A Truth for a Truth (26 page)

The night was perfect for covert operations. What moon was left was shadowed by clouds, and all the galaxy’s stars must have been beaming down on somebody else’s planet. Of course the night was also perfect for an ex-husband stalker to exact his revenge on the woman who’d left him. Craig would be invisible if he simply crouched behind a tree. I had the presence of mind to go back inside once I realized the situation and grab our heaviest flashlight out of the basement. Now it resided like a police baton at my feet on the passenger side of Lucy’s Concorde.

Lucy knows every house in Emerald Springs. When I told her where Zoey was staying, she gave me a rundown on the woman who now owned the house and when she’d bought it. She also knew which agent had listed it for sale and who had represented the buyers.

“You could call Roussos and let him know what we’re doing,” I said, like the good conversationalist I am. “Just in case he wonders where you are.”

“You’re not going to leave that alone, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Even if I was ready to tell you anything, I probably wouldn’t. I hate interfering with your vivid imagination.”

“I could spend all my free time imagining world peace and an end to hunger. Think of the beneficial effects.”

“Should I cut the headlights? We’re just about a block away.”

“I think if you do, you’ll probably drive into a ditch.”

As a compromise she switched to her parking lights. We stopped on the side of the road right between two yards. I peered between them, but the houses behind were dark, at least from the rear. The better, of course, for Zoey’s escape.

“Should be any time now,” Lucy said.

“It’s nice of you to do this with me. You didn’t have better prospects this evening?”

“Fishing, fishing, always fishing.” She glanced at me. “Let’s just say I had a lovely morning.”

“This is
so
unfair.”

“My lovely morning? Or needing to know everything about everybody?”

“I don’t need to know everything. Just major details.”

“About everybody.”

“Not everybody.” I struggled. “For instance, I don’t need to know about the boy who bags my groceries at Kroger.” Although, come to think of it, I have noticed that sometimes he favors his right hand and sometimes his left, so I do wonder if a set of nearly identical twins is taking turns at the store.

But I don’t
really
need to know.

Lucy greeted my example with surprising enthusiasm. “The kid with the braces and the black crew cut? Have you ever noticed sometimes he wears his school ring on his left hand and sometimes his right?”

“You’re kidding!” We compared notes and theories, until I thought I saw something moving just beyond us.

“Get ready for liftoff,” I said. “I think she’s here.”

A woman materialized out of the darkness just in front of the first of the two houses. She wore jeans, and a dark hoodie drawn up to cover her hair. In the glow of a street-light half a block away I could just make out that in one hand she carried a small overnight case, and on her back, a pack the size of the one Deena carries to school. Clearly we had the right fugitive in our sights.

I jumped out and threw open the rear door. I’d had the good sense to bring sofa pillows and one of Junie’s lap quilts to make Zoey comfortable on the trip to Columbus. After her harrowing evening, she deserved nothing less.

She’d paused a moment when the door opened, but now she waved and started forward.

She was nearly to the car when another figure materialized from the shadows of the second house and streaked across the yard, directly into her path.

“Zoey! Wait! Zoey! Stop!”

I didn’t need fingerprints or a driver’s license to identify the man standing between Zoey and freedom. He was close to six foot, broad-shouldered and even in near darkness, looked to have a full head of hair, maybe several shades redder than Lucy’s. He wore a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and running shoes, and filled them out the way a weight lifter might. I hoped that was an illusion, that he was just fat or bloated, and that if I was forced to conk those red curls with the flashlight I was scooping off the floor of the car, he would go down like a tree struck by lightning.

Zoey froze, then she did something I would never have expected. She didn’t cower, and she didn’t scream. She slapped her hands on her hips and faced her tormentor.

“You skulking, cowardly creep! Who do you think you are, stalking me?” She started by shouting and only got louder. “What gives you the right to even come within a block of me, Craig Brown? I despise you. I wouldn’t have you if you were the last man on earth! You can beat me into a bloody pulp, and I still won’t have you. You can kill me, but don’t imagine we’ll be reunited in heaven, because I’ll be there all by myself. So clear out. Get a life. Get an ego. Get help!”

I’m not a counselor, but I honestly don’t think this is the correct behavior for dealing with stalkers. It didn’t matter. Zoey was beyond caring what was correct or what might enrage him further. She had lived in fear of this man for her entire adult life, and now she seemed to realize she’d moved through fear and beyond it forever. When she said he could beat her or even kill her, those were the words of a woman who realized that standing up to her ex was worth any risk. She would not live in the shadows, and she would not tolerate his control over her life ever again.

“I don’t want to beat you.” His voice was one half step from a whine. “I just want you back.”

“You are sick and you need help.”

“I got help! I’d never hurt you now. No chance. We could try again. We could—”

“We could nothing! You’re wasting a perfectly good life trying to get something you’ll never have. Never. Never. Never!”

When I’d opened the door of the car, the inside light had come on. Now that bulb shed just enough glow on the scene for me to see Craig reaching into a pocket. I envisioned a gun. I envisioned the death of an innocent woman before the police escort arrived. Lucy was out of the car now, too, and standing behind it. When I lunged at Craig with the flashlight over my shoulder, ready to bring it down on the back of his head, she jumped forward, too.

He twisted just in time to avoid my swing, but that left him off balance, and in a moment he hit the ground hard. Lightweight Lucy had tackled him.

Lights flashed and I heard one blast of a siren. Then I heard a door slamming and feet slapping rapidly over the sidewalk. I turned to see the double barrel of a shotgun.

“Hands over your head. Get up nice and slow,” a man shouted.

Lucy had already managed to extricate herself, and she backed away. I’d never been prouder of her.

“I didn’t do anything!” Craig shouted.

“He was reaching in his right pocket,” I told the cop, a young man with glasses.

“Those hands get anywhere near that pocket again, you’ll be sorry,” the cop told Craig.

“It’s just a ring. A ring! I was going to give her back her wedding ring. That’s all!”

“You really are nuts,” Zoey said contemptuously. “Taking off that ring was the best thing I ever did.”

I’d expected a lot of things from Craig, the abuser. More violence. Vicious words. Even an attempt to drag Zoey away. I hadn’t expected tears. But tears we got. He began to cry. Loud, choking sobs that would have touched almost anyone. Only it didn’t touch any of the women standing together in the darkness as the policeman cuffed Craig, or as another officer arrived to assist and helped the first one put Craig in the cruiser.

Charity and forgiveness are worthy goals. Neither Lucy, Zoey, nor I came close to embracing them that night. Not then, and not on the way to Columbus, where we delivered Zoey safely to her hotel and out of the clutches of her obsessed ex-husband, hopefully forever.

Zoey’s ex-husband, Craig Brown, who was—not surprisingly—known to some of his friends as Red. The same Craig Brown who, according to Zoey, had always worked in food service and according to me, was now working for Grace Forester and Emerald Excellence.

Roussos had a new jacket, and I was sure a woman had picked it out, since the charcoal color looked great with his black hair, and the cut was perfect, casual with flair. I suspected Lucy’s hand in this, yet another sign that Roussos was the man of the hour.

“Great jacket,” I said. “New?”

He looked suspicious. “Why, are you cold again?”

“I’m wearing wool.” I held out the hem of another of Junie’s sweaters, this one a raspberry knit, as proof. “Not cold, just observant.”

“I’m going home for Easter, and they’ll make me go to church. I figured I’d better be dressed for it.”

“You’re late. Easter’s over.”

“Not for us.”

“Gotcha. Home’s in Athens, maybe? Santorini?”

“Try Tarpon Springs. Florida.”

This was more than he’d ever told me. Greek Orthodox. Florida boy. Autocratic family. I almost had enough to write the man’s biography.

Roussos wrote “the end” to the story of his life and turned back to the reason my seat was firmly planted in the extra chair in the cubbyhole that passed for his office. “Brown claims he was with friends the morning Ellen Hardiger was run down. He says he was up in Michigan on a fishing trip.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t form opinions.”

“If he was with friends, then they can vouch for him, right?”

“Could if they were around. Brown says they took off somewhere or other and probably won’t be back for a couple of weeks. We’ll make some calls and see if we can track them down.”

I already knew the cops hadn’t charged Craig Brown, although they had held him for the night. There was no restraining order in effect, so even though he’d gotten up close and personal with Zoey, no crime had actually been committed. He had never threatened her; he hadn’t even touched her. He had only begged her to return. The cops had questioned him, but this morning, they’d had to let him go with a warning not to leave town.

As for the murders? Roussos had listened carefully as I told him about the link between Win, Ellen, and Zoey’s ex, and he hadn’t even told me to find a new hobby.

“I’ll interview Grace Forester again,” Roussos said, “just to see if she thinks there was enough time during the party for Brown to find Dorchester’s meds, figure out an overdose would kill him, and add them to the shrimp dip. But it sounds like a long shot to me. You said yourself that
she
carried the dip into the kitchen after he left.”

“He could have poisoned it before he ditched.”

“Nobody else at the party got sick.”

“Maybe that was just luck. Maybe nobody else had any after he poisoned it. It was the end of the evening.”

He didn’t look convinced, and I didn’t feel convinced. But my scenario was possible.

“We’re going to keep an eye on the guy,” Roussos said. “I’ve already advised the sheriff’s department, since he lives in the county.”

I got to my feet. Slowly. I’d gotten a total of four hours sleep after dropping Zoey off in Columbus, driving home with Lucy, and falling into bed in my clothes. This morning Ed got the girls off to school, then headed to the church to wait for the electrician who was supposed to repair the attic wiring, but once sunlight was beaming full strength through our curtains, I’d driven here to tell Roussos my pet theory and relay the events of last night from my perspective.

“You know the big problem with everything you told me?” Roussos said, standing to see me out, like the proper gentleman he is.

“His motive?”

“Yeah, why he’d wait so long to kill either of them, much less both so close together. You have any thoughts about that?”

It almost sounded like Roussos was asking me for help, which just goes to show you the tricks ears can play. “Not yet,” I said. “Unless having both Win and Ellen here at the same time just set him off. Maybe he’s been simmering all this time, but he was too disorganized to find and kill them.”

“Weak. Very weak.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m working on it.”

“Don’t bet the farm. Sometimes you connect dots, and there’s nothing to show for all that effort except a lot of straight lines leading nowhere.”

We had been heading back toward the reception area. Roussos opened the door, but I didn’t move.

“Hildy Dorchester’s innocent,” I said. “I’m going to connect dots until I can prove it to you.”

He opened the door wider and gestured. “You start seeing some shapes, you come back and tell me. Just don’t try to figure out what they are all by yourself.”

A sensible person would have gone home for a nap. No one accuses me of being sensible. Yesterday morning I’d chalked up a few pluses with Hildy when I’d imbibed untold quarts of suspect punch. I figured that gave us a place to start again after my unfortunate temper tantrum, but I had to take advantage of her goodwill right away.