Mind-Bending Murder Page 22

  Everyone was here. And then some. I hadn't realized that Ron and Ivan were coming. Or that Ella had been invited. But the rest needed to hear what I had to say. Bryce Vanderzee, Kurt, Kelly, Betty, and Lauren—who I also hadn't realized were coming—Riley, and Mordecai were present.

  "Hey." Kurt raised his hand. "Why didn't you invite Ela? I mean, Ella's here. It seems only fair."

  I ignored the comment. It was up to Ella to explain that she was Ela too.

  "Thanks for coming," I started. "And thanks to the hospital for giving us a space. They told me Pastor Malone here couldn't be moved just yet. So I appreciate the folks who made the trip from Bladdersly."

  "So." Kurt raised his hand again. "Who killed Tyson Pancratz?"

  The others nodded. Damn. I had planned to do this whole, long story with crazy twists that would make me look amazing. But as several people consulted their watches or looked at the clock, I decided to cut things short and keep them simple. Next time, I'd do a dramatic thingy. Next time.

  "The killer is…Pastor Buddy Malone," I said a bit dramatically.

  The room gasped as everyone turned to look at the man. He was sitting in the corner hunched over, eyes out of focus, and drooling. Oh, he's good.

  "Merry," Sheriff Carnack warned. "You had better be absolutely certain of this."

  Vanderzee began to shriek, "You're just saying that because he saw you! He knows you did it!"

  Rex gave me an encouraging nod.

  Ronni began chanting, "Justice for Pancratz! Justice for Pancratz!" How did she get in here? She wasn't invited. Then I noticed that Ron and Ivan had brought the twins with them. Rex walked over and whispered into his angry sister's ear. She scowled, which wasn't much different from the look she always had on her face, but kept quiet.

  Malone drooled a little but just sat there with his eyes unfocused.

  Betty leaned over to Lauren and stage-whispered, "Yup. He looks like a creeper."

  "I am absolutely certain of this," I said. "I'll admit that he's very good. He had me thinking Vanderzee and Mordecai were in on it."

  "You take that back!" Vanderzee sputtered, pointing an accusing finger at me.

  Mordecai looked puzzled.

  "Take it back! Take it back!" Ronni started chanting. Ron, thinking this wasn't a slam against me, started to chant with his wife, until Ivan shot him a look that shut him up.

  I continued my monologue. "When I first walked up to Malone on the street, he acted like he didn't recognize me. When I rescued him and told him who I was, he said I wasn't Merry Wrath. And because the Bladdersly police chief insisted that Malone had identified me, it made me wonder if Vanderzee hadn't made up the whole thing."

  The police officer lunged toward me, only to be grabbed and held back by Ron and Ivan. Ronni was furious but said nothing. I guess there's a line she wouldn't cross with her husband. I'd have to remember that.

  "Let go of me!" The man writhed and screamed.

  "No!" Ivan said. "You have to listen to Merry. Then we beat you. Then we let go."

  "Sheriff!" Vanderzee shouted. "I'm being assaulted."

  "Oh, shut up, Bryce," Ed Carnack snapped. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but while Mrs. Ferguson often interferes with investigations, she's never wrong."

  That's it. The sheriff is now getting a lifetime supply of his favorite Girl Scout cookie.

  Vanderzee clammed up, but his eyes bulged as he thought this over.

  "I said," I clarified, "that I'd thought it was you. Obviously, since I'm accusing Malone, I'm saying you are innocent. You were lied to, and you aren't very bright, but you're not the killer or the kidnapper."

  Kurt raised his hand. "Why do you think it's the pastor? What could possibly be his motive?"

  I silently thanked him for moving things on.

  I held up my copy of Boats of the Midwest. "Because he wrote this."

  It was as if the air had been sucked out of the room.

  "Buddy Malone is the author of this sordid tell-all that reveals the dirty secrets of half the town."

  Betty started making notes about the title of the book.

  I confiscated the notebook. "Don't order that. You're not old enough to read it."

  "But it's excellent blackmail material," the girl complained.

  I'd have to deal with that later.

  "As I was saying, Buddy wrote the book and published it as Anonymous. Kelly Albers called the company that printed the book and discovered that the author's real name—Buddy Malone." I left out the part where Kelly promised the guy she talked to two cases of Girl Scout cookies. That didn't seem like something everyone needed to know.

  "Huh," Kurt mumbled. "I always thought my mom wrote it."

  I asked, "You did?"

  "Well, sure. People who serve drunks often hear a lot more than they should."

  I nodded. "So, it turns out, do pastors. Isn't that right, Malone?"

  Buddy refused to budge from his comatose act. In a weird way, I couldn't blame him. The slandered citizens of Bladdersly would probably show up at the county jail with pitchforks, calling for a good old-fashioned lynching.

  I went on. "I don't have the exact information, but I'd be willing to bet that this man has heard a lot of crazy stories from his parishioners over the years. And since he needed a job to get through his retirement, he probably thought he could write this to make some extra money and no one would be the wiser."

  "How does that connect him to the murder?" Randi asked. She smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. "By the way, dear, you're doing a great job!"

  I thanked her and explained. "Because Tyson Pancratz found out and started blackmailing him. Harold had told me that Malone got him a gig teaching acting at the juvenile detention center. The same place that Tyson did time. And Tyson was behind a number of petty thefts throughout town. Somewhere along the line, whether it was from a Nerd Herd visit or something else, Tyson had stolen his laptop. And as a member of the Nerd Herd, my guess is he stumbled upon the manuscript.

  "However," I said. "He wasn't the only one interested in the book. Vanderzee was desperate to find the author's notes. Which was why he sent deputies to the Chapel of Despair."

  Kurt was confused. "Kayla said something about old people in the church. Why would Vanderzee look for the notes in a druid chapel in Who's There?"

  I looked at the kid. "Because he thought you were Anonymous." I had to tread carefully here because this was more theory on my part. But there was the chance that the police chief might confess, so I kept it in.

  "Vanderzee knew you were courting Kayla, the teen druid. I think he thought you had hidden it there. Those notes would've been valuable because they might have offered proof of his illicit activities."

  I turned to Bryce Vanderzee, who was still struggling against Ivan's iron grip. To his credit, my brother-in-law didn't seem to exert any energy in holding him there. He'd make a fine bounty hunter.

  "And you created the fictitious phone call where I allegedly threatened Tyson. You knew you had only Malone's statement. You needed more proof to lock me up."

  "But somebody kidnapped him," Mordecai pointed out.

  "He did that himself," I answered. "There was no kidnapper. He laid out the trail of breadcrumbs…"

  "Breadcrumbs?" Lauren asked. "That's so Mother Goose!"

  Betty shook her head. "Birds eat breadcrumbs. I'd use BB gun BBs."

  "And I followed it. He put on one hell of a show too. Begging, sobbing, faking another voice. But it was the ropes that gave him away…granted, much, much later. I was pretty distracted when I went up to him, worried that the kidnapper would be back. So I just cut the ropes. When I examined them later, I noticed that they hadn't been tied in a knot. If they had, they'd have fallen to the floor that way. But no, all I found was a long piece of rope with cut marks."

  "He faked the injuries!" Ella snarled. "Well, he won't fake the ones I give him!"

  "You can't attack him," Sheriff Carnack said quietly. "He's in my custody as of now.
"

  "My jurisdiction!" Vanderzee snapped.

  "You are going to be facing an ethics panel," the sheriff said as he held up a copy of the book. "Detective Ferguson lent this to me, and I've read it. I'm not leaving him with you."

  My eyes narrowed. "And to throw Medea Jones off the scent, you leaked false information about me to the press!"

  "You were our number one suspect!" Vanderzee said. "I can do that."

  "That's not why you're going to be investigated." Ed Carnack pointed to the book. "I've read that book. And there's a corrupt police chief in it."

  Vanderzee opened his mouth and then closed it.

  "So Malone pinned it on you and made a statement to back it up," Rex said. "To make sure no one found him out."

  "How did he get you to the shed?" Betty asked.

  I swung around to face the comatose, drooling pastor. "We will have to ask him that. I'm still not sure. But that's what he did."

  "Yeah," Kurt asked, "but how do you know?"

  "Because Buddy's fingerprints were on Merry's shoes," Riley said. "They'd never met before. How had his fingerprints gotten onto Merry's shoes?"

  "Exactly!" I said, explaining that Kelly had asked for my shoes and had them dusted for prints. She also found out Effie belonged to Mordecai by calling all the vets in Bladdersly, but while that was inspired work, it was too late. I'd buy her dinner later.

  It didn't matter because Buddy got to his feet. "Well, I guess I can't poke a hole in that story." The drool and vacant look were gone. "Looks like it's time to face the music."

  My jaw dropped. Seriously? Fingerprints on my shoe was all it took to get a confession?

  "Why did you have to kill Tyson?" Kurt stood up. "Why couldn't you just pay him off?"

  Buddy shook his head. "I did at first. But the fee kept going up. I'm a retired pastor who has to work a part-time job at the pawn shop to make ends meet. I couldn't afford it."

  "But the book…" Kurt pressed.

  The pastor frowned. "Self-published. Oh, half the town bought it when it came out. But I didn't make much money off of it. I thought it would be more successful than that. Maybe it was the title. At any rate, Tyson came to the pawn shop the night of his death. He confronted me, demanding an outrageous sum of money. There was no way I could pay it. I got so angry, and something in me snapped. It didn't seem fair that this was happening to me. It's funny. I've counseled folks for decades about keeping a lid on their anger. And then I spotted the knife. In a fury, I plunged it into his chest."

  There was a moment of silence as everyone processed the idea of the beloved town pastor straight up murdering someone.

  "When I realized what had happened"— Buddy drooped a bit—"I knew my whole life, everything I'd worked for, all the good I'd done, had been thrown away." He looked at me. "That's when I remembered what Medea had told me about you. And I had the idea to put the blame on you. Tyson really wasn't worth all the efforts people had put into him over the years. And you were a former spy. You'd probably killed people. You weren't as good as me. It seemed like the way to escape prison was to pin the blame on you. You were CIA, which meant you were a bad person who'd done terrible things. It made sense."

  "Yeah!" Ronni yelled.

  Every head in the room turned to face me, studying me with new eyes. To be honest, it felt like I'd been sucker-punched. This man had killed in cold blood and thought that it made total sense to pin it on me. He thought I was the bad guy. He thought I deserved to go to prison in his place.

  That seemed judgmental and more than a bit petty.

  Here was a man who'd been beloved by his community for maybe forty years. He'd baptized babies, married young couples, counseled them when things were tough, and conducted their funerals. He'd worked with juvenile offenders in an attempt to do good.

  And at the end of his well-lived, well-loved life, he was rewarded with a tiny pension and the need to work a part-time shift at a pawn shop. People knew who he was but had moved on with their lives.

  So he wrote a tell-all book, proclaiming to the world all the sins he'd heard. People read it and were angry with the author. And he hadn't made much money on it.

  Here comes bad-apple, Tyson Pancratz. A rotten kid who didn't care about anyone but himself—so much so that he was more than happy to bleed dry a man who'd tried to help him.

  I was just a no-good patsy to pin this on. And it stung.

  "Mrs. Wrath is a good person!" Betty stepped forward, chin in the air. "She's the best Girl Scout leader ever! And you're a bad guy because you killed some guy over money!"

  Lauren nodded. "The evils of money and all that…"

  Pastor Malone studied the girls, and after a second, his face fell. It was as if his justification for what he'd done had just fallen apart. Maybe he'd realized there are all kinds of gray in this black and white world. Perhaps he just now figured out that a life well lived was no excuse for the crime he'd committed—and that a life like mine could find redemption in a group of precocious little girls in a small town in Iowa.

  Sheriff Carnack asked, "Did you fake the kidnapping? Did Mordecai know?"

  Buddy nodded. "I did. Mordecai had nothing to do with it. He wasn't even home."

  "How did you get in?" I asked.

  "I've had a key for years. Sometimes Mordecai makes me pick up his dry cleaning and drop it off. I never liked doing those personal errands. So I thought using his basement was a way to get back at him."

  Riley asked, "Why did you call the book Boats of the Midwest?"

  The former pastor shrugged. "I thought it was a catchy title and would draw readers. Everyone loves boats."

  Riley's right eyebrow went up, but he didn't question the man's unusual logic.

  "I have one question. How did you get me there, and why was I wearing a Best Bye shirt?" Okay, so that was really two questions.

  Malone smiled as if he was honored to answer. "When I grabbed you, you were wearing a Dora the Explorer shirt. Who'd believe that someone dressed like that would murder a guy in cold blood? And it had the added benefit of throwing the spotlight on his coworkers."

  Memories flooded back to me. Where had they been all this time?

  I clapped my hand to my forehead. "That's right. I was at my old house that night. I'd forgotten my cup there. And I saw you outside on my way back home!"

  He nodded encouragingly. "I spotted you in the front yard and asked for your help in finding my lost dog."

  It all came back to me, except for how he had knocked me out. "What did you use on me?"

  Betty whipped out another notebook, pen poised in the air. I didn't confiscate it this time.

  "I roofied you. You had a water bottle, and you handed it to me so that you could lock up the house first. I think I put too much in, but it was lucky that you didn't remember until now. And before you ask, I had those drugs because I'd found them in the shed. I'm guessing one of the people who used it as a motel put them there." He looked at Ella, who shouted something unintelligible about not being the town prostitute.

  Well, at least I was right about not being chloroformed. "Where did you get the shirt?"

  "Tyson had a couple in his car. I am sorry about all this." He turned to everyone else. "And I'm sorry about the things I wrote in the book. I didn't want to spend my retirement working as a part-time security guard."

  "Come along, Pastor," Sheriff Carnack said as he guided the man by the shoulder. "It's time to go."

  "You alright?" Rex whispered in my ear as he put his arm around me.

  "I never finished my monologue," I grumbled.

  "You don't have to. Malone confessed."

  "I guess so."

  "You do know that he's wrong, right?" My husband tipped my face up to his. "It doesn't matter how good someone has been for his entire life. He made a terrible decision. And now he's a murderer. Nothing in his past can cancel that out."

  "That's true." I still didn't feel any better.

  "Merry," Rex insisted. "You are a g
ood person. The work you did was part of your job. And now you're making a difference with these girls."

  "Well, maybe not Betty." I nodded at the girl, who was acting out the stabbing with Lauren.

  "And you've solved a lot of murders around here," my husband said. "You've helped put killers away."

  I hadn't thought of that.

  I ran over to Buddy Malone and shoved a card into his breast pocket. "Here."

  He seemed surprised that I'd give him anything. "What's this for?"

  I patted his arm. "A lawyer. And a good one. You're going to need it."

  They took him away with Jane Monaghan's card in his pocket. If anyone could help him, she could.

  EPILOGUE

  A lot happened within the next few days.

  Sheriff Carnack found Boats of the Midwest to be very useful. He found proof that Mordecai was scamming his customers. I'd thought this was because who would work out in a place where people pawned stuff?

  Carnack did instigate an investigation into Bryce Vanderzee's activities, with manufacturing evidence to put me behind bars. But Vanderzee refused to go down without a fight. I made sure Jane wouldn't even take his calls.

  The sheriff even investigated Ella but couldn't find any men in town who were willing to talk to him about her. I don't think he tried real hard after trying her meatloaf. I don't blame him.

  I found out that Nero Fobbs wasn't Kurt Hobbs but Neil…whatever his last name was. I can't believe I never found out. Anyway, Neil and Tyson had stolen the laptops and were getting ready to sell them to a Best Buy in Davenport, Iowa. As for the question of why he asked Ron to throw him out the window? Neither man would say. I'm chalking it up to a weird, being thrown through a window fetish, but that's just my personal theory.

  They never did find the murder weapon. Malone simply couldn't remember what he'd done with it. I, however, did find my missing stiletto. It was hidden in the air fryer. Unfortunately, I didn't remember that until after I'd tried to make pizza rolls.

  Kurt launched Lone Wolf Bail Bondsmen the next week, complete with real business cards that could be given away. He hired Ivan and Ron, and the three of them have been working on marketing plans. I tried to point out that Lone Wolf and Bondsmen were conflicting words, but the guys really, really liked it, so I let it go.