Killer Commute

  By the time they reached Inglewood, she’d tried Betty again and again with no results. No gurgling in her head now, but there was still the odd heat. Within minutes her cellular played its stupid little tune—sort of like a muted Big Ben on Prozac.

  It was a breathless Keegan. The parole board was about to spring him—he’d be home soon. He sounded joyous.

  “That’s the best news I’ve had in years. I just hope you can handle the press, pal. The buzz has been jumpstarted. This is going to be big.”

  When they hung up, he was crying—happy crying. Her cheeks weren’t exactly dry.

  “And Charlie, you have to admit Detective Amuller attended the memorial service and followed up those leads, It’s not as if he doesn’t listen to you,” the ex-cop said out of context. “He mentioned something about a house with a car like Mr. Fiedler’s you and your friends had apparently staked out.”

  “That’s why I’m in such a hurry. I hope Libby went to the diner this afternoon. And, David, I hope you’re armed.”

  * * *

  When the Toyota pulled into the compound, David Dalrymple was busy explaining that Jeremy’s ability to obliterate his identity and still function in society and pursue the pursuit of happiness without paying taxes and leaving no “footprints” was a threat to everyone. This was such a national hazard that all stops had to be pulled. Extreme measures were justified. (Like blowing smoke through a hole in her wall.) Criminals could get hold of this method and ravage and pillage. Foreign spies and terrorists could disappear into the streets without trace.

  Charlie thought that’s what it was they did already, but she didn’t say so. She was too worried about Betty and her own ears. Betty’s old Olds sat in its proper place. Libby’s Jeep Wrangler didn’t—one good thing, anyway.

  “Well, it seems I spent the better part of the afternoon on a long commute for nothing,” Dalrymple told her.

  “Probably told you more than you told me.”

  “Charlie, you need professional help here.” He followed her to Betty’s patio.

  A seagull stood on Jeremy’s picnic table scarfing up fish scraps off a newspaper. Betty must have had fish for lunch, “Hey, I got a renowned lawyer who tells me to stay home and do nothing.”

  “And that’s sound advice.”

  “I’ll let you know when I get the bill.” But “sound” advice was suddenly of even less use to Charlie. The sharp pain in one ear was so sudden she might have been shot, but the hearing was gone from both ears. They stood at Betty’s door, Charlie ready to pound on it. But her hands had volunteered to cover her ears instead. One of them came away bloodied.

  Dalrymple was talking at her in a real panic mode, but when he saw the blood on her hand he lost it, pushed her to the ground facedown, and sprawled on top of her.

  Charlie’d had a bleeding ulcer, fallen over cliffs, been injured in an explosion. She’d survived Mitch Hilsten in rut, a teenaged daughter, a menopausal mother, and a true raft of flirtatious Hollywood geezers—but this little escapade broke a rib. She felt it happen—and she’d thought her ear hurt.

  “I can’t hear you, but get off me,” she couldn’t hear herself say. “You broke something in my middle. You’re killing me. I wasn’t shot. My ear’s bleeding—because of the explosion, I think. Please.”

  Charlie hurt so, she forgot to worry about Betty until her moderator rolled off her so she could turn over, and there was Mrs. Beesom standing above her, wringing her hands and crying behind her eyeglasses.

  “Betty, I’m so glad you’re all right. I was worried, tried to call. You’ve got to get out of here. Go over to Art and Wilma’s. Anywhere, fast.”

  But Betty Beesom wasn’t paying any attention to Charlie. Maybe Betty couldn’t hear Charlie’s voice, either.

  “David, I really do need you now. There’s no time to lose. You did bring a gun, right?”

  He didn’t even help her up. By the time Charlie got to her knees and, clutching her rib cage, finally to her feet, Dalrymple had his hands in the air with no gun in sight. He and Betty were looking over Charlie’s shoulder.

  She turned to face Jeremy Fiedler. He bad brought a gun.

  CHAPTER 38

  CHARLIE SAT ON the floor of Mrs. Beesom’s dining room/living room with her knees under her chin, her wrists taped together around those knees and, mercifully, up against Betty’s soft recliner. She could lean into it and take the misery off her smashed rib when she breathed. Whenever she relaxed her back posture, the rib stabbed something that must be a vital organ because it took her breath away for lots of seconds. Charlie knew very little about her internal organs—other than her troublesome stomach, which was often shown to her in colorful drawings attached to examining room walls by helpful doctors. Mostly, she didn’t want to know, you know?

  Ex-Lieutenant Dalrymple, in much the same condition as she, leaned against a wall. He didn’t have a broken rib but both his wrists and ankles were taped together. Betty, looking frail and scary, slumped without restraint in a cute little Swiss Chalet–type love seat on gliders. A woman whose name might be Gladys, in white anklets and Keds and a gathered shirtwaist you’d have trouble finding anywhere but on a black-and-white episode of Lassie on the Nick, was untethered, too. But she was one upset lady. And the man who was sometimes Jeremy Fiedler—now deceased—stood against a backdrop of Jesus on black velvet.

  “Where’s the Ferrari, Jeremy?” Charlie didn’t hear herself say, but felt the vibrations in her throat. Everyone but Jesus looked at her when she spoke this time.

  Charlie would never say she was getting accustomed to her unpredictable handicap, but things were a little different now. She might have lost her hearing, but she’d be willing to bet she was the only person in the room who saw the whole picture. Betty thought she did, but she was mistaken.

  Everyone but the woman in the anklets talked back to Charlie, but they didn’t speak directly to her or exaggerate their lip movements. Jeremy gestured wildly at her and then at Betty. Unfortunately, so did the gun. Guns have little holes at the end that speak for themselves when you’re eyeing them.

  Somehow this little hole spoke for the man behind it who moved his lips incomprehensibly. It told her to get to her feet. With a totally pulverized rib, this wasn’t as easy as it looked, but the little hole seemed to grow in proportion like there was a howitzer—whatever that was—motioning her upright.

  There she stood on her feet and the Jeremy, behind the howitzer, mouthed terrifying threats he didn’t know she couldn’t hear but did a circular motion with his finger pointing down that intimated he wanted her to turn around. She did. The metal nudge in her back strongly insinuated she move forward. She did that, too, hoping if she and Jeremy and the gun made it out of the room, ex-Lieutenant Dalrymple might find a manly way to save the day and Betty Beesom.

  As she stepped up to the dining-room level, she dared glance back to find Gladys of the anklets also holding a gun, holding it on David Dalrymple. So much for that little rescue scenario.

  If the worst thing in the world could have happened to Charlie now, she would have said it was a toss-up between the feel of a bullet entering her spine and what actually happened.

  She and her captor stepped out of Betty’s kitchen door and then off her patio just as Libby Abigail Greene stepped out of her Wrangler. A rough hand on her shoulder stopped Charlie. Surprise and then shock stopped her daughter.

  A hard metal poke in the back again sent Charlie moving forward toward Libby, who was talking and gesturing either to Charlie or to the man behind her. He would have to kill Libby now, too. There had to be something Charlie could do. Just giving him what he wanted would only ensure the slaughter of everyone in the compound and anyone who happened by. There could be no witnesses. There was too much at stake here.

  But anything she did could endanger her daughter. Anything she didn’t do could, too.

  She watched Tuxedo jump onto the picnic table with a ravaged familiar piece of green and in desperation walked o
ff toward the gate to the alley. Charlie gambled and did the unexpected with a man holding a gun, a man who had to kill once he got what he came for, a man who was between her and her child. Libby would be so distracted to find Jeremy alive she could hardly be expected to do anything rational. But what would the kid do? Charlie dared not think.

  Charlie’s plan was to separate herself from Libby so he’d have to decide which one to go after. Charlie hoped he’d chose her. She hung a right and angled toward the back gate of the compound and without a glance at or permission from her captor.

  This is so dumb. He’s gotten this far, he’s obviously smart enough to force Libby with him into the alley and shoot you both there.

  Not until he finds the money, he won’t.

  It took Charlie every ounce of will she owned to not look over her shoulder. If there was a gunshot and Libby lay dead, she wouldn’t have heard it. The gate wasn’t locked. Why bother now?

  In the alley, fluffy Hairy Granger tried to squeeze between her feet with every step and Charlie finally picked him up so she wouldn’t trip on him. Cats had to be the most irritating animals on earth. Okay, next to murderers.

  The holes in the stucco she and Larry and Ed had made in Jeremy’s alley wall last night looked to have grown in size. For all of Officer Mason’s threats, no crime-scene tape had gone up around that wall. In fact a seagull perched in one of those holes right now. He wasn’t eating money and he wasn’t eating fish scraps. He was sure eyeing Hairy Granger, though.

  Charlie kept walking. She’d never wanted to know much about alley life—figured it would make her angry, disgusted, and guilty, and her plate was too full of that already. Besides, this alley was too close to home. But Hairy stiffened in her arms as they approached a pair of legs in scruffy pants and sandals sticking out from behind a storage unit for garbage cans.

  The guy’s feet and legs looked relaxed unto death, but when she and Hairy passed him his face looked euphoric unto a high just short of an overdose, and he had cigarettes and booze nearby for when he came off it. His eyes couldn’t track and his nose was bleeding, but he winked at her. He was one happy fella. A stack of unopened pizza boxes sat innocently next to him. This man had everything but shelter. This man had money. This man had probably followed the seagull. This man was going to be dead meat in seconds.

  Charlie, you may not hear him babbling at you. You can’t even hear Hairy, whose vibrations could mean either purring or growling, but you must do something.

  Screw the idiot, he’s killing himself without my help, and this damn cat is making me feel sneezy.

  But Hairy clung to her when she tried to put him down, so she faced the breathless inevitable by turning around with this overhaired burden hanging on her front to face the reality of what the armed creep might have done to Libby. Charlie could not only not hear, she couldn’t breathe. Her options were minuscule, her time frame destroyed.

  She had seen that look in Jeremy’s eyes before but had denied it as reality because she needed him. It was the Jeremy who could throw rocks at Hairy one day and entice Tuxedo onto his lap by merely sitting down the next. The Jeremy who fed the seagull his dinner scraps and then chased it off with curses. There was insanity here. To believe she’d allowed her Libby to live so near this danger all these years made her sick now.

  Hairy climbed up on her shoulder, taking the pressure off her rib, and Charlie sucked air into her lungs.

  Libby Abigail Greene lay sprawled at his feet. Jeremy had the gun in both hands extended out and aimed at Charlie, but was looking sideways at the seagull sitting in the hole in the ruins of the house he’d deeded over to Betty Beesom. His mouth looked as if he was shouting—maybe raving, who knows?

  And Art and Wilma Granger were sneaking up behind him, motioning for Charlie to hit the deck before the good-sized plank in Art’s hands contacted Jeremy’s skull. In front of him at his feet, Libby raised her head and made a thumbs-up motion. Thank God she wasn’t dead.

  But it was too late for Charlie. Jeremy pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 39

  THE LAST TIME Charlie was dead, she couldn’t hear. This time she could. And she’d thought life was interesting.

  The problem was, the sound she could hear was deafening.

  Are you never satisfied?

  “Will you shut up?”

  “Mom?”

  “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean you. I was talking to the buzz in my head.”

  “She’s got a buzz in her head,” Libby told some guy who looked suspiciously like a paramedic. The two of them bent over her.

  “Don’t let them resuscitate me, Libby. I’ve already got a broken rib, forgodsake.”

  “It’s your head that’s bleeding,” the paramedic said. “And we don’t normally resuscitate people who can talk.”

  “Actually, that’s from a different trauma. I did the rib by accident when I thought she’d been shot because of the bleeding ear. This woman has been greatly mistreated, but I think not shot in the head.” David Dalrymple looked down on her now, too. “She’s been totally deaf for the last two hours.”

  “I can hear now. Don’t let them take me to the hospital, David. Libby—what’s happened to Jeremy? I heard the gun go off and it was aimed at me. Tell me Mrs. Beesom’s okay.”

  “Trauma injuries to the ear don’t work that way,” the paramedic assured the ex-lieutenant. “Bleeding from anywhere in the head is serious—no matter how or when it happens.”

  “Art hit him over the head with a piece of two-by-four, but I saw you go down about when the gun went off.” Wilma Granger had that smile on her lips but fear in her eyes. How’d she do that? “You sure you ain’t been shot, Charlie?”

  Actually, Charlie wasn’t sure of anything. One ear was sore and her head felt bruised where she’d hit the alley going down. Gladys, if that was her real name, had turned over her weapon and untaped Dalrymple, who spirited both women out of the house. She’d kept saying, “Help me, please? Hurry, he’ll kill us all.”

  “You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you, Ms. Greene?” Detective Amuller’s joined the faces above her.

  “Johann Sebastian,” Charlie greeted him with glee and then passed out. Most probably from the needle prick in her arm.

  * * *

  Charlie was treated in the emergency room—X-rayed, analyzed, lab-tested, checked for balance problems, and released. She had no bullet wounds, only some dried blood in one ear. It was strongly suggested she must have passed out from the fear of being shot by a man pointing a gun at her or by the pain as her hearing returned.

  Her lawyer arrived. So did Amuller.

  Her rib wasn’t broken, merely cracked. There isn’t anything you can do for a cracked rib but learn to move in the least painful ways and to avoid lifting. Sort of roll off the front of a chair instead of leaning on your arms to rise. Never twist your body entering or leaving an automobile. Avoid jarring of any kind and roll your legs over the edge of the bed allowing gravity to work for you while transferring most of your weight to your legs and feet before somehow getting your upper body upright, and never, never breathe shallowly, even when asleep. Because you’ll get pneumonia.

  Otherwise, piece of cake, no problem, nobody ever died of a cracked rib, well hardly nobody, and you’ll feel totally normal in six to eight weeks.

  “Six to eight weeks—that’s two months. I can’t—”

  “Sure seems to be hearing fine now,” Johann Sebastian Amuller shouted for everyone in the emergency room. “I suppose you’re going to tell me Jeremy Fiedler killed Jeremy Fiedler and Gladys Phillips. I got Fiedler on a slab and I’ll soon have the man who shot Gladys. I think you should know I’m not convinced that I don’t have two murders and two murderers.”

  Everyone seemed to be shouting. Charlie heard too well. Seemed better even than before the bouquet bomber blew away her self-confidence and the safety of her fortress. God, she missed Jeremy.

  The Jeremy with the gun escaped from the alley attack after Art
hit him with the two-by-four only to find Gladys on Betty’s patio with Betty and Dalrymple, so he shot Gladys dead on the spot. Betty would have been next but Dalrymple knocked her to the ground, stood in front of her, and aimed Gladys’s gun at Jeremy when Art and his two-by-four charged again, this time into the compound and Jeremy took off out the front destroyed gate. It all happened in a matter of seconds and Dalrymple would have shot the fleeing murderer in the back but discovered too late that poor Gladys’s weapon was not loaded.

  Art Granger lobbed the two-by-four after him but it fell short. Jeremy was gone again, leaving more murder in his wake.

  No sign of hearing loss or major damage to the little hairs deep in her ears could be detected. Dr. Peter Rasmusen, Long Beach’s renowned hearing specialist, was highly recommended by the staff in the ER to look into any problems that might crop up.

  Johann Sebastian gave Ernesto Seligman a thumbs-up, Charlie a wink, and repeated himself. “See you in court.”

  Attorney Seligman turned to David Dalrymple. “You’re positive she wasn’t hearing for at least two hours this afternoon?”

  “Tried to tell Amuller I’d swear to it in court. I will, that’s a promise. He won’t listen. You know, Charlie, you may be right about him. We need good young men like that in law enforcement desperately. I can’t understand his mindset here.”

  * * *

  “It’s Good Cops, Bad Guys, David. Unfortunately it’s easier to learn about people from it and movies than actually observing reality.”

  “So you saw Charlie flinch and go wimpy, too, when her hearing shut down?” Ed Esterhazie asked Dalrymple. “Sorry, Charlie—but that look you get when you suddenly can’t hear isn’t any I’ve ever experienced.”

  They and Ernesto Seligman were helping Charlie and Libby search for loot in the ruin of the fortress.

  “So which man was Jeremy Fiedler, the dead man in the Trailblazer or the one holding you all hostage?” the attorney asked.

  “They both were, or neither. There have been two Jeremys all along. But nobody noticed, except Mrs. Beesom. She notices everything.”