A Puzzle in Paxton Park Page 14

  Shelly’s face went pale and her heart banged like a hammer against her chest wall. She hadn’t driven a car since before the accident that took her sister’s life. “I….”

  “If you can’t do it, I’ll call Melody to come back. She has a doctor’s appointment right now. She can come back here once she’s finished.” Henry looked up at the clock.

  One of the wait staff peeked into the back room. “A group of ten people just came in. I wanted to warn you.”

  Henry groaned.

  “I’ll drive the food over to the house.” Shelly’s voice shook as she said the words. “I’m glad to do it.”

  She wasn’t glad to do it, but she wanted to help Henry and it was only about four miles to the Pinkley place.

  Henry thanked her over and over again as he took the large platters from the fridge and ran outside to put them in his van. He handed Shelly the keys. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “I’ll be back in a little bit.” Shelly got into the passenger seat and immediately broke out in a cold sweat. “If I don’t pass out first,” she mumbled and pressed the button to start the engine. The vibration of the vehicle caused Shelly to have to rest her head on the steering wheel and she began to talk to herself. “I am … able to do this. I am …. safe. I am … going to drive this van.” Over and over she repeated the phrases, and then she sat up and put the van into drive. Her inner core felt like it was full of ice.

  All the way along the country lanes, Shelly muttered positive phrases and affirmations and when she finally pulled to a stop in front of the Pinkley home, she felt like her muscles had turned to jelly. Placing both hands on her cheeks, she said, “I did it. I did it. I made it here.”

  The school bus pulled to a stop to let Aubrey Pinkley off at her home as Shelly was removing the first platter from the rear of the van.

  “Oh, hi. It’s you.” Aubrey came over to see what Shelly was doing. “I stayed late at school and had to take the late bus home.”

  Shelly explained that she worked at the diner and was delivering some food for them ordered by a friend.

  “I thought you worked for the police,” Aubrey said.

  “I do. I have three jobs actually.”

  Aubrey slung her schoolbag onto her back so she could carry one of the platters for Shelly. They chatted as they walked up the front walkway to the porch.

  “That’s Dawn Barry’s car in the driveway next to my dad’s car,” Aubrey observed.

  A sinking feeling pulled at Shelly’s heart as she recognized the vehicle Dawn drove.

  Stepping up to the front door, Aubrey opened it and went inside, holding the door for Shelly to enter.

  As soon as they were in the small foyer, a shot rang out.

  Aubrey let out a piercing scream. “Dad!”

  Aubrey dropped the platter she was holding and was about to dart towards the kitchen when Shelly grabbed the girl’s arm, dropped her own platter, and yanked the front door open, shoving Aubrey outside.

  Hearing running feet heading their way, Shelly was about to dart outside after Aubrey when a voice said, “Hold it right there. I’ve got a gun.”

  Shelly slammed the door so the person wouldn’t see Aubrey standing on the front porch and then turned the dead bolt so the teenager wouldn’t try to get back inside.

  And with her heart in her throat, Shelly slowly turned around.

  24

  Dawn Barry stood a few yards from Shelly with a gun in her hand. The gun was pointed at Shelly.

  “You.” Dawn growled. “Where were you a few minutes ago when Charlie pulled this gun on me?”

  “Charlie threatened you?” Shelly asked in a tiny voice. She could feel the lies that slipped from Dawn’s mouth bumping against her skin.

  “He was going to kill me.” Dawn still held the gun on the young woman.

  “Where is he?”

  “In the kitchen. He said he was going to kill me. We fought.”

  “You got the gun away from him?” Shelly went along with Dawn’s story to buy some time.

  “The gun went off when we were fighting.”

  Unconsciously, Shelly stepped a little to the right to move away from the muzzle of the weapon.

  “Don’t move,” Dawn said.

  “Why are you holding the gun on me? Why don’t you put it down?” Shelly used a gentle tone of voice.

  Dawn stared at Shelly.

  “Is Charlie…?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you call for an ambulance?” Shelly asked.

  “No.”

  “Why don’t we call for help,” Shelly suggested.

  “No.”

  Trying to think of something to say that would help her to get away from Dawn, Shelly looked down at the boxes of food on the floor. “I brought food from the resort diner. I dropped them when I came in. I’ll get something to clean up the mess.”

  “I told you not to move.” Dawn’s expression was of a cornered, wild animal. The whites of her eyes were huge. Some spittle showed at the corner of her mouth.

  “We should go see about Charlie,” Shelly tried to convince the woman. “Maybe we can help him.”

  “Charlie got what he deserved.”

  “What do you mean?” Shelly could feel cold sweat dribbling down her back. She hoped Aubrey had called the police and that a squad car would arrive soon. Hurry.

  “Charlie is a loser and a liar.” Dawn’s skin was pale, but her cheeks were blazing red. “He killed Emma, you know.”

  “Did he? Did he tell you that?”

  “Yeah. He was so sick of her. He was so tired of her running his life.”

  “Was he mean to you?” Shelly wanted Dawn to think she was on her side.

  “Not at first. He was real nice to me … at first.” Dawn’s eyes hardened. “Then he dumped me.”

  “What happened?”

  Dawn looked Shelly in the eye. “Charlie is a user. He uses people. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He had to die. The world doesn’t need people like him.”

  “Is Charlie dead?” Shelly asked with a tremble in her voice.

  “I hope so.” Dawn’s hand shook a little and her eyes seemed to glaze over. “I loved him at first. He didn’t love me. I figured that out. I thought the only reason he wouldn’t stay with me was because of Emma … and those kids.”

  A chill ran over Shelly’s skin.

  “If Emma was dead, then Charlie would be with me. That’s what I thought but, it didn’t work like that.”

  “You hoped Charlie would come back to you if Emma was dead?”

  “He didn’t. I took his phone from him. He didn’t know I did it.”

  “Why did you take it?” Shelly asked. Where are the police?

  “So I could trick Emma. So I could get her to come and help me.”

  “Help you with what?”

  “I pretended to be Charlie. I pretended his car broke down. I used Charlie’s phone to text Emma to ask her to come pick him up.” A smirk twisted Dawn’s lips into a sneer. “Only Charlie wasn’t there on the side of the road. I was.”

  Shelly’s heart pounded hard against her chest. “What happened?” she whispered.

  “I shot Emma. It was me. I killed her. But, I’ll tell everyone Charlie did it.”

  “When did you steal his phone?”

  Dawn’s face was pinched and tight as she looked at the floor of the entryway. “I went to talk to Charlie at the hospital. I tried to convince him to leave Emma. He wouldn’t do it. I took his phone.” A triumphant look crossed Dawn’s face. “He didn’t even know I took it.”

  “Why did you take it?”

  “To use it against him. For dumping me. He’s such a loser.” Dawn’s chest rose and fell … her breath coming fast and shallow. “Loser’s don’t dump me,” she muttered.

  Shelly took a step backwards. “I need to get back to the diner. Henry will be wondering what happened to me.”

  Dawn’s head snapped up and she looked at Shelly with glazed e
yes. “No. You have to stay here.”

  Some scuffling sounds could be heard in the kitchen and Dawn wheeled around. Just as Shelly turned for the front door, a young woman’s scream rang through the air.

  “Dad! Dad!”

  Aubrey had entered the house through the back door to find her father on the floor.

  Dawn hurtled down the hallway to the kitchen and Shelly chased after the woman.

  Shelly screamed, “Aubrey! Run!”

  Charlie was on his back on the kitchen floor with blood seeping through his shirt. His skin was deathly pale.

  Aubrey, her long brown hair falling forward over her face, knelt beside her father, holding his hand and wailing.

  As she rushed into the kitchen, Dawn’s hand came up and she pointed the gun at Aubrey, but before she could pull the trigger, Shelly barreled into the woman, knocking her off balance.

  Dawn fell to the floor. The weapon dropped from her hand and skidded across the room.

  Shelly scrambled to her feet, crossed the room, and grabbed the gun. Wheeling around, she pointed it at Dawn and yelled, “Sit on the floor. Put your hands behind your head. Don’t you move.”

  Kneeling next to Charlie and keeping an eye on Dawn, Shelly used one hand to feel for a pulse on the man’s neck and found a faint beating against her fingers.

  “He’s alive. Can you do chest compressions” she asked Aubrey.

  Tears streamed down the teenager’s cheeks and she stared blankly at Shelly.

  “Stand up.” Shelly yanked the girl to her feet and, without thinking, pushed the gun into her hand. “Hold this while I help your dad. Keep your eye on her.” Kneeling again, she began to do chest compressions. “Did you call for help? Did you call the police when you were outside? Aubrey?”

  Shelly turned her head to look up, and she leapt to her feet. Oh, no. “Aubrey,” she said softly.

  The teenager held the gun in two shaking hands and pointed it at Dawn’s head.

  Dawn had slumped over with her arms wrapped around her head, rocking back and forth on the floor, her body shuddering.

  “She killed my mother.” Aubrey’s voice trembled as her finger moved to touch the trigger. “She shot my father.”

  With her stomach in a cold knot, Shelly moved her feet slowly across the floor. No, no, no. Don’t let this happen. Fighting to keep her voice calm and even, she said, “Aubrey. Don’t do it. Hand me the gun. If you shoot her, you’ll be just as bad as Dawn. Hand it to me. You know it’s the wrong thing to do.”

  Shelly slowly reached her arm out, her hand open. “Your mother loved you. She would never want you to do this.”

  Aubrey buckled at the waist, sobbing, and with a rush of relief, Shelly removed the gun from the teenager’s hand and then wrapped the young woman tightly in her arms.

  25

  The police arrived soon after Aubrey had let go of the gun. The officers removed Dawn Barry from the house shortly after Jay and an ambulance arrived to the Pinkley home. Jay was surprised to see Shelly in the kitchen with her arm around Aubrey’s shoulders. It took some time for the two of them to explain to the police what had happened.

  Charlie survived his gunshot wound and was expected to make a full recovery. He was innocent, at least of his wife’s murder. The man was a gambler and a philanderer and Shelly doubted he would ever be able to change his ways despite Charlie’s new-found determination to do so. Shelly hoped he would prove her wrong.

  Emma’s sister, Evelyn, and her husband had moved into Charlie’s house temporarily to help Aubrey and her brother and so they would not be alone while Charlie was in the hospital recovering. Evelyn had even suggested to Charlie that they sell their houses and buy a two-family home together in order to support and comfort the children. Evelyn was still working on forgiving Charlie for the way he disgraced his marriage, but that was going to take a very long time. Aubrey and her brother were the priority now.

  Dawn Barry stole Charlie’s phone on the afternoon before she killed Emma. She’d gone to the hospital to try and talk Charlie into getting back together.

  The thought of killing Emma had been swirling around in Dawn’s head for two months and she believed if Emma was dead, then Charlie would start seeing her again. At the hospital that day, Charlie told Dawn that it would not work out between them and that she should move on.

  Enraged, Dawn took the man’s phone and decided once and for all to murder Emma.

  Dawn had tried previously to get rid of Emma on the night of the gathering in the restaurant. She’d secretly slipped a poisonous powder into Emma’s wine which was the cause of Emma’s violent two-day illness. Dawn was incensed that Emma survived. She was sure she’d put enough poison in the glass to kill her victim.

  On the afternoon that Charlie rejected her once again, Dawn decided to put an end to Emma Pinkley. She wanted to be with Charlie. She also knew about the couple’s life insurance policies and dreamt of a life with Charlie, free from monetary worries.

  On the evening of the murder, Dawn, pretending to be Charlie, used his phone to text Emma twice. The first time to ask where Emma was, and the second time, to report that Charlie’s car had broken down and to ask if she would come and pick him up.

  When Emma arrived, Charlie wasn’t there … but Dawn was … and when Emma’s car rolled up beside Dawn, the woman pulled a gun on Emma and shot her in the chest while she was sitting in the driver’s seat of her vehicle.

  Dawn was hopeful that with Emma out of the way, Charlie would once again fall into her arms, but instead, he rejected her one more time. In a fury, Dawn broke into and trashed Jay’s house. Charlie had rejected her advances for the last time and Dawn was ready to set him up for the murder of his wife. Deliberately leaving Charlie’s stolen phone in Jay’s house, Dawn set the plan in motion.

  The truth was discovered, however, and Dawn Barry would be charged with first-degree murder for planning and executing the killing of Emma Pinkley.

  As for Charlie’s shopping trip on the evening Emma was killed, it turned out that the man had indeed gone to the Stockville mall to buy the boots, but he had another reason to drive all that way. Charlie was seeing a new woman in the town and he dropped by her house for a little visit.

  It was the evening before Halloween and Juliet and Shelly had invited friends to Shelly’s for a buffet dinner and then a walk into town for the annual Halloween Carnival.

  Jack-o-lanterns, cornstalks, and mums decorated the front porch, and the scarecrow man with the pumpkin head they’d made three weeks ago sat in one of the rocking chairs on the porch. Justice was still wary of the thing and gave it wide berth whenever she had to walk past it.

  The living room and dining room of Shelly’s little rented house had been decorated with small wooden black cats, glass pumpkins, twinkling orange lights on the fireplace mantle, vases of orange and yellow flowers, and ceramic bowls filled with Halloween candy.

  Some of the guests came wearing costumes and when Jay and her husband arrived, she announced that she’d decided to be a police officer for Halloween.

  “So original,” Juliet kidded her sister. “How did you ever think of it?”

  Jack, dressed in a skeleton costume, ran the grill on the patio off the kitchen cooking kebobs and burgers and hot dogs. Friends from the resort stood around chatting and sipping drinks under the decorated pergola in Juliet’s adjoining yard, and Justice moved happily from group to group soaking up the attention and enjoying pats and scratches behind the ears.

  When it was time to eat, everyone squished around the small dining table or carried plates into the living room and took seats on the sofa and chairs to gobble up the grilled meats, chili, rice, cucumber and feta salad, and two kinds of soup, roasted cauliflower, and mushroom and potato.

  After dinner, the friends got ready to walk into town and they left the house under Justice’s supervision and the cat curled up comfortably in her soft rectangular bed in the corner of the living room and promptly fell asleep.

  The gr
oup walked down the lane and turned right onto Main Street to join the streams of people heading for the common.

  Approaching the movie theatre, a shiver ran though Shelly’s stomach as she recalled the night Emma Pinkley hurtled her car around the corner and smashed into one the brick buildings.

  Thinking about the murder, a wave of sadness washed over her.

  Juliet noticed her friend’s quiet demeanor, gave her arm a squeeze, and said, “I’m sure Emma is thankful for your help in solving the case.”

  “The dreams were pretty accurate,” Shelly said. “I just had a hard time interpreting them.”

  “Are you starting to accept that the dreams are telling you something?” Juliet asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t know where they come from or how it could be possible that they try to point me in the right direction. But….”

  “But what?”

  “I like seeing my sister in the dreams.” Shelly smiled. “It makes me feel that she hasn’t left me.”

  Juliet nodded and teased, “Be sure to tell your sister not to leave me out of the dreams in the future.”

  “I think I know why you weren’t in the dreams.”

  “Why wasn’t I?” Juliet questioned.

  Shelly explained, “Emma’s true friends couldn’t make the dinner that night. At least not until Peggy Lane showed up later. The people with Emma were her co-workers and acquaintances, not the women friends she really cared about. That’s why you weren’t with me in the dream. Best friends weren’t around that night.”

  A smile crossed Juliet’s face. “Okay then. I’ll accept that explanation of why I was left out of it. But what did the money falling down from the ceiling have to do with anything?”

  “I think those dollar bills represented Dawn’s desire to get hold of the life insurance money on Emma. The money floated down to indicate possibility and rushed back up to represent Dawn’s inability to get at it. Charlie would cash in the life policy, but he wasn’t going to share it with Dawn.”