Chilled in Chattanooga

Текст добавлен: 21 октября 2016, 23:19

Текст книги "Chilled in Chattanooga"

Автор книги: Deborah Malone

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Instinct kicked in and I turned around. “Amanda? What are you doing?” I was right all along. Amanda was the only one absent from the room when we gathered for Detective Sam’s talk. She had to be the one who planted the tea in my room. “It was you wasn’t it?”

“Geeze, what gave me away?” She hissed. “If you want to stay alive you’d better do what I say. We’re going for a little walk, so don’t try anything.” She slid a coat, thrown over her arm, up to cover the gun barrel. Motioning to the door, she shoved me inside.

We boarded the elevator and rode to the basement floor. It turned out to be a storage area with minimum light. Is this where she was going to leave my lifeless body? It took a few minutes for my eyes to become accustomed to the dark. Why had I come with her? If we’d stayed out in the open I might have stood a chance. But it was too late, and she had me in her lair.

Amanda stood in front of me, pink-handled gun clutched in her grip. I had to give her credit for being stylish.

Keep her talking, Trixie. “What do you want from me, I’m just an old lady?” I’d been watching cop shows with Beau, and he always had something to say about procedures done right or wrong by Hollywood. I wracked my brain to recall hostage situations. “I understand you’re afraid, so let me go and I won’t say anything.” Good one, establish trust.

But Amanda ignored me. “I heard what you said in the Discovery Center. And yes, I am following you. Your snooping around has been getting on my nerves. I don’t see why you had to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.” She emphasized her words by shaking the gun at me. “If the police couldn’t solve it what made you think you could?”

For a millisecond I was confused, then realized she wasn’t talking about our teacher’s death. She had to be talking about the other murder. I forgot myself, and blurted, “You were involved in the Bobby Lee Ghoston murder?”

From her wild-eyed response, I knew I’d hit a nerve. “Don’t play dumb with me, Tracie”

“It’s Trixie.” Stupid, don’t correct her. What does it matter anyway with a gun barrel up your nostril?

“How would you like it if your daddy denied you?”

“Bobby was your father?” Wow, I didn’t see that one coming. I thought she killed Annie, but couldn’t tie the two murders together. Until now.

Amanda’s face softened for a minute. “Yes.” The gun lowered just a hair. I thought she might put it down, but it shot right back up. “After years of begging my mother to tell me who my real father was, she finally broke. I confronted Bobby Lee with the news and he laughed. Can you believe that? He laughed and asked how I could be so sure since my mother had so many lovers.”

I tried disarming her by showing her sympathy. “That must have been very hurtful, Amanda.”

She glared at me, nostrils flaring. This girl had some real trust issues. “How would you know how I felt? How dare he? I knew my mother wasn’t lying. It was okay for him to take in that Tabitha girl who wasn’t even kin to him and raise her like a daughter, but why couldn’t he acknowledge me? Well I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.” She swung the gun around like a conductor’s baton.

Dear Lord, please keep me safe and give me the wisdom to get out of here alive. A light bulb turned on and I fought my shaking hands. If she’d shot Tippi, she was on a murdering rampage and what was one more body on her long list?

“A jury isn’t going to blame you.” I glanced around the room for a path of escape. There wasn’t one. Amanda was standing between me and the door. “You’ve had such a rough time, they’ll understand, I just know it.” Then I recalled the recorder in my pocket. If I could switch it on without her knowing, I could get a confession and perhaps solve my own murder post mortem.

“You’re just saying that to get me off your back.” Amanda wiped a tear, turning aside to keep me from seeing it.

“No, I’m not. I have a tissue for that. I’m just going to reach into my coat pocket.” I held up a hand the way I’d seen in the shows. “See? Just going for a tissue. You know I don’t carry a gun anyway.” I slid my hand in, found the recorder and hoped I’d switched it to record, not erase. Then I found a used Kleenex. “Here you go.”

She took the tissue and dabbed at her streaked face.

“Now, why not tell me everything? I have some connections with the police, and I may be able to help.”

“Why should I trust you?” She shoved the tissue in her jeans pocket and two-fisted the gun in my face again.

“Who else can you trust?” I thought quickly. “I have a daughter about your age, and I think I know how you must feel. Her father wasn’t the best example in the world either.”

“Oh?”

I told her about Jill’s dad, and may have embellished the facts a little to give Amanda’s nervous energy a chance to subside. “So, tell me. How did I frighten you when I mentioned looking into the Ghoston murder, and how is Tippi involved?” Speak into the microphone, there’s a good killer.

“You mean, Tabitha?” She spit out the name like it was venom. “I discovered she was attending the class and decided this was my chance. When I saw her driving that little red sports car and wearing those fancy clothes it just got under my craw. I should’ve been the one to inherit all that money. I thought if I got rid of her then I could claim my inheritance.”

I glanced at my watch. It had only been twenty minutes since I’d left Nana and Dee Dee. Would they figure out something happened when I didn’t show up at our appointed time? I had to keep Amanda talking until I could come up with a plan? I had to try.

“Why Annie?”

A cloud passed over her face. “That was stupid Ladonna’s fault. I heard her say she was going to deliver tea service, and thought she was going to Tabitha’s, so I laced the pot when she wasn’t looking. But she went to Annie’s room first, and it was too late for me to stop her.”

“So you had to frame someone for spiking the tea, and picked me?”

She nodded. “If I framed you, then you’d be out of the way and couldn’t continue researching Bobby Lee’s murder. It was easy when I found some of her favorite tea in the kitchen.”

I was beginning to feel a bit light-headed, and was growing a raging headache. “That was some brilliant detective work on your part. What with the poison and framing me and all.”

She seemed to grow a bit taller. “Rhododendrons. My ex-scumbag of a husband works for a landscaper. At least he was good for something. Taught me which common household plants are poisonous.”

Somewhere a pipe moaned, and the building shifted. The spell was broken. Startled, Amanda turned toward the noise. I didn’t give it a second thought. I karate chopped her hand and the gun flew across the floor. She dove for it, and I ran.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I hid behind a brown paper covered canvas. My heart beat faster than a hummingbird’s wings. I feared Amanda could hear it. “I know you’re back there, Trixie. You can’t hide forever.” When she walked past me, I took the opportunity to escape to another hiding place. This time I hid behind a Rubenesque statue. She kinda reminded me of Dee Dee.

I grabbed my phone to text Dee, but remembered the beeps would give me away. I glanced at my watch and saw forty minutes had passed.

“I know what you’ve been doing. You might as well come on out and get it over with.”

Yeah, sure. I didn’t come out of hiding, no way, but my knees shook so hard I bumped into Dee Dee’s twin and gave away my hidey-hole. Amanda came at me like the crazed woman she was. We struggled over the gun. I found my inner strength, grabbed her hair and jerked her head back to get her in a firm head lock. She let out a scream loud enough to wake the dead.

At that moment, the elevator doors burst open and out came the police, followed by Dee and Nana. The cavalry had arrived just in time.

It was wonderful to be back at Mama’s, sitting around the fireplace with the people I loved most: Nana, Dee Dee, her daughter Stephanie, and my daughter Jill and of course my beloved Beau. We’d just eaten a traditional Christmas dinner of turkey and dressing, green beans, mashed potatoes, and all the trimmings. When we thought we couldn’t eat any more, we found room for a slice of red velvet, or german chocolate cake.

Nana had everyone’s attention as she repeated the story for the hundredth time. “You should have seen us. Dee Dee and I were looking through the telescope when we saw Amanda on the deck with your mama. We jumped up and down and waved, but we couldn’t get her attention.” She turned toward Dee Dee for affirmation as if we didn’t believe her. “Isn’t that right, Dee?”

“It sure is. And that’s when we called 911 and told them to let Detective Sams know Amanda had Trixie.”

“Yeah, and we knew they were in the mansion, we just didn’t know where. The police set up a floor by floor search, and we finally made it to the basement just in time.”

“That would be when I grabbed Amanda by the hair,” I said. “What I still don’t recall is how I got this tremendous pain in the back of my head.”

Amanda had fought back, and as I worked to disarm her, she flailed at me. She might have scrambled my brains a bit, but she didn’t dislodge the recorder that caught the whole thing.

Now Amanda was going to be a guest of the government for a very long time, and it wasn’t going to be in any mansion.

“I’m just grateful to be alive. She was on a murder spree and I was almost her next victim. She murdered Bobby Lee Ghoston because he denied she was his daughter. When she found out I was on the trail she decided to get rid of me, too. She killed Annie and framed me. As if this wasn’t enough murder and mayhem she tried to kill Tippi hoping she’d be able to claim her inheritance.”

I snuggled up against my Beau. I was never so glad to see anyone when he flew home right away after Dee Dee called and told him we’d caught Amanda and I was being treated at Erlanger for my war wound.

“Well, I’m thankful you’re all in one piece,” Beau said. Nana sat on the other side of Beau. He reached over and gave her a shoulder hug. “And that goes for you and Dee Dee, too. I sure don’t want to lose my favorite girls.” Nana turned cherry red.

I settled in to watch the flames flicker up the chimney, happy we were all together, now. Harv couldn’t have been more pleased to have another article to publish about a solved case. My feature about Bobby Lee Ghoston and the Dixie Mafia was selling lots of copies of Georgia by the Way. Tippi a.k.a. Tabitha was thrilled I’d ask her to contribute, and I was more than glad to give her credit.

“Enough shop talk about murders and evidence and proper police procedures.” Beau looked down at me. “Now what’s this I hear about you being the champion spitter of Chattanooga?”

I felt my face glowing warmer than the yule log, and I cut a look at Nana. “Thanks a lot!”

They all broke out in laughter, and I held a hand to my bandaged head, and laughed right along with them.

CHILLED IN CHATTANOOGA

BY DEBORAH MALONE

ISBN 10: 1-60039-219-9

ISBN 13: 978-1-60039-219-1

ebook ISBN: 978-1-60039-734-9

Copy Edit / Back Cover Copy: Melissa Williams Netherton

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