by Alter, Judy
Trouble in a Big Box
by
Judy Alter
A Kelly O’Connell Mystery
Trouble in a Big Box
Copyright © 2012, Judy Alter
Trade Paperback ISBN: 9781622370320
Digital ISBN: 9781622370337
Editor, Ayla O’Donovan
Cover Art Design by KJ Jacobs
Electronic release, August, 2012
Trade Paperback release, August, 2012
Turquoise Morning, LLC
P.O. Box 43958
Louisville, KY 40253-0958
www.turquoisemorningpress.com
Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden, without the written permission of the publisher, Turquoise Morning Press.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.
This edition is published by agreement with Turquoise Morning Press, a division of Turquoise Morning, LLC.
Dedication
For Christian, who taught me about real estate and title searches and whose namesake plays a part in this book. And with thanks to Jay Mitiguy who helped me with the title of this book, and to Genie Knox who helped me with the parts about hip injuries. I’m sorry she learned that the hard way.
Praise for the writing of Judy Alter
“What a great read that I could not put down. The author had me quickly turning the pages in this suspenseful who-dun-it and the many twists and turns kept the plot moving towards a rewarding conclusion.”
~ Dru Ann L. Love, on Skeleton in a Dead Space
“An endearing sleuth, a skeleton behind the spice cupboard, and a fistful of subplots that will keep you guessing. A nicely done debut by an author to watch.”
~ Susan Wittig Albert, author of the China Bayles mysteries
“Alter gives readers a twisty plot, excellent use of setting, and a very likable protagonist. I hope this is just the first of many novels about realtor/detective Kelly O’Connell!”
~ Livia J. Washburn, author of the Fresh Baked Mysteries
“From her love affair with Mike to moving her mother into what has become a dangerous neighborhood for old women to solving serial killings, the reader is rooting for Kelly to win.”
~Terry Ambrose, Examiner.com
Trouble in a Big Box
Kelly O’Connell has her hands full: her husband Mike Shandy is badly injured in an automobile accident that kills a young girl, developer Tom Lattimore wants to build a big-box grocery store called Wild Things in Kelly’s beloved Fairmount neighborhood, and someone is stalking Kelly.
Tom Lattimore pressures her to support the big box, and his pressure turns to threats. Kelly activates a neighborhood coalition to fight the project and tries to find out who is stalking her and why. Mike is both powerless to stop her and physically unable to protect her and his family from Lattimore’s threats or the stalker. After their house is smoke-bombed and Kelly survives an amateur attack on her life, she comes close to an unwanted trip to Mexico from which she might never return.
Chapter One
I remember September 2, 2010 clearly. Mike called about eleven and asked if I wanted to meet him for lunch. For him, it would be breakfast. Mike is a patrol police officer—I’ve learned not to use the word “cop”—and works the late afternoon and evening shift, so he usually gets up around ten in the morning. We agreed to meet at eleven-thirty at the Old Neighborhood Grill, before it got crowded. When I got there, Mike had already secured a booth and ordered two soft-scrambled eggs with cheese and sides of bacon and hash browns. At the walk-up counter I ordered meatloaf, black-eyed peas, and green beans. We talked about the girls and their school activities. Maggie was really showing promise in ballet, which Mike said would make her walk funny the rest of her life, and Em was taking great pride in her artwork, which was probably above average for second grade, not that that’s saying much. And we talked about how our beloved Fairmount neighborhood was getting back to normal after being held hostage by fear of a serial killer who targeted older ladies. Real estate was more active again, and when he was on patrol as the neighborhood police officer, Mike wasn’t stopped in the streets any more by frightened women of all ages. We neither one mentioned that my mom and I came close to being the final victims of Ralph Hoskins. There was no need to talk about it—“Ralphie” was now permanently held at a facility for the criminally insane.
Mostly, we were happy. We were newly married, young—at least young in heart, since we were both soon headed out of our thirties. But we had become a family with my two daughters, Maggie now ten, and Em, now seven. We were in love, and we were happier than two people have a right to be. Maybe I should have recognized that, but neither of us had any way of knowing that Mike was about to be fighting first for his life and then his mobility, I would be stalked by a vengeful enemy, and a big-box store would threaten our idyllic Fairmount neighborhood. No, for the time, all was peaceful, and I assumed it would stay that way. Foolish optimism on my part. It’s not just being married to a police officer that gets me into trouble. It’s me.
After lunch, we parted—me to go back to my office, O’Connell and Spencer Real Estate, and Mike to get ready for his patrol. He kissed me on the nose and turned toward his car. I simply stood and watched him walk away, thinking what a lucky female I was. I will always remember the way he walked that day, because it would be almost a year before I saw him walk unassisted again, and he never again walked with the same casual self-confidence.
****
I’m Kelly O’Connell, sole owner of O’Connell and Spencer Real Estate. We renovate and sell Craftsman homes in the Fairmount neighborhood in Fort Worth, Texas. Mike says I have a talent for getting into trouble, but I just can’t sit by and watch bad things or people threaten my children and my neighborhood. Before my “Ralphie” adventure I survived a pretty serious attempt on my life as I tried to unravel the mystery of a skeleton in a dead space in an old house. Mike Shandy, neighborhood police officer, became my protector, always ordering me to keep my nose out of police business, and during the Ralphie troubles he went from protector to companion to husband. But he still orders me to stay away from trouble and let him handle it.
****
After that long lunch with Mike, I went back to the office to be greeted by my assistant, Keisha, who raised an eyebrow at me, glanced ostentatiously at her watch, and, turning back to her computer, said, “You were gone so long I thought you decided to do more than eat lunch.”
I knew what she meant but I said airily, “Oh, you mean run errands?”
“It don’t matter to me. You just go on and do whatever you want. I can run this office hands tied behind my back.”
“How many houses did you sell?” I asked.
“Two, and bought one. You’ll find the paperwork on your desk.”
Of course, the paperwork said to call Anthony and had the names and numbers of two potential clients. I returned those calls first. One woman sounded like she was seventeen but said she and her husband were new to Fort Worth, and he was a resident at one of the hospitals. She was a nurse. They wanted to live in Fairmount because it was close to the hospital district, and they wanted a modest cottage with potential. I thought immediately of Mrs. Glenn’s house, the one Anthony was working on.
Mrs. Glenn had been attacked by the serial killer but survived. Her children, however,
had sold me the house—after Anthony convinced me it had potential—and we were almost finished remodeling it.
The second woman wanted an already remodeled house, in a good area—Fairmount was a good area, but it had no single “better” area—with at least 5,000 square feet. She was shopping in the wrong neighborhood, though I could show her houses in nearby Ryan Place. I asked Keisha to call her back and explain that gently.
“Sure, I’ll do your dirty work.” She grinned wickedly at me. Our roles were getting reversed here. Keisha was inclined to take charge in small matters, and most of the time I welcomed that because it freed me for PR work, getting out into the neighborhood, all the things I needed to do. A large but young black woman, not fat, but big all over, Keisha dressed flamboyantly in muumuus and bright squaw skirts, both out of style on anyone but her. She came to me from the vocational program of the school district, and I blessed the day I hired her. Keisha made coffee, kept the office running, and kept me grounded a lot of the time.
****
The call came about six that night, as I was cooking dinner for the girls.
Buck Conroy, now Mike’s supervisor at the police substation, minced no words: “Kelly? Get to the JPS ER right away. Mike’s been in a serious accident. I’ll meet you.”
My hand froze on the phone—JPS was John Peter Smith, the county hospital and the closest hospital with a good trauma unit. I was speechless but Buck didn’t wait for an answer. As he hung up, I went from numb with paralyzing fear to a brain that whirled with questions, the most immediate being what would I do with the girls? Mom? No, she’d worry so much she’d scare them to death. Keisha? Yes, that was it. She’d moved out of Mom’s house, once the serial killer business was solved, and rented a small apartment in a larger house in Fairmount, not six blocks from my house. I called and didn’t have to say more than, “Keisha, I need you right now.”
“On my way,” she said.
When she got to the house, I spilled out the story through tears, with two horrified young girls clinging to me. I simply hadn’t been able to hide it from them.
“Go,” she said. “I smell supper, and I’ll finish it. The girls and I will be fine. You let us know soon as you know something.”
As I left, I heard her say, “Now, girls, I don’t know no more than you do. So don’t start pestering me with questions. We’re gonna get on our knees and pray to the Lord for Mike.”
Keisha’s finely tuned sense of what was right in the world came through again, and as I slammed my car door I sent up a quick prayer—a plea for Mike’s survival and thanks for Keisha.
JPS was almost in my Fairmount neighborhood, so I was there within minutes. A police car waited at the ER, and one of the officers jumped out to take my car for me. Buck Conroy, Mike’s colleague and often my nemesis, greeted me with his usual bluntness, “What took you so long?”
“I had to get someone to stay with the girls,” I said frostily.
“Yeah, I guess they don’t belong here, not now.”
I wanted to scream, “Tell me about Mike! Stop talking about the girls!” Afterward I heard I said those very words in a controlled tone of voice.
“Motor vehicle accident,” he said, dragging me by one arm. “Collision at an intersection. Mike was chasing a speeder, but he followed all the rules, was careful. Other car, going like a NASCAR contender, came out of nowhere and ran a stop sign.”
“What happened to the driver?”
Conroy shrugged. “Would you believe he left the scene before the patrol cars got there? We know who he is—small-time crook, calls himself Sonny Adams, and we’re on his trail. But his passenger, a Hispanic girl, maybe nineteen if you’re generous, was dead at the scene. Thrown out of the car. No seat belt.”
Someone had died! My voice quivered as I asked, “Mike?”
“Serious. They’re prepping him for surgery, and they need you to sign permission papers. He’s too medicated.”
Permission papers be damned! “Can I see him?”
He gave me a long look. “You sure you want to?” Then he said, “Yeah, knowing you, you do. Come on, but don’t faint. Hold on to me if you need to.”
I wished my heart would stop beating like a trip hammer. And why did my knees seem to be made of Jell-O?
Conroy dragged me by an officer standing guard, muttering “wife,” and into a cubicle in the busy ER section. Mike lay on a gurney, his body covered to the neck with a sheet. His face was scratched and bruised and frighteningly pale, and something looked strange about the way one of his legs was on the gurney. One arm was tucked under the sheet but the other lay on top of it, and I reached for it. He had tubes in his nose and an IV ran into his arm. All I saw when I looked at him was a mess of tubes and tapes.
“Careful,” Conroy whispered, pulling my hand back as I reached for him. “He’s got a broken arm, other one.”
“Then I can hold this one,” I said, defiance creeping into my voice. “Can you leave us alone for a minute?”
My request clearly startled him, but he managed, “Uh, yeah. One minute. I’ll go get the doctor. He can talk to you, and he has the papers for you to sign.” And he backed out of the cubicle.
I reached for that exposed hand as gently as I could, giving it just the slightest squeeze. And I began to talk in a soft voice, telling Mike how much I loved him, how much he had to live for, how much the girls loved him.
My face was as close to his as I could get it, clinging tight to the feel and smell of him, when the doctor pushed aside the cubicle curtain and coughed gently. I straightened up, dabbing at the tears that kept creeping out of my eyes no matter how hard I tried to hold them back.
“Mrs. Shandy? Can we talk outside?”
“It’s Kelly O’Connell. I kept my maiden name.”
“Uh, Ms. O’Connell then,” and he gestured me past the police officer. Once we were out of earshot, he said, “Sedated patients often hear what’s being said, so I wanted to talk away from your husband. Let’s go find a couple of chairs.”
I found myself sitting at a long conference table in an empty doctors’ lounge, trying to warm my shaking hands around a cup of very bad and very stale coffee. For a moment, a nervous giggle threatened to erupt because I thought of what Mike would say about the coffee. I straightened and looked at the doctor.
“Dr. McAdams,” he said, holding out a hand. “I’ll be operating on your husband as soon as you sign these papers. But I don’t want you to sign them blindly.”
Was he saying I could refuse surgery? Would Mike die if I did? I reached for the papers. “Tell me,” I said and managed to keep my voice steady.
“He has a concussion, and we’ll monitor for swelling of the brain. If that happens, we’ll have to intervene to release the pressure. His left arm is broken, but it’s a clean, simple break. We’re most worried about a compound fracture of the femur at the head of his left leg—that’s the bone between the knee and the hip, and his is fractured right where it goes into the hip. It’s a serious fracture. We’ll have to use screws and maybe plates to fix it, and he faces a long rehab process. We’ll set the broken arm after the swelling goes down, not during this surgery. The rest of his injuries are fairly superficial. He was lucky.”
I tried to take it all in, but it was a lot to comprehend. And all of it frightening. I knew the doctor was simplifying to the point I wanted to tell him with some indignation that I was educated and could understand a few things. In spite of that, I liked this man and trusted Mike in his hands.
“Will he walk again?”
“Probably. If he’s determined and does the physical therapy.” He looked at me a long moment. “His injuries are not fatal. It’s a question of whether or not he’ll be handicapped the rest of his life.”
I knew then and there that Mike would come out of this. I would not allow him to be handicapped in any way. If he’d thought I could be a nag before, he hadn’t seen anything yet. But I also knew Mike himself would be determined to walk normally again.
>
“Do you have a pen and can you show me where to sign?”
“Read it first,” he said as he handed me the pen out of his coat pocket.
****
Thus began the longest six hours of my life. I sat in the surgical waiting room, surrounded by more of the police department than I wished and hovered over by a solicitous Buck Conroy. I called Keisha and told her what I knew, asked her to make it gentle for the girls, and to call Mom. And Claire Guthrie who had become so closely a part of our lives. But really I wanted to be alone. I wanted my own thoughts. I wanted to think about Mike and what we had together, and if I ever believed in telepathy, I wanted to send him messages about strength and hanging in there and coming home to me and the girls. And though I was long out of practice, I wanted to pray.
But Mike’s colleagues crowded around me, some giving me hugs, others voicing their regret and their contempt for the kid who’d caused this and run away. They never voiced a bit of sympathy for the young woman who lost her life. Buck would have justified that because she shouldn’t have been with a petty crook. Some of the officers were almost embarrassed, muttering “Sorry” under their breath and squeezing my hand. People pressed black coffee on me when I longed for a cold glass of wine.
And suddenly, there was Claire—Claire, who’d been my “help a needy neighbor” project, Claire who’d shot her husband in the rear (and some still thought later killed him), Claire who had been through the wringer. She gave me a hug without words, then pulled a chair next to mine, waved away all the officers and onlookers, and pulled one of those tiny bottles of chardonnay, what I call “travel wine,” out of her bag and gave it to me with one command, “Drink this.”
I drank it too fast, feeling only a slight bit of relief. My legs still felt as if they wouldn’t carry me across the room, and I still leaked tears, wiping them away almost unconsciously. Claire told me that Keisha and the girls were fine, my mom had gone to my house to be with them, and they were all waiting for word. Then she took my hand, held it, and said, “Don’t talk. Think about whatever you need to.” Claire Guthrie, whom I once thought of as the lady with a gun, had turned into an angel. She kept people away from me.
