Wreath of Deception (27 page)

Tap, shift. Tap, shift.

Jo pictured poor Genna, out walking her roommate’s dog, possibly even wearing one of Bethanne’s own warm-up jackets. Had she been caught totally by surprise? Jo guessed so. Deirdre would know she needed to catch her victim off guard to avoid any struggle or screams. Jo imagined Deirdre rushing out from a hiding place, or perhaps strolling several steps behind in the shadows, then, as Genna paused near the edge of the cliff, pushing her over the rail before she could react. Jo pictured Deirdre coolly fastening the dog’s leash to a nearby tree, caring more for the well-being of that little creature than she had for the young woman she’d just killed.

Tap, shift.

Jo’s head had begun to throb badly. The pounding at her temples seemed to match the rhythm of her car’s chugging. Her body was telling her in several ways that it badly needed cleaner air. She realized her tapping had slowed down and she forced herself to pick up the pace. Her arms, reaching above her head to the hinge, ached, and she lowered them to rest a moment, inadvertently dropping her steel punch and small hammer in the process.

Jo stared down at the tools as they lay on the floor, her mind suddenly blank. There was something she needed to do, she knew that, but she couldn’t think what that was. Her hammer and—her tools. Oh, yes. She needed to pick them up. She needed to work at the hinge. She bent to pick them up and had to steady herself by grabbing at her bench as dizziness overwhelmed her. She waited a moment for it to pass, then retrieved her tools. What did she want them for? Yes, that’s right. The hinge.

Tap, shift, tap, shift.

The pin in the top hinge poked up, and Jo pulled at it with her cramped fingers, wiggling and working until it came free. She knelt down and grasped the door by the knob and lower edge, pushing away the rags, and pulled. The door didn’t budge. It felt so heavy, heavier than she could manage. She felt so tired, so sleepy. Should she just lie down? Just a minute? No! She had to get the door off. She tugged. The hinges separated.

Jo struggled with the door to shift it sideways and pull it from its lock, as the weight threatened to push her backward. She managed to push it aside enough to step through, then staggered out into the garage. She stood, looking at her car in the small amount of light spilling from her workroom. It sat there, perfectly still, as she heard the engine under its hood run rapidly. That suddenly seemed very funny to her. That the engine was running but the car wasn’t. Jo giggled, then stopped herself. She should probably turn the car off. That seemed like a good idea, but Jo couldn’t remember how one did that. Was there a switch somewhere on the car? Something to flick up or down?

Mike, do you remember? How did we turn our car off?

Maybe she should forget the car and just go. She took a step toward the kitchen door and staggered, grabbing on to the doorframe of her workroom. The connecting door seemed a long, long way away. She was so tired. Perhaps she should just sit down and rest awhile. But something seemed to shake her; someone seemed to say to her:
Move! Keep moving! Get to the door.

“I can’t,” she protested. “My legs won’t move.”

Move!

“I can’t,” Jo insisted, tears filling her eyes. But she did. One foot swung forward, and she shifted her weight onto it. “It’s so hard,” she cried, but she managed to slide her other foot forward, then lean onto it.

Keep going!

“I’m trying!” One more step.

Another one!

Jo’s legs were like cement blocks that she had to push through four feet of water in a slippery-bottomed pool. But she moved, one inch at a time, as the Toyota spewed out its poisonous fumes.

Again.

Again.

Jo could barely see at this point, but she stretched out one leaden arm, flailing from side to side until, leaning forward, she touched wood. She gasped, then fumbled over it until she touched the metal of the door knob, turned it, and pulled. The door opened toward her, and she held on desperately, aware, somewhere in the fog of her brain, that losing her balance and falling backward to the floor meant losing her life. But a single, rising step still stood between her and escape.

Jo tried to lift one foot up onto the step, but her brain’s signals seemed to be scattering like buckshot. Her toes wiggled and her knee flexed, but her foot remained flat. She tried with the other foot. Wiggle, flex, tremble. Nothing worked as she wanted it to. She knew, somehow, she couldn’t stay there, so Jo threw herself forward, landing halfway into her kitchen, and gasped from the floor at the fresher air. It helped, for a moment, and she lifted herself onto her elbows and pulled, determined now to drag herself all the way out.

You can do it.

But then the fog swirled thickly again, engulfing her, and she couldn’t see, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Her head dropped to the floor and she felt the smoothness of the linoleum on her cheek, so cool, so nice. She could just . . .

Jo suddenly felt strong hands grasping her shoulders, pulling her forward.

“No, no, I want to stay . . .” she protested.

But the hands gripped harder, pulling, pulling, and the last thing Jo remembered was a macaroni noodle sliding past her cheek and onto her neck.

Missed that one, she thought, then closed her eyes.

Chapter 30

“You’ve been blessed with a perfect day for this craft show, Mr. Gordon.” Ina Mae stood in front of the St. Adelbert’s Ladies’ Sodality table, facing the country club manager.

His head bobbed in agreement. “We couldn’t have ordered it any better. And what a turnout! I’d have to say this is the best crowd we’ve had in years. Perhaps ever. The weather is a factor, of course,” his voice growing serious, “but I think many people are here because of Mrs. McAllister.”

“Oh, certainly. You might say this entire show is a tribute to her.” Ina Mae leaned closer to Bob Gordon. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if she put in a good word with
someone
,” she raised her eyes heavenward, “for this beautiful, sunny day.”

“Absolutely,” Loralee chimed in. She set down the pink quilted picture frame she had been examining. “It would be just like Jo to continue thinking of others, no matter what.”

Bob Gordon opened his mouth to speak when the voice from the next table caused him to turn.

“Oh, please!” Jo cried out, laughing. “Like I have a hot-line to heaven, and special ordering privileges?”

Ina Mae smiled at her. “Well, don’t you think you have a
few
perks owed you, after all you’ve been put through recently.”

“My perk is being here at all, for which I’m very grateful. If anyone is owed a debt, it would be Charlie Brenner for following his gut feelings and showing up right when I needed him most.”

“Yes, that was extremely clever of him, I have to say. Carrie and Dan have raised a fine boy.”

Jo looked over at Carrie, who was busy at the other end of the table helping a woman decide among several of Jo’s seasonal wreaths, and saw from the pleased smile and pink cheeks that she had heard. Jo knew if Dan were nearby that he too would be grinning with pride. Charlie’s actions that night were truly heroic, and he had definitely grown several inches in the eyes of his parents.

A club employee called Bob Gordon away, and Ina Mae and Loralee were distracted by one of the Sodality ladies. Jo, left to herself for the moment, gazed over the lush green of the club’s golf course, her thoughts going back to that night.

She hadn’t been aware of much once she lost consciousness on the kitchen floor, but she had revived sporadically as the paramedics treated her on her front lawn. She remembered urgent voices shouting and red lights flashing. Charlie had called 9-1-1 and pulled her from the house, frantic, he’d said, until the ambulance finally arrived.

“I was following Mrs. Patterson,” he’d explained to Jo later. “I got bored hanging around Amanda’s soccer game, and rode my bike to the Forest Home Drugstore to check out the magazines. I heard someone mention the playhouse while I was looking through
Cycle Week
, and I looked up. Mrs. Patterson was talking with some other women, and they were saying stuff like what a shame the playhouse closed down and would it ever reopen, things like that, so of course I listened in. I wanted to know what was going to happen too.”

Charlie had told her this as Jo was recovering at the University of Maryland Medical Center, where she’d been taken for treatment in the hyperbaric chamber. She remembered how he had paced about her room, the adrenaline pumping through him once again as he described those moments.

“But they didn’t have any real information. They were just yakkin’ away about how much revenue was being lost by this latest cancellation, and all. So I started flipping pages of my
Cycle Week
again. Then I heard Mrs. Patterson say she would ask Mr. Rulenski about maybe setting up another fund-raiser when she saw him, which would be very soon since she was meeting with him in about fifteen minutes, so she was sorry she had to take off now, yada, yada, yada.”

Charlie had stopped at the foot of Jo’s bed then, his lip curling at the significance. “She was lying. Mr. Rulenski was in New York. I knew because I kept checking with his assistant—what’s-her-name with the glasses—in case rehearsals started up again.”

Jo nodded. Rafe had told her, too, about his plans to go up to New York for a commercial job. “So you followed her?”

“Yeah! I wanted to know what was going on. I mean, I didn’t know too much about her, but in this town everyone’s connected to everyone. Maybe I thought she was going to meet up with Mr. Schroder and I’d hear him telling her how he’d killed off Kyle Sandborn.”

Jo laughed. “Poor maligned Mr. Schroder.”

“Well, maybe not anything that exciting, but I was curious. So I hopped on my bike and tailed her. She’s got a cool car. Did you ever see it?”

Jo nodded, grinning at the teen-interest sidebar to his story.

“But I’m on my bike so I’m invisible. Like, who thinks twice about some kid on his bike, right? And instead of following her to the country club or some place like that, I see her pull onto your street. And she slows down in front of your house but doesn’t stop. It’s like she’s checking it out. So I slow down too, and keep in the shadows. And I see her go around the corner and park, then get out and walk down that street that runs in back of your house. I saw her go into your backyard. But it was dark, and I couldn’t get that close, so I didn’t know she didn’t knock or anything, but snuck in. I just figured you knew she was coming and said to come in that way for some reason.”

Charlie scowled. “If I’d known what she was really doing, I would have charged right in.”

“I’m glad you didn’t, Charlie. She had a gun. It could have been very bad.”

“Yeah, well maybe,” he said, somewhat skeptically.

Jo saw he believed he could have somehow overpowered Deirdre before she pulled her trigger, just as every actor on TV so easily did seven nights a week. “The best thing,” she insisted, “would have been to call the police.”

“Yeah, now I wish I had. But I just hung around thinking if she didn’t stay long I’d follow her some more, see where she went next, and talk to you about it the next day. I was getting worried, ’cause it was getting late and I knew my folks’d be mad if I stayed out too long. Anyway, I saw her come out, but something seemed funny ’cause she seemed real tense, looking around and all. She got in her car, and I kept behind her. She drove faster this time, and I had a little trouble keeping up, but I finally saw her pull into her driveway and her garage. I knew it was hers ’cause the mailbox outside said ‘Patterson’ on it.”

“You could have just gone home then, Charlie. What made you come back to my place?”

“I don’t know.” Charlie looked truly puzzled. “I started to. But something just didn’t seem right. Here she had told the others she was going to meet with Mr. Rulenski and instead she goes to your house. Then, using the back door and all, it just seemed funny. I decided to go back and just see, even though I was cutting it real close with the time by now.”

“You ended up breaking in.”

Charlie nodded. “I was real scared to do that. I just wasn’t sure, you know? But you weren’t answering your door, and when I walked around I could see your kitchen light was on. Then I heard your car running, but the garage door was locked. That really worried me, so I decided to break the window in your bedroom and climb in.”

Thank God he had, Jo thought as the sound of a golf cart winding its way down the path brought her back to the present.

“Jo.” Loralee broke into her thoughts. “Can I get you something to eat from the refreshments table? They have lovely frosted brownies. Maybe coffee?”

“Thanks, Loralee, but I have a drink here I’m working on. And Javonne brought me a fully loaded sub earlier, so I’m bursting at the seams.”

Her workshop ladies—minus Deirdre, of course—had been fussing over her since her return from the hospital, refusing to allow her to cook for herself or even wash a dish. Jo felt she could get used to this very easily. Dan and Charlie had repaired her broken window before she even had time to think of it, and Carrie, Jo was sure, though she hadn’t admitted it, had mopped and cleaned inside.

Jo glimpsed Hank Schroder’s truck in the distance, and remembered how he had shown up at her door a few days ago, typically not asking but
informing
her that he had extra grass seed that would go to waste and since her front lawn was pretty torn up from the emergency workers, he would rake it smooth and reseed it for her. He had brusquely waved off her offer of payment, saying, with the beginnings of a grin that threatened to crack his leathery face, that he owed her one for that free soda he got from her the other night.

Hank Schroder, Jo learned with a shock, had a sense of humor.

“I know you’re just renting,” he’d gone on to say as he got to work, “but I also know your landlord, Max McGee, spends half his time in Florida and doesn’t worry about maintenance.”