Family Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 2) (17 page)

The following day, I pulled into my driveway and the neighbors
descended.  “What’s going on?” I asked.

“The whole town’s in an uproar!” Mrs. Howard exclaimed.  “It’s
Mateo. They’re transferring him across town.

“Why would they do that?” I asked.

“We don’t know, but we’re not going to let it happen,” said
Mrs. Howard.

“Maybe he got a promotion,” I suggested.

“He deserves a promotion,” Mrs. Johns piped in.

“It’s not a promotion,” Mrs. Howard said.

“Well, don’t do anything that’s going to result in my having to
post bail,” I said, and I got a toothy grin in exchange.

“Only if I don’t get my way,” Mrs. Howard asserted.  “Then we
might have to resort to desperate measures.  No, we’re going to call the
garbage company and make them change their mind.  Will you call them?”

“I guess.  Who else is calling?”

“Well, so far, everyone I’ve talked to.”

“That’s my girl, Mrs. Howard.”

The Margarita Man had the misfortune of driving down the street
at that moment in his 1961 Corvair pickup.  The neighbors blocked his passage.
The guy lived in the Park and had become popular with residents for supplying
the margarita machines for an annual neighborhood function.  I heard Mrs.
Howard giving him the low-down on Mateo as I turned to go. “And I’m going
inside right now to call the mayor and the entire city council,” she exclaimed.

When I got inside, Maddie accosted me.  “Did you hear about
Mateo?” she asked. 

“Yeah, Mrs. Howard told me.  I told her I’d call the garbage
company.”

“No need to.” She wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a
welcome home kiss, then she handed me a beer, clinking her bottle to mine.  “I
called them earlier and the guy said his phone had been ringing non-stop all
day,” she laughed. “He said this was unprecedented, getting all these calls
from residents protesting the loss of their garbage collector. Everyone was
telling him how much a part of our community Mateo is, and he just couldn’t
believe it.  And guess what?  They changed their mind!  Mateo stays!” she
exclaimed.

“Wow!  Power to the people.  That’s great,” I said.  “But
someone ought to tell Mrs. Howard.  She’s calling the mayor and council right
now.”

“I’ll call her and tell her we get to keep him.” She made Mateo
sound like a kitten.

But the phone rang before Maddie could make the call, and
Oliver ran to get it.  We listened as he talked and I couldn’t imagine who he
was talking to.

“I’m Oliver . . . hi . . . yeah . . . yeah . . . no, but I have
three cats . . . okay . . . bye.”  He hung up and ran off towards his room, but
I called him back.

“Who was on the phone?” I asked.

“My teacher,” he said, as if it were an everyday occurrence. He
was starting school the next week, and had talked of nothing else for weeks.  His
what if
inquiries had risen to a whole new level, as he imagined all the
scenarios that could happen in the day of the life of a kindergartener.

“Your teacher?” Maddie exclaimed.  “Who’d you get?”

“Mrs. Price.”

“You got Mrs. Price!” she exclaimed,  like he had just won the
lottery.

“It rhymes with nice,” he said, and I could imagine that he
said it just like his teacher. Oliver could mimic accents, lisps and
inflections with incredible accuracy.

“What’d she say?” Maddie asked.

“She said I’m in her class and she can’t wait to meet me.”

“Did she sound nice?” I asked.

He thought about it. “Uh huh.  She has fish and a hamster.”

“Hey,” Maddie said. “What did you decide about me driving you the
first day?” 

With Oliver starting school, Maddie and I were finally going
through a “first” together,  and it was nice to be on a level playing field.  
Maddie had tried every which way to convince  Oliver to let her drive him to
school the first day, but he’d watched the neighbor kids catch the bus since he
was two and he was having no part of it.  It was a valiant but futile effort on
Maddie’s part. 

“I’m riding the bus.”

*    *    *    *

It was almost dusk and I was shutting the blinds in the front
room when I noticed a guy walking slowly past Jake’s house.  I’d seen him a
short while earlier doing the same thing going in the opposite direction, and I
had assumed he was checking out the deer. I knew no one was home because I’d
seen Jake and Kitty leave, and I scanned Jake’s yard for bucks, but there were
none. I went into stealth mode. I closed the blinds, then cracked one up and
watched as the guy looked around to see if anyone was watching, then he turned
up the driveway.

“What are you doing?” Maddie asked.  She said it in a perfectly
normal tone of voice, but she might as well have shouted it.  She laughed when
I jumped.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!  You scared the crap out of
me.”

“All I did was come in and ask what you’re doing,” she said
defensively.

I pulled Maddie over to the window with me. “Check it out.  I think
someone’s casing Jake’s house.”

“What?!”  She cracked a lower slat and peeked out.  Her hair
smelled like flowers and it was distracting. I moved in closer to get a better
whiff. “Oh my gawd!  Look at that.”

There was a 6-foot wooden privacy fence, and the guy was
standing on his tiptoes looking in the back yard.  He moved towards the gate,
looked around to see if anyone was around, then he disappeared into the
backyard, closing the gate behind him.

“Call the police,” I said. Maddie grabbed her cell phone and
punched 911, and I raced to the door and was putting on my shoes. 

“Where are you going?” But before she could argue, the
dispatcher was on the line.  I listened as she stated the address and what was
going down. “Make sure they don’t use their sirens,” Maddie was saying.  I
waved goodbye and she whisper-hissed, “Sam-uel!”

“I’ll be back.” 

She threw her hands in the air and rolled her eyes, and I heard
her tell the dispatcher, “My husband thinks he’s Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Please
tell the police not to shoot him.”

I sprinted across the street and peeked through the slats in
the fence. The guy was squatting down by the propane tank in the back corner on
Mrs. Howard’s side of the yard. I went back out to the street to make sure
there was no propane truck around, but the street was empty. As I walked back
to the fence to resume my stealth position, the curtains parted in one of Mrs.
Howard’s windows, and I saw her looking out her window toward Jake’s backyard.  She
spotted me, the curtains snapped shut, and within 30 seconds she was out in the
front yard, heading in my direction with a very large revolver in her hand.

“What are you doing with that?” I whispered.

“There’s a prowler back there,” she said, pointing the gun
toward the fence.

“I know. The police are on their way.  Go back home!”

“He’s back there by the propane tank,” she said, ignoring my
instructions.

“Mrs. Howard, I’ve got enough to worry about without having to
worry about you getting hurt.  Now, go home!”

Before she could answer, two cop cars pulled up to the house
and the officers met us at the fence.

“We’ve got him under surveillance,” Mrs. Howard said.

“I’ll take the gun,” one of the cops said, and she handed it
over without protest. “Is it loaded?” he asked.

“You becha!” she whispered.

“He’s back there by the propane tank; it looks like he’s trying
to tamper with it,” I said, looking through the fence again.

One cop took off to cover the gate on the other side of the
yard, and the other joined me at the fence, looked through, then motioned for
me to get Mrs. Howard out of there.  The prowler was on his feet and headed back
towards us. 

“Sorry, Mrs. Howard,” I said, and I scooped her off her feet,
then took off running with her out of Jake’s yard, through her yard, and up to
her front porch.  I plopped her down on her feet, opened her front door, and all
but shoved her inside and closed the door, as the cop yelled, “Freeze!  You’re
under arrest!”

“Stay in there!” I shouted through the door.  I sprinted off
the porch, just as the guy came racing towards Mrs. Howard’s yard.  He took one
look at me, changed course, and somehow managed to scale Mrs. Howard’s 6-foot wooden
fence into her backyard.  The curtains parted and snapped shut. I did an
about-face, back to Mrs. Howard’s. One cop was already heading down the
driveway at the far end of Mrs. Howard’s yard, and the other was calling for
backup as he worked the lock on the front gate.

I burst through the front door. “Mrs. Howard!” I shouted.  No
response.  I stomped through the hall into the kitchen.  “Mrs. Howard!”  I
raced through the house, going room to room, but the house was empty.

I was just on the verge of panic, when Mrs. Howard called out,
“Samuel!” She was in her back yard. I could feel bile rising up in my throat as
I ran back to the kitchen, slammed open the screen door and staggered into the
back yard.  It took a couple of seconds to process the scene, and then I
slumped down hard on the back steps holding my chest.

“I got him,” Mrs. Howard said with a toothy grin. 

“Okay, Mrs. Howard,” one of the officers said.  “You can put
down your rifle.  We’ve got him now.”

Mrs. Howard stood down.  “I’m going to want my handgun back
too,” she said in a sweet-little-old-lady voice that belied the scene I’d just
witnessed.

By that time, the fire department had arrived on the scene,
lights flashing and sirens blaring, apparently in case the propane tank
exploded.

“Oh, there’s no propane in that tank,” Mrs. Howard stated,
waving her hand in dismissal of any danger. “They converted to natural gas in
1996.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

We went around front, just as Jake’s car pulled in his
driveway.  The neighbors were gathered in the Johns’ yard across the street.
Jake and Kitty jumped out of their car, and Maddie came running over to make
sure everything was okay, then she took Emily and Cosmo across the street to
our house. I gave Jake and Kitty a quick recap of what had gone down, then the
three of us went to the back of the cop car where the prowler stood,
handcuffed.

“You know him?” I asked Jake.

“Nuh uh.  Never seen him.”

I had turned away to ask the cops something when Kitty shouted,
“You!” and then “I know him!” And then she went ballistic. “You son of a
bitch!” she shouted, and before I knew what was happening, she had jumped the
guy and was pummeling him.  It was priceless!

It went on long enough for her to get some good punches in,
then I got in there before the cops had to pull her off.

“Whoa, Kitty!  That’s enough,” I said. 

I peeled her off and held her from behind with her arms locked
at her sides, but she wasn’t fighting me. I let her go and she turned around
with a big smile on her face.  I couldn’t hide my admiration.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that?” I asked.

“Roller Derby,” she said, checking out her knuckles and shaking
them out.

“Nice.”

Jake slipped his arm around his wife’s waist. “Nice work, Kitty
Cat.” He kissed her ear and inclined his head to the prowler.  “Who’s the
scumbag?”

“Remember that creep who left me at the Rodeo?” she asked.

“You mean the night we got together?” Jake asked.

“Yeah!  That’s him.”

“Well, what the fuck!” Jake exclaimed.

It was close to 10:00 by the time things were back to normal in
the hood. The cops had hauled off the prowler; the Fire Department had
confirmed that the propane tank was empty; the Travis kids had gone back home;
and Mrs. Howard was tucked safely into her home with her rifle and handgun. 
All was well in the Park.

I left the house bright and early Monday morning, and followed
the school bus around the hood for the 35 minutes it took to pick up its
pint-sized passengers and get my kid to school.  I watched Oliver disembark and
enter the gym where Maddie was waiting, then I headed over to La Taza for a
cappuccino to drink with Mrs. Howard’s cherry bran muffins before going to my
office.  In the time I’d been married, I’d never missed my single lifestyle,
but sometimes I longed for a basket of mini-muffins.  I was contemplating
talking to Mrs. Howard about the possibility of throwing in the odd batch of
minis, when Russ buzzed.

“Jake Travis on line 1.”

I punched the speakerphone. “Jake,” I said.

“Guess what, dude?”

“Tell me.”

“The police got a search warrant today and went into that guy’s
house and found a bunch of property that was stolen from my worksites!”

“No shit?  Wow, that’s great!  So that’s it, I guess.”

“Yeah, man.  I’m off the hook,” Jake said. “Hey, I really
appreciate what you did for me and all that.  You know, acting as my mouthpiece
and all that. That was really cool.”

“No problem,” I assured him. “I was happy to do it.  What’s the
guy’s story?  Jilted boyfriend?” I asked.

“Dude’s unstable!” Jake exclaimed. “I mean messed up. I can’t
believe Kitty went out with him, you know dude? Guy’s got a record as long as
my good leg, so they said he’ll get put away.”

I doubted it was true but I didn’t say so. We made plans to
catch up on the weekend and I hung up just as Russ knocked on my door.  He had
two papers in his hand.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I have the bill for the helicopter charter.”

“Okay.”

“Penny had to leave, but she wanted me to ask you if you want
to consider this a firm expense.”

I thought it was an odd question, but sometimes Penny’s like
that - persnickety is the word that comes to mind.  “I don’t know,” I told
Russ.  “I hadn’t really thought about it.  Here, I’ll take it.”

Russ handed me the bill and I almost choked on the last swallow
of my cappuccino.  “Holy crap!”

“Yes, sir. My sentiments exactly.”

I thought about it for all of two seconds before deciding it
was worth every penny. 

“What’s that?”  I motioned to the other document.

“Oh,” Russ said, like he’d forgotten.  “A courier just dropped
it off.”  He handed me an envelope and left, closing the door behind him. 

I studied the envelope.  It was made of heavy-weight, buff colored
paper with a gold embossed
M
for the return address.  My name was hand-written across the front in a black
fountain pen.  There was no address; just my name.

I slit it open with my letter opener. The envelope was lined in
gold paper.  Inside, I found a single top-grade stationary card with the same
M
engraved
on the top left corner. There were only five words.  I counted them.  Five
words that had the potential of destroying my life.

“
You have something of mine
.”

I went into crisis mode.

I reached Maddie on her cell phone and told her about the
letter.  There was a long silence before she spoke.

“Do you think they’d hurt the kids?”

“I don’t know what they’d do,” I admitted.

Sometimes I think I never should have gotten married. It makes
life complicated.  I find myself making decisions I never would have even
considered when I was single.  Before, if I’d gotten something like that in the
mail, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.  I would have picked up the phone
and called
Mr. M
and told him that if he had something to say to me,
come down and say it in person, and I would have dealt with it from there. 
It’s not that unusual to receive threats in my line of business, considering
some of the clientele I’ve represented. You take someone’s money away and give
it to his ex-wife and he tends to get pissed off.  I’d come to believe that it
came with the territory. 

But this was different. I had a wife and kids to consider.  And
if the
M
stood for Mendoza, and I had no reason to believe otherwise, I
wasn’t dealing with a disgruntled spouse.  If even half of what Niki had told
me about
La Gente
was true, it could be all out war if Mendoza didn’t
materialize. And while I was confident I could look out for myself, I wasn’t as
optimistic about looking out for my family.  It wasn’t something I was prepared
to risk.  The truth was I wanted to send them away – far, far away; but I
wasn’t sure how Maddie would react if I suggested it.  As matters turned out, I
didn’t have to.

“I hate to say this, but I think we should go away for a
while,” Maddie said.

I breathed a sigh of relief.  As much as I hated to give in to
threats, the thought of anything happening to my family scared the shit out of
me.  I could feel my blood pressure decreasing with Maddie’s decision.  “I totally
agree,” I told her.

“How long would it take you to clear your calendar?” Maddie
asked.

Say what?
“I uh . . . I wasn’t including myself.  I
thought you meant you and the kids.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“I can’t, Maddie.  But I’ll be fine,” I assured her. 
“Especially if I don’t have to worry about all of you.”

“Oh, Samuel.  I really hate this.”

She got quiet and I wondered if she was crying.

“Madeline?” It was a term of affection I rarely used, so when I
did it usually got results.

“Yeah?” she said quietly.

“Please don’t argue with me here.  If anything happened to you
I’d . . .” It wasn’t something I cared to think about and I let the sentence
hang.  “Just please don’t argue.”

Another silence, then she said quietly, “Okay, baby.”

“Pack for warm weather and I’ll make the arrangements,” I told
her.

I got through to Niki Lautrec without even getting his
voicemail.  “I need a favor.”

“Name it.”

*    *    *    *

With my wife and kids tucked safely away, my mind was free to
strategize.  My first order of business was to get in touch with Rafael
Mendoza. Assuming he was still with Felicia, I could warn her of the ominous
note and pick his brain at the same time. Unfortunately that was easier said
than done.  I hadn’t spoken to Felicia since we’d been whisked off in the
helicopter.  Unquestionably, the river would still be many feet over the
bridge, so unless they’d found another way off the property, presumably they
were still marooned.  I’d tried Felicia’s cell phone but could never get
through and when I tried the number for the farmhouse, a recorded message said
there was trouble on the line.  But small towns in Texas have one thing in
common:  everyone knows everyone else’s business.   With this in mind, I made
one phone call to the Comfort Hair Palace and I got all the information I
needed. 

Ms. Armstrong had indeed found a back way out of the property,
via the bordering cattle ranch. Apparently, she’d driven to the far corner of
her aunt’s property, climbed the  fence and trekked cross-country to the
neighbor’s house where she’d borrowed their farm truck to come to town for
supplies. The neighbors had suggested that she park the truck at the property
line so she could climb over the fence and hop into the vehicle when she needed
to get off the property.  And this she had done several times, always alone.  
The exchange of information that goes on in small-town beauty shops must be
massive. I could just picture all those old ladies gossiping for hours as they
sat there with their hair in curlers and their feet propped up while women with
big hair worked on their toenails.

So now all I had to do was get a hold of Felicia.  I didn’t
have many options, short of driving to the Hill Country in hopes of running in to
her, so I left a message at the Hair Palace that if anyone saw Felicia
Armstrong, to have her call me.  The blue-hair pipeline proved as reliable as
any modern piece of technology; she returned the call later that day.

“What do you mean he’s gone?” I asked in disbelief.  “Where’d
he go?”

“I don’t know.  He had me drive him to Centerpoint two days
ago.  I haven’t talked to him since.”

“And what, you just left him there?”

“Yeah.  Why would they send
you
that letter?” she asked.

I wondered that myself.  I was surprised that Serenity would
have put together a connection between our inquisition about Felicia’s brother
and Mendoza’s disappearance, but I couldn’t come up with any other
possibility.  And now that he’d disappeared again, I was drastically limited in
my options.  For starters, even if I’d known who
Mr. M
was, I couldn’t
respond to his letter because it would be a dead giveaway that he was right.   If
Mendoza wasn’t around, I didn’t have much choice but to wait around until
the other shoe dropped.