Stranded (8 page)

After a week or so of this, she began getting phone calls from a blocked line with no one speaking on the other end. This was followed by someone turning her doorknob in the middle of the night. She considered contacting the campus police but decided against it, unwilling to go public lest her parents be notified. No way did she want them to panic and demand she come home. A few times she managed to yank the door open, but there was never anyone there. When a bouquet of dead flowers greeted her one morning, she decided it was time to enlist the aid of the dorm resident assistant who helped her set a trap.

The perpetrator turned out to be a boy she had in one of her classes. She vaguely remembered that sometime in the first month of school he had hemmed and hawed in an awkward attempt to ask her out. As she wasn’t interested in dating him or anyone else at that point, she’d attempted to defuse the request by joking around and making an excuse to rush off. After that, she’d seldom seen him again. And all along, he had been furious with what he thought was her total disregard for his feelings and had decided to retaliate by anonymously stalking her. After she’d apologized up one side and down the other and he had done the same, they’d avoided each other for the rest of term. She wasn’t sure what happened to him after that.

And that’s how she felt today as she left the Green Mountain Mall. Like someone was watching. It hadn’t started until she finished shopping and was making her way back to her car.

In a replay of those long-ago college years, she found herself whipping around to check out the people and cars around her. And as before, she saw no one lurking, nothing threatening.

Alex had asked her to not be alone. She’d thought a mall would be the perfect place to search for a condolence card for Billy’s mother. At this hour of the day, the place was crawling with people. But now she realized that there were several ways to be alone and one of the most disturbing ways was to be in a crowd of people you didn’t know.

Think about Billy’s mother, stop thinking about yourself
.

Maybe it was because she was in the process of creating a child that the thought of losing one made Jessica so sick inside. But there was also the fact that Billy had been a generous companion with no agenda of his own except to help her. He’d made her world more beautiful, certainly physically with his gardening, but also figuratively by offering undemanding friendship at a time in her life when that was about all she could handle. And now he was gone.

There was that feeling again. Once more she scanned the immediate vicinity, her eyes peeled for tall, tanned bald men in particular. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she whispered to herself as none materialized, but that wasn’t entirely true. The FBI don’t warn people for nothing.

Where was all her bravado now? Was someone in this sea of cars staring at her through binoculars?

The inside of the car felt like a real sanctuary and she locked her doors, glad no one could see her acting like a scaredy-cat. All this talk she’d given Alex about not being afraid and here she was frightened of absolutely nothing. She picked up her phone to call him and then remembered what he was doing with his day and put the phone down.

Okay. She would not drive directly home. She would drive the opposite direction to make sure she wasn’t being followed. With a plan in mind, she took off, checking her rearview mirror frequently. At first there was the usual crush of traffic on the road leading to and from the mall, but the cars quickly thinned out. At the second red light, a station wagon roared up behind her. She could see inside the car. The two teenage girls in the front seat nodded their heads in time with the radio whose music was loud enough to permeate Jessica’s closed windows.

No threat there.

The station wagon turned after a few minutes. Jessica veered off into a fancy neighborhood with narrow streets and little traffic. She meandered around until she realized that not only did she feel totally alone and decidedly unwatched, but that she was behaving like an idiot. She headed home.

A half hour later, she let herself inside the house, dumping her briefcase and purse on the chair. With a sigh, she slipped off her shoes and walked across the room to set the alarm. She stopped suddenly as something caught her peripheral vision. Turning, she gasped, covering her mouth with her hands, unable to move.

* * *

A
LEX
DECIDED
THE
best chance of engaging Lynda Summers in a candid conversation was to arrive unannounced. After all, the day before, she’d told him she never left the house.

She didn’t answer her door and a quick turn of the knob revealed it was locked.

He walked around the yard again just to make sure she wasn’t outside somewhere and ended up in back. The big trees stopped most of the rain from falling on his shoulders but it did nothing to stem the stench from the garbage in the lean-to. Once again, the lock on the shed door drew his attention.

Was it possible Lynda Summers had something worth stealing back here?

He walked around the shed, looking for a window and found himself facing a wall of ivy. When he got closer, he could see a window behind the plants and spread the branches a little, getting close enough to peer through the glass while keeping his feet out of the mud in case there were other footprints to be found later.

He could barely make out part of a small room. Shading his eyes from what little glare there was on the glass, the most obvious distinction about the space was how clutter-free it was.

Closest to the window a large model of a red-and-white biplane hung suspended from the ceiling. More or less under that sat a small round table on top of which rested a lamp with a striped black-and-yellow base that brought to mind a bumblebee. A stack of index cards sat next to the lamp. The only other furniture consisted of an old, upholstered chair close to a workbench fronted by a couple of square stools. There were some kind of supplies on the workbench that he couldn’t make out.

As Lynda Summers seemed totally incapable of keeping a space this uncluttered, this had to be Billy’s hidey-hole. But hadn’t she claimed he used the shed as a place to store engine parts?

Alex let the ivy close up behind him and walked back toward the house, determined to get a search warrant. Billy had liked written directions—maybe something on those cards would point to his killer.

Once again he stood on the porch and knocked on the door. Looking through the front window proved fruitless as her junk blocked any view. He took out his cell and phoned her number. Listening closely, he heard a phone ring inside. The woman apparently wasn’t home.

He hung up and stood there a second. The phone rang in his hand and he saw Dylan’s number flash on the screen.

“I got them,” Dylan said, his voice excited.

“Got who?”

“The Cummings twins. I found a piece of torn clothing on their car. It looks like it could have come from Billy’s jacket. The whole bumper is a mess like they ran into something. They have no alibi. There are some pills in their glove box, too. I’m taking them in. The lab people and the techs are here. The car will be hauled in pretty soon.”

“Wow,” Alex said, kind of shocked. “Good work. Did they say how or why they killed him?”

“They say they’re innocent. They gave each other alibis that are worth about as much as a three-dollar bill. Listen, I’ve got to go, partner.” He hung up abruptly and Alex did the same.

He needed to go downtown, but first he was going to stop by his house and make sure Jessica had set the alarms. He’d do it sneakylike, so she didn’t know he was checking up on her.

Maybe they really had found out who had killed Billy. But Alex couldn’t shake the feeling that even if they had, there was more going on than met the eye....

Chapter Six

Alex did his best to check his temper when he found the front-door alarm had not been set. For that matter, the door wasn’t even locked. He knew Jessica was home, because her car was in the driveway. He didn’t want to bark at her because she forgot the alarm, but such carelessness coming on top of a day like this one made his nerves twice as jumpy.

“Jessica?” he called. Her things had been dumped on the chair and her shoes sat off to one side. He looked around the room, then called upstairs. “Jess?”

Maybe she was in the kitchen. He started to walk to the dining room when the open patio door caught his eye and he veered that direction.

He found her standing still as death in the yard, rain falling on her head, bare feet buried in the grass. By the looks of her hair, she’d been standing there a while. But it was what was all around her that shook his soul.

Someone had ravaged the garden, butchering every plant and flower with what looked like unbridled rage. A million petals lay on the ground, on the paths, on the grass. Crushed, severed stems bent toward the earth, blossoms trampled into the mud. Limbs had been whacked off bushes, leaving raw, jagged edges. From what he could see, even small branches on trees had been bludgeoned. It looked like a giant whirring blade or an ogre with a vendetta had hacked every living thing. The overwhelming scent of devastated flora permeated the air in a sweet, decaying way that reminded him of a funeral.

Jessica finally registered his presence and turned around to look at him. Her eyes were red, her cheeks tearstained, her lips trembled.

He stood before her and she melted into his arms. Great, silent, heaving sobs shook her body as she cried against his neck and he tried to comfort her. If the maniac who did this appeared right that moment, Alex would have gladly beaten him to a pulp.

“Who would do this to Billy’s flowers?” she finally managed to mumble through her tears.

But they weren’t really Billy’s flowers and that’s what alarmed him. This was
their
yard, these were
their
plants. Someone had come through their gate and slaughtered their peace of mind less than twelve hours after the man who had created this beauty was found dead.

“I don’t know,” he said as he tried to comfort her. “But I’ll find out.”

* * *

J
ESSICA
RAN
STEAMING
hot water into the tub, lying back to cover her shoulders, closing her eyes, her hands resting on her bare, wet belly.

A mere inch or two away, her baby existed in a liquid world of his or her own. Maybe Alex was right. Maybe she should go to Kansas City and visit her sister.

No, she wouldn’t do that. There was a feeling in her bones that something was coming to a head. She was not going to abandon the husband who had just miraculously returned to her no matter how many flowers were torn from their stems.

There was a knock on the door and she called, “Come in.”

Alex appeared carrying a mug. “I made you some chamomile tea,” he said.

She sat up and accepted the mug. “Thank you. I can’t seem to get warm.”

“Darn rain,” he said, perching on the edge of the tub. “It gets in your bones.” She smiled as she took a sip of the tea. They both knew the rain had nothing to do with the chills in her body. “I called a gardening service,” he added. “They’re coming here tomorrow to clean things up.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, setting the mug aside. “How was all that destruction accomplished, do you know?”

“Our toolshed was open. The only thing I can find missing is the old machete I stored there for when we went camping, you know, the one with the green cord wound around the handle. Unless you got rid of it while I was...away.”

“No,” she said, “I didn’t move it.”

“Might Billy have taken it?” he asked gently.

“I can’t see why. I was usually here when he worked and I never saw him touch it.”

He nodded and they both fell silent. After a few seconds, she took a deep breath. “I owe you an apology,” she said.

“For what?” he asked, his expression puzzled.

“For turning into a zombie when I saw the yard. I left the alarm off, I just froze. But it wasn’t only because of the flowers or the thought someone had come into our yard.”

“It was because it happened right after Billy’s death,” he said. “I know.”

“Was he murdered, Alex?”

“We think so,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

“We know he was alive when he was run over. We know he had drugs in his system, enough to cause his apparent unconsciousness. The M.E. identified Rohypnol but a complete toxicology will take longer.”

“Rohypnol? Isn’t that a date rape drug?”

“Yep.”

“Good heavens.”

“I know. Dylan found torn clothing on the front grill of a car belonging to Ted and Tad Cummings and there is some damage there including a bunch of dents. There were pills in the glove box, he said, and what do you want to bet that they’ll turn out to be Rohypnol? The boys aren’t talking much, but the techs have the car and the lab is working on the evidence. There was also paint on the bike and the rear bumper reflector is broken. Part of it’s missing. They’re running tests on that, too.”

“Why would the twins fill Billy with a date rape drug and run over him?” she asked, shivering despite the hot water, despite the tea.

“The drug administered in that quantity would have rendered him unconscious and thus compliant. Do you know the twins?”

“They were never in any of my classes, but they were the kind of boys who stood out. Pranks and shenanigans, never anything serious that I knew of. Certainly nothing violent.”

He smoothed a lock of damp hair from her forehead. “You’re going to hear this from someone, so I’m going to tell you. There are rumors circulating that the Cummings kids were into small-time drugs and they used Billy Summers to collect money and make deliveries.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

“I don’t know if I do, either.”

“And what does any of this have to do with your plane crash, or are we talking about two different things?”

“I think Billy’s death and my crash are connected somehow, but I don’t know exactly in what way.”

“What did Billy’s mother say?”

“She wasn’t home,” he told her.

“Shouldn’t you be downtown asking these boys questions?”

“And leave you? Hell, no.”

“You have to do your job, Alex.”

“Dylan will keep me informed.”

“Did you tell him about our yard?”

“Yeah. On the off chance the Cummings twins had anything to do with it I had to.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, shaking her head.

He touched her again as though he couldn’t keep his hands from her. The smoldering look in his eyes burned away a layer of cold.

A sigh escaped his lips. “If I stay here much longer, I’m going to jump in and ravage you. I better go make some phone calls.”

“Thanks for being honest and up-front with me about Billy,” she said. “I have a very hard time believing anyone would want to harm him.” She paused and then added, “I know you’re the cop but I have more questions.”

“Go ahead and ask them,” he said, his gaze lingering on her breasts. “But no promises about the ravaging issue, okay? I may dive in.”

She smiled, understanding his banter was tinged with his desire to reassure her that life was normal despite the current situation. She hadn’t expected him to refuse to answer any more questions, but she had steeled herself for the old back-off-my-territory tone that used to stop her dead in her tracks. Thankfully, it was absent and that was heartening. “We don’t know for certain that your plane was sabotaged, do we?” she began.

“Not for certain, no.”

“And we don’t know who the contact in Blunt Falls is, you know, the one Agent Struthers told us about.”

Alex nodded in agreement, and she continued.

“Or if this contact is really interested in you, even if they were before. I mean, I understand trying to stop you last February when you were on your way to help Nate and Mike figure out a conspiracy. But the man behind that portion of this terrorism movement is dead now, so what threat are you?”

“It would have to be because I know the contact here in Blunt Falls, the person who set me up,” Alex said, alarm igniting his eyes. “Is that what you’re thinking?”

She nodded. “You’re going to keep at this until you figure out what happened to your plane and your friends.”

“Is that what you think?” he asked.

The water was growing lukewarm and she shivered. “What do you mean?” she said.

He fixed her with his hazel stare, the one she always thought she’d hate to be on the receiving end of if she had just committed some heinous crime. “My goal is to figure out what happened to protect you and our baby, Jess. And now it’s even more important because my gut is telling me Billy was murdered, too, in the here and now, and that it ties back to my plane crash. That means his death is mine to solve, as well.”

“How does his death tie to your plane crash?” she asked, wishing she could get out of the water, but she didn’t want to interrupt this conversation, so she stayed still.

“I haven’t told you about what the airport mechanic said about Billy and the plane,” he said. “What with the garden and everything, I completely forgot about it for a while.”

“What did he say?”

“He said Billy missed work Saturday, which was atypical. So, the first day it’s in the paper that I’m home, the kid doesn’t go to work. Tony Machi said Billy hovered around my plane the day it was serviced. He saw the kid studying index cards, too, and was in fact alone with the plane during a lunch break.”

“Was Billy capable of doing something to your plane?”

“Not without help, no. But remember, he was looking at those cards like the ones he asked you to make him so he could tend the garden the way you wanted. And I saw a pile of the same kind of index cards in a shed behind his house.”

“I can’t believe he would do anything to hurt you.”

“You’re thinking of the Billy who came to our house and offered you help, who tried to make you happy. But why did he come to help you, and what did he want to tell me the night he showed up here during our party?”

“We need to be certain about the plane,” she whispered.

He nodded. “Exactly. If we can prove it was tampered with and that Billy had something to do with it, then that might lead to figuring out who he was in cahoots with. I’ll call Nate. As soon as he can get here, I’ll borrow a floatplane from John Miter and fly us both up to the lake. I’d better arrange to get hold of some diving equipment, too.”

“Who’s John Miter?” Jessica asked.

“A guy Dylan and I met out at the airfield last summer,” he said.

Last summer—when they hardly spoke to each other. It didn’t surprise Jessica that she hadn’t heard of this guy.

“Dylan didn’t seem to take to John. I, on the other hand, really liked him. He’s not the chatty type, but he’s definitely got a certain aura about him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He lives out on the lake near Crawfish Point in a house he built himself. I know almost nothing about him because he doesn’t volunteer information. He’s retired now, but he could have been a Superior Court judge, a priest, a mercenary or a crook. When I ask, he just ruffles my hair like I’m ten years old and tells me not to worry about it.”

“Sounds interesting but not your normal choice in friends,” she said. She shivered from a combination of cold and nerves and asked what she really wanted to know but had been reluctant to broach. “Alex, do you ever worry about piloting again?”

He seemed to think for a moment. “Right after the crash, I swore I was finished with flying. That feeling seems to have faded. I guess I’ll know for sure very soon when I take up a floatplane.”

“Take me with you,” she said softly.

He shook his head adamantly. “No, sweetie. I don’t want you anywhere near that lake. We’re going to have to find someplace safe for you to stay while I’m gone.”

“You’re going to find me a babysitter?” she said, irritated. In so many ways he was letting her in, but when he decided to keep her at arm’s length it was very hard to get past him. He was doing better, though. He was trying.

He’s going to have to try harder and it’s obvious that I need to help him
.

“Something like that,” he said.

“You frustrate me, Alex Foster,” she said, casting him an annoyed look. She started to stand and he caught her elbow to steady her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know you’re sorry. I’m sorry, too.” She stepped out of the tub. “I know you need to go downtown and find out what’s really going on. Take me over to Silvia’s house. I’ll be safe there. The woman has been a principal for eighteen years. Nobody or nothing gets past her.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

He handed her a towel and then gently began patting her shoulders dry with another. It brought back memories of their honeymoon, which they’d spent in Hawaii in a very posh place where their room came with a private lanai complete with its own small swimming pool. They’d spent hours in the sun-warmed water, so into each other that the world had almost ceased to exist. What she wouldn’t give to zap them both back to that moment in time....

She turned to look at him.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“I’m cold.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you or to me or to our baby. I promise,” he said, sliding his hand against her damp skin to rest it on top of her abdomen. His touch made her dizzy and she leaned her forehead against his chest. “Jess? Are you okay?”

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “I can’t go through losing you again, Alex. Once was enough.”

He pulled her closer and claimed her lips.

* * *

T
HE
POLICE
BUILDING
was bustling with activity when Alex arrived after dropping Jessica off at her principal’s house. The two women had hugged and Silvia had promised to lock all her doors. They were going to make a quiche for dinner, she said, and Alex was invited to come back and have a piece. He told her he’d do what he could but not to wait for him.