Maltese Vulture Murder Read online

Kelly waved us off. "Go. I've got this." She picked up my fire extinguisher and walked back into the living room.

  * * *

  "Mrs. Jones." Rex greeted us warmly when we walked in. "Thank you for coming in. I really appreciate it."

  He led the way, and we followed him into his office, where the sheriff and Nellie Lou were waiting. Rex invited Pam and Tammi to sit and brought in another chair for me, which he placed near his side of the desk. The sheriff was seated in a chair behind my husband's desk.

  "I understand you called Sheriff Carnack here to tell him Delaney was home?" Rex asked pleasantly.

  From the look on Carnack's face, I'd have said he didn't know about that. Tammi was caught in a lie. I hoped Rex would take it easy on her. You had to be careful with these fragile types. They didn't bend or even break. They exploded.

  "Oh, I…" Her hands fluttered again to her pearls. "I'm sure I did. Unless it was Bill. Maybe Bill called. You know, I get so confused lately."

  I'll bet. Confused because your husband dragged you into his mess.

  "And the girl is fine?" Rex pressed.

  He didn't call her out on her lie. It was an old trick, one we used in the CIA. Don't say much. Let their nerves make them reveal things they wouldn't normally say.

  Tammi nodded so vigorously I thought her head might fall off. "Oh yes! She's fine! Not a mark on her! Nobody hurt her! We're very grateful."

  Her hand dropped to her side, still trembling. Pam reached out and took it in hers, patting it with her other hand.

  "Mrs. Jones," Rex asked casually, "did you know that the kidnappers were using your cabin at the country club?"

  "What?" Tammi croaked, her eyes bulging. "I don't understand."

  Rex dialed it way back. "It appears that the two kidnappers, a Mr. Sun and a Mr. Moon, were using your cabin at the club. Did you ever notice anything amiss?"

  Tammi's eyes blinked, and she looked confused. "Recently? That's not possible…"

  "I'm afraid it is," Rex soothed. "You haven't seen anything unusual at the cabin? Any evidence of someone you didn't know being there?"

  "No! I don't understand," Tammi wailed loudly.

  Pam put her arm around the woman and held her firmly as she spoke quietly to calm her friend down.

  And then it hit me. Tammi didn't seem to understand the question about her cabin. But not for the reasons you'd think. Rex was asking the wrong question. And I now knew which one to ask, because I knew, for once, what was going on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  How did I miss that? I was a total idiot.

  I turned to Pam with renewed interest.

  She didn't seem to notice. The woman was staring at Tammi, who looked at her co-leader with a nervous smile.

  "You did it?" I pointed at her. "You're behind all of this!"

  Pam turned very slowly toward me. Tammi turned green.

  "You killed Bingley! And it has something to do with you and Tammi being a couple!"

  Now everyone was looking at me. Staring, actually. I couldn't blame them. I'd be staring at me too, if I wasn't the one saying it.

  I turned to Rex and Ed. "Tammi is confused about the use of the cabin, because she truly believed it was foreclosed by the club for back rent. She didn't think they owned it anymore. Because she didn't realize that Pam paid the back rent on it and kept renting it in the mayor's name." I looked at her. "Isn't that right?"

  Pam glared at me, but I continued. "This goes back to that town in Texas. Where you and your family, Norbert Bingley, and the mayor's family all lived before you moved here. I don't know how I didn't see it before! I thought the mayor was behind this, but he wasn't. You were!"

  Tammi broke down, sobbing on her friend's shoulder. Pam was staring at me, her arm still around Tammi and her other hand holding Tammi's. Pam's thumb was stroking Tammi's hand to comfort her.

  It felt like I'd been struck by lightning.

  "Back in Texas, you hired Bingley to find something on the mayor so you could blackmail him." A steady stream of words poured out of me. "Probably so he would divorce Tammi!"

  "Merry," Rex started. "Do you have any proof of this?"

  Another lightning bolt struck. Turning to Nellie Lou, I gently opened her beak, reached in, and pulled out a flash drive. I handed it to Carnack, who handed it to Rex. He plugged it into his computer.

  "I think"—I turned back to Pam—"that Bingley didn't just find dirt on the mayor. He also found out about you two."

  Pam exploded with fury. "That moron! Once we had what we needed, he decided to follow us and took some compromising pictures of me and Tammi." She said her partner's name with affection, in spite of the fact the rest of the words dripped venom.

  Tammi continued to sob. There were no protestations, no arguments that what I was saying was false. These two were a couple. And sadly, I thought Pam was probably good for the nervous woman.

  "He decided to blackmail you, Tammi, and the mayor," I added.

  Pam nodded before spilling it all. "Bill refused to divorce Tammi because in Texas, they like their politicians to have certain 'family values.' He knew about us and was furious that our relationship might ruin his chances! He swore that Tammi and I would never be together." She laughed bitterly.

  "Stupid fool. I talked my husband into moving to this town. I was not happy that it was a farm, but we had a plan. This was where Nellie Lou came from and went back to. Tammi put the idea in Bill's head to move here—that this would be an out-of-the-way place to start over. Boy was he surprised when he discovered I'd moved here with my family!"

  She must've realized she'd given up the ghost, because she froze. After a second or two she asked, "How did you know? When did you see the blackmail materials?"

  "I didn't." I shrugged. "I just now realized, when I saw the way you two looked at each other, what had happened. I guessed that the intel was in Nellie's mouth."

  Carnack whistled over Rex's shoulder. "Whoa. Bingley was a good investigator. This will put the mayor away for a long time. Extortion, bribes, money laundering for the Uruguayans. There must be fifty or sixty documents here with the mayor's signature, photos of him with cartel leaders, and more!"

  Thank God. I was worried that I might somehow be off. I continued with Pam, "Sun and Moon work for you. And you didn't really kidnap Delaney. You had her stashed somewhere, alive and happy. Then you released her to Tammi, with the simple explanation that she'd been with you on the farm. I'm guessing you made Delaney promise not to say anything."

  For a moment, I wanted to ask her how she did that. It might be a great tool to use on my girls. Maybe it was a pinky swear promise. Those, in my experience, were unbreakable. Tammi burst into another round of tears. She slid from her chair and dropped to the floor, sitting with her face in her hands. Pam knelt next to the woman she loved and comforted her.

  "My idiot brothers-in-law." Pam shook her head. "They always wanted to be spies. I don't know what I was thinking, hiring them. They just had to find that damn bird. I never told them to wear disguises. And if I'm going down, so are they."

  "You're related to those guys?" This seemed more unlikely than their costumes.

  Pam rolled her eyes. "Unfortunately. They're married to my sisters. Mr. Sun—and what a terrible alias that was—is Homer Roach. And Moon is Elroy Skaggs. They're from Arkansas."

  The sheriff asked, "So, Sun…I mean Homer and Elroy killed Bingley?"

  I wished they had. I felt sorry for Pam and Tammi. But those guys were barely able to handle kidnapping, let alone murder.

  "No. I think Pam did it. Those guys couldn't pull that off," I answered.

  "You're right. They couldn't," Pam agreed. "I had to do it myself. But look, Tammi had nothing to do with it."

  "So," Rex asked, "all Sun and Moon did was steal those birds and fake kidnap Delaney?"

  I nodded.

  He pressed, "Why did Bingley…come here?"

  "I'm not 100% on that," I said slowly. "But if I had to guess, I'd say when he found
out his targets for blackmail were leaving, he decided he had too much of a good thing to let it go. It took him a while to track you guys down though."

  "He probably didn't count on his family sending Nellie Lou back to the makers," Rex reasoned.

  "I didn't think he'd follow us here." Pam stood up. "That was a surprise to us. He called me and told me he was going to get the bird, and I knew you had it because Betty and Lauren told Sophie about it." She gave me a curious look. "You came into the garage right after I killed him. I thought for sure you'd see me hiding under your van, but you didn't."

  If Ronni hadn't drugged me, I would've found the body when I went for the stepladder. I wasn't going to bring it up here, though, because Rex wasn't going to arrest his sister.

  Tammi looked up, mascara streaming down her cheeks. "Bingley must've found us when my idiot husband decided to run for mayor again."

  I thought about this. "But Tammi must've been in on it. Why would you upset her by kidnapping Delaney? And using her cabin at the country club?"

  Pam shook her head. "Tammi had no idea. Not until after Delaney was taken. I feel awful about that. And they did let their cabin's rent lapse, but I picked it up and continued to rent it in their names."

  Tammi nodded. "I only put two and two together when I found out that Norbert Bingley had been killed in your garage."

  "On Rex's side," I corrected.

  She kept talking as if I hadn't interrupted. "Even then, I didn't want to believe it."

  "What is going on here?" Mayor Bill stormed into the station. He glared at Pam. "Why is my wife here?"

  I couldn't help but notice his emphasis on the word my. How Neanderthal.

  "Mr. Mayor"— Rex smiled warmly —"I'm so glad you're here. Can you help us with something? You're the only one who can."

  Bill strode arrogantly to the other side of the desk and looked at the screen. It only took a moment for him to realize what he was looking at, and he turned an amazing shade of pink, then made a run for it. Rex's hands shot out, but the mayor was too quick for him. Using an athletic skill I didn't know he had, the mayor hurdled the desk and came right at me—the only thing blocking him from the front door.

  I brought my arm up as he tried to go around me and clotheslined him in the throat. As he went down, wheezing, I thought that this was way more fun than anything else I'd done in Rex's office.

  My husband moved quickly and hauled the mayor to his feet while slapping cuffs on him. Then he turned him over to Officer Kevin Dooley, who took him away.

  Rex stepped up with a set of cuffs for Pam. "I'm sorry, but you have to come with me."

  By murdering Bingley in our garage, on Rex's side, Pam put herself in the town's jurisdiction.

  "Get me a good lawyer!" she screamed as Rex took her outside to his squad car.

  Tammi's hand was fiddling with her pearls, and she looked at me. "Do you know a good lawyer?"

  "I don't. But I'd recommend getting one from Des Moines," I suggested.

  * * *

  Kelly and Riley met me for a quick burger at Oleo's, and I explained what had happened while we waited for our food to arrive. I was pretty sure Riley wouldn't be happy that I'd solved one of his cases. But the more I told them, the more he seemed to relax.

  "Did you really guess where the flash drive was?" Kelly asked as she finished eating.

  I nodded. "I improvised."

  "Well…" Riley stood up. "This wasn't what I had in mind exactly, but I think we should celebrate." He winked at me. "Come by the office tomorrow around noon. Okay?"

  "Uh, okay…" I said.

  They left, and I watched through the window as their cars pulled out of the lot. The waitress handed me the bill, and I realized Riley and Kelly had stiffed me. Oh well. Maybe I deserved that for butting into his case.

  As I paid for our meals, I wondered—what was he talking about, this wasn't what I had in mind?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The next day, with me chomping at the bit to find out what was going on, Rex and I arrived right behind Soo Jin and Eddy Ruiz, her state police boyfriend. As we opened the door, I noticed that Ed Carnack, Kelly, her daughter Finn, and my troop were all there. Everyone was grinning and staring at me. Behind them was a floor-to-ceiling curtain with a large rope attached.

  Riley stepped forward. "I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time."

  "Do what?" For the life of me, I had no idea what was happening here.

  "Surprise you. I wanted to thank you for my new career path in my new hometown." Riley squashed me in a big bear hug.

  "Oh?" I asked as I pulled away. "You're thanking me for bringing you to Who's There?" Now I wondered if this was some sort of gag thing. Like he'd pull the curtain and there'd be a bust of me made out of Cheetos. Hey, that wasn't a terrible idea…

  "So," Riley continued, "I've been saving up for something special." He walked to the rope and pulled.

  As it fell to the floor, I gasped. There, in front of all of us, in all its diabetic glory, was a six-foot-tall cake made out of Hostess products. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Layers of ding dongs topped with twinkies and just about everything else the company made.

  I turned to Rex. "Am I high on hallucinogens right now, or is this real?"

  My husband laughed and promised me that this was completely real.

  I began to tear up. "That was all for me?"

  Riley nodded. "Too bad you spotted those things in my trunk. I thought you'd figured it out."

  I shook my head and stepped up to the cake. Part of me wanted to touch it, but another part of me wanted to shellac it to keep forever. How was I going to get this home? I'd just have to eat half of it here.

  "Besides the newest Remington sniper rifle," Betty gasped, "that's the most wonderful thing ever!"

  She was right. And my troop deserved this just as much as I did.

  "Have at it, girls!" I shouted as I pulled a cupcake from the formation and bit into it.

  Mmmmffff! So good!

  As the girls grabbed parts of the cake, I noticed that Officer Kevin Dooley was already arm deep into it with frosting all over his uniform.

  For once, I couldn't blame him.

  * * *

  The next few days were intense. Mayor Bill was charged with all kinds of fraud and extradited back to Texas. Pam was out on bail, and she and Sophie moved in with Tammi and Delaney while she waited for her court date. She took Rex to the location where the dodo, penguins, and ostriches were stored so they could be returned to their owners.

  Since the mayor had to abdicate, we held a special election for a new mayor, featuring three town councilmen and a couple of women from the Lutheran Ladies League for some reason. A little old lady named Eunice Baxter won. She'd lived in this town all of her life, and so had her parents and grandparents. I guess Whovians wanted someone from here this time.

  Nellie Lou was stuck in the evidence room at the station, sadly. But I had plans for her when she got out. We were going to visit Mr. Fancy Pants. Once she was clean, that is. Randi promised to clean her up. She'd felt pretty bad about what Ronni had done to me. I tried to convince her that it was cool, but she felt responsible.

  So much so that she donated the Vegas showgirl penguins to the police department, and the ostriches playing soccer with a mannequin head to the sheriff's department. She kept the jewelry, explaining that she still had to fulfill that contract and was excited to hear that a couple of penguins at the zoo weren't feeling very well. I wished her (and the penguins) good luck.

  Pam ended up confessing to everything, and the district attorney decided not to press charges against Tammi. Pam's husband was mighty surprised to find out his wife had killed someone and was in love with another woman.

  In fact, Pam stated that she had planned to take Tammi to New York City just to get away from all animal life. I didn't tell her that the largest population of racoons was in NYC. She wasn't going to make it there for a long time anyway.
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br />   Tammi and her troop decided to keep working with ours, and the girls were much kinder to Delaney—most likely because she stopped saying, "My daddy, the mayor…" I figured they were going to be alright when I found out that Sophie had stopped setting fires. I did hear that she'd started a forge in her barn in order to create medieval weaponry. I was told that she was working on a two-handed broadsword, just for me.

  Riley was hailed as a god by the ladies of Delta Chi sorority for returning their beloved Poopsie to them. I don't know if it got him more work, but time would tell. Kelly resumed her work researching, and Claire went back to being silent and mysterious.

  Mr. Sun and Mr. Moon were found in Bladdersly, living in an abandoned house. They insisted that they didn't know Pam or anything about what had happened. They denied that they were really Elroy Skaggs and Homer Roach. And since they couldn't post bail like Pam had, they were stuck in the county jail.

  Once the mayor was back where he started, the Texas Rangers were all over him. In addition to the other charges, it seemed he'd stolen about $150,000 in city funds to pay off a stripper he'd been seeing called Mandy Milk Juggs.

  After five days, the amazing cake was almost completely gone. I didn't eat it all. I had everyone take some home from that party. Kevin took about ten pounds of the stuff, and though my immediate reaction was anger, I realized that was ten pounds that wasn't going to be working its way to my thighs.

  Everything seemed to be tied up, except that I still didn't know who'd leaked the ghost gurney video, but not the video of Sun and Moon, and Nellie in a lab coat fleeing the scene. I was at the station, bringing Rex his lunch of a slab of Twinkies, and on my way out the door, I bumped into Kevin.

  "Sorry about the video," he said with cone-shaped Bugle crackers on each finger.

  I froze. "What did you say?"

  Kevin ate the crackers off his fingers, biting his pinky hard. He seemed surprised that he did that but polished off the ones on the other hand before explaining.