by Jessica Beck
It was the warmest I’d seen her toward him since we’d broken up.
“Your daughter has been gracious enough to loan me her building on Viewmont,” Emily said as my assistant, Emma, and her mother, Sharon, walked in. “Isn’t that fabulous?”
“Suzanne has a good heart,” Momma said, smiling at me in approval. It didn’t matter how old I got, I still loved it when she was proud of me.
Three hours later, we were just about finished with the move. Phillip and Jake had even installed a new shelf for the three stuffed animals, who looked bemused by the entire situation.
As I handed Emma the keys, I said, “Stay as long as you need to, okay?”
“I’m going to pay you rent. I insist, so don’t make me force you to take my money,” she said grimly.
“Fine. We’ll work something out,” I said, having expected that reaction from the beginning.
“I’m talking about fair market value, Suzanne. I mean it.”
She must have known that I was going to ask for a token payment, but she had me now. “Okay, but I might donate it to a good cause. Would that be okay with you?”
“Of course. Where did you have in mind?”
“The soup kitchen could still use some contributions, even after the auction,” I said.
“That’s perfect,” she answered.
Jake approached and tapped my shoulder. “Sorry to interrupt, but we need to go, Suzanne.”
I’d completely lost all track of time. If we were going to get Van set up somewhere else and stage his room, we’d have to get going.
I felt my heart race as we hurried toward my Jeep.
With any luck, before too much longer, we just might finally discover who had attacked Van Rayburn and left him for dead.
Chapter 16
Penny met us in the hallway outside Van’s room. “Is he still in there?” Jake asked her.
“No. We moved him to 207,” she confided in a near whisper, “but as far as everyone here is concerned, he’s officially still in there.”
“I can’t thank you enough for helping us, Penny,” I told her.
“It’s the least I can do after what Jake did for my cousin,” she said.
“What did you do?” I asked him. Why hadn’t I heard about it if Jake had helped someone out?
“It was nothing,” my husband said, clearly trying to brush my question off.
Penny wasn’t about to allow that, though. “Don’t kid yourself. A good word from you went a long way with the judge. My entire family is in your debt. Taking the time to meet with Taylor, and then standing up for him, was above and beyond the call of duty.”
I was really intrigued now. “Jake, tell me what happened.”
He looked almost embarrassed to recount what he’d done, but he was on the spot now. “Penny asked me if I’d look into Taylor’s arrest. It didn’t take long to see that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but his public defender wasn’t very adept. I spoke with the arresting officer, and he admitted that he might have been a little too enthusiastic arresting the boy. We spoke to the judge together, and he dismissed the charges. The entire thing took two hours. You were at work, so there really wasn’t that much to tell.”
I knew that my husband had a kind heart, and though he could be tough when it was needed, he also had a kindness in him that I cherished. It certainly went a long way toward explaining how much Penny had been cooperating with us lately.
“We’ll never forget your kindness,” Penny said.
Jake clearly wanted to move past the discussion. “Did you set things up like we discussed?”
“Even better. See for yourself,” she said with a grin.
Jake and I stepped into the room, which had been darkened to give only a slight illumination. It appeared that someone was in the bed sleeping, even though I knew otherwise.
“That’s amazing,” I said, as a soft snore began to fill the room. “How did you do that?”
“My uncle is an electronics nut. When I approached him about making this more realistic, he set up a switch on the door. After three seconds, a recording of him snoring starts playing. It lasts about five minutes. Will that be long enough?”
“It’s perfect,” Jake said, and then, to my surprise, the body shifted slightly under the sheet.
“Are you sure no one’s there?” I asked.
She laughed. “Uncle Tim got carried away. He put some kind of widget under the dummy’s chest to make it move sporadically. It’s cool, isn’t it?”
“Amazing,” I said. “Can you reset it?”
After she did as I asked, she said, “The bathroom is the best place to hide. If you leave the door cracked, you can see whoever comes in without being spotted yourself. Do you really think it’s going to work?”
“It’s a coin toss, but at the moment, it’s the best idea we could come up with,” Jake said. “Thanks again for setting this up.”
“This doesn’t even begin to pay the interest on the debt we owe you,” Penny said, and then she was gone.
“Wow, you really saved the day with her family, didn’t you?” I asked softly once we were ensconced in the bathroom. “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“I didn’t want to seem as though I was bragging,” Jake said. “It really wasn’t all that much.”
“It doesn’t sound that way to me.”
I kissed him soundly, and after a moment, he asked, “What was that for?”
“I figured you deserved some kind of reward for being gallant,” I said. “Is that okay with you?”
“If I’d known I’d get that kind of attention from you, I would have told you sooner myself,” he said with a grin.
I had to stifle my laugh, just in case someone was lurking outside the room.
Twenty minutes later, I was bored to tears, but Jake seemed fine. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” he whispered, his gaze never leaving the hospital room door.
“I’m about to climb the walls, but you seem as though you could do this well into the night.”
“Suzanne, I’ve been on so many stakeouts I’ve lost count. There are ways to pass the time, mostly rehashing old memories and analyzing past decisions, things like that, that keep the mind occupied.”
“That sounds even worse than just standing here waiting for someone to show up,” I admitted.
“You get used to it,” he said softly, just as the door began to show a sliver of light. “Shhh.”
I peeked out and saw the sliver widen, and a moment later, I knew who had come calling on Van.
There was enough light to see Vivian clearly, and she had a scowl on her face as the dummy appeared to start snoring. She didn’t say a word as she crept toward the bed.
Scanning the room, Vivian spotted a pillow on the chair beside the dummy. She nearly jumped out of her skin when it moved, but after thirty seconds, when it remained still, she grabbed the pillow and started toward the dummy.
She was poised just above its head when Jake reached out and flipped on the light switch.
Vivian couldn’t have looked more surprised if the dummy had leapt up and shouted, “Surprise!”
“Stop right there,” Jake said as he hurried toward her, his weapon drawn. How had I missed the fact that he’d been armed?
“What are you doing lurking in there?” she asked as the pillow slipped from her hands onto the floor.
“You were about to smother him, weren’t you?” I asked.
“No! Of course not!” Her denial seemed a little too strong to me, and a bit too late to feel real.
“Then what were you going to do with that pillow?” Jake asked her.
“If you’ll put that weapon down, I’ll tell you,” she protested.
“Thanks for the invitation, but I believe I’ll keep it right where it is
for the moment. Now, about that pillow.”
“I was going to climb into the bed beside him,” she said. “Is there a law against that?”
“It didn’t look like that to us,” Jake said. He pulled out his cell phone with his free hand, made a call, and then we both heard him ask, “Are you still in the hospital? Suzanne and I were right. Vivian just tried to smother the CPR dummy.” After Jake put his phone away, he said, “He’ll be right here.”
“What do you mean, dummy?” Vivian asked, staring down at the body under the sheet.
I reached down and slipped the sheet off the CPR dummy, and Vivian gasped when she realized that it wasn’t Van. “You tricked me!”
“A good thing, too, or Van might not have been so lucky this time. Why did you try to kill him, Vivian?”
“I did no such thing!”
“Don’t bother denying it,” I said. “We both saw you.”
Before she could say another word, the chief burst into the room. “Good work, you two.”
Only then did Jake lower his weapon. “She was about to try to suffocate him when we stopped her.”
“I told you, I was just climbing into bed with him! You have all gone insane!” The last bit was shouted, and I could swear I saw a hint of madness in her eyes.
“Why don’t we go back to my office and talk about it?” the chief asked as he reached for Vivian’s arm.
“You’re not going to handcuff me, are you? I hate feeling restrained.” There was a whimpering quality to her voice that made me feel sorry for her, at least until I remembered what she’d just tried to do.
“Then you’re going to really hate the holding cell,” Chief Grant said. As he led her out, he asked, “Jake, would you mind joining me? I’d like to get your statement, and then maybe you could sit in on the interrogation.”
I knew there was nothing my husband would like more, but he still turned to me and asked, “Do you mind?”
It was all I could do not to smile. “You go on. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Thanks,” he said, and then the two men escorted Vivian out of the room.
Penny came in two seconds later. “Is it all over?”
“It seems to be,” I said. “Thanks again for your help. Do you need any help putting this back to normal?”
“No, I’ve got it. It was kind of fun.”
“I guess,” I said, remembering the crazed look in Vivian’s eyes. There had been nothing entertaining about that.
“So, what now?” she asked me.
“I thought I’d go tell Van what happened,” I said. “He has a right to know who tried to attack him again.”
“I know if it were me, I’d want to know,” she said.
“You said Room 207, right?”
“Right,” she said.
I walked down the hallway to Van’s room.
He was sitting up in bed doing a crossword puzzle, in pen, no less.
“It’s all over,” I said when he looked up.
“Who was it?” he asked. “I still don’t have a clue who attacked me at my place.”
“Vivian Reynolds just tried to smother a CPR dummy,” I said.
Van took that in, and then he frowned as he let out a heavy sigh. “I wish I could tell you that I’m surprised by that, but I’m not. She always was a little bit crazy.”
“Then why did you go out with her in the first place?” It was a question I often wondered about, why men dated certain women they knew were unstable.
“What can I say? She was lively, spontaneous, and unpredictable,” he said. “At first, it’s what attracted me to her, but in the end, it’s what made me go for Gabby instead.”
Gabby Williams could be described as many things, but never those three adjectives, at least not in my mind.
“Are you having second thoughts about dumping her?” I asked him.
Van looked saddened by the thought. “She’d never take me back after dumping her like that.”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t write her off just yet,” I said.
“Do you think I still have a chance?” he asked.
“Look at it this way. What do you have to lose?”
For the first time in days, Van actually seemed hopeful.
It lasted less than three seconds, though.
Someone else, the real attempted killer, I suddenly knew, destroyed that by coming into the hospital room wielding a long and deadly-looking knife held tightly in a latex-gloved hand.
Apparently Jake and I had caught the wrong assailant in our trap.
Chapter 17
“Buford, what are you doing here?” Van asked his second-in-command on the town council as the man waved the knife menacingly in our direction.
“I followed Suzanne after her husband and the police chief took Vivian away. I must admit, it was a good trap you set. I almost fell for it myself when Vivian burst in before I could manage it myself.”
“You attacked me? Why?” Van asked, clearly bewildered by the identity of his real assailant.
“Do you really even have to ask? You were always putting me in my place, making sure that I knew that you were the real power on the town council. I got sick of being bullied, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.”
“I never bullied you,” Van protested.
“Please. Between you and the mayor, I knew that I’d never get control if I didn’t take matters into my own hands.”
“That’s why you used the trophy,” I said as it all suddenly began to make twisted sense. “You decided to kill Van and frame the mayor for it. With them both out of the picture, it would be easy enough to step into the void left behind.”
“You did this for our jobs?” Van asked incredulously. “I make nine thousand dollars a year, and the mayor makes a measly twelve grand.”
“It was never about the money,” Buford protested. “It’s the power that counts. I figured the world, and April Springs, were better off without you two running things around here.”
Van’s face suddenly lightened. “It was you! I remember everything now!”
“Too little, too late, though,” Buford said with a nasty little smile.
“How are you going to frame the mayor for this?” I asked, searching desperately for something to use as a weapon to fight back with. Unfortunately, the room was rather stark. There was a pillow and a folded blanket nearby, but I wasn’t sure how I could use either one of them to overpower the madman.
“This knife belongs to the mayor,” he said happily.
“Why would he attack me, though? He’s my friend,” I said, easing toward the pillow. Maybe I could use it to deflect a knife thrust. Then again, the blade appeared to be sharp enough to penetrate it easily, but what choice did I have?
Fighting back was in all ways better than dying passively.
I might not survive the attack, but I was at least going to make him earn it. My plan, if I didn’t make it, was to at least scratch his face. If I could get some of his DNA under my fingernails, my death wouldn’t go unavenged, and he’d be marked publicly with my brand.
My husband would never allow him to go free.
I needed to distract Buford before I could rush him, though. “You were there when Gabby showed up, weren’t you?” I asked him.
“I was nearly ready to kill them both, but fortunately, at least for her sake, Van never mentioned me. He was in too big a hurry to brush her off. I waited until I was sure she was gone, and then I hit Van with everything I had.” He turned to his attack victim as he added reprovingly, “I was sure you were dead! How you managed to hang on, let alone crawl to the door, was astounding.” He looked at me in disgust. “If you and the mayor hadn’t found him when you did, there’s no way he could have held on until morning. In a way, you’ve brought this on yourself, Suzanne.”
I
could see Buford tense up, but I had to delay him for another second so I could finalize my sketchy plan of attack. “That’s why you’ve been hovering around here since Van checked in. You were waiting to see if he’d regain his memory.”
“Of course that’s why. Do you think I did it because I was devoted to the man? Please. Don’t be ridiculous. When you told me his memory was starting to come back, I knew that I had to act.”
“It was all a lie, you know,” I said, trying to get him angry. It was a dangerous move, but since he was going to kill me anyway, what did I have to lose? If I could somehow enrage him, maybe he’d get sloppy, and I’d have a chance. “Even a fool should have seen right through it.”
“Are you calling me a fool?” Buford asked, his hand tightening on the knife handle.
“If the shoe fits,” I said with as much derision as I could muster.
“Suzanne,” Van said, clearly trying to warn me off, but I was committed.
“Come on, Van. Couldn’t you do better than him? Did you really think he was worthy of being your right hand on the council? He can’t even do this right.”
I glanced at Buford and saw that he was livid with anger.
“You’re going to pay for that!”
He was about to move when the hospital door room began to open! Was I about to get reinforcements?
“Van? Are you in here?” Noreen asked.
She wasn’t going to be of any help, but she’d managed to do something anyway.
The moment Buford turned to her, I grabbed the pillow and swung it at Buford’s hand holding the knife. It was a weak weapon, but it managed to catch him off guard anyway. He didn’t drop the knife, but he did take a step backward and lower it.
It was all that I needed. I tackled him, wrapping my arms around his so that he couldn’t stab anyone. He struggled against my grip, and in an instant, I could feel that I was losing control!
“Get help!” I shouted at Noreen.
She stood there paralyzed, but thank goodness Van didn’t. The moment I’d grabbed Buford, Van had leapt from the bed and thrown himself into the fray. No matter what I thought about him, I had to give him credit. He acted swiftly and decisively, coming to my aid, and that got him a great many points in my book.
