Motion for Malice (23 page)

"Maizy!" I called softly.

No response. At least I hadn't heard gunshots or anything. I was fairly sure she wasn't in any immediate danger. Except from me. I was going to wring her neck.

I heard clomping footsteps, and all of a sudden Maizy barreled past me, an expression of urgency on her face. "He's home!"

I grabbed for her arm and missed, since she was already halfway across the yard, moving fast. "What do you mean, home? He should be at work!" I pulled in a breath. "You're going the wrong way. The car's over there." I pointed in the direction of the Valiant, which just happened to be in the direction of Roger Marrin's driveway, in full view of his front window

We were cut off from our car.

"Come on!" Maizy hissed. "He might've heard me."

That did it. I practically trampled her in my urgency to get to a hiding spot. I heard a strangled sort of "
Gak!"
sound and realized I may or may not have stepped on her scarf in my haste. In my defense, it wasn't my fault it was dragging on the ground. That scarf would have been three feet too long for Shaquille O'Neal.

Maizy hunkered down beside me at the far end of the pool, rubbing her throat. "You almost killed me back there!
God!
"

"I did?" I gave her a couple of
golly gee
blinks. I could tell she wasn't buying it, but we both had a bigger problem, and it might be showing up at the back door any minute. Her breathing was ragged. Or maybe that was mine. I was pretty sure I was hyperventilating. I'd read that you should breathe into a paper bag when you were hyperventilating. I nudged her. "Have you got a paper bag?"

She glared at me over her shoulder. "What? No!"

"Plastic would probably work," I told her. "Have you got a plastic bag?"

She yanked her backpack around to her stomach. "You can be so weird.
God."
She rooted around inside. "Here, this is all I've got. Knock yourself out." And she handed me a small, empty M&M's bag. No fair. She got to eat M&M's, and I was eating Styrofoam? I held the bag to most of my mouth and breathed. The ghost scent of M&M's filled my nose, making my stomach rumble. The plastic crinkled with each inhale and exhale. Tiny little delicious chocolate-scented crinkles.

"Ssh!" Maizy hissed.

I stopped licking the bag. "Hey, I'm about to pass out here."

"At least you'll be quiet," she snapped.

I heard the back door open.

"Huh," Maizy said. "Checkered pants again."

"Mmf," I agreed. Hard to talk when I was busy hoovering up M&M's remnants.

Maizy reared back and kicked me in the shins.

I pulled in a sharp breath. "
Ow!"
I dropped the bag and the wind instantly carried it away in the direction of the house. "What'd you do that for?"

"You need to focus," Maizy told me.

I
was
focused. Not so much on the hyperventilating thing—that moment had passed. Now I was focused on going back to the store for some chocolate. Turned out it was a pretty good remedy for hyperventilation.

"Uh-oh," Maizy whispered.

I rubbed my shin. "That's going to bruise. I have very delicate skin."

She ignored me. "He sees something."

I clutched the back of her coat. "Us? Does he see us?"

She shook her head. "He's over by the window. Looking at the ground."

Panic coiled in my chest. There was nothing on the ground to see, except maybe the M&M's bag and footprints. Maizy or Jamie sized footprints. I looked at her Doc Martens. They were caked in grime.

Uh-oh.

"Footprints," I whispered. "We must have left footprints."

"Well, we didn't autograph them," Maizy whispered. "For all he knows, one of his neighbors was snooping around. It's a bad neighborhood."

I looked at the house next door. Perfectly groomed, professionally landscaped, immaculately decorated. It didn't look like a bad neighborhood. Roger Marrin's house was its own bad neighborhood.

Maizy laid a finger to her lips and mouthed, "I think he heard us."

Instinctively I shrank back against the wall of the pool, willing myself to magically be transported back to the Valiant or better still, back to my Roger-free apartment. With M&M's.

"He's coming this way," Maizy whispered.

My eyes squeezed shut. My hands squeezed shut. Other parts of me squeezed shut. So this was the way it ended, crouched by a filthy pool in the filthy yard of a filthy house, wishing with every fiber of my body that I had a weapon of some sort to defend us from this checker-panted mama's boy, maybe a sharp stick or a bazooka.

"Miss Pibs, no!"

I opened my eyes. "What?"

Maizy flapped her hand to shut me up while she peeked around the edge of the pool.

"Come back here, Miss Pibs!"

I tapped Maizy's shoulder. "Who's he talking to?"

"The cat," she said with wonder. "His cat got out the back door, and he's gone after her."

Sure enough, the next "Miss Pibs!" sounded as if it came from the front of the house. Evidently Miss Pibs was making a break for it. "Great!" I straightened up. "Let's get out of here."

We hustled across the yards standing between us and the Valiant. The "Miss Pibs!" were fading by the minute. Roger must be down at the far end of the block.

Maizy stuck the key in the ignition but didn't start the car. "She saved us, you know."

"Who did?" I had my hands already in front of the vent, waiting for the hot air to blow.

"Miss Pibs. If she hadn't run out of the house when she did, he would have found us."

"If he'd been at work where he belongs," I said, "he wouldn't have found us either. Start the car."

She didn't start the car. "Miss Pibs can't stay out here in the cold."

"She'll be fine," I said. "Start the car."

"We've got to help," she said.

I should have throttled her with her scarf when I had the chance. "We are not helping him corral his cat, Maizy."

"I have no intention of helping
him
," Maizy said. "But we could drive around the block once or twice. For
her
sake."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. If that'll get you to start the car, then we can drive around the block. But if he sees us—" I looked pointedly at the fluorescent hood. "And I don't know how he
won't,
then I can't be held responsible for what happens to you."

She patted my leg. "Nothing's happening to me. I'm gonna be fine." She started the car and turned on the heat. It practically spat ice droplets at us. "We can take better care of her, anyway," she muttered.

I jerked my head toward her, but she was already scanning the street for signs of Miss Pibs. If she thought I was stealing Roger Marrin's cat out from under his nose, she'd better think again. I was already suspected of murder. I wasn't going down for petnapping, too. "You are out of your mind," I told her. "There is no way I'm taking that cat home. She doesn't belong to me, and I don't steal other peoples' pets. I'll drop her off near her house, but I am
not
keeping her. Now let's go."

We went.

"I think she likes you," Maizy said forty minutes later, after we'd circled that block and about seventeen others, at five miles an hour, with the windows open, calling for the cat, who was presently curled up on my lap and purring so gently that I had to bend forward with my lips on the top of her head to be sure I heard her. Turned out that up close, she was kind of cute.

We were almost back to my apartment, never having been spotted by Roger Marrin, but only because he'd given up the search sixteen blocks earlier and gone home, muttering to himself and shaking his head. Which in my view indicated he had a real problem with commitment.

"I still don't feel right, stealing her from him." I scratched her ears. She pushed her head into my hand and purred more loudly.

"Look at it this way," Maizy said, and then she didn't say anything. I looked over at her, and she pointed through the windshield.

Curt's Jeep was parked in the driveway. Finally, after everything that had happened, all the unsent e-mails and unmade phone calls, Curt was home.

I shrugged. No big deal. Not as if he'd missed anything important. Maizy and I had everything under control. We didn't need to be rescued by a pair of beefy arms and six-pack abs. Just in case, though, I did a quick hair fluff and ran some ChapStick across my mouth.

Maizy drove past the house.

"What are you doing?" I said. Curt was back there. With his beefy arms and six-pack abs. "We have to take Miss Pibs home." I frowned. "I mean Ashley. She's Ashley now. Right, Ash?" I cupped her little head in both palms and wiggled my nose at her. She looked back at me with adoration. Or maybe hunger. I didn't have the hang of the cat thing yet.

"I like it." Maizy beamed at me. "See, that wasn't so hard." Her fingers drummed on the wheel. "Uncle Curt probably shouldn't know about this," she said.

"He's bound to notice that I have a cat," I said. "Unless you want to take her home."

"Can't," she said. "My brother's got allergies."

Yeah. Right.

"Anyway, I was talking about the Valiant," she said. "If he sees me driving this, he'll tell my dad, and my dad might try to bust Honest Aaron, and we
need
Honest Aaron. So here's what we'll do." She pulled over to the curb a block away from my apartment and put the car in park. It rocked a little and settled in with a creak. "You can put Ashley in my backpack and walk her home. I'll drop off the car and come back."

"Why don't you just come back tomorrow," I said. "I've got to go clean out my desk anyway. Might as well put gainful employment officially behind me."

"You sure you don't want me to come with you?"

I nodded. "I need to say goodbye to a couple of people, and it might get ugly." If I could get my hands on a letter opener and Howard's jugular.

"Okay." Maizy pulled her wallet from her backpack along with her cell phone. And a banana. And some lip-gloss. And a bottle of blood red nail polish. And an Apple iPad Mini.

"Why don't you keep that," I told her. "I'll just hold Ashley. It's not that far."

Maizy glanced out the back window, biting her lip. "I have a better idea." She threw the Valiant in reverse, and we rolled backward down the street toward Curt's house. She braked gently at his next-door neighbor's house, Ashley and I got out, and she roared away with a wave.

Chicken.

Hugging Ashley close to my chest, I hurried up the driveway and around back to my stairs. Curt had the blinds drawn, but the kitchen light was on, and I thought I smelled pasta sauce. I hesitated near his back door, but Ashley mewed softly, and I kept going, climbing my stairs as quietly as I could.

I saw the small ice chest on the landing when I got to the top step. Frowning, I gave it a little nudge with my foot. Not too heavy, not too light. Given everything that had gone on surrounding Dorcas's murder, I was tempted to heave it to the ground, but I didn't want to alert Curt to my presence until Ashley was safely inside out of sight. So I pushed it to the side, let myself into the apartment, put Ashley down on the sofa bed and, almost as an afterthought, switched on Dr. Phil in case she was having any separation anxiety. She stood there like a statue, her tail whisking back and forth in abrupt little flicks, and the fur along her back standing up a little as she stared at the TV.

So, not a Dr. Phil fan.

I tiptoed into the kitchen, ran some water into a cereal bowl, and put it down for her. On my way home from clearing out my desk I'd have to stop for some cat food.

That was all I could do for Ashley at the moment, so I grabbed my car keys, told her not to make too much noise while I was gone, and let myself out.

The ice chest was still on the landing, looking perfectly innocent. I didn't buy that for a minute, not the way my life had been going lately. Holding my breath, I squatted and lifted the lid very slowly to take a peek.

Inside was a plastic container surrounded by two blue ice packs, with a slip of paper tucked in alongside. I unfolded the note, written in what I recognized instantly as Curt's slashing cursive.
Krimpets never cured a cold.
Frowning, I lifted out the container. It was chicken noodle soup from the deli.

Curt had brought me chicken noodle soup.

And I wasn't even sick.

I was deeply, absurdly touched, and then embarrassed when my eyes welled up, and then ashamed because I'd thought such spiteful thoughts about him while he'd been gone, and then elated because
Curt had brought me chicken soup!
No one had ever done that before.

I put the container back in the ice chest, repacked the ice around it, tucked the note in my handbag, and hurried downstairs to knock on his kitchen door. He opened it seconds later, and I just stood there gawking at him because he looked great, even with that days-old stubble, or maybe because of it, and a white thermal shirt with its sleeves pushed up to the elbows hanging loose over faded jeans. I didn't even notice the scent of meat sauce drifting out the door behind him. Right away.

Looking at him, I couldn't think of a thing to say. So much for being cool and unflappable. The moment felt more like junior high geeky. The only thing missing was my braces. I couldn't imagine why I felt so awkward, because this was
Curt,
my shoulder to cry on, my ear to bend, the man who had given me a place to live at below market rate and who never said a word when
that
was too pricey, who could fix anything, and didn't mind sharing his barbecue with me. He didn't know about the pictures in the paper, or Detective Bensinger, or that I was trying to be a healthier eater, or that I'd been fired. And at that moment, I didn't know how to tell him without the floodgates opening up, and I didn't
want
to stand there sobbing because I was a strong, independent, capable, normal woman who could solve her own problems, and also because I had no tissues.

So I said, "You bought me chicken noodle soup."

Good one, Jamie.