Sandrift: A Lin Hanna Mystery (34 page)

“Your case is
another matter.
 
You survived to
tell the tale, and I’m going to make sure justice is done here.”

“What about
right now?” Neal felt he had to speak up. “Mike Clark is in jail but Mark Simon
is still out there somewhere.
 
We
may have an alarm system at the house, but I’m not so crazy as to believe those
things can’t be disabled.
 
What if
he knows Lin’s escaped, I suspect the story was all over the news this morning,
what if he tries to come after her again, maybe hires someone else…?”

“I’ve already
called Ken Parker about that,” Midgett tried to sound reassuring, “and he’s
agreed to put a patrol officer on duty at your place all night. That should
discourage anyone from attempting to break in.
 
The car will be clearly visible, and
your outside lights should, of course, be left on.”

“One more
thing, before we go,” Lin asked, “Did your search turn up any of my things, my
purse, my ring—I was there to pick up the ring, you know.”

“I’m sorry, I
should’ve mentioned those things up front.
 
I was too eager to get your story, I guess,” Midgett apologized. “We
didn’t find any of those things.
 
I
suspect your purse with
all your
ID was destroyed to get
rid of any evidence you’d been in the house.
 
The ring…I’m not sure about that, but I
know we didn’t find it.
 
He may
still have that with him.”

Lin felt
aggravation but not really surprise that all her ID was gone.
 
She’d expected as much.
 
Fortunately, she had the contact phone
numbers for all her credit cards.
 
She usually kept a copy with her when she traveled.
 
Midgett gave her the address of the
Motor Vehicle office where she could obtain a duplicate license.
 
It was a hassle, but she should be able
to take care of things tomorrow.

“Let’s stop and
get something to eat before we go home,” she said to Neal as they left the
office. “Those pancakes are long gone and I’m starved.”

“Me too,” he
smiled, “How about Owens or Kelly’s?
 
I think we definitely have something to celebrate.”

“Only if we go
home so I can change,” Lin insisted. “I refuse to celebrate in jeans and
sneakers.”

“What about
your feet?” Neal asked as they pulled out of the parking lot.

“Much better
now, I feel sure I can manage.” She showed him her hands where the deeper
scratches had scabbed over.
 
She was
able to manipulate her fingers easily. “I don’t think I could grip a tennis
racket yet, but I should be able to do most everything else now and my feet are
even better.
 
I had a lot of
scratches from my walk in the woods, but none were actually very deep.”

They drove back
to Kate’s house where they noticed a Kill Devil Hills police car already parked
in the driveway.
 
Neal let Sparky
out for a few minutes while Lin changed into casual slacks and her blue sweater
that set off her eyes.
 
She chose a
pair of soft flats that felt comfortable enough and looked in the mirror.
 
Not bad she thought.
 
She wanted to both look and feel like
she was going to celebrate—after all, she’d come closer to losing her
life than she cared to contemplate.

They enjoyed a
leisurely, delicious dinner at Kelly’s.
 
The hostess had recognized them at once.
 
She, like most of the folks on the
beach, had heard about Lin’s escape.
 
“Everyone’s been talking about how brave you were, and how lucky,” she
said, “but I bet you just want to have a quiet dinner alone.”

“You’re right,”
Neal answered.
 
She had seated them
in a cozy back corner of the room where there were no other diners nearby.
 
Fortunately, the restaurant wasn’t
particularly crowded, and they enjoyed their privacy.
 
Having told and retold her story most of
the day, Lin was grateful for the normalcy of their dining alone, just an
ordinary couple talking about ordinary things.

The sense of
peace and calm Lin felt at dinner receded a bit as they drove back home.
 
She prepared herself for the sight of
the police car she knew would still be parked in the driveway and what that
meant.
 
They could only hope that
Mark Simon would be located soon and all this would be over.

As they turned
the corner onto Kate’s street, they could hear a dog barking in the
distance.
 
“I think that’s Sparky,”
Neal said, “I hope he’s not barking at the police officer.
 
We might have to bring him upstairs if
he’s going to keep this up all night.”

When they
reached the driveway, they saw not one but two patrol vehicles.
 
Two officers were outside, and they
appeared to be checking around the house while Sparky voiced his objections
from the porch.

“What’s going
on?” Lin asked as she exited the car and headed toward the porch hoping to calm
the dog.

“We’re not
sure,” a young officer responded.
 
Lin recognized him as the one who’d come earlier when they’d had a
prowler, but she couldn’t recall his name.

“I was sitting
here and everything looked fine.
 
Then the dog started barking so I got out of the car.
 
That’s when I saw someone running across
the back yard toward the water.
 
I
chased him, but he disappeared in the marsh grass before I could get a good look.
 
I think he had a boat hidden there somewhere,
that’s how he got away.
 
I didn’t
see anything when I got to the water’s edge, but I heard a small motor out
there somewhere in the dark.
 
That’s
when I called for backup.
 
We’re
checking around the house now.”

“What about the
alarm?” Neal asked the officer.

“Didn’t go off,
but all that means is no one tried to enter the house.”

“It’s going to
take two of us to watch this place.
 
One person can’t watch the street and the water.
 
I might never have known someone had
come in if the dog hadn’t started raising a racket.”

The young
officer asked them to remain outside while he joined his partner in checking
the area.
 
By this time all the
barking and activity had brought Eloise out to her porch.
 
Lin was tired of standing, her sore feet
were beginning to bother her a bit, so she decided to go next door and wait
with Eloise.
 
Neal wanted to go up
and calm Sparky, but the officer wouldn’t let him enter the house until they’d
finished checking the perimeter. He settled for standing near the porch where
he could talk to the animal.
 
Gradually, Sparky seemed to calm down, at least the barking stopped.

Waiting on the
porch with Eloise, Lin found herself shivering in the chill of the breeze
blowing from the sound, even though she wore a jacket.
 
She’d lost her heavier, wool pea coat
when she was kidnapped.
 
That was
one more thing she’d have to take care of, buying a new warm coat.
 
Eloise offered to get her a blanket, but
she decided a cup of hot coffee would work better, warming her from the
inside.
 
Her kindly neighbor had
just returned with a steaming mug when the two officers could be seen heading
for the driveway with some sort of object, about the size of a shoebox.
 
Lin hurried down to find out what it
was.

“We found this
in the shrubs near the back side of the house, under the wooden porch,
actually.
 
It looks like some type
of incendiary device.
 
It’s not a
bomb, but I think it contains some of those heat-producing chemicals.”
 
Lin observed what appeared to be small
blocks of some sort of substance sitting in the cardboard box on top of a pile
of fibers that appeared to be pulled from cotton balls.

“The whole
thing was sitting on a pile of dry pine straw up against a wooden post on the
back side of the porch where it was dry.
 
The pine straw had to be brought
in ,
nothing
in the yard here would be dry enough to ignite. I’ve called someone to bring a
metal box from the station to put the whole thing in.
 
We’ll want to check it for prints.”
 
He held his hand over the device, “you
can already feel it beginning to heat up, and eventually it would have started
a fire.”

Lin shivered at
the thought of what could’ve happened.
 

As if he
understood her thoughts, the officer explained. “Mostly likely with the dog and
the alarm system, you’d have had early warning and wouldn’t have been trapped
inside, but it could’ve done some serious damage to this place.
 
Someone sure wanted to scare you.”

Neal nodded in
understanding, “And we’re not going to sleep here tonight, nor any night until
all this is over.”
 
Lin started to protest
but realized that he was determined so she said nothing.

The young
officer agreed.
 
“We’ll be here, of
course, until morning, but I don’t blame you.
 
I’d do the same.”

They agreed
that Sparky would remain on the porch, after he’d had a short evening walk; Lin
and Neal would return the next morning to take care of him.
 
Lin went upstairs to pack a small
overnight case for the two of them while Neal walked the dog around the block.
 
He stopped to let Eloise know what they
were doing and that the police would be watching things overnight.

The last thing
he did before they drove away was to call the Sheriff’s department to leave a
message for Pete Midgett.

Lin awoke
Monday morning to the ringing of Neal’s cell phone on the nightstand.
 
For a brief moment she couldn’t remember
where they were.
 
Then it all came
rushing back into her consciousness—their celebration of her escape
turning into a threatening invasion and arson attempt on Kate’s home.
 
As Neal reached to take the call Lin
pushed up to the edge of the king sized bed.
 
I guess we should be grateful this is
winter, she thought.
 
If we’d gone
looking for a hotel room after ten o’clock in July we’d have been out of
luck.
 
As it was, the Holiday Inn at
Southern Shores had plenty of vacancies.
 
Lin felt it a bit strange that they were now staying in the same place
Dorrie Johnson had stayed during her visit.
 
In fact, the same young clerk Lin had
talked to earlier had checked them in the night before.

They’d been so
exhausted that they’d fallen asleep almost immediately.
 
For Lin the fatigue was both mental and
physical.
 
She realized her weekend
ordeal had taken quite a toll, and she’d found that having to repeat her tale
to law officers and others added to that.
 
All she really wanted to do was forget all this and move forward to the
holidays with her family, but she realized it wasn’t going away yet.

She got up and
went into the bathroom.
 
It sounded
as if Neal were talking to the Sheriff, reporting the incident of the previous
night.
 
He was stretched out against
the pillows, and Lin could see the outline of his long, sexy body beneath the
sheets.
 
She felt that familiar
warmth growing inside.
 
Stripping
off her gown she announced that she was heading for the shower, just as Neal
was concluding his conversation.

“Not just yet
you’re not,” he said, flipping the sheets back and indicating that she should
join him, “ we never finished our celebration last night.
 
We were interrupted…” Leaving her gown
where she’d dropped it, she moved quickly and slipped into his warm embrace.

***

Later they
decided to take advantage of the hotel’s continental breakfast.
 
Neal stopped at the desk and asked them
to hold their room for another night’s stay. “Just in case,” he said,
“hopefully, we’ll be calling you to cancel later.”

They arrived
back at the house to find that one of the officers was still there.
 
“I decided to take one more look around
after daylight, see if there was any evidence we might’ve missed last night,
and I did find some shoe prints near the house in back and some others in the
mud at the edge of the marsh.
 
I’ve
called someone to come make some casts, hopefully before the tide comes
in.
 
At least those near the house
will be good no matter what.
 
All
that rain over the weekend was a help, made the ground really soft.”

They thanked
the young man. “I’ll be back tonight unless this whole mess is cleared up
earlier,” he said.
 
“As of now
though, I’m off duty and heading home to get some shut-eye.”

Neal leashed up
Sparky for a nice walk around the neighborhood while Lin went inside to make
calls about her credit cards and bankcard.
 
She’d intended to do so last night, but the prowler had interrupted that
plan.

“When I get
back, we’ll go into Manteo so you can get your driver’s license replaced and pick
up your car.
 
Pete said it was ready
when he called this morning and…he want’s us to go by the station to talk about
what happened last night,” Neal seemed to realize how Lin would feel about
that.

She dreaded the
thought of yet another conversation with law enforcement but realized it was
necessary.
 
Even though the Kill
Devil Hills police were investigating their intruder, these events certainly
had implications for the Sheriff’s case as well.
 
When will all this end, she asked
herself, hoping it would be soon.

It was shortly
after ten when they arrived at the Sheriff’s office.
 
Fortunately, there hadn’t been a long
line at the DMV, and getting Lin’s duplicate license had proved to be a quick
errand.
 
Hopefully, she’d get her
car when they’d finished here.
 
Her
keys were missing of course; they’d been in her purse, but hopefully the valet
key was still in the glove box.
 
She’d need to order a duplicate set from a dealer eventually.
 
That reminded her of another
problem.
 
She’d been carrying both
her own house keys and Kate’s.
 
That
meant getting a locksmith out to Kate’s and calling the manager of her HOA to
take care of locks at her condo.
 
This is unending she thought, already growing weary with the hassle.

Pete Midgett
handed her the valet key for her car as they entered his office, “You can pick
it up from the garage when you leave here.”

“Did you find
anything?
 
You mentioned earlier
that there were no prints,” Neal asked.

“Well, as a
matter of fact,” Midgett drawled, “We did manage to find a few fibers on the
driver’s seat.
 
We’re trying to
match them, hopefully to Mike Clark’s clothing.
 
Ken Parker thinks he’s the one who drove
your car, most likely, after you were locked up in the cabin cruiser.”

“Hopefully,
those fibers aren’t black wool,” Lin said,
 
“I was wearing a black wool pea coat when I drove the car.”

“We did find
some of those,” the Sheriff smiled, “but there were others there as well.
 
Has anyone else driven your car? ”

“I have,” Neal
explained, “but I’ve been wearing the jacket I have on right now when I did so,
it’s really the only warm jacket I brought here.”

“If you don’t
mind.
 
I’ll have someone take a few
fibers while you’re here, for comparisons,” Midgett asked as he opened his
now-familiar notebook.

It was quick
work to relate the story of the previous evenings events.
 
Lin and Neal were more than familiar
with the drill by now.

When they’d
finished their story Neal asked, “Any luck tracing Mark Simon?
 
He’s obviously still trying to shut Lin
up it seems to me.
 
How many
connections does this guy have?” His frustration was apparent.

“Probably more
than any of us know,” the Sheriff sighed. “He’s lived here most of his
life.
 
Been in business for a long
time.
 
I’d say he’s one of the more
prominent citizens of Manteo, and he has more than adequate funds to buy
whatever help he wants.
 
Times have
been tough around here, fishing has fallen off, the recession has hurt tourist
jobs—there’re a lot of folks who might be willing to do someone’s dirty
work for a fast dollar.
 
Sooner or
later we’ll find him.”

“Meanwhile,
we’re facing crazy threats.
 
Can’t
even feel safe to sleep in the house,” Neal barked.
 
Lin placed her hand on his knee, seeking
to calm him.

The Sheriff sat
back in his oversized chair, causing it to creak as he shifted his considerable
weight.
 
“I do understand how you
feel, believe it or not,” he sought to reassure them. “ We’re trying to bring
all the pressure we can to bear on this man. In fact, we’re using your lost, or
should I say stolen, ring to push the investigation even further.
 
I checked with the goldsmith in
Elizabeth City, the one who was sizing the ring for you, this morning.
 
He told us that Simon did indeed pick
the ring up on Thursday afternoon.
 
Of course, he didn’t return it to you, and we didn’t find it during our
search of the house.
 
I sent someone
to the gallery this morning to search there as well, but they came up empty.
 
Now I’m waiting for the judge to extend
our warrant to check at the local bank that handles all of Simon’s
business.
 
We think he has a safe
deposit box there.
 
If nothing else,
we may be able to recover your jewelry. That is unless he has it with him.”

This news
brought a smile to Lin’s face.
 
While she realized that the ring, although quite valuable, was insured
and was replaceable, she’d loved the unique design and certainly hoped to have
it back.
 

Midgett
continued, “The judge is holding court right now, but he’ll probably tend to our
request at his lunch break, and we’ll extend our search this afternoon.
 
I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Neal’s
frustration had subsided just a bit by the time they left.
 
The possibility of recovering the ring
helped.
 
He drove Lin to the county
garage to pick up her car.
 
“I’m going to stop at the Toyota dealership on the highway before I drive back
to the house.
 
They should be able
to order me a new set of keys,” Lin said.

“I’m following
you there,” Neal insisted. “Please indulge my overprotective nature right now,
I don’t want you out of my sight, at least not for awhile.”
 
Lin dropped her intended protest.
 
She had to admit that sometimes it was
nice to have someone care that much.

She’d just
finished ordering replacement keys at the dealer’s when her cell rang.
 
She signaled to Neal, who was waiting
outside in the jeep, that she was taking a call.
 
It was the hospital calling with the
report from her blood tests.
 
She
learned that she’d been given an extremely large dose of a strong
antidepressant along with a drug generally prescribed for insomnia. “Most of it
should already be out of your system, but you could be experiencing a few side
effects still.
 
You’re quite lucky,”
the nurse reported. “The lab report indicates your dosage could’ve put you into
a deep coma.”
 
She didn’t add that
it could’ve been even worse, but Lin got the message.
 
No wonder she’d felt so sleepy and
lethargic since her ordeal.
 
She’d
kept going, eager to get back to her normal routine, but she’d felt as if she
were fighting through a deep sense of fatigue.
 
She went over to Neal and shared the
news.

“Are you sure
you feel up to driving?” he asked. “We could leave the car here if you like.”

“I’ll be fine,”
Lin reassured him. “This explains why I’ve felt so tired since coming home, but
I’m really feeling OK now.”

When they
arrived at the house, Lin said she was going to take Sparky out while Neal
fixed a bite of lunch.
 
Her feet
were really feeling much better, and she had to admit she’d missed walking the
energetic, friendly canine.
 
They walked
a bit more slowly than usual, but spent a good half hour exploring the
neighborhood before returning home.
 
Neal had prepared the last of Eloise’s good soup that they ate on the
porch with the gas logs burning away the chill from the morning.
 
The warm fire and the warm soup were
quite relaxing.
 
So much so that Lin
excused
herself
right after lunch, deciding to take a
nap. “Maybe that sleeping potion is still working on me,” she joked.
 
Neal didn’t seem to think it was
funny.
 

Lin gave him a
big hug. “Don’t worry, that nurse said by tomorrow it should all be out of my
system completely, if it isn’t already.
 
I really think I’m just plain tired.”
 
Neal smiled and gave her a long, warm
kiss.
 
He pulled her close, “I’m
just happy to have you back and safe.
 
Sleep all you want.
 
I’m
going to make a quick run to the grocery store to pick up some things, and then
I’ll probably work some on that article I’m trying to finish.”
 

Lin took the
fact that he was willing to leave her alone for a short while as a positive
sign.
 
She climbed the stairs to the
bedroom. Closing the blinds against the afternoon light, she was asleep in
short order.

***

Neal had just
returned from the store with a couple of bags of much needed grocery items when
his cell phone rang.
 
He hastened to
put the bags on the counter, but by the time he retrieved his phone from his
pocket he’d missed the call.
 
It was
the Sheriff so he quickly called back.

“I was hoping
you could meet me over at the Dare County National Bank in a little while.
 
I got my warrant to examine Mark Simon’s
bank records and the contents of his safe deposit box.
 
If your ring is there, I’ll need you to
identify it.
 
Course, I’ll have to
keep it as evidence so you could do it later…”

“I’ll be over
as soon as I can, Lin’s resting, but I can come.
 
At least she’d know if it has been
found, she’s been upset about losing it,” Neal responded. “Give me about
forty-five minutes, I’ve got some groceries to put up.”

When he
finished putting up his purchases, he went upstairs.
 
Lin was sleeping soundly and he didn’t
want to disturb her; he left a note on the dresser as he’d done before.
 
He might even be back before she woke up,
and maybe he’d be able to report that her ring had been found.