by Joanne Fluke
Michael hung up with a feeling of satisfaction. He’d managed to warn Jose without saying who he really was. And he never would have found him this quickly without Toni’s expertise on her computer.
Then he sobered quickly as he remembered how easily Toni had brought up the information on Jose. He’d have to be more careful around Toni. He’d slipped up when he’d mentioned that it had been years since he’d eaten pizza. Of course, he’d covered up his lapse very quickly, but Toni was sharp, and she’d said she loved to solve puzzles. If something he said didn’t ring quite true, she might just decide to pull up some personal background on Mike Kruger from Cleveland. And if she did, she’d discover that he didn’t exist in any of her data banks.
Cheryl Frasier was ladling brown gravy over a meatball sandwich when Jose came back to the kitchen. She was a plump blond woman in her middle forties, the most popular waitress at the Crossroads Truckstop. When the truckers kidded around with Cheryl, she gave it right back to them in spades. But she remembered every name and every face, and she always had a minute to slide into the booth to look at pictures of kids and grandkids. All her regular customers and every member of the kitchen staff loved her.
“I’ve got two red flannels with sunny sides up and a C-burger fries, no dill. Make that burger bloody will you, Jose? It’s for Herbie Collins, and he wants the moo still in it.”
Cheryl turned and caught Jose’s worried expression, “What’s the matter, Jose? You look like Marguerite just told you the rabbit died. “
“The rabbit?” It took Jose a moment to get it. “No Cheryl, Marguerita is not with child.”
“But that’s not for the lack of trying, right, Jose?” Jose smiled, but his face turned slightly red. Even after five years of Cheryl’s frank teasing, he still got slightly embarrassed.
“Sweetie Bea?” Cheryl called out to a passing waitress. “Could you be a doll and dump this plate on table fourteen? I’ve got to talk to Jose for a minute.”
Cheryl walked over to the side of the grill and leaned on the counter. “Look Jose, I know I’ve got a big mouth, but never when it’s something important. Then I can be as quiet as a corpse. What happened? Is something wrong at home?”
“No, Cheryl. It is nothing like that. The call, it was from a reporter. He asked questions about Mr. Lester Robinson. “
“The undertaker that was murdered? Why would he ask you?”
“I served on a jury many years ago, and Mr. Robinson was one of the others. Also Miss Jantzen.”
“The lady who was murdered in Westwood?”
Jose nodded. “That is true, Cheryl. And also Mr. Wallace, the artist who fell from the platform above the freeway. Three from the jury have been murdered.”
“Wait a minute, Jose. That artist had an accident. Nobody murdered him, right?”
“I am not sure, Cheryl. The reporter did not say. But he told me that some of the others are taking precautions. He said I may be in danger, that it may not be a coincidence.”
“No wonder you’re worried.” Cheryl sighed. “But, Jose, maybe this reporter’s just trying to stir up trouble. Those guys are always looking for a big story. The first thing we should do is find out if the artist was really murdered. Wouldn’t it make you feel better if you found out he wasn’t?”
Jose nodded. “Yes, Cheryl. I would feel much better.”
“Okay, then. I’ll find out for you right now. Did that reporter give you his name?”
“Mr. Petersen. From the Times. He said he was writing a feature article.”
“I’ll call from the office. Tell Bea to cover my tables for a minute, will you?”
In less than five minutes, Cheryl was back. She looked exasperated. “Something’s rotten in Denmark, Jose. There’s nobody named Petersen who works for the Times except for a lady in the want-ad department. And the man I talked to said there are no new developments in the artist’s death. It was an accident, just like we thought.”
“But why would this man say I should be careful and take precautions? And why would he lie to me?”
“I don’t know, Jose. He may be a harmless fruitcake, but you never know. Somehow he found out where you work, and he knew you were on that jury. That worries me. If I were you, I’d call the cops and tell them about it. And I’d carry a knife or a gun, just in case.”
Jose sighed. “I cannot tell the police, Cheryl. They would come to my home and . .”
“And what? You can tell me, Jose. I won’t spread it around.”
“I have not said this before, Cheryl. My cousin from Tequila is here, and he has no papers. Please, do not speak of this to any person. Ramone has a wife and four children, and there are no jobs for him in Mexico. His family will starve if he does not send them money.”
Cheryl nodded. “It’s tough down there now. I’ve heard about that. And I understand, Jose.”
“That is good. I give you my promise that I will carry my knife, Cheryl. Then no bad things can happen to me.”
“My lips are sealed. That’s a fact. And I never heard word one about that call you got. Jose, did you say your cousin’s from Tequila?” She waited until Jose nodded.
“And that’s where they make it? The tequila, I mean?”
“That is true.”
“Now you’ve got me going, Jose. I’ve got to know. Do they really eat those ugly little worms in the bottoms of the bottles?”
Jose laughed for the first time since he’d taken the call. “No, Cheryl. The men from Mexico are much too wise to eat worms. They save them all for your American truck drivers.”
CHAPTER 19
It was ten o’clock in the morning by the time Toni finished the last page Mike had written. His main character, Bob, had been confined to a mental institution. Mike had done a masterful job of portraying Bob’s rising panic as the door clanged shut behind him and he was forced to enter a hostile and alien world. Toni rubbed her arms and shivered. She actually had goose bumps. Now she was glad she hadn’t had the chance to read this section last night when it was dark outside.
Mike had been very productive since he’d started to work on the computer. In only five days he’d turned out fifty-three pages, and there’d be another ten or so today, she was sure. She liked to think that it was due to her influence. Certainly his initial purchase of the computer had been due to her urging. But a computer was merely a tool for accomplishing a task more efficiently. It could run every complicated program in the world, but someone still had to sit down at the keyboard to actually generate the work. Mike would have written the same words whether he’d used the portable typewriter he had in his apartment or a ballpoint pen or even a quill. But the actual process would have taken him much longer.
She reread his description of the mental hospital and nodded. Mike was a natural storyteller. The pages she’d read were exciting and fast-paced. She could hardly wait for tonight’s installment. His insights into the workings of a mental institution were nothing short of amazing. His powerful image of Bob’s fight to maintain what sanity he had left while surrounded by people who assumed he was insane was truly chilling. He was a talented writer. Why hadn’t he made contact with an agent? She’d asked last night, and Mike had told her that it was much too early to think about that.
Toni sighed. She had a good notion to call Muriel Watkins and tell her about Mike’s book. Muriel was an editor in New York, and she was an expert at handling the fragile egos of beginning authors. But it wouldn’t be fair to contact Muriel without Mike’s permission. He’d finally trusted her enough to let her read his manuscript. Now she had an even bigger task. She had to convince him to trust her friend Muriel.
Toni picked up the phone and dialed. “Mike? It’s Toni. I just read your last chapter, and I really like it. I think you’re ready for a critical reading.”
There was a frown on Toni’s face as Mike answered. She could tell he would take some persuading. “No, I don’t think it needs any revision. Not for a first reading And I know the perfect person to give
you some honest criticism.”
Toni sighed as Mike gave her his objections. It was too early. He wanted to go over the material again, to add some things he’d just thought of. He was glad she liked it, but he wasn’t ready to give it to someone else to read quite yet.
“Look, Mike. I know how you’re feeling, but you’re going to have to send it off someday. Why not now? I have a friend who’s an editor in New York. I know she’ll be objective, and she might have some good suggestions for the rest of the book.”
It took ten minutes of hard sell, but at last Toni hung up the phone with a smile on her face. Mike had finally agreed. Now she could call Muriel with a clear conscience. Muriel would be at work now, and her office number had just been changed. Toni thought she knew it. She possessed an excellent recall for numbers, but it wouldn’t hurt to check it to make sure.
Toni sat down at her computer and typed BLACKBK.DOC to bring up the file containing her personal addresses and phone numbers. She always listed people by their first names, a procedure diametrically opposed to everything she knew about filing, but she had a good reason to do things backwards. Johnny, the man at the garage who serviced her car, was listed under the Js. How could she put him anywhere else when she didn’t even know his last name? And the plumber, whose name she never could remember, was entered in the Ps for plumber. It might be a little crazy, and people would laugh if they saw her system, but it worked for her, and that was what counted.
Toni scrolled to the Ms. There were four entries. The first was Manager, Apartment Building. The Ms were a good place to put him because the manager changed every year or so. Then there was Marc Rawls a dentist she’d dated a couple of times. No sense in cluttering up her hard disk with him. Toni erased the entry—scrap was a good place for Marc—and moved on to the next name. It was Mike Kruger. Mike stayed, very definitely. And the last entry was Muriel Watkins in New York. Toni picked up the phone and punched in the number.
“Devonshire Publishing. Muriel Watkins speaking.”
For a moment Toni was speechless, but she recovered quickly. “Muriel, it’s Toni. My God! You sound so important.”
“Hi, Toni. Not really. I just wish they’d give me a secretary to answer the phone. Enough of that. How’s the weather out there?”
“Perfect. Blue skies, green grass, temperature in the low eighties.”
“Sounds like paradise to me.”
“Yes.” Toni sighed. “But, Muriel, it’s like this every day out here. I’m dying for the excitement of a good blizzard.”
“Don’t say that. A vengeful God may be listening, and we both know he has a peculiar sense of humor. Remember when we got stuck at the Minneapolis airport, coming home from that conference?”
“With no snow boots? You’re right, Muriel. I like Southern California just the way it is. So how’s the new job? You wrote that you got a promotion.”
Muriel snorted. “That’s right. I’m a senior editor now. That means five times more work for the same amount of money. But I’m not complaining, Toni. It still pays a lot better than that first job we had. Your computer business is doing all right, isn’t it?”
“It’s fine. I got a couple of new contracts last month. A big billing job that’s no sweat at all and another research assignment. I’m happy, Muriel. And, well, I’ve met somebody.”
“A man?”
Toni laughed. “Yes, Muriel. A man. I’ve stopped dating the lower life forms. His name’s Mike Kruger and he’s a writer.”
“Mike Kruger? I’ve never heard of him. What does he write?”
“Fiction. You haven’t heard of him because he’s never been published. He’s fifty-three pages into his first book right now. I might as well come out with it, because that’s why I called. I think he’s a fantastic writer, but I might be just a tiny bit prejudiced. I was curious to find out what you think.”
“Send me something. You could email a file, but I’d really prefer hard copy. And send it to my home address. I’ll read it the moment I have a free evening, and I promise to call you right after I’ve read it. But I’m warning you, Toni. If he’s no good, I’ll tell you.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Don’t pull any punches. Nothing you can say will change the way I feel about him. I can take the brutal truth.”
“My kind of brutal truth?”
“Well”—Toni laughed—“maybe you’d better throw in a polite phrase or two, just to be nice. I’ll get his manuscript to you today, Muriel. And thanks a lot.”
After a few more minutes of conversation Toni hung up and turned on her printer. She’d made a separate file for Mike’s work, and it took only a few minutes to print out a clean copy for Muriel. Then she wrote a short note thanking Muriel again, and stuffed it all into an envelope. How many stamps did she need? She really ought to buy a postage scale. If she knew what the package weighed, she could stick on the stamps and drop it in the mailbox immediately.
Toni went back to her computer again and loaded a math program. This should be simple, now that she’d thought about it. She’d gone out to buy paper for the printer just the other day, two cases of it. The stock boy had taken it to the car for her, and she’d admired the easy way he carried it, one box on each shoulder He’d told her it really wasn’t very heavy. Each case weighed only sixty pounds.
There were twelve reams of paper to a case. Sixty divided by twelve was five. The reams weighed five pounds apiece. She didn’t need her math program for that. And there were five hundred sheets to a ream, so a hundred sheets weighed a pound. And fifty-three pages was roughly one half of that. Sixteen ounces to a pound, and half was eight, so Mike’s pages weighed eight ounces or so. Then there was her note to Muriel and the envelope to consider, plus the two file folders she’d used to protect the manuscript. At a stamp per ounce, ten stamps should be plenty. But ten stamps would have some weight of their own. Should she add another stamp to cover the weight of the other ten stamps? This was getting ridiculous!
Toni shut off her computer. She hadn’t even used the math program. Then she sealed the envelope, stuck on ten stamps, and wrote Muriel’s home address on the outside. She was heading for the door when she reconsidered and came back to put on two extra stamps. Why quibble about the price of two stamps? If she sent off the package with insufficient postage, the post office might return it to her, and who knew how long that would take? It was better to be on the safe side.
It only took a moment to dash to the mailbox outside the front door. There was a schedule posted, and Toni smiled as she discovered that the next scheduled pickup was at noon. It was eleven-thirty now, so that was perfect. She dropped the package inside, and as she heard it hit the bottom she had a terrible thought. What if the stock boy at the stationery store hadn’t really known how heavy the paper was? She’d accepted his word as gospel, and he could have been off by ten or twenty pounds either way.
Toni groaned. Why was she always so impulsive? She should have driven down to the post office and done the whole thing properly. At least there was a way she could check it.
An hour later, Toni was back. The post office had been a nightmare. It seemed everyone had been sending registered letters or certified mail, and no one had filled out the little slips ahead of time. There had been only two windows open, and three other clerks, standing in the back doing absolutely nothing that Toni could see, had deliberately avoided noticing that the line was long and unbearably slow.
Oh, well. Toni sighed. At least she’d accomplished her objective when she’d finally reached the window. She’d duplicated the package exactly, and the clerk had weighed it. Ten ounces. That meant she’d been right in the first place. If the mailbox outside the apartment building hadn’t already been emptied, she would have waited for the mailman and asked for her two extra stamps back.
Michael dialed the number and waited for his call to go through. He’d sleepwalked again last night, but at least there’d been no more murders in the morning paper, and he didn’t remember h
aving the usual nightmare. Last night’s dreams had been about his manuscript winging its way to Muriel Watkins in New York.
Why had he agreed to let Toni send it? To New York, of all places? The police were searching for him. Stan had told him that the papers had done articles about Michael Hart, the deranged murderer who had escaped from a mental hospital in California. Of course, he’d changed all the names in the manuscript, but it was still possible that Toni’s friend might suspect his story was autobiographical
Michael forced himself to think rationally. The chances of anyone guessing that Mike Kruger was really Michael Hart, simply by reading his manuscript, were so slim they weren’t even worth mentioning. There was really no need to worry. But he’d been worried enough, when he’d gone to sleep at Toni’s apartment last night, to sleepwalk again and wind up in his own apartment this morning.
He’d covered his nightly disappearance by telling Toni he’d gotten up in the wee hours of the morning with an idea for the next section of his book. It had been pure fabrication, of course, but he was running out of excuses. How much longer could he expect Toni to believe that he’d gone out for Danish, or home to work, or back to his apartment to change into fresh clothes? She was bound to think he didn’t want to spend the entire night with her, and that wasn’t true at all.
No answer. Michael hung up the phone in disgust. He’d been trying to reach James Zimmer for three days now, but he was never in his office or at his home. Michael could have left a message with his secretary, but what could he say? Would you please tell Professor Zimmer to be careful because he might be murdered? The secretary would assume he was a total crackpot and report the call to the police. No, he had to speak to the professor personally and convince him that he was in real danger.
Michael picked up the list he’d made of the jurors and sighed. Twelve names. He’d remembered them all. Two were circled in green. They were the safe ones, as far as he knew. Stan had told him that Gayle Hochsdorf and Chong Lee were out of the country, and they should be fine as long as they didn’t come back before the police had caught the madman who was murdering their fellow jurors. He thought of tipping off the police himself but then they would start looking for Michael Hart again. As far as he knew, he was the only one who’d tumbled to the connection between the murder victims, and he didn’t dare tell anyone except the jurors themselves.
