Just then I saw a hand come creeping into view on the other side of the screen door. It wasn’t front and center but off near the side. It held something. At first I thought it was a gun, and panic rose from my gut into my throat, threatening to gush into a scream. But it wasn’t a gun, unless guns now came in a flat rectangle shape. It was a cell phone, and from the way it was being held it was probably recording a video or at least audio. Seeing the phone, I was glad I hadn’t mentioned Emma by name, but who knew how long that person had been out there listening. Since the story about Zach hadn’t been released yet, there was a good chance this person had been following Emma.
“No,” I said into the phone, continuing the ruse, “Mom doesn’t know she was here.” I scooted even closer to the screen and wished it was open so I could take a quick strike at the phone with the bat. I laughed again, then said into the phone. “When she does, I’m sure there will be hell to pay.”
I turned slightly to my left and raised the bat in my right, still keeping it out of direct line of sight of whoever was out there. “She did leave a signed photo for Mom,” I said into the phone as I took a firmer hold on the bat and pulled it back across my chest. “Maybe that will mollify her.” I paused. “What, honey? I didn’t hear you.” I paused for effect.
The intruder’s phone moved closer to the screen and more away from the edge, getting bolder in its presence. That was my cue. I moved closer to it on my side. Quietly I pocketed my phone and grabbed the bat with both hands, slowly raising it over my head. “By the way, Greg, Clark and Mom are coming over for dinner tonight. I’m making beef stew.”
Using all my weight, I brought the bat down as hard as I could on the screen exactly where the phone was positioned. I hit a homer. The bat tore through the screen and smashed the phone out of the person’s hand, causing screams of anguish. Before they could recover from the surprise attack, I flung open the broken screen slider and barreled out with the bat cocked and ready.
“You broke my hand!” a guy writhing on our patio screeched. He clutched his right hand close to his chest with his left. “You broke my hand, you bitch!”
“Who are you and what do you want?” I asked, ready to smash a leg to match his hand.
He tried to sit up, but when he did he vomited down the front of his jacket and the tee shirt under it. He fell back down to the concrete pad, whimpering. I almost felt bad for him. His cell phone had landed near the door. Keeping an eye on him, I picked it up. The glass front was broken but otherwise it seemed in pretty good order. It was still recording. I put it into my other pocket without shutting it off.
“Hey, that’s mine!” he protested from his prone position.
“Come and get it,” I challenged.
I pulled my own phone out and started to dial 911, but a call came through as I did. It was Greg.
“What’s going on?” Greg said. “I was meeting with a client when you called. Your message was so weird.”
“I’ll explain the call later,” I told him. “Meanwhile, I captured an intruder. This creep came into our back yard.”
“Your freaking gate was wide open, Odelia,” the guy on the ground protested. He sat up again and wiped his mouth with his good hand. He seemed steadier but didn’t try to get up.
“He’s still there?” Greg asked. “Why haven’t you called the police?”
I was stunned into inaction, torn between explaining the situation to Greg and shocked that the skinny little creep on the ground knew my name. I decided to handle Greg first. “I was about to call the police when your call came through,” I told my anxious husband.
“No,” the guy said. “No police.” He’d stopped sniveling and was shaking his head with vigor. “Please.”
“What’s he saying?” Greg asked. “Put me on speaker.” I did.
“Why were you following Emma Whitecastle?” I asked the guy on the ground, who couldn’t have weighed more than 130 soaking wet.
“Who’s Emma Whitecastle?” Greg asked.
“That was Emma Whitecastle?” the guy asked, seeming genuinely surprised. At least the news got him to stop whining. “Wow. I really hit pay dirt.”
“What’s he talking about, Odelia?” asked Greg.
Hearing Greg say my name brought me back to my original concern. “How do you know my name?” I asked the guy. “Greg, this creep called me by name. He isn’t here for Emma; he’s here for me. I caught him recording me with his phone through our patio door.”
“Who’s Emma?” Greg asked again.
“The medium Mom contacted,” I explained.
“Okay, that part I did get on voice mail,” Greg said, then paused. “Hang up, Odelia, and call the police. I’ll be there in five minutes. My client meeting wasn’t far from the house.”
“No police!” the guy on the ground insisted.
“Oh yeah,” said Greg’s voice through my phone. “There’s going to be police, buddy. Odelia, can you hold him until I get there?”
I put my phone down on our patio table and hoisted the bat. “Oh yeah, I’ve got him,” I said, getting a firm grip on the bat. “If he moves, I’ll be doing a number on him with the Louisville Slugger.”
“Check to make sure he’s alone,” Greg said.
Keeping an eye on the guy, I edged toward the open gate and glanced out into the carport and alley. I saw nothing but my rental car. Not even a curious neighbor, which wasn’t surprising considering the people who lived on both sides of us worked every day. Otherwise, someone might have heard the guy’s screech and come running. I closed the gate tight and secured it just in case he did have a partner lurking out there.
“He looks like he’s alone,” I said to Greg when I returned to the phone.
The guy was trying to stand. “Stay where you are,” I told him. “If you don’t think I’ll take another swing at you, think again.” The guy slouched against a support post.
“Greg,” I said toward my phone, “why don’t you call the cops while I stand guard.”
“No cops, please!” the guy begged. “I am alone, but please—no police. Let me go, and I’ll never bother you again. I promise.”
“Not gonna happen, buddy!” Greg yelled from the phone.
A few minutes later, Greg pulled into the alley and parked behind our garage. I unlatched the gate so Greg wouldn’t have to unlock it from his side and opened it, then went back to watching over my captive. It was another minute before Greg maneuvered himself into his wheelchair and into our back yard. When he did, he was seething. Wainwright came in with him and stood ready for a command, his usual friendly face curled in a protective snarl.
The guy was sitting upright now, still propped against one of the supports of our patio roof, with his legs sprawled out in front of him. He was cradling his right hand but had stopped whimpering about it. He wasn’t very old, maybe in his mid to late twenties. He was skinny, with geek written all over him from his wild, unkempt red hair to his pale skin and thick glasses.
“Did you call the police, honey?” I asked Greg.
He shook his head. “Not yet. I wanted to hear what this clown had to say for himself first.”
Said clown was staring at Wainwright with raw terror. Our dog is a big old yellow teddy bear, but one word from Greg or aggressive movement toward me or Greg and he’d attack any troublemaker. “Call off your dog,” the guy begged. “I won’t do anything stupid. I promise.”
After a few seconds, Greg said, “Down, Wainwright.” The obedient dog stopped growling but remained on alert. To the guy, Greg said, “Hand over some ID.”
The guy turned and started to reach into a back pocket with his right hand but flinched. “I can’t get it with my hand. I think she broke it.” He glared at me as he said it.
“You’re lucky that’s all she did,” Greg snapped. He turned to me. “Odelia, see if you can get his wallet.”
I handed Greg the bat. He gripped it tight and moved a little closer, positioning himself between the guy and the back gate. Wainwright
moved a few steps closer too. The dog’s presence nearly sent the guy into a cold sweat. I went behind the post, keeping it between the guy and me for some security, and reached into the rear right pocket of his jeans. He leaned forward to make it easier for me.
“Steady now,” Greg warned.
I pulled out the wallet and went back to the patio table, out of reach, to check its contents. The wallet was a cheap polyester trifold with a Velcro closure, black, with comic book superheroes on the outside. I held it out for Greg to see, then said to the guy, “What are you, six years old?”
“What?” he said with false bravado. “It’s a collectible.”
The wallet contained no photos but did hold a couple of crisp twenty-dollar bills that looked fresh from an ATM. In slots in the middle section were a credit card, a library card, an employer ID, and an insurance card. On the clear plastic side was a California driver’s license. I pulled it out and reported to Greg, “John Seymour Swayze. Lives on Sixth Street in Long Beach.” I checked the birthdate and did a quick calculation. “He’s twenty-four years old.”
“So, John Seymour Swayze,” Greg said to him, “what brings you to intruding on our privacy? You do know that it’s against the law to record people without their knowing, don’t you?”
While we waited for an answer, I checked out the employer ID card. I showed it to Greg. “Honey, he works for the LA Times—that’s why he’s here.”
“You’re a reporter?” Greg asked. “So were you spying on my wife, as she suspects, or were you following that medium?” Greg turned to me. “What’s her name?”
“Emma Whitecastle,” I told Greg, “and she’s quite famous. Maybe this guy’s a stalker—another thing that’s against the law.”
“I’m not a stalker.” John Swayze took a deep breath. “And I wasn’t following Whitecastle.” He adjusted himself on the ground. “Can I get up? This concrete is hard and cold.”
“No,” I said, “you’ll stay there until the police take you away.”
“No police, please!” He took another deep breath. “Look. If I tell you the truth, will you let me go and not call the police?”
“Why don’t you want the police involved if you’ve done nothing wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing wrong?” Greg parroted to me. “He trespassed onto our property and recorded you without your knowledge. That’s hardly nothing.”
Remembering John’s phone, I pulled it out of my pocket and checked it. It was still recording. The picture was dark from being in my pocket, but the sound was good. I stopped it, then started going back through the photos and videos stored on the device.
“Hey,” John protested. “That’s private property.”
“You mean like this house?” Greg shot back.
“Greg, look at this.” I turned the phone toward Greg and restarted the video that had grabbed my attention. Greg watched with wide eyes, then glared at John. There was no doubt now who the creep was following.
“You’re the one who took the video of the body in Odelia’s car and gave it to the media,” Greg said with disgust to the wimp on the ground. “I should kick your ass for that alone.”
“But this showed up on the local TV news,” I noted. “Why not put photos in the paper?”
“Look,” John began, “I do work at the LA Times, but not as a reporter. I’m in office services.”
“You mean the mail room?” I asked.
“I do a lot of stuff, but yeah, the mail room, gopher, stuff like that,” he admitted. “I was at the car wash when the body was discovered and took the video. A lot of people were snapping photos,” he said defensively. “I tried to show that to my bosses, hoping they might consider me for a better position, but they only laughed at me, so I took it to a friend at the news station. She said if I got more, there might be a job for me there.”
“Who at the station?” Greg asked. “The cute little blond who did the reporting on the video that night?”
“Gloria Conners,” I said. “I think that’s her name.”
John lowered his head and nodded.
“Did you really think she was going to make good on that, John?” Greg asked, his voice softening a tiny bit. “I’ll bet you’ve been dogging her for months trying to get a date or something, haven’t you?”
Again, John Swayze nodded. “I never showed that to the Times,” he confessed, his eyes down on the ground. “I have tried to bring them stories before but they just laughed at me, so this time I showed it to Gloria. She didn’t laugh.” He looked up at us, his eyes bright with hope. “She took me seriously.”
I tossed his wallet on the ground in front of him. “She’d take you more seriously if you carried a grown-up wallet.”
“Please,” he said. “No police. I was in a scrape just a few months ago when I tried to get a story. If I get into trouble again, I might lose my job.”
“The library card is from a town in Idaho,” I noted. “Is that where you’re from?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I moved here a couple of years ago. I just never got rid of it.” He shrugged. “It’s kind of like a piece of home.”
“How did you find out where we lived?” Greg asked.
“I paid someone at the car wash to give me your information,” John admitted. It was exactly what Clark had suspected might happen.
“What else did you find out?” Greg prodded.
“Nothing, I swear,” John said. “That’s why I came here. The police haven’t released the name of the guy in the trunk, so I figured it might be a big news story. Gloria thought so too and said if I could get more information, it could be my big break.”
“More like her big break,” I said with thick sarcasm. I turned to Greg. “So what should we do with him?”
“He’s not the first fool to do something stupid for a woman, and he won’t be the last,” Greg said. “Maybe we should take pity on him and let him go.”
John picked up his wallet with his good hand and struggled to his feet. We didn’t stop him, but neither did we help. “I promise I won’t bother you again.” He cast an eye toward Wainwright, still worried about an attack.
“If you do,” Greg said, seeing his fear, “that dog will be the least of your worries.”
“What about my hand?” he asked, clutching it to his chest. “I think it’s broken.”
“You have an insurance card,” I told him, “use it. Tell urgent care you accidentally slammed it in your car door.”
He put his wallet into the front pocket of his jacket. “What about my phone?”
“This we’re keeping,” I said, holding the phone with the broken front up, “as our insurance.”
“I need that phone,” he whined. “It has all my contacts in it.”
“If you’re a good boy,” Greg said, “when all this is over, we’ll return it. If you’re not a good boy, it will go straight to the police.”
I went over to the gate and unlatched it. While John made his way toward it and the alley, Greg held the bat and Wainwright stood alert. “Where’s your car?” I asked. “And what do you drive?”
“Down on the far end of the alley,” he said. “I drive a Prius.”
“Huh,” I said. “Do you like it? We’re thinking of getting a hybrid.” John Swayze stared at me like I was the geek with the superhero wallet. “Never mind,” I added quickly. “We’ll do our own homework on it.”
Once he was on the other side of the gate, John turned around. “Who is the dead guy in the trunk?”
“Do you really think we’d tell you that?” Greg asked.
“For my hand. You owe me,” John insisted.
I closed the gate and locked it.
“You owe me,” came a cry from the other side, followed by footsteps walking away.
fourteen
“She actually called you Dottie?” Greg asked.
“Yep.” I settled myself into a chair across from Greg at our kitchen table. In front of me was my laptop. Over iced tea and a snack, I’d filled Greg in on ever
ything that had happened with Emma. He had been suitably shocked, especially about my father.
“Has Elaine called you yet?” Greg asked. He’d taken Swayze’s phone and was fiddling with it. “Damn thing is locked now.”
“No,” I answered as I plugged away at the keyboard, “and now I’m really worried. Emma Whitecastle is a famous medium. What if Elaine is dead and that was her ghost being channeled through Emma?”
Greg took a swig of his tea before answering. “Do you believe that’s possible?”
“After what I saw today, I don’t know what I believe. There is no way Emma could have known about me smashing that pig. Or about Zach being young or his name having to do with a bird. So how can those things be logically explained?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea, sweetheart. I’m just sorry I missed it.”
“And what about ‘killing two birds with one stone’?” I prodded, looking for him to help me with this puzzle.
Another shrug. “If Emma’s correct, the killing of Zach and the stashing of him in your car might have accomplished two tasks, yet we still haven’t figured out a connection between you and Zach or any of his family.” He downed a bite of banana before continuing. “The two tasks could even be unrelated to each other,” he finally said. “The killer may have killed Zach for some reason totally unconnected to you, but by leaving his body in your trunk, the killer also tied up another job of some kind.”
I stopped typing. “I don’t like being the object of a twofer, Greg.”
“And I don’t like you being one either,” he said. “Maybe Elaine and her people were the ones who disposed of Zach. Maybe that was one of their jobs, but for some reason they wanted him to be found—and quickly—instead of his body being disposed of in their usual manner, and thought you might be just the way to take care of that.”
Slowly, I shook my head. “I still don’t believe Elaine would put me in jeopardy like that. We have a very odd and protective connection.”
Greg nodded and downed the last of his banana. “That you do,” he said with a full mouth.
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