Orchids and Stone (7 page)

The man put his hand on Daphne’s shoulder. She stepped back but his palm changed to a gripping fist on her jacket. She froze. He looked into the house, nodded, then looked at Daphne again, his grip clenching deeper and harder.

She dropped her shoulder under his grasp, but felt his solid grip on her jacket.

In one breath, Daphne swirled, twisting out of her jacket and running across the yard, around the corner of the house into the side yard.

In those two seconds, she heard the woman shout, “Shit!” and something dropped, a door banged. Footsteps, fast and hard, pounded nearer. Daphne ran into the neighbor’s side yard, across the next backyard, into the alley.

When she heard him running after her, she ran faster down the alley, panicked, and cut across someone else’s property, desperate to escape the sound of the man chasing her. She ducked into the backyard of a house on the next street.

Somewhere behind her, a metal garbage can fell over and she heard the man swear.

Instinct made her want to run back toward the car, but the man was between her and Vic’s Honda, blocking her escape, so she continued deep into the side yard of a stranger’s house, crouched into some heavy rhododendrons, and pressed herself against a tall wooden fence. Perspiration trickled between her breasts.

A flash of motion caught her eye, too high to be the man, but she jerked at the sight of a person going by a second floor window in the next house, the one with the fenced backyard.

Don’t tell him where I am,
she willed the man in the house.

But then she thought, suppose the neighbor is a huge, decisive person who will tell any guy chasing a woman to back off?

But nothing happened. No one opened a window or called out or anything. Had the person upstairs not seen her come into the neighbor’s yard and hide? She heard footsteps scuffing gravel in the alley, retracing, nearing her again. Should she make a break for it, run through the side yard and down the next street? If the man, Guff, saw her—and he was close now—he’d chase her again, grab her again. The sensation of physical desperation reminded her she lacked cardiovascular conditioning. For all her outrageous upper body strength, her endurance was poor and she decided she could not outrun the man. She was wearing boots, he wore sneakers. His reflexes were snakelike. Her hands shook in simple fear. She’d never been chased and she was sweating from more than exertion.

As she hid, an unbidden thought of her sister’s final secret moments came to her. Had Suzanne run from her killer?

Call 911,
Daphne mentally begged all the neighbors, wondering if any strangers were watching the spectacle of a woman being chased, hiding from a man.
Call and report him. Report me as a suspicious person. Just call the police. Someone? Anyone? Someone, see something. Help me.

Again footsteps scuffed by in the alley. When she thought he was farther away, she edged deeper into the side yard, desperate to add a few more paces between herself and her pursuer. If she had to run for it again, she wanted a decent head start.

Or she could hide better. Up ahead were two overflowing plastic garbage bins, offering refuge. Daphne crawled from the rhododendrons on her hands and knees to secret herself between the stinking refuse and the wooden fence.
Bang
.
Boom
.
Bang
.
Boom
. Her heartbeat summoned all, but she could not hear the man’s footsteps anymore.

A few houses away, possibly at Minerva Watts’s home, a door slammed. Daphne felt the drumbeat of her heart, thumping to capacity within her chest, trilling in her ears. Then several car doors slammed in quick succession, their bangs sounding like gunshots.

Holding her breath, Daphne twisted, swiveling her head and neck. If she peeked out the other side of the garbage bins, she might be able to see across the alley, through the yard back to Eastpark Avenue. Creeping, she squeezed around the farther bin.

The unnerving sensation of giving up some of her cover made her heart pound faster. She pressed her lips tight, stifling a murmur and peered toward the street as an engine roared, gunned too hard in starting.

A big navy blue car sped by. Yes, the car from Mrs. Watts’s driveway, the Town Car where the guy put the boxes. Two women were in the backseat, one small and cowering on the far side of the nearer woman—the fleece sweater woman who had called for Guff. Daphne pushed forward and saw he was the driver and that the woman sat with one arm over the old lady, the other hand holding a brown Carhartt jacket.

Daphne winced. The jacket held her phone. And her wallet.

They would know who she was, where she lived.

And they had taken the old lady. They had taken Minerva Watts. Again. Daphne abandoned hope of the best-case scenario or a happy answer—that strangers were having a bad day with a difficult older relative. She bolted for Vic’s car, not thinking about what she’d do if they saw her and came after her again.

She gunned the engine, slam-shifted to spin the Honda around, and floored the accelerator, chasing the man who had chased her.

Fleeing straight down Eastpark, the navy Town Car was already more than a half mile ahead. Daphne rolled through two stop signs, checking left and right fast as she cleared the intersections. The other car was still pulling away, making her wonder if they’d blown the stop signs, too.

Get the license plate at least.
Not having the license plate for the police officers last night was one of her failings.

She drove faster than she’d ever driven through a residential area, ever. She grimaced through it, held her breath. The neighborhood gave way to small businesses. More traffic would be coming with the University District.

Catch them, she willed herself, all attention on her forward pursuit.

They were approaching a green light at the top of a hill. She wouldn’t be able to see which way they turned if they cleared the intersection without her. She pressed harder on the accelerator, city blocks whipping by as she gained on the escaping car.

The light turned yellow and the Lincoln vanished down the hill as the traffic signal loomed red.

Staring at the license plate in the bumper’s center, Daphne stomped the accelerator. Less than a split second later, she gasped at the sight of a car coming at her left rear fender and another at her right front. Then the screaming of tires, the crunch of metal, people shouting, and glass breaking all jumbled in her head as the Honda spun a full circle in the intersection.

CHAPTER 7

Nausea welled up in Daphne’s belly. An adrenaline spike shook her hands. Sweating and pimpled with goose bumps, she gulped in the breeze drafting through her shattered driver’s window.

A man in a Seattle Sonics jacket came to her door as she turned her head like a swimmer needing a breath, her mind needing contact and help. “You fucking idiot,” he said, his chest leaning into her window as he braced his hands on the Honda’s roof. “How red they gotta be for you to stop?”

“I, I need a phone. I have to call the police.”

“Jesus!”

Daphne closed her eyes. If the man’s epithet had been any other, it might not have sent her mind crashing back to Suzanne’s funeral.
Jesus. Jesus.
It was a name a Mayfield girl knew better than to say without respect. In her sheltered childhood, Daphne knew no one who spoke in such terms. Even her father never uttered any kind of curse until after Suzanne’s body was found, then he cursed every unmoving stranger. Daphne first considered the notion of propriety at eleven, when Ross Bouchard spoke out of turn at the altar and sang strange things about Jesus and Suzanne.

“Did you see that car? The navy blue Lincoln Town Car?” Daphne asked without looking at the man, her face turned to her lap, a swimmer no longer breathing, drowning. Her head swirled, remembering the Bouchard boy croaked something about how drowning men could see Him. She turned her head and gasped, “Did you get the license? Someone must have seen it.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” he said, and pushed himself away from her car with enough force to rock it.

She clutched her shaking hands in her lap, wanting to clap them over her ears to quell her father’s voice.
Someone must have seen . . . someone saw something.

Then she exploded, forcing the door open, wrenching a metal groan of protest from Vic’s car. A horn bitched behind backed-up traffic. The Honda was still in the middle of the intersection, still pointing down Eastpark as if willing to make an effort, to pursue, though battered. On each side of the cross street, a crunched car waited at the curb. A blond woman in a green SUV with the driver’s door gaping open pressed something white to her face. A small silver two-door, half its headlights punched out like a boxer with a black eye, sat on Daphne’s right, the remaining hazard lights blinking in surrender.

“God, is anyone hurt? Seriously hurt?” Daphne called, swiveling in the road, facing the two-door, melting in relief when a young guy waved from the front bumper. His jeans were ripped at the knees and his T-shirt riddled with holes, but Daphne knew she hadn’t shredded his clothing.

She jogged to the green SUV, calling to the woman. “Are you okay?”

The blond pulled a handkerchief from her face and looked at bloody smears. “I just dropped my kids off. I’m so glad they weren’t with me.”

“Oh. Oh, yes. Me, too,” Daphne said, soaked in every kind of guilt, every feeling of human inadequacy.

The woman’s focus shifted to something behind Daphne, someone. Daphne whirled, almost bumping into the Sonics man.

“I saw the whole thing,” he said to the SUV driver, pointing an indicting finger at Daphne. “She blew the light. I’m a witness.”

“Did you see the other car? The dark blue Lincoln?” Daphne asked him as she stepped away from the SUV for a futile peer down Eastpark Avenue. The Lincoln was gone, of course.

His face became a sneer. “There was no other car.”

She felt her blood drain and rubbed her temples. “I need a phone. Now. I’m going—”

He shook his head. “You’re not going anywhere.” And he grabbed at her bare arm.

She yanked back hard. “Touch me and I will knock your head off,” she told him.

He stared at her. Behind him, the woman gawked, her gaze covering Daphne as she eyed Daphne’s hair, her dirty hands. Up and down, left and right. Daphne watched the woman ogle until she couldn’t stand it and said, “I’m so sorry about the accident. It was an accident. Do you have a phone?”

“They said someone already called 911,” she said. “We’re just supposed to wait.”

“Yes, yes,” Daphne said, wanting to ask again if the woman had a phone. She swirled in the street, feeling drunk. At the far side of the intersection, the guy at the two-door was holding his phone, taking a picture of his bumper. Daphne saw now that his knuckles were cut. Dabs of blood on two joints dribbled down his fingers and he wiped his hand on his shirt before continuing to take pictures.

“Could I use your phone?” she hollered.

“What for?”

“To call the police.”

“I already called them.”

“It’s about something else,” Daphne said, waving her hands, shifting her tone between entreaty and urgency.

Beyond the SUV, just across the wide sidewalk, a convenience store’s propped-open door advertised energy drinks, lottery tickets, and tobacco.

“I’m just going to use the phone in there,” Daphne said to no one in particular as she pointed, then ran around the car feeling a bit like a kid playing fire drill games in traffic.

Inside the store, an older man with hair like aged steel stood behind the counter. He pointed to a basic black telephone by his cash register. “I make call already. Is good.”

Daphne clutched both hands together to plea. “May I use the phone, please?”

He pointed to it again and she grabbed for the handset, dialing the three numbers. Outside, the man who swore at her stood by the green SUV, watching Daphne, his hands on his hips. She turned again toward the inside of the store. The man at the register was watching a girl at the beer cooler. Signs everywhere promoted lottery tickets. Be an instant winner.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” The dispatcher’s voice sounded unstressed but clipped.

“Hi. I’m calling from an accident on Eastpark that just happened a few minutes ago and—”

“We have officers and an ambulance en route to an injury accident at Eastpark Avenue and Spencer Street, ma’am.”

“Yes. Good. But I’m calling about something else. Just before. There was a man. A man and a woman and they took a little old lady. The lady’s name is Minerva Watts and she lives on Eastpark and they took her in a navy blue Lincoln Town Car, but I didn’t get the license. It starts with a
Y
and then I think another letter. I was trying to get the plate and that’s when the accident happened.”

“Is this car involved in the accident on Eastpark, ma’am?”

“No, but—”

“Is it at the scene?”

“It’s not part of the accident,” Daphne said, waving her free hand in frustration. “The man who’s driving it, see, he chased me. He and this woman took this lady, Minerva Watts. The woman called him ‘Guff’ and he grabbed me and I got away and he chased me—”

“What is your name, ma’am?”

“Daphne Mayfield.”

“Where did the incident of a man and a woman taking an old lady occur?”

“At her house, 11243 Eastpark Avenue. Something’s definitely wrong there. Yesterday, they took her from the Peace Park. I called that in, too. Didn’t anyone call today? Someone must have seen something.”

“Does Minerva Watts know the man and woman? Did she call the man Guff?”

“No. The other lady called him Guff.”

“And Guff grabbed you?”

“And he took my jacket. My wallet and phone were in it. And he chased me and they were driving like crazy down Eastpark and I was trying to catch them so I could at least get the license plate, and then I had this accident and they got away, but I think you should—”

“Ma’am, slow down. An officer is on the way, okay? A police officer is on the way to you right now.”

Sirens wailed outside and Daphne took a breath. “I hear them. I can hear them.”

“Okay, talk to the officer. Good-bye.”

“Bye,” Daphne said to the dead line, going back outside to face more than she felt able to rectify.

Two blue police cars, sirens dying a block away, nosed up to the wreckage. The Sonics man pointed to Daphne then the Honda, SUV, and the two-door in turn. The first officer swung from his car, held a hand out to the man and talked into a shoulder microphone for several seconds before going to the SUV. A red and white ambulance bearing the words Medic One on the side pulled in behind the second police car.

“It’s all her fault!” The Sonics man pointed Daphne out to the second police officer.

Had the dispatcher already sent another officer chasing across the city for the Town Car? Daphne pursed her lips, thinking how much time had passed, how big the city was, how impossible a minute’s head start made pursuit of a fleeing car.

“She ran right through the red light. She was speeding, too.”

The officer looked at the witness then Daphne. She resisted the urge to run to the officers and insert her non-accident needs. The fleeing Town Car was more important but the accident was the attention grabber. She rubbed her head and nodded at both men.

The first officer left the SUV and strode for the two-door, pointing to Vic’s Honda as he went by Daphne. “Yours?”

She nodded again. When he told her to wait beside it, she walked to the car. How much longer? How far away would the couple with Minerva Watts get? How impossible would it be to find already? Where on earth would they be going?

Paramedics opened a large plastic tackle box beside the blond in the SUV. One pulled out a stethoscope and the other opened a dressing.

Feeling inappropriate on too many levels to gawk at the woman while the medics tended her cut head, Daphne turned, watched the first officer stop talking to the young man at the two-door long enough to nod and wave off the other cop. When the second policeman got in his car and drove away, Daphne tried to take a measure of calm. Maybe he would go after the Lincoln. The accident wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t.

Still, it seemed too long before the remaining cop headed back to her and the Honda.

“Saving the best for last,” she muttered to herself and shook her head.

“So, you’re the little woman who started this big accident,” he said.

“Look, there’s this whole other thing,” Daphne began in earnest.

“Dig out your license, registration, and proof of insurance for me, all righty?”

Daphne turned to kneel on the car’s seat, as she dug into the glove box for the registration, raising her voice to tell the cop about all that had happened right before the accident. When she popped up clutching the state’s official registration, she saw the cop was not listening at her door, but walking around the Honda surveying damage. He wasn’t even looking at her. Had he missed her whole speech?

“It was dark blue,” she said, testing him. “The color of your shirt.”

He bent at her rear bumper, touching swipes of green paint from the SUV. “No one else saw a blue Lincoln.”

“He chased me. He has my jacket. My wallet. My ID and my phone.”

“You were chasing another car and that’s why you came through this traffic light like you did?”

“It didn’t start that way, with me chasing him. It started with him chasing me. Around houses and down an alley and through yards.”

“He was chasing you?”

“Yes.” She gave one hard nod to affirm this fact.

“On foot, not in the cars?”

“Right. He ran after me.” Daphne gave another nod, relieved he understood her.

“And why were you running from him in the first place?”

“I ran because . . . because he chased me. He grabbed me.”

He hooked one thumb in his gun belt. “And then you chased him?”

“Yes,” Daphne admitted, aware she sounded more than half crazy.

Shaking his head, he said, “Try again. Why did you chase him?”

Daphne took a breath. “Look. There’s something wrong here, something going on. I think she’s not that woman’s mother. Minerva Watts is not her mother.” She snapped her fingers. “
Lady
. She called her
lady
. And then when she saw me, she called the older lady
Mother
. Hey, did you hear about this car thing?”

He raised one eyebrow at her. “Yeah, suspicious incident on Eastpark. Navy Lincoln, northbound five or ten ago. Got it.”

“You do know! Great! Then someone saw something. Someone else besides me, I mean. Someone called it in? Right?”

“You would be the Daphne Mayfield who called this in to our dispatch center from the JiffyMart?” He pointed over his shoulder to the convenience store without looking.

“Well, yes.”

“Dispatch has radios. They use them to tell us out here in the cars what’s going on.”

“So you know what’s going on?” Daphne wasn’t sure she knew what was going on.

“Think so,” he said.

“So, what are you going to do?” she asked.

He handed her some papers and pointed at her car. “Have a seat. Fill these out. Please be legible.”

She sat behind the steering wheel like an obedient child. “Okay, for the accident,” Daphne said, glancing at the forms which asked for information like her name and insurance provider. “But about the other thing?” She closed a fist over the papers and folded her arms.

He walked away.

She swung out of the car again. He could at least give her an answer. “Hey what’s going to happen? Is someone doing something about it? What are you going to do?”

“I am going to handle this accident.” He turned to the young man at the two-door and gave him similar pieces of paper.

“I mean, what are you going to do about that car? The one I was, you know, trying to catch up to?”

He gave a stony smile. “I am going to handle . . . this accident.”

Two tow trucks arrived in a miniature convoy, their gumball emergency lights casting a weak glow in the afternoon sun. One hooked up to the green SUV.

She looked at her watch. Time was flitting away, wasting. She was going to miss the start of Josie’s volleyball game if she didn’t get clear of this accident soon. This was reality. No one was going to catch the Lincoln Town Car. It was just gone. A suspicious incident, just like the previous afternoon.

The shock of this realization was more defeating than it should have been. Daphne looked around the scene again. One tow truck driver pushed a broom across the asphalt, tinkling bits of shattered glass and plastic scraps of fenders and headlights into a pile. The scrape of his huge metal dustpan reminded her of the groans of the car door. The SUV made the same sound now as its front end was wrenched into the air by the tow truck.