by Gayle Roper
“You must. Just so he doesn’t win.” Meg stood and gestured to the fireplace. “We’ll hang it over the mantel.”
I looked at the adequate painting I’d done that hung there now. A stone farmhouse flanked by evergreens, bathed in a brilliant sunset, very Chester County. I shut my eyes and let my head fall back against the sofa cushion. Gray made a little move, and my head rested on his shoulder instead. Bonier but much more comforting.
Meg left to dispose of the scraps, and Lucy followed. I think she mumbled something about starting dinner.
Gray picked up a slash of navy material Meg had missed and held it out. “Do you have any completed mosaics you could show me? I’m trying to imagine what it is you love so much, and all I can envision are Amish quilts.”
I took the piece of fabric and crumpled it in my hand. I felt too tired to do anything as strenuous as walk to the bedrooms where the mosaics were. But he wanted to know, and somehow that was very important.
I pushed myself to my feet, swaying slightly. He steadied me with a hand on my waist. We walked down the hall, and the closer we got to my room, the louder Rocky’s cries for freedom became. I glanced back to make certain that the cellar door was closed. It was, and I set him free. He lavished us with love, not seeming to recall that I was the one who had imprisoned him in the first place.
I decided to save my Noah’s Ark for last and led the way to Lucy’s room.
“I’m going to show Gray your cat mosaic, okay?” I called to her before I opened her door. “And I’ll let Tipsy out at the same time.”
A muffled sound came from the kitchen which I interpreted as affirmative. I opened her door and pointed to the red, whimsical cat hanging over her dresser.
Gray didn’t say anything for several seconds, and I began to fear hearing, “Very nice.” He walked into the room for a closer look just as Tipsy stuck his head out from under the bed.
“Come here, Tips,” I coaxed, holding out a hand. It was easier to talk to the cat than watch Gray as he studied my work. My heart beat like a flamenco dancer’s castanets as I waited for his reaction.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.” He sounded amazed. At least I think it was amazed, not dismayed or what-can-I-say-that-won’t-hurt-her-feelings. “Let me see another.”
I nodded, abandoned Tipsy, and went to Meg’s room. I pointed to the red rose over her desk. Again Gray studied the work carefully. I thought of the hours spent searching for the right fabric, the right shades of red and green, the hours spent piecing the tiny scraps, every hour satisfying, even when I struggled to make the reality match my inner vision.
“Another?”
I led the way to my room. Noah’s Ark immediately drew the eye. Gray walked to it, even reached out to touch the lion’s yarn mane and the porcupine’s broom quills. He began to shake his head, and my heart plummeted. He didn’t like them.
“Anna, these are absolutely amazing.” His voice was warm with admiration.
“Really?”
“Really. They’re creative and full of life and so unique. And so beautiful!”
Not nice. Beautiful. Unique. Full of life. I could have soared higher than any hot air balloon.
“Why aren’t you hanging one in the model home?”
I blinked. “I never thought of it.”
“Let the people coming through see what you can do, and you’ll have more orders than you can fill.” He grinned at her. “Your mother would have been so proud of you for keeping The Promise. These wonderful creations prove that you are definitely an artist big-time.”
I looked from him to the Ark and back. I felt something tightly coiled inside let go. I began to cry again, but this time with relief. “I am, aren’t I?” It wasn’t the medium that made an artist. It was the heart married to talent. And the wisdom to recognize where the real talent lay.
Gray held me as I wept out all the years of frustration and failure and laughed with me at the sheer joy of being released to work guilt-free in my area of strength.
NINETEEN
Dar Jones drove along the street by the rancher on the hill with a smug smile. Lights flashed on official vehicles littering the drive ahead, and people stood in the front yard. It didn’t get much better than this, and he couldn’t resist the opportunity to gloat, even if he was the only one who knew he was gloating.
He saw Anna Volente standing with the two who lived with her, the girl cop, and the monster dog. The only one missing was the Edwards guy. Dar couldn’t understand this continual congregation of people around her. It was much more than the mere provision of protection. She was a people magnet, pulling people to her as surely as the sun drew the morning dew. As a loner by inclination and by profession, he simply couldn’t comprehend why anyone tolerated, let alone wanted, such constant companionship.
It would make getting her alone and in close quarters a challenge, but what was he if not a man who loved testing his superior skills against the rabble?
He hit the brakes as if he was stunned by the activity he saw. He pulled off the road and climbed out of the car. It was a nice car, a black Volvo. The man who owned it lived a couple of miles away and was at the moment lying unconscious in his garage. The needle Dar had stuck him with had held enough to keep the man down for an hour. When he roused, he wouldn’t remember what had happened. He’d wonder why he was on the garage floor and where the hour had gone, but that was all. By that time, Dar would have the car back in place and be long gone.
“What’s going on?” he asked a young cop.
“Nothing significant, sir,” the kid answered.
Dar eyed the kid. He looked about sixteen. No wonder they couldn’t catch him if this was what they had to work with.
“Well, something happened.” Dar looked significantly at the pandas.
“Vandalism,” the kid said. “The coward’s crime.”
Dar blinked. Coward’s crime? Coward? The burn began deep in his stomach, but he fought it. His face impassive, he managed a “Huh.”
Someone should tell this kid that vandalism done right took nerve and skill. You had to case the place first, find the right time for the entry. Then there was a creativity and a vision in vandalism done right. Purpose.
Of course he knew that so many punks destroyed just for the fun of destroying that very few understood the demoralizing effect of vandalism, and fewer still used it in the battle of wits between quarry and hunter. Attack what the victim felt most strongly about. Strip her of her sense of security. Make her vulnerable, unsure, frightened.
And the kid dared call him a coward.
“So what kind of thing was done? And whose house is it anyway?”
The kid cop looked at him. Dar knew he saw a nosey guy with a backwards baseball cap pulled over unruly brown hair, a guy who wore black-rimmed glasses and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, a guy who had chubby cheeks. Dentists used the absorbent pads to move a patient’s cheek away from his gums and teeth as well as to absorb saliva. Dar used them to round his facial contours as well as to change his voice. He liked to think he sounded like Marlon Brando as Don Corleone in The Godfather when he used the pads. “Go to the mats.” Stroke cheek.
“The house belongs to those three women,” the kid said, pointing to Anna and her friends.
“How awful. Attacking helpless women.”
“I hope they have good insurance.”
With a wave to the kid cop, Dar walked back to the Volvo. Just before he climbed in, he looked back to the cluster of people in the yard. To his surprise Anna was looking directly at him. He smiled, then turned and paused just a moment so she could see his profile. Then he roared off.
He changed cars once again, driving his own black Jeep. He was confident that no one had gotten this plate number on Saturday night. Things had happened too fast. Whistling, he drove to a nearby bar, the kind that were so dark you could barely see who sat on the next stool, let alone the guy in the back booth. He ate a truly terrible roast beef sandwich which he washed
down with a couple of bottles of beer. He was careful to sit with his back to the wall, his face angled from the door. He’d learned that you couldn’t be too careful.
At nine forty-five he left for his ten o’clock meeting at Freedom’s Chase.
“We need to talk. I’m getting nervous,” the caller had said.
“She’ll be dead in no time,” Dar had assured.
“Yeah? Well, while you’re at it, I have another job for you.”
“Fifty thousand,” Dar said, confident he knew who the second hit was to be—Edwards.
“What? That’s extortionate.”
“Take it or leave it. And I want half tonight.”
There was a long moment of silence which Dar let stretch.
“Ten o’clock. Same place.” The line went dead.
Dar grinned as he headed for the site. He loved his job.
TWENTY
At eight o’clock I went down the cellar stairs and knocked on the doorjamb. “Excuse me,” I called into the general confusion. At least it looked like confusion to me.
People milled around doing mysterious crime-scene stuff, and the noise level was low but steady as they consulted or spoke into recorders. I rapped harder and called again. One of the uniforms heard me on my fifth try.
“I need to speak to Natalie,” I said. She was on the far side of the large open room by the walled-off area that housed the oil burner and water heater.
The uniform nodded. “Hey, Nat! The lady wants you.” He jerked a thumb in my direction.
“Thanks.” If I’d known yelling was the accepted method of attracting someone’s attention, I could have done it myself and saved my knuckles.
Natalie looked up, as did everyone else in the basement. I smiled an apology at the interruption as I signaled her to come over.
When she reached me, she looked at me with concern. “Are you okay? You’re awful pale.”
I shrugged. What could I say? Well, Nat, I feel like the bottom has dropped out of my world, but on the up side, I know I can do what I love and still keep The Promise.
“I’m okay, I guess. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.” I fidgeted because I wasn’t certain she was going to like what I had to say. I glanced over her shoulder at all her co-workers. “Can you come upstairs for a minute?”
“Sure. Give me a sec.” She walked to Sergeant Poole and talked softly. He glanced at me, and I offered him a slight smile. He turned back to Natalie and nodded.
We climbed the steps, pushing Rocky back as we opened the door at the top. Lucy and Meg had both left, Lucy for her first graduate class of the semester and Meg for her aerobics class and routine workout. Gray was working at Lucy’s red table in the kitchen, so I went to the living room, Natalie on my heels.
“What’s up?” she asked.
I cleared my throat. This was harder than I’d expected.
“Come on,” she said. “Spit it out.”
So I did.
“I think Skip was at Freedom’s Chase the night Dorothy Ryder was killed.”
Natalie just stared at me in stunned disbelief.
I pressed on. “Today before you got to school, he spoke of how I had messed up his opportunity to get more supplies the other night. He was speaking in that context of my guilt for her murder.”
“Come on, Anna.” Natalie waved a hand negligently. “You know what a trip he is. He’d have said something to me if he was there. He knows how important all information is in solving a crime.”
“And reveal his guilt?”
“What guilt?”
“I think he might be the one taking supplies from Gray’s building site.”
“What?”
“Or maybe I should say A-TAG, not just him.”
She looked at me, her expression hard and unhappy. “Why do you think these terrible things about my baby brother?”
“This afternoon he was talking to his cronies about meeting at the shed at nine-thirty tonight.”
Natalie shrugged. “So?”
“So where’s this shed? It’s not the headquarters they’re building. Skip said they needed more supplies for it. That’s why they’re meeting at the shed.”
“And you think the shed’s at Freedom’s Chase?”
I nodded. I didn’t like accusing her brother, but I was a firm believer in catching a kid in small crimes and dealing with the little wrongdoing so that he never went on to larger stuff. Dad always told my brothers and me that he hoped, even prayed, we got caught if we ever did anything wrong. He didn’t want us to think we were clever enough to escape consequences because sooner or later they’d catch up with us. That philosophy made sense to me.
“I’ll check on where he was the evening of the murder, but don’t worry about tonight. My parents run a tight ship, and he’s not allowed out that late on a school night.”
She seemed confident enough to make me momentarily doubt my conclusions, but only momentarily. I was convinced Skip thought that whatever he wanted was his, and that he’d never met a rule he didn’t want to bend or break to get what he wanted.
She saw my uncertainty harden into conviction. “Go on. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Where do the kids get their supplies?” I asked.
She looked at me blankly.
“The lumber? The nails? All that stuff.”
She turned thoughtful. “I’d assumed Mom and Dad got it for them since the headquarters is being built in their backyard.”
“Can you ask?”
She sighed. “The kids even have a pack of shingles up there, though I’m not convinced they’ll ever get to the point of putting on a roof.” She fidgeted with the coins in her pocket. “They never heard of a plumb line. The thing will collapse before they have anything to nail a shingle to.”
I could easily imagine the A-TAG headquarters because my brothers had built various clubhouses through the years. I, as little sister, was never allowed in, but every “secret” conversation was audible to anyone nearby, the sound leaking out through the many gaps between boards.
Natalie walked to the kitchen. “Hey, Edwards, what kinds of things have been stolen at your building site?”
Gray hit the save button on his laptop, then ticked things off on his fingers. “Wood. Nails. Screws. Shingles. Paint. A couple of guys are missing hammers and screwdrivers from their personal inventory. One’s missing a power drill.”
“In other words, stuff to build a headquarters.” Natalie was fast becoming one unhappy woman.
Gray nodded.
“And you have a shed where you keep these supplies?”
“It’s more like a small trailer that can be pulled where it’s needed. The men come there to sign out tools they don’t own or to pick up supplies. The wood itself is mostly scrap, left lying at the different sites, very easily taken.”
“How does the thief get into the shed?”
“That’s a good question since the padlock is always in place.”
“And you don’t have a night watchman?”
“He works midnight to six.”
Natalie checked her watch, pulled her cell from her belt, and dialed. “Hi, Mom. Yeah, I know I missed dinner. I’m sorry, but I won’t be over tonight. I’m just getting off work now, and all I want is to go home and sink into a hot tub.” There was a pause while Natalie listened. “Mom, you know being a cop does not mean regular hours. Could I speak to Skip, please?”
Natalie looked at me. “She says he’s in his room working on his computer. His room’s on the second floor.” She thought for a moment. “Its windows look out over the roof of the back porch which has a lattice on the side.”
Then Natalie’s mother was back on the phone, and I could hear her almost as clearly as Natalie.
“Calm down, Mom. I don’t think he’s been kidnapped. He’s just gone AWOL.”
I swallowed a grin as I pictured someone kidnapping Skip. It’d be The Ransom of Red Chief all over again.
More agitated words
flew through the air.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. Bye, Mom.” She flipped the phone shut on her mother’s voice and stalked toward the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Anna.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To catch me a petty thief and slap him in juvie for the rest of his life.”
Gray shook his head as he rose. “Not alone you’re not.”
“I’m not calling backup on my own brother.”
“I meant that I’d go with you. Strange things other than your brother have been happening at the site as you well know. You shouldn’t be alone.” He looked at me. “I won’t be too long. I just want to help scare this kid straight.”
“You won’t let Natalie go there alone, but you’re going to leave me here alone?” I sounded as forlorn and abandoned as I could manage.
Apparently I wasn’t completely successful because Gray raised a skeptical eyebrow. “The basement’s full of cops, Anna.”
Minor issue easily circumvented. “And just how much longer do you think they’ll be here?”
At that serendipitous moment Sergeant Poole opened the cellar door, pushed back Rocky who was delighted to see him, and stuck his head into the room. “We’re out of here. Feel free to put some plywood over the shattered sliding door, but don’t clean things up yet. Oh, and you need to call your insurance guy.”
We nodded and Natalie said, “See you tomorrow, William.”
“Right, kid. You’ve got Anna detail again.” He glanced at Gray. “You’re spending the night, right?”
Gray nodded. “The girls have a very comfortable sofa.”
Satisfied, the sergeant disappeared down the stairs, firmly closing the door against Rocky, much to the animal’s dismay.
As I comforted the dog with an ear fondle, I looked at Nat and Gray. “Well, that settles it, doesn’t it? You’ll just have to take me with you.”
That’s how we ended up in the trailer at Freedom’s Chase on a cloudy, mostly moonless night, waiting in the dark. Both Gray and Natalie had parked their cars in the double garage of one of the almost-completed homes, so there was nothing to indicate anyone was on the property.
