She twisted in fear to look down the empty stretch of sidewalk. J.D. followed her gaze, but no one was there.
“We have to get help,” she continued. “The police!”
J.D. scouted the rain-swept street. The entire neighborhood was pitch-dark.
“Come on.” Bracing Jackie’s spent body against his side, J.D. guided her back to his car.
She didn’t fight him when he half urged, half shoved her inside. He removed his topcoat, wrapping it around her huddled body and turned up the heater. She was wet clear through, he realized. Her hair lay plastered against her face, eyes tightly closed. He reached for his car phone.
“Give me your address.”
She hesitated, then pushed the words past teeth that chattered. She waited in silence as he spoke to the police dispatcher.
He clicked off the phone and turned to her. “We’ll meet them at your house.”
She huddled deeper into his coat, her haunted eyes staring up at him in the dim light reflected from the dashboard. Though the car felt suffocating to him, the heat didn’t seem to be penetrating the chills racing through her slight form.
He forced himself to drive slowly. “Whose body is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s a dead stranger in your bed?”
“Would it be better if we were friends?” she snapped.
J.D. acknowledged the foolishness of his question with a nod as he turned the corner onto her street. Lights suddenly twinkled on everywhere. He didn’t need to ask which house was hers. Only one had a front door gaping open with every light in the downstairs blazing a welcome.
He slid into her driveway, one wheel coming to rest on the lawn as the car lost traction. A thin sheet of ice coated the ground. Jackie didn’t even notice. She peered around apprehensively as she reached for the door handle. J.D. laid a restraining arm across her body. “Wait for the police. We don’t know who else is inside.”
“But the body—”
“Isn’t going anywhere,” J.D. assured her, “and you said someone else was inside.”
She subsided almost gratefully.
They didn’t have long to wait. A cruiser pulled to the curb behind them, disgorging a large, burly figure. J.D. recognized the officer at once. “Wait here,” he told Jackie as he stepped from the warm car.
“Frost? What’s going on?” Officer Ben Thompkins demanded.
“The lady says there’s a body on her bed. The killer may have followed her out of the house. She flagged me down two blocks over. I was on my way to pick up a pizza for the kids.”
Thompkins reached for his gun, his other hand going for his radio. “Get back inside the car, both of you.”
J.D. had never seen Ben in his policeman persona before. The transformation was surprising. His good-natured softball buddy had been replaced by a hard-edged professional. J.D. turned back to find Jackie at his side.
“He’s on my bed,” she told Thompkins. “Upstairs.”
“Get her in the car,” Thompkins ordered as a second cruiser pulled up behind his.
Jackie hesitated, and he saw the fear staring starkly out of her expressive eyes.
“Let them do their job,” J.D. advised gently, guiding her back to his car. The two officers conferred briefly before mounting the porch steps.
The sleet abruptly changed to large, fat snowflakes. Nerves kept them standing beside the car. Jackie handed J.D. his topcoat, but he shook his head.
“Put it on yourself before you catch pneumonia. I’ve got a suit coat on.”
“I’m fine,” she whispered, but obediently wrapped the coat around her like a blanket and stood staring anxiously up at the house as they waited. Snowflakes, interspersed with sleet, continued to pelt them.
Thompkins suddenly appeared on the porch and beckoned. J.D. and Jackie picked their way carefully across the grass. The porch steps were icy and Thompkins came forward to help Jackie mount the last couple.
“Show me where you were when you saw the body,” he requested
Jackie headed for the steps, limping slightly. J.D. sent Thompkins a questioning look that was met without expression. Puzzled, J.D. followed Jackie upstairs to where the second officer waited. Jackie turned left and entered the softly lit bedroom on the right.
The room was simply furnished, dominated by a double bed—a tidy, neatly made bed—with a smooth, undisturbed comforter spread across it.
Jackie rounded on them. “Where’s the body?”
Thompkins stared balefully.
Nerves tightened in J.D.’s stomach. “No body?”
“No body at all,” the officer confirmed without a trace of humor. “The entire house is clean as a whistle.”
Jackie lifted stricken eyes. “No! He has to be here!” She raced to the closet and flung open the door. Clothing hung neatly, but there wasn’t a lot of it, J.D. noticed. She whirled toward the connecting bathroom and darted inside. She returned, looking harried. Her breathing came hard and fast, as if she had just run a marathon.
“He was here! Right there on the end of the bed! Look underneath,” she commanded. “He has to be somewhere!”
Thompkins coughed, then dutifully stepped forward, raised the bedspread and peered under the bed.
“Not even any dust bunnies,” he told her.
“He was right there!” She aimed a shaking finger at the neat bedspread. A strand of wet hair fell forward against her cheek, but she ignored it. “There was a dead elf right there on my bed,” she pronounced slowly.
J.D.’s stomach clenched tightly.
Thompkins didn’t even flinch. “An elf,” he echoed without inflection.
“A man dressed as an elf,” she corrected. Her voice vibrated with emotion.
“There’s no sign of forced entry,” Thompkins said quietly. “No sign of disturbance anywhere in the entire house, unless you count the front door being wide open.”
She pointed to the dresser. “I was standing right there in front of that mirror. I keep a flashlight in that drawer. When the lightning flashed I saw him.”
“The dead elf,” Thompkins said levelly.
J.D.’s gaze slid to the perfectly smooth expanse of her aqua bedspread. A military cot wouldn’t be neater.
Here he’d been thanking his guardian angel that Jackie was a harmless, friendly shopkeeper instead of some pervert. Now she was turning out to be a fruitcake, he thought morosely. And just in time for the holidays.
“Was he small?” Thompkins asked.
Jackie’s eyes narrowed in fury.
“It’s a reasonable question, ma’am,” Thompkins continued. “You did say an elf, and elves are—”
She squared her shoulders. “He was a man,” she enunciated carefully. “A full-size man dressed as an elf.”
“Full-size as in five feet? Six feet?”
She faced them with a regal glare of contempt.
“I have no idea how tall he was. I didn’t take the time to measure him. He lay crumpled on my bed right there, near the end.”
Thompkins lowered his hand to the spot indicated. “The bedspread isn’t warm and it isn’t damp.”
Without a word, she hurried from the room and threw open the door across the hall. “He has to be here somewhere.” The room was empty except for the furnishings. “Someone else was down the hall over there.”
In the direction she indicated, the hall was dark—even with lights on. Shadows loomed, probably because all the doors were closed. She flung open the door on her right. The room inside held a daybed, desk, computer and filing cabinet.
“I’m not crazy,” she stated.
Thompkins’s face held no expression whatever. J.D. didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know this woman or anything about her. They watched her open the closet, revealing nothing but empty hangers and a second computer system on the floor.
“Was there blood?” Thompkins questioned. “Any sign of a weapon?”
“No.” She pushed past him, crossing the hall to ch
eck inside another bathroom.
“We checked all the rooms, ma’am,” Thompkins said impassively.
Jackie whirled. “He has to be here! I know what I saw.” Angrily, she swiped at the strand of wet hair on her cheek.
“How old was he?” Thompkins asked impassively as Jackie darted past him to open the final door.
“Young, I think. It was hard to tell. His face was all distorted.”
J.D. frowned. “Distorted how?”
Jackie paused. “A grimace. You know—like one of those Halloween masks? His eyes were bulging and his tongue stuck out—”
“Could it have been a mask?” Thompkins asked.
“No.” Her growing distress was obvious. “He looked dead. His eyes were open and staring and he didn’t move.” She entered the last room.
Unlike the rest of the house, in here there was organized chaos. Boxes, bags, men’s clothing and miscellaneous items littered every available surface. She shouldered aside a stack of boxes to open the closet, then shoved aside some bags and got down to peer under the bed.
Thompkins turned to J.D. “Did you see this elf?” he asked.
J.D. raised his shoulders, dropping them quickly. “No, but—”
“Didn’t think so.”
“He has to be somewhere,” Jackie insisted. J.D. noticed she was trembling.
“Did you take any medication tonight, ma’am?”
Jackie’s eyes glittered and her face flushed with fury. For a second, J.D. thought she might slap the policeman. Instead, she drew in a ragged breath. “I don’t take medication. Not even aspirin.”
Thompkins didn’t apologize. “Ma’am, we went through the house and there’s no body. Was the second man dressed as an elf, too?”
Her lips tightened while her hands formed fists at her sides.
“Ma’am, I’m simply trying to find out what went on here tonight. You said one man was dressed as an elf. What about the man who chased you?”
J.D. saw the flash of fear she quickly buried beneath a show of bravado. Something had happened here tonight. Her fear, at least, was real.
“Could someone be playing a trick on you?” J.D. asked before she could respond.
Both heads swiveled to look at him, as though they had forgotten his presence. The redness abruptly faded from her face, leaving behind a small welt of color along one cheek. She swayed slightly and J.D. reached for her, but she stepped back quickly.
“My ex-husband, Larry Zalewoski. I have a restraining order.”
Thompkins stiffened. “May I see it?”
Jackie hesitated, then led the way back to her bedroom. From the top shelf of her closet, she pulled down a small box and rifled the contents for a moment before coming up with a paper she handed Thompkins.
The second policeman stuck his head in the bedroom door. J.D. had forgotten about him, but apparently he’d been outside. His hat and shoulders were covered in snow, which was starting to melt against the material.
“I’ve got another call,” he said, “but I had a look around outside. The garage is clean. No sign of an intruder.”
“Thanks, Ted. Go ahead and take the call—I’ll finish up here.”
“Right.”
The man disappeared as Thompkins opened the document and began to read. “This is from Indiana.”
“That’s where we lived,” she explained.
“Six years ago?”
Her chin came up a notch. “He tried to kill me one night. Fortunately, I was expecting company. They arrived before he did any major damage.”
J.D. forced himself to relax, but Jackie’s stark words called up a surge of protective instincts.
“He do any time?” Thompkins wanted to know.
“No.” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Could he have been the elf on your bed?”
Jackie shook her head, biting down on her lower lip. “No. But…I think…I have reason to believe Larry found me again.”
“What reason is that?”
“Someone tied a teddy bear to the door of my store yesterday morning.”
Thompkins never took his eyes from her. “A teddy bear.”
Color flooded her face again. “A garish yellow teddy bear. Larry won one just like it at a carnival when we first started dating. This might have been the same bear. Except the eyes had been pulled off this one.”
Tension vibrated through the room.
“Where is this bear now?” Thompkins asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t find it.”
A trace of impatience entered his voice. “You lost it?”
“No! It must be in the store somewhere. Angel probably moved it. I was keeping it in case some child came in to claim it.”
“I thought you said it was the one your husband won for you.”
“I said it looked like that one.” Her eyes glittered. “Yellow teddy bears aren’t all that common. It reminded me of the one from the carnival. The way the eyes had been pulled off…I thought Larry might have done that to terrify me, so I hid it in a drawer in my office. It wasn’t there when I went to look for it today.” She blinked back moisture.
“You think he broke in your store and took the bear?”
Defiant, she lifted her chin. “Anything’s possible. Someone has been watching my shop.”
Thompkins shifted but gave no other sign as to what he was thinking. “Who?”
“I don’t know. My partner and I own the ice-cream place at the shopping center.” She turned toward J.D. “Right before you arrived tonight, I saw someone standing by the trees at the end of the parking lot. The same person has been there the past four nights right around dusk.”
“Might have been waiting for a bus,” Thompkins suggested.
“That’s what I told myself the first two times—before the teddy bear.”
Thompkins “looked” the question at him, but J.D. had to shake his head. Acid churned his stomach. His children had been in her store, in possible danger if what she said was true. “I didn’t notice anyone. But I went looking for my kids. I wasn’t paying attention to anyone outside.”
Thompkins looked as though he expected nothing else. He handed her back her paper. “The items in that back bedroom. They belong to your ex?”
Jackie shook her head. “All of that stuff belonged to my partner’s son. He was killed in a car accident last week. I was in the process of buying this house from Bessie before it happened. Since my apartment lease was up, and she didn’t want the house standing empty after his death, she asked me to move in here until we can go to settlement. I’ve been collecting Donnie’s personal belongings for her and storing them in there until Bessie is up to going through them.”
“Bessie what?”
“Starnes, but her son’s last name is—was Lieberman. Donnie Lieberman.”
Thompkins scratched his chin. “The car crash out on Interstate 70?”
“Yes. Apparently, he was drunk when he went off the road and rolled down the embankment. The car caught fire and he burned to death.”
The radio at Thompkin’s waist crackled to life. He listened a moment and spoke briefly into it. “I have to go. I’ll file a report, but there isn’t much more I can do here tonight. I’ll run a check on your ex-husband, Ms. Neeley, but if you believe he’s dangerous, I’d advise you not to stay here alone.”
The lights suddenly blinked for punctuation.
“Why don’t you change into something dry?” J.D. suggested. “I’ll see Thompkins out and wait for you downstairs.”
Jackie didn’t say a word. She simply watched them leave, her hand clutching the restraining order.
“I DON’T THINK SHE’S crazy,” J.D. told Thompkins. “When I found her running down the street she was terrified.”
“Uh-huh, but there’s no evidence to back up her story. Bodies don’t get up and walk away. Even if they did, they wouldn’t smooth out the bedspread first.” He shook his head. “And a stuffed teddy bear that disappeared, too? I don’t think so,
J.D. How well do you know this woman?”
“I just met her tonight.”
“Uh-huh.”
J.D. had to agree the situation was bizarre, to say the least.
“Well, I’ll file a report,” Thompkins promised, “in case any dead elves turn up matching her description. But we’ve got our hands full with all these damn burglaries lately. The thieves have been hitting some pretty significant residences around here and that puts all kinds of pressure on a small force like ours.” As his radio crackled again, he shrugged and lifted the instrument, speaking quickly into it. “Car crash. Gotta run,” he explained. “Watch yourself.”
“Yeah. You, too.”
J.D. closed the door behind him, noting the old lock. Even Todd could probably break in. Jackie should have dead bolts.
He headed for the back of the house—toward what he assumed was a kitchen and a telephone. As he listened to his aunt assure him that power had been restored at their house, as well, and the children were eating soup and sandwiches, he twiddled with a pair of glasses sitting on the counter. That was why her face had such an unprotected look tonight, he realized. Jackie had been wearing the glasses earlier. He held them up to the light and saw that the lenses were made of clear plastic. Now why would a woman deliberately wear a pair of ugly glasses that she didn’t need?
Heather got on the line and J.D. set the glasses down to concentrate on what his daughter was telling him.
When he finally hung up, he stood for a moment staring vacantly out the kitchen window while his thoughts returned to the immediate situation. Like Thompkins, he wasn’t at all sure what to believe. Jackie had seen something here tonight, but he tended to think Thompkins was right. Someone was out to scare her—or maybe play a practical joke. The elf had probably been nothing more than a mannequin.
He was contemplating that when a noise behind him sent him spinning around. Jackie stood framed in the doorway, a white towel wrapped around her hair. She’d changed from one set of baggy sweats to another. They were not an improvement.
“Why are you still here?” she greeted without warmth.
Good question. “You shouldn’t stay here alone tonight,” he told her quietly. “I don’t think it’s safe. Is there someone you can call?”
Better Watch Out Page 3