Stalking the Phoenix

by Karen Woods

  Most people loved Geoff. He was an easy person of whom to grow fond. Warm, open, with an easygoing manner (except when he was in the courtroom—where he turned absolutely ruthless in pursuit of his goals); this was how Geoff impressed people. He was a busy, mature, professional man with a good income and terrific prospects. Active in politics, Geoff had been asked to consider a run for the U.S. Senate. But, he had refused the offer saying that he was happy practicing law and dabbling in real estate. He was good with children. In short, he was everything I had decided that I wanted in a husband.

  Why did I now, so close to the wedding, remember the old saw about being careful what you want because you just might get it? Immediately, I dismissed that thought as both disloyal and unrealistic.

  I was pushing forty. Surely, I didn’t expect to be swept off my feet. Surely, the sort of rational arrangement I had with Geoff was for the best. Or, at least, that was what my mind tried telling me.

  Geoff is a good man, I thought. And he’ll be a good father. I can’t really ask for more than that.

  I placed the weapon in the drawer of the table nearest the door. Then I opened the door.

  “‘Licia?”

  “Come in, Geoff. How do you always know when I need you?”

  Geoff smiled at me as he entered my small house and closed the door behind him. “Possibly because I love you. You want to tell me about it?”

  “No,” I answered in more of a sob than anything else. “Hold me?”

  Geoff nodded as he opened his arms. “Come here, baby.”

  “Oh, Geoff, I’m frightened,” I admitted as I went into his strong embrace.

  “I know, ‘Licia. I know. Come on, sweetheart, let’s just sit and let me hold you. You don’t have to talk about it, unless you want to.”

  It was a long time until either of us said anything. Finally, I sighed, then said in a voice little stronger than a whisper, “I don’t deserve you, Geoff. You are so good to me.”

  “I think that you’ve got that backwards, sweetheart. Now why don’t you tell me about what’s got you so rattled?”

  Chapter 8

  ALICIA

  “Alicia,” Mae Thompson, the secretary for Math and Sciences, said as I returned to the offices from teaching my last class of the day, “this package just arrived for you. Flowers. I wish that some handsome man would send me flowers.”

  Mae looked expectantly at me over the top of her wire rimmed half glasses as she pushed an errant shoulder length strand of her salt and pepper hair behind her ear.

  Mae’s desk always looked like an anal retentive’s vision of hell. Bulging manila folders were stacked, seemingly without thought of order, two foot high. There was a standing joke in the department that you couldn’t tell whether Mae was at her desk or not from the doorway. That was a bit of an overstatement. Mae was short, but she wasn’t quite—that short.

  “Thanks, Mae.” I began to open the long florist’s box.

  “Did you and Geoff have a tiff?”

  I laughed while I continued opening the box. “Geoff and I don’t fight. I don’t think that we’ve ever fought. One of the things that I like so much about him is that he is so reasonable. Where reasonable is defined, of course, as thinking the way that I do.”

  Mae shook her head and smiled indulgently. “Oh, Al . . .”

  Wilted red roses filled the box. Laying on top of the flowers was a single sheet of cheap erasable bond paper folded in half. With shaking fingers, I reached for the note. Unfolding it, I read the words formed by cut out newsprint glued onto the paper: “Roses are red, Violets are blue, these flowers are dead, soon you will be, too.”

  I dropped the note onto the flowers as though it had scorched my fingers. I felt faint, lightheaded, as though I would be nauseous.

  “Dead flowers?” Then the secretary’s voice became angry, “Who would send you dead flowers? This is outrageous.” She reached for the note I had dropped in the box.

  “Don’t touch that. Call Phil Mallory at the police station. Tell him what’s happened. Ask him to send someone. I’ll be in my office. But, I don’t want to be disturbed until the police get here. Understand? I’m taking these into my office with me.”

  “Yes. Alicia, are you well?”

  “Just call Phil, will you?”

  “‘Licia?” Geoff asked in concern from the doorway of my office a few minutes later.

  “Geoff, come on in.”

  “Honey, what is it?”

  “Why are you here?” I demanded.

  “Did you forget, we are supposed to be over to the rectory in just under an hour?”

  “On the twenty-second.”

  “Honey, today is Wednesday, the twenty-second.”

  I looked at my calendar. “Sorry. I just wasn’t thinking.”

  Geoff smiled at me in puzzlement. “Are you okay?”

  “No. I don’t think that I am. On second thought, I’m sure that I’m not.”

  Geoff looked over to the desk. He saw box containing the wilted roses. I watched him blanch. “Honey?”

  “Oh, Geoff . . .”

  It was twenty minutes later before Phil Mallory came to my office. “How are you holding up?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  Phil looked at Geoff who was standing just behind me. Geoff was kneading the musculature of my neck. I couldn’t see how Geoff nodded in reply to his friend’s question. But, I knew that he had nodded negatively. Phil’s expression told me that Geoff was literally going behind my back.

  “Right now, I’m fine.”

  “Right,” Geoff said as he continued to work on my neck. “If these muscles were any tighter I could use them for violin strings.”

  “Very funny.”

  Gently, he kneaded the side of my neck. “This is about a high C, in fact,” Geoff said. “And this particular strand is about an F above that. On the baroque pitch, of course.”

  “Geoff, please. Cut out the jokes. I know that you are just trying to relieve the tension. But, I’m not in the mood.”

  “You are going to go over to the Y and spend some time working off the tension. I’ll make the supreme sacrifice and play you a game of racket ball. Although in the mood that you are in, you will probably wipe the floor with me. Then you will follow that by a long soak in the hot tub and a sauna,” Geoff ordered.

  “We’ve got to go see Padre about the wedding.”

  “After that meeting, you are going to spend time working off tension and relaxing if I have to hog tie you to make you do it.”

  “That would be rather counterproductive, don’t you think.”

  “Take it easy, ‘Licia.”

  “I don’t feel like taking it easy,” I stated. I felt angry as I turned to face him. “Why in the world would I feel like taking it easy. I’m just about ready to spit nails, and you tell me to take it easy?”

  “‘Licia, sweetheart, please calm down.”

  “Calm down? Not rudy likely. Not in this universe.”

  Phil cleared his throat.

  I turned around to look at him.

  He told me, “The flowers were delivered to the receptionist at Aquinas Hall. Marj said that the man was who delivered the flowers was average height and tanned. I showed her the photograph of Hernandez. She couldn’t make a positive ID. She said that she didn’t pay any attention to him. But, she thought that it might have been the same person.”

  “He’s here, and he wants me dead, Phil. What are you going to do to protect me?”

  Phil sighed. “So far, all we really have are threats and harassment. But there have been no actions against you. I think that we have to consider that this is either an attempt to drive you insane or that there is actually someone out there who wants you dead, but wants you to suffer first.”

  “So tell me something that I hadn’t figured out?”

  I had thought that the statement had been rhetorical. But the sudden increase of tension in the air was enough to convince me otherwise. �
��What? What else has happened? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “‘Licia, calm down,” Geoff urged. “You are only going to make yourself sick if you keep this up.”

  “Just tell me, Phil. Tell me, straight.”

  “Sarah Quinn is missing. Her apartment shows signs of a struggle having taken place,” Phil stated after a long moment’s hesitation.

  I hastily crossed myself. “Dear God.”

  “Sarah Quinn?” Geoff asked in a puzzled voice. “What in the world do you still have to do with Sarah Quinn?”

  I sighed. “Nevermind, Geoff. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I think that it does, sweetheart. What do you have to do with Sarah Quinn?”

  “I’ve been paying her way through school. Anything else that you want to know?”

  “For pity’s sake, ‘Licia, the girl almost got you killed once. Now you are paying for her education . . .” Geoff replied. There was anger in his tone. “Why are you wasting your money like that? Why are you keeping that tie to your past?”

  “It’s my money. I’ll spend it as I wish.”

  “We’ll discuss this later.”

  I had only heard him use that tone once, when he was discussing a client’s case with the prosecuting attorney over the telephone. It wasn’t a tone I ever had particularly wanted him to use with me.

  “There’s nothing to discuss. It’s all laid out in our pre-nupt, Geoff. I’m sorry if you don’t like it. But you were the one who insisted on having that document drawn. You know the terms as well as, if not better than, I do. After all, you dictated them.”

  Geoff was visibly fighting with himself over commenting on that.

  Phil cleared his throat. “Al, I need for you to think long and hard about who else might in the farthest stretch of your imagination have a grudge, for a cause real or imagined, against you. While Hernandez is our principal suspect, we can’t afford to rule out anyone else.”

  Cupping my forehead in my left hand and massaging my throbbing temples with my left thumb and fingertips, I said, “I can’t think of anyone whom I’ve ever hurt that badly.”

  “Old lovers?” Phil offered.

  Chapter 9

  PHIL

  Alicia’s head snapped up. She fixed me with a disbelieving look. “Get real, Phil. Just get real,” she said in a tone so dry that it would have made the Sahara look like a tropical rain forest.

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I,” Alicia replied.

  Geoff placed his hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy, ‘Licia. Phil is only doing his job.”

  “Al, we aren’t at all sure that Hernandez is behind this. We need to cover all possible angles. Anyone who might have something against you has to be suspect. Old lovers are as good of a place to start as any,” I said.

  “It might be under normal circumstances. But, I’m afraid that I can’t help you, Phil. I don’t have any old boyfriends lurking about,” she said as she looked at a spot on the wall just behind me.

  “None?” I asked in astonishment. “None?”

  “My personal history hardly makes it likely that I would have been promiscuous, now does it?” she asked, her voice full of pain. She still would not look at me. “But, this is really none of your business, now is it?”

  “Take it easy, ‘Licia. Phil is just doing his job,” Geoff said again.

  “I know. I just feel out of control,” Al said as she closed her eyes as though to escape. “I hate feeling this out of control. I hate it.”

  “Look, Al, you are thirty-seven-years-old. No one lives that long without making enemies. Now, I want a list of anyone who has anything against you.”

  “I don’t know of anyone who meets that criterion, aside from Hernandez.” Al folded and unfolded her hands in a gesture betraying her anxiety. “I live a very quiet life. I run my business and do my research. I teach my classes and chair the department. I volunteer time at the youth center, the women’s crisis center, with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate when they’ve got a construction project going. I sing with the parish choir and sit on the parish council. I coach the parish high school’s track team, and I teach basic self defense to the girls in both the public and parochial high schools. Then I spend time with my friends and fiancee. That’s about the extent of my rather boring life.”

  “Think hard, Al, please. Is there anyone who might be holding a grudge against you?”

  With a vexed sigh, she said, “Look, Phil, I’ve been over and over this in my own mind. There just isn’t anyone whom I’ve hurt that badly. There is no one whom I’ve really injured, who is still living. That is simply that. There isn’t another soul on the face of the earth whom I’ve given reasonable cause to hate me.”

  “No one?”

  “Not unless, you want a list of very minor disagreements which are best left forgotten. I can’t tell you anything more than I already have. I just don’t know.”

  “Minor disagreements? Like what?” I demanded.

  “Old Mrs. Findley who lives behind me has a little dog which likes to dig up my daffodils. She and I have had numerous, sometimes heated, words about Dodo. I threatened to call the animal control people. She threatened to pepper my backside with rock salt and bacon rind, if I did that. I resolved the issue by just not planting any more flowers without putting up a fence around them. But, Mrs. Findley still doesn’t speak to me unless she absolutely has to.”

  Imogene Findley was an old hell-raiser who had matured into a sweet-looking old lady. Appearances with that woman were deceptive. She was still a hell-raiser and probably always would be. I could well imagine her offering to pepper Al’s backside with rock salt. “Continue.”

  “Let’s see. Sister Mary Clare at Holy Rosary High and I have a running dispute about the need for the girls to have a more thorough grounding in self-defense than I can give them in the three weeks that I spend with them each spring. I would like to extend the sessions to a full semester, but she is adamantly opposed.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “I never could get Chester Whitfield to make good on the rotten job that he did of putting on my new roof. I still have a leak in the back bedroom. He wasn’t too happy when I filed suit against him for breech of contract. That hearing is coming up in a couple of weeks.”

  “Continue.”

  “Ernestine Chapman and I have a running disagreement over the amount of money which the parish spends on the acquisition of new music. She thinks that we spend too much, that we use too much modern music. I tend to think that we don’t nearly spend enough. We’ve both been quite vocal in our positions.”

  “Go on . . .”

  “This is so silly, Phil. None of these people are devious enough to have plotted something like this,” Al replied, her voice revealing just how tired she really was. “It’s just plain ludicrous to think about. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “Come on, Al. There has to be something, someone, whom you have forgotten.”

  “What do you want me to say, Phil? I can’t make things up. I live very quietly. I go out of my way to mind my own business. If I have a plethora of enemies, I certainly have no knowledge of them.”

  “Think, Al. Just think. Didn’t you get a teller fired at the bank?”

  “John Richards,” she answered. “He shorted a corporate deposit by a thousand dollars. Of course, I was disturbed about it. I complained rather loudly to his supervisor. There were several other complaints, as well, as I remember.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Come on, Phil. Do you really think that John Richards could be behind this?” Al asked. “The man was a total basket-case. I never thought that he had sufficient mental capacity to manage his own life, let alone meddle in someone else’s.”

  “We need to explore the possibilities. I am not willing to rule anyone out at this stage.”

  “I honestly can’t think of anyone else who might even have a minor grudge against me,” Al replied
quietly.

  “Real useful, Al. Your list consists of a feisty ninety-two-year-old woman, a nun, the head deacon of the Third Baptist Church, the mayor’s sister, and an incompetent bank teller. That’s some group of hardened felons that you have there.”

  “I told you, Phil, I live a very quiet life. Personally, I like it this way. And Sister is not a nun—she’s a Sister. Her order doesn’t take solemn vows, only simple ones. Sorry, I’m nitpicking . . .”

  Geoff took her hand. “Don’t worry about it, honey. Everyone understands that you are nervous.”

  “I just wish Hernandez would make his move, this suspense is killing me,” Al said, a shade of desperation in her voice.

  “Again, Al that may be this person’s goal- to drive you batty,” I offered.

  “He doesn’t have far to go. I’m almost to the point of jumping at shadows now. I nearly go through the ceiling whenever the telephone rings.”

  “I understand how you feel.”

  “Do you think that Sarah is dead?” Al asked, after a long pause. “Phil, be honest with me, please. Do you think she is dead?”

  “It’s a possibility. So far, no body has been found. But, I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t a possibility. The place, according to the St. Louis detectives with whom I spoke was trashed pretty thoroughly. They are acting on the suspicion that this could be a homicide.”

  “Do you . . .” Her voice quivered. “I mean, you do think this is related, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think that we can discount it, at the moment.” I told her. “I wish that I could tell you that it was absolutely unrelated. I’ve never been a great believer in coincidence.”

  “I wish that I hadn’t asked . . .” she said.

  “No, you don’t. You aren’t a coward, Al.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. It’s not a safe bet at the moment.”

  Geoff’s watch beeped. He looked down at it. “Well, ‘Licia, are you ready to go? Father Douglass expects us over at the Rectory for our first session of pre-Cana.”

  “Can’t keep Padre waiting, now, can we?” Al retorted.