Deception in Strange Places (A Kelly O'Connell Mystery)

by Judy Alter

  “Okay, Tell her pajamas are acceptable. Just get her over here.” And he hung up before I could say any more.

  “Tell me!” Em demanded.

  “I have to go get Sheila,” I said. “You wait here.” In the kitchen, I searched the bottom of my purse for my keys and then raced to the apartment, calling Sheila’s name as I went.

  She met me at the door. “What in heaven’s name?”

  “Your mother. Her house is on fire. She’s okay, but she won’t let them take her to the ER. Drive my car and get over there right away. Mike’s there.”

  “Oh my God!” She grabbed the keys and ran toward the driveway, leaving me to shut the apartment door. I heard the squeal of wheels and hoped she realized how narrow our old driveway was.

  Behind me, Em asked, “Will Ms. Lorna be all right?”

  “Em, I told you to go back to the bed. What are you doing out here in the cold?” I realized I was now shivering, though my adrenaline rush had been so high I didn’t feel the cold until I got Sheila on her way.

  “Eavesdropping,” she said with satisfaction and turned to precede me back to the house.

  Of course, by then Maggie was awake. I suspect the squeal of my tires woke her. So I explained to both girls what was going on as quickly as I could, because I itched to call Mike. When I did, my call went to voicemail, so I left a message asking him to call as soon as he could. He knew I’d be worried, curious, and angry. Ms. Lorna’s was an old house, in poor repair, and a spontaneous fire was possible—faulty wiring, etc. But I didn’t think so. There was too much coincidence about this. And it was always possible Nick set the fire to put Sheila in a vulnerable position—driving alone.

  Another thirty minutes went by, during which I tried to persuade the girls to go back to bed, insisting they were going to school tomorrow and pleas of exhaustion would go unheard. They wouldn’t budge, and I couldn’t blame them. At last, I heard the call of the saints marching in and answered quickly.

  “She’s gone to the ER. Sheila drove her. If they release her, she’ll have to come to our house. Sheila wants her in the apartment, so can you put blankets out for a pallet for Sheila out there?”

  “Sure. What about the fire?”

  “José spotted it early—just luck—and the fire people put it out before it did too much damage. Back of the house is pretty much a mess. That’s where it started.”

  “Arson?”

  He was matter of fact. “Of course. Blatant and yet professional. We smelled the accelerant, saw a gas can, but everything burned. No prints.”

  “Mike, was this the other shoe dropping?”

  “Yeah,” he said bitterly, “but I don’t know how many shoes he has. You haven’t heard the worst yet. When Sheila was in the ambulance with Ms. Lorna, someone took a shot at the ambulance. It bounced off the side, but I think that was deliberate. This guy is too good to miss a clean shot like that. He was letting us know he was there. I am scared to death for all of us…and you don’t often hear me admit that.”

  My suspicion was true—sort of. Nick had lured Sheila out of the house. But if he wanted to kill her, why was he waiting, taking impossible shots?

  Mike went on to explain that his people could do little. Shooting back was out of the question for a lot of reasons. The shooter melted into the shadows of the neighborhood, and though Mike sent out patrols to look for a black SUV, they found nothing. Nor did they see a man carrying a rifle, which would have been fairly obvious. It was likely, he admitted, that Nick had traded the black SUV for a car we wouldn’t recognize.

  “I have a car following them to the hospital. They’ll wait and escort them to our house.”

  At least that was a bit of a relief but what good was a cop in a car against a skilled sniper? I hung up the phone with shaking hands and sat staring into space, a vision of Nick lingering at the meeting floating before me. His eyes were malevolent, even behind sunglasses. I knew he was the shooter, and now he was our very own arsonist.

  Mike came home about two, smelling of smoke, climbed in to bed muttering he had nothing new to report, and was instantly asleep. He had that ability, while I, once wakened, had a hard time going back to sleep. I dozed lightly, listening for Sheila and Ms. Lorna, though I knew there was a strong possibility they’d be at the hospital all night.

  They weren’t. I heard the car come down the driveway and saw flashing red lights on the ceiling—the police car that followed them home was advertising its presence while they got safely inside the apartment. I got up, felt around for my slippers and a sweatshirt, and stumbled through the kitchen to get the blankets for a pallet, which I’d forgotten about in the anxiety of the night.

  They both looked exhausted when I got to the apartment but Ms. Lorna had not lost her attitude. “I’ve never been treated like that. Ever. In my life. It was an ordeal.”

  I looked at Sheila.

  “The ER doctor made her put on a gown, one of those that opens in the front and is not at all good for modesty.”

  “And he was rude,” her mother added. “Talked in syllables, like ‘Breathe.’ Never carried on a civil conversation with me. Just talked to Sheila.”

  Her daughter put an arm around her shoulders. “But they said you’re fine, lungs are clear. Look at the bright side—you didn’t have to stay in the hospital all night.”

  “Might as well have. The night’s nearly gone. And I suppose my house is totally destroyed.”

  I was able to reassure her that only the back of the house was damaged, and the fire crew always secured the residence before they left the scene.

  “I can go home tomorrow.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t know about that. There’s probably smoke and water damage, and we’ll have to call your insurance company.”

  Sheila shook her head at me over her seated mother, a clear message not to talk about insurance. “Thanks so much for the blankets, Kelly. I was going to sit up the rest of the night.”

  “You two sleep as late as you want. Maybe we can talk over lunch.”

  “At Bun Appetit,” said Ms. Lorna.

  I thought she had tuned us out, but not much ever gets by her. I said goodbye and went inside. As I climbed back into bed for the—what? the third time?—the clock read four thirty. In two hours I’d have to get up.

  The next morning was a blur. Mike and I didn’t speak except necessities, like “Pass the salt” and “What should I put in this lunch box?” Not one creative idea went through my mind, and I seemed to have even lost my curiosity. Mike was undoubtedly grateful for the latter.

  After I got the girls to school, I went home, called Keisha to report the night’s happenings and say I was going back to bed. I slept soundly until eleven o’clock.

  ****

  Keisha met us at Bun Appetit. Mona was delighted to see Ms. Lorna, until she heard what had happened the night before. “You just stick with Kelly,” she said to Lorna and Sheila. “She’ll take care of you. Believe me, I know.”

  Keisha cleared her throat, and Mona added, “Keisha too,” at which Keisha grinned.

  “I know,” Lorna said. “Keisha is my guardian angel.”

  I stifled my giggle and ordered my usual hot dog with sauerkraut.

  We elected to take our hot dogs back to the house. It was too chilly to eat outside, and Mike would have a fit if he thought we were sitting on the street, exposed to whatever danger came our way.

  Once we were settled, Keisha told us she’d gone by to look at the house. “Back is all boarded up. I used a key and went inside. You know what those firemen do—they pull all the wiring out of the ceiling to avoid spreading the fire or something like that. So the ceilings are all torn up downstairs—I didn’t go upstairs. And it smells awful smoky in there. Your insurance should pay for one of those disaster companies to clean things up, but don’t you let them put sheetrock over those pulled plaster walls. I’ll talk to them, take care of everything. But first we got to call your insurance company.”

  The elephan
t in the room had just bellowed.

  Sheila asked casually, “You do have insurance, don’t you, Mother?”

  “Of course I do. I just don’t remember who has it or where the papers are. They must be in the house somewhere.”

  Keisha sighed, and I anticipated a search of the house, but Sheila spoke up. “I saw a lot of papers on the shelf in your closet. Could they be there?”

  “Yes,” she said crisply, “I suppose they could. Tell me again, Sheila, about someone shooting at us again last night. This is getting tiresome.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. They found a rifle bullet in the street. It had bounced off the side of the ambulance, left a big dent in it. Mike said it was a warning. Any time that shooter wants to kill us he can.”

  “He can kill me, and it won’t matter, but you have too much to live for.” It was a sentimental statement from Ms. Lorna.

  Sheila was more practical. “I’m going to the house this afternoon to look for those papers.”

  “Not alone, you ain’t,” Keisha said.

  In the end, we all went. Ms. Lorna wouldn’t be left behind, though Sheila urged her to rest. “I’m too old to need rest,” she said.

  I knew she wanted to see her house, and I didn’t try to dissuade her.

  If it weren’t so serious, I’d have laughed at the way we checked things out before getting out of the car. They tell women to be aware of their surroundings at all times, and I was always good about it. But not this good. Once again, I drove for blocks, checking for a black SUV or any suspicious car and seeing none. At the house, we parked in the driveway and headed quickly for the house. Fairmount was a neighborhood with many older, established gardens, which meant lots of bushes and foliage—and lots of hiding places for a shooter. There was no way we could check them all out. My reasoning, as I mounted the front steps, was that having just delivered another of his warnings the night before, the shooter wouldn’t bother us again so quickly. Still, I wished we could have gone in the back door, but it was boarded up.

  Ms. Lorna clutched Sheila as we walked through the damaged house. Disconnected wires hung from great holes in the ceiling, and soot was streaked and smudged everywhere. That carefully set dining room table was a mess with bits of plaster and dirt everywhere; three broken plates stared up at us, and two crystal goblets lay in shattered pieces. I heard Ms. Lorna gasp and turned to see her clasp her hand to her mouth. Slowly she turned to the side cabinet where the serving dishes, Chinese porcelain pieces, were displayed. By some miracle they were untouched by the destruction, although covered with a fine layer of soot. She paused and traced a finger through the dirt.

  With a grim smile, she looked at us and said, “It can all be fixed.”

  “But it shouldn’t have to, shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

  She brushed Keisha’s comment aside and asked briskly, “What’s the upstairs like?”

  Keisha shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t been up there.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Ms. Lorna led us to the staircase where, for some reasons, we ascended in a knot as though protecting each other from whatever lay at the top of the stairs.

  It flashed through my mind there could very well be a shooter up there waiting for us, but my rational mind took over, and I reminded myself that wasn’t his way of doing things.

  The upstairs was about as big a mess as the downstairs. Beds were covered with chunks of plaster, wires hung loose, and soot covered everything. I could envision Ms. Lorna insisting that she could sleep in her own bed that night, but she surprised me.

  Wryly, she said, “I guess I won’t sleep here tonight. I’ll go to a hotel though. Sheila, you can’t keep sleeping on the floor.”

  “I’d rather have you safe and near me,” the daughter said, and that ended that discussion.

  We all piled into the room where Ms. Lorna slept. It was not the master but a smaller bedroom at the back of the house, which, in view of the shooter, I thought was a good thing. Duh. She’s not going to sleep here for quite a while. Surely this will be over by then.

  Sheila moved a footstool to the closet, but Keisha elbowed her out of the way. “You ain’t climbing on that thing in your condition.”

  Squelching a protest, Sheila said, “Thank you” and stepped back. “Just hand things to me.”

  Meanwhile, I rolled the spread off the bed, capturing plaster and dirt inside the bundle, and left us a clean surface on which to sort. And sort we did—piles of papers, old newspaper clippings, entertainment industry magazines. Keisha found one treasure—the deed to the house—and we kept sorting, searching for that insurance policy.

  “Do you pay on it, Ms. Lorna? Who do you pay? We can just call them.”

  She shook her head. “The bank helped me set up an automatic deduction, so it just comes out of my account. I never see it.”

  Inspiration! I stepped into the hall to call Claire and ask if they had set up a management account for her. I remembered before my mom crawled out of her shell of grief over my dad, her banker advised such an arrangement. In essence, the bank managed a person’s finances, for a small fee. Mom had not needed it—she had me—but it sounded like maybe what Ms. Lorna had.

  Claire responded with her usual litany about privacy of clients’ accounts, etc. I cut her short.

  “Claire, the woman’s house burned and needs major disaster relief. She doesn’t know who carries her insurance, and we can’t find the papers. If you have that information, I need it. I’m not asking for bank balances or anything like that, but it would be nice for Lorna’s daughter to know if you’re managing her bills.”

  Claire took a deep breath and said, “I’ll get back to you.”

  While we were waiting, we were treated to a one-sided version of a phone call from Bruce Hollister. As I walked back into the bedroom, Keisha put a finger to her lips to caution me to be quiet. Lorna sat in the room’s one chair with a frown of disapproval on her face.

  “Bruce, how did you know my mother had some difficulty?”

  She listened with a frown on her face and replied, “It’s not been in the papers, and it hardly made the national news. What do you mean you’re in contact with people in Fort Worth? Do you have someone spying on me?”

  Another pause in the one-sided conversation, and then Sheila said, “No, I don’t think it’s a sign from God that I should come back to San Antonio. And my mother clearly does not want to live in a retirement community in Fort Worth, let alone San Antonio.”

  She listened again, clenching her fist in anger, and it struck me again how much Sheila had grown in strength in the last few weeks. She was a beaten, defeated woman when I first met her. Now she was standing up for herself. The difference showed in her face as well as her strong voice.

  “Bruce, get this through your head. The marriage is over. I’m not coming back. You can stop sending that Nick person around to frighten us. I’ve found a loving family here, and I’m staying.”

  Another pause, during which we could hear loud shouting from the other end of the phone. Sheila remained calm. “We’ll work out a fair custody agreement when the baby is born.” She pushed the “end of call” button and turned on us, venting her rage on the only people nearby.

  “That son of a bitch! How could he? He practically admitted that he knew who set the fire. How else would he have known about it? And he thinks it will scare me into coming back to San Antonio and putting my mother in a nursing home there! He’s got about ten more thoughts coming.” She began to walk in small tight circles, clenching her fists in anger.

  “Sit down, baby,” Keisha urged. “It’s not good for the baby for you to get all riled up like this.”

  “I can’t sit down. I can’t sit still. And maybe my baby will learn to stand up for itself sooner than I did.”

  A stern voice cut through the air. “Sit down.” Lorna had spoken without changing her disapproving expression. “Getting riled up, as Keisha calls it, isn’t going to solve the probl
em. We have to think how to get rid of the man who’s been shooting at us.”

  My mouth dropped open. Was she suggesting vigilante justice? Even if we could find him, how would we “get rid of him”? “We can’t do that,” I said aloud. “It’s against the law.”

  She favored me with a pitying look. “I know that, but we can set a trap for him.” She paused, stared at me, and added, “With Mike’s help, of course.”

  Ms. Lorna was like that dog with a bone Mike accused me of being. She set her teeth and bared them, even at Mike that night at the dinner table. She had protested she would not be a bother but would take a boiled egg in Sheila’s apartment. We all laughed at that, which embarrassed her, and she ended up at our table eating spaghetti, though she twirled it delicately against a spoon in the European fashion.

  “Ms. Lorna,” he asked indulgently, “who would be the bait in this trap?”

  “Why, I would, of course,” she replied in a frosty tone.

  “As a police officer, I cannot allow you to do that. I assure you just your existence is a trap. That shooter will try again, though I think he’s deliberately aiming off target. But my men are watchful. I’ve ordered extra patrols of your house, our house, the office, the entire Fairmount area.”

  “You’re looking for a black—what do they call those cars?” she sniffed.

  Maggie helpfully supplied, “SUV?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Another acronym. So annoying. But by now that man could have changed cars three times. You have no idea what he’s driving.”

  “Very true,” he said patiently. “My order covers all suspicious vehicles. I’ll tell you what I constantly tell Kelly: please let us do our job. When you meddle, it just makes it harder for us.”

  She set her shoulders, obviously offended, and excused herself soon after dinner, saying she did not want coffee. I knew there was a Scotch bottle hidden in the apartment by now.

  I wondered if we could set a trap before Bruce and Nick sprang their trap. I had no doubt an unpleasant surprise was waiting for us, sooner rather than later.