by Mary Feliz
“Because I’m writing the narrative. Now, what do you really want to know?”
“Is there a database of students for the district? I mean, I know there is, but how far back does it go? I wondered if we could cross-reference the names of the kids on the garden’s volunteer roster and see if any of them were troublemakers when they were in school.”
“I think a list like that would be against about a dozen laws and there’s no way we could have access to it without breaking several more. If you’re looking for a way to get information on your suspects while you’re waiting for Stephen or Jason, I think your best bet is Boots. She’ll know the background of each of those kids, probably going back to when they lost their first tooth.”
“But would she tell me any of it? She scares me a little. Especially when she’s protecting her kids.”
Elaine sniffed in disgust. “You’ve eluded a murderer twice now, right? I think you could take Boots if it comes to a fight. Suck it up.”
“What did you say?”
“Did I offend you? Did you think I didn’t know any vulgar expressions? I was a middle-school principal, dear, not a hermit.”
I was out of my depth trying to argue with Elaine and I needed to change the subject in a hurry.
“Can we stop at Linc’s house first? I’m thinking we should stop waiting for the county electrical report and hire our own electrician to give an unbiased report on how Sarah was electrocuted and how or why she walked right into such a dangerous situation.”
Elaine pulled up in front of Linc’s house and we climbed up the steps to the porch. The lockbox was gone. I pulled out my key and tried to unlock the door. It didn’t work right away, so I pulled up on the knob and tried again. I tried a few more tricks, none of which worked.
“Let’s try the back door,” I said. “I’ve had more luck with that lock.”
We were about to step down from the porch when I pulled Elaine back into the shadows near the door. I heard an engine revving and by now I recognized the sound of the black Range Rover.
“Get the license-plate number,” I said, pulling my camera out of my pocket to take another time-stamped picture.
“California plate ending in three-six-seven,” said Elaine as the Rover raced off. “I couldn’t get any more. What are we doing?”
I texted the picture and the numbers to Paolo to let him know we’d spotted the vehicle again in Linc’s neighborhood. I explained the situation to Elaine, admitting that while I was curious about what the black vehicle was doing here, it seemed less important when compared to being stalked, chased, and shot at by the driver of the silver truck.
My phone rang before I could stash it back in my pocket. It was Paolo.
“I’ve got you on speaker, Paolo. Elaine is here with me. We’re at Linc’s. We just saw the black Range Rover and the silver pickup was racing through Stephen’s neighborhood when Elaine and I were there about twenty minutes ago.” I stopped to take a breath and realized I’d rattled off all the information as if I was in a speed-talking competition. “Sorry, Paolo. I’m a little wired. Did you get all that?”
“I did. You’re in danger, Maggie. And you’re putting Elaine in danger too. We know nothing about the drivers of those vehicles except that one seems to want you dead, the other is threatening, and they both seem to know way too much about where you will be and when you will be there. Can you get inside Linc’s house?”
I started to answer, but Paolo interrupted. “Never mind. Get in the house, even if you have to break a window. Then lock the doors and stay put until I call you back with instructions or I send a uniformed officer to take you home.”
Paolo took a deep breath and let it out. “I know you don’t want to hear this again, Maggie. I know you’ve heard it enough from Gordon Apfel. But you absolutely must stop your ad hoc investigation before you get killed.”
“Paolo, I’m sorry. You’re right. Elaine and I will follow your instructions to the letter.”
I ended the call and looked sheepishly at Elaine.
“Don’t you dare feel guilty about getting me into this,” she said. “I jumped in with both feet. The only thing we can do now is follow Paolo’s orders and get inside as soon as possible.”
“I think my key will work better on the back door. If it doesn’t, we can knock out one of the windowpanes.”
As we passed the basement door on the side of the house, we both heard a crash that made us jump. Elaine grabbed my arm.
“That’s not good,” she said in a whisper. “Someone’s in there already. Call 9-1-1.”
I pulled out my phone and dialed. I told the 911 dispatcher we’d heard someone rummaging around in a house that was supposed to be empty. She told me to get to somewhere safe and she’d send a patrol car as soon as possible.
I thanked her and hung up.
“Let’s see if the back door’s unlocked,” Elaine whispered.
“No way. That’s how the ditsy blondes in horror movies get chopped up with a meat cleaver. They go into the house when everyone knows that’s where the bad guy is.” Tears of frustration and anger filled my eyes. I struggled to slow my rapid breathing and heart rate and get my thoughts in order.
“Great. We’re not safe inside and we’re not safe outside,” Elaine said. She bit her lip and had her hand on her throat. Her gaze shifted from the back door to the path that lead around the house to the front yard. She shifted from one foot to another and took on the frantic look of a trapped animal.
“Just check the doorknob,” I whispered. “Then we’ll know whether someone broke in or let themselves in with a key.” When I didn’t offer to test the door myself, Elaine shook her head and stepped carefully up the steps, tried to turn the knob, and came back down when it wouldn’t move.
“It’s still locked.”
I sat on the bottom step and hugged my backpack to my chest as if it might protect me from an attack. “Go? Stay? Call the police again?”
Elaine sat down next to me, then stood up with her feet planted shoulder-width apart and her hands on her hips. She looked for all the world like a superhero and I could almost see a cape fluttering out behind her.
“This is ridiculous. I will not be cowed by an overgrown brat in an overpowered car. And whoever is in the basement—if it even is a who; it could just as easily be a raccoon or a rat or a squirrel—they probably assumed we went away. We’re safe enough for now, don’t you think?”
“The police will be here soon,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “We’ll hear anyone coming up the basement stairs. They creak under the slightest pressure. If we hear that, we’re out of here, right?”
Elaine nodded.
I rummaged in my backpack looking for something I could use as a weapon. My hand closed on the folder I’d made for Linc and Sarah’s project. I pulled it out, opened it up, and temporarily forgot about the trouble we were in.
“Look, Elaine, these are the pictures I took of the house when Linc hired me. I take ‘before’ shots of every project.” I handed her half the stack. “I’ve been meaning to go through them and see if they offer any clues about what’s going on here.”
“Like if there’s a Maltese falcon on the newel post?” Elaine said, flipping through the pictures.
I laughed quietly, trying not to alert the intruder to our presence. “Right. Help me look through them. Set aside any pictures of Linc’s workroom. You’ll know it when you see it. Lots of jumbles of wires and electrical test equipment.”
I compared the “before” pictures to my memory of when we found Sarah. In the early photos, a whiteboard covered with formulas and calculations rested on the windowsill, blocking the light. The day we’d found Sarah, the whiteboard was missing and the window was open. I pointed out the change to Elaine, explaining how the room had looked on Monday morning.
“I wonder if someone could have left the window open, knowing a big storm was forecast and that Linc or Sarah would have to close it,” I said. News of the storm had bee
n on the radio, TV, and on everyone’s lips. We all had hoped it would mark the start of our winter rainy season and the end of our lengthy drought.
“Do you know if they tested the water that was on the floor?” Elaine asked.
“No, why?”
“If it was rainwater, it could have been an accident, right? The window was open. Wind could have driven the rain inside and Sarah raced to close it before the rain did any damage.”
“But if it were tap water that would mean someone put it there.”
“Not necessarily,” said Elaine. “What if Sarah had been carrying a glass of water, slipped, and the glass fell?”
“I didn’t see a glass in the room. But that doesn’t mean one hadn’t rolled under a table.”
“We need to get that water analysis.”
“If the water was even collected,” I said. “Jason said Detective Awful is known for cutting corners. But we can ask Paolo about it, maybe, if he doesn’t think we’re continuing to investigate.”
I flipped through the rest of the pictures quickly until I came to the last few I’d taken of Sarah and Linc clowning around on the front porch.
“Look at these. They were so happy. It should hurt to look at them, but it doesn’t. After everything that’s happened, it’s nice to remember her this way.”
Elaine looked at them over my shoulder. “Linc might like to have some of these. They’re adorable. But why didn’t you just do digital photos?”
“These were originally digital. But Linc and Sarah were both much more comfortable working with hard copies of everything. I encourage my clients to go digital as much as possible, but I’m flexible. Whatever makes the project easier for my clients.”
I laid out some of the best photos, trying to choose a few to enlarge for Linc. But then I picked up one of them again and peered at it. I found my reading glasses, put them on, and looked more closely.
“What are you looking at?” Elaine asked. I handed her the photo and pulled my camera from my pocket. I pushed buttons searching for the original image.
“Look in the background, behind Linc and Sarah. Out in the street. Is that the Range Rover? I’m trying to find the original so I can enlarge that part of the screen.”
I found a photo that looked similar and compared it with the hard copy.
“That’s the one,” Elaine said. “How big can you get that section?”
I enlarged the photo as much as I could, but the license plate wasn’t legible.
“Do you think the crime lab could apply more contrast and get a better read on the number?” Elaine asked. “They do it on TV all the time.”
“I’m not sure. I know it’s not like on TV where the whole license plate might be just a few pixels, but they blow it up and suddenly you can read the whole thing. Can I look at that photo again?”
I took the photo from Elaine and squinted, pointing to the license plate. “We know these last three numbers are three-six-seven, right? That’s what you saw this morning. Does the first digit look the same as that three?”
Elaine held up the photo and looked at it from several different angles. “I just can’t tell. Why not send it to Paolo to forward to the lab? If they can’t decipher it, fine. But if there’s a chance they could . . .”
I tapped out a message on my phone and sent the picture to Paolo, telling him it was taken nearly a month before Sarah’s death and seemed to show the same Range Rover that had been hanging around Linc’s house and the garden.
A few minutes later, Paolo called back. “Thanks for sending that photo, Maggie. I passed it along. We were able to enhance part of the plate that was in the other photos you took. We had to make a few guesses, but we ran all the possibilities–none of them are Range Rovers. The mostly likely set belonged to a cream-colored Lexus that was stolen in Los Angeles six months ago.”
“If that’s the right plate, that proves the Range Rover’s driver is in possession of stolen plates, right?” I said. “That proves he’s a bad guy, even if he’s not connected to Sarah’s death. Can you pull him in for questioning based on the stolen plates?”
“Pull him in?” Paolo repeated, laughing. “You watch too much television, Maggie. We’ve already got law-enforcement teams all over the Bay Area on the lookout for the Range Rover, and we’ve given them our best guess at the plate. Once we locate it, we can figure out the next step. It’s easy enough to follow someone until they neglect to use their turn signal, go over the speed limit, anticipate a red light turning green, or do one of those rolling stops. No one is a perfect driver all the time.”
I heard the short bloop of a siren on the street. “I’ve got to go, Paolo. The patrol car is here.”
* * *
The officers were polite, efficient, and took their time thoroughly searching Linc’s house. They found nothing and suggested that we may have heard a rat or squirrel that had made a home in the house. They gave us their cards and asked us to call them again if we heard or saw anything worrisome.
After they’d gone, Elaine and I debated what to do next. Paolo had originally asked us to close ourselves up in the house to protect us from the guy in the Range Rover. However, Santana had been afraid when I showed her the Range Rover picture. I wanted to warn her that we’d seen the vehicle again. I texted Paolo to let him know we were headed over to the garden.
I showed Elaine the way through the hedge, which was thankfully free of spiderwebs today. We walked on the gravel path, enjoying the scents from the herb gardens and the chirps of birds that were feeding on insects and seeds.
Just as the shed came in view, we heard loud, unintelligible shouting that made us slow and then stop. A bulky guy ran from the shed toward the parking area. He wore jeans and a navy hooded sweatshirt, the winter uniform of nearly every student in the area. Next, we heard the sound of a powerful engine starting up, followed by the squeal of tires. Both sounds were consistent with those I now associated with the Range Rover.
“Maybe we should come back later,” Elaine said in a whisper.
I shook my head. “No, listen. There’s water running. No one would leave water running unattended in this drought . . . not unless they wanted to incur the wrath of the water district and the neighborhood.”
I tiptoed past the front of the garden shed and around the corner where the water tap dripped at the hose connector. “Time for a new washer, there,” I said, pointing out the drip to Elaine.
“You’d think Boots would be on top of things like that.”
I followed the hose past a circle of shrubs that badly needed trimming. And then I stopped. Stopped so suddenly that Elaine banged into me from behind, forcing me to lurch forward until I caught myself. I covered my mouth and turned to Elaine.
“Am I really seeing this?”
Elaine didn’t answer. I watched the blood drain from her face and grabbed her elbow as we both sank down on one of the splintery benches spaced throughout the garden.
In front of us, wearing her polka-dotted Wellingtons, was Boots, stretched across the path with one foot tangled in the dripping hose. She lay facedown with her head resting on an antique wrought-iron boot scraper as if it were a pillow and she’d felt the need for a sudden nap. Only the fact that blood oozed out from under her skull, pooling and mixing with the growing puddle of water from the hose, told us that if Boots were napping, she might never wake up again.
Chapter 18
It’s much easier for most people to keep items organized if they know exactly where those items belong. Especially tools that are used by more than one member of a team or family. I have a dustpan and broom labeled with the words I live under the kitchen sink.
Young children and many adults may do better with labels that incorporate pictures or photos in addition to or instead of words.
From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald,
Simplicity Itself Organizing Services
Friday, November 7, 11:30 a.m.
Holding Boots’s left wrist in my hand, I could feel no puls
e. Not being an expert pulse-taker, I checked her other wrist and her neck before standing, looking at Elaine and shaking my head.
“Blast it!” said Elaine. She stood and kicked at the leg of the rickety bench, which threatened to collapse under her assault. She let out a brief sob and then looked at me. “This is ghastly. Unbelievable. Oh, Boots.”
There was nothing I could say. Nothing I wanted to say aloud, anyway. I pulled out my phone and speed-dialed Paolo.
* * *
Moments later, we heard sirens out front. I was on my way to meet the emergency teams and direct them to Boots, when a moan erupted from the shed.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” I called out. I was answered with another unintelligible moan. “Ketifa? Santana? It’s Maggie McDonald. Are you hurt? Are you safe?”
The moan turned to a sob. I eased the door open and peered into the shed, unable to see anything after the bright sunlight outdoors.
“It’s Maggie. I’m coming in.”
Ketifa crouched in the far corner of the shed, clutching the birdseed bucket in her arms.
I sank to the floor next to her, put my arm around her, and tried to take the bucket from her hands. She gripped it as if her life depended on it.
“Are you okay? Is it the baby? What happened?” I pushed her hair back and wiped away her tears as though she were a small child. She had a huge swelling bruise on her cheek, along with a deep cut on her forehead that would need several stitches.
“I just heard the sirens,” I told her. “The police are here and an ambulance crew is coming for Boots. They may be able to take a look at you. Or I can drive you to urgent care.”
“Is she dead?” sniffed Ketifa.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Though I hadn’t found a pulse, I supposed there was a chance she was still alive.
“I was supposed to meet her. She was going to go over my ré-sumé. She was going to help me find a job.” Ketifa buried her face in her hands. Whatever else she was going to say was lost in a new round of sobbing.