Part 21 (2/2)

Sadie was distracted by the fact that Rosemary had hairspray but was completely bald.

”My eyes are burning!” Ed shrieked.

”You stabbed three women to death and then hanged that poor guy in his garage!” Sadie yelled in his face. ”You're lucky we don't cut your b.a.l.l.s off!”

Chapter 16.

Rosemary spritzed Ed Muirhead in the face one more time with her killer hairspray before the officer made it up and over the fence.

”Argh!” Ed screamed. ”I don't know what you're talking about,” he sputtered. ”I never hurt a soul! Some guy asked me to play the part of a grieving man hiring you to clean up after his son who hanged himself.”

Sadie leaned forward and grabbed Ed by his ears.

”Who the h.e.l.l takes a job like that!” she screeched. ”You're telling me someone asked you to pretend your son hanged himself? What kind of a sick, so-called actor fakes something like that?”

”An old actor who barely sc.r.a.pes by doing community theatre,” Ed gasped.

The officer took over then, snapping cuffs onto Ed's wrists and hoisting him to his feet.

Sadie looked into Ed's pathetic, beady little eyes, which had looked so kindly before. She totally believed him.

”I've called for backup,” the officer said, breathing heavily, as if he'd done all the work himself. ”Let's go,” he told Muirhead.

This time they discovered a gate and used that instead of climbing over the chain-link fence. Sadie, Maeva, and Rosemary followed Ed and the cop. Just before he was tucked into the back of the patrol car, Sadie gave in to a burst of anger. She reached into the opening of Ed's b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt, grabbed a handful of graying chest hair, and pulled.

”Who hired you?” she demanded.

”Stop that!” he cried.

Rosemary and Maeva pulled her back while the officer opened the back of the car.

”Some guy e-mailed me and said he saw my performance and asked if I could do a private job for him,” Ed shouted to Sadie.

”Women are getting killed! Tell me who paid you!”

”Save the interrogation for the professionals,” the officer said, trying to calm Sadie down.

”I don't know who hired me,” Ed shouted from the backseat. ”The guy used the same cell phone he gave me to call you. On the day I met up with you, he slipped a couple hundred cash in an envelope with my name on it through the mail slot at Stone Soup along with that phone.”

”So for a couple hundred bucks a murderer hired you to trick me?” Sadie wanted to beat the c.r.a.p out of the guy right then and there. The officer, sensing her anger, pulled her away from the car, but Ed kept talking.

”He . . . he told me you ran a company that did trauma cleaning and that this was an elaborate prank to get you into the garage. In the e-mail he said he was a friend of yours and that you were into practical jokes. He said there was a present for you left in the garage and he told me not to go in, no matter what, because it would ruin the surprise.”

”Go!” the officer ordered. ”Go get your pizza and when Detective Petrovich gets here you can let him do the talking, okay?”

Sullenly, Sadie walked up the street with her two friends.

”He sure was spry for an old guy,” Rosemary said. ”I'm surprised you were able to hold him down.”

”Do you believe him?” Maeva asked.

Sadie thought about it for a couple seconds as she watched Petrovich's unmarked car pull up to the curb with lights blazing.

”Yeah.” Sadie nodded. ”As messed up as it is, I think he's telling the truth.”

They went in and paid for their pizzas but Sadie had lost her appet.i.te. Carrying their food, they started back toward their cars, where Petrovich was talking to the other officer.

Petrovich let them tell their story.

”One thing,” Petrovich asked. ”How did you know to come here and look at that theatre for the face of the guy who told you he was Hugh Pacheo?”

Sadie shared a look with Maeva and Rosemary and then shrugged.

”Well . . . actually, we just stopped at Pagliacci's for pizza. We were taking a walk while waiting for our pies and when he came out of Stone Soup, I recognized him as the guy who met me at the garage job.”

”Quite the coincidence.” Petrovich narrowed his eyes. He looked pointedly at each of them. ”You're sticking with that story?”

Sadie nodded. ”Works for me.”

Petrovich snapped his notebook shut.

”Good, because all this excitement has made me starved,” Maeva said. She opened her pizza box and offered a slice to Petrovich.

Dean was never one to turn down pizza, so he was about to accept the slice when Sadie gave him her entire box.

”I'm not hungry.” Then she turned to Rosemary. ”Go ahead and drop off Maeva and I'll meet you at your place once I'm finished here.”

They agreed, and once the Mini Cooper had left the street, Petrovich turned to Sadie.

”You believe this Ed Muirhead was just hired by this e-mail guy?” he asked, biting off a piece of Sadie's Brooklyn Bridge-style pizza and chewing a mouthful of pepperoni, sausage, and mushrooms.

”He seemed believable but then he's an actor by trade, right?” Sadie shrugged. ”He seemed pathetic but not like a serial killer.”

”Probably women said the same thing about Gary Ridgway,” Petrovich pointed out.

Sadie shuddered. She didn't want to think about the Green River Killer who had terrorized Was.h.i.+ngton in the eighties and nineties. She sure didn't want to think about the forty-nine women he was convicted of killing, or the dozens more he confessed to.

”If it's not him, you will catch the guy doing this,” Sadie told Petrovich vehemently.

”Yeah.” Petrovich stubbornly stuck out his chin. ”Gotta go,” he added. ”I've got a suspect to interview.” He turned to walk away and then stopped and looked at Sadie. ”You're going straight to your friend's place, right?”

”Absolutely.”

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