by Edie Claire
"Mom," she protested, "Mom! Stop it, will you? I'm perfectly all right." She glanced around the courtyard and surrounding parking lot, but saw nothing—and no one—else.
Besides her mother, of course, who was practically undressing her in her efforts to find a bullet hole. "I told you," Leigh insisted again, wiggling away. "I'm perfectly fine. Where's Mason?"
Her mother's dilated eyes stared daggers. "Who cares? That wretched bum could have gotten you killed! Now come inside, quickly!"
Leigh was about to comply when the flashing lights of an approaching police car stopped them both. "You did call the police," she mumbled.
"Well, of course!" Frances answered sharply. "I called the minute I saw him sitting with you. I wanted to come out myself, but I was afraid he'd take off if he saw me."
"It was really Mason, then, wasn't it?" Leigh asked in a low voice.
Frances's eyes blazed. "Who else would get my daughter shot at?" She cast an irate glance toward a corner of the building, around which Leigh presumed Mason had fled. "Lousy smiling con man. I never trusted him. Never." She was still muttering unkind things about her ex brother-in-law when the police cruiser and an unmarked pulled up beside them. Detective Maura Polanski's large legs unfurled rapidly from the unmarked, followed by her hulking torso.
"What happened here?" she asked in her police voice, addressing Frances.
"Mason's gone," Frances answered bitterly. "He ran that way." She pointed, and one of the uniformed officers set off. "But more importantly," she continued, "a dark-haired man in a black Cadillac just shot at my daughter."
"A shooting?" Maura's eyes widened.
Leigh wished she'd gotten the chance to talk first. Shot at by a dark-haired man in a black Cadillac—it sounded like something from a low-budget gangster movie. "They're weren't shooting at me," she clarified. "They were shooting at Mason. I think."
Another uniformed officer was dispatched into the parking lot, and Maura quickly barked some orders into her radio. She looked around the courtyard, which was devoid of other witnesses. "Didn't anyone else hear the shots?" she asked.
"He must have used a silencer," Leigh answered. "All I heard was a whooshing noise and a thump."
"I didn't hear anything," Frances interjected. "After the two of them hit the ground, I opened the door and saw a black car with a gun sticking out the window on the far side of the parking lot. Then the driver pulled the gun back in and peeled off."
Maura pushed a short lock of brown hair behind one ear. She was acting entirely businesslike, but the beads of sweat Leigh saw breaking out on her forehead betrayed a personal concern that was disconcerting. Maura Polanski didn't get rattled over just anything. "Did you get a good look at the man with the gun?" she asked Frances.
"Not until he was driving out the exit—and then he was going pretty fast. I can tell you that he was tall," she said thoughtfully, "because his head was way up near the car roof. His face was pale and skinny and he had dark hair."
A chill crept up Leigh's spine. "Did he have Mick Jagger lips?" she asked in a whisper.
Frances stared at her blankly. "Who?"
Never mind, Leigh thought. "Did he have big lips?" she clarified.
Her mother still looked confused. "I couldn't possibly tell anything about his lips. He was too far away."
Leigh threw an anxious look at Maura, whose sharp eyes registered the same thoughts. But she turned to Leigh with another question. "Where were you when you heard the noise?"
Leigh pointed to the bench and Maura looked it over carefully, then moved on to examine the tree behind. "Here," she said quietly, pointing to a place on the trunk that was about waist-high off the ground. "A bullet went in here."
Neither Leigh nor Frances had any desire to move closer. Leigh shivered a little. "Mason was standing up," she began. "He had just started to sit down when I heard the noise."
Maura nodded solemnly. "I see." She pulled out her notebook and a pen, the beads of sweat on her forehead increasing. "How about you two tell me the whole story again—from the beginning?"
Leigh had finished her account, and Frances was wrapping up hers, when the uniformed officer who had left in pursuit of Mason reappeared around the corner. He stared pointedly at the ground for a moment, then came toward them.
"Whatcha got?" Maura asked, closing her notebook.
"Nobody in sight," the officer reported. "But you should take a look at this." He walked back in the direction he had come, and Maura followed. Leigh stood still for a moment, then walked after them to the spot where the officer had paused a moment ago. The detective squatted down to examine something on the sidewalk, and Leigh moved in closer.
It was a series of red, comet-shaped stains.
She backed up, suddenly not feeling so well. Bullet sound-effects were one thing. She had had no idea what was even happening until it was over. But blood on the pavement was something else. She retreated, knees knocking, and stumbled backward onto someone else's feet. She quickly sidestepped and mumbled an apology.
"No problem," answered Cara, her face nearly white. She looked from Leigh over to Frances, then down at the spots of blood. Matthias sat on her hip, sucking happily at the pacifier that was attached to his collar with a baseball clip. He issued a mild squawk of protest as his mother's grip tightened, then reached out his hands. "Anlee!" he cooed cheerfully.
Leigh smiled at the boy and offered him her own hand, but her gaze was stuck on her cousin, who didn't need to be here. "Cara? Where did you come from?"
"I came to see how you were doing," her cousin answered thinly. "You want to tell me whose blood that is?"
***
"If you're sure there was only one shot, there's a good chance we're dealing with just a minor flesh wound," Maura said calmly. "The slug was in the tree; it didn't stop anywhere. And obviously, he could still run."
Leigh wasn't at all sure that there had been only one shot. But she wasn't inclined to say so. At least not in front of Cara.
For the next half hour, Leigh, Frances, and Maura sat at Leigh's kitchen table rehashing every detail of Mason's last two appearances. But Cara didn't say a word. She simply sat there, keeping one eye on Matthias and the other on a fixed spot of table top. She hadn't come alone; the bodyguard who now stuck to her and Mathias like glue stood dutifully outside in the hall.
A knock sounded on the door, and Maura opened it to a uniformed officer who handed her an envelope. The two talked in hushed tones for a while, then the man left and Maura returned to the table. "The blood trail tapered, then stopped next to some on-street parking a few blocks away," she reported. "So it appears he was well enough to drive off. Might have just been grazed. We'll keep a look-out at the local ERs and clinics, just in case he goes in for treatment. As for the shooter, we'll keep up our efforts to locate the black Caddy, and we'll have a black and white keep an eye on this place, too."
Leigh threw another glance at her cousin, but saw only the same blank, washed-out expression. Her mother, whose initial hysteria had turned first into outrage, then into a burst of maternal proficiency, noticed it also. "Now, don't you worry, Cara, dear," Frances said, wrapping an arm around her niece's shoulders. "The police will get all this mess straightened out. Until they do, perhaps you and Gil could go on a nice vacation, do you think? Take your mind off of things?"
Cara returned a brief, but polite smile and said nothing.
Maura cleared her throat, opened the envelope, and pulled out what appeared to be a sketch. She turned it towards Leigh. "Does this man look familiar?" she asked.
Leigh surveyed the portrait critically, then nodded. "It looks like the kidnapper, but I would say his face was a bit fatter. Who gave this description?"
"The PI," Maura answered. "Now that we've got a name to put to the face, we can run it by the police departments around Boaz, Alabama, where the first call to Gil came from, and around where Mason's been living the last few years. It's a long shot, but we could get lucky." She turned the s
ketch toward Frances. "Any chance this is your shooter?"
Frances shook her head quickly. "No, he had lots of black hair. Skinnier, too."
Maura held the picture towards Cara, whose eyes flickered over it hurriedly. "Don't know him," she said quietly. Then she rose. "Excuse me, I think Mathias needs changing." She scooped the toddler up from his post in the kitchen, where he was rearranging the cookware in Leigh's cabinets, and carried him off to the bedroom.
Leigh watched her cousin depart, then rose and lifted the forgotten diaper bag from where it hung on the back of Cara's chair. "I'll just go check on her," she explained, following.
She found her cousin sitting idly on a corner of the bed, with Matthias squirming unhappily in her lap. "Play, pan!" he protested, but his mother seemed not to notice.
"Here, sweetheart," Leigh offered, taking the toddler from his mother and directing him to the shoe tree in her closet. "Want to play with my shoes?"
Matthias' face gleamed with pleasure as he starting pulling shoes two at a time out of their neat plastic pouches and dropping them in a heap on the floor. Leigh returned to her cousin, who still sat numbly on the bed. She was about to say something when Cara straightened and cleared her throat.
"Thank you. I'll clean up the shoes in a minute."
"No problem," Leigh answered.
"I know you think this bothers me," Cara said with sudden firmness. "But it doesn't."
Leigh knew better than to argue with her cousin when she started talking nonsense. It was just an exercise. A way of working through things. "Oh?" she responded mildly. "It would certainly bother me if I were you."
"Well, you're not," Cara said flatly. "You have a father who loves you. A great father."
"He loves you, too."
"Yes. He does. And I don't need anyone else in my life. Particularly a troublemaker."
"I understand completely."
They sat in silence a few moments before Cara's real questions began.
"What did he look like?" she asked quietly. "I don't mean hair and eye color. I mean, when you looked in his eyes, what did you see?"
Leigh thought a moment. "Aside from his reactions to the kidnapping and the blackmail? Humor. Optimism. Enthusiasm for life. A certain restlessness." Just like you.
Cara drank in the response, but looked away as she spoke again, her voice unsteady. "He didn't ask you anything about me, did he?"
A stab of pain ran through Leigh's chest, and she wished she could answer differently. "No," she said gently. Then she added, "But we haven't exactly chit-chatted."
Cara's eyes remained calmly impassive as she nodded. After a moment she spoke again, barely above a whisper. "I don't understand why he would be upset about Mathias' birth announcement."
Leigh thought a moment. Truthfully, she didn't either. What exactly had he said? That Trudy had sent it to him, and that he hadn't liked "finding out that way." She frowned. What did he expect? Jerk was lucky to find out at all. He should have been happy about it, but instead it made him angry. Angry at who? Lydie? She was the one whose past sins he had supposedly bragged about exposing. Or maybe he resented Gil, a young upstart who had everything he himself had spent his whole life chasing. Or maybe the whole story was one big whopping lie.
"I don't understand it, either," Leigh answered. "But maybe—I mean, I'm sure we haven't seen the last of him."
Cara suddenly rose from the bed, her sea-green eyes flashing. Leigh recognized the look—it was the same vague, festering animosity that used to appear any time her father was mentioned, ever since the day of that fateful visit to Trudy Dublin. "I have to go now," she said, her voice stiffly pleasant. "Thanks for all you've done, Leigh."
The subject of Mason Dublin had been closed. Cara began in the bedroom, then moved around the entire apartment, silently restoring the disaster zones her son had left in his wake. Frances eagerly jumped in to help her, no doubt thrilled with the opportunity to reorganize cookware. Maura rose to leave, and Leigh walked her outside.
"Cara okay?" Maura asked, tossing her head back in the direction of the apartment.
"I wish I knew," Leigh answered solemnly. Sometimes she wished her cousin was a little less strong-willed; stereotypical wounded-female blubbering would be much easier to deal with than Cara's torturous, gut-burning brand of denial. They had all hoped that growing up, marrying, and having a baby of her own had muted her childhood feelings of hurt and betrayal, at least a little. Now it was all back.
And there was no happy ending in sight.
"I don't suppose," Leigh began with a sudden feeling of desperation, "I mean, is there any chance Mason is telling the truth? About not being involved in the blackmail, at least?" Her heart beat quickly as she posed the question. All logic and rationality told her that Mason Dublin could not be trusted—and that only a fool would give him the benefit of a doubt. But she wasn't all that good with logic and rationality.
If the question sounded stupid, Maura gave no indication of it. "There's always a chance," she answered. "His being in Pittsburgh could be a coincidence, given his sister's hospitalization. I've talked to most of the people who work in Trudy Dublin's unit, and though none of them has seen anyone in her room, one nurse's aide did notice that someone has been leaving fresh lemon drops on her bedside table.
"But deciphering Mason's claims of how all this came about isn't our biggest concern right now," she continued heavily. "The person who just took a shot at him is."
Leigh nodded uncomfortably. "I know. I'm living proof that just being in Mason Dublin's company can be dangerous. But—" Her optimistic side reared its little-used head again. "He did try to warn me, didn't he? That's why he followed me home. He said that he was trying to protect the family."
Maura threw her a look that bordered on sympathy. "From what you told me, it sounds like what he did was ask you to drop the kidnapping and blackmail investigations."
Leigh frowned. "I suppose that wouldn't exactly hurt him, would it? Still, his concern about the family's safety seemed real." She paused, realizing how gullible she sounded. "Well, it did," she finished stubbornly.
"Koslow," Maura reprimanded. "Focus. I didn't want to get into this back there—" she nodded in the direction of Cara and Frances. "But you may have more to worry about than just being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Leigh focused.
"Have you wondered how Mason knew that his sister had been assaulted in the first place?" the detective continued. "Trudy couldn't possibly have called him herself, and he wasn't contacted by either the police or the hospital, because no one knew where to reach him. He wasn't staying at his sister's place when it happened, either. In fact, none of the neighbors claim to have ever seen him—though Trudy had only been at that apartment a few months."
"Maybe he got worried when he couldn't reach her," Leigh said tentatively, skeptical of her own suggestion. "But then, I wouldn't think Trudy and Mason had one of those chat-every-Tuesday-at-four kind of relationships."
"I doubt it," Maura responded. "But you're assuming that he had no idea his sister might be a target."
Leigh blinked, and her stomach churned violently. "You're saying that his sister being beaten nearly to death—that it had something to do with him?"
"It was a break-in with assault and battery. Vandalism too: drawers opened, contents dumped. But no known valuables taken. Not even plainly visible petty cash." The detective's eyes bore into Leigh's. "What I'm saying is that it looks like Mason is telling the truth about at least one thing."
Leigh waited, her heart pounding.
"This is no time to be his relative."
Chapter 17
Leigh glanced over the morning paper and sipped her coffee glumly. It was election day. Warren probably had five or six different political breakfasts he could and should be attending, but instead he was standing over her stove, flipping chocolate-chip pancakes.
"I'll be fine," she said for the fortieth time.
"I'm not leaving you
alone," he said for the forty-first.
"I'll go to the office. It'll be perfectly safe there."
He glared at her. "Yesterday I left you in the capable hands of the world's most overzealous mother—and you got shot at. I repeat, I'm not leaving you alone."
"I won't be alone," she argued. "I'll go to Cara's farm. They have security guards 24/7 now."
He brought a stack of pancakes to the table and served himself three. "Like that matters. Sending you to stay with Cara is like having Jessica Fletcher look after Miss Marple. You're not getting out of my sight."
Leigh groaned. Touched as she was by his concern, she hated ruining election day for him. She took a bite of pancake and ate it guiltily. "Then let me come with you—whatever you have to do," she suggested. "I'll just hang on your arm and smile. Promise."
He looked up at her brightly and started to reply, but was interrupted by the phone. Leigh jumped up to answer it, hoping fervently to hear Mason Dublin's smooth voice on the other end. Assuming he was still alive and kicking, she had plenty to say to him.
"Hello?" she said eagerly.
"It's me, Koslow," Maura answered.
Leigh's heart skipped a beat. It was the detective's official police voice, and it didn't sound happy. "What's up?" she asked nervously.
"I just got a call from West View—it seems there's been a break-in at your Aunt Lydie's place. Your parents aren't home. Any idea where they might be?"
"No—I mean, yes," Leigh fumbled. "Dad's off Tuesday mornings, and Lydie and Bess are supposed to be flying in today. They're probably on their way to the airport to pick them up."
Maura paused a moment. "Right. I haven't been able to reach Cara, either."
"She never answers at the farm," Leigh responded quickly. "You have to call her cell phone. Should I go over to Lydie's now? I can tell you if anything's missing."
The detective hesitated. "I suppose—"