What a Peachy Night Page 7

  Beth sighed. “Sometimes I wonder about that woman…but there's no sense in letting her annoy me. Now, tell me, Detective, what do you need me to work on?”

  “I don't want to overwhelm you, but we have six hours to figure out another move,” Michelle explained. “I need you to give me a list of all the people the Manhattan Killer murdered. I need names, backgrounds, the works.”

  “The Manhattan Killer...got it, Detective.”

  “Any progress on Mr. Bibb?” Michelle asked in a hopeful voice.

  “Not yet,” Beth apologized. “But give me some time and I'll kick over a stone. And with Ralph helping me I'm sure we'll come up with something. But for now, I'll put Mr. Bibb on the back burner and focus on my new task.”

  “We have six hours, Beth,” Michelle warned. “Time isn't on our side. Please hurry.”

  “You bet,” Beth promised and got to work.

  Michelle put down the phone and rubbed her neck. “Beth is going to pull the names of everyone J.W. Wording killed. Once she gets us the names we can try and connect the dots.”

  Momma Peach rubbed her eyes again. “We have six hours. It's going to take Beth at least an hour to pull the names. It wouldn't hurt if we napped for that hour.”

  “I guess not,” Michelle agreed. “You can nap on the baking table and I'll take the floor.”

  Momma Peach fought back a yawn. “I guess that will be fine,” she said. “I am simply too tired to argue.”

  Michelle continued to rub her neck. “Momma Peach?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did J.W. Wording wait all this time to come for you?” Michelle asked. “He could have come for you at any time. Why now? Why this point in time? It's obvious he's much older...why did he wait?”

  “I have been wondering that myself,” Momma Peach told Michelle and walked with her back into the kitchen. “I just don’t have an answer.”

  Michelle walked over to the kitchen counter and looked down at a row of washed plates resting on a drainboard. “There must be a reason why he waited all this time,” she insisted. “But what?”

  Momma Peach sat down and put her head down on the baking table. “Baby, that monster will let us know in time. For now,” Momma Peach yawned and closed her eyes, “let's rest our brains before they turn to mush.”

  Michelle looked at Momma Peach and watched the poor woman fall asleep. A few minutes later, Momma Peach began snoring. “Poor baby,” Michelle whispered. She walked over to Momma Peach, kissed her head, and made her way back to the front room and called Beth. “Beth, I hate to ask this, but I also need you to see if a detective by the name of MacNeigh is still living.” Michelle quickly told Beth about Detective MacNeigh and what hotel he had been assigned to on the Manhattan Killer case. “If Detective MacNeigh is still living, please try and locate a phone number for me.”

  “Not a problem,” Beth promised. “And listen…don’t worry about asking. I’m happy to do it. We're a good team, Detective. You always have my back and now I can repay the favor.”

  “Thanks, Beth,” Michelle smiled and ended the call. “Now, I think I'll try and grab a quick nap.”

  Michelle eased back into the kitchen and cuddled up on the kitchen floor next to the baking table. The kitchen floor was hard, but she didn't care. Her mind was exhausted, and she needed rest. Slowly her eyes closed, and she drifted off into a quick sleep and a strange dream. In the dream, she herself was sitting in a fancy dining room looking out a large oval window at a rainy city. It was night and lightning flashed across the stormy sky. The entire city was dark except for the hotel dining room where she sat. Even the dining room seemed dim, however, and Michelle became aware that a sickly fog hung everywhere in the room. The smell of expensive cigar smoke and fine brandy roamed the foul air like a wealthy old ghost walking around with money in its lazy eyes. In the far corner, she saw Momma Peach sitting with a strange man. The man was wearing a deep gray suit and smoking a cigar. “Now Momma Peach, it's your move,” she heard the man say.

  Momma Peach lowered her eyes and studied a white and gray marble chess board. Her king was in check. “Don't rush me,” Michelle heard Momma Peach reply in a worried voice. Michelle noticed Momma Peach was wearing a black dress and her hat had a little veil that covered the top of her face...she realized Momma Peach was dressed for a funeral. It gave her a feeling of dread to see her friend appear so very pale and sickly. However, the ill appearance of Momma Peach seemed to please the stranger. “I’m still thinking,” she said in a weak voice.

  “Of course, of course,” the stranger said and puffed his cigar with patience. His dark eyes studied Momma Peach with hate and malice. “You were very smart last time we met, Momma Peach. But this time, it seems, the board belongs to me.”

  Michelle wanted to get up and run over to the stranger and drag him away from Momma Peach. The need to protect Momma Peach was so powerful that she felt as though her body was going to explode. Yet she couldn't force her legs to move; her arms felt like bags of wet concrete. “Leave her alone...leave her alone!” Michelle tried to yell, but her mouth refused to open. She saw Momma Peach look at her with tired, scared eyes.

  “Last time you won the game, Momma Peach,” the stranger continued to speak. “However,” he said and savored a puff of his cigar again, “this round belongs to the one who understands how to play in the fog.”

  “I don't like the fog in here, no sir. I can't see in the fog,” Momma Peach said and then began coughing. She grabbed her chest and leaned forward.

  The stranger grinned. “The quicker you move, Momma Peach, the quicker you die.”

  Momma Peach raised her head. “Don't...rush…me,” she begged and fought to take a breath despite her coughing fit. “I will move when I’m ready. You're going to kill me anyway, so what's the rush?” She looked at the board in despair as the foul air wheezed through her lungs.

  Michelle saw that Momma Peach's defeated words pleased the stranger to no end. The man grinned and tipped his cigar over a silver ashtray and knocked a line of ash off. “You always assumed that you would win every case, Momma Peach. But now your end has come. You have come up against an opponent that you are not able to defeat. I am slightly disappointed. In our last game, you put up a grand fight. However, this time around, you were very simple to defeat.”

  “It's the fog,” Momma Peach said, studying the chessboard. “I just can't think straight in this awful fog…”

  “Indeed, you can't.” The stranger grinned and nodded at the chessboard. “Your king is in check, Momma Peach. Can you get out of check, I wonder? The game is almost won. Will you surrender or try to work your way free? Of course, I’d like to see you try, even though I already know any attempt you make would be futile. You have no chance of defeating me this time, Momma Peach.”

  Michelle felt her eyes pulled to a cold stone fireplace that appeared to be full of damp and rotted logs. Then she looked back out at the dark city, illuminated occasionally by lightning. The city, she felt, was dead...hollow and lifeless. Not a soul stirred except in the fancy dining room, which was suffocating with fog instead of being filled with life and sound. Michelle was consumed with despair and hopelessness, and then in the silence she began to hear a terrified scream. It took her a moment before she realized—the scream was her own voice. “I'm trapped here,” Michelle struggled to scream. “This isn’t real! I have to wake up.”

  “It's your move, Momma Peach,” the stranger said again, only this time his voice was stern and dark with malice. His face began to melt. The features of a hideous monster were revealed behind the false mask of his flesh. “It's your move!”

  “Okay, okay,” Momma Peach screamed and moved her rook up the board and put the stranger's king in check. “Check,” she said triumphantly, though it gave her another coughing fit. The stranger merely grinned and slid his queen into position, capturing her king and ending the game. “Oh dear,” Momma Peach began to cry. “I done went and lost the game.”

  “Yes, you did,�
�� the stranger said as his flesh continued to melt. He stood up, took out a black handkerchief and wiped the traces of it away. When he removed the handkerchief, an ugly, snakelike visage was revealed, with glowing, inhuman eyes. “You cannot win against the devil, my dear. Now it's time to die, Momma Peach.” The stranger reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a gun. He pointed the gun at Momma Peach and pulled the trigger. Momma Peach's body jerked and then...slumped forward onto the chessboard, silent and lifeless.

  “No!” Michelle screamed in horror, still frozen in place. “Momma Peach...get up…no! Please, no...no! No...no...”

  “Baby, wake up, you're having a bad dream,” Michelle heard a sweet voice from a faraway distance.

  Michelle felt her eyes open. She saw Momma Peach's warm and loving eyes looking down from a face that brought relief and happiness into her heart. “Momma Peach,” Michelle said and burst out into tears, “you lost the chess game and he shot you...he shot you in a dead dining room...” Michelle threw her arms around Momma Peach and cried. “Oh, Momma Peach...he shot you...”

  Momma Peach pulled Michelle into her arms and held her tight. “Oh, Momma Peach's sweet baby,” she whispered and closed her eyes. “I ain’t going to get shot. I am going to trap this monster into a corner and throw fire on him. You just wait and see. Hush now, it was just a bad dream. Just a bad dream.” She rocked Michelle back and forth to soothe her, but the nightmare stayed in Michelle’s mouth, sour and lingering.

  Outside, the fog crouched over the landscape in perfect stillness and listened.

  Chapter 5

  Momma Peach opened the back door to the kitchen and saw Erin Goldman standing in the alley holding a large white bag. “Poor baby, you must be cold from the walk over. Won’t you come inside?”

  “I wish I could, Momma Peach,” Erin said, “but the diner is really busy. Fog or no fog, the breakfast crowd still comes.” Erin handed Momma Peach the bag and wiped at her damp black hair. “Mrs. Edwards said she would put the food on your tab.”

  “Momma Peach don't have no tab with that woman,” Momma Peach told Erin suspiciously as she smelled the bag in her hands. “In any case, I just hope I don’t need a stomach pump after I eat this here burned food.”

  Erin grinned and shoved her hands into the pockets of her green rain jacket. “Momma Peach, you know Mrs. Edwards serves some mighty good food. Why do you insist on fighting with her?”

  “Because,” Momma Peach said and looked out into the alley, “Momma Peach has principal. Now you tell that old lady I will be by later to settle the bill.”

  “I will,” Erin sighed and waved goodbye to Momma Peach.

  Momma Peach watched Erin walk away into the fog and then closed and locked the back door. “Breakfast is here,” she told Michelle.

  Michelle raised her head up from the baking table, looked at Momma Peach, and then focused her eyes back on the information Beth and her cousin the librarian had managed to find. “We have five victims...three men and two women...all over the age of fifty...all very wealthy.”

  “Albert Rings, Nathan Willingham, Howard Stunwell, Patty Wayfield and Joan Reed,” Momma Peach said in a thoughtful voice. She maneuvered over to the kitchen counter and pulled two to-go boxes out of the bag. The smell of delicious pancakes, freshly scrambled eggs, turkey sausage, gravy, and biscuits rushed into the kitchen and ran to Michelle's nose. Michelle felt her mouth begin to water. “Maybe we can manage to gag this slop down,” Momma Peach fussed.

  “Maybe,” Michelle agreed warily. Her stomach growled. “I'll pour us some coffee.”

  “Okay,” Momma Peach agreed and got to work preparing two breakfast plates. She didn't like eating out of a to-go box. Food was meant to be eaten on a plate, not out of a box. “Baby,” she said, opening one of the boxes and spotting a stack of fluffy pancakes, “it seems to me that the five people J.W. Wording killed must be somehow connected to either his daddy or his momma in some way or another.”

  “I agree,” Michelle said, pouring coffee into Momma Peach's coffee cup. “The question is: how?”

  Momma Peach carefully placed the stack of pancakes onto a brown plate and thought. “I assumed J.W. Wording was a serial killer...and it did seem that way at the time, yes sir and yes, ma’am. But now I am wondering if his killings were just a way to get money. Well, a way to get money—but from people that he knew, somehow.”

  “I think your theory is right on track,” Michelle agreed. “The only problem we're having is connecting the dots. Each of the victims seems completely unconnected to one another, aside from being wealthy and older—but that’s not unusual since there aren’t a whole lot of millionaire teenagers running around that a killer can murder, right? Each victim lived in a different state, and even varied in their political views.”

  “Yet,” Momma Peach pointed out very carefully, “they were all killed in Manhattan at the hotel they were staying at. So we still have to prove how he knew them. Surely he didn’t just randomly make the acquaintance of five strangers who liked to blab about their wealth. Not too many people carry lots of money around with them, even on vacation, right?”

  “Right. From the police reports, it looks like most of the victims were traveling with upwards of one hundred thousand dollars, for various reasons. One guy even had a half million on hand, can you believe that?”

  “My oh my. That is a lot of folding money,” Momma Peach commented, her eyebrows raising.

  “Indeed. And rich people are usually smart enough to not go blabbing about a giant case full of money up in their hotel room, you know?” Michelle shook her head as she thought through the problem some more. “Five different hotels...five different killings...all by the same hand,” Michelle nodded her head. She filled her coffee cup full of hot coffee. “There has to be a connection,” she insisted.

  “There is,” Momma Peach promised.

  Michelle walked to the baking table and set down their cups of coffee and focused on Momma Peach. Momma Peach's face was deep in thought. “What are you thinking, Momma Peach?”

  “Medical,” Momma Peach told Michelle.

  “Medical?”

  “Baby,” Momma Peach said and began taking out fresh biscuits and ladling gravy onto a second plate, “you said that a reporter out there in California suggested Meredith Wording was killed because she knew her husband was going to allow illegal organ transplant operations at the hospital he donated to, or something like that?”

  “That's what Beth told me,” Michelle nodded her head. She took a sip of her coffee. The coffee was strong, hot, and ready to take on the fog. “Are you thinking each of Wording Junior’s victims received illegal organ transplants at the Jeremy Wyatt Wording Medical Center? If so, why wouldn’t he kill them out in California? Why lure them to New York City?”

  Momma Peach shrugged her shoulders. “If,” she said in a careful voice, “J.W. Wording Junior did kill for money...and if his victims did receive an illegal organ transplant...then that might have given that monster the tool he needed to blackmail his victims before killing them.”

  Michelle absorbed Momma Peach's words. “Mr. Wording was found poisoned to death,” she said. “Maybe he was killed because—”

  “Because he tried to have his son killed for using the blackmail material,” Momma Peach told Michelle and began scooping the soft scrambled eggs onto a plate. “I sure am wondering why J.W. Wording would fake his own death. Could he have faked his own death to throw someone off the trail?”

  “Hey, that's a good point,” Michelle exclaimed. “I didn't consider that.”

  Momma Peach went to fetch silverware for their meal. “So perhaps the son fakes his death, then years later comes back for revenge on the father...maybe even the boy shows up with his momma, assuming his momma faked her death, too. And what does the old man do? Refuse them...threaten them...who knows? But whatever course he took sure didn't make his son happy.”

  Michelle slowly folded her arms. “Mr. Wording was killed...but maybe he did g
ive up some money, Momma Peach. Or maybe he didn't.”

  Momma Peach turned and focused on Michelle. “Maybe the old man gave up more than money. Maybe he gave up some very important names hoping to save his own hide.”

  “Could be,” Michelle said. “This is turning into a very interesting case.”

  “No, I wouldn’t say interesting,” Momma Peach gently corrected Michelle. “More like tragic. We must remember that J.W. Wording the younger is a monster...a killer...hiding under a gentleman’s face. Regardless of his reasons why, there is no excuse for murder. He killed six innocent people, rest their souls, yes sir and yes, ma’am. A person doesn't kill that many people unless he's pure evil.” Momma Peach shook her head. “I am thinking that a second monster, the momma, might have been feeding the fire, too.”

  “I don't know how we could find out if Meredith Wording is still alive or not...if she is, she would be really old,” Michelle told Momma Peach.

  Momma Peach nodded her head. “A very old lady indeed,” she said. Michelle grew silent and went back to studying the list of names as Momma Peach finished preparing breakfast. “Here we are,” Momma Peach said a few minutes later, carrying two plates over to the baking table. She set the two plates down and took her seat. “Let's give the Good Lord thanks for this food.” Michelle bowed her head and said a prayer of thanks along with Momma Peach. “Amen.”

  “Amen,” Michelle whispered. She opened her eyes, looked down at the plate of food, and smiled. “Forgive me, Momma Peach, I'm really hungry,” she said and tore into the pancakes.

  Momma Peach sighed. “I guess we need to be thankful,” she said and took a bite of biscuit dunked in gravy. “Not...not too bad, I reckon. Could be worse.”

  Michelle swallowed a bite of pancakes and tapped the list of names. “I think J.W. Wording lured each of his victims to New York, Momma Peach, and that will be the key to linking them together.”

  “Yes. Very smart,” Momma Peach replied and took a sip of her coffee. “I definitely believe J.W. Wording lured his victims to New York, squeezed some money out of each and every one of them, and killed them.” Momma Peach cut into her pancakes, which, despite her worst fears, were actually fluffy and smelled delicious. She tried not to hold it against the diner and focused on the case at hand. “The older woman I saw Mr. Wording with at the fancy hotel all those years ago…she was wearing some mighty fine pearls and diamonds. And goodness, the dress that woman was wearing cost enough to gobble up my yearly pay in one sitting, yes sir and yes, ma’am. And also,” Momma Peach pointed out, “the suit the man wore, and his shoes, and his cologne, were nothing to sneeze at. Most importantly,” Momma Peach emphasized, “the hotel itself cost a person an arm and a leg just for a simple one-night stay. Yes, sir, J.W. Wording had some money on him, and so did the woman he had supper with.”