Caveat Emptor and Other Stories Read online

  “How’d you get infected?”

  “A fashion magazine wanted an exotic background for a layout. The money was good. One of the teachers at Ben’s school took care of him for the ten days I was there.”

  Jack considered offering sympathy, then decided she wouldn’t be receptive. “Okay, let’s go back to something you said earlier. You were at Suzanne’s house when Spider killed her? That’s hard to swallow, Abbie.”

  “I know,” she said. “After I was released from the hospital and threatened with jail time if I violated the restraining order again, I stayed away from Spider. Then I learned how sick I was. I can’t even hold down an office job, and I don’t have enough money to make sure Ben will be taken care of after I’m dead. I went on welfare, which gave me lots of free time to stalk Spider, but this time from a prudent distance. I watched his house. I followed his car. I couldn’t afford tickets to his basketball games, but I was always parked nearby when he left the arena. When he and Suzanne were married, I was in the crowd on the sidewalk across from the church. I sat outside restaurants while they ate lobster and drank champagne. I called his house from pay phones, but hung up if anyone answered.”

  “Planning to accomplish what?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I hoped he would somehow sense my presence and worry that I might blow him away when he turned his back. I wanted him to feel just a fraction of the anxiety I feel about the future.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “But let’s talk about the day Suzanne was killed. I was there that afternoon, parked down the street, when Spider drove to her house and stayed for about half an hour. When he came out onto the porch, I could see he was turning on the charm, smiling, nodding at her, probably making promises to take her to Paris and the Riviera when the basketball season was over. He’s a very slick performer.”

  “He admitted he went to her house that day,” Jack said. “According to his story, that’s when he scratched his arm on the screen door and dripped blood on the carpet. How do I know you didn’t read it in the newspaper?”

  “I can describe her house.”

  “The address was published, as well as photographs of the house and street. Newscasters did broadcasts from the sidewalk out front. There was footage of the jury as they were escorted inside. Ninety percent of the people in this tavern can describe the house, Abbie. You’ll have to do better than that to convince me that you were there.”

  “Which is what I’m going to do,” she said. “Spider testified that on the night of her death, he went out to dinner, then went home. If anyone had asked me, I could have backed up that much of his testimony, since I was following him. He parked in the driveway. After a few minutes, all the downstairs lights went off and shortly thereafter the light in his bedroom came on. I was about to leave when I heard a car door slam. Seconds later he drove out the gate, his headlights dark. I followed him, naturally, and realized pretty quickly where he was headed.”

  Jack felt a chill, as if the air conditioner had been turned up. “Suzanne’s?”

  “Forty-five minutes later he turned onto her road. I parked behind a grocery store and walked the half mile to the house. His car wasn’t there, but the lights were on and the front door was open. I was standing in the shadows, wondering if I ought to go home and say a prayer for her, when headlights came on further down the road. I jumped behind some shrubs as Spider drove by.”

  “You’re sure you recognized the car?”

  She laughed contemptuously. “Yes, I’m sure; my hobby was such that I could have spotted his car in a blizzard. I figured he’d tried to insinuate himself back into her good graces and she’d thrown him out. The open door bothered me, though, so I waited. An hour later, the door was still open and the same lights still on. I finally decided to go into the yard to get a better look. I ended up in the living room. She was on her back on the floor with the knife in her chest. There was blood all over the place, but I made myself feel for a pulse. She was dead.”

  “And you didn’t call nine-one-one.”

  “Obviously,” she said. “I’d been warned that if I had any further contact with Spider, including following him, I’d face felony charges. I couldn’t prove he’d been there. My word against his, and I’d spent thirty days in a mental institution for stalking him. Crazy woman versus insanely popular athlete. No, I didn’t call nine-one-one or anyone else. Would you have?”

  Jack regarded her soberly. “If what you’re saying is true, you committed a felony by failing to report the crime.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, almost ashamed of himself. “Then what happened?”

  “I took her wedding ring off her finger. Maybe it was an awful thing to do, but all I was thinking was the last thing she deserved was to be buried as the wife of a monster. I didn’t try to sell it or anything. I’ve still got it, as well as my bloodstained shoes and trousers. I was in such shock that I stuffed them in the back of a closet. Now I’m glad I did, since they’re proof that I was at the scene.”

  “Not proof that you killed her, though,” Jack said. “The detectives determined early in the investigation that you weren’t a suspect. You told them you were home, and since you hadn’t bothered Spider for over a year or ever threatened Suzanne, they crossed you off the list.”

  Abbie shrugged. “Here’s what is going to happen. When Spider was found innocent, you started thinking about other possibilities. Tomorrow, you’ll come to my apartment and interview me. You leave with some troublesome ideas. You reread all the police reports and talk to your pals who were on the case, then return to interview me. I break down and admit that I went to Suzanne’s house to convince her to resist Spider’s sweet-talk. I describe how she realized who I was and became verbally abusive, how I grabbed a knife from a drawer and stabbed her, then yanked out the knife and later threw it out the car window while driving up a canyon road. I’ll tell this to the prosecuting attorney, and to the judge when the time comes. No excuses, no insanity plea. I expect to get twenty-five to life, but that’s not a concern. Later, you hold your own press conference and say that because you feel sorry for me, half the money is going into a trust fund for Ben.” She stared at him. “I’ve arranged for a lawyer to draw up the papers and administer the trust. You’ll keep half of whatever’s left after taxes. Not a bad day’s work, is it?”

  “What if your doctor tells the press that you have this terminal disease?”

  Abbie looked at him as though he was particularly dim-witted. “For one thing, he’s bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, and I’m not about to give him permission to ever mention I was a patient. For another, he took a sabbatical and is in Brazil working with tropical disease experts there. If I’m questioned about my health, I’ll just say that my consuming guilt ruined my appetite and prevented me from sleeping. There won’t be a trial. My lawyer will negotiate a sentence in exchange for my full cooperation. All you have to do is play your part.”

  Jack envisioned himself at the precinct, telling the detectives that he strongly suspected Abbie Cassius, scorned ex-girlfriend and known harasser, had not only killed Suzanne Durmond but also retained evidence of her complicity in the crime. No matter how skeptical they were, they’d feel obliged to talk to her.

  To add the icing to the cake, Spider’s expression when he learned of her confession would be worth more than five million dollars. If he admitted his own guilt, double jeopardy would protect him from a second criminal indictment, but expose him as a easy target for a civil suit by his victim’s family. That could cost him ten times as much.

  “Do you have absolute faith in me?” he asked. “What if I forget about the trust fund?”

  “When you come to my apartment, you’re going to sit down and write a letter disclosing your role in a conspiracy to commit fraud, obstruct justice, and engage in theft by deception. You used to be a good reporter, Jack. I know you’ll be able to capture the essence of this conversation, as well as describe your subsequent int
entions to lie to the detectives and prosecutors. This letter will be in your own handwriting, of course. You’ll then hand it over to me, and get it back as soon as Ben’s share has been deposited in the trust account.”

  Jack was becoming impressed with her attention to detail. “What if Spider claims he’s broke and refuses to cough up the money?”

  “At the press conference he said that he can raise it by selling his mansion and his ranch in Colorado. He’s on record, and you can sue him if necessary. Poor old Spider will be broke, without any expectations of multimillion-dollar basketball contracts and lucrative product endorsements. No more glitzy parties, movie premieres, celebrity tennis tournaments, television talk shows, complimentary suites in Vegas. He won’t end up in prison, but a crummy one-bedroom apartment might begin to feel a little bit like a cell.”

  “One last question,” he said. “Why me?”

  “Why not?” she murmured, then wrote an address on a napkin and shoved it across the table. “Come over tomorrow morning and we’ll get the show on the road.”

  Within a matter of weeks, Abbie Cassius had been transferred to a federal penitentiary, her prediction of twenty-five to life uncannily accurate. Spider Durmond had called a press conference during which he claimed to be pleased by this triumph of truth and justice, but his eyes had blazed with enough fury to melt a camera lens. Jack had been badgered by the media as well. Public sentiment had rumbled against him until he’d announced plans to establish a trust fund for the innocent, emotionally disabled boy.

  The furor abated for several months, then flickered briefly when Spider publicly presented a check to Jack on the steps of the courthouse. Battling nausea and feeling no sense of virtue, Jack had accepted it with a grimace. Only then had he made the four-hour drive to visit Abbie behind the foreboding gray walls. She’d adjusted to the routine, she said, and was allowed to call Ben once a week. When her calls stopped, she doubted he would notice.

  The day after he finalized the trust, a messenger delivered a thin package. Inside was his handwritten letter; there was no indication anyone had tampered with the sealed envelope. He burned it, then gathered the ashes and flushed them down the toilet.

  It was three months later, while sitting beside a pool in a luxurious hacienda in Baja California, sunburned after a day of deep-sea fishing and on his third margarita, that Jack wandered across the article buried within the back pages of the Los Angeles Times. Researchers at a hospital in Rio had found an antibiotic that could reverse, or at least impede, the debilitating symptoms of plasmocerciasis, a disease virtually unknown outside of certain regions of the Amazon rain forest.

  He thought back to Abbie’s confession at the sentencing hearing, when the judge had required her to describe the particulars of her crime before accepting her guilty plea. She’d either embellished her fantasy with the polished skill of a best-selling horror novelist, or the twelve jurors had been right. Hard to know. In either case, Abbie had gotten what she wanted, and justice had been served, albeit lukewarm and difficult to digest.

  He decided to send a postcard to Abbie the next day. “Wish you were here,” he’d write.

  Why not?

  About the Author

  Joan Hess (b. 1949) is the award-winning author of several long-running mystery series. Born in Arkansas, she was teaching preschool when she began writing fiction. Known for her lighthearted, witty novels, she is the creator of the Claire Malloy Mysteries and the Arly Hanks Mysteries, both set in Arkansas.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  “Death of a Romance Writer” copyright © 1988 by Joan Hess. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1988.

  “Too Much to Bare” copyright © 1990 by Joan Hess. First published in Sisters in Crime 2.

  “The Maggody Files: Death in Bloom” copyright © 1999 by Joan Hess. First published in Mom, Apple Pie, and Murder.

  “Caveat Emptor” copyright © 1998 by Joan Hess. First published in Murder for Revenge.

  “A Little More Research” copyright © 1990 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1990.

  “The Maggody Files: Time Will Tell” copyright © 1997 by Joan Hess. First published in Vengeance is Hers.

  “All’s Well That Ends” copyright © 1999 by Joan Hess. First published in Irreconcilable Differences.

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  978-1-5040-3731-0

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