Open Season (29 page)

He hesitated, then told her the truth. “For a while. Then money problems start kicking in. Deputies can’t be indefinitely assigned to guard duty.”

“Then unless I can make a positive identification of
one of the three men from police photos, or they happen to solve the crime and it was someone else entirely, we’re looking at a long-term situation.”

He nodded, his gaze holding hers. He wished she hadn’t made such an accurate assessment, but she was too intelligent and well read not to have eventually figured it out anyway. Watching her expressive face, he could practically read the thoughts chasing through her mind.

“Don’t borrow trouble; we’ve got enough to handle right now. We’ll do this one step at the time. “You make the statement, give them descriptions of the three men, and we’ll take it from there.”

“All right, but for now, I don’t just want my family guarded, I want them
gone.”
She turned to Evelyn. “How about a week in the Smokies? You and Aunt Jo, and Beth’s entire family”

“I’m not leaving you with this going on!” Evelyn said fiercely.

“I’ll be safer if you do,” Daisy pointed out, with irrefutable logic.

Evelyn hesitated, torn between common sense and a mother’s instinct to fight for her child.

“For one thing,” Daisy continued, “guarding one person would be much easier for the police than guarding seven. For another, I won’t be distracted if I know you’re safe, so I won’t be as likely to make any mistakes.”

“She’s right,” Jack said, throwing his weight behind her arguments. “Pack up and leave town as fast as you can. I can assign a couple of officers to guard you until you do, and have the Huntsville department do the same for Beth’s family.”

“What about the puppy?” Evelyn looked down at
Midas, who was gnawing on one of the chair legs. “Who will take care of him?”

Daisy followed her gaze and swooped down on him. “Midas, no, no,” she said sternly, picking him up. If her tone of voice registered with him, it wasn’t evident from the joyous wiggling, tail-wagging, and licking with which he welcomed her attention. “I’m obviously not going to work for the duration, so I’ll take care of him.”

Evelyn said, “Midas, huh?” in a tone that said she had accepted, however reluctantly, the need to leave her daughter in Jack’s care.

Daisy brushed her nose against the plush fur to hide the sudden tears that welled in her eyes. “Jack named him. It was either that or
Fuzzbutt.”

Jack moved forward before the scene got uncomfortably emotional. “Ladies, you have a lot of preparations to make. I’ll make some calls; Mrs. Minor, two of my officers will be waiting for you when you get home.”

“Goodness,” she said, reaching for the phone. “I’d better warn Jo.”

Thirty seconds later, she was heading out the door. Jack said, “Call Beth and tell her to start packing. Would Nathan already be at work?”

“No, he’s on second shift.”

“Good. I’ll call Huntsville and get some protection on them right away. If he has any problems reporting off with his employer, let me know and I’ll get the okay.”

Evelyn was nodding as she went down the porch steps. She suddenly stopped and turned back to him. “There’s one thing I want you to know.”

“What?” he asked warily, put on guard by the narrowing of her eyes.

“I make a darn good mother-in-law, if I do say so
myself. But I’ll make an even better enemy, if you let anything happen to my daughter.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, understanding completely.

Daisy stared after her mother, her eyes round with surprise. “She just threatened you,” she said incredulously.

“And very well, too.”

“Um . . . that thing about a mother-in-law—”

“We’ll talk about it later. Go get ready.” He rubbed a rough hand over his jaw, making a rasping sound. “Mind if I borrow your razor? I don’t want to leave you to go home and shave.”

Daisy got ready while he was on the phone in her bedroom. She kept leaning out of the bathroom trying to hear what he was saying, but couldn’t make out many of the words. Finally she gave up and concentrated on what she was doing, staring at herself in the mirror and feeling as if none of this was real. She was ordinary Daisy Minor, a librarian who had lived her whole life in this little town. People like her didn’t expect things like this to ever happen to them. But she had decided to go husband-hunting, and now someone was hunting her. It was open season all around.

Jack came into the bathroom. “Okay, everything’s set with your family. My officers will escort your mother and aunt to Beth’s house. They should all be out of reach within a couple of hours.”

“Good.” She leaned forward and applied some lip gloss, then stepped back. “The bathroom’s yours. The razor’s in the medicine cabinet.”

He looked down at Midas, who of course had followed them and was now plopped on his belly, chewing on Jack’s shoelaces. “You have a crate to put him in while we’re gone, don’t you?”

“No, but that’s okay.” She bent down to separate puppy and shoes. “We’re taking him with us,” she said as she left to get dressed.

Temple lingered over his breakfast of freshly squeezed orange juice and a bagel with cream cheese. Usually he left the house by eight-thirty, but by eight-forty-five he still hadn’t left. Patricia, their cook and housekeeper, left the kitchen to tidy the bedrooms and do the laundry.

Jennifer didn’t eat; she seldom did, but usually it was because her stomach was too queasy from her drinking the day before. Today the queasiness was caused by jagged nerves. She sat silently, drinking a cup of coffee and wishing she could add just a dash of whiskey to it, but she didn’t dare. If she added one dash, she’d add two, and soon she’d leave out the coffee altogether. Her hands were shaking, and she clasped them around her cup, willing the shakes to stop, praying Temple would leave soon because she didn’t know how much longer she could last.

He didn’t speak to her, but then he seldom did. They lived in the same house, but their lives were almost completely separate. He no longer told her when there were social functions she might have been expected to attend as the mayor’s wife; he no longer told her anything, not where he was going or when she could expect him back. He didn’t tell her the details of his day; if one of the kids called him, he didn’t even tell her that, though she knew from things they had said that they called him regularly. They must be calling him at work, she thought, because they never called here.

She might already have lost them beyond recovery,
she thought, and swallowed the nausea that welled up on a bubble of pain. Her babies . . . they were grown, now, but part of a mother always remembered that time when they had just come from her body, when they were so tiny and helpless and she was their entire world, and they were hers.

Her children were ashamed of her. They didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t want to be around her. Temple had done this, but he’d done it with her help. She had sought refuge in a bottle instead of facing the truth: the man she loved didn’t love her, had never loved her, would never love her. She was a means to an end for him. She should have taken the children and left him, and no matter how nasty the divorce got—and it would have gotten nasty, she trusted Temple on that—at least she would have had her pride, and her children wouldn’t look at her with contempt.

Jennifer looked at the clock. Five till nine. Why was he staying so long?

The phone rang, startling her. Temple got up and answered it on the cordless, taking it with him into his office and shutting the door.

So that was why: he’d been waiting for a phone call.

Shakily she took her cup of coffee upstairs to her bedroom, closing and locking the door. Patricia had already made the bed and tidied her bathroom. Jennifer sat down on the bed and looked at the telephone. If she picked up now, Temple would hear the click; when she listened in, she always picked up just as he did, and she covered the mouthpiece with her hand so no noise would leak through.

Her heart pounded. She lifted the receiver and started punching buttons, as if she were making a call.
She didn’t even put the receiver to her ear, and she heard Temple shouting, “Jennifer! Damn it, I’m already on the phone.”

“W-what?” she stammered, slurring her voice just a little. Maybe he’d think she had started drinking before she came downstairs. “S-sorry. I was just calling;—”

“I don’t give a damn. Get off the line.”

She heard a chuckle on the other end, a deep laugh that made her go cold and every hair on her body lift in alarm. Elton Phillips.

“Sorry,” she said again, then placed her hand over the mouthpiece and quickly clicked the button to make it sound as if she’d hung up.

“The stupid bitch,” Temple muttered. “Sorry about that.”

“That’s all right,” Phillips said, and laughed again. “You didn’t marry her for her brain.”

“That’s for damn sure. If I had, I’d be shit out of luck, because she doesn’t have one.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if she’s the only one whose bulb doesn’t glow all that brightly. You’ve made several mistakes lately yourself.”

“I know. I apologize, Mr. Phillips. Sykes has everything under control.”

“That remains to be seen. The Russian girls will be here tomorrow morning, and I want Mr. Sykes’s full attention on handling the shipment. If he doesn’t take care of this librarian problem before then, I’ll be very unhappy.”

Belatedly, Jennifer remembered that the answering machine function built into the phone included a “call record.” She blinked at the base unit, looking for the correct button. It had to be with the other function buttons. PLAY, DELETE, PAUSE—there it was: CALL RECORD.
She depressed the little red button and prayed that it didn’t make a noise or beep a warning.

“He’ll grab her when she leaves the library for lunch, or when she goes home this afternoon. She’ll just disappear. When Sykes handles something personally, there aren’t any problems.”

“Really? Then why was Mitchell’s body found so fast?”

“Sykes didn’t handle it. He stayed behind at the club to find out who had seen them in the parking lot. The other two were the ones who handled the body.”

“A
mistake on Mr. Sykes’s part.”

“Yes.”

“Then this is his last chance. And yours.”

Phillips abruptly hung up, and Jennifer almost cut the connection on her end. She waited, though, waited for a couple of long seconds. Why didn’t Temple hang up? She sat with her finger poised on the button. Was he waiting to see if he heard a betraying click? Cold sweat trickled down her spine.

Finally the line clicked, and in the next split second she disconnected, too, returning the receiver to the hook. She dashed across the room to unlock her door, then ran into the bathroom and quickly squeezed some tooth-paste on her toothbrush, turned on the water, and began brushing for all she was worth. Temple never came to her bedroom; she was panicking for no reason—

The bathroom door opened and Temple said, “What in hell—”

She jumped and shrieked, spewing toothpaste all over the sink. She was so shaky that she lost her balance and stumbled backward, colliding with the toilet and almost falling over it, but she managed to grab the tank and steady herself, sitting down hard on the lid.

Temple eyed her with disgust. “For God’s sake, you haven’t even had breakfast and already you’re drinking.”

With a trembling hand she wiped the toothpaste off her mouth and didn’t say anything. Let him think she was drunk; that was safer.

“Who were you calling?”

She indicated her hair, accidentally swiping the toothbrush against the side of her head. “I need my hair done.”

“No joke. Next time, make sure I’m not using the phone before you pick up and just start punching numbers.” He didn’t wait to see if she agreed; he just turned around and left. Jennifer rested her head against the sink, taking deep breaths and trying to slow her pulse rate. When she felt steady enough, she got up and washed her face, rinsed out her mouth, then used a washcloth to wipe the toothpaste out of her hair.

She hadn’t turned off the answering machine recorder. She went back into her bedroom; Temple had left the door open, so she went over and closed it again, then went to the phone and stopped the recording.

That little tape was golden. The question was, what did she do with it? Who could she take it to? Temple had often said that the new police chief, Russo, was “his” boy, meaning he had Russo in his pocket. He’d been glad when old Chief Beason retired, because Beason had been around a long time and had his nose poked into too many things, knew too many secrets. It remained to be seen if Russo was as blind as Temple thought him to be, but Jennifer couldn’t take the chance right now. It was too important that she get this right.

She stayed in her room another half hour, then went downstairs to see if Temple had left. He wasn’t in his office, so she checked the garage; his car was gone.

Finally! Seating herself at his desk, she looked up the number for the library and quickly dialed it.

“Hillsboro Public Library.”

Jennifer took a calming breath. “May I speak to Daisy Minor, please? This is Jennifer Nolan.”

“I’m sorry, but Daisy isn’t working today. This is Kendra Owens; may I help you with something?”

Dear Lord, now what? “Is she at home? Can I reach her there?”

“Well, I don’t know. Her mother said she had a toothache, so she’s probably at the dentist’s office.”

“Do you know which dentist she uses?” Jennifer felt her control slipping. She needed a drink so bad. No. No, she did
not
need a drink; she needed to concentrate on what she was doing.

“No, I don’t.”

“This is important, damn it! Think! I need to get in touch with her immediately, someone is going to try to kill her.”

“Excuse me? Ma’am? What did you say?”

“You heard me!” Jennifer clenched the receiver so tightly her knuckles turned white. “You have to find her! I heard my husband on the phone talking to a man named Sykes who’s going to kill her, unless I can warn her first.”

“Maybe you’d better call the police—”

Jennifer slammed down the phone and buried her face in her hands. Now what? Dentists. How many dentists could there by in Hillsboro? Not many, but what if Daisy went to a dentist in, say, Fort Payne? Or Scottsboro?