Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 04 - Jupiter Returns (3 page)

Your days are drawing to an end. I am watching you.
You can’t escape.

Jupiter

I took the note inside and gave it Tracy, “I haven’t touched it,” I said.

She got a tissue from the box on the conference table and took the note from me and put it in a zip lock bag.
“Let me guess, it was under your windshield wiper?”

I nodded and she told me to wait a minute
while she called my tail. He turned out to be a big black man whose name was Huck. He spoke in a soft voice and didn’t say much but I felt safe with him around.

“What’s your name?” I asked him as he was walking me to my car.

He gave me a big grin. “Travis Bacon, but most folks just call me Huck.”

“Okay, Huck
how’s this going to work? Are you responsible for just me or are you going to try to guard all of us at my house?”

“I’m strictly your tail.
Where you go, I go. Someone else will be living with your family. When you’re in for the night, I will go home and let Jake take over. He’s a good agent and has been doing this a long time. In the morning, I’ll be back to follow you into work. How’s that sound?”

“It sounds great,” I said.
“I think I’m going to have Tracy, Mark and Brad move into the mansion. I already told Jesse to take Brad over there for the day. What do you think?”

“Yeah, I think it will be a lot easier to protect everyone if they’re all in the same place.”

He followed me home and I got out and told him I wouldn’t be going out, that I would be in for the night.

Jake had already told everyone to move into the mansion and they were in the process of doing that.

Brad came running over to me, “Aunt Judith, guess what, we’re sleeping over. The whole family! Mimi said I could sleep in the daisy room.”

I hugged him, “That’s wonderful, Brad.
We’ll have so much fun.”

He took my hand and led me inside and I waved goodbye to Huck.
Mimi made a delicious dinner of pot roast with mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans. We had sweet iced tea with the meal and then everyone went their separate ways.

Ben and I went to bed early.
We were both exhausted.

CHAPTER 4

I was dreaming about being on a tropical beach with Ben.
We were stretched out on a huge blanket and he was rubbing suntan lotion on my back. The sun felt too hot and I was going to tell Ben I wanted to get in the water, but when I stood up the heat was so intense I fell. What started out as a pleasant dream became a nightmare when I looked out at the ocean and saw that it was on fire. I screamed and woke myself up.

Ben jumped up when I screamed and it looked like the sky outside our window was on fire.

“Mark and Tracy’s house is on fire,” Ben said.

Fire trucks were screaming around the corner just as we hit the bottom stair.
Mimi, Mark, and Brad were holding each other but Tracy was nowhere to be seen.

“She grabbed her gun and was out of here before I could stop her,” Mark said.

“Where’s Jake?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen him.
Maybe he had already gone over there before we all got downstairs.”

We went outside to watch but the heat was so intense we had to go down the block and watch from there.
The firefighters fought hard but it was no use. A strong accelerant had been used and the house burned to the ground. What seemed like many hours later, the exhausted firemen and police left and still Tracy and Jake had not returned.

It was getting lig
ht outside when Jesse came down. “I’ve been trying to get Brad calmed down. He finally went back to sleep. The fire woke him up and he was worried about his mama, after what happened in St. Augustine a couple of years ago.”

We all thanked her
and Mark went up to look in on his son.

“I’m glad he’s asleep,” I said.
“Tracy and Jake are missing. We don’t know what’s happened.”

Mimi shook her head, “I’ll tell you, I worry about Tracy.
I have grown to love her like a daughter. How could I not love her? She brought me together with you and Julia. I wish she didn’t like being in the FBI so much. She’s good at what she does and we need people like her but I sure do worry about her.”

Mimi went on like that for some time
and I was worried about her. I sat down beside her and put my arms around her. “Mimi, would you like me to get you some coffee? Someone’s made some. I can smell it.”

Just then one of the maids came in and announced that breakfast was served.
Mark came down and we went in to the dining room to eat.

No one said much and we picked at our food until we heard Tracy and Jake come in.
They were out of breath like they had been running.

“We chased her for miles, but lost her,” Tracy said.
“I thought I was in good shape but she’s amazing.”

“Slow down, honey and tell us what happened.
We’ve been worried sick about you. Brad was scared you’d been burned up, like we thought you were in St. Augustine a few years back.”

Jake took over the story, “I woke up and knew that someone had set fire to your house.
Agent Carr and I met up as we were both running down the stairs. I stopped long enough to call 911 and then caught up with agent Carr outside.

“
I saw a woman run around the back of the house with agent Carr right behind her. I thought sure you would catch her, agent Carr.”

“Just call me Tracy, Jake.
Anyway, I thought I had caught her but just as I was diving for the tackle she got a second wind and shot away like lightning.”

Mark poured her a cup of coffee and put a plate in front of her filled with eggs and biscuits.
“Thanks darling. We chased her all through River Oaks. She scaled fences like I’ve never seen anyone do in my life.”

“I tried to go around an
d head her off,” Jake continued. “But I couldn’t get ahead of her. Just when I thought I had it figured out which way she was headed, she changed courses. At one point I thought she was headed right toward you, Tracy.”

“Yeah, I did too.
But we lost her. I just hope she isn’t hiding out inside someone’s house. I stopped one of the deputies that were leaving here and asked him to get some officers to start canvassing the area and knocking on doors.”

“Was it Jupiter?
” I asked.

“I
think so. She looked about the same size. She had her hair up in a stocking cap and was wearing a skin tight black body suit. Her face was blackened. She was hard to see. If she hadn’t been moving, we would have probably missed her.”

“Well, thank God everyone was in th
e big house and no one was hurt,” I said.

CHAPTER 5

Jupiter had escaped and she didn’t resurface for several days.
Tracy and Mark talked about looking for another house but Mimi asked them to wait until after Jupiter was caught.

“You can stay here indefinitely,” Mimi told them.
“This house is so big you can have all the privacy you want. Besides, I like having all of us under one roof.”

The next day I stopped at Starbucks for coffee on my way to work and couldn’t find my wallet.
I emptied my purse and it just wasn’t there. I tried to think back to the last time I had used it.

I
t must have been two days before when Ben and I had picked up my car at the airport, where it had been parked while we were on our trip. I had noticed it was low on gas and stopped to fill up.

Ben had r
emarked that it was strange to be low on gas since I had never let my car get below a half tank. Ben had pumped the gas for me and I had opened my wallet to get a credit card. I remembered using the card and then putting it back in my wallet and putting the wallet back in my purse. I was sure of it.

Huck walked over to my car while I was searching for the wallet and asked what was wrong.

“My wallet is gone. I emptied out my entire purse and it’s not here.” I explained to him when I thought I had last seen it.

“You’d better cancel your credit cards right away.
You’ll need a new driver’s license too.”

I told Huck I was going back home to see if it was there.
He followed me.

When I drove into the d
riveway, Mark came out laughing. “You decided against it? Where’s Ben?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The red Corvette, Judith. Did you decide not to get it?”

“From the beginning, Mark, tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Judith! You came in here about an hour ago to pick up Ben. You were driving a bright red Corvette. You said you were test driving it, that you were thinking about buying it. You said you wanted Ben to go with you and to drive it too…?”

I looked at Huck, “What do you make of this?”

“Sounds like someone who looks a lot like you stole your wallet and is trying to take over your identity.”

“She didn’t look a lot like Judith.
She looked exactly like her. She did sound different. But when I commented on it she said she was coming down with a cold.”

Thinking out loud, I said, “Could Jupiter have gotten plastic surgery
, to look like me?”

Huck was shaking his head
before I finished the sentence. “There hasn’t been enough time. She wouldn’t have healed enough by now to pass herself off as you. What about your twin, Julia?”

I shook my head, “Julia would never do anything like this, unless she has completely lost her mind.”

I dialed the number in New Orleans for the art gallery and Julia answered the phone. “Hi Judith,” Julia said. “Guess what, I sold two very expensive paintings today, one for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars and one for one million. Can you believe it?”

“That’s great, Julia.
Is everything else all right?”

“Everything is great.
The professor and I are talking marriage. Can you believe it? Of course, you have to be my matron of honor. Jean has a new love interest…”

Julia, the chatterbox was still in New Orleans.
I caught her up on the honeymoon but didn’t mention the current problem.

“You both heard.
Julia is at the art gallery. She made two big sales today and is going to marry the professor. She then talked about a lot of other chatter she usually engages in.”

Mark spoke up, “This woman in the Corvette didn’t chatter like Julia, and she didn’t sound like you, Judith.”

I called the police who came and took a report but looked skeptical. If it hadn’t been for my reputation with the local FBI, I think they would have blown it off entirely.

I next cancelled my credit cards and went inside to tell Mimi what had happened.

“What could it mean?” she said. “I’m so tired of all this bad stuff happening to you and Julia.”

I gave her Julia’s good news and she smiled
, “So, the chatterbox is getting married. That is good news. Judith, could this woman pretending to be you have anything to do with Jupiter?”

“I don’t see how, but the timing seems to suggest it, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does,” Mimi said. “Be careful, Judith.”

CHAPTER 6

I went to work but got very little done.
I wrote some profiles for some of the other cases and sat in on some meetings but I was worried about Ben. I kept calling home but no one had seen him.

I left work early after tell
ing Huck. He followed me home. By 10:30 Ben was still not home and we were getting worried.

I couldn’t go to sleep
. I tossed and turned until 2:00 a.m. and finally decided I had to do something. I got up and took off my pajama bottoms and put on a pair of jeans.

Getting
my purse, I slipped out the front door intending to drive around looking for Ben. I had no destination in mind. But I wasn’t going anywhere. Someone had slashed all four of my tires. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up as I felt like someone was watching me. I spun around looking but no one was there. Running back into the house, I locked the door. Someone grabbed me from behind and tackled me to the floor.

I screamed out in pain as my knee hit the marble floor.
Lights came on and suddenly everyone was awake and downstairs.

“What in the hell are you doing, sneaking around in the middle of the night.
You could have gotten killed. I could have shot you,” Tracy said as she gave helped me up.

“Someone’s slashed all four of my tires, Tracy.
I was going out to look for Ben. He’s still not back.”

“Judith, why don’t you wait until morning?
Where were you planning to look anyway? Houston is a big city.” Mimi said all of this with a big yawn.