Saturday Night Cleaver (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #4) (21 page)

“We’ll check this out,” he continued, rubbing my back, “then I’m taking you straight to the hospital. We should have had you transported hours ago.”

When we screeched onto White Willow Lane, two cruisers were already positioned, one in front of our house and one in front of the Penobscotts’s. My mother stood in the driveway talking to a uniformed policeman while another could be seen knocking on the front door of our neighbor’s house. I flew out of the car and up the driveway as quickly as my battered legs would carry me.

“Please do not question my hearing, young man,” she scolded him. “That is blatant age-ism. A recent visit to the doctor revealed that these ears work just as well as those of any twenty-year-old. I most definitely heard two powerful gunshots that rocked the foundations of my daughter’s house.” When she caught sight of me, her frown deepened. “Barbara, you look terrible.”

I coughed. “That’s funny, because I’m sure I feel way worse than I look.”

Erik flashed his badge and the censured cop sighed in relief. “When did you hear the shots, Diane?” Erik asked her.

Seeming appeased, she rattled on, but didn’t exactly answer the question. “Thank goodness you’re here now, Erik. Possibly you can teach this rookie a thing or two. For instance, to believe a rational woman when she reports the discharge of a weapon. I told him I was a graduate of the County Citizen’s Police Academy. I know whereof I speak.”

The “rookie’s” radio squawked. “Not getting an answer here,” came a static-laced report, from what I assumed was the officer investigating next door. A quick look-see confirmed he was on his radio. “Checking the rear of the premises,” he added.

“Roger that,” answered his colleague, who appeared desperate to leave his current station and join him.

Erik offered him the out he was looking for. “I’ve got it here,” he said. “Give him backup.”

The grateful policeman nodded and literally dashed away. That’s my mom. She even scares uniformed lawmen packing heat.

Howard caught a glimpse of something and tipped his head toward our house. “Barb, we have spectators.”

I looked up to see several eyeballs peering through the upstairs window in Callie’s room. Mama Marr and the three girls had collected there to view the exciting goings-on.

“We should go let them know we’re okay,” I said.

With a nod, he joined me on the brick path that lead to the front door. “You’re not exactly okay,” he said.

“I’ll put on a good show.”

As we approached the house, he called back. “Fill us in when you know anything, Lamon.”

Still Brad-Pitt handsome despite his desperate lack of sleep, he gave a nod. “Will do.” Then he turned back to sweet-talk my mother. “Now, Diane,” he said, all smiles, “tell me when you heard the shots.”

We’d barely reached our front step when she interrupted her own description of the gunshots to point out activity at the Penobscott house. “My. Someone has finally decided to answer the door,” she said.

Howard and I turned at the same time to catch sight of Neil Penobscott not just “answering his door,” but blasting through it and out onto the front lawn, his arms raised high in the air, screaming, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! My wife’s gone crazy! She’s got a gun and a hostage! Don’t shoot!” He fell to his knees on the frost-glazed grass.

Erik was on the move when the early morning air was filled with the bold and unmistakable blast of heavy weaponry. Even my mother yowled at the crack which rang from inside the Penobscotts’s house.

Howard threw the door open and shoved me in. “Upstairs and stay there!” he shouted. He pointed a stern finger in my face. “Stay there!” My mother was on his heels, not messing around. She might have had a diploma from the Citizen’s Police Academy, but she also apparently wanted to graduate on to another year of life on earth. She sped around him, through the door and upstairs faster than the Road Runner looking for a pile of Acme bird seed.

But I could see Howard had no plans to join us. He tried to close the door behind her, but I threw my foot in the way. “Howard, you’re unarmed, you can’t!” I grabbed his wrist and pulled hard, straining my own ribs. “Get in here!”

“I won’t put myself in danger, I promise.”

How could he promise such a thing? He was crazy. “Lock the door,” he said, escaping my grasp, and running away, not a hint of a limp in his gait.

At his core, Howard was a hero, a man who believed in facing any dangerous scenario head-on to protect others. I knew he had no choice in his own mind. I locked the door, genuflected even though I wasn’t Catholic, asked Buddha to send a dose of good Karma our way, and followed my mother up the stairs to Callie’s room.

Amber and Bethany gravitated to my side like magnets. I’m not sure I could have peeled them away they were stuck so tight. Mama Marr was beside herself with fear for Howard.

“My son, what is he doing? He doesn’t have the guns or no thing and there is the shooting!” She pointed to the Penobscotts’s house. “This is worse than Philadelphia, this Rustic Woods.” She shook her head while my own mother tried to comfort her with little pats to the back.

“He’ll be just fine, Alka. Your son is one of the strongest, smartest, bravest men I know. I’m proud to have him for a son-in-law.”

I was far too terrified to ruminate long on her accolades or their contradiction to the many less celebratory opinions she’d expressed about Howard over the years, but the praise was duly noted.

Callie’s room sits in the upper corner of the house facing the street. It has two windows, one looking out onto White Willow Lane which also gives her a nice view of the Penobscotts’s front yard. The other window, on the side of our own house, faces the side of the Penobscotts’, their back yard, and the woods behind. From our vantage point, staring out of the front-facing window, we could see Officer Lamon inside the police cruiser at the end of our driveway and Howard, kneeling on the road beside him, using the driver’s side door open to protect him from God knew what. Lamon was on the car radio, probably calling in the troops. The door-knocking cop had made it back to the same car, hiding behind the passenger’s-side door, while it appeared that Neil had been directed to the back seat.

Realizing that the girls should not see Howard in danger, especially Callie, who didn’t need to witness a repeat of our August trauma, I told them to move to Amber’s room and close the shades.

“No!” they screamed in unison. “We don’t want to be alone!”

“You won’t be alone,” my mother cooed in an unusually soothing tone. She really could be warm and consoling when she wanted to, I thought. I imagined her with those babies in the hospital. “I’ll go with you.” She opened her arms wide and scooted them out the door. “Alka, would you like to come?” she asked.

Mama Marr was adamant, her head shaking firmly. “No. I stay.” Her fingers gripped the window sill in case anyone should try to remove her with force. “I stay,” she repeated.

Unable to locate the young policeman who’d been reprimanded by my mother, I slipped over to the other window for a better view of the Penobscotts’s side and back yards. There, I spotted him creeping slowly around the corner of the house. Another shot rang out and he fell to the ground. By the way he dropped, I just knew he had taken a bullet rather than a dive for safety.

Then I spotted movement in the far corner of their property, right at the tree line.

The jeans and the blond hair were unmistakable.

Slithering on his stomach into the woods like a snake, was Colt.

Colt was alive.

Chapter Twenty

I
screamed out the window to
Howard, who was still in the cul-de-sac, ducked behind the police cruiser. “Howard! Colt! Backyard,” but he didn’t turn his head. “Howard!” I screamed again. “Anyone! Help him!” Nothing. We were too far away, the commotion in the street was too loud, and my voice just floated away on the cool, fall breeze.

Something had to be done. Crazy-wife-with-a-gun, Melody Penobscott, was out there shooting people left and right. Colt was being hunted down like sick prey and no one knew. I tore out the room and took the stairs three and four at a time, stumbling on the last step and splaying face down onto the foyer floor. Bump in the road. I ignored the shooting pain in my side and scrambled up. Mama Marr hollered after me, “What you do? Where you go?”

“Mama, get to Howard! Tell him it’s Colt! He’s heading for the woods!” I shouted back.

We don’t keep guns in the house, I won’t allow it. FBI agent or no, I absolutely cannot tolerate a firearm in my house with children around. I will admit, at that very moment, I regretted my hard stance on the subject. A loaded gun would have been handy. Never fear, though, I had a kitchen full of killing machines. Or at least a steak knife or two.

Rifling through my drawers, I also began to regret my poor attention to all things culinary. I was a 46 year-old married woman and mother of three, and yet I did not even have a proper set of knives. We had one chopping knife—if that was what it was called—who knew? I chopped with the thing. Sometimes. But it was easily twenty years old and the tip was broken off. That wouldn’t work. There were the steak knives, somehow those didn’t seem quite menacing enough. Time was running out if I wanted any chance of intercepting Melody and saving Colt’s life, so I grabbed the scariest thing in my messy utensil drawer: my pasta spoon.

Keep reading. It’s scarier than you’d think.

I flew out the back sliding glass door. My backyard met seamlessly with the Penobscotts’s, since neither yard was fenced, and both were bordered by the same woods I had walked the previous days. I slipped into the woods with one goal: rescue Colt. Did I want to be a hero? Heck no. Did I see a choice? Not really. If I had run out into the cul-de-sac to warn the tiny brigade of three, precious time would have been lost and Colt could have been dead. The best case scenario had me locating Colt and bringing him to safety without ever encountering Melody or her firearm. The worst case scenario...was worse.

The ground beneath my feet was buried in damp leaves and golf-ball sized acorns, so I kept slipping and losing my balance while I tried to maneuver between the trees and lock my radar onto Colt’s whereabouts. It was one thing to see him from a second story window, but down on the ground, my bearings were twisted. I wondered if Mama Marr had made it to Howard yet. Backup with matching fire-power was a far better prospect than going it alone. My pasta spoon would be very intimidating, I knew, but I wasn’t naive enough to believe it could stand up to the threat of a loaded barrel in my face.

A whisper caught my attention. The voice was Melody’s. “Colt? Where are ya? Come on out. I won’t hurt ya.”

For a selfish moment, I wondered why the cuckoos always latched on to me. Then I realized this one had latched onto Colt and I was just along for the ride. That nutcase would rue the day she messed with Colt Baron and his friend, Barbara Marr.

Melody didn’t sound inches away, but she didn’t sound very far either. I knelt low to the ground behind a fat oak tree, scanning for both of them, glad for once, that my old jacket was so faded—hopefully it offered me some camouflage. Leaves rustled, but I couldn’t tell from where. My heart pumped so furiously that my breathing became hard to control. I couldn’t let her hear me. As I covered my mouth to muffle the sound, I noticed my breath in the air and realized I should be looking for evidence of their respiration, not just their bodies.

Melody whisper-shouted again. “Hey baby, don’t you know I love you?”

As soon as I heard her voice again, my eyes watched the air nearby. Bingo. From behind a tree far to my right, I saw the condensation of her breath as the words spilled out. Still though, Colt was at large.

“Colty...” she continued with more edge in her voice. “The police are after us and you’re starting to-”

As I moved one leg to get a better footing, a twig snapped under my foot, interrupting Melody’s psycho-attempt at wooing. She moved from behind the tree and began treading in my direction.

“Colty? Is that you? This is getting serious.” The deranged and irritable tone in her voice rose sharply.

I had to admit, I was becoming irritable as well, unable to locate Colt and wondering where Howard and those police were with their weapons. Knowing I had to get out of Melody’s way fast, I planted myself stomach down on the ground and began wiggling backwards toward the steep slope that led away from the houses and down to the path. Something sent Melody moving in the opposite direction, so I struggled to get on my hands and knees to better look for Colt, only gravity kept pulling me down the slope. I reached for a twiggy baby tree with my left hand, straining with all of my might and had just managed to brush it with my fingertips when something cold and wet landed on my pasta spoon hand. My scream was instinctual and, unfortunately, I couldn’t take it back.

Melody was heading my way again, faster now, louder, with more confidence.

“Curly,” croaked a voice.

The something that had grabbed my hand was Colt. As I furiously brushed leaves away from the lump next to me, more and more of him appeared. He was pale, drained, and dirt-covered, but he was alive. He must have crawled to the spot and covered himself with leaves to hide from Melody.

“You found me,” he whispered.

I smiled and gave a nod.

He coughed quietly. “Took you long enough.”

“She’s coming this way,” I whispered in his ear. “Can you move?”

“Pretty...sure.” His breath was raspy.

I peered behind us, down the long, steep slope. Finally, the sound of approaching sirens told me more help was on the way. The police could be just seconds from finding Melody and thwarting her, but I couldn’t take any chances. I certainly couldn’t scream to gain their attention, or she might shoot. If, however, Colt and I were able to make our way safely to the walking path, a bridge lay just around a bend. I remembered that it was still well-covered on both sides by heavy brush and a shallow creek ran underneath. I’d move us in that direction thinking it could provide us necessary concealment.

“Slide backwards, hang on to me.”

He didn’t say anything, but weakly raised his thumb to indicate he was on board. Down we slid, over leaves and sticker vines and fallen branches both large and small. The ride was filled with bumps and jolts that irritated the burn in my ribcage. Colt grunted the whole way down, so I suspected he was in a great deal of pain as well. Once we reached level ground near the path, I prayed a jogger bearing a concealed weapon for safety would appear, but such was not our luck. Rest would have been nice, but there was no time. A quick peek up the hill told me Melody was hot on our trail.