No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (54 page)

I was in the middle of a dream in
which Jasper’s lips were almost touching mine when I heard a slight
scratching sound at the door. The hair on the back of my neck rose
up in response. Grabbing the hammer, I silenced the television
volume and then crept forward, towards the door. I listened
carefully, trying to identify the sound, but there was nothing
more. And yet, something told me not to relax my guard. Instead, I
waited, feeling like there was more to come. I was right, but it
wasn’t what I expected.

Five minutes after I heard the
strange noise at the door, the lights went out without warning. I
cried out as everything faded to black. Quickly, desperately, I
reached out and felt my way along the wall to open the built-in
cupboard near the kitchen. I was looking for my battery-operated
lantern, and when my hands wrapped around it, I flicked it on. It
cast an eerie glow in the dark room. Looking out the window, I
could see that the street lights were still lit. Remembering that
unusual sound at the door a few minutes ago, I rushed forward and
checked the locks. The deadbolt I had so carefully turned was now
unfastened, as was the door knob lock. I remedied that. I realized
the scratching I’d heard was the sound of the killer picking my
door locks. If he opened them once, the man who had been on the
other side of my door might do it again. He must have gone down to
the basement to shut off the power, planning to overtake me in the
dark. That thought struck terror in my heart. The killer was coming
back. He was probably climbing up the stairs at this very moment. I
rushed to my turret, grabbed one of the chairs at the table, and
dragged it back to the front door. Working quickly, I shoved it
under the knob, wedging the door shut, and then I picked up my cell
phone and dialed 9-1-1. With one hand on the hammer and the other
on the phone, I spoke breathlessly when the operator came on the
line.

“I’m at 16 West Avenue. Someone just
tried to get into my locked apartment and then the lights went out
in the building, but the street still has power.”

“Can I have your name?” said the
steady voice on the other end. “Are you alone? Are there other
people in your building?” The questions continued as my hands shook
uncontrollably. And then, suddenly, swiftly, the door knob turned,
but did not yield. Seconds later, there was a terrible crash and
the door frame splintered, but the chair under the knob
held.

“What was that noise?” the police
dispatcher wanted to know. But I didn’t have time to answer. I
dropped the phone and picked up my nail gun. When the next strike
against the door came, I was ready. I pressed the gun against the
wood of the door and fired. I felt the nail penetrate something on
the other side. I heard a muffled yell, but I didn’t recognize the
voice. The lights came on unexpectedly and as I blinked, trying to
adjust my eyes to the incursion of brightness, there was a
commotion out on the stairs. I could hear voices raised, but I
couldn’t hear the conversation. And then there was shouting coming
from outside the condo, followed by the screech of tires. I looked
out the window, seeing the figures moving across the wide expanse
of lawn. Police lights blazed into action as two patrol cars tore
off in pursuit of a pair of tail lights, heading down West Avenue
at a high rate of speed.

“Ms. Dawkins?” A knock at the door
drew my attention. “Glendale Police. Can you open the
door?”

“It’s okay, Suzykins. I’m here.” I
heard my big brother’s voice and burst into tears. It took all of
my physical and mental energy to remove the chair keeping the door
in place. Even as I pulled it away, I heard the chair feet gouge my
beautiful wood floor and cursed myself for being so sloppy. At
last, the chair came free and I unlocked the deadbolt and the
knob.

“Are you okay?” The first face I saw
was Jasper’s. He wrapped me in his arms and squeezed me tight. As
soon as he let me go, Ned hugged me, too.

“I was driving by just as Jasper got
here and I stopped to talk to him. We saw the lights go out. We
went down to the basement to turn the circuit breaker back
on.”

“We had no idea the guy was up here,
trying to get at you. He came scurrying down the stairs, holding
his arm,” Jasper told me. “We tried to stop him, but he got
away.”

“Looks like you nailed the bastard,”
my brother announced proudly. We all looked at the scrap of black
fabric hanging from the metal tip that poked through the wooden
door.

“Did you see who it was?” I asked
breathlessly.

“You don’t know?” Jasper was
surprised. “It was John Sullivan.”

The police officer was still
examining the battered door when his radio crackled to life. He
chatted with the voice on the other end, sharing details. We left
him on the landing and went back inside my condo. When he finished,
he joined us.

“We have a hostage situation.
Sullivan is holed up in his house, threatening to shoot any cop who
tries to get in.”

“Well, that can’t be a good thing,”
said Ned, understating the obvious.

Chapter Ten --

The local news stations covered the
action in Glengarry Court, right down to the hours of negotiations
by the S.W.A.T. team. When that went nowhere, the police staged a
distraction, which allowed several members of the team to slip in
through the basement hatchway. Once inside the house, they quickly
apprehended Susan Lefkowitz’s killer.

It turned out that she had barely
spoken to her neighbor. Certainly, she had never given him a key to
her home. That didn’t stop him from breaking into her bungalow,
sometimes even as she entertained her lovers. On one of his illicit
forays, when Susan was off doing a stint as Rainbow, the
vibrational healer, John Sullivan had come across the letters and
photos she had stored in a dresser in her bedroom. This apparently
enraged Susan’s stalker, and he reacted by tearing up her garden,
cutting all of the heads off of her daisies. When she returned home
and found her flowers decimated, she assumed it was a prank by
teenagers, not the result of a man spiralling out of sanity. Over
time, he could no longer control his jealousy, and he began to
menace his neighbor in dangerous ways that seemed to escalate with
each new imagined slight.

When he finally did decide to kill
her, he didn’t rush into it. He didn’t one day lose his temper and
lash out at her. Instead, he spent some time planning it. Police
found Susan’s blood in his home, along with her collection of sex
toys and the headboard she had tied Kyle up to in that memorable
photo. She didn’t even die right away. Instead, she was held
captive, chained to a wall in the basement of John Sullivan’s home
over the course of a couple of weeks. The police knew because they
found the killer’s stash of naughty photos. The sheer look of
terror in Susan’s eyes told the police that she had been tortured,
debased, and otherwise abused by her kidnapper. When Susan finally
managed to break free one day, she made it all the way to the
kitchen before John Sullivan grabbed her and threw her down the
basement stairs, intending to restrain her again. She struck her
head on the way down, and slowly bled to death from the concussion
she received.

Two days after John Sullivan’s
arraignment on murder charges, Jasper and I met for another picnic
dinner on the beach. I had been staying with Ned and his family for
a few days while my front door was replaced and my floor was
repaired. Even though I knew that Susan’s killer was behind bars, I
was still nervous about going back home.

“Want me to sleep on the
sofa?”

“Oh, I do and I don’t. A part of me
wants that, but another part of me thinks I need to know I’m safe
there, even when I’m alone. And an even bigger part of me wants to
know you’re staying with me for me, not as a protector, but because
we both want you there. Let’s face it. You’re still wrapped up in
Eva.”

“Am I?”

“You seem to be. You still keep me
at arm’s length.”

“How do you figure that?” Jasper
leaned into me. “I’m here with you.”

“Only because Eva didn’t want to
move.”

Jasper rubbed the back of my head
affectionately. It hardly suggested he thought I was as
irresistible as the goal-driven girlfriend with the fabulous figure
and the emotional exuberance of a cold front moving in.

“Eva offered last week to move here.
She wanted us to get back together. I told her no. I want a very
different kind of life than what I had with her.”

You did? You do?”

“I did. I do.”

“Before that lunatic tried to kill
me?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh,” I smiled. “You like
me.”

“I do.” He leaned in and gave me a
kiss that sent sparks flying through my veins, all the way from the
top of my head to my toes. I was about to give myself up to the
passion when I felt Jasper pull away.

“Before this goes any further, I
think there’s something you need to know, something about Jane.”
Those green eyes were serious and I sensed an unspoken
plea.

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“You remember those photos Jane got
before she dropped the charges?”

“Sure. That bastard Kyle....” Jasper
cut me off mid-sentence.

“I was one of the naked guys in the
photos.”

“What?” I felt like I was in a bad
dream, in desperate need of a pinch. “I don’t
understand.”

“You think Jane left because she was
embarrassed that she was raped. The truth is she left because Kyle
stole her stash of dirty photos. Jane always took photographs of
the guys she took to bed. I know because I was one of
them.”

I felt it in my gut, like a big, fat
sucker punch that knocked the air out of my tires. I was surprised
I didn’t double over with the pain. Not only was Jane not the
victim of a rape, the man who just told me he was interested in
spending time with me was one of her conquests.

“When Kyle sent those photos, he
wasn’t trying to blackmail her. He was sending Jane a message that
there were plenty of guys available to testify about her sexual
activities.”

I thought about that trip to the
police station with Jane, about her tearful description of the
terrible things Kyle had done to her, about the evidence gathered
by the emergency room doctor. For so long, I had been disappointed
in Jane, not only for not standing up to a bully like Kyle, but for
running away, taking her friendship with her. She had made it all
up. It never happened.

“But why?” I heaved a great sigh.
How could any woman do this? What had she hoped to
achieve?

And then I remembered the
conversation we had in our senior year of college. We were talking
about what we planned to do after graduation. Jane had decided she
was going to get married.

“Who’s the lucky guy?” I had asked
her. I can still remember that sly, little smile she wore as she
sat on my bed.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“But that means you’re not in love,”
I replied. “Why would you want to get married if you’re not in
love?”

“Oh, grow up, Suzanne. Marriage
isn’t about love. It’s about getting what you want. You have to
wheel and deal to win, and sometimes, you have to make a man do
things he doesn’t even know he wants to do.”

“And how are you going to do that?”
I had laughed.

“I have my secret ways,” she
insisted. I finally figured out what she meant by that.

“It was a long time ago,” Jasper
said in his own defense. He was studying me carefully. “Twelve
years, to be exact.”

“Oh.” I had no idea Jane even dated
him. She never told me. I thought we shared everything about our
lives. It turned out there was another Jane, a secret Jane, a woman
who was cunning and even ruthless in her efforts to meet her goals,
even those goals that were twisted and shaped by bad judgment. Now
I understood why Jasper had seemed so cold when we ran into each
other again.

“That’s why you blew me off when I
came up to you at the restaurant?”

“I thought you knew what Jane did. I
thought you were a part of it. Kyle warned all of us. We knew you
and Jane had gone to the cops and to the hospital, and that she was
planning to claim Kyle raped her. We were all waiting for the cops
to knock at our doors.”

“That’s terrible.” I looked down at
my hands, thinking of how I had patted the tearful Jane
reassuringly as she gave details of the incident to the police
woman.

“It is. This all got very
complicated because Kyle is Kyle. His problem is that he’s really a
sleazy guy. Why wouldn’t you think he killed Susan? Especially
after the shabby treatment he gave you. If it’s any consolation,
Kyle told me he had his hands all over you because he was trying to
provoke you into claiming assault, so he could prove you and Jane
conspired all those years ago. Only none of the guys who had slept
with Jane had ever even gotten to second base with you.”

I nodded, still stunned by the
revelation. It suddenly dawned on me that Jane ran away from
Glendale, not because she was the victim of a crime, but because
she had a secret life and was afraid it would all be revealed, no
matter what she did.