The Charlie Greene Mysteries by Marlys Millhiser

Author:Marlys Millhiser [Millhiser Marlys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504049665
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

32

Richard Morse, Irma Vance, and Maurice Lavender stood around Charlie’s bed the next morning. Richard was saying, “So what’s it going to be, Charlie? You want Maurice here put in jail and Medora Lavender left to her own devices in that nursing home? You want Irma in prison for just trying to save his tush and thwart a blackmailer? She’s had her problems under control for years. They got great drugs for that stuff now. The Scarborough House thing is history. Hey, you’re calling the shots, babe. You heard the tapes.”

“Why didn’t Lieutenant Dalrymple? If I could find them, his men could.” Then again, they couldn’t find Mary Ann’s rental car parked in the Tuschmans’ parking lot—if one could believe Roger. As much as she didn’t want to, Charlie did.

Now the boss was saying, “But they didn’t find them. Old Charlie did, though. If she could just keep Irma and Maurice out of jail for pulling a stupid but well-intentioned stunt—which on the face of it wasn’t a bad idea. Irma had noticed some unsavory types hanging out in the alley, so some bum doing in Gloria wasn’t that far-fetched. They thought they’d wiped all trace of Gloria off the railing.”

“Richard, tapes or no, the Beverly Hills P.D. probably has both deaths about solved. They and the courts will decide who goes to jail and who doesn’t. Besides, somebody was whispering up or down the stairwell and trying to sound like Gloria, someone who kept saying she was in the trash can.”

“Who would pretend to be Gloria and do that? Not Irma or Maurice. Who else knew she was even dead till the next day?” He raised his hands toward the ceiling like a TV evangelist. “Wouldn’t it be the mother of all ironies if Gloria herself managed to tip off the Beverly Hills P.D. that way? God, talk about your concept.”

“But she wasn’t even in a trash can.”

“Hey, for goofy Gloria, that’s close enough.”

“We did not put Gloria in the bushes.” Irma rubbed enlarged knuckles in an odd, nervous gesture Charlie had never seen before.

“You put her in the dumpster, which is more logical. Why do I have the feeling there were more than two of you? Did Mary Ann help?”

Maurice sat on Charlie’s bed to hold her hand in one of his and stroke it with the other. It was the most natural thing, and yet he’d chased the office witch out into the hall in a rage so awful she fell and struck her head. And then he helped stuff her into the bag on the janitor’s trolley and later in the day—in fact shortly before security and the police searched the entire building for her—helped carry her down the back stairs and out to the alley. Something didn’t wash.

“Far as I know, Mary Ann was nowhere near the agency at the time,” Maurice said.

“Okay, then who was the third culprit here? You and Irma may have stuffed Gloria into the bag, may have even gotten her body down the back stairs in that bag.

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