Blind Dates Can Be Murder (45 page)

Chewie had finally decided he liked the chief after all. Once the man produced a giant rawhide bone, the dog had no choice but to fall in love.

“Used to have a German shepherd,” the chief said with a shrug to Jo’s questioning look. “Got hit by a car three months ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was a good dog.”

Chewie settled down at their feet and got busy.

They were still in the garage, sitting on lawn chairs, and Jo had described the whole incident at her house. The chief had listened intently, asking questions now and then. When she was done, he said he didn’t have any thoughts as to who the man could be.

“The thugs are really crawling out of the woodwork on this one, aren’t they?” Jo said.

The chief grunted.

“You remember the first mug shot, Mickey Paglino, the old blond guy who was Frank Malone’s business partner?”

“Yeah?”

“I just got a call about ten minutes before you got here. Friend of mine on the force in Moore City knew we had an interest and thought I’d want to know. That guy collapsed tonight during the viewing for Frank Malone. The coroner thinks he may have been poisoned.”

“Poisoned! Is he dead?”

“Not yet, but right now it’s not looking too good.”

A surge of nausea rolled through Jo. Until now she had convinced herself that the man who threatened her had been bluffing, but the type of person who killed with poison was probably also the type of person who killed with explosives.

“Chief, what are we going to do? Someone I love is in danger.”

“I think it’s time to step this investigation up a notch,” he replied. “The county sheriff’s department has a bomb unit with trained bomb technicians. They’ve got tactical, investigators, everything. I’ve worked with them before, Jo, and they’re top-notch.”

“Can you bring them on in this but still keep their involvement hush hush? This guy said if I told anyone, especially the police, he would set the bomb off.”

“I know. Trust me, Jo. These guys know what they’re doing. I’ve seen them lie in wait before, and they practically vanish into thin air.”

“Don’t look yet,” Marie said, steering Lettie away from the bathroom mirror and pointing to the chair she had set backward in front of the sink.

Lettie sat as directed, towel-drying her hair. After a few moments she allowed the damp tendrils to fall on her shoulders.

“Well?”

Marie’s face looked encouraging.

“It’s very different. I like it. A lot. We won’t know the true color till it’s dry, of course, but I think it’ll be gorgeous.”

She reached for a blow-dryer, but Lettie interrupted her before she turned it on.

“I want you to cut it first,” Lettie said. “Real short. Like, to the top of my neck.”

Marie shook her head.

“I don’t know anything about that. You’d look like a hatchet job. Listen, if you can’t afford a nice salon, you could at least try one of those walk-in places over by the discount store. I think haircuts are all of twelve dollars.”

“I want it cut now,” Lettie said. “If you won’t do it, I will. I know how. Do you have any scissors?”

Marie swallowed hard.

“It’s no big deal,” Lettie added. “I’ve been cutting my own hair my whole life.”

Marie seemed almost saddened by that fact. “I tell you what,” she replied. “I have a friend, Lola, who lives in the next building over. She’s a hairdresser. Why don’t I give her a call and see if she could come over and do it?”

“It’s like ten thirty, isn’t it?”

“She’s a night owl. Ten thirty’s nothing to her.”

Without any further discussion on the subject, Marie left the room and went to the kitchen phone. Lettie could hear her talking in the distance, so she seized the opportunity to case the bedroom.

It wasn’t hard.

At the dresser, the top left drawer was slightly open, and inside Lettie could see a brown manila envelope. She had a feeling that would be the cookie money.

Marie’s voice faded, and Lettie tiptoed closer to the doorway to listen, to make sure she was still talking.

“…so sweet, bless her heart, and I have a feeling she hasn’t got a penny to her name…”

So Marie was pitching her as a charity case? Didn’t matter. As long as she got what she needed, she’d be all right. Steeling her nerve, Lettie slid open Marie’s drawer and used a finger to lift the end of the envelope. She couldn’t tell how much was there, but she definitely saw the green of dollar bills.

Quickly, she pushed the drawer back the way she found it and returned to her seat in the bathroom.

“You didn’t peek, did you?” Marie asked, bustling in.

Lettie thought for a moment she was talking about the money, but then she realized that Marie meant the mirror.

“Nope,” Lettie replied honestly. “I haven’t seen a thing.”

The chief’s house was dated but cozy, with roses on the wallpaper and a large shiny grandfather clock in the corner. He had a big dog pen in the backyard, so Chewie was content to run around out there, rolling in all of the smells.

While Jo sat at the kitchen table and pulled all of the addresses from her Rolodex that were also in her address book, the chief spoke at length on the phone with the director of the bomb unit. They seemed to be mapping out a plan, and Jo was glad she had come. It had been the right decision.

“Jo, I wasn’t in your address book, was I?” the chief paused to ask her, one hand over the receiver.

“No, sir. Just the phone number for the station.”

“All right,” he said into the phone. “We’ll make my house the home base. Send your men in unmarked cars.”

He spoke for a while longer, and by the time he got off the phone and joined Jo at the table, his expression was grim. He explained to her the plan, which boiled down to a two-part operation. They would attempt to identify the target and seize and detonate the explosives. If that wasn’t possible, they would have to proceed with their second choice: Jo would have to receive the phone call and go through with an exchange, after which the man would be arrested.

“But what can I give him? I don’t have a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills—or whatever he thinks it’s supposed to be.”

“They’ll provide something. Hopefully, we won’t have to take it that far.”

Jo looked down at the stack of Rolodex cards.

“What are we going to do, Chief? I’ve got to make some phone calls. There are some people I have no choice but to warn.”

Chief Cooper shook his head slowly.

“That’s up to you, Jo, but it may backfire. I say you should only contact those people who would know how to get out of their homes without being obvious. Otherwise, he might be lying in wait with a detonator and take them out just as soon as they open their door.”

Jo closed her eyes as images of her friends, relatives, loved ones, and acquaintances flashed through her mind.

“We can apply some logic here,” the chief said. “He’d probably start by choosing someone named Tulip, hoping to hit a relative.”

“That’d be my mom and dad in New York—”

“Anyone local named Tulip?”

“I’m the only one.”

“Okay, then he’d probably branch out from there to the names of women who live alone. That’d be a lot easier than trying to get around a husband and wife and kids. Any single gals in there?”

“What do you think, Chief? That’s probably half the names.”

“Okay, after that, he’d look for homes that are a bit isolated, maybe hidden from view by overgrown shrubbery and trees.”

“How do we know it’s a home? Couldn’t it be a car?”

“What were his exact words again?”

“He said, ‘Right now, someone in this book, someone you love, is living on top of twenty pounds of Semtex and doesn’t even know it.’ Living on top of. Yeah, that sounds like a house.”

“Most likely, a house with a crawlspace,” the chief added.

“That still leaves a lot of people.”

“At least the bomb unit guys know how to search out potential targets. I assume they’ll narrow down your stack there and then go out and do some recon. They may find this guy’s little gift package before sunrise.”

Jo wasn’t very optimistic. There were a lot of names there.

“There are a few people I simply have to call,” Jo said.

Sighing tiredly, the chief handed her the phone. Jo dialed Danny first. It was late, but Jo could hear a television in the background.

“Danny, I have to talk to you,” she said quickly.

“Hold on,” he told her and then the background noise went silent. “Jo, listen, about earlier—”

“There’s no time to talk about that now. We have an emergency, Danny. I have to tell you something, and I want you to listen very carefully.”

26

J
o left it to Danny whether he would tell his sisters and their husbands or not, since they were all in her address book. She explained the potential danger, but of course Danny thought they’d be safer knowing than not knowing. He actually seemed more upset about Jo having been accosted and tied up by a stranger than he was about being a potential bombing target. He made her promise that she wouldn’t be alone again until this was over and that she wouldn’t go back into her house unless the police were with her. He said his family would probably all get out of their homes and reconvene at his aunt and uncle’s house, which was plenty big and located about ten miles out of town.

After hanging up with Danny, Jo called her friend Anna, who was levelheaded and would evacuate appropriately to her parents’ house; then her pastor and his wife, who lived in the parsonage near the church. They said they could stay with their son. Fortunately, Jo didn’t need to call Marie, since she had recently moved into an apartment and Jo was waiting for the change-of-address card before she updated her listing.

By the time she had finished going through the pile and calling everyone who she felt could handle the news, the director of the bomb squad had arrived.

The next thirty minutes passed by in a blur. There were men in special suits, lots of questions, and a map of Mulberry Glen spread out over the kitchen table. Jo helped to pinpoint each of the addresses, and once that was finished, they told her that if she had a place to stay she should get some sleep, that there was nothing else for her to do. She would have protested, but just the idea of a soft bed and a pillow was nearly overwhelming. She was exhausted.