There is no awareness of time when you’re out cold, but I knew minutes or hours had passed, because I was now looking up at a pale dawn sky, not foggy darkness. I also had a different view of the world now, a very peculiar view. The limousine loomed over me, the door open. Beside me, the underside stretched out in a gray maze of pipes and springs and unidentifiable car stuff.
I was, it appeared, flat on my back.
I felt groggy and stiff . . . and why was my right leg bent under me, and driveway gravel digging into my backside?
And my head, I realized with a sudden groan, oh, my head . . .
I reached up to touch it gingerly, and something moved to block the pale sky overhead. Tom Bolton’s frowning face. What was he doing here?
I felt a strange sense of disorientation, as if I’d plunged into a time warp in one of those science fiction books Rachel likes to read.
“You okay?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know. What happened?” I wiggled my lips. They’d gone puttyish, slow moving and sluggish.
“I noticed the limousine door standing open. I came over to see what was going on and found you lying here unconscious.”
I sat up hastily. Mistake. Limousine, Tom, and pale sky whirled as if we’d just been engulfed in some cosmic readjustment. I waited until the whirling stopped, then winced as I fingered the back of my head and found a lump that felt like the shape and size of Texas.
I offered the only explanation that seemed plausible. “I must have stumbled and bumped my head on the door when I fell.”
“What were you doing out here in the middle of the night?” Tom’s tone oozed disapproval, as if he figured I had to have been up to something nefarious.
I hadn’t been, but why was I out here? And in my pajamas too. Straining to think back, I remembered trying on that chauffeur’s uniform. Yes, and waking up in the night, being worried about the limousine. Coming outside, opening the limo door . . .
Then that big, dark pit.
I got my hands under me and tried to lever myself to my feet. Tom pushed me down.
“You’d better stay right there. I called 911. An ambulance and someone from the sheriff’s department will be here in a few minutes.”
Alarm joined the foggy mist in my head. Police? Ambulance? I knew I should thank Tom for coming over to check on the open door of the limo, but at the moment I didn’t feel too appreciative. Would they charge some huge fee just for coming out with the ambulance, even if I didn’t need it?
Again I tried to rise; again he pushed me back. I looked at his scowl and had the peculiar feeling he wasn’t so much concerned with my welfare as he was with keeping me immobilized until someone from the sheriff’s department arrived.
“Perhaps you could call back and tell them everything is okay here,” I suggested.
He didn’t move. “Soon as I saw that limousine in the neighborhood, I knew we were in for trouble,” he said darkly.
His logic escaped me. “Why?”
“Mafia. Crooks. Drug dealers. Hookers. It’s people like that who use limousines.” He nodded sagely.
“All kinds of ordinary people use limousines,” I said, with as much indignation as I could muster with chunks of gravel digging into my bottom and Texas throbbing on the back of my head. “They use them to go to the airport or get married or celebrate an anniversary! Kids even go to the prom in them.”
“Emma and I never rode in any limousine.”
I could hear sirens approaching. I was still sitting beside the limousine door, Tom watching me suspiciously, when a blue-and-white car bearing the insignia of the county sheriff’s department pulled to the curb.
We were outside the city limits here, so it was the sheriff’s department rather than the city police who’d responded to Tom’s call. Two middleaged officers in brown uniforms stepped out. When Tom wasn’t looking, I struggled to my feet.
“Got a problem here?” the shorter of the two officers inquired pleasantly.
He introduced himself as Deputy Somebody and the other officer as Deputy Somebody-else, but by now I was so rattled that the names slid by me like fried eggs on Teflon. Down the street, I saw a front door fly open, then another.
“Nothing’s wrong.” I yanked my pajama top down, feeling uncomfortably exposed even though everything was modestly covered. At the same time I was halfway wishing I’d worn something more stylish than these daisy-flowered things that were more Old Mother Hubbard than Victoria’s Secret.
“Everything’s fine. I just came out to check on the limo and stumbled and hit my head on the door. My kind neighbor here found me and was concerned for my welfare and called you.”
I gestured toward my kind neighbor. I realized I was babbling, but there’s something about police officers looking you over that makes you feel you have to explain yourself. It gives you a guilty feeling, as if you’ve probably done something illegal even if you can’t remember what. “But I’m fine, so if you could just radio the ambulance not to come—”
Too late. The ambulance skidded to a stop behind the deputy’s car. The paramedics rushed to Tom, who, with rub-bery folds of flesh above his thick neck, gray stubble on his jaws, and the expression of a man who’s just eaten a raw squid, apparently looked as if he needed medical attention more than I did. He was also dressed in pajamas, a wild plaid like the pants he usually wore, but he did have a blue terry-cloth robe on over them.
“Hey, get away from me!” Tom backed away and waved his hands as the paramedics approached him. By now Moose was in a full frenzy of barking in the Sheersons’ backyard, and I remembered he’d been barking in the night too.
I stepped forward. “I guess it’s me you came for,” I said reluctantly. “But I’m fine, just fine.” I smiled brightly and bounced on my bare feet to reinforce that claim.
“And you are?” the shorter officer inquired.
“Andi McConnell. I live here.” I pointed to the house. “And that’s my limousine—”
“Your limousine?”
“I inherited it a few days ago. Long story,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
After some discussion with the officers, with me trying my best to look both physically and mentally robust, the ambulance finally departed. By this time Joella had come out, and other neighbors had clustered and were milling around on the sidewalk.
“What’s going on?” Jo was in a robe too, with a wispy nightgown trailing around her bare feet. She reached up to touch my sticky hair. “Andi, you’re hurt!”
I repeated my mantra. “I’m fine, just fine. This is all just a misunderstanding.”
Short Deputy was examining the door of the limousine, Tall Deputy circling the vehicle, both of them being very careful not to touch anything.
“We don’t find anything that suggests you had contact with either the door or doorframe,” Short Deputy commented. “No hair or blood.”
I fingered my head. I didn’t feel any stream of blood, but my hair was sticky and matted over Texas. “What do you mean?”
Tall Deputy: “It doesn’t appear you hit your head on the door. Or anywhere else on the vehicle.”
“Then I must have just fallen and hit my head on the gravel.”
“Are you sure you weren’t struck?”
“Struck by what?”
“You didn’t see anyone?”
“No. Just Tom here, when I came to.”
“She was out cold when I found her.”
He sounded defensive, and I was startled to realize that under the circumstances the deputies might think he was involved in my injury. Okay, Tom and I have our differences. Most people in the neighborhood have differences with Tom. He’s pointed those binoculars in my direction more than once, and he called in a complaint when Rachel was playing “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” too loudly to suit him one Christmas. But I’d never suspect him of clunking me on the head.
Short Officer pulled out a notebook and looked at Tom. “Your name is?”
“Tom Bolton, 413 Secret View Lane.” He pointed across the street. “Lived right there for the past twenty-four years. I’m up by five or five thirty every morning. I like to get an early start on the day.”
An early start on spying on the neighbors, is what I thought, but what I said was, “Tom is my good neighbor. He didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“About what time did you look out and discover the door of the limousine open?” the officer asked Tom.
“Five fifteen, five thirty, somewhere around there. I hadn’t had breakfast yet. Still haven’t had it.”
His sour glance in my direction suggested this was definitely my fault.
“Did you see anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Strange persons, vehicles, anything?”
“No.”
“Okay, thanks.” Short Officer turned back to me as he put the notebook away. “Have you checked the interior of the vehicle?”
I’d looked over the interior of the limo when I moved it from the street into the driveway, but I hadn’t checked inside it since I’d found myself stretched out beside it in my pajamas. “No, I didn’t even think about it.”
“Mind if we have a look inside?” Tall Officer asked.
“Help yourself.”
The officers briefly inspected the interior of the limo, front and back; then Tall Officer motioned me over.
“Everything look okay to you? Don’t touch anything,” he warned, as I leaned inside to look.
I peered around. Nothing looked wrong or different, and yet, oddly, something didn’t feel quite right. The door of the little fridge hung open. Had I left it that way? Had the tarp mural always sagged like that? Had the curtains all been pulled shut?
“I guess it’s all the same,” I said finally.
“You still think you fell, you weren’t struck with something?” Tall Officer asked.
I hesitated, a smidgen of doubt surfacing. Could someone have clobbered me? I couldn’t actually remember stumbling. “Why would anyone hit me?”
“We’ll check the house. Someone could have gone inside while you were unconscious.”
It was an alarming thought. Had I been knocked out by someone for the specific purpose of burglarizing the house?
“I’d appreciate that. Thank you.”
“We’ll take a look around, then you can come inside and see if anything’s missing.” Short Officer turned to the crowd. “Okay, folks, fun’s over. Nothing’s happening here.” He waved an arm, gesturing them to disperse.
The small crowd, with some reluctance, I thought, headed back toward their homes. Except for Tom, who apparently felt he had a proprietary interest because he’d found me. Joella wanted to stay too, but I squeezed her hand and told her to go back inside. Standing out here in the wet grass in her bare feet, looking worried and scared, didn’t strike me as the best situation for a pregnant young woman.
The officers went inside, moving cautiously as they shoved the door open, guns drawn. By now I was more jittery than when I’d first found myself stretched out on the driveway.
Now that I thought about it, my head felt as if it could have been struck, walloped by anything from a baseball bat to that shovel I’d been waving at Jerry. The officers were inside for several minutes before Tall Officer stepped up to the open door and motioned me inside.
“All this look normal?”
Inside, looking at the rooms through the officers’ eyes, I could see that it might appear someone had pawed through the place. Mail and magazines scattered around the swivel rocker where I usually watched TV or read. A couple of kitchen drawers open. Cornflakes box fallen over on the counter. My purse on the coffee table, contents scattered because I’d been looking for spare change in the bottom. Clothes piled around the bedroom because I’d started a get-rid-of-old-stuff project a few days ago. Medicine chest in the bathroom open, contents strewn across the counter.
I almost wished I could claim an intruder had ransacked the house, to explain the disarray, but the truth was, this was just my level of live-alone housekeeping. I kept my desk at F&N scrupulously neat and organized, but at home my inner slob seemed to take over. I peered in my jewelry box, where I kept the only good jewelry I owned, a pair of diamond-stud earrings. They glittered up at me, and my mother’s old Hamilton watch was there too.
“I don’t see anything missing.”
“Good.” Short Officer pulled out a notebook. He asked a few questions, the exact spelling of my name, my marital status, did I own the house or rent, how long I’d lived here, where I was employed.
He nodded sympathetically when I told him I’d just been laid off at F&N. “My sister-in-law just lost her job there too.”
He scribbled my answers in the notebook, then snapped it shut. “We’ll be on our way, then. Take a flashlight if you go chasing around out there in the dark again. Avoid any bumps or falls.”
“Right. Thanks for coming. I appreciate your quick response.”
Outside, the officers paused to admire the limousine gleaming in the rising sun. “Quite an inheritance. What are you planning to do with it?” Short Officer asked.
“I haven’t decided yet.” I thought about my Tuesday deal picking up the charter sailboat clients. “People are telling me I should start a limousine service.”
“Good idea. Vigland could use something like that. I might even impress my wife on our anniversary and take her out in it.”
I gave my best chauffeur’s bow and click of heels. Neither of which were particularly impressive since I was still in pajamas and bare feet. “Your chariot awaits, sir.”
The officers headed for their patrol car; then one of them stopped. A ray of rising sun glinted on something in the gravel at the rear of the limousine.
“It’s just shards of glass,” I called. “I dropped a photo there yesterday, and the glass in the frame broke.”
The two officers glanced at each other. “Maybe we should have a look in the trunk,” Tall Officer said.
“There’s nothing in there. I cleaned it out just yesterday.”
“We’ll take a look anyway, if you don’t mind.”
The driver’s door was still open. I went to it, intending to pop the trunk button, but Short Officer smoothly intercepted me.
“We’ll use the keys. They’re in the trunk lock.”
I followed him around to the trunk, and I saw the keys now too, dangling from the lock. I couldn’t remember using the keys to open the trunk to get the uniforms, but I must have. The officer didn’t instantly open the trunk, however. Pulling latex gloves from a pocket, he donned them and carefully touched only the metal part of the key ring.
For the first time I realized that even though the officers were being polite and considerate and helpful, they hadn’t dismissed the possibility that I wasn’t being on the up-and-up with them. But what could they think was going on here? Drugs in the trunk? And my clunk on the head was part of some drug-deal skirmish? Was that what all these don’t-touch-anything precautions were about—fingerprints?
“Really, the trunk’s emp—”
I’m not sure just how it happened, but both officers, Tom, and I were all congregated around the trunk when Tall Officer lifted the lid with a gloved hand.
We gave a collective gasp as we all saw what lay inside.