Criminal Intent (MIRA) (11 page)

He glanced around for a weapon. On the counter, resting in a wooden rack, he found an old-fashioned marble rolling pin. He snatched it up, hefted it, impressed by its weight. Louis found the idea of violence distasteful but in a situation like this, a man had to save his own hide any way he could. Breathing hard, he stood to the left of the refrigerator in the pint-size kitchen, rolling pin in hand.

Wyatt
walked into the room, carrying a white takeout bag with the Clem’s Clams logo. Bill Wyatt was a big man, but Louis had a couple of advantages. He might not be a kid any longer, but Wyatt had at least thirty years on him. And Wyatt didn’t have a clue that Louis was standing in his kitchen.

Wyatt glanced up and saw him. The bag fell from his hand and landed with a plop on the kitchen floor. “What the hell?” he said. “Who the hell are—”

He never got to finish his question. Louis swung the rolling pin. With a sharp, sickening crack, it connected with Bill Wyatt’s skull, and the big man went down like a fallen oak. He lay on the floor, silent and unmoving. Louis dropped the rolling pin. It landed on the floor next to Wyatt with a loud thud. Sweat trickled down his sides as he stood over the body on the floor, breathing hard and wondering how things had spiraled so far out of control. How could his plan have gone so wrong so quickly?

There was only one thing he could do. His heart thudding like a locomotive, Louis left Wyatt lying there and ran like a frightened jackrabbit for the door. He didn’t even bother to see whether or not he’d killed the man.

He just got the hell out.

A
nnie
was downstairs in the tiny office behind the store, going over the books with a fine-tooth comb, when she heard a dull thud coming from somewhere above her. Startled, she glanced ceilingward, puzzled because the apartment was both empty and locked. An instant later, there was a second thud, and she realized the sound wasn’t coming from her apartment. Through the open window, she was hearing the unmistakable sound of footsteps, walking around on her roof.

Prickly fingers of anxiety danced up and down her spine. She was alone here, utterly alone, for the first time since she’d arrived. Estelle wasn’t due in for another two hours, and Sophie, already bored to death with sitting around the Twilight and anxious for next week to roll around so she could start her new babysitting job, had wheedled and cajoled until finally Annie caved and allowed her to ride her ten-speed down the treacherous state highway and into town. It had been a tough decision. The rational woman in her had argued that Sophie was fifteen and fully capable of riding her bike a couple of miles into town. The irrational mother who was the rational woman’s evil twin didn’t bother with argument. She simply constructed a grisly and effective mental image of her precious
daughter crushed beneath the wheels of a pulp truck. Dead on the shoulder of the highway, like Timmy Rivers.

But Sophie wasn’t Timmy Rivers, and this wasn’t Atchawalla. It was broad daylight on a summer morning, and Sophie wasn’t the kind of kid to take chances. She was a careful biker who obeyed traffic laws, always wore her helmet, and paid close attention to approaching vehicles. So the rational woman had won the battle, but it had been a hard sell. Now, as a result of having taken a giant leap toward cutting Sophie loose from her own obsessive mothering, Annie was left alone to deal with whoever—or whatever—was up on the rooftop.

Somehow, she doubted that it was old Saint Nick.

She glanced around the office in search of a weapon. All she could find was a pair of scissors. At close range, they would undoubtedly be quite effective, but Annie wasn’t sure she wanted to get that close to somebody bent on doing her harm. If she were lurking outside somebody’s home, those shiny blades, gleaming in the sunshine, would certainly give her pause. She could only hope they would have the same effect on whoever was out there.

Scissors in hand, she let herself out the front door and walked around the corner of the building. At the Crowley house across the highway, a pair of young boys took turns tossing a basketball through a rusty hoop hung over the garage door, their excited voices carrying over the buzz of a lawn mower from two houses down. Beside the door to her number-three guest room, directly above a cluster of milk-weed that had shoved its persistent little head right up through the pavement, a battered aluminum extension ladder leaned against the side of the building. Shading her eyes, she followed its length, up past the door frame, past the roof overhang, and directly to the man who stood on her roof…testing the boards.

The
breath exited her body in a giant whoosh, leaving her feeling like an idiot, standing there brandishing a pair of lethal-looking scissors like some would-be Edwina Scissorhands. Dressed in tan Dickies and a tattered navy sweatshirt, the man gingerly poked his foot, clad in a retro-look red-and-white high-top canvas sneaker, at what appeared to be a spongy spot beneath the shingles.

“Hello?” she said. “Can I help you?”

The stranger glanced down at her, then moved closer to the edge. Annie got a snapshot impression of shaggy brown hair that could have benefited from a good combing. A broad, pleasant face. Nice eyes. And a smile that must have felled more than a few females in his time.

“Jack Crowley,” he said. “Jo told me you have a leak.”

The light bulb went on over her head. “Jolene’s husband,” she said, tucking the scissors behind her back. “The CMP line-man.”

“That’d be me. Hope you weren’t planning on using those scissors on me.”

Score one for rampant paranoia. She hoped the sunlight was bright enough to camouflage her flush. “Only if you pulled a weapon first. Thanks so much for coming over.”

“Not a problem. Jo always makes me a list of things to do, and I just fall in line like a good little soldier.” Coming from another man, his words might have sounded resigned, even bitter. But uttered by Jack Crowley, they seemed matter-of-fact, almost cheerful.

Shading her eyes again to see him better, she said, “So what’s the verdict?”

“Well…” He drew the word out into several syllables. “I’m no roofing contractor, just a backyard handyman, but it looks to me like your roof’s in pretty good shape.” He hunkered down, balancing himself with one hand pressed against the shingles. “You check the rest of the rooms?”

“Yes. This
seems to be the only area that’s leaking.”

“I’d imagine this could be fixed pretty easily. A four-by-eight sheet of plywood, a roll of tar paper, and some roofing shingles ought to do it.”

“How hard would it be? The work?”

“That depends. You thinking of doing it yourself?”

Mindful of her rapidly dwindling bank account, Annie said, “Yes.”

With a wicked grin, he said, “You’re not afraid of heights, are you? From the ground, this doesn’t look very far up. But once you get up here, your perspective changes. Suddenly it’s one hell of a long way down.”

“Heights don’t bother me.” Her fears ran more to random traffic accidents and homicidal sheriffs, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Come on up if you want. I’ll show you.”

She set the scissors down on the pavement, then grabbed the ladder and hoisted herself up onto the first rung. It wasn’t the first time she’d climbed one of these things, but it had been a while. When she reached the top, she paused, hands braced against the shingles. “Nice view,” she said.

And it was a nice view. From here, she could see right over the roof’s shallow peak and down a wide sweep of river, its lush green banks lined with willow and birch and wild fern.

“This place is beautiful,” she said. “I’m surprised the town doesn’t attract more tourists.”

“Economy went down the toilet when the cotton mill closed. There’s nothing to come here for. Don’t know if you’ve been downtown yet, but there’s probably a half-dozen empty storefronts. The President keeps telling us the economy’s in recovery. Guess he hasn’t been to Serenity lately.”

“Yet people stay here.”

He shrugged, glanced across the road, to the tidy white frame house and the two boys trading good-natured insults in
the driveway. “Jo and I, we’ve lived here all our lives. We’re a lot luckier than some. No matter how poor a town is, people still need electricity. And they still have to educate their kids. That equals job security for us. Serenity’s not such a bad place to live.”

“That’s good to know, especially since I just bought property here.”

“Speaking of which.” He returned his attention to the roof. “See this spot here? It’s soft. Real soft.” He demonstrated, pressing against it with the toe of his sneaker. The spongy wood flexed beneath the pressure, and when he removed his foot, the indentation made by his toe was still clearly visible. “But the rest of her’s solid as a brick. You tear off the shingles, replace this sheet of plywood with a clean one, lay down a strip of tar paper and reshingle her, she’ll be good as new.”

It looked almost possible. “What’s the best way to anchor the shingles?”

“I’d use a staple gun. It’s fast, it’s clean, and you won’t hammer your thumb. You start at the bottom edge and work your way up. That way, they overlap, and since water runs downhill, there’s no way it can creep up underneath and get to your plywood.”

“Mr. Crowley, you’re a font of wisdom. Thank you so much.”

“Just being neighborly. And it’s Jack.”

“Jack.”

“You’re welcome to use my ladder. I’ll leave it here. You can bring it back when the job’s finished. Jo’s been after me to clean out the gutters.” He flashed her another of those heart-stopping grins. “This’ll give me an excuse to put it off for a while longer.”

Wryly, she said, “So glad I could be of service.”

“If you need transportation to the lumber store, I have an old pickup truck I use for that kind of thing. Feel free to take it. Just
ask Jo for the keys. If you wait for Sonny to get your car fixed, it could be October before your roof gets repaired.”

He followed her back down the ladder and hopped to the ground. “Oh, before I forget—we’re having a little get-together Friday night. Just a few friends. Jo and I would love for you and your daughter to come. Around six would be good. That’ll give us a couple of hours before we’re forced to go indoors to avoid becoming human pincushions. Those damn mosquitoes’ll eat you alive if you let ’em.”

“A dinner party,” she said. “I don’t think—”

“Whoa,” he said, and held up a hand. “Nothing that fancy. This is Serenity. Our idea of a party is a six-pack of Old Milwaukee and a bag of Doritos.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “Sounds like my kind of party.”

“It’s all real casual. We’ll barbecue some burgers, sit around swilling beer and telling tall tales, take a dip in the pool if we feel like it.”

“It sounds like fun,” she said, “but I just got here, and—”

“All the more reason you should come. It looks to me—” he craned his neck to study the derelict building in front of them “—like you’re planning to stay for a while.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then you might as well get to know the neighbors. We’ll see you Friday around six.”

The hospital room was unnaturally silent, the only sound the soft beeping of the monitor beside the bed. Bill Wyatt lay so still and pale against crisp white sheets that Lottie would have thought he was dead if not for the gentle rise and fall of his chest and the indecipherable squiggles that ran across the monitor.

She’d talked to the police earlier, trying to make sense of this, trying to understand why anybody would have broken into Bill’s condo and attacked him. The cops had said robbery
was probably the motive, but what did Bill have that was of any value? He lived on a fixed income, owned no jewelry or coins, no stocks or bonds or valuable antiques. Probably the most valuable thing he owned was Romeo, the yellow-fronted amazon parrot, but they hadn’t touched Romeo. Thank God, because it had been his screeching and squawking that had brought Everett Freeman across the hall to see what all the ruckus was about. If Romeo had been quieter, or if Everett had stayed over at Eleanor Tolley’s place like he did sometimes, Bill probably would have been dead by the time anybody found him. Lottie had never much cared for Romeo, but now, the parrot had been elevated to hero status.

She’d returned from Tallahassee energized, almost giddy in her excitement over the upcoming cruise, and this unexpected turn of events had left her stunned. She’d been a little shell-shocked when the doctor came in, and although she’d listened carefully to everything the doctor had had to say, she hadn’t taken it all in. Dr. Herrera, a young woman about the age of her granddaughter, had been kind. Gently, and with great patience, she’d attempted to translate all that medical gibberish into layman’s terms that Lottie could understand. But all Lottie wanted was the bottom line. Was Bill going to make it or not?

That, Dr. Herrera had said briskly, was out of her hands. She was doing everything in her power to make Bill well. The rest was up to God. And, she’d added, almost as an afterthought, to Bill himself.

The stubborn old fool. How many times had Lottie told him that he needed to install a decent security system? She’d lived in southern Florida longer than he had. The region might be a tropical paradise, but it had its flaws, one of them being a skyrocketing crime rate. Lottie had friends who’d been victimized, and she’d learned from their mistakes. But Bill, who always had an answer for everything and who was quite possibly
the most stubborn, infuriating man on the planet, had ignored her words of warning.

Damn him. What was she going to do if she lost him?

He wasn’t showing signs of improvement. Lottie might not be a doctor, or even a nurse, but she wasn’t an idiot. She knew that the longer he remained in a coma, the poorer his chances of recovery. She needed to contact his daughter. Even if the worst didn’t come to pass, Robin needed to know that her dad was in the hospital and in a bad way. Bill would probably strangle her if he found out, but this time, he wasn’t getting the final say. Lottie didn’t know the exact nature of the rift between Bill and Robin, just knew they’d had some kind of falling-out. Bill didn’t even know where his daughter lived. She called him regularly, always the dutiful daughter, but she stubbornly refused to give him an address or phone number.

Robin had gotten into some kind of trouble. Lottie had inadvertently heard them arguing about it on the telephone one day. Or at least she’d heard Bill’s end of the conversation. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but she’d been brewing tea in the kitchen and Bill hadn’t exactly been quiet. He’d been ragging Robin about somebody named Bobby Sarnacki, somebody she’d apparently run to for help instead of coming to her own father. Bill had made it crystal clear exactly how he felt about this Sarnacki character, who apparently had a less-than-stellar reputation with the Detroit police. The argument had ended in a stalemate, as Lottie suspected most of their arguments did. Bill had spent the rest of that afternoon in a surly sulk. She would have kicked his scrawny hindside from here to the moon if she’d thought his sour mood was a result of pure orneriness. But there was more to it than that. Bill was hurting. Despite their differences, he thought his daughter had hung the moon, and the discord between them was killing him.

It was time for Bill and Robin to heal that rift. Glancing at
the pale, still man lying in the hospital bed, she prayed it wasn’t too late for them. Bobby Sarnacki must know how to reach Robin. All Lottie had to do was call him. She knew Bill wouldn’t approve, but that was just too bad. She had to do something besides sit here by his hospital bed, hour after hour, her heart in her throat as she watched the man she loved inhale and exhale, terrified that each breath would be his last. If she could track Robin down, at least she’d feel as though she was doing something useful.