Seeking Refuge

by Alana Terry

  “What?”

  “Linda Fletcher. At what time and on what day did she die?”

  “Yesterday—four-thirty, why?”

  “Mail carrier—four-thirty in the afternoon then,” she clarified.

  “Yes.”

  Relieved, Alexa opened her purse and flipped through her wallet. She pulled out a receipt, a business card, and a photo with the spa’s watermark on it. “I have an alibi. I can’t believe that I actually need one, much less have one, but I do.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Yesterday at four-thirty, I was at this day spa. As my receipt shows, I had the full package including a trim and style. I even have a watermarked picture of me with the hairstyle they did.”

  “Ok, I’ll bite,” Joe said. “Why the picture?”

  “I liked it. I wanted to be able to show a hairstylist anywhere I went what I wanted. I also picked up a business card to go in my planner for next year. I’m going back.”

  “Give them to me at the station before we go in. I’ll verify it while you talk to the chief and make sure they’re entered into the file.”

  WHERE WAS JOE? THE chief had been interrogating her within an inch of her remaining sanity for the past half hour. She’d almost confused herself as to which day she’d gone shopping for her mom and which day she’d looked at properties. She’d mixed the Chicago and New York bookstore names, and nearly dissolved into tears twice. Only the frustration and irritation of Chief Varney’s manner kept her spunky enough to withstand his constant barrage of questions.

  Just as she decided to ask for legal representation, Joe knocked on the chief’s door and entered without waiting to be invited. “I checked out her story. Receipt, business card, picture—all checks out. The owner of the spa remembers her because of her clothing. I had her email me a copy of the picture they took—same one as she gave me. She was there when the murder took place.”

  “Then it’s Wilma.” The chief started to apologize but Alexa stood, her eyes flashing.

  “Chief Varney, am I being charged with a crime?”

  “Well, no. I don’t want you leaving town without telling me, of course, but it looks like you’re off the hook for this one, and we didn’t find any trace of you leaving Chicago. You won’t be charged with the poison or the light bulb slaughter.”

  Alexa winced. What a terrible name to give someone’s death. “And how is it possible that Mrs. Vanderhausen, whom I’ve never met, supposedly killed someone exactly the way that someone was killed in my book, and yet unlike my character, she is guilty? My baker did not commit the crime, Chief Varney.”

  “Really? Then who did?” The chief seemed interested now.

  “Do I have to tell you? It’ll give away the plot, and if that gets out, I might as well stop writing.”

  The chief groaned. “I’m not about to start spreading information that is sensitive to a case, and I can’t let a woman go just because your book says she’s innocent. She made the cupcakes. She gave it to the mail carrier. No one had been in the house—her words, mind you—for days before she started baking. No other cupcakes were tainted.”

  “The lab results will tell you that the coffee in the thermos had the cyanide, not the cupcakes. The almond was a red herring.”

  “Wilma gave the mail lady whatever it was that killed her. It must be her. You can go.”

  Alexa stood, opened the door, and shut it a little harder than necessary. Outside the office, Alexa sighed and rolled her eyes at Joe. “Who knew when Suzy and I planned the poison of gossip that it would translate into another murder?”

  “You and Suzy? Who is Suzy?”

  Alexa nearly screamed with frustration as she realized she had just made life complicated for her friend. She shouldn’t have mentioned anything. “She’s my friend in Arkansas. She has a husband, three children, and no money to fly to Fairbury while I’m not here to kill off human substitutes for my characters.”

  “But she knew that you were going to poison a character?”

  Alexa remembered her conversation with Shane and sighed in relief. “She didn’t know how. That part I planned afterward when I had a conversation with a bellhop about cyanide.”

  Joe’s mustached twitched before he exploded. “Alexa! What do you think you’re doing? You can’t go around talking to friends and or strangers about how you’ll kill off your victims while someone is out there turning your imagination into fact!”

  “When I did it,” she protested, “only one person had died, and I thought it was an odd fluke because someone in town overheard something! I didn’t know it would be repeated!”

  “So, what did you tell the bellhop?” Joe pulled out his notepad.

  “We just discussed the slight almond scent of cyanide and how you’d think it could be disguised in an Italian soda or baked goods, but you can’t because it’s bitter. There is no way he could have recreated a crime that I hadn’t even written.”

  “He could have gotten a passkey, went into your room, and read what you wrote after you wrote it.”

  Alexa’s head shook as Joe spoke. “After running a decryption program on my laptop, of course, and figuring out somehow that I planned to write something with it. We were just talking crime, murder, means, motives, and opportunities. He likes to write and we talked about writing, not about my writing.”

  “Still, with a murder here and you being there now—”

  “I’m quite certain that if he knew about the murder in Fairbury, he would have mentioned it. I didn’t say I planned to use anything from our discussion. In fact, I don’t think I got the idea until I was in the room.”

  “And you didn’t tell him about the light bulb thing?” Joe pressed further. “You didn’t tell him about this book plot idea—even without telling him what it was?”

  “I don’t talk about my works in progress with anyone but Suzy.” The minute she spoke, she regretted it. “Look, Joe. Can I go see Mrs. Vanderhausen for a few minutes and then leave before you tell Varney?”

  Joe stared at her. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “I feel responsible. Please, Joe.”

  Joe led her to the back of the station. “I’m probably going to answer for this. I’ll tell him the minute you’re done in here. If you get out of the parking lot before he can send me to get you, then you’re ok—at least until he follows or sends me after you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Wilma looked pathetic. A plump woman, her usually round, pudgy face seemed gaunt and drawn, creating an even more revolting appearance than expected. Her clothing disheveled and her hair matted from a long night of tossing about on the cell’s mattress, she stared in shock at their arrival. “Miss Hartfield?”

  “I see you know me, Mrs. Vanderhausen. I was wondering if you had called an attorney.”

  “Do I need one?”

  Alexa ached to hug the woman. “Yes. I’ll call mine and ask her to recommend someone. You will also need bail. I’ll post it once it’s been set. I know you are innocent. I don’t know who did this to you, but you’re not going to suffer for it.”

  “How—”

  Alexa’s shoulders sagged. “I can’t tell you. I just know. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.”

  Joe led her away from the holding cell and past the chief’s office. “I’ll be going in now.”

  Thankful, Alexa nodded and almost ran from the building, unintentionally snubbing Martinez in the process. As her Mini Cooper zipped out of the parking lot toward home, Alexa saw Chief Varney rushed from the building. “Bye, chief,” she muttered.

  On the drive home, Alexa considered the mess she had once called her life. Dead bodies, suspicion cloaking her friends and acquaintances, violation of her privacy—all of it screamed for resolution. Another life wasn’t an option. Perhaps she could create a character who was a budding forensic detective in the wild west of a hundred years ago. Perhaps that would be safer.

  She mentally wrangled names—Jesse Adams and Jedediah Walker lea
ding the front—as she drove beneath the barren canopy of tree limbs and branches to her cottage. The muffled sound of her phone ringing amused her as she opened the door to her house and stepped inside. Ignoring the ringing, she put away her purse, retrieved all her luggage and carted it down to her guest room, removed her coat, hat, and gloves, and even put water on to boil before she answered the third attempt to reach her.

  With a studied attempt at relaxed indifference, she answered. “Hello?”

  “That wasn’t funny, Alexa Hartfield!”

  “Oh, Chief Varney. Did I forget something? What was funny?”

  She sensed it—the innocence in her tones—he almost fell for it. “It won’t work, Alexa.”

  “Look, I knew what you’d do and say, and I decided I could tell you what I know just as well over the phone. Joe heard me. He saw my facial expressions.”

  His voice rumbled as he cleared his throat. “I not only have the right to ask you questions, Alexa, I have a responsibility to the citizens of this town—to you too.”

  “I know. However, I told Joe everything that I already could except for Suzy’s last name, phone number, and address.”

  “I’ll be flying out of Rockland tonight.”

  Alexa sighed. She knew it was coming, but hearing it didn’t make it any easier. “Can I call her? She’ll be terrified for me if you show up at her door and flash your badge or give your name. I know she’s going to think something happened to me.”

  “If you do not want me to call and have your friend picked up by the local police and held until I can get there, I would suggest you forget that idea. I promise that I’ll assure her of your safety-first thing.”

  “Well then, can I ask a favor?” He’d probably say no, but it couldn’t hurt.

  “What’s that?”

  “Can I send my Christmas presents with you?”

  Chapter 12

  MERRY CHRISTMAS, ALEXA Hartfield. How does it feel to know you have destroyed another family? Do you not see the fruits of your labors? Do you not realize that you are now not only killing the minds and spirits, but also the bodies of your readers as well?

  He watched her as she brought armloads of shopping bags into her house. Minutes later, a college student from the church exited with a sheet of paper and stacks of perfectly wrapped packages. Alexa emerged from the house, carrying her own pile of presents. Wilma Vanderhausen and the female cop—Judith—followed too.

  Do you feel better about yourself, having that woman in your home? He muttered his interrogation while watching as if she could hear him or knew he was there.

  The student and Judith both drove away, while Alexa and Wilma hurried into the cottage. He hadn’t understood why Wilma didn’t die. She was the bad person in the story. Why must the innocent die when the true villain escapes detection?

  “It’s poetic justice, isn’t it?” he asked. “She’s the villain, yet the innocent around her die. Now she’ll see the error of her ways, won’t she?”

  A head nodded yes in the twilight as the streetlight flickered over the truck. He made a sharp U-turn and drove out of sight, still talking about justice and planning their next “meeting.”

  Chapter 13

  WILMA SAT IN ALEXA’S favorite chair, sipping tea and directing the placement of lights on Alexa’s Christmas tree. “I like that purple and silver. I would never have thought of it, but it’s gorgeous with that white tree.”

  “Thanks. I haven’t had a white tree in a while, so I thought it was time for it. I might do origami ornaments some year. They’d be pretty with a white tree.”

  “So, you really do make a different tree every year. I’d heard that, but I didn’t know if it was true.”

  “It’s my Christmas present to myself.”

  After draining the last bit of tea from the cup, Wilma set the saucer down on a coaster and asked, “What do you do with them every year?”

  “They’re in the garage.”

  “You should sell them—maybe for charity or something. Who wouldn’t buy an Alexa Hartfield Christmas tree?”

  She had considered it a time or two, but it always felt so full of herself. “I suppose if there is ever another one of those local fundraisers for a sick kid or a dad out of work or something, I could auction them off for something like that.” She could auction off the manuscripts too, for that matter.

  That thought prompted a new, unwelcome one. She climbed down the stepladder, a purple and silver filigreed teardrop-shaped ornament in her hand, and hurried to the linen closet. On the top shelf sat the pasteboard boxes, seemingly unmolested. A finger ran along the top confirmed her suspicions. The cleaner hadn’t done the interior of the home. She’d have to call Anita and request a thorough cleaning. Spring was too far away.

  “Alexa, I think the lights on the right side are a little sparser than on the left.”

  She stood behind Wilma to compare and agreed. “I think you’re right. I am so glad you caught that before I got too far on the ornaments. That happened two years ago and I was up until after two in the morning on Christmas Eve fixing it.”

  “They’re lovely—the ornaments. Would you mind telling me where you got them? I’d like to buy one as a memento of this.”

  Without a word, Alexa passed the one in her hand to Wilma, her eyes watching out the window. Two doors down, she saw a Ford Focus parked with an excellent view of her house. Two people sat in the car, and Alexa was certain that she had seen a pair of binoculars. The couple drew close as if to kiss, and Alexa turned her head.

  “Where do you want this one?” Wilma rose and moved toward the tree.

  “That’s for you. Merry Christmas.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t hinting! Really—”

  “Who says you were? I have plenty.” Once again, her attention was arrested by the car out front. Without hesitation this time, she pulled her phone from her pocket.

  Keeping her back to the window and one side pressed to the adjacent wall, Alexa called the police station. “Chief Varney? I’m getting nervous.”

  “I told you not to let that woman in your house. Paying her bail does not make her any less dangerous or you any less of a target.”

  “It’s not Mrs. Vanderhausen! Outside my house, two doors down, there is a white Ford Focus. I noticed it a few minutes ago. I thought I saw binoculars for a second, but then I thought sunglasses.”

  “Well, it’s kind of dark for sunglasses.”

  “Exactly,” Alexa agreed. “Anyway, they looked like they were going to kiss so I looked away.”

  “And what is your point? I have a killer to catch.”

  “Which I’m trying to help with here! Listen. I just looked back, and they do have binoculars and those binoculars are trained on my house. Please send someone!”

  “Please tell me you are not standing in front of your window talking on the phone for them to see.”

  “Of course not! Get someone over here.”

  Chief Varney started to growl and then sighed. “Got Martinez on the way.”

  Alexa disconnected, smiling. Things were ok between her and the chief. Martinez, poor fellow, had become a running joke between them. Sending Martinez for anything, usually a drive-by to ensure she got home safely was the same kind of fatherly teasing that meant he felt ornery but loving.

  For the first time since her nightmare began, Alexa saw the agony he must have felt. The entire town knew of their friendship. If he even appeared to neglect his responsibilities, it would look worse than if he showed the same mercy for someone else. Joe was right. He had been toughest on her because he cared about her.

  Wilma’s voice broke into her reverie. “The car—its lights just came on. I think it’s driving away.”

  Alexa groaned and then whooped as the squad car turned onto Sycamore Court. Wilma’s jaw mimicked Alexa’s, hanging free in disbelief, as the white bubble drove past the patrol car and around the corner. Martinez jumped out of the car and made it up the walkway before Alexa found her feet and dashed out t
he door. “Are you going to let them go like that, or did you think I called to invite you to tea and cookies?”

  “Oh, sure. Thanks!”

  “Martinez,” she cried, “You let them go! The people you were sent to find?”

  “There was no one in front of a house like you said.”

  “I described the car! I know that the chief told you what it looked like!”

  “A white Ford Focus parked two doors down from your house. There is no Ford Focus there, Alexa!”

  Alexa took a deep breath and tried again. “And as you pulled onto the street, you passed a what?”

  “A... oh, that was your peeping Tom?”

  Alexa turned to Wilma, grateful to see the disbelief etched in the woman’s rapidly aging face, “There is a number on the fridge. It’s for Officer Joe Freidan. Will you please call him and tell him I need him.”

  Martinez flipped. “What do you need Joe for? I’m here. I think it’s kinda rude for you to call and ask for help and then get picky about who comes.”

  Alexa turned and stormed up the steps, furious. She grabbed the phone from Wilma and railed at Joe. “How is Martinez even allowed on the force? He is completely inept and acts like a teenager who doesn’t want to admit that he didn’t do his homework so he blames the dumb dog.”

  “Where is he?”

  Alexa glanced out her window. “He appears to be leaving.”

  “I’ll be right there. Meanwhile, don’t let Wilma out of your house. I don’t know who those people were, but if they’re watching you or her, and we don’t know which, you could both be in danger.”

  Alexa reached for a glass, filling it with water. “Joe? There was something familiar about them, but I don’t know why. I mean, it’s not like I could see their features or anything. It’s almost like I’ve seen them sitting there before, but I don’t remember anyone actually doing that.”

  She talked Joe into his car, across town, and onto her street. Joe commented twice that she needed to calm down, telling her that she was growing hysterical. She hadn’t managed to lose self-control. Not yet anyway.