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I THOUGHT maybe The Hunter had a point, and I should call the police when I got home. The trouble was I had no description of my attacker and couldn’t remember my “witness’s” name. I chose to table that dilemma until after I got my head checked. Maybe by then I’d know what to say.
My cell phone rang while I was waiting my turn at the drugstore’s Urgent Care Clinic. I stepped into the empty vitamin aisle to answer.
"Ms. Barnes? Bowler police. Sergeant Ringwald speaking."
With my aching head, my first thought was that one of my kids had been in a terrible accident. Garry, perhaps, washed overboard from a yacht off Nantucket. Chelsea, mugged by an irate next door neighbor.
"I looked into that guy, Michael Cotaldi," the sergeant from Bowler, Minnesota, reported.
“Omigod!” I exclaimed. “What did he do?"
Ringwald said it would take a few days to verify the facts.
“Fine, then tell me what might he have done.”
I could hear the man’s mental wheels clicking from cog to cog. “You’re a civilian,” he said aloud. “If you don’t know what Cotaldi allegedly did, you can’t accidentally tip him off.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer if I knew what not to say?”
Ringwald sighed.
“Just stay away from the guy. Okay? Don’t go anywhere near him.”
“Why not? Is he dangerous?”’
I imagined Ringwald clenching his teeth, his jaw muscles rolling.
“You can trust me,” I argued. “I called you first.”
Ringwald snorted out a skeptical grunt, but he finally told me what I wanted to know.
Simultaneously, the nurse called my name, so I stuck my head around the corner to give her a wave.
"...But you do nothing, you hear me?” Ringwald insisted. “Nothing! Let the professionals handle this. Stay away from the Cotaldis or Swensons or whatever they're calling themselves these days. You got that? I mean it."
“Right," I agreed because he was in Minnesota, and I was here. However, I was pretty sure if I begged off babysitting Jack, paranoid Mike would be absolutely certain I was onto him.
Onto his past, that was. Although it seemed pretty likely Cotaldi was watching, aka stalking, me. I had yet to see that person’s face—not even today—so I couldn’t swear it was him. One might even argue that The Hunter had actually knocked me down and, arriving late, the running man chose to steer clear. Not everybody sees themselves as a rush-in-to-rescue-the-lady hero. And come to think of it, it was a man’s scream everybody in the vicinity heard.
"Thank you for your concern, Sergeant,” I told Ringwald. “And thank you for looking into this so quickly."
"Tell you the truth, I thought you were nuts, no offense. But I got a buddy in Minneapolis, so I rang him up. Uh, one more thing," he prompted. "Cotaldi's address. Nothing’s on the books."
"Oh dear,” I stalled, “I’m not home right now, and I don’t want to get it wrong.”
“You don’t remember?” Ringwald sounded appropriately surprised.
“If you knew where I am right now you’d understand.”
“Where are you?”
I waved to a woman reaching for a bottle of cough medicine. “Will you please tell this man where I am?” I held out my phone.
“The drug store?” she said toward my fist.
Urgent Care, I mouthed then showed her the lump on the back of my head.
“Uh, Urgent Care,” the woman repeated with mounting distress.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant. I fell walking in the woods this morning. Until a doctor checks me out I wouldn’t be confident telling you my mother’s name.”
“But you’ve got the address, right?”
“Written down at home. Yep.”
“You’ll call me back as soon as you can.”
“MS. BARNES,” the store intercom announced.
“You bet,” I assured Ringwald.
“Promise?” I think he asked just as I hung up.
He had claimed they needed a couple days to verify the facts, but what if they didn’t? With luck I’d just bought myself enough time for a quick face-to-face with George Donald Elliot.