Yeah, and the moon is really made of Swiss cheese.
Chapter 39
We devoured a ham/beef/Canadian bacon with extra cheese and no sauce pizza as we watched ‘In Harm’s Way’. Near the end of the movie, Keaton’s cell phone went off. I groaned. “Seriously? I thought you turned that thing off!” I said as he pulled it out of his pocket.
“I guess I forgot, sorry. Hello? Uh huh. Really? How long ago did this happen? I see.” He looked at his watch. “Yeah, I can be there in about twenty minutes. Right, see you then.” He hung up and looked at me apologetically. “Someone stole a backhoe from one of my construction sites. Probably some kids going for a joy ride. The police want me to come out to see if there is anything else missing. Do you want to come with me?”
I thought about it a minute. “I think I’ll pass this time. My ribs are bothering me a bit.”
“Okay,” he said, bending over to give me a kiss. “I shouldn’t be gone long.” Pulling back the shade, he saw that there was a police car in the parking lot. “Our overnight bodyguard is already here.”
I looked at my watch: 7:45. “They’re early tonight.”
“Just as well since I have to leave,” Keaton replied, putting on his jacket. “I won’t be gone long, maybe an hour at the most. Call me if you need anything and turn on the alarm after I leave.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Boss Man, sir,” I laughed, giving him a mock salute. He laughed, gave me another kiss and left. I punched in the alarm code and curled up on the couch to finish the movie.
Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on the door. “Who is it?” I asked. No answer. I shrugged. Someone probably realized they had the wrong place. Another knock. I went to the door, picked up my baseball bat and peered through the spy hole but I couldn’t see anything.
The door handle shook, followed by a scratching noise in the lock. I grabbed my cell phone and tried to call Keaton. No answer. I dialed 911, told them who I was and explained the situation. The operator assured me they would send someone over and try to radio the officer on duty in the parking lot. She told me not to hang up, but I wasn’t about to stand there with the phone to my ear while someone broke in and told her so. I left the connection open, putting the phone down on the coffee table.
I turned off the TV, DVD player and the lights before opening the blinds so a band of light was all that could be seen in the living room. The scratching in the lock stopped and whoever was on the other side tried the handle again. I heard some cussing followed by a loud thud against the door. I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest as they threw themselves against the door again and again. The frame broke, the alarm started wailing and the person stumbled into the room. I didn’t think about my broken hand or ribs as I swung the bat like I was going for the World Series winning home run and made contact with their body. Whoever it was exhaled a huge breath of air and fell to their knees. I started to swing again but they rolled out of the way, got up and ran out the door.
My hand hurt inside the cast, but I didn’t lower the bat. I was afraid that whoever it was would come back. My heart was beating wildly and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Damn asthma. I tried to slow my breathing down but it didn’t help. Moving backwards, I felt my way to the bathroom for my inhaler. As I took two puffs, I heard footsteps running into the condo. I dropped the inhaler and raised the bat, ready to swing again. “Ms. Bannerman?” I heard a male voice call out. “It’s Officer Richardson, ma’am. You called 911 about an intruder. Are you ok?”
I saw a beam of light coming down the hallway. “Stop right there,” I said, my voice shaking. “I’ve got a bat and I’m not afraid to use it. Show me your badge.”
“Yes, ma’am. Just stay calm. I’m taking it off my uniform right now. I’ll hold it out for you to see by the bathroom light if you’ll just turn it on.”
I flipped on the switch and cautiously stuck my head around the corner. I saw a middle aged man, in full uniform, gun drawn but held down to his side, holding out his badge. “See, ma’am? It’s ok. I know your brother, Braden. Call him if you want, he’ll verify I am an officer.”
“I can’t. My phone is on the coffee table.”
“I’ll back up, get it and slide it down the hall if you want.”
I lowered the bat. “It’s ok. I believe you.” I leaned the bat against the wall and came out of the bathroom.
“Is there anyone else in here with you?”
“No, just me.”
“Are you hurt?”
“My hand is sore inside this cast, but that’s all.”
“Can you disable the alarm, ma’am? It’s a bit loud.”
I walked to the front door, punched in the code and the alarm fell silent. I let the operator know that there was an officer here with me and thanked her for the help. “What about the officer in the patrol car downstairs?”
“I came up here first, ma’am,” he explained as more footsteps came thundering up the stairs. Bernie appeared in the doorway. Oh lovely, the last person I really wanted to see tonight.
“Who the hell is supposed to be on duty tonight?” he asked Richardson.
“I have no idea, sir. I came up here to make sure she was ok first. I’ll go down and check right now.” He disappeared out the door.
“Are you ok?” Bernie said as he led me to the couch. I nodded. “What happened?”
I gave him a detailed account of the evening, starting with the phone call Keaton had received up to the time Officer Richardson had shown up. Bernie took a look at the cast, turning it over to look at the palm. “Looks like you cracked the cast, Charlie,” he said, showing me the long horizontal crack. “You’ll need to get that checked out.” I nodded listlessly. “Tell me about this phone call you said Keaton got.”
“He got a call about 7:30. He said it was the police, and that someone had stolen a backhoe from one of his construction sites. He said that they wanted him to come out to see if anything else was missing.”
Bernie pulled out his phone and called his office. “Daisy, did we get a burglary call tonight about a stolen backhoe? Uh huh. I see. No, no problem. Thanks.” He hung up and looked at me. “There have been no reports of a stolen backhoe tonight, Charlie.”
“You mean someone lured him out of here to get to me?”
“Um, Chief Gibson,” Richardson said from the doorway.
“What is it?”
“I found out who is supposed to be on duty tonight.”
“Who is the nincompoop? He is going on report!”
“It’s Harvey Martin, sir. He’s dead. Someone strangled him in his car.”
Chapter 40
Bernie let loose a string of curse words that would have made my mother wash his mouth out with Lava soap for a week. “Stay with her,” he ordered Richardson as he left.
I leaned back on the couch and closed my eyes as more sirens blared from downstairs. A paramedic I didn’t recognize showed up with his box. “Chief Gibson sent me up here to check her out,” he said as he sat on the coffee table in front of me. “How are you, ma’am?”
“Just peachy,” I muttered.
“Chief Gibson said that your cast has been cracked. Do you mind if I take a look?” I held out my hand so he could examine it. “He’s right,” the paramedic said, turning my arm so he could look at both sides. “Cracked all the way around actually. You’ll have to have it cut off, new x-rays taken and a new cast put on.”
“Yippie.”
He arched his eyebrow at me and looked up at Richardson. “Has she been like this the whole time?”
“Before or after she threatened me with the bat?”
“Doesn’t every woman you meet threaten you with a bat?” the paramedic laughed. He flashed his light in my eyes, and was checking my pulse when Keaton came in.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Richardson said, holding up one hand. “You can’t come in here.”
“This is my condo and that is my girlfriend. I’m damn well coming in,” Keaton replied, crossing the ro
om and sitting next to me on the couch. “How is she?”
“Her cast is cracked, so she needs to go to the hospital to have it replaced,” the paramedic said. “I think she might be in shock, although some of it could be the adrenaline wearing off.” He closed his case and stood up. “Are you going to take her to the hospital?” Keaton nodded. “Good enough, then.”
Bernie came back as the paramedic was leaving. “Is she ok to answer a few more questions?”
“Should be.”
Bernie grabbed a chair from the table and put it down next to the couch. “Charlie, did you hear any noises or anything from outside before the knock on the door?”
I thought about it a minute and shook my head. “I had the TV on watching a war movie. All the explosions from the movie probably drowned out anything that happened outside.”
“Did you get a look at the person?”
“I told you, I turned off all the lights and the TV in the room before they broke down the door. The only light in the room was coming through the curtain I opened,” I said, pointing to the half-open living room curtain. “There is supposed to be a light on at the top of the stairs, but whoever it was must have unscrewed the light. The door flew open, they stumbled in and I swung the bat as hard as I could.”
“Where do you think you hit him?”
“I’m not sure.” I went down the hall for the bat and moved to the spot I had been standing when it happened. As carefully as I could, I gently swung the bat, picturing it hitting the person again. “Mid-section. I might have hit their lower ribcage. Definitely the stomach.”
“How hard do you think you hit them?” Keaton said.
“Hard enough that they dropped to their knees. I remember hearing them gasping for air.”
“You probably did some real damage then,” Bernie replied. “So we are looking for someone with internal injuries and possibly some broken ribs. I’ll get a call out to area hospitals to be on the lookout for anyone coming in with those types of injuries.” He stood up and put a hand on my shoulder. “You did good, Charlie, real good.”
“I’m sorry about Officer Martin,” I told him.
Bernie’s face turned dark. “I have to go tell his family, and then I am going to hunt down the sick…person who did this to him and make them pay.” He stormed out with Officer Richardson right behind me.
“Sorry about the door,” I said as I sat back down.
“I don’t give a fig newton about the door,” Keaton said, pulling me close.
“Bernie said there was no report about a stolen backhoe.”
He nodded. “Nobody was there when I got there, the gate was intact and all the equipment was there. I got back here as fast as I could.”
“I know.”
“How’s the hand?”
“Painful.”
A crime scene technician appeared in the doorway. “I’ve got to do some work in here.”
“We’re on our way to the hospital,” Keaton replied, helping me up. I grabbed my phone and wallet.
“I’m going to need the weapon you used on the assailant,” the tech said. I pointed to the bat leaning against the chair Bernie had been sitting in. “You used a bat?”
“It was the handiest thing I had.”
She nodded. “Any other areas I should concentrate on?”
“Whoever it was never made it past the coffee table. They fell to their knees right here,” I said, indicating the space just inside the door. “When I started to swing again, they rolled to the right, got up and left.”
She examined the bat closely. “Didn’t even crack it,” she said, clearly impressed.
“No, I cracked my cast instead,” I told her, holding it up.
“Ouch, that has to hurt. I’ll be a couple of hours at least to make sure I get all my bases covered. You may want to find another place to spend the night. We’ll be taking the door with us to examine for fibers and fingerprints, things like that.”
“I’ll call my foreman, get him to bring in a new one, not a problem,” Keaton assured her.
We walked downstairs to a chaotic scene in the parking lot. Several police cars, local, county and state, as well as two ambulances were scattered all around. I saw flashes of light, which meant there was probably some press there as well, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. Unfortunately, Ralph was there in the middle of the group and started yelling at me at the top of his lungs. I mutter a couple of choice words and ignored him. My phone rang. “Don’t ignore me, Charlie!” Ralph yelled. “I want details and I want them NOW!”
“Get bent, Ralph,” I said and hung up. It rang again. “What?”
“Don’t tell me to get bent, Bannerman. You are deep in the middle of this story. You have a responsibility to the newspaper.”
“No, Ralph, I have a responsibility to myself. You aren’t even in the top 100 on the list.”
“Aw, come on Charlie, just one little statement,” he begged.
“Okay, hold on a minute, I’ll give you a statement.” I hung up and walked over to the news-hungry press. “Here is a statement: Victim tells her boss, the editor of the local paper, to get bent.” I turned to walk away, and then turned back. “One other thing, Ralph: take your job and shove it.” I walked away, got into the Mustang with Keaton and left.
“Did you just quit your job?” Keaton said.
“I do believe I did.”
“You are unbelievable,” he laughed.
“So I’ve been told.”
Chapter 41
Since I wasn’t bleeding, having a heart attack and could breathe just fine, we weren’t a priority. The admissions clerk took one look at me, rolled her eyes, shook her head and motioned for me to go sit down. We were still sitting there an hour later when my parents came rushing in.
“Charlie! Are you alright?” my mother said, hugging me tightly.
“I was until you squeezed the heck out of my broken ribs, Mom,” I gasped. She quickly let me go and took my left hand in hers.
“Braden called us. He said a policeman was killed outside Keaton’s condo and that you beat someone with a baseball bat.”
“I didn’t beat anyone,” I assured her. “I only managed to get one swing at him.”
“Did you use that swing I taught you in high school?” my father asked. “The World Series game-winning swing?” I nodded. “Did you get a piece of him?” I nodded again. “That’s my girl.”
“Christopher!” my mother said, shocked. “Really! Don’t encourage her.”
“I’m not encouraging her, Grace,” my father said. “She protected herself and it sounds like she did a mighty fine job of it, too.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” I smiled at him. I patted Mother’s hand. “I’m okay, honest. I cracked my cast. They are going to x-ray it to make sure I didn’t break anything else and then put a new cast on. You didn’t have to come down here.”
“Yes, I did,” she replied. “You’ve been through a lot the last couple of weeks. I didn’t realize how much until Braden told me.”
“I asked him not to. I didn’t want to worry you.”
“We’re parents, dear. It’s what we do. You’ll find out someday when you have children of your own. You don’t stop caring or worrying about your children just because they are grown and out of the house.”
I put my head on her shoulder. “Thanks, Mom. I needed that right now.”
Dr. Lance came into the waiting room. “Well, well, you are certainly keeping us busy, Charlie. Slow time at work or something?”
“Or something,” I replied.
He took my right hand in his and looked at the cast. “Well, you did quite a number on this cast. What exactly did you do?”
“I was swinging a bat at a house breaker.”
“My word,” he said. “Did you make contact with the idiot?”
“Yes, sir. Right in the mid-section.”
“Good girl. Well, let’s get you to a room, cut off that cast and get some new x-rays. Does it hurt much?”
“I’ll have the nurse give you something for that,” he said, helping me to my feet. My parents and Keaton stood up, too. “Now, now, she’s just going for x-rays, not life or death surgery. Give her a little breathing room. I’ll send her out when we’re through. Shouldn’t be more than an hour.”
He was right. An hour later, I was back in the waiting room with a bright new purple cast and feeling no pain from the medicine they gave me. My parents had gone home. Keaton informed me Chet had replaced the door, but we weren’t going back to the condo.
“Where are we going?” I asked groggily.
“To a hotel. You need some peace and quiet, and you aren’t going to get that around my place right now. Chet says the police are still there and so is the press, trying to get statements from whomever they can. I doubt anyone is going to be breaking into the place the rest of the night.”
I relaxed in the seat, too tired to argue. I don’t really remember anything else until Keaton shook me awake. “Come on, Charlie. We’re here.”
I squinted my eyes, trying to figure out where here was, but gave up. He helped me out of the car, through the lobby and to the elevator. When the doors opened, he swept me into his arms and carried me down the hall to our room. Sliding the key into the lock, he pushed the door open with his foot and walked inside. He put me down on the edge of the bed. “Where are we?”
“At a hotel in the Dallas area, far from the chaos,” Keaton said.
“You’re too good to me,” I yawned as I slipped off his jacket. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Why do you say that?” he said as he turned down the other double bed.
“I don’t usually end up with nice guys like you.”
“Well, now you have, so hush. Just let me take care of you tonight,” he said, helping me up and into the other bed.
“No arguments from me tonight,” I mumbled as my head hit the pillow. I don’t even remember him pulling the covers around me.
Chapter 42
Good Night Sleep Tight Don't Let the Stalkers Bite (Charlie Bannerman Mysteries) Page 16