No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (53 page)

The forensic team knew we were
renovating the interior, and because of that, they wanted to make
sure to get as much physical evidence as possible, since they
wouldn’t necessarily be able to come back for it, especially if it
was removed as part of the construction plan. They had covered the
windows with dark plastic sheeting, to block out the light, and I
saw at least two people using black lights as they searched for
blood stains.

I met Detective Gertmuller in the
dining room and he led me down to the basement, wanting to see
exactly where I found the box of letters, on the off chance there
might be more. I explained how I normally did things when we were
about to flip a house.

“Ever find anything valuable?” he
wondered, making conversation.

“I found an engagement ring left in
a can of coffee on a bedroom closet shelf once. I was pouring the
grounds out into the trash and saw something glitter. The little
old lady who owned the house had dementia and the family thought
she had lost the ring years earlier. And once I found a savings
book that still had a couple hundred dollars in it. It’s always
nice to turn things back over to the families and see their
reactions.”

“Well, you hit the jackpot on this.
That body could have remained there for eternity. Why were the men
digging there again?” he wanted to know. I explained that the water
bill was too high for an empty house, which made him want to know
exactly when the bills increased.

“Why?” I asked.

“We can’t find all the bones. Some
are missing and we think the body was moved here long after the
murder. By the way, that’s not information for the
press.”

“No, no,” I agreed. But it made me
think. “Why would someone move bones? That sounds really creepy.
Almost like an obsession. I mean, if she was already dead somewhere
else, why would the killer bring her skeleton back here? Why not
just dump it somewhere else? You probably wouldn’t even be able to
identify her.”

“Twisted minds do odd things,” he
replied. He was watching me closely. “You look like you might know
something.”

“I don’t know that I actually know
anything,” I admitted. “But the next-door neighbor seemed rather
disturbed by the fact that we were here in the house yesterday.
John Sullivan claimed he was watching the place for her and that he
and Susan had had a long relationship. He even said he moved here
to be closer to her. It made me very uncomfortable. I’m positive I
locked the door this morning like I always do. I was in the middle
of showing it to a prospective buyer when we caught the guy
sneaking around the house. Very creepy.”

“Thanks,” he nodded in response to
the information. He seemed to be deep in thought.

“As for what we plan to remove from
the premises,” I changed the subject, “let me give you a
run-through on what’s staying and what’s going.”

I left by five, passing the media
gauntlet on my way out. One of the more aggressive reporters
followed me all the way to the silver streak, offering favorable
press coverage for Dawkins Builders if I cooperated. I turned him
down flat and he got snarly on me, but I didn’t really care. It’s
not like Ned and I were participants in the murder.

I decided to take my evening run in
the opposite direction, to avoid getting near the edge of the press
feeding frenzy. Once I changed into my running clothes, I headed
down Johnson Boulevard and over to Spruce Street. It was less
traveled, less scenic, but I told myself that at least I wouldn’t
have anyone following me. Boy, oh boy, was I wrong about
that.

Chapter Nine --

The sky was overcast, putting a
damper on the evening’s sunset. There was a light breeze coming off
the ocean and it seemed to follow me as I ran towards Jenkins
Hollow. I decided to do the front loop, running on the trail down
to the old ruins and back. I gave myself twenty minutes to do it,
knowing that meant I was averaging a ten-minute mile. It felt good
to have the wide open space to myself, save the occasional walkers
and a family having a picnic dinner under a big sugar maple in the
pasture. A figure on a bike passed me at a rapid rate, feet
pedaling frantically. I couldn’t have said whether it was a man or
a woman, because the hood was pulled up over the bike rider’s head,
but my gut told me it was a man. He was certainly in a hurry,
almost out of sight by the time I reached the top of the hill and
headed down towards the old stone fortification. I turned at the
well, marking it as my halfway point, and checked my watch. I was
running about a minute slower than I had hoped, but I was
distracted by my thoughts of Susan’s murder.

I had never met the woman, but the
belongings in the house gave a glimpse into her life. Definitely a
colorful, almost chaotic character. I thought the name she had
taken on, Rainbow, probably described her approach to life. This
was not a timid wallflower. The decor of the house proved that. The
photographs illustrated that. She was defiantly proud of herself in
some of the more kinky ones, almost as if she were daring the
photographer to keep up with her unconventional side. Could she
have rubbed the killer the wrong way? Kyle had an enormous ego and
a very large need to have it stroked. Maybe she told him to go
pound sand and he lost it. Maybe she had found someone new to take
his place, someone like her neighbor, although I didn’t really
think John Sullivan was her type. Maybe Kyle hurt her while they
were having sex. Maybe she wouldn’t let him control her. I thought
about how angry he was when I called him on his bad
behavior.

I was running down the steep incline
to the brook basin when I felt a sharp, painful sting as something
struck me hard in the stomach. A moment later, I was struck again
in the middle of my thigh with equal ferociousness, hitting muscle
and causing me to instantly cramp up. Grabbing my leg reflexively,
I was unable to stay upright, and the rest of me tumbled the
remainder of the way down. I felt my skin burn as I tore across the
surface of the gravel-covered trail. By the time I landed in a very
unglamorous pile of pain, a bruise the size of a quarter was
emerging on my left thigh. There was another purple shadow on my
stomach. What in God’s name could have caused that? I looked all
around me before I saw what was out of the ordinary. On the ground,
about ten feet apart, were two tiny white glass balls, very visible
against the dark gray stone path.

Standing up tentatively on my sore
leg, I hobbled over to the first glass orb and picked it up. Why
would someone want to hit me with what seemed to be a white marble?
I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t true, even as I knew it was.
I couldn’t help thinking that it reminded me of the run the other
day in the park, when I went tumbling down the hill. Had something
struck me then, too? Maybe that sting I felt on my ankle wasn’t
just a stray pebble sent into the air by a wayward
footfall.

It took me ten minutes to hobble up
the hill and find my way to the road. I saw the familiar car just
as I emerged from the tree-lined path. Jasper had his mother in the
Lexus and I could see the look of concern on their faces as he
pulled off the road and slowed to a stop in front of me.

“Suzanne, what happened?” Jasper
rushed to my side.

“I think someone hit me with this.”
I held out one of the white glass balls for him to see.

“That’s slingshot ammo,” he told me.
He looked down at my thigh and the now-throbbing bruise. “You could
have been seriously hurt. What kind of kid thinks this is a good
activity?”

He managed to load me into the back
seat. His mother was kinder than I remembered, offering me ice from
her cold drink.

“This is the second time in a few
days you’ve had this kind of spill,” Jasper pointed out.

“Funny,” I groaned. “I remember
feeling a sharp pain in my ankle before I fell at Plover
Park.”

“Why would someone want to harm
you?” June wondered aloud. “You seem like a nice girl.”

“I am a nice girl,” I agreed
wholeheartedly. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of a single
enemy I might have, other than Kyle. “Does anyone know where that
creep is?”

“You didn’t hear?” Jasper announced,
watching me through the rearview mirror. “Kyle’s in police custody.
They’re holding him overnight.”

“Damn!” I cursed. “He made such a
good suspect. What kind of jerk uses a slingshot?”

“Well, when I was a kid, the typical
target was a squirrel.”

“Please tell me you didn’t go around
torturing little squirrels with marbles,” June demanded.

“Not me, Mom. Remember Keith
Hublein? The guy was a wizard at knocking squirrels out of trees.
He didn’t kill them. It usually stunned the hell out of
them.”

“That’s mean!” his mother admonished
him. “I wish I had known. I would have peppered Keith’s fanny with
marbles, give him a taste of his own medicine. What a little
juvenile delinquent he was.”

From the back seat, I watched mother
and son, thinking that they were comfortable bickering together.
June and I thought alike on the fate that should have befallen
Keith Hublein. It’s one thing to get rid of a pest. It’s another to
enjoy the cruelty of torturing a living creature.

That thought brought me back to the
fact that I had been deliberately struck by a couple of glass balls
used as ammunition for slingshots. Was my assailant sadistic? Did
he mean to inflict pain on me? Or was he hoping for worse? And if
it wasn’t Kyle, who was it?

“He had to be hiding before I ran
down that hill,” I said suddenly, interrupting their conversation.
“And he had to have been hidden at Plover Park, too. Do you think
it’s just some jerk using runners as target practice? Or do you
think it was me he was after?”

“Would anyone have a motive for
hurting you? Are you being stalked?” June was curious.

“I don’t think so.”

“No hang-up calls? No strange mail?”
she asked. I shook my head.

“Well, you take my advice, dear.
Don’t take any chances. It’s not worth it. These days, there are a
lot of unbalanced people out there, doing really crazy
things.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied with
dismay.

When we arrived at my place, Jasper
helped me out of the car and up the stairs while his mother waited
for him. He got me an ice pack from my freezer and a cold
soda.

“Are you going to be okay,
Suzanne?”

“Sure.” I gave him a little smile.
“I’m getting used to falling down when I run.”

“No,” he told me. “Don’t ever get
used to it. It’s not okay that someone hurt you. I think you should
tell the cops. It might have something to do with Susan Lefkowitz’s
murder.”

“What do you mean?”

“The first time you got hit, hadn’t
you just decided to buy the bungalow? Today, her body was
discovered. Maybe the killer is mad at you for stirring things up.
Or you’ve made him nervous.”

“Oh, great. Now I’ll never be able
to sleep tonight! Thanks, Jasper.”

“Look, I’m not trying to scare you.
I’m just saying that maybe you’re a target because you upset the
apple cart.”

“I wish I hadn’t.” I looked down at
that bruise. “What a terrible thought. What if he comes after
me?”

“Let me drop June off at my sister’s
-- that’s where she’s staying tonight. I’ll come back after we eat
and I’ll stay the night here with you, probably around nine. That
sofa looks pretty comfortable.”

“Oh, I feel silly. Maybe it’s just
my imagination. Maybe those little glass balls were already there
on the ground.”

“And maybe they weren’t,” Jasper
pointed out. “If nothing else, you’ll get a good night’s sleep. By
the way, do you have a problem with dogs?”

“Only the human kind,” I responded
with a half-hearted smile.

“I’ll bring Fang with me. Lock the
door. Call me if you need me. And think about telling the police
about what happened. Even if the incidents are unrelated, that’s
information the cops should have.

“I’ll think about it,” I promised.
The idea was less than appealing, but I would consider
it.

After he left, I closed the door and
used the dead bolt. And then, giving in to a bout of nerves, I got
out my tool box, the big one I keep in the closet. Most women
probably aren’t familiar with basic builder’s tools, but I grew up
around them. I’ve been swinging a hammer since I was about ten and
I crafted my first dollhouse. At eleven, I built my own tree house
with my dad supervising me. At fifteen, I spent the summer working
on my dad’s crew. I might not carry a Glock, but I’m mighty fast
with a nail gun, and no slingshot-wielding creep was going to get
the drop on me.

I rested for a while before getting
up to scramble some eggs and toast some bread. I watched the
evening news and a couple of game shows. The thought of a hot bath
was tempting, but I really didn’t want to be naked if the killer
stopped by for a visit. By eight-thirty, I was feeling drowsy. I
double-checked my weapons on the coffee table. The hammer would be
handy as a blunt force instrument. I loaded the nail gun with the
longest nails I had available, thinking I could pin the killer to
the wall if necessary. I grabbed a screwdriver with a long shaft to
use like a knife and laid it on the table. Then, and only then, I
let myself dose off, awaiting Jasper’s return.