Once Bitten, Twice Dead Page 29

  “What was David like?”

  “He was a good worker. I had him stocking shelves and manning the check-out register. To give you an example of his independent thinking, he was only sixteen when he came to work for me that first summer, but by the second week he told me my store wasn’t arranged properly. So one night after we closed he stayed and rearranged half the shelves, moving stuff around to different areas. I had to admit the next day that the store looked better, but I don’t think making the store better was on David’s mind. He just wanted things his own way.”

  “Yes, I’ve experienced that attitude with him.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. But thanks for your information.”

  The other person who seemed to know David well was a nanny the Selbys had until David was in 7th grade. Lita Rugless now lived outside of town, close to the Turnpike. It was a cabin in the woods, but it looked like a chalet—money had definitely been put into it for improvements.

  The nanny was a little old grey-haired lady not much bigger than a child herself. She was hunched over, almost as if bending to talk to someone even smaller than she. Possibly she had become frozen in that position from constantly looking down to talk to all the little kids she had taken care of in her lifetime.

  As she walked me back into her cabin, she began coughing ferociously. Maybe she had only an hour to live, so I’d better hurry.

  “The nanny business must be good Mr. Rugless. You have a nice place here.”

  “Actually when my parents died they gave me a good inheritance. They went through the Depression and Stock Market crash of ’29, but they had drawn their money out of the bank, so they had always maintained their cash supply. I’ve been set for life for a long time now. I didn’t have to really work since I was thirty, but I’ve always liked kids.”

  “Did you like David Selby?”

  “Oh, there’s a name from the past. At first I thought he was a good kid, but then there was that strange reaction he had.”

  “What was that?”

  “He got real angry at me when I told him about the money I’d inherited. I was just happy about it, and I wanted to share the news with him.”

  “How angry did he get?”

  “Well, it was fortunate for me that I was a light sleeper. The night after I told him about the money, I woke up and my bed was on fire. I was, and still am, a smoker so it could have been me with a careless cigarette, but when I finally doused the fire and went into David’s room he wasn’t there. I found him standing outside. I asked him what he was doing out there, and he said he didn’t want to get hurt in the fire.”

  “How old was he then?”

  “Wait a sec, let me think. He would have been nine. From then on he seemed to dislike me, and I quit being his nanny the next year because I became a little afraid of him.”

  I thanked Mrs. Rugless and headed for Philly to talk to the friend David had lived with during high school. I also got a scary story from him.

  Maybe following in his parents’ footsteps at the University of Pennsylvania, Jerry Fallon was now a psychology teacher at the school.

  “Of course I remember David. He was hard to forget. What I remember the most about him was that he was quite the practical joker. He liked to play pranks on people.”

  Somehow this didn’t resemble the David I had known, so I inquired further. “What kind of practical jokes?”

  “Actually I thought they could have been harmful, but David just thought they were funny. David liked to sneak into the neighborhoods with the big houses like in the communities of Lower Merion, Bryn Mawr, and Radnor.”

  “What would you guys do there?”

  “You are including me, and I was there also, but it was all David. I think he took me along just so he could have an audience.”

  “What were some of those ‘pranks’?”

  “Let’s see, one night he fixed the brakes of a Cadillac parked in one of those long driveways.”

  “Fixed? How?”

  “David made it so the brakes didn’t work.”

  “Wouldn’t that be totally dangerous for the next driver?”

  “Absolutely, but even when I told David those words myself, he just laughed. And that wasn’t all. He set fires in the backs of two other houses, and also put smelly stuff into the pool of a third house.”

  “He seemed to be a real vandal.”

  “That would be an accurate assessment.”

  It seemed that David had started his campaign against the rich at an early age.

  I remembered neighbor Charles Hunter’s words about the vacation habits of the Selbys. He had first mentioned Sea Isle City. I spent four days walking the boards there, and at Atlantic City and Wildwood, but I had no sighting of David. I had shown the merchants at those places a personal picture I had of David, but no one had seen him shopping in their stores.

  Charles Hunter had mentioned one other place that the Selbys had used for their summer vacations. It was time for me to head for the Florida Keys.

  I took a flight to Fort Lauderdale, and then rented a car for the next hundred fifty miles to the town of Marathon in the middle of the Keys. Like Hunter had suggested, I checked with the real estate people there, and got the address of the Selby house. The agent told me that no one had come down to claim the keys this year.

  “David had called to tell us that his parents had died, but he didn’t want to put the house up for sale, so we’re still saving it for him.”

  “Here’s my card. Please tell me if he shows up. I’m an old friend. I’d like to touch base with him again.”

  “Sure.”

  I didn’t think the agent believed the “old friend” story, but I had to try to establish some kind of network that could help me track David down. Now it was definitely a game of hide-and-seek between David and me. I thought I would keep hanging around the Keys for awhile. He might just return to his childhood roots.

  CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

  So here I was in the middle of the Keys, searching for that needle in the haystack. Whenever I reached into that haystack this needle could definitely prick me, so I had to be careful. I couldn’t think that because David had once cared about me, that he wouldn’t hurt me now. After all, I was now one of those evil rich people that he hated.

  I got a room at the Harbor Star Motel by the bay and set out on my quest.

  Showing my picture of David at the various stores and restaurants did me no good until the second day. At the Winn Dixie grocery, a young clerk said, “Yeah the guy was in here three days ago. He bought two bottles of wine. I noticed him because when he paid his money at my register he looked nervous, like he was an underage drinker. We have plenty of those down there—including myself. Oh, but I don’t do that any more. This guy, though, was plenty old enough.”

  “Did he use a credit card?”

  “No, just cash. It’s odd for me to see cash. It almost seems like it’s not as good as a credit card, when actually it’s the exact opposite.”

  “You could write a book about that.”

  “You really think so? Maybe I will. I’m not going to work in this dump all my life. This is just temporary until I can discover my true potential.”

  This kid must have been watching too much Oprah. “Of course—good luck to you.” With renewed hope that I was getting closer to David, I left the aspiring success-magnet to mull over his future.

  I had been showing David’s picture to some of the better restaurants in town, but when I thought about it David’s entire life seemed to revolve around avoiding the “money trap,” as he had called it. So probably he had continued to avoid money in the time I hadn’t been in contact with him after he left me. That meant to me that David would now be close to running on empty with any kind of cash flow. He had to spend some to get down here and also to survive the last few days. Maybe my restaurant search was too high-class.

  Probably because of my experience with Phil Petrosky, I had blocked fast-food places out of my
mind. I started to try those, and there was a “never saw the guy” at the McDonalds, but I got a hit at my second stop. At the Dixie Dog down the road, the counter guy said, “Yeah, he and a girl ate here yesterday.”

  A girl. Maybe David knew someone down here, and he was shacked up with her. Even though the real estate guy had said no one had come for the keys to the Selby’s summer place, I knew it would be easy for an ex-cop to ease his way into any kind of locked house.

  I went back to the real estate agent and explained the real reason I was down here. The words “serial killer” had their desired effect, and he gave me the keys to the Selby’s residence. And, sure enough, as I walked around the house by the canal, I saw a screen slightly ajar, and a window not completely closed. David had been here.

  I spent an hour searching the inside, but David had removed all traces of himself. The re-made bed did look rumpled and there were some crumbs on the kitchen counter, but that was about it. He had been here, but for how long I didn’t know. And it didn’t look like he was coming back—none of his stuff remained in the drawers or closets.

  There were two trash barrels out by the curb. I had seen the garbage trucks going through the neighborhood when I arrived. The trash had already been picked up. But I did think it was odd that the covers were still on the cans. No self-respecting trash man would put the lids back on after he took the garbage away. The signature of a good trash man would be to fling the lids away from the barrels, into the bushes or under a car.

  When I lifted the lids, each of the barrels had all the trash still in there. The next door neighbor was just coming out to retrieve his two receptacles. I asked him, “Hey, why is my trash still here?”

  “You hit the lottery today, you lucky girl—you got your trash left until a week next time.”

  “But why?”

  “These trash people the last couple of years have a new union contract. If you don’t put the barrels out just so, they won’t pick up the trash. When I first moved here it took me three weeks to get mine picked up.”

  This was getting intriguing. “What did I do wrong?”

  “I don’t know, but these guys are real ass-wipes. If you didn’t do it right, they just won’t take it. They get insulted like they’re part of the royal family, or something. Were your barrels facing the way they are now?

  “I didn’t move them—I just took the lids off.”

  “That’s it then, see, your address is facing toward the house; it has to be facing the street.”

  “Thanks for the tip. I’m just renting from the owner—I’ll do it right next time.” Maybe I had hit the lottery. Now I could search through the trash and possibly find a clue as to where David is now. I pulled the barrels into the car-port and began my task. There’s no greater fun than to search through garbage. That next door neighbor probably thought I had really developed a great affection for my trash as I began to spread it out toward the front lawn. After a half hour I smelled like the inside of those barrels, and I had found nothing.

  I did one more inspection. Wait a minute, inside that coffee cup I had just thrown back again was a crumpled up piece of paper. The good old durable ballpoint pen ink was only a little blotted. I could make out two words: one was “Caprice,” and then “Jones.”

  It seemed to me that “Caprice” had been a car make, I think from Chevie. Maybe David was now driving one of those, probably stolen. Jones was certainly a common name, unless it was slang for something else. I didn’t think David would be writing the shorted form of “capricious” on a scruggy piece of paper. I couldn’t quite remember what “caprice” meant as a vocabulary word, and David who had always said he didn’t do well in school, probably would not have that in his word-bank.

  I called the real estate guy. “Do you have a listing for “Jones”?

  A moment of silence. I could hear the rustling of paper. “Yes, there is a Ms. Capricia Jones who lives at the Seashell Terrace apartments and marina. You’ve come up in the world, Ms. Stolle. That’s a pretty ritzy place. Almost everyone who lives there owns a boat, and I don’t mean rowboat.”

  Oh, oh, I thought, is this a new victim for David? Would he come all the way down here to kill someone? I had to tell myself that I was dealing with a crazy person, and the answer to my question might be, yes.

  The agent told me how to get to the Seashell Apartments. David himself had come up in the world because the woman who opened the door of apartment 336 was stunning. She had long everything—legs, breasts, hair, eyelashes. If she wasn’t a model, she should have been.

  “Are you Capricia Jones?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  She was surprised when I pulled out my gun. “Get back into the apartment,” and I pushed my way in.

  “Please don’t hurt me. Take what you want. Here I’ll give you my watch—it’s expensive. Take it.”

  “Calm down, Ms. Jones. I just want to know where David Selby is.”

  “David? You want to kill David?”

  I felt I didn’t have time to explain, so I gave Capricia the short version: “I’m a detective—he’s a serial killer.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “This is no joke, Ms. Jones. Now where is he?”

  “He’s right down there.” She pointed toward her balcony. We were on the third floor. I walked her out there with my gun still at her back. I never did know if David had an accomplice in his killings. I might be in the presence of a beautiful but dangerous person.

  Capricia got much less dangerous when, as we stepped out into the sunlight, she fainted. So maybe she wasn’t David’s accomplice. I looked past her down at the boat docks, and there was my quarry, David Selby nonchalantly tinkering with the dials of what looked like a speed-boat. Of course he just happened to look up and see me. Capricia had let out a loud sound when she swooned, and maybe he did hear that. For whatever reason, he had looked right at me, and in another second he was at the controls and starting up the boat. David was running again.

  Capricia lying there at my feet began to moan: “I don’t want to die.” She had either forgotten my story or didn’t believe it. Then she seemed to faint again. The boat was pulling out of its slip. I got a full glass of water from Capricia’s sink and threw it in her face. That did the trick. Amid much sputtering, Capricia Jones was now fully awake.

  “Ms. Jones. David just took off in your boat.”

  “That’s all right. I told him he could drive it anytime he wanted to.” Now she seemed to have forgotten that I told her David was a serial killer. “That’s a great piece of machinery he’s driving, but I like my other one—it’s a lot faster.”

  “Your other one?”

  “Yeah, the one next to it. That’s mine, too.”

  “Give me the keys to it.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  I brought out my gun again.

  “I guess I can accommodate you.”

  By the time I ran down and started the other boat, of course David was long gone, but there was only one exit out of the cove and into the Atlantic Ocean. Capricia had said that this boat was faster than the one David was in. Maybe I could catch him.

  When I pulled the throttle to full speed I was almost thrown backwards over the seat. Yes, this was a powerful boat.

  After five minutes of skimming the waves, I could see David’s boat in the distance. I was gaining on him. David looked back a couple of times, and saw the same thing I knew: that I would eventually catch up to him.

  As I got closer, I saw he was in his swimming trunks and appeared to have no weapons. However, I didn’t take into account the one weapon he had for sure—the boat he was in. As I got within thirty yards of him, David suddenly spun his boat to the left and did an instant half circle. He was now to the side of my boat. Before I could maneuver my boat, David was on top of me. I braced myself for the impact, but it wasn’t enough. My teeth clamped together and I was propelled through the air seemingly before I heard the terrible crash.

  I hit
the water, and it almost knocked my unconscious, but I held on and gradually my vision cleared. I was a pretty good swimmer and had never been afraid of the water, but this wasn’t a swimming pool I was in—it was the Atlantic Ocean.

  In the distance I could see David’s boat retreating. There was a huge gash near the front of it, but otherwise it looked intact. On the other hand, my boat had been reduced to splinters. Capricia had liked that boat because it was faster, but faster probably meant lighter materials. Materials that could easily be crushed.

  There was a piece of my boat floating past, and I made a grab for it. I got it and hung on, letting the current take me. I hoped I wasn’t heading to England.

  Truly I didn’t know how long I hung on. It felt like hours, but it might have been minutes. Just when I didn’t think my arms could keep on gripping that large piece of plastic, I heard shouts. I looked up and saw that I was passing under a bridge. That real estate guy had thought at first I was a tourist and told me to be sure to see the seven mile bridge, one of the longest in this area. I guessed this was that bridge—three people were on it waving and shouting at me. I heard those wonderful words, “We’ll get you help.” Thank goodness for cell phones.

  Help seemed to be a long time coming. A couple of times both my hands slipped off the debris I was hanging on to. But each time I regained my grip before my life-island could float away. Then I heard the wonderful sweet-sound of a motor, and I was dragged onto a patrol rescue boat.

  I was treated for hypothermia and kept in the local hospital for a half-day for observation. I still can’t turn my head all the way to the left, but other than that and a ringing in my ears I think I’m all right.

  I didn’t like losing my gun which was now at the bottom of the Atlantic. I went back to Capricia’s apartment, to find that the girl had regained her composure. “The police told me what happened—I called them right after you left in my boat. I’m glad you’re O.K. I can always get a new boat.”