Sid began to get nervous as he sat in the dark in Stan’s bedroom. If they could anticipate how the killer would strike, it would be so much easier. But so far, the only method had been poison. Would the killer come in and try to inject more poison into Stan, or would they bring a gun this time and just shoot him outright? He didn’t know what to be prepared for.
Police officers were staked in the trees all around the house where they could see anyone who approached the house the moment he arrived. But they had to catch the killer in the act or there would never be a conviction for anything more than breaking and entering. They had to be able to prove they had the right person.
He looked over at the bed, where they’d put a dummy under the covers. In the dark, it looked as if someone slept there. He hoped that all they’d gone through in the last two days was not in vain. He hadn’t been crazy about this idea at first, but it had grown on him. And as they’d planned out the farce, he had begun to hope it would work. If Celia was the killer, and he felt sure that she was, they would be able to prove it unequivocally tonight, to everyone, including Stan.
His telephone—which he brought instead of his radio because of the noise level that would alert any intruder—vibrated on his hip, and he grabbed it up and put it to his ear. “Yeah?” he whispered.
“Someone’s coming,” one of the guys outside said. “We almost missed them. But whoever it is is on foot, headed toward the house from the woods behind it.”
“Is it a man or a woman?”
“Hard to tell. They’re wearing a black ski mask.”
Sid closed his eyes and hunkered back against the corner. “Are they armed?”
“Can’t tell. Whoever it is is almost to the house.”
Sid aimed his weapon, waiting.
He got up and went to the door of the bedroom, where he could see the back door. There was no sound, none at all, and he waited for a scratching or breaking glass, anything that would indicate the door was being broken into. Instead, the door came open easily, as if the intruder had a key.
It had to be Celia!
He sank back into the bedroom, waiting. What would she do next?
But the prowler didn’t come toward the bedroom. Sid waited as agonizing moments ticked by. He heard nothing. If people had truly been asleep in this house, no one would have been awakened. He inched to the door again and peered out. There was no sign of whoever had come in. The uncertainty of what was going on made him very nervous. Should he leave the bedroom and find the person, wherever they were hiding? Should he go ahead and make an arrest? If it was Celia, wouldn’t this be enough evidence to convict her, or would she just convince the judge that she had come into her own home not meaning any harm?
Something told him to sit still, not to move.
Then he heard the slight squeak of the back door opening again. He inched back to the casing and saw the person stealing out. Quickly, he grabbed his phone.
“She’s comin’ back out! Don’t let her get away!”
“Did she try anything?”
“Nothin’. Didn’t even come in the bedroom. Man, somethin’s up, but I don’t know what.”
“Did she plant a bomb…start a fire?”
“I don’t know, but I ain’t likin’ this. Just grab her. Don’t let her get away, whatever you do! I’ll be searchin’ the house.”
“I’m on it.” He heard the phone click off and looked out the window. His phone vibrated again.
“Chad’s in pursuit, but she took off through the woods. Chad’s followin’ on foot, and we have some patrol cars comin’ out on the other side.”
“How did she get away?” Sid yelled into the phone.
“Just went the other way. We weren’t expectin’—”
“You idiots!” Sid screamed. “Catch her or all your jobs are on the line.” He flicked on the lights and began to go through the rooms one by one, looking for anything that might look suspicious. There was no fire, none that he could detect, no smoke of any kind. He began to sweat. It was hot in here, getting hotter. Why was the heater on?
He went from room to room with his gun, looking around, desperately trying to determine what the intruder had done. In the living room, he began to smell gas. Slowly, he walked to the fireplace, where the smell was strongest. There was a gas starter in the bricks, and he pulled his latex gloves out of his pocket, put them on quickly, and tested the chrome key. It had been turned on full blast, letting gas flow through the air. Whoever might have been in the house sleeping would never have woken up.
So there had been a murder attempt!
He ran outside. “All right, we’ve got an attempt,” he said. “She turned on the gas starter in the fireplace, tryin’ to kill everybody in the house with gas poisonin’.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“Don’t go in there. Call the fire department.”
“Maybe we could get fingerprints on the starter’s key, or on the door.”
“First we gotta catch her, and we gotta do it now.”
R.J.’s unmarked car screeched up to the curb, and Sid jumped in. R.J., who’d been out looking for Barnett, had heard all the commotion on the radio and decided to come this way.
“Man, turn this thing around and go to the street behind them woods!”
“What’s goin’ on?” R.J. asked. “I heard somethin’ about gas leaks and Celia runnin’ through the woods. How’d she get away with the place surrounded?”
“Ask them,” Sid said, disgusted. “Just step on it.”
R.J. turned his blue light on and hurried around the streets until he came out on the other side. Already, four police cars were parked there with blue lights flashing. The canine force was out, and he could hear their two dogs barking as they hurried through the woods. He got out of the car.
“Hey, Sid, we got something!” someone called, and he hurried over.
There was a BMW parked there, pulled slightly in among the trees.
“This car has to belong to the person involved.”
Sid’s heart lunged. “That’s Celia’s brother’s car. That’s what she’s been drivin’ since all this started.”
The cops all stared at him, as if they didn’t want to hear it. “Come on, man. We gotta find her.”
“Well, did you call to see if she’s slipped away from Jill?” R.J. asked.
“No,” Sid said, kicking himself. Quickly, he dialed the number. Jill answered the phone. “Yeah?”
“Jill, it’s Sid.”
“Has something happened?”
“Sure has. Look, has Celia left the house?”
“No, she’s still in Aunt Aggie’s room.”
“All right, do me a favor. Get up, go to her room, talk to her. I want to make sure you see her face-to-face.”
“Why? You think I’m hearing a tape recording of her crying or something? I hear her, Sid.”
“Jill, just do it!”
He listened to the silence for a moment as she went to the other room. He heard her calling, “Celia?”
In reply, he heard Celia’s voice. “Yeah?”
“You okay?” she asked. “Can’t you get to sleep?”
“I’m okay. Don’t worry about me.”
“All right.” Silence again as Jill went back to her room. “Sid, she’s fine. You heard her,” she whispered.
Sid turned back to the BMW. “Then do you have any clue where David is?”
“David? Well, he had dinner with his parents, then came back and went to bed.”
“Go look in his room, Jill. I need to know where he is.”
“Okay.” He heard her knocking on the door, and calling out, “David? David, it’s Jill. I need to talk to you.” No answer.
Then Sid heard Celia’s voice again. “Jill, what is it?”
“I need to talk to David,” she said. “It’s very important. He’s not answering.”
“Maybe he’s sound asleep.”
Jill banged again loudly. “David! Wake up!”
Still no answer. She opened the door. The bed was still made up, and the clothes he’d been wearing lay in a heap on the floor. David was gone.
“Where is he?” Jill asked Celia, panicked.
Sid heard the silence, then, “I guess he went out again. Must not have wanted to wake us up.”
Jill was breathless as she came back to the phone. “Sid, he’s gone.” She ran to the back door and looked in the garage. “His car’s gone, too.”
“That’s what I thought,” Sid said. “Jill, I think we may have found the killer. And you’re right. It ain’t Celia.”
Celia stood in David’s room as Jill finished her phone call. From the panic in her friend’s voice, she knew Jill thought that David was the killer. But that was ludicrous. He was her brother, and he loved her. He had done nothing but support her through this whole ordeal.
She went to the bed and picked up the photo album that lay there. It was the same one she’d seen him studying the other day. She opened it and saw a page full of her baby pictures. Her parents held her like a pageant trophy and smiled with such pride and delight that no one would have dreamed that they’d someday disown her.
She turned the page and saw herself at three, dressed in a flowing white gown with baby’s breath in her hair, holding her newborn baby brother. It seemed more a picture of her than of him. She scanned the snapshots one by one, noting the way the camera zoomed in on her, leaving him as an afterthought.
She thumbed past the pageant years, where she was pictured in a fortune’s worth of dresses and tiaras. David appeared in some of them, always to the side or in the background, sulking while she hammed it up. She wondered why he seemed so interested in those pictures now. They couldn’t hold fond memories for him. She wouldn’t blame him if they drew out resentment and bitterness in him.
But enough to kill? No, she thought. That was ridiculous. Whatever Jill was so upset about, it couldn’t be that.
But a chill came over her as she realized that something wasn’t adding up. If he was resentful and nursing childhood wounds, why did he act like the loving brother who would stick by her through thick and thin? Why had he put his workaholism aside to spend a week with her in her time of need?
She saw his briefcase lying on a table, and something compelled her to open it. She saw the usual items—his laptop computer, some paperwork that meant nothing to her, a day planner. She unzipped the pocket on the side and pulled out three pens. On the other side, she saw various notepads and Post-it notes haphazardly stuck down in the pocket. She pulled them out, but as she did, her fingers brushed something under the lining. She pulled it to see if there was another pocket. The lining came free…
She slid her fingers into the opening and pulled out what was hidden there.
Her heart froze.
It was the checkbook she’d been looking for.
She tried to catch her breath, but her chest seemed too heavy. She stumbled out of the room as her mind raced. It made no sense. David wouldn’t—couldn’t—have poisoned Stan.
She heard Jill in the kitchen talking to Sid in a panicked voice. Something about gas leaks and David’s car in the trees…
Her heart sprinted as she tried to think. Had something happened to Stan?
She managed to move herself into the kitchen, just as Jill hung up.
“Is Stan all right?” she rasped.
Jill turned back to her, and her face changed. “Celia, you look awfully pale. Sit down.” Celia did as she was told, but she kept her eyes fixed on Jill. “He’s fine,” Jill said. “But there was another murder attempt, Celia. They’re looking for David.”
Celia looked down at the checkbook in her trembling hands.
Jill saw it. Gently, she took it out of her hands and opened it. “Celia, where did you find this?”
Celia frowned, desperately trying to think of a reason why David would have had it. “It was…in his briefcase…hidden in the lining…”
Jill’s eyes widened, and slowly, she stooped in front of Celia and looked in her eyes. “Celia, I know this is hard for you. But I think your brother may be the killer.”
“No,” she said, beginning to cry. “There’s an explanation. I know there is. You can’t jump to conclusions. Maybe…maybe someone put it there, to set him up.”
Jill lifted Celia’s chin and made her look at her. “Celia, David and Aunt Aggie were the only two who knew when you’d be at the hospital when the IV bag was changed. David was there the whole time. He was with Stan the day he was poisoned. He had the checkbook.”
“No!” Celia got up and pushed past Jill, shaking her head frantically.
Jill was red-faced as she clicked her phone back on and dialed. “Sid, it’s me. Listen, you’re not going to believe this.”
Celia couldn’t listen. Sobbing, she ran out of the room as Jill told Sid that David was a killer.
She went to Jill’s purse, which sat on a chair in the parlor, and pulled out her keys. Quietly, she went down the hall to the back door and slipped out. She got into Jill’s car, cranked it, and pulled out of the driveway before Jill even knew she was gone.