Be My Valencrime

by Amy M. Reade

  Lilly had been rooted to the spot, but once Harry let out that primal yell and she heard Stu’s shocking response, she jumped into action. She scrabbled for the closest object she could get her hands on, a metal tray that held the outgoing mail. She lifted it with both hands to bring it down on Stu’s head, but he moved suddenly and Hassan was squarely in her line of fire. She jerked her arms down and yelled to him to get out of the way.

  “Hassan! Move!” she screamed. He broke his concentration only for a moment to see what she was doing, then immediately rolled out of the way so Lilly could have a clear path to Stu’s head.

  Harry had twisted sideways and was attempting to scramble to his feet to gain the advantage over Stu. Stu, though, raised his knife and was plunging it down into Harry’s ribcage when Lilly, with a scream of exertion, swung the metal tray and hit the side of Stu’s head.

  Chapter 49

  A fraction of a second later, Stu slumped over Harry’s torso. Blood streamed from his head and Harry, with a cry of alarm, shimmied out from underneath his former friend. He stood up, but had to bend over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

  “Did you hear what he said?” he panted. “Alice is at his house!”

  Hassan had managed to get to his feet, too, and was pulling out his cell phone when a loud knocking sounded on the back door of the office.

  “Lilly? Are you in there? Lilly!”

  It was Bill.

  “Bill!” she shouted. The door handle was rattling and she bounded around her desk to open it.

  When Bill stepped inside, he was greeted with a bewildering sight: Harry, bleeding from his chest and still gasping for breath, Lilly, tears streaming down her face, Hassan, standing in the middle of the office with a look of shock on his face, and Stu, unconscious on the office floor.

  “What happened here?” he asked.

  Lilly took a deep breath. “Stu came in here and attacked Harry. Hassan and I were trying to stop him. Bill, listen. He said he was going to go home and do the same thing to Alice!”

  Bill’s eyes widened. He reached for the radio on his shoulder and moments later had requested that a phalanx of officers go to Stu’s house and break the door down, if necessary.

  Then he called an ambulance for Harry, who was sitting on the floor, wincing in pain and holding his side.

  “I’m okay,” Harry panted. “I just want you guys to find Alice.”

  “We’ll get her,” Bill said grimly. “But you’re going to the hospital. We’ll let you know the second we find her.”

  Lilly had run to the front of the shop, where her purse still sat on the countertop. A lone woman stood on the sidewalk, peering into the store and checking and double-checking her watch. Lilly unlocked the front door long enough to tell the woman there was an emergency and to return the following day, then she locked the door again and sprang for her purse. There was a scarf in there that she hadn’t worn that morning, so she whipped it out and carried it back into the office.

  “Harry, hold this against your side,” she instructed. He did as she told him to do, grimacing with the effort.

  “Lilly, are you all right?” Hassan asked. She nodded, too overcome with emotion to say anything.

  It wasn’t long before the jewelry store was swarming with police officers and paramedics. Two of the paramedics stabilized Harry as quickly as they could and whisked him away to the hospital, promising Lilly and Hassan that they would take good care of him.

  Stu woke up to find an officer standing over him. He looked dazed, then Lilly could see that the reality of the situation had dawned on him. The officer guarding him noticed, too.

  “Don’t move!” he barked.

  Stu slumped down onto the floor again while the paramedics turned their attention to him. Two officers watched him closely while he was strapped onto a stretcher, then one of them joined him in the back of an ambulance while the other followed in a police car. Lilly had no doubt they would keep a careful watch on him at the hospital.

  Two other officers were questioning Lilly and Hassan separately. They wanted to know everything from the moment Lilly received the call from Harry while she was in the bistro to the moment Bill arrived at the back door of the shop.

  When they had asked all their questions, Lilly went over to where Bill was standing, talking to another officer. Bill nodded and the officer walked toward the front of the store.

  “How are you doing?” he asked Lilly.

  “Okay, I guess. Do you think Harry will be okay?”

  “I think so. A stab wound is serious, but I’ve seen much worse and those people survived.” His radio began to squawk. “Excuse me,” he said. He walked a few feet away and listened, then answered briefly.

  “They’ve got Alice. She’s okay.”

  “Thank God!” Lilly cried. It was then that the stress of the day came crashing down and she collapsed into her desk chair, sobbing. The police went on with their work, moving around her, while Bill and Hassan just let her cry.

  Finally, several minutes later, she wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and stood up.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. They both smiled gently at her.

  “That’s okay,” they said in unison.

  “Do you know anything about what happened to Alice?” Lilly asked Bill.

  “Nothing yet. I’ll let you know when I hear something. If you’re all right, I’m going to head down to the station. I need to start writing this up,” Bill said. “These officers will be here for a little while.” He nodded in the general direction of the officers who were left.

  “Thanks, Bill,” Lilly said.

  “Bill, you should have seen her,” Hassan said. “If she hadn’t hit Stu with that metal tray, he would have sunk that knife right into the side of Harry’s chest. She probably saved his life.”

  Bill looked at his sister.

  “Don’t tell Mom,” she said.

  Chapter 50

  After Bill left, Lilly sat down again at her desk. She tried to get some work done, but all she could do was stare at the wall, her body numb with shock. She wanted to leave, but she had to stay until the police left so she could lock up the store.

  Hassan sat in the office, too, not saying anything. Eventually he roused himself and went to the front of the store, then returned wheeling his suitcase.

  “I’m going to head home,” he said. Lilly didn’t know if he was referring to his home in Minnesota or his home in Juniper Junction, and at that moment she didn’t even care.

  “Okay,” she said flatly. She couldn’t summon any more emotion for him.

  “Can we still talk?” he asked.

  “Yes, but not today.” She ran her hand over her tired eyes.

  “I’ll call you in the next few days,” he said. She nodded and he went out the back door. When he was gone she slumped back in her chair, tempted for a moment to indulge in a little bit of self-pity, but she sat up again and squared her shoulders. She was going to plow through some work until the police left, then she was going to go to the hospital to see how Harry was doing. If he didn’t already know the good news about Alice, she planned to tell him. Then she was going to go to her mother’s house and check on her, then she was going to go home and have dinner with Laurel. Then she was going to bed.

  It was after the normal closing time when the police officers finally left, but it wasn’t too late. Lilly locked up and hurried over to the hospital, where she found that Harry had been admitted with a stab wound. They wanted to keep an eye on him overnight. She was his first visitor, though he had received a phone call from Bill. Leave it to him to steal my good news, Lilly thought with a grimace.

  “They have Alice!” Harry exclaimed weakly when he saw Lilly. “She’s okay.” He was beaming tiredly, despite the bandages and the IVs and the exhaustion that was evident on his face.

  “I’m so happy,” she replied, taking his hand in hers. Then she had a thought. “I’ll be right back, Harry.”

  She went to the nur
ses’ station and waited for someone to come along and help her. When she had asked her question and received confirmation, she returned to Harry’s room.

  “Are you all right? Where did you go?” he asked.

  “I’m better than all right,” she said, thinking Take that, Bill. You can’t steal all the thunder.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Alice is just two floors down from you. You can go see her!”

  His mouth hung open. “She’s here? Are you sure?”

  “Positive. I just went out and asked a nurse to check for me. She’s here for observation.”

  Suddenly Harry looked nervous. “Do you think she wants to see me?”

  “Why wouldn’t she?” Lilly asked, incredulous.

  “Because I didn’t find her,” he said. “I didn’t look hard enough. I should have known it was Stu when he stopped coming around. He never wanted to stay overnight at my house, either.”

  “No one could have known that,” Lilly scolded “Now do you want me to wheel you down there, or what?”

  He swallowed. “I guess so, if you think that’s the right thing to do.”

  “It’s not my call, Harry. It’s yours.”

  There was a knock at the door. Harry glanced up and his face went white. Lilly whirled around and stared.

  Alice stood in the hallway, smiling timidly.

  In two steps Lilly was at the door, flinging it open to let Alice come in. She wrapped Alice in an embrace, her tears mingling with Alice’s, and then stepped away so Alice could approach the bed. The young woman walked slowly, trying to move her IV stand with her, and Lilly reached out to help so the tubes wouldn’t get tangled.

  By the time Alice reached the bed, Harry had swung his legs over the edge and was trying to stand up.

  “Don’t try to get up,” Alice told him. “Let me come to you. I’m stronger.”

  He reached out and she leaned into him, tubes and all. When Lilly tiptoed out of the room, they were laughing and crying and holding onto each other for dear life.

  After Lilly left the hospital, her cheeks still damp with tears of happiness for Harry and Alice, she stopped at her mother’s house.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while,” Bev remarked sharply when Lilly walked into the living room.

  “It’s been crazy, Mom,” Lilly said. She was simultaneously relieved to see that her mother’s moxie hadn’t dimmed and annoyed that her mother greeted her that way.

  “Is everything okay?” Nikki asked. She gave Lilly a meaningful look, letting Lilly know that she had been worried.

  Lilly smiled her appreciation for Nikki’s thoughtfulness. “Yes, I think everything is fine now.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Bev demanded. “What’s fine?”

  “Everything,” Lilly said simply. She sat down next to her mother. “Tell me what you’ve been up to today.”

  Lilly spent the next hour talking to her mother and Nikki. It was just as if the past three weeks hadn’t happened. They didn’t talk about anything but happy times and happy memories, and by the time Lilly headed home, exhausted, Bev was in a much better mood.

  Nikki walked Lilly to the door. “Lilly,” she began. Her tone was wary. Lilly was on alert immediately.

  “What is it?” Lilly asked.

  “It’s just that Beau and I are planning that getaway weekend that he gave me for Valentine’s Day. I’m wondering if I can get a few days off to go. We’re planning on—”

  “No details,” Lilly said, holding up her hand and cutting off Nikki’s train of thought. “Of course you can have days off. Just tell me when, and Bill and I will arrange our schedules so one of us can be here all the time. We really need to concentrate on getting someone else in here so you can have a life again. But I don’t need to know what you and Beau have planned. Please.” She smiled and Nikki blushed.

  “Thanks, Lilly. I’ll let you know when we have the dates finalized.”

  Lilly couldn’t wait to get home and slip into her pajamas. She was starving, too. It felt like she had choked down that flamiche days ago.

  Laurel was waiting for her when she trudged into the kitchen.

  “Mom! What happened? You look terrible.”

  “Thanks,” Lilly said wryly. “It’s been a long day. They found Alice. She’s going to be okay.”

  Laurel’s face broke into a broad smile. “That’s great! Where was she? What happened to her?” She peppered Lilly with questions while they made dinner and sat down together to eat.

  Lilly told her everything she knew, but there were still things she wondered about. She would talk to Bill in the morning. First, though, she needed sleep.

  “I have news, too,” Laurel said with a sly smile as they finished the dinner dishes.

  “Oh? What news?” Lilly asked.

  “I’m going to prom,” Laurel said.

  “You are? With whom?”

  “Vanessa,” Laurel said excitedly. “Her boyfriend dumped her! Can you believe it? So we made a pact that we wouldn’t go with any boys. We’re just going to go together and have fun.”

  “That’s my girl,” Lilly said, gathering Laurel into a hug. “We can go shopping for a dress this weekend, if you’d like.”

  “Definitely. We can go with Vanessa and her mother,” Laurel suggested.

  “You got it.”

  After Laurel went upstairs Lilly let Barney out and then went upstairs herself. She couldn’t wait to crawl between the covers.

  But before she could even get in bed, the phone rang. It was Hassan.

  “Can we talk?” he asked. “I know you wanted to wait, but I have to get something off my chest. Is this a bad time?”

  “It’s okay,” she said, suppressing a sigh. She longed to be asleep.

  “I want to apologize for everything,” he said. “I was wrong to react the way I did when you didn’t tell me the truth about everything that happened at Guy’s Place. I thought about it and you a lot when I was in Washington and I know you were just trying to keep me from worrying. I tend to see things in black and white, and that wasn’t a black-and-white situation. I’m truly sorry.”

  “And I’m sorry I lied to you,” Lilly said. “If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t. I should have known it was better to tell you the truth and let you worry.” She managed a chuckle.

  “Do you think we could try that lunch again tomorrow?” Hassan asked.

  “I doubt it. Harry’s going to be fine, but he’ still in the hospital and I won’t be able to leave the shop,” she said.

  “Leave it to me. I’ll bring something in.”

  She could hear the smile in his voice and she smiled, too.

  “It’s a date,” she said.

  Chapter 51

  The next morning Lilly was at work early when her cell phone rang. It was Bill.

  “I called to tell you what we learned last night when we questioned Stu,” he said.

  “Tell me everything.” She sat on the stool, the one Mary Louise had thrown through the window, while she listened to the story.

  “Well, you know that Stu was auditing a course with Alice,” he began. “He knew her through his friendship with Harry, and when he found out she was a student at the community college where he was also a student, he decided to audit one of her classes just to be closer to her. Essentially, what started out as a serious crush turned into an ugly obsession with Alice.”

  “Did Alice realize it?”

  “Apparently not at first. But she left campus to go to work at Guy’s Place one night and he followed her. He didn’t know she was a dancer there, but he found out pretty quickly. He watched her dance and when it was her turn to waitress, he started hitting on her. He figured she was loose if she was a stripper, but she made it clear to him that she was committed to Harry and that she only danced because it was good money and since her parents weren’t helping to pay for her classes at the community college, she needed the cash.”

  “We figured that, knowing her p
ersonality,” Lilly put in.

  “Right. Needless to say, she’s quit that job.”

  “Good.”

  “Anyway, he kept returning to the bar and bothering her, and she just kept on rejecting him. It triggered something in his head. The next day was Valentine’s Day, and he knew Harry was going to pop the question. He followed Alice to Guy’s Place that afternoon when she went to get her paycheck, and when she left the building he grabbed her from behind and took her to his house.”

  “Oh, my God.” Lilly closed her eyes. She didn’t know if she wanted to hear the rest.

  “He kept her in the basement. He didn’t touch her, and she confirmed that. He just wanted to look at her and he didn’t want Harry to have her. It was that simple. Twisted, but simple.”

  “So how did he keep her there?” Lilly asked.

  “She was chained to the wall. But he fed her and gave her water to drink and let her use a crude bathroom he had set up in the basement. Under supervision, of course. She was just biding her time, waiting for a chance to escape, when everything hit the fan at your store and the police found her.”

  “What about Mary Louise? Was she involved at all?”

  “It doesn’t look that way. She’s just weird. She had a thing for Harry and she wasn’t going to let something like a serious girlfriend get in her way.”

  Lilly shuddered. “How did you happen to be at my shop when Stu was there?”

  “I was in the neighborhood, talking to one of the merchants about some petty shoplifting. I had just heard that Stu’s license plate was a match to the partial plate they found on Guy’s security footage, so I decided to stop by and tell Harry in person. When the front door was locked and there was no sign in the window explaining why, I knew something was wrong. So I went around back.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Stu is the one who attacked you in the parking lot at Guy’s Place, too. And he killed Suzanne. He’s as good as confessed to both,” Bill said quietly.