DRIVEN: A Rita Mars Thriller

by Webster, Valerie

  “I didn’t do anything,” Rita said.

  The widow with the poodle looked at Rita, picked up her dog, and edged away.

  “And the guy’s going to accuse you of stealing his wife,” Mary Margaret said.

  “I never laid a hand on her,” Rita countered.

  The Jamaican cleaning lady took a step toward the widow.

  “You wound up in the cooler with the street walkers, for God’s sake.”

  “Like I had some choice in that.”

  At this point the elevator stopped, and the maintenance man took an appraising look at Rita as she and Mary Margaret got off.

  Mary Margaret’s apartment was open and airy, a beneficiary of bygone and more generous times in real estate. Rita went straight for the window.

  “I love this view.”

  Mary Margaret deposited the coffees on the breakfast bar in the small kitchen and went into the bedroom to change.

  “Places available here,” she called.

  “Not on your life.” Rita watched a man in a shabby overcoat rummage through a dumpster in the alley behind the building.

  “Yeah, I forgot, you might actually have to live next to somebody.”

  “Very funny,” Rita said. “I just like peace and quiet—and space.”

  Mary Margaret quickly emerged in navy blue sweats with Baltimore Police Academy in gold down the left leg of the pants. “Ready?”

  She handed one of the cafe mochas to Rita and they sat on the sofa, which faced a gas fireplace. Rita opened the white bakery bag of macaroons and pointed it toward Mary Margaret.

  “And how the hell did you get the most famous criminal attorney in Baltimore history out of retirement?” Mary Margaret sipped her coffee.

  “Holt Howard is a buddy of mine. We go way back. I ended up finding some evidence in one of his old cases that helped clear his client.”

  “Well, aren’t you special?” Mary Margaret took a bite of macaroon and leaned back into the sofa.

  “Yes, I am as a matter of fact. But the truth is we’ve worked on a bunch of stuff together—some very interesting city graft cases in ‘03 and ‘07.”

  “And speaking of the city’s legal establishment. You are in big trouble.” Mary Margaret sat up straight. “You could end up losing your license over this. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking how much fun it would be to be dragged off the Hopkins campus by two growth hormone experiments.” Rita bit into her cookie. “For God’s sake, Smooth, it was time to confront this guy. He almost killed me—and his wife.”

  “I don’t know which is worse, this Dr. Demento chasing you or the State of Maryland ripping up your investigator license.”

  Rita gulped down more macaroons with her coffee. “The license, definitely. That’s why I called in Holt. I told him about this psycho, Sevier. He told me not to worry. Said we’d never get in front of a judge. According to him, Sevier would not want to call attention to his misbehavior.”

  Mary Margaret leaned back again into the sofa. “Girl, I never saw anybody who could get into trouble like you.”

  “I always get out,” Rita said.

  “Gotta hand it to you,” Mary Margaret agreed.

  For a while they sat quietly eating cookies and drinking coffee with the sun setting across the city. It cast purple shadows at the fireplace and illuminated the photographs on the mantle. The picture in the middle was that of a woman about Mary Margaret’s age. She had shoulder length dark hair, smiling dark eyes that crinkled at the corners as a sign that she laughed often. She wore a polo shirt and held a golf trophy.

  Rita glanced at Mary Margaret. “It doesn’t seem possible that she’s gone.”

  “Two years. Some nights I sit here and feel like she’s going to walk through that door.” Mary Margaret drank her coffee.

  In the two years before, her lover, Lola Garcia, had died of breast cancer.

  “I miss her,” Rita said.

  “Me too.” Mary Margaret got up, went to the stereo and turned on the radio. The oldies station.

  “We’re gonna end up old maids,” Rita said.

  “Could be,” Mary Margaret said. “Hey, turn that up.”

  Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon was belting out “Palisades Park.”

  “Come on, old lady,” said Mary Margaret. “Can you still rock and roll?”

  “Who you callin’ old?”

  Rita grabbed Mary Margaret’s hand and twirled her around. She sang along with Freddie Cannon.

  Mary Margaret chimed in.

  “The two shouted the chorus together.

  And for a few minutes, they danced back and forth across the living room floor and sang and did not remember they were alone in the world.

  Chapter 14

  It was after six when Rita left Mary Margaret’s apartment. She wove through the downtown streets, up I-83, and into the countryside. She passed several malls where the parking lots were still lighted hives of activity. She had bought exactly zero Christmas gifts. Rita turned on the radio to try and forget the usual last minute buying frenzy she faced.

  Every station had holiday tunes, except for one. Madonna sang “Take a Bow.”

  “You’ve got that right, honey.” Rita sighed. Even the non-Christmas songs were haunting her tonight. The ghost of Christmas past was not giving up so easy.

  Rita had no strength for the memories that song brought back. Snippets played in her head, happier holidays with Diane. Rita had loved Christmas then. She marveled at the dread and loneliness with which she now approached the season.

  She pulled into her driveway. She had phoned Bev earlier to ask her to stay at the house that night because she was going to be late. She also called Karin to assure her that she would be indeed safe in the house and not to be concerned that Rita wasn’t there when she arrived.

  When she entered, the Great White Hunter curled on the hearth beside the wood stove on which Bev had placed a pot of simmering potpourri. The Christmassy scents made Rita even sadder.

  Bev was upstairs on Rita’s treadmill. Karin was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee for after dinner.

  “Your dearly beloved had me carted to the big house today,” Rita told her.

  “My God, what happened?” Karin asked.

  Rita told her the story.

  “He’ll never follow through,” Karin said. “Revenge is always personal for him and he would never trust the courts to get it right. I think for him exacting a penalty is pleasure. It validates his sense of control.”

  “Very interesting,” Rita replied. “My attorney had a similar assessment.”

  “But it worries me.”

  “I’m not worried,” Rita said.

  “His focus now is as much on you as me.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Rita told Karin.

  “I don’t trust him. The more I see, the more I believe he’s capable of anything.”

  “I’ve never thought of him any other way,” Rita said.

  The phone rang.

  “Ms. Mars?” The voice was quivery.

  “Yes?” Rita was tentative and the response made Karin turn to her with a worried expression. Rita shook her head to indicate it had nothing to do with Dr. Demento.

  “What should I do? I can’t find her anywhere and I’m afraid she’s walked off. She did this once last summer but my nephew was here . . .”

  “Whoa. Leonard?” Rita asked. Karin came over to stand near the phone.

  “Yes, from next door.”

  Leonard was seventy-five, spry and healthy, but frail nonetheless. From seven in the morning until six at night, he had a visiting nurse or a relative to help him with Loretta. For the remainder of the night he was on his own.

  “Loretta’s missing?” A knot clenched Rita’s throat. The temperature had fallen quickly in the last hour and the wind chill had the mercury hovering at 20. The weatherman had mentioned the “S” word.

  “Have you called 911? Have you called the people at the next f
arm over? Did you call your nephew to get him over here?”

  “Ms. Mars, I called you first. I thought she might have walked over to your place. You know she thinks her Uncle Hodge is still in that house.”

  Rita heard tears in his voice.

  “Hang on, Leonard,” Rita placed her hand over the phone and yelled. “Bev, come down. I need you.” She went back to Leonard. “Call your nephew. Tell him to come directly down Belfast Road. She might just be walking straight. I’ll call 911 and the Stevens folks down the road. I’ll get him and his two girls to start driving around.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Karin ran to the closet for her coat.

  “What the hell are you yelling about?” Bev appeared in the kitchen in her sweats. Perspiration streamed down her face.

  Karin did a double take at this unaccessorized Bev.

  “Loretta’s missing.” Rita said. “We have to find her.”

  Bev turned immediately and ran back upstairs to get ready. “Just give me a minute.”

  Rita once more returned to Leonard. “Can you do that, Leonard? Can you call him and let me take care of the rest?”

  “We got to find her, Ms. Mars. She’ll freeze to death in this night. It’s my fault. I should have watched her better, but she never ran off in the dark. She’s afraid of the dark,” Leonard sobbed.

  “We can’t waste time, Leonard. Will you call your nephew now? Turn on all the lights in the house. Stay there in case she’s just around there and she turns up while we’re looking. Ok?”

  Leonard sobbed some more.

  “Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  Rita flashed Leonard off the line and called 911. Then she phoned the Stevens family who lived a quarter of a mile away on a road that ended across the street from Rita and Loretta’s driveway. He and his two daughters would scout the roads that Rita told him. She gave him her cell number in case Loretta turned up.

  “I’m ready.” Bev had put on dry sweats and a watch cap. Rita asked her to search around Leonard’s property and hers, then move on to the adjoining fields and pastures.

  “She can’t get too far into the woods around here because of the underbrush, but she might have wandered into my pasture or the guy’s behind us.”

  Bev pulled on thick, lined gloves and went to her car to get her high-powered flashlight.

  “You coming with me?” Rita asked as she was tugging at her own gloves.

  Karin nodded.

  Rita glanced at her watch as they headed for the Jeep. “It’s seven thirty. We don’t have much time.”

  “Do you want to take my car?” Karin asked as she pulled mittens over chilled fingers.

  “Mine. I have the spotlight.”

  Rita put the Jeep in gear and rolled down the driveway. In her rearview mirror she could see the powerful beam of Bev’s flashlight slice the darkness in the back pasture.

  “We’ll go to the end of Western Run first. You keep an eye out on that side. When we get to the pastures, I’ll get out and run the spotlight.”

  Karin nodded.

  Rita eased the Jeep along the shoulder of Western Run Road.

  “See anything?” she asked.

  “No,” Karin said.

  Rita drove three miles to the end of the road, turned and came back down the opposite lane. At each of the open stretches of field, Rita stopped and swept the dark land with the spotlight attached to the driver’s side of the hood. With its extension cord, Rita could freely direct the beam in any direction.

  She and Karin spotted deer and fox, a startled Labrador retriever, and a stalking barn cat. They saw no trace of Loretta.

  Rita called Bev on his cell phone. “Anything?”

  “I have seen jack shit,” Bev said. “I’m on Wilder’s farm behind you. The cows are a little restless and they are sure as hell makin’ me nervous. I keep seein’ myself stampeded into the ground.”

  Rita got an update from the family further down the road as well—nothing. She had seen no policemen and she was careening back and forth between panic about not finding Loretta and fury in seeing no police response. Rita pulled over on the non-existent shoulder. She rested her forehead on her steering wheel.

  “You’re doing everything possible.” Karin touched her arm.

  “I have to find her.” Rita raised her head. She got back on the road and waited at the stop sign for the lone car to pass.

  Karin sighed. “It may be that we don’t find her.”

  “We will. I will. I will drive all night and all day tomorrow if I have to, but I am going to find Loretta.”

  “Rita, you can’t take on that responsibility.” Karin said quietly.

  “I already have.”

  Rita pulled into the parking lot of the local convenience store.

  “Coffee?” Rita asked.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  Inside Rita went first to talk with Buck, the young man behind the counter. He worked there a few nights; during the day he was a mechanic at the gas station. Buck knew everyone in the community. He had seen no trace of Loretta, but volunteered to ask those who came in until he left at eleven. Rita gave him her cell phone number.

  “She may have approached a house, gotten confused and wandered up a lane, gone into a barn or an open garage,” Karin said when they got back in the Jeep.

  “Jesus,” Rita said. “I never thought of that. We need to go back along my road and the lanes to the houses.”

  For another hour, Rita and Karin drove up the winding farm lanes, some paved, some mere dirt paths. They went to each front door and inquired. They looked in barns and run-in sheds and garages and playhouses, and they found nothing. When they had completed this search, they were once again at the little local store. Rita went in for more coffee.

  Karin poured half and half into her steaming cup. “Are you crying?” she asked Rita.

  “The cold is making my eyes tear.” Rita turned away and snatched a handful of napkins after she had snapped the lid on her coffee cup.

  Buck called after them as they approached the counter. “Hey, you don’t owe me nothin’. You just find Mz. Mondieu. I’m still askin’ anybody who comes in if they saw her.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  In the car, she flipped open the coffee cup lid then dialed on her cell phone again and phoned the Mondieu house. Loretta’s nephew, Pete, answered.

  The police had finally arrived, one patrol car. The officer was going to drive around the roads and look. Pete had not seen or heard from him in over an hour. The Stevens family was still out there: they were trying some of the closer roads that ran off Western Run. The black man who said his name was Bev had stopped by also, and said to tell Rita that he was going to scout through the thin tree line that separated the Wilder farm from Rita’s. Bev hadn’t seen anything either.

  Rita pushed the end button. “Two hours. She’s been out there for two goddamned hours.” She pounded the dash with her fist.

  “We’ll find her.” Karin put her own hand over Rita’s.

  “I don’t know.” Rita shook her head. “I just don’t know.”

  “What’s our next plan of attack?” Karin asked.

  “The only thing I can think of is that she might be wandering around Steady Eddie’s.”

  “Steady Eddie?”

  “Eddie Rosen, surgeon extraordinaire. His house is less than a mile away from ours, off Tanbark Lane. The last time Loretta disappeared, we found her there. Loretta thought she’d arrived at Scarlett O’Hara’s Tara. Eddie’s a good guy, but he does have an ego and a house to match.”

  “To Tara .” Karin sat back in her seat as Rita throttled the Jeep into gear.

  The ride was swift and rough. Rita slammed on her brakes in front of Eddie Rosen’s. Two massive brick pillars shouldered a black iron gate between. Buried flood lights played on the surrounding shrubs and a brass plate that proclaimed this was Rosewood Farm. A small metal box at the edge of the driveway sprang from the ground on a black iron stan
dard.

  Rita inched the Jeep close and rolled down the window. She pushed a button and waited.

  “Can I help you?” A man’s voice came back.

  “Eddie, it’s me, Rita, from down the road. Remember when my neighbor, Loretta Mondieu got confused and came down to your house?”

  The iron entrance gate was already opening.

  “This is a mighty cold night for her to be out. I haven’t heard my dogs barking or anything.”

  “Can I just look around?”

  “Take your time. I ‘m getting ready to go out, or I’d help. There’s a button to open the gate near the barn—you’ve seen it. Use that to get out.”

  “Thanks, Eddie.”

  “Rita, good luck in finding her.”

  Rita drove the Jeep inside Rosewood. Indeed, Eddie’s was very much a Tara , big white columns and a huge brass chandelier hung from the second-floor porch that jutted over the front of the house. The principal difference lay in that Vivien Leigh had no battery of floodlights to show off her architecture once the sun went down.

  “My God,” Karin said as she and Rita passed the house and headed for the barns.

  “The good news is that we get a real clear view of the house. The bad news is that Loretta isn’t there.”

  Behind the house was a long low barn, closed for the night. Inside were seven polo ponies. Eddie, besides being an accomplished plastic surgeon, was captain of the Maryland Polo Club.

  Rita and Karin got out of the Jeep. “Let’s look through the barn.” Rita rolled back the sliding door and was greeted with a few snorts, some stamping hooves and a long, low whinny. She switched on the light.

  The barn was spotless with scrubbed rubber grid flooring. Each stall had its own brass name plaque and brass fixtures.

  “These horses live better than some people,” Karin said.

  “Yep, and they have life insurance policies to match.”

  The two women checked every stall, the tack room, the feed room, and the groom’s office. Nothing.

  “Let’s check the field.” Rita closed the sliding door as she and Karin stepped outside.

  “This way.” Rita walked behind the barn. When she reached the back of the building, motion sensor lights bathed the area in light. She found the electric panel she wanted and reached in. Stadium lighting blazed across a perfectly manicured and beautifully striped playing field. “I don’t believe this,” Karin shielded her eyes with her hand.