"So what are you going to do if he comes back tonight? Wait around all night for him to try the window again?"
John smirked. "I am a night owl, remember?"
CHAPTER 9
John kept his promise and stayed up all night watching the cornfields; nobody came out, not even a bird or creepy child. He gave me the boring report late the next morning when he stumbled into the kitchen where I'd just prepared my lunch specialty, a peanut butter and butter sandwich; biting into the sandwich reminded me that we'd have to go to the food store for some jelly.
"So no sign of our unwanted guest or the Great Pumpkin?" I asked him as he slipped onto one of the island stools. With his limp limbs and dark eyes he looked like something the cat had dragged in, then back out, then back in.
John shook his head. "I saw nothing out there but corn."
I sat on a stool beside him. "I suppose it could have been worse. You could have been abducted by aliens and made me jealous when they performed strange sexual experiments on you," I quipped.
That got a half smirk out of him; not as good as a whole one, but I was glad to see it. "I suppose we'll have to do the experimenting to make up for that lost opportunity."
I sat up straight and cracked my back. "Maybe in a few days when my bones are realigned. You pound hard when you're eager."
John slid over to me and swept me into the crook of one of his arms. He leaned down and his soft breath tickled my ears. "You should see me when I really get going."
"I'd rather feel that, but seeing is believing," I quipped.
"Then as soon as you're healed I'll show you," he promised.
"And send me right into the emergency room," I countered. I slipped out of his clutches and dropped my empty plate into the sink. "But your lust-filled mind is forgetting something very important."
"And that would be?"
"Monroe is going to be coming in the next half hour."
"I thought you said it was important."
"Hey, that's one of my lines!"
John shrugged. "Maybe your humor is rubbing off on me."
"Perish the thought that there would be two of me in this world. The epicness would lead to total annihilation."
"Or perhaps the world couldn't handle another modest individual," John replied.
I dramatically flung my arm over my head. "Either way the outcome would be disastrous. Best keep to your prudish nature, John, and leave the insanity to me."
He chuckled and prepared himself breakfast. "A good idea."
John finished his meal, and went into his study. He was still in there when there came a knock on the door, and I answered it to find Monroe on the doorstep. I cracked my lips forcing a smile on my face. I regretfully stepped aside to let him inside. "Good afternoon, Mr. Monroe. Mr. Benson is waiting for you in the study."
Monroe smiled at me. "Good afternoon, Miss Calhoun. A lovely day to be working outside, isn't it?"
Only if it meant I was digging his grave. "Yes, only one or two dark clouds on the horizon." Him being one of them.
Monroe walked back into the study and I found myself at a loss for what to do. Out of sheer desperation I risked radioactive exposure and performed a community service by doing John's laundry. Judging by the crustaceans on the jeans and the stiffness of the shirts, I'd say they'd been sitting there since before Cecil was born. I was still hard at work disposing of the waste when loud voices erupted from the study like Mount Vesuvius. I peeked my head out the door and across the narrow hall to the wooden door. With each shouted word the wood stretched and strained until I feared the whole thing would splinter.
Surprisingly, it did, but not because of the sounds; it was because of Monroe's body crashing through the thick wood. He landed on his back and John stepped through the man-shaped hole with his fist bloodied and his face bruised. John tossed Monroe his briefcase and it landed on the man's groin; he squawked and clutched at his package like it was all he was getting for Christmas. "Get the hell out of here!" he yelled at Monroe.
I thought maybe now was the time to interfere before John castrated the prostrate fellow. "What in the world is going on?" I yelled at them both. Much as I hated Monroe, I pulled his briefcase and him off the floor. "What are you two fighting about now?" I peeked through the hole past John and noticed sunlight streaming through the windows; the curtains were on the ground, and I saw part of John's face looked red. I glanced between Monroe in my arms and the curtains, and a frown crept onto my face. "How did those curtains get down?" I asked John.
John nodded at Monroe. "He pulled them down."
"Does he know about your sensitivity?"
"Perfectly."
I dropped Monroe like a bag of potatoes, and he crumpled just as easily onto the floor. "What the hell were you thinking?" I angrily asked the lump of spuds. "You could have seriously injured Jo-Mr. Benson!" Nearly let slip that unprofessional moniker.
Monroe gathered some of his wits about him, an easy feat for any idiot, and stumbled to his feet. He wiped blood from his lips and glared at us. "What do I care about this freak and his condition? He's a detriment to the company, and I will say as much in my next report to the board." He staggered down the hall and out of our lives, or so I hoped; his threat hinted otherwise, but that was a problem for later; right now I had a wounded boss to mend.
I hurried up to John's side and looked over his face. Half of it was turning a nice shade of tomato red, and he had cuts and bruises on his face where Monroe had landed a punch. "We're going to need a cold pack on those burns ASAP," I told him.
He winced when my probing fingers accidentally brushed against the red skin. "It may be too late for that small of an effort. It might not even take the edge off the pain."
"That's all we've got, so that's what we're going to do," I insisted. I dragged him into the kitchen and used up most of the ice cubes from the fridge in order to stuff half a dozen gallon bags full of the face-freezing blocks. John grappled with me when I tried to put one on his face, so I allowed him to press the bag himself and sat down on a stool close by his seat. "So what's the rundown?"
John blinked in bewilderment. "Pardon?"
"What caused the scrape?"
"His punches."
"What caused the fight?"
"He lost his temper when I accused him of stealing my documents."
"But you said we couldn't prove he'd taken them," I reminded him.
John shook his head. "Not those documents. I had more stolen from me after he left."
"How can you be sure it wasn't him? He went inside the house alone while we were still admiring the cornfields," I pointed out.
"Impossible. It would have taken him too long to get at them."
"What exactly is missing?" I asked him.
John furrowed his brow. "Some of my old schedule books like the one I still use. Many of the entries have records of my transactions, and all my meetings were on those pages."
"They're just books, so why would it have been impossible for Monroe to swipe them when he grabbed his briefcase?"
"They're hidden in a wall panel behind the desk. Only me and-" John froze, and his eye twitched.
"Only you and-?"
His voice dropped to a whisper that trembled with anger. "Only my secretaries and I know where that panel is hidden."
I frowned. "I don't know about a secret panel."
"That's not important right now."
"I think it's pretty important. Why didn't you tell me where this thing was?"
"Because you're not supposed to see-" For the second time in ten seconds John froze up. I wondered if the ice cubes weren't having a dangerously effective effect on him.
"I'm not supposed to see what?" He looked away, and I inched toward him. "I'm not supposed to see what?"
"I'll tell you later, but right now-"
"No, tell me now."
"Angel, I've had several years of my life stolen-"
"And I'll shave off a few more if you don't tell me."
&
nbsp; "Sometimes you don't live up to that pet name I gave you."
"Sorry for the false advertising, but what am I not supposed to see?"
"Angel, focus. I'm suffering from a severe sunburn and I've been robbed twice in as many days."
"I am focused-just not on what you want me to be focused on."
John set the package of ice down on the island counter and gently cupped my chin in his hands. He forced me to look into his soft, pain-filled eyes. "Angel, I promise I'll tell you later, but right now we have greater problems to deal with."
"You won't forget?"
"I definitely won't forget."
I sighed and nodded. "All right, I'll focus. When did you notice the books were gone?"
"This morning just before Monroe arrived. That's why I didn't have time to tell you about the theft."
"So you were digging in the secret panel place and found they were gone?"
He shook his head. "I noticed the panel was slightly ajar. Somebody had carelessly left it open."
"Sounds like they were in a rush. Any idea when it could have happened?"
"Any time after Monroe left. I was in the study, but didn't look in the direction of the panel."
I rubbed my chin in one hand and pondered the mystery. It was a stumper right down to the wooden panel. "So if only your secretaries knew about this panel, then it must have been one of them."
"And we know a certain secretary who works for Monroe," John chimed in.
My brain lit up like an old flashlight, the kind that needs a good whack on the side of the head to get started. "That's it! It all makes sense!"
"I make sense, but you're sounding nonsensical," John argued.
My brain was so excited it jumped me off the stool and paced me around the room. "The green hand prints on the windowsill, the missing things from your office, and Monroe coming here. He's the one behind the thefts, but he's not the thief."
"Not the thief? Then you're saying-"
"That Monroe's been bringing a passenger here and dropping her off in the cornfields before he reaches the house. She slipped to the side of the house, climbed the vine and hid somewhere until the coast was clear for her to swipe the stuff."
My glee was contagious as a wide smile slipped onto John's face; I just hoped nothing else would be catching. "And what she didn't know was that her old room was occupied, and she heard you coming and escaped around the back of the house."
"But I bet she didn't run out into the fields," I added. "She could have slipped into the laundry room close to the back door and waited for all of us to pass by before going into the study to swipe the calendar books. They would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for a meddling me seeing her escape around the house."
"And finding the green hand prints," John added.
I stopped pacing beside the island and puffed out my chest. "All in a day's work for-" John reached over and tapped on my breast, and I whacked his hand away. "You ruined my catch-phrase!"
"We're not done yet, Nancy Drew. We don't have any evidence of Sievers being here," he pointed out.
All the air blew out of my chest and I slumped over the island. "You're right. No cop would believe that fantastic a story."
"They might if you don't deliver it with such cartoon hilarity."
"It makes me laugh."
"The officers might not have the same sense of humor."
"They might not have a sense of humor at all, but I have a plan to capture the capers once and for all."
"What is it, Scooby-doo?" he teased me.
I tilted my nose up and brushed a hand through my hair. "I'll have you know I'm Daphne."
John rolled his eyes. "What's the plan?"
I grinned evilly and rubbed my hands together. "We make them an offer they can't refuse."
"How?"
I slipped off the evil in exchange for a sheepish grin. "To be honest we just make up some fake papers and see if they take the bait. No risk, and everything to gain if we catch them in something illegal. I can't see this failing."
John frowned. "It will fail if the board removes me before they take the bait, and how are we supposed to get Monroe back here?"
"Hmm, any means of communication Miss Sievers would know about that would tip them off?"
"She knew I would place important documents in the mailbox just prior to the mail arriving," he replied.
"Then that's where we'll start the trap. Write up something big and important, and we'll ship it off today."
"The mail already left."
"Write up something big and important, and we'll ship it off tomorrow."
"After the pain subsides," he pleaded. His face had surpassed tomato and zoomed on to racing-stripe red.
I winced. "Agreed."
CHAPTER 10
John wasn't well enough to do any work until later that night. He sat in his study writing up the fake memos when I received a call from a familiar phone number; it was Will Tanner. That reminded me how I'd blamed him for sneaking into my room when the real culprit was Sievers. I answered with the intention of giving him a fresh start; his first words tossed the fresh dirt back in my face, along with the shovel.
"I'll get you for this, bitch." My blood ran cold with that threat, but my heart was running just fine; it beat away at a healthy breaking-the-sound-barrier speed.
"W-what?" I stuttered out.
"You heard me, bitch. You've got the cops out on me and some other guys, and I'm going to make you sorry you did that."
My mind was a mouse wheel of panicked thoughts, though my ears were calm enough to decipher a swishing noise in the background on his end of the line. "B-but they just want to talk to you! If you'd just go to them-"
"With my past I'd be history! They'd lock me up as soon as they got my fingerprints!" He paused, and I next heard a low, eerie chuckle. "But I'm going to do one last thing before I leave this sorry hole of a town." I had to agree with him there, but I didn't like the mention of one last chore; I'd rather he be lazy and just leave. "I'll be seeing you soon, Trix."
The phone call went dead, and so did my pulse. My shaking hand couldn't hold the phone and it clattered to the ground, followed closely by me as my legs buckled beneath me. I fell to my knees and out of the corner of my eye I saw John come out of the study. He saw me praying there to any god who would hear me and rushed over. "What's wrong? What happened? You're as pale as me."
"T-tanner called," I told him.
"Tanner? Oh, the guy from college? What did he want?"
"I think he wants to hurt me, and I think he's coming here to do it."
"How can you be certain?"
"Because he said he was going to see me soon, and I heard a sound like he was in a car and things were flying by outside the windows."
John's face was grave as he helped me up onto my feet. "I'll call the police, but it will take them a few minutes to respond." He plopped me onto the living room couch and dialed the police. From his side of the conversation, things didn't sound too promising. "Hello? I need to report a threatening phone call with intent to do harm toward a-Trixie Calhoun." I had to smile at that. "We think the-yes, we have the number of the person." He gestured to my phone, and I handed it over so he could read the number to me. "We think this man attacked her apartment a few days ago and might be on his way to hurt her now." A short pause while he listened and I chewed my nails to nubs. "That would be great, how fast can they be here?" His face dropped, and my hope with it. "I see, well, we'll be sure to stay inside." He hung up the phone and ran his hand through his hair. "Not good, Angel. They're getting a car right now but it'll take them a half hour to get here because they're responding to other calls."
I scowled. "Just like the police. When minutes count they're only an hour away."
John plopped himself down beside me and wrapped a strong, comforting arm around my shoulders. "They'll be here when they can, and we might have called them for nothing. That Tanner might have been lying about coming to see you,
or he might get lost on these-"
The sound of shattering glass caught our ears. We jumped to our feet and swept over to the window. It was dark out the front lawn, and I couldn't see anything beyond the glare of the living room light. For John the case was different; his eyes widened and he pulled me back away from the window. His voice was a strained whisper. "You stay inside," he ordered me.
He tried to leave the room, but I clutched onto his sleeve and hissed a few questions at him. "What? Why? Where are you going?"
"I believe your Mr. Tanner is out there destroying your old car."
"He's too late. Old age and rust destroyed that thing a long time ago."
"He's finishing the job on your windows, and if you want me to confront him in the act you need to let me go."
"Not without me." I propelled myself forward into the hall, but he caught my arm.
"You can't see as well as I can in the dark, and you might hurt yourself."
"I can get along fine enough to help-" There was another crash of glass; two down, four more to go.
John pulled me deeper into the hall away from the front door. "We're wasting time, now stay here and behave." A third crash came to our ears.
"I'm not very good at behaving, and you're not going out that front door. He'll spot you." I pulled him down the hall with me and dragged him out the back door. "Now you sneak around the left and I'll sneak around the right, and we'll catch him together. Agreed?"
"Not if I can help it." John ungallantly pushed me to the ground and ran off to the left.
"Hey!" I hissed, trying hard not to alert our prey to our presence.
I climbed to my feet and dashed off to the right side. I was nearly at the corner at the front of the house when I heard loud, angry voices. There was another crash of glass and when I rounded the corner I saw two dark shapes grappling on the ground along the front walk. I could tell which one was which by John's pale skin, and I could also tell he wasn't having as easy a time as he'd hoped with Tanner. I recalled Tanner telling me he was on the football team, and the way he was taking John's bruising blows showed he hadn't been lying about his extracurricular activities.
I ran up to them to assist, but they literally rolled right over me, and pressed me into the thankfully soft grass. Their arms and backs ribbed into my ribs, but they rolled away to fight on the other side of the walk up to the porch. I sat up and growled, but realized I couldn't do anything strength-wise; they'd just run me over again. Tanner's groin was safe because their legs were locked in combat. I looked around for a weapon, and spotted the familiar red hat of my old friend, Gnomy.