Prime Suspect Page 19

  “Both your uncles were gem smugglers. It was Pryor who came up with the idea of distributing the gems inside the collars of those high-priced mutts Olivia breeds.”

  Inside the collars. Of course. She and Caleb had looked outside but not inside. She thought of sweet Mrs. Gates. “Do you mean everybody who buys a Fairmont Designer Dog is really buying emeralds?”

  “Not every one. Just a few of them. Unfortunately, somebody made a stupid mistake.” Mitchell glared at the man who had kidnapped her, who dropped his gaze for an intent inspection of the floor. “The collar sent to your mother had emeralds in it. We tried to switch it.”

  “Not my fault they never left that stupid house,” mumbled the man.

  Of course they didn’t. Mama was dying of cancer and had decided to avoid hospitals so she could remain in her home until the end.

  Darcie still didn’t understand. “But why would he make emeralds if he had access to natural ones? Was he trying to become a legitimate manufacturer?”

  That drew a laugh. “Legitimate? No. He switched because he was afraid. A few years ago his Colombian contacts got a little too difficult to deal with. Gems were only a sideline for them. Drugs are where the big money comes from, and they started applying pressure to convince Richard to expand from emeralds to cocaine. He wanted no part of that, but neither did he want to give up his emerald business. So he decided to create synthetic gems and pass them off as real ones.”

  It began to make sense. Darcie didn’t want to believe Uncle Richard capable of illegal activities, but what did she really know about him? She had no difficulty picturing Uncle Kenneth threatening to betray him to drug-dealing Colombians. But instead of having him killed, Uncle Richard let him go to prison.

  Well, at least he isn’t a murderer. Or is he?

  “Who killed Jason Lewis?” she asked.

  “Him?” Mitchell shook his head. “He was an idiot. He discovered the lab and tried to blackmail Richard.”

  Horror bloomed in her chest. “You mean Uncle Richard killed him?”

  Mitchell laughed. “No.” The laughter died away, and the eyes fixed on Darcie became intense while his grip on the gun tightened. “I did.”

  * * *

  “You.” Recognition flared in Mrs. Fairmont’s eyes when Caleb turned. “I knew there was something strange about you. Why did you kill Jason?”

  Caleb kept his hands above his head, fingers splayed. “I didn’t kill anyone. Honest.”

  “Huh.” Clearly she didn’t believe him. “What are you doing on my property?”

  He would have liked to ask the same thing, since she’d told the detective she was staying with her sister for a few days, but obviously that had been a lie. Instead he decided to confront her with something that mattered—the truth.

  “I’m here to rescue Darcie. Where is she?”

  Her head tilted slightly, confusion apparent in her eyes. “Darcie Wiley? What do you mean you’re here to rescue her? Why would she be here?”

  The response gave Caleb pause. Was this a ploy, a delay tactic? No, the woman looked genuinely confused.

  “Not by choice—she’s been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped?” No doubt her reaction to that news was genuine. Concern drew lines on her forehead, and the gun wavered uncertainly. “You need to contact the police immediately.”

  Caleb studied her. Was it possible she didn’t know, that she wasn’t involved? “I did contact the police. They’re in the process of getting a search warrant from the judge, but I was afraid if I waited, it might be too late.”

  “Search warrant? For my kennel?”

  “No,” he said carefully, watching her reaction closely. “For the secret room beneath your pool house.”

  No mistaking that reaction. Her jaw dropped open and she lowered her hand to her side, the gun apparently forgotten. “What are you talking about?”

  The puppies continued to raise a ruckus, desperately trying to get their attention. “Uh, can you shut them up? I don’t want to alert anyone to our presence.”

  “Let’s go in Jason’s office to talk. When we’re out of sight they’ll be quiet.”

  Since that’s where Caleb wanted to go anyway, he turned again to the door. Moving silently, he twisted the knob and pushed the door open. Nothing moved inside, and he heard no sound. Still, he tiptoed and, when Mrs. Fairmont had closed the door behind her, didn’t raise his voice above a low whisper.

  “I have a friend who does building inspections, and he says there’s an underground room below this office.” He watched her face carefully. “Are you saying you don’t know about it?”

  Guileless round eyes returned his gaze. She shook her head. “I wasn’t here when the office was built. I spent a month in Europe with my sister that spring. The kennel was under construction when I left—they hadn’t begun this part yet.” Bitterness flooded her face. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Richard had a secret room constructed. It would explain why he spent so much time in the pool house at night. I knew he had a mistress, but I didn’t dream he would bring her here, to my home.”

  “Mistress?”

  “That girl’s mother, of course.” Pain appeared in her eyes and the corners of her mouth drooped. “She’s probably not been kidnapped at all. If she’s here, she probably only wanted to see the place where her father and mother met to carry on their illicit affair.”

  Now Caleb understood. Sympathy came over him for this woman who thought her husband had betrayed her. Darcie might not appreciate him telling her secret, but Mrs. Fairmont needed to know the truth.

  “Your husband wasn’t Darcie’s father,” he said gently. “He was her uncle. His brother raped her mother.”

  Horror descended on her face, but was that a touch of relief he spied? It would be natural, if so.

  She spoke wonderingly. “So Richard wasn’t having an affair with Beth Wiley?”

  “No. He was taking care of his brother’s daughter and her mother.”

  “And all this time I thought...” She raked her fingers through her hair. “And you say Darcie has been kidnapped and is being held here?” She looked around. “Where?”

  “I don’t know.” Urgency gripped Caleb’s insides like steel bands constricting his lungs. He saw nothing unusual in the room. Four plain walls, one with a windowed door leading to the kennel. Another door in the inside wall, this one without a window, probably opened onto the pool house.

  He laid an ear against the wood and heard nothing but silence.

  “You should go back to your house and wait until the police arrive,” he told Mrs. Fairmont.

  “I’m going with you,” she replied, her tone stubborn.

  Caleb didn’t have time to argue with her. Every minute wasted might be one of Darcie’s last. He twisted the handle and opened the door a half inch, listening for sound. Nothing. Placing an eye over the crack, he edged it open further. The room beyond the door lay in darkness, but from somewhere out of sight came a dim glow.

  The hinges creaked once as he eased the door open enough to slip through. He stopped, listening intently. Was that the faint sound of voices? He couldn’t be sure, but they didn’t sound alarmed, so he stepped through and onto a tile-covered floor. Placing his booted feet carefully so as not to make a sound, he went to the center of the room. Mrs. Fairmont followed, her bedroom slippers moving silently after him.

  White wicker furniture with brightly patterned cushions faced the sliding glass doors that led to the pool deck. The curtains had been drawn closed, but a faint light shone around the edges. Against the left wall was the rounded countertop island of a wet bar. At first Caleb thought the dim light he’d spied came from the curtains, but he now saw the true source. A closet door stood partially open, and the light came from there.

  With a raised hand, he indicated that Mrs.
Fairmont should stay back, and he crept to the closet. That was also the source of the muffled voice he heard. He peeked inside.

  Turning his head toward Mrs. Fairmont, he mouthed the word, Bingo.

  A carpeted panel in the floor had been raised to reveal a set of stairs leading downward. The voice, a man’s, carried up the stairs. He strained to make out the words but couldn’t.

  In the next moment, his heart leaped. A different voice spoke, a female’s. Darcie! Hers, he recognized.

  Okay, Lord. What do I do now?

  A thud behind him interrupted the silence. He whirled around to find Mrs. Fairmont watching him through rounded eyes. At her feet was a book she had apparently knocked off a table. She mouthed, Sorry.

  The mumbling voice below stopped.

  Caleb dashed toward her. If they’d heard below, they would come to investigate. He snatched the book off the floor and hustled Mrs. Fairmont into the only hiding place available, behind the wet bar. They crouched together, listening for sounds of approach, Caleb in the front and her huddled against the back corner. She raised her arm and shoved the gun toward him. Though he hated the things with a passion, he took it.

  Lord, please don’t let me have to use this.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Horror spread through Darcie’s chest, robbing her of breath. She was standing in front of a murderer. And he had a gun pointed at her.

  She cleared her throat. “Why?”

  “Purely by accident. Lewis discovered the lab last year, and he started blackmailing Richard right away. His demands were becoming increasingly bothersome, so Richard asked me to talk to him. But Lewis was an idiot, and irritating as well. We argued. He took a swing at me.” Mitchell shrugged. “The situation escalated, and the next thing I knew—”

  A noise from above interrupted his confession. Mitchell’s head jerked upward, as did Butch’s.

  “Mike can’t have gotten there and back this quickly,” Mitchell whispered. “Check it out.”

  Butch went to the same drawer Mitchell had a moment before and withdrew another pistol. Moving quietly, he crept toward the stairs, his eye fixed on the ceiling. When he got to the bottom of the stairway, he whispered over his shoulder, “That idiot left the hatch open.”

  Mitchell lunged forward and grabbed Darcie. He held her in place with one hand and placed the gun barrel to her temple. “One sound and you’re dead. Understand?”

  Heart pounding, she nodded.

  Butch doused the lights, and the room went pitch-black. The pressure on her arm tightened, and the gun pressed against her skull. Butch made almost no sound as he climbed the stairs. In the minutes that followed, Darcie had a wild desire to pray. It might do no good, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  Dear God, I don’t want to die. Is there somebody up there trying to rescue me? Help me! Please, please help me!

  Not eloquent for sure, but that was the best she could do under the circumstances. She repeated her plea over and over in her mind.

  Finally, she heard a door close above and then the light came back on. Butch’s legs appeared, paused as he lowered the panel over the staircase and then descended the rest of the way. Darcie’s sharp disappointment found release in a sob.

  “Nothing up there at all. Must have been outside.”

  “You didn’t check outside?”

  Butch awarded him with a disbelieving scowl. “With that maniac dog running around? No way. I looked out the windows, though. Everything’s quiet.”

  Mitchell released Darcie, and she wasted no time putting a few feet of distance between them. She would take a maniac dog over a maniac murderer anytime. “Was killing my uncle Richard a mistake, too?”

  His smile made her shiver. “No mistake. After the incident with Lewis, Richard became difficult. Seems he didn’t trust me anymore.”

  Hmm, I wonder why? Darcie kept her face clear of the sarcastic thought.

  “He got scared. Said it was time to close up shop. He wanted me to dismantle the lab and then leave. Offered me money to leave the country and start a new life.” A scowl twisted his lips. “The amount was a drop in the bucket compared to what he had, and I told him so. He refused to give me any more.”

  “So you killed him over money?”

  “Oh, no. He never intended to let me leave, I knew that. As soon as I had cleared all the evidence out of this place he would have turned me over to the cops. Not directly, that’s not how he worked, but he would have gotten it done.” A cold smile came over his face. “That’s where you came in.”

  Her courage frozen in the face of that insane smile, Darcie couldn’t manage an answer.

  “I knew about you, of course. I’d delivered money to your mother often enough, and then there was that stupid mistake with you getting one of our special collars.” He aimed a glare at Butch. “And I knew about the will. At first I was going to kidnap you and use you as leverage to convince Richard to see things my way, so I had Butch and Mike mimic the rapists who’ve been attacking women in parking lots. But they screwed that up, too.” He shook his head in Butch’s direction. “Then when you called the other day wanting to meet with your uncle, I realized that was my chance. You almost ruined everything by bringing that big goofball with you.”

  Darcie would have bristled at the insult to Caleb, but her fear overrode any other reactions.

  “But it worked out okay in the end. I was hiding in one of those cubicles, watching, so I knew you were alone with Richard. It was an easy matter to wait until you two left and then...”

  His hands made a twisting motion, and Darcie’s stomach lurched.

  “Is—is that what you’re going to do to me?”

  The smile took on a plastic sympathy. “Don’t worry. I’m getting better at it. And you have a few more hours. I need to wait until tomorrow, when Olivia returns from her sister’s. By then we’ll have the equipment moved and there won’t be any evidence that there was ever anything going on here except an unfaithful, vengeful wife who couldn’t stand the thought of her husband’s illegitimate child inheriting.”

  His plan became clear. He intended to pin the murders on Mrs. Fairmont.

  * * *

  When the thug had disappeared behind the closet door, Mrs. Fairmont whispered, “What are we going to do?”

  Caleb’s thoughts were flying so fast he could barely keep up. One thing was certain, though. He had to get her to safety.

  “I want you to sneak out of here, get in your car and leave. On the way, call Detective Samuels and tell him what’s going on.”

  “But what about you?”

  “I’m not leaving Darcie down there. Somehow I’ve got to rescue her.”

  “Don’t you think you should let the police do that?”

  He made no answer. What he should do didn’t enter into the equation. Darcie was in danger, and he wasn’t going to leave her there.

  “You don’t know how many of them are down there,” she pointed out in a reasonable tone. “There’s no other way in or out except that closet, so there’s no way to get to her without them seeing.”

  She was right on all counts. The man who came up to investigate the noise had spoken to someone else when he came upstairs, and the voice had been lower in timbre than the previous voice. So that meant there were at least two men down there with Darcie. Maybe more.

  A distraction might draw them out. Another sound, maybe? Then when the one came to investigate, he could grab him, take him outside and force some information out of him.

  That wouldn’t work. When he didn’t come back immediately, the other one might realize something had gone wrong. He might hurt Darcie, or even use her as a hostage so he could get away. Caleb would be left standing here, watching her taken away to who knew where. And hostages rarely survived once they’d outlived their usefulness. No, h
e was going to have to get down in that room somehow.

  If he couldn’t distract them, maybe he could confuse them, at least momentarily. Long enough for him to get down the stairs, ascertain the situation and take them out. The gun’s metal felt warm in his hand. The thought of using it on a human being sickened him. In fact, using it at all sickened him. Even if he’d had a gun back when he was facing that guard dog he wouldn’t have—

  An idea formed. A crazy idea. He slipped his hand into the nail pouch he still wore tied around his waist.

  Twisting around to face Mrs. Fairmont, he whispered, “I have an idea. You’re probably not going to like it, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  * * *

  “Call Mike and find out how long he’s going to be.”

  Mitchell spoke over his shoulder to Butch. He’d set the gun on the countertop and knelt in front of the safe. So far he’d filled a dozen little bags with emeralds, but apparently there were more trays in the safe.

  Darcie, seated in one of the folding chairs beside the card table, noted the location of the gun dully. It was on the other side of the room. If she was closer and her hands weren’t still bound with duct tape, she might have attempted to go for it. But she’d be stopped before she was even out of the chair.

  “Okay.” Standing behind her, Butch pulled out a cell phone and glanced at the screen. “Stupid phone. I can never get a decent signal down here unless I’m near the stairs.”

  He crossed the room to stand beside the exposed staircase, his phone pointed upward, and punched a number.

  Suddenly he looked up at the door. “Wait a minute. I think he’s back. The closet just opened.”

  Still squatting on the floor, Mitchell’s head jerked toward him. “You sure it’s Mike?”

  Butch pulled the pistol from where he’d tucked it in his waistband and aimed the barrel upward.

  * * *

  “Please, please be careful.” Mrs. Fairmont’s whisper held a tearful plea.