Fixing and pricing took longer than I’d thought it would, but at 3:15 p.m. I was waiting impatiently for Juanita Smith, the cleaning lady I’d gotten complaints about, to show up. The impatience seemed to be more because of my mood after my evening with CJ and that I hadn’t come up with any further ideas about Margaret’s death.
Juanita was coming to buy a box full of Pez dispensers I’d listed for a new client on the garage sale site. Last week the client had contacted me, saying she’d decided to sell her collection of Pez dispensers. Most of them had been lumped together in one lot, but we’d kept out a few that had a bit more value. Juanita had snapped them all up. I’d been surprised by the number of people who were interested, and I’d realized I should have sold them in smaller lots, which would have meant more money for my client and me.
The wind gusted hard enough to rattle the windows. But other than that, the house was quiet. The apartment next to mine was empty. Stella was teaching, and the Callahans, who lived across from Stella, were in Florida for the winter. I guessed CJ’s lecture had spooked me a bit, because after I’d gotten home last night, I’d tried to change the Pez exchange meeting place to Dunkin’ Donuts. But since I hadn’t heard from the woman, I waited for her here. The box of Pez sat next to the door. CJ’s baseball bat now leaned against the wall on the other side of the door, just in case, not that I planned on letting her in.
I put on some music and scrubbed the claw-foot tub while I waited. If she didn’t show up, I’d give her one warning. If she did it again to me or any other member, I’d ban her from the site. Sometimes I felt more like a kindergarten teacher trying to control a class full of rowdies than the admin of a Web site. The tub sparkled by the time I finally heard a knock on the door.
I opened the door and smiled at the woman standing in front of me. She had large dark eyes and a bit of an overbite. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Before I had a chance to say a word, she was shoved into me. I stumbled back. A man in a black ski mask, sunglasses covering his eyes, shoved her again. She fell. Her head smacked against my hardwood floor. She didn’t move.
I grabbed the baseball bat. The man wrenched it from my hands and tossed it aside. He pulled another mask out of his coat pocket and yanked it over my head. Backward, so I couldn’t see a thing. He spun me around and propelled me across the apartment. His hand settled between my shoulder blades and he pushed me hard. I staggered forward until my head rammed into a wall. A door slammed behind me.
Chapter 9
I snatched the ski mask off and realized I was in my bathroom. Alone. Only a thin line of light showed under the door. Three giant steps got me across the bathroom. I found the light switch and flipped it on. Instead of trying to get out, I dragged the chest I used as a laundry basket across the door. I slid to the floor and braced my back against the chest. I snatched my phone out of my pocket, then dialed 911.
When I heard CJ yell my name ten minutes later, I thanked the 911 dispatcher and hung up. “In here,” I called. “Give me a minute.”
CJ tried to open the door, but he was stopped cold by the chest.
“Just a minute. I blocked myself in.”
“Good move, Sarah,” he said through the door.
I shoved the chest. It was hard to move, unlike in my panic, when it had slid so easily. After some pushing, I inched it out of the way. CJ threw the door open. He looked me up and down before reaching over and pulling me into his arms. I latched on, burying my head in his chest. His heart pounded, like he’d run all the way over here from the station.
“Did you catch him?” I asked.
I felt CJ shake his head. “He was gone.”
“What about Juanita? Is she okay?”
“The EMTs are with her.”
“Hey, Chuck? Whoa. Sorry, ah, Chief,” Pellner said at the door of the bathroom.
Pellner seemed to be CJ’s go-to guy at the station. CJ pulled away from me. I wanted to reach out and grab him back. I braced myself on the sink instead.
“It’s no problem, Pellner.”
Yep, no problem here. Even though I hated it when people called CJ Chuck. Charles James Hooker would never be Chuck to me.
“What did you need?” CJ asked Pellner.
“The EMTs want to know if Sarah needs them,” he said.
They both turned and looked at me.
“We’d better have them take you to Leahy to look at that bump on your forehead,” CJ said.
I whipped around and looked in the mirror. A small red bump rose over my right eye, probably from when I’d rammed the wall. “It’s fine. I’m not going to the hospital.”
“You might have a concussion or internal bleeding.” CJ planted his hands on his hips.
I touched the bump gingerly. A pain seared through my head that made my eyes water.
“You winced,” CJ said.
“I’ll just have the EMTs take a quick look before they leave.”
I pushed by CJ and went into the living room. A few officers stood around, chatting in low tones. Juanita sat on my couch, with EMTs on either side of her. She looked pale but otherwise okay. It seemed she, too, was refusing to go to the hospital.
“I’m so sorry,” I told Juanita.
“I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said. “I don’t know where he came from. Like thin air. I didn’t hear him on the stairs behind me.”
CJ held up a hand to stop her from talking. He grasped my arm and led me toward my bedroom. I smiled at Juanita as I left the living room. Her brown eyes looked tired and sad.
“What? Why’d you bring me in here?” I asked when we reached my bedroom. “I want to talk to Juanita.”
“We need to take her statement. Check her out.”
“You think she had something to do with this?” I shook my head and winced again. It felt like a spring thunderstorm had taken over my brain. “She was attacked, too.” I replayed the assault over in my mind. It made me shiver. I wanted to pull the throw off my bed and wrap it around me, but I didn’t want to look like a victim.
CJ picked up the throw and settled it around my shoulders, as if he’d read my mind or maybe it was the shivering. “I’ll be right back.” He returned with one of the two female EMTs. “Check her out,” CJ said. “Talk her into a quick trip to the hospital.” He stepped out of the room.
“CJ, wait.”
Instead of answering me, he closed the door. The man could be completely frustrating.
The EMT sat down next to me, and she started a concussion examination. She talked in a calm, soothing voice as she ran through questions and checked me out. She told me what to watch for. “You don’t have signs of a concussion, but you really should go to your doctor. Your blood pressure is slightly elevated.”
“I’m fine. My blood pressure probably has more to do with my ex than anything else.” I flicked my head toward the door and regretted it as another bolt shot around in my head.
As the EMT was leaving the room, CJ and Pellner walked in.
“Pellner will take your official statement,” CJ told me. “We can do it here or down at the station, wherever you feel more comfortable.”
“Here, please,” I said.
CJ left the room and closed the door behind him again.
While my bedroom wasn’t that big, it wasn’t uncomfortable. I gestured toward the only chair. Pellner eyed it.
“It’s sturdier than it looks,” I said.
I had found it on the side of the road last fall and had re-covered the seat with a delicate blue-and-white toile fabric that complemented my blue-and-white comforter. Airy white curtains hung at the single window, which overlooked the town common and the tall white Congregational church. The bare branches of the trees waved frantically in the wind, and the sounds of the church bells seemed more like clangs than rings today.
“You don’t want me to hear what Juanita’s saying, do you?” I asked. “Do you think one of us is lying?”
Pellner sat on the chair and pulled out a notebook. I perc
hed on the end of the bed.
“How do you know Juanita?” Pellner ran a hand through his military-short dark hair.
It was obvious Pellner wasn’t going to answer any of my questions, so I gave up. “She’s a member of the virtual garage sale site I run.”
“So you don’t know her personally?”
“I do now.”
Pellner frowned at me. “Walk me through what happened, starting with why she was here today.”
I scooted back on the bed and leaned back against the headboard, not wanting to admit how much my head hurt or how scared I felt. I briefly described the sale of the Pez.
“Do you have a description of your attacker?”
“He wore a ski mask and sunglasses. So none of his face showed. Maybe a black turtleneck and jeans. Gloves on his hands. It was all a blur.”
CJ opened the door. “Juanita left. You two can come back out.”
Pellner looked relieved. I dropped the throw. I slipped on a black cardigan as we walked back out into the living room.
My front door was open, and Juanita stood on the landing, talking to one of the officers. She was tiny, maybe five-two, but she looked strong.
Juanita gestured back toward the box of Pez, which had been knocked over at some point. Pez dispensers were scattered across the floor. “I guess I can’t take these right now?” she asked.
The officer shook his head.
“Okay,” she said. She mouthed, “I’m sorry,” to me and left.
“So the sale was all arranged,” Pellner said. “What happened when she showed up?” Pellner jerked his head toward where Juanita had just been.
“I opened the door. Juanita stood there. I wasn’t going to let her in,” I said. I glanced at CJ as I said this, my voice a bit more defensive than I meant it to be. I gestured to the box the Pez had been in by the door. “I left the box right by the door so I could just hand it to her. The guy forced his way in, knocking Juanita out in the process.” I emphasized the word knocking a little more than normal. But I had to admit that doubts about Juanita’s innocence in this whole episode had already crept into my brain. I tried to remember who’d recommended Juanita join the group. Nothing came to me. I’d have to see if I could track the information down on the virtual garage sale site later.
“Did he have a baseball bat with him?” Pellner asked. He pointed to the bat on the floor over by my grandmother’s oak rocking chair.
I felt my face warm. “No. I stuck it behind the door for protection.”
CJ looked at the wooden bat. “Is that my bat?”
I nodded. “I just found it in a box in the storage space under the eaves.” After our divorce last year I’d kept thinking we’d finally sorted out who had whose stuff. But then something like the baseball bat would turn up and have to be returned.
I filled them in on the rest of what I knew. Pellner took notes. CJ listened to the whole thing, careful to stay in the middle of the room so he didn’t whack his head on the slanted part of the ceiling. I kept waiting for CJ to lecture me or tell me, “I told you so.” He didn’t. But he had to be thinking it.
I looked at CJ. “Maybe you should check the apartment next door. It’s still empty, as far as I know. Maybe the guy hid in there and popped out when Juanita showed up. But why would he do that?”
CJ and Pellner exchanged glances but didn’t answer.
“Pellner, will you go check it out?” CJ asked.
Pellner disappeared through my front door.
“You need to see if anything is missing,” CJ said to me.
I looked around the living room. Nothing seemed to be out of place, but everything seemed a bit messier than normal.
Pellner came back in. “It’s locked. But the lock is flimsy. Wouldn’t take much to open it.”
I wondered if he had.
I went into the kitchen with CJ and Pellner, a space where three was definitely a crowd. My computer wasn’t on the small kitchen table and the vintage tablecloth was askew. “My computer’s gone. Please tell me someone moved it.”
“No one moved it,” CJ said.
I wanted to stomp my foot or kick something or someone, like the jerk who’d taken my computer. I needed it for work. I could use my phone for lots of it, but it was easier to use the computer. Plus, I had files I kept of people who had complained or broken the rules. And I had tons of pictures stored on it. I wondered when I’d last backed the thing up. Maybe everything was accessible instead of gone.
“Is there anything on it that someone would want it for?” CJ asked.
“Nothing I can think of. It’s more the inconvenience and expense of replacing it if you guys don’t find it.”
“Your renters’ insurance should cover it,” Pellner said.
My nonexistent renters’ insurance. But I didn’t want to admit that in front of CJ. “The deductible is probably more than the computer.” I walked into my bedroom, CJ and Pellner in tow. I picked up my purse and looked through it. “My credit cards are all here. I don’t think I had any cash, or at least not much. Why wouldn’t he grab my credit cards?”
“I don’t know. You keep saying ‘he.’ Are you sure it was a man?”
I thought for a minute, going back over what had happened. “I just assumed it was, but I don’t know that for sure.” I opened the top drawer of my dresser. The small amount of cash I kept there was missing. There was an empty space in the back corner of the drawer and it left an empty place in my heart. “I had about forty dollars in cash in the drawer. It’s gone.”
“Anything else, Sarah?” CJ asked.
I looked him in the eye. “My wedding ring.”
Chapter 10
Pellner looked back and forth between CJ and me then left the room in a hurry. Maybe the fact that my wedding ring was gone was a sign my relationship with CJ was over. CJ was only here because I was one of the townsfolk he had to protect. I moved to follow Pellner into the living room.
“Sarah, wait,” CJ said. “I’m sorry.”
“Because I’m one of the townsfolk or because of us?” I asked. The two steps separating us had never felt farther.
“Chief?” Pellner called from the living room.
CJ glanced toward the door and then back at me before he walked out of the room.
I pulled my cardigan tighter around me and followed him.
“Can you find someplace to go for a couple of hours?” CJ asked me. “This is still a crime scene.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Where should I go?” I thought about Seth, but he was probably at work. Why did I think of Seth before friends like Carol or Laura?
“You can come to my place.” Stella stood in the doorway. Her dark green eyes stood out against her paler than usual olive skin. “And then you can explain what’s going on.”
“I’ll explain now, because they”—I cocked my thumb at CJ and Pellner—“want to go through the empty apartment.”
“Yes, with your permission, Stella, we’d like to take a look around,” Pellner said.
Pellner and Stella had known each other since high school. They’d even dated at one point, but Stella hadn’t wanted to settle down as Mrs. Scott Pellner and had pursued an opera career instead. Her own demons had eventually chased her back here to Ellington.
“Can I at least grab my purse?” I asked CJ after Stella led Pellner over to the empty unit.
CJ nodded and followed me into my bedroom. I was beginning to feel like a suspect. CJ leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded, watching me. He didn’t move when I picked up my purse. Now for the lecture. I waited. But instead of a lecture, he reached out and trailed a finger down my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Then he turned and left.
Sorry for what? I wondered.
* * *
I ended up going to the doctor. The bump on the head and the headache scared me enough that I let Stella drive me over. Living alone made me wonder what would happen if I keeled over in the middle of the night. How long
would it be before anyone noticed I was missing? One thorough exam, a few hours, and a scan or two later, I walked out with a clean bill of health. Then we went to a big-box store, and I bought a new computer.
An hour later Stella and I sat on her couch, each with a glass of wine, and with the remnants of a big salad Stella had thrown together on the coffee table.
“Did Pellner find anything interesting in the empty apartment?” I asked.
“Not unless you find dust bunnies interesting. I need to find a new tenant.”
“So it didn’t look like anyone had been in there?”
“I guess not. Wouldn’t you have heard someone? Not that I don’t love this place, but the walls aren’t that well insulated.”
“I had the music up, and I might have been singing . . . just a little.” We grinned at each other. Stella liked to drag me to karaoke with her at an Irish pub and restaurant called Gillganins. But my voice, while usually on key, was no match to hers. My smile changed to a frown.
“What?” Stella asked.
“I wonder if the attack today had anything to do with Margaret’s death.”
“Why would you think that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really have a reason. Just a thought.” I stood and stretched. “I’m tired. I think I’ll head up to bed.”
“I’ll walk you up,” Stella said.
When we got upstairs we decided to go through the empty apartment just to double-check. All the windows were locked, and no one leaped out of the closets at us. Stella helped me clean up my apartment, too. We put all the Pez dispensers back in the box and cleaned off the fingerprint powder.
“Do you want me to stay?” Stella asked.
“No, but thanks. I’ll be fine.” I think I even sounded like it might be true.
* * *
Tuesday afternoon I trudged up the stairs after another meeting with Laura about the February Blues garage sale. She’d asked about the bump on my head, which now was little enough that it was more like a pimple than a bump. But my head still ached. The thought of stretching out on my couch kept me moving up the stairs. I was almost to the top when a man came out of the apartment next to mine, dressed in jeans, a leather jacket, sunglasses, and a Red Sox baseball cap. I opened my mouth to scream and turned to run.
All Murders Final! Page 6
