“Good Lord, Tommy. The stolen candlesticks and VCR were just a ruse to make it look like a burglary. Last night, somebody intentionally messed with the furnace.
Somebody tried to kill me and my children.”
Chapter 17
Every Little Breeze
The next morning, the furnace was in normal operation, and Lauren and I had made our peace, of sorts. She spoke about it all being “water under the bridge.” That was true. But how much water could relationships withstand before the bridge washed out?
During the past week, I’d kept my parents somewhat informed of my troubles, though my accounts were glossed over so as not to alarm them into notifying the National Guard. Specifically, they knew about the two deaths and my head wound. But I’d decided to wait to tell them about the break-in, for they would want us all in protective custody.
However, there was another bit of unpleasantness I could no longer delay. Stephanie Saunders. This was a person who hated me, maybe even enough to want to kill me. A visit to her might help me learn if she was the one who’d tried to asphyxiate my children and me.
Before I could get to the phone and set up a rendezvous, the doorbell rang. Surely this wasn’t Stephanie reading my thoughts and glumming my day even more than I already was, a day after I’d narrowly escaped being murdered.
At the door was a barrel-chested middle-aged man wearing a workman’s uniform. A patch on the light blue shirt pocket read, Bob’s Home Repair.
“Came to fix your window, ma’am,” he said.
I watched him work as I dialed Stephanie from the kitchen phone. Fortunately his repair job required little bending or squatting. His particular body type had inspired the invention of the belt, but he wasn’t wearing one. His was not a rear end I wished to be mooned by.
Stephanie was home, blast it all. By the time I’d made arrangements to go to her house, Man of Bob had completed his job. He hiked up his pants, which stayed in place for a half second. As he headed for the door, he said over his shoulder, “Must be a high-crime district. This is the third call we’ve had for a repair on Little John Lane in two weeks.”
“You had two other repair jobs? At which houses?”
“Actually, both were next door.”
Lauren’s house. The kicked-in door was one repair, but what was the second? How could I ask him that without appearing incredibly nosy? “So you repaired their door. You did a nice job. What other type of work do you do?”
He grinned and gave me a lecherous once-over. “What type of work were you interested in having me do for you?”
Oh, spare me! I forced a smile. “The septic tank needs an overhaul.”
He left abruptly.
I was determined to put on a good appearance for Stephanie so she wouldn’t have cause to goad me into another argument. I applied makeup and changed into tan cotton pants and a Windex-colored blouse, because Windex was definitely one of my colors and Stephanie was sure to notice. Now I was all gussied up for someone I intensely disliked.
I drove slower and slower as I neared her house, but my sense of direction failed to fail me.
Stephanie, who in her flowing royal blue dress and elegant gold jewelry was nothing short of stunning, took me on a tour of her home. The huge country-style, kitchen was done in hand-painted pies, with window-paned cabinets and copper pots on the walls. The family room was awash in maroon and earth tones. Navajo rugs and tasteful Indian statues graced the cherry-wood bookshelves.
We climbed a spiral staircase and viewed the bedrooms furnished with antiques, poster beds, oak dressers, and braided throw rugs on the hardwood floors. The three bathrooms each had separate shower stalls and sunken ceramic-tile tubs.
She finally led me to what she called her “sitting room,” which I would’ve called a den, but we did sit in it so no sense nitpicking. She had a coffee carafe and cups waiting for us. This room had a cathedral ceiling that accentuated the stained-glass hangings and coffee table. No matter what I thought of the woman, her eclectic taste in home decor was flawless.
“Your house is gorgeous,” I admitted as we settled into the couch, a flowered pattern of rich, dark hues.
“Thank you. I did it myself. Perhaps you haven’t heard. I’m an interior designer. Let me get you one of my cards.” She started to rise.
“Thanks, but that’s all right. I can’t change the interior of my parents’ house, nor would I want to, and we’ll be moving back to Boulder afterward,”
She sat back down and cocked a perfectly tweezered eyebrow at me. “After what?”
“My husband’s assignment in the Philippines will be finished in August. We’re going home to Colorado as soon as he comes back.”
She leaned over, patted my hand, and said, “Of course he’ll come back, darling.”
I shot to my feet. “Excuse me for a moment, I left something in my car.” Namely my self-control. And losing my temper now would defeat any possibility of my learning whether or not she had messed with my furnace. Did she hate me so much as to want to kill me? Hard to say, but she sure was one hateful person.
To allow myself to vent in private, I marched out, locked myself in the car and indulged myself in thirty seconds of foul language aimed at Stephanie. Afterward, I locked the car again, pocketed the keys, and reclaimed my seat in the sitting room.
Stephanie took a dainty sip of coffee, pinky extended, then set it down. “While you were gone I went ahead and poured for us. Did you want cream?”
“You poured my coffee?”
“Yes. Cream?”
Uh-oh. If Stephanie indeed wanted to poison me, my brief exit had given her ample opportunity. I looked in her cup: black, and said, “No, thanks,” reasoning that this at least eliminated my chance of cream poisoning. I took a sip of coffee, praying it wouldn’t be my last. It was an almond blend and was delicious. Wait! Isn’t there some deadly poison that tasted like almonds? I set the cup down so fast, coffee sloshed into the saucer.
“Stephanie, let’s get right to why I called you. You and I are radically different people. We’re never going to be bosom buddies.”
Focusing on my chest, she said, “You can say that again.”
I silently called her several nasty names, but said only, “I’d rather not.” A deep calming breath or two was in order. I reminded myself of the purpose for my visit: my plan was to give her the opportunity to slip up, to reveal knowledge she shouldn’t be privy to. “Somebody has been sending me death threats.”
“Death threats?” For just an instant, her eyes lit up, but then her expression became one of deep concern. “You poor dear! How dreadful. I had no idea!”
“So do you have any idea now about who might be doing this to me?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment. “None. Absolutely none. What exactly did the threats say?”
“I’d rather not go into that.”
“Of course. Too painful.” She sighed and shook her head. “When did you receive these threats? And how? Were they mailed to you?”
So much for my plan. She would try to badger me into giving details, not reveal any herself. I decided to take a different tack. “Why didn’t you ever let on that Lauren was the one who put that poem of mine in the school newspaper?”
“You’re still worried about that? Good heavens. That was a lifetime ago.” She sighed and delicately sipped from her cup. “There was no point in letting Lauren take the blame. I desperately wanted out of my editor’s job anyway, while Lauren wanted the position. She begged me not to tell you, so I didn’t.”
Stephanie being decent without an ulterior motive? No way. “You let me go on all this time thinking you did it. Why?”
“It would’ve destroyed your friendship with Lauren. You and I never got along anyway, so why rock the boat? I figured it was the least I could do for Lauren.”
I crossed my arms. “Lauren must’ve had something big to use against you.”
She shrugged. “That, too. In a—“she gestured into the air “—w
eak moment I’d told her I hadn’t been faithful to Jack. She threatened to tell him about my dalliances if I told anyone she was the one who published your tour de force.”
I grimaced.
She snorted. “I never claimed to be Mother Teresa, for Christ sake. But I’ve never sent you any death threats, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
As I studied her face, I was unable to decide if I believed her last statement. “Stephanie, even though we can’t be friends, we don’t need to be arch enemies either.”
“Enemies?” She made a wry smile. “That’s a term I haven’t used since grade school.”
The remark stung, and I found myself wondering how she could be so gifted at needling me in my most tender places.
She met my eyes. “You never liked me, Molly. You made that clear from day one. It’s not easy to care for someone who obviously dislikes you. But I’ve tried my best to like you anyway. That’s all I can do.”
For once, I knew her words were the truth; I never liked her, and I like most people. She’d given me plenty of reasons for my dislike. “Well, Stephanie, what can I say? I don’t care about whatever it was that got us off on the wrong foot years ago. I do care about how you treat me now, and that is, in a word, badly.” Shitty would’ve been more like it, but badly was descriptive enough.
She looked thoughtful for several seconds, then said, “Sorry,” as nonchalantly as a gesundheit after a sneeze.
That’s it? Sorry? I watched her take another sip of coffee. Apparently that was all she had to say about the matter. She eyed my deserted cup. “Don’t you care for the coffee?
“It’s delicious, but I’m allergic to almonds.”
“I’ll brew something different for you.”
“Thanks, but I should be going.”
She walked me to the door, then said, “I’m glad we had this little chat. Drive carefully.”
Automatically, I thanked her for her hospitality, but staring into her blue eyes, all I could think was: This is a person I truly don’t wish to spend time with.
As I drove home, I chastised myself. I’d learned nothing about whether or not she could have murdered Steve Wilkins or Mrs. Kravett. She claimed not to be the one threatening me, but I remained unconvinced either way. I did know that if I were Lauren and had slept with Preston, I would be watching my backside. I couldn’t understand Stephanie, so I couldn’t predict her behavior.
At home, I went immediately to my office and checked my email and fax tray. Nothing. Why had Poison Pen stopped sending threats? Possibly the rationale was that the pen is mightier than the sword, but not mightier than carbon monoxide.
I sat at my desk and doodled, drawing two mice. Eventually the doodle led to an especially inane cartoon. Two mice are walking down a road on a windy day. In the air are the words: Psst. Swiss cheese. One mouse says to the other, “Is it my imagination, or does every little breeze seem to whisper Swiss cheese?”
How could I market this? The song I’d gotten the idea from predated my parents, so I was probably one of the few people under fifty who remembered it. Who would buy the card? A convention of old cheese salesmen? As opposed to salesmen selling old cheese, I suppose.
None the less, I decided to scan it into my computer.
I nearly panicked when my keyboard didn’t respond, till I realized it had been disconnected from the scanner. I plugged the keyboard cord in, unplugged it, then plugged it in again, trying to figure out how this had happened. Perhaps the same person who’d tampered with the furnace had disconnected the keyboard cable. But why?
I searched my disk, and looked for any time-stamps that indicated that someone other than me had used the computer last night. Everything checked out fine, but I ran the computer through an operation that flagged altered files. Still fine. Was someone’s fiddling with my computer related to Steve’s death while using his? But if so, why disconnect my keyboard? Maybe the motive had been to keep me in my basement office near the source of the carbon monoxide, while I checked out my computer.
If this were yesterday morning, prior to Tommy’s discovery of the furnace problem, that might have proven to be very effective. Feeling uneasy, I scanned the card into a file. It occurred to me how well matched Stephanie and Preston were. Perhaps they had an open marriage and were both fooling around. If so, hopefully from now on it would be with equally hedonistic people.
That reminded me. I hadn’t verified the rumor that Preston and Sam’s import company was no longer under investigation. I dialed the enforcement office of the US Customs Service and suffered through a brief conversation with a customs agent who interrupted my every other word to say, “What?” Then he said, “I dunno anything about that. Let me let you talk to somebody else.” To my relief, he put a woman on the line who both spoke and understood English. She referred me to an enforcement agent of the Fish and Wildlife division in the department of interior. Now there’s a catchy job title.
He was a nice, helpful man whose name, given at the start of our conversation, was lost by its conclusion. I told him what little I could about Saunders and Bakerton Imports and how I’d learned those few disputed facts. He told me that, frankly, Preston and Sam had escaped prosecution by the “skin of an elephant’s tusks.” The company had insisted that the shipment had been received prior to January 1, 1990, and the government had lacked sufficient evidence to prove otherwise. Lucky for Preston and Sam. The smuggling plus conspiracy charges carried a maximum penalty of $250,000 and up to five years in jail.
After hanging up, I sat thinking, back to my original question: Who had killed Steve Wilkins and Mrs. Kravett? In my various gyrations over the past couple of days, had I eliminated any of my dinner party suspects?
If anything, Lauren looked massively guilty. I was so mistrustful of Stephanie, I wouldn’t drink coffee with her. As for Preston and Sam, that report of Cherokee’s had already been examined and ultimately dismissed by the authorities. But could I say with any certainty that Cherokee’s report had nothing to do with why two people were murdered? It didn’t take a whole lot of thought to conclude I couldn’t.
To put it another way, I had reached a dead end. And all I had to do to remind myself that time was running out for me was look at my heat registers.
That afternoon, after both children had settled down for cartoons, I went downstairs. My fax machine had a message in the tray. I read:
You’re still alive. Don’t worry. Next time I won’t go so easy on you. But I do wonder about your children. If you think they’re safe from me, you’re wrong. Killing them would be all too easy. If you were any kind of a mother, you’d protect them. You’d leave town!
“Damn you to hell!” I smacked my desk with the heel of my hand and stared at the letter. First you threaten me, then my marriage, now my children. Whoever’s doing this is a summa cum laude graduate of the Marquis de Salle Torture School. “By God! I’m going to find you and make you pay for this!”
This fax had been sent from a self-service business center. Maybe the creep’s computer was down. I needed to show this threat to Tommy, and I would drive it to the police station myself. But I had another stop to make first, and there was no time to lose.
I got the kids in the car, and the three of us drove to the business center. Inside were dozens of copier machines and four fax machines along one wall. Half of the copiers were in use; none of the fax machines. At the back of the store, an overweight woman in her late twenties or so sat behind the glass counter, reading a paperback.
Now to find a safe diversion for the children. To one side of the counter was a display that held hundreds of pens in some twenty shades. I told Nathan and Karen I would buy them each a pen in whatever color the store had the most of. They complained a little, but then dutifully started counting.
“How long have you been here today?” I asked the woman.
She looked up from her book, studied me, then said, “Too long. Why?”
“Have you been here for more than two hours? I�
��m trying to get a description of someone who sent me a threatening fax from one of your machines. It was at twelve forty-eight this afternoon.”
The girl snorted. “During the lunch hour? Good luck. Place is a mob scene.” She set her book upside down beside her and came toward me. “Bet we’ve had twenty to sixty customers today. Most never even come to the counter, just put money into the machines, use them, and leave.”
Listening in one ear to Karen and Nathan count aloud, I handed her a list of names of everyone at my dinner party and asked her to compare the list to her checks and charge receipts. There were no matches.
“Did you see any blonde women about my age and size with really skinny legs, or a brunette less than five feet tall? Or a balding man with a ponytail? Or a man with an egg-shaped head? Or a handsome, classy, white-haired man?”
She shook her head and chortled. “Wow. At least you ask interesting questions. Most people just ask me how to operate the machines or clear a paper jam.”
“I’ve got a yearbook here. Whoever it was would be seventeen years older now, but I’ve marked the pages with their pictures.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“Please, just look at the places I’ve marked and tell me if any of them look familiar.” I opened the book to the first marked spot, where youthful Stephanie eternally beamed. I rotated the book toward her and pointed.
“Nah.” She flipped to the next marked page, where Denise Meekers was shown. She shrugged. She shrugged again at the photo of Tommy Newton. She started paging through toward Jack Vance’s and Lauren’s photos, and suddenly stopped. “Wait!” She grinned. “I can’t believe this actually worked, but the girl here looks real familiar.”
I looked at where she was pointing and sighed, realizing now what a futile exercise this was. “That’s me.”
She widened her eyes and looked from the picture to me and back. “Gee, lady. You were sure ugly in high school. No offense.”
Death Comes eCalling Page 17
