Cold Feet (Five Star Mystery Series)

by Karen Pullen

  “Accident,” I said. “Looks worse than it is.”

  “Gia’s following me. She’s really lost it. I don’t know what she’ll do.”

  “Is she out there now?” Tricia asked. We went to the window but the afternoon street was quiet, only a couple of children riding bikes.

  “Are you going to fix this thing or not?” Scoop held up the microphone.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Mike asked.

  “It doesn’t fucking work, Einstein.”

  “Don’t talk like that in front of my mother.” Mike examined the various electronic components of Scoop’s makeshift broadcasting system. “Look. You have to plug in the transmitter.” He held up the cord. “See? Plug? Goes in outlet.” He demonstrated.

  Scoop grabbed the microphone and attached it to his collar. “Testing, dear Jesus, thank God it works.”

  “Maybe you should thank me too,” said Mike. “I was sound asleep when you called. And you woke up Gia. She spent the night on my couch.”

  Gia was his house guest? I felt lost, adrift in a sea of neurotic behavior.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Tricia whispered to me. “Let’s go plan my first tour. Cancun sounds good, doesn’t it?” She pulled me out of the room, ignoring Scoop’s “where the hell are you going?” I followed her downstairs into her office. I was getting impatient, and ready to leave as soon as Tricia told me what was so important.

  “You called me,” I said. “Something significant, was it?”

  By this time she was online and perusing flights. “Look, four hundred ten dollars, only one change in Miami.” She was entering a credit card number when I noticed motion outside, through the window facing the street. It was Gia, walking toward the front door, walking fast, as if on a mission. Her eyes glistened with mania in a waxy-white face. My heart lurched when I recognized what Gia cradled in her arms.

  A shotgun.

  At that instant I had my own revelation—there was about to be a massacre. Time slowed to a crawl, the way it does when things get exciting. Gia opened the front door. As she came into the hallway, I shoved Tricia to the floor behind her desk. I knelt down beside her and unholstered my SIG. I could see Gia’s feet; she paused at the office door, then moved away. As I heard her climb up the stairs to the broadcast room, I picked up Tricia’s desk phone and dialed 911, requesting help pronto. Anticipating the boom of a shotgun at any moment, I started up the stairs to try to save Mike’s life.

  I flattened myself against the stairway wall and leaned cautiously around the doorway. Gia stood six feet away, her back to me, still cradling the shotgun like a baby. She had walked into Scoop’s live broadcast over the Internet. From the CD player came a pure soprano voice singing about lambs and blood. The camera, aimed at the front of the room, captured the empty floodlit pulpit and behind it, Scoop, crouching down low, his hands shielding his bald head. He began to inch and worm along the floor toward the stairs like a Marine under fire. Mike had flattened himself against the back wall, and was slowly sliding toward the floor.

  But Gia didn’t threaten them. She walked to the camera and turned it around so it faced the back of the room. She sat down in front of the camera, set the butt of the gun on the floor and her chin on the muzzle end of it, like she was going to blow her head off. She pushed her hair behind her ears and stared into the lens. “I’m going to end my pain right now,” she said. “You’ll be sorry, Mike Olmert!”

  “Move now, move fast,” I hissed to Mike. He dashed past me, down the stairs, and Scoop scrambled to his feet and followed. I stood in the doorway, unsure, wishing I’d brought my Taser. I didn’t want to injure her.

  As they fled, Gia’s eyes fastened on me. She pointed to me. “You! You can’t have him!”

  I kept my gun out but didn’t threaten her. Death-by-cop might be one of her current goals and I had no interest in helping her achieve it. Getting closer might increase her paranoia and push her to act.

  “I can help you,” I said, “if you put the gun down.”

  For an answer, she twisted her head back, resettled her chin firmly on the muzzle, and reached down toward the trigger. Her arms were too short. She glared at me as if it was my fault. As she focused on me without blinking, I considered the distance between us and how quickly she could upend that gun and pull the trigger in her hyperalert state. A shotgun blast at ten feet would turn me into hamburger. I remained still, holding the SIG in both hands in front of me, watching her eyes and her hands and her feet. It was a stand-off, and until her attention wavered or she threatened my life, I could only wait. A siren wailed faintly in the distance. Then another, a duet. I felt a trickle of sweat between my shoulder blades. A muscle at the corner of my left eye began to twitch. Gia and I watched each other like mongoose and cobra. The sirens grew louder as the seconds passed, then abruptly cut off as the police cars pulled into the driveway and I braced myself for the hostage protocol, the tear gas, the swarming SWAT team.

  From behind me came the sound of footsteps on the stairs. I turned; it was Tricia. “Stay back,” I whispered, moving to block her entry into the room, but it was a wide doorway, and I had to keep my eye on Gia, so Tricia easily stepped past me, sat down beside Gia, and put her arm around her. “You’re hurting,” she said, “let’s talk to God,” and she began a murmurous prayer asking for help, for strength, for grace. I was astonished at her fearlessness. And Gia didn’t turn the gun on Tricia. She eased her chin off the barrel and closed her eyes and listened, visibly trembling. Their image streamed live onto the Internet, the camera capturing the bowed heads, the words of entreaty, Gia’s ragged breathing, the shotgun pointing at the ceiling. It was a powerful scene that I hated to break up but Tricia had distracted Gia enough so I could make a move. It took less than a few seconds—seconds that seemed like an eternity—to slip into the row of chairs behind them and creep as silently as possible, while shielding my face from the camera. I grabbed the shotgun just as the police burst into the house.

  Gia was taken away in handcuffs. The manic glare in her eyes had faded to a depressed resignation. While waiting to be interviewed by the police, I slumped in a chair and listened to Tricia and Scoop digest the experience.

  “Someone was recording the broadcast and the whole thing went online,” Scoop said, fiddling with his comb-over, pressing the long side-pieces into place.

  Doesn’t look good, Scoop, I thought, that you crawled out of the room and let your wife deal with the shotgun-totin’ psycho. “No such thing as bad publicity, I’ve heard,” I said.

  “Certainly not for my darling,” Scoop muttered.

  Trish smiled so wide I could see where her caps ended. “Already I’m getting calls. I’m going on TV tonight with a couple other women who’ve repelled home invasions.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” I said. “Your tours are going to book up fast.”

  Scoop looked from me to Tricia and popped the cigar out of his mouth. “What tours?” he asked.

  The interview room was an uninspired space, with scuffed dull beige walls, no pictures or windows, no reading material. Anyone in that room would be forced to face her own thoughts. Through the one-way glass I watched my nemesis, Dana De-Grasso. Clutching her waist, she rocked in her chair and picked at her nails, flicking fragments of nail polish into the air. Dark purple bruises embellished her face and her frizzy hair was clumped and greasy-looking.

  The interrogating sergeant was a burly man in need of a shave, with a stale smell like he’d been working for eighteen hours. “I’m going to propose that she give up Jax Covas’s whereabouts in exchange for cigarettes and this.” He held up a box of fries, a burger, and a milkshake.

  “That’s what she gave me to eat, so she must think it’s food,” I said. “Don’t let her know I’m police, please.”

  Dana had been kept in the hospital overnight, then brought to the county jail. For the past hour, she’d been sitting in the interview room, waiting to be questioned once I arrived. The sergeant opened t
he door and went in. I watched on a small TV screen at his desk.

  Dana’s dead eyes flickered at the sight of the box of food, and she sat up a little straighter.

  “Hi, you doing okay?” the sergeant asked.

  Dana said, “Yeah, I guess. What’s this about?”

  He looked incredulous. “Huh? You don’t know?”

  She shrugged. “I kinda know.” She eyed the food. “I’m hungry. Is that for me?”

  “You’re in deep, lady. Kidnapping is a federal crime. I’m talking life sentence, madam. I’m not gonna ask you why you snatched that poor young woman and beat her up and injected her with your shit. Why doesn’t matter to me. We know you did it. Nothing good is ever gonna happen to you again.”

  Belligerent, bullying—the sergeant was breaking every rule in the interviewing canon. Fortunately he wasn’t going after a confession. Dana’s expression was defensive and sullen.

  “She’s okay, isn’t she? I didn’t hurt her,” she said.

  “She’s not okay. You’re going to prison, honey. You’ll be old and gray when you get out if you’re unfortunate enough to live that long. Unless you cooperate. I’ve got some leeway on the charges. First degree, second degree, unlawful imprisonment. Big difference in sentencing. You understand?” He took out a pack of cigarettes and matches, placed them on the table, but didn’t offer her one. Dana seemed to withdraw into herself, marshal her resources. She didn’t look as if she found any.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “What were you thinking? What was the plan? The point of this crime?”

  Dana didn’t answer.

  “Were you going to kill her?”

  “No, absolutely not. I’m not a murderer.”

  “Were you going to turn her over to your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know who you mean.”

  The sergeant made a show of leafing through his yellow legal pad. “Juan Xerxes Covas.”

  “You mean Jax?” She hunched her shoulders and rocked in her seat. “The hell with him.”

  “Where is he?” The sergeant plopped the pad onto the table, poised his pen to write, and looked at her expectantly.

  “I kept trying to call him, to ask what I should do.You know. Let him know I had her. But his service was dead, I couldn’t even leave a message. He must have killed his phone.”

  “He lives with you, right? Where would he go? He have family?”

  “He has an ex-wife around here somewhere. He’s got family back in Guatemala.”

  “An ex-wife here somewhere? You mean in the States?” The sergeant unfolded the bag and took out some fries. He opened a packet of ketchup and squeezed it into the fries. He ate a couple without looking at her, then licked his fingers.

  “I mean here in North Carolina. He visits her now and then for stuff with their grandkids. But he never told me nothing about her.” Dana gazed miserably at the wall. “I’d give him up in a minute, believe me. He knows I’ve been arrested and he doesn’t even get in touch? Or send his lawyer to bail me out? ‘Got your back,’ he used to tell me. I thought I was doing him a favor when I picked her up. That’s treachery, man.”

  “He is a double-crossing SOB. Tell me where he is and I’ll take care of him for you.” He unwrapped the burger and inserted a straw into the milkshake.

  Dana was silent for a minute. “There’s a place he hangs.”

  The sergeant pushed the burger, shake, and fries across the table.

  “Ten-fifteen East Waters,” she said. She stuffed a handful of fries into her mouth.

  She’d given the address of the cinder-block house where she’d stashed me. A stupid lie. But it was too late to renegotiate; she was well into the burger. The sergeant knew it too. He picked up the matches and left the room, closing the door behind him. “Let her rub her knees together if she wants a light,” he said to me. “You hear all that?”

  “I did. The ex-wife. We’ll get back to you with her ID.” Hogan could find her, I was sure.

  He handed me his card and pulled on a sports coat. “I’m available if you learn anything but right now I’m out of here. It’s my daughter’s eighth birthday and there’s a cake that looks like Hannah Montana’s guitar in my car.”

  On the TV screen, Dana was chawing down the burger. She picked up the milkshake and sucked on the straw. I remembered when she brought me one, held it to my mouth so I could drink it, delicious, cold and sweet, how grateful I’d felt for that small pleasure. She’d locked me up for twenty hours. For that, she was facing twenty years in a different kind of lockup.

  I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her.

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  Sunday Evening

  “Intriguing perfume,” the waitress said. “What is it?” She was a chunky woman with a baby-smooth face and long red hair swept behind her ears, wearing a tuxedo. The other waitress was in a floral miniskirt, lace tights, and painfully high heels that made her long legs look even longer. The bartender had on pearls and a black strapless dress displaying her thoroughly tattooed arms. It was lesbian night at Why Not, a gay club in downtown Durham, and apparently the staff had been instructed to dress up.

  Since I wasn’t wearing any perfume, I didn’t reply to the waitress’s question.

  “Touch of Pink,” Ingrid said with a beguiling smile. She had asked me to meet her in the bar to discuss her search for a private investigator. In an adjacent room, swaying, twirling women danced to an all-girl band playing covers.

  “Very nice, dearie.” She turned to me. “And what happened to you?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She frowned at this non-answer, as though my rainbow-hued face was possibly my own fault. Ingrid ordered white wine and I warily asked for ginger ale. With alcohol in my bloodstream, who knew what I’d do in this friendly bouncing place—relax, have a grand time like everyone else, dance with some cute girl . . . ? So I thought it best not to drink.

  Ingrid sat across from me in a booth. Compared to the waitresses, she was dressed conventionally in jeans and a white ruffled blouse over a tee-shirt that sported some letters. “What’s on your tee-shirt?” I asked. She pulled her blouse open and showed me—2QT2BSTR8.

  “Clever.” My clothes were even more conventional but I fit right in, as half the women in Why Not were wearing black leather.

  “Usually me and Kate come here together for date night,” Ingrid said. She looked longingly at the women, mostly in couples, sharing the rooms’ tables. “But I think she’s found someone else.”

  They call it heartache for a good reason, and mine wrenched with sympathy as her words carried me into familiar emotional terrain. I could identify with every pang, every teardrop, every spasm of loss. “How do you know?”

  “She’s been so distant. This morning she literally pushed me away. I love her more than anything, Stella. I want to know what’s going on. Her sun is in Aries, you know.”

  “Oh?” I was with her, up until the sun-in-Aries part.

  She took a big swallow of her wine. “Kate’s impulsive, acts without thinking. I did her natal chart, and at the moment of her birth, Cancer was ascendant. That’s why she has a hard shell and a mean pinching claw. But she’s soft and loving on the inside. Except the past few days when she didn’t even kiss me good-bye.”

  “Have you tried talking to her?”

  “She says nothing’s wrong.”

  And I’d heard that one too.The cowards won’t confess. “This is recent?”

  “Ever since last weekend, which by the way was the worst weekend of my life. Even before the murder. I loved Justine but it was too much, listening to Kate’s parents fawn over her.

  They’ve always been horrible to me and Kate.” Her square face was flushed, her eyes puffy with tears behind the dark-rimmed glasses.

  “So she says nothing’s wrong. Has she acted like this before?” I was beginning to feel like a marriage counselor, the last thing in the world I’m qualified as.


  “Stella, I have a confession. Promise you won’t kill me.”

  Ingrid took my hand and squeezed it.

  “Of course I won’t kill you.”

  “I lied. When I said I never told anyone about Justine’s sex change? Here, I’ll show you.” Ingrid pulled a video camera out of her purse and turned it on. She pressed a few buttons and handed it to me. “Watch this. I taped it that Friday night, after the rehearsal dinner. Mike had left, Justine had gone to bed.”

  On the tiny screen I saw a pan through the parlor, past stuffed Scotties staring fixedly at each other, focusing on a clutter of wine glasses reflecting flickering candlelight. The camera pulled back to show Kate, Tricia, and Scoop sitting together on a sofa.

  “This is my last night in a family of four,” Tricia said.

  “Tomorrow we’ll be five.”

  Ingrid, from behind the camera, said “What about me?”

  “You count, Ingrid,” Kate said, looking at the camera. “Five in our family now, six tomorrow.”

  Tricia looked dismayed. “Don’t spoil this moment, please.”

  “It’s a good time for a prayer,” Scoop said, folding his hands and bowing his head. “Dear heavenly Father,” he began.

  From behind the camera, Ingrid said, “Ask for tolerance,” and Tricia winced.

  “Forgive us our weaknesses. Give us strength to fight depravity, to bow to thy will, to cast out the demons that possess us.” His resonant voice was self-assured.

  The camera wavered and I could hear Ingrid whimper. Scoop stopped praying and frowned at the camera.

  Ingrid blurted “I hate you! I hate you! You are so . . . so . . . wrong about everything. Ignorant!” She continued filming, as though to record her anger. “You think she’s so perfect but she’s not. I’m sick of being treated like a leper. I went to school with her and Justine used to be a boy. There, now pray for her.” Ingrid’s voice was shrill, breaking with tears.

  Scoop stared at the camera. His brow was furrowed and his mouth was open, giving him a stupid and uncomprehending expression.