On the basement level, I walked as the dual dryer loads buzzed and tumbled to a stop. I pulled open the first dryer and started folding the larger items immediately so they didn’t wrinkle.
Someone opened the door behind me and came into the laundry room. I was in such bliss folding the hot clothes into tidy squares; I didn’t even turn to see who it was.
A female said, icily, “You again.”
I turned to find a horrifying sight. Harper. Not that Harper was her real name. Her blond hair was pulled up in a tight bun and pierced with two sharp-looking sticks. The person that Tony had pulled me over on the highway to warn me about stood no more than twelve feet away, a cruel look on her face.
We were alone in a concrete, windowless basement, and the only exit was behind her.
She had no laundry.
She did, however, have a hammer in her hand.
“Hi there,” I squeaked.
She gripped the hammer tightly. “I see you’re following me.”
Chapter 33
Almost anything, when used creatively, can become a weapon.
As I faced off against an attacker with a hammer, I scanned the vicinity for something to arm myself with. There was only a warehouse-sized jug of liquid detergent and a box of dryer sheets. I grabbed the jug and held it between us as a shield.
“People know I’m down here,” I said evenly. “You won’t get away with this.”
Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes bulged. “Get away with what?” She raised the hammer by an inch.
“I saw you today,” I said. “I saw you in Portland, at the pawn shop. I said your name, but you didn’t turn around because your name’s not really Harper.”
She took one step toward me, her pale eyes narrowing to slits. “Who told you that? Who told you my name’s not Harper?”
“Officer Tony Milano is looking for you, right now. He’ll be here any minute to arrest you.”
“No,” she breathed.
I gripped the jug of detergent tighter. “Yes,” I said. “Now put down your hammer and step back.”
“What?” She gave me a dumbfounded look but didn’t set down the hammer.
Suddenly, she lurched forward.
I did what seemed both necessary and prudent at the moment; I chucked the nearly-full, warehouse-sized jug of detergent at her.
The jug struck her in the stomach. She released the hammer, arms flailing. The hammer soared through the air and landed inside an open washing machine with a loud clang. As the metallic echoes faded, she stumbled backward.
Eyes bulging, she gasped, “Can’t. Breathe. Help.”
As she crumpled to the ground, I got the feeling I’d made a terrible mistake. She looked so small and fragile on the gray concrete floor. She kept gasping, making an awful wheezing sound.
I started toward the door but stopped at the light switches. One light was off. I flicked the switch up. A lamp in the far corner of the room came on, illuminating a pegboard wall of tools, which was full except for the space marked off by the outline of a hammer. The girl had come to the basement to return a tool, not to make me the next victim.
I went to the gasping girl, got down on my knees, and patted her back. She shrank away from my touch.
“You’re okay,” I said soothingly. “I just knocked the air out of your lungs. Try to calm yourself, and the breath will come to you.”
She kept wheezing. Her bun had come undone, and her golden hair fanned out on the grimy floor. I stayed by her side, apologizing and telling her how I’d had the wind knocked out of my lungs a few times. The last time had been when I was playing touch football and someone decided to turn the touch into tackle. Having your diaphragm spasm like that can be frightening.
I kept patting her back, saying, “Easy now. Let it all out, pause, and then you’ll be able to breathe again.”
Between gasps, she asked, “What did I ever do to you?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m so sorry I hit you with that jug, Harper, or whatever your name is. I overreacted when I saw you with that hammer.”
She said, “I’ll tell you my name if you really need to know.”
“Catch your breath first,” I said gently.
While I waited for her to breathe normally, I read the sign posted for Katrina Court residents who wished to borrow tools:
1. All tools must be signed out using the sign-up sheet.
2. Tools not returned within 36 hours will be considered stolen and replacement value charged to the borrower’s apartment.
3. No auto body work beyond oil changes may be performed in the underground parking lot.
After a few minutes, the girl I’d assaulted with a bulk-warehouse-sized jug of laundry detergent was breathing normally, sitting upright, and sobbing on my shoulder.
“You were at the same pawn shop Murray Michaels used,” I explained. “Was he more than just a regular restaurant customer to you?”
“I didn’t kill him,” she said. “He was my friend. Honestly, I wouldn’t ever hurt him. I only went by his house a few times because I was curious.”
“Did you see something at his house?”
She sniffed and pulled away from my shoulder.
“I didn’t go inside,” she said. “One time, after he disappeared, some people saw me outside the house and asked who I was. It was an older man, and a little old lady, walking a small dog.”
“What did they look like?”
She wiped the tears from her eyes. “Like regular, normal people.”
“Do you remember the breed of dog?”
She sniffed. “I think it was brown. I told the couple I was his daughter. I forgot this was such a small town, where everybody knows everybody. The guy said Murray didn’t have a daughter, and they were going to call the police because I looked like I was casing the place, so I told her about how he and my mother used to date, and I thought I was his daughter, but didn’t know for sure.” She shook her head. “I’m so stupid.”
I considered what she’d told me. “You’re not stupid for telling the truth,” I said. “When you talk to the police, just be honest.”
Her body tensed, and she used her feet to push herself away from me.
“Why did you throw that thing at me?” She inched toward the room’s only exit.
I held out my palms to show her I was unarmed. “When you accused me of following you, I took it the wrong way. I guess you were talking about how you just saw me yesterday, at the pub, and again, today.”
She nodded. “It was a stupid joke.” She buried her face in her palms. “I’ll never fit in here, will I?”
I wanted to reassure the crying girl that she would fit in fine, but I wasn’t exactly one to talk.
“Everything is so messed up,” she groaned.
Her tears were getting to me, but I hadn’t forgotten Tony’s warning. This girl was hiding something, or hiding from someone.
I asked, “Why are you here? Why Misty Falls?”
She lifted her face from her hands. “I moved here so my sister and I could get a fresh start. My mother always said good things about the town. She only lived here for a year or two. She’s gone now, but I wanted to see if it was as nice as she said.”
“And Mr. Michaels was your father?”
“I don’t have proof, but I thought I could save up for one of those DNA tests. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know. I wanted to meet him first and see what he was like.” She wrinkled her nose. “He wasn’t perfect, was he?”
“He had his good qualities,” I said. “I grew up in the house next door, so I knew him a long time.”
She looked up at me with red-rimmed, hopeful eyes. “Was he a good man?”
“He didn’t deserve what happened to him, if that’s what you mean.”
She held her arms across her chest in a protective posture. “But what was he like?”
I paused to consider how to best frame what I knew about the deceased man, to leave his living descendant with the best of him.
>
“He loved books,” I said. “He tried to get the neighborhood kids interested in reading.”
The corners of her mouth twitched up. “That’s nice,” she said. “What else?”
I remembered running a lemonade stand on the sidewalk and Mr. Murray asking questions. My sister and I thought he was going to be his usual ornery self and make us move so we weren’t in front of his house, but he didn’t. He brought us a calculator and paper and showed us why we weren’t charging enough to cover our expenses. He helped us make a new sign and then guilted several neighbors into buying lemonade from us.
I told Harper the whole story, including more details as they came to me. By the end, her eyes were dried and she was smiling.
“That’s a cute story,” she said.
“I never realized it before now, but when he showed me how to figure out a profit margin, something clicked in my head. Mr. Michaels was the first person to get me interested in business.”
“He was a good man,” she said.
Now that I was looking for it, I could see the family resemblance. There was something in the tilt of her nose and the cool blue of her eyes.
“You do look a bit like him,” I said.
She gave me a weak smile. “My father, the town’s kleptomaniac.” She looked off into the distance. “Could be worse, though. I’ve got a fifteen-year-old half-sister who moved here with me, mainly to get away from her father and other jerks.”
“Sorry to hear that.” I got to my feet, dusted myself off, and helped her up. She groaned and rubbed her solar plexus, where I’d hit her with the jug. “And sorry again for knocking you down,” I said.
She went to the door and stopped, her back to me. “It’s always darkest before the dawn,” she said softly.
I replied, “Can I ask you one more thing? Why were you at the pawn shop today?”
“One time at the restaurant, I said something about selling some jewelry. Mr. Michaels recommended that particular shop. He said the owner was an old friend.” She gave me a sad look over her shoulder. “The jewelry is junk, but I wanted to talk to the owner, to get some closure or something.”
“Did Mr. Michaels know who you were?” I asked.
She held my gaze. “One time he told me I reminded him of someone special.”
“That’s something,” I said.
She gave me a wistful smile. “I like to think he’s smiling down on me now and that he’s glad we met.”
“That’s a really nice image.”
She pulled open the door and slipped out, leaving me alone in the laundry room. I leaned into the washing machine, picked up the fallen hammer, and returned it to the tool box, as per the posted sign.
The door opened again, so I armed myself and whipped around.
“Just me,” she said, holding her arms up in a defensive position.
“Sorry.” I put the laundry detergent down.
She said, “I wanted to let you know I’m going to call the police and try to help them with the case. I don’t know if it will do any good, but I’ll tell them which people Murray used to complain about when he was having his lunch.”
“Was my father one of those people? His name is Finnegan Day.”
Recognition flashed across her face. “I’ll leave your father out,” she said. “But I will tell the police about all the fights he had with the owner of that costume shop.”
“Great idea,” I said, not letting on that it wouldn’t do much good, as Leo Jenkins had been cleared as a suspect.
Chapter 34
“Wow. You folded everything,” Jessica said when I returned with the laundry. “Is that what took you so long? I thought you’d gotten lost.”
“I love folding hot laundry,” I said, which was true.
We got back to watching our spy movie, and for the rest of the evening, I didn’t mention how I’d hurled a year’s worth of liquid detergent at her neighbor. If Harper was on the run from someone or something, it wasn’t my secret to share.
By ten o’clock, we’d run low on pizza and girl talk, so I thanked Jessica for the fun evening and drove home.
At the duplex, Logan’s side was brightly lit.
I sat in my idling car and watched as he walked by the living room window, shirtless. He walked up to the window and glanced left and right, first at the snow-covered lawn and then at the cloudless night sky. He stretched, rubbing his nice-looking stomach.
During the drive home, I’d been thinking about the spies in the movie we’d watched. Even while bullets were flying, the man and woman kept flirting with each other, their romance progressing. Some of the scenes had been so corny, but Jessica and I had both swooned, enjoying every minute of it.
Now that I was single again, the romance aspects of movies meant more to me. The romantic gestures weren’t just unbelievable things I’d roll my eyes at. The corny moments now seemed like hopeful possibilities, actual things that could happen to me. My former fiancé would never have looked into my eyes and said the perfect line, let alone swept me up into his arms with perfect time, but now my future was wide open.
And Logan’s curtains were wide open. Why? And why was he always walking around with no shirt? Was he putting on a show on purpose?
Another car drove down the street, slowing as it passed my vehicle. I leaned over and pretended to be digging through my purse. The other car stopped next to my car. I straightened up and turned to look out the driver’s side.
Officer Peggy Wiggles waved back and signaled for me to lower my window.
She called over, “Do you normally park on the street? I would imagine you’d park up there, on the driveway.”
“I like to mix it up,” I said. “How about you? Any breaks in the case?”
“You know I shouldn’t discuss that with you.” She glanced down at a screen that glowed blue on her face.
“Are you going to a call in this area?” I asked.
“No,” she answered without looking up. “Just checking on your residence, as per Milano’s request.”
“I saw Tony today,” I said. “We had lunch.”
She looked curious but didn’t press for details. I told her anyway, including my new information about the girl I was still calling Harper.
“You guys should run a DNA test,” I said. “Harper would probably want to know for sure, and it would back up her story.”
“I’ll pass that along to Officer Milano,” she said, glancing past me at the house. “Would you like me to walk you to your front door and check the residence?”
“Am I in danger?” I asked.
She took her time before answering, “It never hurts to be careful.”
“Officer Wiggles, is there anything in particular I should be careful about? Have you got any new suspects, or information from the coroner?”
“Sleeping pills,” she said. “Stormy, please keep this under your hat. The toxicology report suggests that somebody drugged Murray Michaels then strangled him. I’m only telling you this so you can be aware of what you’re eating or drinking.”
I took a deep breath as the news washed over me like a bucket of ice water.
“If he was drugged first, it was pre-meditated,” I said. “That’s cold.”
She guffawed. “Very cold.”
She had her arm sticking out of the window and patted the side of the cruiser with a metallic whack.
“Well, have a good night,” she said cheerily.
“You, too. Be careful out there.”
“I have a gun,” she said, and she drove off.
After she left, I sat in my car for a long time, thinking about how Murray Michaels had lived his life. Someone had despised him enough to plan his murder. Things might have turned out different for him if he’d made more of an effort to connect with people.
Along with my memory of him helping me with the lemonade stand came more memories, each coaxing out another, like the string of silk scarves coming from a magician’s top hat.
Mr. Michaels had
confiscated toys for crossing over his property line, but he’d also made a show of generosity once a year, returning the items in a cardboard box left on the porch, no note or explanation. When it snowed, he’d shovel the walkway in front of his house, skip ours, but then shovel in front of the homes of some of the widows on the street.
Sure, he’d argued with my father over the years, but only because he loved a good debate. Talking was his entertainment, but it had to be deeper than small talk. He wasn’t content to stand around and muse about the weather when there was business, politics, and even religion.
If he hadn’t gotten himself killed, we might have had some lively discussions now that I was back in town. He’d always seemed a bit of an outsider, like me.
It was easy to be friendly to people who were kind and polite all the time, but most people had flaws. He couldn’t see past the flaws of others, so they wouldn’t look past his.
I wondered, if I could work on myself in general, work on building bridges with people who weren’t so perfect and easy to love, would that help me in life? I didn’t want to end up cranky and alone, my death unnoticed for weeks. And I didn’t want to start another romantic relationship only to hit the same obstacles again.
So, with the best of intentions in my heart, combined with some cowardice about facing my shirtless tenant, I put the car in gear and drove to my father’s house to offer emotional support to Pam.
Or to let her make fun of my hair.
Whatever would make her feel better.
Chapter 35
For the third morning in a row, I awoke to a raspy tongue on my forehead.
“Jeffrey, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think we should start seeing other people.”
He gave me an offended look, which only got worse when I turned him around to check his surgery site. He scampered off with the remainder of his dignity, his long gray tail swooshing in question marks.
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