Chapter 47
My heart banged against my chest as I missed a step and slid halfway down the stairs, then scrambled to my feet and ran through the downstairs hall toward the kitchen whence screams and banging and crashing noises emanated.
Yelling for Latisha, I dashed into the room, nearly tripping on an overturned chair. Regaining my balance, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Latisha, her arms flailing away, hung by a red strap held by a hairy-legged man in Bermuda shorts who was swinging her around, scattering shells, glue gun, salt and pepper shakers, a Dawn dish detergent bottle, and various kitchen utensils around the room.
“Put her down!” I screamed, running toward the man. “What’re you doing? Turn her loose!”
I grabbed Latisha by the waist as another revolution brought her within reach, and before I knew it, I, too, was swung off my feet. Crashing into the peninsula counter, I lost my grip on her and so did he. Latisha slid across the floor, curling up beside the refrigerator. Breathing hard, the man turned his attention to me. As I scrambled for anything to fend him off, all I could see was the dark, determined look in his eyes as he raised a fist with a gold-ringed finger.
Rob, I thought, and wondered where the other two were—but not for long. I dropped to the floor just in time to avoid a blow to the head.
“Run, Latisha, run!” I yelled, scooting to the other side of the peninsula.
Expecting Rob to be on me, I hoisted myself to my feet only to see him leaning over Latisha, tugging at her.
“Get away from me!” she yelled, kicking wildly at him. “Help, help, Miss Lady! Don’t let him have it!”
But that’s exactly what I intended to do—if I could find something to let him have it with. Coffeepot! There it was, a glass coffeepot on the counter, half full, cold as yesterday’s, but with a handgrip for convenient pouring—or swinging.
Snatching it up, I headed for Rob, who now had Latisha cornered next to her little shell-strewn table. Still screaming and kicking at him, she scooted under the table. He dropped to his knees and crawled in after her.
Raising the coffeepot, I braced myself, getting ready to brain him as soon as his head poked out. Then another, deeper scream overrode Latisha’s, and Rob backed out so fast that he almost knocked me over.
Screaming and high stepping, he danced around, scrubbing at his face. “Get it off! Get it off!”
Leaning over, he brushed frantically at his naked legs, and I saw my chance. Drawing the glass pot way back to work up momentum, I swung hard and caught him on the side of the head—cold coffee sloshing over him and the refrigerator. A dazed look swept over his face as his eyes rolled back in his head. His legs slowly giving way, he crumpled to the floor.
“Come on, Latisha! Run!” I yelled, reaching for her.
She came crawling out, her red pocketbook dangling from the strap across her shoulders, and a gun pointed at Rob.
“Good Lord!” I gasped. “Where’d you get that!”
“From Miss Hazel Marie,” Latisha said.
Glue gun—of course! With the aid of a coffeepot, Rob had been hot waxed into submission.
Knowing there were two others somewhere, I grabbed Latisha’s hand and pulled her toward the door. She screeched as the glue gun’s cord slowed her until it popped out of the receptacle. At the same time, my foot touched something that skittered toward Latisha, and she, being closer to the floor, scooped it up without missing a step.
I almost missed one, though, as I slid on shattered glass from the window on the door. Rob had just broken in with Latisha sitting right there and me in the bathroom—the nerve of him!
Seeing the car keys on the floor, I swept them up and ran, dragging Latisha with me and throwing her into the front seat of the car with no thought of seat belts or backseat safety.
Ramming the key into the ignition and the gear into reverse, I stepped on the gas. The car spurted backward onto the street at nine miles an hour, helpfully engaging the door locks.
“Are you all right?” I screamed at Latisha, my nerves twanging as my eyes switched back and forth between the rearview mirror and the windshield. Two others on the loose. Got to move! Got to get to Mr. Pickens and Coleman.
“Yes’m, I guess,” she said, sniffing. “At least I got my pocketbook, but I’m hopin’ you won’t tell Granny on me.”
Giving her a quick glance as I took a corner a little too fast, I asked, “For what? You were wonderful, Latisha. Nobody could’ve done better.”
“Well, yes’m, I coulda, ’cause Granny tole me not to never leave the glue gun plugged in. An’ looks like I did.”
The urge to laugh surged up so unexpectedly that I had to grip the steering wheel to keep it down. I might never have stopped if I’d given in to it.
“Well, this one time, Latisha, I’m glad you did. We might never have fought him off if you hadn’t hot-glued him.”
But they surely weren’t done with us. Where were the other two? As we sped through a residential area, getting closer to safety, I became aware of a peculiar beeping sound.
“What’s that noise?” I asked, glancing at the dashboard for a warning light.
“That man’s smartphone,” Latisha said, holding up a black rectangular object that was not only beeping its head off, but blinking off and on like crazy. “Look like somebody callin’ him.”
“Well, don’t answer it.” Not knowing a smartphone from a dumb one, I didn’t like the sound or the look of it.
Whirling the car into the Pickenses’ drive so fast that I took out part of a forsythia bush on my way, I had a notion to grab the black box and throw it as far as I could sling it. Who knew what it was? Did bombs beep and blink?
Before I could do anything, though, Latisha was out of the car and running for the porch, the box beeping and blinking in her hand and the glue gun’s electrical cord trailing behind her. I sprang out after her, yelling for help.
James jumped up, his eyes wide and the shotgun at port arms. “What’s goin’ on? You folks all right?”
“Stay alert, James!” I didn’t stop, just dashed inside where help awaited. “They may be following us.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he said and snapped to attention at the head of the steps.
“Looks like part of a tracking system,” Mr. Pickens said, turning the little boxlike device over in his hand. “It’s not a cell phone, that’s for sure. I’d say it’s a scanner of some kind, probably operating on radio frequency identification or RFID.” Which didn’t mean one thing to me, but it was obviously operating on something because it was still blinking and beeping up a storm.
Coleman was on the phone, calling in the cavalry from the sheriff’s office. “Yeah, on Polk Street. Home invasion, child endangerment, assault on a female—two females—attempted robbery, and that’s for starters. And spread out, there’re two more of ’em somewhere, maybe in a black Suburban.”
Everybody who’d come for dinner had also come running to the study, when we, wild-eyed and frantic, burst in. Between us, Latisha and I told what had happened, gasping out the details of our close-quarters encounter with Rob.
Sam kept rubbing my arm and saying, “Julia, Julia,” and Hazel Marie wrung her hands, while Binkie and Lillian searched Latisha for signs of injury.
Coleman hung up, saying, “A car’s there now, and more on the way.” He frowned at the madly working device, still in Mr. Pickens’s hand. “Whatta you think?”
“Well, it’s operating on a signal from something that enabled them to track us not only from the beach but from one house to another, that’s for sure. Only thing is, we don’t know where the signal’s coming from.”
“Got to be close,” Sam said. “Somewhere around here from the looks and sound of it.”
“James may need backup,” Coleman said, reaching for his service weapon under his shirttail and heading toward the porch. “An empty shotgun’s not gonna cut it.”
My nerves were still on edge throughout all of this. In fact, as relieved as I was to have given the slip to Rob, it now seemed that worse things were in store. Strange people after us and strange devices tracking us—this we knew. What we didn’t know was why.
Looking around the room, I saw anxiety or puzzlement on one face after another except Latisha’s. Gazing up at Lillian, she asked in a pitiful little voice, “Granny, I sure could use some more of that ’naner puddin’.”
“I could, too. Come on, baby girl, let’s go to the kitchen an’ get some.” Lillian took her hand and they walked out, crossing the hall, going through the living room and the dining room, and on into the kitchen.
Mr. Pickens, still examining the device in his hand, suddenly said, “Sam, look at this. It’s slowing down. Still going strong, but not as fast or as loud as it was.”
Both Sam and Mr. Pickens stood watching the black device, then they looked at each other. “Lillian!” Mr. Pickens yelled as he left the device with Sam and ran toward the kitchen. “Take Latisha out in the yard. Take her out to the garage!”
Good grief, I thought, he’ll scare them to death. But I knew she’d do whatever he told her without question.
Mr. Pickens came back into the study, then leaned over again to stare at the device. Even I could tell that the beeping was quieter and less urgent. The blinking red light was as bright as ever, but it, too, was settling into a slower, regular rhythm.
Mr. Pickens and Sam stared at each other. “Latisha!” they said at the same time.
And to prove it, Mr. Pickens went to get her, bringing both Lillian and Latisha back to the study. And, the nearer to us they got, the louder and more agitated the device became.
Lillian was almost as agitated, having been sent outside then called back in so precipitately by Mr. Pickens. “What we done, Mr. J.D.?”
“Not a thing, Lillian, not a thing. We’re just thinking that Latisha may have picked up something besides this little box. Did you, Latisha? Did you bring anything else from Miss Julia’s house?”
“No, sir,” Latisha said, her eyes wide. “I mean, yes sir. I brought back Miss Hazel Marie’s glue gun an’ I got my pocketbook.”
Her pocketbook! I’d thought that Rob had been after Latisha herself. But instead of wrestling for her, it had been her pocketbook that he’d been trying to wrest from her.