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After lunch, I arrived home just as Buddy Reid pulled up in his company van. He was a tall, thin, serious man who moved with deliberate grace. We were chatting in the driveway when my next-door neighbor, Dottie Bell, approached. She was the quintessential nosy neighbor. With her brows firmly cemented in concern mode, she asked what had happened last night. I lied and told her I’d seen a prowler and called the police.
Dottie nodded, eyeing the van. “It’s a good thing you’re having a security system installed, living on your own and all. Maybe it’s time you and that professor get married.” She sounded like my mom in her better days.
“Thanks for checking up on me, Dottie. I better show him around,” I said, indicating Buddy. Waving goodbye to Dottie, I led Buddy into the house and gave him a quick tour while telling him that the intruder was more than a prowler. He was a violent killer who might return.
“We got some options,” Buddy said, speaking in a low voice. He listed various systems, cameras, sensors, monitors, motion detectors and their prices. I asked which would be best, and surprisingly, it wasn’t the most expensive. It was a wireless monitored system with a backup power supply in the event of an outage, door and window sensors, and a glass-break detector. If all that failed, a motion sensor would trigger the system. “And since you’re a friend of Detective Ortega, I’ll knock off another ten percent.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“However, if you’re also a friend of Baker’s, I’m gonna tack on another twenty percent.”
“Totally understandable.”
“Ten off, it is,” he said.
The combination of little sleep and beers at lunch had left me logy. I went into my room to change into a sundress. When I opened my closet and looked in, goosebumps rose on my arms. I wondered if Michelangelo had been in my closet, hiding like the boogeyman. A harsh truth struck me then. It was obvious, but I’d avoided it since the incident. Michelangelo could have killed me if he’d so chosen. He hadn’t. Maybe he’d played a similar game with his earlier victims. If he’d made a late-night house call, I was already a victim too.
Something happened to me. I was no longer brave, confident Lise Norwood, PI. My heart pounded to the point that my chest felt bruised. My breathing fast and shallow, I grasped the closet door for support then lowered myself to the floor, afraid I would pass out. Trembling started, and I shook all over, violently. Tears followed.
It lasted about five minutes, then I told myself I couldn’t allow fear to take control; that would be handing a victory of sorts to Michelangelo, so I grabbed the knob on the closet door and pulled myself up. I picked out an old sweatshirt I no longer wore, wiped the tears and snot from my face, found a sundress, and put it on.
“Damn you.” I muttered the curse at Michelangelo, wherever he was.
I got a glass of water, the latest Virgil Flowers mystery, and shouted at Buddy that I would be in my backyard. It was my favorite part of home, and it would soothe me. Stately live oaks twisted their gnarled limbs high overhead, providing shade. I had a few palms scattered about, along with a variety of native plants. Everything encircled a brick firepit. The area was furnished with antique outdoor furniture and a couple of hammocks that swung with the breeze.
I got in one of the hammocks. I didn’t want to think about Michelangelo’s nocturnal visit, especially after my panic attack, but my mind often wandered where I didn’t want it to. Though it was breezy in the shade, the day was still hot. Even so, I shivered because that man had been in my house. There were two opportunities for him to leave the photo on my pillow. One was while I slept, and I shivered again. The other was that he’d hidden somewhere then put it there while I searched the house. Screw this line of thought.
I opened my John Sanford novel. While I appreciated his Lucas Davenport books, I was in love with Virgil Flowers. If he lived in San Marco, he would be a surfer. In the midst of reading, my emotions shifted gears, and all the stress of the past few days mounted until I cried yet again.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
I wasn’t lost to an all-out boo-hooing; it was more of a quiet cry. Maybe it was an aftershock of my panic attack, but I knew it was also because I didn’t have the one person to talk to who could make me feel better. I called Nick.
“Lise. Hey.” With those two words, his voice chased away the aftereffects of the boogeyman’s visit.
I wiped off the tears and put on a happy voice. “Hi, Nick. Damn, I miss you.”
“I miss you too. How’s everything going?”
I started to tell him about Michelangelo being in my house, but I stopped myself. If I did that, Nick would come charging back to San Marco to protect me, Vienna be damned.
“Lise?”
Not only that, but, in all seriousness, I didn’t think Nick could offer up much in the way of protection. No offense to my man, but he was the traditional lover, not a fighter.
“Lise, are you there?”
Maybe later, if something else happened, I would tell him. But I wouldn’t distract him from this golden opportunity. It was too good for his career.
“Sorry, phone was breaking up,” I said.
We talked about Vienna, about San Marco, and about missing and loving each other. When we ended the call, I felt sad but good. His voice was a balm against the craziness of a madman. I gazed up at the live oak branches overhead and the blue sky beyond. After a half-minute, my phone buzzed, signaling a text. Hoping it was another message from Nick, I was disappointed at seeing an unfamiliar number. Sighing, I opened the text message. It was a photo of a nude woman standing just in the doorway of a room. She was drying her red hair with a towel, as if she’d just emerged from a shower. Her face was angled down. She had a good figure with pretty breasts, and her complexion was pale and freckled.
The sender had added one sentence to the text. A lovely model. -M