"Here, Naddie, put this on."
I fastened a mask to my own face, then, dragging the canister, made my way clumsily toward the front of the van.
I studied the sliding window. It had a lock, like on a jewelry display case. It didn't look too sturdy.
I pulled the trowel out of my pants, rammed it into the space between the sliding panels and pulled back, hard.
"What the hell?" Pottorff was pounding on the window with his fist. "Get back there!"
I pulled even harder. The lock turned out to be sturdier than the Plexiglas it was attached to. The Plexiglas crackled, then cracked, then split in two.
Pottorff's hand shot through the opening, but I whacked it with my trowel. "God damn!" he yelled, hastily retracting his paw.
I picked up the insecticide, aimed the nozzle into the cab, pulled the trigger and sprayed. I sprayed right and left, up and down, I sprayed until the canister was empty.
Pottorff coughed, he gagged, he tore at his eyes.
Chet stared straight ahead, but his eyes were streaming; he swiped at them with his shirtsleeve. The van swerved, hit the rumble strip, then pulled back onto the highway.
"Stop!" I screamed. "Stop now!"
Chet was aiming for the exit to I-695 when the cop car appeared outside his window. Chet swerved, accelerated and tore up the ramp, but was going too fast to make the turn. The van hit the Jersey wall, scraped along it, gradually slowing. Just when I thought we'd be okay, my head crashed into the ceiling as the van jumped over an object on the shoulder and shot across the ramp to bounce off the Jersey wall on the opposite side.
In the cab, Chet was wrestling with the steering wheel, struggling for control. With the cop crowding him on the right, Chet kept to the shoulder, still driving like a madman. Up ahead, a disabled vehicle blocked his way. "Look out!" I screamed, and ducked, covering my head with my arms. By the time Chet saw it, though, it was too late. He slammed on the brakes, sending the van into a slow skid. It screamed along, teetering on its right-hand tires, tipped and toppled on its side with a sound of breaking glass and shredding metal.
Suddenly everything was quiet.
I opened my eyes. I was lying on what had been the right side of the van, and I had the headache from hell.
I struggled to my knees. "Naddie! Where are you?"
"I'm over here."
Wiping at my eyes, I crawled to her. Secure in her corner, cushioned by seed sacks, she had survived the crash fairly well, but she was pinned in by the lawn mower, which had become unattached from its moorings.
"Are you okay?"
Naddie clutched her arm to her chest. "I think I've broken my arm."
"Anything else?"
She sucked in her lips against the pain and shook her head. A tear rolled down her cheek. "I don't think so, but the arm hurts like the devil."
"I'll have you out in a minute."
I'll have you out? That was a laugh. I poked my head through the window. There was no one in the cab. What I saw in the side view mirror was the backside of Chet and a brown blob that was Pottorff, crawling over the guardrail and hightailing it off into the underbrush, heading, I presumed, for nearby Arundel Hills Park.
"Help!" I screamed to anyone who might be listening. "Help! Get us out of here!"
There was the wail of more sirens. "Reinforcements!" I cheered. I crawled back to the cargo door and began flailing at it with my feet.
Suddenly the door was wrenched open. With "Thank God!" on my lips, I launched myself forward, falling into the arms of a very surprised Anne Arundel County cop.
"My friend," I muttered into his uniform. "Her arm's broken."
The officer held me at arm's length. He looked puzzled, as if I'd been speaking Greek. Where had all that blood on his uniform come from?
"Ma'am?" he said. "Are you all right, ma'am?"
The next thing I remember was sitting in the backseat of the police cruiser holding a compress to a gash on my forehead, watching as Chet and Pottorff, handcuffed, shuffling and staring at their shoes, were assisted into the backseat of a second cruiser.
"Please, check out my friend in there. I think she needs an ambulance."
"You both need an ambulance," the officer said. "It's on its way."
I shivered. "My friend. Is she okay?"
The officer smiled. "She's fine. Just a little beaten up. We've made her comfortable. Don't worry."
A blanket appeared from somewhere and I pulled it over my head and around my shoulders. "What took you so long?" I complained. "I called 911 and told them where we were."
The tips of the officer's ears reddened. "Do you know how many blue vans All Seasons has?"
Under the blanket I shook my head.
"Six. And one of them was parked on Rowe Boulevard in front of the Hall of Records. The crew was weeding the median." He grinned. "We had a very surprised driver and his assistant spread-eagled among the pansies when your call came in. By the time we'd realized our mistake and got around the corner to the construction site, you were gone."
Although it wasn't particularly funny, I smiled. "So near and yet so far."
"Something like that"
"They took my cell phone," I said.
The officer immediately got my drift. "Is there somebody we can call?"
I thought about Paul. If he had already gotten home, he must be frantic. "My husband." I gave the officer our number. Then I ticked the others off on my fingers. "And my brother-in-law, Lieutenant Rutherford with the Chesapeake County Police. And Officer Mike Tracey. He's one of you. He's working on the case this is related to."
"Ma'am," the officer said with a broad grin, "are there any cops you don't want me to call?"
I smiled. "It runs in the family."
"Do you mind if I ask?" the officer said after a moment.
"Ask what?"
He tapped the painter's mask that still dangled from my neck. "Why this? Your friend has one, too."
"I'll show you," I said.
He followed me over to the van, where I pointed out the yellow canister. "I sprayed 'em with that."
"What's in it?" he asked, picking it up and hefting it in his hands.
"Nothing now," I grinned. "But it used to be insecticide."
"'Kills chewing, sucking, and other hard-to-kill insects,'" the officer read off the label.
I thought about Pottorff in his beetle-brown suit. "Sounds about right to me."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The next time I saw Officer Mike Tracey, I was perched on a gurney in the emergency room of Anne Arundel Medical Center, and the plastic surgeon was humming "I've Been Working on the Railroad" while sewing six stitches into my noggin.
Tracey had been leaning against the wall, silently watching the doctor work. "That's quite a gash," he said as the doctor moved aside and the nurse began to apply a bandage.
"I'll live. How's Mrs. Bromley?"
"She's just a few cubicles away. Why don't you ask her yourself?"
Holding my head stationary, I waggled a hand at the doctor. "Almost finished?"
The doctor nodded, smiling. "Call my office and make an appointment. I'll want to see you in five days." He pulled a prescription pad from the pocket of his lab coat, scribbled something on it, tore off the page and handed it to me. "This is for Percocet, if you need it for pain. My phone number's there, too."
"Thanks, Doctor." From the throbbing going on in my forehead, I predicted I'd need to corner the market in Percocet.
The nurse put the finishing touches on my bandage then took us to see Naddie. She was in a nearby cubicle, lying on a gurney. "We've given her a light sedative," the nurse told us. "And we're keeping her overnight for observation. Don't tire her out," she said before slipping out.