Hotline to Murder Page 21

  She checked for messages on the house answering machine. There were none. She picked up the phone and called her mother’s cell phone number. She got voice mail. She said, “Mom, it’s me, Shahla. I’m home. Give me a call.” Then she checked the garage, just to make sure. The car wasn’t there.

  Her mother apparently hadn’t been very worried about her, but she should at least have left her a note. Shahla looked around, but there definitely wasn’t any note. Well, she wasn’t going to worry about them, either. She would get a call from her mother or they would show up, sooner or later. Meanwhile, she would fix herself something substantial to eat.

  Maybe her mother had told a neighbor where she was going. They were good friends with the Thompsons, who lived across the street and three doors north. Shahla didn’t know their phone number, so she walked over to their house and rang the bell. There was no answer. Nobody was home this morning.

  Should she call Detective Croyden and tell him about the phone call last night? He wouldn’t be working today. She didn’t want to deal with anybody else. She would call him tomorrow. Anyway, the caller was probably just one of her friends playing a joke on her. Who else would know her cell phone number and her street? She had probably overreacted last night.

  ***

  Shahla had a desire for action. She had been sunning herself on the beach since early afternoon. She was all alone. Jane was out of town. Lacey’s house had looked empty when Shahla walked past it. She had rung the doorbell, just in case, but there was no answer. Her mother and Kirk were who knew where. She had come to the beach because she wasn’t going to stay in the house alone any longer on a beautiful late summer day.

  She should go for a workout run for cross-country, and she had worn her running shoes with that in mind, but she still had a headache, although it was improving. And she didn’t feel like doing any more homework. She felt naked without her phone, but she had left tracks so that her mother could find her. She had written a note, saying where she was. Her mother couldn’t accuse her of disappearing again. In fact, she could accuse her mother of that very thing.

  She looked north along the beach and saw people playing beach volleyball, near the long pier that provided a walking path out over the water. She was too short to be good at volleyball. She was much better at running. It looked as if all the players were girls. She remembered something about a beach volleyball tournament for amateur females this weekend.

  Some of the players were undoubtedly from the Bonita Beach High team. Joy should be playing. But Joy would never play volleyball again. Shahla wondered whether Martha was playing. Martha. The question of whether Martha had anything to do with Joy’s murder was unresolved. Shahla had talked to Tony about it, but nothing had ever been done, as far as she knew.

  She walked along the beach path to the volleyball courts. She saw a couple of girls from the Bonita Beach team, girls she barely knew. Then she saw Martha. Martha was playing a match. She was teamed with another girl from Bonita Beach, whose name Shahla didn’t know. Martha’s bikini was too small, but Shahla had to admit, grudgingly, that she had a better figure than Shahla had previously given her credit for. In spite of the acne on her face. She and her partner seemed to be holding their own against another team.

  Shahla watched the match for a few minutes. In two-person beach volleyball, it was necessary for each player to be able to do everything well: serve, dig, set, spike and block. There were no specialists here. Martha’s game had a lot of room for improvement, but she showed promise as she sprawled in the sand after digging out a hard spike with one arm. She got up in time to run to the net, jump, and hit her partner’s set for a winner.

  Martha was playing better than she had any right to be. Shahla walked to a table set up on the sand. A lady at the table must be in charge of the tournament. She was doing several things at once; talking to players clustered around her, writing down scores that were being relayed to her by the referees, and making occasional announcements concerning court assignments, using a megaphone.

  When she was relatively free of her duties for a moment, Shahla asked her, “How are the Bonita Beach girls doing?”

  “Not bad.” The woman smiled at her. “They’ve won a couple of matches already.” She referred to her score sheets. “Dembroski and Fulton won their first two matches.”

  Martha’s last name was Dembroski.

  The woman continued, “It’s such a shame that Joy Tanner was killed. She and Martha were signed up as a team for this tournament. They would have been the favorites.”

  Shahla was startled. Joy and Martha a beach volleyball team? But of course. They had grown up together. They knew each other’s every thought. It was logical. In fact, Joy had said something about that to Shahla. Shahla had immediately repressed it, as she had tried to do whenever Joy mentioned Martha.

  Most upsetting was that it probably destroyed any motive Martha had for murdering Joy. You didn’t murder your beach volleyball partner, especially when she might be your ticket to greatness. Shahla turned away from the table in disgust. She had willed Martha to be a murder suspect, but what one wished for and what one received were often two different things.

  Shahla turned around and walked back toward the beach path. Fifty yards down the path she saw somebody who seemed familiar. The short, dark hair, the compact figure. He looked like Tony. He was walking away from her so she couldn’t see his face. And he wasn’t on crutches. It couldn’t be Tony. Her imagination was playing tricks on her.

  CHAPTER 32

  Tony didn’t know whether all this walking was good for his knee, but he couldn’t stop himself. After he walked the length of Bonita Beach twice, he drove home and checked with the police. Still no news of Shahla. He ate something—he didn’t notice what—in his empty townhouse. So empty he imagined he heard echoes as he moved through the rooms. Maybe he should call Josh and apologize. He didn’t know where Josh was staying, but at least he had his cell phone number.

  After staring at his own phone for a while, he decided not to call. He couldn’t face any more rejection right now. Without a plan, he walked out his front door. He went toward the Hotline office. Distances were not great in Bonita Beach. He walked to the building that housed the Hotline, and then he walked around it, observing the shoppers who were patronizing the adjacent stores. He didn’t go up to the office, itself. That morning, when he had been perusing the Green Book, it had felt eerie without Shahla there. If something happened to her, he was sure he could never go to the office again.

  He walked back to his townhouse, getting home after dark. What now? There was no place he wanted to go. His knee was too sore to walk anymore. He couldn’t even watch television because Josh had taken the TV set. He forced himself to get a pad and pen and sit at his table to formulate a plan of action. He covered the pages with doodles, but nothing intelligible.

  ***

  Shahla ate a dinner that she fixed at home. Most of it consisted of leftover lasagna, nuked in the microwave. It didn’t taste great, but it would keep her alive. She knew some of the rudiments of cooking, but it wasn’t much fun to cook for one person.

  She turned on the TV but couldn’t find a show that interested her. It was dark now and her mother and Kirk still weren’t home. The feeling of unease that had been gnawing at her became a full-fledged worry. What if they had been in an accident?

  She decided to go back over to the Thompsons’ house. They must be home by now. And if they weren’t, she would call Tony. He would know what to do. As she walked out the front door, she could see Thompsons’ driveway. The car that was usually parked there wasn’t. Well, perhaps somebody was home, anyway.

  She walked north along her side of the street until she was opposite the Thompsons’ house. She was about to cross the street when she saw a car coming from the south. She waited to let it pass, but it slowed down and blinked its lights. Considerate California drivers sometimes stopped for pedestrians, even in the middle of a block.

  Shahla waved a
t the driver as the car stopped, even though the car’s headlights prevented her from seeing who was inside. She had reached the middle of the street when the car suddenly lurched forward, directly at her. Confused, she jumped back toward the curb, trying to get out of its way. It screeched to a halt beside her and the driver’s door flew open, narrowly missing her. A man jumped out of the car and grabbed her before she could react.

  Shahla screamed as the strong arms attempted to pull her toward the car. But the car was still rolling slowly. He let go of her with one hand and grabbed the open door frame of the car with his other hand, apparently to try to stop it. He was holding her by the right wrist. She tried to jam the fingers of her left hand into his throat. It was a glancing blow, at best, but she felt his grip loosen on her wrist. She jerked her whole body as hard as she could.

  Her wrist pulled free, and she ran north along Sandview Street. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man chasing the car, which was rolling toward the far curb. She was running away from her house, but in the other direction the street ended in a cul-de-sac. He must have been waiting for her there. At the first intersection, she turned in the downhill direction, toward the beach. She had to get out of his line of sight.

  She went one block downhill and stopped behind a lamppost, panting. This wasn’t a good hiding place, but she didn’t hear any sounds of pursuit. A car went by, but not that of the kidnapper. What should she do? She couldn’t go back to her house as long as the man was in the neighborhood.

  She decided to go to Jane’s house. Jane’s father should be there now, and he would protect her. Their house was several more blocks north and two blocks uphill from here. Shahla crossed the hilly street and ran along the street parallel to her own. She would go another block north and then cut uphill. She slowed down to a jog, wanting to conserve her energy. It was a good thing she ran cross-country. Training in the hills had greatly improved her wind.

  At the next intersection, Shahla looked uphill. A car was moving farther up, but it was harmless. She started up the hill at a fast walk. Before she had gone halfway up the block, a car went through the intersection above, on Sandview Street. It was his car. She stopped, frozen. Then she heard the sound of a car backing up. That thawed her. She turned and ran back downhill.

  In a few seconds, she heard the sound of the car approaching her from behind. She kept running downhill, trying not to go so fast in her panic that she tripped and sprawled on the steep sidewalk. Her speed didn’t matter much because he could drive much faster than she could run. But here, close to the beach, cars were parked along the curb and he couldn’t get near her without leaving his car.

  He drove alongside her. Shahla didn’t look at him. She hoped he didn’t have a gun. Then he pulled ahead and stopped the car in the middle of the street. He opened the door and jumped out. She was on the right sidewalk so he had to run around the back of the car to cut her off. Her first instinct was to try to outrun him, but he squeezed between two parked cars and blocked her path.

  He was wearing a baseball cap. Shahla couldn’t see his face in the dim light. Was this the Chameleon? He was an apparition, more ghost than real, with his arms up and his body braced to intercept her, like a football player. She couldn’t reverse direction and go uphill. By the time she stopped her forward momentum and turned around, he would be able to grab her.

  She had a strong desire to barrel into him at top speed. She was within a few feet of him, close enough to see him flinch at the prospect of impact. At the last possible instant, she put on the brakes and slowed enough so that she was able to slip between two parked cars. She headed out into the street to go around his car.

  Caught by surprise, the man went through the next space between the parked cars and reached for her as she ran by. He got hold of her arm. Desperate, Shahla tried to keep running, dragging him with her. As she steered just to the left of his car, he was off balance and hit the back of it. He released his grip on her. She lurched forward and thought she was going to tumble head over heels.

  She desperately tried to get her center of gravity over her legs and regain her balance. She bounced off a parked car and careened through a complete 360-degree turn before she got her body under control. Then she found herself running down the middle of the street, almost to the dead-end at the beach.

  She ran past the end of the street for a few feet to the concrete beach path and turned right on it, heading in the opposite direction from her home. She didn’t hear footsteps behind her, so she looked over her shoulder. The man wasn’t in sight, and a beach house blocked her view of the street she had come down.

  Shahla continued north on the beach path at a slower pace and immediately saw the benefit of being here. The path was well lit by lights on poles, and there were other joggers and walkers going in both directions, even at night. She didn’t think he would dare to follow her here.

  But where could she go? She might be safe on the beach path, but she couldn’t stay here all night. She couldn’t go home because the kidnapper might stake out her house. The police station was too far away from the path to get to safely. She couldn’t call anyone because she didn’t have her cell phone or any money. Could she try to borrow a phone from another jogger? That meant a long explanation and the strong possibility that she would be labeled as a weirdo.

  She continued on at a slow jog for a few minutes, breathing the cool night air and being thankful that she was free. However, each time she went past one of the streets that came down to the beach, she looked for the kidnapper’s car. She didn’t see it. A few minutes more and it occurred to her that she must be getting close to where Tony lived. She knew his townhouse complex was near the water in the northern part of Bonita Beach.

  Tony would help her. But she had to find him first. She wished she had her phone. His home number was in her directory. Of course she hadn’t memorized it, and of course it was unlisted. He had told her that he had gotten an unlisted number because some women made crank calls to Josh, his roommate.

  His development had a name. What was it? Something to do with the ocean. Duh. Ocean View? Ocean Air? Ocean Potion? Shahla almost laughed, in spite of herself. Something to do with the Pacific Ocean. Ocean Pacific? No, that was a trademark. She was getting close to the northern boundary of Bonita Beach.

  She stopped where the next street came down to the beach and looked carefully up the pavement but didn’t see the dreaded car. A jogger was coming down, about to turn onto the beach path.

  “Excuse me,” Shahla said, stopping him in mid-stride. “Do you know of a townhouse development called something like Ocean Pacific?”

  The man, who was dressed in sweats, stopped his forward progress and ran in place as he thought. “How about Peaceful Ocean? It’s just a few blocks from here.”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Go up this street and take the second left. It’s quite big. You can’t miss it.” He took off in an easy lope.

  “Thanks,” she called after him. Shahla took one more look up the street before she started to walk along it. The coast was clear. As soon as that thought entered her head, it occurred to her where it had originated. The seacoast. Idioms, expressions, sayings, words, and their meanings—all fascinated her.

  But she had to concentrate on the present. The two blocks went fast and soon Shahla was walking roughly north again on the cross street in this relatively level part of the city. A few blocks more and she could see a sign at the entrance to a residential development. Please let it be Peaceful Ocean, she prayed. She hadn’t prayed since her father had died.

  As she approached, she could make out the letters. Peaceful Ocean. Thank God. Shahla turned into the entrance road and was faced with a number of almost-identical townhouses. Which one was it? She looked to the left and the right and realized that there might be a hundred of them.

  She remembered Joy’s description—the pool was in its front yard. Where was the pool? Not in sight so it must be in the center of the complex. She continu
ed on the entrance road, which went between groups of the homes.

  She heard a car engine behind her. It was probably a resident, but she turned around to make sure. Her breath caught in her throat. It was him. Panic overcame her. She ran. When she passed the first row of buildings, she looked to the right. There was an open grassy area. She looked to the left. She saw the pool.

  Shahla ran toward the pool on the sidewalk. The road didn’t go in that direction. After a few seconds, she heard footsteps running behind her. She ran like she had never run before. As she approached the fenced-in pool, she realized that three units qualified as “having the pool in its front yard,” and they were at the other end of the pool from her.

  Would he dare follow her that far? She ran past the pool. The footsteps were gaining on her. Three houses. Which one was it? She didn’t have a clue. She ran up two steps to the door of the first one and knocked loudly. She turned her head and saw him a few feet away. He had stopped.

  If nobody answered, Shahla was sure he would try to grab her. She leapt off the steps and ran through a small garden area to the second house, trampling flowers. She jumped onto its steps and knocked on that door. Then she continued through another garden to the third house and did the same.

  Again she turned and faced her would-be kidnapper. He had retreated a few feet but was still near the first door. It hadn’t been opened. Uncertain now, Shahla stayed on the steps of the third townhouse. What if none of them were home? Would she end up running around the pool with him chasing her?

  She planned to beg for help from the person who opened the first door—whether it was Tony or not. The door in front of her opened. It was a middle-aged woman.