Aurora 07 - Last Scene Alive (20 page)

“You sound funny,” he said. “Were you asleep?”

“Oh, no,” I said, my voice relaxed and slow. “No. Not asleep.”

“I need you to do me a favor,” Sam said.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, finally picking up on the worry in his voice.

“It’s Patricia. She didn’t come in to work this morning, and she doesn’t answer my calls.”

“Gosh, that’s not like her.”

“No, it’s not. She hasn’t missed a day of work since I hired her. Her son’s not in school, either. The school called here, looking for her.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to go over to her house and make sure everything’s all right there.”

“So, if there’s a dead body, you don’t care if I find it!”

“Roe,” he protested, obviously offended. “I can’t leave. It’s work hours.”

I sighed, not making any attempt to cover up my exasperation. Robin bent over me, doing something that made me bite my lip to keep in a gasp. “In a few minutes,” I said, to get Sam off the phone. “I’ll go, Sam, in a few minutes.”

“Good,” he said, obviously surprised I’d caved so quickly. He gave me the address. “Then let me know.”

I hung up without saying good-bye. Sam wouldn’t even notice.

Robin went with me, once I’d explained the circumstances to him.

I’d never known where Patricia lived before today. Of course I’d known where the street was. It was on the upper end of the scale for the largely black area of Lawrenceton that ran on the northwest side of town, literally following the old railroad tracks. Patricia’s rental was a small, square house with minimal yard and no carport. Patricia’s little car was nowhere in sight. There were two newspapers lying by the front steps.

I knocked, of course, but I didn’t expect an answer, and I got none. I tried to peer in the windows but, literally, I wasn’t up to that. Robin obligingly undertook the task, and he reported that the house looked very clean, but a little disordered—as though the Bledsoes had packed very quickly. The kitchen counter held none of the usual small appliances. A set of keys lay on the counter, along with a sheaf of money.

“Like she left the keys and the next month’s rent so the landlord wouldn’t feel any need to track her down,” Robin said.

“Oh,
man”
I muttered, trying not to moan. “This isn’t going to be pretty,” I told Robin as I punched in the library number.

Of course, Sam was distraught when I told him Patricia was gone. He could not believe she would just cut and run with no warning.

“Did you do something to her?” he said accusingly.

I’d had enough. “Sam,” I said sharply into the phone, “Patricia may have been the perfect secretary, but I am the one who’s worked for you for ten years. I think you should have a little faith in me.” We hung up on each other, equally unhappy. I was cudgeling my brain to think of what could have happened to Patricia and Jerome. It was eerie and frightening to admit that she had evidently packed up her clothes and some small goods, and vanished.

“Come to think of it,” I said to Robin, “she’s been acting funny for days. Ever since she found out that the movie people attracted the media, and Celia came into the library and actually checked out books, Patricia’s been asking questions like crazy about where the filming was going to be every day, whether the movie people would be coming to the library, like that.”

“Do you think she’s running from something? Maybe she knows someone on the crew,”

Robin said. “Someone she didn’t want to recognize her?”

I considered. “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe she was scared she’d be noticed by one of the media people here to watch the filming and do interviews.”

“Did you say anything about the film yesterday?”

“Nope,” I said. “But she practically fainted when she saw me repairing a book. As a matter of fact, it was right after that that she left the library in a mighty big hurry.”

“What was the book?”

“It was one Celia had checked out. You know, when she came to the library after she first got to Lawrenceton. I think she was looking for me, to have a peek at me. But she thrilled Sam by taking out a library card and checking out some books to do research for her next movie.”

“The sixties-radical movie,” Robin said.

“Right.
Bell-bottoms and Bombs
, or something like that.”

“Can you find the book again?”

“Sure. Let’s go to the library.”

I tracked down the book in record time. It had been reshelved. I flipped it open, Robin looking over my shoulder. I turned to the picture section and began to really examine the old pictures. Lots of Afros and jeans, dashikis and beads. Peace signs. And photographs of wires and bits of hardware that were used in the making of bombs. What an incongruous blend, the philosophy of world peace, disarmament, and the construction of bombs to blow a hole in the consciousness of middle America.

The next picture was of a group of radicals at some rally.
Right to left
, read the caption,
suspected bomb makers Joanne Cheney, Ralph “Coco” Defarge, his teenage sister
Anita, Maxwell Brand, and Barbara “Africa” Palley
.

“Anything ring a bell?” Robin asked in my ear, making me twitch.

“No. Yes,” I said suddenly. I put my index finger on the picture of the radicals. “Look at the little sister.”

“I never met Patricia Bledsoe,” Robin reminded me.

“This is her,” I said breathlessly. “Oh my God. Patricia the perfect helped her big brother make bombs in the sixties.” I had to put my hands over my mouth to stifle a totally inappropriate laugh. Patricia, the rigorously traditional woman whose middle name was conservative! Patricia, who wouldn’t even let her son wear Nike! “This is just going to kill Sam derrick,” I said, suppressing a snort with great difficulty.

“This is funny, how?” Robin asked.

I tried to explain.

“Are you going to tell someone?” he asked.

“I have to, don’t I?” I asked. “Don’t I have to tell someone? She obviously picked up and ran because she thought I’d smoked her out. It couldn’t have been further from the truth. If she’d just stayed put, I’d never have known.”

“All the way back in the sixties,” Robin said gently.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, reluctant to debate my duty. “I have a lot of sympathy for her, even if she was the biggest pain in the patootie I’ve ever encountered. Except maybe Sam himself.

But you know—if she did help build that bomb—I’m not trying to be Rhonda Righteous, but a security guard got killed, Robin. Besides, obviously Patricia was panicked by the idea of Celia seeing this picture and noticing the likeness, just like we did. What if Patricia somehow made her way onto the set and killed Celia, thinking Celia had spotted her and was going to tell?”

“Can’t take that lightly,” he agreed. “Will you tell Sam?”

“Oh, you bet,” I said instantly. Then I reconsidered. “At least about our suspecting she’s Anita Defarge.”

“Not about her connection with Celia?”

“I know the papers this morning said it would have been easy for someone to have sneaked up to her trailer and killed her because there were a lot of people around. I just don’t see it happening,” I said. “Do you agree? There were a lot of people, but none of them looked or dressed like Patricia. And Celia had never talked to her, that I know of. They’d just glimpsed each other when Sam gave Celia a tour of the library. Wouldn’t Celia have raised a fuss if someone she didn’t know entered her trailer? She wouldn’t have just sat there and waited for something bad to happen.”

“I agree, for the most part,” Robin said. “Just mention the fact you’re most sure of; that the picture looks like his secretary.”

“That’s what I’ll do,” I said resolutely. I folded immediately. “In fact, maybe I’ll leave calling the police up to him.”

Robin waited out in the employee break room while I went in to Sam’s office and broke the news. The fluorescent lights glinted off Sam’s thick glasses as he looked hopelessly down at the black-and-white picture. “She was so great,” he all but whimpered. “She took all my calls. I never had to talk to anybody. She understood the paperwork. She was never late. She was never sick. Her son was respectful and quiet.”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” I said as gently as I could. “I’ll just leave it up to you what to do.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt about what to do,” he said gloomily. “She may have been on the run all these years, always looking over her shoulder. And with the boy, too—I wonder what she told him. But I have to call the FBI. That’s the law, and I have to uphold the law.”

I felt like a second-class moral citizen compared to Sam’s straightforward conviction. It must be wonderful to always know what was right to do.

At the back of my mind, I kept hoping that Patricia would walk in with some explanation of where she’d been and what she’d been doing. It wouldn’t take much to satisfy Sam. If she just said, “What coincidence, that girl looks like a young me,” that would probably do it. But the combined evidence of the flight and the picture—well, at least that should be investigated.

With a grim face, Sam picked up his phone to call the local police. He said, “I guess they can give me the right number to call.” Then he put the phone back on its cradle. “But you know

. . . maybe I don’t have to call right now. After all, she still might show up. Maybe there’s a sick relative she had to visit.”

Maybe there was an elephant in my locker. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Excuse me, Sam,” I said. “I’ll leave. You do what you think is right.”

“Aren’t you supposed to come in for the afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll see you later.”

No “thank you,” no “I appreciate it.” Well, that was Sam. No people skills.

Robin was still waiting for me. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but I lifted a finger to my lips. When we were safely out in the parking lot, I told him what had transpired. He shook his head doubtfully, but agreed that Sam should be the one to make the phone call that would set law enforcement on Patricia’s—Anita’s—trail.

I had two hours before I was due back at the library, and we trailed over to Mother’s office to sign some paperwork.

Mother greeted Robin quite matter-of-factly, but she was not overwhelmingly friendly, even when he asked her to find him a modest rental. She looked relieved, but not enthralled. She’d have to have warm-up time, I guessed. I wasn’t going to push it.

My mother saw Robin as a potential threat to my peace of mind, a possible dumper of her vulnerable daughter, the potential dumpee. His fame and fortune made no difference at all to her. But a couple of the other realtors were more impressed. I thought Patty Cloud, now a partner and divorced twice, was going to come clean across her desk and tackle Robin, she was so enraptured with having a real celebrity in the office. She made a determined attempt to impress him with her attractiveness and her business acumen, and I was pleased to see that she didn’t make a dent. Patty had always played one-up with me—a one-sided game, since I had never had a competitive bone in my body. I hoped Patty had gotten something out of it, because it had never made a bit of difference to me.

“I’ll be glad to take you around town, get you set up with the bank and a dry cleaner and so forth,” she offered, her eyes gleaming. Robin reached over to take my hand, very casually.

“Roe is taking care of me,” he said. Patty’s face was just wonderful. She could think of about twelve bitchy things to say, but she couldn’t, because, after all, I was the boss’s daughter.

“Thanks,” I said, when we were returning to my car.

He knew full well what I meant, but he just smiled his crooked smile. “It was my pleasure,”

he said, wiggling his eyebrows, and I laughed out loud.

He went back to his motel room to work, and I went home to make phone calls. Mother had worked it so I could move out of this house and into the house on McBride in a week. I called a company on the outskirts of Atlanta, made a definite date for them to come pack up this house on one day, and move the contents to the new place the next. It only cost me an arm and a leg and one kidney. I tried to ignore the stab of pain I felt as I thought of leaving this house empty.

I tried instead to focus on the incoming family, with their son who would love living out in the country. He might make friends with my neighbor’s dog Robert. Maybe Robert would stop his nighttime howling when the new family moved in. Speaking of Robert, he was doing some daytime howling now.

As I was pulling on some nicer pants to wear to work, I thought I heard a noise downstairs.

I stopped breathing to listen better, while my fingers automatically pushed the button through the hole. I took some silent steps to the top of the stairs and listened. There it was again, a step in the hall.

I knew it was not Robin or my mother or anyone who had a reason to be there. I thought of Tracy, her angry face, and I stepped back into the bedroom and lifted the phone. I heard a familiar
beep beep beep
—somewhere downstairs, a receiver was off the hook. I needed my cell phone.

It was in my purse, which was on the counter in the kitchen downstairs.

“Aurora!” called a familiar voice from downstairs.

My breath gushed out in a sigh of sheer relief. Catherine Quick. It was her afternoon. Oh, thank God.

“Catherine,” I called, trotting down the stairs, half-angry and half delighted, “why did you come in so quiet? You could tell I was home.”

I came into the kitchen to get yet another shock. Tracy, Robin’s biggest fan, was holding a knife to Catherine’s neck.

“Oh,” I said quietly. “Oh.”

Catherine’s face was contorted with fear, and tears were running down her cheeks. I didn’t blame her. The knife Tracy was gripping was a Swiss Army type thing, as far as I could tell—