“So glad I could be of service. Still starved for entertainment?”
“Maybe. Got any DVDs with good beefcake?”
“That depends. Are you going to tell Peter about this?”
“Hmmm.”
“Bailey, promise me you’ll never tell Peter I spit out one of my smoothies.”
“I dunno.” She held one hand out, palm up. “Beefcake,” she said, looking at her hand as if she expected a tiny stud muffin to appear there. “. . . humiliating you in a way that you will never live down.” She held out her other hand. She hummed while she joggled her upturned palms, mimicking a scale while she weighed her options. “This is a really tough decision.”
“Bailey, you tell Peter and I’ll never talk to you again.”
Bailey pursed her lips, nodded her head thoughtfully, considering.
“Bailey!”
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”
“I’ll download season one of The Doll House.”
“Well . . . I don’t know . . . .”
“Okay, okay. If you’ll go pick it up, I’ll order Dewey’s.”
~
“What’s this obsession you have with lentil recipes?” Bailey asked around a mouthful of spinach, garlic and goat cheese pizza.
“I’m trying to up my raw food quotient. I ate lentils all winter because they’re the only alkaline bean and I’m trying to keep my PH balanced. There has to be a way to eat them raw. I refuse to turn my back on all those lovely enzymes.”
“What about just munching them? I don’t like eating cardboard, but that’s just me.”
“I tried that while I was running errands the other day. I was so proud of myself for eating a whole cup of lentil sprouts. Then my car drove itself to UDF and when I came to, I was at the register with a couple of custard filled, chocolate-iced Bismarcks. It was totally counter productive.”
“Sure, but you got to eat chocolate.”
“There is that.”
Lia pulled out her phone on break at Scholastic that night to check her messages, hoping Peter called. She had one message on voicemail. It was Steve from the Homeless Alliance. She almost hung up her phone out of disappointment. “Lia, It’s Steve Reams. I kept asking around, and I finally talked to someone who remembered your mystery guy’s real name. It’s Eric Flynn. Hope this helps. Let me know if you need anything else.”
Lia’s ears rang and her breathing became shallow. Eric? Nice Eric, who she picked out for Desiree? Eric is a stalker . . . a killer? She looked at the clock. Seven minutes, and she had to be back at her workstation. Next to Eric. She felt nauseated, as if she might throw up. What am I going to do about this? How am I going to make it through the next two hours? Act normal. Just act normal, and after you get off work you can tell Peter. He doesn’t know you know and he can’t hurt you while you’re at work.
Lia avoided looking at Eric as she made her way to her chair. She kept her eyes on her monitor and tried to concentrate on her work. Good thing employee chatter was discouraged. Her mind extrapolated possibilities. Eric killed Desiree. Eric made me a doll. Is Eric going to kill me? She would have given anything to leave right that moment, but she didn’t want to call attention to herself.
She had to reread many papers several times to get her focus. Twice Eric showed her scoring mistakes she’d made. She kept her eyes down while her heart pounded and nodded in response to Eric’s concerns, promising to try harder.
The clock moved so slowly it would have lost a race with continental drift.
Finally Eric announced that it was time to finish scoring the current paper and shut down.
Lia grabbed her bag and scooted her chair back, preparing to make a quick exit. Eric put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“Lia, can you stick around? I need to talk to you.”
“I, uh, someone’s waiting on me,” she lied.
“Five minutes?”
“Uh . . .” She did rapid mental calculations. Five minutes, and people would still be in the building, even if they weren’t in this room. There would still be cars in the parking lot. She could hold it together for five minutes, sure she could.
Her insides froze as Eric collected folders and her teammates gathered their belongings and joined the evening exodus.
Finally, the room was empty. Eric sat back down.
“What did you need, Eric?” she asked, anxious to get away.
“You’ve been off your game the entire second half of shift. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, really.” Except for my heart pounding in my ears.
“Something’s bothering you, I can tell. What happened over break?”
“Look, it’s personal. I promise I’ll do better tomorrow. I’ve got to go.” She stood up, fingering the kubotan in her sweater pocket anxiously.
“I really have to go.” Her voice turned into a squeak. Appalled, she lunged for freedom.
He grabbed her arm, “Lia, you’re freaking out. What is this?”
“Let me go, Eric,” she exploded. “Don’t ever touch me. I know what you are. I know what you did to Desiree.” Shocked, he dropped her arm. She backed away, keeping her eyes on him.
“Now wait a minute. . . .” he began, coming towards her.
“Stay back!” She pulled her hand out of her pocket and before she thought about it, she depressed the plunger on her kubotan, hitting Eric in the chest with pepper spray. He howled with pain and surprise.
She turned and ran, not stopping until she’d crossed the parking lot and arrived, panting and sobbing at her old Volvo. Only to see a little foil doll perched on her driver-side mirror.
Lia gave a strangled cry of frustration and struck the doll. It bounced off the next car and passed through the headlights of a car pinned in the nightly logjam. It landed on the asphalt where another departing employee stepped on it.
She looked back as she fumbled with the Volvo’s lock, her hand shaking so hard she dropped her keys twice. If this were the Terminator, he’d pop up in front of me right now, looking like Terry and calling my dog by the wrong name. . . . A security guard was standing in the doorway, scanning the nightly traffic jam. Yep, that’s Eric, he’s killed the guard and morphed into a replica of him so I won’t realize he's following me. I’ve got to stop this. I’ll go into hysterics and I won’t know if it’s because I’m laughing or freaking out.
There were too many cars. No way would Eric be able to pick her out. Heart pounding, she eased her car into the melee. The stop and go traffic increased her distress as she attempted to avoid rear-ending the car in front of her while struggling to absorb her confrontation with Eric. The nightly exodus snaked around the building at a snails pace until, finally, she pulled out on the boulevard. She gunned her car, squealing her tires as she tore down the road. She slammed on the brakes when she saw the lights of the first gas station, over a mile from Scholastic.
Lia sat in her car with her phone in her hand and waited for her heart to stop pounding. Breathe. Remember what Asia taught you. When she thought she could speak again, she speed dialed Peter.
“Hey, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you tonight. What’s the occasion?”
“Peter,” she quavered. “I know who killed Desiree, and he knows I know.”
Peter tapped his foot impatiently as he sat on Lia’s porch, waiting for her to get home. Four dogs watched through the living room window, paws propped on the sill, heads in a row, whining to get out.
Lia had refused his offer to come get her, saying she’d feel better if she kept moving. He’d promised to wait for her. That creep knows where she lives. There wasn’t much chance that Eric could beat her home, not since she’d maced him and he’d be busy filing an incident report, if not a police report. No. He won’t go to the police. Too much explaining.
Really, she was at greater risk of having an accident than she was of being accosted. He’d made her promise to drive carefully.
Headlights broke the night from the far end of the block, growing as
they drew near. Lia’s black sedan pulled into the only available parking space, two doors beyond her two-family. Peter breathed a sigh of relief as she got out of the car.
A dark van pulled out of a driveway a half-block away. It slowed as it drew abreast with Lia. Before Peter could react, the back doors flew open. Someone wearing a visored motorcycle helmet tossed a pillowcase over Lia’s head and dragged her in. Her screams were cut out as the van’s lights switched off. Her abductors peeled out leaving Peter standing in the middle of the street, hoping for a plate number.
The light over the license plate was out.
Peter raced towards his car, beyond the spot where Lia had been taken. Something pink caught his eye and his step faltered. He coughed as he entered the residual cloud of pepper spray, his eyes lured by the rosy gleam on the pavement. The kubotan, his birthday present to Lia, lay on the pavement. The bulk of the shot must have hit the visor of her attacker’s helmet. That’s why it hadn’t incapacitated him.
It’ll just have to lay there.
Peter jumped into his Explorer, whipped it around and squealed his tires in pursuit. Kirby Road was two blocks away. He had to get there before the van disappeared. He pulled up to the stop sign, in front of the de-commissioned Kirby Elementary School, looking both ways. No vehicles in sight.
He slammed the wheel with his fist. Eenie, meanie, miney. . . . Left was better traveled and well lit, leading to the Northside business district. In that direction, it was a straight shot to the stoplight several blocks away at Chase Avenue, and not a van in sight. Their lights were off. Maybe I just don’t see them.
To the right the road darkened and curved, leading into the backroads. He went right, grabbing up the mic on his radio to call it in, Lia’s screams echoing inside his head.
Lia tensed when the lights of a car caught her eye to the left. The van pulled past her, then stopped. She screamed as a sack of some sort came down over her head, but still managed to get off a shot of mace from her kubotan keychain. The pepper spray filled the air and she started coughing as rough hands dragged her back, into the cargo bay of the van.
Where’s Peter? Why didn’t the pepper spray work? She kicked, twisted and squirmed while her abductor held her arms against her side, his fingers digging into her biceps.
“Jesus,” her abductor coughed. “Open the windows, will you, this stuff is killing me.”
“The windows are down. Fumes are coming off your helmet. Put your helmet in the garbage bag, like I told you, asshole,” Abductor Number 2 said.
“How’m I supposed to do that?” Abductor Number 1 spat out, coughing. “I gotta hold her, don’t I?”
“Oh, for Chrissake.” The van veered suddenly, drove up a short incline, whipped around and screeched to a stop, rocking on bad shocks. Seconds went by. Lia felt a gun pressed into her shoulder.
She stilled.
“That’s right, bitch. You be good now while my friend ties you up or I’m going to shoot your shoulder. You don’t need your shoulder for what we want.” He coughed. “Get rid of that damn helmet and tie her up. And hurry.”
The worst of the fumes dissipated, then rough hands pulled her wrists together behind her back and wrapped duct tape around them.
“Tape that pillowcase around her neck. I don’t want her seeing us.”
They don’t want me to know who they are. They must not plan to kill me. She prayed they didn’t change their mind.
The coarse hands gathered the pillowcase around her neck. Fingers groped the chain of Desiree’s necklace and pulled it out of Lia’s shirt. “Nice,” Abductor Number 1 said, tugging on the pendant.
“Hurry up. We’ve got company.”
Cherie Jackson traced one glittery nail across the well-muscled thigh of Officer Brainard, who was sitting in his patrol car behind Kirby Road School with his pants down around his ankles. She was satisfied when she heard his sharp intake of breath. “Jesus, you’re killing me,” he gasped. “Put me out of my misery.”
“Sugar, you’re spoiling all my fun. Don’t be in such a hurry.”
“Your fun is about to spoil itsel—” Brainard’s head jerked up at the sound of screeching tires. Annoyed that someone else was using his favorite break spot, he looked out the windshield and wondered why the headlights on the midnight blue van were off.
“Wait here. I need to check this out.” It had been easier to take his pants down than it was to pull them back up. The van sat, motionless. He zipped up his pants with difficulty and left the car door open after he exited, not wanting to alert his target until he was ready. Flashlight in his left hand, he unsnapped his holster with his right. He reached for his weapon when the memory of his unfortunate encounter with that jackass at the bank and the ensuing ass scalding halted his hand.
When he was 15 feet away, he switched on the flashlight, illuminating the van. There was no one in the driver’s seat. He circled around towards the windshield so he could shine his light inside the back of the van.
A man in a ski mask popped up and fired three shots out the driver’s side window. Brainard was raising his gun when the fourth shot hit him in the chest.
Cherie screamed as the van peeled out. When it got to the edge of the parking lot, the back door flew open and a body tumbled to the asphalt.
Peter heard the call for officer down at Kirby School and cursed himself. That’s why the van disappeared so quickly. It pulled onto Innes and hid behind the school, and like an idiot, I drove right past them. I thought they’d be hightailing it. Makes no sense.
He followed an ambulance onto the lot. As he drove up the incline to the school parking lot, he spied a white blur on the pavement. It shifted, and he saw that it was attached to a body. Lia’s body.
He forgot about his fellow officer, jumping out of the Explorer as a line of patrol cars blew past him towards an unidentified woman kneeling over the body he assumed was The downed officer.
“Hold on, Babe. I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Everything’s going to be okay.” He prayed he was right as he felt her arms and legs for broken bones, then pulled out a pocket knife and began sawing through the duct tape binding her wrists.
“Peter?” Her voice was weak and muffled by the pillow case.
“I’m here. Are you okay?”
“I hurt.”
“Where, Babe? Tell me where?”
“All over.”
“I’m sorry, Babe. I’ve got to give you a redneck wax. It’s going to hurt, but the sting will go away.”
“What are you talking ab—”
He ripped the duct tape off, taking all attached body hair with it. She screamed.
“It’s like a Brazilian, but cheaper,” Peter explained.
Her wrists freed, she felt around for his arm and began hitting him.
“Ow! Hold on, you want me to get this pillowcase off, don’t you?” She lowered her fists so he could reach her neck.
Sirens blasting, more patrol cars pulled up. He waved them on to the back of the lot.
An EMT approached. “Your man is stable. We’re taking him in,” he said to Peter. “How are you feeling, Miss? Up for a ride to the hospital?“
“Can’t you look at me here? I think it’s just road rash and some bruises.”
“The young lady with Brainard said you were tossed out of a van. Did you hit your head? You might have a concussion.”
He checked her vitals, peered into her eyes.
“I’ll look after her,” Peter said.
The EMT wasn’t happy, but he gave them both instructions for the next couple days.
Brent joined them, stooping to keep the knees of his pants off the pavement. “Well, now, Lia, aren’t you a sore sight for my eyes? Anything I can give you a hand with?”
Lia twitched one corner of her mouth in a ghost of a smile.
A line of patrol cars filed out of the parking lot, presumably to search for the van. One remained behind to secure the area for the crime scene techs.
“What’s happening?”
Peter asked Brent.
“Well, now, let’s see. Brainard was on break, apparently having a chat with Miss Cherie, whose claim that she is 21 is entirely suspect, despite her possession of an official replica of an Ohio State ID Card. Incidentally, they were chatting with his radio off, which would be why he didn’t hear the BOLO .”
“A chat?” Peter raised his eyebrows.
“Actually, I think it was more of a ‘chat.’” Brent hooked two fingers of each hand to frame the quote. “But I digress. Miss Cherie says the van pulled in and Brainard thought it was strange and decided to investigate, though I think he wanted to chase it off so it wouldn’t disturb his tete-a-tete with the young lady. When he approached the vehicle, the driver fired several times, hitting Brainard once in the chest. Then he drove off, discarding our lovely Lia on the way out.”
“How’s Officer Brainard?” Lia asked.
“Lost some blood. Doesn’t seem to have hit any organs, but they won’t know for sure until they get him on the table. Good thing he’s unconscious. Come morning, he’s going to have some ‘splainin’ to do.”
“Why is that?” Lia asked. “He got shot saving me.”
“That was just dumb luck, emphasis on dumb. If he’d had his radio on, he’d have known about the van, and he’d have called for back-up before he approached. And if he’d been wearing his Kevlar vest, he would be bruised but not bleeding. Then there’s the questionable presence of Miss Cherie, who is well known to the constabulary for her entrepreneurial activities and her official replica state ID.”
Lia’s mouth made a big ‘O.’ “Why do I think this doesn’t bother you?”
“Well, now, it’s just so nice to know that God still looks after drunks and idiots. I’m so very happy he didn’t die, because I’d hate like hell to give a hero’s send-off to an officer who bungled himself to death.”
“I think you’re afraid he’ll take your title as the department pretty-boy.”
“No one, Miss Lia, not even Officer Brain-dead,” he reached out and flicked her on the nose, “is taking away my title as department pretty-boy, if I have to ream his colon with my Manolo Blahnik knock-offs. Let’s get you home before the vultures—I mean press—show up. Can you walk?”
Sneak Thief (A Dog Park Mystery) Page 19
