Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
The last thing Bonnie wanted to do the next morning was plan the family celebration that she had insisted on hosting. Sam had changed the time on her three times, until it was now a late lunch.
She wanted to be out there doing something about “Dangerous Dan” before he did something about her or another of her friends, but right then, she was making her famous blueberry pancakes for breakfast while looking up deadly poisons that grew wild in Zone Five on her burner phone.
She filled a warmed gravy boat with warmed maple syrup, for ease of pouring.
“Aw, Grams, that smells great!” Sadie said as she entered the kitchen. She wore pink sweatpants and a grey T-shirt that said KALE in the same font used by YALE. Her sable-brown hair was in a high ponytail that bounced when she moved. “How’s Aunt Rosa doing?”
“I expect a morning report any minute now.” Bonnie dropped the pre-paid phone into her apron pocket beside the real one, flipped the pancakes, and said, “Don’t forget our lunch this afternoon for your mom. Is she here?”
“Um…no. She had…something. Early.”
Bonnie frowned, but then Sam came into the kitchen wearing a suit without the jacket, and a badge on his belt. He opened a few cupboards. “You have a travel mug I can use? I forgot mine.”
“Just don’t forget our lunch to celebrate your new job and Marina’s new business and all of you moving home.” Her tone had shifted to deeper and firmer. It was the one she used on certain government officials, scam artists who called on the phone, and uncooperative offspring.
She opened a cabinet and took out a tall metal travel mug. It was that blue pattern with white specks, like camping pots have. “Here. This was your dad’s favorite.”
“I’ll do my best to get back in time, Mom,” Sam said, filling the mug with coffee. “They said I’d be out by three, but there’s gonna be a lot.”
“Well, it is for Rosa,” she said. “Part of it is anyway. Right?”
“Yes, part of it is.”
“And you’re worried it’ll take all day?”
“Well, no, but some things broke on another case overnight, and—”
“What kinds of things?”
“I can’t really—”
“Sure you can, hon, I’m your mother.” This was the don’t even bother arguing with your mom, dear tone. Patent pending. “Anything to do with Mr. Terrence?”
He looked at her sharply and she knew she was right.
“He was a co-worker,” she went on, scooping pancakes onto a platter. “I’m concerned. We all are, of course. I mean, that someone we work with could just up and vanish without a word…”
Sally had just entered the kitchen barefoot, wearing pajama shorts and a T-shirt. She came over and hugged Bonnie. “I’m sure he’s okay, Grams.”
“Oh, I hope so. But Sam, someone said it didn’t look like he left on his own.
That Detective Sterling you replaced. Nothing…
happened to him. Did it?” She blinked up at her tall, strong son with eyes as innocent as his used to be when he was nine-through-seventeen and had done something he shouldn’t.
Turnabout’s fair play, kid.
“It looked like he’d left on his own at first, but uh…he hasn’t used his credit cards since. And his finances are off. A lot of unexplained income. We’re doing another check of the place with forensics this time.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. If there’s any blood or anything…”
He kept speaking, but the word blood had Bonnie reliving that awful moment, the bash of the pan reverberating up her arm into her shoulder, which was still sore.
The give of his skull, then the impact with the mantel.
Blood had sprayed. In her mind’s eye she recalled every instant, and then their cleanup efforts with the Clorox wipes afterward.
The ceiling. They’d missed the ceiling.
“So if anything did happen to him, we’ll find out,” Sam finished.
“And you’re doing that today?”
“This morning. Team should be there by now. I have to go.” He snatched two pancakes off the plate, rolled them up together, and dunked the end in the warmed syrup in the gravy boat.
Bonnie rolled her eyes at his manners but stayed on topic.
“Good,” she said. “It’ll be a relief to know for sure.
” She hoped the panicked bird flapping its wings in her chest wasn’t audible from the outside.
“If it helps you get back in time, just bring your work home. You can use your father’s den.
You’ll have all the privacy in the world, and there’s a lock on the door.
I’d really love the family all together, hon. ”
He looked from his mom to his daughters, who nodded in enthusiastic agreement with their grandmother’s words.
“Fine, if it runs long, I’ll work from home this afternoon.” He leaned in, kissed Bonnie’s forehead, fist-bumped his kids, then he headed out the door.
“Way to go, Grams,” Sadie said.
“Yeah,” Sally added. “You really are learning to stand up for yourself.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Bonnie replied. “Speaking of, I want to talk to you both. I want to tell you something nobody told me.”
The girls looked at each other, then back at Bonnie. She said, “Let’s sit.”
They all sat at the small kitchen table with their pancakes.
“Girls, the truth is, the world isn’t a safe place for women.
Especially young women. It never has been.
But now, it’s out in the open. In plain sight.
There are predators out there. They’re stronger than us, so we have to be smarter than them.
It’s a survival tactic.” She topped off her coffee and took a slow sip.
“They tell us not to walk alone at night, to carry pepper spray, to use the buddy system. They tell us not to dress provocatively and not to take our eyes off our drink in a bar, or anywhere really. But nobody tells them to stop attacking us.”
“Right,” Sally said. “So we have to do all those things and then some. And we have to trust our instincts and never worry about hurting somebody’s feelings by protecting our boundaries.”
“And if said boundaries are crossed—” Sadie got up from the table, her pancakes gone. She mimed grabbing someone’s shoulders and kneeing them in the groin, saying, “Ha!” like a martial artist.
“We’ve had this talk, Gram. With Mom.” Sadie glanced at her sister. “Like twelve times now.”
“A hundred times,” Sally said. “Monthly, since we were five.” She got up and executed a strike of her own, heel of her hand to an invisible chin. “Ha!”
Then she and her sister walked around the dining room, yelling “Ha!” over and over while delivering strikes of various kinds.
As she watched them kicking, punching, kneeing the air, Bonnie’s feelings for Marina underwent a profound change.
She didn’t think she was going to have to pretend to like her anymore.
Diane’s assignment for the moment was to keep an eye on Jenna and Rosa.
Harry had gone golfing. It was warm and sunny and it had been easy to talk him into it while letting him think it was his idea. So he would be safely away from home should Dangerous Dan or some henchman-for-hire show up at her house.
She was not sitting in the hospital room.
Sitting was the enemy of the older woman.
She was standing with her paper cup of horrible coffee from the cafeteria.
Jenna had fallen asleep in the chair. At her age, you could get away with that.
Rosa was out cold too, thanks to the pain meds they’d given her.
So Diane killed time by looking at the floral arrangements on every surface of Rosa’s room.
A few more were lined up on the floor near the window.
Rosa’s Reads was closed, but word of the accident had got out around town very quickly, and Rosa’s customers loved her and wanted her back.
Heck, that little bookstore was the reason they were all friends, Diane recalled. She and Christine, who’d known each other since middle school, had decided to join a book club that met there for something fun to do.
Naturally, they’d met Rosa, the owner. Bonnie had joined the same week. They’d been a foursome ever since.
Chrissy’s first husband Jon, a round-cheeked, friendly man with the brightest smile ever, had died a couple years later. He’d been a volunteer firefighter, out on a call like so many others, and he’d just keeled over. A massive coronary, a widow-maker, they’d said.
Poor Chrissy. She’d hardened after that, they’d all seen it.
And Rosa. Rosa was so important to the community! What was Cortland going to do without her?
Diane was worried about Christine. Her task today was to follow Dangerous Dan Fitzpatrick.
The notion was to note his movements and routines and find a way they could get to him to do what they needed to do and more importantly, to keep him from hurting any children until they did.
They were all on backup. If Christine called, they’d fly to her side.
The thought of killing a person was foreign to Diane. She didn’t think her mind was accepting that it might really happen. It was an abstract concept. She was feeling as if it would never come to that, as if they’d surely find another way, as if all that talk in the car had been bluster.
Otherwise, she was sure she’d feel horrified at the notion of taking a life. She didn’t even like killing mice.
Her extra phone pinged its text signal.
Christine: He’s at the Marlborough Club, getting a massage.
Diane felt her eyes widen as she rapidly typed a reply.
Diane: From a girl?
Christine: Don’t know. He was already in the room when I got here.
Diane: Well, do something!
Christine: Like what?
Diane racked her brain, looking around the hospital room for an answer, and finding one, mounted to the wall.
Diane: Fire alarm?
Christine:
Christine was a member of the most exclusive golf club in the county, the Marlborough Club, so it had been no problem getting in.
The clubhouse was a gigantic log structure, with a floor-to-ceiling, two-sided, fieldstone fireplace as its focal point.
The wide hearth became a narrower chimney and climbed upward and through the lobby’s cathedral ceiling.
Comfortable chairs were arranged all the way around it in small groupings.