Chapter Forty-Five
Forty-five
The lights in the convenience store were exceptionally bright, even by convenience-store standards.
I hadn’t noticed it earlier because I’d been here in the daytime.
But now that it was dark out, I felt like this place could have doubled as a surgical theater, only with cigarettes and lotto tickets.
It was busier in the store than it had been when I bought the water, and Violet was no longer here.
The new clerk was a teenage boy with half-closed eyes and a hairstyle that added four inches to his height.
He was probably stoned. And so I had a feeling I wouldn’t have been able to talk to him the way I’d talked to Violet, but that was okay.
A gill net can catch only so many fish in one day.
I grabbed a bottle of iced tea and a ham-and-cheese sandwich and got in the back of a lengthy cash register line. I was still waiting when Mimi called.
“Can you tell me that name again?” she said after I answered. “You asked if I thought it sounded familiar?”
The person in front of me finished paying. I walked up to the register and set my purchases in front of the clerk. “Edward Piro,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” Mimi said. “Edward.”
I noticed some large, homemade dog biscuits in a box at the counter and took one out to buy. It was the least I could do for Rosie after abandoning her for an entire day. “Why do you ask?”
“It might be nothing,” Mimi said. “But remember that rich boy I told you about? The one Leila stayed with when she first moved to New York?”
“Yes,” I said as I gave the clerk my credit card. “The Trekkie, right?”
“Well, she did meet him at a Star Trek convention, so I would assume,” Mimi said. “But I don’t know anything about him—not even his last name.”
The clerk pointed to a stack of brown paper bags. I nodded yes. He put my things in and handed it to me. I thanked him. He said nothing. I headed for the door.
Mimi was saying, “I did just remember his first name, though. Leila told me during the one phone conversation we had around that time. I think she just wanted to give me something. A little piece of information so I’d…you know…hang up.”
“What was his first name?” I asked.
“Teddy,” Mimi said. “That’s short for Edward, isn’t it?”
“It can be,” I said.
“Yeah, well, it’s been in my mind,” she said. “Figured I’d pass it along.”
“Thank you,” I said. “How’s Tommy?”
“He’s okay,” she said. “I think he might be starting to miss his mommy.”
“I’m sorry, Mimi.”
“I know,” she said. “One day at a time.”
After we hung up, I texted Blake, asking him to research Teddy Piro, too.
I was already out of the store and in the parking lot when I sent the text.
I looked up from my phone and my arms went slack.
The bag I was holding fell from my hand.
The black Porsche 911 Carrera was parked at the edge of the lot, just under the lone streetlamp.
I picked up the bag with one hand and slipped the other into my purse, my fingers finding my gun, my palm resting on the frame.
I didn’t take it out, but I kept my hand on it as I walked toward the sleek car, the light reflecting off it in rainbows, like an oil slick.
“Edward?” I said.
I peered inside the car. There was nobody behind the wheel.
I glanced at the floor. Front and back. Nobody was hiding.
I saw a coil of rope on the rear seat, alongside a rectangular metal box that looked like a tool kit.
I slipped my phone out of my purse and snapped a picture of the box, another of the rope.
I took a few steps back, photographed the length of the Porsche, then moved to the rear of the Porsche and took one of the license plate.
How long has his car been parked here? And where is he now?
I looked at the pictures as I walked back to my own car. I wasn’t sure what they proved. A toolbox and a rope could be in the rear seat of a fancy sports car for any number of benign reasons. But at least I had something.
Why is Piro here? Where is he?
I had just reached my car when I felt the answer to my second question—footsteps behind me, something pressed to the back of my neck. It was the barrel of a gun. I froze. My phone dropped out of my hand and clattered to the pavement.
“Edward Piro?” I said.
He breathed into my hair. The barrel jammed against the top of my spine. I felt a whisper in my ear—a voice that was all breath, no tone behind it. “Sunny Randall.”
I froze.
I heard the click of the gun’s safety releasing.
I wanted to step on his foot or elbow him in the gut, then reach into my purse again and grab my .
38. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was paralyzed.
I hated myself for that. Hated my body for betraying me.
Move. If you’re going to die, at least die fighting back.
“It can happen anytime,” he whispered. “Anyplace. Whether you expect it or not. We’re everywhere.”
We? I said nothing. I couldn’t move my lips to talk.
“We know everything about you. Mind your own business or it will happen. I’m watching. We’re watching.”
The barrel lifted from my neck. My body finally got unstuck. My right hand dove into my purse and grabbed my .38. I yanked it out and took it in both hands and whirled around to face him.
Nobody was there.
The Porsche’s lights switched on. It tore out of the parking lot.
I thought about how long I’d been standing there, unable to move.
Enough time for a big guy like the one I’d seen in that car to get all the way across a decent-sized parking lot.
Never again, I told myself. You are never going to freeze up like that again.
I got back into my car and started it up. I opened the iced tea and took a bite of the sandwich and turned on the AM news to get the voices out of my head. You were weak. You were afraid. You’re a woman, not a child. There’s no excuse. Never again.
I ate my sandwich as I drove, listening to commercial after commercial until I managed to stop berating myself and think of nothing but driving.
The last commercial ended, and the announcer came back on—the same exceedingly animated guy that my dad used to listen to when I was a kid and he’d take me to Saturday soccer practice in his shiny Audi.
This announcer had to be close to one hundred by now, yet that cheesy radio voice hadn’t changed a bit.
He still hung on to every r like a long-lost love.
“Our top story tonight,” he said. “Queen of Romance Melanie Joan Hall has been arrested for the murder of Leila Donnelly.”
I nearly drove off the road.