Murder on Consignment (20 page)

“No. Do
me a favor and unzip me, would you?” 

She looked at me strangely, but complied.

Once unzipped, I yanked all two yards of pumpkin chiffon up to my neck and started maneuvering like a Cirque du Solei contortionist, which wasn’t easy in the front seat of a Volkswagen Bug. Once I had finally freed myself from the torturous contraption, I sat back in the seat, an orange circle of chiffon around my shoulders, and let it all hang out for a few seconds of jubilant liberation.

My sister’s eyes were darting back and forth. “Well, this is the first time
this
has ever happened in front seat if my car. Pull your dress down; we need to get to Morgan before she decides to take off again.”

I slipped the dress back
over my torso and turned for her to rezip me. She fruitlessly tugged for a minute or so, before we decided to abandon the effort and leave the dress half-zipped. No big deal. St. Benedict wasn’t full of fashion divas anyway.

As
we neared the steps, I heard a rustling sound. “Did you hear that?” I asked.

“No, it’s nothing. Come on, catch up.”

As soon as we entered the chapel, Sister Eileen scurried over, her face flushed with excitement. “I didn’t think you would ever arrive, Sister. I just didn’t know what to do. She’s inconsolable.”

Mary Frances put a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “You did great. Thank you for calling us. We’ll take it from here, if you’d like to go back to your room and rest.” 

Sister Eileen looked relieved to be able to get away from Morgan’s hysterics. I assumed it was the most excitement she’d seen for a while. The poor thing was probably worn out.

I looked down at Morgan who looked like a child huddled against the wooden pew. She had her
legs drawn to her chest and was rocking in unison with her sobs. The rhythmic sound of her cries mixed with the creaking of the pew made an eerie sound that echoed throughout the chapel, giving it a haunted feeling.

“Morgan, we were worried about you. Where have you been?” my sister asked, reaching out to stop Morgan’s
swaying.

Morgan shrugged away and kept
rocking. Mary Frances and I exchanged glances. I decided to give it a try. “Look Morgan, I’m in tight with the local police. I can help you through this. I’m sure killing Alex wasn’t premeditated.”

She stopped
moving and looked at me through puffy eyes. “What are you talking about? I didn’t kill Alex.”

She seemed so earnest. “Okay,” I said, pretending to go along with her. “Then you’re here because you’re running from your father-in-law. You must be very afraid of him.”

“Of James? No. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m—”

Clicking heels echoed
through the chapel, causing us to glance toward the sound. We became frozen in place as we watched Patricia make her way toward us. She was dressed to kill (literally) in black knee-high boots, tight fitting leather pants, and black gloves, which were unfortunately wrapped around the handle of what looked to be a very dangerous gun … oh my … why was Patricia carrying a gun?

Morgan scampered behind me, her shaking hands holding me out as a barricade between her and Patricia. “How did she find me?” Her tone was high pitched and frantic.

“I called her. She’d been so worried about you,” Mary Frances replied in a faint voice, stepping forward and addressing Patricia who was now standing about two feet away with the gun pointed directly at us. “Put the gun away, Patricia. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Patricia tilted her
head back, an ugly laugh escaping through twisted lips as the gun danced in her hands. Suddenly, I had a flashback to the year before when someone I’d trusted turned a gun on me. At the time, I promised God if he got me out alive, I’d never get involved in another murder case. I realized now that I’d broken a bargain with God. That’s why this was happening. I deserved to die this time. It was just poetic justice it was going to happen in God’s house.

“Hurt someone?” Light from a row
of flickering candles cast menacing shadows across Patricia’s face as little evil cackles sounded from her lips. “I’m not going to hurt someone. I’m going to
kill
someone, and that someone is you, and you, and you.” She pointed the gun at each of us respectively. Sharp little whimpers were coming from behind me where Morgan was crouched … or maybe they were coming from me. I couldn’t tell. I was in a complete state of panic. I should have listened to Mary Frances. I should have been more prayerful … less lustful … less dishonest … less … 

“Why would you want to kill us?” Mary Frances asked. She was so brave.

“Actually, Sister, I don’t really want to kill you; you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But your sister? I’ll kill her just because she’s a pain in the butt … and a horrible dresser,” she added.

There was a weird moment when everyone forgot about their impending deaths and turned to look at me. That’s when I realized I was going to die in this
gawd-awful dress and it wasn’t even zipped all the way!

“It’s me she wants
,” Morgan whimpered, still crouching behind me.

“That’s right. It’s you I want. Come out from behind there, dear, and let me see your face before I blow it off.”

I shivered. This woman was absolutely evil.

“Stay where you are, Morgan,” Mary Frances calmly ordered. Alth
ough I really didn’t think Morgan was going to just jump out and face the gun-wielding Patricia.

“Oh, come on now. Don’t you want to come out and tell everyone what a naughty girl you’ve been
, Morgan? That’s right. Morgan isn’t as sweet and innocent as you all think. She’s very conniving. Aren’t you Morgan?”

“You’re the conniving one, Patricia.” Morgan said, finding her voice. “You’re responsible for three deaths. And why? For money?”

Patricia snarled, “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to put up with J.J.’s philandering; you didn’t sign a prenuptial. No, all these years I’ve had to tolerate James having an affair with that Russian woman. How do you think it’s been listening to the whispering behind my back and pity-looks from my friends?  But what choice did I have? Without James, I had nothing.”

I spoke up. “Well then, why didn’t you just murder James? Why Jane and Pauline? They were innocent.” That seemed like a reasonable question to me.

“I thought about killing James, but you know how it is. The spouse is always the first suspect. My plan seemed more fun and it was foolproof, until Morgan got involved.”

“And what plan was that?” I asked, gaining more nerve by the minute. If I was going to die, I might as well have a few answers first.

“It was all about that stupid bun recipe. All that crap about it being his mother’s recipe was a lie. I knew where he got it … from Calina. She’d given it to him and had been receiving a cut of the company all these years. I knew if I got that recipe, I could barter for anything I wanted. All I had to do was threaten to go public with it. And, why shouldn’t I? I was right there with James the whole time the business was being built and I wanted a piece of it.”

“I see. What about Jane and Pauline? Why them?”

“Anna, our maid, overheard a phone conversation between Calina and James.” Patricia was so wrapped up in telling her clever plan she didn’t notice that Mary Frances was moving away from our little group. She went on, “Calina knew she was dying and wanted to wrap up a few details. She told James she’d kept the original copy of the recipe in the second volume of the book. She was too sick to send it, so she asked him to come and get it.”

“Oh, that’s why he only had the first volume of that book in his office. She had the other.”

“Yes, isn’t that romantic?” Patricia’s voice dripped with venom.

“So you decided to go after the recipe yourself? Beat James to the prize
,” I asked.

“Yes, but she died quickly. The next thing I knew, Alex, that idiot, came home
and sold everything from her estate,” she continued, her voice strangely void of emotion. It’s like she was on automatic pilot. “I had to get those books back.”

“So, you approached Jane Reynolds about buying them.”

“Of course, but she’d already promised them to some other buyer. She was so stubborn. I offered her twice what the other buyer was going to pay, but she insisted that she had already committed to someone else. It got nasty between us. I had no choice but to kill her. She wouldn’t give me the books.”

“But you didn’t find the recipe in those books?”

“No. I knew that volume must have gone to a different buyer. So, after I killed the shop owner, I pitched the books to cover my tracks.”

I shivered. “And Pauline?”

“Oh,
that
girl. I’d found out about the Retro Metro from the auction house and was there when her boyfriend called. I overheard her telling him about the envelope she’d found. It was almost too easy. Like it was fate that I had been standing there when she called him. I simply waited until she was alone that night and…. You should have seen her beg for her life. Really,” she rolled her eyes, “so pathetic.” 

Every fiber
in my body screamed with repulsion. I started shaking. Not with fear; but with anger. “You must have been desperate to get that recipe,” I managed to say.

Patricia become more agitated. Not a good thing since she was pointing a gun at me. I snuck a peek at Mary Frances. S
he was edging toward a statue display by the candles.  

I refocused on Patricia whose eyes had taken on a strange, far-away
look. “Yes, you could say I was desperate. I got the recipe and arranged to meet Alex at the Huntley. I rented a room so there wouldn’t be any risk that someone might see us together.”

My eyes were instantly drawn to her leg. How could I have been so wrong?  “So you were the one with Alex at the Huntley?” I asked. I was stalling for time. Out of the co
rner of my eye, I could tell Mary Frances had almost reached the statue. What exactly was she planning on doing?

“Yeah, you were breathing down my
back. I knew you suspected those secondhand dealers were killed for something. If I came forward with the recipe all of the sudden, you’d know I was guilty of murder.”

“I see. It would make
sense for Alex to have the recipe, though. It was his mother’s, after all.”

“That’s right. So I showed it to him and tried to convince him to come forward and use it to claim his shares in JimDog Corporation. With that recipe in hand, he could
use it to barter for anything he wanted. I was offering him a lot of money to sell those shares to me,” Patricia went on, seemingly eager to reveal her brilliant plan. “He was all for it, too. Then,
she
got in the way.” She was indicating toward Morgan.

“What do you mean?”

“Morgan saw us together at the Huntley.”

“I thought I was going to catch J.J. with his mistress,” Morgan’s tiny voice came from behind. “I’d paid the clerk to tip me off when someone checked in under the name Farrell. I rented the room across the hallway and planned on waiting a bit before surprising him in the act.

Patricia chuckled. “She was surprised all right.”

Morgan continued. “I didn’t even know who that man was. I didn’t start to put
things together until the next morning at the garage sale when you accused me of being at the Huntley with Alex Sokolov.”

“She tracked him down
,” Patricia jumped back into the conversation. “They must have compared notes because somehow Alex put it together that I’d killed those women. He was freaked out. He wanted out of the deal. He was going to head back to Russia.”

“So, you went to his house and killed him
too?”

“He was a loose end. I had to kill him. Just like I have to kill all of you.”

She closed in on me and straightened her aim. I ducked, closed my eyes and covered my head. Behind me, Morgan started screaming hysterically.

A loud crack echoed through the air.

I jumped, then jumped again at the sound of something hitting the floor. I opened my eyes and immediately looked down. Patricia was lying in a crumpled heap in front of me.

I wasn’t shot. I wasn’t shot! But w
hat had happened? I looked around and then back down to where a thin stream of blood was draining from Patricia’s head. Shards of blue and white ceramic littered the floor. The gun had slipped from her hand and was lying next to her limp body.

We all stared in silence. It was Mary Frances who finally spoke first. “She’s not dead, is she? I didn’t mean to kill her!”

“What did you do?” I asked.

Mary Frances was vi
sibly shaking. “I hit her with the statue. Is she dead?”

“You should have stayed out of it, Sister,” came a voice out of nowhere.

My head snapped around and my jaw dropped as Sarah Maloney stepped out of the shadows. “Now I’ll have to finish the job.” She stepped in with a gun pointed at me. “Killing you is going to be such a pleasure,” she said in a hauntingly low voice. 

I held my hands up. “Wait—”