Relative Danger Page 19

  Believers began scurrying to the center aisle. People of all ages gathered, stretched their arms, and swayed.

  I hoped I wouldn’t have to join the jostling. But then I determined, as more of the congregation filled that area, I’d surely done worse. And their stretching and bending with arms flailing must be excellent exercise. Fun, but not strenuous. Kind of like a Richard Simmons workout.

  The teen girl beside me screamed, “Oh, yes, yes!” and fell over sideways.

  I gasped and reached for her.

  “Alleluia!” Mamma yelled near the girl. Then the prune woman slumped.

  Mamma could talk! I’d witnessed a miracle, I realized while rooting through my purse for my cell phone. The 911 lady answered. “Yes,” I said, breathless, “I’m in a warehouse church.” I started to explain the crisis—two people down in one family—when rising voices and thumps of falling bodies made too much noise for my voice to be heard. More people fell. Others tossed out their arms and shouted. People swayed. They slumped and fell to the floor. Had Legionnaire’s disease filtered in through the vents?

  “And He wants you! And you. And you!” Preacher called, his finger selecting for God. And once God chose, His elect tumbled, one after the other to the chilled cement floor.

  “What’s your emergency?” the woman on my handset yelled. “I’ll send paramedics or firefighters or police. But you’ll have to tell me what’s happening.”

  My eyes expanded to take in the falling bodies. Beside my feet, the teen girl lay crumpled across a kneeler. She didn’t appear to be breathing. My pulse raced. “People are passing out. You might need to remind me of how to do CPR,” I hollered to my phone, which I set down on a pew while I knelt beside the girl.

  As I went down, I spied a man from Sidmore High. Three rows up. Skinny vice-principal Tom Reynolds. He’d missed school Friday. His arms weren’t flailing when he saw me. His eyes widened, his mouth opened, his face looked pale.

  I folded down into position and clasped the girl’s chin. Her cheek was cherry red from where it hit the kneeler. “You’ll be all right,” I said, hoping she could hear. I turned her nostrils so she could get air and hoped I could hear the 911 woman giving me instructions. I’d try for Mamma next. But she was lying so still. My mouth neared the teenager’s, and her eyes popped open. “Alleluia, you’re alive,” I cried. Here I was, saving a person.

  The aqua eyes of the girl with an angelic nature glared at me with such harshness that my hands shrank away. Her glare reminded me of Sledge. Her eye color made me think of another boy. “Your eyes resemble a student’s,” I muttered. “John Winston’s.”

  She stared at me. “That darn John passed the note, made us believe Miss Hernandez was a killer.”

  My pulse stilled. I glanced at Mamma. She lay motionless, her big blue eyes peering at mine. Another miracle from Preacher. I let the teen go, and Mamma’s lips curled into a grin. She shut her eyes, and her arms again slumped over the pew.

  The sweet teen girl watched me sit back. When she seemed certain I’d remain there, she released a loud sigh and turned her face back against the kneeler.

  “Hello! Are you still there?” the frantic words shouted from my phone.

  I peered at people swooning everywhere. Preacher’s well-fed face beamed. Bodies were falling around him like garbage being dumped into a heap. “I’m sorry,” I said into my phone. “It’s not an emergency. It seems there’s a party going on.” The 911 lady hung up. I peered around for Tom Reynolds.

  No sign of him bent over a pew or sprawled on the floor. Maybe he’d been smart and done what I now knew I must do. I needed to get the hell out of this place before heaven surrounded me with more crumpled bodies.

  “Come again, Sister,” called a man who rose from a death-like trance when I ran past him, hitting the church doors on my way out. To my relief, they opened.

  These people were like cult followers, I determined, veering my Mustang out of the parking lot. This had been a new experience I could add to all the others I’d had since I became an evolving woman, discovering the varying essences of life, selecting those from which I’d want to partake. Membership in All-Believers Church wouldn’t be high on my list.

  I hadn’t seen Tom Reynolds outside the church. Obviously he was a member. No wonder he had accompanied Hannah to Grant Labruzzo’s funeral. As principal, she would’ve represented the school. No other staff member attended the services. And Miss Gird said that Tom Reynolds had gotten Labruzzo hired for his custodial job, which he’d carried out so poorly. Why had Tom Reynolds run out once he saw me?

  I didn’t know, but now developed definite ideas about what had happened to Labruzzo. When he was up on the school auditorium’s balcony, he probably swooned out of habit, like all those people who fell over the pews. He could have fallen. Yes, he could have.

  I drove, getting vibes, but not good ones. I wanted to cook a six-course meal even more than I wanted to return to Kat’s school. But I needed to go back there tomorrow. I had to find out why Tom Reynolds left the church so quickly. And I’d search the parking lot for black trucks.

  The picture of a male falling brought to mind something I’d recently read. Maybe Grant Labruzzo took one of those post-Viagra pills that caused a few men to pass out. One man had cracked his skull and required stitches. An authority said some males might die because of taking that pill. “Wow,” I said, suddenly envisioning Labruzzo as a lover. He’d certainly been young enough. But at that age, needing a sexual stimulant? Not from what I remembered about men. Yet the ad had said that even some males in their twenties started taking those pills. Gosh, hard to imagine.

  I turned onto Holiday Drive, punching Roger’s number in my cell phone, slowing before I reached the white brick house. Kat answered on the third ring. “Don’t hang up,” I said. “Kat, we were right. John Winston did write the note that said the police arrested Miss Hernandez. He wrote it and then sent it around your class just to get you worried.”

  “How would you know that?” Kat raised her tone. “You didn’t go around asking people again, did you?”

  “A girl from school was at a church service. I didn’t ask. She just told me.”

  “Gram…”

  “I promise.”

  I watched the garage door on Marisa’s house sliding up, anxiety tightening my chest. I didn’t want a black truck to roll back on that driveway.

  “You really went to church?” Kat said.

  “I was up real early and found one.” My tension loosened as a blue compact car emerged from the garage. “Kat, do you know Tom Reynolds very well?”

  “He’s the vice-principal that mainly deals with discipline problems. I haven’t been sent to him often.” She made a small laugh, and I did the same.

  Marisa backed her car toward the street. She glanced at my vehicle, but not at my face, and waited for me to pass.

  “Who might know him?” I asked Kat.

  “Mr. Reynolds is good friends with Miss Hernandez.” I braked at the end of Hernandez’s driveway. “But Gram, don’t even think about talking to her. Promise me.”

  I inhaled, considered what I should do, and accelerated. “Baby girl, you get me to make a lot of promises.” And if she only knew where I was…

  The blue car headed in the opposite direction. I moved out of the neighborhood. “Kat, I want to take you and your dad out for dinner.” But surely not at Gil’s place.

  “Sounds good. Let me ask Dad.” She was gone for a minute and returned. “He said that’s fine.”

  I recalled a mission. I had rented vehicles and needed to get them back to their dealers. “I’ll need your help for a little while before we eat. How about if I pick you up early and have Roger meet us?”

  She said she’d be ready. We hung up, and I relaxed. Kat was my friend again.

  I drove back toward the church. Maybe I’d spot Tom Reynolds. I had left there so quickly that I hadn’t taken much time to look outside. And I hadn’t promised Kat I wouldn’t talk to him.
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  Remembering all those swooning people made me reconnect with the idea of Grant Labruzzo as a lover. I considered sex. Dr. Marie, who’d examined me a few months ago, told me that many women weren’t interested in sex after they reached a certain age.

  I assured her I hadn’t reached that age yet.

  From her stool near my knees, Dr. Marie glanced up over pretty eyeglasses and said, “But not men. No matter how old they get, men never stop trying.” I liked her immensely for telling me that story. I also liked her office, with wispy cheesecloth curtains in the old converted house. Antique dolls sat in small rockers, and lace doilies covered arms of overstuffed chairs. Used buttons created interesting patterns in picture frames on fireplace mantels. I enjoyed Dr. Marie so much that I could’ve brought her along with me. Or instead I could fly back through New England to see her each fall while the foliage displayed its splendor.

  That would help Sidmore High, I decided. Cheesecloth curtains, a few antique furnishings. Maybe Mozart playing from hall speakers. More flowers and trees. If the kids had a place that felt grounded, maybe they’d be content and not get into those violent moods.

  I smiled. I’d suggest those changes to the administrators come morning. I grinned harder, deciding that a woman had surely invented the stirrup system in Dr. Marie’s office. So unlike those stirrups at the end of straight beds, hers were attached to a comfortable lounge chair.

  Again I considered what I’d read. Had Grant Labruzzo had a problem with penile erection? And if he did, like Dr. Marie said, he surely wouldn’t want to give up. “Try this new medication for men,” some aging doctor could have told him. “It might make you weak, but it’s worth a try.” I imagined that doctor winking. Man-to-man stuff.

  Grant Labruzzo tried the medicine. He climbed to the school balcony to clean. Got weak and fell. Cracked his neck. Died.

  Was that possible? Plausible? Come on, Cealie, you can do better than that. Of course an autopsy would’ve proven whether any drugs had been in Labruzzo’s system at the time of death.

  I located the church and found its parking lot still filled with vehicles. Driving around every row, I saw no late-model black truck, no sign of Tom Reynolds.

  * * *

  I returned to the condo with no definite idea about what happened to Grant Labruzzo. The police would be solving the mystery concerning his death. Maybe by now they’d discovered he’d only fallen. I needed to shift my mind away from that problem.

  With much time to spare before taking my family out to eat, I decided to spend that time doing as I pleased. What pleased me at the moment was reading. My cookbooks were only for putting me to sleep, and I didn’t want any sexually stimulating material from my newsletter now, so I flipped through the novels I’d purchased at the airport. The cover of Lover Killer promised “A humorous romance with murder.”

  I shoved that book under my arm and dropped a Bette Midler CD into my personal player. Carrying the sound system and a cup of steaming instant mint tea to the patio, I considered the novel’s premise. Lover. Killing. Grant Labruzzo’s young face. I had thought of him as his job title, custodian. Yet he did have another life. Abby had suggested and Kat confirmed that he’d been a flirt. Suppose he’d had a sweetheart? He wasn’t married. I’d gleaned that from his obituary. So suppose a disconcerted lover showed up at school after hours.

  A student? Some teenage girls adored older men. And what if they’d had a heated argument, way up on the balcony? This young woman, I envisioned in a growing picture of the dark auditorium, went into a rampage. She swore at him, displaying a violent temper, and then— What? Picked him up and tossed him over the railing?

  “Silly silly, Cealie,” I said, sliding the glass door shut. I’d probably just reconnected with that image of Miss Hernandez going after the custodian. Or maybe I had already read too many mysteries.

  More people were out than before. I set my CD player on a small table and noted a floral fragrance wafting on a breeze. Shrubs and leaves of trees appeared to be dancing. The brick wall that separated the patios back here looked extra red in the sunlight. I stretched on a chaise lounge and enjoyed the lazy way vehicles moved beyond the hedges on a Sunday morning, much less rushed than on weekdays. Two women jogged past. “You’re doing great,” I called.

  “Thanks,” the first one replied. The straggler behind her resembled a wrestler. She could have tossed anyone off a balcony.

  I tuned in to birds’ songs, admired the condo’s manicured flowerbeds, and got in touch with the slight warmth from the clear azure sky. A thumping sounded from a basketball bouncing nearby. I felt at peace with the world and its inhabitants, and took sips of my tea. Happy to take a break from worries, I set Bette crooning softly in my earphones and started my novel, ready to laugh.

  On page one, a woman died. Drive-by shooting. Kidnappers snatched her son on page two. This wasn’t funny. My pulse sped. I didn’t want these bad things to happen. The kidnapper who’d shot the mom made smart comments to his partner. Was this the humor? Thugs began to threaten the boy, shoving a gun to his nose, while their truck sputtered, running out of gas. The truck’s sputter. The pistol hammer’s click.

  I shut Bette up, slammed down the book, and stood.

  A pow like a gunshot had come from the road. A truck, similar in detail to the one in the novel, puttered by. That rickety truck had problems and had probably backfired. And if I hadn’t heard that old model, I wouldn’t have noticed the mid-sized black truck. It moved before me much more quietly than Bette’s voice. It was beyond the brick wall.

  I dashed toward the street. I could see the far corner, where the black truck whizzed into a heavy flow of traffic. An instinct told me to run to my car and try to follow.

  Come on, Cealie, you’ve seen too many cop movies.

  A young woman jogged toward me. I flagged her down, and she slipped off her earphones. “Did you see who was driving that black truck?” I asked. “A man? Woman? Teenager?”

  “Truck?” She glanced at the road, turned and gave me a blank stare. “Uh-uh.” Reconnecting her earphones, she jogged on.

  Tomorrow I would definitely search Sidmore High’s parking lot for that truck. But the rear bumpers of most vehicles there had had school parking stickers. This one’s bumper had no sticker that I’d seen.

  My heart continued to make knicky-knack jumps when I returned to the patio. I bent to retrieve my CD player and noticed that three feet beyond, between potted plants, something small glittered.

  I walked there and lifted a bullet.

  Chapter 19

  I dashed into the condo, slammed the door, bolted the lock, and leaned against the door, my heartbeats thrusting into my throat. But bullets could pierce doors. I jumped aside and moved deeper into the condo. Yanking up my cell phone, I saw I’d missed an incoming call and punched nine-one. I stopped before hitting one again. Exactly what was I going to tell the lady this time? That a black truck, possibly the same one I’d seen before, drove down this road? “So what?” she’d certainly ask.

  “Somebody in it shot at me,” I’d say, insisting she do something. Send the cops. I opened my hand and stared at the bullet. Without the sunlight, it no longer looked shiny. In fact, it could’ve been old. Maybe the bullet had been lying on the patio for quite some time, hidden as it was by the pots holding plants. “But suppose it wasn’t?” I might ask the woman who’d answer my emergency call. “What if someone tried to kill me?”

  I’d read many mysteries and knew how the plot could go. Deadly plots. I lifted my finger and touched the numeral one again. Then I hit off. This was real life, not a story. And I was sure that old truck had backfired and made the noise. Still, my shivering body yearned for comfort. I envisioned Gil, his compassionate gray eyes, broad shoulders, and warm embrace. Should I call him?

  I shook my head. I had no idea whether I was now threatened. And we were no longer a couple. I decided to bounce thoughts around to a new friend. Flicking on the light above Minnie, I said, “Cousin Stevie
’s ridiculous warning sent my imagination into overdrive. And at this church I saw the believers dropping like shot birds. Then this novel I started to read gave me creepy ideas.” I considered a moment. “So should I call 911?”

  I didn’t fear making a fool of myself. I had done that many times and surely would again. But I wouldn’t ask for help unless there was an actual emergency, like I thought I’d seen at All-Believers warehouse church. If people were dying, I’d need medical assistance for them. And if someone shot at me, I’d call the police. Other than that, I could take care of myself. I walked, cloaking myself in my mantra—“I am woman. I can do anything—alone.” No one actually died at that church, and I had no idea whether anyone shot at me. I dropped the bullet into my purse. Tomorrow I’d try to find out what type of gun had shot that substitute teacher, Jayne Ackers, whose murder might not have anything to do with the school. After all, people got shot every day. This was the U.S. of A., wasn’t it?

  I recalled that talking to my friend Minnie would make her happier and told her a little about the mystery I’d begun reading. I believe she enjoyed it, for her body seemed straighter. With all of my recent horticultural knowledge, she’d be thriving soon. She would be my companion for a very long time.

  Leaving her, I checked to see whose phone call I’d missed. The number came from Cape Cod, but not my office. It was the home number of my manager, Bud Denton, and he never phoned me from home. Fearing bad news, I returned the call. “Bud, how are you? What’s wrong?”

  “Cealie, I know you can’t put a colon after are, but I’m not sure why.”

  The anxiety I’d felt left.

  He said, “A client from the Chamber asked me that after I deleted the colon from her copy. I tried to look up the rule but don’t have any of the books at home, and my Internet server’s down.”

  Another question similar to the one from Brianna with no hips? I said, “It’s because you can’t place a colon in front of a predicate nominative.”

  “Oh, and that would be any noun or pronoun that follows a linking verb.”