Dial Om for Murder

by Diana Killian

  A moment later Jake appeared on the front doorstep.

  A.J., hands frozen on the wheel, said faintly, “Do you think he’s arrested Mother?”

  Andy said grimly, “Him? Probably.”

  A.J. swallowed hard. She felt a little lightheaded. They waited. Jane was put into the police car, the officers got in, and the car drove slowly away. The trooper who had directed them over to the side went to speak to Jake. As they talked, Jake stared at A.J.’s car.

  After a brief discussion Jake turned and went back in the house.

  The trooper crossed the lawn to A.J.’s car.

  “You can go,” he said.

  “Is my mother being arrested?”

  “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “But—”

  The trooper made another of those brusque move-it-along motions.

  “Move it,” Andy said out of the side of his mouth. “Robocop is liable to arrest you, too.”

  Hands shaking, A.J. put the car in reverse, inching painstakingly past the wedge of official vehicles, before finally reaching the safety of the open road.

  “Should I call Mr. Meagher?” she asked as they drove swiftly back to Deer Hollow. “He won’t really arrest her, will he?”

  Andy just shook his head.

  Back at Deer Hollow, A.J. paced up and down the living room while Monster, head on his paws, watched her. Andy sat on the sofa absently stroking Lula Mae.

  “Why doesn’t she call?” A.J. demanded as the clock slowly ticked down the hours.

  Andy shook his head again—it was starting to get on her nerves.

  “What can they be doing? They can’t be interrogating her, can they?”

  “They’re probably getting out the rubber hoses and bright lights as we speak.”

  She glared at him. “Very funny.”

  “Sorry. She’ll be okay, A.J. You know, Ellie. She’d probably get a kick out of being arrested. And if she needed Mr. Meagher, she’d have no hesitation yelling for him.”

  The phone rang, shattering the silence that followed Andy’s words.

  A.J. jumped to answer it.

  “Mother?”

  There was a pause and then a voice—muffled and indistinct—said, “Keep your nose out of Nicole Manning’s murder if you don’t want to end up like her.”

  The phone clicked down.

  A.J. looked to hit redial, but the phone in the hall was an old model, refurbished from the fifties, and did not have such fancy doodads.

  Returning to the front parlor, she said, “Somebody just threatened me. Us. Me.”

  “That narrows it down.”

  “I’m serious. Someone just called and said to butt out of investigating Nicole’s murder if I didn’t want to end up like her.”

  Andy stared at her with dawning consternation. “You are serious. Did you recognize the voice?”

  She shook her head. “It was pretty low tech. Someone disguising his voice and talking through a handkerchief.”

  “He?”

  “I don’t know.” A.J. lowered her voice and spoke in menacing tones, trying to emulate the caller. “It. Could. Have. Been. A. Woman.”

  “Don’t do that, okay? It’s scary.” Andy tilted his head. “Maybe it’s a prank?”

  “Nothing gets me laughing like a death threat. It’s that stupid article about me being the local Miss Marple—I bet it caught the attention of some nut.”

  Andy looked worried. “If it’s not a prank, we must be getting close.”

  “Close to what? Close to who? How could we be getting close without knowing it?”

  “Well, then maybe it is a prank.”

  Wide-eyed, they gazed at each other.

  Andy was sleeping on the sofa when the phone rang the next time. He groggily lifted his head, and A.J. said, “I’ve got it,” and went into the hall.

  She lifted the receiver and Elysia hissed, “Trust no one!”

  “Mother?”

  “The police have taken Jane.”

  “I know. We were there this evening, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t tell Jake. I was going to call from your house so that it would make it clear we were all cooperating.”

  Elysia who had been making a soft shushing sound as A.J. spoke, turned up the volume like a hissing tea kettle on the verge of explosion, cutting off with a sharp, “SHUSH!”

  A.J. shushed.

  Elysia said, “I know it wasn’t you, pet. The Grand Inquisitor wouldn’t be so angry with you if you were the fink.”

  “Fink?”

  “The coppers received an anonymous tip about Jane. We are being watched.”

  “What? By whom?”

  Elysia spluttered, “How should I know by whom? But they may be listening to us at this very moment.”

  This jolted A.J. into silence. Then sense reasserted itself. “How could they be listening to us? And what makes you think it’s a they? I doubt if it’s a conspiracy—”

  Elysia was hissing again. A.J. shut up, and Elysia whispered, “We can’t take that chance.”

  “Mother . . .”

  “Meet me tomorrow at eight—no, I need a decent night’s rest. Make that ten o’clock—at the place your father took you for your ninth birthday.”

  “But—”

  Elysia hung up.

  A.J. stared at the phone in disbelief before replacing the receiver and returning to the room where Andy was sleepily scrubbing his face.

  “Who was that?”

  “Mother. I think she’s finally snapped. She thinks we’re being observed by an unknown nemesis. She says the police were tipped off about Jane by an anonymous caller.”

  Andy lifted his head. “I thought that was you.”

  “You thought I told the police that my mother was hiding a fugitive?”

  “I did. Sorry.” He said slowly, “Someone is watching us.”

  A.J. nodded. “We’re starting to make someone nervous.”

  After Andy turned in, A.J. sat in the parlor listening to the crickets outside the open window and the chimes moving softly in the night breeze.

  It was nearly midnight when she heard the sound of an engine approaching. Monster thumped his tail heavily on the floor. Lula Mae stretched luxuriously and showed her claws.

  A.J. rose from the sofa and went to the window.

  Jake’s SUV gleamed in the moonlight. The car door opened and he got out, a long-limbed shadow crossing the grass and coming slowly up the porch.

  A.J. opened the door before he rang the bell.

  He stared at her for a long moment.

  “Will you come in?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I can’t stay.”

  “Jake, I know what you’re going to say . . .”

  “No,” he said levelly. “I don’t think you do.” And something in his tone held her silent.

  “I like you, A.J. A lot. Hell, I even like your mother. Sort of. But . . . I don’t like this. I don’t like the games you play.”

  “It’s not a game,” she tried to interject. “I know how it looks, but I was going to—I was trying to—I had already told Mother—” She stopped, horribly aware that she was making it worse with every word out of her mouth.

  Jake spoke over her, and although he didn’t raise his voice, every word hit her as hard as a pelted stone.

  “I asked you to stay out of it. You’re not dumb, so you must know that you put me in an impossible position when you cross the line between my personal and professional life. Worse than that, you lied to me.”

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “Come off it. You lied by omission. We sat right there at lunch talking about Nicole and your mother and Jane Peters, and you never said a word. Not a hint that you knew where Peters was. Didn’t it occur to you that you had a responsibility to come forward? I’m not just talking about your responsibility as a law-abiding citizen, I’m talking about your responsibility—call it your loyalty—to me. You’re the girlfriend of a cop. It didn’t occur to you that some of these stup
id, reckless decisions would reflect on me?”

  And even though she knew Jake was right to be angry, A.J. was starting to get mad, too. “I wasn’t thinking about your image, no. And I was going to tell you, Jake. Tonight—”

  “My image? I’m not talking about my goddamned image. I’m talking about the fact that you’ve potentially compromised a police investigation. I’m talking about the fact that I could lose my job over this. And because of you, because of my feelings for you, I’m continuing to make bad decisions. I should have arrested your mother tonight along with Jane Peters. I should have arrested you and your damned ex-husband. But I didn’t. Once again, I didn’t do my job because of my feelings for you.”

  She could feel the blood draining out of her face as the full ramifications of what she had done finally sank in—along with the realization of the extent of Jake’s feelings for her.

  And although she tried to be rational, she couldn’t help pleading. “She’s my mother, Jake. It’s not so easy to choose between loyalties like that.”

  “I know.” He just sounded weary now. “So let’s call it a draw. You should have confided in me, but I should have arrested you. So we’re quits.”

  “Quits.”

  He nodded, drew in a long breath, and expelled a longer one. “Yeah. We could go back and forth on this, but the upshot is . . . I don’t think it’s going to work between us.”

  She opened her mouth and then closed it.

  “Good night,” Jake said.

  She watched until his figure merged with the darkness.

  Twenty

  A.J.’s cell phone was ringing.

  She stopped pacing in front of the empty parking lot of the Wild West City in Byram and snatched it up.

  “Where are you?” she demanded.

  Elysia’s voice crackled back indignantly, “Where are you? I’ve been waiting here since nine bloody forty-five!”

  “Waiting where?”

  “At Fairy Tale Forest in Oakridge.”

  “What on earth are you doing there? You said to meet you at Wild West City.”

  “I said we would meet where your father took you for your ninth birthday.”

  “Which is Wild West City.”

  “But I-I distinctly remember—” There was a funny pause.

  Oh.

  Elysia’s moment of doubt was understandable. Her memory of those years was sometimes a little cloudy, but not this time. In this particular case A.J. and her father had pulled a fast one, jettisoning the mater-approved fairy tale theme park in favor of the western amusement park. Funny how A.J. had forgotten all about that switcheroo until this moment.

  She felt almost guilty remembering the illicit delight of that stolen day . . . the excitement of hay rides and make-believe gun fights . . . the pleasure of having her workaholic father all to herself, the relief of not having to worry about whether her mother would get through the day sober. If she closed her eyes she could once more smell the sawdust and popcorn and leather and horses. . . .

  A.J. snapped out of it. “It’s moot, anyway, Mother. They’re both closed this time of year.”

  She could practically here the wheels turning. “Were you followed?”

  “Was I—?” A.J. turned to stare at the wild green hills behind the carefully reconstructed frontier town. It felt eerie out here all on her own in this little ghost town. The faded signs creaked in the wind. “No. Why would I be followed?”

  “Because I made sure to shake any tail.”

  A.J. closed her eyes, summoning inner strength. Alas, after the past few days she seemed to be running alarmingly low on inner strength. And the fumes were making her giddy. “Why would someone follow either of us?”

  “Pumpkin, use your loaf. To stop us. I remember on an episode of—”

  A.J. couldn’t take it. “Mother, if someone is following us, spying on us, planning to stop us from further snooping, then we’ve already done the worst possible thing. We’ve split up and we’ve both headed out to isolated areas where we could be picked off with no one around to help us.”

  Elysia inhaled sharply and began coughing.

  “Mother? Mother.” A.J. walked up and down the parking lot, listening tensely.

  After a delay filled by muffled hacking and coughing, Elysia’s voice came on the line. “Never fear, pet,” she said hoarsely. “Just swallowed the wrong way.”

  “Oh for—!” A.J. leaned weakly against the side of a wooden building. With an effort she got control. “Look, there’s no point skulking around because whoever is watching us already knows we’ve shared any information. The best thing is to get back to Stillbrook.”

  “We’ll rendezvous at—”

  “No.” A.J. repeated, “No. We won’t. I have to get to work, and you have to leave this alone. If you want to help Jane, then help her find legal representation, but we need to stop.”

  “What’s happened?” Elysia asked sharply. “Has someone got to you?”

  Talk about leading with your chin.

  “You mean threatened me? Yes, as a matter of fact. But that’s not . . . that doesn’t matter. Jake—actually, that doesn’t matter either. But we have to stop this now. I have to stop this now.”

  “Has that rozzer been at you? Has he been bullying you?”

  “No. No more than I deserve. Listen. I can’t tell you what to do, but I can’t go on playing cops and robbers. We’re not accomplishing anything. In fact . . . we’re placing ourselves in danger.” A.J.’s eyes raked the verdant hillside as she strode to her car. She got inside and locked the door. “I’ll call you later, all right?”

  “But we’re so close!” Elysia protested.

  “Call me when you get back to town so I know you arrived safely.”

  “So you do think we’re getting close.”

  “No, I don’t. But someone else apparently does. I’ll talk to you later.” A.J. disconnected and started the engine.

  What a way to start the morning. But her attempts to reach her mother at home and head her off had met with no success.

  As A.J. drove, she listened to the local radio station: it was the usual mix of weather and traffic and the Boss—and then a special news bulletin. Wonderingly, she heard J.W. Young state to reporters that he believed in the innocence of his estranged wife, Jane Peters, and that he intended to stand by her.

  “I’m going on record that I believe implicitly in the innocence of my wife, Jane Peters. Jane has remained a dear friend. She was a friend to Nicole. Anyone who knows Jane, knows the allegations against her are false and will be disproved.”

  The newscaster came back on talking about startling revelations in the Nicole Manning murder case, and then it was back to weather, traffic, and the Boss.

  A.J. arrived at Sacred Balance without incident—or any sign of pursuit—and gratefully immersed herself in the day’s work. She rarely worked Sundays, but work was what she needed right then. She needed to keep very busy because if she didn’t, she would start to think about Jake, and she wasn’t able to handle those thoughts yet.

  Elysia called shortly after A.J. had settled down at her desk to say that she had arrived safely and that Mr. Meagher was arranging bail for Jane.

  “How’s Jane holding up?”

  “It’s not pretty. That child does not belong in a cell with the dregs of humanity.”

  It was hard to believe that the tidy little local jail house confined the dregs of humanity within its four brick walls. Not that A.J. wasn’t sympathetic to Jane’s plight. Being arrested would be . . . awful. She was abjectly grateful Jake had not arrested her—or her mother.

  “Does Mr. Meagher think there will be a problem getting bail for her?”

  “He said the fact that she fled the crime scene and continued to flee could be a problem. Have you had a chance to reconsider—?”

  “Yes,” A.J. said, cutting her off. “And no.”

  “But I don’t understand. We’re making such marvelous progress. Someone is getting nervous, pumpkin,
and that’s always a good sign.”

  “I’m getting nervous. And that is not good. It’s the last thing I need right now.”

  “It’s not like you to be so poor-spirited, Anna.”

  “I’m not poor-spirited. I’m being sensible. For once.”

  “Very well. If your decision is final.” Tartly, Elysia added, “At least Andrew is committed to the cause.”

  “That’s another thing. Leave Andy out of this. He’s not in any shape to play detective. Stress is very bad for him.”

  Elysia said huffily, “Andrew doesn’t find sleuthing stressful. There’s a difference between stress and stimulation. The dear boy enjoys the thrill of the hunt as any right-minded person would.”

  A.J. bit back the words she would have—probably—regretted. Besides, Elysia was right about one thing. Andy did enjoy sleuthing. He was practically as big a nut as her mother.

  “Are we still attending Nicole’s funeral this evening?” Elysia inquired. “To pay our respects?”

  “To pay our respects, yes. I’m attending the funeral. If you’re attending it for any other reason than that, I don’t want to know.”

  Elysia made a dismissive sound and rang off.

  Confirming her mother’s opinion, Andy seemed remarkably chipper when he stopped by A.J.’s office midmorning before his next beginning yoga session.

  “Have you heard from Ellie? I got the weirdest call this morning.”

  “From who?”

  She was immediately concerned that the anonymous caller might have phoned in with more threats, but Andy said easily, “From Elysia.”

  “Oh. Right.” A.J. said, “I have heard from her. The sleuthing is on hold until further notice.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” A.J. explained why in no uncertain terms.

  Andy listened with raised his eyebrows and made no further comment. When she finally paused for breath, he excused himself and escaped to his workout. Feeling a little better for unburdening her soul, A.J. returned to her paperwork.

  After that, the day was beautifully ordinary and delightfully dull.

  When the afternoon classes had concluded for the day, A.J. held a quick staff meeting and broached her idea of bringing a doctor on board as the first step to implementing several yoga therapy courses.