“Forgot my Warfarin medication, Julia, thanks for reminding me. Got to keep this old heart in good working…” he started to say, before seeing Lily and me. “What…?”
“It’s nothing, Joe, these women took a wrong turn,” said Junior, staring at us. “Julia, go inside.”
“Wrong turn,” I agreed, finding my voice as we edged past them both.
“Who were they, Carter?” Mrs. Simons asked as we walked away. “Don’t give me the directions thing. Was that her? Carter? Answer me? Was that her? Why was she at…” The rest of her questions were lost to us as we were beyond earshot of their voices, leaving the Simons to their argument and a confused-looking Joseph O’Keefe behind us.
Our heels weren’t made for jogging, but we beat a fast pace to my car and climbed in. I hit the lock button and exhaled my relief. Even when I pulled my seatbelt around me, my heart was pounding.
“Here,” said Lily, passing me a small, tissue-wrapped parcel.
“What’s this?”
“Birthday cake.”
“You stole cake from the Simons? Lily!”
“Not just any cake. Birthday cake. Mmm, delicious!” she exclaimed between bites. “Plus, I really thought it through. I’m sure there are absolutely no laws on stealing birthday cake. None whatsoever.”
“Oh, screw my life!” I wailed, leaning my head against the steering wheel. As Lily made appreciative noises over the cake, I thought about what we’d overheard. It could have been nothing, but Junior tried his best to brush off his wife’s concerns about a ring. Then she seemed to think one of us might have been "her". But who was that? Did Junior have a mistress? Junior was a good looking man, had a lovely wife and a great life. Would he risk it all to have an affair? Did our victims know about it?
“Hey.” Lily patted my back. With her other hand, she pulled back the tissue to reveal the triple layer slice. I hated to admit, but it smelled divine as I took it from her, peeling back the last layer of tissue and noticing the iced butterfly pattern. The tissue paper had butterflies on it too, I realized as I looked closely. The Simons seemed to have a thing about the pretty winged creatures and it seemed to nudge something in my memory. Something I had seen on the whiteboard at the agency. The strange mark on Lorena's forehead... its pair of triangles could be a tiny butterfly, the same size as the one I'd seen on Junior's cufflinks. “That worked out a lot better than my wedding store stakeout. At least, we got something out of this!”
"A lot more than just a slice of cake," I agreed.
Chapter Fifteen
I arrived on my doorstep, dejected, an hour later. After dropping Lily at her temporary residence, I drove home to my bungalow and pulled onto the dark driveway. Sure, I had good memories in abundance of the dinner, but the crumb-filled tissue crumpled on the passenger seat was a reminder that anytime now, Carter Simons Junior could be informing someone of Lily’s and my excursion, uninvited, onto his property. I did not look forward to having to explain it to Solomon when he called me out on it, especially when we didn’t even discover anything really useful. Lily’s photos were blurry, except for a couple of cake shots, and one of the powder room wallpaper, and the conversation we overheard was more perplexing than pertinent. And the mark... it could have been anything, I reasoned. Maybe I just wanted it to be a butterfly.
Grabbing the napkin, I threw it in the trash on my way to my front door. The path was dark and I pulled a face at the lamp, which failed to turn on, then nearly tripped over something large and heavy in my way. I squealed when something thumped my foot.
“Barney! What the hell?” I said loudly, looking down at my neighbor’s assistance dog, currently sprawled on my doorstep. His tail thumped my foot again.
“Ruff,” said Barney, scrambling to his feet and thrusting his nose first into my palm, then into my jacket pockets. When he didn’t find anything, a little stream of drool fell from his mouth.
“No food for you,” I told him, grabbing his collar. “You’re going home and you’re going to be quiet all night so I can sleep in peace. No horror movies, no howling, no nothing.” I continued telling him exactly what he couldn’t do all the way to his own door. I pushed the doorbell, and it rang loudly and flashed too, just in case Aidan wasn’t wearing his hearing aids. I waited while Aidan appeared.
“Hey,” he said opening the door a crack, then wider when he saw whom it was. He had a TV remote in one hand and a tub of popcorn in the other. I pointed down. “How did he get out? And where did you find him?” he asked, tossing a piece of popcorn into his mouth.
“On my doorstep.”
“Aww. He went to visit you. Sweet.”
“Delightful,” I said, sounding anything but. “We’ve had a talk and he’s going to behave all night.”
Aidan made a rude noise, which summed up the probability of that as Barney strolled past him and flopped across his hall carpet. “I came by earlier to see if you wanted dinner, but I guess you went out. You look pretty.” He ran his eyes over me in appreciation. I knew he’d inquired after my relationship status once, but I never viewed him that way. It was hard to when my mind was full of Solomon, and nowhere near my mind when I had a handful of... well, never mind. He was nice though, had a charming face, and was extra helpful about the house. I would have been happy to introduce him to my single friends; unfortunately I was short on the single friend front.
“Thanks. My brother and best friend are getting married and I was at their rehearsal dinner.”
“Got a date?”
I pulled a face, heaved a breath, and rolled my eyes.
“That’s girl-speak for ‘no,’ isn’t it? I’ll be your standby,” he offered. “I look great in a tux. Want to watch the rest of Predator with me?”
“Thanks and no thanks. ‘Night, Aidan. Goodnight, Barney,” I said, waving at the dog. He raised his head, gave me a doggy grin and laid it on his paws again.
“Later, Lexi. Hey, I noticed your porch light is out. I’ll come by tomorrow and fix it.”
I gave him the thumbs up as I left, glad of the offer even if it was just so I didn’t get surprised by Barney again, and the door banged shut behind me.
Back home, I locked my front door and flipped on the lights, going through the motions of closing the drapes and making myself a hot chocolate. I was wondering if I should get a pet to keep me company on lonely nights. As I passed by the fridge, I gave the magazine cutout I held up with a magnet there a stroke. It was a fluffy white cat that looked ridiculously high maintenance. Stroking the picture was the closest I got toward looking after an animal. That, and talking to Barney whenever he visited. Once, barely a week after I moved in, I arrived home to find him asleep on my couch! I still don’t know how he got in.
I went around checking all the window catches before I retired to my guest bedroom, and changed into my pajamas. I read a book for a while, and made a few case notes. I thought about Solomon not making it to the dinner, even though the meeting had clearly been cut short. I wondered if he would be my date for the wedding, or if I should accept Aidan’s back-up offer. I worried if I should have been clearer in what I wanted from Solomon, and not expected him to just know. I window-shopped on my cell phone’s browser before the calendar reminded me of my appointment with Garrett to go to the shooting range. Hopping out of bed, I retrieved my gun from its safety box and checked it over, just to make sure it was in good working order. I noticed I’d forgotten to unload it. I set the safety, and placed it on my nightstand so I wouldn’t forget it the next day before switching off the lamp.
Amidst the stillness, and gentle creaks of the house going to sleep, I heard a single bark from Barney before I fell fast asleep.
~
I don’t know what woke me, but all of a sudden my mind was on. My body, however, lagged a few steps behind. Looking through my lashes, I could see shadows cast around the room, and the dark chink between the curtains told me it was still the dead of night. The world that was Bonneville Avenue in the early hours of the morni
ng was still. No vehicles moved. No dogs barked. The kids a few doors away were quiet. But in my bedroom, a floorboard creaked and I knew I wasn’t alone.
It may have been something in my subconscious, sounds that I’d heard in my sleep and not yet processed, or maybe even my sixth sense, but I felt a presence that wasn’t welcome, and knew it wasn’t Barney paying a visit. My first instinct was to throw back the covers and scream. My next instinct, and the one I followed, was to stay very motionless and pretend I was still asleep until I knew what was going on, or what I faced. It would be just my luck to assault Solomon on a surprise visit, not that he was in a habit of doing that, and certainly never while I was asleep in bed. So, I took a few seconds to allow my body to wake up while I inspected what I could see of the room from behind my eyelashes. My dresser, the cute velvet tub chair I found on sale, my day clothes folded over the arm, the open door… the pair of legs.
The legs stepped closer and from behind them came a gloved hand, and a glint of steel.
My heart thumped wildly.
Another step closer.
The body leaned in.
I sat up, and screamed as loud as my lungs would let me before belting the intruder with a pillow that I grabbed with my left hand. I watched in terrified satisfaction as my assailant stumbled backwards, probably bewildered. But a pillow certainly wasn’t enough. As I threw back the bedding and scrambled to my feet, he lunged towards me, and this time, his ski-masked face came close to mine, the head-butt glancing off my cheekbone and sending me crashing against the wall. My knees threatened to give way and my body pounded as I cried out, wincing with the pain that shot through my shoulder where I jarred it.
I kicked out as he approached, planting my foot squarely on his chest with a resounding slap, and knocking him backwards. He stumbled, grunting, and came at me again, slashing the knife. I barely heard the whisper it made as it cut through the air, but I screamed again and again. Blocking his hand with my left, I punched with my right, the blow glancing off his forehead. I dropped to my knees, however, when he landed a punch with his closed fist.
As I fell, I spied the gun. Grabbing it, my thumb scrambled at the safety, missing it once, twice… got it! I fired.
“Oh, fuck!” screamed the man, staggering backwards, his attention now on his side, which he clasped. He looked up and I saw his eyes, just the whites of them against the dark. “You bitch! You fucking bitch!”
I raised the gun, and steadied it, as I got shakily to my feet. I looked down on him, both of us frozen. “Next time it’s between the eyes,” I warned him, my voice steadier than I felt. Whether I was bluffing or not, I couldn’t be sure. Crucially, neither was he. “I won’t miss,” I cautioned him, hoping my legs would support me for a few minutes more.
He gave a grunt, walked unsteadily backwards, and started to leave the room. A moment later, he returned, except this time, he was… retreating? Despite still having the gun pointed at him, he didn’t turn around.
From my vantage point on the bed, my back pressed against the wall, I couldn’t see why he didn’t turn around to face the danger that was before him — me. Then he stepped to one side and I saw a figure in a hockey mask holding a chainsaw. He ripped the cord and the damn thing powered up, the sound vibrating through the room.
“What kind of freakshow is this?” yelled the knife-wielding assailant at the hockey-masked chainsaw guy. “Are you frickin’ nuts?”
Assailant number two stepped inside the room and waved the chainsaw at the knifeman who lunged this side and that, stepping backwards. With one last look at me, the knifeman turned and leaped through my window. One curtain ripped from the pole, and glass splintered in all directions as he escaped. He didn’t look back, but took off at a run.
That left me with a chainsaw-wielding intruder. I raised my gun again. “I shot him!” I yelled. “I’ll shoot you too!” Barney padded in and sat down. The hockey mask dipped as the figure looked down at him. “If you hurt the dog, I’ll definitely shoot you!” I screamed.
The chainsaw stopped and the man carefully set it down on my bedroom floor. He stayed low, rubbing Barney on the head as he reached for his mask. When he stood up, I could have screamed in relief if I hadn’t been all screamed out. “Aidan!” I wailed, lowering my gun.
“Barney woke me. He knew you was in trouble, I think,” he said. “He brought me a copy of my Jason DVD and wouldn’t stop jumping on me until I followed him. I saw someone moving in your house so I grabbed my chainsaw and came right over. I followed Barney and your kitchen door was open.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you. Barney, you brilliant dog.” I scrambled from the bed, lurching towards them.
Aidan stepped back and pointed at the gun. “I promise not to shoot,” I told him. “I’m all done shooting tonight,” I added as the police siren cut through the still night air.
“I called the police,” Aidan said and Barney’s tail gave a thump.
“I hear them.”
“C’mere.” Aidan held his arms out and I stepped into them, allowing him to fold me into his warmth for a couple of minutes, right up until half of MPD burst through the doors. They threw Aidan to the floor, diving on him. After the last man landed, Barney climbed on top and rested his head on a police officer’s back.
Daniel was the next man through the door. He looked at the tangle of bodies, then at me, then down again. I followed his eyes, feeling like I was having an out of body experience. “Sis, you’re bleeding,” he said. I responded by blinking before I went dizzy, and Daniel caught me just before I hit the floor.
~
“I didn’t faint,” I said, ten minutes later, as we sat at my small kitchen table. Daniel looked up from the bandage he was taping to my forearm and raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t lose unconsciousness,” I continued to protest. “I just wanted a ride to the kitchen. All that breaking, entering, and fighting was hard work.”
“You’re lucky this was just a surface wound. Glad you see the funny side,” said Daniel.
He didn’t get to finish because a voice behind him said, “I sure as hell don’t.”
I looked up and gave my next visitor a weak smile. “Hey, Maddox.”
“Hey, yourself,” said Maddox, squeezing through the officers, now crowding my kitchen. They’d given us a little room so Daniel could clean my small knife wound, and someone had smartly cordoned off my bedroom after ten officers, one sore Aidan, and Barney trooped out. Aidan had the third chair and Barney was safely under the table where no one would trip over him. The gun was between us. I didn’t know where the chainsaw was. Maddox rounded the table, and after checking Daniel’s handiwork, pulled me into a fierce hug. “You have no idea how scary it was hearing your address being announced over the radio.”
“I bet it wasn’t as scary as a man with a knife in my bedroom at three a.m.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. It’s all a big blur, and it happened so fast. I heard something, or maybe it was my sixth sense. I don’t know.”
“Oh sweetheart, that’s not sixth sense, that’s common sense. If someone is in your bedroom uninvited, he’s not there to turn down the covers and kiss you goodnight.”
“Yeah, okay, well, something woke me up and there he was. How did he get in?”
Maddox looked over his shoulder. “ Anyone? How did this creep get into Lexi’s house?”
“I found tool marks on the front door lock,” said a uniform somewhere in my hallway, past the small crowd that had gathered. “Is cousin Lexi okay?”
“Siobhan, is that you?” I called back.
“Yeah, it’s me. Oh, Jord is here. Hey, Jord!”
“Hey, Jord,” the crowd chorused as my brother made his way past them.
“The kitchen door was open,” said Aidan, who was following the conversation keenly. “That’s how I got in.”
“Guess he tried the front, couldn’t get it open, then went in the back,” said Daniel, abandoning my arm to check the door beh
ind me. He pulled on a fresh pair of gloves, opened it and examined the damage. “Looks like your lock is busted. We’ll get them both dusted for prints,” he added, retrieving an icepack from the fridge for my cheek on his way back.
When Jord finally made it to the kitchen, he was in uniform, although his days wearing it were numbered since passing his exams with flying colors. All he needed now was a spot to open up and he’d be joining our other brothers in suits. “What the hell?” he said, looking at me, then at Maddox. “There’s an ambulance out front. I thought you were dead.”
“Surface wound,” I told him, holding up my arm. I got some “ohs” and some “aws” from my audience, which abruptly silenced after a scowl from Maddox. It was nice that they all cared enough to stick around, although I had to admit, this was prime gossip material for the station too.
“She was lucky,” said Daniel, again. “She fought off her attacker.”
“I shot him,” I said, bluntly.
“Did you hit him?” asked Jord.
“You bet. I kicked him too.”
"I meant with a bullet."
I nodded. "Yep." There was a small round of applause as I confirmed my shot.
“Who processed the bedroom?” asked Maddox. There were some mumbles and a few looks around, but no one came forward. “Out!” he yelled, backing them up as he pressed forwards. “This is now a crime scene. Out. Every single one of you is corrupting the evidence here. Get out!”
“You heard him,” said another familiar voice. This time, Garrett appeared in the doorway. “This is like a Graves family convention. Hey, Uncle Dermot! Siobhan, good to see you. One shooting and they all come running,” he said, upon entering the kitchen. “I’ve seen three of our uncles and four cousins.”
My cousin, Siobhan, edged through the doorway, looking serious. “I’ve got uniforms perusing the perimeter looking for evidence,” she told us. “Uncle Dermot is going to stand guard on the kitchen door and Uncle Luke is posted at your bedroom window. I’m taking the front.”
Weapons of Mass Distraction (Lexi Graves Mysteries) Page 19
