Don

by Carlene Thompson

  So off he'd gone and she'd lain in bed until dawn broke, then fallen into a deep if brief sleep. Now the clock told her it was eight. At nine o'clock the locksmith would be here. Time to rise no matter how much her tired body protested.

  The coffee smelled especially delicious as it dripped with maddening slowness into the pot. Natalie poured a mug before the pot finished filling, took a bagel from the toaster, spread it with cream cheese, and sat down at the kitchen table. Yesterday had been gray and dismal. Today a periwinkle-blue sky lay above the calm waters of the lake and a pale yellow sum warmed the tender green grass of early summer. Once again Harvey Coombs sat out in his rowboat, ancient hat jammed on his head as he fished for famous Lake Erie perch. The scene looked like a calm, lovely painting. Murder had no place here.

  But it was here.

  "I will not think about it this morning," Natalie said to Blaine as the dog finished her breakfast and Natalie went to the front door. The newspaper lay on the lawn. She sighed. The paperboy was a star pitcher on the high school baseball team, but he could not seem to get the rolled newspaper anywhere near the front porch. Ever. Natalie clutched her robe around her and padded down the front walk on bare feet. A white car was parked across the street. A man sat behind the wheel. He paid no attention to her, but embarrassed in just her robe, she turned and quickly ran inside.

  She sat down at the table with a second cup of coffee and unrolled the paper. Headlines screamed the news of Alison's attack. The story was scanty-reporters had had barely enough time to gather a few details before the paper was put to bed at ten o'clock. By now they were besieging Viveca at the hospital. Natalie could imagine her distress as reporters dug for details of Alison's background and mental history, and she was oddly relieved that her father was there to help Viveca, since Oliver seemed to have stepped out of the picture.

  She glanced up at the kitchen clock. 8:45. The locksmith was due at nine. Natalie hurried through a shower and pulled on jeans and a tank top. Her hair hung long and wet as she rushed to answer the doorbell. A middle-aged man with graying curly red hair and a gold front tooth faced her. "Gary of Gary's Locksmiths!" he announced, grinning ferociously. A locksmith on speed, Natalie thought. Or maybe he just loved his job. Or perhaps he was showing off his gleaming tooth. Whatever the case, Andrew had described Gary to her, so she didn't worry that he was the killer posing as a locksmith. "Come right in," she said. "We need a new lock on the front door, the back door on the garage, and the sliding glass doors leading to the patio."

  "Yep. Doc already told me. I'm gonna put a bolt on the sliding glass doors. Slickest thing you've ever seen." Gary grinned again, looking expectantly for an ecstatic reaction to his amazing sliding glass door bolt. "I'm rarin' to go!"

  Good Lord, Natalie thought. She motioned him in, glancing at the man in the white car. He sat perfectly still, looking straight ahead with his head tilted slightly to the left. Maybe he was waiting for the young couple who had recently moved into the gray house across the street. But he'd been waiting for twenty minutes.

  And he hadn't moved a fraction.

  Natalie stepped past Gary onto the front walk. She gazed at the man, transfixed as an icy feeling settled in her stomach, radiating shuddery cold. Suddenly she felt as if she could stand under a white-hot desert sun for hours and still not feel warm.

  Slowly she walked toward the car. From what seemed a great distance she heard Gary yapping about replacement pins and tumbler cylinders. Natalie ignored him. If he'd started shouting at her she still wouldn't have turned around. Something waited for her in that car. Something as irresistible as it was awful.

  Natalie halted at the car and stared in the window. No movement. The unnatural angle of the head. The white shirt with a blood-soaked collar.

  Unable to stop herself, she clasped the door handle. Pausing, she drew a deep breath, then opened the door.

  The body of Jeff Lindstrom tumbled from the car, landing at her feet, his glassy brown eyes staring up at the beautiful blue sky.

  18

  "Good God Almighty! What the hell! Is he drunk?" Gary blustered from the doorway. Harvey Coombs' wife Mary had materialized in the street. She took one look at the gaping neck wound, gagged, and ran for home. Natalie kneeled and lifted a wrist searching for a pulse. The arm was beginning to stiffen. Given the temperature, she would say Jeff had died about three or four hours ago. She glanced in the car at the congealing blood covering the cloth upholstery seat. So much blood. His throat had been slashed in the car where he'd been left to bleed to death.

  All of this ran through Natalie's mind as she pressed lightly on his lids, closing his eyes. She knew she shouldn't touch the body, but she could not leave those sightless eyes open, vulnerable like Tam's had been.

  She looked up. Gary still stood gaping at the front door. "Call the police," she yelled. He didn't move. " Gary, call the police! Ask for Sheriff Meredith or Ted Hysell. Tell them to get here immediately." Gary was frozen. " Gary, now!"

  Gary jerked as if jolted by electricity. The young couple from the nearby house appeared on their front walk, dressed in identical red-white-and-blue running suits. Both were tall and blond and looked like brother and sister. The young man walked toward Natalie. "What's going on?" He circled around the front of the car, looked down at the bloody body and quailed, all color draining from his ruddy face. "Did you do this?"

  The absurdity of the question snapped Natalie out of her numbness. "Do you think I'd cut this guy's throat, then leave him outside my house so I could stand over him, gazing at my handiwork?" she asked coldly.

  The young man backed off, obviously considering more strongly the possibility that this loony woman had indeed killed the man. "I was only trying to help."

  "I didn't hear any offer to help." Tears suddenly filled Natalie's eyes and she began to tremble. "Do you have a blanket we can throw over him?"

  He turned and ran back to his wife. After a murmured exchange she exclaimed, "I'm not ruining one of my good blankets!" In measured strides they retreated to their house and firmly closed the door. In less than a minute their faces appeared at the front window.

  "Love thy neighbor," Natalie muttered as she sank down beside Jeff's body, suddenly dizzy. Three times in one week she had stood guard over the victims of savage violence. It was absurd. It was horrible. She felt as if she'd fallen off the edge of the world.

  Mary Coombs dashed out of her house bearing a blanket that she tossed over the crumpled form of Jeff Lindstrom. Then she sat down on the pavement beside Natalie and poured a cup of coffee from a Thermos. "Drink this, honey. You're shaking like it's thirty degrees out here."

  The coffee was thick with cream and sugar. Natalie liked her coffee black, but she drank obediently. Mary put her arm around Natalie's shoulders, and slowly the shaking began to subside. "Did you know him?" Mary asked.

  "Slightly. He wasn't a friend." She shuddered. "He was left here for me to find."

  "Now, Natalie, you're just scared."

  "I know what I'm talking about." She looked at the pleasantly weather-worn face of the woman who'd offered love and sympathy ever since Kira deserted her so long ago. "Mary, did you see his throat?"

  "Yes, horrible. This is nasty business, Natalie, but it doesn't have anything to do with you. Not a thing in the world."

  But it did. Natalie knew with sickening certainly that it had everything to do with her.

  She wasn't sure how long she and Mary sat silently beside the white car before the first police car arrived. Nick Meredith emerged, his expression grim, his eyes surrounded by bluish circles. Natalie doubted if he'd gotten a full night's sleep since the murder of Tamara. He looked at the blanket, then at Natalie. "Know who it is?"

  "Jeff Lindstrom."

  He drew in a quick breath. "Okay, besides Natalie, how many people have trampled on the crime scene?" he demanded.

  "Only me," Mary returned indignantly, "and I didn't trample."

  "The guy who lives in the gray house was her
e," Natalie told him. "He didn't come within six feet of the body, though, and I didn't see him touch anything."

  Nick looked around. "Pretty boy standing at his window clutching a woman?"

  "Yes. Gary didn't come over."

  "Who's Gary?"

  "The locksmith gawking at you from the doorway of my house. He made the call after I found the body."

  Nick turned to a deputy hovering nearby. "Get the tech team."

  "Runnin' them ragged lately," the deputy muttered as he headed for the patrol car.

  "And keep everyone else away from the area," Nick added. He pulled on a clear, latex glove and lifted the blanket. After gazing at the neck wound for a moment, he withdrew a wallet from Jeff's pants pocket. He flipped it open and read from the driver's license. "Jefferson R. Lindstrom. 2020 Madison Street, Cincinnati, Ohio."

  Mary looked at him sternly. "Certainly you don't need Natalie to stay here and watch whatever you do with a body. She needs to go inside."

  "She does indeed." Nick reached down and took Natalie's arm. "Let's go in and you tell me what happened."

  Mary insisted on following, casting suspicious looks at Nick. He told Gary to go about his business, but Gary wasn't breaking any records. He worked slowly and quietly as he eavesdropped on Natalie's account of the morning up until she'd opened the door of Jeff Lindstrom's car.

  As soon as she finished, someone began pounding on the front door and shouting, "What the hell is going on? Are those home invaders back?"

  "Oh, Lord, it's Harvey," Mary groaned. "He was fine when he went out to fish, but it sounds like he got into the liquor before he came over."

  "Would you mind taking him home, ma'am?" Nick asked politely. "We have all the confusion around here we need."

  "Yes, I'll take him home," Mary said with suppressed fury. "If we hadn't been married since we were nineteen, I'd divorce him, the old fool."

  She marched off and, after a brief but loud altercation on the front porch, Natalie heard her leading away a protesting Harvey. "Poor guy," she said. "He used to be brilliant and so charming."

  "Last week he spent the night in jail," Nick told her. "I thought Hysell was going to cry when I arrested him, but I can't have him sitting out in his boat yelling to a crowd of tourists that he hid a bomb on shore."

  Natalie smiled faintly. "I appreciate the effort, but you don't have to keep prattling about Harvey. It's not going to take my mind off Jeff."

  "I know, but you're so pale I thought I'd give you a minute to recuperate." Nick sat down and to her surprise took her cold hand in his. "Where's your father?"

  "At the hospital. He's always spent more time there than at home."

  "Even when you were a little girl?"

  "Yes." She looked at him. "He couldn't help it. He's needed."

  "I wasn't criticizing. When I think of how little time I've spent with Paige lately… well, never mind. Are you all right?"

  "I honestly don't know. I keep finding bodies. It's almost funny. I feel like a bloodhound." Abruptly she started laughing. The laughter lasted for thirty seconds until suddenly it turned to ragged sobs. "I just don't understand, Nick. I thought Jeff might have killed Tam, but now he's been murdered. I guess this blows Ted's theory. Lindstrom didn't have anything to do with Eugene Farley."

  "Yes, he did," Nick said slowly. "His mother is Constance Farley's sister. Eugene was Jeff's cousin."

  Natalie looked at him in disbelief. "His cousin? How do you know?"

  "I spoke with Mrs. Farley. She was really upset when she found out he was here. She said he was, and I quote, 'an awful boy' and 'crazy.' "

  "Crazy how?"

  "She didn't elaborate, but she was adamant that I not cooperate with him. She was especially freaked out over the possibility that I might discuss her or Eugene with him." He smiled. "She wanted me to run him out of town."

  "Tar and feathers?"

  "I didn't suggest it, but if I had, she would have jumped at the idea."

  Natalie wiped at the tears streaking her face. "What do you suppose he was really doing here?"

  "I don't know. I considered the possibility that Mrs. Farley might have dispatched him to do her killing for her, but that seems too extreme. Then there's the possibility that he really was interested in doing a true-crime novel and in his investigation he found out more than I did. Maybe he thought he knew who the killer was."

  "And?"

  "And he made the mistake of confronting that person. He could have had plans to triumphantly drag the killer into the headquarters of the stupefied police. Or he could have had plans to blackmail the killer. Lindstrom was cocky as hell, Natalie. He was the type who thought he could outsmart, outmaneuver anyone." Nick looked into her eyes. "But maybe he met his match."

  The door swung open and Mrs. Fisher looked at Nick belligerently. "What is it now?"

  "I need to speak with Dee."

  "I need to speak with Dee, too, but she's not here." The woman clutched her flannel robe around her. She'd combed out her pin curls and her white hair formed a thin, frizzy halo around her wizened face. "I haven't seen her since yesterday afternoon. No one to fix my dinner! No one to fix my breakfast! I could have died in the night and laid in my bed till I rotted'."

  Her face reddened and Nick feared she was working herself into another coughing fit. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

  Her gaze narrowed. "Always tryin' to get into this house, aren't you?"

  Oh, God, not this again, Nick thought. "Mrs. Fisher, do you have any idea where Dee might be?"

  "If I knew, I'd sure as hell tell you so you could drag her back by the hair to take care of me like she's's'posed to. Free room and board I give her! And for what?" Her pale eyes pinned Nick. "Why're you here lookin' for her? She's done somethin'. Don't try to fool me. What is it?"

  "I don't know that she's done anything. I just want to talk to her."

  "About what?"

  "I can't discuss it with you."

  "Well, to hell with you then!" Mrs. Fisher slammed the door.

  Nick stood on the porch for a moment, thinking. Dee Fisher had been acting strangely for over a week. According to her mother she was often gone at night and had received a number of secret phone calls. Wade at the Lakeview Motel had seen her coming out of Lindstrom's room the night after Tamara Hunt's funeral. She was upset. Lindstrom was never seen again. And now he was dead.

  And what about Alison Cosgrove? She'd been attacked around ten last night. Mrs. Fisher said she hadn't seen her daughter since yesterday afternoon. That left nearly twenty four hours unaccounted for. Twenty-four hours missing from the life of a woman who had loved Eugene Farley and never gotten over his death.

  As much as he hated to do it, Nick knew he had to talk with Ted Hysell about the possibility that his girlfriend was a killer.

  The paramedics had taken Jeff Lindstrom away over an hour ago. A couple of reporters prowled the street, but everyone had sequestered themselves in their houses, refusing comment. Just twenty minutes ago Natalie had spotted a particularly pushy female reporter for the local newspaper standing on the patio peering in the sliding glass doors at her. Natalie had drawn the vertical blinds with a crash and an expletive loud enough to be heard through the glass.

  Now, numb from the shock of finding the body, she sat on the floor with her guitar and strummed absently, Blaine by her side. She hit ragged chords. Her voice quavered. She broke a string.

  The phone rang. Kenny's disembodied voice floated from the answering machine. "Natalie, I know you're there, so pick up. I want to talk to you. Let's work this out. Natalie?" A pause. "Well, I love you, hon."

  Nothing about having read of more murders in Port Ariel and being worried about her. Nothing about thinking of her sadness after Tamara's funeral. "Let's work this out." He was bored, temporarily at sea without her. And, "I love you, hon." Two weeks ago her heart would have beat faster at hearing those words. Now they sounded hollow. No feeling ebbed behind them. Had it ever? Or had she been nothing
more to Kenny than the woman of the moment, someone convenient and eager to please?

  She began to play and sing, launching into "I Can't Make You Love Me," by Bonnie Raitt. Tears were gathering in her eyes when the phone rang again. "Natalie, it's Lily." Natalie put down the guitar, swallowed to control her voice, and picked up the receiver. "What's going on?" Lily demanded anxiously. "You found a body?"

  "Do we have a Port Ariel town crier?" Natalie asked. "How did you find out?"

  "Your neighbors across the street called my father. Apparently they're afraid they're going to be dragged into something unsavory. They wanted to know if they needed representation and said they wanted the best."

  "What a pair of self-involved idiots."

  "Why didn't you call and tell me what happened?"

  "I didn't want to upset you. I figured all hell was breaking loose in your world already considering the attack on Alison."

  "I didn't know anything about it until this morning when I called Dad. He was just on his way to the hospital."

  "He didn't go until this morning?"

  "Apparently not."

  "Viveca called here around one A.M. wanting my father to come. I wouldn't wake him because he was wiped out and sound asleep, but I talked with her for a while. She told me she'd asked your dad to come, but he said he had his own problems."

  "You think he was unfeeling."

  "To say the least. He's supposedly in love with Viveca."

  "Well, maybe he's not as crazy about her as he thought."

  "Last night was a fine time to decide that."

  "What is it with you?" Lily asked sharply. "I didn't know you'd become Viveca's champion. And my father has been through a lot. He's nearly reached the end of his endurance."

  "I didn't mean to offend you. It's just been quite a morning."

  "Never mind." Lily's voice turned oddly fiat. "About this body you found. Who was it?"

  Natalie stiffened. About this body you found. Who was it? Lily sounded like Natalie had found a stray cat on the porch. She'd gone off on a tangent about her father and Viveca before she even asked the identity of the body. "It was Jeff