Orchids and Stone (13 page)

Inside, Vic pushed a button on the blinking answering machine. Its mechanical voice said, “Message one.” Frances Mayfield had implored her daughter to call, to come visit. Daphne deleted the message.

“Message two.” Then a woman’s voice said, “Mr. Daily, this is Seattle Police Dispatch. I’m relaying a question for one of our officers at a scene regarding your vehicle. Are you there?”

After a pause, the line went dead and the message stopped. The machine clicked and said “Message three,” in its stilted, careful English.

At the sound of his own voice asking Daphne to pick up if she was there, Vic hit delete.

“Message four.” The machine’s repetitive, electronic syllables made Daphne want to scream.

Then there was a man talking, his voice low and snarling. “You get it now? Something from ten years ago can come back and bite you in the ass.”

CHAPTER 12

Daphne recoiled from the telephone, then rallied and punched the button to replay the last message.

Vic rubbed his scalp. In the living room, Jed turned the television up as the answering machine again voiced the electronic comment, “Message four.” And then a man’s snarl repeated. “You get it now? Something from ten years ago can come back and bite you in the ass.”

“Who is that?” Vic asked.

She shook her head.

“You don’t know?” His hands made fists on his hips.

She frowned and hit the message again, thinking of Guff rushing her at Minerva Watts’s doorway. His words, his tone filtered back.

You. Stand there. Hold up.

One hand went to her right shoulder, remembering his grip on her jacket though she stood coatless in the kitchen now. Daphne hit the machine and played the message again. Low, the voice snarled its vague threatening words. A bit of menace. It sounded like someone disguising his voice, but it didn’t sound like the man she’d seen carrying a box, Guff. No. Guff, the man who grabbed her and chased her, hadn’t called the house and left this message.

Daphne shook her head. “Something from ten years ago? That doesn’t make sense.” Her father’s suicide, a decade past, reamed her mind with new confusion. Nothing made sense.

“Then what would that guy be talking about, Daph?”

“I don’t know. But do you believe me now? This guy Guff grabbed me. That woman called Minerva Watts
lady
at first but then called her
Mother
. Said it was time for her pill. Minerva asked her not to take—”

“Daphne!”

“What?”

“What does that have to do with something . . . ,” he pointed at the phone, “from ten years ago biting you in the ass?”

“I don’t know! How should I know? Maybe it’s a message for you, not me. What did you do ten years ago? I didn’t even know you then.”

He shook his head. “Ten years ago, I had two little ones and a bad marriage and I’d just gotten my job at the Weather Service.”

“So in ten more years you can retire and you’re all set.” As soon as she snapped off her retort, she regretted it.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “And you. Ten years ago, you lost your father.”

“I didn’t lose him. I know where he is. Just outside the church grounds. Just . . . not with his daughter.”

“Daphne, what is going on?”

“You know what? The first thing you said to me was that I missed Josie’s game. And you already knew I was in an accident. You should have asked first if I was okay.”

“I could see that you were okay. Come on. We don’t want to fight.”

“Oh, I think I do.”

He looked away, working his jaw muscles.

She folded her arms across her chest. “And that guy took my jacket, so he has my wallet. I have to get my mother . . . I don’t know. Out of the house. She’s playing bridge right now. But I have to go over there.”

He grabbed her hand, then turned his wrist to check his watch. “But I need your truck so I can take Jed back to his mother’s. We’re late. I called Cassandra before we came home and asked for an extra hour, because I wanted to run home to check on you. I wanted to see if you were here. You weren’t answering your phone.”

“That guy got it when he took my jacket.” Daphne replayed the quick conflict in her mind again, then remembered the wreck, the jail. The unfairness of it all brought tears to her eyes, but their appearance was infuriating. She wiped her face.

“But from the way you describe it, he was just sort of holding on to your jacket and you slipped out of it.”

“And then he chased me, Vic. You know, I think Minerva Watts’s grandmother’s brooch was in that box Guff was carrying. He put it in the car.”

“Do you hear yourself? Where in the world did that come from?”

“The box that guy Guff was carrying.” Daphne snapped out of her numbness, “Look, whose side are you on?”

“Yours.” He looked behind her and smiled. “I’m on your side.”

Daphne turned. Seeing Jed behind her, she wondered how long he’d been there, how much he’d overheard.

“What’s going on?” the boy asked.

“Oh, we just got an odd message on the machine, buddy. That’s all,” Vic said with a shrug. “You haven’t used the phone, have you, bud?”

Jed shook his head. Vic nodded and said, “Go get in the truck and I’ll run you back to your mom’s house.”

After the boy stepped outside, Vic turned to Daphne and snapped his fingers. “Have you been on the phone since you came home?”

She nodded. “When I was upstairs, I tried to call my mother to warn her.”

“About this weird phone message?”

“No, about a guy having my wallet. Her address is on my ID.”

“Okay, but we haven’t received any calls, right? Nothing incoming? You haven’t answered the phone?”

She shook her head, excited as she understood what he was thinking. They could uncover who left the message. There was a way.

Vic nodded. “Then we’ll just dial star sixty-nine on the phone and get the phone number of the last incoming call. I don’t think outgoing calls affect the ability to get the number of the last caller. And the last incoming call is from the man who left that message.” He pointed to the answering machine.

She snatched the phone from him and he spread his fingers in a gesture of submission. Then she dialed three numbers and asked for a police officer, explaining that someone had her wallet and had grabbed her and chased her and now she had come home to a threatening phone call. And then she rolled her eyes at the dispatcher’s vague answer of how long it might be before a police officer would come to her house and hear her complaint.

“What are you doing?” Vic asked when she hung up the phone.

“I get one chance to dial star sixty-nine and see who the last caller is, right? I want a police officer to witness it. I mean, suppose we get a phone call right now? Suppose Thea calls or anybody else. It’ll show her as the last caller and we’ll lose getting to know who phoned in this threat.”

“You think it’s a threat?”

“It’s pretty weird, isn’t it? So, I’m going to get a police officer here and he can hear with us who left that last message. And maybe he’ll do something about it. I’ll be a complainant,” she told Vic, gesturing toward the telephone. Her head pounded. Nothing made sense, but she needed to articulate things. She would begin at the beginning with the next police officer and leave nothing out. He would see it. He would understand. He would find what was missing. Maybe it would be a female officer. Yes, that would be better. Daphne nodded. “It’s just like yesterday when I called the police, I mean when you called, about those people taking Minerva Watts. I mean when they took her again today, it was like that.”

“Her daily kidnapping?” Vic flipped one hand in a doubtful wave.

“What?”

“Well, it doesn’t make sense.” He cupped her face with both hands. “Yesterday you see this couple with this older woman in the park and they go to a car. She says she’s being robbed and kidnapped. Today you see the same thing. And you still believe there’s really something wrong even though—”

“You weren’t there. If you’d been there, you’d know.”

“I’d know what?”

“That there is something wrong. Something’s going on. She said it was her grandmother’s brooch—”

He waved her off, his face perplexed. “What brooch?”

“I didn’t see it but—”

“Exactly. You didn’t see it. She wasn’t making sense. She’s a failing little old lady. She’s Grazie without the fur.” He stopped himself and rolled his lips in, then closed his eyes before continuing. “All I’m saying is, I want you to think about what you saw, what you’ve told us.”

“Us?”

“Me. The police. Thea.”

She nodded, her jaw set. “Because all of you understand there’s nothing wrong and Minerva Watts is perfectly safe and I’m the one who’s wrong here?”

“Daph, please. People do not get kidnapped one day and then again the next. By the same people? At about the same place? That is not kidnapping. That is a couple trying to handle an old lady in their lives.”

“Then why’d he chase me?”

He spread his hands wide. “Why did you run from him? Isn’t that why he chased you? Wouldn’t you do the same, instinctively? If someone is at our front door”—he pointed to it—“and that person suddenly runs . . .” He gave a dismissive one-handed wave for explanation.

“No. No, Vic. And you know what? I am not feeling very safe with you, not with your attitude toward what happened to me today.”

The front door opened and Jed stepped inside, accidentally bumping Grazie, who rested against the door like weather stripping. She struggled to her feet then collapsed, panting in pain.

“I think,” Vic said, leaning over to calm the dog as Daphne knelt. “I think I have to put her down.”

“No!” Daphne gritted her teeth, regretting her screech.

Jed patted the dog’s head, then pushed his hands deep in his front pockets. “Don’t put her down. Just don’t. But Dad, are you coming? Mom’s going to be mad if I’m even later getting back.” He twisted his lower lip and looked at the dog. “Is she okay?”

A knock at the door made them all scramble, including Grazie.

“Who’s here?” the boy asked, not calling through the door but looking at Vic and Daphne for an answer.

“I would seriously love to have just one thing going on instead of ten,” Daphne said, sliding Grazie away from the door and rising to twist the knob. “Hello,” she said, waving the short uniformed man with a red crew cut into the house. “You got here fast.”

“In the area,” he said. “What can I do for you? You’ve had a suspicious telephone call?”

“Dad, what’s going on?”

“Jed, go grab the registration to Daphne’s truck out of the glove box for me.” Vic opened the door and shooed his son outside again. Then he turned to Daphne and stroked her shoulder. “Begin at the beginning?”

The cop eyed them in turn. “A threat on the phone? Is this related to the little pickup outside?”

“Threat on the phone, yes,” Daphne said.

“Related to the truck, no,” Vic said, sliding his arm all the way across her shoulders.

She felt herself relax into the warmth of his chest, told herself she’d had the third worst day of her life and that’s why nothing clicked, but it felt good to have Vic’s body against hers. She played the message for the officer several times, confirming for him she had no idea who the caller was or what the reference to ten years ago could be about. Then she told him about the woman in the park and the claims of kidnapping and robbery, about seeing the couple take Minerva Watts to a car, about reporting it to the police yesterday. Then she told him about going to the address Thea found today, and what the couple said, and all about the grabbing and chasing and hiding. About chasing them with Vic’s car, the wreck, and the arrest for reckless driving. And coming home to this threat.

The crew cut officer never interrupted, never looked lost. Vic nodded all the way through her careful story.

“So, let’s hit star sixty-nine and find out who called you last,” the cop said.

“Great,” Daphne agreed. And then he did and they all crowded around the speakerphone. A recorded operator’s voice announced the last number that phoned the house. Daphne and Vic sagged together.

“It’s Cassandra’s number,” Vic said, his voice dull.

“And Cassandra is?” the officer asked.

Daphne looked away. “His ex-wife.”

“Ah, so this is an ex thing. Sounds like you know the drill? All about restraining orders to deal with harassing phone calls and such?”

“No,” Daphne said. “I do not know the drill.” She went to the front door, opening it just as Jed came inside with a paper in his hand.

“Your glove box is a mess. Is this the right thing? Your registration?” He handed it to his father and stalked off to the living room.

“Jed?” Daphne called after him, cutting off her annoyance with a deep breath when he ignored her. Then she threw the cop and Vic a glance and pursued the boy.

The living room was empty. She pushed open the kid’s bedroom door.

“Jed?” Louder, going into the room calling him, Daphne made sure she produced enough volume for the cop and Vic to hear.

“What!” The boy’s shot-back answer belied his pretense of not knowing Daphne had been calling for him. He sat on the floor leaning against his bed. Daphne felt a hand on her shoulder and wanted to shrug out from under it. Instead she shot Vic a look and he pushed his hands deep into his front pockets, exhaling.

Daphne rushed to speak first. “Jed, did your mom call since you’ve been home?”

“Nope.”

“And you haven’t answered the phone, right?” Making sure she missed nothing this time. “We didn’t get a phone call that you know of? Not when your dad and I were outside after you walked Grazie?”

Jed shook his head but hesitated, openmouthed and silent.

“What?” Daphne demanded, trying to keep her voice measured.

He shrugged. “Josie called me.”

“Jed! We’ve got the police here.”

“But why? Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

“Someone threatened me or us or something,” Daphne told him and shook her head, realizing how nutty and inadequate she sounded. She turned her back on the boy and stood puffing in the living room. “So after some guy left that message, Josie called. She’s the last caller. She called while we were outside, Vic. Now we’ll never know who that guy was. We’ll never get to know why he threatened us, what he meant.”

“Someone’s threatening you?” Jed asked. “Who?”

The cop held up a hand. “Ma’am, generally when someone’s being threatened, they know what they’re being threatened about and they know who’s making threats.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Any significance about ten years ago at all? For either of you?”

He eyed Daphne and Vic in turns. Daphne was sure he noticed the look Vic shot her, the blink of an acknowledgment of what happened ten years ago in her life.

When neither Vic nor Daphne said anything, the cop continued. “You know, it could just be a wrong number, too. Whoever the caller is, he could have just dialed the wrong number, left the wrong person this odd . . .”

“Threat,” Daphne said.