Authors: Midnight Hour
“Bullshit!” Grace said again.
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He crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head at her. To her fury, a twinkle appeared in his eyes. “You know, you might want to think about getting some help with that rampant paranoia you seem to be developing.”
The lid blew off Grace’s temper. Pointing an accusing index finger at him, she moved away from the door, her eyes narrow and as cold as steel as she closed in on him.
“Listen, Detective, your antics are endangering my daughter and I won’t have it. Is that clear? I won’t have it! You’re aware of what’s going on at my house, you’re aware that Jessica’s being stalked and threatened because of this drug thing, and proceeding with a raid at her high school without notifying me and giving me a chanc e to get her out of harm’s way nothing short of criminal irresponsibility! My inclination at the moirient is to call the district attorney, call the chief of police, and call the police department internal-affairs unit and scream bloody murder about the tactics that you have used in this case!”
I I she came to a Practically vibrating with outrage,
stop less than a foot in front of him, her fingerjabbing the air with each point she made. She was tall, he was taller. She was also thin where he was muscular, but then, she was furious while he gave every evidence of being amused. That, she felt, Was enough to balance the physical scales.
He reached out, caught the hand that was pointin
9 at him, and held it fast. The feel of his hard, warm fingers wrapping around her slimmer, cooler ones was
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startling enough to be distracting. Their gazes met over their joined hands.
“Tell me something, Your Honor: Do you try to bully everyone you meet, or am I just lucky for some reason?” There was no mistaking the amusement in his face now.
Grace jerked her hand from his hold, her anger reenergized by his levity. On the verge of exploding at him, she managed not to. Taking a deep, calming breath, she said nothing for the space of several seconds. Remaining in control was the secret of wielding authority, she had found. Once you lost control, the other person gained the upper hand.
“I want my daughter protected.” She used her judge’s voice, the cold, clear tones that stated distinctly that she expected to be obeyed. “I want someone sent to her school to watch over her for the rest of the day. I want her-and the girl I’ve sent to pick her up-to have an escort home. I want a police officer in my house to provide protection for us until I am sure that Jessica is safe. If you don’t have the authority to make the necessary arrangements, I will go over your head and find someone who does.”
He looked at her for a moment as if he were considering how to reply. He crossed his arms over his chest, and lines appeared between his brows as he frowned slightly.
“Your Honor,” he said, speaking slowly and distinctly as if he were addressing someone whom he considered a trifle thick. “Think about what you’re asking here. At this point, there is no evidence that anybody at Hebron High School or anywhere else has connected
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your daughter ,vith our drUg investi,gation-Any threats to her froin that direct](M seein to be strictly i product of your possibly overly vivid imagination and a set of coincidental circumstances. If we surround her with police escorts, we will make her stand out in a way that you don’t want. That is what will target her as an informer, which, let me rernind you, she has not been. if you want my advice, it would be to not draw attention to her in that way.”
Grace was stymied. She had had similar thoughts herself, which had been overruled by her growing feeling that her daughter was in danger. Was she overreacting? she asked herself desperately. Should she just-and, oh, it was the hardest thing in the world to do hould she just wait and see what, if anything, happened next, in the hope that nothing would?
He sighed. “If it will make you feel better, I’ll see that someone follows your daughter and her babysitter home from school. I’ll see that there’s a periodic driveby of your house this afternoon and tonight. And I’U see that the whole thing is done very unobtrusively. You have my number and the general police number, and you and Jessica can call either one if you feel threatened in any way. But I don’t think there’s anything for you to be worried about. If, and you notice I say if, big if, our drug investigation at Hebron was in some way putting your daughter at risk, then you have nothing more to worry about, because it is over. Over. Got it?”
Grace stared at him. He met her gaze, his expression a combination of exasperation, humor, and understanding. This feeling she had that she could rely on
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what he was telling her, rely on him, warred with the more subtle prorriptings of her intuition. Maybe fie \7,as right, she thought, and her screaming rnother-instinct
was wrong.
She had always had a tendency to be overprotective where Jessica was concerned.
IIAII right,” she said. “All right. Linda—you reZ
member Lirida-is pickingJessica up after school. She drives a tan Ford Escort. just-have somebody see that they get home okay. And have somebody do a few drivebys this afternoon and tonight.”
“I will,” he promised, his lightened tone and expression telling her that he thought she was seeing reason at last. “Don’t worry. I-“
There was a knock at the door. Before Grace could move to answer it, the door opened and Owen Johnston stuck his head in. Fiftyish and married, with a thick head of silver hair and a kindly expression, he was a fellow Domestic Court judge, and Grace had a standing date with him and the other three Domestic Court judges on the fourth Thursday of each month.
“You ready to go to lunch, Grace?” he asked, spotting her. She was still in her judge’s robes, turned toward the door, with Marino standing behind her. Owen glanced over her head at the cop, and then back at her, frowning as though he thought he had intruded on something personal. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“I’ll be with you in one minute, Owen,” she said with a smile. He nodded and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
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When she turned back to Marino, his expression had changed in some undefinable way.
“I’ll take care of things, Your Honor,” lie said crisply and, Just like that, walked past her and out the door. Grace was left staring after him for a frowning moment before a gentle knock reminded her that Owen and the others were waiting. Hurriedly unzipping her robe, she joined them for lunch.
And refused to allow herself to remember the delicious little tingle she had felt when Tony Marino had held her hand.
As it happened, that day and the next were uneventful, even reasonably pleasant. When she anxiously (though, she hoped, subtly) questioned Jessica about what had gone on at school, her daughter reported that none of her friends had been caught with any drugs in their lockers, so none of them had been arrested. The kids who had been arrested, as well as the boy who was shot, were juniors and seniors, and she didn’t know them. She was happy because most of the kids had started talking to her again, although some of thernlike Allison-were still being kind of snotty. Listening, Grace thought with relief that Marino had been right. With the drug investigation at Hebron concluded, perhaps Jessica really was no longer in danger.
Reaching that conclusion, even tentatively, was such a relief
Basketball tryouts were Saturday morning. Grace got Jessica to the gym early at eight A.M., then stayed to watch, chewing nervously on her knuckle when things got tense. The Hebron Ladybirds was one of the best girls’ high school teams in the state, and the competi-190
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tion to make the squad was fierce. As a freshman, it would be difficult for Jessica to make varsity, but she had her heart set on it.
“Jessica’s doing well,” Ann Millhollen murmured encouragingly as Jessica went six-for-six from the freethrow line. Ann sat beside Grace in the bleachers, which were sprinkled with parents watching the tryouts. Ann’s daughter Emily was a friend ofJessica’s and was trying out as well.
“Thanks. Emily is, too,” Grace replied. Emily had gone four-for-six from the freethrow line, but she was tall and sturdfly built and murder on the boards.
“She was so nervous this morning. Was Jessica?” “Jessica doesn’t get nervous,” Grace reported wryly, rubbing her chewed-on knuckle. “I do.”
“Oh, look at that!” Ann exclaimed, her gaze caught by the action on the court. Grace’s head whipped around, and her stomach twisted as she watched her daughter run the length of the court with a steal, go for a layup-and have the ball snatched from her hands at the last second by Tiffany Driver. No call from the coaches, who were acting as refs. The look on Jessica’s face as she chased the hall downcourt again made Grace proud and despairing at the same time. Jess was determined to make the team, and she was playing her heart out. jumping to block Tiffany’s shot, she was knocked to the floor. Grace winced.
Once tryouts were over, Grace drove Jessica home to change clothes. In a one-time exception to the three-month grounding that was still in force, Grace had agreed to let Jessica go to the mall for lunch and a
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movie with a group of girls who had tried out for the team.
It was hard not to relent occasionally. Gracejustified it by reasoning that they had both been under so much stress lately that Jessica really needed this time with her friends as a kind of release.
As for danger, there shouldn’t be any. All had been calm for two days. The drug thing was over. Jessica’s fi7lends were speaking to her again. And it was broad daylight and a whole group of girls and the mall, after all.
If the mother-instinct thing wouldn’t leave her alone, Grace thought, she could always go to the mall herself, stay out of sight, and keep an unobtrusive eye on her daughter.
Though Jessica would kill her if she was caught.
As she pulled into the garage, Grace was smiling faintly at the thought of skulking behind kiosks while trying to keep her daughter in view. Jessica leaped out of the car as soon as it stopped, then hesitated. Ordinarily she would have run in ahead of her mother, dropped her gym bag in the kitchen, and headed straight upstairs for a shower, but after her recent upsetting experience with the mirror, she was reluctant to go inside alone. Grace understood perfectly what she was feeling, without Jessica needing to say a word. In many ways, despite the recent ups and downs in their relationship, she and Jessica operated on the same psychic wavelength. Probably because it had been just the two of them for so long.
Therefore Jessica was only a little bit ahead of her as they entered the house through the kitchen door. True
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to form, she dropped her gym bag by the coatrackand then stopped dead.
“Mom, you got me a cake?” Jessica asked in disbelief, inadvertently blocking Grace’s view as she stood as if carved from stone, staring at the kitchen table.
“What?” Carrying her purse and a bag of groceries, Grace nudged her daughter aside, glanced at the table, and stopped dead, too.
In the center of the table was a layer cake, beautifully presented on a doily-bedecked paper plate, decorated as if it had been ordered for someone’s birthday. It glistened with white icing and yellow roses with green leaves and apricot buds. Leaning closer, Grace saw that the top of the cake was adorned with a picture, drawn in icing, of a basketball going through a hoop. The message read, “Good luck, Jessica.”
Grace had not ordered the cake, nor authorized anyone else to do so. In fact, she and Jessica rarely, if ever, ate cake.
More important, the confection had not been on the table when she andjessica had left. And since then, rio one else should have been in the house.
CAKE.” MARINO STARED down at the cake aTlon the table, his hands closing around the back of one of the greenpainted ladderback chairs that made up the kitchen set. He glanced at Grace, who stood on the opposite side of the table watching him. “So what makes you think that a cake that says ‘Good luck, Jessica’ constitutes a threat?”
Officers Gelinsky and Ayres, who’d been on the scene for about ten minutes, hovered nearby. Gelinsky appeared faintly bored as he contemplated the cake, whi_le Ayres looked downright dour as she, like Marino, looked at Grace.
“I didn’t order it. We don’t eat cake. And it was not in the house when we left,” Grace explained for the second time, holding on to her patience with an effort. Marino had just arrived. Gelinsky and Ayres had already been underwhelmed by the significance of a cake as a threat.
“Your sister probably brought it. For God’s sake, it’s
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a nice gesture. Unauthorized delivery of a cake is not exactly a crime.”
“My sister knows Jessica and I don’t eat cake. My sister did not bring it. No one who knows us would bring it. Jessica is diabetic. We do not eat cake.”
Grace spoke emphatically. On the surface, she supposed that it probably did seem as if she was having a strangely negative reaction to what could be construed as a charming surprise for Jessica. But the cake was sinister. She felt it with every iota of intuition she possessed, and regarded the beautifully decorated dessert with as much fear as if it were a live bomb sitting in the middle of her kitchen table.
Whoever had written the message on Jessica’s mirror had left the cake, she knew.
“It’s not over,” she said aloud, crossing her arms over her chest. She wore a navy wool blazer over a white turtleneck and khakis, and still she was cold, cold to the bone. The kind of cold that had nothing to do with the heavy gray skies outside, or the rainy mist that hung like fog in the air.
“What?” Marino glanced at her, a hint of exasperation in his voice. His black hair was wavy today, too, adding credence to her theory that its latent curl was brought out by rain, and she thought maybe he’d had it cut, because it looked shorter around his neck and ears. Like herself, he was dressed in a blazer and slacks, the former tan tweed, the latter well-cut dark brown wool. He was even wearing a tie, of tan silk with thin black stripes. With the tiny part of her mind not consumed with mushrooming fear, she wondered where he’d been headed when she had paged him.