Читать книгу Clandestine Cover-Up - Pamela Tracy - Страница 9

Friday night, according to the police dispatcher, was not the best night for nonemergency responses. If Tamara wanted, she could wait a couple of hours for a squad car to show up. Or she could come down to the station and wait for an hour. Or she could wait until tomorrow.

Vince wanted to yank the phone out of her hand and fill the dispatcher in on Tamara’s history with a stalker, especially since it didn’t seem that she had any intention of doing so.

“I’ll arrange to meet with an officer tomorrow,” Tamara said.

As Tamara deposited her cell phone back into her purse, Vince asked, “So, you don’t think it’s important enough to tell them about the stalker?”

For a moment, he thought she’d clam up or tell him it was none of his business.

“There are three possibilities,” she finally said. “One, these warnings weren’t meant for me. That’s my hope. Of course, more realistically, I may need to accept that my past has followed me and William Massey has an accomplice. Or, finally and even worse, I have something new to worry about.”

That was what he’d been thinking. He didn’t know whether to be relieved that she wasn’t in denial about the threats or to be worried that she wasn’t a screaming lunatic about the threats. He started to make a suggestion, but suddenly she was looking at him with the strangest expression.

“You know, it may not be a stalker. I mean Massey’s notes were always of the ‘I’m going to get you’ variety. They always had an undertone that I belonged to him. Both the graffiti on the door and now this note seem to just want me to disappear.”

He wanted to say that every stalker was different, but what did he know? “You want me to follow you to your sister’s house?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Why would you follow me there?”

“It’s where you’re staying, right?”

“No, Lisa’s nine months’ pregnant. She’s only been married a year and is busy building a home for a new husband and stepdaughter. There’s a big difference between me coming for a short visit and me moving in. Trust me, she doesn’t need another roommate.”

“Okay, so where are you staying?” Vince asked.

“Billy’s letting me rent his mother’s upstairs apartment. It’s the same one Lisa lived in before she married Alex. I just moved in this morning.”

“Maybe you should call Alex? He’d come over.”

Tamara shook her head. “Lisa doesn’t need to be alone, and this is not their problem.”

It wasn’t his problem either, but as he followed her off the steps of the porch and then to her car, he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow her problem was about to become his problem.

“I’ll follow you home,” he said, opening her car door.

“I’d appreciate that.”

It was well after ten when he finally parked his car behind Tamara’s, and the nighttime sky offered little in the way of light. The streetlights, however, beamed a halfhearted welcome. Lydia’s was the biggest house on the street. It also had the most character. It had, at one time, been his home away from home. A place he could go if things got a little difficult at home.

Stepping out of his truck, he walked leisurely over to Tamara’s little red Jaguar. The sound of country music carried on the wind. She turned the car off before gathering up some papers and her purse plus a couple of shopping bags. He took the bags from her, half expecting her to protest, but maybe both the warnings and the mouse had subdued her.

He followed her to the bottom of an outdoor staircase. When Lydia had moved into the brick house, she had converted the upstairs to an apartment complete with its own entrance. Vince’s mother said Lydia not only knew how to manage her money but how to create ways to make money.

Vince’s mother was too busy trying to manage her sons to manage her money. When Vince was ten, his father had abandoned the family. That same year Vince’s older brothers had moved out. For the next two years, Vince and his mother had moved from one apartment to another. They hadn’t had much money. During that time, his mother had remarried, had Vince’s little brother Jimmy, and got divorced. Vince became the man of the family.

When they got to the top of the stairs, Tamara unlocked the door, disappeared inside for a moment and then returned to relieve him of the bags.

“Thanks,” she murmured softly. “I was getting a little spooked back there at the church. You made some pretty bad moments not so horrible. I do appreciate your help.” Then she smiled and closed the door.

Leaving him outside, feeling as if he’d just missed an opportunity he hadn’t even realized was offered. That realization was followed by the certainty that his initial attraction to her flowing red hair was really nothing.

Nope, it was her smile that did him in.

For the first time in months, Tamara fell into bed without going through a paranoid routine of checking her front door’s lock and all the windows about a dozen times.

Tonight when she crawled into bed, her last thought was I’m tired. She didn’t make it to I wish I could fall asleep. Instead, she fell asleep.

For two whole minutes.

And then, her eyes went to the clock by her bedside.

Midnight.

It had all started at midnight. William Massey’s first phone call. Tamara burrowed under the blankets and, even though her clock didn’t make any noise, she covered her ears.

She almost wished she could blame Massey, but tonight what kept her from sleeping was the sudden realization that most likely Massey wasn’t involved with the threatening warnings she had received.

No, he struck at midnight.

On Saturday morning, Vince drove to Tamara’s apartment to check on her.

Her car was gone. There was no cause for worry, he thought. He headed for the church. But her car wasn’t there either. Okay, a slight cause for worry. He checked the only other place he could think of—her sister’s house. She wasn’t there. Finally, he spotted her car. It was the first time he’d ever felt relief at finding who he was looking for at the police station.

Checking his watch, he grimaced. Today was pretty much mapped out thanks to a promise he made his mother to help his great-uncle Drew. He turned his truck toward what used to be the outskirts of town.

Vince pulled into the dirt driveway leading up to his uncle’s trailer. Drew opened the front door once Vince started taking things out of the bed of his truck. Slowly, Drew stepped down onto his front step, glared and spit on the ground. “What are you doing, boy?”

In his younger days, according to those who remembered, Drew had been over two hundred pounds, six foot two and a contender with attitude. Now, past eighty, Drew was a walking advertisement for skin and bones and bad attitude.

Drew knew exactly why Vince had shown up this morning.

Vince answered anyway. “I’m cleaning up your yard. You only have thirty days, remember, before you start getting hefty fines.”

Drew clutched at the screen door. It kept him steady. “I’ll shoot anyone who comes on my land in thirty days.”

Sad thing was, Vince almost believed the old man. “Uncle Drew, just let me take care of this and then you won’t need to worry.”

Like his uncle had once been, Vince was over six foot, weighed just over two hundred pounds and had attitude. The difference was, Vince had learned to control his attitude. Not that a good attitude was helping to deal with Drew today.

Even with his missing weight, stooped height and outward frailty, Drew’s voice still had a guttural edge. “Ain’t worried. Don’t need any help. Git.”

“I’m not gitting.” Vince didn’t move, and Drew stomped into the trailer—no doubt heading to the phone to call Vince’s mother. He wouldn’t get far there. She was terrified at the thought of Drew winding up homeless and showing up on her doorstep.

Mom still had Jimmy at home, and right now Jimmy was at what his mother called an awkward stage. He still needed approval but insisted he could make his own decisions. From what Mom said, most of Jimmy’s decisions right now were wrong.

Vince wasn’t too worried. He’d survived puberty.

Come to think of it, maybe Vince should have a talk with Jimmy.

If nothing else, getting Jimmy out here to help pull weeds might be an opportunity that benefited both of them. Vince could pay Jimmy, and Jimmy could start saving for the car he wanted. One brief phone call later, Vince knew that idea was a bust.

Even at age sixteen, Jimmy was terrified of Uncle Drew.

Vince started pulling the weeds growing past his knees in the front yard. Every twenty minutes or so, as perfectly timed as a cuckoo on a clock, Drew would open the screen door, curse and spit and then retreat.

Things got even more interesting a few hours later when Miles Pynchon, minister of the Main Street Church, pulled up in a fairly new pickup and shouted, “Need some help?”

“I’ve got a handle on this,” Vince said. “You might not want your sons to hear what my uncle Drew has to say.”

“They’ve heard your uncle Drew many a time,” Miles said. “We live just over the fence. Drew’s inspired a sermon or two. Anytime you want to attend services and come listen, you’re invited. Now, the boys and I have about three hours to spare. Tell us where to start.”

“So far, I’ve been working with two guidelines. If it’s trash, throw it away. If it’s too heavy to move, leave it alone.”

“All of it looks like trash,” one boy muttered.

It only took five minutes for Drew to notice his visitors. Funny, Vince had grown up in a world where cursing was the rule not the exception. Never had he noticed just how bad it sounded, at least in front of kids. It made him wish more than ever that Miles and his sons would leave and let Vince work in peace.

Instead, Miles sang while he loaded old pieces of wood, broken buckets, all kinds of signs, cans of paint and smelly tarps into the back of Vince’s truck. He started with tunes from the Beatles, switched to James Taylor and, by the time the sun started to descend, he’d worked his way to gospel songs. Some Vince knew; others he did not.

In between songs Miles invited Drew and Vince to attend church on Sunday. Drew had two words for the invitation; the second word was no. Vince also shook his head. His mother had gone to church a time or two. She’d never felt welcome. He doubted he’d feel much different.

“I can even offer Drew a ride,” Miles offered.

The teenage boys gave each other the guarded look that all teenagers share when it comes to the actions of their parents. Vince couldn’t help it. He laughed.

“We all appreciate you cleaning up his yard,” Miles said. “He scares most of the neighbors. Some complain just because they hope it will somehow cause him to move.”

“That’s not going to happen. The more people complain, the more he’ll dig his feet in,” Vince commented.

Miles nodded. “What happened to your uncle, Vince, to make him like this? Such an empty life.”

“My mom says he’s always been like this. My father blamed Drew’s time in the military. Drew spent time in Alaska and then Vietnam, but he was over in Vietnam in the early sixties before anything really happened.” Vince thought about it for a moment. “Except maybe drugs.”

They worked silently for a moment. Then Vince asked, “Hey, Miles, do you know Tamara Jacoby?”

“I’ve met her a few times. Why?”

Vince waited a moment, hoping the minister would say more. When he didn’t, Vince continued, “Did Alex and Lisa fill you in on what happened back in Phoenix with Tamara?”

Miles stopped working. “They did.”

Vince checked to make sure the boys couldn’t hear. “She bought the old Amhurst Church. I stopped by there last night when I saw her standing on the sidewalk. Someone had painted ‘you’re not wanted here’ on the door. Then, she found a dead mouse inside.”

“Think it’s Massey?”

That the preacher remembered the stalker’s name told Vince how much the family had confided in their minister.

“She called someone she knows who told her that Massey’s still in prison. It gets worse. While she and I were both inside, someone left a threatening note on the door.”

“You tell Alex?”

“No. It didn’t seem my place. I was there when she called the police. This morning she went by the police station and filed a report.”

“That young lady’s been through enough,” Miles said.

“Can you talk to her?” Vince asked. “Maybe get her to stay with Lisa and Alex for a while.”

“I’ll try. She’s only been to church once since she’s been here. I started to welcome her, but she ducked away. Maybe you could bring her?”

“Nice try,” Vince declined.

The door to the trailer opened. Drew hobbled out and crawled into his old truck, muttering, “Miserable excuses for human beings,” before driving toward town.

“Must be grocery day,” Vince said.

“No,” Miles answered. “Grocery day is Monday. He’d never go to the grocery store on a Saturday, too crowded.”

They watched the ancient Ford truck disappear from sight.

For the past half hour, Miles sang a few more gospel songs. His voice was low, and the songs were poignant. They fit the mood. Vince had no doubt the minister would talk to Tamara, offer assistance and even maybe counsel. Problem was, Miles Pynchon was in charge of a whole congregation. Vince wasn’t sure of the number, but based by the size of the church building, Vince figured more than two hundred members. There was only so much time Miles could give to Tamara, especially if she wasn’t asking for help.

At just after five o’clock, the Pynchon boys followed their dad to his truck. They took enough parts to make either a lawn mower that ran like a motorcycle or a motorcycle that also functioned as a lawn mower. Either way, the boys looked intrigued. The minister took home a wooden cross, splintered in places, and a Bible so old its leather binding was all but in shreds.

One man’s junk was another man’s treasure.

As Vince headed for his truck, he took one last look at his uncle’s property. Thanks to his efforts and that of the Pynchons, the yard had a few clear areas and even something of a path. Not that Drew needed a path. Vince doubted the old man cared to walk in his backyard or even knew what all was in it.

Drew’s backyard was quite a bit like Drew’s life—filled with a lot of junk that no one really cared about.

Vince paused.

His own backyard consisted of sheds and tools and toys. Things that right now, during his prime, seemed important. It all could count as clutter; it could all eventually turn to junk.

Funny how thinking about Uncle Drew and then thinking about Tamara really made a man think about what should be important.