Woman On the Run (30 page)

* * * * *

“What do you think, Sally?” Alice asked anxiously Saturday morning, holding up some color samples. Peach and sky-blue and taupe.

Alice had begged her to accompany her to Rupert. Julia had reluctantly agreed and then had surprised herself by having a wonderful time.

Alice’s chatter had kept her amused during the ride and she had discovered that the third time was the charm. Instead of feeling oppressed and frightened by the landscape between Simpson and Rupert, she found it imposing and majestic.

When they had walked into Harlan Schwab’s store, Harlan had greeted them cordially. At first he had been disappointed that Julia wasn’t with Cooper.

In his second sentence, he asked Julia whether she was married and for a moment she was taken aback. Was that some rule out West she didn’t know about? You had to be married to buy dry goods? Then she realized that, like everyone else, Schwab was matchmaking. There were only three channels and no cable in the area. Matchmaking was obviously what people did instead of watch TV. It took Julia a good ten minutes to get Schwab back on track and focused on Alice’s project.

“Well…” Julia stepped back three paces to get a better look. She put a finger to her cheek and watched Alice more than the color samples. Alice fairly hummed with excitement, her light blue eyes alive with the thrill of planning her new diner—or fern bar. She looked about twelve and as happy as it was possible for a human to be. Julia bit back a smile as she pretended to consider. But it wasn’t even close. The sky blue exactly matched Alice’s eyes. “I’d go with the blue and we can rag-roll it with cream. Harlan? What do you think?”

“Good choice.” Harlan Schwab said, beaming at them both. “Well, ladies, I think you’re all set now. You’ve got—” he ticked off the packages around the cash register, “—your paint, your fabric, your leaf stencils, a set each of coffee cups and tea cups. You’re all ready to go.”

Mindful of Cooper’s comments about shopping locally, Julia had convinced Alice to buy as much as she could from Glenn and they had made the trip into Rupert only to buy what Glenn didn’t carry. Harlan had seemed to understand that instinctively.

Alice paid and Julia started gathering up the packages when Harlan stopped them with a wave of his hand. “No, no, ladies, we can’t have that. Just let me know where the car is, and when you plan on driving back and I’ll have my son there with the packages.”

“Harlan, you really don’t need to—” Alice began.

“Oh, yes I do.” Harlan was already beckoning to a sturdily built teenager and smiling at Julia. “Coop’d never forgive me if I didn’t give his lady a helping hand.”

Cooper’s lady?

What do I have
, Julia thought,
a sign on my forehead?

* * * * *

“I know I said I wanted to be back early, but would you mind if we stopped at the bookstore?” Alice asked as they strolled back to the car. “I want to look at some decorating books, just for a few ideas, and I want to see if the new Mary Higgins Clark is in.”

“Oh, yeah,” Julia replied. She had nothing else to do, besides recolor her hair that evening. She’d been putting it off. She hated having brown hair. “I’ve always loved bookstores.”

“I can’t believe how incredibly nice you’ve been.” Alice hooked a companionable arm through Julia’s as they walked down Rupert’s pretty streets. “I’m really excited about what we’re doing. And I just love coming to Rupert. It’s a pity Simpson doesn’t have any—
OhmiGod
!”

“What?” Alice’s shocked tone had Julia whirling around, heart pounding, wondering from what direction this new danger was coming from and what form the danger would take. She stared narrow-eyed down the street but all she saw was clean empty pavement and neatly boxed geraniums. “What?”

“Look at that,” Alice breathed. She was pointing, wide-eyed, at a purple and blue jumpsuit with a wide white belt in a shop window. It was made out of some kind of shiny polyester and it jostled for position with a sequined biker’s outfit. “Can’t you just see me in that? I can see myself in that. God, isn’t it gorgeous? How do you think I’d look?” She had her nose pressed against the shop window and her breath was fogging it up.

Like a Power
Ranger
, Julia thought. “Alice,” she said carefully, “don’t you think you should be saving your money for the redecorating?”

“Oh.” Alice blinked as reality rushed in and she heaved a huge sigh. She detached her nose from the window with an almost audible plop. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said reluctantly as Julia led her away, like a child being led away from a candy store. Alice swiveled her head for one last wistful look at the shop window.

“Come on, Alice,” Julia coaxed. “Let’s go look at some of the decorating magazines. I wonder if Bob’s got the new
Metropolitan Home
in.” She had a firm grip on Alice’s elbow and kept her distracted with chatter and by the time they walked into Bob’s Corner Bookshop, Alice seemed to have herself under control. She went straight to the home decoration section.

Julia stood still for a moment, breathing in the heady smell of books. She’d been to the bookstore less than a week ago, but she was used to dipping in and out of bookstores the way other people dipped into the cookie jar. Bookstores usually had twice-weekly deliveries, she knew, so there would probably be a whole new set of books in since last Saturday. And, to tell the truth, last Saturday she’d been so distracted by Cooper’s overwhelming presence that she hadn’t browsed as much as she’d have liked. Alice was a very nice girl, but she certainly didn’t make her blood bubble hotly under her skin the way Cooper did.

Humming quietly, Julia dove into the bookshelves.

Half an hour later, she woke up from her trance, arms full of books, having thoroughly examined Bob’s stock. It was a well-run little bookshop, for its size. Even if it had been in Boston, it would have been one of Julia’s favorites. Now that the drive to Rupert didn’t terrify her, Julia knew her stay in Simpson—however long that would be—would be more bearable.

And Simpson wasn’t even as bad as she sometimes made it out to be in her darkest moments. Alice was turning into a good friend and the redecorating project was sure to keep her happily busy for a while. And, of course, there was Cooper, who kept her warm at night and gave her more orgasms than there were trees in Idaho. And who was coming home on Friday.

Julia looked around for Alice and spotted her in the magazine section, talking with a young blonde woman. Alice caught Julia’s eye and waved, grinning. Julia walked over.

“Hey, Julia.” Alice shifted her magazines to free an arm. “Meet Mary Ferguson. She’s new to the area, too. She lives in Dead Horse. Mary, this is Sally Anderson, our new grade school teacher in Simpson. That’s about 20 miles away.”

“Hi, Mary.” Julia shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.” Mary Ferguson looked to be Alice’s age, or maybe a year or two older. She shared Alice’s blonde, wholesome looks.

“Hi, Sally.” The young blonde smiled. “It’s sure nice to meet another newcomer. It seems not too many people move out here. So you live in Simpson too. What’s Simpson like?”

Julia thought that over. “Quiet.”

“Oh.” Mary looked downcast. “That’s not too good. No lawsuits, no divorces?”

“Ahm…” Julia bit back a smile. “Not lately. You on the lookout for lawsuits and divorces?”

“I sure am.” Mary grinned and pressed a card in Julia’s hand. “If you need legal advice, I’m your woman.” Julia noticed that Alice held a similar card in her hand.

Curious, Julia looked it over. It was cheap cardboard and had Mary Ferguson, Attorney-at-Law printed on it. “There’s no address,” Julia said. “Just a telephone number.”

“It’s an answering service in Dead Horse. I’ll get an office just as soon as I get a client or two. In the meantime, I’m living in a rented room. I just passed the state bar exam this summer and I didn’t want to work with my father’s law firm. He’s got a big one in Boise and he always just assumed…well, I guess he thought that I would automatically want to work for him. But if I start out with him, I’ll never know if I’m any good or not. So I decided to open my own practice. But my graduating class was the largest class of law graduates ever and there are no openings at all in the Boise area. So I decided to take the scientific approach and studied the lawyer-to-population ratio in the whole state and this part of the state has the lowest. But,” she added sadly, “I’m beginning to see why.”

“Well, that’s—” Julia hardly knew what to say, “that’s a—a novel approach.”

“Those are my dad’s very words,” Mary said glumly, “only he used ‘stupid’ instead of ‘novel’.”

“I’m starting a new business, too,” Alice said. “Only I don’t have business cards.” She caught Julia’s eye and grinned. “Yet.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mary turned friendly eyes onto Alice. “What kind of business?”

“A fern bar,” Alice said proudly. “And sometime soon, I’ll have an inauguration. Maybe at the next meeting of the Rupert Ladies’ Association.”

“There’s a Rupert Ladies’ Association?” Mary brightened and took an enormous planner out of her purse. She pulled the pen from its slot and laboriously filled in a page. “Rupert Ladies’ Association,” she said as she wrote, then looked up. “That’s great. I’ll join immediately. Who knows if there’s an unhappy wife who wants to file for divorce? Or someone got run over and wants to sue. Do you know when the next meeting will be held?”

“Oh,” Alice said airily, “Sometime in the next ten days.”

“Okay. I think I could fit it in.” Mary started flipping importantly through her planner. Julia was amused to see that most of the pages were blank. Mary’s pen hovered. “Who should I contact?”

“Karen Lindberger. She’s in the Rupert phonebook.”

Mary was diligently writing the name down, then looked up at Alice. “And what’s the name of your new fern bar?”

“Carly’s—no.” Alice bit her lip and looked pleadingly at Julia. “I don’t want it to have the same name. What will we call it?”

“Well, that’s not a problem,” Julia said. “It seems rather obvious to me what it should be called.” She hummed the first few bars of “Alice’s Restaurant”, and looked expectantly at Alice and Mary.

They looked blankly back.

Julia knew she didn’t have much of a voice. She hummed the bars again and sighed when the two girls’ smiles starting looking strained. They stared at her, looking for all the world like two very confused blonde puppies. Well, they were younger than she was and they didn’t share her penchant for ‘70s movies. Of course they didn’t recognize the song. Julia suddenly felt ancient.

“Ohhh-kaaay,” she breathed. “How about…how about the ‘Out to Lunch’?”

“Out to Lunch.” Alice’s eyes were gleaming. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” She all but clasped her hands over her heart. “Oh, Sally, you’re so smart. However do you think of these things?”

“It’s a knack,” Julia said.

* * * * *

The gun wasn’t important, the camera was.

You didn’t need a Dirty Harry .44 Magnum to take out Julia Devaux. Any Saturday night special would do. As it happened, the professional had purchased, perfectly legally, a Model 60 Smith and Wesson two hours after landing at Boise airport. It was snubby, with a 2-inch barrel, and it only carried five shots, but that was fine. Two shots would do it.

The gun had been purchased with one of the professional’s deeper identities. The bullets would go to the ballistics lab, the gun would be tracked down and a trace put on the identity. The professional had created a character three layers deep, with cross-referenced credit ratings, an impressive educational background and even a few awards for public service from two local Chambers of Commerce in two different states. The professional had had a lot of fun with the wording of the citations.

The cops would go crazy.

And by the time the first underpaid lab assistant examined the bullets, the professional would be lifting an ice-cold margarita on the sundeck of the beach house.

No, the gun wasn’t of any importance whatsoever. What was important was the camera. After much hard deliberation, the professional had settled on a Hasselblad 35 mm that automatically stamped the date and the time on the film. That was important.

Santana was an animal and when he’d specified Julia Devaux’s head, he meant exactly that. The professional could just imagine Santana in some garage, recently sprung from prison, gloating over Julia Devaux’s head. He would probably have it mounted.

But there was no way on earth that the professional could travel across the country with a human head. Thus, something else was necessary to convince Santana that the job was done.

The professional had it all planned, down to the finest detail. First the incapacitating shot to the shoulder, taking timed pictures, then putting the camera on automatic as the professional put the gun to Julia Devaux’s head and pulled the trigger. And the final photograph.

A headshot of a head shot
, the professional thought with satisfaction.
I like it
.

* * * * *

Cooper was seriously annoyed by the time he made it to Carly’s late Sunday afternoon. It had been a harrowing week.

Sure, he got a lot of business done and had bought fifteen very promising foals, but he hadn’t had a spare minute. He was up before dawn each day to watch the training sessions, busy all day with the annual conference, out to dinner talking business until very late every evening. The only time he had free to call Sally was very early in the morning but that was 3 a.m. her time.