Cold Feet (Five Star Mystery Series)

by Karen Pullen

  Blue was somehow in the mix. Most certainly he’d tried to sabotage Wyatt’s B&B. Could the poisoning be part of the sabotage, as Wyatt suggested? An attempt to make the inn guests ill, gone horribly wrong? Blue had been upstairs during breakfast, “fluffing up.” I thought about Liesle’s psychic sensing of peanut butter. If I learned that Blue’d eaten a peanut butter sandwich that morning, I’d cuff him in an instant.

  Too many kinda-sorta motives; not enough evidence. My thoughts drifted to the break-in at my house and my suspicion that it was related to the abortive raid on Jax’s house. Perhaps he had recognized me after all. What else could it be?

  Just after nine P.M., as I passed the north and south exits for I-95, my car engine began its death throes. It huffed and jerked, smoothed out for a minute, then slowed to thirty miles an hour. Flooring the accelerator didn’t help. I moved into the shoulder lane, turned on my hazard lights, and crawled another mile to the next exit, the Johnston County rest area. I rolled to the parking area and stopped, popped open the hood and checked the oil, the hoses, and radiator. They looked fine. I’d have to get a tow truck to take the car to be repaired, then call around to see who could help me get home. I went inside the rest area building to find a phone book.

  As I stood by a phone booth, rifling through the automotive listings, I glanced up to see a big woman coming out of the ladies’ room. She looked familiar, damned familiar, with that frizzy hair and hollow eyes: Dana DeGrasso, Jax’s partner, the woman who’d searched me, taken my gun, wrestled me to the floor. Furthermore, I knew exactly what she was doing here. I-95 runs from Miami to Maine. It’s the north-south highway for drug dealers, and its intersection with I-40, three miles away, made this rest stop a convenient location for a drug pickup. No telling how many powder bricks were in her trunk.

  I quickly turned my gaze back to the phone book, trying to avoid any worrisome spark of recognition, remembering how she and Jax had scooted after selling to me, the comments of their housekeeper, their suspicion that I was a cop. Dana strode out of the building, and I followed, to get a look at her car and see whether she was alone. I scanned the parking area. I didn’t see her anywhere, but the grounds were perfect for hide-andseek, with floodlights that cast deep shadows among the clumps of shrubbery.

  I wanted to arrest her, and needed backup. I called the state police, told the dispatcher who I was and what I wanted to do. The dispatcher said a trooper was patrolling in the area and would be there in a few minutes. I started down the row of cars, checking between them. I held my phone in one hand, while my other hand, inside my jacket pocket, clutched my gun. A nervous reaction to seeing Dana—keep a tight grip on the SIG. I came to the end of the row of cars without seeing her. I went back to the building, edged to the corner, and peered around. No Dana. I decided to let Fredricks know what was going on, and dialed his home number. I was walking to the next corner, starting to fill him in, when I heard a rustling step behind me.

  I had half-turned when someone shoved me to the ground and sat on me, sending my phone flying and knocking the air out of my lungs. Gasping to breathe, I recognized Dana’s air-freshener smell. I squirmed and tried to flip her off but the woman had the substance of a hippo. She had a very tight grip on one wrist; the other wrist was pinned under me.

  “Quit wiggling, you little bitch,” she said. “You turned us in, didn’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?” My mind raced, fueled by fear and acute discomfort. Dana wasn’t giving me an inch of wriggle room. Could I talk my way out of this? She pried my right arm out from underneath my body, pulled me to my feet, and wrestled my gun away. The woman must work out—her hands were like vise-grips. I opened my mouth and took a deep breath, planning to let out a helluva scream, when Dana jerked me around and punched me right in the nose. I felt my nose give way, painfully, and my eyes filled with tears. It hurt. A lot.

  “Oh, ow,” I said. “What do you want?” Maybe logic would help. “You’re going to get in trouble for this.” My nose was throbbing, it needed ice. “The cops are on the way.”

  “I’m not worried.You won’t be here very long.”

  I didn’t know what she meant but it didn’t sound good. “Look, let me go now and you can get away. I don’t even have a car.”

  “Just shut up. You don’t get an opinion.” She mashed me against the wall of the building, scraping my cheek against the rough brick. “Don’t move, just hold still,” she said. Any resistance on my part met with increased pressure from her. Then a needle entered my arm, and I felt a bubbly rush. My fear vanished, replaced by euphoria. She could have done absolutely anything to me and I wouldn’t have cared. Everything was okay, more than okay, warm and fuzzy, and I floated, carefree, high above all petty worries and fears about a broken nose. My brain soaked up the drug and blazed with joy. My eyelids dropped, my knees buckled, I sank to the ground and vomited all over Dana’s sandals.

  CHAPTER 15

  * * *

  SaturdayVery Early Morning

  I was handcuffed and locked up, and I didn’t care. Time as measured by clocks no longer mattered. Instead, I started counting the visits from Dana and her needle.

  The first time the drug wore off, it was still pitch dark, though I could hear an early bird calling out the approach of dawn. The room’s window was locked and covered by a grate, and through it I could see a waning moon and the bright speck of Venus. Thinking I had little to lose, I kneed the doorknob, kicked at the door and called out for help. Dana came in right away with the needle. She wore a red tank top that revealed too much of her big floppy chest, and plaid flannel pajama bottoms. Her hair was wilder and frizzier than ever.

  “There’s no one to hear you,” she said. “Make all the noise you want.” She shoved me down on the bed and sat heavily on me. I twisted and earned an elbow in my belly that knocked my wind out long enough for her to inject me with a swift practiced motion. She sat with me for a few minutes as the drug took effect. I asked her about a tattoo on her shoulder, a bulldog wearing a green hat, with “USMC” in black letters underneath, and she talked about being a Marine. I lay there, euphoric and weak, fading in and out of consciousness.

  Later I became drowsily aware of my surroundings: a small room without a lamp or overhead light, a stained blue carpet, gray-white walls. The bed was covered by an orange and brown paisley bedspread, unwashed and blotchy with dirt. A dull putty-colored blanket seemed cleaner, so I pulled it open and put it on top of the bedspread. My hands were cuffed so it was impossible to open the window, latched on both sides and blocked by an iron grate screwed tight to the outside wall. Were this a movie, the heroine would produce a little jimmy-thing from her bra and magically pick open the cuffs. She’d raise the window. Then she’d flip the jimmy-thing over and it would be a tiny hacksaw and she’d rip right through that grate, all quietly and in two minutes so she wouldn’t be detected, then she’d slither out the window, flip to the ground, immobilize the guards with forceful kicks. Wearing black leather.

  But I didn’t have a jimmy-thing. And it’s much harder to pick handcuffs than you’d think. Actually, it didn’t even cross my mind; the handcuffs seemed invincible. I did wonder where I was. Right outside the grated window was a large prickly-looking holly bush, beyond it dirt and a bit of grass, beyond that a chain-link fence and a cinder-block wall painted green, now peeling. Trash littered the area—bottles, fast food containers, bits of paper. I could hear muffled street noises, traffic and sirens and horns, from perhaps a block away.

  Fear, the self-preservation variety, scuttled around me like an annoying rat, muffled, dampened and so squashed by the drug that its squeaks barely registered. When the drug wore off, the rat squealed insistent messages about needles, infection, contamination, and survival, stupid. As though Dana could hear the squealing, she would show up soon afterward, needle in hand. The third time Dana came in, she removed the handcuffs to allow me to use the bathroom. Then she recuffed my hands and gave me food—a breakfast burrito, a
donut, and some orange juice. I hadn’t eaten since the shrimp and pasta with Delia the previous day, so I was hungry and ate everything, even though the burrito was cold and the donut was stale. I asked her what she was going to do with me. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “No, I’m not a murderer. Here, this will help.” She got out her needle. Fear-rat perched on my shoulder and nipped at my face, until the drug floated me far and away from worries as trivial as death.

  Later in the day, she brought me a burger and a strawberry milkshake, delicious and sweet. Once again I asked what was going on, and she apologized for the handcuffs, the locked door—but didn’t answer the question. She left and I heard the car start, then silence. She was gone for hours. The drug wore off, and I could hear the rat’s hissing begging me to survive. I decided I didn’t have much time. She had my SIG. Jax could tell her to take me somewhere remote and shoot me. I knew I had to do something but I was handcuffed and even if I weren’t, Dana’s size gave her an advantage. The thought of anyone so much as breathing on my throbbing nose brought tears to my eyes. Wussy, yes, but not hopeless—I had brains, feet, my hard head. I lay on the yellowish blanket and created a plan, running through every step, thinking of contingencies.

  It was almost dark again when I heard a key in the door and Dana came into the room, dressed up in her clear plastic platform shoes and a swingy wig. I was awake, feeling nauseated and sweaty, not anxious to grapple with her. It would be so easy to go along, nod off. But I’d had enough of Dana’s medicine. I wanted my life back. I wanted my life, period.

  “Hey,” I said, “got a question.”

  She sat on the bed, her solid haunch forcing me against the wall, and laid a needle on the bedside table. She took a rubber tie out of her jacket pocket. “Sure, make it quick.”

  “Do you remember when I gave you my umbrella? Showed some kindness? Can you reciprocate, help me out of here?”

  “I am helping you. Give me your arm, it’s happy time.”

  She reached for my arm but I pressed my elbows to my sides. “Wait. I’ve been having cramps all night. I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “After.”

  “I’m going to have an accident.”

  “No, you won’t. Be quiet.” She leaned into me and I couldn’t move. I felt the prick of the needle, and the familiar rush, the nausea, the falling. My muscles loosened, the aching pain in my face vanished, I sank into the security of the drug.

  “I’ll give you a minute,” she said. “Wait until you can walk.”

  I lay on the bed, my eyes half-closed, waiting for the rush to subside. Trying to remember what I had to do. The rat whined like a mosquito, screeching at me to pay attention, it was now or never. Did I believe the rat? Why not let Dana keep right on visiting me? She’s taking good care of you, all’s right with the world, said the drug. The whiny rat said, you’re an idiot. You’re a prisoner injected with opiates against your will. Do something. Now now now now now.

  Dana tugged me to my feet and pushed me down the narrow hall to the bathroom. She unlocked one of the cuffs, leaving the other on my wrist. I went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and closed the door. It was your basic filthy bathroom, decorated with scum, grit, mildew and E. coli. A look in the mirror showed me a swollen nose, two black eyes, a bruised cheekbone, and a dull tangled mess of hair. I peed quickly then stood and found what I remembered seeing behind the toilet—a plunger. A grotty, black rubber plunger with a beautiful twenty-inch wooden handle. I opened the door a crack and whispered. “I need a tampon. Do you have any?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She opened a cupboard in the hall, revealing centuries-old cleaning supplies, gummy shampoo bottles, a jumble of raveled towels. And a familiar blue box.

  I wasn’t feeling much motivation; my brain was in a happy place and not excited enough to hurt anyone. I needed the opposite of happy thoughts, I needed fear. I thought about Jax. His cruel glass eye, his horrific scar. Would he send a cold-blooded killer to get me, expecting a complacent Stella? I thought about needles, infection, disease, overdose. Fern and how she must be sick with worry. Merle wedged against the front door waiting for me to come home. Was anyone caring for him? Was he hungry? I closed my eyes and waited for my head to stop spinning. I put the base of my left thumb in my mouth and bit down hard, hoping a stab of pain would create adrenaline, enough to do what needed doing.

  When Dana handed me the blue box, I lunged, shoving the wooden plunger handle into her heart. Something in her chest gave way, and she fell back with a hoarse cry. I jabbed her in the gut and she doubled over, then I cracked her a few good ones on the head until she fell and stopped thrashing. One of the blows had hit her square in the face, smashing her nose, not quite by accident. She lay quiet, inert, probably concussed but breathing through her mouth. I took a deep breath but didn’t slow down because the rat was perched on my shoulder, squealing in my ear, encouraging me to move quickly, so I covered her with the dull blanket and took her keys from the door. I found my gun and my cell on the kitchen counter. Back in control—the feeling was priceless.

  I stumbled outside. The early evening was cool and cloudy, damp on my face, silent except for some distant traffic. I debated trying to rouse the neighbors to get help, but the houses were dark, and when one of Dana’s keys unlocked the Lexus in the driveway I decided to clear out. I started the car and backed onto the street.

  The dashboard clock said 6:30, a time when most people were watching the news, drinking a beer, crawling on the floor with their kids. I wasn’t seeing right—no matter how much I blinked, a purplish haze clouded my vision—and my response time felt terribly slow, but I thought I could drive.

  I clutched the steering wheel and wondered why I was still alive.

  CHAPTER 16

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Twenty Hours Earlier

  Friday Midnight

  Fern counted sheep, visualizing each spindly-legged woolly bundle as it trotted to the fence and jumped over, but she lost interest at number seven. She punched her pillow into shape, untangled her nightgown, then lay still, thinking about her painting class for teenagers. One sweet girl had a brilliant talent, but the other students intimidated her. Grace had been shy like that. Odd how the boys always thought they were better than they actually were, and the girls thought they were worse. She pondered why that was. The boys needed to show confidence and the girls needed to let them? Boys wanted attention, girls wanted friends? Maybe she could talk the girl into entering a contest or two. A few blue ribbons would boost her belief in herself.

  It was hopeless. Sleep wasn’t going to happen. She got out of bed, made a cup of tea, and settled herself in her glider with a mystery from the library. Soon she was absorbed in the story. One of the characters had stuffed a body under the attic floorboards, and his delusional landlady had just gone up there to look for a 1953 calendar. Would she notice the smell? The floorboard that wasn’t put back correctly?

  The ringing of her phone frightened her. It’s never good news at two in the morning.

  “Ms. Lavender? Hank Fredricks.” The man’s voice was gentle and somber. “I work with Stella.”

  Fern managed to ask, “What is it?”

  “I have bad news. There’s a strong possibility that Stella has been abducted.”

  She gripped the phone. She must have misheard. “What did you say?”

  Fredricks told her the details. Stella had called him about three hours ago, from an I-40 rest stop. She’d recognized a known drug dealer, one with an outstanding warrant, and had asked the highway patrol for help in making an arrest. When the highway patrol arrived, Stella’s car was there, but she’d disappeared. Bystanders had seen her being helped, half-carried, by a large woman into a white Lexus.

  “What’s being done?” Fern could barely get the words out.

  “We’ve issued a missing persons bulletin,” he said. “I’m confident they’ll find her. I’ll call you the instant I know anything. Sorry, I’ve got to go.” He hun
g up.

  “They’ll find her”—an echo from twenty-two years ago when Grace disappeared. A broken promise, an outright lie. “They” didn’t find her, not for agonizing days, months, then years that Fern barely endured, carrying on only for Stella’s sake. Trying to nourish a dwindling hope, trying to blank out the worst, the images and the eternal loss. She couldn’t possibly be expected to bear this another time.

  Fern threw the phone across the room and wailed with frustration and fear and grief. It was intolerable that she might lose Stella. Fern began a feverish begging to anyone who would listen. Please please please keep her safe . . . What else could she do?

  She’d barely heard what Fredricks told her but now she went over it again. Rest area, car trouble. Someone saw a woman help Stella into a white Lexus.

  A white Lexus? Jax drove a white Lexus. Stella had told her to drop him, she knew he was a drug dealer. Not a coincidence. She picked the phone up from the floor.

  At six in the morning, Fern heard a knock on her front door. She’d heard about Fredricks from Stella, so she wasn’t surprised by his strained shirtfront with its almost-popping buttons. But she hadn’t expected a handsome face, in a chubby-Elvis kind of way, or his good manners. They sat in the kitchen at the worn oak table, a potted rosemary plant from Stella’s car between them. It was still dark outside, and in the wavy glass pane of the back door Fern saw her reflection, a froth of white hair, a blurry white face. Neither of them had slept all night.

  “So you know this character, this Jax,” Fredricks said.