A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5)

by Lois Winston

  He placed the pad and pencil on the table. “The county police legal department will contact you with that information, ma’am.”

  “They’d better. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

  Spader grimaced as he turned to me. “I’ll make sure someone gets out here right away to fix the damage to your door, Mrs. Pollack.”

  As I walked him to the splintered front door, he said, “And again, I’m sorry for what happened, but you do understand we had no choice, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Meanwhile, if you think of anyone who might have a beef against you or one of your kids, contact me.”

  I glanced over toward where Lucille still stood under the archway separating the living room from the dining room. In a voice soft enough that she wouldn’t hear, I asked Spader, “Have you considered the person might be someone who has a beef with my motherin-law?”

  He scowled in Lucille’s direction. “The thought definitely occurred to me. I know the Westfield police have a long list of complaints against her. We’ll investigate all leads.”

  “And you don’t think this is connected in any way to Betty’s or Carmen’s deaths?”

  He scratched at the five o’clock shadow covering his jaw. “Anything is possible, but since the two murders don’t appear connected, I fail to see how the swatting factors in to either.”

  “My mother insists I should pack up and leave until the killers are caught.”

  “I take it, you don’t agree?”

  “Do you?”

  “I can’t tell you what to do, Mrs. Pollack, but no one else on the street is panicking. If it would make you feel more comfortable, by all means, pack your bags and take a vacation. I’m certainly not ordering anyone out of their homes.”

  “A vacation is financially out of the question. And leaving would create a logistical nightmare for me and my kids.”

  However, I couldn’t help but feel there are a lot of coincidences suddenly floating around. “I was willing to accept coincidence when it came to the murders, but after this swatting incident, I’m finding it hard to believe something larger isn’t at play here.”

  Spader rubbed his jaw again. “If you can figure out how to connect the dots, Mrs. Pollack, you know where to find me. Right now I’m proceeding with the assumption that we’re dealing with three separate crimes until I have proof otherwise.”

  He heaved a sigh. “And here I thought biding my time until retirement in Union County would be a piece of cake compared to the crime-infested streets of Newark.”

  *

  It took me nearly an hour and the combined efforts of Lawrence, Zack, Alex, and Nick to convince my mother we wouldn’t be murdered in our sleep that night. She didn’t believe us, but she finally gave in and allowed Lawrence to take her home after a carpenter had arrived to repair my front door.

  Mama tried one last parting shot as she left. With hands on hips, she stood on the front porch and declared, “I won’t get a moment’s sleep tonight, thanks to your stubbornness, Anastasia.”

  “I’ll fix you a warm toddy before you go to bed,” said Lawrence. “That will help you sleep.” He looped his arm through hers and urged her down the walkway. Mama continued to glance over her shoulder at me as Lawrence half-dragged her toward his car.

  To my shock, the carpenter handed me a bill once he finished the repairs. “This should go to the police,” I said. “They broke the door.”

  “In the course of doing their job,” he said. “The homeowner is responsible for paying for the repairs.”

  “But—”

  He held up his hand. “Sorry, ma’am. That’s the law. I accept cash, checks, and credit cards.”

  I stormed off to grab my checkbook, muttering a string of words that would shock my sons. “Spader breaks down my door, and I have to pay? How fair is that?” I asked Zack after the carpenter departed, check in hand.

  “You of all people should know life is rarely fair.”

  Once my temper cooled, I slept soundly for the first time since Betty’s murder on Monday, but I’m sure that had everything to do with the warm body snuggled beside me. Unfortunately, a phone call woke me the next morning an hour before the alarm was set to go off.

  I glanced at the clock, groaned, then groaned again as I read the display on the Caller ID. “Good morning, Mama,” I mumbled into the phone.

  “Good. You’re not dead. I was just checking. Maybe now I’ll be able to sleep for a few hours.” She hung up.

  Zack rolled over as I placed the phone back in the cradle. “What did she want at this hour?”

  “To make sure I was still alive.”

  “Thoughtful of her. Should we go back to sleep for an hour or fool around?”

  I snuggled into the warmth of his body. “What do you think?”

  *

  Friday passed without any further murders, swattings, or visits from either Mama or Ira. I’m not sure Mama had given up so much as she’d gone into pout-mode. Every half hour throughout the day I received a call from her, only to have her hang up as soon as I answered and assured her I was still very much alive.

  My phone’s battery was draining power faster than a drought-stricken riverbed sucks up a summer rainstorm. By the sixth call that morning only fifty percent of the charge remained. Luckily, Zack had reminded me to take my charger before I left for work that morning.

  “What’s with all the calls?” asked Cloris. She’d been at a meeting earlier, so I hadn’t had a chance to tell her about the swatting. “You don’t normally receive this many calls in a week.”

  “Mama being Mama.”

  “Do I want more of an explanation than that?”

  “Just her usual craziness. She’s checking to make sure I’m still alive.” I suppose I was lucky she’d waited until five-thirty that morning to begin her barrage of calls.

  “Why wouldn’t you be?”

  “Bring me something chocolate, and I’ll explain.”

  A moment later Cloris stood in the entrance to my cubicle, half a chocolate fudge brownie in her hand. “It’s all I have at the moment.”

  I grabbed the brownie and sunk my teeth into it. Once I washed the mouthful down with a swig of tepid coffee, I caught Cloris up on the events of last evening.

  “Mama in one of her moods does have an upside, though,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Chances are slim she and Lawrence will drop in at dinnertime this evening.”

  *

  Not only did Mama and Lawrence stay away that night, but my evening’s prospects improved even more when I arrived home to find Lucille and Mephisto nowhere in sight.

  “They drove off this morning in a rusted-out circa 1960’s Volkswagen minibus packed with angry-faced octogenarians,” said Zack. “The driver could barely see over the steering wheel. She jumped the curb and sideswiped the oak tree at the end of the driveway.”

  “That would be Harriet Kleinhample and the other Daughters of the October Revolution. If we’re lucky, Lucille won’t return until after we’ve finished dinner.”

  As for Ira, since he didn’t petition very long or very hard the day before, maybe he’d come to the realization that having me and the boys move in with him and his juvenile delinquents wasn’t the best of ideas. I could only hope.

  That night Alex, Nick, Zack, and I enjoyed a semi-peaceful, non-dysfunctional family dinner together, interrupted only every half hour by calls from Mama.

  “What if we don’t answer next time?” asked Nick after I hung up from the second call.

  “Bad idea,” said Alex. “She’ll rush over here to make sure we’re okay.”

  “We could leave the phone off the hook.”

  “She’d only call my cell phone,” I said. “And if I didn’t answer that, she’d call Zack. Putting up with her calls is far better than putting up with her in person right now.”

  “She means well,” said Zack, always the voice of reason.

  “I know.”

&
nbsp; The next time the phone rang, Nick answered. “We’re still alive, Grandma.” Then he hung up on her.

  However, after a day of constant calls, Mama had succeeded in planting a seed of doubt inside my head. Was I taking the events of the last week too lightly? While the boys cleared the table, I expressed my concerns to Zack. “What if I am putting the kids and myself at risk?”

  “If you feel that way, you should take Ira up on his offer.”

  “No one else on the street is moving out.” Then again, no one else was swatted. Why would someone swat us? We weren’t celebrities or gamers, and unless the boys were keeping something from me, a bully hadn’t targeted either of them.

  I took hold of Zack’s hands. “Tell me the truth. Do you believe I’m doing the right thing by staying?”

  He drew me into his arms, placed his index finger under my chin, and tilted my head up until our eyes met. “I think you need to do what you feel is best for you and the boys. If that means staying, I’m going to be right beside you.”

  “You and Sig?”

  “Me and Sig.”

  I thought for a moment. “My gut tells me something odd is going on. It’s all too coincidental, but I don’t believe we’re in any danger.”

  “No Spidey tingles?”

  “None.”

  “Then go with your gut and forget about Flora’s paranoia.”

  *

  When the call goes out for human cloning volunteers, I plan to be first in line. As a single parent of two teenagers, I desperately need a clone, especially on the weekends when my schedule is so jam-packed that I keep a to-do list to juggle my to-do lists.

  This weekend was no exception. On Saturday Nick had a JV soccer game scheduled at ten; Alex’s varsity soccer game began at one. Luckily, the first was a home game, and the second was located in the adjacent town of Cranford. This allowed me just enough time to run to the supermarket between games. My other errands, including a trip to Home Depot for a toilet flushing repair kit and to the AT&T store for cell phones, would have to wait until later that afternoon.

  That left leaf raking for Sunday, rain or shine because if the leaves weren’t piled at the curb before the scheduled pickup on Monday, I’d have to bag them and haul them to the conservation center myself. And that was not a chore I cared to add to my to-do list.

  True to his word, Zack refused to let me out of his sight, accompanying me throughout the day on Saturday. “Don’t you have your own errands to run?” I asked as I froze my patootie off sitting on the soccer field aluminum bleachers.

  “They can wait until during the week when you’re at work.”

  “So you’re playing bodyguard today?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Packing heat?” I whispered softly enough that none of the other parents heard me. Zack went all stony-faced on me. “Okay, I get it. Don’t ask; don’t tell.”

  “Precisely.”

  “New Jersey has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Concealed weapons permits are nearly impossible to obtain.” I mentally placed another checkmark in the Zack as Government Agent column, then added under my breath, “Unless you work for an alphabet agency.”

  He shook his head and laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “I’m stubborn, remember? You said so yourself.”

  He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and drew me closer to him. “I also remember telling you I’m far more stubborn.”

  “Touché.”

  After watching Nick’s team beat Plainfield two-zip, Zack and I headed to ShopRite. Mama called while we stood at the end of a very long checkout line.

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single parent with too many tasks to juggle in too short an amount of time will invariably land in the checkout line where everyone in front of her is either writing a check or counting out dozens of pennies that they then proceed to drop all over the conveyer belt and floor.

  In certain situations one can either go postal or put a twenty-first century spin on Jane Austen. I chose the latter, heaving a huge sigh before answering my phone. “Hello, Mama. I’m still very much alive.”

  “Of course you are, dear. You answered the phone.”

  Her voice was devoid of petulance, and she didn’t hang up immediately after verifying that my heart continued to beat inside my chest. This was certainly a welcome departure from her last three-dozen phone calls. She’d either finally given in, or she wanted something. My money was on the latter.

  “I need you to do me a favor,” she continued.

  TEN

  Bingo! Did I know Mama? You bet. “What sort of favor, Mama?”

  “I don’t remember if I filled Catherine the Great’s food and water bowls before we left this morning. Would you be a dear and run over to the condo to check for me? We won’t be home until late this evening.”

  Great! One more item added to my already too long to-do list. “Where are you, Mama?”

  “Atlantic City.”

  At the end of October Mama and Lawrence certainly weren’t sunning themselves on the sand or wading in the ocean. The background noise told me everything I needed to know. “A casino, Mama?”

  “Don’t worry, dear. Lawrence isn’t Karl. We’re only going to play the nickel slots, and we’ve set a strict limit. No more than a hundred dollars each. Then we’ll have dinner and take in a show.”

  I stared at the sweat beads forming on the packages of frozen spinach in my shopping cart. Two hundred dollars would buy two hundred boxes of store brand frozen veggies, enough to feed my family for months. Lawrence and Mama had never once offered to pay for a meal, much less bring in a pizza. Instead, they constantly dropped by unannounced and mooched off me, even though Mama knew full well the precarious state of my finances.

  In addition, they’d allowed Ira to foot the bill for their wedding and honeymoon, as well as their condo. A vision of an old wine commercial swam in my head but with Lawrence taking the place of the actor who asked, How do you think I got so rich?

  “I don’t have time now, Mama. I’ll run over later this afternoon.”

  “But Catherine the Great might be hungry and thirsty!”

  “She’ll survive a few hours.”

  “Really, Anastasia, I ask so little.”

  I responded by hanging up on her. A moment later my phone rang again. I glanced at the display and let the call go to voicemail, even if it meant Mama might worry I’d been gunned down on the supermarket checkout line.

  “Everything okay?” asked Zack as he unloaded the contents of our cart onto the conveyor belt.

  I frowned at the bags of Halloween candy he grabbed next, wondering how many of the kids who rang my doorbell Monday night would offer a thank-you. Most of them didn’t even live in the neighborhood and few bothered with costumes—another reason I hated Halloween. “Hardly.”

  He raised both eyebrows. “Care to elaborate?”

  I sighed. “Let’s just say everything is status quo in Anastasia World.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Mama needs a favor—for a change.” And I was transforming into a first-class curmudgeon.

  *

  Another soccer game and the purchase of cell phones kept us busy the remainder of the afternoon. My eyes nearly bulged out of my head when the sales clerk tallied up the invoice for the three phones and the monthly plan. “It’s practically a mortgage payment!”

  Thanks to a summer moonlighting job, I’d recently paid off some major credit card debt I’d inherited from Dead Louse of a Spouse. Now I’d once again be carrying a balance and paying an exorbitant interest rate, but what choice did I have?

  I reluctantly signed the cell phone plan agreement, then began to dig around in my purse for my wallet. Zack stayed my hand and waved his iPhone over the scanner. “No,” I said. “I can’t let you do that. Not all three phones.”

  “Too bad. It’s already done.”

  “I’m going to pay you back.”

  “Someday.” />
  “As soon as I can.”

  “We’ll discuss it when you’ve climbed your way out of that financial hole Karl dropkicked you into.”

  Karl. Every time I thought of him and what he’d done to me and our kids, I seethed. Exactly when did the anger stage of grief dissipate? I kept waiting, but I only seemed to grow angrier as time passed.

  However, without Karl’s treachery, I wouldn’t now have Zack in my life. Maybe every black cloud does have a silver lining. Tears sprang to my eyes. If I’d let him, I had no doubt Zack would pay off all my debts. Not that I’d ever take advantage of his generosity in that way. I fully intended to pay him back, no matter how long it took me. I squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”

  *

  We sat in silence for most of the short ride home from the AT&T store. Zack kept his eyes on the road while I stared out the side passenger window. Finally he said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re conflicted.”

  Okay, so maybe he could read my mind. I turned to him. “Go on, Dr. Freud.”

  “You don’t want to become dependent on me or anyone else to solve your problems because putting your total trust in a man is what got you into this situation in the first place.”

  “And yet I’ve allowed just that, both with you and Ira.” I sighed. “I’m a damned hypocrite.”

  “No, you’re a good person thrust into difficult circumstances. There’s nothing wrong with accepting help in order to survive.”

  “Survival is one thing, Zack; cell phones are quite another.”

  “Cell phones are a necessity these days, especially for someone who’s morphed into Westfield’s own version of Jessica Fletcher. Hell, I know law enforcement personnel who come across fewer dead bodies than you do.”

  I raised both eyebrows. “Exactly how many people in law enforcement do you know?”

  “Enough. And it has nothing to do with you thinking I’m a spy. So let’s not even go there. Instead, consider where you’d be if you didn’t have a working cell phone the day Ricardo abducted you.”

  My cell phone had saved my life that day. If my battery had died while I was bouncing around in the locked trunk of Ricardo’s Mercedes, I’d now be decomposing in an unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere. “We certainly wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”