Damsels in Distress (37 page)

“No, I don’t have to believe one word you say. Let me ask you this: Were you aware that Salvador Davis and Stark Reality were one and the same?”

“Yes,” he said in a small voice. “I mean, I wasn’t until I started searching for Salvador on the Internet. I didn’t realize he was such a big deal, though. He wrote comic books.”

“Are you telling me you weren’t curious enough to follow the lead and find out more—like how much money he made?”

Edward opened his mouth to refute my presumption, then shrugged. “So I knew he was rich. That was like a bonus. I would have wanted to meet him anyway. He was my father.”

“An especially lucrative bonus, I should think. You and your mother must have been excited at the possibilities.”

“I shouldn’t have told her,” he said with a groan. “She was getting by in Oregon with her stoned hippie friends. They had a big house out in the country, grew pot in the national forest, and found jobs when they needed cash. Nobody paid much attention to them.

All she had to do was stay there until I dealt with things here. It’s not my fault.”

“Ah yes, my daughter’s motto. You’d better go to the PD and explain to Detective Rosen why you failed to mention a few details when you were questioned.”

I sent him on his way and sat down at the counter to read the newspaper. There were pictures of the Japanese reporters attempting to storm the PD, and of the mayor sweating at a press conference. Farberville had been a busy place lately, I thought. Bikers, Renaissance impostors, and now foreign media. Peter and I might prefer a house in the country, although we would not grow pot or welcome castaways. Caron had never gone through the adolescent stage in which she imagined herself atop Black Beauty, clad in a trim gray jacket and spiffy little riding helmet. A swimming pool and a suite would appease her. I could read
Town & Country
instead of
Publishers Weekly.

I was envisioning myself greeting guests for a weekend house party, which would feature croquet, tennis, cucumber sandwiches, and martinis, when the phone rang. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls,” I muttered as I picked up the receiver.

“Claire, this is Anderson. Something terrible has happened!”

“Did your conference call get rerouted through Siberia?”

“It’s Lanya. The police just called. They want me to go over there and talk to her, but I don’t know what to say. They think she’s armed.”

“Lanya? What’s going on? Where is she?”

“Fiona’s house. From what the police officer said, she’s taken Fiona hostage and is threatening to kill her! I’m supposed to go reason with her and convince her to come out. I’m afraid that if she has a gun, she’ll shoot me first. You have to go there. She’ll listen to you.”

“Where are you now?”

“In my car. A woman down the road offered to keep the kids until noon, so I made it to the office in time for the call. In the middle of it, my assistant told me I had an urgent call from the police.

My first thought was that the boys had stolen the woman’s car again. It never crossed my mind that Lanya could do something this crazy. Will you go to Fiona’s?”

“What’s the address?”

He told me and I promised to meet him as soon as I could. There was no reason to call Peter, since he was probably already there, along with half the police force. I locked the store, hurried back to my duplex to get the car, and drove to a subdivision of distressingly similar brick houses. An officer flagged me down and ordered me to turn around and leave. I obliged, then found a place to park one street over and cut through the few backyards that weren’t fenced. The street was crammed with official vehicles, tight-lipped uniformed officers, the omnipresent KFAR news van at a discreet distance, and Japanese reporters swarming like gnats behind the police barricade. I spotted Peter and Anderson in the yard of a vacant house across the street from Fiona’s residence. A real estate broker’s sign announced the house was for sale at a reduced price. I wiggled through the crowd, squirmed through a gap between the sawhorses, and joined them. Lanya’s station wagon was parked in Fiona’s driveway, and there was a second car in the carport. The curtains in the house were drawn as if it were vacant, too. Unfortunately, we all knew it wasn’t.

“Have you tried to talk to her?” I asked between pants, unaccustomed to sprinting.

Peter gave me a chilly look. “I’m amazed the media got here before you did.”

“I walked to the bookstore this morning, so I had to go home to get the car. Well, Anderson?”

“No, she let Fiona speak a few words on the cell phone, then cut it off. Knowing Lanya, she might have put it down the garbage disposal or smashed it with a hammer. She doesn’t like cell phones. I set mine to vibrate when I get home, and go outside if I need to take a call.”

“Why do you think she’s armed?” I asked Peter.

“We have to assume she is. You can’t hold someone hostage with a nail file.” He went over to a police van nearby and disappeared inside it. Anderson and I stared at the house until Peter returned with a tweedy little man with sad eyes. “This is Dr. King from the psychology department at the college,” he said to Anderson. “He wants to ask you some questions about your wife’s mental stability. You can sit in the car over there.” After they’d moved away, he said, “Do you think she might listen to you? She did let you in her bedroom.”

“I thought you questioned her yesterday about Serengeti’s death.”

“Through the door. She refused to unlock it.”

“Oh,” I murmured, gazing at the blank windows of the house. “What if she
is
armed? I don’t fancy finding out the painful way— or the fatal way, for that matter. Why don’t you take off your tie, tousle your hair, and woo her with your boyish charm?”

“I don’t want to get shot, either. I can’t make honeymoon plans from a hospital bed.”

“What honeymoon plans are you making? Shouldn’t I be consulted?”

“When we have time, I’ll take you out for a romantic dinner and explain. Okay, here come Dr. King and the husband. Maybe they’ve come up with something.”

Dr. King pulled Peter aside, but I could hear him as he said, “Mr. Peru won’t do it. He says a great deal of her current anger is directed at him, and he has to take their children into consideration. I have to agree that they won’t fare well if their mother ends up in prison for killing their father. That’s more than traumatic.”

We were all standing around helplessly when Sally Fromberger swept up in her cape, brushing aside officers as if they were pesky autograph seekers. She handed Anderson a plate covered with foil. “I know from watching TV shows that these hostage situations can drag on all day. I thought you all might like some freshly baked muffins to keep up your strength. Why, Claire, I haven’t seen you since the Renaissance Fair. Wasn’t it something? I do hope we’ll have one every year.”

I truly wished that I was armed. “Go back to your cafe, Sally. This is a dangerous situation.”

“Lanya wouldn’t shoot a prioress,” Sally said with a chuckle.

“I would,” said Peter. “Since that’s not possible with the media watching, I’ll settle for having you arrested. Officers, remove this woman and stick her in a cell at the PD until I get there and can file an arrest report.”

Sputtering, Sally was hauled away. Peter and the psychologist went behind the van to continue their discussion. Although I hadn’t seen a drape twitch across the street, I felt as though Lanya were watching us. Was Fiona tied to a kitchen chair, with a sock stuffed in her mouth? And more importantly, would Lanya actually shoot any of us if we approached?

For the next three hours, nothing much happened. Anderson and I sat down on the porch of the vacant house. He tasted a muffin, then put it back on the plate. The media remained behind the barricade, but they were clearly disappointed at the lack of drama. Those on camera knew they were losing their audience to game shows and soap operas. Dr. King was escorted to a police car and driven back to his ivy tower, where he could regale his colleagues and students with his intrepid attempt to assist the police in a life-and-death crisis. I hoped he might see the irony when he ate his tuna salad sandwich in the faculty lounge.

Anderson’s cell phone rang. Peter, who’d been conferring with the officers, hurried over and told Anderson to answer it.

“What’ll I say?” asked Anderson, his voice quivering.

Peter glared at him. “Why don’t you find out what she says first, and we’ll take it from there?”

Anderson punched a button as if it were a glowing ember. After listening for a moment, he looked up and said, “It’s not from across the street. It’s the woman who’s babysitting my children. I told her I’d pick them up at noon.”

“Tell her you’re busy,” I suggested.

“She said if I wasn’t there in fifteen minutes, she would take them to the county line and dump them. She’s, uh, kind of upset.”

“She hasn’t been watching TV?” I said.

Anderson licked his lips. “No, and that’s one of the reasons why she’s upset. I have to do something with them, Lieutenant Rosen. Is there any chance you can put them in a cell next to that crackpot in the cape?”

I had an idea. “Go fetch them, Anderson, and bring them back here. It’s our best shot at ending this Mexican standoff. Trust me.”

Peter seemed doubtful, but he told one of the officers to drive Anderson to the woman’s house and return with the children. “Would you care to elucidate?” he asked me.

“Not now,” I said. “Is there anything to drink in the van? Iced tea would be nice.”

“It’s not a concessions booth, but I can scrounge up a bottle of water.” He stalked away, and when he returned, merely handed me the plastic bottle and went to stand in the shade under a tree.

I kept my fingers crossed as I unscrewed the top of the water bottle and took a sip. It occurred to me that Peter should have gotten the key to the for-sale house, where there would be facilities should the afternoon drag on. I made a note to remind him the next time we were involved in a hostage situation.

Chapter Eighteen

O
h , my gawd!” Luanne shrieked as I came into her store. “I saw it on TV! What an absolute hoot. The cops, the SWAT team, the reporters, the teary husband—and who saves the day? Some filthy little barefoot kids! What did you say to them?”

“I told them that their mommy was making chocolate chip cookies in the house across the street,” I said. “I knew Lanya wouldn’t shoot them, and they were howling so loudly that she had to open the door. After that, the situation defused. Fiona came outside and said it was all a terrible mistake, that she and Lanya were in the kitchen drinking coffee the entire time and hadn’t even noticed the commotion outside. They appeared to be highly entertained by what they claimed was a misunderstanding.”

Luanne grinned. “Was Peter highly entertained as well?”

“Far from it. When he demanded to know why Fiona had called 911, she swore she hadn’t and that she’d lost her phone at the Renaissance Fair. She claimed it was one of her students, pulling a prank.”

“And what did Lanya say?”

I perched on the edge of a display case of beaded purses. “She couldn’t sleep so she went for a drive, and then thought she might stop by Fiona’s house so the two of them could check the invoices and receipts from the fair. Since Fiona is a teacher, it seemed likely that she would be up and about early in the morning. Once they started, they lost all track of time.”

“A tempest in a teapot.”

“Prospero was blowing steam out of his ears. He and the others had been there since nine o’clock, concerned about the purported victim as well as the purported perp, who might have harmed herself, too. Hostage situations often end with murder and suicide. Fiona’s lucky that the police didn’t throw a tear gas canister through a window and break down the front door. That would diminish her goodwill in the neighborhood.”

Luanne went into her back room and returned with a bottle of designer water. “You must be exhausted,” she said as she gave it to me. “So what do you think was going on behind the drapes? Do you think the two of them ... ?”

“I hadn’t considered that,” I admitted, “but I don’t think they have an intimate relationship, if that’s what you mean. They both have impressive track records for heterosexual activity. They were giggly and complacent when they came outside, but not at all guilty. Peter says he’s going to file charges against at least one of them when he has more information about the call to 911. They’ll have to send the tape and a recording of Fiona’s voice to the state lab, and it may take a week to get the results. If they end up with proof that she made the call, she’s going to have to come up with a better story.”

“If she’s telling the truth about her cell phone, any of her students could have pocketed it,” Luanne said. “They seemed to resent being forced to participate. Well, not the pirates. They were having a jolly time.”

“An adult would have turned it in at the Royal Pavilion or the ticket table at the entrance. The only reason I’m confident Caron isn’t guilty is that she couldn’t have known Lanya was at Fiona’s house. I don’t know why any of the other students would, either.”

“Except the ones who live nearby or deliver newspapers to that particular neighborhood.”

I finished the water and took out my car key. “I need to open the bookstore on the off chance someone might want to buy a book in the next two hours. I’ll talk to you later.”

When I arrived at the store, I had to struggle to unlock the door. My adrenaline had ebbed, and I was indeed exhausted. Peter had conceded that my scheme worked, but he’d stalked off without saying anything further. Anderson had been sitting on the curb, moaning about the publicity and its impact on his job. He had not spoken to his wife, nor she to him. It was likely to be a wee bit tense at the Peru home for the next few days—or until she left in September for the course in California. And I had a feeling she would go. Salvador would not be around to see his name on a wine label, but his heirs would as they raked in their share of the profits. If I was right (as I tend to be most of the time), the details had been finalized at Fiona’s kitchen table that morning. Whatever Lanya’s intentions had been when she arrived at dawn, they had been defused by the promise of financial support. If I was right, I amended with a modest smile.