asked. ‘Because we found the same crap in Miss Hutchins’ attic.’
My eyes got wide and I grinned at my clever husband. ‘You’re right!’ I said. ‘Let’s go see.’
There were a couple of shirts hanging in the closet with the tags still on them, and all the toiletries, when lifted with the tongs, seemed fairly full. Willis borrowed the tongs to open the only drawer in the bathroom. And there, staring up at us – if it had eyes, which of course, it didn’t – was the sheathed straight-razor that Mary Mays was supposed to have fingerprinted.
There was no noise, just possibly a shadow passing between the bedroom light and Willis and me still in the bathroom. That was the only thing that made me turn around. When I did, I grabbed Willis’s arm. There was a man standing there, pointing a gun at us. I had no doubt this was Mary Mays’ bad boy. Surprisingly, though, he looked like the same guy who’d been in the picture with Diamond Lovesy, and the same guy Miss Hutchins had called ‘daddy.’
‘So,’ I said, putting on a braver face than I felt, ‘you’re Miss Hutchins’ daddy, huh? You’re kinda young.’
He grinned at me. ‘Not for a ghost, huh?’ he said.
‘You look pretty substantial to me,’ Willis said.
‘Oh, I am. Substantial enough to blow a hole through the both of you!’
‘You’re Edgar Hutchins’ grandson, right?’ I said.
The grin left his face and he frowned at me. ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.
‘Who else could you be? You’re too young to be his son. The family resemblance, the destroyed pictures so no one would know about that resemblance, Miss Hutchins seeing you all those times and believing you were her father. Personally,’ I said, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, so I figured it had to be a relative. Especially when we found a picture of you with Diamond Lovesy. What was your connection to her?’
‘She was my half-sister. And that stupid name is one she made up. Her real name was Darlene Winslow. My daddy gave her his name, although she wasn’t really his kid. And he never let her forget it, either,’ he said with a grin.
‘So your name is Winslow?’ Willis asked. ‘Not Hutchins?’
‘Ol’ Grandpa Edgar changed his name when he came out of the Philippines,’ he said. ‘Least, that’s what my daddy told me. Actually named me after the old coot. They call me Eddy. But ol’ Edgar went AWOL, so he couldn’t very well use the Hutchins name now could he?’
‘I don’t understand what you’re doing here,’ I said. ‘Why are you harassing the old lady? What’s in it for you? I can’t see you doing anything that doesn’t profit you somehow.’
The grin was back on his face. It was a lovely grin, full of straight, pearly white teeth and a dimple in his left cheek – just no sparkle in the eyes. Actually, there wasn’t much of anything in those eyes. No spark, no shine, no depth, no life. They were as cold as the proverbial witch’s tit.
‘Profit? I guess you can say that. I don’t mind telling y’all, since you’re going to be dead in a few minutes anyway. It’s a treasure. Real treasure. No fooling around.’
‘Is that what all the banging around has been about?’ Willis asked. ‘By the way, what were you dragging down the hall Saturday night? Sounded like something heavy.’
‘Oh? Y’all heard that? Sorry to wake you,’ he said, the grin even wider than before. ‘It was an old chest. Had a strong lock on it. Figured if I tried to get it open up in the attic I’d be heard. So I dragged it outside and into my car. Opened it up there. It wasn’t all that heavy.’
‘No treasure inside?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘Just some old clothes. Mary, the dumb ass, said they were worth a mint – real vintage, she said. But who in their right mind would buy old clothes?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ I said.
‘So what happened to Humphrey?’ Willis asked.
Eddy shrugged. ‘That asshole! Darlene – Diamond to you – knew about the treasure I was after and told Humphrey. For some reason she thought he was her true love. He couldn’t see her for nothing. Actually, I think he was more interested in me than her. But he’s the one who got her into this whole psychic scam bullshit and made some decent money. I told her I knew where we could get some real money and she could dump his fat ass. But then she told him!’ He frowned. ‘The bitch! She was supposed to be on my side, but she goes and tells that dipshit!’
‘That must have been annoying,’ I said, edging closer to the drawer where the straight-razor still resided in its sheath. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, especially up against a gun, but it was the only thing I could think of.
‘Annoying shit!’ he said vehemently. ‘That SOB thought he could bargain with me. Came up with this plan of him and Darlene getting into the house and helping me look for it. Like he was gonna share the treasure with me when he found it! I’ve been in and out of this house for months. I know where everything is! Still, I didn’t mind helping Darlene a bit at first – not enough to bother me, mind – then that stupid Hammerschultz gets stinking drunk and I go downstairs in the middle of the night and he’s all, “When I find it, I’m keeping it, asshole, and you and your sister can shove it.” So I grabbed him and sorta twisted his head. Didn’t really mean to kill him,’ he said. Then he grinned again. ‘But it sure made a neat popping sound when I broke his neck.’
I thought I was going to throw up in my mouth. This guy was one of the sickest people I’d met – and in my hobby of finding killers, I’d met a few true sickos. But this one took the cake. ‘You moved the chest after you killed him?’
‘Well, I was gonna get him to help me, but when he said what he said …’
‘So you’re the one who wrote the reservation in Miss Hutchins’ book?’
He said nothing, just grinned at me.
‘And then you shot your own sister?’ I asked.
He straightened his shoulders and got an indignant look on his face. ‘Hell, no! That’s family! You don’t kill your kin.’ He stopped and thought about it, then said, ‘Mostly. But no, I didn’t shoot Darlene. Ol’ Mary Mays did that. Darlene was really pissed about Humphrey and she asked me to meet her to talk, but I was busy, so I sent Mary. And Darlene’s all shook up, tells Mary she’s gonna turn us both in for killing Humphrey, and get this, Mary says she said, “the love of her life!” That squirrely old fag!’ He laughed out loud. ‘She wasn’t joking, though. And she shook Mary up so much that she just lost it and shot her.’ He shrugged. ‘I had nothing to do with that.’
‘Why did you come back here?’ Willis asked him.
‘To the apartment, you mean?’
Willis nodded.
‘Well, there was Mary – before she grew a fuckin’ conscience and wanted to confess everything. But then I saw them take the policeman away in the ambulance. Thought you two would be long gone. I just needed one little thing. If you wouldn’t mind, lady, open that drawer behind you and hand me that thing in the red velvet bag.’
‘You mean your straight-razor?’ I asked, doing as he said. But I didn’t hand it to him. Instead, I hefted it in my hand. ‘Family heirloom?’ I asked.
‘Guess so,’ he said. ‘It was Grandpa Edgar’s. Now hand it over.’
‘Put down the gun,’ came a voice from behind us.
Eddy whirled around to stare at the forensic lady standing there with her bag in her hand. She held no weapon, so he shot her. Luckily, he wasn’t a very good shot and the bullet only grazed her, but my husband, bless him, took that opportunity to jump into action and managed to knock Eddy to the ground, pushing the gun away. I grabbed it while Willis continued to knock Eddy around a bit. I really didn’t blame him – I mean, we were both pretty high on adrenaline.