The Magic of Murder (18 page)

I told Rebecca to make a right at the corner. Two blocks up, I had her make another right then pull over halfway down the block. If she told me what she knew about Ira Smith—if I could believe her—I might begin to understand what was going on: why Jimmy Osborn and Amy Woodward had been killed; why the killer intended to do the same to me. I especially wanted to know why she suddenly appeared at Main Street Books. I didn’t dare wait until we got back to my house.

“Okay, Ira’s not watching now,” I said as soon as she parked.

She slid the bench seat back, unfastened her seatbelt, and turned to me. “The last time he came for a reading, he seemed rather nervous. A friend of his had dragged him into something, he said, and now unsavory people had gotten involved. He was afraid of those people, wanted the cards to tell him how to get free of them. He wouldn’t tell me who the friend was or what he was doing.”

“What did the cards say?”

“Tarot cards only read the future of the path you’re on.
You know that. They don’t tell you how to get off that path.”

“But, you told Ira you had an answer. In his office, you said so.”

She stroked her braid. “We needed a lie. If he didn’t think I knew something, he wouldn’t have told us the little he did.”

“And the rest of it—the part about his being involved with dangerous people?—didn’t you think it was important to tell Roger about that? Shouldn’t you have told me? Those dangerous people could be the ones who’ve tried to kill me.” Was Rebecca one of those dangerous people? Tears sprang up in my eyes.

She took Elvira from my arms. “I didn’t see the connection before.”

My stomach quivered. She still held something back. “When you used the oil you brewed on my leg, you said you brought it because you thought it would be needed.”

Staring out the window, she stroked Elvira.

“Rebecca, why did you have it with you?”

She sighed. “Yesterday morning when I did a reading for myself, I saw…” her voice faded into the hum of the car’s engine.

“What?” The quivering climbed from my stomach to my chest.

She seemed ready to cry. “The cards told me I might lose a friend.”

“Lose?” Now the quivering was in my voice.

“I saw a…a funeral.”

I gasped. “Mine?”

She took my hand, held it tight. “We can change the
future. We have to. That’s why I came to your book signing.”

Elvira mewed. It was as if she said my friend spoke the truth.

Panicked now, I shouted, “We have to tell Roger!” I didn’t stop to wonder why I equated him with safety.

“You’re right.” She handed me the cat and slid the Valiant into gear.

As we swung from the curb, Elvira jumped onto Rebecca’s lap and clawed the window.

Not for the first time that day, I said to her, “Hey, you’re gonna get us killed.”

She growled and continued to scratch the glass.

“What is it?” Rebecca asked.

Elvira hissed and smacked the window with her paw. She seemed to be saying,
It isn’t me who’s gonna get us killed!

I leaned over to see what she tried to attack.

Behind the ramshackle house on the other side of the street I noticed a narrow lane. In the center of the lane I saw a weathered wooden barn with shrunken slats through which I could almost see the buildings beyond. The barn appeared to be so old it might have stood there since before the city became a city, since the long ago time when Niagara County was nothing but woods and farmland. In all the years I’d lived in the area, all the times I’d spent in Niagara Falls, walked along these streets, I’d never noticed it. Now as I did, I felt something unsettling about the sight. The barn and the boarded up houses surrounding it looked familiar.

“What?” Rebecca asked.

“I…this…it…it looks like…” Had I been able to finish the sentence, I would have told her this might be the place Amy Woodward was killed in my vision. At last I was able to get a few more words out. “Circle the block. I have to see this alley from its end.”

Elvira’s head seemed to twist nearly a hundred and eighty degrees. She looked at me with wild eyes.

I ignored her.

Following my directions through the maze of one-way streets, Rebecca brought us to alley’s entrance. When we got there, I rolled down my window and leaned out.

As my eyes panned along the row of run-down houses, a black SUV, its windows tinted almost the same black, backed out of the barn. Half-hidden behind a chain link fence and scant leafless trees, a figure dressed in black with what appeared to be a ski mask over his face, climbed from the passenger seat. He reached back inside and pulled out what appeared to be a rifle of some kind, maybe an Uzi. Another figure, similarly clad, came around the front of the SUV. He stopped by the first man and leaned close as if speaking to him. Then they both turned in our direction. One pointed at us, the other leaned on the fence.

Weeraaaah!
Elvira screeched.

A third man emerged from the barn. He joined the other two near the SUV. The first man raised his rifle, rested it on the fence, bent, and peered through the sight.

“We have to get out of here!” I shouted.

I didn’t need to tell Rebecca twice. She gunned the engine and we shot down the street.

Chapter Nineteen

Home but Not Safe

             
W
e were being followed. I’d seen the three men jump into the black vehicle as we sped down the street. Fear crept up my spine on tarantula legs. I felt the damn spider bite my neck. Felt its venom seep into the marrow of my bones.

“Go, go, go!” I hollered.

Rebecca spun the steering wheel to the left, to the right then left again. My brown Valiant squealed around corners. If my right foot and leg were once again on fire, I wouldn’t have noticed. Fear is the greatest anesthetic. I twisted my body to look out the rear window. My eyes flicked as I searched for the SUV with tinted windows I was certain would soon nip at our tailpipe. I was also certain an Uzi would be aimed at us from one of the SUV’s windows.

A car pulled out of a driveway, slammed on its brakes. We barreled past doing far more than the thirty-mile-an-hour legal speed limit on the city streets. The driver opened his door and leaned out. His middle finger raised, he yelled at us.

“Turn here!” I shouted.

We swerved around another corner.

Her claws out, Elvira clung to my coat.

We were on Independence Avenue, a wide street with one lane in each direction separated by a raised median. Hyde Park Road loomed ten blocks ahead. A long time ago, boats sailing the Niagara River had been unloaded, and the goods carted overland to Lake Ontario along what was then called the Salt Road. The endless Ontario wasn’t our goal. We needed to avoid being blasted into an endless sleep. Once on Hyde Park Road, we’d make a right turn and my car would be pointed at the police precinct, at safety.

Just ahead, a large black vehicle ran the stop sign. It shot across the intersection.

I pointed. Rebecca turned right, then right again. We were headed back where we’d come from. The alley off Nineteenth Street was the last place we wanted to be.

“Turn here!”

Halfway through the intersection, my Valiant fishtailed.
The tires scraped against the curb, bounced off. Steering into the skid, Rebecca knocked over two garbage cans. Trash flew across the street behind us. The tires gripped the
road just before we sideswiped a parked Cadillac. A woman
jumped from the driver’s door, and shook her fist at us. We weren’t making any friends today.

I unsnapped my seatbelt and climbed onto my knees so I could peer through the rear window. A black SUV turned onto the street. Maybe it was dark gray. Maybe it wasn’t the one we’d seen outside the barn. I had no desire to find out.

“Faster!” I yelled, as I dropped back down and refastened my seatbelt.

Rebecca hit the gas. The rear tires spun on a patch of black ice. The SUV drew closer. Now it was only a half block behind. Yes, the SUV was black.

Traction at last. We barreled toward the red light on Pine Avenue.

“Run it!”

Rebecca shook her head and tapped the brakes.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t wanna get a ticket.”

I glared at her. “Would you rather get dead?”

She glanced over her shoulder. The SUV had gained on us. “I see your point,” she said.

We picked up speed.

“Hold on!”

Elvira screeched.

We raced past the Italian deli and bounced into the intersection. My car thudded as the shock absorbers pushed back against gravity. We shot through.

Brakes screamed on vehicles coming from both directions. Thank goodness not everyone in Niagara Falls was moving as fast as my car. Although, I did hear a thud behind us, but no police sirens. There’s never a cop when you need one. Even a cop waving a ticket book would have been welcome.

I looked back. The SUV had stopped at the light. This didn’t mean those weren’t the guys from the barn.

I directed Rebecca though another series of turns. Down a dead end street, through a backyard where a stunned older man was pouring seed into a bird feeder, then onto a road near the casino. After another mile, we drove onto the entrance ramp of a parkway Robert Moses had laid out. The parkway merged into the LaSalle Highway. At eighty-miles-an-hour, we reached the highway’s end. The black SUV wasn’t behind us. I exhaled. Two more turns and we were on River Road. Home.

Rebecca pulled toward my driveway, my car still moving fast. I didn’t lean over to check the speedometer.

“Where’s the garage door opener?” she asked.

Her foot wasn’t on the brake.

“Don’t have one.”

From the way she blinked, I thought my friend intended
to crash through the garage door.

“Damn!” she muttered.

My body lurched forward when she slammed her foot on the brakes. Elvira bounced against the dashboard.

Rebecca jumped from the car. In a few seconds she had the garage door open. Back in the car, she drove inside. She jammed the driver’s-side door against the wall as she leaped out to close the garage.

My hand shaking, I leaned over and turned off the ignition. We’d escaped the guys who chased us. No reason to let carbon monoxide do the job they hadn’t.

Rebecca climbed back into the car and sat, panting, behind the wheel. Equally out of breath, I clutched Elvira to my chest.

We sat there, our eyes dead ahead, staring at the tire hanging on the back wall, at the garden hose dangling like a snake from a hook screwed into a stud. At the hood of my Valiant that was no more than a millimeter from the tire and the hose.

Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Our breathing slowed.

Elvira squiggled out of my arms. Her hind legs on the floor, her front legs on my lap, she looked up at me with an expression that asked,
Are we gonna sit here the rest of our lives?

“We should get into the house,” I whispered.

Rebecca’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “
Speak
for yourself.”

Another minute passed.

I shivered. “I’m cold.”

“Me too,” she said.

Neither of us moved.

“We should go in,” I said a minute later.

She shook her head. “Those men may be out there.”

I glanced at the side door my father had built into the garage. Beyond the garage, a brick path led to the side door that opened into my kitchen.

“If we duck, stay below the top of the fence,” I said, “chances are no one will see us.”

“But they might.”

I shrugged. “Either we risk being seen, or catch pneumonia.”

The crutches poked under my arm, I opened the door. Rebecca slid across the bench seat and followed me out of the garage. Elvira slunk along next to us.

Inside, I slammed the kitchen door and double-locked it. Rebecca drew the shades. We didn’t dare turn on any lights.

Now on my sofa, huddled together under the knitted
cover, we began to giggle. Then laugh hysterically with tears
in our eyes. We couldn’t stop.

That is, until my cell phone rang.

***

Before I had a chance to say hello, Roger hollered at me.

“What the hell have you been up to?”

As if the bad guys were parked outside, waiting for the slightest sound to tell them we were here, I whispered, “Uh, what do you mean?”

“The desk sergeant just got a report about two maniacs barreling though Niagara Falls like Thelma and Louise on the lam. A brown Plymouth—the description sounded like
your
car.”

“There…are lots of cars like mine.”

“With your license plate hitched to them?”

“Oh,” I said.

“I told you to stay put!”

“You told me nothing of the sort!” I yelled back. “And don’t you dare holler at me.”

At the sound of my raised voice, Elvira scampered to her hiding place under the skirt of my wingback chair.

Rebecca’s face fell. “
Shhh
,” she said, “they’ll hear us.”

Angry, my fear fled as quickly as the cat. “No one’s out there.” I tossed off the cover, stumbled from the sofa, and stood on tiptoe to peek through a window in the front door. What I saw probably turned my face as white as the walls.

A black SUV pulled up in front of my mailbox. The passenger door opened. A figure in black leaned out, and peered up and down the road.

I gasped.

“What’s going on there?” Roger asked. “Another bottle
of wine?”

I dropped to my knees, cringing against the door. Shielding the phone and my mouth with a hand, I whispered, “They’re outside.”

“Who’s outside? Emlyn, what’s going on?” Roger no longer sounded angry, not even annoyed. “Talk to me.”

I found my voice. “The men.”

“What men?”

“From the barn.”

“The— What?

Rebecca was now crouched at the door. She leaned on me, her ear against the phone.

“Emlyn, you’re not making sense,” Roger said.

“Help us, Roger!” I said.

He didn’t hesitate. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Tell him we haven’t got that long!”

“Rebecca?” Roger said.

“They know we’re here.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Okay, stay calm. Go down the basement. Now! I’ll get a squad car over there.”

Rebecca grabbed my shoulders and yanked me to my feet. Bent low so we would remain below the white Formica counter separating the hall from the kitchen, we moved—almost crawled—the eight feet along the wooden hallway floor to the basement door. When she opened the door, I latched onto the jamb.

“Elvira! Where’s Elvira?” I said.

“Don’t worry about her. She’ll be all right.”

Glass shattered behind me. My eyes shot open wide. I clasped a hand across my mouth to hold in a scream.

Rebecca all but lifted me from the floor. She turned me around and pushed me toward the basement steps. The door squeaked when she closed it behind us.

I don’t know how long we remained in the dark, huddled on the cement floor against the cinderblocks in a corner of the frigid basement. I don’t recall taking the hammer from the tool bench beside me. The next thing I remember, I heard heavy footsteps in the hall above. The footsteps stopped at the basement door.

Rebecca clutched my blouse.

The door creaked open.

I leaned back to get a bit of purchase. Then, with all my might, I heaved the hammer at legs descending the stairs.

“Ouch!” Roger howled. He dropped heavily onto a wooden step and rubbed his shin. Peering at us through the darkness, he said, “You could’ve killed me.”

Relieved it was him instead of the men in ski masks, I laughed. “I only need one crutch. Here, you can have the other.”

I guess I didn’t sound sufficiently repentant. His cheeks pinched in as though he had sucked on a lemon. For a minute, I thought he might grab the crutch I offered and beat me with it.

***

For the second time in three days, I had a shattered window in my living room. At least the guys who chased us hadn’t burned my carpet—the condition my leg was in, I couldn’t have gotten on my knees to scrub it clean.

When he could walk again, Roger hobbled to his house and returned with a sheet of plywood. Rebecca and I resumed our places on the sofa. Elvira crawled from under the chair and stretched out across our laps. Roger nailed the plywood over the window then began to carefully caulk the edges. While he worked, he questioned us about our afternoon.

Who were the men in the SUV? Why were they after us?

We didn’t know who they were, we told him. We saw them back out of the broken-down barn in the alley off a street north of Pine Avenue. We didn’t know why they aimed a rifle at us then chased us through the Falls.

“I thought we lost them,” I said. “How’d they learn where I live?”

Roger stepped off the dinette chair he’d set near the window and turned to us. His face was drawn. He didn’t have to answer. It was clear he thought those men had a connection in the police department, someone who could access the Department of Motor Vehicle’s database.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why’d they come after us?”

He stared at me.

It was a foolish question. While we tried to learn if my ex was connected to the drug ring the DEA believed was active in the area, and how that connection might have led to the murders of a Niagara Falls detective and the wife of the detective chief, we’d accidentally stubbed a toe on the place from which the ring operated.

Nervously bouncing words off each other, Rebecca and I described the barn and what we’d seen in the lane off Nineteenth Street.

“It was the alley from my vision,” I said. “The place where I saw Amy Woodward killed. Except it wasn’t exactly
like it.”