Terri Reed - Double Threat Christmas

“Car,” she repeated. “Cars are safe.”

His curiosity piqued by her odd behavior, Paul said, “Officer Johnson will escort you to find your coat and then he’ll take you to the station. I’ll see you again there.”

“Can I change? My shoes at least?” she asked, her expression nearing panic.

Paul hid a smile at having pegged her correctly and sought for a soothing tone. “Of course you may.”

She moved stiffly to a panel of wall behind the reception desk. With a little push the panel opened, revealing a closet.

Paul exchanged a curious glance with his partner.

“I’ll tell Sims,” Andy stated and retreated back to the workroom to inform the lead CSI of the secret hole in the wall.

Megan retrieved a pair of tall, black snow boots. Methodically, she unzipped each boot then grabbed an aerosol can from a shelf inside the closet and sprayed the insides of each one. The scent of lemon filled the air.

Then Megan slipped one foot out of a pump, while balancing on the other heeled shoe while she carefully placed her stocking foot into the boot. She repeated the process with the other foot then bent to zip up each boot.

Figuring she was done, Paul started to turn away, but stopped to watch in rapt fascination as she once again reached for something on the shelf inside the closet. This time she pulled out a moist square sheet, which she used to thoroughly wipe each pump down before putting the shoes in the closet where the boots once had been.

Then using the same moistened wipe, she ran the cloth over the door panel where she’d touched the wall before pressing the wood back into place. Using the tips of two fingers, she dropped the cloth into the wastebasket.

With a tenuous smile, she announced to Officer Johnson, “I’m ready.”

That was some routine. The woman became more interesting each passing second. And by the time he was done he’d get to know her a whole lot better.

Paul noted the stiff way she held herself as Johnson helped her don her long woolen coat. Johnson took her elbow to lead her out and she shied away. Like someone once abused? Or did she just not like being touched?

The officer shrugged, dropped his hand and opened the gallery’s front door for her to pass through. At the last moment, before stepping outside, she turned her head and met Paul’s gaze.

There was panic in her eyes. Fear, maybe. But also something else, something vulnerable, that slammed into his gut.

Hating that he’d let his guard slip even a fraction, Paul shook himself and dispensed with any softening toward Ms. McClain.

Obviously, if he saw fear in her eyes it was only because she was guilty.

Fifty-two steps.

That’s how many footsteps Megan counted as she was led to the waiting police vehicle at the curb. She shivered as flakes of snow covered her hair and landed on her face. Her heart thudded in her chest, making breathing difficult. Horror nearly choked her. She fought for control, but any semblance of control had been taken away from her.

By a murderer.

Two men had been killed, and she was the number one suspect.

With a father who had been a cop on the Boston police force and a brother who was a sheriff, she knew the law would shield her. The maxim “innocent until proven guilty” would hold, but it wouldn’t save her from accusations and assumptions. Her only real protection would come from God.

Just as her psychologist, Dr. Miller, had suggested she do when she was confronted by any source of fear, she whispered the mantra over and over, “When I’m afraid, I’ll trust in the Lord. When I’m afraid, I’ll trust in the Lord.”

She took comfort in her faith even as disbelief and terror that this whole nightmare was happening took hold of her stomach and twisted her insides into tight knots.

Officer Johnson, twentysomething with a clean-shaven jaw and a lump at the bridge of his nose, opened the back door of the white cruiser with the blue lettering of the NYPD across the side.

Her gaze strayed to the ten-story building a half a block away. She counted the windows up three floors and across six to her apartment. She just wanted to go home and cocoon herself inside the four walls where everything was neat and orderly. Where there were no dead men, and no police detective who looked at her with accusation in his jade-colored eyes, making her feel like she were scum on the bottom of his shoe.

“Ma’am,” Officer Johnson prodded with a gesture to the interior of the car.

Swallowing back her panic, she told herself, Cars are safe. She’d be safe. Nothing bad was going to happen to her in the car. Only in a car she wasn’t in control. Walking, she could control. She could control her steps, her pace and her path.

She slid onto the seat in the back of the cruiser, the cracked leather creaking beneath her. The car smelled like stale coffee and greasy food, making her stomach riot with nausea. She shuddered, wishing she had her lemon-scented air freshener handy.

Officer Johnson slid into the driver’s seat and soon they were sloshing their way through the late evening traffic.

She stared straight ahead and briefly met the officer’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Did he, too, think she killed those men?

Quickly she averted her eyes to watch the neighborhood go by. She counted how many people she saw wearing brimmed hats, beanie caps and how many were braving the elements with bare heads. But she kept losing count as the frightening picture of the two dead men crept into her mind.

The image of her scissors embedded deep into the stomach of Mr. Drake would forever be imprinted on her brain.

She gagged, fighting to control her body’s need to lose the salad she’d had for dinner.

She replayed the whole evening over and over again, looking for some way to make the outcome different. But that was an impossibility.

The past could not be undone.

A lesson she’d learned long ago but still struggled to come to terms with. She so wanted to be able to turn the clock back, to force events to be redone so that her father wouldn’t have been murdered and her life shattered by grief and illness.

Stop it, she commanded herself. She wouldn’t go down that road. Not now. Now, she had to think about tonight and the two men who had died in the gallery.

She’d been in the workroom tending to the Wahlberer, a lovely landscape of the Mexican Riviera, with lots of color and bold strokes that were softened by featherlight shading that inspired, giving the onlooker a sense of place that only the masters usually accomplished.

But she’d met the artist Wahlberer, a talented young upstart out of Canada who’d flirted shamelessly and hadn’t really taken seriously his good fortune at having his work displayed at the Sinclair Gallery. His flippant attitude about his art and the gallery had grated on her nerves.

As she’d told Detective Wallace, she couldn’t understand the compulsion of either of the two dead men to buy the painting. The amount had been way above the value, and, yes, a boon for the gallery and the artist, but a poor investment in her mind.

Then when Mr. Vanderpool had shown up, saying he’d been told that he could have the painting, the yelling had started. Overwhelmed by the feral angriness of the two men, Megan had retreated in search of her boss.

Why hadn’t Sinclair been in his office? He always worked until eight. A shiver hit her flesh as possibilities of what could have happened ran rampant through her brain.

There had been another person in the gallery. But who? And why murder the two men?

A thought clamped on to her mind and wouldn’t let go. If she hadn’t gone in search of her boss, would she, too, have been killed?

“A 9 mm revolver,” Andy said, holding up the weapon with his pencil through the trigger guard. “Found in the Dumpster out back.”