A Catered New Year's Eve

by Isis Crawford

  Libby turned to face her. “The content or its existence?” she asked.

  “Both,” Bernie said, wishing she’d brought something hot to drink along with her. “It seems schizophrenic to me.”

  Libby raised an eyebrow. “In what way?”

  “Well, the note is telling us to walk away at the same time it’s suggesting we’re going down the wrong trail. Evidently the writer can’t decide what he or she wants us to do—stay or go.”

  “What trail?” Libby asked rhetorically. “We don’t have a trail.”

  “Evidently whoever wrote this thinks that we do.” Bernie stifled a sneeze.

  “At least it’s not a death threat,” Libby said, indicating the note with a nod of her head.

  “Now there’s a cheery thought,” Bernie told her.

  “They could have written, ‘Stop or you die,’ or words to that effect,” Libby pointed out.

  Bernie rolled her eyes. “They could have written lots of things. They could have written, ‘Back off or we’ll make you drink gas station coffee and eat Velveeta for the rest of your life.’ But they didn’t.”

  “Laugh all you want,” Libby told her. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if the person who left this note is the person who killed Peggy Graceson. Which makes it a death threat by extension.”

  “Talk about a leap of logic.”

  “The expression is a leap of faith,” Libby said, correcting her sister.

  Bernie frowned. She wasn’t in the mood for a semantic discussion. “Whatever. What you said is ridiculous. We don’t know that the person who wrote the note is the person who committed the murder,” Bernie observed. “Or murders,” she said, thinking of Ada’s uncle, Henry.

  “Why else would they be warning us away, Bernie?” Libby demanded.

  “Maybe they have our best interests at heart.”

  “Doubtful.

  “Not necessarily,” Bernie replied. “For that matter, why leave us a note at all? Why say anything—especially since Ada is now in custody?”

  “Why indeed?” Libby stuck her hand in her pocket, pulled two squares of dark chocolate out, and handed one to Bernie. “I wonder what Dad would say about this note?” she mused as she unwrapped her square, then popped it into her mouth.

  “Probably the same things we are,” Bernie said as she did likewise. She felt the chocolate melting in her mouth and coating her tongue. She gave a small sigh of pleasure. “Do you have any more?”

  “I wish,” Libby said. She was handing the note back to Bernie when another thought occurred to her. “You do realize that whoever left this on Mathilda was sitting here watching Ada get arrested,” she said.

  “Not necessarily,” Bernie objected.

  “But probably,” Libby said. Then she made another logical leap. “And maybe he or she was here watching because he or she was the one who had made the call,” Libby said as she absentmindedly smoothed the note out with her thumb before she handed it back to her sister. “And they wanted to make sure the arrest was carried through.”

  “Which implies they had an inside connection,” Bernie pointed out. “On the other hand, they could have arrived when Ada was getting arrested and left us the note because they didn’t want to see her getting arrested.”

  “Well, the one thing we do know is that whoever wrote the note was here sometime between when we went upstairs to talk to Kate Silverman and when the police came down with Ada,” Libby said.

  Bernie nodded. She agreed with that.

  “Which didn’t leave them a lot of time,” Libby observed. “Like I just said, odds are, they were here before we came. They’re probably here watching us now.”

  “Oh, please,” Bernie told her as she folded up the note and put it in her jacket pocket. “Get a grip. You might as well be saying they put a tracker on our van.”

  Chapter 29

  Libby’s eyes widened. She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God! How do you know they didn’t?” she exclaimed. She hadn’t thought of that possibility before her sister mentioned it, but now that Bernie had she couldn’t get it out of her head. “They could have,” she said.

  “Why would they?” Bernie countered, sorry she’d opened her mouth. Was paranoia contagious? Bernie wondered. If so, had her sister caught it from Ada?

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Whoever they are.”

  “We should check.”

  Bernie groaned as she shook her head. Why had she said anything? Why hadn’t she kept her big mouth shut? “I was kidding.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “We should go home.”

  “Oh, now you want to go home, but when I wanted to you told me we had to stay.”

  “That’s not what I said,” Bernie protested.

  “It’s close enough,” Libby replied, a mulish look on her face.

  “Where do you get this stuff from?” Bernie asked, not that she expected an answer. The one thing she did know was that there was no arguing with Libby when she got this way. It would be quicker to say yes than to spend the next twenty minutes fighting. “Fine,” Bernie grumped. “If it’ll make you happy.”

  “It will,” Libby said, looking expectantly at her sister.

  “What are you looking at me for?” Bernie asked. “You were the one who suggested it. You want to go out in the cold and look for it, be my guest.”

  “I will.”

  “Better you than me,” Bernie told her her sister as Libby put her gloves back on, zipped up her parka, and put her hood up.

  The wind smacked Libby in the face as she got out of the van, making her sorry she’d opened her mouth. As she blinked snow out of her eyes she thought about getting back in the van and forgetting about the whole thing, then ditched the idea. She wasn’t about to give Bernie the satisfaction that she’d caved. No. At least she’d make a show of going over the van, because now that she was out here, she thought that Bernie was probably right and she was being paranoid.

  Libby told herself to focus. The faster she did this, the faster she’d be back inside Mathilda. What did a tracker look like anyway? Obviously, it had to be a small metal object, but outside of that she had no idea.

  And where would someone put something like that? Where would she put it? Not on the sides of the van. That would be too obvious. Not on the tailpipe in this case. Or near it. The tailpipe would have been too hot. It took about half an hour for that sucker to cool off. Under the hood? Again, no. Because if he or she had raised the hood, the snow would have fallen off and there was more snow on the hood when they came out of the building than there was when they went in.

  Which meant there were only two places the tracker could be. Either underneath one of the tire spaces—Libby was sure they had a name but she didn’t know what it was—or inside either the rear or the front fender. Libby walked to the front of Mathilda and started looking, but between the dark and the cold it was hard to see. She’d have to go by feel. Cursing under her breath, she took her gloves off and ran her hands over and under the sides of the fender. Nothing was there.

  “How’s it going?” Bernie asked, rolling down the window as Libby passed by her as she stomped to the back of the van.

  “Just super,” Libby said, caught in midstomp.

  Bernie snickered, which Libby pretended not to have heard. “Want my phone?” Bernie asked.

  Libby paused, puzzled. “Why would I want your phone?”

  “Duh. Double duh. The flashlight,” Bernie said.

  “I’m fine without it,” Libby replied, feeling like an idiot because she’d forgotten that cell phones had that capability, not that she would ever admit that to her sister.

  “Your call,” Bernie told her and rolled up the window, glad to not have the wind blowing the snow in her face.

  Once Libby got to the back of the van she did the same thing she’d done in the front. She ran her hands over the fender, but she didn’t feel anything along the sides or underneath the rear bumper.

  She straighten
ed up. She was wrong. Bernie was right, damn it all. Her fingers were killing her from the cold and her lower back wasn’t feeling too great, either. Libby was about to go on to the tire openings when she decided to give the fender one last try.

  This time when Libby ran her fingers along the inside of the fender, she felt something sitting along the curve of the metal. Obviously, she hadn’t been thorough enough the last time. She pulled at it and it came loose. Then she held it up toward the streetlight. Yup. There it was. A tracker. She felt better than she had all day. She ran over to the driver’s side, knocked on the window, and held the device up.

  “See. I told you,” she said to her sister, her voice jubilant with victory. “I’m not crazy after all.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Bernie said. She wasn’t often shocked, but she was this time. Why would someone have done this? Why had they gone to the trouble? Her mind went into overdrive as she began computing the possibilities. Which might be the reason for what happened next.

  When her sister appeared at her window, Bernie rolled it down and held out her hand. “Let me see,” she commanded. Naturally, Libby handed the device to her. Unfortunately, at that moment Bernie thought she saw a movement around the left-hand corner of the apartment building out of the corner of her eye. “What’s that?” she asked, lifting her hand to point, thereby allowing the tracker to fly into the air.

  “Oh no!” Libby cried as she watched the tracker travel three feet and descend into the white morass lying on the ground. She wanted to cry.

  “Rats,” Bernie cursed as she realized what she’d done. “Don’t worry. We’ll find it,” she told Libby as she opened the van door and jumped down.

  “Yeah, in the spring,” Libby answered as she walked over to where the tracker had fallen, squatted down, and began to sift through the snow.

  “I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye,” Bernie explained. “No. Someone. I thought I saw someone move.”

  “Who?” Libby asked, looking up. She didn’t see anything. Or anyone, for that matter. Just a veil of white. “I don’t see anybody.”

  “There was someone,” Bernie insisted as she knelt down and joined Libby in her search for the missing tracker. “I swear there was.”

  “It could have been a reflection of the light on the snowflakes,” Libby replied as she continued to go through the snow with her hand. There must be a good seven or eight inches of snow on the ground, but it couldn’t have rolled that far, she told herself. If it had rolled at all. She had watched the thing fall. So, it should be there. Unless, of course, they were looking in the wrong spot.

  “No, it wasn’t a reflection of the light,” Bernie insisted as she continued searching. Although had she seen what she thought she had? Was her sister right after all?

  “I believe you,” Libby said to Bernie, even though she didn’t. Not really. The operative word here was thought.

  It was cold and dark and the snow was swirling around them and after ten minutes, by mutual consent, the sisters gave up looking. There didn’t seem to be any point in continuing.

  “The important thing is that it’s off the van,” Bernie said to Libby by way of consolation once they were back inside Mathilda.

  Libby grunted. Her teeth were chattering, she couldn’t feel her fingers, and her feet were wet from the snow that had found its way into her boots. And on top of that, she was seriously annoyed. She just didn’t know who she was more annoyed at: her sister, for dropping the tracker, or whoever put the device on their van in the first place.

  “Why would someone do something like this?” she asked as she rubbed her hands together and flexed her fingers to get the circulation in them going again.

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question.”

  “And?”

  Bernie shook her head. “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you one thing. Whoever it is is really starting to piss me off.”

  “Me too,” Libby agreed as she held her hands in front of Mathilda’s heater on the theory that a little heat was better than no heat at all. “You think that person you think you saw . . .”

  “Did see . . .”

  “. . . Is the person who put the tracker on the van?”

  “And the note. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I do.” Bernie tapped her fingernails on Mathilda’s steering wheel. The sound echoed through the van.

  “Why would he or she still be here?” Libby asked her sister. “Why would they leave a note for us and then stick around and watch us read it? Especially with the tracker on the van. Why would they do that when they’d know where we were going?”

  “They might get a kick out of watching our reactions,” Bernie told Libby. “You know, the way we like watching someone eat what we bake. For example, Lizzy O’s smile of satisfaction every time she eats one of our chocolate croissants definitely makes my day. Maybe whoever is doing this enjoyed seeing our reaction when we read the note he or she left.”

  “The two things aren’t the same!” Libby protested.

  “Actually, they kinda are.”

  “How?” Libby demanded. “Explain it to me.”

  “Nevermind,” Bernie told Libby. It wasn’t worth going into. Then Bernie had another thought. “Or maybe we came out sooner than the person expected and he or she didn’t want to leave and attract our attention.”

  Libby gestured to the rows of silent, white-shrouded vehicles, vehicles that were acquiring more snow cover by the minute. “If they are watching us, they’re watching us from an apartment window, because they’re not here,” Libby remarked.

  “No. If they’re anywhere, they’re hiding in the back of the building,” Bernie said. “That’s the only place they could be.”

  “Come on, Bernie,” Libby said. Her sister was getting a glint in her eye she didn’t like. Libby had a pretty good idea where this conversation was going. “My pants are wet, your pants are wet, my hands are freezing and so are yours, and we have to get up at five tomorrow morning. Let’s just give it up, go home, and go to bed.”

  Bernie turned to her sister. “Don’t you want to find out who’s responsible for this?” she asked.

  Libby nodded. “Of course I do.” What else could she say? “But just not right now.”

  “This will just take five minutes,” Bernie said.

  “Nothing ever takes five minutes.“

  “This time I promise that it will. Just humor me. After all, I humored you.”

  “And I was right!” Libby couldn’t help herself from exclaiming.

  “Which is why we’re going to do this. You know the expression hoisted on your own petard.”

  “Mom used to say that. What is a petard anyway?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” Bernie admitted.

  Chapter 30

  Libby fastened her seat belt and watched the snow fall, while she tried to ignore the cold seeping up her legs and the snow melting in her boots. The wind had picked up, driving the snow horizontally. The storm was turning into a full-fledged blizzard. She leaned over and turned on the radio, twisting the dial as she hunted for a news station that wasn’t staticky. A moment later, she found one. “There,” she said after she’d listened to the announcer. “They’ve declared a snow emergency. We should go home. We have to be off the roads.”

  “And we will be. This will just take a minute,” Bernie reassured her sister. “I just need to do this.”

  “No. You want to do this. There’s a difference,” Libby muttered as her sister followed the road that curved around the building complex. Or, rather, Bernie followed what she thought was the road, which by this time was really nothing more than an outline banked by more snow on either side.

  The road was narrow, made narrower by the three Dumpsters sitting against the side of the building.

  “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Libby told Bernie as Bernie slowed down to go around the next turn. “What happens if we get stuck?”

  “Always the optimist,” Bernie told Libb
y. “We’re not going to get stuck.”

  “But if we do?” Libby insisted.

  “We’ll call AAA.”

  “They’ll take hours to get here on a night like this. If they can get here at all. We might end up sleeping in the van.”

  Bernie took a deep breath and let it out. “I promise you we’re not going to get stuck,” she was saying when a black SUV came roaring around the turn from the opposite direction, heading straight for Mathilda. Bernie slammed on her brakes. The SUV did the same. “What the hell?” Bernie cried as she watched the SUV reverse course with a roar of its engine and start backing up.

  “They must have thought we left,” Libby observed. “You were right. They were hanging out in the back.”

  “Nice to know I’m not seeing things,” Bernie said as she put her foot down on the gas.

  “What are you doing?” Libby screeched.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Bernie answered, her attention totally focused on the road.

  “Trying to kill us?”

  “Ha-ha, Libby. This is the guy who left the note, the guy who put the tracker on Mathilda, and I’m damn well going to find out who he . . .”

  “. . . or she . . .”

  “. . . is and why he or she wrote that note if it’s the last thing that I do.”

  “Which it very well might be,” Libby said, the words coming out between clenched teeth as she rechecked her seat belt to make sure it was securely fastened. “But what about me?”

  “Hold on,” Bernie told Libby as she flew around the corner.

  Libby reached for the grab bar and white knuckled it as Mathilda skidded sideways. The van was heading for a large oak tree on the right. Libby closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the crash coming. A moment later, she opened them again and let out a sigh of relief when she realized that nothing had happened, that Bernie had managed to wrestle the van back onto the road.

  “Oh ye of little faith,” Bernie said, nodding to the tree they’d just missed hitting. “We had a foot to go.”

  “Looks like six inches to me,” Libby observed.

  “We weren’t that close,” Bernie protested.