Chills & Thrills: Three Novel Box Set (60 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

When Kelly entered her home on the edge of Laurel Canyon, it was just after eleven o’clock. She hadn’t heard anything from Tamara about the blood samples, but she knew it took time.

She started to turn off the alarm on the wall behind the front door. But when she punched in the numbers, she realized it wasn’t on. Jesus. What was wrong with her? She’d forgotten to turn it on again? She’d had the alarm installed about six months earlier when a Peeping Tom had been reported in the area, but she often failed to set it while heading out to work in a hurry. She was pretty sure she’d done it that morning though, especially after Jake’s death. But maybe she hadn’t. It wasn’t too difficult to imagine it had slipped her mind, considering all that had been going on.

She double bolted the front door and headed into her kitchen. Putting the kettle on the stove to heat up some water for tea, she opened up her pantry and took out a box of kitty food to signal to Stevie T it was time for dinner. She shook the box—a ritual that would normally have him bolting from wherever he was sleeping—and called his name. “Stevie. Stevie T! Here kitty, kitty, kitty.” She poured the food into his bowl. But he didn’t appear. Again she called, “Stevie, here kitty, kitty.” Nothing. That was odd. He lived to eat. Her stomach fluttered. What if he was sick somewhere? He was getting on in years. Her voice, now frantic, kept calling his name as she searched the house.

Kelly reached her bedroom, still calling, when she heard a soft meow. Where was it coming from? Outside? She opened the slider off her room and Stevie T strutted into the house. “What? Where have you been? How did you get outside?!” Then, “Oh my God.”

The flutter in her gut grew into a knot of anxiety. Every nerve ending vibrated. There is no way she would have left a door or window open. She lived too close to a main street, not to mention the coyotes in the canyon who would love a plump cat like Stevie for dinner. She picked him up, happy he was alive, but confused and a little scared.

As she held Stevie T close to her, anxiety slowly changed to terror. Her eyes focused on her nightstand. Someone had been in her home and left her a present.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Gem noticed details. She also had a photographic memory. As a journalist, this came in handy. As a human being, it could, on occasion, be a nuisance. Tonight though, it was all good.

One thing she’d noted over the last couple of years was her neighbor, Chad, went out in the evenings. More precisely, he went out every Tuesday and Thursday evening. The weekends and other days were sporadic, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays, her handsome, creepy young neighbor was usually gone from the time she walked through her front door, poured her Pinot Grigio, and plopped her ass down on her deck chair…until about the time she’d poured herself a third glass of wine and was watching Late Night with Dave.

She also knew the next-door neighbors, Martin and his wife Patty, screwed on Friday nights at almost nine o’clock precisely. Every Friday, Martin’s mother would come by and pick up their seven-year-old son who Gem babysat on rare occasions. Martin always came home with a gift in hand for Patty. Usually it was a bouquet, but on occasion Gem noticed he might also have a gift box in hand.

Once the kid was gone, the flowers in a vase (or the gift opened), and Patty was parked on the patio with a martini watching her balding but sweet husband grill steak or fish, the two of them spoke in hushed tones. Gem could not help the twinge of jealousy as she watched them. After dinner, candles burned out, they would go back inside, turn up some music, dim the lights, and, well, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what happened next. Saturday morning Martin Jr. would be promptly returned home by Grandma at ten o’clock

Details.

Second glass of Pinot down, a grilled cheese in her stomach, and dressed in black, Gem knew what she was about to do next was reckless and could likely get her into hot water if she were found out. But she would never have become a successful reporter if she hadn’t learned to take a few risks.

She opened up her desk drawer and found everything she needed. Then she stepped outside and, after a glance around, walked through her patio gate across the garden over to the wide sidewalk where her neighbor Chad’s gate faced the walk. She took another quick glance around and noted there were no dog walkers or night joggers out. It was after ten o’clock. She was giving herself thirty minutes and if Chad was following his pattern, he would be home about an hour after her mission was complete. Mission? Who am I, James Bond? Gem laughed softly and then got down to business.

First she pulled a small switch-blade and screwdriver from her backpack. The blade would probably work. It had done the trick for her the few times she’d locked herself out of the house. Hopefully Chad didn’t have an alarm. She knew he didn’t have a dog.

In less than five minutes, Gem was inside. Her heart racing, she could feel the adrenaline pumping through her. It felt sneaky and wrong, but at the same time her gut told her she was making the right choice. If she could get a life-changing story out of this or one that could right wrongs, it was worth the risk. It was why she’d brought some tape recorders, phone bugs, and wire tapping instruments along for the ride
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 This was the one and only thing—aside from their wonderful sons—she could feel genuinely grateful to her ex for. Dennis had been nothing to write home about, but he’d been a decent private investigator and had taught her a few tricks of the trade. She’d even helped him back in the day—typically with adultery cases. But this thing with neighbor Chad was way past that.

What did scare her was the Mexican cartel. If, in fact, Chad was somehow connected to the cartel underworld and she got involved in a story that led in a direction the narcos did not want it to go, she could find herself taking a dirt nap. The kind she knew she’d never wake from. For now—her blood racing, nerves tingling—none of it really mattered.

Gem was proud she managed to set up two separate wire taps and two phone bugs in less than 30 minutes. She placed them in the guy’s bedroom and family room.

Now it was time to leave. But she paused to take quick note of her surroundings. Clean with modern furniture, a lot of plants, some art—mostly ugly and mundane—and one family photo. She picked it up and turned on her pen light to get a better look. The photo appeared to be of a family reunion—lots of people in it from little kids to a few elderly people and even one guy who appeared ancient. The man standing next to Chad looked like someone Gem knew. But it was dark and without better lighting, she was having difficulty making out who he was.

The piercing ring of a cell phone froze her in her tracks.

Details

The ringer sounded just like Chad’s. She’d heard it before, and knew she was majorly screwed when a key slid into the front door lock.

Everything slowed down. Dead journalist walking flashed across her mind’s eye. Survival mode kicked in.

Details

Chad was living in a third-floor plan. What the sales agents referred to as The Optimum. Back in ’06, nearly half a million dollars purchased The Optimum. Gem hadn’t been able to afford that floor plan. But she sure had dreamt about it and studied the hell out of the plan in the little brochure they handed out at the sales office. Thank God for that. She had about fifteen seconds to bolt the hell up those stairs to the third floor guest room/loft. In it, she found a day bed. She silently thanked God for her petite frame and quickly shoved herself beneath it before Chad walked through the door.

Her heart didn’t settle into her 5’1” frame for at least an hour. She listened as Chad fixed what she could only guess was something with garlic in it—a lot of garlic. She also heard him uncork and pour a bottle of wine. Then the TV went on. A pause. Gem’s heart skipped a beat. And then, words and phrases—just a few she could make out. Words and phrases that most certainly didn’t add up if this guy was somehow associated with the Mexican cartel. Phrases like “Hitler’s ideology of eugenics was a correct one. The timing for a new change—a right change, is now,” and “The white race…the real American race…is the pure race. It is time for us to stand up for what is right. For what we believe in.” Gem’s stomach turned. Maybe the guy was watching some kind of documentary. Dennis had lived for the WW II programs on the History channel. But what chilled her to the core was when she heard Chad say out loud, “Heil, Hitler.”

What the hell?! Seriously, was this guy for real? Maybe he was some kind of bizarre history re-enactor. Or maybe he took part in community theater? Because if not, the only other conclusion she could draw was Chad was missing a few screws, quite possibly a major sick-o, and she needed to get the hell out of his place, pronto.

She had to keep her cool. Losing it would be a major mistake. She could feel the heavy beating of her heart and hear the blood rushing through her ears. And she had to pee on top of it all! The way she saw it, she had three options. None of them terribly appealing. One, she could lay in wait until morning and pray he never found her and left to wherever he might be going. No way. Her bladder would not hold out that long. And how did she even know when and if he might leave the next day? She didn’t!

Oh God, her hands were starting to shake. Keep cool! Details. Think. Second option was Chad shared a common wall with his neighbor. Gem knew she was an elderly woman whose husband had died a couple of years ago. She was hard of hearing. There was an air duct. Maybe she could get it open, get through it, and shimmy into granny’s place. No way. First off, she may have been petite but her ass had always been akin to Jennifer Lopez’s. Getting the butt through an air shaft would be impossible and even if she did, she could wake granny up and scare the poor thing to death. No real option there. The only one left then was to wait until the freak fell asleep. Gem would have to go out the same way she had come in.

She waited for almost two hours. The television had gone off. She thought her bladder might explode. Her heart still raced at a clip that made her certain she could have a heart attack at any moment. She’d heard him clamor up the stairs, run water in his sink, a toilet being flushed, and then the click of a light being turned off. And then she waited some more, praying she timed his REM sleep pattern just so.

Two hours into it, Gem knew she had to take that chance. She slowly and as quietly as possible, with the knowledge that her, life could very well be on the line, slid herself out from under the day bed. She stood steadying herself on the wood side of the bed. She took a deep breath.

Three steps down the stairs a creak rang out under her the foot she had just stepped down on. She sucked in her breath and listened. Nothing. She took each step with measure and caution. What felt like an eternity she finally reached the bottom step and stood downstairs in Chad’s family room. She heard movement upstairs and threw caution to the wind. As quickly, carefully and quietly as she could she made it to the sliding glass door, slipped the lock and got outside where she sprinted across to her home where she went around to the front door where even if Chad was up he could not see the front door of her place. She’d been wise to leave all of her lights off. She reached underneath a potted plant that she kept to the side where she had an extra key. She slid the key quickly into the door and made it into her place where she turned around and bolted the door.

She dropped to her knees and felt the tears wanting to come. She had made it out alive! A few seconds later she finally made it to the bathroom without ever turning on a light and she peed like a freaking race horse. She walked back into her kitchen, and hands shaking, she grabbed the entire bottle of Pinot. Screw the glass! She marched upstairs into her darkened room and sat back against the headboard of her bed where she took several swigs off the bottle of wine until her heart finally stopped racing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Before Tony could get both feet in the door, his mother asked where he’d been all night. “Your papa fell asleep an hour ago, and you don’t answer your phone. That phone is hooked to you like glue. Why didn’t you answer?” Her clipped Italian accent was thick with worry and frustration.

“Oh, Mom. C’mon. I’m sorry. We have had this discussion…I don’t know how many times. If I’m not answering your calls, it’s because I’m on a case.”

“How do you know it’s not an emergency when I call? How do you know Papa isn’t in the hospital or Luke isn’t hurt?”

“Mama…” Tony sighed. “I am tired.”

“Hmmph.” She straightened out her long, silver-streaked hair. Her large brown eyes flashed in anger. He gentled his voice. She was, after all, his mother and deserved respect.

“Mom, no one needs to wait up for me. It’s after midnight. Come on. I am a big boy.” He glanced over at his father, snoring open-mouthed in his leather recliner, the television blaring. His mother’s poodle, Franco, lay on the old, green shag carpet Tony kept promising he would replace on one of his weekends off. His parents needed so much done to the house. A stab of guilt hit him. The duplex smelled of his mom’s wonderful veal Marsala. Likely now tucked away neatly into the refrigerator. “You should be in bed, Mom.”

She tossed up her arms. “I worry.”

“I’m a police officer. I think I got this down.

“No, You know what I do worry. Don’t ignore me.”

It was coming. The same talk they had on a monthly basis. “I do know why you worry, but this is my job. This is what I do. This is how I make a living for me and the kid, and help you guys out, too. I don’t want to talk about it again. Not tonight. I’m tired.”

“I’m going to say it one time and that is all. Luke, he got one parent. One. He loses you, he got none. That’s it. Then when your papa and I gone, he got no one. Orphan. Is that what you want?”

Tony sighed and walked to the fridge, where he grabbed a beer. He needed to get Luke upstairs and into his own bed. Tony would make himself a sandwich later and insist his mom go to bed. There was so much irony here, but he didn’t want to ponder it. He’d moved his family into the upstairs of his parents’ duplex to help them out. His father, in particular, was showing signs of aging. Now Tony’s wife was gone, and he was the one getting help from his mother. She mothered Luke as best she could, but a grandmother was not a replacement.

“I’m gonna say one more thing.”

Of course she was. Tony took a slug of beer and tried not to roll his eyes. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“And you know I’m right. That baby in there needs a mama.”

He walked over to her, gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I love you, and I love that you worry and care so much. Luke and I are fine. We are good. If you need help, I will hire some.”

She slammed her hands onto her wide hips. “I don’t need no help! That is not what I am saying, Antonio.”

Oops. He had pissed her off. She’d used his full name.

“It’s time for bed, Mom.” He gave her his most charming smile.

“Leave Luke here. He’s asleep. You gonna be tired tomorrow morning, and I know you, you gonna work late again. I will take him to school.”

“I love you.”

She waved a hand at him, and he started down the hall. “Now don’t you go in there, Tony, and wake him up.”

“Aw, Mom, I just want to see him before I go upstairs.”

She sighed and gave up the fight, and instead went over to his dad’s chair. She nudged him gently and told the old man to wake up and get into bed. Tony headed down the hall, into the small guest room they’d turned into a room for his little boy. He looked down at Luke. He was beautiful, like his mother had been—so much like her. His hand grazed Luke’s face, causing him to stir slightly.

Tony stayed with him for a few moments, even considered lying next to him, he was so tired. But he knew if he did, neither of them would get a good night’s rest. So Tony reluctantly left his son sleeping.

He locked the front door behind him and started upstairs to his place. His phone rang. For a split second he thought about not answering. At this hour, it could not be good.

“Pazzini.”

He was surprised. It was Dr. Kelly Morales. And she sounded scared.