By Cook or by Crook

by Maya Corrigan

  Luke gave her a you-must-be-kidding look. “No way I would fire him. People who sweep the floor with that much enthusiasm are hard to find.”

  Val had trouble reading Luke. She couldn’t tell whether he appreciated Jeremy’s hard work or was mocking him for enjoying a menial task.

  As the music started, she spotted Chatty conversing with two older women whose jewelry and makeup would have suited a concert at Carnegie Hall better than one at the town park. Clearly they could afford Chatty’s high-end beauty products. Why had Nadia gone to the trouble of sending one of those products for testing unless she intended to act on the test results? She might have confronted Chatty about it Monday morning, when she’d also shown Chatty the burned racket.

  On Monday night Nadia had welcomed someone arriving at her door. She would have let Chatty in, though not Bigby because he’d stalked her . . . or so Chatty had claimed. Val cringed. How easily Chatty had convinced her of Bigby’s guilt and thrown up smoke screens after the murder. While in front of a TV camera, she’d diverted suspicion from the tennis team toward Nadia’s real estate colleagues. After that, she’d told a newspaper reporter that the police would soon arrest the racket burner for murder.

  Val watched Chatty hand business cards to the two well-heeled women. Did she have an alibi for the night of the murder? Probably not. As a single mother, she spent most nights at home with her fourteen-year-old son. But she could have left him alone for as long as it took to murder Nadia. Motive, means, opportunity—Chatty had them all.

  Val’s eyes stung with tears. The downside to sleuthing—finding a friend guilty. Though she’d run to the chief with her suspicions about Maverick and Bigby, she would hold off on telling him about Chatty. For a change, she would think through a theory before sharing it.

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and forced herself to forget about Nadia and Chatty for the rest of the concert.

  Twice before the music ended, she caught Luke looking at her. Then, during the encore, she felt his hand on her neck. When she turned, he kissed her, holding the back of her head with one hand. She smelled his aftershave, an overlay on the cooking oil that clung to him. Twenty years ago, his kiss had surprised and excited her. She hadn’t known what to do with her arms, leaving them to flail at her sides. Now, though, she knew how to use them.

  She pushed him away, the heels of her hands against his shoulders. “When you asked me to meet you, I didn’t think—”

  “You can’t blame me for kissing you. I couldn’t help myself.”

  She almost laughed. He’d used those exact words the last time. Amazing how puppy love imprints every detail on your memory. Tonight he’d kissed her in front of an audience at twilight. She hoped anyone who saw that also noticed her rebuff him.

  When the encore ended, Tiffany scampered toward them. “Val, you gonna walk back with us? You promised.”

  Val hadn’t promised, but Tiffany’s parents might have seen her push Luke away and sent the girl to give Val an excuse to ditch her date. Val saw no reason to string Luke along when she preferred Gunnar’s company.

  She stood up. “Thanks for suggesting the concert, Luke. I’ll head back home with my neighbors.”

  Luke’s face turned stony. “Sure. Enjoy the rest of your night.” He stood up and disappeared into the crowd.

  “Race you to your house,” Tiffany said as they turned the corner onto Val’s street. She darted away.

  Val trotted at an easy pace behind her. The girl’s parents and younger brother brought up the rear.

  Tiffany bounded up Granddad’s porch steps, stopped short, and suddenly ran back to the sidewalk, her face contorted in fear.

  Val felt a jolt of adrenaline and dashed toward her. “What’s wrong?”

  Tiffany grabbed her hand. “I didn’t know you had dogs. They sound mean. Do they bite? Is that why you never let them out?”

  “They’re in the house?” When the girl nodded, Val imagined Granddad fending off canine attacks. She ran to the porch as her grandfather opened the front door. He looked calm despite the furious barks coming from inside the house. “Are you dog-sitting, Granddad?”

  He grinned. “In a way. When Ned moved to the senior village, he forced his dang-fool motion detector on me. RoboFido. It makes a racket when anyone comes near the house. I’ll turn it off.”

  Val explained the barking to Tiffany and her family. The girl insisted on meeting RoboFido.

  The device sat on the floor near the front door’s sidelight. Tiffany frowned at it. “It’s just a box. It doesn’t even have fur.”

  Granddad patted the girl on the head. “This dog is less trouble than the furry kind. Never needs walking. Want to see how it works?” He pointed to a dial on top of the box. “This is the on-off switch and the volume control. The other dial lets you pick different sounds.”

  Tiffany took to the role of DJ and strung together a medley of doggie tunes—a woofing solo, a baritone-and-bass barking duet, and a snarling chorus by hounds of the Baskervilles. Tiffany’s little brother howled along with the hounds. Her parents had to drag her away from the gizmo.

  Granddad closed the door behind the family and gestured with his palm up toward RoboFido. “How do you like our pet?”

  “We need a dozen in a house this size.” Val unplugged the device. “One’s better than none. I’ll put it in a back window facing the darkest part of the yard.”

  She also made sure the lights near the front and side doors were on. She’d heard nothing unusual outside the house last night, either because she’d slept soundly or because the driving rain had discouraged anyone from creeping around. No rain tonight.

  After getting ready for bed, she decided against sleeping in her own room. It faced the backyard. She’d surely hear the sentry barking, but she wouldn’t hear any noise from the driveway or the front. She took her pillow and a light blanket to the sofa in the sitting room, read until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, and fell asleep.

  She dreamt of driving through a fierce windstorm that denuded the trees. Her tires crunched over piles of dry leaves. She woke up and still heard the crunching sounds from her dream. They came from under the side window. She parted the curtain and could barely make out the yellow hatchback in the driveway. No light came from the fixture near the side door. A loose bulb for the third time this week? No way. She decided against turning on the lights in the house. They wouldn’t help her see into the darkness outside, just make her visible to anyone out there.

  The crunching noises stopped. Then a crescendo of barks reverberated through the house. Fido had detected motion in the backyard.

  “Val?” Granddad said from his bedroom door. “What’s happening?”

  “Someone’s out back. Call 911. Tell them to send the police. Then lock yourself in your room.”

  The barking stopped. Val grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen and peered out the dining room window. She saw a dark figure run from behind the house toward the front. A second figure pursued and tackled the first one.

  Val ran to the side door and cracked it open. Her flashlight illuminated two men on the ground between the car parked in the driveway and the backyard. They thrashed and slugged each other. One wore a dark turtleneck like the man she’d noticed at the park tonight. The other guy, also in dark clothing, wore a tight-fitting cap.

  The man in the turtleneck rolled on top of the other guy and punched him.

  If Val didn’t act, the police might find a man beaten to a pulp in her driveway.

  Chapter 22

  Val searched the closet near the side door for something to hurl at the men and break up their fight. No wrench. No hammer. Her old tennis racket would have to do.

  She opened the side door, flashlight in one hand, racket in the other.

  “Look out, below!” Her grandfather yelled from an upstairs window. Whatever he threw made a volley of soft thuds at the front of the driveway, nowhere near the men fighting toward the back.

  She aimed
her flashlight at the fighters and crept toward them. The man in the turtleneck had his hands on the other guy’s throat. She couldn’t stand by and watch someone being choked.

  Val gripped the racket to hit her target with the frame instead of the strings. She leaned over the men on the ground. Pretend it’s a first serve. Wham.

  Despite a blow to the head, the big guy in the turtleneck still pinned the other man down.

  Val swung again, a forehand to the husky man’s neck. Whack. The blow stunned him enough that the guy underneath pushed him off, scrambled up, and kicked the husky man in the groin. Turtleneck grunted and curled up.

  Val trained her flashlight on the kicker. His face was smeared with something black. She couldn’t make out his features. He shoved her.

  She fell backward. The racket and flashlight flew from her hands, and her head hit the soft earth of her flower bed. The man who’d pushed her disappeared into the night.

  A startled cry came from the front of the house, guttural noises, and then a string of curses. The voice sounded like Gunnar’s though she’d never heard language like that from him.

  “Gunnar?” she shouted.

  “Val? What’s going on?”

  She found her flashlight on the ground, stood up, and trained it on him as he sidled past the yellow car toward her.

  “Hey, you’re blinding me.” He shielded his eyes with his hands.

  A clean face, not blackened. She lowered the flashlight. He wasn’t the man who’d shoved her. “Two guys were duking it out in my yard. One of them’s groaning on the ground. The other one pushed me and ran off. Did you see him?”

  “He fell in your driveway near the street. I tried to grab him. I fell too, and he got away. Did you throw tennis balls all over the front?”

  “I did.” Granddad’s voice came from behind Val. “To trip you guys up.”

  Gunnar stopped dead in his tracks. “Sir, is that thing loaded?”

  Val turned to find Granddad wearing pajamas and carrying a shotgun. “Oh, shi—I mean, shoot.” She saw him raise the gun. “I mean, don’t shoot!”

  He braced the gun against his shoulder and aimed it at Gunnar. “That other fellah got away before I loaded it. It’s ready to fire now, so don’t try to run. Call the police, Val.”

  “I told you to call them.” Val could reach high C when she was angry. Never before had she hit high banshee.

  “I had to go upstairs to find my gun and ammo. They were in the closet behind your bucket of old tennis balls.”

  “I’m callin’ the cops now.” The bass voice came from the house across the driveway. “How am I supposed to sleep around here?”

  Val could have asked her neighbor the same question when he ran a chain saw at dawn. “Thanks, Harv—” She broke off as he slammed the window down.

  Val beamed her flashlight at the hulk on the ground. With the light on his face, she saw his dark mustache and bushy eyebrows.

  “It’s the pirate.” Granddad swung his gun toward the man. “Avast!”

  Gunnar leaned over the man. “You okay, Vince?”

  The reply included a string of unprintable words. Val caught the gist. Vince was mad as hell, but not severely injured. Now that Val knew he didn’t need medical attention, she wanted answers from Gunnar. “What’s Vince doing in my yard?”

  “I asked him to keep an eye on you today.”

  “I saw him at the concert keeping an eye on me.” Though he’d disguised himself with glasses and powdered his mustache to look older. Had he followed her all day? “Does he drive a dark blue car with tinted glass?”

  “Uh-huh.” Gunnar squatted next to the man. “Can you get up, buddy?”

  “Stay on the ground,” Granddad said. “I have a gun on you.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” Vince rubbed the back of his head. “I was on top of him, Gus. And then something hit me from behind.”

  Val moved closer to Gunnar. “Why did he call you Gus?” Either her serve to the head had concussed Vince into a memory loss, or Gunnar had lied about his own name, along with probably a thousand other things.

  Vince sat up. “First I got hit in the head. Next something hit me in the neck. Then the guy kicked me in the balls.”

  “Why were you fighting him?” Gunnar asked.

  “He was piling up paper along the foundation.”

  Val aimed her flashlight toward the house. Sure enough, crumpled newspaper. “That was the crunching sound I heard. But why—?”

  “He headed for the backyard and set something down.” Vince pointed over his shoulder. “Then the dogs started barking, and he took off. Check out the backyard. I bet you find a gasoline can.”

  A gasoline can. “Arson?”

  Val could hardly believe it. RoboFido had scared away an arsonist, and she had clobbered the wrong person. Or had she? Maybe Vince was the arsonist, trying to blame someone else for what he himself had done.

  Granddad lowered his gun. “You can get up now. A pirate who saves my house from an arsonist can’t be all bad.”

  “A pirate?” Vince scratched his head and stood up. “I was getting ready to tackle him when the dogs went crazy. He ran, and I jumped him. Man, that guy was strong. Built like steel. With all that barking, I expected a dog to bite me on the ass. Instead, somebody hit me.” He turned to Val. “You?”

  Val chewed her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to stop the fight.”

  “Why didn’t you hit the other guy?” Vince rubbed his neck.

  She heard a siren in the distance. Lot of good it did to call the police. The fight was over, the arsonist gone. She turned to Gunnar. “All day I was afraid someone was stalking me. You should have told me about Vince.”

  “I didn’t know how you’d react. I wanted you to leave town, and you wouldn’t go. I talked him into keeping an eye on you. You couldn’t object if you didn’t know about it.”

  “If you thought I needed protection, why didn’t you do it yourself?”

  “You blew me off this morning when I offered. And I tried to spend the evening with you, but you had other plans. I came here to relieve Vince.”

  The siren cut off as the squad car pulled up in front of the house. By then Granddad had disappeared into the house with his gun. Wise man.

  “Police! Don’t move!” The command came from behind a torch that turned night into day. “What’s the problem here?”

  Val recognized the voice of the officer who’d responded to her car alarm two nights ago. “Officer, it’s Val Deniston. Watch your step in the driveway. Someone was sneaking around the house tonight, and my grandfather emptied a bucket of tennis balls to trip him. These two men tried to catch him, but he got away.”

  “Which way?”

  Gunnar pointed. “Across the street and between two houses. Five minutes ago.”

  The officer approached. “What’d he look like?”

  Val hadn’t noticed much about the man she’d seen only by flashlight. “Dark clothes, a tight cap. His face was smeared with charcoal or something.”

  Vince piped up. “Height about six-two, weight around two hundred. Muscular build.”

  “And who are you?”

  Vince whipped a badge out of his pocket. “Vince Palminteri, Drug Enforcement Agency. Your chief knows we’re operating here.”

  The policeman checked Vince’s ID and then eyed Gunnar. “Are you DEA too?”

  “No. Here’s my driver’s license and government ID.” He surrendered two cards.

  Lights blazed in two houses across the street. For the first time Val realized how little she was wearing. Her elongated T-shirt left lots of leg exposed. “Officer, I’d like to go inside and put on some clothes. The two guys know more about what happened here than I do.”

  She left the men in the driveway, unplugged RoboFido, and patted him. Such a good watchdog. Her grandfather emerged from his bedroom in overalls and his pajama top. She told him his pirate worked for the Drug Enforcement Agency. He went back outside.

 
By the time she changed and returned to the driveway, another squad car had arrived with a policeman she didn’t recognize. The officer tagged a can of gasoline as evidence. Gunnar was still there, but Vince had gone.

  “What weapon did you use on Vince?” Gunnar asked.

  She spotted her racket near the flower bed and brandished it. “The only thing I could find.”

  “He’s lucky you didn’t find a crowbar. I can’t wait to tell him what hit him. He left when the neighbors started coming out. He has to keep a low profile.”

  Because he worked undercover. So how did Gunnar come to know him? Before she could ask, the cop with the weather-beaten face approached her. “You have a smashed lightbulb in your side fixture. That’s the one I tightened the other night.”

  “Our visitor got tired of unscrewing it night after night. Any chance a police car can stay until daylight in case he comes back?”

  “We’ll patrol the area, but if other calls come in, we have to respond. We’ve had a couple of arsons in the last month or so, but never more than one a night.”

  She sighed. If the arsonist wanted to finish the job, he could call in a bogus emergency to get the police out of the neighborhood.

  Gunnar touched her arm. “Go get some rest. I slept earlier. I’ll be on your front porch in case you need me. If the guy comes back, I want to be where I can see and hear him.”

  She went inside, found a light coverlet, and brought it out to him. “Take this in case it gets cool toward morning.” She sat next to him on the porch steps. “Is your real name Gus?”

  “A nickname. My initials are G.U.S.”

  “You’re on nickname basis with a DEA agent?”

  “I’ve worked with Vince on some cases. I’m with IRS Criminal Investigation. My job is tracing laundered money.”

  Now that had the ring of truth to it. Unlike his other stories—opening an accounting practice, Great-Aunt Gretchen’s will, his acting ambitions. “Are you working with him now?”

  “Not right this minute.”

  An evasive answer, but she was too tired to care. “I’m going to sleep.” She stood up.