by Willow Rose
“Do you have any idea where we can find her?” Sandra asks.
“Oh, she’s probably at work now. She drives one of those grooming vans. You know the ones that come to your house and groom your dog. It’s very popular around here. Groomers on Wheels, I believe the company is called.”
Chapter Eighty-Three
September 2015
I Google the name of the company while sitting in the car, still parked in Ally Meyer’s driveway.
“Grooming on wheels,” a singing voice says at the other end.
“Hello, I’m looking for Ally Meyer,” I say.
“My. She is a popular woman today,” the voice says. “Well, she is one of our best, so it’s actually no surprise. What do you need to have done?”
“Eh, I need my Goldendoodle groomed. Does she have time today?” I ask, looking at Sandra, who shrugs.
I am not lying. Snowflake could really do with a trim.
“How long since his last grooming?”
“Three months.”
“Three months on a Goldendoodle? That’s a long time. It’ll probably be a big job then. I don’t know if Ally can make it today.”
“It’s not that big of a job. I’ve kept his fur brushed every day. He has hardly any mats,” I lie. Snowflake seriously needs a grooming, and I haven’t been brushing him every day as I should, like you have to do with a longhaired doodle. I lie because I feel like the woman is judging me, making me feel guilty. I wonder why I care.
“It will still be a big job,” she says. “Let me see. Right now she is in Cocoa Beach. After that she is going to the base around four, but if you can wait till around six this evening, she might be able to make it. I know it’s late, but it’s all I got with this short notice. Where are you at?”
“I’m in Cocoa Beach. Did you say she has a job at the base, as in Patrick Air Force Base?” I ask.
Sandra’s eyes meet mine.
“Yes. We have a lot of clients there,” the woman says.
“Thank you,” I say, and hang up.
“She has a job on the base at four o’clock,” I say to Sandra.
“You think it’s AK?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say, and start the car. “Last night, she tried to kill Olivia, and now she’s going for Ally.”
“So what do we do now?” Sandra asks.
I drive onto A1A and accelerate. “We get the crew together,” I say. “Start calling them.”
Half an hour later, we all meet at Joey’s house. Snowflake is enjoying all the company, not to mention the attention and visits from person to person to get petted. Bonnie and Clyde follow in his trail. They seem to go wherever he goes.
Joey gets there last.
“So, what’s going on?” Danny asks.
“We believe we know who killed Jean,” Chloe says.
“We think someone is targeting a group of girls from our high school. Coraline Cane is dead, Cassie Morgan is dead, and so is Jean Schmidt. I spoke earlier today with Holly Leslie. I don’t know if any of you remember her, but she was part of their little gang as well. She told me how she was attacked in 1995 by AK and the other girls and shot with a spear gun. She was lucky to get out of it alive. We believe AK is trying to kill all of them. Last night, there was an attempt to kill Olivia as well; someone tried to stab her in the throat with a pair of scissors, but we managed to stop her. It happened on base, and as we, or as Chloe has found out, AK lives on base where she is now called Liz Hester. We need your help to find AK’s next target. I have reason to believe it is Ally Meyer. Sandra and I tried to locate her earlier today, but were told she was here in Cocoa Beach.”
“Ally Meyer…?” Alex looks at me, then at the others.
Joey gives me a concerned look as well. “But…isn’t that?”
I nod. “Yes. She is the one who was with AK when they broke into my house that night when AK shot my mother.” I take in a deep breath, pushing back the memories and emotions. “I know what you’re all thinking, and yes, I am pissed and I can’t forgive her for what she did, but she still doesn’t deserve to die. We need to stop AK or Liz or whatever her name is now, before she kills more people. For all we know, she might come after any one of us next. I know she has it in for me. We need to find Ally before she gets to her.”
“How?” Danny asks. He is always the practical one. If there is a problem, he wants to find out how to solve it right away, instead of spending time discussing the issue. He has always been like that. I love that about him.
“She drives a grooming van for Groomers on Wheels. She has a client here in Cocoa Beach now, and then at four o’clock, she is going to the base. We have to get to her before she gets there.”
Danny nods and finds his phone. “I’ll tell the boys to look for her van. We can easily search the area if we bring out all the trucks.”
“How about alerting the police?” Alex asks, while Danny leaves the room with the phone to his ear.
I look at him and wonder if he is right. I am just not certain I trust them. Especially not Chris Fisher. Besides, I am not sure they’ll believe me.
“No police,” Marcia says. “We don’t need them. I’ll take my bike and drive down to Minutemen. I know everyone that hangs out around there. I know every drunk, every homeless person in town. They usually have eyes on every corner. They’ll know if she’s here.”
“I can get us access to the police’s surveillance cameras on all the stoplights,” Chloe says.
Sandra looks at me while everyone is scattered. “What do we do?”
I look at Joey, then back at Sandra. “The only thing we can do.”
Chapter Eighty-Four
September 2015
“How short do you want it?”
Ally looks at the woman holding the poodle. The woman has been a client for two years. Ally can’t stand her. Not her fancy home across from the country club, nor her spoiled poodle, and especially not her stiff upper lip that she always presents when Ally shows up in her van.
“Just like last time. Not too short, though,” the woman says.
“And you want the nails clipped and the ears cleaned, right?”
“Yes.”
“And the private parts.”
“Yes. By all means. How much is it again that you charge for all that?”
As if you don’t know.
“Seventy-five.”
“That’s a little much, don’t you think?”
Here we go again!
“It’s the standard price. I don’t make them.”
“I’ll give you sixty-five,” the woman says with a snort.
It’s not like you can’t afford it, lady!
Ally sighs. The first time she came to the woman’s house, she agreed to the sixty-five, since she was new and afraid that the woman would take her business elsewhere. But the company made her pay the last ten out of her own paycheck, so she hasn’t made that mistake again. And she isn’t going to today either.
“It’s the price. As I said, I don’t make the prices.”
The woman snorts again. “Okay then.”
The woman hands Ally the leash and the dog walks to her reluctantly.
“I should have her back in less than an hour,” Ally says.
She takes the poodle to the van and helps her get inside. The poodle tries to fight her, but Ally is a lot stronger, and soon she has the dog inside and can close the door behind them.
Ally sighs and sits down. She is tired. Sick and tired of dogs, and especially their owners. Driving a grooming van got you in contact with some of the worst of them. The rich upper class ones who just wanted everything done for basically no money at all. Why are the richest always the cheapest? Grooming dogs is hard work. Ally should be paid for it. She should be making a lot more than she does.
The poodle is not comfortable in the van. It knows what’s going to happen. Ally turns on the water in the bathtub and puts in the soap. The dog squirms and tries to escape. Ally fights with it for a little
while, hurts her hand in the process, then pulls out a syringe and injects a sedative in the dog. She waits a few seconds till the dog calms down before she finally manages to put it in the bathtub. The owners don’t know that she sedates the dogs to make the grooming go smoother. Neither does the company. It was one of the other groomers that taught her the trick when Ally asked her how on earth she managed those troubled dogs. She even sells her the drug. It makes things a lot easier. The sedative is out of the dog’s body within an hour, just in time to hand her back to the owner. She might be a little groggy afterwards, but not enough to make the owners suspect anything.
Ally bathes the now heavily sleeping dog, then grabs the shaver and cuts the hair. She cuts her around the eyes, then clips the nails, trims the ears and the private parts. She blow-dries the hair and looks at her work. It all takes about twenty minutes, then she waits till the dog wakes up again. The dog is big, and therefore wakes up before planned. Ally is happy to get out of there early.
She hands back the dog. The woman writes her a check for seventy-five dollars.
“See you in two months,” Ally says, then leaves.
She gets into the van and looks at her list of today’s clients. Only one more left. She starts the van and drives up Minutemen Causeway and soon finds herself on A1A, where she turns right. On her way, she passes three fire trucks, which strikes her as odd, but she doesn’t take any more notice. On the passenger seat besides her lies her phone. It lights up, but is silenced, so she doesn’t hear that it is ringing. Ally is whistling in the car when she continues on A1A towards the base and her last client of the day.
Chapter Eighty-Five
September 2015
“She’s been spotted on Minutemen two minutes ago.”
Marcia sounds agitated on the phone. “Johnny, who hangs out on the corner by City Hall, saw her drive onto A1A in the intersection.”
“Two minutes ago?” I ask and look at my watch. “That means she is probably already down by 15th Street, maybe even further.”
I hang up and look at Sandra. Joey is sitting in the back. We have been driving around our neighborhood and Snug Harbor to see if we could spot her somewhere around here. Meanwhile, I am debating with the woman at the groomer’s main office on the phone. I want her to tell me where Ally is; I even tell her it’s a matter of life and death, but she keeps telling me she is not allowed to give me the address. Instead, I tell her to call Ally on her cellphone and tell her to call me. I keep looking at my phone, hoping she will.
I hit A1A and speed up, when Danny calls. “She’s been spotted at 16th a minute ago.
“16th! That means she is halfway to the base,” I say, and hang up. I press the gas pedal down and exceed the thirty-five mile limit by…well, by a lot.
I pass 10th, then 11th, and when I reach 16th, I receive a text from Chloe. Sandra reads it to me.
“Her truck just stopped for a red light at the Officer’s Club,” she says.
The break in front of the Officer’s Club is one of our old favorite surf spots. It is the first red light you meet after you leave Cocoa Beach, driving south towards the base. She is going faster than I expected. I have to accelerate, hoping the red light will hold her for a long enough time for me to catch up with her. If she makes it onto the base, then I can’t get to her anymore; I can’t help her.
“Hurry up,” Sandra says.
“I’m trying to. But these cars won’t get out of my way. I’m stuck.” I honk the horn at the pickup truck blocking my way going twenty-five miles an hour. Next to him, a Toyota has parked on the inner lane. I can’t get past them.
“If she’s at the O Club, then there is only maybe thirty seconds till she reaches the base,” Joey says.
I look at my clock. “She’s early. By half an hour. She isn’t supposed to be there until four. I had planned to go there just before four and stop her if we hadn’t found her before,” I say. “How was I supposed to know she would get there half an hour early?”
I growl and honk again. Finally, the car on the inside moves out of my way and I can go around the truck. I race past Summer Street, past Taco City and my favorite surf shop, Oceansports World.
I reach the O Club and realize the light has turned green. I speed up and think that I can spot the van in the distance.
“Is that her?” I ask Sandra. She has better eyes than me. “Is that the grooming van?”
“I…I don’t know,” Sandra says. She leans forward to better see, but still shakes her head. “It might be.”
“We’ve got to get to her,” I grunt. “We’ve got to stop her.”
“Yes,” Sandra suddenly exclaims. “I see it now. It’s her. It’s the van. It says Grooming on Wheels on the back. Hurry up. We’re almost there. You can make it, Mary.”
I literally stand on the pedal in order to press it to the bottom. I can see the van getting closer now.
“Almost there,” Joey says.
“Almost,” Sandra repeats.
I can see her now. I can see the van getting closer and closer. I realize she has stopped for another red light, at the intersection leading to the base. I have to reach her before the light turns green and she turns onto the base. I have to.
“Hurry, hurry,” Sandra says.
“I’ll make it. Once I get up to the side of her van, you roll down the window. Both of you. Then you yell at her, all right? Tell her to pull to the curb. All right? I need both of you to do it.”
“Got it,” they say in unison.
We can make it. I think we can. I know we can. Come on!
I manage to convince myself that we’ll actually make it, when I hear the siren behind me.
Chapter Eighty-Six
September 2015
“It’s the police! You’ve got to stop, Mary!”
Sandra is screaming now.
“No! You can’t stop now,” Joey yells. “We’re so close.”
The siren is wailing behind us. He is flashing his lights at me, trying to get me to stop. Meanwhile, the light turns green, and the van with Ally Meyer in it starts to go; it blinks to signal that it is turning, but holds back for oncoming traffic.
“You’ve got to stop,” Sandra repeats. “I don’t want to get shot. He will shoot. You know what they’re like. Or he will hit our car with his to try and stop us. I don’t want to die.”
“You watch too many movies, Sandra,” I say.
I keep going. I don’t stop. The police car is getting closer to us. It has a stronger engine than my rental car. In a few seconds, it will be next to us.
“Stop! Mary, stop!” Sandra yells, and hides her face between her hands, just as I reach the van.
“Now!” I yell and turn the car to get up onto the side of it.
Joey is the only one who reacts. He rolls down the window. He yells and waves. “Stop! Stop the van! Don’t go! STOP!!”
I have to keep looking at the road, so I can’t see if she notices him. “Did she see you?” I ask.
“She saw me! She turned her head and looked at me,” Joey says. “But…”
But she doesn’t stop.
Our car screeches across the asphalt and lands in the grass, while her van continues through the gates of the base. She stops to talk to the guard shortly, but is let in within seconds. They know her.
I curse and growl. The police car has stopped behind us. The officer gets out of his car and walks to ours, pointing his gun at us, yelling for me to keep my hands on the wheel.
It takes maybe ten minutes, maybe fifteen, but finally I manage to convince him that I am not dangerous, that I am not drunk or intoxicated. I go through all the tests and don’t fail even one. Not even the walking straight on a line, even though I am so agitated it is hard for me to focus.
He gives me a ticket for reckless driving, then tells Joey to take the wheel going back.
“Thank you, Officer,” I say, trying to keep my cool. As soon as he is gone, I look at my friends, holding the ticket in my hand.
“No
w what?” Joey says.
“I might have an idea,” I say.
I grab my phone and call Danny. Meanwhile, Joey drives us to the nearest parking lot in front of the O Club. Danny arrives a few minutes later in his fire truck. It shines brightly in the sun.
“What’s going on?” he asks and gets out. “Did you stop her?”
“No. She went in. I need you to get me onto the base,” I say.
“No. No. No,” he says and waves his finger at me.
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” I say. “I know you can. In that thing. They’ll never question a firefighter, a fellow hero. There’s a fire station on base, right? Tell them you’re here to visit your colleagues.”
Danny looks at me.
“Please?” I say. “You’re the hero here. You would want to save a life if you could, right? I should be the one hating Ally and not caring about her, but come on. She doesn’t deserve to be killed. And we can’t let AK get away with it. She has gotten away with way too much in her life. If we can get to Ally and get her to testify against AK, then maybe we could get her locked up. But we can’t if she is dead.”
“She’s got a point, bro,” Joey says.
Danny stares at me, then nods. “Alright then. I’ll see what I can do. You can hide in the back. I can’t promise you anything, though. Just pray that we don’t get picked for a random search.”
“Let me do it,” Joey says. “It might be dangerous.”
“No,” I say. “I am the only one Ally will listen to. I am the one she wronged, remember? She owes me and she knows it.”
I jump in and lay flat on the floor of the fire truck. Danny puts a blanket over me to cover me up. Sandra and Joey stay behind. Joey’s and my eyes meet just before Danny closes the door. I can tell he is concerned.
Frankly, so am I.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
September 2015
We’re in luck. The guard at the gate buys Danny’s story about paying his buddies a surprise visit. The guard calls the fire station and they’re thrilled that Danny is stopping by.