After Midnight (24 page)
Back inside the house, I tossed the
Tribune
onto the kitchen table and set to work making a pot of coffee. I knew right where to find everything. Before long, the cozy aroma of coffee filled the kitchen.
I had to wait for the pot to fill, though, so I sat at the table and looked through the newspaper. It didn’t contain a single story about anything I’d been involved with last night.
Nothing in the Obituary section, either.
None of which came as much of a surprise.
When the coffee was ready, I poured myself a mugful. I almost took it outside to drink it by the pool. That would’ve been nice on such an early, lovely morning. On my way to one of the back doors, though, I remembered what the prowler’d done. That changed my mind. So I returned to the kitchen table and looked at the newspaper again while I enjoyed my first mug of coffee.
I went straight to the movie ads. I like movies. Chester had a cineplex with six theaters. Not bad for such a worthless little town. Some good stuff was playing. I checked the times on a couple of them, and wondered about going to a movie today.
Why not? I deserved a treat, the way I’d toughed it out and taken care of so many problems.
One problem still needed to be dealt with, though.
Tony’s redial.
I now had a plan.
If it works, I thought, I’ll take in a movie afterward to celebrate.
When I went for a refill on my coffee, I checked the clock on the kitchen wall.
6:20.
I should probably wait until after 8:00 to try out my idea.
To help pass the time, I decided to make myself a huge breakfast. Normally, I don’t have any breakfast at all—just coffee. But I’d had a long, hard night. I’d gotten enough exercise to kill off a high-school football team, picked up scads of minor injuries (food heals), and must’ve burnt off one or two zillion calories. I deserved a
feast
.
While a skillet full of bacon was sizzling on a burner, I made myself a Bloody Mary. I prepared it my special way—half tomato juice and half vodka, double the usual amount of Worcestershire Sauce and Tabasco to give it a real bite. After stirring it around with ice cubes, I squeezed a slice of lime into it. Then I sprinkled ground pepper over the top.
It tasted so fine.
I sipped it while I finished tending to the bacon, made some toast and fried a couple of eggs. After buttering the toast, I topped each slice with an egg. Then I sat at the table and devoured it all.
One of the best things you can put in your mouth is a piece of buttered toast that’s dripping with egg yellow. Try it by itself, or with a chunk of egg white and a bite of bacon. Wash it down with coffee or a Bloody Mary. Mmmmm.
I hated to see the last of it go.
After breakfast, I did the dishes and skillet by hand and put everything away. I was tempted to have another Bloody Mary, but resisted the urge. One had been enough to make me feel pleasant. A second might knock me off my feet.
I needed to have my wits about me—and my feet under me—for taking care of the redial problem.
Before leaving the house, I hung the saber on the wall where it belonged. I also hung Charlie’s robe in the bedroom closet and put on my swimsuit from yesterday. The swimsuit was all I had to wear, because I didn’t want to use Tony’s clothes again now that they’d been washed. In the laundry room, I emptied the drier and stuffed everything into a grocery bag.
Carrying my bags, my purse, and the
Chester Tribune
, I left the house and went up to my room over the garage.
It was nice to be in my own place again. It felt so safe and cozy. I wished I could stay—climb into bed and bury myself under the covers and sleep for ages.
Maybe later
.
A lot later
.
First, I needed to hide Tony’s things. I hung up his shirt in my closet, just as if it were my own. I folded the cut-offs and slipped them into a dresser drawer where I kept other pairs of shorts. The handkerchief and bandana also went into drawers. I put the note pad and both sets of keys in my purse. I hid the cassette tape in a chest pocket of an old flannel shirt near the back of my closet.
That left nothing except the severed denim legs of Tony’s jeans. They certainly weren’t incriminating, so there was no reason to hide or destroy them. I decided to take them out to the car with me. They might make good rags. So I folded them and set them near my purse.
Next, I took off my swimsuit. I put on thong panties and a bra, then stood like a dope and wondered what else to wear.
Making the decision wasn’t easy. Mostly because I didn’t really know what I’d be doing. Also, maybe, because I needed sleep. And the Bloody Mary might’ve had a little to do with it.
Finally, I made up my mind and got dressed.
With my purse, the morning newspaper and the denim legs, I hurried downstairs and let myself into the lower part of the garage.
I took Judy’s car.
I didn’t like the idea of driving it around. I wanted to dump it somewhere and be done with it, but using my own car for a mission like this would’ve been idiotic.
Judy’s car, at least, couldn’t be traced to me.
And I doubted that anyone would recognize me. Not in my sunglasses and red wig.
Yeah, I had a wig on.
I kept a small collection of them, just in case. A gal never knows when she might want to alter her appearance a bit. Or a lot.
The curly red hair looked pretty damn gawdy, but that was the idea. Gawdy all the way. My lipstick was too bright, too red. My gold hoop earrings were the size of bracelets. If people saw me,
that’s
what they would see. They’d never stand a chance of recognizing—or identifying—me, Alice.
I drove to the busy area near the highway. Some of the locals call it “motel row.” But it had a lot more than just motels. Along both sides of the highway were tons of restaurants and gas stations, and even some fruit stands and gift shops.
There were also scads of public telephones.
You hardly ever find phones in enclosed booths, anymore. I didn’t want to deal with highway noise, so I parked the car and went into a restaurant called Pokey’s. The hostess was busy seating a family, so I went straight for the restrooms. Near the end of the corridor, I found two public phones between the doors marked Guys and Dolls.
Nobody was using them.
I took the note pad and a pen out of my purse. After checking the newspaper, I jotted down a number I’d found on the masthead.
Then I dropped a quarter into the phone and made the call.
“
Tribune
circulation,” a woman’s voice told me. “This is Yvonne. May I help you, please?”
“I hope so,” I said. “This is Mrs. Tony Romano. I’m afraid we didn’t receive our newspaper this morning.”
“May I have your phone number, please?”
I read her Tony’s number off the pad, and figured she was probably tapping it into a computer.
“Yes. You
should’ve
gotten it by now, Mrs. Romano. I’ll…”
“The thing is,” I said quickly, “we haven’t been getting it since our move. We just recently moved to a new place. I was wondering if there might be a mix-up and maybe it’s still being delivered to our old address on Washington.”
“Hmm. No. We have it here as being delivered to 8448 Adams.”
I wrote the address on my note pad.
“Is that your correct address for delivery?” Yvonne asked.
“Yeah, it is.” Laughing softly, I said, “So much for my theory.”
“Well, I’ll make sure we get this straightened out for you, Mrs. Romano. We’ll have this morning’s paper to you within the hour.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Thank
you
for being a subscriber, and we do apologize for your inconvenience.”
“No problem. Thanks again. Bye-bye.”
I hung up and grinned.
After glancing around to make sure nobody had an eye on me, I wiped the handset and number pad with a tissue. Then I walked out of Pokey’s and climbed into Judy’s car.
Next stop, Tony’s place!
I felt brilliant.
Of course, the trick would’ve fallen flat if Tony hadn’t been a
Tribune
subscriber. Lucky me, he was. And lucky me, he’d been prompt about giving the paper his change of address.
If my luck held, I would walk up to Tony’s front door and find it unlocked.
Which was
sure
to happen.
Sure.
In my dreams.
Too bad I’d gotten rid of Tony’s keys. I could’ve stepped right up to his door, unlocked it and walked in easy as pie. But last night, I’d been sure there was no possibility of learning his new address. I’d been
positive
. There just wasn’t any way to do it, not without drastic steps such as questioning people in his old building.
Besides, I’d already thrown his keys in the fire before Judy told me that she knew for a fact he had redial.
If only I’d kept them!
Thought I was so smart, throwing all that stuff in the fire.
Yeah, yeah, burn the evidence! Great idea!
Shit!
Of course, the keys would probably still work fine. All I had to do was drive over to Miller’s Woods, hunt around until I find the campsite, dig the keys out of the cold campfire, hike back to the car and drive all the way over to Tony’s…
That’s all.
And in the meantime, maybe the cops might find Tony’s body.
If they haven’t already.
And they get to his place ahead of me.
What if they’re already there?
Tony’s address on Adams was only a few blocks away from Judy’s apartment building. Just for the sake of caution, I made a slight detour and drove to her place, first. The neighborhood probably would’ve been crawling with cops and curious neighbors if Tony’s body had been discovered. But it was quiet, so I drove on.
As I drove, I wondered how to get inside his apartment.
I had no idea.
I planned to play it by ear.
Now, you might be asking yourself,
All this over a redial button? Is she nuts?
Maybe.
I wondered about that myself.
But I kept picturing a cop in Tony’s apartment. He notices the redial feature and thinks,
This’ll have the last number Tony ever called! It might even belong to the murderer! Check it out!
So he gives it a try. Next thing you know, Charlie’s voice is in his ear, saying, “Thank you for calling. Nobody is available to answer the phone, right now, but if you’d like to leave a message…”
This’ll
really
get the cop going. Especially if he ever lays his hands on the phone company records and finds out what
time
Tony made the call—and how long it lasted.
He’ll be very eager to pay Charlie a visit.
But Charlie and Serena are out of town for the week.
And the only person with access to the house and phone is me.
Not a pretty picture.
But I now had a chance to make it go away.
All I had to do was get inside Tony’s apartment and make one telephone call.
Worth a little risk, don’t you think?
I thought so.
But then, I’d been through a lot, so maybe I wasn’t thinking very straight at the time.
Leaving Judy’s car parked around the corner, I walked back to 8448 Adams.
It was an old, single-level building with eight small units and an open, grassy courtyard in the middle. I didn’t know Tony’s apartment number. So instead of entering, I just looked the place over and kept walking.
Each front door had a mailbox nearby. Too bad. If you’re in a complex with a bank of mailboxes, the post office requires names on all the boxes. But when you’ve got your own box, like at this place, you don’t need to put your name on it. And nobody does.
Three of the units had newspapers in front of them.
One of those was probably Tony’s.
But which?
Had the
Tribune
delivery person shown up yet with the replacement? If not, I could simply wait for him and see what he does.
But there was a slim chance that he’d already been here and gone. (He certainly wouldn’t have left a
second
paper on the doorstep.) If he’d already shown up, I would have an awfully long wait.
There was just no way to know for sure.
Anyway, I didn’t have time to waste. I had to get this done and get going.
Maybe the car ports or garages would give me a clue as to Tony’s apartment number. So I headed for the end of the block to look for an alley entrance.
And heard a distant siren.
Oh, my God!
The sound froze me.
My mind went nuts. The cops had found Tony’s body, knew I’d killed him, knew where to find me, and were swooping in for the arrest. In a matter of seconds, squad cars would roar around the corners and shriek to a halt. Cops would leap out and come at me with their guns drawn.
I had an urge to break into a run.
The siren’s cry grew louder.
They can’t know it’s me! How can they know it’s me?
Just play innocent, I warned myself. Admit nothing. Stay calm.
What can they really prove?
As the siren noise bore down on me from behind, I turned my head and looked over my shoulder.
Siren blaring, lights aflash, an ambulance sped by me and kept going.
I laughed at myself. But my heart was thumping like mad, and I was suddenly out of breath.
Even after the ambulance was out of sight, I stood there gasping, trying to calm down.
Not enough sleep, that was the problem.
That, and a little too much stress.
Maybe I should’ve had that extra Bloody Mary with breakfast, after all.
I’ve gotta get out of here!
But I couldn’t just give up on Tony’s place without at least trying to get in. It was almost a miracle that I’d been able to find out his address. I was
meant
to come here, get inside somehow, and take us off his redial.