Love Notes

by Penny Mickelbury

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  Mimi looked into her eyes and saw fear. “You think Erin’s involved.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I think she knows Trudi did something wrong and I think that she may suspect...oh, God, Miss Patterson, I don’t know what to do!”

  “I told you what to do. Call the police.”

  “Can you do that for me? Would you? You said you had a police source.”

  So much for a cozy Sunday in front of the fire. Mimi leaned into the wind, hurrying to her car. She had dressed warmly in tights and a turtleneck beneath wool slacks and a thick, cable knit sweater. She wore hiking boots with thick socks and a sheepskin jacket, and the wind cut through the clothes to slice at her skin as if she were naked. She slid into the car but didn’t start the engine, cold though she was. “What a mess,” she muttered as she reached for the Thomas Guide maps beneath the seat, and she looked up the address Jackie Marshall had given her for Trudi Thompson. A straight shot down the main road.

  She dug around in her purse for her cell phone, pressed the button, and waited for it to let her talk. The message on the screen told her the battery was low before it shut itself off. She threw it into the back seat, started the car, and drove too fast out of the parking lot, catching a patch of ice left over from the other night and skidding slightly before straightening out.

  She put the open map on the passenger seat and plotted a route to Trudi Thompson’s house, counting on there being a gas station or convenience store or fast food joint en route so she could stop and call Gianna at a pay phone. She imagined that Gianna and her team already knew about Trudi and briefly considered not making the call, but she reminded herself if by some error in the Universe they didn’t know and Gianna found out that Mimi had known and not told her, there would be too much hell to pay. Better to call and get a grouch on the phone now than possibly have to deal with a monster later.

  Three and a half miles into the drive on a state road that she wished had been better salted and sanded, Mimi turned into a gas-and-go mart and pulled up to a pump. She needed fuel for the car and for herself. The oatmeal and toast had long since worn off and, she remembered, she’d planned on having a plate of Erin’s mother’s crab cakes. Her stomach growled at the thought. Maybe a bottle of mineral water and a bag of popcorn would satiate until she got back to D.C. and to Crisfield’s, a seafood house that had been on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring almost since Indians first discovered crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. Her stomach growled again.

  She’d paid for the gasoline, water and popcorn and was headed for the door when Trudi Thompson exited the women’s restroom at the rear of the store, drying her hands on a paper towel which she crumpled and tossed, as if shooting a basket, into a trash can at the front of the store. She looked to see if the store clerk noticed. He hadn’t. She looked at Mimi and something registered in her face.

  Mimi walked over to her and introduced herself. “I’ve seen you at The Bayou a couple of times.”

  “I thought you looked familiar. You got in the way of me talking to that sexy bitch with the pretty eyes. And wasn’t that you hiding behind the pillar that night when Marianne was talking to that cop? She didn’t see you, but I did.”

  “Guess I failed Undercover 101.”

  Trudi didn’t get the joke. Mimi wasn’t surprised. Her initial impression of Trudi had been that she wasn’t very bright and a closer encounter confirmed that first impression. She was also every bit as attractive as Mimi had recalled though in a smarmy kind of way. The hair was just a bit too blonde and contrived to fall just a bit too carefully over her left eye, but it was thick and curly and you couldn’t buy that in a bottle. The deep blue eyes were contact lenses, and though her skin was clear there was the kind of underlying pallor that suggested debauchery. Her jeans hung enticingly low on her narrow hips, the black tee shirt was tight and tucked in, and the black leather jacket hung open to reveal breasts nicely unencumbered by a bra. Mimi thought it was too cold to be concerned about looking sexy but given Trudi’s Nordic appearance, maybe she was from Minnesota and wasn’t cold.

  “What are you doing way out here, city girl?”

  “I just left Jackie Marshall’s place. She and Erin were helping me with some information, and now that I think about it, maybe you can, too.”

  “That bitch! What did she tell you?”

  All of Mimi’s senses were on alert. “I’m working on a story about crime in major metropolitan areas and I’m using a woman named Millie Cartcher, a veterinarian who was from Georgia, as my focus. Her family says she’d still be alive if she’d stayed in Georgia.”

  “What the hell does this have to do with me?”

  “You knew her before you started working in D.C. She used to frequent Happy Landings. She was in her mid-fifties—”

  “They’re all in their mid-fifties. Old bitches, drink too much, got nobody to love ‘em, and think if they buy me a couple of drinks it’s worth a fuck.”

  Mimi looked her up and down—a bit of a strain on the up, for Trudi was at least five- nine or ten. She’d be one hell of an attractive package if it weren’t for the ugly persona that radiated out from her in all directions. “Is it?”

  Trudi returned the gesture, taking a longer time of it. “For you? Yeah.” She peered into the bag Mimi carried. “Got any beer in there?”

  Mimi shook her head. “I’m driving and I’m not real sure of this road.”

  Trudi draped an arm across Mimi’s shoulders. “Well, I know this road like the back of my hand. I live on it and I’m going home and I’m taking you with me and the beer’s already there. That your car? Good, ‘cause I wrecked the shit outta mine last night and it’s too cold to walk.”

  Mimi knew from the map where Trudi lived, not necessarily far, but the road was dotted with ice and it was freezing. “How’d you get here?”

  “Got a ride, then got dumped. Women suck, present company excepted,” she said, drawing Mimi in close to her body. “What say we spend the afternoon talking about what it is you want to talk about, then spend the night talking about what it is I want to talk about?”

  Mimi pushed against Trudi to free herself and the other woman’s arm became a steel vise around her shoulders. She dropped her bag and put both hands up to push but Trudi grabbed her arm and twisted, bringing Mimi flush against her.

  “Trudi, you take that dyke shit outta my store,” the clerk yelled out. “And you, lady, pump your gas and move your car outta the way.”

  Still gripping Mimi’s arm, Trudi picked up the bag with her other hand and propelled Mimi out of the warmth of the store, into the frigid, howling wind.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Gianna’s fight with the chief left her drained. Two nights with no sleep and an inability to locate Mimi rendered her too weak for battle, but she had no choice in the matter. She needed his involvement if she was to get warrants to search Trudi Thompson’s person, house, car, computer, garage, and anything else she owned in Frederick or in any other Maryland county, including her family’s home on the Eastern Shore, and she wanted that court order right now. She had suspected that Trudi wouldn’t be showing up for work today and a call from Marianne confirmed her worst suspicions. Trudi had quit and she asked Marianne to mail her final paycheck to her mother in Cambridge, Maryland. Marianne was so sorry; seemed that Gianna was right. Seemed that Marianne had had a killer right under her nose and hadn’t been able to stop her. Those women dead and Marianne could have done something...

  She could have done nothing, Gianna tried to tell her, except most likely put herself and Renee in danger. Not your fault, Gianna told her, and by the way, what are the last names of Erin and Jackie, the women who bought Happy Landings from you? Erin Hill and Jackie Marshall. Peggy Carter’s first lover. And once again, who was Millie Cartcher kissing that day on the patio? A stranger, yes, but what kind of stranger? Tell me again exactly what she looked like.

  Eric, Bobby and Kenny waited in the Think Tank for
word from on high that they had their court order and their warrants, then, joined by Tony Watkins and whatever back-up the chief would provide, they’d get to Columbia as fast as they could and, with the assistance of the local authorities, they’d take apart Trudi Thompson’s life. And Trudi Thompson, if they could find her. Alice and Cassie were at The Bayou and would remain there until there was no further danger to Marianne or Renee or Peggy Carter. Tim was driving Gianna and Linda, first to Erin and Jackie’s home since the bar wouldn’t be open this early, and then to sit in front of Trudi’s house until the paperwork arrived.

  Gianna stretched out in the back seat of the unmarked but didn’t sleep; some of the exhaustion would have to wear off before she could sleep. She sat up, took her cell phone from her bag, and punched in Mimi’s numbers again: Home, work, cell phone, the gym. Mimi had left a message yesterday afternoon saying she’d be home by seven at the latest. Gianna had started calling at eight and had called every hour on the hour until the present. She’d even had Eric check accident reports throughout the region in case her too old, too small, classic automobile had skidded off the road and into a tree or down an embankment. Nothing. And Gianna was worried.

  Monday morning traffic was dense. Once, in the not so very distant past, Columbia had been woodland. Back then, it was a New Town, like Reston in Virginia, one of those model towns conceived to demonstrate that people of all incomes and races could live in harmony. Then, as it grew, it became a suburb of either Washington or Baltimore, depending on one’s residential perspective, and as both Washington and Baltimore expanded, Columbia became extensions of both, so that now, morning and evening, coming and going, traffic around Columbia was dense. Tim was a good driver, an efficient driver, and nobody could make better time, but she wanted him to hurry, to activate lights and siren and cut through all the traffic. But he couldn’t. They had no legal authority as cops once they left the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and their own jurisdiction.

  She picked up the sheaf of correspondence between Sandy and Spice. She’d read these pages a dozen times and knew the words and the feelings they conveyed: Sandy’s communiqués were letters and her words spoke of hope and excitement at the prospect of nurturing a new love, while Spice’s offerings were notes—none longer than a paragraph, no sentence longer than a few words—and they all seemed disjointed and disconnected, as if the writer didn’t remember what she’d written the previous day. And Spice’s words, unlike Sandy’s strokes and caresses, spoke of sex and power and subjugation, and Gianna wondered again how Sandy missed the message, even though she knew the answer.

  She stuffed the papers back into the folder and looked out at the traffic. The wind had died down overnight and a thick, gray cold had settled over the landscape. Despite the wind, many trees still bore vestiges of fall, and the leaves shivered. Though Tim and Linda had no way of knowing of Gianna’s concern for Mimi, concern that was turning to fear, they rode in silence in the front seat, attuned, she knew, to any word or movement on her part that would signal the need for their involvement. But the only thing she needed them to do was get her to Jackie Marshall’s front door.

  And what a front door it was! Though she knew from Peggy that Jackie was a tobacco heiress, Gianna hadn’t given any thought to what, exactly, that might mean in terms of where or how the woman might live. The house facing them at the top of the hill, still a quarter mile away, was wood and fieldstone and looked as if it had lived on top of that hill for a hundred years. A weathered split rail fence led the way to the house and there were horses in a distant field. Smoke curled from chimneys at both ends of the house, which seemed to grow as they got closer. Tim and Linda whistled in unison.

  “I think I’m going to open a women’s bar,” Tim said.

  “That would be after you’d raised and sold tobacco for a couple of hundred years,” Gianna said, as impressed with the property as they were.

  “Guess you’d better keep working on that twenty year pension,” Linda said to Tim as he stopped the car to the right of the front door of the house, on the edge of the circular driveway, leaving enough space for another car to pass. There were three other vehicles parked to the left of the door—an ancient though fit-looking Suburban, a middle-aged Blazer that looked as if it had just come from the showroom floor, and a three-year old Buick. The government-issued cop car fit in perfectly.

  Gianna was out of the car and up the steps before Tim and Linda got free of their seat belts and they hurried to catch up. She pushed the doorbell and stood squarely in the front door, Tim and Linda flanking her, just out of sight, hands on their weapons. She rang the bell three times before it was answered and knew from Peggy Carter’s description who had opened the door; and though she expected that Jackie Marshall would be attractive, she was unprepared the woman’s beauty. The two of them—Peggy Carter and Jackie Marshall—must have been quite something together forty years earlier.

  “Miss Marshall, I’m Lieutenant Maglione, D.C. Police.”

  “Thank God she told you! I worried all night about what to do.” Gianna’s face must have registered her confusion because Jackie Marshall rushed ahead. “The reporter, didn’t she tell you to come here?”

  “What reporter, Miss Marshall?”

  “Montgomery Patterson. She told me that she had a contact with the police—”

  “May we come in, please?”

  Jackie Marshall, hearing the command in Gianna’s request, stepped quickly aside to let them enter and Gianna realized that the woman was in her robe and slippers, realized that they had awakened her, realized that it was Monday and that the bar most likely would be closed and that the bar owners most likely would have looked forward to sleeping late. Tim and Linda still flanked her but they’d backed slightly away so that they could see down the hallways that branched off from the foyer, while Gianna had a clear view up the wide staircase. What she saw was Erin Hill, yawning and pulling on a robe. Gianna waited for her to descend before she introduced herself again, introduced Officers McCreedy and Lopez, and recovered enough of her wits to ask Jackie Marshall to repeat what she’d said about Montgomery Patterson.

  “She was here yesterday—not here at the house, at the bar—and she said she’d tell the police what I told her.”

  “You shouldn’t have told her anything, Jackie!” Erin screamed. “Why’d you have to tell her anything? I knew she was nothing but trouble soon as I saw her!”

  Gianna gave Erin a look that caused her to flinch and then she looked back at Jackie. “Tell me exactly what you and Montgomery Patterson said to each other, Miss Marshall.”

  “No, Jackie!” Erin wailed. “Just let it be!

  “If you say another word, Miss Hill, I’ll have you arrested and charged with obstructing justice and interfering with an officer in the conduct of an investigation. Miss Patterson is missing and so is Trudi Thompson.”

  “Trudi said Marianne fired her,” Erin interjected, “she’s not missing.”

  “Trudi was not fired and I’m waiting, Miss Marshall,” Gianna said.

  When Jackie Marshall finished talking, she drew a map with directions to Trudi Thompson’s house and she gave written permission for them to use and search her property if necessary, over Erin Hill’s objections. Gianna left Linda in the house with explicit instructions not to let Erin Hill out of her sight and she and Tim left the house and returned to the car.

  “Drive off the property then find a way to double back and get us to this barn,” she said, giving him Jackie Marshall’s map and pointing to the barn. “I’d just as soon not be too big a target,” she said, the feelings within threatening to overwhelm her. Finally, she thought, there was a real, tangible motive for the killings: Three years ago, young, pretty Erin Hill had left young, pretty Trudi Thompson for the stunning but fifty-seven year old Jackie Marshall. Not only left Trudi but told all their friends and anyone else who would listen that Jackie was superior to Trudi in every way—especially sexually. Virile, studly Trudi, eclipsed and replaced by a
n “old bitch.” She’d threatened to kill them both and had actually cornered Jackie in the parking lot of the Giant Supermarket late one evening and slapped her around. And immediately had felt the weight of what it meant to threaten one of the county’s wealthiest, most powerful citizens. It was not a mistake that Trudi would make again; nor was it one that she would live down any time soon. Everywhere she went for the next year, it seemed, somebody knew that she’d been foolish enough, stupid enough, to take on a Marshall. Nobody had seen Trudi’s action through the lens of Trudi’s perspective, which was that she had bravely defended her honor. To the world Trudi was a fool, a buffoon. And a dyke.

  And now, it seemed, Trudi had Mimi in her clutches, for Mimi had left Jackie Marshall the previous afternoon with directions to Trudi Thompson’s house and had not been heard from since. The same directions that Gianna now had herself, though she was heading not to Trudi’s house but to an abandoned tobacco curing barn on the far edge of the Marshall property where, according to Erin, Trudi and her brother and a female cousin operated an occasional chop shop, an activity and an arrangement that Jackie Marshall had known nothing about until just moments ago when a tearful, apologetic Erin spilled the beans. If Trudi was at home, at the house she shared with her brother and cousin, Eric and the rest of the Team and the backup units with their warrants would find out soon enough. But there would be no warrant to give them permission to search the Marshall estate; there was only Jackie Marshall’s written permission, and there was only Gianna and Tim to do it.

  Tim pulled the car off the two-lane blacktop and into a clump of trees and underbrush that barely concealed it, but it would have to do. Gianna briefly contemplated and quickly dismissed the thought of calling the chief to tell him what she was doing. He’d order her to wait for legal support and back-up and she didn’t have time to wait. Mimi might not have time for her to wait.