Mom Zone Mysteries 02 Staying Home Is a Killer (26 page)

The kitchen light went off and the dining room light blazed.
Please let him go to the bedroom first to put his suitcase in there.
For a second, I contemplated staying where I was and trying to explain that I was just dropping off mail or investigating odd lights inside the house.

The hall light flicked on. Leaning sideways, I jumped and twisted. I hoped my body remembered a few of those gymnastics moves from the class I took in third grade. The cold, sharp air struck my face and I balanced with my stomach on the windowsill for a minute, looking for a handhold. Abby brushed snow off her coat. “There’s nothing to hold on to. Just fall, the snow will break your fall,” she whispered. A thick line pressed into my hip. I squirmed. Something blocked me from getting out the window. I looked back and saw the journal edging out of my pocket braced on the inside of the glass. That was what was shoved into my hip.

I groaned, twisted, and managed to work one arm back inside the window frame. I wrestled the journal free and dragged my arm back out the window. “Catch.” I tossed the journal to Abby. As I heaved it, I lost my balance and half slid, half tumbled down the white siding of the house. I untangled my feet from an evergreen bush. “This is the hardest snow I’ve ever felt,” I said as I flexed my arms and legs to check for broken bones. “Hey, you’re stepping on me,” I said to Abby.

“Sorry. I’m trying”—she pushed—“to close the window.”

I stood up cautiously. An icy trickle of melting snow raced down my spine and I shivered. The evergreen bush under the window looked like Big Foot had stomped on it. Thank goodness it wasn’t prickly, like the ones around my house. “Got the journal?”

Abby nodded. The light came on inside the bath and silhouetted her hands. She jerked them away from the window. It was still open an inch, but we backed away and tried to walk casually. Just two girls out for a little exercise on a dark, freezing night through the ice-and-snow-covered neighborhood.

An Everything In Its Place Tip for Organized Closets

Prevent coat closet chaos with well-defined areas in the closet.

• Choose an organizer like hanging shelves or a set of plastic drawers. Label one compartment for each family member. Everyone will have their own area for storing gloves, hats, scarves, and keys.
  
• Hooks or bins are a great storage place for backpacks, sporting equipment, and umbrellas.
  
• Store out-of-season items on upper shelves and switch out when the season changes.
  

Chapter Twenty-four

T
he next afternoon, Tuesday, I pulled the Cherokee into the squadron parking lot. “Okay, we’re here,” I said to Livvy.

“Talk. Daddy,” she informed me with all the solemness of a news correspondent reporting a downturn in the economic indicators.

“Yes.” I opened the back door and leaned in to unbuckle Livvy. “We’re going to talk to Daddy.”

After I picked up Livvy from Abby and Jeff’s house last night, I’d returned home damp and still slightly giddy from our frantic escape through the bathroom window. I’d checked our e-mail and found a note from Mitch. The operations center where he was had video phones, and there was also one set up in the squadron. Mitch said he’d signed up to use the video phone during what would be the next afternoon in my time zone.

So, Livvy and I were actually going to see him. We hurried through the veil of snow. I picked up Livvy and trudged up the steep incline ramp to the squadron. Before I reached the top, the inside set of doors clanged opened and I had a sense of déjà vu, expecting to see Penny propping open the door for me like she had the day she died.

But it wasn’t Penny. It was Georgia Lamar. She paused for a moment, as if she was considering brushing past me without saying anything, but then she stepped back and held the door open.

“Thanks,” I said as I stepped through.

“Sure.” She reached down, pulled her hat out of the leg pocket on her flight suit.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine.” Her voice was curt.

I searched for a subject to prolong our conversation, if you could call it that. “How’s the campaign to remove the posters going? Need a signature?”

Her lips twisted. “Right. Like a petition would help. I’m going to take care of it.” She jammed her hat down on her blond curls.

A few more people meandered down the hall toward us. I realized it must be getting close to four-thirty, official quitting time for the military folks, who go to work around seven-thirty in the morning. Georgia glanced down the hall at the approaching people and bit off her next sentence. “See you.”

I walked down the hall, then down the stairs to the basement break room and the little alcove across the hall. It had actually been a storage closet, but it had been converted to a minioffice so spouses could have some privacy while they chatted with their husband or wife halfway around the world. A sign taped to the wall declared
WET PAINT
and pointed to the door frame. Irene sat in front of the computer, talking to her husband. I saw Tommy, Mitch’s boss, in the bar in the Hole. I avoided the shiny coat of paint on the door frame and dropped the diaper bag on the table beside the computer, my declaration that I was next in line. I signed the video conference log-in sheet, set Livvy on her feet, and steered her in the direction of Tommy and the bar.

“Hey, Tommy.” I hopped up on a bar stool and pulled Livvy up in my lap. “Heard anything about Mitch?”

“Hi, Ellie. Nothing. That’s good, though.”

I watched five more people enter the break room. Some sprawled on the worn couch in front of the wide-screen TV after picking up a beer out of the fridge. Even though Irene was across the hall her voice carried into the Hole. “Then Evan made the basketball team? And now he wants to quit guitar. I told him that’s not an option, right? He knew that when he tried out…”

I sighed and scratched my plans for bringing Mitch up to date on the murder investigation.

Tommy pulled two beers out of the fridge and held one up. “Beer?”

“No, thanks. Have you got a Diet Coke in there?”

While Tommy replaced the beer and shoved some cans around I noticed beer posters still adorned the walls. “Last one,” he said and plopped a Diet Coke down in front of me.

“You guys really should expand your drink selection,” I said.

“Yeah. What do you think we should get? Some wine spritzers for George?”

I knew Tommy was referring to Georgia Lamar. “You’re awful. I know you take the other side of arguments just to annoy her. So how’s it going with her?” Livvy grabbed at my can and I jerked it away, sloshing bubbly dark puddles onto the bar. I grabbed a roll of paper towels sitting at the end of the bar and wiped up the spill. A large silver bell sat next to the towels.

“What’s that doing down on the bar?”

Tommy pushed the bell across the bar toward me. “Had it engraved with Briman’s name.”

With my finger, I traced the two rows with the engraved names of the squadron commanders.

“We haven’t gotten around to putting it back up yet,” he said and I looked over at the post at the end of the bar where the bell usually hung.

Livvy mimicked me and ran her hands over the bell. “No,” I said to her, but Tommy shrugged.

“It’s fine,” he said. “She can’t hurt it. Just don’t let her ring it.” He smiled and roughed up Livvy’s flyaway hair.

I laughed and pushed the bell farther back on the counter. If the bell rang, it meant free drinks and everyone in the squadron showed up in the bar. Whoever rang the bell had to pick up the tab.

Tommy took a swig of his beer and said, “I don’t know what’s up with Georgia. She’s been muttering about getting her way. With anyone else I’d think it was all talk, but with Georgia—well, she’s stubborn.” He crushed his can and tossed it in the trash. “I’m outta here. See you.”

Will sauntered in and took Tommy’s place behind the bar. He popped open a beer from the fridge.

“Hey, Will.” I felt a little funny talking to him, remembering the mad dash out his bathroom window. I still had Penny’s journal. I’d looked at each page after Abby and I got back to my house, but I hadn’t found anything new.

“Hey.” His listless response reassured me that he didn’t suspect we’d been in his house.

“Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“Sure.” He dropped on to the bar stool.

“Do you remember when I came by your house after Penny died?” I wasn’t sure if the alcohol had erased his memory or not.

“Sure.”

“Well, you said something about Clarissa. Something about how she couldn’t be cultured if she tried.”

Will chugged his beer, then said, “I said that, huh?”

I nodded. “What did you mean?”

“Clarissa was kinda—” He glanced at Livvy and amended whatever he was going to say. “Easy,” he concluded.

A surge of anger made my next words sharp. “You know from personal experience?” If he’d cheated on Penny—

“No.” His flat, almost bored denial cut off my thoughts. “I saw her and Rory on his boat last summer at Lake Coeur d’Alene.”

I waited.

“They were on his boat.” Will took another drink and glanced at Livvy again. “Fooling around.”

“Did you tell the OSI?”

Will shrugged, set down the beer on the bar, and began popping his knuckles. “She’s dead. I didn’t want to get involved. Someone killed her, you know.”

“Ellie, I’m done,” Irene called.

I said good-bye to Will and crossed the room. I gave Livvy a baggie of Cheerios and logged on to the messenger service we’d set up. The Cheerios would ruin her dinner, but I’d work around that for a little peace.

After a few false starts, a window opened and Mitch was smiling at us across the miles.

He looked good.

“Hey!” he said. “There’s my girls! You look great. How are you, Livvy? Hi, honey. It’s so good to see you.”

Livvy dropped her bag and pointed to the screen. “Daddy! Daddy on TV!”

“Thanks,” I said. Then I heard the catcalls behind me.

“Oh, come on, Mitch, go ahead, call her ‘sweetums.’”

“Hey,” Mitch said, “is that Rory I hear?”

I glanced over my shoulder and realized he’d come into the hall, probably just returning from his TDY because he parked his rolling suitcase beside his pub bags while he joked with the guys around the TV about Mitch and me. “Yes. We have an audience,” I said.

“Just ignore them. How’s everything going? Anything broken yet? The Cherokee still running?”

“Don’t jinx us! Nothing’s broken yet.”

Even though our house was in the fifty-plus age category, we’d rarely had problems with it when Mitch was home, except for a few leaky pipes. But it seemed each time he left for a deployment some major catastrophe occurred on the home front. Last time it was the washing machine. The deployment before that one, a windstorm toppled one of the pines in our yard. It had narrowly missed Mabel and Ed’s roof. Another time, the alternator on the Cherokee went out.

Livvy’s hands left blurry fingerprints on the monitor, so I pulled her back into my lap, but she didn’t want that. She poked at the keyboard.

“Hey, Avery,” Rory shouted, “how’s the weather? How many times a week are you flying?”

Mitch answered their questions, while my temperature rose. How rude could you get? This was our first chance to see Mitch in a week. Couldn’t Rory and the guys back off? Finally, I said to Rory, “Hey, this is supposed to be my time with Mitch. Sign up for your own fifteen minutes later.” I smiled, but my tone was sharp.

“Excuse me.” Rory’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Ma’am.” He grabbed his bags and left. I watched him leave, realizing I’d probably blown my chance to ask him if he argued with Clarissa before her art class or about Will’s sighting of them boating on the lake.

Mitch and Livvy had a halting conversation about Cheerios. Then she sang the ABC song for Mitch, at least as far as the letter
k
.

I felt a hovering presence behind me and saw Sidney, another spouse, waiting.

“Mitch, I’ve got to go. The next person is here.”

“We need to get one of these at home on our computer and we can talk all the time.”

“Right,” I said. But when would I have time to hook it up? Assuming I could get it hooked up? Instead of that, I said, “Maybe you’ll be home before I can get one.”

“I don’t know. Anything else?”

“Well, there are some things going on, but I can’t go into it right now. Too many people.”

“I’ll try to call you. It’s been hard to get a phone line.”

We said our good-byes and then I packed up the toys Livvy had pulled out of the diaper bag. I scooted over to make room for Sidney as I swept scattered Cheerios into a pile and then tossed them in the trash with my empty Diet Coke can. I dragged Livvy away from the monitor screen and hoisted her onto my hip.

On the way to the parking lot, I ran into Irene again. She gripped my arm, nearly toppling me over. “Have you heard about Ballard?” As usual, her sentence was a question, but it didn’t have her normal tentative upswing in the tone at the end. She had news, gossip, and she wanted to share.

“No.” I regained my balance and shifted to one side of the hallway as I sensed someone gaining on us from behind. Rory passed us, gripping a rolled carpet swathed in plastic that was draped over his shoulder. His round glasses reflected the light coming in the glass doors, but he twisted his head slightly and his gaze slid sideways to meet mine.

His face remained impassive. No greeting, no response to my stare. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and disappeared down the ramp. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out as I focused on what Irene was saying. She released my arm and pulled on her gloves. “Of course, I don’t believe a word of it. The idea that Ballard only wants money? For a cult? She’s committed to helping people find wholeness and peace in their lives. And individual peace will lead to world peace.”

“So what’s happened?” I asked at the door. I set Livvy down and began the process of zipping up her coat and coaxing her fingers into her mittens.

“Protesters! Ballard opened a little shop downtown, you know, in the skywalk? I went by there this morning and there were people there holding up posters saying Pathway is running a cult and that Ballard only wanted money. She never asks for money!”