The Trouble with Tulip (40 page)

When their walk was over, Jo thanked Danny for walking with her. Then, rather than going to bed, she went into her home office, the best place to be when her brain was on hyperdrive and the night stretched endlessly before her.

She let Chewie come along, but she also brought a roll of aluminum foil. Once they were inside the office, she pulled out about five feet of the foil, tore it loose from the roll, and laid it on the couch. She put a blanket on the floor for the dog, settled down at the chair, and reached into the basket of reader mail.

Jo had been working so hard this week to solve Simon's con and Edna's murder that she had given short shrift to the problem that was sitting squarely in her own lap: her column! She decided to brainstorm with herself, thinking of different ideas that might work to bring this dying art form back to life.

She had been going through reader letters for fifteen minutes or so when the dog stood, stretched, and decided to relocate to the couch. He jumped up onto it and landed on the aluminum foil, which made a horrible crinkling noise. He leapt back down to the floor, circled a few times, and then glared at Jo, almost insulted that she had subjected him to such a frightening indignity.

She laughed.

“Serves you right, boy,” she said. “Maybe now you'll stay off the couch.”

He went to his blanket, worked for a while to get it just so, and then collapsed into it. Jo watched the whole thing, wondering if it might not be so bad to have a dog around permanently. They had gotten off to a bad start, but he was a sweet dog and a smart one. Maybe if she had a fence installed and bought him his own bed and some chew toys and things, they might find themselves happily cohabitating. He certainly brought a feeling of security and comfort—and companionship. Jo had never had a pet before, but she was starting to understand the attraction.

Turning her attention back to her work, she put away the letters and reached for a pen and some paper. She wrote down the names all of the icons of the household hints business and what they had done to stay relevant. Martha Stewart, despite all of her legal problems, had positioned herself as a purveyor of elegance on a budget. Heloise stayed in the public eye primarily because she continued to write a razor-sharp column in a national women's magazine. The Fly Lady—one the biggest up-and-coming household hinters—used the Internet as her primary medium, dedicating herself to helping the organizationally impaired.

Jo's agent was correct that she needed a website too, and she decided to find a webmaster very soon. Besides that, she thought she might talk to a publicist—and a speaker's bureau. Surely she could begin to make herself more of a household name, no pun intended. Suddenly, she felt very determined, knowing she would not go down without a fight!

Jo picked up the latest issue of the newspaper and flipped through it, skimming the articles and trying to get a feel for modern culture. As she did, she jotted down all sorts of crazy ideas of how she could proceed, sort of brainstorming with herself.

A reality TV show?

Focus groups?

Stay-at-home-mom support groups?

Women's retreats?

Creative projects for latchkey kids?

Working-mom luncheons?

She kept thinking and kept writing, and soon she had filled an entire page with different directions she could go. She was particularly intrigued by the idea of a reality television show—not that it would be easy to get such a thing on the air, but she ought to look into it, at least. In her fantasy of how that could work, she decided she could create her own catchphrase, something like “Your Hint Takes the Cake!”

Smiling to herself, Jo was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. It had been a long and complicated day and the need for sleep was finally catching up with her. She put away the pen and paper, turned off the light, and then simply grabbed a pillow and blanket from the closet, moved to the couch, ditched the foil, and lay down. She could hear Chewie readjusting himself at her feet, and something about him being there made her feel safe and complete.

Jo awoke to pitch-black darkness and an odd sound sending tingles down her spine. In an instant, she remembered she was out in the office. Then she realized Chewie was growling.

One glance at the softly illuminated digital clock across the room told her it was 4:37
A.M
. She sat up and put a hand on Chewie's back, softly whispering words of comfort.

But she didn't feel comforted. He continued to growl, and Jo stood, moving silently to the window. Peering out, she saw movement along the back of her house, and from what she could tell, it looked as if someone was trying to break in.

Lucky for her they didn't seem to realize she was out in the office. She only hoped she could keep Chewie from barking.

Heart pounding in her throat, Jo reached for the phone and dialed 911, muffling the receiver so the touch tone beeps couldn't be heard. When an operator answered, she whispered sharply that someone was trying to break into her house. The operator quickly took her information and then told her to hold on while he contacted the police. While he was doing that, she grabbed her cell and dialed Danny's number. He could get there a lot quicker than the cops could, if the intruder decided to turn his attention toward her.

“I'm coming right over,” Danny said after she explained.

“No!” she whispered sharply. “That's too dangerous. Just stay on the line with me, in case.”

“All right, but I'm getting dressed,” he said. “Haven't you got some acid out there, or something you could use as a weapon?”

“Hold on,” she whispered. “I'll check.”

She set down the cell but kept the regular phone to her ear, listening as the 911 dispatcher gave her address to the police. She silently crept over to the chemical storage area and grabbed a spray can of toilet bowl cleaner, a substance that would be sure to stop anyone in their tracks. Then she returned to the window, shocked to see the intruder working on her back door knob.

Chewie couldn't take it any more. He barked loudly and then barked again. Jo pulled her face from the window just as the intruder turned and looked her way.

“That's it, I'm coming!” Danny said through the phone, and then she could hear it drop.

“Please hurry!” she said to the 911 operator as she dared to peek from the window again. This time, she saw the intruder running toward the backyard—the direction that Danny would be coming from. Steeling her nerve, she opened the lab door and let Chewie out, hoping he might be able to protect Danny.

In the distance, she could hear a siren.

“I'm going out there,” she said to the operator.

Against his protests, she dropped the phone and returned to the chemical storage area, tossed the can of toilet bowl cleaner, and grabbed a squeeze bottle of acetone and a butane lighter.

Jo ran outside, turning toward the back.

Chewie was barking furiously and a man was yelling. Jo ran toward the noise, praying that Danny and the dog wouldn't be hurt.

By the time she reached the fence, the intruder was face down on the ground in Danny's yard, Chewie was standing on the man's legs, barking, and Danny was poised with a baseball bat.

“He didn't see the split-rail fence!” Danny cried when he spotted Jo. “Landed flat as a pancake and Chewie was all over him! Good dog!”

Jo squirted the acetone all over the man's back and hair, knowing the cold wetness and the flammable smell would be a bit of a shock and ensure his cooperation—even if the threat wasn't genuine. He didn't have to know that the acetone was evaporating too quickly in these conditions to actually be flammable.

“Mister, that's acetone I'm pouring on you, and I've got a lighter in my hands,” Jo cried. “Don't move or you're toast. Literally.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” the man mumbled. “Lord help me.”

When she could see the flashing lights out front, she handed the lighter to Danny and ran to get them, telling the two cops who responded to the call that they had already apprehended the suspect out back. They ran with her and took over.

“This guy smells like lighter fluid,” one of them said, gesturing for Jo to pull off the dog.

“More like nail polish remover,” amended the other.

“It's acetone,” she said. “I had to think of something that would keep him still until you got here.”

The cops laughed.

“I'm sure the big dog and the baseball bat didn't hurt either,” one of them said.

As they cuffed the man, Jo knelt down to calm the still-barking dog, not surprised to see lights coming on in several of the surrounding homes. Putting both arms around Chewie, she buried her face against his shoulder.

“Good boy. That's a good boy,” she cooed. Finally, once he was calm, she stood and put her arms around Danny, who held her close.

“All right, buddy,” one of the cops said, “stand up.”

They pulled the man to his feet, and as he turned around, Jo recognized him.

“Angus!” she cried, pulling away from Danny, dismayed to see that her intruder was the scar-faced janitor. “What are you doing here?”

He shook his head, unwilling to speak.

“Did you kill Edna Pratt?” Jo demanded.

Angus' eyes widened.

“Kill her?” he said, seeming genuinely surprised. “The newspaper said her death was an accident.”

It was a long night.

Danny was tired of answering questions, tired of going through his version of what had happened. But the chief himself had gotten out of bed to come down to the station and question Angus. According to him, the coroner had declared Edna's death a possible homicide earlier in the evening after analyzing some of her preserved lung tissue and finding no evidence of caustic fumes having been inhaled. Not surprisingly, Jo had been right all along. Edna was murdered. The bleach and ammonia had been combined
after
she was dead.

Jo seemed relieved that the cops were finally going to take the matter seriously and do something about it. The chief was in with Angus Young for a long time, and when he came out, he, too, looked exhausted.

“So is Angus the murderer?” Jo asked when they saw him. Danny and Jo had been hanging around in the inner waiting area in hopes of speaking with him.

“I don't know,” the chief replied. “On the one hand, he's got some serious prior convictions.”

“Prior convictions? You mean he's been to prison?”

“Yep. His real name isn't even Angus—it's Fred Jackson.”

“Fred Jackson?”

“Uh-huh. On the other hand, he has a pretty good alibi for the night Miz Pratt died. We'll have to check it out, of course, but if it's true, then he wasn't the one who killed her.”

“What was he doing at my house tonight? Was he going to hurt me?”

The chief raised both hands as if to say, “Who knows?”

“He says he was just looking for information, trying to see how close you were to learning the truth about Simon's con.”

“Simon Kurtz?”

“Yep. Says he was being blackmailed by the man. Apparently, Angus got his jobs at the school and at Golden Acres with a fake résumé, fake name, and fake identification. He was working there under false pretenses, and Simon knew that. It's pretty complicated.”