Broken Vows Mystery 03-In Sickness and in Death (16 page)

I sucked down half the Pepsi through my straw, then pulled out Maury Boor’s picture.

“Is this him?”

Bernie accepted the photo. “That’s him. A little younger.”

I explained what I had learned about Maury. “I also found out Maury worked for In-house Textiles. Do you use them?”

“We use somebody else less expensive. Sorry.” Bernie filled a bowl with pretzels and set it in front of me. “Hey, my son Jacob is in the same class as your boy Danny.”

Danny wasn’t my boy and he never would be, but I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to check up on him. “Did Jacob give you any idea how Danny was fitting in?”

“I heard he has a good arm for football. They played at lunch yesterday.”

“That’s good.”

“You should have him try out for the team in the fall. I’m a coach.”

“We’re not really sure how long Danny will be with us.”

Bernie popped one of the pretzels in his mouth and chewed. “Is it true his father is in jail for car theft?”

I finished my soda and pulled out a five. “Yes. Where’d you hear that?”

Bernie waved off the money. “Jacob told me. He heard it on the bus. One of the other kids’ mothers knew.”

Word traveled fast in Wachobe. Some of the deputies had wives and mothers who didn’t know when to keep their mouths shut. “I hope that doesn’t cause problems for Danny at school.”

“I’ll tell Jacob that Danny needs a friend. Jacob’s a good kid.”

“Thanks, Bernie.” I gathered my purse and stood. “Call me if you hear anything else, about my sister or Danny, okay?”

He swiped my glass from the counter and dunked it in the sink below the bar. “Sure thing, Jolene. Don’t worry.”

But worrying was one of the things I did best.

____

I called Ray on my cell phone as I walked back to the shop. My feet had started to burn and ache in my dress boots. I think I even limped a little.

“What’s up, Darlin’?”

I filled Ray in on Maury Boor’s old job and my quest to learn more about him. “It’s a dead end. Have you had better luck?”

“He drives a white Honda Prelude, not a Camry.”

“That’s good news, I guess. Right?”

“It means it isn’t likely that he parked a white Toyota Camry with a woman’s arm on ice in the trunk outside the psych center, if that’s what you mean.”

It was. “But everyone keeps saying he’s creepy.”

“I talked to the arresting officer about the stalking charge. He was leaving roses for a girl on her doorstep nightly. She asked him to stop, but he didn’t.”

“Not such a big deal, right?” But it was. It was. I knew it was.

Ray must have agreed. “I don’t like it. I’ll call the HR department at In-house Textiles and see what they’re willing to share with me. I’ll see you at home later.”

He hung up before I had a chance to ask him if they’d gotten any more leads on Jessica James’ body.

I checked the clock and realized I had just enough time to get over to the school for dismissal. I hopped in the car and hightailed it over there, successfully inserting my Lexus sedan into the last parking space behind a rainbow assortment of minivans.

While I watched for Danny to appear in the stream of children exiting the school building, I tried to make sense of what we knew so far. A Camry had been stolen from a used car lot outside Geneseo. That same car, based on the VIN, had been parked outside the psych center with Jessica James’ arm inside the trunk. Danny claimed the keys had been in the ignition when he took it. He also claimed the keys belonged to his dad, until he saw the woman’s arm and changed his mind. Ray said they hadn’t been able to get any clear prints from the keys to match Danny’s father’s prints, so maybe his father had stolen the car, maybe he hadn’t. But from what Danny said, his father had been driving a Camry with all their things in the trunk. So, where were all their things? Had someone removed them from the car and replaced them with Jessica’s arm in a cooler? What for? And what happened to their things?

The psych center or the doctor’s office building figured into this somehow. Had the person who had stolen the car been in an appointment with their doctor or visiting a patient when Danny spotted the car and took it? If so, Danny’s father couldn’t be that person. He’d been in the county jail at that time. Were we blaming him for a car theft he hadn’t committed? Were we looking for another car thief? Maybe one in treatment?

That seemed like a bit of a stretch. Car thieves didn’t get treatment like kleptomaniacs. They got jail time. But I’d bet stalkers got treatment. Maybe Maury Boor had been required to seek treatment. Maybe Maury Boor had been at the psych center that day, driving a stolen Camry instead of a Prelude. He’d worked as a deliveryman. Maybe he had a customer close to the used car lot from which the Camry had been taken. He wouldn’t want to mess up his own car with a dead woman’s body, but he might have a preference for cars like his own. If so, was my sister in the hands of a murderer?

I squeezed my shoulder blades together to stop from trembling. My imagination was getting the best of me. Lots of people were in and out of that doctor’s parking lot and the psych center every day. Even Leslie Flynn said she was a patient there.

I kicked myself mentally for not asking her about the nature of her treatment. But she didn’t drive a Camry. She didn’t live in Geneseo. In fact, I got the impression that prior to now she’d stayed pretty close to the farm most of the time. But she had been at The Cat’s Meow—supposedly to pay off her brother’s bounced check. Her brother had been there, too, talking with my sister on Tuesday before she disappeared. I’d forgotten to ask Leslie whether her brother had admitted to meeting Erica or not. I wondered what kind of car he drove. Maybe Ray could look it up.

The back door of my car flew open. Danny dropped onto the seat, his head bowed.

“Hi, Danny. How was school?”

He dug in his backpack and pulled out a yellow slip of paper. “Here.”

His head lifted. I got a good look. “What happened to you?”

He had a shiner on his right eye, a dark, purple-red one, and a touch of dried blood under his nose. “I got in a fight. You have to meet with the principal in the morning. I think I’m going to be suspended.”

I read the yellow
slip. It was a request from Principal Travis for Ray or me, preferably both, to bring Danny to her office at eight o’clock in the morning. “Oh, Danny. What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know.”

I could hear the frustration in his voice. It matched mine. “What was the fight about?”

“Nothin’.”

I twisted around farther in my seat. “It was not about nothing. Did someone say something to you about your dad?”

Danny’s eyes grew frightened. “What about my dad?”

Once again I’d led myself into a trap. “Nothing. I just thought …
never mind. What was the fight about? You might as well tell me now, because you’re sure going to have to tell Ray later.”

Danny’s eyes filled with tears. “This kid, he kept making these snorting noises every time he walked by my desk. At lunch, he got right in my face. I asked him, ‘What’s your problem, dude?’ He said, “‘Your foster father’s a pig, and pigs stink.’”

The fight was about Ray? I couldn’t believe it. Ray talked to the kids at this school every year about the D.A.R.E. program. It wasn’t quite that time of year yet, but he’d never said that any of them had been anything other than respectful in prior years. And I was shocked that the old “pig” label had come up. I’d never heard anyone refer to any police officer or sheriff disrespectfully in this town, especially in that ridiculous way.

I wanted to ask if the other kid had gotten the worst of it, but I settled for a different question. “What’s this kid’s name?”

“I don’t know.” Danny pressed his head against the window. “Can we go home now?”

I sighed, partly delighted that he thought of our house as “home” but also a little distressed because I had to stop at the grocery store first. All I wanted to do was go home, too.

Danny refused to come in the store with me, which didn’t matter. Everyone would just stare at his eye, then at the two of us, wondering. A few would even be bold enough to ask what had happened to Danny, if they knew me. In this town, sometimes they had the nerve to ask even when they didn’t know you. I wouldn’t miss the attention.

The store wasn’t busy this time of day. I wheeled the cart around the store as quickly as I could, grabbing anything that looked good to me.

As I grabbed a package of spaghetti off the shelf, a flash of red from the end of the aisle caught my eye. It was Leslie, carrying a shopping basket and looking right at me.

“Hey, Leslie.” I waved and started toward her.

Her eyes widened. She darted around the corner.

I chased after her in time to see her climb into a Ford pick-up truck in front of the store. Seconds later, she pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared.

Then I realized she hadn’t been wearing her new wig. In fact, it probably wasn’t Leslie at all. It must have been her brother. Funny he’d run away. People must get them confused all the time. Maybe he wasn’t a people person? I shrugged it off.

My bill came to over two hundred dollars. I handed over my credit card and pushed the cart laden with grocery bags out the door.

I unlocked the trunk of the Lexus and deposited all my bags inside. Then I started toward the cart corral.

As I shoved my empty cart into the mass of other carts, a shot rang out. Something whizzed past my ear and pinged against the back end of the stainless steel corral frame. Seconds later, I heard another shot and another ping, this time against the car parked next to the corral.

I looked at the round hole in the trunk of that car. It could have been in my torso instead.

I hit the deck between the car and the corral and fumbled for my cell phone in my purse.

As my shaking fingers pressed 9-1-1, another bullet zipped past my ear. I scrambled toward the front end of the car, away from the shooter.

The 911 operator answered.

“I’m in the parking lot of the Wachobe P&C. Someone is shooting at me.”

“Ma’am, are you in your car?”

“No, I’m on the ground between a car and the cart corral.” An awful thought hit me. “But Danny … my boy … is in my car on the other side of the parking lot.”

“All right, ma’am. An officer is on his way. Stay low to the ground and seek cover until he gives you the all clear.”

“But my boy—”

“Stay where you are, ma’am. The officer is coming. I’ll stay on the line with you.”

I eased my head up to peek over the hood of the Acura I’d taken cover behind, trying to spot Danny. Another shot whizzed past me and cracked the windshield of the truck behind me as I dropped back to the pavement.

“Ma’am, are you taking cover?”

“Yes, yes! Where’s the officer? Can you call my husband Ray Parker? He’s a sheriff deputy.”

“I’ll contact him now. Stay down, ma’am.”

I heard a car turn over. It sounded familiar. The driver accelerated and squealed out of a parking space.

Another shot connected with the back end of the Acura. Was the shooter trying to hit the gas tank?

I dug in my heels and crab-walked closer to the truck behind me. If the Acura blew, the truck and I would go with it, not to mention the cart corral.

A car flew past the rear of the Acura, spun around the end of the line of parked cars and slammed to a stop in the lane behind me. “Get in, Jolene, get in!”

I scrambled to my knees and crawled to the Lexus. Danny opened the rear passenger door. I dove into the back seat. He hit the gas. We peeled out of the parking lot. He made a hard right onto the road which threw me to the floor. I heard the police siren coming from behind us as Danny raced down the road.

The siren faded.

“Pull over, Danny. Pull over. We’re safe now.”

He jerked to a stop by the side of the road. I climbed over the console and into the passenger seat. Then I grabbed him and hugged him tight. “Thank you.”

He wiggled his way out of my grasp. “I didn’t see the guy, but I heard the shots.”