by Harper Lin
“Great. That ought to pay for the tow and the new tire.” Amelia scowled.
After another ten minutes of complaining and fussing over her tire, Amelia flopped down on the back step and affectionately rubbed the side of the truck.
“Well, that must have been why business was so good today. Heaven knew I was going to need the extra cash.”
Gavin knelt down on one knee in front of her and took both her hands in his.
“I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad night. Look, once the tow truck gets here, let me take you to dinner to get your mind off things. Maybe we could have a drink somewhere and talk. What do you say?”
“I can’t tonight. In fact, that’s what Lila and I were talking about before the whole flat tire took over the afternoon.” Amelia gently pulled her hands away from Gavin’s. “You are a really nice guy, Gavin, but I’m seeing someone.”
Chapter Twelve
Gavin watched Amelia’s face while she explained her situation with Dan, how she felt about him, and how she hoped it wouldn’t make things weird working next to her.
“So you were serious when you said you had a boyfriend. I thought you were bluffing. Is he that tall dude who’s always wearing a suit that I see over here sometimes?” Gavin asked sheepishly.
“Yeah.” Amelia felt her cheeks puff out as she smiled.
“Well, he seems like a decent enough guy. But do you think…”
As Gavin was speaking, Amelia’s phone began to ring. She pulled it from her pocket.
“One second, Gavin. It’s my kids.” She pressed the little green button and put the phone to her ear. “Hey, Adam. What’s up?”
“Mom, did you schedule a plumber to come to the house today?”
Amelia froze.
“What?”
“Yeah, there’s a guy here who says that you told him to come check the bathroom sink. That you were going to meet him here? You didn’t say anything, so I was wondering…”
“Adam, is he in the house?”
Gavin stared at Amelia, whose complexion had gone sheet white. He reached out toward her as if he were scared she might fall over.
“No, he said he was getting a few things from his truck. Meg’s at the front door, and…”
“Adam, tell her to shut the door!” Amelia screamed into the phone. “Shut the door! Adam, tell her to shut the door!”
Adam yelled their mother’s instructions at Meg.
“Adam? Did she do it? Adam, lock the door! Make sure every door and window to the house is locked! Right now! I’m on my way!”
Gavin stood and tried to put his hand on Amelia’s shaking shoulder.
“Amelia, what’s the matter?”
“I’ve got to get home! My kids are alone, and he’s there!”
With shaking hands, Amelia dialed Dan’s cell.
“Walishovsky.”
“Dan! Tim Casey is at my house! The kids are alone there! Please, you’ve got to send someone to check on them!”
“Amelia, I need you to calm down. Why would Tim Casey be at your house?”
“I don’t know. To send a message. To hurt my kids. Dan, I don’t have time to explain! Please, send someone to check on them. I won’t get there fast enough!”
By this time, Amelia was crying. Lila had come out of the truck when she heard her screaming. She looked at Gavin, who shook his head and was just as confused as she was.
“Oh no!” Amelia hung up the phone and paced toward Lila then to Gavin. “What have I done? I need to get home.”
“I’ll drive you,” Gavin offered. “My car is right over there.”
“Yeah, just go, Amelia. I’ll handle the truck. Don’t worry about a thing.”
Amelia looked at Gavin. Wiping tears and mascara down her cheeks, she managed to choke out a thank you as he took her by the hand and led her swiftly to his car.
Within seconds, they were on the road, heading in the direction of Amelia’s house. Adrenalin raced through Amelia’s body, and without thinking, she explained the whole situation to Gavin. The visit to Waterware, the spontaneous visit to the No-Tell Motel, the backed-up toilet, and the suspicious behavior of Tim Casey in the white van with red lettering, and showing up just as she had a flat tire.
“And now he’s at my house. He lied to my children. He saw their faces. Gavin, what if we’re too late? My God! What if he’s hurt my kids?”
“Don’t think that way, Amelia.” Gavin tried to soothe her as he sped down the street, weaving between cars and honking his horn. “If everything you think about the guy is true, then he isn’t stupid. He won’t try anything in broad daylight, and not with evidence stacked so high against him. He’s obviously trying to scare you.”
“Well, he’s done it!” Amelia cried.
After what felt like hours, following Amelia’s shaky directions, Gavin finally turned down her street. There was a squad car in front of the house, as well as Dan’s car. There in the driveway was the white Waterware van, the back doors open with tools and supplies spilled on the ground.
Officer Darcy Miller was kneeling down at the back of the truck, cradling her arm. Several drops of blood had fallen to the pavement.
Before Gavin could put the car in park, Amelia jumped out and ran up to the officer.
“Oh no. Darcy. Are my kids okay?” She stopped and swayed unsteadily as she reached down to help the wounded officer.
“He caught me with an ice pick. An ice pick! Who does that?” Officer Miller sounded more annoyed than hurt.
“My gosh!” Amelia cried.
“I’m okay, Amelia. Don’t worry. Go ahead…” Officer Miller pointed toward the front door.
“Mom!” Meg yelled. She was crying too and came running out into her mother’s open arms.
“Where’s your brother?” Amelia kissed and hugged her daughter tightly.
“He’s in the house with Officer Radcliff. I think that’s what his name is.”
Taking her daughter by the hand as she’d done when she was little, Amelia quickly hurried into the house. There she saw Adam, visibly shaken, sitting with Officer Radcliff, who had a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Mom.” Adam got up slowly and went to his mother. She took him into her arms, where he buried his head into her shoulder.
“Are you all right?” Amelia kissed his head, still holding Meg’s hand.
“Yeah,” Adam said into her neck. “Mom. I’m glad you’re home.”
Amelia looked at the police officer.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t mean to open the door, Mom.” Meg sobbed. “I looked first, and I thought, ‘Oh, he’s just a plumber. Maybe he’s at the wrong house.’ Or maybe you had forgot to tell us about something getting fixed.”
“It’s okay, Meg,” Adam said soothingly. He looked at his mother. “He must have heard me yelling. Before Meg could shut the door, he came barging in. He pushed Meg, and she fell on the floor.”
Meg began to sob again, squeezing her mother’s hand tightly.
“So I ran at him. I tossed your measuring spoons at him, and when he reached to catch them, I pushed him out the door.”
“You tossed my measuring spoons at him?” Amelia laughed and cried while smoothing Adam’s hair away from his face.
“I read somewhere that it is nearly impossible for a person to not reach up to grab a set of keys that have been tossed to them. I didn’t have keys, so I thought the measuring spoons might be close enough. They were.”
Amelia burst into hysterical sobs of relief, and she hugged her children. They just stood there for a few moments, holding each other as Amelia repeated over and over, “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I’m so sorry.”
Finally, they all calmed down.
“You guys sit down. I saw Dan’s car out front. Where is he?”
“A squad car showed up right after you called and we got the door shut.” Adam wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. “The guy wouldn’t listen to the officer when she told him to drop w
hat he was holding.”
“Where were you guys?” Amelia rubbed her arms to stop them from trembling.
“We were in the window,” Meg replied.
“In the window? Why were you in the window? You should have been upstairs, locked in my room, and on the phone with police.”
Meg and Adam looked at each other and smiled through their tears.
“Well, we didn’t want to miss anything.” Adam sniffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve and grinning.
“Now that it’s over, it was pretty exciting,” Meg added, also wiping her eyes but smiling.
Amelia shook her head.
“So where is Dan now?”
“The guy took off running.” Meg sobered up quickly. “He headed through the neighbor’s yard.”
Amelia looked toward the front door, which was still open. There were two more squad cars and the paramedics out front, their red and blue lights drawing out every neighbor as if they were peculiar moths to gawk and see what was going on.
“You guys stay inside,” Amelia ordered them. Heading up the porch was another uniformed officer, who met her at the door.
“Hi, Ms. Harley. We need to talk to Adam and Meg.”
“How do you…?”
“Detective Walishovsky has talked about you guys.” The officer was short and had a moustache and gentle eyes. “It won’t take long. We’ll need a statement from you, too. And don’t worry about the van. The tow is on the way to pick it up. It’s evidence now.”
Amelia nodded.
Neither of her children protested. Instead, Meg scooted her chair closer to Adam.
Amelia walked out toward the ambulance. Before she got to it, the two additional squad cars sped off, lights blazing and sirens wailing.
Just then she remembered Gavin. He had parked his car a bit behind the police cars. When he saw Amelia, he climbed out and jogged up to her.
“Are you okay?” He looked genuinely concerned as he slipped his hand around her arm.
“Thank you for driving me.”
“It was no problem. Do you want me to stay? I can stay with you for a while if you want.” He really looked eager to help.
“No. Please go home, Gavin. I’m going to wait for Dan.” She squeezed his hand, patting his fingers and smiling weakly.
Gavin nodded.
“I’ll see you at work.” He waved as he turned and jogged back to his car. That was going to be a weird environment now. It didn’t take dating the guy to cause awkward feelings and bouts of humiliation. Just a lunatic with a hair dryer and an ice pick to do it.
Shaking her head, Amelia went to the ambulance.
“Darcy, have you heard from Dan?” Amelia watched as the EMT bandaged up Darcy’s arm where Tim had stabbed her with the ice pick.
“They went to get him.” She nodded toward the cars that had just left. “Shots were fired.”
Swallowing hard, Amelia looked at the ground then at Darcy.
“We’re talking about Detective Dan Walishovsky, Amelia. Don’t worry.”
“I can’t help it.” Amelia began to cry.
Chapter Thirteen
After the police had gotten their statements from Adam, Meg, and Amelia, the house and street turned quiet. Adam and Meg had fallen asleep in their mother’s bed, not wanting to sleep in such far corners of the house. Not tonight. Not after all the commotion.
Amelia had been in the bed between them as the television quietly buzzed some old western on Meg’s favorite classic movie station. Adam gave no protest to leaving the station on. Within ten minutes of all of them climbing into the bed, the kids were asleep. Amelia was anything but.
After inching herself out of the bed, she went downstairs, poured herself a glass of wine, and sat down at the kitchen table. Tears flooded her eyes, and she cried again.
The guilt of the terror she had caused her children to endure was too much, and she shook her head in disgust. Thoughts she’d never dared bring to the forefront of her mind suddenly appeared attractive and possible. Would the kids be safer with their father?
“If he wanted them full time, he would have fought for them, Amelia,” she whispered. But she knew once the story hit the papers, John would be blowing up her phone with a laundry list of criticisms. Probably every threat imaginable except that he’d take the kids away. Jennifer wouldn’t go for that.
As if on cue, her phone went off. Sweeping it quickly off the table, she let out a gasp as she saw the familiar number.
“Dan. I’ve been so worried.”
“Is my car still in your driveway?” His voice was calm, slow and like music.
“It is.” She wiped a tear off her cheek.
“Mind if I come over to get it?”
“Of course not.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have some coffee, would you?”
“Always.”
“Great. I’ll be there in a few.”
Quickly, Amelia got a pot of hot coffee going and pulled two cups down from the cupboard. She saw the squad car drop Dan off, and when he came up the walk when she opened the door, Amelia thought he had aged ten years.
“Dan?” Her voice cracked.
He shook his head and stepped into the house. Letting out a long sigh, he took Amelia in his arms and hugged her tightly.
“Did he get away?” Amelia’s heart was frantically beating against her ribs. “Is he still out there?”
Dan just held Amelia without saying anything.
“He used the cord of a hair dryer to strangle Preston Dwight and David Scranton,” Amelia said. “I saw it in the back of his van. Why he had that in the back of his van, I don’t know, but the pattern matches the marks in the picture. Perfectly.”
“Plumbers often have hair dryers,” Dan mumbled into Amelia’s shoulder. “If they can’t find a leak, they use it to completely dry a spot so they can see the water right away.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
Amelia pulled away and put her hand on Dan’s cheek. She took his hand and led him to the kitchen.
Even with cups of coffee in front of them, Dan wouldn’t let Amelia’s hand go.
“When you called and said he was after the kids, I didn’t think about who you meant. I just thought I had to get here quickly. It wasn’t until I got here and saw it was Tim Casey that I remembered you had said his name.”
Amelia’s breath caught in her throat.
“I’m so sorry, Dan. It’s all my fault.” She explained what she had done and how Tim had followed her and had popped her tire but pretended to be in the neighborhood to offer a helping hand. She confessed to putting her children in danger.
“I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive myself. The kids are going to have to testify, too, aren’t they? Or…did he get away?”
He took a sip of coffee. Letting out a deep sigh, Dan looked sadly at Amelia. He shook his head.
“Tim Casey committed suicide when I had him cornered in the garage of one of your neighbors two blocks over.”
Amelia gasped.
“He had no intention of going quietly. In fact, he had no intention of going at all. Things were closing in on him.”
Dan went on to explain that Starla-Ann Dwight had used him to get her baby’s father jealous. It worked. Kyle was back in the house on Preston’s last night alive.
“In his warped, twisted mind, it was the boy’s fault Starla-Ann wanted to cling to Kyle. Remove the boy, then Kyle would be of no use. Tim could then swoop in. So he had the boy open his bedroom window, and he took the boy out and strangled him in the back of his van with the hair dryer cord. Then he left his body in the park, just tossing it aside like nothing. The problem was that Starla-Ann didn’t want anyone after she lost her boy. Tim’s plan backfired.”
Amelia leaned forward and listened as the coffee in front of her started to go cold.
“Since Kyle already had a bad reputation with the police, Tim assumed they’d take him into custody. But there was no proof Kyle did anything. And Tim was a stella
r citizen. Helping with the search party, trying to console the grieving mother. He was the only one with a clean background, so no one ever took him seriously as the murderer.”
“But when David Scranton came looking around, that spooked him,” Amelia added. “Oh my gosh. He was the plumber for that motel. It’s no wonder there was no sign of a forced entry or struggle. Tim probably just knocked on the door and said he was there to fix a pipe or something.” She nearly choked. “Like the Boston Strangler.” She grabbed Dan’s arm. “And he used the same weapon both times. That cord.”
“Tim Casey was a popular guy around town.”
“I saw his office. Did you see the pictures with all kinds of local celebrities?” Amelia asked. “Aldermen. Cops. Businessmen. I’m surprised he offed himself. A guy like that with all those connections would probably be able to get a fancy lawyer and have a good shot at beating the whole thing.”
Dan agreed.
“But he blew it when he came after your kids.” Dan cleared his throat. “Something you did drove him into the light. He played a bad hand, Amelia. You had done something to stack the deck against him.”
Amelia leaned back in her chair. “No. I didn’t do anything but ask a couple questions. None of them were even that good. You’d have been pretty disappointed in my detective skills, Dan. I promise you that.”
“But you did the one thing that Starla-Ann didn’t do. You pushed. Preston wasn’t even your child, but the love you’ve got for your own kids made you look into this. You were trying to help a mother. Not solve a murder. A man like Tim Casey had no idea what hit him.”
Before Amelia could say another word, a groggy Meg came down the stairs, rubbing her eyes.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Amelia cooed. “Doing okay?”
“Yeah, I just wanted a drink of water.” She stood in a pair of sweat shorts and a baggy T-shirt with a picture of Elvis on it that she had begged for two Christmases ago.
“I’ll get that for you.” Amelia stood and got a bottle of water from the fridge and cracked the seal open. “Is your brother still sleeping?”