Uncommon Grounds

by Sandra Balzo

  Kids with firecrackers?

  Or a militia with guns on night maneuvers? Seemed nuts, but then there was a lot of that going around.

  The bell above the door tinkled. I wasn’t done with Henry, but Caron was in the back so I had to get up to wait on the newcomer. I rang up the sale and finally the customer was gone. Henry was getting up to leave, too.

  “Henry,” I called.

  He stopped.

  “The last time you told me the kids were making noise down there—do you remember what night that was?”

  “Certainly,” he said as he carefully placed his hat on his head. “Thursday night. It’s always Thursday night.”

  And today was Thursday.

  Finally, 5:00 arrived. I pulled off my apron, pulled on my coat and sped home. I was too tired to think about what I was doing. I just hoped it was the right thing. Or at the very least, not the wrong thing.

  There was a message from Sarah on voice mail commanding me to call the moment I got home to give her an update. I ignored it for once.

  I hadn’t forgotten Pavlik was coming by, but I hoped to have him in and out in an hour so I could prepare for the rest of my evening. While I waited, I dug through a box of mittens and scarves in the basement and in triumph pulled out a red-trimmed navy ski mask. It would do.

  The doorbell rang a little before 7:00 and I went to the front window and peeked out. Sure enough, it was Pavlik. I must have caught him on his day off. He had on jeans with a blue sweater and a buttery leather jacket.

  I dropped the ski mask on the table by the window and went to the door. I had no intention of mentioning night maneuvers to Pavlik. His eyes were a clear, cool gray tonight. A good sign, I thought, and I hoped to keep them that way.

  I invited him in and asked him to sit down. Frank lumbered in and settled at his feet, not even treating him like a visitor any longer. I wished I was as calm.

  Pavlik gave him a scratch. “You said you needed to talk to me?” He was talking to me, presumably, even if he was paying more attention to Frank.

  “I saw the film of the First National Bank robber on the news last night and I recognized him.”

  “I’m not surprised. He was your L’Cafe technician.”

  I must have gaped, because he went on. “Oh, I didn’t put it together until I looked back at the tape from the first robbery again. Then I finally realized I’d seen him before.”

  Do you think he might have mentioned it to me? “Ed was installing the loaner when you came to the store the second time,” I remembered.

  Pavlik nodded. “Remember, he didn’t have plates on his truck? These guys don’t believe they have to license their cars. After all, the Constitution doesn’t say so. Of course, the fact that cars didn’t exist at the time the Constitution was written doesn’t affect their God-given right to drive one.”

  “Of course,” I said, “and he asked for cash instead of a check.”

  “Cash can’t be traced, obviously, or taxed.”

  Like the Harpers’ income. My mind was racing. “So you’re sure he was tied to one of these anti-government groups?”

  “Domestic terrorist, really. And yes, I’m sure. The Feds had been watching him and they found plans for pipe bombs and nerve gas in his apartment printed right off the Internet. He’d been hanging out at some of the survivalist home pages on the net.”

  Okay, now to take it the next step. “And David and Patricia?”

  Pavlik stood up and walked to the front window. “I don’t know, but it’s certainly possible they’re part of the group. Mrs. Harper is from Chicago where the group is based.”

  As is Pavlik, I thought.

  “And the tax evasion points to it obviously.” He picked up the ski mask and dangled it off one finger. “I know this is Wisconsin, but isn’t it a little warm for this?”

  “It’s my son’s,” I said, snatching it. “He’s away at school and I’m sorting through the things he left behind. I must have carried it from the closet when I came over to see who was at the door.”

  Pavlik was just staring at me.

  “When you rang the bell,” I added, knowing full well I was explaining way more than what a ski mask, even in April, called for. “Now where did I put those matching gloves?” I said, looking around in an addled housewife kind of way. I figured Pavlik would buy that, given his opinion of me. I tossed the cap at the couch and turned back to him. “Oh, well, I’ll find them later.”

  “Sure you will,” Pavlik said. He looked like he was trying not to laugh.

  I’d fix that. “So Ed killed Patricia.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “He obviously had the know-how.”

  “But you used the machine after he installed it,” he pointed out.

  “He could have come back.”

  “When? How would he have gotten in?”

  I had been thinking about that when I wasn’t babbling about ski masks. “It must have been Sunday.”

  Pavlik was looking at me like I was nuts, but then I was used to that.

  “Tony Bruno, the dentist next door?”

  He nodded.

  “He spoke to Ed the day he installed the loaner. Kidded him about being back so soon.”

  “So? He saw him on Friday when he installed the first machine.”

  “No,” I insisted. “He didn’t. Tony’s office is closed on Fridays, so he and his family can go up north. They come back before mass on Sunday. He must have seen him then.”

  Pavlik shook his head and pulled out his notebook. “Okay, so I’ll talk to Dr. Bruno. But even if Groschek was there, it doesn’t get Harper off the hook. Somebody had to let him in, and it’s possible Harper was up to his ears in this stuff. And somebody had to get Mrs. Harper to use the machine. That could only be her husband—with or without Groschek. Besides, we know Mr. Harper was there. Your friend Pete saw his car.”

  But I was thinking about David and Patricia’s argument on Friday night. I filled Pavlik in.

  “So?”

  “So that was the night the first robbery took place and the surveillance video was shown on the news. Maybe Patricia recognized Ed.”

  “Did she give any indication that she knew him when he installed the machine?”

  That stopped me short. “No. No, she didn’t. Although she certainly wasn’t very friendly. I just chalked it up to Patricia being a snob.” Oops, speaking ill of the dead again.

  Pavlik grinned.

  I felt myself flush. He laughed and shoved his dang notebook and pen back in his jacket pocket. “I have to meet someone. Is there anything else?”

  Yeah. Who are you meeting? But I didn’t ask. After all, I had plans for tonight, too. I just said no, and walked him to the door.

  As I opened it, he hesitated and looked down at me. “You stay out of this—I’ll check it out. But I want to make sure you understand that implicating Groschek in Mrs. Harper’s murder doesn’t exonerate Mr. Harper. And,” he touched my nose with his index finger, “it also doesn’t mean that he didn’t commit suicide.”

  He turned and walked down the sidewalk to a motorcycle waiting at the curb. He pulled on his helmet and roared off on his big black Harley hog. Hot damn.

  Chapter Twenty

  So, does one take one’s handbag when one goes surveilling?

  I was willing to bet Miss Manners didn’t have an answer for that one. I opted to leave the handbag at home and slid my driver’s license into my pocket. That way they could identify the body.

  I waited in the minivan in the driveway, ski mask in hand, and sure enough, at 11:00 p.m. the parade from Christ Christian commenced down Poplar Creek Drive just as it had last Thursday.

  Four...five...six cars, each with more than one person in it, best as I could tell. I let the last car get well past before I backed out and followed.

  We were all heading downstream toward Brookhill Road. If my hunch was right, the cars would pull in...

  Sure enough, the first car took a right just past
Brookhill, turning off Poplar Creek Drive onto a service road. The rest of the cars followed, but I continued on, turning right at the next driveway, which led to Brookhills Senior Manor. Poplar Creek ran directly behind the Manor’s back parking lot, separated by a barbed wire fence.

  I slid my ignition key under the mat so I wouldn’t lose it and got out of the van to look around. All was quiet. I didn’t even see Henry, my favorite insomniac. Pulling apart the two strands of barbed wire, I ducked through and skittered down the muddy hill toward the creek. Although I couldn’t see in the dark, it sounded like it was still running high and fast.

  I planted myself behind a wild honeysuckle bush and tried to pull down my ski mask. That’s when I remembered I’d left it in the van. Damn. Maybe this was like lying. You got better at it, the more you did it.

  I was sort of hoping I wouldn’t get the chance.

  I settled in to wait. And wait. Geez, how long does it take to get out of cars and walk a block or two? What were they doing? Handing out name badges? Assigning seats for the ride back? It was probably all of fifteen minutes, but it seemed a lot longer sitting there on the ground imagining field mice crawling up my pants leg. Not that I would notice, since my legs were asleep. And my butt was frozen.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. In fact, maybe this was really stupid.

  But something was going on down here and whatever it was, I knew David had participated last Thursday because his car had passed my house. Of course, it also could have been Sam driving the Mercedes since, according to Eric, he had spent quality time at Poplar Creek, too.

  But somehow I doubted kids carpooled to makeout spots. Then again, these days...

  I heard a noise downstream. The wind carried the sound of underbrush crackling, of people walking towards me. Having seen enough TV shoot-em-ups to know that the good guy should never stick his head up or somebody will try to blow it off, I tried to peer through the shrub. Since the honeysuckle hadn’t leafed out yet, it was fairly easy to see through. That might work both ways, I supposed.

  I could barely make out several small spots of light. Flashlights, maybe. And voices. Henry was right. They were awfully noisy. Either they didn’t realize their voices carried, or they didn’t care. I thought I recognized a couple of them—maybe Rudy’s or Way’s—but that was likely wishful thinking. The sounds just seemed to tumble over each other on the wind.

  When the lights stopped moving, I crept out from behind the honeysuckle and made for a tree, ten yards ahead. From there, I crawled forward on my belly until I was less than a half a football field away from the group.

  I had to admit I was feeling pretty cool. Like when I played Army in the backyard with Danny Danielli when we were eight. I could still only see an occasional figure in the moonlight, and I strained to see what they were wearing.

  After all, militias wear fatigues right? Teenagers wear...just about anything. I crept a little closer into the moon shadow of another tree. Something about the way the figures were moving made me think they were adults—and older adults at that.

  Yeah, Maggy. Brookhills’ senior community was out for maneuvers. Still I was certain now that these weren’t kids, but men, and that they were carrying—

  Pop! A splinter of wood exploded from the tree trunk next to me. Had that been a gunshot? In Danny Danielli’s backyard, the guns went “bang” not—

  Pop!

  Still, “pop” worked just fine.

  Damn, someone was shooting at me. I attempted to become one with the earth—but not in the Zen kind of way— and scutter away like a crab. A hand grabbed my leg.

  I almost peed in my pants. I turned and another hand went over my mouth and a body covered mine, flattening me even further into the grass and mud. I pulled at the thumb of the hand over my mouth like Gary had shown me in self-defense class, trying to break the hold. I wasn’t having much success, so I sunk my nails in and tried again.

  Bingo—the hand loosened and I sucked in air to scream.

  My attacker shoved my face into the mud to stop me and that was when I smelled it. Mint Crest. And the arm holding me down was encased in what had been buttery leather, but was now buttery leather covered in mud.

  “Will you shut up?” Pavlik snarled in my ear. I nodded the best I could and he let go of the back of my head. He didn’t get off me, though.

  “What the—” I started.

  “Not a word,” he said, and a finger waved in front of my face. I nodded again. “Just follow me. You got it?”

  His face was next to mine, but I couldn’t see his eyes in the dark. I was kind of glad about that.

  Pavlik slid off my back and slipped behind the trunk of the tree. I followed, trying not to get panicky just because I couldn’t get a lungful of air into my squished chest.

  Another “pop!” or maybe it was a ping. Either way, I looked at Pavlik. Maybe he wasn’t going to hurt me, except for my feelings, but the fact remained that somebody was shooting at us.

  A ping, a definite ping, closely followed by a pop. I dove onto Pavlik, practically climbing him. Could a bullet go through both of us?

  “They’re going to kill us,” I whimpered from somewhere in his jacket. I felt rather than saw him shake his head.

  No? They weren’t going to kill us? Then why bother shooting at us? Seemed sort of silly, didn’t it?

  I pulled back and looked at him and his eyes shifted to the tree in front of us. There was a round cardboard disk on the side away from us, the side closest to the shooters.

  “What...” Pop! and the disk spun wildly. It was a target. I’d stumbled into a firing range.

  Pavlik crooked his finger at me and crawled away.

  I followed. When we got to the fence, he separated the strands of wire and let me crawl through first, then he followed.

  When he straightened up on the other side, he was pretty ticked. “What the hell did you think you were doing out there? I knew you were up to something when I saw that stupid ski mask.”

  He walked as he ranted. “Silly me, I hoped, I hoped that it was something as simple as a train heist. But noooo...”

  I trailed after him. “I heard that people were hanging out at the creek on Thursday nights,” I tried to explain, “and last week I saw a bunch of cars heading in this direction. What with all the militia talk...”

  He turned and I nearly ran into him. “Didn’t we just talk about this? Didn’t I just tell you to let me handle it? If you had an idea, scatterbrained though it might be, you should have—”

  Scatterbrained, huh? “Why would I ever tell you anything, when I know you’re going to make me feel like a fool?”

  Pavlik looked hurt. “I listened to your traffic light thing. And even about the possibility of Groschek sabotaging the espresso machine.”

  “Sure,” I said as we reached my car. Pavlik’s Harley was parked next to it. “But only after I had the facts to back them up. Look at the sugar packets. You said Gary and I should have told you, but you know,” I poked him in the chest, “you would have pooh-poohed it.”

  He looked at his coat and then at my finger. “ ‘Poohpoohed it?’ ”

  “Of course. Gary’s a good cop, but you even have him spooked.”

  Maybe poking Pavlik hadn’t been such a good idea. He’d noticed the mud that caked his sleeves. Lucky for him, my body had protected the rest of him.

  He brushed at the mud. “Listen, I’m not going to discuss this with you. Donovan’s a big boy, he doesn’t need someone to protect him. As for you, I’m starting to wonder.”

  I had pulled open my car door and was searching under the mat for my ignition key. “Wonder about what?”

  “About whether you should be put away for your own protection. One minute you’re a ditz, the next minute you’re coming up with something that actually makes sense.”

  Ditz? I was a ditz? I opened my mouth and then slapped it shut. Maybe he had a point. I had to admit I certainly wasn’t operating on all cylinders these days.

/>   “You could have been killed out there,” Pavlik was saying. “These people are dangerous.”

  “Then why don’t you arrest them?” One of my rare moments of lucidity, apparently. “They’re shooting guns out there and you’re the sheriff.”

  And they almost shot the sheriff. But they did not shoot the deputy. I giggled to myself. So much for lucidity.

  Pavlik reached under the mat and came up with the key. “There’s an on-going federal investigation.”

  I moved to take the key, but he didn’t let go. “I’m not involved in it, and you’re not involved in it, so let’s say we just let the Feds do their jobs.”

  “So they must be after them for something more than gun charges, right?”

  “That’s all I’m going to say,” Pavlik said flatly. “And truthfully, I don’t know much more.”

  “Not that you would tell me if you did,” I said, plucking my key out of his hand.

  “You’re damn right about that,” he said, pulling on his helmet and straddling his bike. “But what I will tell you is not to say a word about this.”

  He shook that finger in my face again. “Not what you saw tonight, not what I told you about the investigation. Nothing. Or I will not hesitate to tell the Feds you need to be put in

  protective custody. And then where will your business be?” Good question. “One other thing,” he said as he started his bike. “Next

  time you try to disguise yourself, you might want to change clothes. You smell like a coffee pot.” Oh.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next morning, Sarah called me at the store in a panic. “Langdon says we can’t bury David in hallowed ground, because everyone thinks it’s a suicide.” The Brookhills Observer had come out yesterday, making it exceedingly clear in its convoluted way that the authorities were considering David’s death a suicide.

  “But if Langdon is so sure David didn’t—”

  Sarah cut me off. “The man doesn’t have any balls. He won’t stand up to the elders. Maggy, you have to do something!”