Sleuthing Women II

by Lois Winston

Scorched

  Exposed

  Beyond Limits

  Shadow Fall

  Deep Dark

  At Close Range

  Touch of Red (October 2017)

  Alpha Crew Series

  At the Edge

  Edge of Surrender

  Cover of Night (September 2017)

  For a complete listing of Laura’s books, visit her website.

  Books by Allison Brennan and Laura Griffin

  The Moreno & Hart Series

  Crash and Burn

  Hit and Run

  Frosted (novella)

  Lost and Found

  Sleuthing Women II: 10 Mystery Novellas

  CREWEL INTENTIONS

  An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Novella

  By Lois Winston

  In this novella addition to the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack receives a desperate phone call from former American Woman fashion editor Erica Milano. Erica is now in Witness Protection and living under a new identity in Western Pennsylvania. But someone is stalking her, and Erica has compelling reasons why she can’t go to the police or notify her Witsec handlers. Anastasia is the only person she can trust to help her, and she knows Anastasia won’t let her down. After all, Erica once saved Anastasia’s life. But will Anastasia be able to return the favor before the stalker strikes?

  ONE

  “Anastasia, I need your help.”

  I recognized the voice at once. “Erica? You shouldn’t be calling me.”

  “I had to. I don’t know where else to turn.”

  “Hold on.” I poked my head out of my cubicle and found the hall empty. Quickly I darted down the corridor to the models’ closet, a walk-in storage area where I kept arts and crafts supplies and models from past magazine issues.

  Once inside, with the door closed and keeping my voice to a whisper, I said, “Are you crazy? You’ll get kicked out of the program.” Although I had gleaned my knowledge of WitSec one hundred percent from a now-canceled TV show, I assumed breaking the No Contact With Anyone From Your Past rule was definitely grounds for expulsion.

  “I’ve taken precautions.”

  “What kind of precautions?”

  “I’m on a burner phone. No one will know.”

  Erica Milano, former American Woman fashion editor and daughter of crime boss Joey Milano, now lived under an assumed name in an undisclosed city, compliments of Witness Protection. Several months ago, she’d provided a federal prosecutor with evidence against her ex-boyfriend after he tried to kill me. Attempted murder was only one of the many crimes that permanently relocated Ricardo to a federally run establishment with bars on the windows and razor wire landscaping.

  In addition, Joey Milano now awaited trial on more than two dozen counts. Thanks to Erica, the feds had enough information to cripple her father’s organization and put him in standard-issue neon-orange jumpsuits for the rest of his life—unless his goons got to her before she testified against him.

  “I really shouldn’t be talking to you, Erica. For your safety and my own.” This call not only put her in jeopardy, but might also lead to a couple of Neanderthals with baseball bats showing up at my front door. And they wouldn’t be asking directions to Yankee Stadium.

  She panicked, her voice trembling as she sniffed back tears. “P…please don’t hang up, Anastasia.”

  I caved. After all, Erica had played a major role in saving my life. I owed her. “What’s going on?”

  “I need to see you. Can we meet?”

  “Is that such a good idea?”

  “I’ll make sure no one finds out. You’re the only person I can trust.”

  “What about the U.S. Marshals? Aren’t they supposed to protect you?”

  “If I tell them what’s going on, they’ll relocate me.”

  “So?”

  “I can’t leave.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve met someone.”

  Translation: I have a new boyfriend. “Won’t they relocate him with you?” Again, my source of knowledge was totally television-based.

  “He wouldn’t be able to move with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  Isn’t everything? I sighed. “I don’t think meeting with you is a good idea, Erica.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  Bull’s eye. Erica knew all about Karl Pollack, my not-so-dearly departed husband, leaving me in debt that rivaled the gross national product of many a small third-world nation. Ricardo had been Karl’s bookie, a fact I learned only after Karl dropped dead at a roulette table in Las Vegas when I naively believed he was at a sales meeting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Since then, my life has been reduced to scrounging for whatever additional money I can earn to supplement my paltry craft editor’s salary.

  “Three thousand dollars,” she added.

  A sum much too large to pass up, even though I had no clue what she needed from me. Too many bill collectors had me on speed dial, and every day my sons inched closer to college. Right now I couldn’t even afford to send them to the local community college. Hoping I didn’t regret whatever I was about to dive blindly into, I said, “Okay, where do you want to meet?”

  “First, swear you won’t tell anyone.”

  Was she kidding? “Of course, I won’t tell anyone. You shouldn’t even be telling me where you are.”

  A huge heave of relief made its way through the phone line. “Thank you. I knew I could depend on you. I sent you a plane ticket.”

  “You were pretty sure of yourself. What if I turned you down?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I saved your life.”

  My mind flashed on an image of Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye from White Christmas, my favorite holiday movie. Throughout the story, Danny Kaye’s character manipulates Bing Crosby’s character with the same argument. Visions of me plummeting into a similar, non-ending situation with Erica swam around in my head. Would I wind up running to her aid for years to come, risking my life each time she dangled a few thousand dollars in front of me? Probably. Thanks to Karl, I had little choice.

  “And what happens once I arrive at this as yet undisclosed location?” I asked.

  “I’ve arranged for a car service to pick you up at the airport.”

  She hung up before I could say anything else. An hour later the mailroom sent up a FedEx envelope that had arrived for me. Inside I discovered a roundtrip ticket to Pittsburgh and a money order for three thousand dollars.

  I stared at both in disbelief. Erica had me booked on a flight leaving out of Newark Liberty the following morning and returning Sunday night. A note indicated that a car service would pick me up at the crack of dawn to drive me to the airport.

  ~*~

  Luckily, Mama had no plans for the weekend and agreed to stay with the boys. I wasn’t about to leave two teenagers alone for a couple of days. Not that I didn’t trust my sons, but temptation can invade the bodies and brains of even the best of kids. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  Mama never met a secret she could keep. Unfortunately, I’m a lousy liar. I turned my back on her, pretending to sort through the mail so she didn’t see my face. “Atlanta.”

  “What in heaven’s name for?”

  “I’m meeting with a craft book publisher.”

  “On a weekend? I hope Trimedia is paying you time and a half.”

  Still keeping my back to her, I said, “It’s not for work. It’s freelance. And they were nice enough to agree to meet with me over the weekend so I wouldn’t have to take any vacation or sick days.” Not that I had any left to spare.

  At least Erica took my work schedule into consideration when she booked the flights. Whatever the crisis, she seemed confident that I’d be able to solve it over a weekend. Unless she expected me to fly back and forth every weekend from now until she no longer need
ed my assistance in solving her unknown problem.

  TWO

  I arrived in Pittsburgh at nine o’clock Saturday morning. A dark-suited driver holding a sign reading Anastasia (no last name) waited on the other side of security. Since no other drivers held up signs with names remotely similar to mine, I figured Anastasia meant me. I introduced myself, then followed him to his car.

  An hour later we drove past a sign that read Welcome to Oakmont. We continued for another half mile, making several turns, before he pulled up in front of a small yellow and white two-story clapboard house on a quiet, tree-lined street. Erica waited on the front porch.

  At least I think Erica stood on the porch. The woman bore little resemblance to the plus-size, twenty-three-year-old I remembered. If her father’s goons had fanned out across the country in search of her, they’d never mistake this woman for Joey Milano’s daughter.

  Erica had dropped at least thirty pounds and chopped off all but a few inches of her hair, which she’d dyed platinum and wore gelled and spiked. In addition, she’d traded her Donna Karan pantsuits for skinny jeans and a torso hugging Jon Bon Jovi lime green T-shirt that exposed several inches of flesh and a belly button ring.

  I finally accepted this stranger as Erica when she ran down the porch steps, threw her arms around me, and started blubbering. “Thank you, thank you so much for coming. You’ve saved my life.”

  I hope she didn’t mean that literally.

  “So what’s going on?” I asked after she’d calmed down enough to tip the driver and escort me into the house.

  “Leave that,” she said, indicating my carry-on. “I’ll show you to your room later. I made coffee and bought raspberry croissants. Let’s talk in the kitchen.”

  I followed her through a small living room and dining room into a spotless kitchen. All the furnishings looked new. The kitchen appeared recently renovated with granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, and polished hardwood floors. I thought of my own kitchen with its original circa nineteen-sixties chipped Formica countertops, builder’s grade laminated cabinets, and speckled linoleum. I had no idea Witness Protection paid so well.

  “You have a lovely home,” I said as I took a seat at her glass-topped kitchen table.

  She poured two cups of coffee and handed me one before taking the seat opposite me. “Thanks. The renovations took lots of elbow grease. You wouldn’t believe what this place looked like when I bought it, but I needed a project to keep my mind off everything that had happened.” She paused for a moment, her eyes growing misty as she struggled to continue. “All that I’d given up. My job. Family. Friends.”

  “I’m sure the situation hasn’t been easy.” I reached across the table and placed my hand over hers. “It’s good to see you.”

  Her face brightened, and she squeezed my hand. “You, too.”

  “What should I call you?”

  “Erica.”

  “Really? Isn’t that risky?”

  “I’m now Erica Miller. WitSec suggests people entering the program keep their first names and the first initial of their last names.”

  “Why is that?”

  She shrugged. “Ease of remembering, I suppose.”

  I guess I missed that bit of WitSec trivia from the TV show, but the explanation made sense. I couldn’t imagine the anxiety involved in Erica having to remember an entirely new back-story of her own life. What if she slipped up? Or forgot something? Keeping her first name provided her with a sense of familiarity and maybe a small amount of comfort.

  I polished off a croissant, washing the pastry down with a sip of coffee, then helped myself to another croissant. The time had come to get down to the reason for my visit. “So what kind of trouble did you get yourself into, Erica Miller?”

  “I’m being stalked.”

  “What?!” I nearly choked on a mouthful of raspberry croissant. “Jeez, Erica! You need to tell your WitSec contact. What do you expect me to do?”

  “I told you on the phone, if I tell WitSec, they’ll move me, and I can’t move.”

  “Because your new boyfriend can’t move. I know. But you didn’t tell me why he can’t move.”

  “Darren’s divorced. He shares custody of his kids with his ex-wife. WitSec would have to move all of them, and his ex would never agree to that. They’re not on the friendliest of terms. Besides, he doesn’t know I’m in the program. He can’t know. No one can.”

  And yet, here I am. I tried to reason with her. “You’re in danger. What on earth do you expect me to do?”

  “I need you to figure out who’s stalking me. No one has threatened me. The situation may have nothing to do with my past.”

  “If no one has threatened you, how do you know you have a stalker? Do you sense someone following you? Have you seen anyone lurking around outside?”

  She shook her head. “No and no. But unsigned notes keep showing up. Slipped under my door. On my car windshield. On my desk at work. And gifts sometimes. Left on my porch or at my back door.”

  “What kind of gifts?”

  Erica rose and walked over to the pantry. “I’ll show you. I’ve saved them.” She opened the pantry door, pulled down a large box from the top shelf, and returned to the table. I moved the platter of croissants to the kitchen counter to make room for the box that Erica placed on the table between us. She opened the lid and began removing the contents—dozens of pastel envelopes and various small items, all wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with pink satin ribbons.

  I unwrapped one of the packages to find a lace edged, white cotton handkerchief embroidered in silk thread with pink tea roses at each corner. I marveled at the museum quality workmanship. “This is quite old,” I said. “And definitely handmade.”

  “There are more.” Erica unwrapped a second package. This one contained a set of crewel-embroidered white linen tea towels, also with a pink rose motif. A third package revealed a pair of ivory gloves, embroidered at the cuffs with rows of tiny pink rosebuds.

  “I’m beginning to see a pattern here. Are all the gifts embroidered?”

  “Yes, and all the embroideries contain pink roses.”

  “Are pink roses your favorite flower?”

  She nodded.

  “Who knows that?”

  “Dicky knew, but he probably forgot. He never brought me flowers.”

  Dicky. AKA Ricardo. I doubt that slime bag forgot anything, but if he’d escaped from prison, the authorities would have notified us. Besides, Ricardo wouldn’t send Erica antique embroideries. Such gifts didn’t seem like her father’s style, either. “What do the cards say?”

  Erica opened one of the envelopes and removed the contents, a perforated paper card. Not surprisingly, the cross-stitched design was of a pink rose. I opened the card and read the note written in a flowing script: My darling, I will be yours forever. Under that, a hand-drawn rose. No signature, of course. That would be too easy.

  “I’ve received more than two dozen cards so far,” said Erica, indicating the stack on the table. “All with different pink rose designs, a flowery sentiment, and no signature, just the drawing.”

  “When did the notes and gifts start arriving?”

  “The first card showed up about three weeks ago, but the frequency is increasing. At first they arrived every few days. Then I began receiving cards once a day at different times of the day. The gifts began arriving the end of last week. Now sometimes I’ll discover more than one card a day and at least one package.”

  “And you have no idea who might be sending them?”

  “None. I thought Darren sent the first card, but when I called to thank him, he denied having sent me a card. Then I realized the handwriting didn’t match.”

  “I’m not surprised. The handwriting is far too feminine for a man.”

  “You think so?”

  “Definitely.” However, Erica’s not noticing the feminine style of the handwriting didn’t surprise me. Her generation used keyboards and keypads to communicate, not pens a
nd paper.

  “Your boyfriend wasn’t concerned that someone else had sent you a romantic card?”

  “He laughed, said I must have a secret admirer, but he wasn’t worried because he knew how I felt about him. Since he hadn’t sent the first card, I haven’t mentioned the subsequent ones or the gifts.”

  “If you were anyone else, I’d agree with him. There’s nothing menacing about these gifts or the cards other than the gift giver chooses to remain anonymous at this point. And that’s more mysterious and romantic than menacing.”

  But Erica wasn’t just anyone. She had every right to feel threatened, given that both Ricardo and her father wanted her dead—although I couldn’t fathom why either would send her such non-threatening cards and gifts. If Joey Milano knew his daughter’s hiding place, she’d be dead by now.

  I opened the remaining two packages, a Victorian style needlepoint brooch and a needlepoint eyeglass case, both containing pink rose designs. Then I removed the rest of the cards from their envelopes and spread everything out across the table. “These are all quite old.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “From the fabric discoloration and fading and the brittleness of the paper. Are there any shops around here that sell antiques?”

  “There’s a store on Main Street that sells second-hand furniture. I suppose some might be antiques. The stuff just looks decrepit to me. There’s also an outdoor farmer’s market at the high school every Saturday morning. Some people sell crafts and flea market type goods. Do you think whoever is leaving these purchased them from one of those places?”

  I stood up. “Only one way to find out. Let’s go.”

  ~*~

  As we walked over to the high school, I learned more about Erica’s new life. “Do you like living here?”

  “I do. At first this new lifestyle took some getting used to. I’ve never lived in a small town before, and Oakmont is a really small town by my standards. The population hovers shy of sixty-five hundred. I grew up in The Bronx, surrounded by well over a million neighbors, not to mention an additional seven million in the four other New York City boroughs.”