Caught Redhanded (12 page)

“Did you hear your phone ring?” William asked me.

I shook my head. “But then I had gotten out of the car.” A chill ran through me. “How could he know that I had gotten in the car? He’d have to have been watching, wouldn’t he?” Talk about eerie, weird, strange, odd, uncanny, bizarre. I took a deep breath. When I started with the list of synonyms, it was time to take a firmer grip on my emotions.

William nodded. “He saw you get in but not out. He could have moved someplace for cover and placed the call.”

“He must have planted the device during the night,” Natalie Schumann said.

“He did.” Mrs. Anderson held out her paper. It had taken her some time to find it after the blast had blown it out of her hand. She’d finally discovered it in the garden of the house two doors down.

Now she offered it to William. “I saw him for the first time last night at—” she peered at the paper “—2:54 a.m. He was sneaking down the alley toward the parking area, though I didn’t realize then where he was going. He was carrying a black bag.”

She turned to me. “That’s what I wanted to tell you when I yoo-hooed you after you got in your car. He carried something the first time I saw him, when he went
to
the parking area. The second time I saw him—” she peered at the paper William held “—was 3:14. And the bag was empty. He had it crunched in his hand.” She crunched a make-believe bag in her hand. “So he wasn’t a husband trying to slip home like we thought, because he went down and then back. That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you, Merry.”

So many questions and no answers swirled through my mind as we waited in the emergency room for treatment with Curt as our Good Samaritan and chauffeur. Mrs. Anderson’s X-ray confirmed she had a broken wrist bone. While they set and casted her, I got shot in the hand to numb the palm and then got stitched up after they painted the area thoroughly with bright orange disinfectant.

“Will this stuff wear off soon?” I asked, thinking of the wedding.

The doctor shrugged and we left, Mrs. Anderson wearing a handsome sling over her housecoat.

“Did you see Millie Long in there?” she asked as we walked across the parking lot. Her voice was full of distress.

I shook my head. “I don’t know Millie Long.”

“She came in an ambulance because they thought she had a heart attack.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Is she a good friend?”

“Sure, but that’s not the point. She saw me looking like this!” She looked down at her bathrobe and slippers. Her good hand went to her head. “And my hair!” She groaned. “I can’t stand it!”

“I’m sure she understands,” I said, though if she came in with a possible heart attack, I doubted that she even noticed Mrs. Anderson, let alone her appearance.

Mrs. Anderson sighed. “You’re too young and beautiful to understand. At my age a woman must be vigilant if she wishes to preserve her image.”

“Sounds like Jolene sixty years from now, doesn’t it?” Curt asked and I had to laugh. Then a thought struck me.

“Curt! If it was the murderer who planted the bomb—and I don’t know who else it would be—what if he tries to do something to Jo, too? She was with me when I found Martha.”

“Then he must have a personal death wish,” he said, his voice dry.

“I’m serious! Is Jo in danger? We have to warn her. We have to talk to William.”

I borrowed Curt’s cell and called Jo. Mrs. Anderson listened avidly.

“Reilly,” Jo yelled without moving the phone and I thought my ear would pop. “You’ve got to save me!”

When I could hear again, I called William. “Thank you, Merry,” he said. “The thought has occurred to us, too. I would suggest that you not go anywhere alone until we know what’s going on. In fact, why don’t you just move in with Curt?”

“Can’t. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Oh, come on, Merry. Everyone lives together these days. And everyone knows you’re getting married, so it’s not like you’re shacking up.”

“Can’t, William. He and I are both committed to premarital chastity, just like the Bible says.”

“Well, just live there if you don’t want to sleep with him.”

I looked at Curt’s strong profile as he drove us homeward. “We’re chaste, William. Not dead.” I hung up to his laughter.

After we helped Mrs. Anderson into her apartment and got her settled with a nice pot of tea, we went to my place and I called Mr. Hamish, owner of a local car dealership that also handled rentals. In the months I’d lived in Amhearst, he and I had become good friends.

“What happened this time?” he asked eagerly as soon as I identified myself. He had rented me cars on numerous occasions and he thought I lived a very interesting life.

“A car bomb.”

“Wow!” he said with awe. “How fascinating.”

“That depends on whether or not it’s your car,” I reminded him.

Curt, who drove me to Mr. Hamish’s, waited while I got my car, then followed me to work. He even escorted me inside. When I get there, Jo was on the phone with Reilly. She was pouting prettily, so I assumed he was telling her something she didn’t want to hear. As soon as she spied Curt, she said, “Well, Curt’s here to protect Merry.”

Curt gave me a goodbye kiss. “Just please don’t go wandering off alone. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Jolene, tell Reilly goodbye,” Mac yelled. “We’ve got to get some work done here.”

Jo pulled her phone from her ear and stared at it. She looked floored. “He said I’m not to call him again! And then he hung up on me! On me! His wife! I only called a couple of times.”

“Five.” Edie held up a hand with the fingers splayed.

“Six,” Mac corrected. “Now get to work, all of you!”

In response to Reilly’s and Mac’s perceived mistreatment, Jo went on a crazed bit of deadheading, pruning and watering. Edie ignored Jo but insisted on mothering me, bringing me Coke and snacks and offering her sixteen-year-old son, Randy, as bodyguard. Larry the sports guy pontificated on all the things he’d learned from reading Tom Clancy books on the Special Forces. He obviously saw some connection between my bomb and infiltrating and exfiltrating without the enemy’s being aware you’d been there, though I missed the correlation myself.

When things finally calmed down a bit, Mac beckoned to me.

I went to his desk and stared when he offered me a seat.

“Mac, are you sure? You’ve never done this before. Will you regret it in the morning?”

“Just sit, Kramer.”

I did, grinning.

He touched his picture of Dawn with his forefinger, then looked at me. “You realize what this attack means, don’t you?”

“Somebody doesn’t like me? But that’s okay because I don’t like him very much, either.”

He gave me his bored look. “It means I’m innocent. I didn’t murder Martha.”

“My car getting blown up proves that you’re innocent?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” I said, uncertain of his logic. Not that I thought he’d done the crime—either crime. I didn’t. Then it hit me. “Is it because you like me too much to blow me up?”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s because I wouldn’t have failed.”

I stared at him, appalled. “What?”

He let his head fall back against the headrest on his big chair. He stared at the ceiling as if beseeching the suspended tiles to give him patience. He sat up. “That was supposed to be a joke, Kramer.”

“Oh. Of course.”

He touched Dawn again, then grinned at me. “I have an alibi!”

Thank goodness! Then I had second thoughts. “For 3:00 a.m.?”

He nodded. “I was at the hospital with Dawn and one of her girls. And lots of people saw me.”

“That’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful!” And it was. What a relief! By turning in the diary, I hadn’t condemned a friend to the state pen after all.

“I was at His House to pick Dawn up for a movie and just before we left, one of the girls went into labor. I drove her and Dawn to the hospital and waited for the baby to be born. It was a boy about this big.” He held his hands six inches apart. “Cute little thing with lots of dark hair sticking up all over. Sort of like he’d stuck his finger in an outlet.”

“So you’re a dad,” I teased.

He looked suddenly embarrassed, astonished and pleased all at the same time. “She said she was naming him Mac. Well, Mackenzie, but she’d call him Mac.” He glanced at Dawn’s picture again. “Of course, the adoptive parents will change his name, but it was the thought.”

“And a wonderful thought it was.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Congratulations, Pop. Where are the cigars? Or the candy bars that say It’s A Boy on the wrapper?”

The back door to the newsroom opened and I turned to see who had come in. William. I watched as he walked right up to Mac’s desk, halting beside me.

“I take it you’ve heard about Merry’s car,” he said without preamble. I might as well have been invisible for all the attention he paid me.

Mac nodded, looking wary.

“Were you ever in the military?” William asked.

Mac stiffened. “The United States Army Reserves.”

“Your specialty?”

“EOD.”

“Explosives Ordnance Disposal.”

Mac nodded.

“But he’s got an alibi,” I blurted.

Both men turned to me, but it was William who said, “Thank you, Merry. I’ll talk to you later.” Then he waited until my nerve broke and I turned to go.

“Merry,” Mac said softly.

I looked back at him.

“It is because I like you too much to blow you up.”

I felt the tears gather. I nodded and made my way to my desk.

FOURTEEN

W
hen it was time for me to go to Mercers’ to pick up Bailey shortly after one, Mac wanted to follow me.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you, girl. I can’t afford to lose my best reporter.”

I smiled at him, understanding he meant more than just the possibility of my getting blown up, but it felt too weird having my boss tail me. “I’ll be fine. Whoever it is can’t do anything to me in the middle of town in the middle of the day. Besides, he can’t know what kind of car I’m driving now unless he was hiding behind a tree at Mr. Hamish’s or in our back lot when I pulled in. And Bailey will be with me all afternoon.”

“Some protection she’ll be.”

“Bailey will be more than enough to keep him away. What’s he going to do? Kill us both?”

He didn’t look convinced. “If something happens to you, Curt will haunt me for the rest of my life. I don’t even want to think about Dawn’s reaction.”

“You can grump all you want,” I said, unmoved by his glass-half-empty assumptions, “but I’ve learned your secret.”

His eyes narrowed. “What secret?”

“You’re a chocolate-covered cherry.”

He looked appalled.

“Hard shell on the outside but soft and sweet inside.”

“Please! Spread rumors like that and I might as well pack my bags and leave town.”

I was grinning as I left the newsroom and went to my navy rental. As I drove to the Mercers’, I started thinking about how life often juxtaposed the extraordinary, like exploding cars, with the ordinary, like teasing your boss or going on interviews. When something amazing, bizarre or astonishing happens, it seems as though there should be a break in time to enable adjustments, whether physical, emotional or spiritual, on the part of the person experiencing the overwhelming events.

But it doesn’t work that way. Life continues, responsibilities remain and appointments wait. All a person could do was shrug and keep going, trusting that the Lord knew what was happening and was there to care for you.

Of course, maybe the Lord knew that doing the ordinary was the best way to cope with the painful and unexpected. Routines center reeling thoughts and feelings, giving structure to a life suddenly gone off on a strange tangent, forcing you to go forward when all you want to do is hide in bed with the covers over your head.

Bailey came down the walk in a slow, careful stride, opened the passenger door and slid in. Her glorious hair was caught at her neck in a large gold clip and her eyes were heavily rimmed with black. Her face was very pale and carefully blank, and I wondered what she thought about spending the afternoon with me and the ministry’s various clients. After she buckled her seat belt, stretched as far as it would go, she sat with her hands clasped in her lap. I noticed for the first time that her nails were bitten to the quick. They were also painted black.

She was dressed in two voluminous T-shirts over her sweatpants, the shirt underneath yellow, its sleeves showing where the black sleeves of the upper shirt were rolled almost to the shoulder. The yellow hung below the black almost to her knees and I thought of night-shirts. I wondered how she could stand all those clothes in the July heat. I felt wilted in one layer of clothes, let alone two or three.

Bailey was quiet as we drove to our first interview. I wondered if she was this shy around everyone, or if it was just me. I began to doubt she’d be any great asset in the upcoming interviews. I was afraid she’d sit there scowling like Snoopy in his vulture persona, making everyone uncomfortable.

I was pleasantly surprised when she opened up as I pulled to the curb at our first stop.

“Mrs. Santiago is a widow who needed Good Hands to repair some plumbing and fix her roof,” Bailey told me as we walked to the door of an old green bungalow near the edge of town. The door opened and a tiny woman with much gray streaking her short black hair smiled at us. A gold front tooth gleamed in the sunlight.

“Bailey,
mi amiga.
You get
más hermosa
every day,” Mrs. Santiago said in a voice that carried the accent of her native Mexico. She leaned up to kiss Bailey’s cheek. “Come on. Come in.”

We followed her into a living room where a window air conditioner labored to keep the heat at bay. A floral border circled the walls about eighteen inches from the ceiling and balloon curtains made of floral sheeting that coordinated with the border hung at the windows. I knew immediately that Candy and her helpers had been involved here as well as the team that did the actual repairs.

“I was part of the crew who worked on Mrs. Santiago’s house,” Bailey told me, pride radiating from her like heat from the scorching pavement out front. She turned to the tiny woman bent with age and arthritis. “Will you tell Merry about how you came to contact Good Hands and what we did for you?”