Murder Is the Deal of the Day Read online

“You got it,” Gil said.

  Chapter 41

  Whitey Belmont locked the back door behind him. “Judy? Are you here?” he called out, walking through the kitchen.

  No answer came.

  Usually, he arrived home from work to find her sprawled out on the sofa. But at least he could keep an eye on her there, make sure she wasn’t out gambling. And his dinner was always ready. He wondered if she had snuck away to one of the boats, forgetting he would be coming home an hour earlier today.

  The curtains were drawn over the bay window in the front of the house and he pulled back a corner just to check the car again. There appeared to be a man behind the wheel; a woman sat next to him in the passenger seat. They didn’t seem to be talking in a particularly friendly way—more businesslike. The woman looked straight ahead. Her severe haircut made him think of Mrs. Jordan, his phys ed teacher from elementary school. Both people drank from white Styrofoam cups. As he released the curtain, Whitey wondered who they were and if he should be afraid.

  He opened the door to the hall closet and put his briefcase on the floor inside; then he carefully hung his suit jacket on a

  hanger. He had removed his tie during the drive home, tucking it into the breast pocket, but now the silky material slid free onto the floor. Bending down to pick it up, he caught sight of several packages shoved in the back of the closet. Whitey recognized the Home Mall logo; he would have recognized it from across the street.

  Furious, he walked into the bedroom. The walk-in closet was larger than the bedroom he’d occupied when he was a kid. Opening the doors, he reached inside and felt for the light switch. It hadn’t made him angry to store his clothes and belongings in the hall closet and guest bedroom. Women had this thing for clothes—everyone knew that—and he had never denied Judy her little pleasures. But he could not—would not—tolerate her lying to him.

  Boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling in the far corner, behind her winter clothes. A toaster, two sets of silverware, a food processor, and four complete sets of dishes. Behind him hung silk blouses, wool skirts, at least a dozen dresses, each with a price tag dangling from it.

  At first, he was merely angry, but the more he found, the more brand-new pairs of shoes, watches, and cosmetics sealed tightly in untouched packages, the more the rage shook through his body.

  “When I’m finished, the only thing left in here will be garbage!” He shouted.

  He began with the boxes. Tossing appliances and china against the wall behind their bed, he didn’t give a damn where anything landed. His anger only seemed to grow with each item he threw. When everything on the floor of Judy’s closet had been cleared out, he stomped into the kitchen, grabbing a pair of scissors from the utility drawer.

  At first, he took his time, artfully cutting the sleeve out of a cashmere sweater or all the buttons off a blazer. He almost started to laugh. But the harder he worked, the more the clothing seemed to multiply, until he was hacking away madly, shouting at every seam and zipper.

  Judy hurried inside, still wondering what that dark car was doing over in front of the Richardson house. It had been there when she left for the grocery store and she was sure it had been there when she closed the curtains, around ten o’clock, the night before. She couldn’t help but notice the older man behind the wheel; he reminded her of her uncle Phil. She had also noticed Whitey’s car parked in the garage. It took her a moment to remember it was the afternoon of his Rotary meeting, when he usually got home early.

  “Whitey?” she called as she put two grocery bags on the counter. “Honey, where are you?”

  “Get your butt in here!” She heard him shout from the bedroom.

  “What’s wron—” She couldn’t believe her eyes. Clothes and boxes, glass and paper cluttered the bedroom. A spot behind their headboard had several small holes where metal had punctured the drywall. The small lamp, normally on her nightstand, lay smashed.

  “This is going to stop right now!” Whitey shouted as he ripped through her new suede coat with the kitchen scissors.

  “What is?” she asked meekly, but she knew the answer.

  “The excuses, the meetings, the spending—your addictions!” He dropped the coat and stood looking at her. His face was flushed, his mouth contorted like those melting skulls she had seen in a horror movie.

  But she didn’t back away. “Now, sweetheart—”

  “Just look at yourself! You eat too much; you buy too much. You overdo everything, every step of the way. Why is it so hard for you to understand that things should be done in moderation? You never know when to stop. So, my darling wife, I’m stopping things for you.”

  Tears flooded down her cheeks. He should have known mentioning her weight would make her start.

  “Cut the crying; it won’t work this time. Look at all this crap! Just look at it!” He grabbed her by the hair and jerked her into the closet.

  She tried defending herself. “Most of those things were for Christmas and birthdays. Not for me. I—”

  “We don’t have one damn credit card we can use. We’re being eaten alive. I work my ass off. This is all your fault!”

  “But I can’t stop. It’s a sickness, Whitey. I’m trying to get better, you know that.”

  He pushed her against the wall; she slumped to the floor, wailing she was sorry. It only made him angrier.

  Adrenaline rushed through his body as he went to her dresser and tore open the drawers. Stabbing each article of clothing, he shredded and ripped everything belonging to his wife.

  Drying her eyes, Judy got to her feet. She would reason with him. After all, Whitey was a practical man. Coming up behind him, she watched for a moment as he cut into each pair of her panty hose. Then, in the calmest voice she could muster, she said, “I’ll get a job. I’ll pay off all the bills myself.” He turned, not knowing she was that close to him. The scissors entered her stomach so easily, he was almost as shocked as she was.

  Her eyes bugged at the pain. “Oh my God!” she screamed, pressing her hands to her stomach and falling backward onto the bed. “Oh my God!”

  In his other hand, he still gripped half a pair of panty hose, which he shoved into her mouth to keep her quiet.

  Why hadn’t he thought of doing this sooner? he wondered, looking down at Judy. No, if he had, that bitch Claire Hunt wouldn’t have gotten the message. None of them would have.

  He pulled the scissors out of the wound and aimed them a little higher this time, closer to her lungs and heart.

  She kept saying it over and over until she couldn’t say it anymore. “Oh my God! Oh my God! . . . Oh my G—”

  Chapter 42

  “How many more days are we going to have to sit out here before you realize the guy’s clean?” Myra Longfellow asked her partner.

  “The call came from this location,” Holliday repeated for the hundredth time.

  “It could have been a prank, a nut, but I hardly think that guy we just saw go inside—the geek in the suit—is a killer.”

  Holliday was ready to argue his side again when a patrol car pulled up, flashing its lights. The two detectives got out of their car and approached the vehicle quickly.

  Holding his badge out for inspection, Holliday identified himself and his partner. “So what’s the call, Officer?”

  “A nine one one—sounds like a domestic disturbance. You didn’t hear anything?” the young cop asked.

  “No,” Holliday said, “but they might be in the back of the house.”

  “Figures,” the cop said, “the call could’ve come from the neighbors on the other side, over there.” He pointed to a yellow house farther down the block from where they all stood.

  “We’re coming in with you, Officer,” Myra Longfellow announced, and started toward the house. The two men followed her.

  She poked at the doorbell, anxiously trying to look into the curtained window. When no one answered, she tried the bell again.

  The officer opened the screen door and knocked loudly on the fron
t door. “Mrs. Belmont? Open up, please. It’s the police.”

  Thinking that the woman might feel safer opening her door to another woman, Myra Longfellow shouted through the door, “We’re here to help you, Mrs. Belmont. Are you all right?”

  While the other two waited, Holliday started around the house. “I’ll try the back door,” he said.

  “This sure doesn’t feel right,” the cop said, and pushed the front door with his shoulder. The chain lock snapped, causing the door to fly open and crash loudly against the wall. “Mrs. Belmont? Mr. Belmont? Police!”

  Holliday heard the noise, came back around, and walked through the front door. “There’s a window open, looks like a bedroom. Too high for me to see anything.”

  The uniformed cop pulled his gun and led the way while the three of them walked through the house, checking each room until finally stopping in the doorway of the master bedroom.

  “What a mess,” Longfellow said.

  The cop slowly walked into the room. “Police. Ma’am, are you in here?”

  Holliday looked into the large closet. “Someone was definitely very angry here. Look at this.” He pointed to the shredded clothing, some of it still clinging to hangers.

  Longfellow looked in amazement at the destruction that must have been going on just a few moments before, all the time she had been sitting right outside in the car.

  Careful not to touch anything, the cop walked around the foot of the bed and that was when he saw Judy Belmont’s foot.

  “Detective Holliday! She’s here.”

  Holliday rushed to where the policeman stood, staring. Bending down, he felt the woman’s neck for a pulse. “Too late.”

  “You mean she’s dead?” Longfellow asked. “She can’t be.”

  “Okay, you come check this out while I call in for backup.”

  Myra knelt down beside Judy Belmont’s body and put her ear to the woman’s chest, listening for a heartbeat—anything to signify the woman was still alive. But as she looked at the location of the wound and the amount of blood that had been lost, she realized there was no hope.

  Holliday took out a paper napkin he had tucked into his pocket after a take-out lunch in the car with Longfellow. He wrapped it around his index finger and dialed the station from a phone in the kitchen.

  “That’s right, we’re at the Belmont house now. Could you check a nine one one call that came in about fifteen minutes ago? Sure, I’ll hold.”

  Longfellow took out a small notepad and started jotting down what they had found and her impressions of the scene,

  while the sergeant searched through the rest of the house.

  “And the call came from what address? Are you sure?” Holliday asked. “Yeah, yeah, I believe you. Thanks.”

  Holliday knelt down to where his partner sat on the floor. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

  “What?”

  “That nine one one call came from here, and it was a man’s voice on the tape.”

  “What did he say?” Longfellow asked.

  “He said somebody better come clean up this mess, that he had killed his wife and the Hunt bitch was next.”

  Longfellow looked at Judy Belmont and then to her partner.

  “So what do you think of your geek now?” Holliday couldn’t resist asking.

  Chapter 43

  She’d been dreaming of Yorkshire. They were sitting by the fire in the Black Bull, laughing, drinking cider from tall glasses. She felt safe, happier than she could ever remember feeling.

  And then the phone rang.

  Gil jiggled the bed as he jumped up, hoping it wasn’t Allyn

  calling to say he wouldn’t be able to go in early and open the store. Claire knew the chance of getting back to England that day was beyond slim, and she grudgingly got out of bed.

  Straightening her paisley nightshirt, she turned on the television, then opened the front door to get the newspaper propped up in front of it. After that, everything started happening at once.

  Bold headlines shouted CALL-IN KILLER ON LOOSE.

  The local anchorwoman said, “George Belmont, known to his friends and family as Whitey, brutally murdered his wife late yesterday.”

  And Gil came into the room agitated, yelling above the voice on the television. “That was Detective Holliday on the phone.”

  Claire pushed the mute button on the remote.

  “Well, the first call was him, but just when we were almost finished, another call buzzed in.”

  She handed him the paper. “And who was that call from?”

  “CNN. Can you believe it? Some reporter had the nerve, the goddamn nerve, to ask me how I was feeling about all this? Thank God Holliday had just filled me in.”

  “What did you tell him—the guy from CNN?”

  “I said—and I’ve waited a long time to say this—‘No comment.’ ”

  Claire sat down in front of the television. “Well, I feel like we’re standing in the middle of a minefield. Everything’s blowing up all around us and there’s nothing we can do about any of it.”

  Gil sat next to her. Together, they listened to the blond anchorwoman finishing up her report on George Belmont. When a commercial came on, Claire turned the set off.

  “Did Holliday have anything encouraging to report, or did he just tell you to keep an eye on me?” she asked.

  He put his arm around her. “Promise you won’t get upset?”

  She leaned back to look in his eyes, to see if he was kidding. “I think I’m a little past upset, Gil. I’m working on anger and fear right now.”

  “Well, you’ve got to hear this,” he began. “There was a nine one one call. That’s how they came to find Judy Belmont’s body. The caller turned out to be Belmont. He said he had just murdered his wife and that you were next.”

  Claire couldn’t stop the tear that squeezed out of the corner of her right eye.

  “Holliday said they did some checking and found that Belmont owns a gun; but they haven’t been able to locate it yet.”

  “Which means he probably has it with him,” Claire said.

  “Probably. They also found some gun club medals he won, and his records show he was in the marines.”

  “Which also means he knows how to use the gun and doesn’t have to worry about getting that close to me to kill me.”

  “You have to know all of this, Claire. We can’t protect ourselves if we don’t know what we’re up against.”

  “I know,” she said sadly, “but I have to ask you something.”

  “Anything, sweetheart.”

  “Gil, do you think I am responsible in some way for all those women being killed? And Judy? I feel so badly for her.”

  “No! Don’t even think like that. Holliday made it very clear, and he went out of his way to tell me to reassure you that you haven’t done anything wrong. A psychologist the police department consults worked up a profile of George Belmont. His report said that all the rage stems from Belmont’s inability to live with his wife’s addictive behavior. He not only hated her for losing their money but he hated himself more for enabling her. He felt powerless to control his life after a while. You just happened to be out there—visible—a perfect excuse.”

  Tears started trickling down her face.

  Gil hugged her to him. “Don’t go soft on me now.”

  She pulled away and swiped at the tears with her sleeve. “These are just because I’m so angry.”

  “Good,” he said, “anger can be productive, like getting us something to eat. I’m starving. Or do you want me to make breakfast while you get dressed?”

  The phone rang before she could answer him.

  Gil didn’t move. “Holliday said we should stay in today and he’d call sometime after dinner. I could pull the damn plug on that thing until then.”

  “Good idea,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’ll fix breakfast; I need something to do.”

  While Claire made coffee, she thought about Paul. For weeks, she’d been reassuring h
im that everything was fine. And with him living in Kansas City, there had been some news that she had been able to keep from him. Like the local report about the on-air “killer call.” But now with CNN rehashing every half hour how George “Whitey” Belmont had murdered his wife and was probably coming after Claire Hunt next, she needed to be with her son.

  “Done,” Gil said as he walked in the room and stopped to watch his wife. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Yes?”

  “Before Belmont can hurt you, he has to find you.”

  “True.” She poured two glasses of orange juice.

  “We’re not in the book, no one at the station is about to give out our address, and the bookstore is listed under Old Delmar. We’re not talking about a master criminal here; the guy’s an average man who just went off the deep end.”

  “Four times,” Claire said. “And he was sure smart enough to find those three women.”

  “They were all connected to his wife. Friends, or fellow members of some club. It didn’t take that much thought.”

  “So you’re trying to convince me that we’re safe?”

  “I think we’re okay as long as we stay here, like Holliday told us to.”

  “What about visitors, Warden?” Claire asked, setting the table. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Paul; I want to call and ask him to take a day off. I miss him, Gil.”

  The intercom buzzed.

  Gil walked to the small box installed in the wall by the front door and depressed a button while he spoke. “Yes?”

  “It’s the manager, Mr. Hunt. We got a call for you down here in the office. Is there something wrong with your phone?”

  “No, we just unplugged it.”

  “I can’t say I blame you, sir, considering everything that’s . . . Well, it’s Mrs. Hunt’s son. He’s worried about his mother and asks you to call him at home.”

  “Thank you very much; we’ll do that.”

  Claire overheard the conversation from where she stood. Smiling for the first time that day, she said, “We’ve always had this special—”