Death Comes to Suburbia (Book 2 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

The Jeep’s windows weren’t entirely defogged, but I backed down the driveway in a hurry to get home and report to Tommy. Oddly, someone in a green Mazda pulled out from two houses down just as I did. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but instead of heading for the housing-development exit, I turned right at the next block just to make sure the car wasn’t following me. It turned, too.

  “Mommy? When Karen’s ten, how old will I be?”

  “Eight.” It was possible the car behind me was simply visiting a friend who lived down this street. I took my second right.

  “Why will I just be eight?”

  The green Mazda turned as well. I took a left and another right, zigzagging through Northern Knolls.

  “Why, Mommy?”

  The car was still behind me. I silently strung a slew of swear words together. We were being followed. “Why, Mommy?” Nathan asked again.

  “Um…” Age. He’d asked about his and Karen’s ages. “You’ll always be two years younger than she is.”

  The green Mazda had sped up a little to keep pace. The driver was a black man.

  “That’s not fair! I don’t want to be younger!”

  Oh my God! I’m being followed! My child’s in the backseat! Drive safely and don’t panic!

  Nathan was in tears now and kicking my seat.

  My pulse raced. I desperately needed Nathan to be quiet. “Stop crying! You’ll appreciate being younger when you’re older!”

  My answer gave him pause, but then he cried, “You like Karen best! That’s why you made her get born first!”

  “Not now, Nathan! Mommy needs to concentrate on her driving.” I reached into my purse. I couldn’t find my cellphone.

  “How come you keep looking in the mirror?”

  “Because…because there’s something stuck between my teeth.”

  Please. Dear God. I scanned for people out in their front yards. If I could find anyone outside, I could pull into their driveway and ask them to call the police. No one was in sight. Two p.m. on a rainy Thursday afternoon. They were probably all at work or watching talk shows on TV.

  “Are you lost again, Mommy?”

  “Yes,” I snapped back, then realized that was the truth.

  “I think we go this way,” Nathan pointed at an intersection.

  I followed his instructions. He was right. We were back on the main drag that would take us out of Northern Knolls. The car behind me sped closer still. I sped up as well. This time the Mazda had gotten near enough for me to recognize the driver. It was Chase Groves.

  He beeped his horn at me and waved. I waved back, rationalizing that if I behaved normally, he wouldn’t realize I suspected him of murdering Preston. My taking circuitous routes through housing developments in the process of being lost was normal behavior for me, sad to say.

  We neared the exit of Northern Knolls. The light was red. “We turn left after this light, don’t we?”

  “Yes,” Nathan answered.

  I’d already known this, but letting him feel he was helping me find my way home had proven to be a good distraction for him. The last thing I wanted to do now, though, was lead Chase to my house. I would drive straight past it, to the police station a mile beyond our home.

  Chase stopped behind my Jeep for the light and gestured for me to pull over. Oh, right. Like I’m really going to risk that!

  Then again, my son was in the car. I couldn’t take any chances of Chase trying to run me off the slick roads. Instead, I could try to gain some distance on him by getting him to leave his car, then I’d speed away. I cranked down my window, gave the “okay” sign, and gestured at the wide shoulder up ahead.

  I pulled over, holding my breath. Please don’t let him shoot at me! He stopped right behind me and got out of his sporty-looking Mazda into the drizzling rain. He was wearing a bulky leather jacket. His right hand was in his jacket pocket. If that hand was holding a .22, I was doomed. I called out the window, “Stop following me, Chase! My son is in the car, and you’re scaring me!”

  He froze, but then took another couple of steps, his hand still in his pocket. “Wait, Molly. I just want to tell you something.”

  I gunned my engine and sped away, pulling in between two cars. I breathed a sigh of relief and watched him through my rearview mirror. He held both palms up in a gesture of helplessness, then pivoted and headed back to his car.

  “Who was that, Mommy?” Nathan asked nervously. “My dentist. I probably have a cavity he wanted to tell me about.”

  “Maybe he wants to help you with that thing stuck between your teeth.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably it.” We drove up a steep hill. I stared into the mirror. To my horror, Chase had gotten back into his car and was now speeding to catch up to us. Defying the rain and the steep hill, he crossed the double yellow line and passed two cars. Oh, shit!

  Recollections haunted me of a horrifying incident that took place in Denver. A woman who’d temporarily rescued a kidnap victim drove to a police station, only to be shot herself, and the victim recaptured in the police parking lot.

  “Um, that reminds me. We’re going to pay a visit to my friend Sergeant Tommy and ask him about his dentist.”

  Though I’d tried my best, my voice sounded tense and unnatural.

  Nathan craned his neck and peered out the back window. “The dentist is waving at us.”

  “Sit back down!” I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. “He’s just being friendly.”

  Alarmed by my mood, Nathan said nothing as we zoomed past the turnoff for our house. The police station was straight up ahead. Chase’s car was now just three cars back from mine. I got into the left-turn lane for the station.

  A steady stream of traffic blocked my way. Chase pulled up directly behind me. He clasped his hands together in mock prayer, then gestured at me to pull over to the right of the road.

  There was a small gap between cars, and I gunned it. We squeaked through, though the cars hit their brakes and honked.

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?” Nathan asked.

  “I think my dentist’s mad at me. We’re going to talk to Sergeant Tommy about it.” I shed my seat belt and opened Nathan’s. “I’m carrying you in so we can go really fast.”

  I ignored Nathan’s protests and pulled him between the bucket seats and into my lap-no easy matter, but I wanted to shield him with my body. I watched the street, my heart pounding. Chase was still in the turn lane.

  I leaned on my horn. A black, elderly officer came out. I opened my door and clutched Nathan against my body and ran toward him.

  I whirled around and pointed with my chin just as Chase pulled a U-turn. “See that green Mazda?” I cried to the officer. “It’s been following me for the last five miles. Driver’s name is Chase Groves.”

  “Okay, ma’am. I’ll pull him over and see what’s going on.”

  Tommy, who must have heard my honking, met us in the lobby, where I finally felt it was safe to lower Nathan to his feet. I told Tommy I needed to talk to him privately for a couple of minutes. He said he’d get someone to keep an eye on Nathan for me. He located a female officer, who pulled out a game of Trouble from a cabinet and sat with Nathan outside Tommy’s office.

  Tommy listened patiently as I told him I was being chased by Chase Groves and how Chase had suddenly discovered Preston was suing him. When I finished relating my theory that Chase hadn’t returned to Cleveland but had stayed in town to kill Preston, Tommy shook his head.

  “Couple days ago,” Tommy said, “Dr. Groves told me all about that lawsuit. Also ‘bout how he’d flown in, confronted Preston, then flew back out the next Friday. So I called his sister in Cleveland. She verified the whole story.”

  “And you’re just going to take his sister’s word for it?”

  “Hers and the airline’s. He was on a flight from Cleveland to Albany on a Monday, a week before Preston died. He was also on the following day’s flight back to Cleveland, just like he said. And he was on his scheduled return flight from Clevelan
d a week later…the day after Preston died.”

  I hesitated, but only for an instant. “So? That doesn’t tell us anything.”

  “Us?” Tommy growled.

  “Who’s to say he didn’t take another round trip in between those flights? He flies into town that weekend, goes into a bar looking for someone to make the deliveries that made STOP look guilty. He hires Dayton, maybe follows him so he knows the boxes were delivered, then kills Preston and returns to Cleveland so he can be on his Tuesday flight home.”

  “Checked that already,” Tommy said, mangling a paper clip absentmindedly as he spoke. “Checked the passenger lists for all the round-trip flights between Cleveland ‘n’ here that week. Chase Groves wasn’t on any of them.”

  “So? He used an alias! You think if he went through this much trouble to concoct this elaborate scheme of dog-poop deliveries that he’d just get tickets under his own name?”

  “He’d have to have paid cash for his tickets,” Tommy argued as his mangled paper dip broke. “Credit cards or personal checks would have listed his name. There were no passengers, none, from Friday through Sunday who paid cash in Cleveland for a flight to Albany.”

  “Maybe one of his relatives paid for the flight. Or he drove. Or went by train.”

  Tommy rested his elbows on his desk and, glared into my eyes. “Molly, you are the most stubborn person I’ve met in my life. Listen to me. Chase Groves did not kill Preston Saunders. He was in Cleveland.”

  “How can you be so sure? He just followed me halfway across town! Why would he do that unless he knew I was going straight to the police?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Answer me this, Molly. Half of the town knew about his beef with Preston. So what was he going to gain by preventing you, from talking to us, huh?”

  My cheeks grew warm. That was a good question, and we both knew it. “Maybe he thought Emma told me more than she did. Maybe he confessed to her.”

  Tommy sank his face onto his hands in frustration.

  “Well?” I said, my voice shooting up with my own frustration that more than matched his. “That’s plausible. Why else would he chase after me like that?”

  He straightened. “I don’t know. Possibly if you’d given him a chance to tell you, you’d have found out.”

  I stood up and grabbed the doorknob to leave. “Or possibly, if I hadn’t driven off like I did, I would be dead by now.”

  As I opened the door, Tommy said, “Just one more thing you may want to know, Molly.”

  I turned and waited. Tommy was now leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “That sister of his who says Chase was with her on Monday? Don’t be too quick to accuse her of lying.”

  Tommy waited for me to take the bait. While part of me knew better, the defiant part of me couldn’t resist. “Now’s when you tell me she wouldn’t lie right? She’s a judge or policewoman or someone you’re sure wouldn’t lie, even to save her own brother.”

  “She’s a nun.”

  I winced. I couldn’t help it. Tommy gave me such a smarter-than-thou smile, I retorted, “Oh, right. Like nuns don’t ever lie? It could happen.”

  I marched up to Nathan, who was in the process of winning his third straight game—bless her—from the policewoman. After waiting for the last couple of rolls of the die and Nathan’s victory, we left. The patrolman who’d, upon my urging, raced after Chase was now chatting with the woman behind the desk in the lobby. They stopped talking when I passed, and I had the distinct impression they’d been talking about me.

  Okay. So maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe Chase wasn’t guilty. But then why follow me all over the place and pull me over? Were my brake lights out?

  Just in case, the moment we got home I had Nathan help me check my brake and signal lights. They were fine. Jim still wasn’t home from his “office emergency,” but Karen’s bus would arrive in a few minutes. In the relative quiet, the question of why Chase followed me ran through my brain. Asking him myself was too embarrassing even to consider.

  “Hello, Chase? Sorry I called the police on you. Did you have something important on your mind?” Instead, I decided to call Emma and thank her for lunch, and perhaps see if I could glean some inkling about why her husband may have followed me.

  I dialed Emma and was shocked when a deep voice answered that sounded a lot like Chase. My first instinct was to hang up, but I thought twice and said in a squeaky voice, “May I speak to Emma, please?”

  When she got on the line moments later, I said, “Hi, Emma? It’s Molly. I just wanted to thank you for lunch. I had a nice time.”

  “Oh, you did, did you?” There was such unmistakable, seething anger in her voice that my palms began to perspire.

  “Yes. Really. Thank you. I guess Chase is there, so he probably told you about his trying to talk to me earlier, right?”

  “Yes, indeed. He told me. About that. About how you sent a police officer to arrest him. An African-American follows you in his car, and you leap to the conclusion that ‘the black guy did it.’”

  “It isn’t that, Emma. I didn’t ask the officer to arrest him, just to find out why he’d been following me. A mutual acquaintance of ours was recently murdered. Given the circumstances, any woman would panic being followed by a man, regardless of his race. I had no way of knowing why Chase was following me, so I—”

  “He wanted to invite you to my birthday party tonight, Molly. He had only thought to invite you after you mentioned our lunch at your dental appointment. He spotted your car in the driveway, and decided at the last minute to see if you could come.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly. I nodded at my daughter, Karen, who’d just burst through the door and was trying to tell me how cold and wet she was.

  “And, by the way,” Emma continued, “despite the fact that you humiliated him, he wants to buy your cartoons. Call him at his office.”

  She hung up.

  I set the phone down gently. Karen studied my face and asked, “Who was that on the phone, Mom? What’s wrong?”

  Bewildered and horridly embarrassed, I hung my head. “Nothing,” I said quietly. “I just made a sale.”

  Chapter 18

  We Must Look at zee Evidence

  After hanging up with Emma, I sat in quiet contemplation. Chase Groves might have had a printed invitation for me, which he’d been keeping safe from the elements in his pocket. That could marginally explain why he’d kept his hand in his pocket and why he wanted to see me in person rather than simply call me at home. And then perhaps he’d followed me to explain or apologize, thinking I must have needed help because I was so agitated.

  Still, Chase Groves had made some fundamental mistakes in following me. As I’d tried to explain to Emma, any woman traveling with her young child in the car would feel threatened when followed by some man she’d just met. Especially when that man was on the woman’s short list of possible murder suspects.

  The phone rang. The moment I answered, Jim said, “Are you all right?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Where were you?” His voice was rife with worry. “I thought you were going to be home. I called several times and nobody answered. You didn’t answer your cellphone, either.”

  “I was out making a fool of myself during a luncheon date with a former potential friend. But I’m home now. How are things going at work?”

  “Never mind that.” He sighed. “I can’t take this. When you didn’t answer, I thought…are you planning on going out again?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Things are…It’s a mess here. The system crashed and there’s…I can’t come home right now, but I can’t concentrate.”

  Jim was not easily rattled. Now suddenly he couldn’t complete his sentences. I’d never heard him sound this scared. “I’m planning to stay home the rest of the day.”

  “Good. Just…call me if you have to run out for any reason. Okay? So I’ll know where you are? And check your cellphone battery.”

  I agreed,
empathizing. On several memorable occasions my imagination had run rampant with fear that Jim had gotten into a traffic accident when we’d merely miscommunicated.

  Interfering with my thoughts was Karen and Nathan’s spirited debate about which one of them was ignoring the other. The correct and obvious answer being “neither,” this was a particularly lame-brained argument to have to listen to. They compounded my aggravation by drifting into whichever room I entered. They finally quieted when I put on my unplugged headphones, which I’ve conned the children into thinking blocks all noise.

  Despite my desire to direct my brain waves elsewhere, my mind went right back to my suspicions about the murder. I’d already crossed off Hank Mueller for being too obvious, but what about his wife? Could Sabrina have wanted to frame her own husband for murder? No. Having a convicted murderer as a spouse would drop her too far in social standings. That left Richard Worthington. But if he had a motive, I hadn’t discovered it yet.

  It felt as though I had overlooked some major, obvious clue in all of this. If only I could discover that clue, I could stay “safe at home” as Jim wanted, yet solve this thing, as I so desperately wanted.

  To help me sort out my thoughts, I sat down in the living room and doodled a drawing of Hercule Poirot in a room with a toppled, empty birdcage. There are claw marks on the tug and feathers around the room. Around him sit a circle of elderly people, plus one very guilty looking cat. Hercule is saying, “And now, mon ami, we must use zee little gray cells. We must look at zee evidence.”

  The doorbell rang. Fortunately, the children were out of the room so they didn’t notice that I, headphones and all, had heard it ring. Karen was in her room; Nathan, wearing his red Bart Simpson raincoat, was on the back deck, hammering tacks into a short two-by-four he’d found.

  I opened the door. Stephanie! She was supposed to be in the process of being arrested. Now what? Did she want me to hide her?

  She mustered a smile. “I am so sick of being cooped up in that house. Estelle has Mikey. I know I should probably have called first, but I was so anxious to get out I just took off. May I come in?”