by Sara Rosett
He nodded and said, “But it was only in the parking lot for a few hours. Jeff dropped me off at the repair shop where I got my car. Then I picked up the leaf blower and went back to the base. I didn’t get back until almost one-thirty and left at four-thirty. Someone had to work fast to get this in my car.”
“About the leaf blower…” I said in a leading tone, and Mitch looked uncomfortable.
“I knew you weren’t going to buy it. I don’t know why I even bothered,” he said a bit ruefully. “I really did take it to Jeff,” he assured me.
“Why do I think there’s more going on here than Jeff’s yard work?”
Mitch sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. His haircut was so short—military regulation—that it stood on end and gave him an even more frazzled appearance. “There is more to it. Jeff’s taking it to a neighbor on base, an electrician. I wanted him to check it out and see if someone tampered with it.”
The overhead light attached to the garage door automatically switched off, throwing a deeper shadow over Mitch’s face. Despite the low light, I could still see the troubled expression in his dark eyes. “So that’s why you changed the lock on the storage shed.” Mitch thought someone broke into the storage shed and fixed the leaf blower so that it would shock him.
“Yeah. A lot of good that did.”
“It was a bit like closing the barn door after the horse got out,” I agreed, but added, “It was a good call, though. You couldn’t have known for sure what was happening.”
“I didn’t. I thought it was odd. There are so many safety features on lawn and garden equipment now, so I thought it was unusual, but I wasn’t sure it meant anything. It could have been a malfunction. I searched for recalls online, but there weren’t any, so I figured it was a fluke.”
I swiveled fully toward him. “But then, the accident with your car—it wasn’t an accident?”
He shrugged. “Again, I can’t say one hundred percent that, yes, someone tried to take out my tire. It could have been a natural failure of the tire, a blowout.”
“I know you said you’d need new tires soon, but would it cause something like that?” I asked, thinking of the deflated tire and the ragged trail of bent grass that I’d seen when I picked up Mitch after the accident. Tire and vehicle maintenance were definitely Mitch’s department and I only reluctantly took over those things when he deployed.
He rubbed his hand over his rumpled hair again and said, “It shouldn’t have. Those tires should have been fine for another ten or fifteen thousand miles, but if the pressure was low, then that could cause the tire to flex more and overheat. If there was a weakness in the tire itself, that could have been enough…”
“You think someone actually let the air out of one of your tires so it would be more likely to fail?”
“I don’t know,” Mitch snapped, then stopped. “Sorry. I’m frustrated. Do you see the pattern?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “It’s escalating. First, the leaf blower, a small incident. It might or might not have been rigged to shock you. But even if you got shocked, how bad could that be?”
“Bad,” Mitch said darkly. “Electricians work with one hand for a reason. Even low voltage can be dangerous.”
“Okay,” I said, somewhat shaky myself. “So, counting the leaf blower and the tire blowout, that’s two dangerous things that have happened to you in just a few days. Those things could have possibly been written off, but this,” I said, pointing to the remains of the plastic bottle. “There’s no question about this. Someone definitely wanted to hurt you. The explosion alone could have ruined your hearing, not to mention if it happened while you were driving…” my words trailed off because I didn’t want to think about the possibility of what Mitch’s reaction would have been to a thunderous explosion from the backseat.
To distract myself from those thoughts, I asked, “Where would you get dry ice around here?”
Mitch shrugged. “I’m not sure. Uncle Kenny got some for us from the ice cream store, but grocery stores sell it, too.”
“So, someone saw your car in the parking lot, got some dry ice, put it in a soda bottle, and placed that bottle in your car moments before you left to drive home?”
“That’s about it.” Resignation and frustration laced through his tone.
I suddenly realized we’d both handled the bottle. “Mitch, fingerprints,” I said.
He shrugged. “I doubt there will be any,” he said, but gently placed the bottle on the seat between us.
We sat in the half-light for a few seconds, then I said, “Who would do something like this to you?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was quiet, puzzled.
If someone had told me a few days ago that there was a person who didn’t like Mitch and was trying to hurt him, possibly even kill him, the concept would have been so absurd I would have laughed. “This whole situation is impossible. Everyone likes you,” I said, almost belligerently. With his easygoing personality and subtle humor, Mitch made friends easily, and his roll-with-the-punches attitude kept him from taking anything in the squadron too personally. My quibble with him was that he was too relaxed and sometimes let people run over him.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Mitch said, holding up the plastic bottle.
“Have you argued with anyone? Has anyone threatened you?” I persisted.
“No,” he said dismissively. “No one’s even yelled at me recently, except for Carrie Kohl.”
Chapter Ten
Mitch’s tone was flippant, but I wasn’t about to write off anything. “Carrie Kohl yelled at you? When was this?”
“A couple of weeks ago. I saw her at Barney’s, that sandwich shop right outside of the base. I was there having lunch with the guys and I remembered I’d found one of those notebook organizer things that belonged to Ryan in The Nest.”
The Nest was the bar in the squadron. Most of the time it was used as a break room, but on Friday afternoons it certainly took on more of a bar-type atmosphere. The name came from the hawk on the squadron’s emblem.
“It was in one of the cabinets under the bar. He probably set it down there one afternoon and forgot about it. I found it and tossed it in my car. I thought I’d drop it off at her house on my way home.”
“Why didn’t you bring it to the orderly room and let someone in there call her?”
Mitch shrugged. “I don’t know. She seemed to be having such a bad time. I thought it might be hard for her to come to the squadron. Memories, all that. Anyway, I forgot to drop it off that afternoon, but I saw her the next day at Barney’s, so I went out to the car, grabbed it, and gave it to her.”
“But she wasn’t happy to get it?”
“More like furious.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. Who wouldn’t want to get something that had belonged to a deceased loved one? Especially a notebook that would probably have Ryan’s notes and possibly even his thoughts. Some people used their daily planners as more of a diary. It could be a very valuable piece of Ryan’s life.
“Once she realized what it was, she said, ‘How dare you,’ and threw it back at me.” Mitch rubbed his chest. “Hard. I wasn’t expecting that. She tagged me pretty good.” His eyebrows scrunched together and he shrugged his shoulders. “I still don’t get it. She was shrieking and crying at the same time, so I couldn’t understand half of what she said. Something about how she was doing better and then I had to go and bring that thing to her.”
I imagined Mitch was baffled by that kind of display. He probably wanted to escape in the worst way. “What happened then?”
“I picked up the notebook and told her I was sorry, that I didn’t mean to upset her, that I thought she would have wanted it. There were napkins on the table and I gave some to her. By that time, she’d sat back down and was basically sobbing. There were several other women there with her. It must have been some kind of group, because they all had on red T-shirts. One of them was patting Carrie on the back and looking at me like
she wanted to personally punch me in the face. She took the planner and told me it was best that I leave. I got out of there fast.”
“I bet you did.” There’s nothing like a crying woman to send a man into full retreat mode. “Why didn’t you tell me about it? If I’d known she’d acted like that, I wouldn’t have been quite so shocked when I saw her letters to Colonel Pershall.”
“I think that was the day that the sprinkler broke again and we had the geyser in the backyard.”
“That did take over our life for a few days,” I agreed.
“What’s this about letters?” Mitch asked.
I ran my finger down the line of stitching on the seat of the car as I said, “Denise asked me to help her find some other suspects for the police. She feels like they’re concentrating so much on her that they’re not going to find the killer.”
When I met his gaze, Mitch stared at me with raised eyebrows.
“I know. I know—you’re not excited about this,” I said. “But what could I say?”
“No is always an option,” he said dryly.
“Mitch, her husband has been murdered and she’s the main suspect. I figured I could help her make a list of people the police could check on.”
“So who did she come up with?”
“Not many, I’m afraid. Henry Fleet, Colonel Barnes, and Carrie Kohl. And Carrie was the only one who seemed to actually have a real motive. Apparently Henry was upset about some class he didn’t get to go to…AQS in residence?”
“Yeah,” Mitch said, immediately recognizing the acronym for one of the advanced military education schools. “That can be a real career booster.”
“But it turns out he was out of town last Saturday anyway, so that only leaves Colonel Barnes and Carrie. Denise said that Colonel Barnes was jealous of Colonel Pershall.”
Mitch considered the idea, his head tilted slightly to one side. “I’d say it was more of a competition. A friendly one, I thought, but I could be wrong.” Mitch frowned. “Back to the letters…”
I told him about Carrie’s letters, then looked at the ruptured plastic bottle on the car seat, then back to Mitch. “Do you think Carrie would do something like this?”
Mitch didn’t answer right away. “I wouldn’t think so, but…”
“But I wouldn’t have thought she could write those letters, either.”
As Deputy Collins placed the ripped plastic bottle in an evidence bag, he said, “So, we got one, too.” He was a big, oversized man in his late thirties with a brown, squared crew cut, pockmarked face, and huge hands, but he handled the bottle and few plastic fragments delicately and spoke with the friendliness and courtesy of a true Southerner.
“Another one?” Mitch and I said, almost in unison.
The sheriff’s office hadn’t responded to our call right away. I was actually glad the deputy arrived about three hours after our call. At least the kids were in bed and I didn’t have to come up with an explanation for them about the official visit.
“Yeap, this is the fifth one today.”
“Really?” Mitch said, exchanging a glance with me.
Had we been wrong? Were all those things we were worried about coincidences? Our plan had been to tell the deputy about all the weird near misses Mitch had had during the last few days, but we did that silent-married-communication thing we could do sometimes. He shook his head slightly and I knew he wanted us to keep those details to ourselves. I gave him a half-nod to let him know I agreed. If there were multiple dry ice bombs, then perhaps this wasn’t a coordinated attack on Mitch. At least, that’s what I thought he was trying to silently convey to me. The silent-married-communication thing didn’t always work. In fact, sometimes we completely misread each other, but today I felt like we were on the same wavelength.
“Where were the other ones?” I asked.
“They weren’t all in our jurisdiction—we cover the county, but let’s see…it’s my understanding that two went off at Taylor in base housing. One exploded in the North Dawkins Wal-Mart parking lot. It was left in a buggy and parked in the return area, and another was left in the lobby of an office park out by the interstate.”
“Any sort of pattern?” Mitch asked as he waved away a gnat.
“No, sir, not that we can see right off, but I’ve got all your information and we’ll contact you if anything comes to light. Most likely, it was kids. I will be glad when school starts again.”
I shifted my shoulder blades to unstick them from the fabric of my shirt. “You think they were all pranks?”
“Can’t say at this point, ma’am, but school does start next week and there’s always some juvenile mischief during the last days of summer. We’ll coordinate with Taylor’s security police and the North Dawkins Police Department.” His face was ruddy from the heat and I knew he was ready to leave, but I asked, “Aren’t you going to fingerprint the car?”
He smiled ruefully. “We’re a small force, ma’am, and don’t have the manpower or the money to fingerprint everything. Now, if this had been a carjacking or a robbery, well, that would be different.”
“I see.”
As the deputy drove away, dusk was deepening, but it hadn’t cooled off yet. I pushed my bangs off my forehead as I said, “He might have taken fingerprints if we’d told him about the leaf blower and the tire blowout.”
“I don’t even have the leaf blower here right now and I handled it so much that I doubt there would be any other prints left on it besides mine. Same thing with my car. We’ve already touched both handles on the back doors on the car. We’ve probably smudged anything that was there, if there was anything to begin with.”
“And the tire is gone, too, isn’t it?” I asked, disheartened.
Mitch nodded. “I called the repair shop to see if they still had it, but it was picked up for recycling yesterday.”
“Were we wrong? Maybe you’ve had a streak of bad luck.”
“It’s possible,” Mitch said, but there wasn’t much conviction in his voice.
The next morning when the alarm went off, I felt as if I’d pulled an all-nighter. Too bad I’d spent the whole time punching my pillow and doing clock checks every thirty minutes while Mitch twitched beside me deep in REM. Needless to say, I was not in the best of moods that morning and had practically growled at Mitch when he kissed me good morning. I felt slightly better by the time I’d had a shower and applied a little makeup. Mitch was ready to go by that time and leaned around the bathroom door frame, his keys and hat in his hands. “Safe to come in now? Feeling more human?”
“Marginally.”
“You might think about coffee this morning. You look like you could use a cup.”
“Thanks. Just the words of encouragement I need to hear today,” I said as I applied a coat of mascara.
“Hey, I didn’t mean it that way,” Mitch said, backpedaling.
“I know, but I couldn’t sleep last night. What are we going to do?” I asked, looking at his reflection in the mirror.
“We’re going to go about our day like we normally would. I’m going to go fly and you and the kids should do what you’d usually do. As far as we know, today’s an ordinary day. You and the kids should be fine.”
He meant that so far the attacks, if they were attacks, had been targeted at him. I rarely used the leaf blower and both the tire blowout and the dry ice bomb had involved his car, not mine. “That’s not really a comfort,” I said as I screwed the mascara brush into the tube and tossed it in a drawer. “Be sure to lock your car doors today.”
“Will do,” he said and gave me a quick kiss.
As he walked out of our bedroom, I noticed his squadron coin was on the dresser. I picked it up and ran quietly through the house. By some miracle, the kids were still asleep. Usually by this time Livvy had already dressed herself and was ready to “help” me fix breakfast. I heard a noise from down the hall, soft singing, and realized she was awake, but playing in her room.
I caught up to him in the garage, whi
ch was about fifteen degrees warmer than our house and sticky with humidity. “You forgot your coin,” I said.
He glanced at it and frowned as he patted his pockets. “I’ve already got mine on me. Never leave home without it,” he said as he fished it out of one of his flight suit pockets. He compared the two and handed the one I’d been holding back to me. “That’s not the squadron coin. See the black on this side?” he said, pointing to a small area on the side with the hawk.
“But Denise has one exactly like it with the black area on the side with the hawk. I saw it when I went to her house. Are you sure they didn’t update the coin and mail a new one to everyone?”
“No. The squadron doesn’t mail coins.”
“Well, someone mailed one to us and one to Denise.”
My fingers closed around the coin and I gripped Mitch’s arm. “And Dan got one in the mail, too.”
Despite the heat of the garage, a coldness settled on me and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I ran though the events of the last few days. “You’ve got to call him.”
“Ellie—”
“Right now,” I insisted. “Why didn’t I connect it before? Don’t you see? Three people have received these coins in the mail—Colonel Pershall, you, and Dan. Colonel Pershall’s dead, someone took a shot at Dan, but his heat exhaustion probably saved him, and now you’ve had all these weird things happen to you.” Mitch paused with his car door halfway open as I said, “Dan called yesterday to thank you for sending him a coin. I forgot to tell you about it. The dry ice explosion kind of dominated my thoughts last night. You didn’t send it to him?”
“No. Are you sure it looked like this with the black on one side?” Mitch asked as he took the coin back for a closer look.
“I haven’t seen it, but he described it and I’m pretty sure he mentioned three colors, yellow, blue, and black. I know Denise’s coin looked exactly like this.”
Mitch checked his watch and said, “I can’t cancel now. I have to go.” He returned the coin to me.