Hotline to Murder (37 page)

“Am I happy to see you,” Shahla said. She
shifted her position and sighed. “That’s better. You came along
just in time. Branches were sticking into my legs, but I was afraid
to move.”

Tony saw a mess on her shoulder and said,
“You’re bleeding,”

“I am? Just another scratch. I think he got
me with his knife. Even though he wanted me unmarked.” She raised
her voice. “Is that why you strangled Joy instead of stabbing her?
So she would be beautiful for you?” She shoved Nathan’s head into
the brush and received a groan in response.

Tony pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket
and pressed it against Shahla’s wound to try and stop the flow of
blood. He said, “I think wearing my sweatshirt helped you. It’s
loose enough so that the knife didn’t penetrate it very well. But
it’s torn.”

“It gave its life to save me.”

“We’ll have it framed. By the way, the
police should be down here shortly.”

“Oh yes, the police. They missed all the
fun.”

***

Tony didn’t like hospitals. He didn’t watch
emergency room shows on television. The last time he had been
admitted to a hospital was when he had suffered a ruptured
appendix, at the age of eleven. He didn’t visit other people in
hospitals if he could avoid it.

However, he wasn’t going home without making
sure that Shahla was all right. He hadn’t realized she had other
wounds besides the one on her shoulder until the police arrived and
released them from their positions on top of Nathan. Then he saw
that she had scratches all over her body, the most dangerous one
being close to her eye. A policeman had driven her to a hospital in
Culver City, and he was going there now.

Tony had been up all night, and he felt
exhausted, now that the adrenaline was wearing off. He had wanted
to go to the hospital with Shahla, but she had told him to stay and
help in the search for Tina. She had been adamant about it.

So he assisted the police as they combed the
level part of the park. He was reminded of the story of the man who
searched for his wallet underneath a streetlight, even though he
thought he had lost it in a dark alley. However, Tony had to agree
that it didn’t make any sense for Tina to go back up the hill after
she made it down. And she wasn’t on the trail. So why not search in
the easiest place?

There was a small fishing lake near the
picnic ground. Tony walked to the lake, with the help of his
flashlight. He didn’t spot anybody around the lake, but he did see
restrooms. Where would a girl logically hide from a man?

He knocked on the door of the women’s room.
He didn’t hear anything so he opened the door. It was dark inside.
He shone his flashlight around and called, “Tina. It’s Tony. We got
Nathan. You can come out.”

One of the stalls was locked. By standing on
his toes he could look over the door. He shone the flashlight
around the stall. Huddled in a corner beside the toilet, looking
scared, sat Tina.

It took him a couple of minutes to coax her
to come out of the stall. Then he escorted her to the picnic
ground. When Tina saw the police and realized she was safe, a
torrent of words came out of her mouth. She said, among other
things, that she and Nathan had entered the park while it was still
open, through an entrance from a residential area. This was before
officers had been stationed at the entrances.

The two had scurried through the gate in
broad daylight when a nanny tending a baby had opened it with a key
she had. They had hidden in the brush when officers and employees
searched the park, after it closed. Nathan had taped Tina’s mouth
during this period. They had joined the others on the plateau only
a few minutes before the action started.

Throughout, Nathan had controlled Tina with
the threat of his knife and by keeping a strong grip on her arm.
She had been too scared to scream or to ask anybody for help. In
spite of her name, she didn’t speak Spanish, and so she didn’t try
to communicate with the nanny in that language. And she thought the
members of the congregation were somehow working with Nathan. It
sounded as if she had convinced Nathan she believed in the
Ascension so that he wouldn’t kill her.

Tony went to a local police station with a
mixed group of officers, including police from Bonita Beach and
LAPD, and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. Detective Croyden
was there. After he told them about borrowing the truck, they found
the owner, who was still at work, and effected an exchange of the
vehicles. Tony suspected they did this because they thought he had
stolen the truck.

As he told his story, he learned that they
had found the bra and panties at Nathan’s apartment. They appeared
to have no doubt that Nathan had murdered Joy. The testimony of
Tony and Shahla would be vital to the prosecution. That was nice to
hear. Nobody criticized him for not working more closely with the
police, now that the case was solved.

As for the faithful who had not been carried
up to heaven on schedule, Detective Croyden said they told him that
they had entered the park from the backyard of one of the
parishioners, much as Tony had envisioned. Luther Hodgkins had
stationed himself at the entrance, which was through a hole in the
fence, acting as ticket taker, meaning that he took all their cash.
But then he disappeared. Nobody remembered seeing him on the
plateau. The police had put out an APB for him.

In spite of this, the parishioners still
believed in the Ascension. Some believed they had seen Jesus. They
tended to blame the police for screwing it up. However, it would
still happen. But, as Croyden wryly remarked, their faith wasn’t
going to help them survive without food and shelter until they got
the timing right.

Now, as Tony walked out of the morning
sunlight and through the doorway into the hospital, the first thing
he saw was a shop selling flowers and balloons. Women liked
flowers. He went into the shop and purchased a bouquet in a vase.
He learned Shahla’s room number from an attendant at the
information desk and took an elevator to the third floor.

He walked along the corridor, past the
nurses’ station, trying not to look into the rooms, until he came
to the correct one. As he went through the doorway, the first thing
he saw was Shahla, asleep in a hospital bed, complete with its
fancy gadgets for raising and lowering the whole mattress or
sections thereof.

Shahla’s body looked like a disaster area.
Her left shoulder was bandaged, and she had a patch over one eye.
Scratches covered her face, arms, and legs, which were bare.
However, she seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Her dark hair was
spread out on the pillow. She had an IV going into her wrist. She
was wearing a hospital gown, and a sheet covered the trunk of her
body, to give her what little modesty could be had in a
hospital.

Tony noticed Rasa, who was sitting beside
the bed. For some reason, he hadn’t pictured her being here. When
she saw him, she smiled and stood up. She took the flowers and
placed them on a table beside the bed. Then she gave him a big
hug.

“Thank you for helping Shahla,” she said
softly.

Helping Shahla? He had almost gotten her
killed.

“Shahla told me everything,” she continued.
“How you rescued her from man who tried to kidnap her and how you
looked for Nathan and Tina.”

That was definitely the abridged version.
Tony asked anxiously, “Will she be all right?”

“She will be fine.”

“Her shoulder and her eye?”

“Her eye is not hurt, for which we are
thankful. The cut on her shoulder is not serious. She can go home
this afternoon.”

Rasa was a nurse so she should know. They
didn’t keep patients in hospitals very long these days, but it was
probably just as well. From his own experience, he knew that a
hospital wasn’t a good place to rest. As if to prove his point, a
young lady bustled into the room and said that she had to take
Shahla’s “vitals.”

Of course this woke Shahla up. As soon as
she saw Tony, she held out her arms for a hug. She gave him a
surprisingly strong hug, considering what she had just been
through. The nurse’s aide told her to calm down or it would affect
her blood pressure and heart rate.

Shahla tried to stay still until the nurse’s
aide was through with her, but as soon as the woman left, she
pointed to a television set attached to the wall and said, “We saw
on the news that they found Tina, but I want to hear your side of
the story.”

“
You
are most of the story,” Tony
said. “After all, you stopped Nathan.”

“Shahla is hero,” Rasa said proudly.

“She certainly is,” Tony said. “But don’t
you need your sleep now?”

“I can sleep this afternoon at home.
Besides, I feel fine. I’m going to school tomorrow. So tell me what
happened after I left.”

Tony told the story, answering Shahla’s
questions. When Shahla had heard it all, Tony said, “I have a
question. You know and I know that Nathan is no poet. So who wrote
the poem about spaghetti straps?”

Shahla was silent for a few seconds. Then
she said, “I did.”

“But…why?”

“Because I wanted to make sure you stayed
involved in the case. I needed your help to solve it. And I wasn’t
about to leave it to the police. I placed the poem by the door when
you were taking a call, so it would look as though somebody had
slid it underneath.”

“Without getting any fingerprints on
it.”

“Yeah. Wasn’t that clever? I held it with a
napkin. I didn’t even get prints on the paper when I printed it
with my computer.”

“So our trip to Las Vegas was for
nothing.”

“Nothing?” Shahla’s face fell. “ Didn’t you
enjoy it? At least until you hurt your knee? I am sorry about
that.”

Rasa looked from one of them to the other
and said, “Did Shahla trick you?”

Tony said, “I take full responsibility for
my actions. And yes, I did enjoy the trip to Las Vegas.”

“I have a question,” Shahla said. “We have
been to Las Vegas together, we have eaten many meals together, I
have even slept in your…house.” Tony was sure she had been about to
say “bed.” “But it’s always been business. We’ve never had a real
date. When are we going to have a real date?”

“Uh.” Think, Tony. “When you’re
eighteen.”

“I’ll be eighteen on December twelfth. Okay,
good, I’ll put it on my calendar.”

“I’d better get going so I can catch up on
my sleep. I suspect Mona will really be pissed if I don’t show up
for work tomorrow.”

“Give me a hug.”

But instead of hugging him, Shahla pulled
his lips down on hers and kissed him hard. When she finally
released him, he gave a head-fake of embarrassment and looked at
Rasa. She was shaking her head—but she was smiling. Dating Shahla
wasn’t going to be the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
And it definitely wouldn’t be boring.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After spending more than a quarter of a
century as a pioneer in the computer industry, Alan Cook is well
into his second career as a writer.

Run into Trouble
is about a footrace along the California coast in
1969 during the Cold War. But is the Cold War about to heat up?
Drake and Melody, who worked undercover together in former lives,
need to find the answer before all hell breaks loose.

The Hayloft: a 1950s
mystery
and prize-winning
Honeymoon for Three
feature Gary Blanchard, first as a high school senior who has
to solve the murder of his cousin, and ten years later as a
bridegroom who gets more than he bargained for on his
honeymoon.

Hotline to Murder
takes place at a crisis hotline in Bonita Beach,
California. When a listener is murdered, Tony and Shahla team up to
uncover the strange worlds of their callers and find the
killer.

His Lillian Morgan
mysteries,
Catch a Falling Knife
and
Thirteen
Diamonds
, explore the secrets of
retirement communities. Lillian, a retired mathematics professor
from North Carolina, is smart, opinionated, and loves to solve
puzzles, even when they involve murder.

Alan splits his time
between writing and walking, another passion. His inspirational,
prize-winning book,
Walking the World:
Memories and Adventures
, has information
and adventure in equal parts. He is also the author of
Walking to Denver
, a
light-hearted, fictional account of a walk he did.

Freedom’s Light:
Quotations from History’s Champions of Freedom
, contains quotations from some of our favorite historical
figures about personal freedom.
The Saga
of Bill the Hermit
is a narrative poem
about a hermit who decides that the single life isn’t all it’s
cracked up to be.

Alan lives with his wife,
Bonny, on a hill in Southern California. His website is
alancook.50megs.com
.