“No. Please do not close the store. The one thing I don’t need is more guilt. My brother has already called me twice and he’s furious. He’s telling me that this wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t so selfish.”
I didn’t want to get into what I thought about that, so I gave her a hug, which she accepted stiffly, and sent her on her way.
Mert dropped in a short time later to help me load up supplies for our Art Fair booth. She had changed out of her work uniform of black slacks and white blouse, and into a skinny pair of jeans and a bright orange low-cut top. Her eyes sparkled as she told me about her recent date with Hank. I admit that I only half-listened. I loved Mert. She’d been my best friend for nearly ten years. We’ve always found plenty to talk about. We didn’t have any secrets from each other until now.
“You’re awful quiet,” she said before she launched into another volley of “Hank says” and “Hank thinks.”
Keeping my mouth shut entirely seemed the safest course of action. I desperately wanted to tell her about the plot to snare Bill. I wanted to hear what she thought of it. I wanted to see her righteous anger at the man who killed my husband.
But I also knew that Mert would be furious if she learned how Bill put out a contract on my life. She might even take justice—in the form of a frying pan—into her own hands.
So I sat silent as a sack of dirty laundry in her candy-apple-red Chevy S10 truck.
We found a good spot in the parking lot at Faust Park. Mert and I worked steadily to load boxes onto a cart. Johnny arrived late on his new motorcycle. Once we had all the boxes of merchandise out of the truck, he said, “Sis, why don’t you move your Chevy to the far end of the lot? That way other folks can use these closer spaces for loading, too.”
That left us alone. Just Johnny and me.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
“Ain’t nothing going to happen to you, babe.”
“No, I mean scared about my relationship with your sister. If you and I fight, she’ll feel miserable. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”
“She’ll be safer if we pull this off.”
“Excuse me? What do you mean?”
“Bill hasn’t just threatened you, Kiki. He’s going after other people in your life, too.”
“What? He’s done something to Mert? She hasn’t told me anything!”
“She gets nasty postcards. Hang-up calls. Kid stuff. But last week, her truck windshield got broken.”
“She told me that was a rock.”
“Yeah, a rock someone tossed,” he snickered.
“How about Sheila?”
“Since Robbie moved in, it’s all good.”
“But before?”
Johnny shrugged. “Someone poured gasoline on her lawn and lit it. Postcards with threats. Hang-ups. Her garage door got jimmied open. A dead rat was nailed to the back wall of her house. That’s how come Robbie moved in.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I knew none of this. None.
“Bill’s been bragging about taking a lot of folks down a peg. That’s why he shot up the May Day shindig,” Johnny said.
“He said that? I mean, he bragged about shooting Edwina Fitz-gerald at the May Day ceremony?”
Johnny shook his head. “Not exactly. See, he’s been telling guys that he means to make you pay, and he wants to settle a few scores with other people here in town. He says he’s got help, so I figure he hired someone. Who else could it be behind that attack? He’s a graduate of CALA, right? His kids go there.”
“Went there. Past tense. After he car-napped me, his wife took the kids and moved to Los Angeles.”
“These were his stomping grounds. He knows his way around. Any offender will tell you that it’s easier to pull off a job when you know your surroundings. Besides, it’s not like you’re a world traveler. You’re here. He’s here. He’s going to take his best shot at you.”
I shivered. I hoped Johnny was speaking metaphorically. Somehow I doubted it.
Forty-seven
Other vendors arrived at the retail area. Johnny set up our tables, fitted the pieces of our display that he’d built. A colorful sign with a glass jar full of watch faces welcomed visitors to our booth. Peg board walls facilitated displaying merchandise. A foldout shelving unit showed off more goodies.
Mert racked hanging goods while I organized table displays. There was a lot to do, more than I remembered, and hauling boxes made for sweaty work. A part of me started to get ticked off, thinking about how Dodie didn’t trust me to share big decisions, like taking on a new partner, but she sure didn’t mind tasking me with a huge responsibility like setting up our entire booth for this event.
Maybe I was overtired, but the harder and longer Mert and I worked, the more irritated I got. Why was I busting my butt for Dodie? She sure didn’t think much of me. Why was I out here sweating and grunting and overseeing Mert’s efforts, while Dodie rested at home? She had a funny way of ignoring the responsibilities she’d shifted my way while still treating me like I knew nothing about the business.
I was hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. A volatile combination to be sure.
So when Johnny came up from behind me and gave me a big open-mouth kiss, the wrong kind of fireworks went off inside my head.
I pushed him away. “Stop it.”
“But I’ve been working so hard, and you look so cute all hot and bothered like this.” He put a hand behind my neck and kissed me. I tried to squirm free, but I couldn’t. His grip was too powerful.
Before I could think, before I could apply reason, I panicked. Suddenly, I was a helpless child again, a child forced to endure her father’s “affection.” Johnny’s mouth covered mine and I gagged.
My mind shut down. I forgot who I was, what I’d been through, and the progress I made in becoming an adult. Johnny’s whiskers, rough at the end of the day, sandpapered my face the way Daddy’s had. Johnny’s hands, insistent behind my head, pressured me into submission. Mert looked away in embarrassment, and that served to trigger a memory of Mom turning the other way.
The child inside me cried for help. All this happened in the nanoseconds that it takes for neurons and synapses to fire in the brain. Johnny’s forced kiss took me to a place I’d escaped from, and I fought being dragged back there the way a swimmer resists having her head held under water.
An atavistic impulse gave me a sudden surge of strength. I brought my knee up hard, slamming it into Johnny’s groin. As he went down, I gave him a slap to the side of the head so hard that the skin on my palm stung. As he sank to the dirt, he sputtered, “Cop lover.”
The haze of my vision clouded. I kicked him in the gut, and I would have done it again, but Mert grabbed me.
She and I wrestled. “Stop it! Jest stop it! Kiki? Johnny? Have you both gone nuts?”
“Get your hands off me.” I wrenched away from her. In my peripheral vision, I noted the crowd, a group of curious onlookers, some amused, most horrified.
I leaned over and screamed at Johnny, “You no-good bum. Stay away from me! You got it? Keep away!”
“Calm down,” said Mert.
But I’d lost my head. I was well and truly crazed. Her admonition to “calm down” had exactly the opposite effect on me.
“Don’t you tell me what to do!” I screamed. “Get out of my sight! Beat it! And take your bum of a brother with you!”
Forty-eight
Thursday, May 6
“Good work. Your quarrel with Johnny and Mert was certainly convincing,” Robbie winked at me from over his coffee cup. With Linnea gone and Sheila being hopeless in the kitchen, KP duty fell to Robbie. I sipped the tea he brewed for me and nibbled at my toast. My reflection in the bathroom mirror sported big dark circles under both eyes. I hadn’t gotten much sleep. I kep
t reviewing what happened at Faust Park and praying Mert would forgive me. Someday. Maybe.
“Plenty of onlookers, plenty of drama,” he added.
“Right.”
“Having Detweiler come pick you up. Nice touch.”
“Yep.” I hadn’t had a choice. I needed a ride home. Sheila was meeting the string quartet she’d hired for her wedding. After Detweiler dropped me off, I noticed I’d missed a phone call from my sister Amanda. I’d turned off my ringer so it wouldn’t interrupt my “fight” with Johnny, and in the chilly aftermath, I’d neglected to turn it back on.
All in all, it ranked as one of the worst evenings of my life.
Robbie sipped his coffee and continued, “Mert being out of the way is a plus. If she knew what Johnny planned—”
“She would kill me and spoil Bill’s fun.”
Last night while lying in my bed, I went over and over the plan that Robbie and Johnny had concocted. For the first time, I realized how much of a risk Johnny was taking. One of the conditions of parole is nonassociation with criminals. This cockamamie plot put Johnny back in the thick of the wrong sort of people.
“How did you get permission from his P.O. to pull this off ?”
“That was tough. Johnny’s been a model citizen. To make this happen, he’s hanging out with guys one step away from being arrested. But the stakes went up dramatically with the sniper attack.”
“Got it. After an important citizen died, the P.O. decided to throw Johnny under the bus.”
“The parole officer owed me a favor. You were in danger. So was Sheila. And Anya.” Robbie pushed his coffee cup away. “We’re family now. That’s how this works.”
Actually, we were not family. Not yet. The wedding was three weeks away, but I got his point. I couldn’t help thinking that before Robbie and I “were family,” Johnny and Mert had been my family.
Family. Such a fluid concept. Handy, too. An all-purpose excuse.
An hour later, I cradled another cup of tea at the Grantwood Diner. Detweiler’s amazing green eyes smiled at me. “Boy, when you play a part, you aim for an Academy Award, don’t you?” His long legs stretched under the table. We’d gotten our food—in my case, the tea and a toasted bagel—and moved to a red Naugahyde booth in the back for privacy’s sake.
I tried to smile at him, but my effort proved weak. I pressed my fingertips to my eyes to stop the imminent flow of tears. “I hated it. I thought it would be hard, but it was worse than hard. Why didn’t anyone tell me that Bill threatened Mert? And Sheila?”
“Did you need more on your plate?”
“No.”
“Look, our C.I. says Bill’s flashing cash for anyone who will bring you to a warehouse so he can teach you manners.”
“That’s not enough to pick him up and put him in jail?”
“A confidential informant’s testimony doesn’t hold much weight in court.”
That made sense.
“I brought a gift for you.”
I’d noticed the red gift bag but pretended not to. I love gifts. I figured he knew how hard it’d been for me last night, and he picked up an iced cookie for me. Lately, he’d made a habit of stopping by bakeries and bringing me a pastry. I hadn’t been eating much, and I’d had trouble keeping food down.
The tissue paper crinkled beneath my fingers. At the bottom of the paper bag, I found a box. On the lid was a photo of a gun.
“It’s a Kel-Tec .308. Here are the bullets.” He pulled a small box from his jacket pocket and rattled it at me. “Remember, never pull or display your gun unless you are willing to use it.”
“Huh?”
“Once a creep sees your gun, his natural response is to shoot you first.”
“That makes sense. Why the Kel-Tec?”
We’d been to the shooting range, more for sport than serious lessons. Or so I had thought. I hate to admit it, but blasting the heck out of a target labeled “Bill” always put me in a good mood. To Detweiler’s surprise, and mine, I turned out to be a pretty good shot. But I never expected our outings to be preparation. I knew that Detweiler’s life depended on his gun, but mine didn’t.
Or did it?
“It’s lightweight. You can put it in your purse. It’ll fit in your glove compartment.”
So that was why he’d encouraged me to get my concealed carry permit. At the time, it seemed like a bunch of useless rigmarole. But Detweiler had been planning ahead. The question was, why?
“I really need this?” I picked up the box and slid it into my purse.
“I hope not.” He leaned over and kissed me, his lips soft on mine. “I sure hope not.”
I stared at him, feeling that completeness, that sense that I’d found what I’d been searching for. “I want this mess behind me.” I leaned across the table and kissed him back. When we were through, he captured my hand in both of his.
“I know you will. People think you’re this piece of fluff, but you aren’t. That’s why no one will suspect you are carrying. I only hope—”
A loud crash caused us both to lift our heads.
Forty-nine
“Get away from him! He’s my husband!” Brenda Detweiler shrieked.
I ducked as she took a swing at me. Her fist went wide. Her body followed. Her hands slammed the table and stopped her from smacking her face down into my tea cup.
Detweiler stood up and hauled her by the collar to an upright position. “Brenda, that’s enough.”
She lunged toward me, took another swing as she neared my face. “I told you to keep away from him. I warned you.”
“It’s over, Brenda. Sign the papers,” Detweiler said, pulling her off to one side. I’ve never seen his eyes so flat and hard.
“It’s not over until I want it to be. You’re not dumping me for her!” Brenda poked her finger into his chest. “You married me. You’ll die with me.”
Heads swiveled to stare. A man wearing a cheap tie and well-worn button-down shirt hurried to our table. He twisted his hands nervously. “Folks, let’s simmer down.”
“Shut up!” Brenda screamed at him and yanked herself free from Detweiler’s grip. “Mind your own business.”
“Excuse me, but this is my business, Miss. I’m the manager here. If you have a quarrel, please take it outside. You are bothering the other patrons.” He gestured to the onlookers. Actually, they looked more fascinated than bothered. Brenda was putting on a fine floorshow.
“You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” added the manager, belatedly.
“You think? I’m just getting started. Watch this.” Brenda grabbed my mug and smashed it against the table. Tea splattered me, the table, and the floor. Porcelain pieces flew everywhere. Brenda grabbed the chunk attached to the handle and waved it at the manager like it was a gun. “Back off, Jack. And I mean now.”
The manager’s eyes grew bigger than a blue-plate special. He yelled toward the kitchen. “Help! Someone dial nine-one-one!”
Detweiler opened his jacket and flashed his badge. “Don’t bother. I’ve got it.” With a quick movement, he grabbed Brenda’s arm and twisted it behind her back. “Stop it now, or I’ll cuff you.”
He crab-walked her toward the exit.
“Oh, yeah? This is all HER fault,” shouted Brenda, jerking her head toward me. “Kiki Lowenstein is a home-wrecker! She broke up our marriage!”
I wanted to sink through the floor. Since that was a scientific impossibility, I decided to settle for a speedy exit of my own. Blotting tea off my clothes, I tried to clean up the mess. I dug around in my purse and tucked a crumpled five dollar bill under my water glass. Now all I needed was to locate my car keys.
Brenda kept yelling as Detweiler moved her toward the main entrance.
“It’s over, people. We’re coming around with c
offee on the house,” the manager said.
I thought the drama was over.
I was wrong.
When I couldn’t locate my keys, I pulled the Kel-Tec out of my purse.
That was a mistake.
“Gun!” screamed a customer next to me. “She’s got a gun!”
I thought Brenda had returned. I assumed she was packing heat.
I grabbed my new toy and scrambled under the table. With my purse held tightly against my chest, I hid there. All around me, chairs overturned. Feet scrambled. Legs ran past. Screams filled the air.
I leaned my head against the seat of the booth. I was so very, very tired. I hadn’t been sleeping well. I closed my eyes. Sirens blared in the distance. I opened my eyes and counted wads of gum stuck to the underside of the table. They hung like multicolored rubbery stalactites.
The noise of scraping chairs continued, as more legs swirled this way and that. I decided to snuggle down and get comfortable.
My eyes grew heavy.
When the Grantwood cops showed up to arrest me, I was sound asleep.
Fifty
“You are late.” Margit crossed her arms across her chest, wrinkling her lime green polyester pantsuit. “How will you manage to get everything done? We have stock coming in.”
“Them’s the breaks,” I muttered walking past her toward the sales floor. “Actually, I’m a time management whiz kid. I’ve managed to start a riot, get arrested, and make bail, yet still show up before our first customer walks in.”
“You think you are amusing, but you are not.” Margit followed on my heels.
Actually, I hadn’t made bail. Once I got hold of Detweiler, the whole matter was dropped.
I turned over the OPEN sign. I started counting the cash drawer. Maybe it was my imagination, but ever since my ride in the police car, my skin had been crawling. Picking at my hair, I plucked out a round, fat bug. I promptly squashed it between my fingernails. Was it a tick? A flea? Or … ugh … head lice?
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