“In the morning I’ll call my lawyer and have you written into my will.”
“Funny.”
He laughed. “Okay, so you won’t get it back if I’m dead. Otherwise, you will. Trust me.”
“I do.” Summer was surprised to find that it was the truth. She knew that if she made him a loan, he would pay her back unless death kept him from doing so. He might be a kidnapping, car-stealing, scandal-ridden murderer, but she’d bet her life savings that he wasn’t the kind of sleazeball who welshed on his debts.
“I appreciate that.”
“You should.”
Summer turned onto Route 231, which led straight into Murfreesboro. Her house was no more than fifteen minutes away.
“You sure you don’t want me to take you to Sammy? He’s not involved in anything dishonest. I’d stake my life on it,” she said.
“Maybe you’d stake yours, but I’m not willing to stake mine. Thanks anyway.”
A red pickup rumbled past, headed in the opposite direction. Its headlights kept Summer from getting a glimpse of the driver—but whoever was hunting them wouldn’t be driving a pickup truck. Would they?
She was getting as paranoid as Frankenstein himself.
The car topped a rise, and the lights of Murfreesboro were suddenly before them. Not that there were many at that hour: a still-open Sav-a-Stop, a fire station, a couple of streetlamps, a traffic signal. As the Chevy approached the intersection where Summer needed to turn right, a police car pulled up at the light directly opposite.
Beside her, Frankenstein tensed. Summer tensed, too. For the first time in her life she wondered, was the officer in the car friend or foe?
She didn’t like the uncertainty.
The traffic light changed, and the police car drove past them without pausing. Summer let out her breath and turned right. Being hunted was not a pleasant experience.
She was glad it was almost over.
Her house was located in Albemarle Estates, a small residential development about a mile off the main highway. It was nothing special as houses went—a modest two-bedroom brick ranch on a street of similarly modest two- and three-bedroom brick ranches—but she had qualified for the mortgage herself, come up with the down payment herself, made the monthly payments herself. That was something she was inordinately proud of, and her pride carried over to the house. It was the best-kept one on the block, its trim a pristine cream, its concrete porch and walk bordered by meticulously neat flower beds. Built in the postwar boom of the early fifties, it had a mature willow tree in the front yard and a profusion of well-cared-for bushes nestled up against the foundation.
The door to the one-car garage was shut, just the way she had left it. The front porch light was on, just the way she had left it. The curtains were drawn, the interior dark. Everything was quiet, still, peaceful. Just the way it was supposed to be.
The Chevy’s engine suddenly sounded inordinately loud as they cruised along the sleeping street.
“Do me a favor, okay?” Frankenstein said as she indicated with a gesture which house was hers. “Pull around the corner before you stop, and we’ll walk back. Just in case.”
The way he said “just in case” had such a chilling effect on Summer’s nerves that she did as he asked. A house with a FOR SALE sign in the front yard stood empty just beyond the turn. Summer pulled into its driveway, shifted carefully into neutral—she was getting pretty good, the gears didn’t make a sound—then reached down to turn off the ignition.
Frankenstein watched her surprised fumble. “We don’t have a key, remember? Anyway, we need to leave the engine running. Just in case.”
“Would you stop saying that?”
“What?”
“ ‘Just in case.’ You’re giving me the willies. Do you really think someone’s in my house?”
Frankenstein didn’t answer for a minute. “No,” he said finally, opening his door. “I don’t think they’re here—yet. I actually think you’ve got about twenty-four hours before they give up chasing us across the hinterlands and show up here. But I’ve been wrong before. And this isn’t the kind of mistake you get to make twice.”
So much for reassurance. Leaving the motor running, Summer slid out of the car.
13
“Why do I keep getting the feeling that I’m making a big mistake here?”
Frankenstein’s muttered question seemed addressed more to himself than to Summer. With her hurrying to keep up, he moved quickly along the sidewalk, hands jammed in the front pockets of his cutoffs, shoulders hunched in what Summer assumed was an effort to ward off the predawn chill. The moon was low in the east, casting a cold, pale light over the slumbering subdivision. A brisk breeze swirled cicada shells out of their path. Somewhere in the distance a frustrated tomcat yowled. Otherwise, the night was absolutely silent except for the whirring of the cicadas, which was so omnipresent, Summer didn’t even register it anymore.
“You won’t get very far with no money for gas.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself. Know what myself keeps answering? You won’t get very far dead, either.” He slowed his pace with three houses still to go and stopped altogether in the lee of a large lilac at the far edge of Summer’s next-door neighbor’s yard. “Does everything look right? No lights on or off that shouldn’t be? No curtains askew? Anything at all out of the ordinary?”
“Everything looks just like I left it.”
“All right. Give me your key and wait here.”
Until that instant the appalling truth had not occurred to Summer.
“I don’t have a key,” she said in a small voice.
He glanced at her. She suspected his expression would have been the epitome of disgust if she’d only been able to read it. As it was, his facial swelling obscured everything except the resignation in his voice.
“The key’s in your purse, right?”
“Right.”
“Why am I not surprised, I wonder. Why do you women have these love affairs with purses, anyway? What’s wrong with a plain old pocket? At least you’re not always leaving them behind.”
Summer didn’t dignify that with an answer.
“No spare key hidden under a fake stone in the shrubbery?”
“No.”
“Any unlocked windows?”
“No. I’m very careful about that.”
“Good for you. Any suggestions as to how to get in?”
“Well—my next-door neighbor has a key.” Summer indicated the house that claimed the lilac.
“Wonderful. All you need to do is go knock on her door—let’s hope she’s an early riser, because it’s not quite dawn—and ask her for your key. Of course, if she’s very observant you’ll need to think up some reason why your blouse is all ripped and you’ve got a bump the size of an egg on your forehead and you’re missing a shoe and—”
“She’s in Florida,” Summer interrupted, remembering.
“That does a lot of good. Leaving a spare key with a neighbor who’s in Florida.”
“She’s got school-age children and it’s summer break and she and her husband took them to Florida. It’s the first vacation they’ve taken in two years.”
“I’m happy for them. You have any objection to me breaking a window?”
“Under the circumstances? No, of course not.”
“Wait here.”
Before Summer could say aye, yes, or nay, he disappeared around the side of the bush. Actually, waiting while he checked out her house was not a bad idea, especially if there were murderous types lurking about, but the whole chauvinistic bit rankled. Still, if someone had to wind up dead, better him than her, and feminist principles be damned.
She held fast to that notion as she craned her neck around the bush to watch the action at her house.
Only, as minute after minute ticked by, there was no action. Nada. Zip. Had he gotten in? She could have broken in in the length of time he’d been gone. Surely he was not going to leave her standing out here wit
hout a word for the rest of the night!
Her house appeared undisturbed. As far as she could tell, no lights had been turned on inside. The outside looked as deserted as it had when they first drove past.
Where was he?
Maybe he’d tripped over the sprinkler hose; she had left it stretched across the back walk to water the new border of yellow zinnias she’d just planted around the patio. Or maybe he was having trouble fitting through a window. His shoulders were broad, and her windows, conventional double-hungs, weren’t that big.
Maybe he was rifling through her house.
Maybe he was at the wrong house.
Maybe the bad guys had him.
Maybe … but she could maybe herself to death, Summer decided irritably. She would give him about five more minutes, and then she was heading for the car and Sammy as fast as she could go. If Frankenstein didn’t like it, that was just too bad. His prolonged absence was scaring her.
Goose bumps chased themselves across her arms. The wind blew, the lilac swayed, the cicadas whirred. Frosty moonlight waxed and waned, casting twisty, elongated shadows like reaching fingers over the neat lawns and deserted street and sidewalk. A tune began to intrude on the edges of her consciousness. Summer found herself humming it under her breath, trying in vain to remember the words, the title. When they came to her at last, she smiled wryly at the appropriateness of the song. It was Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight.”
Summer felt as if she were trapped in a bad horror movie complete with mood music. Waiting for the monster to put in an appearance. Which, in a way, she supposed she was. At least she was waiting for Frankenstein.
She didn’t even have time to crack a smile at her own humor before she saw him. Just a glimpse of him, slipping around the far corner of her house. So he had not been able to break in yet. Maybe the glass in her windows was proving more resistant than either of them had given it credit for. Or maybe, as seemed more likely when she thought about it, the last time she redecorated she’d painted the windows shut.
In any case, if he was still outside, he definitely needed help.
Summer sidled out from behind the bush and slunk—there was no other word for it—behind her neighbors’ house. Scaling the chain-link fence that enclosed her own backyard was the hardest part. Her sneakered toe fit perfectly in the little diamond-shaped openings, but the bare toes of her other foot hurt like heck when it was their turn to climb.
Unlike her child-oriented neighbors’ lawn, her own was an oasis of velvety-soft fescue and colorful flowers. She spent so many hours laboring on her yard that she didn’t even like to think about what that said about her life. With no husband or children to distract her, and with her social life consisting of occasional evenings out with a small circle of female friends and her less than sizzling relationship with the divorced dentist, she had put a great deal of her spare time and almost all of her passion into her residence. She liked to think it showed.
The thick cushion of grass was cool and soothing beneath her abused foot. Even in the dark, the zinnias’ bright, bobbing heads outlined the patio. Summer eyed them with approval as she stepped carefully over a bank of glossy impatiens, skirted the small water-lily pond that was last summer’s project, and headed toward the far side of the house. On impulse, she yanked a tomato stake out of a raised bed as she passed it. As a weapon, the yard-long stick wouldn’t be worth a whole lot, but still it was better than nothing. Not that she expected to need a weapon, but like the Boy Scouts, she believed in being prepared.
Frankenstein must be trying to break into the window of the spare bedroom, Summer decided. It was just out of her sight, around the corner in the most private part of her yard, where the fence formed a trellis for this summer’s project, her Zephyrine climbing roses.
Summer breathed in their spicy-sweet aroma as she stepped around the side of the house. The delicate pink semi-double blooms with their dark green foliage had flourished under her care, and almost hid the fence from view. She had had such success with these new additions to her garden that next year she meant to plant them all around the fence line. A tingle of anticipation at the thought provided the first pleasurable emotion she’d had for hours.
But at least she had located the source of her dis-pleasurable emotions, she consoled herself as the pleasant sensation died away in the face of stark reality. There he was, peering over the fence, his chest crushing her poor flowers! Too bad they were thornless; he deserved a few wounds for his carelessness. The Zephyrines were delicate!
“Would you get off my roses?” she hissed at his back, bristling in defense of her darlings. For emphasis, she poked him in the backside with the pointed end of her stick.
“Yeow!” He clapped a hand to the part she had abused and whirled to face her.
He was not Frankenstein! Summer’s eyes rounded and her mouth dropped open as the man brandished his own stick. Then she saw to her horror that it was not a stick at all. It was a rifle—and the business end of it was pointed right at her midsection.
How she had ever made such a mistake she couldn’t fathom. The guy wasn’t even wearing shorts. If she’d taken just a moment to think, she would have realized …
Chalk up another “if only” to add to her collection.
“Drop it.” He indicated her stick with the muzzle of the rifle. Summer didn’t really obey. What happened was that the tomato stake more or less fell from her suddenly nerveless hands.
“Well, well, well,” he said. The predawn gloom obscured his features, but Summer knew from the tone of his voice that she was in big trouble. “What’ve we got here? Another pretty lady. How about you and me head on inside?”
She assumed that refusing was not an option. Her only hope was to think fast.
“I’m just checking on my neighbor’s house,” she lied, the words spilling out rapidly as fear settled like a rock in her stomach. “I know you must be the man she hired to watch over the property, but she’s really particular about her roses and …”
“Shut up.” His voice was brutal. He made a threatening gesture with the rifle. “And turn around. Now.”
Summer opened her mouth, shut it again, and pivoted. Trying to con him into letting her go was clearly a waste of breath. All at once, the heavy perfume of the Zephyrines threatened to choke her. Briefly she toyed with the idea of bolting. Surely he wouldn’t just shoot her in the back, in cold blood? An instant’s reflection answered that question: Of course he would. But was he likely to fire and reveal his clandestine presence in this small enclave of closely packed houses? A gunshot would surely awaken someone, who would—what? Rush to her assistance? Call the police? Maybe just turn over and go back to sleep, putting the sound down to fireworks, or a backfiring car?
Was she willing to take the chance that he wouldn’t pull the trigger?
Even if she bolted, he wouldn’t have to shoot to stop her, she realized suddenly. Her own fence would do that. No way could she get over it before he caught her. Why hadn’t she bordered her yard with hedge roses, as she at first had been inclined to do? Why had she chosen a four-foot chain-link fence, of all things?
To keep the neighbors’ dog out of her flowers, that was why. Her last slim hope of escape was snatched away by the existence of a boisterous mutt that liked to dig.
And the worst part of it was, the dratted animal wasn’t even home to bark and alert his owners to her plight. For the first time ever he was in a kennel while her neighbors vacationed.
To think of the nights she’d been awakened by that howling hound, and now, when she needed him … But that was the story of her life.
“Get a move on.” Prodding her in the small of the back with the rifle, he herded her toward the sliding glass doors that opened onto the patio. When she stopped, he reached around her to tap on the glass. Nothing happened, and he gave an exasperated grunt. A moment later, he repeated the exercise, keeping the mouth of the rifle nestled against her spine all the while. This time the curtain shifted as
someone peeped out. There was the click of the lock being turned, and then the door slid open.
Summer was prodded inside.
Her dining room, onto which the patio door opened, was dark. By the faint glow that filtered in from the kitchen, she saw at a glance that everything was just as she had left it. An oak table and chairs—not antique, but old, and lovingly restored—and a pine china cabinet that she had hand-painted to match the wallpaper made up the room’s furnishings. Nothing had been disturbed, down to the centerpiece of freshly cut daylilies that rested in a fragile glass vase on the table and the two place settings of her good china that she had left ready for her regular after-church lunch with Jim, her dentist friend.
Not that she was likely to keep the date.
“Who’s she?” The man who had opened the door was shorter than the first man, and his voice had the slurred drawl of the mountains. Definitely a local. Summer didn’t think either was a thug from the funeral home, but in the dark it was hard to be sure.
The man who had brought her in shrugged. “She was poking around outside. She claims she’s a neighbor.”
“Take her downstairs.”
“My husband will be wondering where I am, and …” Summer tried desperately.
“Shut up and start walking!” A shove sent her stumbling toward the kitchen. The feel of the rifle in the small of her back kept her moving.
The light from her kitchen was so faint because it was beaming up from the basement through the partly opened door. Summer was forced toward that door by the rifle at her back. Behind her, the two men exchanged low-voiced conversation that she couldn’t quite separate into distinguishable words.
Her basement stairs were gray-stained wood. She had brightened the concrete walls with a coat of white paint. Resting against the far wall were the washer and the dryer, with a basket of folded towels atop it. The other furnishings were an old but still functional TV—turned on mainly when her nieces and nephews came to visit—a rarely used exercise bike, and a couch and two chairs that had been bounced from the living room when she got new ones a year or so back.
Walking After Midnight Page 10