The Midnight Hour

by Karen Robards

  “What about your housekeeper?”

  “Oh, yes. Pat does.” She closed the dishwasher door without turning it on—it still was not full—and turned to face him again.

  The look he gave her said as plainly as if he had spoken the thought aloud that almost forgetting that her housekeeper possessed a key did not enhance his opinion of the quality of her testimony. In other words, what else was she forgetting?

  “Anybody else? The babysitter?” There was a slight edge to his voice now that spoke of impatience.

  “Linda? No. Jessica has her own key, which she uses to let them in after school.” Grace leaned against the island, too. The tile counter top felt cool and slick as her hand rested on it.

  “Ah.” There was a world of enlightenment in the syllable. “Jessica has her own key. Who’s had access to it, I wonder?”

  “What do you mean?” She frowned at him.

  “I mean that it’s entirely possible that she’s had a friend or two make a copy.”

  “I don’t think—why would any of her friends do that?”

  “So they can write messages on her mirror and deliver a surprise cake,” he said dryly.

  “Oh.” Grace hadn’t thought of that possibility—that one of Jessica’s friends might have copied Jessica’s key. It would explain things.

  “Yes, oh. Okay, that considerably increases our list of possible cake-delivery suspects with access to a key. Let’s see, there’s your sister. Your next-door neighbor. The housekeeper. And any or all of Jessica’s friends. And their friends, ad infinitum.”

  “I’m having the locks changed on Monday. And a security system installed.” But Grace was almost certain that the person she had chased out of the yard the night she had found Mr. Bear down by the road had not been one of Jessica’s friends. At least, not one she knew.

  “Good idea.” Again his voice was dry.

  “I’ve got the pictures.” Ayres was holding several instant snapshots in her hands, waving them in the air so they would dry, and more lay in front of her on the table. The camera dangled from her neck by its strap.

  “Great.” Marino walked back over to the table, and stood looking down at the pictures for a moment. Ayres touched his hand and said something to him, smiling. It was the first time Grace had seen her smile. So Officer Ayres was flirting with Detective Marino. She was surprised at herself for being surprised. The policewoman was young and attractive. Why shouldn’t she find Marino appealing? Grace did herself, whether she liked to admit it or not.

  Marino, however, appeared oblivious to what was going on. He never even smiled back at Ayres. Instead, he was all business as he glanced over his shoulder at Grace. “What I want you to do now is call your sister, the next door neighbor, and the housekeeper, and see if they still have their keys and if any of them made you a gift of the cake.” He held up his hand to stop her when Grace would have protested that none of them would have done such a thing. “Just on the off chance, okay?”

  “All right. Fine.” Grace called the Aliens first and spoke to Judy. Who said the key still hung on a nail in her pantry. She personally hadn’t so much as looked at it in months and from its dusty state didn’t think anyone else had either, and she knew nothing about the cake. Called next, Pat said she’d used her key on Wednesday as always, but not since then. It was still on her key ring, and she knew nothing about the cake. Jackie was not at home.

  Marino and the others had been looking through the house as Grace talked on the phone. Marino entered the kitchen just as she tried Jackie’s number for the second time.

  “None of them brought the cake. Jackie’s not home, but I know she didn’t,” Grace said, hanging up.

  Marino acknowledged her words with a nod. “Everything in the house looks fine. No one lurking in the closets or under the beds. Nothing seems to be missing, but you might want to check yourself.”

  Grace nodded. A quick tour of the house with Marino at her heels showed everything seemingly in its place. Officers Gelinsky and Ayres were standing in the kitchen talking in hushed tones when they returned.

  “There’s really nothing else we can do except file another report,” Gelinsky said apologetically to Grace.

  Grace’s mouth thinned. Filing a report was useless. “I want whoever is doing this caught” She looked at Marino as she spoke. Talking to Gelinsky and Ayres was, as she had already learned, a waste of breath.

  “You’ve said that before,” Marino said. “And, believe me, we’re doing our best. What I’m going to do now is have someone check with all the bakeries in the area to see if anyone made a cake like this, and for whom. It shouldn’t be hard to find out where it was made if it was done locally, which it probably was. If you have no objections, I’m also going to take the cake and have it tested, just to make sure that it isn’t poisoned or anything.”

  Grace hadn’t thought of that. “That sounds good.”

  “Okay.” He picked up the cake, looked down at it thoughtfully, then glanced at Grace again. “You have anything to put this in? A box or something?”

  Grace shook her head. A shoebox wasn’t going to do it, and she had nothing larger. “I don’t have a box, but I have some plastic wrap. At least that would make it less messy.”

  “What about a garbage bag? One of those big plastic ones.”

  “I have that.”

  “If you don’t need us any longer, Detective . . .,” Gelinsky said as Grace fetched a garbage bag from the pantry. It was obvious from the rather furtive glance he cast her way that he was not 100 percent certain how she would receive his desire to leave.

  Marino shook his head. “Go ahead and take off. There’s really nothing else to do except take care of the cake, and I’ll handle that.”

  “If you need help, Detective . . .,” Ayres said, clearly offering. Again she smiled at Marino. Grace felt a quick stab of antipathy toward the other woman, and appalled by the implications, immediately strove to banish it. Marino shook his head no to the offer of help, and Gelinsky and Ayres left, the latter with obvious (to Grace at least) reluctance.

  “You have any toothpicks?” Marino asked when Grace handed him the trash bag.

  “I think so.” She returned to the pantry, located the box of toothpicks she had used to spear olives and cheese for her last dinner party, and returned with them to the table. Marino extracted perhaps a dozen from the box and inserted them into the top and sides of the cake.

  “What are you doing?” Grace asked, mystified.

  “These’ll keep the plastic off the icing,” he explained, giving her a quick smile loaded with self-deprecating humor.

  “Good thinking.” Grace was impressed—both with the toothpicks and the smile, which dazzled her.

  “My mother used to bake cakes all the time. Won prizes for them at the state fair. Believe me, I know about transporting cakes. Now hold the bag open for me, please.”

  Grace complied. Marino deftly slid the cake inside, and sure enough the toothpicks held the black plastic away from the icing. That done, Marino picked up the pictures, which Ayres had left on the table, glanced at them a final time, and put them into his pocket.

  “I’ve got to go.” He picked up the cake, holding the plastic-wrapped bundle carefully with both hands beneath it. “I’m due at my newest niece’s christening”—he glanced at the clock on the wall—“in thirty minutes.”

  “Wait a minute,” Grace said, her bedazzlement instantly torpedoed. Her hands curled around the top back rung of the nearest chair as she stared at him in disbelief. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do? Look around, take a few pictures, ask some questions, and then just leave? What about this person who is breaking into my house and terrorizing my daughter and me?”

  For a moment he just looked at her without speaking.

  “Grace,” he said finally. “I’ll make sure this cake thing—and the other things—are thoroughly investigated, I promise. But I have to tell you that we don’t have much to work with here. Gift cakes a
nd messages on a mirror and stolen teddy bears are not enough to justify mobilizing the entire police department.”

  “They’re threats” Anger was building in her voice again. Her hands tightened on the chair back.

  “Maybe,” he said noncommittally, turning toward the door. Glancing over his shoulder, he added, “I’ll do what I can. In the meantime, keep the doors locked, whether you’re home or not.”

  “That doesn’t seem to do much good, does it?” There was a slight shrillness to her voice. “Just like calling the police doesn’t seem to do much good.”

  “We came, didn’t we?” He headed toward the door with Grace at his heels.

  “And you left.” Her tone was definitely shrill now. “Without doing anything to resolve the problem. Like I said before, you’re not taking this seriously.”

  “I’m keeping an open mind,” he said, pausing in front of the door and nodding at it. “Could you get this?”

  “Great.” Grace opened the door for him ungraciously. A rush of cool air, the soft roaring sound of what was now a downpour, and the smell of dampness, of soaked earth and greenery and pavement, greeted her. “I’ll keep reminding myself of that. Knowing you’re keeping an open mind certainly makes me feel better, let me tell you, when my daughter is being stalked and threatened because of your drug investigation.”

  He stepped onto the porch, then turned to look at her, a slight smile tilting up a corner of his mouth in silent acknowledgment of her sarcasm. With the ephemeral grayness of a sheet of falling rain for backdrop, his broad-shouldered frame seemed suddenly very solid and substantial, and she realized how much she did not want him to leave. “All right, you made your point. As of this moment I am now, officially, taking this seriously, I promise. But I really don’t think you or your daughter are in any physical danger. Whether these are threats or pranks or just a bizarre series of coincidences, nobody’s confronted you or Jessica directly. I don’t think anyone’s going to.”

  “I certainly hope you’re right.” Her voice positively dripped sarcasm this time.

  His smile broadened into a grin. “Call me if you need me.”

  He turned away.

  Helplessly, angrily, Grace watched him cross the porch and then take off running down the steps with a left turn at the bottom toward the driveway, at which point the dripping snowball bush largely blocked him from her view. Mouth tightening, she shut the door and locked it.

  As she turned to walk back into the kitchen for a much-needed cup of coffee, it suddenly struck her just how vulnerable she was, alone in her large, echoing, empty house.

  Which someone with evil intent could apparently enter at will.

  Chapter

  25

  “JESSICA, LOOK, it’s Rusty Curran! Over there, with Todd Williams and Andrew Sykes and Jason Olshaker!” Emily jabbed her in the ribs with an elbow. Her excited whisper was, Jessica feared, loud enough to be heard clear down to the opposite end of the crowded mall, where Emily’s mother, Ann, was shopping in Lazarus Department Store.

  “Shh!” Jessica warned, shifting away from the sharp-edged elbow as she shot a covert glance in the direction Emily indicated. Sure enough, there was Rusty, in baggy khakis and an untucked flannel shirt, laughing and talking in the middle of a pack of his similarly dressed friends. It looked as if they had just come out of the movies, which were the centerpiece of that section of the mall. Streams of people moved in front of and behind them.

  “Quick, let’s duck in here.” Panicked, Jessica steered Emily and the others—Tiffany Driver and Polly Wells—into the nearest store, which happened to be an earring boutique. It was a mistake. Allison and Maddie were in there—basically all the high school kids who weren’t nerds hung out at the malls on the weekend—trying on earrings in front of the mirrored walls. Spotting them, Jessica almost backed out again. But it was too late. They’d seen her, too, through the mirrors.

  “Why, if it isn’t Jessica!” Allison said, too sweetly, as she turned away from the mirror. Like a lot of the kids in the cool crowd, Allison blamed Jessica for bringing the cops down on their heads. If Jessica were normal—translation, nondiabetic—their reasoning went, she wouldn’t have passed out that night in Brandeis Park and they could have bought their pot and gotten out of there without the cops having any idea who they were. Thanks to Jessica, the heat was on now at Hebron, and it wasn’t safe to bring so much as a Midol to school.

  “Hi, Allison, Maddie,” Jessica offered weakly, knowing herself scorned. The bright blue earring that Allison wore in one ear—she held the other in her hand—almost exactly matched the eyeshadow that swept from her lid to her brow. Unwillingly, Jessica admired the effect. From her chunky sandals to her tight black mini to the pumpkin-orange streaks that adorned her hair today, Allison was so stylin’. Jessica knew she couldn’t look that good in a million years.

  To handle the stress of the moment and stay cool, what she really needed was a cigarette. Not just for the nicotine, but because it would look so right. She didn’t have any with her, though. She’d left her Winstons under the swing cushion on the porch.

  “Are you hangin’ with the girl jocks now?” Mad-die’s tone was patronizing. Unlike Allison, she was a blonde, with waist-length hair held back from her face by a leopard-print headband that exactly matched the scarf she had used to belt her tight black jeans. She was pretty, probably the prettiest girl in school, although she was not considered to be as cool as Allison, and she was totally aware of her place in the scheme of things. The look she swept over Emily, Tiffany, and Polly was openly contemptuous. In the hierarchy that every student at Hebron lived by, girl jocks were in a class just slightly above the total dweebs. Definitely unCOOL.

  “Hi, Allison,” Emily said in a small voice, while Tiffany and Polly didn’t speak at all, merely nodded. Emily was broad-shouldered, with muscular arms and legs, a flat chest, and a bouncy, athletic walk. Tiffany was almost six feet tall, and broomstick-thin. Polly was shy, flat-chested, and wore both glasses and braces. All three of them were total zeroes with boys. To Allison and Maddie and their crowd, such social misfits just didn’t count. Like every other nonperson at Hebron, Emily, Tiffany, and Polly knew their status and were intimidated by it, and by the two pretty, popular girls who confronted them.

  Thanks to her damned diabetes, Jessica knew she was now reduced to the ranks of a nonperson, too.

  “Jessica plays basketball. Didn’t you know?” Allison said to Maddie. She completely ignored Emily’s greeting, and, indeed, her presence, and Tiffany’s and Polly’s, too. Her focus was all on Jessica, the recently fallen.

  “Eww, no, I didn’t,” Maddie said, in exactly the tone she would have used if Allison had asked her if she didn’t know that Jessica had lice in her hair.

  “Jessica’s really good,” Tiffany said loyally, making Jessica want to sink through the ground. “I bet she makes the team.”

  “Well, isn’t that special?” Allison cooed. “I just bet she does, too.”

  “Hey, look, it’s Rusty Curran and his crowd,” Maddie said, spotting the boys through the glass window as they passed by.

  “Jessica likes Rusty, don’t you, Jessica?” Allison gave Jessica a malicious smile. “Does he know you’re here, Jessica? I bet he came to the mall just hoping to run into you.”

  Of course former friends Allison and Maddie knew how she felt about Rusty, Jessica thought, willing her face not to turn red.

  “Let’s tell Rusty Jessica’s here,” Maddie said, giggling, and Allison nodded. Before Jessica could stop her—she would have thrown herself on top of a live grenade to stop her—Maddie darted out of the store.

  “I’ve got to go,” Jessica said abruptly, not caring what Allison thought if she could only get away before they humiliated her in front of Rusty. With Emily, Tiffany, and Polly trailing, Jessica practically ran from the store.

  “Jessica, wait, here’s Rusty!” Maddie called. A quick, involuntary glance back showed Jessica that Maddie, indeed, had Rusty in t
ow. Giggling, she had one hand hooked around his arm, pulling him onward. His friends were farther back, mere faces in the milling crowd. Rusty was frowning as he looked after Jessica. She wasn’t surprised, Jessica thought, her body burning with humiliation. It wasn’t every day that a guy like Rusty had a girl positively flee from him.

  Without warning, her toe caught on something. She stumbled, flailed her arms, and fell. Just like that.

  For what seemed like an eternity she lay facedown on the cold terrazzo floor. Her life passed before her eyes, scene by scene. Mortification was the mildest term for what she endured. It was so all-encompassing that it overrode any physical pain.

  “Are you okay, young lady?” A man with cordovan wing tips and gray polyester trousers knelt beside her, his hand touching her back.

  “Jessica! Jessica, are you all right?” Emily, Tiffany, and Polly came running up. Into her line of vision came jeans with frayed edges, sneakers, Polly’s embarrassing lime-green laces.

  “Should I call security?” A woman’s voice. Tan hose, sensible black pumps.

  Jessica scrambled up. “I’m okay,” she said, her voice high-pitched as her trembling knees threatened to dump her back on the floor. “Really. I’m not hurt.”

  The man, silver-haired with glasses; the woman, a plump boutique clerk; and other passersby nodded and faded away.

  “Are you sure?” Emily asked. Jessica barely heard her. Rusty was walking toward her, long hair thrown back from his face, grinning from ear to ear. Maddie clung giggling to one of his arms and Allison, also giggling, clutched the other. Neither of the girls reached higher than his shoulder. Large and in charge was how he was described at school. Just looking at him made Jessica feel dizzy.

  “That was so funny,” Allison said between giggles. “You must have been practicing.”

  “It takes somebody really clumsy to trip over a bench in the middle of the mall,” Maddie said, her eyes snapping maliciously at Jessica.

  “Shut up, you bimbos, Jessica might really be hurt,” Rusty said in a voice that was only semijocular. Despite his wide grin, Jessica was stunned to see what appeared to be real interest as he looked at her.