O’Malley closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, knowing there was more to the story. “Show us where it happened,” he said.
I followed the cops into the parking lot and locked the office door behind me. From where we stood, it was obvious there were no cars in the parking area near the Dunkin’ Donuts. The three of us unnecessarily looked both ways, crossed the deserted road, and entered the lot.
During one of our periodic truces, Mike had told me that in the Springfield police department it was customary for newbies to ride with the more experienced cops for at least six months. O’Malley had been on the force for more than ten years, so it wasn’t unusual to find him babysitting one of the newer guys. Most of them moved on to bigger departments elsewhere, where they could actually use the sophisticated forensics training that was standard these days, but they got their starts in small departments like the one in Springfield.
Up until that point, O’Malley’s charge hadn’t said a word, but he was chomping at the bit to prove his worth to his superior.
“Excuse me, sir. Carjacking?”
It was a logical assumption for Milk Breath to make, since my car was nowhere in sight. They looked at me, waiting for an explanation. I told them my car was at the other end of the lot and took my time concocting a legitimate reason for something that, in the suburbs, was tantamount to lunatic behavior, i.e., not parking as close to your destination as humanly possible. Nothing was coming; the well was dry. I paused, picking up the now empty thermos while something halfway reasonable sprang to mind.
“I wanted to burn a few extra calories,” I said, trying not to look up and to the left, which I’d read somewhere was a sure tip-off that the speaker was lying.
O’Malley’s eyebrow lift was barely perceptible. That time he couldn’t control it, but it was definitely there, even if he spared me the full drawbridge-raise treatment. I was grateful.
The cops left me briefly and made a show of investigating. The young one did most of the talking. I knew I hadn’t given them much of a description. A man wearing panty hose. Suntan, looked like control top from the way his features were distorted and his lips were pulled back like a woman with a bad face-lift. He was five foot ten or thereabouts, average weight. He didn’t try to rob or rape me, and didn’t say anything to reveal either an accent or a manner of speaking, just the one expletive, repeated twice, referring to an activity he wasn’t likely to be engaging in that night or any time soon thanks to my extremely pointy Lucchese cowboy boots.
“Anybody else see this guy? Maybe the kids from Double D?”
I shook my head. “They were gone by the time he attacked me.”
“Funny you’d still be here so much later after they closed.” I’d forgotten that he used to work at the police substation and probably knew their routine almost as well as they did. Mike told his partner to go back to their patrol car and wait for him. He’d walk me to my car.
“Is your car really here?” O’Malley asked when the other man left.
“Of course it is.” I pointed to the far end of the lot near the gas station, and we started walking.
“My young partner is suspicious. He thinks your boyfriend roughed you up, and you’re protecting him. He’s not right, is he?”
I didn’t feel like announcing that I had no boyfriend. We both knew it. “Of course not. Your partner should be a novelist, not a cop.”
“You’re up to something, aren’t you? You, Babe, maybe that whack job friend of yours from New York?”
And to think Lucy was always asking how he was. “Hey, she’s my whack job friend. Just leave Lucy out of it.” I wasn’t looking forward to the sermon I knew was coming, so I said nothing more and just kept walking to my car.
“Who was the note for?” he asked. Aaayy. My oh-so-subtle sleight of hand had worked on the kid but not O’Malley; I’d never make it as a magician.
I wasn’t used to telling so many lies in one night; it was exhausting. How in hell had Caroline done it for so long? I looked around for inspiration. All I saw were the patrol car’s flashing red lights reflected in the windows of the closed shops and my own Jeep a hundred yards in the other direction. I unlocked it with the automatic button on my car keys. The lights turned on and instantly I could see something was different.
I’d slid right in next to another car, larger than mine, one of those I assumed was in the gas station’s lot being repaired. Now it was gone. I tried drawing a mental picture of the car but all I could remember was that it was a dark-colored SUV with unfamiliar-looking license plates, not Connecticut, New York, or Massachusetts.
Just then, O’Malley and I heard a screech of brakes. An eighteen-wheeler slowed down, then blew by us. I couldn’t see much from where we stood, but I thought I could make out the silhouette of a baseball hat and longish hair flying out the open driver’s side window. Leaving the scene of the crime? Or maybe Jeff Warren hadn’t been my assailant. Could he have gotten to his truck and back so fast if he had been the one to attack me? And why would he come back?
Then it hit me: Warren had passed by earlier to drop off his randy coworker, unwittingly giving me time to get away from my attacker. Thanks, Jeff. When he returned for our appointment, he saw the cop cars, freaked, and hauled ass out of there.
“Shoot,” I said, louder than I meant to.
“You expecting a delivery?”
“Sort of.” I watched as my savior barreled toward Virginia. Then my phone rang, breaking the silence.
“I guess city folk and the rich really are different. I never realized you were such a night owl,” he said, folding his arms and looking at me as if he’d never seen me before.
Yeah, that was me, party, party, party. I gave him a weak smile. The phone continued to ring.
“You gonna answer that?”
I worried that it was Warren phoning to curse me out for calling the cops and maybe even siccing them on him as he sped across state lines until I saw the number.
It wasn’t Warren: it was Babe checking up on me, right on the dot at 1 A.M. I repeated her name loud enough so O’Malley could hear who I was talking to. She peppered me with questions until she overheard Mike’s voice and finally believed that I was okay.
“All right, missy, what’s going on?” he asked.
I said nothing, but he wasn’t going to let me off that easily.
“There’s nothing to tell.” And there wasn’t-not yet anyway. Maybe Warren was the hapless, accidental catalyst of this whole Caroline Sturgis business and maybe I was the hapless, accidental victim of an opportunistic mugger. Maybe. But somebody I knew once said that there was no such thing as a coincidence.
“Why are you cross-examining me?” I said. “I’m the victim here, remember? I’m not supposed to go out after dark? What is this, Victorian London? Is Jack the Ripper on the loose stalking women?”
“I’m not cross-examining you; I simply asked a question. It’s what I do for a living.”
I hated that he was being so rational, and I, tired and irritated, was not.
O’Malley insisted on following me home and sprinted back to Babe’s to join his colleague in the patrol car. As soon as his back was turned, I dialed Warren’s number. No answer. I was leaving him a long-winded message when the cops returned. I abruptly hung up and pretended I’d been fidgeting with my seat belt. O’Malley pulled parallel to the Jeep and pointed straight ahead, telling me to go.
I drove well below the speed limit to annoy him, hoping he’d get frustrated or take the hint that I didn’t appreciate a police escort, but he stuck to my rear bumper like a trailer hitch until I turned into my driveway-where the motion-sensitive security lights were on. Someone or something had just been there.
I stopped short, and only O’Malley’s quick reflexes kept me from getting rear-ended. Now I was glad they’d followed me home. I parked at the base of my driveway as far to the right as I could to let the patrol car pass. O’Malley hopped out and came over to my side of the Jeep.