by Lee, Rachel
Nancy leaned against the doorframe and folded her arms. “The window latches are kind of old.”
“Old? They’re ancient! Every one of them is a little loose. Damn it, where is it?”
“Have your landlord fix them.”
“Harvey? You’re kidding, right? Or have you forgotten I finally had to go to the health department when the sewer line broke?”
“Yeah.” Nancy sighed. “I guess I did forget. Look, Annie, you’re just making a mess here. Tell me what you want, and I’ll look for it.”
Anna threw a scrub brush and it hit the wall with a satisfying smack.
“Okay, okay,” Nancy said. “I’ll just shut up.”
“You don’t have to shut up. But that s.o.b. isn’t going to find it as easy to get in here again if I have to nail the damn windows shut.”
Nancy refrained from pointing out that nailing aluminum frames might be difficult. And expensive. Harvey would make her replace every single one of them.
“Damn it!” Anna swore again. “Damn, damn, damn, where are you, you sucker?”
“What exactly are you looking for?”
“A thick strip of aluminum.” She kicked a bucket aside.
Nancy scanned the room. “You mean this?” Reaching across to a nearby shelf, she lifted a two-inch-wide, two-foot-long aluminum strip with screw holes in it.
Anna turned. “That’s it. Where did you find it?”
“On that shelf.”
“Shit.” Anna took it from her, grabbed a hammer out of the open toolbox, and headed for the bedroom.
Nancy followed, watching as Anna placed the aluminum on the sash next to the lock, and began to hammer it under the catch. And with every blow of the hammer, Anna spoke.
“You. Are. Not. Going. To. Get. In. Here. Again. You. Bastard.”
Then it was done. Nancy sauntered over and looked at it. “Looks good, Annie.” She tried to tug the strip from under the latch, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Let’s try to open the window,” Anna said, tossing the hammer on the bed.
Even with the two of them exerting full strength, the window stayed firmly closed.
“So,” said Nancy, “are you going to get strips for all the windows?”
“No.” Anna picked up the hammer and marched past her.
Nancy once again followed, this time into the kitchen, where Anna dropped the hammer onto the counter and yanked the yellow pages out of the drawer under the bar. She flipped pages impatiently and finally stopped to run her finger down some listings. A moment later she picked up the phone and punched in some digits.
“Yes,” she said a few seconds later. “I want to install a home security system, and I want to do it today. I’m being stalked.”
It took three calls, but she eventually found a company that was willing to rush the installation for an additional charge. When she hung up the phone, she was pale and shaking.
“I’ve had enough, Nance,” she said. “I have had enough!”
“I can understand that. I’m not real happy about this myself. Look, just sit down and try to calm down, Annie. We need to keep clear heads.”
“Oh, my head is perfectly clear. After they install the alarm, I’m getting pepper spray and a cell phone. And maybe a gun.”
“No.”
Anna shook her head and stared at her sister. “No?”
“No gun. Annie, you don’t know anything about guns. You don’t know how to use one to protect yourself. You bring a gun into this house and all you might be doing is arming this scuzbucket with a deadly weapon. At least talk to Gil about it first.”
“Gil?” Anna laughed bitterly. “Sorry, Nance, he and Tebbins think I drugged that officer with the coffee. It was all over Tebbins’s face.”
Nancy couldn’t deny that. “But they haven’t arrested you.”
“Don’t hold your breath. If I live long enough, I’m going to have this whole thing pinned on me. See those surveillance cars out there? They’re here as much to keep me from disappearing as to protect me.”
Anna sagged as her anger deserted her, and she went to sit at the table with her head in her hands. “This guy is ruining my life.”
“It seems that way.” Nancy went to sit beside her. When she placed her hand on Anna’s shoulder, she felt the shudder of tears pass through her. “Aw, sis…”
“I’m okay. I’m okay.”
But it sounded like a cry of desperation. Nancy didn’t blame her. Life was going to hell like a roller coaster on a downward rush. “You’re not going to work today,” Nancy said. “You can’t. I’m calling your boss.”
“No! I’m not going to spend the rest of my life locked inside my house.”
Nancy put her hands on her hips and gave her a stern look. “Just what are your other options, Annie? To wind up dead?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Twenty minutes later, Ivar was on the doorstep, arguing with a cop about whether he should be allowed to see Anna. Nancy, overhearing the commotion, opened the door and peered out.
“Oh, he’s okay,” she said to the cop. “Anna’s boss from the museum.”
Ivar, his dignity wounded, brushed himself off pointedly and stepped into the house. “Cretins,” he muttered. “Nancy? You’re Nancy, right?”
“Right.” It didn’t bother her that few people could tell them apart. She’d had a lifetime to get used to it. “Anna’s in the kitchen. She’s not doing well.”
“I should think not!” Ivar followed her to the kitchen and dining area.
Anna looked up, took one look at him, and said, “Oh, God.”
Ivar ignored her reaction. “It’s beyond enough,” he said, pulling out a chair and plopping into it. “Do you have any coffee?”
Nancy had the urge to laugh hysterically but quelled it. “Are you sure you want to drink my coffee? Tebbins thinks we drugged the cop who was on duty out front last night.”
“Didn’t I say they were cretins? Of course I’ll drink your coffee.”
“Well, it’s nice that someone believes in Anna.”
“Of course I believe in Anna! I’ve worked with her for nearly two years. I was the one who recommended she be named head curator.”
Anna lifted her head from her hands. Her eyes were reddened and exhausted. “Thanks, Ivar.”
“Yeah,” Nancy agreed. “I’ll make that coffee now.”
Ivar looked at Anna. “You poor dear. Nancy told me what happened last night. You must be beside yourself.”
“Actually,” Nancy said as she measured coffee into the filter, “she’s about ready to kill someone.”
“Oh, dear.” He reached out and patted Anna’s hand. “You don’t want to do that. Let the police do it. They have a license to kill. Believe me, you don’t want all that messiness.”
“Messiness?” Anna laughed bitterly. “Just what state do you think my life is in right now?”
“I know what state it’ll be in if you shoot someone. You’ll be in jail, dealing with lawyers—I can’t imagine a worse fate than that, you know! Lawyers and the press. They’ll be calling you terrible names, dressing you in that awful jailhouse orange—it wouldn’t do a thing for that gorgeous hair of yours.”
“Oh, man,” Nancy muttered, rolling her eyes. Ivar ignored her.
“What’s more,” Ivar continued, “you’d be facing the death penalty. How is that going to improve your situation?”
“Ivar,” Anna began, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand.
“I can see it now,” he said, getting wound up. “Your picture all over the front page, day after day, with the title ‘spree killer’ attached. Your attorneys, moving to have you declared insane because you’ve been driven crazy by your obsession with the curse that killed your father.”
“Ivar…”
“The jury, handpicked from the best of the Bible Belt because they’re willing to sentence you to death, listening to the claims that you’ve lost your mind. Deciding it’s obvious that you’ve been possessed by some Mayan devil and
that you deserve to die. I’d get up on the stand and defend you as a hapless victim, but no one would listen to me.” He leaned toward Anna, confiding, “No one ever listens to me.”
“Ivar…”
“They’d drag you out of the courtroom in handcuffs. I’d be weeping, and it would be on the six o’clock news, and everyone, my wife included, would be wondering if we’d had an affair, or if I was involved somehow in the crimes. I’d be ruined, your sister would be devastated…”
“Ivar, enough! It would be self-defense!”
He looked at her. “Really,” he said in a calm voice. “Only if they find the real villain first, my dear. Otherwise, you’re going to be blamed for all of it, and your stalker is going to be considered a victim.”
Anna fell silent, looking at him from hollow eyes. Nancy muttered, “God.”
Ivar smiled. “I knew you’d see reason. Is that coffee ready yet?”
Nancy poured him a cup and practically slammed it on the table in front of him. She shoved the sugar bowl and creamer toward him, and he had to catch them to keep them from going off the edge of the table.
“What did I do?” he asked plaintively.
Nancy put the heels of her hands on the table and leaned toward him. “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to make this situation look any more hopeless.”
“Really?” He dumped two heaping teaspoons of sugar into his coffee. “As long as there’s breath, there’s hope you know. These cops may be cretins—I certainly think so, judging by the way they seem to be floundering around—but at least they haven’t arrested you yet. Which means they don’t have a good enough case. As long as the possibility exists in their minds that you’re not the thief and killer, they’ll keep looking.”
“And I could be dead by the time they find him,” Anna said bitterly.
“Now, now, let’s not exaggerate. They may be overly muscled cretins but they do know their jobs.”
“We hope,” Anna said.
“Oh, come off it,” Nancy protested. “I don’t especially care what Tebbins might be thinking because I know Garcia doesn’t believe you’re guilty, Anna.”
Anna shook her head. “What are you? A mind reader?”
“I’m a face reader. Tebbins can point the finger at you all he wants, but Gil thinks you’re innocent.”
Ivar elevated one brow. “Do I detect the scent of romance?”
Nancy threw a dish towel at him, which he caught neatly in midair.
“Ah,” he said with satisfaction. “I thought so.”
Nancy looked at her sister. “That settles it,” she said. “You are cursed.”
Anna fell asleep finally on the couch. Nancy spread a colorful ripple afghan over her, pausing a moment to remember the hours their mother had spent crocheting it. The colors were garish, suiting their mother’s temperament. Nancy loved hers, an exact duplicate, but supposed the colors annoyed Anna, whose tastes were far more subdued.
Nancy was tired, too, but she hadn’t expended her adrenaline yet in a burst of outrage the way Anna had. Funny how the wacky sister had been the more reserved of the two all day.
Though she never would have admitted it to Anna, Nancy was beginning to feel caged and trapped. Just the mere idea that she couldn’t go out and run around was having an annoying psychological impact on her.
She understood that she couldn’t leave Anna alone; that would be foolhardy. But she still resented the hell out of their confinement.
A peep out the curtains told her the cops were still there. Leaning on one of the cars, they were chatting with each other. She wondered what the neighbors must be thinking, and some of the ideas that occurred to her made her mouth twitch with a grin.
But her good humor, one of her strong points, didn’t endure very long. She looked over at her sleeping sister and wondered how the hell they were going to get out of this mess.
Come Monday, Anna would go back to work. Nancy knew her sister too well to believe otherwise. Besides, despite all the craziness their mom and aunt had surrounded them with, they’d both been taught a strong work ethic.
What then? Anna should be safe at the museum, Nancy decided. Too many people around for anything to happen. But she shouldn’t come home alone, no matter what. Or go to work alone. Which meant Nancy would be her self-designated escort.
That was fine by Nancy. What wasn’t fine by Nancy was the realization that she herself would have to be alone all day, wandering around a mostly strange city by herself, or sitting in this house watching the hours tick by. After their discussion during the night about how Nancy might also now be targeted, the prospects weren’t appealing.
But neither was the idea of sitting around the museum all day. Anna might be able to find things for her to do, but they wouldn’t be the kinds of things that appealed to her.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t willing to do necessary scut-work. She’d been doing it as needed all her life. But she preferred things which entertained her. Things having to do with computers.
Computers. The thought sizzled through her brain, capturing her attention. The “impossible” theft had to involve software somewhere in the system. Everything involved software these days. And programmers were notorious for leaving “back doors.”
Then there was hacking. A really good hacker could break into almost any system. A moderately good hacker could get into most. Nancy had done a bit of that in her younger, wilder days and knew just how easy it could be. Any computer attached to the outside world could be hacked.
And she was willing to bet the security system was attached to the outside world. It had to be.
Excitement began to throb in her. It took all the resolve she had not to wake Anna and demand they go to the museum immediately. It wouldn’t matter even if they did, though, because they’d need the cooperation of the security company.
Damn, she couldn’t wait until Monday. Not when every minute might be bringing them closer to death. Finally she went to the phone in the kitchen. Tucked behind it were two business cards, one for Tebbins and one for Gil. It took her no more than a split second to decided which one she trusted more. She called Gil.
The postmortem showed no injuries to Eddy Malacek other than the needle hole in his left arm, and a couple of small contusions that might have come from bumping into anything. He hadn’t been beaten, hadn’t struggled or fought to defend himself.
“Death by overdose,” the M.E. said as he pulled the sheet back up over the body.
Gil nodded. “That’s what I expected. What I’m wondering is whether he was drugged with something beforehand.”
“We won’t know until we get the tox reports. But don’t worry, I’m not going to give a final ruling until then. If he was drugged, it’s anybody’s guess how. His stomach was empty.”
“Coffee?”
The M.E. shrugged. “Maybe. If it was given hours before his death.”
Which was entirely possible, Gil thought as he strode out into the day’s rising heat.
Pulling out his cell phone, he called home. Trina answered sleepily.
“I’ll be home in about thirty minutes,” he told her.
Her answer was almost resentful. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Great. She was going to go back to her mother on Sunday mad at him. From experience he knew what that meant. His ex would probably make him sweat for his next visitation. He was getting used to it though. The woman would give him hell, but she wouldn’t keep Trina from him. She had too many other things she wanted to do with her weekends, things that didn’t involve dragging a teenager around with her. Or even having one at home.
Gil, in his odd moments of resentment, just wished she’d up and marry that turkey she was dating. He’d save a load on alimony. On the other hand, he didn’t feel too good about Trina having a stepfather. He didn’t like the idea of another man playing dad to his only child. It galled him.
But worse were his feelings about stepfathers in general. Some of them were good, but he�
�d answered too many domestic violence calls that had involved some man beating on his wife’s kids.
His ex would tell him he was being paranoid. Maybe she was right, but he had good reasons for it.
He’d tried to find out how Trina felt about the guy, but she just shrugged. Teenage pretense; she cared but didn’t want anyone to know it.
Was that normal? He’d certainly seen it in enough of the kids he dealt with on the street, but they were often abused, angry, and sullen. Was this just the age, or had someone taught Trina that expressing her feelings was an emotionally dangerous thing to do?
He had no way of knowing. For all his complaints about his ex, he knew she loved their daughter. Haphazardly at times, but it was still real love.
And he had never, ever, in his wildest imaginings, dreamed how difficult it could be to be a weekend parent.
Oh, well.
When he got home, Trina had apparently gone back to bed. He used the opportunity to take a shower and wash the smells from the night and from the autopsy off himself. Off course, he had to wear a plastic shower cap over his head to protect the stitches, so the job was anything but thorough. When he stepped out, he was sure he still didn’t smell very good.
He thought about trying to cadge a nap, but when he emerged from the bedroom he discovered his pager was beeping. Checking the phone, he found he had a message on his voice mail, too. No rest for the weary, he grumbled to himself.
He called the station and discovered he had a message to call Nancy Lundgren; it was urgent.
What now? Instead of feeling worry, he felt annoyance. It was Tebbins’s case on that side of the bay. He couldn’t do a damn thing over there except call Tebbins anyway. Not that he could blame Nancy or Anna for not wanting to. After all, Tebbins might think he had the great stone face, but the truth was, the man’s expressions gave away every thought in his head. The women would have to be stupid not to realize Anna was a prime suspect.
The thought gave him another unpleasant jolt. He wasn’t being completely objective, and he knew it. Nor was he happy about it. In fact, he was second-guessing his every reaction to this case, and Tebbins’s reactions, too.