Authors: Lorena McCourtney
No,
I decided determinedly.
I’m going to get those numbers if I have to crawl close enough to do it by feeling the license plate with my fingers.
Another dash and I was within forty feet of the pickup.
Now I could make out shadowy movement. Two figures of indeterminate size. A scrape and rattle. Yes, they were wrapping something around one of the tombstones!
Another sprint and I was crouched directly opposite the wheels of the pickup. Just the narrow road and fifteen or so feet of hillside separated me from the license plate. But now there was nothing more to hide behind between here and there.
I flattened myself on the ground as a shadowy figure came around the side of the pickup. The door opened and the engine revved.
“Hold it!” A high-pitched, excited sounding voice. More movement at the back of the pickup. “Okay, go!”
Rumble . . . screech of straining metal . . . tires digging deep. Then a crash as the tombstone burst loose, and the pickup surged forward.
More shadowy movement, the rustle of cable being removed from the fallen stone. Then the pickup moved backward again, lining up to connect the cable with another tombstone.
Who
were
these vandals? All along I’d assumed they were kids, partying teenagers out having a malicious, beer-guzzling version of a good time. Yet there didn’t seem to be any good times involved here. No cheering each other on, no joking or drinking or carousing. Just methodical, determined destruction. Up to now I’d been too busy dodging from tombstone to tombstone to be really scared. But with throat-tightening clarity I suddenly recognized real danger here. These guys weren’t playing games. What if they saw me?
I had a sudden, ghastly vision of
me
dragging on the end of that cable.
I swallowed, flexed my hands, and wiped out the vision. I couldn’t let fear paralyze me now. And now was my chance, while the two men were busy fastening the cable around the next tombstone.
I darted forward, across the road.
And plunged headfirst into a shallow ditch I’d never noticed on the far side of the road. To my own ears the crash sounded louder than the tombstone ripping from the earth. Stars that had never known sky reeled across my vision. My heart rabbit hopped.
I hunched my shoulders, bracing myself for a hand reaching down, plucking me up, and dangling me like a fish on a hook.
I saw a flare of lights. I wanted to lift my head, but it felt like a sack of cement on the end of my neck. No way could they miss seeing me in the glare of their lights.
No, the flaring lights were from some other vehicle turning around under the arch at the entryway.
“Let’s get outta here!” It was the high-pitched voice again.
I pressed myself flat against the bottom of the shallow ditch. Weeds and gravel bit into my hands and cheek with unpleasant familiarity. The pickup growled forward, lights still off. I heard the sound of something dragging on the ground when it reached the road—
“You forgot the cable, you idiot!” A deeper voice, with a note of angry authority.
Pickup door opening. Shadow running around to the rear of the pickup. Curses. Apparently the dragging cable was fastened to something at the rear of the pickup, and the guy who’d gotten out couldn’t get it loose. With a curse the driver joined him. The two men weren’t more than two or three yards away from me now. I could see that one of them was big and beefy, the other small and wiry. I could hear their grunts and hard breathing. If one of them so much as glanced toward the shallow ditch—
Invisibility, don’t fail me now!
“Get a flashlight.” The hard voice from the big guy, commanding, no panic.
“We can’t use a light!”
“Get the—” I cringed at the expletive, “flashlight!”
The smaller figure ran to the passenger’s side door. The glove compartment rattled as he dug into it. Light flared when he aimed the flashlight beam on something at the rear of the pickup where the cable was attached. A scraping sound.
“Okay,” the harsh voice muttered. “Got it.”
A split-second flare of beam upward into the face of the big, rough-talking man. Then a clunk as he threw the cable in the back of the pickup. Slam of doors. Out-of-gear coast down the hill. Momentary flare of red taillights under the arch, then headlights turning on as the pickup wheeled onto the main road and drove away.
I sat up. I felt like one of those cartoon characters slowly reassembling itself after being flattened by a steamroller. I filled my lungs with a deep breath. My neck felt crinked, as if my head had made a 180-degree swivel. I had a pain in my right elbow and blood trickling from a cut on my chin.
I ignored pain and blood, closed my eyes, and concentrated on branding that face into my memory. A square face. Beefy. Flab around the eyes, making them look small and piggish. Wide nose and broad forehead, heavy jaw. Thick neck. Hair? I wasn’t certain. He’d been wearing some kind of cap.
But I can remember that face. I’ll never forget that face. I’d know that face if I ever saw it again.
Yet what good did that do? I had no license number. No description of the vehicle other than it was a pickup, maybe dark colored, and had something on the rear to fasten a cable to. The high-pitched voice of the smaller man was a little unusual, but was that his usual voice? Under less-stressful conditions, he might have a perfectly normal sounding voice.
I drove home feeling more discouraged than I had on nights I’d seen nothing. The vandals had come and gone, and all I had was the floating vision of a heavy-set face and body. I couldn’t even put a definite age to it, although I knew he was no teenager. Forties, maybe.
I caught a few hours sleep before church the next morning, where, since jumping jacks were hardly appropriate, I resorted to pinching the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger to stay awake during the sermon on the empowerment of self-reliance.
Afterward I drove directly to a little shopping center, the one where I’d almost gotten run down, and rushed into the one-hour photo developing shop. I wasn’t certain how to take the film out of the camera, but the pleasant young woman at the counter did it for me. I killed time eating a taco salad and milk shake until I could pick up the photos. I was so eager I opened the envelope right there at the counter.
I held my breath as I flipped through the glossy photos. Dismay was my first reaction. Flowers? Thea’s petunias and geraniums and marigolds. Ferns. Was that all there was on this roll? A dark shadow . . . Thea’s thumb? She’d taken a number of thumb pictures over the years.
Then there we were, Thea and me posed on the back steps, all dressed up for our once-a-year birthday splurge on lobster at Victorio’s Seafood. Kendra had come dashing up the basement steps on her way somewhere, saying, “Oh, don’t you two look grand! We should have a picture.”
Thea had beamed, saying, “I’ll go get my camera!”
“Smile!” Kendra had said gaily as she aimed the camera at us. “Pretend you just won a million dollars!”
I shoved that photo aside. Nice to know my image hadn’t yet become too invisible to show up in photos. But underneath was the important photo, the one I was hoping for. After Kendra had taken our picture, she’d handed the camera back to Thea, and Thea had playfully aimed it at Kendra.
Kendra hadn’t wanted her photo taken. She’d raised her hands in startled protest. “Oh, don’t do that! I hate having my picture taken.”
I’d thought at the time how odd that was. A beautiful girl not wanting her photo taken? Kendra hadn’t managed to cover her entire face, although one hand did hide her chin.
One thing about the circumstances of the photo I hadn’t remembered.
Kendra had been wearing that clingy, backless dress that evening, the black one with exotic red flowers. The slit exposed her leg to the upper thigh, long and slim.
The other thing about the photo was something that had apparently happened so briefly that I hadn’t noticed it at the time. But the camera can catch a frozen split second.
And what the camera had caught on Kendra’s lovely face was a stark panic of fear.
Fear.
Was it an eerie prophecy? Because now a young woman in a black-and-red dress lay dead in the morgue.
But surely Kendra couldn’t have been afraid of Thea and me! So what was this about? Why had she feared having her photo taken?
It was almost 3:00 in the afternoon by the time I got home. I headed for the bedroom and a nap but then remembered my plan to invite the Margollins and Mac MacPherson to dinner. I was tired from the long night and little sleep, but I very much wanted to make amends for last night.
I dialed Magnolia’s number and, not giving her a chance to jump on me, did a hasty apology about last night and an invitation for dinner tonight all rolled into one. “Or if you can’t make it tonight, tomorrow will be fine.” As a token of appreciation for Magnolia’s matchmaking efforts, I added brightly, “I really would like to get to know Mac better.”
“I’m afraid it’s a little late for that.” A definite up-on-her-high-horse note there. It might take more than ham roll-ups to appease her.
“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.
“Mac picked up and left this morning.”
“Already? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. South, I think.”
“Is he coming back?”
“Not that I know of.”
“But I thought he was staying for several days—”
“Apparently something changed his mind.” That statement was so heavily weighted with meaning it could have sunk a battleship.
“You mean just because I—”
“He was really looking forward to meeting you.”
“He was?” I was astonished. Mac hadn’t come into this as a happy wanderer ambushed into an unwanted widow trap? He’d really wanted to meet me?
“Yes, he was. I’d told him all about you, and he was very interested. And then you sneaked out like a deadbeat avoiding a bill collector.”
I was briefly baffled by what Magnolia could have told Mac to arouse his interest. She’d embroidered a bit, I suspected. I tried to use that to make myself feel less guilty about letting her down, but it didn’t work.
“I’m sorry, Magnolia, I really am.”
And it wasn’t just guilt. I was sorry. I’d missed out on something that might have been very good.
Mac MacPherson was not pickled eel.
Detective Dixon called Monday morning.
“We’re going to have to ask you to come in and take a look at the body after all. The couple from Philadelphia said she isn’t their daughter.”
“And you haven’t determined that Kendra is safe somewhere?”
“I’m afraid not. There seem to be some . . . discrepancies about Kendra. You’ve never heard from her?”
“No.”
I told him about the photograph and that in it Kendra was wearing the dress that matched the description of clothing on the body. I guess I was hoping he’d say they could use that to make identification, and they wouldn’t need me at the morgue.
No such luck.
“The photograph may be helpful, but we need a visual ID.”
I swallowed. Kendra’s body. With a gunshot in the chest. In the water for several days.
“But what you may be able to give us, of course, is a negative identification, that the body isn’t your friend Kendra. In that case, if she’s actually missing, the photo may be helpful in finding her.”
I knew he was trying to put an upbeat spin on this, and I appreciated the effort. Although on second consideration, it made me feel only a smidgen better. Because I’d still be looking at some murdered young woman, whoever she was.
Lord, help me to do this.
“It’s quarter of nine now,” Detective Dixon said. “How about I pick you up at 11:00?”
So soon?
“Or this afternoon, if you prefer,” he added, as if he’d heard my thoughts.
“No, 11:00 will be fine.”
I spent the time before that hour reading some comforting verses in Proverbs and Psalms and trying not to let morbid imagination get out of hand. I didn’t wait for Detective Dixon to come to the door when I heard the car in the driveway. I picked up the photo and my purse and went out to meet him. He opened the passenger’s side door for me. He still looked more like a wrestler posing as a businessman than a police investigator. Except for that gun under his jacket.
“You’re sure you’re okay with this?” he asked.
“Whether I’m okay with it or not, you need me to do it, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Inside the car I handed him the photo. “This is Kendra. It was taken about six weeks ago, just outside her apartment.”
I didn’t point out the dress, but I knew Detective Dixon noted it. He gave no indication, however, whether or not Kendra resembled the body that had been pulled from the river. Being careful not to influence my identification one way or the other, of course.
What he did say was, “It looks as if she didn’t want her photo taken.”
“She was quite distressed about it, actually.”
“Any idea why?”