I forged ahead onto the grass just past the library, trying to make out a couple of blurry shapes waiting for me on the other side of the dismembered foliage. In fact, I could now discern the image of another car, on the opposite side of the road from my car. Too dark to tell, but it might even be Skip’s. I took comfort in that.
Safely past the branch—which, to my relief, didn’t assume the form of an alien and envelop me in its many arms—I started across the road toward my car.
Until a set of taillights came into view just ahead of me, on the shoulder.
The car door opened about the same time that I saw the license plate. STITCH.
Or was my mind playing tricks? If so, it was a double trick. The vehicle looked too much like an Escalade to ignore the situation.
Before I could evaluate all this new data, Steve Talley stepped out of the car.
“Geraldine, what a coincidence,” he said. He stood by his vehicle, hands on his hips. He was dressed in suit and tie, ready for a photo shoot, his thick, dark hair recently patted down. I caught a whiff of aftershave freshly applied. Not the way you’d dress for an assault. But in the light of the open door, his eyes told a different story.
My knees felt as though they were made of pipe cleaners. Don’t panic. There may be many, many Escalade STITCHes in Lincoln Point.
What were the chances that this was not the same STITCH? Or that this was truly a random meeting? Zero and zero, I realized.
“Steve.” It came as a whisper.
He pointed to the interior of his car. “I have that cute little scene here,” he said.
I blinked. “A scene?”
“Yes, the one I bought at the auction. It appears to be broken and I wonder if you can take a look?”
I took a tentative step, backing away, but Steve was through with subtlety. He moved quickly toward me, grabbed my upper arm and pushed me against his car, my face toward the window.
I saw what was once my lovely Victorian Christmas scene on the backseat, now looking more like a crime scene than a cozy holiday parlor. The beautiful spruce was on its side, ornaments scattered everywhere. Nothing was upright. Not the chair, ottoman, lamp, or coffee table. It was odd to see the books still glued in place on the shelves of the toppled bookcase, as if the works of Shakespeare were defying gravity.
“Do you think you can fix it?” he asked, his voice low and harsh, almost unrecognizable. The look on his face was nothing I’d seen before, angry and ominous.
I forced myself to frame a question, as if I were the teacher again and Steve a temporarily unruly student.
“What’s this about, Steve?” Do I want to hear this?
“I think you know, Geraldine. I bought this piece of junk just in case I needed it to get to you. I was pretty sure you were on to me. I hoped I was wrong.”
“Is that why you followed me?”
“Until I noticed you had an armed escort and I had to pull out. Quite a slip, using my Escalade at first. You see, I’m not a career criminal and I make mistakes.”
“And you resorted to slashing my tires?” Maybe I could still be that special person that a murderer confessed to, to get it off his chest. Looking at Steve’s expression, his wide, frightening eyes, I feared his confession would be the last thing I heard.
“I tried to discourage you, but you’re worse than the cops. They recognized that a miserable piece of trash like Carlos Guzman wasn’t worth the trouble of an investigation. As soon as you started poking around the Mary Todd, and then at Gus’s place, and now . . . visiting Nadine in jail. That was the last straw. I knew I had to protect myself.”
“Did you have to protect yourself from a weak old man as well?”
“It wasn’t my fault that Mooney saw me in the pharmacy.”
My mind, which I thought was frozen, went from pharmacy to farmacia and then to the line in Carlos Guzman’s notebook:
Steve “Stitch” Talley was addicted to whatever Gus could get him from the Mary Todd pharmacy and Carlos knew it, giving him an edge over what Steve had on him.
“That must have been some arrangement with Carlos, sharing information to further your mutual goals. But I guess he overstepped his bounds.” I didn’t have a clue where this bravado was coming from, except that I felt I had nothing to lose.
“That’s about enough, Geraldine.” He reached into his pocket and my greatest fear was realized. He pulled out a gun.
“We’re going for a ride,” he said. “In your car.” He pushed me roughly toward my Ion, across the road.
For a few seconds, probably to preserve my sanity, my fear was overcome by my outrage that someone had bought my beloved handiwork with such an ignoble purpose in mind. That he called it a piece of junk was beyond forgiveness.
Chapter 28
If anyone had seen Steve and me enter my car, that person might have assumed I was simply driving Steve home after a meeting. Steve walked the few yards nonchalantly behind me, not touching me. He didn’t need to. I felt as severe a pain in my back as if he’d been poking me.
Steve was silent, while I rattled on. “Be reasonable, Steve. We can go to the police. We don’t have to tell them about this little slip at all. I know you’re just panicked. Think about your children.”
I didn’t hold much hope that sentiment would tug at his heartstrings, since he’d already used his young daughter as a contingency plan in case he had to get to me.
We entered my car. “Where are you taking me? My family knows I’m here.”
“They also know how nosy you are, and when they find you next to a Dumpster in that same crappy neighborhood, they’ll think you were still snooping around and they’ll assume you’re another innocent victim of the slums. The newspapers will praise your courage. ‘Respected retired teacher, blah blah blah.’ ”
I wished he didn’t make sense. It was a clever plan, accomplishing two goals—getting rid of me and making another point about the neighborhood his proposal was designed to clean up.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, grasping at phrases that sounded weak even to me.
“I regret that I do. I hoped that with Nadine’s arrest the case was now closed in your mind and we could go our separate ways in peace. Watching you this evening, I knew that was not going to happen. I’m not a murderer. Carlos was an accident. We had a nice information exchange business going, but he got greedy. He was being squeezed by Senorita Muniz and now he wanted money from me, otherwise he’d ruin any chance I had to keep my job, let alone get the promotion and recognition I deserve. I just wanted to shut him up, but one thing led to another.”
“You can go to the police.” My worst idea yet.
“Drive, Geraldine. Head out the back road to New Salem.”
The buildings of the complex were dark, but I thought surely somewhere in its bowels there was a late-night crew, perhaps someone guarding Nadine Hawkes, whose crime now seemed minor.
“Steve . . .” I began. But I had nothing more to say.
Captive in my own car, I drove out of the complex. Steve sat in the backseat, in Maddie’s place, which enraged me. I thought of accelerating to ninety or one hundred or whatever my Ion could do and crashing us into a tree. Or turning around quickly and barreling through the fenced-off area that housed the police cars. I thought of simply pulling over, refusing to drive. None of the options seemed guaranteed to spare my life. It would be only a minor inconvenience to Steve if he had to shoot me in my car and run away before anyone arrived.
All I could do was play out Steve’s plan and hope for intervention or a brilliant move on my part before he carried out the final step.
If the situation weren’t so tense, I would have laughed when the 1812 Overture rang out from the pocket of my sweater. Before Steve realized what was happening, I had the phone in my hand and open. My personal best response time.
Steve put the gun against my head. I thought of shouting out to the caller, or better yet, saying Steve’s name. He pushed the gun harder into my skul
l and I knew I couldn’t get an SOS out. It might not matter anyway, even if my caller later figured out what had happened. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Steve had a chartered plane at the ready to take him to join Gus Boudette on the French Riviera.
Mostly, I was trying to stay alive as long as I could. “Make it good,” Steve whispered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Gerry,” Beverly said. “I’ve been wanting to chat and there’s no answer at your house.”
I remembered that June and Maddie were going to make an ice cream run to Sadie’s. At least they were safe.
I couldn’t blow this one opportunity to get help. My lips were so dry I could hardly speak. I cleared my throat. “I, uh, I’m with Nick Marcus. Remember? I told you we had a date.”
A pause while Beverly processed what I said. Then a laugh. “Okay, what’s up? Are you teasing me for spending so much time with him? I’ve been with Nick all afternoon. He’s just leaving my driveway.”
I kept my voice as steady as I could. I cleared my throat again. “We’re at Sadie’s now, waiting for ice cream.”
Whether it was due to her sisterly intuition or her civilian volunteer training, Beverly snapped into action. “Gerry, listen to me. Hang up, but make sure you leave the phone on and we’ll use your GPS. I’m getting help right now on my other line.”
“I’d better go. Our sundaes are here.”
I placed the phone back in my pocket. Then I made a wrong turn. Stall, stall.
“Don’t mess with me, Geraldine.”
“I don’t know exactly where you want me to go.”
Steve was leaning on the headrest in front of him. There were lights in many of the windows in the neighborhood buildings. I knew he’d have me drive to the most remote part of the lot. “I guess it doesn’t matter now that we’re in smelling distance of the projects. Take a left here.”
I turned down the street I recognized as Lourdes Pino’s.
At Steve’s prodding, I got out of my car and walked toward a stairway. I tried to read the number on the building, but it was fuzzy. I was frustrated because I thought it was important that I know the number, otherwise I’d be lost.
Steve wandered a few feet in either direction, his demeanor alert, listening, I supposed, for an impediment to his plan. I closed my eyes, waiting. When I opened them after what could have been a few seconds or a few hours, I saw that Steve was still pacing. At every little sound, even a twig snapping under his own feet, he’d stop and listen, and point his gun in the direction of the sound.
My heart hammered in my chest. What was he waiting for? Was he hoping I’d die of fright before he had to kill me?
He might get his wish.
I heard a crash. A sound too dull for a gunshot, but what else could it have been? A shot through my heart? I shut my eyes. But I felt no pain.
A rescue!
I saw Steve Talley sprawled on the ground and Kyle Pino standing over him with a two-by-four. I thought I must be in a fantasy world where all the incorrect murder weapons were taking shape.
Steve staggered up and grabbed Kyle’s ankle as Kyle swung again. The gun had slid across the asphalt away from the stairway. I ran toward the gun. I saw Steve pick up a pipe or something similar. Kyle jumped on him. Or maybe it was vice versa.
Finally, I heard sirens.
I picked up the gun as three Lincoln Point PD cruisers turned into the lot.
I saw Skip get out of one of them and wondered if he’d had his dinner yet.
Chapter 29
After a mandatory checkup at Lincoln Point Hospital, I held court in my atrium. At least, that’s how it felt with visitors filling the area.
Linda ministered to me as if she were on duty, propping pillows behind me and checking the labels on the orange containers of pills that graced my little table. Though I hoped the ER staff hadn’t prescribed anything I could become addicted to, I did enjoy the calmness that had swept over me since my last dose.
But even in a less-than-full-alert state, I was eager to hear the resolution of the case that had taken so much of my energy. Skip explained the deal Steve had with Gus, who had an unauthorized key to the pharmacy.
“When Steve needed help after accidentally killing Carlos, Gus was the logical one to call to help set up the frame. Apparently Gus was easy to buy off,” Skip said.
“The promise of spending the rest of his life on the Mediterranean was all it took,” said Beverly, who kept a steady pace of wiping my brow unnecessarily. “Maddie is with June,” she told me, leaning close to my ear. “We didn’t think she needed to hear all these details.”
“Thanks, Beverly,” I said. I owed her gratitude for more than taking care of Maddie. “You saved my life, you know.”
“Me and Kyle and the Lincoln Point PD,” Beverly said.
“Nothing like having back-to-back nine-one-one calls,” I said.
Beverly’s eyes were teary. “I can’t believe how selfish I’ve been this past week. Maybe if I’d listened to you and we talked as usual, none of this would have happened.
“No way, Mom,” Skip said.
I patted her hand in agreement.
“Anyway, I’ll never do that again, Gerry.”
Linda had her own pieces of the puzzle and she was eager to add them. “Remember when Mr. Mooney said the van driver gave him medicine in the lobby, when it was really Steve Talley who gave it to him? Well, I figured out he must have seen Steve and Gus together in the pharmacy, probably more than once, and that’s why he was mixed up.”
I loved how Linda looked after her patients on so many levels. I didn’t even mind being one of them now.
I thought of all the little events that brought us to this point. Maddie’s help finding the fence image on the Internet, Linda’s using her resources to dig out facts here and there, Beverly’s picking up on my signal for help, Kyle Pino’s coming through at the end, in a way defending his neighborhood.
“I got lucky,” he’d said during a brief visit earlier in the day. “I was looking out the window when you pulled up. And it didn’t look right down there, you know? So I called nine-one-one.”
“Lucky for me you’re a responsible young man,” I’d said. “You didn’t have to risk your own life.”
“The police don’t always come right away in my neighborhood.”
“That’s going to change,” Skip had said.
Skip assured us that with Steve now sitting in the basement of the police department building, the city council would scrap the Talley plan for Nolin Creek Pines and open the discussion to a neighborhood committee interested in true restoration.
In hindsight I was overwhelmed by the amount of information and advice we’d received from Sandy Sechrest, Mr. Mooney, Emma, Lizzie, Sofia, and the other residents of the Mary Todd Home. I hoped in the future they might be taken more seriously when they offered their observations or the benefit of their life’s experiences.
Skip was the last to leave my house. My nephew had outdone himself to protect me through the week, and, without a lot of fanfare, had looked into everything I’d brought to him.
“I thought we’d lost you,” he said now, holding my hand as tightly as when he was a small boy and we crossed a street together.
Chapter 30
On Christmas morning, all Porters were present and accounted for. We’d decided to open our family gifts early and have June Chinn and Nick Marcus join us later. I looked forward to having them share Christmas dinner, the menu for which went on and on: pork loin roast with cranberry stuffing, potato puree, Waldorf salad, and many potluck surprises. Plus, of course, a long list of desserts.
Richard and Mary Lou had arrived only last night due to unforeseen emergencies at his hospital. We’d agreed ahead of time to spare them the details of the Carlos Guzman case. Even without that to talk about, the three of us had stayed up half the night chatting, rebonding.
The only mention of the case while we were all gathered came from Skip.
“Reporter
s,” he said, tossing a newspaper in my recycling basket. “Chrissy Gallagher sounds like she closed the case herself by inspiring a Lincoln Point citizen to action.” He turned to me. “That would be you, I suppose.”
“Time for presents,” Beverly shouted. “Only happy talk, please.”
We’d made a rule some time ago that whatever else we gave each other, there would always be something handmade. Big or small, even if only the gift card, as long as there was something personally crafted.
Skip complained the most about this tradition, but always came up with something unique. This year, June had talked him into an afternoon at our do-it-yourself ceramics store and he’d created clever switch plates for each of us.
“I can’t believe you did this,” Beverly said, showing off hers, which looked vaguely like an LPPD volunteer patch.
“I can’t either,” Skip said. “You can see why June and I won’t be dating anymore.” We all looked horrified, and Skip slapped his knee. “Gotcha.”
Maddie had made me an upholstered couch using sponges and fabric from one of her “baby dresses” as she called them—a tight floral print that I must have given her before I realized she’d have a personality of her own.
This rule was easiest for Mary Lou, the professional artist, of course. This year she outdid herself, taking advantage of their spacious minivan to transport a painting.
“Direct from L.A. to LP,” she’d said when she handed me the large package. I expected a landscape, which Mary Lou did very well, or a garden, á la the French Impressionists. Instead, I gazed with delight on a painting of Ken and me, copied from one of the last holiday photographs of the two of us before he was forced to bed.
Memories poured over me as strongly as if Ken were in the room with us, in the home he loved so much.
“I thought a long time about doing this,” Mary Lou said. “It’s just from a photograph, so it’s not as nice as . . . well, I hope you like it.”
I let the tears make their way down my cheeks. No wonder Maddie could hardly contain herself all week about the presents coming from L.A. “Nothing could please me more.”
Mayhem in Miniature Page 26