Nowhere Safe (8 page)

“What did the detective say?” he asked again.

With a sigh, Janet gave in. “There was another incident like your dad’s, only that guy lived.”

“What do you mean?”

Reluctantly, she told him about the man who’d been tied to the pole at the school. “His name’s Steven Harmer, or something like that, but I suppose now they’ll rake it all up again.”

“Jesus, that’s what Jamie meant.”

Jamie was his girlfriend. A sneaky little junior high horror story, if ever there was one. “What did Jamie say?” she asked, trying to keep the snarl from her voice.

“She saw it on the news. Some guy zip-tied to a pole at Twin Oaks. Left in his boxers, like Dad. They said it was a prank.”

“Well, the detective said they think both this Steven Harmer or Harner and your dad were
targeted
by the same person.” She got some perverse satisfaction out of watching the color drain from her son’s face. “You can tell Jamie it was no prank. There’s some crazy man out there, randomly attacking people, and he killed your dad.” She sniffled, calling up some real tears. She’d loved Chris. She really had. It just made her so mad sometimes that he hadn’t gone for that promotion. He could have been the postmaster of the West Laurelton office if he’d just tried a little harder. Had she nagged him? A little, maybe, but Chris had always needed a push. And wasn’t that what wives were for?

“Why?” her son asked her. “What’s this other guy’s name again? Steven what?” He was already turning away.

“I can’t remember exactly. It started with an
H
.” Then, as he pulled his cell phone from a pocket of his low-riding jeans, she said, exasperated, “You’re going to go look it up on your phone, aren’t you?”

“On the Internet,” he answered.

She wanted to throw something. Chris Jr.’s last birthday gift had been a smartphone—his father’s idea, and a bad one, as far as Janet was concerned. It gave him all the more reason to ignore her and half the time she wanted to snatch it out of his hands and throw it away. Except it was expensive.

“Don’t step on that plate,” she called after him. “And bring it back here.”

Maybe she should stop paying his phone bill. She had a phone, too, but what junior high kid needed all that access? Just something to get him into trouble, and besides, without Chris’s paycheck they had to be careful, despite the life insurance policy she’d taken out on him. Oh, sure, he’d laughed at her and made her feel stupid for getting such a big policy on him, but who got the last laugh, huh?

With that thought, she picked up her own cell phone and Googled Verizon. Clicking on the number, she idly picked up a cookie and munched away as she was waiting to be put through. My, but they were good! She could go into the business, if she had a mind to.

“Hi, this is Janet Ballonni, and I’d like to cancel my son’s cell service,” she began as soon as someone picked up, only to realize it was a recorded message.

“Sure, I’ll hold,” she snarled at the music coming through.

It took
forever
before she got through to the billing department, and what do you know, they wouldn’t help her at all because she wasn’t the primary account holder! She screamed at them that her husband was dead and then they had a helluva nerve asking her for a death certificate. “I’ll bring it to your store tomorrow!” she shrieked, just as she heard the front door slam again. Hurrying to her post at the curtains, she saw her son walk rapidly down the driveway and then disappear down the street.

She was so angry, she hardly knew what to do. “I’ll have to call you back!” she finally declared in frustration, slamming down the receiver and hurrying out the front door into a windy afternoon. She walked rapidly to the end of the drive and looked up and down the street.

Chris Jr. was nowhere to be seen.

 

 

“The Foxglove Park vic’s name is Carrie Lynne Carter. She’s suffered from depression on and off for years, according to her mother,” Wes said as September entered the squad room.

George piped up. “Wes and I got the information.”

“How?” September asked, dropping her messenger bag on her desk. She could take it back to her locker later.

Wes gave George a look. “I checked with the neighbors. Found out that one of them, Mrs. Debra Carter, was on vacation, but that she had a daughter about the right age and right description.”

“So, I left a message at the Carter home,” George said before Wes could go on. “Asked them to call and she just did.”

“You didn’t deliver this news in person?” September questioned George, a note of incredulity entering her voice.

“I did,” Wes said. He turned from George but the look in his eyes revealed his disgust at the man. “Just got back. Mrs. Carter was in a state.”

“I didn’t tell her anything,” George defended himself.

“You didn’t have to.” Wes’s tone was cool. “She knew her daughter wasn’t there.”

“Okay,” September said, hoping to ease the tension. “What did Mrs. Carter say?” she asked Wes.

“Carrie lives with her. She had a boyfriend who recently broke up with her, and Carrie was depressed. Her mother’s pretty sure it’s suicide but almost hopes it’s foul play.”

“Tox screen still not in?” September asked.

“Nah.”

They knew Carrie had ingested some kind of antidepressant, but the finer details were yet to be determined. “Did Mrs. Carter say Carrie had been prescribed something?”

“Xanax, maybe. One of those. She wasn’t sure, but Carrie was definitely taking something, so she probably overdosed on her prescription. There aren’t any bottles around, apparently.”

“Why aren’t there any bottles?” September asked.

“She must have gotten rid of them herself. She was kind of sneaky about taking her meds.”

“Her mom said that, too?”

“Yep.”

“So J.J.’s ruling it a suicide,” September said.

Wes nodded. J.J. was what everyone called Joe Journey, the county coroner. He was brusque and crusty, but September got along with him okay. Not so her old partner, Gretchen Sandler, who irked J.J. to no end and vice versa. But then what else was new?

“What happened with the Ballonni widow?” Wes asked.

“Nothing new,” September answered. “She thought we were investigating a sex-role-playing angle. Something she saw on TV? Like a series that also ran in the newspapers?”

“It had nothing to do with the case,” George said from across the room. Both of them looked at him but neither of them said anything. George, though, true to form, ignored their silent condemnation and said, “That was just one of those
Dateline
-like reports on sex games one of the local stations ran. Maybe it came out about the same time Ballonni died, but it didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Mrs. Ballonni thinks one of Chris’s coworkers, Gloria del Courte, was the one behind the story.”

“Total bullshit,” George said.

“Why would she think that?” Wes asked.

“She says del Courte had a thing for her husband. Her name’s not listed anywhere, so I don’t know if she was interviewed,” September added, searching in her messenger bag for the file. “Janet Ballonni seems kind of . . . unwilling to believe anything bad about her husband.” She related the part about the gum giving. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Bernstein on his old route, and Gloria del Courte, see if there’s anything there. I tried to get her to let me talk to her son, but she refused.”

“How old is he?” Wes asked.

“Junior high-ish.” September looked in the file. “Thirteen.”

Wes thought about it a minute. “Was he there when you interviewed her?”

“He wasn’t back from school yet.”

“Try going to see her again when he’s there. That age of kid . . . he could just override her and talk to you anyway.”

“Or, run and hide from the law,” George said.

Wes shrugged. “You never know what the hell you’re going to get.”

“Okay,” September said. She would have liked to talk to Chris without his mother around, but there were rules about minors that needed to be obeyed. “Did you meet with Stefan?” she asked.

Wes shook his head. “Tried to, but he’s a slippery kind of guy. Always putting me off. I went to his house and a news crew was camped outside.”

“Uh-oh.” September made a face.

“Had to call the home phone, since our doer stole his cell. Talked to his mother.”

“Uh-oh, again.”

“Yeah, well. She wouldn’t let me talk to Stefan, though he was there, I’m pretty sure. The principal, Lazenby, sent him home, indefinitely it appears, as he didn’t even attempt to go to the school today.”

“She probably doesn’t want the news vans at the school,” September said. “Or, maybe Stefan needs more time off.”

“A little of both, probably. Anyway, I told his mother to have him call me, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“It won’t,” September predicted. “You’re going to have to track him down.”

“You know, there’s no garage at their house, and there’s only one car, a Chevrolet Impala.”

“I think that’s Verna’s car.”

“I was just wondering where his car was. It doesn’t appear to be on the street anywhere, and it’s not on the grounds.”

“Good question,” September said, reviewing her conversation with Stefan at the hospital. “He said he walked to the school Tuesday morning.”

“Do you know what he drives?” Wes asked.

She shook her head. “We’ll have to look it up.”

“I’m going to ask him about it, among other things, but I gotta get in the door first.”

“I’d offer to help, but he’d rather see me even less than you.”

“And D’Annibal doesn’t want you on the case.”

“And D’ Annibal doesn’t want me on the case,” she agreed.

“It’s a white Ford van,” George said, from across the room. He rattled off the license plate number and Wes went back to his desk, picked up the small notebook he carried at all times and wrote it down.

An hour and a half later, September packed it in at the station and headed to Jake’s house. She was almost there when she turned around and veered toward her old apartment. She had a couple of months left on her lease and it had helped her drag her feet on the move over to his place. Not that she didn’t want to go there. She did. She was doing it this weekend, come hell or high water.

But it didn’t mean she wasn’t deep down scared of the commitment. Jake’s long-term relationship with Loni was something to consider. It was over now. Jake definitely wanted it to be over, but it had bounced back and forth between them for over a decade. And though September knew Jake really cared about her, loved her, even, she didn’t trust that his feelings would last. Loni, for good or for bad, had burrowed a place in his heart that maybe even he didn’t understand how deep. September had been jilted for Loni once already, back in high school. Maybe Jake was completely free of her, or maybe he wasn’t. He thought he was; that was for sure, but September had spent a lot of years protecting her heart and she wasn’t fool enough to ignore the possibility of a relapse. Some couples thrived on unhealthy relationships. Maybe Jake wasn’t as immune to that as he thought.

She walked up the front steps. She still got a jolt or two of pain from her wound when she moved too fast, but she was getting better daily. She didn’t have to move quite so gingerly. Another week and she might be damn near back to fighting form.

Inside her apartment, the place felt cold and damp. Quickly, she turned on some lights to dispel the twilight gloom. She looked around the kitchen and living room, then walked down the hall to her bedroom, staring at her queen-size bed. Jake wanted to move it to his spare room.

Moving in with him. . . . A shiver ran through her. She was thrilled and scared at the same time.

She walked back to the kitchen and then the living room. Opening up the square chest she used as an end table, she pulled out the quilt her grandmother, Meemaw, had made for her. It was the one possession that truly mattered to her, and she tucked it under her arm as she left.

In her Pilot, she pulled out her cell phone from her messenger bag and put another call in to her brother. Preparing herself for his voice mail, she swallowed back the complaint on the tip of her tongue when Auggie answered on the fourth ring. “Wow, you’re alive,” she said instead.

“Alive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, or move your bed to Jake’s, whichever comes first. How are you doing, Nine?”

“Fine. Good. Pretty damn good, actually,” she added with a smile. What was she so worried about?

“Liv’ll come with me on Saturday, and maybe we can go out and get something to eat afterward?”

“God, a double date? Have we ever done that?” she asked her twin.

“No. You didn’t date, remember?”

“Neither did you.”

“I dated,” he protested.

“You just ‘had women.’ Not the same thing.” Until Olivia Dugan had entered his life, Auggie had been the proverbial love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy, more interested in his dangerous career than romantic relationships, an adrenaline junkie, for sure, and in that he hadn’t changed much.

“How about that Thai restaurant right by your place. Where is it?”

“On Pilkington. But it’s a ways from Jake’s,” she reminded him.

“But it’s good.”

“Hey, I’m in. You’re helping me move, I’ll even buy.”

“Wow.”

Although Auggie seemed ready and willing to help her move, she knew deep down he thought she was moving too fast with Jake, someone they’d both known most of their lives, as Jake’s father, Nigel Westerly, had worked for Braden Rafferty at one time, running the Willows for many years before he’d bought his own vineyard and had gone into competition.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“I know. Thanks, anyway. Did you know I’m back at work?”