by Lauren Carr
“Are you Matheson?” she asked between licks of ice cream as she made her way to them.
“Depends on who’s asking?” Chris asked from where he stood with his fingers laced on top of his head while the officer examined his identification.
“Lieutenant Cameron Gates.” She gestured for the uniformed officers to allow her to take care of Helen and Chris. “But don’t go anywhere. Let me find out who was shooting at who.” She turned back to the visitors. “I told you to wait for me.”
“Too late.” Chris gestured at the ice cream cone. “Sorry to interrupt your ice cream break. Maybe if you had waited until after lunch for your dessert you would have gotten here before the shooting started.”
“I didn’t have breakfast. Some hog ate all of the Krispy Cremes while I was booking a cold-blooded killer, who it took me two days to track down.” Cameron paused to sniff his shirt. Her eyes narrowed. “Do I smell Tracy’s breakfast casserole on you?”
“Yes,” Helen said. “And it was to die for.”
“It’s the sausage. She gets it fresh, never frozen, from a local farmer in—”
“Excuse me,” Chris interjected, “but we just got shot at by a homicidal geriatric phony pacifist, who’s now running around the city with a gun.”
Cameron looked him up and down while licking her ice cream cone. “A pacifist with a gun?” She looked down at Sterliing, who was focused like a laserbeam on the ice cream. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
“If she gets off for murder, we’re handing her over to the FTC,” Helen said.
“Those people don’t mess around,” Cameron said. “I guess your questioning of the witness didn’t go well.”
“It turns out that she’s a missing suspect,” Helen said.
“Who was supposed to have been killed forty years ago,” Chris said.
“If she faked her death forty years ago, how old is she?” The corners of Cameron’s mouth curled upward. She peered at Chris while taking a generous lick of her ice cream.
“Okay, I’ll admit it, an old woman got the jump on us,” he said.
Sterling uttered a long mournful groan of shame.
Cameron spun around to the uniformed officers. “Okay, we’ve got an armed murder suspect on the run. She’s seventy years old, so she couldn’t have gotten far, but she could be anywhere.”
“That’s not a problem.” Chris knelt to hold the painting smock to Sterling’s snout.
The German shepherd had five people following him when he ran out of the alleyway onto Bates Street. On the corner, Sterling stopped to sniff the sidewalk before zig-zagging across the street and down several blocks.
“She couldn’t have gotten far.” Helen gasped while running as fast as she could to keep Chris and Sterling in sight while they crossed a street into a residential area made up of older homes.
“She’s heading toward the freeway,” Cameron called from behind them before radioing into dispatch to send units on ahead.
Chris focused on keeping Sterling in his sight. The dog seemed to have a strong scent. He only stopped occasionally to zig-zag from one side of the sidewalk to the other before picking up his pace. Reminding himself that Patricia Baker was close to seventy, Chris found it hard to believe that she had been able to outrun them as far and as fast as she did.
Desperation was her fuel.
Eventually, the older residential area gave way to a sidewalk next to a busy four-lane freeway with fast moving traffic. Upon hitting the sidewalk, Sterling came to a halt and barked.
Chris rounded the corner in time to see Patricia Baker aim her gun at the German shepherd. He grabbed Sterling by the collar, yanked him back, and spun around to cover him as Patricia pulled the trigger.
Chris felt the hot searing pain of the bullet rip through his sleeve and graze his upper arm. He fell back behind the cover of a parked car and pinned Sterling against the fender with his legs.
Her weapon poised to fire, Helen stepped in front of them. “Drop it, Patricia! It’s over!”
Before Patricia could re-aim, Cameron Gates fell into position behind the old woman. “Police! Drop your weapon! We have you surrounded.” The two uniformed officers joined the detectives.
Patricia took in the growing number of officers surrounding her.
“It’s over, Patricia!” Chris called to her while grasping his wounded arm. “The only way out of this is to give yourself up!”
“I didn’t mean to kill him!” Patricia yelled above the rushing traffic only a couple of feet away. “His wife was leaving. We’d been together for years--even before he’d married her. He only married her because his father ordered him to. The joining of two dynasties. But when I found out that she was leaving him. I thought, ‘It’s fate! Now it’s our turn for us to be together!’”
“But then suddenly, he insisted on stopping Mercedes from leaving,” Chris said. “He was getting dressed to go after her.”
“It was all a blur. One minute we were making love. The next, he was putting on his pants to go to her. Next thing I knew, he was on the floor with blood everywhere. I had the champagne bottle in my hand. I loved him and I killed him. I went to get help. That was the worst thing I could have done. Things got so messed up after that.”
“If you do the right thing, give yourself up, and tell the truth about what happened,” Helen said, “then everything will be straightened out.”
“You mean like the truth will set you free?” Patricia threw back her head and laughed. “Don’t you see? I did tell the truth. They said they’d take care of everything. It would be all right, but it wasn’t all right. The truth made me a prisoner of our authoritarian do-do system. The only one I can count on to take care of me is myself.”
With that, Patricia Baker stepped off the curb into the path of a speeding city bus.
Chapter Thirty
After multiple statements and interviews, the Pennsylvania State Police released Chris and Helen. Anxious to return home, Chris only permitted the EMTs to put a small butterfly stitch on his arm.
They returned home to Harpers Ferry without stopping. Stunned by Patricia Baker’s suicide, they rode in silence except for an occasional assurance from one to the other that they were not to blame for her death.
They were so exhausted by the time they reached Jefferson County that Chris drove past the state police barracks where they had left Helen’s vehicle to take her to her house on the mountain. The hour was too late for them to check in on the girls who were still staying with Reverend Ruth.
The search for Thomas Clarke ended when Chris pulled his truck into Helen’s driveway to find his SUV parked next to an old sedan.
Chris parked his truck behind the sedan. “Maybe you should count to ten before—”
The warning to take a deep breath was of no use. Helen threw open the passenger door, jumped out, and ran into the house.
“Damn!” Chris slid out of the driver’s seat.
Sterling jumped into the seat that Chris vacated and pressed his snout against the console to turn on the radio.
Chris found Helen in her master bedroom.
Naked, Thomas and a bleached blonde struggled to untangle themselves from the sheets and comforter while Helen berated them for defiling her bed.
“Are you kidding me!” Helen threw articles of clothing at them. “You brought a bimbo into my home to hook up in my bed!”
“Is that a real gun she’s wearing on her belt?” the woman shrieked while groping for some clothes to cover her nude state.
“Of course, it’s real!” Helen said. “Didn’t he tell you? I’m a cop!”
Clutching clothes to cover herself as best she could, the woman scurried from the room as Chris entered.
“How could you do this to me?” Helen punched Thomas in the shoulder.
In the process of stepping into his pants, he lost
his balance and fell onto the bed. With his feet tangled up in his pantlegs, he slid onto the floor. “What’s the big deal?” He clawed at the bed to make his way back onto his feet. “You’re marrying Saint Chris. I thought you’d want me to move on.”
“Not in my bed! Chris and I haven’t even made love in this bed.”
“I know what this is really about.” With a chuckle, Thomas puffed out his chest. “You need both of us to make you feel fulfilled.” He dropped his trousers to the floor to reveal himself in his full glory.
“Did you move on before or after you shot up Chris’s farm?” Helen asked.
“Wait a minute!” Thomas held up his hands. “I didn’t take any shot at anyone!”
Still struggling to put on her clothes, the woman reappeared in the doorway. “Excuse me, but there’s a truck with a dog listening to Tim McGraw blocking my car.”
“You told Sierra that Chris could burn in hell!” Helen said.
“I never said I was going to send him there.”
Chris agreed. “Just like I never said I would step aside.”
“Can someone please let me out?” the woman asked.
Her index finger aimed at his chest, Helen advanced on Thomas. “Where were you yesterday afternoon between noon and one o’clock?”
Thomas backed away from her. “I was enjoying a pleasant afternoon doing what I do best with Kimberly.” Thomas gestured at the blonde who was gazing pleadingly at Chris.
“Candy,” the woman corrected him. “Give me the keys and I’ll move the truck myself.”
“Candy,” Thomas said. “Then her roommate came home—”
“Which is where I really want to be right now,” Candy said.
“—and so we moved the party over here. Tell them, Cindy.”
“Candy,” Chris corrected him.
“Candy,” Thomas said. “Tell them what we were doing all yesterday, last night, and today.”
Candy looked at Helen’s gun. “I’ll tell you whatever you want me to say if you’ll tell the dog to move his truck.”
After moving his truck to allow Candy to make her escape, Chris waited with Sterling while Thomas gathered his belonging—many from the yard after Helen had tossed them off the deck.
Furious, Helen remained inside the house. Chris hoped she didn’t follow through with her threat of setting fire to her bed. She seemed to comprehend his point about her home insurance not covering home fires in the event of arson.
Chris waited for Thomas to collect his things and climb into his SUV before approaching him.
“I’m not going to hunt you down to shoot you if that’s what you’re worried about,” Thomas said with a growl.
“No, you’re a lover. Not a fighter.”
“Whatta ya want, Matheson?”
“I’m marrying Helen.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I did hear you when you were talking about Sierra needing her family back,” Chris said. “She’s a good kid. She deserves a family.”
“But you’re not honorable enough—”
“You’re a smart man, Thomas,” Chris said. “You know your family will never go back to the way it was before, whether I step aside or not. Too much has happened between you and Helen.”
Thomas stared straight ahead.
“But Sierra can have a family,” Chris said. “We love her, and she loves us. Helen and I are going to get married and Sierra will be part of a loving home.”
Thomas’s head jerked around. He fired off a glare at Chris.
“But, no matter what happens, you’re still Sierra’s father,” Chris added quickly. “Helen and I getting married isn’t going to change that.”
Thomas’s eyes softened.
Chris held a business card out to him. Thomas dragged his eyes to look at it. Without touching it, he asked, “What’s that?”
“My cell phone number. If you ever want to take some real steps toward bridging your relationship with Sierra, then I’ll be your advocate. Give me a call.”
Thomas hesitated before taking the card. “You’d go to bat for me with Sierra?”
“Definitely.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“No,” Chris said. “I’ll do it for Sierra.”
It was after midnight before Chris got home. With a yawn, he parked between Elliott’s SUV and his mother’s blue Malibu. Heading straight for his food bowl, Sterling galloped ahead of him onto the porch and ran inside as soon as Elliott, weapon secured in the waistband of his trousers, opened the door to greet them.
“Well, this was one messed-up case,” Elliott muttered.
“You didn’t have to witness a seventy-year-old woman stepping out in front of a bus.” Chris made his way into the kitchen where Doris was serving up devil’s food cake onto two dessert plates.
She stopped with the serving knife in mid-air when she saw the bullet hole and blood on his shirt sleeve. “What happened to you?”
“What does it look like?” Chris showed her the hole in his shirt. “I got shot.”
She examined the wound sealed with butterfly stitching. “Are you okay?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I got shot.”
Doris gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Will cake make it better?”
“It won’t hurt.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, Mom.”
“I wasn’t offering. I was just curious.” With a wicked grin, she held out a plate past him to Elliott.
“I should have known.” Chris took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and sat at the breakfast bar. “How’s Matthew?” He twisted the cap off the bottle.
“He went home today,” Doris said while taking a third plate from the cupboard. “His mother won’t allow him to help you work on the barn.”
“Do you blame her?”
“Are you sure this woman was Patricia Baker?” Elliott asked.
Chris took a long gulp from the bottle. “She confessed to killing George Livingston.” He twisted in his seat to look over at the line of dog beds resting along the French doors.
Finished with his late dinner, Sterling curled up on his bed. Missing her favorite German shepherd, Thor made a bed between his front paws and allowed him to use her body for a cushion on which to rest his head.
“How’s Sadie?”
“She’s sleeping in my room. She was up and about today. She’ll be okay.” Doris placed a slice of cake in front of Chris and pointed at it. “You think more clearly when you have food on your stomach.”
Chris picked up the fork and dove into the dessert. The rich goodness embraced his tongue. “You didn’t bake this, did you?”
“Of course not.” Doris placed her hands on her hips. “Gail dropped it off at Speare’s house because of Shannon’s passing. She didn’t know that his wife is on a strict diet. Rosalyn’s determined to lose her baby fat.” She gestured at the cake. “Being the kind, compassionate woman that I am, I took it off her hands.”
“Gail made this?” Chris moved the plate in closer as if he feared someone would take it.
“It’s sinfully delicious, isn’t it? Of course, Gail made it.”
“Aren’t you going to ask about Chompers?” Elliott asked Chris with a grin.
“Do you mean the demon puppy from hell?” Lifting his feet up onto the stool’s footrest, Chris searched the floor near his ankles. “Where is he?”
“Reverend Ruth offered to let him stay with the girls at her place,” Doris said.
“She’s going to perform an exorcism on him at midnight tonight,” Elliott said with a grin.
“He’ll need more than one,” Chris said.
“He did do one good thing,” Doris said.
“He went twenty-four hours without biting someone?”
Doris opened a drawer and extracte
d a plastic bag containing the chewed-up leather glove. “He brought this home after the shooting.”
Chris examined the glove through the clear plastic bag. “Except for the teeth marks, it looks new.”
“Doris says it’s not yours,” Elliott said.
“Nah, this is genuine leather. Plus, my work gloves are old. This is a shooting glove.” He dropped it onto the counter and ate another bite of the cake. “I don’t wear shooting gloves. My aim is more accurate when I use my bare hands.” He looked from Elliott to his mother. “Do you think this belonged to the shooter?”
“Unfortunately, we can’t prove it,” Elliott said. “Chompers brought it in almost ten hours later and we can’t say for certain where he got it.”
“Bruce told us any defense attorney would get it tossed out of court,” Doris said.
“He’s right. Well, we know the shooter wasn’t Thomas. He has an airtight alibi. He was hooking up with some young woman he’d met in a bar while drowning his sorrows.” Chris took another sip of his beer.
“If it wasn’t Thomas, who did take a shot at you?” Doris asked.
“They didn’t take a shot at me. They thought they took a shot at me.” Chris patted Doris’s hand in response to the fear he saw in her eyes. “It wasn’t a professional hit, Mom. Pros don’t shoot the wrong man.”
“And they wouldn’t have just grazed him,” Elliott said.
“It’s someone who isn’t that good of a shot.” Chris resumed examining the leather glove.
“Or out of practice.”
“The third man,” Chris murmured.
“Who’s the third man?” Doris asked.
“That’s what we need to figure out,” Chris said. “Patricia Baker had set it up for her and the banquet manager to witness George Livingston leaving in his wife’s Camaro. The banquet manager wasn’t involved in the conspiracy. The driver of the Camaro was. That was Gavin Fallon.”
