Blind Dates Can Be Murder (30 page)

Black powder was everywhere, and when she had finished eating she retrieved the vacuum cleaner and her bucket of cleaning supplies, paper towels, and rags. The technicians had told her how to handle the mess, that she could use ordinary household cleaners, particularly ones with bleach wherever possible. For any places on the rug where the powder had spilled, they suggested vacuuming, and if spots still remained, calling a professional steamer.

It felt good to clean. As Jo got on her hands and knees and went to work, it was almost as though she was erasing every trace of whomever it was who had violated her home. She covered one end of the house to the other, vacuuming and wiping and scrubbing until all traces of the powder were gone. Even the spots in the rug had all come up with spot treatment cleaner and a damp washcloth.

By the time Jo was finished, Chewie was scratching at the back door to get in, and Jo definitely needed coffee. She let her dog in and fed him, put her cleaning products away, threw on some shorts and a T-shirt, and put her hair in a ponytail. Once Chewie was finished eating, she would skate down to the coffeehouse and buy the biggest latte they sold.

Jo looked out the back window, toward Danny’s house, and felt an ache deep in her heart. She hated not knowing what had happened at the hospital—was his foot broken? Sprained? Did he have a cast?—and worse than that, she didn’t even know if he had come home last night or if he had stayed with his parents.

As she strapped on her blades and waited for Chewie to finish eating, she prayed for Danny’s health—and for their future, whatever it might hold.

Then she and Chewie headed out into the morning, master and dog, sailing along the sidewalks as fast as the wind would carry them.

Today was the day.

The processing began after breakfast, when the C.O. brought Chuck a set of clothes—street clothes, the standard-issue jeans, shirt, and jacket that everyone was given upon release. Word spread through the tier like wildfire, and the men began calling out to him, some of them hostile, most of them simply jealous. A sour taste in his mouth, Chuck tucked in his shirt and turned his back on all of them. He was so ready to get out of there!

The C.O. had given him a plastic bag for his personal items, but there weren’t many—just a few photos and things. When the C.O. came to get him, the man didn’t even speak. He simply gestured toward the part of the building that the inmates called the Highway, because it led to freedom and beyond. As Chuck went, shouts and whistles went with him. He stared forward the whole way. There wasn’t one single thing or person he would miss.

They processed him out, going over his green sheet one last time. He was given the balance of the money he’d earned while in the joint, an extra $15 compliments of the state of Pennsylvania, his personal belongings, and a bus ticket to Moore City.

“The next bus should be along in about half an hour,” the treatment counselor said. Then he thrust out a hand and added, “Good luck.”

Outside, he took the long walk to the bus stop, where one other person was waiting—a woman, one of the staff workers from custodial.

“Beautiful day, huh?” Chuck said.

She simply scooted further away on the bench and said, “No habla anglaise.”

Yeah right, she habla anglaise just fine. But Chuck was happy. He was going to let it slide.

The bus ride was an overload to Chuck’s senses. Everything was so busy and bright and colorful. And smelly. And loud. And overwhelming.

He saw some daffodils along the side of the road and thought how fitting that he should be getting out in the spring, in this season of rebirth. Now he was reborn. It was his turn to spring up out of the dirt and find new life.

He knew exactly where to start.

Danny couldn’t understand why the crocodile wouldn’t let go of his foot. It didn’t bite through the skin, it just held on, with a ferocious, dull ache that wouldn’t stop. All around him was black water, with only the tip of the croc’s nose and a row of scissorlike teeth showing above the surface. On the shore, Chewie stood there and barked, but no sound came from his throat.

“No!”

Danny sat up straight, heart pounding.

He had been dreaming. The crocodile was just a dream. The bite on his foot was the pain, intense pain, of broken bones.

Taking a deep breath, Danny leaned back on his elbows and tried to calm his beating heart. His foot was throbbing beyond belief. He needed something for it.

“Mom!” he called.

A moment later, his mother appeared in the doorway.

“Hey, sweetie, you awake?”

Wearing an apron and drying her hands on a towel, she looked as though she had stepped straight out of a Betty Crocker ad. Danny tried to smile, but he knew that it came out more like a grimace.

“I need to take a pill, but I don’t want to do it on an empty stomach.”

“Of course. Let me make you some breakfast. You all right?”

“I will be. Thanks.”

She left the room and carefully he struggled to sit up, propping the pillows behind him. Thank goodness he had decided to stay at his parents’ place last night. If it were possible, his foot hurt worse now than it had then. There was no way he could take care of himself.

He studied the monstrosity at the end of his leg. Wrapped in tape and propped on two couch cushions, it looked even more swollen this morning. Protruding from the end were his toes, and they were a bright, purplish blue. Ouch.

According to the hospital, his foot was broken in two places. He had a follow-up appointment with the orthopedist in the morning, and he hoped that by then the swelling would have gone down enough to have a cast put on.

“Here’s an ice pack,” his mother said, bustling into the room. “I’ve got the waffle iron heating up.”

“Waffles?” he asked, a silly grin coming to his face.

His mother looked at him wistfully and smiled in return.

“With you all grown-up and living on your own, do you think I’m going to pass up this chance to pamper you?”

She fixed the ice pack around his foot and then retrieved the portable phone at his request. Danny thanked her, and as she left he realized how grateful he was for parents, who were so readily helpful and so easy to deal with. He tried to imagine poor Jo in the same situation, and he knew that, were she hurt, no one in her family would even show up or care.

Danny was staying not in his old boyhood bedroom in the attic, but in the guestroom because it was downstairs. The décor was unremarkably bland, with beige walls and white curtains and one painting on the wall, that of a bridge somewhere in Italy. Staring at that bridge, he sat with the phone in his hand, thinking. He wanted to call Jo, but he resisted. Instead, he dialed Tiffany at the photography studio, told her what happened, and said he’d be out for the next few days.

After that, he held his breath and dialed the number for Brianna at Stockmasters. She was in and said she had just left a return message for him at his home.

“I guess we’ve been playing phone tag, huh?” she said cheerily.

“Guess so. Please fill me in. Details, details. What photo is it?”

She was all business, explaining the entire situation. The movie was called
The View from Cemetery Hill
, and it was a drama set in modern-day Gettysburg. The photo they wanted was a black-and-white he had taken there last fall. It was also one of his favorite photos of all the ones he had ever done.

“They’ll be altering it, of course,” she said, “adding color and a foreground and all that, but it’s a lock for sure. They’re faxing over the contracts this afternoon. Ten thousand even.”

She gave him the rest of the details, and by the time they hung up, his grin was nearly as wide as his face.

“Here you go, freshly made waffles with butter and syrup,” his mother said, bringing in a tray. “Well, aren’t you the cat that ate the canary?”

He had already told her about the movie poster yesterday, so now he shared with her what he had just learned. She was so excited for him; as his mother, she knew how badly his artist’s ego needed a big success like this one.

As he ate, she sat on the chair beside the bed and chatted, finally getting around to the question he knew she’d been dying to ask since the night before.

“How’d it go with Jo yesterday? Did you tell her—you know.
Tell
her?”

He put down the fork and used a paper towel to wipe his mouth.

“I don’t really want to talk about it, Mom.”

“Diana’s already called twice this morning. Can I at least give her a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down?”

Danny exhaled slowly.

“Tell her it’s a thumbs-sideways. Jo doesn’t know what she thinks. At this point, all I can do is put it in God’s hands.”

The phone was ringing when Jo got home from skating with Chewie.

“Hello?” she said, trying not to sound breathless.

“Jo? Chief Cooper.”

“Hi,” she said, sitting on the nearest chair to unhook her in-line skates. “Sorry if I’m out of breath. I was…exercising.” Somehow, it felt too frivolous to say she was off skating while he was hard at work trying to solve this case. “Did the fingerprints come back?”

“Not yet. I’m still waiting to hear. In the meantime, I’ve got some, uh, shall we say, unexpected information.”

“What is it?”

“We just got a copy of Frank Malone’s telephone records for the last year.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know how to say this, Jo, so I’ll just give it to you all at once. He called your house, two weeks ago. You spoke for six minutes.”

17

L
ettie slept in, waking around ten to the ringing of the phone. The caller was the man from Dates&Mates, the one who had interviewed her on Saturday. He explained that the situation had changed, and if she was still available to start right away, they would like to hire her.

“That’s wonderful,” she said. “Of course. I can be there in an hour.”

It wasn’t until she had showered and dressed that it dawned on her to wonder how, exactly, the situation had changed. Something made her feel apprehensive, especially when she remembered Tank saying he had “one more errand” to run before his day was done.

On a hunch, Lettie dialed the main number for Dates&Mates. When the receptionist answered, Lettie asked to speak with Viveca. From what Lettie could recall of her interview, that was the name of the pregnant girl whom Lettie was supposed to replace when she went out on maternity leave.