“Don’t worry about anything, Mario. Look.” I pointed at the front of the house, where I could see a marked police car. I waved at the officer, who looked bored out of his gourd. He waved back. “I’ve already got company.”
“Okay.” Mario didn’t look too sure, but he drove off anyway.
I headed back to the salon, turned off all the fans, lights, and one curling iron (I’d have to talk to Enrique about that tomorrow). I set the alarm and went into my house. I wondered with a tinge of pique how Scythe had made out that day. I’d bet anything he’d gone through the list I’d given him, probably found the likely suspect and put him behind bars already. I probably was off in soap opera land, and they’d have a good laugh over me. Meanwhile, I was still having trouble reconciling the friend I knew with the man I’d come to know with my digging. I guess Scythe was right when he told me to leave well enough alone. I hated that.
The girls were crying outside. I let them inside and almost immediately heard a distant boom. They ran to the right side of the house. I followed, and we saw a plume of smoke coming from down the street, out of sight.
“Geez, if it’s not one thing, it’s forty,” I muttered amid the barking. Then I realized I sounded just like my mother and gave myself a mental slap.
I hurried to the front window. The cop car was gone. I thought he might be on top of things, but just in case, I thought I ought to call 911. I picked up the phone. It was dead. Maybe someone had hit a telephone pole. Did they still use poles, or did they bury everything underground? I guess I should be more on top of advances in general technology instead of just in hairstyling tools.
Where was my cell phone?
I remembered throwing it onto the passenger seat. Maybe Scythe had tried to call me on it. I forgave him. Sort of.
I told the girls to stay—which I doubt they heard, they were baying so loudly—then, grabbing the keys out of my purse, I went out the kitchen door. I retrieved the phone, saw I’d missed four calls, and entered my voice mailbox. Another boom echoed from down the street. I walked around the house to see if I could discern more before I called 911. Plus, I was selfish enough to want to hear my messages first. Scythe was the first call. “I don’t know where you are, but get home so I can get a guy on you. I’ll be there to talk to you as soon as I can.”
Hmm. Sounded like he might be taking me seriously after all.
Or just wanted me to stay out of his way. A more likely scenario.
I’d reached the front porch, when I looked up and caught sight of a pair of male legs behind the gardenia bush next to the steps.
“Well, well, what took you so long?” I asked, hanging up the phone.
“I had to wait until everyone left, stupid bitch. I’ve been out here all afternoon.”
I was just registering the fact that this wasn’t Scythe’s baritone—it wasn’t a baritone at all but a weedy tenor—when he leaped forward and put a vise grip on my upper arm. If I hadn’t been so busy assuming it was my friendly nemesis, the too-tan legs with knees too knobby to be Scythe’s (remember, I’d felt those knees) would’ve been a dead giveaway. Bad play on words, I thought, since dead is probably just how this guy wanted me. The girls were going nuts inside, banging their noses against the window. I heard sirens down the street. Oh, if only one of the police cars or fire engines passed by my house, maybe I could get someone’s attention. I struggled, kicking out and bucking with my body. He knocked the car keys and cell phone out of my hand; they both skidded across the porch and off into the flower bed. He wrapped his arms around me, and I saw he was wearing tennis whites and snowy Reboks.
Uh-oh. Maybe I shook the Van Dykes’ tree a little too hard.
“Damn, damn, damn.”
“Shut up,” he hissed, slapping a piece of duct tape over my mouth. Shoot, he’d taken away my best weapon.
Some petunias started singing the William Tell Overture. Now I could tell where my phone was, if I could just get this cretin off me. I kicked him in the crotch, and his grip loosened for an instant. I dove for the petunias, hanging my torso off the end of the porch. He grabbed my feet and sat on them. I searched the flowers, beheading them with abandon. The phone, with my superior luck, had stopped ringing. I felt eyes on me and looked deeper into the bushes to Rick and Laurel’s white cat, Merlin. I wondered why she wasn’t heading for the hills with all this noise, and then I remembered she was deaf. I was trying to send her a Dr. Doolittle message to run for help, when my fingers touched something metal, small, and cylindrical. Not the phone. I lifted it up and saw the can of pepper spray that I’d lost out of my purse when Jolie ran into me the morning Ricardo died.
Van Dyke was dragging me toward the front door. I drew my hands up at my chest to hide the can. We’d reached the front door, with me still facedown on the porch. I could feel him grab the back of my shirt, lifting me up. His arm was wrapped around my waist; his other hand reached up to grab my hands. I shoved them down. Up. Down.
“This isn’t a Laurel and Hardy movie.” He swore and grabbed my hair instead and pulled hard. Ouch.
“Open the door,” he ordered. I don’t know what he’d planned to do about the dogs that were ready to rip him limb from limb, but that wasn’t my problem. He wouldn’t get that far. I put my finger on the trigger of the pepper spray and twisted the doorknob with my other hand, opening the door just as I aimed behind me and sprayed.
“Aaaaaa!” Van Dyke let me go and fell back as I slipped through the door, shut it, and threw the dead bolt.
The girls were drowning me in dog spit. I ripped the duct tape off my face, taking some skin with it. Worse than ouch. I don’t know which of us was swearing more, me or Van Dyke. I peeked. He was writhing on the edge of the porch, trying to get his skinny tanned legs back under him, tears streaming down the right side of his face. It looked like I’d only gotten him in one eye.
Where was Scythe when you needed him?
I heard the William Tell Overture outside again. Damn.
I wondered if I could make it to the back of the house and jump into my truck before he got to me. The keys! They were in the petunias, too. Where was that extra set I had? Why wasn’t I more organized?
“That will be my if-I-live resolution—to get organized,” I muttered to myself as I ran to the kitchen. Char followed. Beau and Cab stayed at the window, barking at Van Dyke.
I yanked open my junk drawer and started throwing things out. No keys. Glass shattered at the front of the house. The dogs went ballistic, nails skidding on hardwood. Char booked it out the kitchen door to get in on the action. I was a little worried that one of them would get hurt fighting Van Dyke, but I knew they’d have him cornered in the living room long enough for me to get the phone and call the police. I ran down the hallway and caught sight of a gremlinish white ball of fur headed straight for me, right before I was nearly mowed down by my own three dogs. Legs tangled in crazed canines, I nearly fell as they raced up the stairs after what I belatedly realized was Merlin.
How did Merlin get into the house?
I seriously doubted he threw himself through the plate-glass window to save me, despite my Dr. Doolittle message. I felt a little guilty anyway, although I didn’t see any blood.
I heard Van Dyke picking his way through the glass.
I ran for the kitchen door and was caught again.
This time, I felt tears welling in my eyes at the hopelessness of it all. My dogs were upstairs, cat cornered, baying at the tops of their lungs. They could stay that way for hours. The sirens were drowning them out completely, so even the neighbors wouldn’t wonder about the noise. My cell phone was outside, and a murderer was inside with his tennis-fit arms wrapped around me.
Now I felt the point of a knife against my throat.
Well, I guess I could’ve hidden the kitchen knives while I was looking for my damned truck keys, couldn’t I? This guy was an opportunistic killer, just grabbed whatever was handy. Oleander. Brush pick. Kitchen knife.
That would be my second if-I-live-throug
h-this resolution—hide all sharp objects in case I decide to go poking around in a murdered friend’s life again.
Maybe I wouldn’t have any friends left. If Mario and Trudy came back any time soon, Van Dyke might off them, too. Of course, I’d bet I was going first.
Panic threatened to overwhelm me. As usual, I was thinking way too much. I told my survival instincts to take over my brain. Screw thinking. Start doing.
Too late. I felt the duct tape going around my wrists, then taping my arms to my sides. I still had my legs, which I spread as far apart as I could. The knife then dug into the vicinity of my kidney. Have I mentioned I really hate knives—like worse than guns or snakes or needles? I could envision the blade invading my skin, diving into my organs. The vision paralyzed me. He taped my ankles together, then shoved me into a chair. And taped me into that, too.
“People can see me sitting here,” I pointed out.
“Right.” He looked outside and back to me like he’d had a plan all along. “And they’ll think you are enjoying a nice salad for dinner.”
“What salad?” I asked.
He pulled a Ziploc bag full of green leaves out of the pocket of his shorts. “Oleander salad.”
Uh-oh.
twenty-six
FLINGING OPEN CABINET DOORS, MIKE VAN DYKE finally found a bowl and dumped the oleander leaves into it. Then he raided the refrigerator. “Look at this. You could open a gourmet restaurant. Radicchio. Chinese parsley. Endive. Kale. Even cilantro! How convenient. This will have the cops all over the map wondering which one of these freakish lettuces from weirdo places accidentally got packaged with some oleander. Good for me.”
Ripping open bag after bag, he threw a little of each kind of green into the bowl, then he took the oleander leaves and broke them up into it, mixing it with his hands. I watched as the white sap melted into the water beading on the lettuce leaves. I was in trouble. Deep trouble.
As Van Dyke opened the refrigerator door, I finally got a good look at his hair. Yuck. It was number two clipper-cut on the sides, but he’d permed the crown sometime in the decades since his wedding and had it plastered in a mini-pouf with both gel and hairspray (control issues) like he thought he was some sort of blond JFK (ego issues). With a grunt of satisfaction, he flourished some lemon-lavender salad dressing he’d found behind the milk and doused the assembled leaves with it, chortling. “And when they wonder just why you could stomach the taste of the oleander, well, here’s the answer. I bet this tastes like crap.” He looked on the label at the expiration date. “I’m the luckiest man alive! It’s even out-of-date.”
Well, it didn’t taste scrumptious, but I wasn’t admitting that to him. I’d bought it on a lark a long time ago, tried it once, and never tried it again. My third if-I-live- through-this resolution—clean out the refrigerator so I won’t have any extra ammunition for homicidal maniacs who happen to come calling.
The cordless phone sitting next to the refrigerator rang. We both looked at it like it was alive.
“I thought I cut the phone line,” Van Dyke complained.
“So it was you, not the accident down the street.”
“That was me, too, and it’s no accident,” Van Dyke boasted. “I paid some guy in a trench coat big bucks to throw a firecracker into a gas tank.”
I guess the flasher had a place to stay tonight—the burn unit of the hospital. Nice guy, this Van Dyke.
The sirens still blared. The dogs still barked. I was still up the creek without the paddle. I looked more closely at the phone. It was the long-range cordless I’d bought for the salon. Mario had been talking on it to Trudy when he’d gone to make his sandwich. He must have forgotten to take it back to the receptionist desk. Thank the good Lord for dimwit friends.
It stopped ringing. Van Dyke looked at me.
“It’s the phone for the salon.”
The phone started ringing again.
“Do you have an answering machine?”
“Yes.”
“Then why aren’t they leaving a message?”
“Bring it to me, and I’ll check the caller ID.”
He showed me the display. Trudy was calling from home.
“It’s my best friend.” I smiled in relief.
“So?” He was getting worried, time to play on that. The phone stopped ringing.
“So, she’s probably called my cell phone and my home phone and gotten no answer. If I’m not answering at the salon, then she’ll get worried and rush over here. Right away. Speedy quick.”
Van Dyke grimaced. “How far away does she live?”
“Not far,” I lied. “Five minutes or so.”
We stared at the quiet phone. I prayed as hard as I ever did for Trudy to try a third time. Ten of the longest seconds of my life ticked by. It rang again.
Van Dyke swore. He sat down next to me, holding the knife point in my back, where the brush had stuck out of Ricardo. He jammed the receiver to my ear. “Talk to her, then, but you’d better not let on that anything’s wrong, or I’ll forgo the nice, clean way to kill you in favor of the quick, bloody way. Remember, I’ve done that before. I don’t like it, but I will do it.”
He pressed the talk button with his thumb and leaned in so he could hear.
“Hello?” The knife point dug into skin. I winced. He dug it deeper. I felt some blood seeping out. I tried not to panic.
“Reyn! I was frantic with worry! Why didn’t you answer any of your phones? Are you crazy? Don’t answer that! I know you are.”
“Hi, Trude, no need to be worried. I was just busy.”
“Busy doing what? What could be so important that you’d give your best friend a heart attack imagining the things that could be happening to you right now?”
I paused. How could I come up with a way of telling Trudy something was wrong without Mr. Quick Stab catching on? And I didn’t want her to faint if I shocked her too strongly. I went for the humor angle. Inside joke. “I was trying on some things I got from Frederick’s of Hollywood for my date.”
Van Dyke wiggled his waxed eyebrows. What man waxes his eyebrows? Gag. I might be sick even before I took a single bite of oleander.
“Date? What date?”
Oh, come on, Trude!
“The date with that tall hunk you tried to set me up with all week, of course, you silly. How could you have forgotten? What kind of friend are you?”
“What things from Frederick’s of Hollywood?” She sounded suspicious now. Praise the Lord, I think she was getting it.
“Oh, you know, the leopard-print satin pushup bra with the black fur trim.” I suddenly wished I actually looked at those catalogues they sent. Who knew it might save my life one day? Was Van Dyke breathing heavier? Gross. I finished my description quickly. “The red see-through negligee with the gold feathers. Those black suede crotchless bikini panties.”
I know I heard Trudy swallow a laugh. Bitch. “Oh, yeah, those things. I remember now. Your date’s gonna love them.”
Van Dyke brought the knife up to make a cutoff motion across his throat. Don’t I wish he’d get a little closer to his neck. Trudy had the message. I just hoped she had enough time to get help before I was a goner.
“I hope he does.” I giggled just for good measure in case Trudy hadn’t gotten it by now. I doubted she’d ever heard me giggle.
“You and the mirror have fun!”
Van Dyke cut the connection and threw the phone onto the table. “Gosh, after that, I wish we had the time to have you model those luscious items. But, sorry, got to kill you in time to make dinner at the club tonight.” He glanced at his Rolex. “I might take them to my girlfriend, though, if you don’t mind. Of course, you won’t mind, you’ll be dead. Might as well make good use of them.”
He chuckled for a moment, then sobered up suddenly. “Let’s get on with it.”
He found a fork and stuck it into the pieces of green and shoved the bite toward my mouth. I stared at the pieces of leaves in front of me, trying to pick out the ole
ander from the other. It probably wouldn’t matter; enough sap had gotten on the other pieces to do me in. One bite of cardenolide glycoside wouldn’t kill, the gardener had said. I wished I’d asked exactly how many bites of the toxin was deadly. That knowledge might come in handy right about now.
My lips refused to open.
“Listen,” he said, peeved, as he reviewed the Rolex again. “I only have an hour before I have to be at the San Antonio Country Club.”
“That’s only about five minutes from here,” I pointed out helpfully.
“Yes, but I want to make sure you’re dead before I leave.”
“Oh.”
He shook the bite of salad in front of my face. I shook my head. He picked the butcher knife back up off the table. “Quick or slow. Pretty soon, you won’t have a choice.”
I opened my lips. He shoved the bite in and pricked my jaw with the knife to get me to chew. Ick. Man, did it taste worse than dog do. And I’d know, because my thankless brothers made me eat that when I was four years old. I told myself to gag, throw up, but I didn’t then, and I didn’t now. Sometimes having an iron stomach is a handicap. I pretended to gag.
Van Dyke reached into his back pocket and flourished the duct tape. “I can shove a whole bunch of this in your mouth and duct tape it closed between bites.”
I vetoed that idea, only partly because nothing in my life had hurt worse than ripping that duct tape off my face. The other part was, I wanted use of my tongue. I was getting a confession out of him, even if I wouldn’t be alive to repeat it. Trudy’s right. I am competitive, and I would beat the cops at this or else.
The Brush Off Page 29