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L.J. checked his watch. Five minutes till nine. Not too early for Miz Pearl. He rang the doorbell, stifling the urge to jam the buzzer. This level of impatience felt foreign to him. What’s gotten into me? Nothing could compel the old lady to step up her tortoise pace.
A minute passed and the door cracked open. “Miz Pearl, hope I’m not calling on you too early.” He gave a slight bow and his brightest smile.
Pearl let the door swing wide, her frail body swayed slightly on the threshold. The sun’s probing rays did Riley’s mother no favors. Dark smudges marred her parchment skin. Her face looked like crinkled typing paper haphazardly erased and smoothed. The haggard woman’s seven decades were no mystery. On the bright side, she wasn’t sucking oxygen. Things were definitely going his way.
Pearl’s pale eyes refused to meet his steady gaze. She’d seen the news or talked with Riley. She knew her daughter was caught shacking up with a relative of the boy who’d chased her son to his death.
Despite her embarrassment, she managed a fleeting smile. He counted on old-fashioned manners and her fondness for him to earn entry into her condo. His opportunities for access were dwindling. Given Riley’s housing predicament, she might camp at her mom’s.
“Oh, John, I’ve been up for hours. I wasn’t expecting company.” She patted absently at her permed hair. “Please, come in. You know you’re always welcome.”
She led him toward a living room crammed with valuable antiques. A few weeks back, Pearl said she couldn’t bear to part with any of the treasures since Riley would want them once she remarried and settled down.
Pearl made no attempt to hide her enthusiasm for him as future son-in-law. She wanted her daughter to wed Lewis John Hunter, IV. Good family stock, despite his father’s surrender to despair. Wealthy. Eligible widower.
Since L.J.’s father went by Lewis, John’s family called him by his middle name. However, he answered just as often to L.J., a nickname that stuck after a first-grade teacher used initials to distinguish between three “John-boys” in her class.
Pearl motioned to the room’s sole easy chair. “Can I get you something? Coffee?”
“Coffee, if you’ll join me, Miz Pearl. The Yates and Hunters have been friends for what, a century? I think I’m due kitchen company status. Why don’t you let me help?”
Pearl rewarded him with another flicker of a smile. “Coffee it is. You’re welcome to a seat at the kitchen table while I make a fresh pot.”
Good. One hurdle down. Now all he needed was a moment’s distraction to spike her drink. The sedative would knock her out cold in half an hour. He’d already made an impression of her house key. Once Pearl lost consciousness, he’d come back inside, make the switch.
L.J. followed her down the short hallway and pulled out a cane-backed kitchen chair.
“Have you visited your father?” Pearl asked as she scooped out coffee.
“Yes, I just left,” he lied.
Who would dispute him? Certainly not his addled dad, or his father’s Vietnamese caretaker. Even if Pearl quizzed the live-in nursing aide, the woman’s broken English provided an effective barrier.
“Dad’s doing well today. We had breakfast together. He still has his appetite even if he can no longer read the paper with his morning coffee.”
“I know how hard it is to see him like this.” Pearl sighed and poured water into the coffee maker’s reservoir. “Lewis was so brilliant and always a considerate gentleman.”
Yeah, before his loving wife drove him to put a gun to his head.
He watched Pearl extract dainty china cups and saucers from her cupboard. Couldn’t bring herself to use mugs with company. She shuffled over to sit beside him. As the coffee perked, L.J. engaged in requisite small talk. He wouldn’t hint his visit had another motive until she started sipping her doctored brew. When the coffee quit gurgling, he jumped up before she could object.
“Sounds like it’s ready. I’ll pour.” With his back blocking Pearl’s vision, he slipped the meds in her cup and swirled the powder with the teaspoon of sugar she preferred.
“Here you are,” he said. “A little sugar, just the way you like it.”
“Why, thank you, John. You’re so thoughtful.”
He sat and sipped his coffee. She followed suit.
“I have a confession to make,” he said. “I stopped by to talk about Riley.”
Pearl’s pursed lips said she wanted to object, but didn’t know how to do so gracefully.
He hurried on. “I’m sorry to make you uncomfortable, but I’m worried about Riley. You heard what happened last night?”
Pearl lowered her gaze. Her thumb rubbed nervously back and forth across the delicate china rim. “Oh, John, we shouldn’t discuss Riley. She’s a private person. She’d be very angry—”
“Please, hear me out. My only motive is to protect your daughter and your family from scandal. If the situation is left to fester, it might affect your brother.”
That grabbed her attention. Pearl doted on her younger sibling, the senator. Her expression changed from discomfort to near panic. Her breaths escaped in percussive huffs.
Use some tact. You can’t have her gasping for air.
“Perhaps Riley told you she broke off our relationship. While I pray she’ll change her mind, I’d never ask you to intervene. That’s not why I’m here.”
He looked down, feigning embarrassment. “While I was at Dad’s, a friend in the sheriff’s office called—a deputy who knows I’ve been seeing Riley. He described what happened at the Valdes home, how the professor fired your daughter’s gun, and shouted threats. The deputy told me Valdes is now wanted for murder.”
Pearl gasped on cue. “Oh, my! Oh, my!” One hand shot up, covering her open mouth. The other fumbled along the surface of the tablecloth.
L.J.’s hand captured the woman’s bony forearm. He squeezed ever so gently. “It’s okay. No need to get over-excited. Riley’s not linked to this unpleasantness. We just need to shield her. Make certain it stays that way. She must keep her distance until we know if this man’s a killer.”
Pearl nodded with vigor. She was with him.
“Perhaps this professor’s innocent,” he added magnanimously. “But, if he’s guilty and the press ties Riley to him, she could lose her job. I don’t have to tell you about the social toll. If there’s one thing that grows faster than kudzu in Leeds County, it’s vicious gossip.”
* * * *
L.J. climbed into his roadster and waved goodbye to Pearl. She listed to port in the doorway. Her eyelids losing the fight against gravity. She wouldn’t be on her feet long.
He drove around the block, out of sight, and shut off the engine. He closed his eyes and meditated to clear his mind. Wait thirty minutes. Play it safe.
At ten o’clock, his duplicate key unlocked the deadbolt on Pearl’s back door. A soft snore made the old woman easy to locate. She was out cold, sprawled in the living room easy chair. The meds felled her within steps of the front door.
He hustled through the kitchen door and hoisted a brand-new oxygen concentrator over the threshold. The unit resembled a portable suitcase complete with an extended handle and wheels. Its exterior was identical to the concentrator Pearl dragged behind her wherever she wandered. Like Mary and her little lamb. If Pearl needed a toke of oxygen, L.J.’s doppelganger would perform just fine. Only the custom-made replacement had an additional function—an explosive he could trigger from his cell phone.
Having spotted Pearl’s concentrator in the hallway on his prior visit, he quickly made the switch and carted the original away. When Miz Pearl attended her niece’s commencement, she’d tote an unexpected graduation gift.
L.J. smiled as he re-locked Pearl’s back door. What a perfect Thursday morning. Less than forty-eight hours to go. In a way, he dreaded Saturday’s arrival. Not the bloodshed. But the aftermath. The calm after the coming storm.
He preferred the storm.