DRIVEN: A Rita Mars Thriller

by Webster, Valerie

  “I’m going to feel like I’m living in a used car lot.” Karin turned down the bed as Rita came back to unpack.

  Rita picked up her suitcase and moved it to the top of the blanket chest.

  “The drawers are empty.” Karin went to the closest set and opened the top one as Rita approached with clean underwear.

  “Thanks.” Rita dropped in her things and went back immediately.

  “Have you eaten?” Karin asked.

  “Not yet.” Rita stayed away from the chest until Karin moved.

  “I can call in Chinese.”

  “Sounds great,” said Rita. “I’m going to unpack and then do a perimeter run. By then the food should be here.”

  “Oh, certainly.” Karin left and Rita could hear her on the steps downstairs.

  Later, while they ate, Rita went over a list of things that needed to be done to secure the house.

  “You have an electrician. He can do the lighting stuff. Your locks were changed?”

  “Yes,” Karin answered. “Are you going to eat the last of that shrimp?”

  Rita pushed a carton across the kitchen table. “All of the locks?”

  Karin’s mouth was full. She nodded.

  “Even the padlock on the bilko to the basement.”

  Karin stopped in mid chew.

  “I’ll pick one up tomorrow.” Rita set a reminder on her phone.

  Karin bent her head. “This is starting to wear me down. What have I forgotten to do to keep myself safe? Where is the next threat going to pop up?”

  “It changes your perspective.”

  “In an unpleasant way, in a way that invites distortion of the world and life in general.” Karin pushed her plate away.

  Rita nodded. There were other things that distorted one’s take on the world as well—tight shoes and women who left you.

  “Rita?”

  “I’m sorry,” Rita said. “I was off somewhere. What were you saying?”

  “I said I didn’t mean to get so down. I have known people in similar situations. For all these years, I have blithely handed out directions. It’s time to heed my own advice.”

  “I like that,” Rita said.

  “I don’t like it, but I can do it,” Karin said.

  ♏

  The Seth Thomas clock over the mantle ticked ominously in the quiet den. Karin VanDreem sat on one side of the fireplace reading patient notes. Rita sprawled in an armchair on the other side, reading Stephen King. Seth Thomas boomed the eleventh hour.

  “Geez.” Rita sat up.

  “It is pretty loud.” Karin stood. “I think it’s time to turn in.” She glanced around the room quickly. “What should I do?”

  “Get down on your hands and knees and crawl to the steps.”

  Karin stared at her.

  “Joke. Just a joke.” Rita stuck a slip of paper into her book and also stood up.

  “I’m already paranoid enough. Don’t play games.” Karin waited for Rita to lead the way.

  “I apologize. It isn’t funny.”

  At the top of the stairs, Karin followed Rita into her room. “Do you need anything?”

  Rita’s hand brushed again the sleeve of her thick Ragg cardigan.

  “I’m fine,” Rita said.

  “I’m right next door,” Karin said.

  “Hey, that’s my line.”

  They laughed together.

  Chapter 12

  It was lunchtime and Bev was out of the office. She exercised religiously at the Downtown Athletic Club. Rita frowned. Bev’s legs were better looking than hers, and it had been a week since she’d had time to get on the North Central Railroad Trail for a run.

  She sat with her feet propped up on her desk and watched the screen saver marquee float across the screen. Fortune Favors The Brave . Rita snorted and lurched forward to the telephone.

  “Captain Smooth,” said the voice on the other end.

  “Do me a favor.”

  “Sorry, I gave up killing people for Lent,” Mary Margaret said.

  “Well, I guess I’m in luck. We’re heading for Thanksgiving instead of Easter,” Rita responded.

  “You’re pretty clever for a heathen girl. What’s the favor?”

  “I need some dirt.”

  “On?”

  “Dr. Douglas Sevier,” Rita said.

  “Define ‘dirt’.”

  “Anything legal you can suck out of the criminal justice network. Parking tickets, assault, jaywalking, petty theft.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Anything you can find, ok? I’m going to dig around for the unofficial stuff—at the university, the studio where he tapes his show. I found out he had a female mentor who started him down the TV trail to fame and fortune. They don’t speak anymore.”

  “Very interesting,” said Mary Margaret. “Coming to basketball tonight?”

  “I’m still baby-sitting,” Rita answered. “I’m going to take off early though and run, stop by and check on my house, say ‘hi’ to Lorretta.”

  “Homesick?”

  “Bored.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I saw your favorite queen of mean, Diane, yesterday afternoon. She asked how you were doing,” Mary Margaret said.

  “I’m shocked that she spoke to you,” Rita said.

  “Me too. I just shrugged.”

  “Good answer.”

  “I’ll get on this Dr. Demento thing right now. As soon as I get through, I’ll e-mail you what I find.”

  “Good deal.”

  “Have fun,” Mary Margaret said.

  “Oh yeah, it’s a toss-up between the hilarity of this stake out and the antic humor of rusting pipes.”

  ♏

  The door to the office opened and Bev waltzed in. She wore majestically white cross-trainer sneakers, red sweatpants and a black velour pullover. Her lipstick and nail polish were a perfect match for the sweats. She carried a black gym bag.

  “I have to admit. You keep those shoes as beautifully as mine,” Rita said.

  “It’s as important to look good as to feel good.” Bev disappeared into the bathroom.

  “Ah, timeless wisdom from the cosmetics counter.” Rita pulled on her navy pea coat and tugged her white polo shirt collar back up around her throat.

  Bev emerged from the bathroom in a Valentino miniskirt with a pearly silk open neck blouse. She tossed in a dash of color with a demure lapis choker and matching earrings.

  “Half a day?” Bev asked.

  “I’m securing the VanDreem premises—locks on the bilko door and meeting the electrician to set up the motion sensor floods. I’m going to take a run on the trail out by my house, shower, and pick up some more clothes.” Rita opened the office door.

  “What’s happening on the front?” Bev sat on the edge of her desk so that she could see into Rita’s face.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Bev said.

  Rita shook her head.

  “Eyes open, girl.”

  “Always, Bev, always,” Rita said.

  ♏

  It was a clear, sharp November night. A solitary star glistened in the cutaway curve of a crisp quarter moon. The air was still and scented with the pungent streak of wood smoke. Rita could see wisps trailing from the huge brick chimney on the north side of Karin’s house.

  Rita pulled her Jeep into the driveway and closed the door softly. After her five-mile run and after she’d paid the electrician, she’d spent two hours at Johns Hopkins University where Douglas Sevier taught clinical psychology. She asked a lot of questions and still had nothing. Karin had beaten her home.

  Rita decided she would test her handiwork. She walked slowly and deliberately toward the front door. The front floods popped on. Rita veered toward the oaks on the south end; more light. Rita approached the basement entrance. Bingo. And then to the north end. Another blaze.

  “My God.” Karin stood in the kitchen doorway shielding her eyes. “Where are the band and the elephants?”
>
  “You gotta admit. No one is going to sneak up on this house.” Rita said.

  “Karin? Everything all right over there?” The voice was that of an older man, loud, but quivery.

  “Yes, Dr. Preston. I’m fine. The lights will be off in a minute.” Karin looked at Rita.

  She nodded and as she did, darkness fell around the big old white colonial.

  “Well, you call me if you need anything.” The old man closed his door.

  “I will, Dr. Preston. Thank you.”

  “An admirer?” Rita asked as they went inside.

  “An eighty-seven-year-old widower.”

  “It’s never too late,” Rita said.

  Karin rolled her eyes and locked the back door behind her.

  Dinner was angel hair pasta with fresh homemade sauce, salad, and hot bread. The kitchen was fragrant with the scent of tomato and Romano. Rita was starving.

  “This is fantastic,” she said as she polished off her second helping.

  “Thanks,” Karin said. “I took some Italian cooking classes last year and this is the first time I’ve gotten to try anything out. Coffee?”

  “Cooking classes,” Rita said.

  Karin poured boiling water into a French press. “Something wrong with that?”

  “I would like coffee, please,” Rita answered. “No, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a foreign concept to me.”

  “How about a cannoli with your coffee?”

  “I wish I’d known about that before I wolfed down all that pasta.”

  “Sorry—but you can have a bite of mine.” Karin smiled.

  “Deal,” Rita said. “I went to Hopkins today.”

  “See Douglas?” Karin took mugs out of the cupboard.

  “No, he was at a taping of his weekly show out at Public Broadcasting . Under the guise of writing an article for Maryland magazine, I talked to all kinds of people he works with, people he’s written articles with, done research with.”

  “And they all said he was ‘brilliant, a leader in his field, an asset to the university’ and breathed nothing more.” Karin smiled as she opened the refrigerator for the cream.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I’ve seen it. My guess is that half of them know only the professional side that the majority sees and the other half, the ones who have caught a glimpse of the dark side, are afraid to say anything. He has a lot of clout.”

  The coffee was ready and Karin poured into the two mugs she had placed on the table. She removed one cannoli from a small white bakery box, put it on a dessert plate and took two forks from a drawer. She handed one of the forks to Rita as she sat beside her.

  “An accomplished hostage taker,” Rita said.

  Karin nodded as she stabbed a small bite from her cannoli. “I’ve seen him in action.”

  Rita reached over and broke off a piece of the ricotta filled shell. “When we have the stalking evidence, it’s going to be important that there was a pattern.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Well, you were married to him for five years. You must know something or someone.”

  “I know a few names from the past, people who I no longer have contact with.”

  “That’s a start,” Rita sipped her coffee. “What about a first wife?”

  “I only have a name. According to Doug, she drowned on a snorkeling trip a year before we met. He was supposedly deeply affected and didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Karin and Rita looked at each other.

  “I’ve never thought of it other than as an accident,” Karin said.

  “Give me all the details you have. I’ll track it down tomorrow.” Rita took a sip of coffee. “And what about Laura Quick?”

  “Ah, the infamous Dr. Quick.”

  “Infamous?” Rita broke off more cannoli.

  “According to Douglas, she turned into an obsessive, stalking bitch who wanted to control his life,” Karin said. “Of course, all this occurred after she had master minded the launch of his career.”

  “I see a pattern here,” said Rita.

  “Absolutely. I believed his side in the beginning, but now . . .” Karin paused, fork in mid reach. “And you ate all the cannoli.”

  “Geez, another pattern. I’m sorry. It was so good.”

  “That’s why I bought extra.” She brought the box to the table.

  “I think I need to chat with this ex-girlfriend, and check the police report on his first wife’s death.”

  “Are you going to ‘help’ me with this one too?” Karin smiled as she placed the shell on the plate.

  “I am not only too embarrassed, I’m too full.” Rita saluted with her coffee cup. “Bon appétit.”

  That night Rita tossed and turned as she wrestled sleep. Was that a whiff of cigarette smoke? She kept getting up and looking out the picture window that faced the dark south end of the house. By the time she was sleepy, the crescent wafer of moon had set and a thousand stars glittered in the deep November sky.

  Now Rita dreamed. In the ethereal story playing, she walked farther and farther into a wood. The trees were dense evergreens. They stood close, and it was difficult to pass. A ground mist rose higher and thicker as she walked. Suddenly Rita heard the shrill call of a strange bird.

  The bird was persistent. Approaching. It was the clock alarm. No, the phone.

  Rita sat up. The room had disappeared.

  “Jesus.” She dropped to the floor.

  The shrill bird was the smoke alarm in the hallway.

  Rita, shoeless and in her pajamas, crawled across the room on her elbows and knees.

  “Karin,” she yelled as loud as she could.

  No answer.

  “Karin.”

  Rita stopped at her bedroom door. “Karin.”

  No answer.

  Rita could not remember the layout of the room, and she could see nothing. At floor level she had just enough oxygen, but she knew she had to get to Karin immediately.

  Coughing.

  “Karin.”

  “Rita?” More coughing.

  “Get on the floor. The smoke rises. You can breathe down here.” Rita, still on elbows and knees, rushed toward Karin’s voice.

  Rita looked around her. She had no idea where the door was. They were on the second floor, and she had no way of knowing where the fire might be.

  Karin bumped into her. She was gasping.

  “Stay close to the floor. Breathe. Stay low. We’ve got to get out of this house.”

  “Can’t breathe,” Karin choked.

  “Keep moving. Stay low. Can you lead us out of here?” Neither woman could see the other. Rita put her hand out to Karin’s face. Karin nodded.

  “We can’t lose touch. Get closer. Shoulder to shoulder as we move. Ok?”

  Karin nodded again.

  “Let’s go.”

  Quickly they were in the hallway. The smoke seemed thicker and more acrid.

  “I’m turned around.” Karin sounded like she was going to cry. “I can’t see anything. I don’t know where the stairs are.”

  “It’s all right.” Rita put an arm around her. “Is there a balcony, a widow’s walk on this house?”

  “No.” Karin was crying.

  “Ok,” Rita said. “How about an outside window railing or a trellis?”

  Rita gagged. She pressed her lips close to the oriental carpet to suck in as much oxygen as she could.

  “Nothing that reaches to the second floor.”

  Rita put an arm out around Karin. “Your room. Quick!”

  They elbowed their way back.

  “To the window.”

  Rita did not follow.

  Karin halted. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to close your door and stuff the sill. Just go to the window.” Rita pushed her.

  “I can’t see.” Karin started to jump to her feet. Rita wrenched her to the floor.

  “Stay down.” Rita’s voice was raspy. She tried to sound calm. “You
can’t breathe up there.”

  Karin coughed violently. Rita put an arm around her again to reassure her.

  The smoke was thicker, black. It left an acid taste on Rita’s tongue. The thin air layer at floor level was getting thinner.

  “Go to the window. Now,” Rita said. She couldn’t see her, but Karin crawled away into her bedroom. Rita followed.

  She reached the bed and yanked the comforter back to the doorway. She slammed the door and stuffed the bed covering as tight to the sill as she could.

  “Karin?”

  “I’m at the window.”

  “Open it. Stick your head out and breathe.”

  Rita heard the creak of the knob as Karin rolled the crank on the windows. She felt a sharp blast of November air. The smoke turned toward the draft.

  Karin coughed again. Rita’s lungs were stinging as she hustled toward the cold breeze. She banged into Karin’s feet.

  “Open them all. Vent the room,” Rita wheezed.

  In a moment the three-bedroom windows were wide to the night. The smoke crowded the frames and rushed toward the sky.

  Karin reached out a hand and pulled Rita up. “I can get some air here,” she said. “But now what?”

  “Do you have shoes on, socks?”

  “No.”

  “Catch your breath.” Rita made a grab for the bed and pulled off the top sheet, then the fitted. She knotted them together and tied one end of her makeshift rope to a leg of Karin’s four-poster.

  “We’re over the kitchen porch. From there we can jump to the ground.” Rita tied the sheet around Karin’s waist.

  “My arms aren’t strong enough.”

  “I’ll lower you. The drop isn’t that steep. Get on the sill.”

  Karin perched tentatively on the frame. “I can’t do this. I’m acrophobic.”

  “Afraid to leave the house?”

  “Heights, dammit. I’m afraid of heights.”

  The smoke still billowed from the open windows.

  “Trust me. Look at me. Watch me the whole way until your feet touch the porch. Then stand back from the sheet so I can climb down.”

  Karin started to look behind her at the ground.

  Rita reached for her chin and gently positioned her face forward. “Look at me,” she said. “It’s the only way.” With that she helped Karin ease downward from the window until only her hands were visible clutching the sill.