Home Free (31 page)

“Drop the fucking knife, jerk.”

He stared for a second in shocked disbelief,
then waved the knife like he was brushing away a gnat. “You won’t
shoot me, pussy bitch.” He snarled his contempt. “Put the gun away
before you hurt yourself, whore.”

I swung the gun just to the left of his head,
widened my stance and bent my knees a little to brace for the kick,
and shot a big-ass hole in my living room wall. Jack would
understand. I returned my aim to his face. Derek was wailing like a
little girl and I thought, what a fucking sissy. I didn’t even
graze his ear.

“My foot!” he screamed.

His foot? I looked down. Evidently, he’d been
so startled when I fired the gun that he dropped the knife. It was
sticking through his foot and the thin rubber sole of his flip-flop
and into my floor, and I thought of butterflies pinned in display
cases, only this had a little puddle of blood starting to spread,
whereas the butterflies didn’t.

“Hunh.”

“MY FOOT!”

I kept the gun trained on him in case it was
some kind of trick and made my way around him to get to the office
so I could call for help. “Don’t move.” Jeez, I crack myself up, I
thought. As I passed the front door, there was a knock. Finally, my
brownies. I opened the door. Jimmy C stood looking at me with a
pained expression. I stuck my head out the door, looking around the
yard.

“You didn’t see a pan of brownies out here,
did you?”

“Alex, I think there’s a problem. When we
played the tape for Brian, he broke down and admitted everything.
Everything except sending someone over here. He admitted he was
planning to have you killed, but he insists he had nothing to do
with the attack last night.”

“No shit.” I waved my gun in the direction of
the living room, then followed him in. “I was just going to call
you.”

“She stabbed me in the foot, the crazy
bitch!” Derek screamed, flapping his arms around. “Do
something!”

“Goddammit, you call me
bitch
one more
time, and I’m going to fucking shoot you right in front of Jimmy
C,” I growled, pointing the gun at him again.

Jimmy C’s eyebrows disappeared into his
bangs. He took in the butterflied foot, the ski mask on the floor,
the hole in the wall and Rose’s gun in my hand. “Aren’t you Derek
Harrison?”

Derek nodded. “She stabbed me in the foot,
and she tried to shoot me. She’s fucking crazy!”

“Shut up.” Jimmy C radioed for a uniform and
the paramedics. “Don’t move,” he said to Derek. “Get it,
don’t
move
?” he said to me, laughing, easing the gun out of my hand
and ushering me towards the office.

“I know, I told him the same thing. He
doesn’t seem to think it’s funny.”

When we were out of earshot, he whispered,
“What’s this about? You know him, right?”

“All I can figure is, he held some kind of
grudge because I broke up with him back in high school. He said it
was payback.” I didn’t see any reason to bring up the other stuff
from high school.

“Uh, Alex, he stabbed
himself
in the
foot, right?”

“Yeah. Apparently he’s a little gun-shy.”

“Did you miss?”

“Hell no.”

“And you’re sure he’s the same guy from last
night?”

“Well, he had the mask on, but he’s the right
build. Mikey could corroborate that. Plus, he’s been leaving me
notes for a week. Most of them were paste-on letters, but today
there was a handwritten one. It’s on the front seat, I’ll go get
it.”

Just then, we heard another blood-curdling
yowl from the living room. I rolled my eyes. That guy was such a
wimp.

“Jesus, what now?”

Jimmy C and I got to the living room in time
to see Lucifer sink his teeth into Derek’s good ankle, evidently
for the second time, if the bloody puncture marks were any
indication. I guessed I hadn’t shut the door all the way when I let
Jimmy C in, and the cat had slunk in when we weren’t looking.

“Get your cat off me!” Derek screeched,
trying to shoo him away with his foot, but unable to do so without
increasing the pain in his other foot. Karma’s a bitch.

I scooped up Lucifer, afraid he might get a
disease from biting Derek’s rotten flesh, and he immediately
started purring. “He’s a stray. Don’t know if he’s had his
vaccinations or not. Probably they’ll have to give you the rabies
shots. I’ve heard that’s not overly pleasant.”

Jimmy C stifled a snicker. I ran outside to
get the note, dumped Lucifer on the porch and almost mowed Debbie
down. She looked for a gun. I looked for a pan of brownies.

“I heard the shot, and I called the cops.
They said a detective had already radioed. Are you okay?”

“Fine, just have to get something from the
car for the detective.” I beeped the car open and picked up Derek’s
note by the corner, trying not to put any more fingerprints on it
than I already had. The one that said
WHORE
was still on the
seat, too, and I grabbed it. “This’ll be over in a minute.” Hint,
hint.

The uniform and the paramedics rolled up
simultaneously, and I let them in and took the notes to Jimmy C. He
read them and nodded. “This is good,” he said. “We’ll check the
fingerprints and match the handwriting. If they’re his, it
certainly indicates he was here before.” He slipped the notes into
a plastic bag. I brought him the others from the kitchen drawer,
and those went in the bag as well.

“You didn’t tell me about this, because...”
he asked.

“The first couple were friendly, I figured
they were a joke from a friend. By the time they got rude, and then
threatening, I just assumed it had to do with Brian. Turns out,
Derek’s been stalking me. His ugly car was parked out front for
awhile every day, and he’d jog by from time to time. I never got a
good look at him, so I didn’t realize it was him till he showed up
here tonight.”

Jimmy C shook his head. “You have this much
excitement when you lived down south?”

I thought of my ineffectual attempts at
seducing my own husband and gave Jimmy C a wry smile. “Sure.
Doesn’t everybody?”

Jimmy C went to talk to the uniforms. I
couldn’t watch when the paramedics pulled the knife out of Derek’s
foot. The red stain had grown considerably. I didn’t think Jack
would be able to fix that, or the slice in the carpet either.

While the paramedics wrapped up Derek’s foot,
Jimmy C asked to see the scene of last night’s attack. I took him
into the bedroom and explained how Ski Mask, aka Derek, had jimmied
the lock and stealthed into my room, brandishing the hunting knife,
how he woke me up and threatened to kill me if I screamed, how he
tried to untie the security knot in my pants, and how Mikey had
come in and scared him away, sending him crashing through the
French doors. Jimmy C stood, nodding, looking thoughtful, and took
some notes. Jack had boarded up the door like he’d promised. But
the gunshot wound to the wall was still untreated, not to mention
highly noticeable, and bore a striking resemblance to the one in
the living room. I hoped he wouldn’t ask how Mikey had scared him
off. I was getting better at lying, but I wasn’t eager to try it
with a detective.

“All righty, then. That’s about all I need.”
He flipped his notebook closed and slipped it into his jacket
pocket. I held my breath. “It’s a shame what those previous tenants
did to this house. Good thing your new husband is a contractor.” I
closed my eyes and exhaled, and I seriously considered kissing
Jimmy C on the mouth.

When the paramedics and the cruiser had left,
Debbie finally brought over the pan of brownies and a half-gallon
of milk. I invited her to stay, and she, Jimmy C and I finished off
the lot of it. Debbie asked him about the neighborhood watch idea,
and I figured it was a good time to have my long-anticipated
shower.

“There’s a spare key in the hall table,” I
told her. “Lock up when you leave. I’m going to bed.”

I stood in the shower, my mind blank, until
there was no hot water left. Jimmy C had left the gun on my
nightstand, and I checked to make sure it was loaded, slipped it
under my pillow, hoped I wouldn’t shoot myself in the head, and
slept like a log.

Jack was the first to arrive. I woke at seven
to the smell of coffee and bacon, and I went to investigate in my
undies and a nightshirt that sported Mickey Mouse flipping the
bird. It covered my underwear, but just barely. Murphy was in the
kitchen, making omelets and bacon, drinking coffee and reading the
paper.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked, pouring
myself a cup. I didn’t ask if it was decaf.

Jack flipped the paper around so I could see
the headline on page one,
Local Politician Charged
. “You’re
a celebrity, pumpkin.” He slid an omelet onto a plate, added three
slices of crispy bacon strips, and pushed it across the counter to
me. He filled his plate similarly and came around to join me,
stopping to wrap me in a giant hug. “You okay?”

I nodded. We sat down to eat. The article
said that Brian had confessed and planned to plead guilty at his
arraignment this morning. I wanted to believe he’d chosen to avoid
a trial in order to minimize the pain to our family, including his
own kids. But the cynic in me couldn’t help but think he just
wanted to reassure would-be voters that, while he was admittedly a
cold-blooded killer, at least he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer who
wasted tax-payers’ money. The paper also commented on the irony
that the reward money had been put up by the perpetrator himself.
I’d forgotten about the reward money.

There was no article about Derek, and I
figured it had taken long enough at the hospital that he hadn’t
been booked yet by the time the newspaper was put to bed. I sighed.
Something to look forward to tomorrow.

“You see the living room?” I asked. As if he
could possibly miss it.

“Uh-hunh. It’s on the list. I can’t fix that
carpet though. You should remove it and install hardwood floors
throughout. It’ll match the bedroom.”

“Whatever you want to do.”

The doorbell rang mid-way through my eggs. I
stood up to answer it, and Jack raised his eyebrow in the direction
of my attire. I sat down, and he got the door, returning with my
mother and a casserole in tow. I stood up to greet her and put the
casserole in the fridge. She gave me a hug. Jack went back to
munching his bacon.

“Hi, Mom.”

She didn’t mention the bloodstained carpet or
bullet-riddled wall. She didn’t flinch about Mickey flipping her
off. She didn’t comment on the fact that I was eating breakfast in
my panties with Murphy. I wondered if that meant she thought we
were married. I braced myself.

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“We’re not married.”

“I didn’t think you were,” she frowned.
“You’ve had a busy couple of weeks.”

I creased my forehead, not following.

“It was two weeks ago today we found out you
were living here.”

Wow, Pauline was right. I was going to have
to start pacing myself or I’d run out of excitement before
Thanksgiving. “Shit, that’s right. Damn, sorry.”

She shrugged and looked at her hands.
Evidently her daughter’s foul mouth was no longer her biggest
problem. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Not without pants.”

“No, I mean Minter. You’re not going to move
away after all this,” she waved her hands vaguely. “Are you?
Because your father and I would really like it if you’d stay.” It
was the closest thing to a heartfelt outpouring of emotion as
Dorothy Jordan was capable of. No guilt, no drama. I thought she
should be rewarded for her efforts, so I hugged her again.

“I’m staying, Mom. I like it here.” I meant
it. The weather still sucked, the mindset was still outdated and
the hairstyles were still an abomination. But I felt at home in
Minter. I was worried about what that said about me, but there it
was. “Besides, it’ll be years before I’ve paid off all the work
Jack’s doing on the house.” And probably that long before I’ve
worked things out with Danny. She didn’t say anything about Brian,
and I wondered how parents dealt with something like that, a child
who wasn’t what they’d always thought. I didn’t want to bring it
up. What could I possibly say?

The front door slammed, and I panicked for a
second. I wondered how long it would take for that reflex to fade.
Probably I should return the gun to Rose before I accidentally shot
someone. I thought about Derek and came to the conclusion I should
return the gun to Rose before I purposely shot someone. Kevin and
Pauline joined the party in the kitchen.

“Don’t you people have jobs?” I asked.

“We’re on our honeymoon,” Pauline responded,
beaming.

“
What
?” Three part harmony from Mom,
Murphy and me.

“The judge had to come sign off on some
paperwork last night, discharging the warrants against Danny and
me. I asked him if he could marry us. You don’t need a blood test
or anything anymore, just a license. He said, sure. I asked
Pauline, and she said, sure. We’ll have a real wedding later on,
when things have settled down.” He glanced at my mother. “But we
didn’t want to wait.”

My mom hugged them both and welcomed Pauline
to our family and said something about happy news for a change.
Jack and Kevin did the back slapping thing. I went to answer the
doorbell. Jimmy C stood there, in his sunglasses and suit and tie,
sweating already.

“Why don’t they let you wear shorts? That’s a
ridiculous way to dress in this heat.” I motioned him towards the
kitchen.

“The bicycle patrols at the lake wear shorts.
I’m thinking of putting in for a transfer.” He shook hands with
Kevin and nodded at the others. It occurred to me that not one
person had commented on my attire so far this morning, which left
me to wonder how I normally looked.

Jimmy C glanced at my mom, then at me. “Can
we talk privately?”