As anticipated, once I was in the kitchen, Mom rejected my help. However, she’d interpreted my presence as code for “grill me about Ket.”
“How? When?” she asked as she tore up a salad.
“Legal technicality. This morning.” I answered her questions to the best of my abilities. “Do you mind if I go freshen up before we eat?”
Mom arched a brow, bombarded me with a few more Ket questions and let me go. “I left you some goodies in your room. The local bath and body shop had their new line of fall scents out last week. I picked you up a few of those three-in-one body washes you love.”
She had indeed. Pumpkin Pie Pleasures and Cinnamon Bun Bliss. I gave them each a quick sniff. Nice. I had a momentary fantasy of a double shower with Van and me, Van covered in luscious Cinnamon Bun Bliss lather and some bump and grind going on. They say that cinnamon is good for the health. In my fantasy, it was definitely very good for me. I smiled to myself and then I was off to the guest room to log on to Mom’s computer.
Ten minutes later I’d Googled Cliff and found him and his movies on IMDb. I couldn’t find anything more damning on him than that he’d made more than a few bombs. Nothing I’d ever rent, for sure. I turned my attention to Peewee and his big shot, rumored-to-be-Mafia uncle. Jackpot!
Mom called us to dinner just as I finished reading a fascinating article on one of those crime file websites about Sil Canarino, with a brief mention of his lowlife nephew Peewee. Sil was a Mafia boss and infamous wiretapper to the stars with more dirt on the Hollywood rich and famous than an excavation site. He was currently in the can awaiting trial and refusing to talk about how to decrypt his impressive encrypted library of audio files that housed all that lovely, rich sandy loam. The key to the encryption was a dongle. Everybody wanted it—the tabloids, the FBI, the guys Sil had the dirt on. And guess what? The dongle was missing.
“Shit!” I said, hoping Grandpa didn’t hear. Shit had to be way worse than crap. And I was deep in it.
The table was set for four with Mom’s best everyday dishes and a floral arrangement in fall colors. A large bowl of tossed salad sat off to one side surrounded by an assortment of salad dressings. I sat next to Van and across from Grandpa. My mind was bouncing around
Godfather
endings and
Sopranos
episodes. I’d gotten rid of that damn dongle, if it indeed was
the
dongle. Everybody knew I’d given it up. I was safe in my childhood home, the one I hoped didn’t turn into Massacre on 185th Street. I just needed to relax. Van had to be right. We were safe now.
Mom brought out the pot pie, apologizing for the simple meal.
“Never apologize for pot pie, Mom.” I turned to Van. “It’s her signature dish for a reason.”
Mom smiled and I tried to relax. Everything was all better now. Grandpa said a Dutch blessing, which sounded mostly like butchered English, and we all dug in.
Mom couldn’t keep her mind off Ket. She’d thought of a few more questions. “Has Ket contacted you? Have you, or anyone up here, actually seen him since he’s been out?”
Even though she was a champion worrier, my mother wasn’t the kind of woman you could keep things from. I told her about the necklace in my room.
“Those wretched Cindy Lous!” Mom scowled. “Anything for a sale. I wonder how much extra Ket paid for delivery. Have you called the police?”
“I’ve talked to them,” I said obtusely. Well, I had talked to the cops, though not about Ket. “There’s not much they can do.”
“Until he murders you in your sleep.” Mom had that “I’d like to protect my kid by murdering Ket” tone in her voice that I’d grown to know and love over the past few years.
“I’m keeping up my victim’s diary and storing all evidence.” I gave Mom a look that asked her to drop it.
“Dutch showed me his Bigfoot collection,” Van said, trying to arrange peace by switching topics. To my amazement, he and Dutch seemed to have bonded. “That footprint picture from 1998 is amazing. The print is huge, too large to be human, yet human-looking. Very ingenious putting that gum wrapper next to it to show the size,” he said to Dutch, who did his own shrug.
“It was all I had on me,” Grandpa said and launched into another one of his Bigfoot tales.
I knew the picture and the gum wrapper—Double Mint, Dutch’s signature chew, especially when he was trying to quit smoking.
“I saw that print,” I said to Van, since he seemed so impressed by the thing. “A week after Grandpa found it, he took me up in the North Idaho countryside to see it. It was still there in the packed dirt. The hair on the back of my neck stood up just seeing it.” Kind of like it had been doing for the past twenty-four hours or so.
Mom wasn’t into the Bigfoot discussion. She was more into the big jerk train of thought. “Reilly, you have your gun with you, right?”
“Always.”
“Gun, that’s a good idea.” While we’d been discussing Bigfoot, Dutch had been coming to a slow Dutch simmer. I was amazed he hadn’t thought of getting the gun before. Usually he wasn’t so slow on the uptake. He pushed his chair back from the table. “I’ll just go get the shotgun. In case. Keep eating. I’ll be right back.”
Mom watched Grandpa go. “I wish Ket weren’t out. I liked it better when you kids were babies. I had so much more control over your world and safety back then. If there was a bully in playgroup, I simply talked to his mother. And if that didn’t work, I pulled you out.”
I nodded in response. “You could try Ket’s mom. But she’s firmly on her little darling’s side and almost as much of a jerk as he is.”
Mom sighed. “Come to think of it, the talking-to-the-mom thing didn’t work much better back then. But sometimes I wish I still had the pulling-you-out-of-the-group option. Are you going back to camp tomorrow?”
I looked at Van who looked at me. “Yeah, I think so.”
Mom frowned. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I heard a story on the news today. A man was found murdered in a warehouse run by your spy camp people. The police weren’t releasing any details.” Mom gave me another piercing look that conveyed the question, when were you planning on telling me about that one?
I withered just a bit in my chair.
Mom was a news junkie—talk radio, twenty-four-hour TV news shows, the Internet, she took them all in. Her addiction had gotten worse since my ordeal with Ket. I don’t know if she was trying to comfort herself, prepare herself, or scare herself crazy. I should have known better than to try to keep something like a murder in a warehouse from her.
“Sorry. I got caught up in the Ket stuff and forgot.”
“Forgot? You forgot about a murder?”
“Okay, delayed. I was going to tell you about it, but I thought you had enough to worry about.”
Mom was still frowning.
“Really,” I said. “Look how long it took you to get around to asking.” I put a note of triumph in my voice.
“I didn’t want to upset your grandfather by bringing it up in front of him.”
“He doesn’t know?”
“Do you really think he’d let you go back if he did?”
Fortunately, Van saved me by taking up the story, telling it in a confidential tone. Like he was letting Mom in on the top secret scoop. The man had a gift. He made our discovery sound like an Abbott and Costello caper. Mom was actually smiling as he talked. She even giggled once or twice.
The way Van told the story, we discovered the body all right, although more like from afar, almost as if we’d spotted Jay in the bottom of a ravine from the top of the hill with our binoculars. Very safe and sanitary.
“I can’t believe you two discovered the body. Danger certainly follows Reilly around.” Mom looked directly at me.
I stared down at my plate to keep from giving the real story away. “Remind me to ask you to recount
Hamlet
and
The Silence of the Lambs
. Those two stories have always bothered me. If only I’d known they were comedies,” I whispered to Van.
“I thought you’d be thanking me,” he whispered back, reaching around me and giving my shoulders a squeeze. I noticed a bead of sweat forming on his forehead, but he didn’t move to take his jacket off. “Reilly has a hard time talking about it,” he said to Mom.
“Buck up, baby.” Mom reached across and patted my hand. “They’re sure there’s no danger?”
Van answered. “They don’t think the murder has anything to do with camp. He was probably just dumped there. They’ve added additional security. The place has never been safer.”
“Well, if there’s extra security,” Mom said, giving me one last sympathetic look before letting the subject drop.
Neither Van nor I mentioned that I’d dated the murdered man. Nor did we mention Goon or the dongle. If Mom didn’t have enough of an inkling about them to drag the details out of us, she didn’t need to know. Only a fool tells her mother everything.
“Where’s your grandfather?” Mom asked, noticing Dutch had been gone longer than expected. “What in the world is taking him so long?”
“Maybe he had to reload some ammo?” I said.
“He doesn’t reload shot.” Mom pushed her chair back just as a loud crash came from the vicinity of the garage.
The crash was followed by scuffling and loud male voices, one of which was Grandpa’s.
“Damn it!” Mom said, seemingly unafraid of Grandpa’s wrath for cursing. In the next instant, she hit the outdoor security lights, flooding the lawn in brilliance that would have put the midday sun to shame.
Van reached beneath his jacket and ran out the door before I could stop him. “Stay here,” he called after himself.
I ran for my purse, which Mom had stored in the coat closet in the front hall. Why did I never have my gun on me?
A door slammed. I jumped. My purse clattered to the floor as I pulled the Beretta out. By the time I got back to the kitchen with gun in hand, Mom had her pistol and stood at the ready, aiming toward the back door.
“What do we do now?” I asked. I really did not want to use the gun.
“You cover the front door. I’m taking the back.”
“What is this?” I asked. “I feel like I’m in an episode of
Cops
.”
“Just don’t get trigger happy,” Mom said, her eyes steely with that “protect the cub” look. “We don’t need anyone shooting Van or your grandfather.”
“Speaking of cops, maybe we should call the cops,” I said, my voice rising in panic. “Has anyone called the cops?”
Mom’s response was cut off by the squeal of peeling tires and flying gravel.
Grandpa came charging into the house. “Them sons of guns broke into the garage!”
Van was right behind him, panting. “They got away.”
“Those high school kids again?” At first Mom sounded merely annoyed. “This is not a house to mess with. We have guns in this house. We have a creepy, scary, stalking maniac skulking about. We don’t need any dumb high school kids dropping by to get shot.” Her voice rose in pitch with each word. Looking spent, she dropped her gun and turned to me.
“They broke in last month and stole an old pair of pruning shears, of all things. Cut themselves in the process and bled all over the hood of the car. Very disturbing. Those shears were rusty. I can’t imagine what they wanted with them. I hope they didn’t get lockjaw. I can just imagine being sued by a trespassing delinquent.”
“It wasn’t kids,” Van said quietly. That’s when I noticed that he had a gun, too, and was quietly re-holstering it beneath his jacket.
I set my Beretta on the table. “You have a gun, too? Is that what you’ve been hiding all evening?” I didn’t even try to take the accusation out of my tone. “Aren’t we a highly un-PC crowd? We’d make a good ad for the NRA.” I put my hands on my hips. “You can take your jacket off and stop sweltering now.”
Van grinned. “You aren’t the only one with a permit to carry concealed.”
“I bet,” I said.
“If they weren’t kids, who were they?” Mom asked. She slid her gun back in a kitchen drawer. For just a moment I hated Ket that much more for making my little mother a gun-toting mama.
“Adults. Looking for something in the garage. Dutch scared them off.” Van slid off his jacket.
“Ket?” I asked.
Van shook his head. “Could be his henchmen, though. Maybe some PIs he hired. There were two of them.” He shot me a look that said maybe they weren’t even Ket’s guys. I didn’t like the possibilities. Fortunately Mom and Dutch missed the look. Van glanced around the room and then strained like he was listening for something. “Should we be expecting the cops?”
“I don’t think anyone called them,” Mom said.
“Nor should we,” Grandpa said. “They won’t do a bit of good. Haven’t so far, anyway. Never kept Ket away and still haven’t said boo about catching them high school hooligans.”
Van didn’t give an opinion.
I didn’t notice until that minute that Grandpa had changed into his hunting camo and had a high-powered rifle in hand.
“I thought you went for the shotgun,” I said.
He shook his head. “I meant to. But then I noticed a suspicious car parked on the road.” He pointed in the general direction of the road. “That’s when I realized this was no duck job. I needed my high-powered, night vision sight.”
“Dad,” Mom said, pointing to his gun and the muddy footprints on the wood floor.
“Sorry.” He leaned the rifle against the wall and went to the mat to wipe his feet. “The sprinklers were on earlier today.”
During all the domestic chatter, Van had gone to the window and was peering covertly through the blinds.
“Do you see anything?” I whispered. Why I whispered, I’ll never know. It’s one of those things. When you’re sneaking around, hush seems required. “Is anyone out there?”
“Not now.”
“I’d better arm the security system. Everyone stay away from the doors and windows.” Mom headed for the security system control panel and I headed for Van, coming up behind him at the window and maybe standing a little too close for propriety’s sake.
“What’s up?” Van asked as soon as she was gone. He was still staring out the window.
“You tell me.” I paused. “We can’t stay here. We’re putting Mom and Grandpa in danger.” I blew out a breath. “Grandpa is going to be tempted to use that gun.”
Van nodded. “What’s your plan?”
“I have to go back to the hotel.” And then I said the part I’d really been dreading. “And I’ll have to make it obvious I’m leaving. I want them to follow me. I want them as far away from my family as possible.” I drew in a deep breath. “You can stay here. Grandpa can drive you to camp tomorrow.”
Van shook his head and started laughing.