CHAPTER 21

ROSEMARY TURNED off the phone, dropped it into her pocket, and moved back to the scene of the fray, calling, “Hush!” over her shoulder to her barking dog. Steve Runyon was half lifting, half pulling his captive away from the tumble of scattered logs, her hands behind her back; apparently people who worked in private security carried handcuffs. She was spitting curses and threats, which only got her rougher treatment from Steve, but Rosemary could see no obvious wounds, no bleeding. “I’ve called the sheriff,” she said, and Steve tossed her a startled, chilly glance, then nodded.

“She’s not hurt?”

“Not so’s you’d notice it. Maybe some glass splinters in her hair or down the back of her neck. Too bad.” He opened the rear door of his truck, tossed the woman onto the back seat, said, “Sit there and shut up,” and slammed the door.

“My rifle?” She spotted it, in the grass where he had dropped it to run after the careening SUV, and hurried over to pick it up. “Kim? Where’s Tyler?”

“Oh, he’s at home. He won’t wake up probably until morning. Hey, who is that woman?” she asked, glancing first at the truck, and then at Rosemary.

She didn’t want to go there just yet, and spoke instead to Steve. “Mr. Runyon? I want to thank you for your help. But right now, if you don’t mind keeping an eye on…” She nodded in the direction of his truck. He made no verbal reply, but she chose to accept his shrug as agreement. “Thanks. Until somebody from the sheriff’s department gets here.”

She turned and set off for the house, intending to go inside and open some windows, but when she reached the porch she simply dropped to the middle step to sit there, rifle across her knees. Kim eyed her briefly before moving past her up the steps and through the door, to return with a jacket and drape it around the older woman’s shoulders. “It’s getting cold” was all she said.

TWO sheriff’s department vehicles roared up a short time later, sirens wailing and lights flashing, and pulled in to either side of Steve’s truck. Gus Angstrom leapt out of the sedan the moment it stopped, cast a quick eye over the scene, and came toward the house at a trot. “Rosemary? What’s happening?”

“Short answer, I opened my back door maybe half an hour ago and found a strange woman in my backyard. She attacked me, locked me in my basement, and proceeded to pour gasoline around my house. In the back hall at least, and maybe the kitchen. I assume she was planning to burn the place down.” She heard her voice waver, and so did he.

“Right,” he said, and reached to touch her shoulder briefly. “And this woman got away?”

“Nope.” This from Steve Runyon.

“Ah, Runyon. You helped out here?”

“Helped, yeah. Mrs. Mendes got out of the basement and had the woman kind of treed, and I, uh, got her out of the tree and put her in my truck.” He pointed at his vehicle, and the deputy who’d appeared just behind Angstrom went over for a look.

“Treed?” The sheriff raised a questioning eyebrow in Rosemary’s direction.

“My guns were in the basement. I got this one out?” she patted the rifle “…and stopped her little gasoline trick. She dropped the can over there somewhere,” she added with a wave of one hand.

“And that’s the intruder’s vehicle, there in the log pile?”

“Yup,” said Runyon. And then, “Yes sir.”

“We’ll arrange to have it towed in tomorrow.” Angstrom took a notebook from his shirt pocket, made a few notes, and put the book away. “Okay. It’s cold getting colder, gonna be rain before long. Let’s take this show to town. We can get all this information in official writing, fill in the details. Talk to the alleged assailant—”

Rosemary tipped her head back to look up at him. “Alleged?”

“Cop talk,” said Angstrom. “We can also get a cell ready for her. But first, Mrs. Mendes, let’s have a look around inside. You can show me what damage was done where, and then decide whether you’ll want to stay here tonight.”

He reached over to lift the rifle from her lap, then held his other hand out to her. After a moment, she grasped it and stood up. “Okay. But I will definitely stay here tonight.”

“Yes ma’am, if you say so. You ride in with me, and I’ll promise to bring you back when we’re finished.” He looked at Steve Runyon. “Runyon, we’ll need you in town for a while, too. After you help my deputy get the woman out of your truck and into his.”

Runyon’s reply was another shrug. Angstrom said, “Good,” and turned to the so-far silent woman standing beside Rosemary. “Kim, what do you—”

“I have to go home. Tyler’s alone there, asleep. All I know, Steve and I were out in my yard because he was just leaving, and we heard a shot and then another one and some yelling. Sounded like they came from Rosemary’s place here, so we jumped in his truck and came down to see if she needed help. And she did.”

“You’re a good neighbor. How about Steve drives you home, as soon as his truck’s free, and then comes on in to join us.” He turned as the green-uniformed deputy approached. “All set, Len?”

Len, tall and burly and probably somewhere in his late thirties, shrugged. “She’s locked in the back of the Expedition. Got a real mouth on her, but she won’t give me her name. Also got a semi-auto pistol, a Glock, in the console of her rig. Porsche Cayenne, that is, must have cost her a dollar or two. Oh, she says Mrs. Mendes’s dog attacked her.”

“He was defending me,” said Rosemary quickly, and went to give him an approving pat as she freed him.

“Good for him. Len, you get any personal stuff of hers, including the Glock, from her Porsche and take it along. And Annie’s on tonight, so you’ll have a woman to help you book our guest in. Okay, everybody all set?” Without waiting for answers, he said, “See you in town soon as I’ve finished here.”

IT was her first look at her basement door since she’d pushed past it on her way out. “Oh, my. I’ll need not just a new lock, but a whole new door.”

“’Fraid so. I think the frame can be mended, though.” Angstrom aimed the digital camera he’d fetched from his truck and took a shot of the door, then moved down several steps to take another from that side. For the rest, it appeared that gasoline had been sloshed around in the back hall and outside on the small porch there, and splashed on the shingled siding along the back of the house.

After leading the sheriff to the discarded gas can and watching him collect it and put it in his car, Rosemary poured water over the still-hot ashes in her fireplace and then set about dousing the hall with water and swabbing the result out the door. Angstrom, beyond remarking that it was going to rain soon, made no objection when she asked him to turn her hose on the back porch and the siding. Finally she had a last look around and said, “Okay, I can go now. And I’m going to assume there are no more bad guys out here tonight and leave some windows open to air the place out. But we’ll have to take Tank.”

When they were on the road, with Tank in the rear seat behind the screen, Angstrom took his eyes off the road to toss a brief glance in his passenger’s direction. “Rosemary, do you know the identity of the woman who attacked you?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s—or was—Congressman Brian Conroy’s chief of staff. Sammie something. Andre, I think.”

“Pretty sure.”

“Yesterday after I came back from seeing Mr. Conroy, I Googled him and I found his website, with a bio, pictures of him, his ranch, and his staff. She was a distinctive-looking woman with wild, curly hair that reminded me of Christy’s. You remember Christy Mendes?”

“Oh yeah.”

“This evening I’d spent several hours doing other, personal stuff on the computer, and wasn’t ready to go to bed when I finished. So I was sitting in the dark having a glass of wine and listening to music, and Tank heard something outside. I opened the door, the outside light came on, and…there she was.”

“You recognized her?”

“Not then. But Tank made a big fuss, and her hood fell back, and when I thought about it later—”

“After she’d locked you in the basement?”

“Right. I was trying to control Tank and put him in the basement. And she came up behind me and just…pushed me down the stairs.” Rosemary hunched her shoulders to suppress a sudden chill at the memory of that fall. “And locked the door.”

“And what did you do after you’d shot your way out?”

She frowned at him. “You make it sound like a wild-west scene. Once I’d smelled the gasoline, I didn’t have much choice.”

He shook his head. “Lady, I’m not criticizing, I’m admiring. So what do you think brought her to you in the first place?”

“I have no idea. Maybe you should ask her.”

“We can do that. And we’ll ask your helpful neighbor Steve Runyon how come he didn’t mention recognizing her. Since I understand he’s been head of security for the former congressman for some time.”

“He’s not my neighbor, I met him for the first time tonight. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to stop talking about all this until we get to town and someone is writing it down. So I won’t have to keep repeating myself.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and turned his attention to his driving.