by JoAnna Carl
“Not that I know of.”
Joe didn’t know of any Haneys in Warner Pier either. Even Tracy—who was likely to know everybody and everything about them—had not heard of anyone named Haney. We checked the Warner County phone book and found only one Haney listed, a John Haney who lived in Dorinda, the county seat.
“Why an ‘antique’ baseball bat?” Underwood asked. “Why not a regular one?”
I didn’t have an answer to that either.
By then it was after eleven, and Underwood broke the news that we needed to stay out of the house until noon the next day so the crime scene team would be able to finish up in daylight.
“That’s fine,” I said. “If those guys are still on the loose, and it’s too hot even to close the windows, I wouldn’t stay in that house if it were guarded by a company of Marines.”
“We’ll go to my mom’s,” Joe said.
I glared at him. Was he forgetting our houseguests? “She hasn’t got room for six people.”
“It’s either that or we drive thirty miles to Holland. You know we can’t find rooms in Warner Pier. Not in July.”
Brenda asked the key question. “Does your mom have air-conditioning, Joe?”
“Central.”
Tracy, Brenda, and I spoke in unison. “Let’s go.”
Joe called his mom, and she agreed to take in the whole gang. Darrell hung his head and dragged his feet, but he obviously wouldn’t find it convenient to stay in his camper while our house was overrun with crime scene investigators working thirty feet away.
So I laid down the law. “I’m sorry, Darrell, but you’ll have to go along with the program. It’s the best we can do. You’ll probably have to sleep on the floor, so don’t feel like you’re getting any favors.”
Pete still hadn’t appeared. Joe wrote him a note and left it taped to our back door.
“I’m getting worried about Pete,” I said. “Why hasn’t he shown up?”
Joe laughed. “Pete is the last person to worry about. He can take care of himself.”
We were allowed into the house long enough to pick up everybody’s toothbrushes, and I got a pair of my own sandals. We arrived at Mercy Woodyard’s house to find she’d lived up to her reputation for efficiency. She’d made up the double bed in her guest room for Joe and me, pulled out the folding couch in the den for the girls, and arranged for Darrell and Pete to stay with Mike Herrera.
Mike plays the dual role of the mayor of Warner Pier and Mercy’s boyfriend. He has an apartment in a building he owns in downtown Warner Pier—the Sidewalk Café, which he owns, is on the first floor, Mike’s business office and his catering operations are on the second, and his living quarters are on the third.
Mike had a guest room with twin beds, Mercy told us. She assured Darrell that, as a restaurant owner, Mike often took in employees who needed emergency housing. I’m not sure this was true, but it seemed to make Darrell feel better.
Joe drove Darrell over to Mike’s apartment. When he came back he said Mike seemed pleased to help out, and Darrell seemed pleased that Mike also had central air-conditioning.
Joe tried to call Pete. His cell was out of service, but Joe left a message telling him he couldn’t stay at our house and to go to Mike’s.
He again told me there was no reason to worry about Pete. I decided he was right, or maybe I was simply too tired to worry about anything. We took showers and went to bed. I don’t know that I slept terribly well, but I did sleep. I’d eaten breakfast the next morning before Mike called and said that Pete had never shown up to occupy the second twin bed.
Joe brushed off my concerns with a casual, “Oh, Pete can take care of himself.” In fact, he was so casual I began to suspect he knew where Pete was. It wouldn’t have been the first time Joe had kept some secret that Pete wanted kept.
I called TenHuis Chocolade to assure Dolly we were all right and tell her I’d be coming to work that afternoon, but that I’d have to wait until the crime scene folks let us back into the house, since I needed clean clothes. Especially shoes. The sandals I’d put on wouldn’t do for work.
Then I helped Mercy clear the breakfast dishes. “I don’t want to make you late to work,” I said.
“It’s hardly worth going in right now anyway.”
“Is business slow?”
“I have lots of policies that are sold by the year, of course, so it’s not as if I’m broke yet. But new business . . . it’s been almost nonexistent this summer. Thanks to the Warner Pier grapevine.”
“The burglary scare?”
Mercy nodded. “I guess it really infuriates me because it’s so silly. First, there have been maybe twenty burglaries, and only half of them were my clients. Why am I getting the blame?”
“I know, Mercy. It’s stupid.”
“Besides, it’s not like I have a list of the contents of people’s houses. That’s not the way it works.”
“I think our policy just says ‘house and contents.’ Something like that.”
“That’s what almost everyone’s policy says! People don’t list their furniture piece by piece. If they list something separately, it’s usually special jewelry. Maybe a sterling tea service. But who has things like that at Warner Pier?”
I handed Mercy a skillet and thought about that one. “There are lots of rich people around here. Don’t they own valuable things?”
“Sure they do. But they don’t usually bring them to their summer cottages. The antiques—now, that’s the problem. Because people do bring old furniture to cottages. And if they leave it there long enough, it becomes antique. But even most of those items aren’t particularly valuable. People don’t usually list them for their insurance policies. I don’t have the slightest idea what ninety percent of my clients own.”
“What do you do if they make a claim?”
Mercy shrugged. “Take their word for it. It’s nice if they have photos or sales slips or some other kind of record, but most people don’t. It works most of the time. But I couldn’t tip a gang of burglars off to the contents of my clients’ houses. I don’t know what they have in their houses.”
Mercy left for work, and Joe went out, saying he was going to check in at the police station—one of the benefits of being a city attorney—and he’d be back to pick me up between eleven o’clock and noon. “Keep the doors locked,” he said as he went out. “Don’t open up unless you know who’s there.”
The girls were still sleeping, so I looked in the drawer where I knew Mercy kept playing cards, found a double deck, and dealt out a hand of Spider.
Of course, I couldn’t concentrate on the cards. All I could think about was that crazy chase the night before. In my own house. Those guys had not been plain old burglars. They had been lying in wait for me. They had wanted to do me harm.
I was convinced that they had wanted to kill me. Me. Lee McKinney Woodyard.
Apparently that was what Joe thought, too. Why else would he have given me all the “keep the doors locked” instructions?
But why would the baddies want to get rid of me? Because I’d seen the two men in the boat? I hadn’t thought anything about them. I’d been looking for Pete, not them. If they hadn’t shown up in my front yard, I would never haven given them another thought.
Did they think I might recognize them as the Double Diamond robbers? I hadn’t. Until they came to the door.
And why did they come to the door? Our house had sat there all day with its windows wide open. If the tall guy and the short guy wanted to ambush me, why didn’t they wait inside? Were they afraid that some other person—Joe or Pete or someone else they saw as more threatening—might walk in on them instead? Even the girls—if they’d beaten me home . . .
Waves of shudders went over me. I went to the den door and peeked at the girls, just to make sure both of them were breathing. The thought of the girls walking in on those two guys was going to give me the jimjams for a long time.
And what if I had parked in my regular parking plac
e at the Baileys’ house? I’d have had to walk down the path between the two houses. They could have ambushed me there. I’d never have had a chance to escape—through the Michigan basement or by any other route.
I thought about that possibility for a while. Then I called Joe’s cell phone. He answered on the first ring. “Everything okay?”
“Yes. Everything’s fine. I just got to thinking about those guys last night. They were waiting for me, Joe. They’d set an ambush.”
“It sounds that way.”
“But they could have broken into the house easily, and they hadn’t. They weren’t waiting inside. I wondered if they’d been waiting at the Baileys’ house.”
“Why would they do that?”
I went on without answering his question directly. “I simply forgot to park over there, the way I’ve been doing. If they’d laid a trap for me at the Baileys’ . . . well, they would have gotten me.”
“Lee, don’t dwell on that sort of thing. Everything’s all right. You’re safe. Try not to think about it.”
“I’m not sitting here being morbid. I just wanted to make sure that the crime scene people are checking around the Baileys’.”
He didn’t answer, and I went on. “Because those guys came up on the porch just about three minutes after I turned on the lights in the house. That’s just about the length of time it would have taken them to come from the Baileys’ house to our house. And waiting for me over at the Baileys’—that would have given them a better chance to catch me, if I had parked where I usually do.”
“But how would they know you usually parked there?”
“From watching us, Joe. They would have been spying on our house.”
I took a deep breath. “If the crime scene people found as much as a footprint over there—even a cigarette butt or a hair—it would prove those guys had been watching our house.”
Joe took two deep breaths before he answered. “You’re right,” he said. “It would prove someone had been watching us. I’ll check with Underwood and the crime scene team.”
Chapter 18
Mercy’s house seemed cold and lonely after I hung up. I nearly turned the air-conditioning thermostat higher. Instead I pulled an afghan off the foot of Mercy’s bed and wrapped up in it.
It wasn’t that I’d forgotten how to enjoy air-conditioning. No, the thought of someone spying on our house had chilled me right to the bone.
If someone had been spying on us, who was it?
And why? Why would anyone do such a thing? Was it because Joe and I had witnessed the holdup at the Garretts’ house? But Alex Gold had been a witness, and he seemed to be living a peaceful life. When I’d burst in on him the night before, he apparently had been sitting around enjoying his living room window unit. Why were we more threatening to the bad guys than he was?
Who? And why? I hadn’t answered either of these questions when I heard someone stirring in the den. I peeked in the door and saw Tracy sitting on the edge of the bed. “Hi,” I said. “Come on in the kitchen, and I’ll trade breakfast for speculation.”
That didn’t exactly speed Tracy up, but in about twenty minutes I had her sitting at the table with a Diet Coke. She’s not a coffee drinker.
Tracy’s eyes were still bleary, and she gave a broad yawn before she spoke. “What sort of speculation are you interested in?”
“Have you seen any strangers hanging around our house during the last . . . well, since you’ve been staying there?”
“Nope.”
“Has anybody pumped you or Brenda about our little household?”
“Pumped me? You mean asked questions about who was staying there and why?”
“Yes. That sort of thing. Or maybe about who does the cooking or what do we do about laundry or just who all those cars belonged to and how we jammed all of them in the drive.”
“I don’t think so, Lee. Of course, Mr. Glick is always full of questions. But he’s not a stranger.”
“No, and he’s lived there six months. I think this would be somebody new. I mainly wondered if you’d seen anybody you didn’t know walking down our drive. Or on the Baileys’ drive.”
Tracy shook her head. “Sure haven’t. Too bad Gina isn’t here to ask.”
“Gina?”
“Yes. She was always peeking out the upstairs windows, watching, if anybody went by.”
“I hadn’t realized that.” I got up and raided Mercy’s refrigerator for strawberry preserves, handing them to Tracy for her toast, but I was thinking about Gina.
Where had Gina gone? Why had she called the Holland motels trying to locate her ex-husband? And why had that ex-husband been using her dead brother’s name? Why had that man—if it had been him—come to our house and asked for Joe, not for Gina? Was the dead man really her ex-husband? Was he one of the guys who had invaded Double Diamond and stolen the famous jewels?
Could the spy have been Gina? Was the spying connected to her disappearance? And where was Gina?
Was Gina dead?
My stomach got all fluttery. I’d worried about telling my stepmother that something had happened to Brenda. Now I began to worry about having to tell Grandma Ida that something had happened to Gina. Where could she be?
Tracy was speaking again. “Your house is sort of secluded, Lee. People don’t wander by. As for strangers . . .” She snorted out a laugh. “It seems as if the people staying there are stranger than the people who walk by.”
I smiled at her joke. Then I thought about it seriously. If there was a spy—and that was still an if, I reminded myself—could it be one of our group?
My emotions rejected the idea strenuously. I might get annoyed at being forced into the role of hostess for five people I didn’t know well—even Brenda and I were practically strangers—but I had formed at least a slight emotional link to each of them. The thought of one of them spying on the rest of us was horrible, even worse than the thought of a stranger doing it. But I couldn’t say it might not be possible.
Darrell? I felt sorry for Darrell. But pity didn’t equate to trust. Darrell was hiding his thoughts and feelings. I didn’t understand what was going on in his head.
And how about Pete? There was a mystery man if one had ever existed. He was definitely more than a bird-watcher. Could he have been telling the bad guys more than he shared with Joe?
Brenda and Tracy? They were simply too naive to be deliberately revealing the details of how we lived. Of course, either might have let something slip to a person she trusted.
Which brought me to the boyfriends: Will VanKlompen and Tracy’s steady date, Jack Eberhardt. Had the girls told them about our ménage? Had some spy then asked the boys about the odd group where their girlfriends were staying?
All these things rolled around in my mind for an hour or more. Brenda got up, and she and Tracy watched some talk show in the den, but I was so taken with my own thoughts that I barely spoke to them. And after all that thought I came up with no new ideas.
After the jewelry had been hidden in Darrell’s camper, I’d asked the neighbors if they’d seen any strangers around. Maybe something would still come of that. Hardly a revolutionary thought. But it kept me from thinking about the possibility that someone actually sharing our house had been telling the bad guys what we were up to.
I decided to follow up on my earlier inquiries. I bit the bullet and called Harold Glick. If anybody got around the neighborhood, he did. I was grateful when he didn’t answer the phone. I left a message, saying I was still trying to figure out whether strangers had been prowling the neighborhood, and that I’d call him back.
I called several more people. Most of our neighbors weren’t home, and the two who answered the phone didn’t have any strangers to suggest. Both of them wanted me to tell them what had been going on over at our house. Having cop cars around doesn’t enhance your reputation as a desirable neighbor.
My final call was to the Garretts. I’d found the number on my desk, where I’d put it the day Garnet came by
the office, and stuck it in my purse. Of course, I knew that Uncle Alex was the only person at Double Diamond, and I didn’t think he would be any help. But I called anyway. To my surprise, Garnet answered the phone.
“Oh!” I said. “I thought you and Dick were in Grand Rapids.”
“We are. This is my cell phone number. Oh, Lee, I talked to Uncle Alex this morning, and he told me about the awful experience you had last night. I’m so sorry!”
“Uncle Alex—I mean, Mr. Gold—saved my bacon, or maybe my life. If he hadn’t been home, I was going to have to take to the woods. Barefoot.”
“I hope, hope, hope that this had nothing to do with our holdup. You and Joe must think we’re international spies or something.”
She’d said the magic word. I interrupted her to ask if they’d seen any strangers who might have been spying on our house.
“Everybody in Warner Pier is a stranger to me,” Garnet said. “We’re the newcomers.” She gave a few descriptions of people whom she’d seen walking down Lake Shore Drive, and I quickly realized that my quest was useless. A few of them I could identify. But others . . . who knew? They could have been anybody.
“I guess I’m wasting time,” I said. “A stranger who’s wearing a swimsuit could be renting a summer cottage. Heck, in any neighborhood all a bad guy has to do is paint ‘Lawn Service’ on the side of his pickup and throw a power mower in the back. Then he can go anyplace and do anything, no questions asked. I guess we’d have to fall over somebody holding a telescope up to his eye if we were going to identify a spy.”
Garnet laughed. “I’m glad you can joke about it, Lee. I’ll talk to Dick; maybe he noticed someone.”
“Whether he did or not, please tell him thanks for the loan of his beach shoes.”
“Beach shoes? What beach shoes?”
“The ones he left by the door at the cottage. Last night I had to take to my heels barefoot, and my feet were already sore by the time I got to Double Diamond. So I borrowed a pair of flip-flops I found by the front door.”
“Dick never wears flip-flops.” Garnet lowered her voice. “He lost a toe to a lawn mower when he was just a kid. He’s self-conscious about it. He always wears closed shoes. The flip-flops must belong to Uncle Alex.”