He tilted his head in that puzzled way that dogs do. He tilted it first to one side, and then to the other, but he wasn’t sitting. Then, without warning, he stood on his hind legs, planted his two bear-like paws on the gate, and began emitting very deep, very loud, very conspicuous barks.
I fell to the ground and began crying again. My jig was up. Any hope I’d ever had of finding Colt was gone. And my ribs were screaming, “Enough! Enough!”
With the sun making its appearance, I sat and bawled while Frank and Stein joined in the chorus.
It wasn’t long until I realized Christina was standing above me. “Barb? Are you okay?” She called up to her house. “Howard! She’s right here!”
Lovely, kind, sweet, head-bobbing Christina got down on the ground with me and rubbed my back. “Did Frank and Stein hurt you?”
I shook my head. “I was trying to steal them. Do you forgive me?”
Howard was next to me now as well.
“What were you trying to do?” he asked.
“Frank and Stein...sob, sob, good noses...sob, sob, find Colt...sob, sob.”
“Barb, we have some news. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but we’re certain he’s not anywhere in the Ash house now.”
I brushed my tears away along with some yucky stuff from my nose. “How? Why?”
“Communication here hasn’t been the best among the units so not everyone knew the name of the missing person. When they sent a crew over to check out Colt’s car, one of them realized what was going on. He told me just now that he gave Colt a ride to our house Friday afternoon because his car wouldn’t start.”
“He called the police to come get him? Why didn’t he call us?”
“He didn’t call the police, his cell phone was dead so he started walking to the West Lakes Shopping Center when this cop, a friend of Colt’s, spotted him and stopped to talk. I think the guy said they play poker regularly. Anyway, he gave Colt a ride to our house sometime between four and five p.m. on Friday.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I said. “He didn’t come to our house.”
The world was swirling around me. Every time we opened a door, it lead to another door, but never to an answer. Never to Colt. I started feeling nauseas again. I wiped more tears away and tried to stand, but when I did, the ground went wobbly and my legs gave out. Christina felt my forehead.
“Howard,” she said. “She’s burning up.” She pushed herself from the ground. “I’ll be right back. Frank! Stein! Come!”
The dogs followed her into the house and not a minute later, she returned with a puffy floral comforter which she wrapped around me. “Let’s get you inside and take your temperature. And I’ll fix you a hot cup of tea. Don’t worry, I put the monsters in the basement.”
She and Howard helped me up. As we walked back to the house, now in good daylight, I noticed that the very back of her yard, some three feet out from the fence, was covered in decorative, white landscaping rock.
White landscaping rock.
Hmm.
“Christina, why the rock?”
She seemed puzzled by my question. “I think she might be hallucinating, Howard. This could be worse than we thought.”
“No,” he said, understanding my strange query. “She’s asking about your landscaping. The white rocks. I’m not sure it’s a question, so much as a thought.” He was following my drift, I could tell.
Christina’s white landscaping rocks reminded me of those in the Penobscotts’s yard next door. Next door. ND. The nd in Colt’s text message wasn’t code for Nectarine Drive, it was code for Next Door.
Maybe we weren’t the worst investigators in the world after all. The slowest maybe, but not the worst.
The bobbing commenced. “Yup, yup, yup. Those rocks. Only way to keep the yard from turning into one big mud puddle with the dogs around. Uh, huh, uh huh. Necessity.” Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Yup, but did you know my neighbor told me, after we put those in, that those kind of rocks are the calling card of,” her voice went even lower, just in case the CIA was listening in, “swingers. You know, couples who like to...whoopee, woo-hoo, with other couples.” She fanned herself. “Yup, yup, yup, wish I’d known that. I would have chosen river rock!”
“Howard, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“It’s a stretch,” he said, “but you just might be right.”
A mask of sheer terror flashed across Christina’s face as she apparently misunderstood our exchange. “No, no, no, no, no! I swear, we aren’t swingers! We’re as normal as white bread and apple pie! I don’t even like S-E-X. Ask my husband.”
That was more than I needed to know. And evidently more than her husband wanted us to know too, because he was standing on their deck staring down at her, arms crossed, brows deeply furrowed.
Behind him stood Erik, who looked relieved when he saw us. “Thank you,” he said patting Mr. Fetty on the back. “Hopefully we’ll be out of your way soon.” He joined us in the yard. “911 dispatchers took a call from Diane at your house.”
“What’s wrong? Are the kids okay? What happened?”
“Everyone is fine. She was calling in ‘suspicious activity’ in your neighborhood. She heard a possible gunshot.”
Chapter Nineteen
Aching ribs, fever, and mild hysteria be damned—nothing was going to stop me from getting to my family if they were in danger. Straightening my back, I threw off the comforter and summoned a mother lode of energy and serious intention. “Take me home,” I said.
Erik had secured a police cruiser and rushed us home with lights flashing and sirens blaring.
“It’s the Penobscotts, Howard,” I yelled over the siren shrill. “Colt stumbled into some evil lair of perverted debauchery they’re running over there. I knew something was odd about her. People from Wisconsin don’t know how to make sushi. A mean Cheddar Mac & Cheese, yes. Not sushi. That should have been my first clue.” I know, there I went with the racial profiling again. “Sushi chefs use cleavers, right? Those severed appendages I found in the woods were probably her handiwork. And now she’s turned to guns!”
Howard remained more even-keeled. “Your mom could have heard a car backfire and mistook it for a gunshot. Let’s stay calm until we know more.”
He was right. I worked to calm my nerves, but the constant squall of the sirens made that next to impossible.
“We’ll check this out,” he continued, rubbing my back, “then I’m taking you straight to the hospital. We should have had you transported hours ago.”
When we screeched onto White Willow Lane, two cruisers were already positioned, one in front of our house and one in front of the Penobscotts’s. My mother stood in the driveway talking to a uniformed policeman while another could be seen knocking on the front door of our neighbor’s house. I flew out of the car and up the driveway as quickly as my battered legs would carry me.
“Please do not question my hearing, young man,” she scolded him. “That is blatant age-ism. A recent visit to the doctor revealed that these ears work just as well as those of any twenty-year-old. I most definitely heard two powerful gunshots that rocked the foundations of my daughter’s house.” When she caught sight of me, her frown deepened. “Barbara, you look terrible.”
I coughed. “That’s funny, because I’m sure I feel way worse than I look.”
Erik flashed his badge and the censured cop sighed in relief. “When did you hear the shots, Diane?” Erik asked her.
Seeming appeased, she rattled on, but didn’t exactly answer the question. “Thank goodness you’re here now, Erik. Possibly you can teach this rookie a thing or two. For instance, to believe a rational woman when she reports the discharge of a weapon. I told him I was a graduate of the County Citizen’s Police Academy. I know whereof I speak.”
The “rookie’s” radio squawked. “Not getting an answer here,” came a static-laced report, from what I assumed was the officer investigating next door. A quick look-see confirmed he was on his radio. “Checking the rear of the premises,” he added.
“Roger that,” answered his colleague, who appeared desperate to leave his current station and join him.
Erik offered him the out he was looking for. “I’ve got it here,” he said. “Give him backup.”
The grateful policeman nodded and literally dashed away. That’s my mom. She even scares uniformed lawmen packing heat.
Howard caught a glimpse of something and tipped his head toward our house. “Barb, we have spectators.”
I looked up to see several eyeballs peering through the upstairs window in Callie’s room. Mama Marr and the three girls had collected there to view the exciting goings-on.
“We should go let them know we’re okay,” I said.
With a nod, he joined me on the brick path that lead to the front door. “You’re not exactly okay,” he said.
“I’ll put on a good show.”
As we approached the house, he called back. “Fill us in when you know anything, Lamon.”
Still Brad-Pitt handsome despite his desperate lack of sleep, he gave a nod. “Will do.” Then he turned back to sweet-talk my mother. “Now, Diane,” he said, all smiles, “tell me when you heard the shots.”
We’d barely reached our front step when she interrupted her own description of the gunshots to point out activity at the Penobscott house. “My. Someone has finally decided to answer the door,” she said.
Howard and I turned at the same time to catch sight of Neil Penobscott not just “answering his door,” but blasting through it and out onto the front lawn, his arms raised high in the air, screaming, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! My wife’s gone crazy! She’s got a gun and a hostage! Don’t shoot!” He fell to his knees on the frost-glazed grass.
Erik was on the move when the early morning air was filled with the bold and unmistakable blast of heavy weaponry. Even my mother yowled at the crack which rang from inside the Penobscotts’s house.
Howard threw the door open and shoved me in. “Upstairs and stay there!” he shouted. He pointed a stern finger in my face. “Stay there!” My mother was on his heels, not messing around. She might have had a diploma from the Citizen’s Police Academy, but she also apparently wanted to graduate on to another year of life on earth. She sped around him, through the door and upstairs faster than the Road Runner looking for a pile of Acme bird seed.
But I could see Howard had no plans to join us. He tried to close the door behind her, but I threw my foot in the way. “Howard, you’re unarmed, you can’t!” I grabbed his wrist and pulled hard, straining my own ribs. “Get in here!”
“I won’t put myself in danger, I promise.”
How could he promise such a thing? He was crazy. “Lock the door,” he said, escaping my grasp, and running away, not a hint of a limp in his gait.
At his core, Howard was a hero, a man who believed in facing any dangerous scenario head-on to protect others. I knew he had no choice in his own mind. I locked the door, genuflected even though I wasn’t Catholic, asked Buddha to send a dose of good Karma our way, and followed my mother up the stairs to Callie’s room.
Amber and Bethany gravitated to my side like magnets. I’m not sure I could have peeled them away they were stuck so tight. Mama Marr was beside herself with fear for Howard.
“My son, what is he doing? He doesn’t have the guns or no thing and there is the shooting!” She pointed to the Penobscotts’s house. “This is worse than Philadelphia, this Rustic Woods.” She shook her head while my own mother tried to comfort her with little pats to the back.
“He’ll be just fine, Alka. Your son is one of the strongest, smartest, bravest men I know. I’m proud to have him for a son-in-law.”
I was far too terrified to ruminate long on her accolades or their contradiction to the many less celebratory opinions she’d expressed about Howard over the years, but the praise was duly noted.
Callie’s room sits in the upper corner of the house facing the street. It has two windows, one looking out onto White Willow Lane which also gives her a nice view of the Penobscotts’s front yard. The other window, on the side of our own house, faces the side of the Penobscotts’, their back yard, and the woods behind. From our vantage point, staring out of the front-facing window, we could see Officer Lamon inside the police cruiser at the end of our driveway and Howard, kneeling on the road beside him, using the driver’s side door open to protect him from God knew what. Lamon was on the car radio, probably calling in the troops. The door-knocking cop had made it back to the same car, hiding behind the passenger’s-side door, while it appeared that Neil had been directed to the back seat.
Realizing that the girls should not see Howard in danger, especially Callie, who didn’t need to witness a repeat of our August trauma, I told them to move to Amber’s room and close the shades.
“No!” they screamed in unison. “We don’t want to be alone!”
“You won’t be alone,” my mother cooed in an unusually soothing tone. She really could be warm and consoling when she wanted to, I thought. I imagined her with those babies in the hospital. “I’ll go with you.” She opened her arms wide and scooted them out the door. “Alka, would you like to come?” she asked.
Mama Marr was adamant, her head shaking firmly. “No. I stay.” Her fingers gripped the window sill in case anyone should try to remove her with force. “I stay,” she repeated.
Unable to locate the young policeman who’d been reprimanded by my mother, I slipped over to the other window for a better view of the Penobscotts’s side and back yards. There, I spotted him creeping slowly around the corner of the house. Another shot rang out and he fell to the ground. By the way he dropped, I just knew he had taken a bullet rather than a dive for safety.
Then I spotted movement in the far corner of their property, right at the tree line.
The jeans and the blond hair were unmistakable.
Slithering on his stomach into the woods like a snake, was Colt.
Colt was alive.
Chapter Twenty
I screamed out the window to Howard, who was still in the cul-de-sac, ducked behind the police cruiser. “Howard! Colt! Backyard,” but he didn’t turn his head. “Howard!” I screamed again. “Anyone! Help him!” Nothing. We were too far away, the commotion in the street was too loud, and my voice just floated away on the cool, fall breeze.
Something had to be done. Crazy-wife-with-a-gun, Melody Penobscott, was out there shooting people left and right. Colt was being hunted down like sick prey and no one knew. I tore out the room and took the stairs three and four at a time, stumbling on the last step and splaying face down onto the foyer floor. Bump in the road. I ignored the shooting pain in my side and scrambled up. Mama Marr hollered after me, “What you do? Where you go?”
“Mama, get to Howard! Tell him it’s Colt! He’s heading for the woods!” I shouted back.
We don’t keep guns in the house, I won’t allow it. FBI agent or no, I absolutely cannot tolerate a firearm in my house with children around. I will admit, at that very moment, I regretted my hard stance on the subject. A loaded gun would have been handy. Never fear, though, I had a kitchen full of killing machines. Or at least a steak knife or two.
Rifling through my drawers, I also began to regret my poor attention to all things culinary. I was a 46 year-old married woman and mother of three, and yet I did not even have a proper set of knives. We had one chopping knife—if that was what it was called—who knew? I chopped with the thing. Sometimes. But it was easily twenty years old and the tip was broken off. That wouldn’t work. There were the steak knives, somehow those didn’t seem quite menacing enough. Time was runnin
g out if I wanted any chance of intercepting Melody and saving Colt’s life, so I grabbed the scariest thing in my messy utensil drawer: my pasta spoon.
Keep reading. It’s scarier than you’d think.
I flew out the back sliding glass door. My backyard met seamlessly with the Penobscotts’s, since neither yard was fenced, and both were bordered by the same woods I had walked the previous days. I slipped into the woods with one goal: rescue Colt. Did I want to be a hero? Heck no. Did I see a choice? Not really. If I had run out into the cul-de-sac to warn the tiny brigade of three, precious time would have been lost and Colt could have been dead. The best case scenario had me locating Colt and bringing him to safety without ever encountering Melody or her firearm. The worst case scenario...was worse.
The ground beneath my feet was buried in damp leaves and golf-ball sized acorns, so I kept slipping and losing my balance while I tried to maneuver between the trees and lock my radar onto Colt’s whereabouts. It was one thing to see him from a second story window, but down on the ground, my bearings were twisted. I wondered if Mama Marr had made it to Howard yet. Backup with matching fire-power was a far better prospect than going it alone. My pasta spoon would be very intimidating, I knew, but I wasn’t naive enough to believe it could stand up to the threat of a loaded barrel in my face.
A whisper caught my attention. The voice was Melody’s. “Colt? Where are ya? Come on out. I won’t hurt ya.”
For a selfish moment, I wondered why the cuckoos always latched on to me. Then I realized this one had latched onto Colt and I was just along for the ride. That nutcase would rue the day she messed with Colt Baron and his friend, Barbara Marr.
Melody didn’t sound inches away, but she didn’t sound very far either. I knelt low to the ground behind a fat oak tree, scanning for both of them, glad for once, that my old jacket was so faded—hopefully it offered me some camouflage. Leaves rustled, but I couldn’t tell from where. My heart pumped so furiously that my breathing became hard to control. I couldn’t let her hear me. As I covered my mouth to muffle the sound, I noticed my breath in the air and realized I should be looking for evidence of their respiration, not just their bodies.
Saturday Night Cleaver (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #4) Page 16