No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (18 page)

“That has to be the meanest
thing anyone has ever said to me!” he yelled. “You are a very
cold-hearted woman, Kimberly Sheffield!”

“Get out!” I shouted back.
My heart pounded hard inside my chest as my voice climbed several
octaves. “Get out of my house right now!”

I shook myself free of his
grasp, pulled myself up to my full height, and prepared myself for
battle. Tom seemed to recognize the futility of waging war with me.
He took a deep breath as his demeanor deflated, and he sat himself
down in Adelaide’s favorite wing chair.

“Wow,” he sighed. “Am I
really that awful? Was I really such a bad guy when we were
together?”

I stood out of reach, wary
of trusting him. A sense of genuine remorse seemed to come over
him. He kept his eyes on the fringe of Adelaide’s Aubusson rug as
it sat on the polished wood floor. As the minutes ticked on, he
showed no signs of leaving.

“Tom?” I said his name and
he looked up hopefully. “It’s time for you to go. I mean
it.”

“Okay, you win. I give up.”
He leaned forward in his chair. “I’ll go.”

He got as far as the front
door before he turned back to me. For a moment, I thought I saw the
flash of a diabolical gleam in those eyes of his, but then it was
gone. He gave me a sad smile.

“If we’re really over, Kim,
can I have something of mine back?”

“What?” Maybe this was the
real reason he came to see me. Now it was beginning to make
sense.

“Do you remember that silver
chicken spice box I brought you back from Germany?”

“The spice box?” I did a
quick inventory of the gifts he had given me while we were
together. The spice box was something he had made a big fuss over
when he presented it to me. Done in 800 French silver, it was
unique and charming. I had fallen in love with it the moment I saw
it. Why was Tom asking about it now?

“If it’s really over between
us,” he said, “really over, I’d like that back. It has great
sentimental value for me.”

“I thought you bought it at
a flea market in Frankfurt just before you gave it to me.” He had
some nerve asking for that back. It’s not like it was an engagement
ring.

“I did,” he agreed, nodding.
“But it was just like one my grandmother had when I was a child.
I’d like it back.”

“It was a gift, not a loan,”
I pointed out curtly.

“Still, I’d like it back.”
He moved towards me, and for a moment, I felt a menacing chill. How
serious was he about the chicken spice box? “It’s very important
that I have it.”

“You can’t have it right
now. I’m in the middle of having my things shipped up here.” Don’t
ask me why, but I flat out lied. I’m not normally given to
deception, but something about Tom’s manner urged me on. That
chicken was sitting in my bedroom, on a shelf with some other
trinkets. Part of me wanted to keep that silver chicken spice box
just because he had given it to me. It was a consolation gift for
the pain he caused me when he left. And part of me also wanted to
keep it from him, to pay him back for coming back and playing on my
emotions. But most of all, I wanted to know why that silver chicken
spice box was so important to him. Until I had the answer to that,
I was holding onto it.

“When will you get it for
me?” Tom said, a tone of urgency slipping into his
voice.

“My tenant is making
arrangements for me. When my things arrive, I’ll send it to you.
Just write down your address.” I took a note pad and a pen off the
kitchen counter and handed it to Tom.

“Thanks,” he said, jotting
the information on the paper. “You’re sure there’s nothing for us
to rekindle?”

“Positive,” I
responded.

“Too bad,” he sighed,
shaking his head. “I still find you irresistible.”

Before I could do anything,
Tom reached out and kissed my lips, holding my face in his hands.
Memories flooded my head as I felt the familiar lips, the last lips
I had kissed, moving over mine with a penetrating hunger. I pulled
away, feeling overwhelmed.

“Whoa!” I put my hand out,
to prevent Tom from coming after me. “No!”

“Can’t blame a guy for
trying, can you?” There was a small smirk on those deceitful lips.
He seemed quite proud of himself. “See you.”

With that, he was out the
door in a few giant steps, bounding to his car with a spring in his
stride. What had happened that made him so happy? I didn’t think it
was the kiss. Was it that I promised to return the chicken spice
box to him?

Even after all this time, I
still didn’t understand Tom. He always seemed to have a hidden
agenda. Now, with the passing years, it was easier for me to see
just how manipulative Tom really was. Thank goodness I didn’t marry
him, as we had planned. It would have been a complete disaster. We
never really clicked as a couple. It was pure animal attraction
driving that relationship. How did it start? What stopped me from
seeing him for what he really was?

As Tom drove away, I pulled
the drapes in every room, feeling incredibly vulnerable. I didn’t
trust him not to double-back. Something had changed between us. Any
semblance of trust had vaporized when Tom forced his way into
Adelaide’s house.

I waited a good half hour
before I went to my bedroom and reached up to the shelf where that
silver chicken spice box sat. I held it in my hands, trying to
determine why it was so important. It didn’t seem different to my
untrained eye. When Tom first gave it to me, I had had it
appraised. The written estimate for replacement value was under two
thousand dollars. Maybe it was more valuable now. Maybe that’s why
he wanted it back.

This weighed on my mind well
into the next day. I forced myself to think about our relationship.
Tom was the one man in my life who didn’t fit into my world. I
always was expected to fit into his. He was never an easy man to
love. A little too dangerous. A little too daring. A little too
selfish. What had drawn us together? In and out of the hours, tiny
snippets of memories came sneaking back into my mind. We were
guests at Delia and Bennie’s wedding. He begged me to dance. My
reluctance only seemed to feed the fire, making me even more
attractive. He would not take no for an answer. He kept asking me
if I knew how attractive and irresistible I was to men like him.
Unfortunately, he forgot to inform me he was still very much
married. I found out six months into our relationship, when he
announced that he was finally legally separated. By then, our
relationship had progressed to the point where Tom wanted to move
in. I hesitated, in part due to the shock of finding out he had
deceived me.

I passed the morning working
on my cookbook outlines. At eleven, the phone rang. It was
Barry.

“Kim!” He sounded like he
was crying. “Something terrible happened!”

“What?” I gave him my full
attention. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s horrible! Jim was
assaulted! He’s in the hospital!”

“What happened?” I asked,
dreading the details.

“Jim got your key in the
mail this morning, so he decided he was going to go over to your
storage unit and take a look. The guy from the moving company was
supposed to meet him there, so they could talk about what size
truck was needed for your stuff and to sign a contract.”

There was a long pause. I
could hear Barry sobbing in the background. How bad was it? Would
Jim survive?

“Sorry,” he apologized,
trying to catch his breath. He cleared his throat and steadied
himself before going on. “The moving man found him on the floor. He
was...very bloody. The police said that he had been assaulted with
a stun gun and beaten with some kind of club. He has a concussion,
a couple of broken ribs, a broken arm, and a fractured
jaw.”

“Oh, Barry,” I cried. “I’m
so, so sorry.”

“The police said it looked
deliberate. They have the surveillance tapes. Kim, three guys went
right up to your unit and went in. They were in there for almost
twenty minutes. They didn’t leave with anything, so the police
don’t think robbery was a motive. They were dressed in black
masks.”

I thought about what I kept
in the unit. There were a few family heirlooms and some decorator
knock-offs I paid an arm and a leg for, but most of the items had
only sentimental value to me. Hardly anything that would appeal to
a gang of thieves, especially a violent one.

There was shock and
disbelief in Barry’s voice. I understood why. Jim wasn’t the kind
of man who made enemies. The thought that three men would
intentionally brutalize him was overwhelming.

“This is unbelievable,” I
said, feeling completely and utterly helpless.

“Tell me about it! The
police need to talk to him. They will if...if he ever wakes up
again.” The thought of losing Jim this way was frightening to me. I
could only imagine what it was like for Barry.

“Call me. It doesn’t matter
what time of day or night. Anything you need.” I could hear Barry
sighing on the other end and my heart ached for him. This
catastrophe had shaken him down to his soul.

“Kim,” he said softly, “what
am I going to do if he doesn’t make it? He’s my best
friend.”

“He’s going to be okay,” I
insisted. “You have to believe that. And the police will catch the
creeps who did this.”

“I know you’re just saying
that, but thanks. I need to believe you’re right.”

“Me, too,” I
admitted.

Chapter Six --

After lunch, I decided to
get a new appraisal for the silver chicken spice box. I carefully
packed it in my oversized purse and drove a couple of miles to
Ranly, to a little antique store I had visited more than a few
times. The owner was a helpful woman in her sixties, with a passion
for the unusual and a penchant for doing her research.

“Amanda,” I greeted her as
she came out from behind the counter, “is there any chance you can
tell me something about this little piece?”

Holding the silver figurine
in my hand, I offered it up to her trained eye. Her eyes grew
narrow as she looked it over quickly. I watched her brow curl into
a frown. She took out a magnifier and gave it another
examination.

“Lovely,” she decided. “Nice
casting. French. Late eighteen ninety, maybe nineteen
hundred.”

“So?” I was confused.
“What’s the problem?”

“Here,” her long, polished
fingernail tapped the bottom of the bird, “we have all the normal
marks of the maker. Everything matches the catalog
listings.”

“What’s the but?” I
demanded.

“There are extra numbers
here. See? One-one-four,” she recited. I followed her finger to the
tiny engraving on the base of the bird. “That’s not normal for this
silversmith.”

Gazing at the spot she
indicated, I could barely see the microscopic numbers, even with
her jeweler’s loop. To my untrained eye, they just looked like
strokes of feathers. What did all this mean?

“My best guess? These were
added by someone else.”

“How strange,” I replied.
“Why would someone do that?”

“If you look closely, you
can see someone tried to mimic the maker’s marks, but they aren’t
quite as deep. Same script style, though. Fancy a cup of Earl
Grey?”

Amanda led me to the back
room, where she had a small microwave. We had tea together in
colorful mugs. It was just after three when I left the
shop.

Ten minutes later, I pulled
into Adelaide’s driveway, collected the mail from the box, and
walked up the path to the front door. As I slipped my key into the
lock, I thought I heard a sound inside. Peeking through the front
window, I saw a furtive flash of movement in the hallway, heading
towards the bedrooms. Jim popped into my mind and I suddenly
wondered if I was walking into a trap, facing a similar fate to my
tenant in Belle Haven. With my heart pounding its way out of my
chest, I stepped away, intending to get back into my car and phone
the police.

The blow struck me without
warning as I was accosted from behind. Strange hands gripped me
roughly. I tried to scream, kicking wildly, trying to land a blow.
A car horn blared. Just as suddenly, I was released, shoved to the
ground, landing face first in a bed of fuschia-colored petunias. I
heard voices, heading my way.

“Are you okay?” Mrs. Patel,
the next-door neighbor, came running. “I saw what happened to you.
I called the police. They’re on their way.”

“Thank you,” I said,
accepting her help to get me back on my feet. I was very wobbly.
Looking down at my slacks, I was also pretty filthy. There were two
rather large grass stains on my knees. Mr. Monroe and his son,
Bobby, came running up.

“Did he hurt
you?”

“No,” I said. My elbows were
skinned, but I was otherwise uninjured.

“He wasn’t alone, you know,”
Bobby said. “Another guy took off across the backyard. They had
stockings over their heads.”

“Weird,” his father
exclaimed. “Imagine that, in broad daylight!”