Closet Confidential (19 page)

Twenty minutes later, my heart soared as the Miata lurched down the bumpy track and crested the slight hill at the end of the line. Two vehicles were angled on the ragged grassy slope. A squad car was idling, door open, although Nick was nowhere to be seen.

I stopped at the top of the incline to the beach and hopped out of the car. I didn’t want to get stuck on the sandy uneven track.

Pepper’s new red Ford Edge was parked straight on, doors closed. I paused midstep. What was she doing here? What if I was about to interrupt a romantic moment between a married couple? I stuck my head back into the Miata and gave a short blast with the horn. I waited to give them time to adjust their clothing if necessary and then stomped over toward the car.

I felt like giving the two of them the kind of old-fashioned talking-to that you hear about. I also felt like letting the air out of their tires. Nick was going to be in trouble at work, not that I cared. But overprotective Pepper had left her baby in a bike shop. How crazy was that? As I reached Pepper’s car, I could see she was resting her head on the steering wheel. I knew she was tired, but this was ridiculous. You would have thought the blast from my horn would wake her up. I was surprised her own car horn wasn’t blaring with her head in that position.

I knocked on her window. She didn’t move. I hammered loudly. Nothing. I tried shouting. Still nothing.

“Pepper!” I pulled at the door handle in a panic.

Locked.

I banged on the window again.

I raced to the front of the vehicle, intending to pound on the windshield. I raised my fist and gasped. Pepper’s face was squashed against the steering wheel, a jagged gash showed on her forehead. There was far too much blood.

I don’t know why I thought screaming “Pepper” would do any good. I tried screaming for Nick, and that failed utterly, too. It crossed my mind that whoever had done this might still be in the vicinity. I whipped my cell phone out of my pocket to call 911.

Great. I must have been in one of the few pockets without cell phone service in the entire county. I moved to the other side of Pepper’s vehicle and tugged at that handle. She was bleeding quite a lot. I thought if I could staunch the flow, I could drive us to the hospital, or at least to meet an ambulance.

Of course, it was locked.

Pepper always kept her doors locked. She wasn’t the trusting type. But she wouldn’t have locked the doors against Nick. That didn’t make sense. Unless Nick was the person who’d injured her. I couldn’t allow myself to think that Pepper might have been dead. I hunted around for a rock big enough to break the back window without getting Pepper hit by glass. The rocks I tried were pathetically small.

I hated to leave her, but I didn’t have any choice. I turned to head up the hill to the Miata when a movement caught my eye, from the brush by the side. Naturally, that movement was between me and my car. Who was it? The person who’d injured Pepper? Nick? A bear?

I didn’t wait to find out. I jumped into the idling police car and slammed and locked the door. The key was in the ignition or it wouldn’t have been idling. Lucky for me it hadn’t been idling long enough to kill the batter. I tried my cell again. Still no signal. I stared at the police radio equipment. How did that work? No time to find out. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a dark shadow approaching. I wasn’t the only person in the world who would have grabbed the wheel, slammed that cop car into reverse, and stepped on the gas.

The squad car rocketed backward toward the Miata, and I jerked the wheel in time to miss it. I zigzagged backward up the road, practically standing to touch the pedals. No way was I taking the time to adjust the seat.

As I approached the county road, I slowed until I found a segment wide enough to turn around. With one eye on the back window, I managed the U-turn. I tried again with my cell phone. Still no service.

I shot forward in the car and drove to the highest spot of the hill.

The little bars were back on my phone. Four!

I pressed 911 and gasped for breath.

“Oh hi, Charlotte,” the familiar voice said. I’d known Mona Pringle since high school at St. Jude’s, although lately all our interactions seemed to be through 911.

Mona said, “Do you have a cold or something?”

“Emergency, Mona. No time for banter. Pepper Monahan has been badly injured. She’s at the entrance to Bakker Beach. She’s in a locked vehicle, bleeding. Her husband—”

“Nick the Stick?”

“Nick’s car is on the site with the door wide open and there’s no sign of him.”

“Any sign of the perp?”

“No one else that I could see, Mona. I think you should say “officer down” or something to the police, so they realize how—”

“Don’t worry. I know how to do my job, Charlotte.”

Everyone’s a prima donna these days, even the unflappable Mona. I said, “They need to know that Pepper’s keys are inside of the locked car and Nick may be hurt, too.”

“Got it. Hold on, I’m calling it in.”

I tried to hold it together as I shouted, “And Pepper’s lost a lot of blood. A whole lot.”

“Stay on the line,” Mona said.

I sat and got my breathing back to normal after stating my case. Had I told her everything? Had I made sure they knew they were going to have to open the door of Pepper’s car? Would they realize how serious it was? Would they have the right tools?

“Charlotte?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m on the county road near the entrance to Bakker Beach.”

“Stay in your car. Keep it running with the doors locked, and move down the highway away from the entrance. Do you hear me, Charlotte?”

“Yes, Mona. I hear you.”

I may have glossed over the fact I was driving an official police vehicle. And one that appeared to be involved in a crime. I had planned to park it back by Pepper’s car after I made the call, but even in my state, I could see that wasn’t a good plan.

“There’s a problem, Mona.”

“Beside the officer down and the missing officer?”

“Yes. I’m actually in the police car.”

“Of course you are. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself,” Mona said. “That’s a good one, even for you.”

“It was empty and the door was open and I realized that my car was up the road and when I saw that Pepper was injured, I knew I had to get help. And—Oh crap.”

Mona said, “What now?”

“There goes
my
car!”

“What?”

“My Miata. It’s racing down the highway toward town. He must be doing a hundred and fifty.”

“Who was driving?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see. But whoever it was, he’s got plenty to feel guilty about.”

I took a minute to call Tierney. My hands and voice shook, but there was no point in him getting the information third-hand from some snickering colleague. It was getting close to our date time, although that wasn’t going to happen now. Tierney arrived shortly after the ambulance and the fire department.

I had to admire those firefighters. I took a chance and followed them in Nick’s police car after they all shrieked past me. They were prepared for anything. The firemen apparently have special tools for getting into vehicles, something thin and yellow called a glass punch according to the smart young cop I remembered from a previous encounter. He was one of the first on the scene and took the time to check if I was okay. Why couldn’t they all be like him? Normally he was friendly and concerned, and even better, he wasn’t so tall that I had to strain my neck to look up to him, like so many men in my life, Jack and Tierney included.

Six more police cars arrived in chaotic short order but had to be moved so that the ambulance with Pepper could scream away to Woodbridge General. A tall, awkward guy with a hangdog face stepped out of the last cop car to arrive. Tierney chewed him out for blocking the road. The latecomer’s seventies-rock-musician mustache almost quivered. Serious face or not, in my opinion having a mustache like that proved he wasn’t nearly as intelligent as the crisp, clean-shaven junior officer. For one thing, he had the look of a cartoon dog and he seemed to be walking in circles.

“Move your sorry butt, DeJong,” Tierney added to the cop with the mustache, before he ambled by me, jingling his keys. To me, he said, “I thought you were going straight home to get ready.”

I braced myself for a blast. “Something that Pepper said on the phone alarmed me. I wanted to reassure myself. I went looking for them.”

“We’re the police. We would have found them.”

“You would not have found them. Don’t even pretend. You are so new to Woodbridge, I bet you’d never even heard of Bakker Beach. And another thing, do you expect me to believe that your colleagues would have looked for a married couple, both police officers, here in make-out mode before dinner? Because that wouldn’t happen.”

“Eventually, they would have been found.”

“Eventually wouldn’t have been soon enough. Pepper could have died here. All alone.”

“Tell me again why you thought to look here?”

“I checked out places that Nick liked to go when we were kids. This was the first location I tried. I figured he was keeping a low profile.”

He scowled and paced back and forth, glowering at Pepper’s vehicle. “Explain to me again where the squad car was.”

“I think it was right there.” My hands were still shaking as I showed him how Nick’s car had been parked. “I could put it back if you want. The door was open and the keys were still in the ignition. The engine was idling. I needed to get away.”

“Okay. And the person who took your car?”

“I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman. I saw a dark shape. And I was out of there.”

“Could it have been Nick?”

“I can’t believe that it was Nick. How could he leave his wife like that?”

“Why did you think you’d find Pepper here?” I figured I knew what he was doing. Typical cop stuff. Asking his questions in a disjointed way, seeing if I’d stumble as I told my bizarre story.

“I was looking for Nick.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew Pepper was also looking for Nick. Being Pepper, she had a good chance of finding him. If I found Nick, I’d find Pepper.”

“Why did you want to find Pepper?”

I hesitated. I would be violating a confidence. But it was the right thing to do. Pepper had been making up her own rules and look where that had gotten her.

“She was almost hysterical, worried about Nick. She even left her baby at Jack’s cycle shop.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Hard for anybody to believe. Except for Jack, of course, who thought it was the most normal occurrence in the world. And Little Nick, who was having baby fun.”

But Tierney didn’t want to talk about Jack. “What was she worried about?”

There we were, at the moment of truth. I could connect with Tierney, who I knew to be a decent person, or keep Pepper’s secret, whatever it was. I thought about Pepper and her terrible injury, and I thought of Nick, missing.

“She thought Nick was frightened of something, that he might have stumbled on something dangerous.”

“And you didn’t see fit to mention it to me? We were talking before you drove out here.”

“It was too vague for one thing. I didn’t even know if it was true, or if . . . You know, it can’t be easy being married to Nick Monahan, so it seemed possible that she was overwrought, exhausted from the baby and Nick’s usual hijinks. But I did track Nick down and talk to him earlier today.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t learn anything. I could tell he was scared, though there was no clue what he was frightened of. He acted as though he was afraid for Pepper, too. I wondered if he’d been gambling and lost a pile of money or experimenting with drugs and he was afraid she’d catch him and leave him. I suppose in either case, there could have been people after him. I even considered the possibility of a jealous husband. That’s all I know. But Pepper was worried about him. But before you chew me out, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have gotten much out of him, either.”