She stopped in the dark to look out the living room window for the promised rain.
“Oh my God,” she said out loud when she saw a dark figure standing on the street across from her apartment building, watching.
She jumped behind the curtain, dropping her can of soda in her panic. She sunk to the floor, her heart pounding.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
She was scared -- lord, she was scared. She could hear her blood pounding in her ears and she suddenly had to pee … bad. The events of the past week or two had worn her nerves down to bare, screaming nubs.
She stomped on the rising panic and took a deep breath before she lost it. First: Make sure she was safe in the apartment. She crawled across the floor to the door, reaching up to jiggle the knob, reassuring herself that it was locked. “Yesssssss,” she thought.
She crawled back across the floor to the window. It seemed very important to keep it a secret from the man … Lester Lomax? … that she’d seen him. She couldn’t risk turning on a light.
She forced herself to stand and peek out the window again. He was still there: A figure standing at the edge of the glow from a street light. He must have been dressed in all black, or at least in dark colors. The white of a shirt or tennis shoes would’ve jumped out of the gloom.
He didn’t move, didn’t lower his head or scratch his balls, nothing. Was he really looking up here? She couldn’t tell, but his dark presence scared her almost beyond reason.
She slid back down to the floor again. She felt paralyzed with fear. Where was her purse with the all-important cell phone? She came in and flung it. Where, though?
She tried to remember. She’d been really tired when she unlocked the door after spending the day at the kennel. She’d actually leaned up against the jamb for a second or two.
“Oh, no!” she thought. “I didn’t, I couldn’t have left my purse outside the door.”
She’d have to open the door. Not only might her cell phone be in her purse, but tucked inside a side compartment was an extra key to the apartment.
She crawled across the floor to the door again. She slowly, slowly, unclicked the latch and raised herself high enough to take the chain off. What if there was someone out there waiting for her? Fast, she had to be fast.
“Breathe,” she thought. She steeled herself and opened the door a crack, ready to dive out and grab the purse. The shock of not seeing it there was almost as great as seeing the man on the street.
She slammed the door, locking it as fast as she could. Where was it? Had someone taken it? It was an older building, there were no young partiers, mostly older people, all of them friendly. They’d be more likely to ring her doorbell and hand it back to her than steal it.
Maybe he’d already been there and taken the purse with her key in it. Maybe he was waiting until he was sure everyone was asleep before he came back up again and opened the door and... her imagination ran wild, fueled by scenes from true crime TV programs. “Please God, get me out of this and I swear I’ll never watch a true crime show again,” she thought.
She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. Not yet.
Bertie crawled back to the window again, and huddled against the wall, hugging her knees to her chin. Think, think!
She decided to check all the places the purse usually landed, and started crawling toward the bookcase. It sometimes slid under there. As she turned, she brushed up against the curtains, making them swing back and forth. They moved against each other, making a sound like a hissing snake.
She froze again. Anyone looking at the window would’ve seen the curtains move. She stood up beside the window, and peeked out again.
He was gone! Where did he go? Was he creeping up the steps to her apartment? She angled her neck to see more of the street. There he was, slowly walking to the south where there was a public parking lot. Once more, she slid to the floor. She was getting friction burns on her back.
Bertie laid down on the floor, too weak from relief to move. She stayed there until the fear-sweat on her body started to chill her. She stood and looked out the window. Far down the street, she could see headlights, then a car slowly moved out of the parking lot onto the street and away from her. She couldn’t make out what it looked like except that it was smallish.
Still without turning on the living room lights, she went to the kitchen and switched on the dim light over the stove. The kitchen was in the back of the apartment. It was almost impossible to see its light from the front living room.
Bertie popped open another soda, sat down at the kitchen table, and held the cold can against her forehead. For the first time she understood the import of Madison’s words. This was about a murder. A man had been killed and the person who did it was still out there. Was it the man on the street?
She’d assumed it was Lester Lomax, but surely nothing she’d said or done at the bar would lead to this. Did the man not read? She hadn’t written any stories about her conversation with Gardener the gardener. Maybe he only read about pre-school fashion shows. Ha! Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head.
And the man looked too tall to be Lomax. But if it wasn’t him, who was it?
She was dabbling on the edges of the Bellingham murder, she didn’t actually know anything. Or did she? In books, the heroine knows something but doesn’t realize it.
What did she know?
She knew that Gardener the gardener was having an affair with Delia Bellingham. It wasn’t general knowledge, but Shawn knew and so did the police, so it wasn’t likely that someone would come after her. And the reverse held true: No one knew that she knew except Shawn.
But who knew that the old man had put Delia up to it? Ahhh, now there was a secret. Bertie knew, Shawn knew, and the person who told Shawn knew, whoever that was. And, of course, Gardener and Delia knew.
What about Delia Bellingham? Bertie realized she’d never seen or heard anything about her since she’d made the flying tackle that brought down R2 and Gardener.
If R1 had threatened to reveal the affair, even though he’d put her up to it, Delia had a motive to kill him. What husband would believe his attractive young wife was bumpin’ uglies with the gardener because his own father asked her to? Especially if said husband was a little teapot short and stout.
Could it have been a woman on the street outside her apartment? Bertie had immediately assumed it was a man, but it could’ve been Delia Bellingham.
It could just as easily have been R2. Her meeting with him, short as it had been, hadn’t been pleasant. He was a man under a lot of stress and he handled it badly.
And she did know something … she saw hair fall out of the garbage bag he was toting into the Bellingham Building. Maybe everyone at Bellingham knew about it, but she doubted it, not the way he’d been skulking about. The idea of scalping wouldn’t leave her mind. Maybe R2 was a serial killer and kept his victims’ scalps as a souvenir.
Bertie snorted. “Gimme a break.”
Gardener the gardener had the most clear-cut motive of anyone involved in this sorry mess. His life was pretty much hell right now, with the police investigating him as the prime suspect, people looking at him suspiciously. Surely he wasn’t still living at the estate and tending to the garden.
Physically, he fit the man outside her apartment. Unless it was a woman in a bulky coat. Sigh.
Gigi Bellingham was tall. But of all the players, she seemed the least likely of all to murder her husband.
She was living the good life. She had money, she had social status, and a husband who seemed more interested in fondling stray women than sex with her. Bertie had a feeling that the tussle of a good sexual wrestling match was beyond Gigi. So what if the old man was a serial fondler? The world was filled with women who looked the other way for a posh lifestyle and unlimited money.
The other Bellingham, Bella, seemed too nutso to actually formulate a coherent plan to murder someone. She was creepy, but she seemed content in her filthy lair, cooking her vile little concoctions and drea
ming up off-the-edge products for the Bellingham line.
She might even be agoraphobic. Her father and now her brother had food delivered to her apartment so how often did she leave?
Bertie’s eyes were starting to close and her feet were freezing. It had been a long, difficult day. She was going back to bed.
First, she raided her recycle bin for all the empty soda cans, and lined them up on the window sill and in front of the living room door. Maybe tomorrow she’d get some marbles, too. “Bertie, note to self: Rent ‘Home Alone’ again.”
She put a butcher knife under the extra pillow, within easy range. Now, as long as she didn’t roll over in her sleep and stab herself in the eye, she was safe.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bertie did stab herself, but not in the eye. She stepped on the little hand of the demolished alarm clock, which had wedged upright in the weave of the carpet. Trailing blood into the bathroom, she patched herself up and briefly contemplated a trip to the emergency room for a tetanus shot.
“Lockjaw or coffee? Lockjaw or coffee?” she weighed.
Coffee. She sat at the kitchen table clutching a mug in both hands while she sipped. Life-giving nectar of the gods. Maybe Bella could create a caffeinated cream you could apply directly to your skin or a coffee air freshener. There had to be a faster way to get coffee into your system than waiting for a pot to brew. What did that take? 10 minutes? That could be the difference between life and death first thing in the morning.
Bertie drained her cup, filled it again and leaned over it to inhale the fumes. The sleep fog was clearing from her head and she was reconsidering what had happened last night in the relative sanity of daylight.
There had been a man (woman?) on the street opposite her apartment. And he (she?) did seem to be staring at her window.
But there was a bar around the corner from her building and drunks sometimes forgot where they’d parked their car. They often stood there, trying to figure out where and why they were. Once, she’d seen a guy whip it out and pee on the sidewalk (he should’ve kept it in—it was nothing to brag about). Maybe he’d been peeing while she looking for her purse and then gone on his way.
Whatever, she felt better this morning and maybe, might be, willing to concede that she’d overreacted.
Two mugs of coffee and a snootful of caffeine fumes and she was ready to call Kate. She felt guilty -- she should have checked in sooner. It was Sunday, but taking care of dogs was a seven day a week job so Bertie knew she’d be there.
Dave the Dentist answered.
“Hey, Dave, how’s it going this morning? How’s Katie?”
“Hey, Bertie. She’s much better. After Katie called me in Tucson, I jumped the first plane I could get, but I didn’t get in till late last night. Thanks for staying with her. Weird stuff, huh?”
“Yep. Have the police come up with anything?”
“Nah. I doubt if they’re taking it very seriously. This is small time—they’re not going to try very hard to find the big, bad kennel burglar.”
“You’re probably right,” Bertie conceded. “Our tax dollars at work and all that. Is Katie around?”
“She’s out back, lemme give her a yell”“
Dave was such a nice guy. Too conservative for her taste, but a real sweetie. And Katie got free dental care—her teeth were beautiful. You couldn’t ask for more than that in a guy.
Dogs barking joyously was the background music while Bertie waited for Katie to pick up the phone.
“Bertie?”
“Yeah, Katie, it’s me. How are you doing this morning?”
“Lots better than yesterday. Thanks so much for helping me. If you hadn’t been here, I’d have lost it.”
“I would’ve never left you alone,” Bertie said. “Dave said he doesn’t think the police are going to do much.”
“I don’t think so either. They didn’t even talk to anyone in the neighborhood. I stopped in and talked to some of the store owners this morning and they didn’t know I’d been robbed. But they all promised to watch for anyone suspicious. That’s about all I can do, too.”
Bertie gave Katie a downplayed overview of her early morning adventures.
“If you’re not worried about it, then I guess it’s okay, but why don’t you give Madison a call and let him know. It can’t hurt.”
“Maybe,” but Bertie knew she wouldn’t.
Bertie did her laundry and was on her hands and knees trying to get the blood out of her bedroom carpet when she realized she’d never put cleaning before... well, anything else. She was trying to avoid leaving the safety of the double-locked apartment.
“God,” she thought, “I can’t let my life come to this—cleaning.”
She decided to walk to the small mom and pop grocery store on the next block. It was raining -a soft, gentle rain that created a mist in odd corners.
Bertie loved weather. Southern California’s constant sunshine was boring and after awhile, depressing. Give her a good thunderstorm with lightning and thunder and thrashing trees—now that was living.
She put on her hooded school-bus yellow raincoat and walked down the street, avoiding looking at the place where the man (woman?) had stood last night.
The little store was crammed with shelves, leaving only narrow aisles for navigation. Herbs and ginger and curry perfumed the air and every little nook held a surprise. She had a pleasant chat with Mr. Yung, the store owner, who was trying to convince her to cook ethnic dishes with ingredients she’d never heard of, and then she started back up the street to her apartment.
The weather had worsened while she’d purchased her Moon Pies and Earl Grey tea, the sky dark with black and blue clouds that were dropping twilight into the day before its time. The gentle rain was falling harder and Bertie put her hood up and splashed through the gathering puddles.
As she hurried, she heard footsteps, faster than hers, coming down the street behind her. She couldn’t see around the hood that blocked her vision; it was like wearing blinders. In a quick glance, she saw only a large figure, dressed in black, bearing down on her.
She walked faster. So did the dark figure.
The fear from the night before overtook her—blind, unreasoning panic. She broke into a run, the hood falling from her head in the rush of wind. The sound of her own steps covered those of the person behind her.
How close was he? (she?). She started sweating in her rubbery raincoat.
After a block and a half, Bertie had a stitch that was tilting her body to the left as she clutched her side. Where was everyone? Not even a car glided through the wet streets.
She could see her apartment building now. She risked another glance, shock sending an electric current of fear through her body.
The dark figure was right behind her. Whoever it was had started running, too.
Fear-fueled adrenaline pushed her faster until the door was in front of her. She pulled the key from her pocket, fumbling to get it open. Her fingers felt like logs, but the lock finally clicked open and she threw herself in the building. Sweat almost blinded her as she looked out the window to see who was chasing her.
A man, dressed in black sweat pants, sweatshirt and cap jogged past, his running shoes making slap slap slap noises on the wet pavement. She saw his face—it was the guy who ran past her apartment every day—a fitness fanatic who never missed a day.
She crumpled to the floor, bursting into tears as she fell.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
She called Madison.
“Hey, I was just thinking of you,” he said. “I was going to invite you to dinner, but I’m clear ’cross town and I’m starving. How about a drink later?”
“Yeah, that’s great, thanks,” Bertie said, struggling to sound normal.
“There’s an adult bar somewhere around where you live. I think I can still find it. Is that OK with you?”
“An adult bar? You mean strippers?” Bertie asked dubiously.
He laughed. “No. It’s a bar for adul
ts—no yuppies, puppies or guppies. No bare midriffs, no crack pants and Janice Joplin on the jukebox... an adult bar.”
Bertie was relieved; she wasn’t up to explaining on the phone. “Could you please pick me up? You remember where I live, right?”
“Sure. I’ll call you right before I get there,” he said.
She was waiting in the lobby, just inside the front door when he pulled up in a black Mercedes. He got out and opened the door for her.
“I’m impressed. All this on a cop’s salary? Should the paper be investigating kickbacks?” she said, settling into a leather seat.
“My one indulgence. When you’re in department cars all days, it’s good to drive something that doesn’t shake your bones loose. I got to keep it in the divorce.”
He was wearing a leather jacket with jeans and a sweater. The smell of leather was strong in the car. Madison was cheerful; obviously he’d left his work behind for the day. He talked about the still-drizzling rain, a novelty to a California boy like him.
Bertie had never been to Madison’s adult bar, even though it was fairly close. It was dark with high-walled booths that created little islands of privacy. Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street,” with its haunting sax, was playing.
Madison ordered Balvenie scotch, a grown-up’s drink, and Bertie ordered a chardonnay. They started talking before the drinks arrived—small talk made people who are attracted to each other when they’re getting acquainted.
They sipped rather than gulped and the drinks lasted. He told her a story about his days in the police academy that involved a lieutenant and a sausage grinder and she laughed out loud.
He ordered another Scotch and said, “I’ve been talking almost the whole time … a first for me, I might add. Tell me something, Bertie Mallowan, something that I don’t know about you.”
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