Love Game (27 page)

“What is this? Protracted introductions?” Mrs. Arbuthnot spat. “What does this have to do with Rellik?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Anyway, it turned out that all of us were invited on a tour of the house across the street at the same time. I think that was a mistake. I think Mavis, Felicia, Mrs. Arbuthnot, Frank, and Kirk Shields were supposed to be the only ones invited on that tour. We were an afterthought.” I pointed to Remington, Lucy, Bridget, and Luanda.

“Rellik was very excited about his flip,” I continued. “He was nearly done, and then he showed us to his real pride and joy, the panic rooms.”

“Oh, my God, this is boring,” Mrs. Arbuthnot said. “We were all there. We know the story.”

“Bear with me,” I said. “It’s unusual to have a basement in Southern California. When I asked Rellik about it, he said, ‘Rellik Construction aims to please.’ Who was he trying to please? It made me
think that he already had a buyer in mind, someone who’d ordered the panic rooms.”

“Oh, shit,” Spencer said, catching on.

“When Rellik locked us up, I assumed the other room was the better panic room. It had furniture. But when I saw Frank Richmond’s face and heard about how Rellik had terrorized you all, I knew that we had been lucky in our panic room. We only had to suffer being plastered and having too little oxygen.”

“Don’t forget he hit Spencer over the head,” Bridget reminded me.

“I’m getting to that,” I said.

“When we finally got out, we saw how Frank had been beaten up and, of course, that Rellik had disappeared. Why? Where had he gone? Perhaps he had heard Spencer and Remington break out of the room. The metal made a horrible sound. He would have realized he couldn’t take them on, even if he had a gun. So he got a big head start. Ran for the hills.”

“Makes sense,” Kirk Shields said. “You put two and two together nicely.”

“I thought it made sense, too,” I said. “Picture perfect. My only question was, why did Rellik kidnap us? But that could be easily explained by assuming he was crazy. Then I stumbled on Rellik’s body.” I looked at Kirk. “You wanted to know who my source was, who led me to his body, but I really just stumbled on him. It was an accident.”

“She does that all the time,” Bridget explained. “If there’s a dead person around, Gladie will trip over him.”

Lucy nodded in agreement, and Spencer rolled his eyes.

“After I saw him, my question changed from why did he kidnap us to who killed Michael Rellik and why.”

Lucy perked up. “Yeah, why?”

“It didn’t look like he had a partner. He was working alone. So I thought it had to be revenge.”

The parlor was filled with possible suspects. Heads turned as we all scanned the potential murderers. A lot of people wanted revenge against Michael Rellik. After all, he had kidnapped us. I scooped some more guacamole with a chip and ate it in one bite.

“All of us would have liked revenge against Rellik, but unfortunately there were no suspects,” I said.

“Why not?” Lucy asked.

“Because we were all locked in the panic rooms at the time of death,” Remington said.

“This is better than
Castle
,” Lucy said.

“It’s a little unusual not to have any suspects. Isn’t that right, Chief?” I asked Spencer.

“Just continue on, Pinkie.”

“I kept thinking about something my grandmother said to me: ‘Nothing is as it seems.’ She meant Luanda, but it related to the murder. So I changed my question from who killed Michael Rellik to what exactly happened in those panic rooms.”

“The spirits are calling me!” Luanda announced, and stood up.

“Not now, dear,” Grandma told her, and yanked her down by her dress.

“The first thing I know is that I was locked in a panic room. The second thing I know is I heard screams from the other panic room, and you guys called for
help. The third thing I know is that Spencer was thrown into the panic room with a head injury.”

“Are you going to count all the things you know?” Spencer asked.

“What did Rellik hit you over the head with?” I asked him.

“I don’t know. He hit me from behind. I never saw him coming.”

“It must have been the same thing he used to beat Frank,” I said. “Frank, what did Rellik use to beat you up?”

Frank was quiet for a long time. “His fists,” he said, finally.

“Oh, shit,” Remington said.

“Rellik was killed with a nail gun,” I revealed. “But he didn’t have any injuries to his hands, which he would have had if he’d beaten somebody. Was he wearing gloves when he did it?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Arbuthnot said. “He was wearing gloves.”

“That explains it,” I said. “Here’s the thing, though: When we were freed, Lucy introduced herself to Kirk, and he shook her hand with his left hand.”

“Gladie, it’s perfectly acceptable to shake with the left hand. We shouldn’t discriminate. We should applaud the breaking of traditional barriers,” Bridget told me.

“I agree,” I said, even though I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Some of my best friends are lefties. But yesterday, when we were in Cup O’Cake together, Kirk signed his bill with his right hand. And then I saw it at Uncle Harry’s this morning. His right hand, I mean.”

Kirk’s hand slid behind his back, but not before we saw the cracked, bruised knuckles.

“You used to be a policeman, right?” I asked him. “I thought it was odd that a cop would retire so young to become a security guard in the middle of nowhere. And I was sure Uncle Harry wouldn’t hire a disgraced cop. He has to trust the people who work for him. So that leaves retirement.

“You came to Cannes to seek revenge against Michael Rellik. You devised a plan. And you killed him,” I stated.

Mavis stood up. “This is crazy nonsense. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Be quiet, Mavis,” Kirk said. “She’s right. I killed him. I confess.”

“But there were five holes in Michael Rellik’s torso,” I said. “Five.” I pointed at Mrs. Arbuthnot, Mavis, Felicia, Kirk, and Frank Richmond, and counted. “One, two, three, four, five.”

“Oh, shit,” Spencer breathed.

“What?” Lucy asked. “This is way over my head. I thought you said there were no suspects. He was killed when we were locked in the panic rooms.”

“Yes. When we were locked in the panic room,” I said. “But they were never locked up.”

“Gaslight,” Bridget whispered.

“Exactly,” I said. “It was a ruse. Smoke and mirrors. We were led to believe they were locked in, but, really, they had locked
us
in. We never saw Rellik close the door. Spencer never saw Rellik hit him. All we know is that we were locked in, they made noise in the other room, and, when we escaped, Rellik was gone.”

“Oh, shit,” Grandma said.

“In reality, Rellik was being murdered with five nails in his chest,” I said.

“That was me,” Kirk said. “I killed him.”

“I thought, five is an interesting number,” I continued, ignoring Kirk. “Why five? If it’s revenge, did Rellik do something bad five times? But I turned the puzzle inside out, and one nail gun shot five times by one person became one nail gun shot by five people one time each,” I said, out of breath. I gasped for air. Grandma handed me a lemonade, and I gulped down half of the glass.

“Yep, you’ve got the gift,” she whispered to me. “You’re doing a great job.”

I felt a wave of shyness and a building anxiety. I didn’t have the gift. I didn’t know anything. What was I even talking about?

“Everyone in the other panic room,” I continued. “You all killed Rellik together. You probably killed him on the tarp outside the room and dragged him out of there. Quick and clean.”

“Oh, Lawd, they did! They all killed him! We were in one room, and they were in the other room, killing him!” Lucy exclaimed. “Why, Gladie? Why?”

“Revenge,” I said. “Rellik caused a house fire in Irvine, and people died. Irvine is the common thread with everyone in the other panic room. It should be easy to get the details of the house fire, but I have the feeling Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mavis were related to the family. Related by marriage, mothers of the couple, paternal and maternal grandmothers of the children, I’m guessing.”

Mavis nodded and swallowed a cry. “It wasn’t revenge.”

“Be quiet, Mavis. Don’t say anything,” Mrs. Arbuthnot commanded.

“It was justice,” Mavis continued, ignoring Mrs. Arbuthnot. “He got what he deserved.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot broke down in deep sobs, wailing like an injured animal. Mavis and Felicia gathered around her and hugged her. Her sobs were contagious, and soon all five of Rellik’s murderers were crying together.

It stayed like that for a long time. It was more than grief; it was a sort of cleansing.

“He killed a family of four,” Frank Richmond explained. “He was hired to change the electrical wiring, but he never did.”

“He had a huge outfit,” Kirk explained. “Hundreds of houses at once, flipping, remodeling, and he never inspected the work. He just ordered the slipshod crap from off-site and raked in the profits.”

“My daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren,” Mrs. Arbuthnot said. “All perished.”

“I was the only one to survive.” Mavis showed me the scars on her arms. “My room was on the bottom floor. My son, his wife, and the children, all dead.”

They were all affected by the deaths. Felicia was the little boy’s special-education teacher; she had worked with him one-on-one since he was a toddler. Frank was the father’s business partner and best friend. And Kirk was the cop on duty that night, who found the bodies and couldn’t accept that Rellik would not be punished.

Rellik’s crime wasn’t limited to the four deaths and
the house fire. He could count five more victims, those forever changed by the unjust tragedy.

“They charged the workers but never the big boss,” Mrs. Arbuthnot said. “He got off. The authorities said his paperwork was in order, but we know it was all him. He was responsible for our loss.”

Spencer took out his handcuffs.

“Don’t you see what we did was just?” Frank asked him. “We righted a wrong. We are the good guys.”

Spencer listened quietly. I could tell that he was swayed by their pain. I was, too. Up to a point.

“Good guys?” I asked. “Even if we completely discount the fact you murdered a man in cold blood, you still locked us in a panic room, you tried to plaster us to death, and you could have killed Spencer when you knocked him on the head. And, on top of that, you killed a helpless dog, probably because he came for a visit at the wrong time and you didn’t want his owner showing up. Have I forgotten anything?”

The five murderers answered me with shocked silence. It was probably the first time they had realized that, in their zeal for justice, they had indeed become the bad guys.

“We’re sorry,” Felicia squeaked. It was the confession that I was waiting for—not a lot of words, but a confession nonetheless. “But you’re wrong, Gladie. We didn’t track him here. We all moved here to be away from our memories. We didn’t plan this. We were just trying to get on with our lives.”

“The idyllic town of Cannes, far away from crime and murder. Mavis moved first, and we all followed,” Frank said wistfully.

Spencer chortled. “I guess you didn’t count on Gladie living here.”

“We were trying to heal,” Mavis said. “And then Rellik came to town. We couldn’t believe it at first. He didn’t know us from a hill of beans, of course. That’s how far removed he made himself from our tragedy, like it was nothing for him. He hadn’t bothered to even know our names. Can you imagine, Gladie?”

No, I couldn’t imagine. “So you all conspired,” I said.

“It was easy,” Mrs. Arbuthnot said, with more than a hint of pride. “You complicated it by showing up at the tour, but the panic rooms were a happy accident. We had more than enough alibis with you there.”

I was getting a little peeved. “And the plaster? And Spencer’s head? I understand the ideas of revenge and justice, but not the way you did it. Murder, attempted murder, kidnapping. You murdered a man and you terrorized innocent people.”

“You heard Miss Marple,” Spencer said. “You’re under arrest.” He and Remington cuffed the men and waited for backup to arrive.

Meanwhile, I snuck out and went upstairs to take a nap. Having the gift was exhausting. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I WOKE
hours later, disoriented but well rested. My room was dark, and my clock said it was 10:00. I was strangely wired, and I was sure there was no way to go back to sleep. I took a long shower and let the hot water beat down on me until it ran cool.