Mom Zone Mysteries 02 Staying Home Is a Killer (13 page)

The fur trim on the coat’s hood tickled my cheek. He leaned down and whispered, “I’ll give you one chance to give it up.”

I thought of my purse tossed so casually on the seat, far out of my reach. I pulled my hand up slowly and pointed inside the Cherokee.

His grip tightened and the knife pressed harder against my neck. He said something, but I focused on the headlights that swept over us as a rumbling SUV pulled into the slot directly in front of the Cherokee. The headlights blazed as the door opened, and then a woman popped up on the running board and shouted, “Hey, are you okay over there?”

His grip lessened and I felt the cool night air on my neck where the knife blade had been. The lights and another woman’s voice seemed to free me from my motionless spell. I croaked, “Help!” and stepped down hard on his instep, twisting, writhing to get away. My hip slammed against the basket and it skidded down the length of the Cherokee. “Help,” I screamed again, this time louder. The blare of a horn sounded from the SUV.

My attacker let go, cursing, and then ran down the narrow aisle between the cars away from the headlights. A skinny kid in a leather jacket and a green apron was pushing a line of carts. “Get him! Get him!” screeched the woman from the SUV. The kid looked up, puzzled. The hooded figure pounded toward him. The kid stepped out from behind the line of carts. The man shoved him square in the chest and sent the kid sprawling. The man pounded across the parking lot and disappeared into the nearby residential area. I heard a car engine roar, the screech of gears, and then a muffler thumping away in the night.

The kid picked himself up and totted to the edge of the parking lot, then returned to the Cherokee where I gripped the cart and tried to get my breath back. I was drenched in sweat and my hands and legs were shaking uncontrollably. I probably looked like a possessed wind-up toy.

“He’s gone,” the kid said to me. The door of the SUV slammed and a woman hurried over to me, her cell phone tucked next to her expensively highlighted blond hair. “Yes,” she was saying as she daintily stepped over the piles of slush, “an attempted mugging. Copeland’s parking lot.” She gave the address and then slid the phone into the pocket of her long double-breasted wool coat. “Are you all right, dear? Oh, look. You’re bleeding, but it’s not deep. Just a scratch.”

She stepped carefully back to her SUV. I touched my neck and saw a thin dash of red on my gloves. The woman appeared again, a wad of tissue in her hand. “Here, put this on your neck. Come this way. You need to sit down.” She opened the driver’s door and guided me into the seat. This must be how my grandmother felt after she broke her hip and had to learn to walk again. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

The woman turned away and I heard her inspecting the kid for damage and fussing over him. I leaned back in the seat and focused on the snowflake mosaic frozen on the windshield.

Chapter Thirteen

B
etween the three of us we were able to piece together a description of the man.

“Dark, hooded coat with fur trim around the hood,” I said, then sipped at the hot coffee a store employee had brought for us.

“It was dark green,” said the woman who had made the phone call. She finished her coffee, adjusted her bright scarf, and pulled out a slip of paper, her grocery list. “And he was wearing jeans,” she added. I couldn’t remember her name.

The kid who was bringing in baskets stood awkwardly on the other side of the grocery store manager’s office, fingering the ring through his eyebrow. He shuffled his feet, slurped his coffee. “Big boots,” he added suddenly. “I forgot to tell the police officer that. He was wearing those heavy boots like construction workers or hikers wear.”

I fingered the tiny cut, a scratch, at the base of my ear. It had already stopped bleeding and scabbed over.

A woman in the dark blue of Vernon’s police department entered the tiny room. Her radio squawked and she turned it down. “We’re finished with your car, ma’am. We’ll talk to the people in the neighborhood to see if they saw any unusual cars tonight.”

“He was wearing heavy boots, brown. You know, like construction worker boots,” said the kid, edging to the door. The police officer pulled out her small notebook, jotted in it, and nodded to the kid and the woman. “Thanks for your help,” she said and stood aside to let them leave the room.

As the woman in the wool coat sailed past, she patted my shoulder and said, “Take care.”

I stood up experimentally. My legs held, so I shuffled over to the desk and set down my full cup of coffee. It had done a great job warming my hands. “Does this happen a lot in this neighborhood?”

Officer Rutledge adjusted the zipper of her heavy coat and shook her head. “No. We’re seeing more muggings and purse snatchings, but usually downtown. And it’s tapered off since Christmas.”

I led the way out of the office into the store. The fluorescent lights glared and the bright colors of magazines, candy bars, and balloons seemed to shriek at me as an ache throbbed behind my eyes. Great, a headache. As I walked past a bagger stuffing groceries in plastic bags, he shouted someone’s name. I started.

“You’re still in hyperaware mode,” said Office Rutledge. “I’ll follow you home.”

That statement did nothing to reassure me. Instead, the bar of lights in my rearview mirror made me more nervous and jumpy. I was afraid I’d do something stupid, like forget to signal or run a stop sign, but I managed to coast into my driveway without seeing the lights flash in my mirror. I got out, waved at the patrol car, and then stood there a moment, trying to remember something. Oh yeah. The groceries.

I opened the back door and stared at the gallons of milk and the bags of apples. The kitchen door opened and Mitch bounded down the steps. I’d called him from the store. He’d stayed at home because Livvy was asleep and he couldn’t leave her. His arms encircled me and he said, “Are you okay? I could have woken Livvy up and come up there. I didn’t think about that when you called.”

I leaned into his shoulder. “Are you kidding? Never wake a sleeping baby, or a toddler, for that matter! I’m all right. A little jumpy, but I had a police escort home. Won’t that drive Mabel crazy?”

Mitch released me and grabbed the groceries out of the Cherokee. “She probably won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

I grabbed the last bag and gallon of milk, then elbowed the door shut. “I just hope I can,” I said and walked into the kitchen with a sigh of relief. What is it about being home that makes everything better? It’s illogical, the feeling that I’m safe or that everything will be okay if I can get inside my kitchen door. I was probably as vulnerable in my driveway as I was in the parking lot at the grocery store, but the feeling of security enveloped me. The ache behind my eyes eased and I plopped into a chair while Mitch put the groceries away.

“Do you think it could have anything to do with that conversation you overheard? Did you tell the police about it?”

“No. I didn’t think of that.” I stood up to get some ibuprofen. I washed it down with a glass of water from the faucet, so cold that it made me shiver, even though I was still in my coat. I walked into the living room and curled up in our overstuffed chair. “They assumed it was an attempted purse snatching. They even told me I was lucky that I’d tossed my purse into the Cherokee first where he couldn’t reach it. What good would it do Mr. Baseball Cap to attack me or try to take my purse? Even if Penny gave me something, I wouldn’t carry it around in my purse.”

“Maybe he wanted to scare you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. This was one of those random crimes. He saw I was preoccupied and that he could get some cash or credit cards. All he said was, ‘I’ll give you a chance to give it up.’ He had to mean my purse. Why do you have your suitcase out?” It was open on the couch and piles of clothes spilled out of the laundry basket on the coffee table. I ran through my mental calendar, but Mitch wasn’t supposed to go on a trip until his deployment next week.

Mitch squashed the last plastic bag and walked over to lean on the door frame. “I’m on twenty-four-hour phone alert.”

“What? What’s going on?”

“They won’t say. I’m supposed to stay near the phone, so they can put me in crew rest, if they need to.”

I grabbed the remote control. I could usually guess why Mitch was on alert, if I watched the news. I folded clothes as the news anchor said, “A trade delegation from the Middle East will arrive in the Northwest next week. Delegates from Bulgaria, Turkey, and Macedonia, nations allied with the United States in the War on Terror, hope to expand cooperation with the U.S. from security issues to economic interests. Another ally in the War on Terror, the Gulf nation of Osan, has seen tensions rise over the United States’ use of its airfields. Escalating violence there threatened the American embassy. There’s no word from the White House on whether more U.S. troops will deploy to the region.”

“What about your regular deployment?”

Mitch called from the kitchen, “Don’t know. If I go, it might be a short turnaround and then we’d still go on the deployment. Or they could roll us from this into the deployment. Or they might task another unit to fill the deployment and then send us home after this, if we go.”

It reminded me of the convoluted sports reporting near the end of football season when the sports anchor runs through all thirty-five variables if team A wins and team B loses.

I stacked a neatly folded T-shirt next to Mitch’s pile of tan flight suits. “Well, maybe this will be like all the other times and nothing will happen.” Usually, Mitch lived out of a suitcase for several days and we jumped every time the phone rang, only to have the whole thing evaporate after a few days. I picked up my jeans and put them away. I slid the drawer shut and Mitch’s arm encircled me. He said, “It’ll be okay. I probably won’t have to go.” He kissed my neck, just below my ear.

“I know. I hate the waiting, though.”

“I don’t like it either.” He kissed the other side of my neck. “You know, we should go to bed early,” he said in a lighter tone. I watched his reflection in the dresser mirror. He waggled his eyebrows at me. “I might ship out any minute.”

I circled in his arms and put my arms around his neck. “Then we’d better use our time wisely.”

It was later that night when I was curled up next to Mitch’s warm back that I remembered the man’s words before the headlights spotlighted us. When I pointed to my purse, he’d said, “Not that.”

I slid out of bed and went to the kitchen. Moving blindly, I felt for the cabinet door, found a glass, and filled it with water. After a few sips I sat down at the table, trying to make sense of the thoughts racing around in my mind.

A random mugger wouldn’t have turned down my purse. I forced myself to go over the words I’d heard the man say. Again, I felt the bite of the cold air and the even colder sliver of steel against my throat. He’d said I had one chance to give it to him.

“It” again. I sipped the water. I took a deep breath and reminded myself I was back in my kitchen, safe and unharmed. Was it the same “it” that Victor and Mr. Baseball Cap were talking about? Were Victor and Mr. Baseball Cap in something together? Something illegal or shady? Was it linked to Penny’s death? The faster I figured out what it was and whether or not it was related, the safer we’d be. I placed the glass in the sink and rechecked the dead bolt on the back door. I snuggled into bed against Mitch, but it was a long time before I slept.

I decided to visit Georgia Lamar. I knew she’d been released from the hospital a few days ago. I wasn’t sure if she’d slam the door in my face, but there was only one way to find out. After church on Sunday afternoon, I left Mitch immersed in a basketball game with Livvy snoozing in her room. I zipped down the sweeping curves of Rim Rock Road between twin ribbons of snow that the plow had pushed up. The main artery into downtown, the road itself was sanded and clear of snow. I felt like a bobsledder streaking down a course between the mounting walls of snow.

I stopped at the little gas station tucked into the residential neighborhood, picked up a newspaper, and considered the heavy gray sky. Well, it wasn’t snowing at that moment and there was no wind, so I might as well fill up the Cherokee with gas now. Tomorrow’s forecast was windy with snow.

After I paid for the gas, I borrowed the cashier’s phone book. There were ten Lamars listed, but only one had just an initial G. Lamar on Lilly Avenue, and I bet it was Georgia. Why do single women list only an initial and their last name? Instead of camouflaging them, it shouts, “Hey, I’m a single woman, living alone.” I checked the coordinates on the map and realized I was only a few blocks away from Lilly Avenue.

Back in the Cherokee with a Hershey’s bar to sustain me, I continued down Rim Rock Road until I neared the interstate and the Victorian houses transitioned from single-family homes to divided apartments. I found the address and edged into a precarious park on the car-lined street. The two-and three-story gingerbread-trimmed homes had plenty of space to convert into apartments, but not a lot of parking. Studying the pale yellow Queen Anne that now sported peeling paint and two front doors, I ate half the Hershey’s bar and debated whether I really wanted to talk to Georgia.

Thistlewait was definitely not going to let me in on the investigation. He’d been formal and exact during the rest of the search of our house. Georgia would at least have some details about her poisoning and maybe she’d share them with me, I hoped. Of course, if she thought I’d tried to poison her, she might be less helpful. I popped the last rectangle of chocolate into my mouth and got out of the Cherokee. Normally, I wouldn’t pester someone just out of the hospital, but besides the attempted purse snatching, the OSI had searched my house. That was enough to banish any restraints I usually felt. Until Clarissa returned from her trip I could focus on Georgia and Ballard. I couldn’t figure out a way to find out anything about Victor yet.

I took a giant step over the snow piled on the curb and tromped to the front door. As I contemplated the two blank cards inserted above the doorbells, wondering which one was Georgia’s, a sporty CRV crunched up the narrow driveway and parked behind the house. I wished I’d brought something like a casserole or dessert. She’d just gotten out of the hospital, after all. On second thought, she probably wouldn’t touch any food from me. I walked around the side of the house and caught Georgia as she inserted her key in the lock of the back door.