by Hannah Reed
“Checking bees,” I said. “And buying protection.” When Patti popped through the cedar hedge, I held up my new pepper spray.
“That isn’t going to even slow down an attacker,” Patti said.
“Are you and Joel really going to print all that stuff he told me about?”
“Of course. This could be my big break.”
“Aren’t you worried about Johnny Jay’s reaction?”
“We’re saying we got the information from an anonymous source.”
I sighed in frustration. “Won’t he figure that source is me?”
“Probably. Here, you need this.” Patti handed me a large spray can.
“Wasp spray?” I read from the label on the can. “For what?”
Honeybees are constantly blamed for the actions of wasps, which are a far more aggressive insect, but it isn’t in my nature to spray them dead.
“Spray that at Johnny Jay,” Patti said. “And he’ll stop dead in his tracks. And it’s good for twenty feet so get him early before he has a chance to get too near. If you aren’t on the ball, if you freeze up and don’t get him right away and he does close in, you’ll have to use the knee-to-groin tactic and you better hope you connect.”
“Where do you come up with this stuff?” I asked, giving the air a small spray from the can to make sure it worked. Patti would make a great self-defense instructor, if she could be pried away from her snooping habits. She had unique techniques.
“I’ve been in some tight spots and always feel safest with my trusty can of wasp spray.”
“It doesn’t exactly fit in my back pocket.”
“I don’t care how you carry it, just do.”
“All right.”
“Where are you going?” Patti asked when she saw me putting a leash on Ben.
“To check on things at the store.”
“I’ll come along. Give me that wasp spray. I’ll protect you.”
“I have Ben.”
“You need all the help you can get.”
We had barely made it past Patti’s house when a car pulled up and Johnny Jay came charging out of the driver’s seat like an angry bull.
I didn’t even have time to turn and run.
Thirty-one
Johnny Jay was in my face before either Patti or I had a chance to raise our weapons and aim at him. My mouth didn’t even have time to open, so Ben didn’t get the attack command from me, not that I would have remembered that special, powerful word under the circumstances anyway.
There Johnny Jay was. All that bullying, bulky brawn way too close for comfort.
And to say he was P.O.’d wouldn’t even come close to describing his current emotional state.
“Haven’t you done enough damage?” he had time to yell, so close to my face I could count his gold fillings. Instead of counting, I came to my senses and blasted him with the pepper spray. Only I didn’t get it in his eyes, because his arm came up and blocked my trigger finger. But he sure backed up fast. That move left him open to a flank attack from Patti, who fired a round of wasp spray at the back of his head. Some of it settled on me.
Ben, sensing he should run interference, growled. That scared all of us.
“Stop!” Johnny shouted, and for some strange reason we did. “That’s enough. Don’t move. I’ll charge you both with assault. And call off your dog.”
“You can’t charge us with anything, Johnny Jay,” I shouted back, since he was shouting. “You aren’t in charge anymore! No charging. No arresting. How does it feel to be common?”
“I’ll file a complaint.”
“You’re the one after me! I’ll get you for stalking.”
“I have a pocket video camera,” Patti lied. I knew it was a lie because she didn’t have any pockets in the capris she wore. But Johnny didn’t notice. “Touch a hair on her head,” my neighbor warned him, “and you’ll make the front page one last time.”
Johnny’s mouth opened, closed, opened again, but nothing came out until his eyes shifted to me. Then he said, “Fischer, you’ve completely ruined me.”
I used to be Missy to Johnny Jay until the big public apology; then I became “Story.” Now I was just Fischer? Well, he’d always be Johnny Jay to me whether he wore a uniform or not.
And the nerve of the man, blaming me for his own actions, not taking responsibility. I hated when people didn’t take responsibility. Grams called it a pervasive social problem and she was right. “You ruined yourself, Johnny,” I said. “I didn’t make you use unnecessary force on me. If you’re stupid enough to beat up on a woman, and in front of witnesses with electronics, then you deserve what you get.”
“Should I nail him again?” Patti yelled, spray can at the ready.
“No, wait,” Johnny said, still loud, and I could tell his eyes were at least irritated, because they were red as if he’d been crying and he couldn’t keep them open without a lot of blinking. I felt a little eye irritation myself from Patti’s overspray. “What the hell did you spray me with?” he asked Patti.
“Wasp spray. And there’s more where that came from, so back off, buddy.”
Another big surprise, Johnny backed off. “Damn,” he said.
Ben growled again, watching me for guidance. “Sit, Ben,” I said, now that there was space between the bad guy and the rest of us. Ben sat and turned his head to stare at Johnny.
“We need to talk,” Johnny said to me.
I saw Carrie Ann and Ali Schmidt round the corner at a dead run. Carrie Ann was in the lead; she overshot and ran right into me, which I saw coming only at the last second, not nearly enough time to dodge her. She knocked me backward into Patti’s bushes.
After almost taking a direct hit of wasp spray from Patti, and Carrie Ann’s overeager rescue, I wasn’t sure I needed any more help from my friends.
“One of the customers said you were in trouble,” Ali said, panting.
“And I forgot my cell phone at the store and just happened to be inside picking it up,” Carrie Ann said, pulling me upright. “So we came to help.”
“What is this?” Johnny Jay said. “Some kind of vigilante block watch group?” He glared at me, then shook his head. “This has gone too far.”
“You got that right, bud,” Patti said, still talking tough.
“What are you doing harassing Story again?” Carrie Ann asked him. “Don’t you know enough to keep your distance?”
“Did you hear about the article about to run in The Reporter?” he said. “Did you hear what she said about me?”
“Nothing that wasn’t true,” I said, wondering when Patti was going to step in and admit her big role in that article. I glanced at her. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “My car was stolen,” Johnny said.
“Convenient,” Carrie Ann said.
There we all stood in a big circle, four determined women and one pathetic bully. How does it feel? I wanted to ask him, but Johnny wouldn’t have understood. He didn’t have the capacity to feel anything other than frustration and rage.
“Get back in your car and take off,” Patti said to him. “And don’t come near her again.” She held up the wasp spray, her fingers on the trigger. “Or next time, I won’t miss.”
“Wasp spray?” Carrie Ann said, with an incredulous expression on her face. “You’re using it for self-protection?”
Johnny glanced at me, and for a brief second I thought I saw pleading in his eyes, but then they turned back to their standard mean glare.
“Don’t think this is over,” he said to me.
“Did you hear that?” Carrie Ann said. “He threatened her right in front of us.”
My friends edged toward Johnny. He didn’t seem so confident without his badge and gun and with four of us and a canine attack dog staring him down.
In next to no time, he was peeling away and we were watching him go.
After a round of high-fives, my knees got weak and I had to sit down on the curb. “What if I’d been alone?” I asked. “What would he have done?”
“Y
ou don’t have to even think about that,” Ali said, sitting down next to me. “Because you weren’t by yourself. Good going, Patti.”
Patti beamed. “Having you and Carrie Ann show up didn’t hurt, either.”
“Next time,” I advised her, “spray an attacker from the front. Blasting him in the back of the head didn’t accomplish anything.”
“I was unnerved,” Patti said.
“Who’s watching the store?” I asked Ali.
“Brent and Trent,” she said. “Business is winding down. They told me they would close up. So I’m off now.”
“I want a drink,” I said, standing up and wondering if Mom was right about me having a problem.
“Let’s go to Stu’s,” said Carrie Ann.
“Not a good idea,” I said.
“Trust me,” Carrie Ann said. “I can handle going there. Do you really think it’s possible for me to stay away from drinkers forever? Look around you. Everybody and his uncle drinks alcohol.”
“Not everybody,” I said. “Hunter doesn’t.”
“So there are two of us out of zillions. Besides, Hunter goes to bars. He just drinks soda. I can do that.”
What could we say? At least there’d be plenty of us to watch over Carrie Ann. We headed down the street. Ben trotted along next to me.
Carrie Ann had one last comment before we swung through the door into the bar. “I’d be perfectly content to inhale second-hand smoke. Too bad nobody can smoke inside anymore. Trust me, though. I won’t drink a drop.”
My cousin was using trust me way too much. I had my guard up.
Inside, a bunch of Kerrigans sat at a table—Terry, Robert, Rita, Gus, and several more.
“I’ll catch up to you,” I said to my group. “I want to talk to Gus for a minute.”
My cohorts found a booth next to a window facing the street, while I joined the Kerrigans.
Out of respect for Carrie Ann, and partly to prove to myself I didn’t have any kind of problem other than Johnny Jay, I ordered seltzer water with a twist when Stu asked me what I wanted.
Mom should see me now. Why did she always arrive at inconvenient times when I seemed to be at my very worst?
“Johnny Jay tried to ambush me a few minutes ago,” I told everybody at the table. “Lucky for me I was with my friends and Ben. Or who knows what he might have done.”
Murmurs rose around me, expressions of outrage, several head pats for Ben. I’d found my fan base. Why hadn’t I thought to appeal to Lauren’s extended family earlier?
“We want him behind bars,” Gus said, rubbing day-old growth. “It’s not enough that he’s stepped down.”
“He hasn’t stepped down,” Terry corrected Gus. “He’s on leave, like a vacation. But if we have our way he won’t be back.”
“He killed Lauren,” Rita added, her voice thick with conviction.
“We can’t prove it,” Robert said. “Not yet anyway.”
That got me thinking about how much effort and luck it took to actually prove a person guilty of a crime. Even when the whole town knew the truth, without the right evidence or a confession from the killer, a cold-blooded murderer could go scot free to hurt other people. Scary to think about.
Terry was going over his own bullet points, making me smile. I thought I had a monopoly on those. “Number one,” he said, “Jay never forgave Lauren for killing his father. Number two, where was he when Lauren was killed? Nobody knows the answer to that because of his job. He was alone on the road all the time. Where’s a solid alibi?”
“Number three,” I said, stepping in to help with the various points. “He had the means. Johnny’s trained in firearms. Those two women didn’t stand a chance.”
“But how are we going to prove he did it?” Gus asked. “That’s the thing.”
Nobody had an answer for him.
Thirty-two
Since I wanted to help Carrie Ann remember the period of time when she’d blacked out, I waited until Stu had a few minutes free, then I asked him if he remembered her being around last Saturday.
“She was here late afternoon,” he said, glancing over at my friends sitting by the window.
“Was she drinking heavily?” I asked.
Stu groaned dramatically. “You know I don’t like to talk about my customers,” he said. “It’s bad for business.”
“She’s part of my family. You have to tell me. Come on Stu.”
“She might have had one or two.”
“Carrie Ann says she can’t remember a thing. It had to have been more than one or two.”
Stu shook his head. “She wasn’t here long enough to have had more than one, maybe two.”
So Carrie Ann had changed locations; started at Stu’s, ended someplace else. But where had she gone from here?
I caught my cousin’s eye, motioned to her with a little head move, and she came over to the bar.
“Stu remembers seeing you in here last Saturday afternoon,” I said to her.
“Okay,” she said slowly, and I saw her eyes swing up in her head like she was trying to see inside her brain and that would help her remember.
“Keep at it,” I told her, and we went back to our table. Carrie Ann started moping over the 7UP in front of her. She should be thrilled that I’d discovered her starting point. She’d been in here Saturday afternoon. Why couldn’t she remember any details? That was the weird part. Unless she did remember and wasn’t telling the truth.
Ali scooted over, making room for me to sit down. “Sounds like you have the Kerrigans on your side,” she said in that husky voice of hers.
I nodded. “Just have to prove Johnny Jay did it. How hard can that be?”
“Pretty hard,” Patti said. “A police chief can concoct alibis and all sort of things.”
Ali looked doubtful. “I don’t know about that. He’d need people to lie for him.”
Carrie Ann said, “Well, someone might. You guys would lie for me if I asked you to, right?”
“Not if you murdered someone,” Patti said, definitively. “Unless, of course, they deserved it. Like if they were killers themselves or they hurt kids or small animals.”
A little later I saw Rita Kerrigan head for the ladies’ room. I followed her in and explained about the box of items out at Stanley’s and how most of it was junk, with one exception. I tried to give her the locket I’d found.
She wouldn’t even look at it. “I don’t want anything to do with anything from then,” she said, actually closing her eyes rather than risk actually seeing what it was. “And I told Stanley the same thing. Throw it away, every bit of it.”
Okay, then. Stanley had been right about Rita not wanting to confront any memories that might pop out of that box. I felt insensitive for reminding her of other bad times and putting her on the spot.
When I returned to the table I dropped the locket down in the center.
Stu came over. “You ladies want another round?”
“Four more sodas,” Patti said. “And more sweet potato fries.”
“Whose is this?” Carrie Ann asked after Stu went to fill our order and she’d picked up the locket.
“I found it in a box of things Stanley pulled out of Lauren’s car,” I said. “The night she ran over Wayne Jay.”
And then I told them about Stanley wanting to throw it away and how Holly had volunteered me as custodian while she’d been lounging inside my truck hiding from Stanley’s bees. And how I’d had to scrounge through mouse poo to find the locket.
“Rita won’t take it,” I finished. “What should I do with it?”
“It doesn’t look valuable,” Patti said, as though she had any idea what jewelry cost. Patti’s body was totally unadorned with extras. No jewelry at all. “A trinket. Pitch it.”
Ali took the locket from Carrie Ann and studied it. She opened it up and saw T. J.’s tiny picture. I thought she looked wistful and a little sad. “He’s always been cute, hasn’t he?” She showed it around and everybody agreed, including me. I’d
never thought of her husband as good looking, other than his teeth, but as long as Ali thought so that’s all that counted.
Then she dropped the locket on the table and pushed it away. We kept ordering food. Nothing beats good old bar food when your energy reserves are low. I ordered a big burger decked out with all the trimmings, including bacon and cheese.
But I resisted the urge to eat the entire giant hipwidener, so I shared it with my cousin, who said she wasn’t hungry but took half anyway and picked at it. I hadn’t seen her that down in the dumps since Gunnar put her on a short leash with her own kids.
As it turned out, she had something to worry about.
Because about an hour later Gunnar rushed in, scoured the place until he spotted us, bolted over, and told Carrie Ann the cops wanted her for questioning and she should give herself up.
“Who says?” I asked while Carrie Ann tried to hide under the table.
“Sally Maylor came by my place looking for her.”
“I’m as good as dead,” Carrie Ann said from below. “I’ll live out the rest of my life like a goldfish in a bowl, like a monkey in a cage.”
“Gunnar said they only want you for questioning,” I offered, but it was a lame attempt to comfort her. “I’ll go down there with you.”
“No, I’ll go,” Gunnar said.
“You stay with your kids,” I said. “They need you.”
For once in my life I’d made the right decision by not drinking alcohol, because I had to drive her to the police station, where I found out Johnny Jay was running the whole show from the sidelines when all along he’d led the entire community to believe he was on voluntary leave from duty. He even had on his uniform.
“Fischer,” he said to me, standing too close for comfort. He took a big whiff my way, nosing around in hopes of catching the smell of alcohol on me. “You seem to follow trouble wherever it’s hanging out. And get that dog out of my station.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Questioning suspects, apprehending criminals. Want your own suite? I think a cell is available.”
“We want to talk to Sally instead of you,” I said. Carrie Ann hadn’t said boo. She stayed behind me, looking like a cornered animal. A guilty one.