Here Today, Gone Tamale (23 page)

Lenny!

My ears started to burn. How dare that sicko joke that way? Dear God, let it only be a joke. I unlocked the truck and squealed out of the parking lot. I hit speed dial and called the restaurant. No one picked up and a recording of my own voice came on.

I took the right onto the highway too fast and went into a skid, careening toward the shoulder. I lifted my foot off the gas and coaxed the wheel. The truck found the lane at the last second.

Breathe slowly.
I forced myself to breath slowly. No one was going to kill Lenny. If anything they would merely shave his other side. My pulse was racing so hard I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.

There was barely anyone on the road. Most folks were at the auction. I hit speed dial and tried Aunt Linda. Voicemail again. I slowed just enough to take the exit without doing myself an injury. Maybe the staff would still be there. Maybe
this whole thing was a fake, a ploy to upset me. If so, it had worked.

I prayed for forgiveness and ran the light at Main, spraying gravel and sand as I pulled into Milagro's parking lot. No one was around. The staff and my family were gone.

My phone buzzed and my heart flew into my mouth. This time it was a text from Patti.

Eddie let me in. Can't wait to dish the dirt.

I glanced around and noticed a familiar jeep parked on the street out front. Thank God. If Patti was here, then Lenny was here. I looked up at my apartment and saw that the light in the living room was definitely on.

As Uncle Eddie would say, I was so angry I wanted to spit. First I needed to see my Lenster and give him a big kiss, and then I would call the sheriff's department and lodge a complaint.

I picked my way through the parking lot, cursing my newly repaired heels. I inserted the key in the lock and the door swung open on its own. I forced myself to relax. Once I made it upstairs, I would have a talk with Patti about leaving doors unlocked. Then again, how was she to know that the sicko was threatening Lenny again?

The kitchen lights burned brightly.

“Patti,” I called.

I looked around and everything was in order, except for a trickle of water running in the sink. On closer inspection, I found crumbs on the counter and the fridge ajar.

It made me smile. If I'd been given access to a restaurant, I'd find it hard not to sample the wares as well. Unless my eyes were deceiving me, Patti had sampled a batch of tamales left over from lunch service. I opened the industrial fridge and discovered that only a couple of tamales remained.

A beloved bark erupted from the ladies' room. “Lenny!”
What was he doing in there? I ran down the hall and yanked open the door.

“Yip, yip, yip,” Lenny said.

I scooped him up and danced around the room. “Who's the sweetest dog in all Broken Boot?”

“Grrr.”

I halted my spinning. “I'm sorry, boy.” I placed a kiss on top of his head. “Did Patti put you in here?”

“Yip, yip,” Lenny said. He wriggled, fighting to get down.

“Okay, okay.” Gently, I placed him on the floor. As if chasing a mouse, he bolted for the apartment steps. The lights in the dining room were off for the night, and I walked through without turning them on.

Lenny came yipping back down the stairs, demanding my attention.

“You hungry, boy?”

“Yip, yip, yip.”

“Okay, okay, so you're not hungry.”

Above my head, the floor creaked. Milagro was located in an old building, built around 1906. It creaked at times with no explanation.

“She's up there?”

“Yip,” he answered, placing his paws on my legs and looking up at me almost beseechingly.

“Okay, okay.” I started up the stairs, but my feet hurt. “Patti,” I cried from the bottom step. The door was closed to my apartment, but she should still be able to hear me.

“What's she doing?” I asked Lenny.

With a big sigh, I scooped up the waistband of my pantsuit to keep from tripping over my bell-bottoms and started up the steps. I reached the top and opened the door.

“Patti?” No answer.

“Come out, come out, you're creeping me out.” I laughed at my own tired joke. I locked the door behind me and heaved a sigh. I had no reason to be afraid. Lenny was unharmed,
and Elaine, Suellen, Melanie, and P.J. were in the middle of auctioning off some of Dixie Honeycutt's most valuable work. Even now, I could picture Elaine, basking in the glory of a job well done.

“Go ahead and hide. I'll come and find you in a minute. You won't believe what I have to tell you.”

I pulled out my phone to call the sheriff's department. It connected for a second, but suddenly went dead. Great. My stupid phone had no bars in my own home . . . as usual.

If I was right, one of the Burnetts murdered Dixie with her own necklace. My money was on Elaine, though I couldn't explain why, at least not yet.

Lenny ran through the living room and into my bedroom like the house was on fire.

A prickly feeling came over my neck, and I shook it off. I wasn't one to believe in ghosts, other than the Holy Ghost, but the hairs were standing up on the back of my neck.

A tapping noise made me jump out of my skin. “Patti,” I whispered. “Is that you?” Nothing.

Lenny ran back into the kitchen and jumped into my lap.

“Hey, watch it,” I didn't want him to pick the front of my slacks. “What is it?” I crooned, trying to kiss his nose. He wriggled in my arms. I lowered him to the ground just as he jumped. He ran into my bedroom again, but this time I followed.

Tap. Tap.

OMG. The tapping was coming from the closet. If this was Patti's idea of a joke, I was going to kill her.

Lenny began scratching at the closet door.

I looked around my bedroom for a possible weapon. Even if it wasn't Elaine, there was always the possibility that a rat, squirrel, possum, raccoon, or bat had taken up lodging in my closet, not to mention my clothes.

With Lenny in one arm and a ski pole in my hand, I slowly opened the closet door. The closet was dark, but the bedroom light shone bright on Patti's head.

“Patti,” I cried.

My best friend was there on the floor, duct tape on her mouth and around her wrists and ankles. Her eyes wide, she motioned wildly with her head, crying out as best she could behind the duct tape gag.

I lowered the ski pole and dropped to my knees. In her eyes, there was no sign of tears or weakness, only outrage.

Lenny whined, and I pulled the tape from her mouth.

“Ahh,” she whimpered. She shook her head to clear the pain. “She's coming back. She's out there somewhere. Go and get help.”

“But—”

“Put that tape back on my mouth so she won't know you found me. You don't have time for anything else.”

I started to do as she said. “You do mean Elaine, right?”

She nodded and her eyes fell to the tape in my hand. “Hurry.”

“I don't get it. I left her at the auction. She wouldn't leave in the middle of her big moment.”

“She did this.” She tried to pick up the tape with her fingers, though her wrists were tied together.

“Okay, okay, I got it.” I smoothed the gray sticky tape over her mouth as best I could.

The room went black. I barely held in my scream. “Patti,” I whispered, “I'm going to go get help, but I won't go far. Promise.”

I could still see the whites of her eyes. I fumbled for the flashlight app on my phone. She was frantic, gesturing with her tied hands for me to go.

As I hurried into the kitchen, Elaine's voice floated up from the stairs below. “You shouldn't leave your extra set of keys where just anyone can find them.” She sounded calm and in control as usual, as if advising the committee members on their festival duties.

“Yip,” Lenny said.

I dialed 911, but the screen remained dark. No service.

Still holding Lenny in one arm, I fumbled through the knife drawer. In the very back, I found the old skeleton key that belonged to the closet. I hurried back, opened the door, and whispered. “I'm coming back. Hang on.”

Patti struggled to speak through the duct tape.

“No.” I caught her eye. “I couldn't live with myself if she were to harm you.”

Wide-eyed and shaking her head as hard as she could, she tried to speak around the tape, but to no avail.

I checked my phone. No signal.

Lowering my mouth to Patti's ear, I whispered, “She's downstairs. I don't have a signal. I've got to find a way outside to call the sheriff before she breaks down the door.” I backed away enough to make eye contact. “Elaine Burnett is not going to send you or me to our maker, not while I have breath in my body.”

At last Patti nodded, her steady gaze riveted to mine as if transferring all of her cool self-assurance to me. I nodded in return, placed Lenny in the closet with my best friend, and then quickly locked the closet door.

In the bedroom all was quiet, no sign of Elaine.

I threw the skeleton key under the bed and suddenly remembered the knives in the drawer. I hated sharp objects, especially knives. I even looked away in a movie if a character cut themselves by accident. And forget slasher movies, I avoided them like last week's leftovers.

But if a knife was all I had against crazy Elaine, then a knife it was. I'd channel my inner horror movie heroine and pray. Those chicks might run throughout the entire movie, but they managed to kill the creeper in the end.

I was standing in the bedroom when Elaine jammed the key in the apartment door lock. Why hadn't I placed a chair under the doorknob? Horror movie heroines were dimwits. I made it only as far as the kitchen doorway when the apartment door flung wide. Elaine stood on the threshold, wearing a tiny headlight. In her right hand, she held a pistol.

In the closet, Lenny flew into a fury, barking and growling like a dog twelve times his size. “Don't worry,” Elaine said. “I'll take good care of him.”

I backed into the living room, grabbed the coffee table, and flung it between us, hoping to give Elaine an obstacle.

She laughed. “I haven't used a pistol in a long time, not since my husband taught me to shoot on our honeymoon. But I'm pretty sure I can figure it out in time to put a hole in you if you don't stand still.”

Her words gave me a boost of confidence. Maybe the gun would jam. I ran for the bedroom and locked the door. I tried to check my phone for service, and she started firing at the doorknob. I dialed 911 just as the knob fell off.

I looked around, frantic for even a wisp of an idea. “Elaine, what did I ever do to you?”

She fired again, and a bullet plowed through the doorframe. Spotting the other ski pole, I crawled over to it and wedged it beneath the door handle.

“What didn't you do?” she demanded. “All you had to do was stay out of the way so Wallace and his deputies could bungle it.”

“I couldn't let Anthony go to jail.”

She banged the door and the ski pole jumped. It wasn't going to keep her out for very long.

“Nine-one-one.” The female operator's voice crackled to life. “What's your emergency?”

“Elaine Burnett's trying to kill me.”

“Ma'am, can you get to a place of safety?”

Gunfire hit the door and wood chips started flying.

“What's under the door handle, Josefina?” Elaine's irate, church lady voice suddenly reminded me of my seventh grade band director, Mrs. Chambers. After one band contest too many, the old drill sergeant retired early to a mental home in Corpus Christi.

My gaze soared around the room, desperate for anything that would help. If I ran into the bathroom I was a sitting
duck. She'd only have to shoot off the doorknob again to reach me.

I spotted the street lamps and ran toward the light. I pried open the window and kicked out the screen. The balcony rested on the covered porch below. It was sturdy enough for me to sit outside on sunny days in my lawn chair, but not secure enough to hold two people. It was fifteen feet in the air and it was my only choice.

I climbed through the window and shut it again, hoping she wouldn't look to the windows first as I tried to get down without breaking my legs.

I knew in a flash that once I stood long enough to lift my leg over the balcony rail, I'd be a sitting duck. I could hear the operator talking on the phone, but I couldn't carry on a decent conversation in the midst of someone trying to riddle me with bullet holes. I crawled to the side of the porch, away from the window.

I heard the window start to open. My adrenaline pumping like an oil gusher, I rolled back against the wall.

“Josie,” Elaine whispered in a voice now devoid of anything but motherly concern. “Are you out there, hon?” If I didn't know she was trying to kill me, I'd think she was worried I might fall of the roof. “Don't make me turn on my light.”

I gave no reply, and she said nothing further. It was a Mexican standoff between two women, one desperate and the other insane.