Chapter 4
Mercedes Saggers didn’t hesitate. The moment the man approached her with a shiny object in his hand—undoubtedly a knife—she reacted on instinct.
Whipping out her can of mace, she pressed the nozzle and sent a powerful stream of the noxious substance straight into his face.
When he screamed, she kept spraying, aiming as best she could for his eyes.
When he dropped to the floor, screaming like a little girl, she felt a sense of relief.
“There,” she told him. “That will teach you to try and mug innocent old ladies!”
“I wasn’t trying to mug you, you stupid woman!” the man screamed.
And since Mercedes hated being called stupid, she released whatever was left in the canister of mace into the man’s visage, which by now was pretty red. Red and swollen.
She hoped he wasn’t allergic to the stuff and that she hadn’t accidentally killed him. Then again, he had tried to kill her, hadn’t he?
“You got what was coming to you,” she said, therefore. “And now I’m going to call the cops, so you can’t do this kind of thing again to some other person, you crook!”
“Lady, all I wanted was to ask for a light!” the man cried.
He was rubbing his eyes now, which, in Mercedes’s personal opinion, probably wasn’t a good idea, as it only exacerbated the distress he was already suffering.
“What light? You pulled a knife on me!” she said, pointing to the knife that had skittered across the concrete and had come to a stop against the tire of Mercedes’s car, as parked in the underground parking garage they were in. Always a good place for a mugging.
“That ain’t no knife!” he cried. “That’s my lighter!”
She picked up the thing and had to admit that she couldn’t really make much of it, apart from the fact that it was shiny. But then, of course, she wasn’t wearing her reading glasses.
“Wait,” she said as she rummaged through her purse again. “Let me get my glasses.”
“I’m blind!” the guy cried as he kept rubbing those eyes of his.
“Stop rubbing, you fool! You’re only making things worse for yourself!”
“It hurts so much!”
“Oh, you baby,” she murmured as she placed her glasses on her nose. She cut a quick look at the guy, making sure that he wasn’t getting ready to spring and pounce on her. But as far as she could tell, he had lost all of his fight and didn’t pose an immediate danger.
She studied the object in her hand and had to admit that it didn’t look like a knife at all. It looked more like… a lighter. “Say, this is a lighter,” she pointed out, therefore.
“That’s what I keep telling you!”
“So why did you pull a lighter on me? Did you want to set me on fire or something?”
“I wanted to point out that it was empty and I wanted to ask if you had a light for me.”
She pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Do I really look like the kind of person who smokes? I gave up that filthy habit years ago, young man.”
“Good for you,” he said, but she could tell that he didn’t really mean it. “Now will you please call a doctor? I think I’m blind.” He pointed a finger at her. “And it’s all your fault!”
“No, it’s not. You pulled a knife on me. You tried to rob me, you hoodlum!”
“You’re crazy,” he said in response, and produced a groan that didn’t sound as if he was being a happy camper right now.
Mercedes had to admit the lighter didn’t pose any threat to her at all. And, of course, if it was empty, as the guy claimed, it posed even less of a threat than if it had been operational.
“You shouldn’t have waved that lighter at me,” she said. “Has no one ever told you it’s impolite to sneak up on people like that? Out of nowhere? In a parking garage?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said the guy, who clearly had never learned the lessons of how to function properly in polite society. “Are you gonna call me a doctor or what?”
“I don’t think I am,” she said, once again pursing her lips in a disapproving manner. “You are rude,” she pointed out. “And until you learn how to behave, I will not lift a finger to alleviate your distress.”
“Alleviate my distress?” he said. “What are you, a teacher?”
“Well, I was,” she said, slightly mollified to discover that her expensive education and the habits of a lifetime still lingered. “I taught English. I’m retired now.”
“Just help me up, will you?” asked the guy. “And point me to the nearest bathroom. I have to wash out my eyes.”
She took a step back. The last thing she wanted was to assist this man to the nearest bathroom. Even though he hadn’t actually pointed a knife at her, she still found his behavior appalling and quite reprehensible, and she wasn’t going to lift one finger to assist him in attenuating his discomfort.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to find your own way to the nearest bathroom,” she said primly. “And now I shall bid you adieu, young man. But before I go, I want you to listen to me—and listen very carefully.”
“What now?” he said. Had he been capable of rolling his eyes, she was certain he would have done so. Instead, he merely squeezed them even more tightly shut.
“Be kind,” she advised. “And treat others with consideration. These habits will serve you for the rest of your life and, if truly taken to heart, will be the making of you.”
“Just get lost already, will you?” he said, proving himself to be the lost cause that she had known from the first that he was. “And stop spraying people with mace!”
At the mention of the word, she was reminded of the fact that she was now fully out of the life-saving substance and that she urgently needed to order more.
So she legged it over to her car and drove out of the parking garage as fast as her little car could go, before some other mugger approached her and tried to relieve her of her purse and possibly her life.
These were some mean streets, she had come to realize, and the last thing she needed was to be caught alone and unaware once more.
She had managed to extricate herself from a very dangerous situation once, but there was no guarantee that she would be able to do it again.
As she left the parking garage, she looked around, her eyes adjusting to the light, and when she didn’t immediately know which way to go, she decided to head in the direction of the downtown area.
Most local police stations are located there, and she had a feeling that Hampton Cove’s police station would be no different.
She had an urgent missive to deliver to whoever was in charge of the Hampton Cove police, and she needed to do it as soon as possible. Before it was too late.