thirty-three

The horror of what just happened stunned Francine for only a second before she realized she had to do something. Vince would probably survive. He might lose his hand, but he wasn’t in danger. Eric was her first priority.

He lay on the floor, in agony but conscious. Blood pooled on the edges of his sweater. She lifted it. The bullet had hit him square in the stomach. She did a quick examination and determined the bullet was still embedded in his body. “Call 911 now!” she said. “He needs to get to an emergency room.”

Cass rushed over and knelt beside her and Eric. She pulled out her cell phone. “What should I say?”

“Just give them the location. I’ll talk you through the rest of it.”

“What about Vince?” Myra said.

Francine noticed that Myra was now on the floor cradling her husband’s head in her lap and trying to wipe away the blood with her shirt. Fuzzy and Charlotte seemed rooted in their spots. “He needs to get to an emergency room too,” Francine told Myra. She noticed Cass’s hands were shaking so bad she couldn’t seem to hit the right numbers on the phone.

Charlotte, meanwhile, roused herself and scouted the room for a phone. “Doesn’t anyone have a good old-fashioned landline anymore?” she asked, hands on hips.

Cass finally hit the jackpot on the numbers. While the phone call went through, Francine directed Charlotte elsewhere. “I need to stop the bleeding, Charlotte. Please get me some towels.”

With Charlotte looking, she turned her attention back to Eric. She felt for a pulse at his neck. It was still strong, but beating very fast.

Cass took Eric’s hand. “I meant to tell you about the baby when we met in secret the other night, but it just didn’t seem like the right time. I never suspected that you still loved me. I broke it off fifteen years ago because it was wrong. I knew it was wrong. I shouldn’t have seduced you. I’m sorry for everything. But I’m not sorry about where we are right now, that I love you and you love me.”

Eric squeezed her hand. His eyes were closed and he licked his lips. They were dry. “Water,” he said. His voice was raspy.

Cass got up and ran to get water.

Francine knew what she had to do. She couldn’t take any chances on Eric dying. She reached into the neckline of her shirt and pulled out her necklace. On it was the ampule containing formula Number 58 from Doc Wheat’s supply of medicines, the one she couldn’t duplicate. The ampule contained only a few milliliters of the liquid, but she believed it would do the trick. She put it to his lips. “Drink this,” she said. When he opened his mouth, she poured it in. It was gone in a swallow.

“Please, more,” he said.

She had just tucked the tiny container away when Cass returned with a glass of water. She propped his head while Cass helped him sip from the glass.

Charlotte entered the room carrying a stack of towels. “Found ’em. Finally.” She left a couple with Myra and dropped the rest next to Francine.

Francine pushed the towels into the wound.

Five minutes later when the paramedics arrived, the bleeding had slowed and almost stopped.

 

Since Camille’s death had been Jud’s case from the start, the county prosecutor called on him to assist even though Cass’s house wasn’t located in Brownsburg. Jud arrived at the scene, took everyone’s statement, and helped process the crime scene. Francine and Charlotte were eventually sent home, but he’d warned them he wanted to see them the next day.

And so, after a restless night where she found herself reliving the horror of being thrown in the back of a hearse, fearing for her life, and then seeing two people shot, she had already anticipated Jud’s phone call. When it came, she dragged herself out of bed and into a hot shower. She got ready, picked up Charlotte, and headed for Brownsburg’s Town Hall.

Jud’s office had changed little since the last time they’d been there, which Francine reminded herself was only a couple of days ago. The multitude of picture frames on the wall had still not been dusted. She wondered when they would be. Maybe never.

He offered them a cup of coffee, which they both gratefully accepted. She half expected Charlotte to pull out a bottle of cognac and spike them up because you really never knew what Charlotte would do, but thankfully no such thing happened.

Jud returned with a tray of three mugs. He leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his. “Weak,” he said, “but hot. The Kuerig machine is out this morning, and no one remembers how to use the coffeemaker. We were lucky to find some ground coffee in the freezer.”

Francine sampled hers and agreed with Jud’s assessment. It was weak.

“So, Jud,” Charlotte said, “how can we help?”

“I find this convoluted. It would appear that blackmailing ran rampant. Even you were a victim, Charlotte. Is that your assessment?”

Charlotte’s eyes grew wide. “No, not me! I mean, I suppose I had been, in the past. A long time ago. You found that out?”

“Your name showed up in the paperwork we took out of Camille’s house after she died. We’ve been watching you, though we doubted you had anything to do with her death. From past experience, we know you and dead bodies go together like coffee and donuts.”

She chuckled. “Spoken like a true policeman, though you don’t look like you spend much time in donut shops. It’s true I made a tribute payment to her after my husband died. I don’t really want to talk about it, other than she never asked for more.”

“So why did she do it at all?” Jud interlocked his hands behind his head and stretched. “What motive did she have?”

“Francine has a theory,” Charlotte answered, nodding toward her. “I think you should share it with him.” She looked back at Jud. “She really is on to something.”

“I think Camille came to think of herself as a vigilante,” Francine said. “Like a superhero who had the ability to see the wrongs people were committing and could administer justice.”

Jud righted himself in his chair and leaned forward. “You have an example?”

“One you already know about. She discovered the child pornographer while monitoring Internet activity from the Bulldog Coffee House. What I think happened—and I only have circumstantial evidence—is that she uncovered some other things about people she was able to use against them. Like Vince Papadopoulos and the ‘abortion’ he arranged for the student Fuzzy got pregnant. He didn’t really have an abortion done. He made the girl disappear until the baby was born and given up for adoption. What he did was technically blackmail, since he extracted a million dollars out of Fuzzy’s parents. But some of it was so he could provide money to her foster parents for support.”

Jud’s mouth twisted as though he wasn’t sure how much to reveal. He seemed to decide in favor of continuing the discussion, though. “He wasn’t completely philanthropic with that money. Only about half of it went to the foster parents. He kept the rest.”

“Which is what made Camille’s sense of justice kick in,” Charlotte said, butting in. “If he had been sending all of it to the foster parents, he might not have cared if all had been revealed. He might even have looked like a good guy. But he got greedy.”

“She was blackmailing Fuzzy too,” Francine said. “I think she was holding what she knew about his previous wrongdoing over his head. Yes, she was extracting his pay as a Town Council member, but she was also trying to keep him from doing it to any other young girls.”

“What about Dick Raden?” Jud asked.

Charlotte scoffed. “We don’t know exactly what she had over him, but with all the bad deals he’s made—at least, bad for Brownsburg—we bet you’ll be able to track something he did that was illegal.”

“What we don’t know,” Francine said, “is why she really chose to run for the Town Council in the first place. All we can figure is that she knew their good ole boys’ network was not helping the Town, and, in do-gooder mode, knew she had the goods on them to break up their control. Between her and Janet Turpen and Fuzzy, who might have been hoping she would stop blackmailing him if he supported her, she was getting the job done.”

Jud nodded. “That would make sense. Then who killed her?”

“You don’t know?” Charlotte asked, frowning.

Jud shook his head. “No one’s confessed. We have Cass, Vince, and Myra on charges of abducting you; Vince on attempted murder charges with regards to Eric; and Fuzzy on some minor charges. But no one on Camille’s death.”

Charlotte and Francine locked eyes. Francine wasn’t about to answer that one. She knew who shot Eric because she’d been a witness. But who knifed Camille was a different story.

Charlotte took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “I’m pretty sure it’s Vince. I think he and Camille had gotten to the point of real animosity. When Eric presented him with the alternative of giving him a lump sum in return for getting Camille off his back, he viewed him as just another blackmailer. Eric was younger and stronger, and so Vince decided he could kill Camille and send a message to Eric that he was not to be trifled with.”

Francine shuddered when she remembered finding Camille gasping for breath because the knife had penetrated one of her lungs. It was worse than almost anything she’d encountered during her days as a nurse. No wonder Eric hadn’t wanted to be left alone after that. And yet, he’d slipped away from Toby, whom he’d recruited as a protective roommate, to be with Cass at least one night they knew of. “Do you know if Cass’s baby was Eric’s?”

“That’s what she claims,” Jud said. He habitually took another sip of the coffee, remembered it was weak, and made a face. “The only way to know for sure is to exhume it, but we don’t think it will come to that. She says she regrets having the abortion, and both of them have professed their love for each other. Apparently they’ve been meeting in secret during the last two months. In the end, it doesn’t matter. He was eighteen even back then, so there was nothing illegal going on.”

Francine turned to Charlotte. “I’ve been meaning to ask, how did you guess last night that Jacqueline Carter was Cass’s baby?”

“Mostly I just wanted to keep them talking,” she said. She exhaled shakily as if recalling how frightening it had been. “Cass wouldn’t let go of the land, so there had to be a strong motive that involved who Jacqueline Carter was. Plus, I remembered that photo of the chubby girl at the Tastee-Freez taken in Chicago. You said you said you thought it wasn’t Camille, even though it was in with her pictures. I realized that Chicago was where Cass had gone the summer before she and Fuzzy divorced. It seemed possible.”

Francine was always amazed at how Charlotte’s mind bordered on clairvoyance. “Was Fuzzy ever in love with Cass do you think?”

Charlotte shook her head, but it was Jud who answered. “My opinion is no. When she was young, he may have been in lust with her, but when she got older he was just using her as a cover for his predatory habits.”

“I’m guessing the only reason they were cooperating was to make the shopping mall at the I-74 interchange a reality,” Charlotte said. “And Cass was frustrating them all.”

“She held a key piece of land,” Jud agreed. “Fuzzy’s parents are in a nursing home, so he had control of the surrounding parcels. Vince and Myra had purchased a five-acre plot from him many years ago for a retirement home, but they were willing to sell at a high price. Vince was looking to replace some of the money he’d obtained from Fuzzy’s parents that Camille had extracted from him. Dick Raden was going to make a killing if he could arrange the deal, and Janet Turpen was working on the financing piece. Cass was the only one they had to convince.”

“But she wouldn’t sell because she couldn’t let go of her daughter Jacqueline?”

Jud nodded. “Exactly. She’s at an age now where having children would be very tricky, so it looked like Jacqueline would be her only child. She knew the cemetery was going to be moved. Since she had fought Fuzzy for that land during the divorce, she didn’t want to give in. She didn’t want the grave disturbed, knowing her daughter was buried there. Money wasn’t enough of a motive.”

Charlotte thought a moment. “What strikes me is the number of people who thought they were doing the right thing, or at least a good thing. Vince, in not allowing an abortion but instead arranging for an adoption, and then sending some of the money to the foster parents. Camille, in making Vince pay for what she perceived as blackmail and also controlling Fuzzy’s impulses. Dick Raden and Janet Turpen in creating the outlet mall that would bring people to Brownsburg. And even Eric, who says he told his aunt Camille that blackmail was wrong no matter what reasons she had for it. He tried to buy her off with a lump sum payment extracted from all the players to end the scheme.”

Francine agreed that it was surprising how wrong things had gone and how many secrets had been spilled, not to mention the life that was lost and the life that was almost lost. She wondered about the secret she was carrying—of the rejuvenative powers of the spring she’d inherited in Parke County and the curative formulas that could be created from its waters. She took a contemplative deep breath before asking a question she really wanted an answer to. “Any information you can share on Eric’s condition?”

“Since it’s good news and they’re doing a press conference in a half hour, I don’t see why I can’t. He’s out of intensive care, and the hospital expects him to make a complete recovery,” Jud said. “They said it’s a good thing he was in excellent physical condition because his body is healing quickly. That’s the only way they could account for it. They told me it’s as if his body knows exactly how to make the repairs it needs to get better.”

Francine put a hand to her neckline and subconsciously twirled the necklace containing the now-empty ampule that had held the last remnants of Doc Wheat’s formula No. 58, which she had yet to duplicate, and wasn’t sure she ever could.

Not unless she could find the elusive second spring.