by Regina Duke
Thor nodded at the girls. “That window is looking great. You should get an A in art class.”
Karla tried to maintain a serious expression, but Minion beamed and jumped up and down. “Thanks, Mr. Garrison!”
Karla shushed her, then said with dignity, “Thank you. I’ll tell our instructor you like it.”
Polly paused at Thor’s side. “Thor Baby? Those girls have painted a cemetery on your business window.”
“I know, mom. Community spirit. We’re decorating for Halloween. It was Ashley’s idea.”
“Oh, really? Interesting.”
Thor led the way inside. “She’s going to be huge help with marketing.” He closed the door behind his mother and glanced around.
Britney Beth was shoving a file folder into the cabinet. She turned around, and when she saw Polly, her expression brightened and her drawl thickened. “Polly! You’re here at last. So good to see you.” She rushed forward and planted a chaste kiss on Polly’s cheek. “Come on in. I’ll make you a cup of tea.” She angled toward the sideboard without turning her back on Thor and Polly.
Thor eyed her suspiciously. “What were you filing?”
“Whatever do you mean? I was just tidying up?”
Thor looked around again. “Where is Ashley?”
“Oh, she left.”
“Where’d she go? She knew I was bringing mom from Pueblo.”
Britney Beth assumed an innocent expression. “Well, I showed her a note that someone left for her and she ran out of here and drove off in a big hurry.”
Thor’s gaze narrowed. “What note?”
Britney Beth shrugged and pulled her hands from behind her back. In one of them was the note she’d shown to Ashley.
Thor’s brow furrowed as he took the creamy note paper from her. He read aloud, “Meet me at the house. Life or death.” He waved it in the air. “When did this arrive?”
“Oh, earlier, sometime. I noticed it on the floor by the mail slot. Someone must have dropped it through when I was in the back room.”
Thor’s expression hardened. “Really?” His single word dripped with doubt and sarcasm. He strode across the room and opened the file drawer. In her haste, Britney Beth had not quite pushed the folder she was replacing all the way down. Thor pulled it out and carried it to his desk. He opened it. There lay the note that Julie had left in the figurine for Ashley. Beneath it lay one photocopy. Thor pulled a sheet of paper out of his printer and laid it over the photocopy. Then he took a pencil and scribbled lightly over the top. The imprint of the photocopied note showed up like a negative in the graphite.
“You traced this, didn’t you? You traced it so you could practice Julie’s handwriting and fake that note.”
“Whatever are you talking about? Why would I do that? I told you, someone pushed it through the mail slot.”
“That’s a lie,” said Thor coldly. “That old mail slot doesn’t work. I sealed it when I leased this place. The mailman comes inside to deliver mail.”
Britney Beth’s eyes widened in alarm. “Oh.” She put a finger to her lips. “Well, maybe someone shoved it under the door.”
“This is Colorado, Britney Beth. People here don’t leave spaces under their front doors. Too much cold air and snow. This isn’t a Grade B Hollywood movie. You forged this note to get Ashley out of the way.”
Britney Beth tilted her nose in the air. “So what if I did? I have a right to visit with Polly for a while before that troublemaker shows up. She’s ruining my life!”
“You are the only troublemaker in this vicinity,” growled Thor. “You sent her back to her mother’s house, and probably right into the arms of the villains who’ve been chasing her. If anything happens to Ashley, you will pay for this one big time. Mama, don’t let that conniving little hellcat out of your sight. I’m going after Ashley.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Ashley drove like a bat out of hell to the old brown house on Bondy Lane. It had been a shock seeing her mother’s handwriting on that envelope. The contents of the note played through her mind as she drove.
“Meet me at the house. Life or death.”
Something seemed a little off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe it was the high quality of the stationery. Julie had written to her father on lined notebook paper. If only she’d brought the note with her.
Once she reached Bondy lane, she remembered Thor’s caution on their previous visit. She slowed and drove by the house, trying to look innocent as she passed the property. Like Thor, she peered left and right and checked her rearview mirror, hoping to spot any unusual vehicles or activity. But just like the first time, she saw nothing.
If someone was still watching the house, at least they wouldn’t recognize her new car. Maybe she should do what Thor did and park on the upper side of the block. Then she could approach the house by coming down the hill through the back yard.
Emboldened by her recent experience in stealthiness, she parked in front of the same empty house Thor had targeted. She tried to look nonchalant as she trod the length of the driveway to the back yard gate.
Maybe a realtor sent me to check it out, she thought. Or maybe I’m looking for a lost pet. She ran some possible excuses through her mind as she navigated the leaf-strewn grass, but no one stopped her. No one even peered out a neighboring window to wonder what she was doing there.
The smell of fall was in the air, snow-melt and crushed leaves and moist earth. The rush of autumn scents carried her back to her childhood. As she went through the gate to the top of her mother’s property, she could see the cubbyholes under the bare lilac bushes where she used to hide when Julie was having one of her “bad days.”
For a moment she flashed back to that terrified little girl huddling against the fence beneath the lilacs, and shivered. Looking down at the kitchen door and the storm door at the back of the house, she wondered which entry she should use.
She made an impatient noise and chided herself. “Ash, if Julie is waiting for you, the decent thing is to knock on the kitchen door and wait for her to let you in.”
She adjusted her purse on her shoulder and climbed the three steps up to the kitchen door. She raised her hand to knock on the glass, but before her knuckles landed, she noticed that all the kitchen cupboard doors were open, and the counters were covered with dishes and cans.
She frowned and shaded her eyes against the glass of the kitchen door. The lower cupboards and drawers were all open as well.
For a moment, Ashley thought perhaps her mother had returned to pack up a few more belongings, but then she noticed that two of the drawers were hanging at awkward angles. Julie would never treat her kitchen that way. And two cans had rolled onto the dark stain on the floor.
Whoever did this, it wasn’t Julie.
Ashley realized all of a sudden that she was visible to anyone who came around the corner into the kitchen. With a small gasp, she descended the three steps and backed against the house to let her heart calm down.
If Julie was in the house, she must be having an episode. That might explain why she wasn’t tidying the mess in her kitchen.
In her bright, sunshiny kitchen.
But if she were having an episode, wouldn’t Julie have closed all the blinds the instant she arrived? If she had the time and foresight to leave Ashley a note, surely she would have time to go through the house and pull all the shades.
Curiouser and curiouser.
A dog barked in the yard next door.
The sudden noise alarmed Ashley. She pulled up the storm door and descended carefully into the gloom, easing the door shut as she went. As a precaution, she slipped what remained of the bicycle lock through the latch.
She stopped to marshal her breathing for a few moments as her eyes adjusted to the dark basement. She listened carefully, trying to discern any sounds of movement from above, any indication that Julie was indeed upstairs and waiting for her.
As she listened, something occurred to her. How had Julie k
nown where she could be found? Britney Beth told her she’d found the note slipped through the mail slot. Was that the part that felt off to her? But it was her mother’s handwriting, she was sure of it. She had a very distinctive hand.
She frowned. It should be pitch black down here, but it was not. A stream of light from the kitchen reached to the bottom of the stairs and revealed the same chaos in the basement that she had spied through the kitchen door.
Irritated with herself, she pulled out her cell phone and activated its flashlight app. She stood still near the storm door until she could see well enough not to trip on the layer of clothes and toys strewn in her path. All around her, boxes had been cut open and their contents strewn across the basement. Clothes, linens, old shoes, and toys from Christmases long past formed a musty smelling carpet on the concrete floor.
She moved carefully through the mess. Although some of the items were familiar to her, she felt no nostalgia for the toys, nor did she want to touch any of them. They harked back to the darkest time of her life.
Not even her father’s cancer and death loomed as dark and menacing as those early years in her mother’s house. She panned the light from right to left, looking not for memorabilia but for clues. Papers and magazines, books and computer printouts, all had been glanced at and tossed by someone. Then she saw the book, and her breath caught.
It was the only book she remembered from that time of her life. She wondered what it was doing down here instead of upstairs in her little attic room. Why hadn’t her mother left it there, with her other things? But then, why had she brought any of her toys downstairs, when she had otherwise tried to keep Ashley’s bedroom, superficially at least, as it was the day her father took her away. She would never understand how her mother’s brain worked.
She bent to retrieve the book. It had a bit of mildew on the spine, but other than that, it was still in good shape. Walt Disney’s Bambi. It wasn’t a thick book but it was oversized and contained page after page of colorful cartoon illustrations. Bambi and his mother. Flower the skunk. The whole story laid out for a child, with paragraphs at a reading level far above anything she could have attempted by herself as a young girl. So why did the book loom large in her heart?
The answer came at once. Her father would read it to her at bedtime. And when they moved away, she remembered now, he’d bought a new one to share with her in their new apartment. Her eyes stung with tears as she turned the pages. Half way through the book, a brochure fell out. She caught it before it hit the floor and stared at it with blurred vision. It was a travel brochure touting the touristic wares of Las Vegas, Nevada. But although the book was old, the brochure was new. And someone had circled the name of the New York, New York Casino.
Puzzled by the combination, Ashley was so intent on the mystery, she didn’t even notice when the storm door rattled behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Ashley could not shake the feeling that the new Las Vegas brochure was important. She slipped it into an inside pocket of her long down coat and clutched the book from her childhood close to her heart. At that moment, she heard footsteps upstairs.
Julie must be there after all. Ashley felt a tickle of panic. What if it was someone else?
One way to find out. She waded through the rumpled bed sheets and faded dish towels toward the stairs. She was just about to ascend when she heard more footsteps clumping through the house.
No woman walked like that.
Ashley froze. A millisecond later, she turned off her light and darted under the stairs to the darkest corner.
A distinctly male shadow stood in the kitchen door, blocking the light from upstairs. Half a second later, whoever it was started coming down.
Ashley’s heart pounded against her breastbone. She held the book in front of her like a magic talisman, then realized it would work better as a cudgel. She lifted it high, prepared to bring it down on anyone who approached.
At the very moment she struck, she heard her name called.
“Ashley? Ow! Hey!”
“Thor? What are you doing here?”
“Put that book down and I’ll tell you. Heck of a way to treat your bodyguard.”
“I’m sorry. I came because—”
“Because Britney Beth claimed someone left a note for you and it was in your mother’s handwriting and it told you to come here and meet her at the house.”
“Yes. That’s right. But how—?”
“How did I know what it said? Because Britney Beth wrote it, that’s how. She was trying to hide it when I got back to the office with my mother.”
“No! Why would she do such a thing?”
“Let’s get out of here, okay? Look at this mess. Whoever did this could be back any moment. We can continue this discussion in the safety of my office.”
“Oh, goody,” said Ashley sarcastically. “I can hardly wait to see dear Britney Beth again.” But she followed him up the stairs into the kitchen. “I have a few choice words for her, and I can’t wait to ask your mother—” Thump. She ran into Thor’s solid back.
He had stopped cold in the middle of the kitchen.
Standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room was a grim-faced man in a dark suit and a black cowboy hat. Ashley couldn’t tell if he was the same one she’d spotted across the street from Thor’s office, because all she could focus on was the gun in his hand.
“Stop right there! Federal Marshal!”
Thor raised his hands in the air.
“Come out from behind him, lady.”
Ashley did as she was told. She tentatively raised one hand while still clutching her storybook in the other.
“Did you take that from the basement?”
Ashley nodded.
“Just lay it on the floor, please. Nothing leaves this house.”
Thor cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose we could see your I.D.? Someone has been following my client. I’d like to see your badge, if you don’t mind.”
“Who are you? Her lawyer?”
“No. I’m Thor Garrison. I own a business in town, Thor Security.”
The Marshal lowered his weapon. “Sorry to startle you. We’ve been keeping an eye on this house for a while now.”
“Agnew Spinoza used to live here,” said Thor.
The Marshal nodded. “Exactly.” He eyed Thor suspiciously. “I hope you’re not thinking of involving yourself in that mess.”
“Not at all. May I put my hands down?”
“No. What are you doing here?”
Ashley felt like she was being called on the carpet in the principal’s office. She started to respond, but Thor spoke for her.
“Spinoza’s wife used to know her father. He died of cancer, and she dropped by as a courtesy to tell Mrs. Spinoza the sad news.”
The Marshal’s eyes narrowed. “She can’t talk for herself?”
Ashley piped up, “Like he said, I came to tell her my father was dead. But she wasn’t here and there was a suspicious stain on the kitchen floor. I got scared and asked Mr. Garrison for help.”
For a few seconds, the Marshal stared right through them. At last, he nodded once and made a sound in his chest. “Spaghetti sauce.”
Ashley looked at him askance. “Beg pardon?”
“The stain on the floor. You can’t come back here. It’s too dangerous. Spinoza has enemies. Him and his wife, they don’t live here anymore.”
“Can you tell them my father died?”
The Marshal’s brows met in the middle. “What makes you think—?” But he bit it off and shrugged. “What the hell. I’ll pass a message on to the powers that be. You her daughter?”
Thor stiffened and took a step toward Ashley who nodded curtly.
“I heard she had one, but there was no contact for years.” He grew stern again. “And that’s the way it has to be. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Ashley.
“Don’t come back. Leave the book. You didn’t take anything else out of h
ere, did you?”
Thor spoke for her. “Of course not.”
“Good. Now get out before I think of half a dozen reasons to have you arrested.”
Thor grabbed Ashley’s hand and pulled her toward the front of the house. He moved decisively, and when she tried to speak, he squeezed her hand to silence her. Down the stone steps to the narrow sidewalk they went. He turned left toward the cemetery.
Ashley half jogged to keep up with him. Once they went around the corner and headed up the hill to the street where she’d left her vehicle, she managed to gasp, “Why did you lie to a Federal Marshal?”
“I didn’t.”
“But you said—”
“He never showed us his badge.”
“You mean—?”
“I mean, we have no way of knowing if he’s really a Federal Marshal. Until we find out, I’d rather not tell him everything.”
Ashley’s hands shook as she placed her key in the ignition of the new SUV.
Thor patted her shoulder. “Drive straight back to my office. I’ll be right behind you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She drove like a normal person. That surprised her because her heart was pounding, and the Las Vegas brochure was digging into her ribs, reminding her that she had lied about not taking anything. Did Julie leave it for her to find? But how could that be? Julie didn’t know she’d be coming. She calmed herself. The brochure probably meant nothing. But she wanted to believe that it was a clue.
When she reached Thor Security, Karla and Minion were putting the finishing touches on their artwork. It was almost dark. Karla was cleaning up their paints. Minion was bouncing up and down, reviewing the photos they’d taken of their project.
Thor pulled up behind her and hopped out of his vehicle to come to her door.
Ashley offered him a tight-lipped smile. “The girls have finished the window.” She stepped down out of the SUV.
Minion dashed over to them. “Look, look! We got all our pictures taken. Now all we have to do is make our presentation on the computer. I’m so excited. We’ll put Thor Security all over Facebook. Everyone will want to hire you.”
