Nowhere Safe (14 page)

September said, “Mrs. Bernstein, how old is Missy now?”

“She just turned seven. Why?”

“I was wondering if I could talk to her and—”

“Not on your life! I can’t believe you people.”

Holding on to her cool, September asked, “Do you know if she ever had any further contact with Mr. Ballonni?”

“She did not. After the gum incident, I watched for him to drive by. Whenever I saw him drop off the mail, I made sure Missy was inside the house. I can’t say I was brokenhearted to learn someone killed him. Assisted suicide?” She made a sound of derision. “I always knew it was murder. It didn’t take the incident with this new guy to tell me that. If you ask me, they’re both pedophiles. Mark my words.”

There was silence after that. September couldn’t think of anything more to say, so she just thanked the woman and hung up. Wes was on the phone when she looked over at him, but George was sitting back in his chair, his gaze on her, a slight smile on his face.

“What?” September asked.

“Your voice got colder and colder. Who was that?”

“One of the mothers on Christopher Ballonni’s mail route believes he was a pedophile. He tried to give her daughter, who’s now seven, a stick of gum.”

“What do you think?”

“She’s hard to listen to, but . . . I don’t know, maybe. I agree with her on one thing—somebody killed him. If someone believed he’d abused their child, I can’t think of a better motive.”

“Huh.”

“She gave me the names of two other women in the file, so I guess I’ll check with them. Chubb canvassed the neighborhood, interviewed most of them already, but maybe I’ll learn something new.”

“What does that say about your stepbrother?” George asked, his brows lifting.

“Nothing good,” September admitted. What
did
that say about Stefan? “I’ve never liked him, but before I start down that road I want to be sure. And George?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s my ex-stepbrother. I would really appreciate it if somebody around here could remember that.”

Wes hung up at that moment and swung around. “Just got off with Dr. Flavel Rolfe. Too early to tell, but all signs point to Carrie committing suicide.”

“Kinda what we thought. What did he say?” September asked.

“It’s what he tried not to say. Didn’t want to reveal anything about her that could help us until I went on about us believing her ex-boyfriend had killed her on purpose.”

“You mean you lied,” September said.

“Oh, yeah. Laid it on thick. Couldn’t tell me anything until he thought we were railroading Dan Quade. Then, he started defending the man. He said Carrie went from crying her eyes out about Dan dumping her, to wanting to get back at him. What’s the best way? The old ‘you’ll be sorry when I’m gone’ stuff. Sounded like he felt Carrie played that card.”

“Wouldn’t she leave a suicide note?” September questioned him.

“Don’t know.” Wes shook his head. “I’ll talk to D’Annibal. See what he wants to do.”

“Jesus Christ!” George suddenly exploded.

Both September and Wes looked over at him. He was sopping up coffee he’d knocked over on his desk, but his eyes were on the computer. “That goddamn Pauline Kirby’s ahead of you guys. I got headlines here. She’s already saying exactly what you just decided, that Carter’s death was a suicide. Bet it’s on the five o’clock news.”

“How?” Wes asked in disbelief. “I just talked to Rolfe.”

“Debra Carter,” September said. “She told us newspeople wanted interviews. She probably took the next call and told them what she thought.”

“Did Kirby mention the ketamine?” Wes asked, looking at George.

“Shit, yeah.” George finished sopping up his coffee.

Wes made a grumbling noise and then stalked across the room with purpose, turning toward the break room.

“Are you leaving?” September called after him.

“Yep. I’m going to interview your stepbrother again, one way or another. Let’s get some traction going before Pauline Kirby does our job for us on that case, too.”

September watched him leave, then slid a look over to George, who raised his hands to ward off what was coming. “He said stepbrother. I didn’t,” he reminded her.

Fun Night started at six
P.M
. and ran until nine. The school parking lot was jammed as Lucky eased to a stop a little after six. She’d never gone to school herself, having been home-schooled, if you could call it that, by her adoptive father, bastard that he was. After his death, she’d wound up in foster care for a very short time, as she didn’t trust either of the families who had taken her in, and she ran away from both of those homes as quickly as she could, disappearing into a world of street kids who lived a vagabond existence in and around Oregon coastal towns.

She recognized there were huge gaps in her education but didn’t care. She wasn’t like other people. Tonight all she wanted was to find the source of the scent she’d picked up, and then she’d get the hell out. Stefan Harmak was at home; she’d cruised by his house first in her black Lycra jogging suit and had been lucky enough to catch him walking by the front window of the house. It just didn’t look like he was leaving. If he showed up, hopefully she would catch his aroma before he saw her. And she also hoped Dave DeForest wouldn’t become too much of a problem, either, but if he did, she would just disappear into the night and he would probably assume her family hadn’t moved into the area after all. There was no way he would connect her with what happened to Stefan earlier . . . or what she had planned for him later tonight.

She was now wearing the same outfit she’d worn when she’d gone to the school this morning. In between her trips to the school she’d changed in a restroom at the train station to her baseball cap, a heavy sweatshirt, and baggy pants to use as a disguise while she bought a disposable cell phone at a Portland convenience store. She’d also teamed that outfit with a pregnancy pad she’d purchased a while back, which she hoped, under the sweatshirt, gave the impression that she was overweight rather than with child. The disguise worked well enough because the guy behind the counter barely looked at her. She’d ditched that outfit and was back to looking like professional Alicia Trent.

Just before she climbed out of the Nissan, she threw another glance at the glove box where she’d stowed not only the .38 but also the stun gun, a pair of binoculars, and another small thermos of sweet dreams, her name for the roofie-laced concoction she’d learned to make. She hoped she would be able to use her preferred methodology on the man she was after, but there were always contingencies.

The cool wind whipped at her hair, which was pulled into a sleek bun. She didn’t want to go inside the school just yet. She’d kind of hoped she could pick up her quarry when he was either going in or coming out, but so far that hadn’t happened. She’d waited until the bulk of the people had arrived in order to stay in her car and just watch without anyone wondering why she didn’t get out. If enough people went by and looked in at her, however, she would have to enter the school, just to keep from drawing too much attention to herself.

Exhaling a long breath, she decided to wait a few minutes more.

“If you aren’t going to call the police again, I will,” Verna stated flatly, turning away from Stefan and toward the house phone.

Stefan felt his blood pressure rise. His mother had been on him all week. He’d told her he’d reported the theft of his van, but though she’d believed him in the beginning, she didn’t anymore. Being stuck together in the house had eroded communication between them. Gone was the Verna who fawned over him. In her place was this other Verna, the one who’d blighted his childhood with mercurial moods that zipped from zero to sixty in one second, his mother changing from sickly sweet over-attention to a fulminating rage so fast it damn near made him dizzy.

“Leave it alone!” he demanded.

“This man took your van. They need to find him AND your van! I can’t believe you’re so complacent!”

“I’m not complacent. You think I want to keep riding in the car with you?”

“You should have told that detective who called. Pelligree.”

“I’m seeing him tomorrow, okay? I told him I would.” Stefan was already trying to think of ways out of that. He couldn’t talk to the police again. They were too knowing. Too searching. And the media was just as bad, but he didn’t have to talk to them if he didn’t want to.

“I’m calling September tonight,” Verna said with conviction. “They all still think you walked to school that morning. Let’s give her the facts.”

“I
did
walk to school,” he said, but it sounded weak even to his own ears. Of course the reason the van was missing was because the bitch had taken it. He’d told Verna that someone must have stolen the van from the driveway at the same time he was being tied up, but that was way too much of a coincidence for her to believe. Over the last few days she’d gone from wanting to believe him to being annoyed and bullying. She just wouldn’t leave him alone. But no matter how much she nagged he’d stuck with the lie rather than admit that he’d been taken at the mall and driven to the school.

He just wanted it all to go away.

And goddamn it, he wanted his van back, but not from the police. He didn’t want them searching through it, maybe finding something he didn’t want them to discover. What if the bitch who’d drugged him had planted some evidence inside?
God.
She would. She’d made him write those words. Who knew what else she was capable of?

“You can’t call September,” Stefan said.

“She’s a member of the family,” Verna snapped out. “I could call August, if you prefer.”

Stefan didn’t like September much, but he distrusted Auggie and March and all the rest of the Raffertys even more. They all had those blue eyes that looked so much alike and stared at him in silent judgment. He’d felt their disdain. He knew how much they detested him, and he detested them right back.

“The Raffertys aren’t family,” he muttered between his teeth.

“Oh, yes they are. And they can help you.”

She swept up her cell phone from where she’d left it on the kitchen counter. He watched as she placed the call and put the cell to her ear.

Then he leapt forward and yanked it away from her, shutting it down.

“Stefan!” She was shocked and dismayed, her mouth opening like a fish.

“Just fucking leave me alone!”

With that he grabbed her keys off the table and slammed outside, breaking into a run for her car.

 

 

By six forty-five Fun Night was going strong. Lucky had gotten back in her car, half afraid to go into the school. She’d cracked her window and had listened to the faint blur of noise from within the school walls. Pulling out the binoculars, she’d lifted them to her eyes only occasionally, afraid someone would spy her. She could see the guard near the door and the table that was set up just inside with several women manning it, selling strings of tickets to . . . what, she wasn’t sure. Games? Food? Prizes? Maybe all of the above.

Headlights washed over her car as another vehicle suddenly entered the lot. She barely had time to drop the binoculars, and feeling exposed, she got out of the Sentra again, pretending she’d just arrived. The car, a black Volvo sedan, circled around the lot, looking for a spot.

Her breath caught when he pulled up behind her as she pretended to be locking the car in preparation for going inside. She’d pulled on her black raincoat and the hood covered her head and obscured the sides of her face.

“Are you leaving?” the man behind the wheel asked hopefully.

“Sorry.” She remote locked the car until it beeped at her.

He lifted a hand and moved on, but Lucky didn’t think she could risk getting back in her car one more time, so she walked on leaden feet toward the school. As she approached, the hairs on her arms lifted.
He’s here,
she thought.
In the school.

If she got close enough, brushed against him, she would know who he was for certain, though she preferred to keep her distance until she was ready to make her move. Sometimes, she got too close too early. If that happened and he noticed her too much, she played off the feeling as if it were a mutual attraction, something they both felt. She would stare at her mark with wide, eager eyes, trying to seem more childlike and naive, attempting to tap into their sick desire. She was way too old for them, but she sure would catch their attention. That generally allowed enough time for her to put a plan into action.

But at the school? How was this going to work?

The women selling tickets looked up at her with big smiles as she entered the school. “Hello, there,” one said. “How many tickets do you want? Twenty dollars worth?”

“Sure,” Lucky said. Beside the table was a poster on an easel that depicted a big red thermometer with lines where numerical amounts were listed. The bulb at the bottom was full, but the neck of the thermometer was still empty, stopping short of the ten-thousand-dollar mark.

“Our goal is twenty-five thousand before the end of the year,” the other woman said as the first one took Lucky’s twenty-dollar bill and handed her a string of tickets. “This and the spring auction are our biggest fund-raisers.”

“Be sure and go to the cakewalk,” the first woman urged. “One of our families owns Laurelton Bakery and all the cakes come from there.”

“It’s one of our most popular attractions,” the other one chimed in.

“Cakewalk,” Lucky repeated, mystified.

“Just go straight on down to the end of the hall and turn right. It’s in the west wing.”

Lucky did as she was told. She felt naked and exposed in the sea of parents and children clogging the hallway. The parents were talking in clumps, and the kids were running from room to room, being constantly told to slow down.

Her whole being was alert. The sensation that had lifted the hairs on her arm hadn’t dissipated, but neither had it increased.

Pop rock music emanated from the room where the cakewalk was held. Lucky paused in the doorway and watched adults and children moving in a circle, stepping from one numbered, plastic footprint stuck on the floor to another. Other people stood by in a line, waiting their turn apparently. Suddenly the music stopped and everyone jumped on a footprint and expectantly looked at the man in front.

“Okay,” he yelled. He had fine wisps of hair covering a mostly bald head and he wore a huge smile. Reaching into a deep, cylindrical metal jar, he pulled out a ping-pong ball with a number on it. “Seventeen,” he cried, and a little girl with pigtails started jumping up and down and shrieking, “It’s me! It’s me!”

“Well, go on and pick somethin’ out,” he said to her.

The girl ran forward, abandoning the number seventeen footprint, and raced to a long table where an array of cakes stood by. “That one!” the girl cried, pointing to a cake in the shape of a jack-o’-lantern with a candy corn mouth and black gumdrop eyes.

“Good choice,” a woman said, from behind the table. She quickly boxed up the cake and handed it to the child. “Better take this to Mom or Dad,” she said. As soon as the child was gone, she pulled out another box from a stack against the back wall, set it on the table and pulled out a cake from inside, placing it in the space left by the jack-o’-lantern one. This one was a square sheet cake with a skull on it in black icing.

“I want that one!” a boy declared, as the people who’d been walking in the circle departed and the people waiting in line took their places.

On their way out, the people who hadn’t won were each handed a small plastic toy, apparently as a consolation prize. Lucky moved forward with the next round, intending to sit out the game, but another young girl said, “Get on your number or they won’t do it!”

She opened her mouth to protest and felt heads swiveling her way. Feeling like she was having an out of body experience, she walked around the circle as the up-tempo music played. Suddenly the music cut out. She looked down and was standing on number twenty-six.

She watched the man in front plunge his arm into the metal cylinder and wondered if she could just leave her footprint.

“Number twenty-five!” he yelled.

The woman in front of Lucky let out a shriek of delight and danced her way to the table, picking up a cake with pink and lavender flowers, while Lucky felt her jumping pulse slowly return to normal. This was too much of an attention-getter.

She filed out with the rest of the losers, a little rattled. If she’d won it would have been a disaster. This was what came from walking in unprepared. She needed to go back outside and hope she could pick up her quarry’s trail from the safety of her car. She was picking up her consolation prize, a little green alien, when she heard, “Hello, Mrs. Trent.”

Sucking in a breath, she turned to see Dave DeForest. He was smiling at her, but there was a tightness to it that worried her until she saw that a woman was clinging to his arm. Ah, the wife had made it after all.