BEVERLY BARTON - Time of Death

“Let us know,” Derek added.

Maleah shot him an are-you-still-here? glare and then turned back to Lorie. “You look beat. Why don’t you go on up to bed?”

“I don’t want to leave you with the dirty dishes and pots and pans.”

“Go on,” Derek told her. “I’ll help Perdue clean up the kitchen.”

Maleah groaned, making her displeasure known to anyone within earshot.

Charles Wong roused slowly, at first uncertain what had awakened him. And then the doorbell rang again and again, loud enough to be heard over the racket coming from the television. Someone was at his front door. But who the hell could it be? He glanced around the room and realized that he had fallen asleep in the living room, on the sofa, while watching the late-night newscast. With Lily and the girls gone on the overnight Brownies camping trip, he had snacked for supper, then fixed himself a bowl of popcorn and settled in to watch TV. He missed his wife and stepdaughters. Being with them reminded him of how lucky he was and that working at being a better human every day had its rewards.

The doorbell kept ringing.

“All right, I’m coming,” he called loudly. “Be right there.”

Barefoot and wearing a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants and a T-shirt, he got up, glanced at the time on the DVD player—11:52—and padded across the room. When he reached the front door, he paused before opening it.

“Yeah, who’s there?” he asked.

“Hey, man, it’s me. Let me in. I got a six-pack and some of the good stuff.”

Charlie didn’t recognize the man’s voice. He probably had the wrong house. Charlie unlocked the door and, leaving the chain latch on, eased the door open a couple of inches.

“Come on, man, let me in. I need to pee real bad.”

The guy didn’t look familiar. Black hair, black mustache, dressed in cheap leather and sporting a sizable tattoo on his neck, he looked like some of the guys Charlie had known in his past.

“Look, buddy, I think you’ve got the wrong house.”

“You’re Charles Wong, right? You’re married to my cousin Lily, right? Didn’t she tell you I was in town and she offered to put me up a couple of nights?”

Lily’s cousin? “No, she didn’t mention you.”

“Hey, sorry about that. I guess she forgot. Probably too busy with plans for that overnight camping trip with the girls’ Brownie troop.”

Charlie breathed a bit easier. Apparently his midnight visitor really was Lily’s cousin. Otherwise, how would he know about the Brownie troop’s camping trip?

Charlie removed the safety latch and opened the front door. “Come on in. I’m afraid you’ll have to bunk on the sofa. We don’t have a guest bedroom.”

“No problem. I’m grateful you’ll put me up a couple of nights while I’m in town.” He entered the living room and closed the door behind him.

Charlie noticed the small tote bag in his hand. “You’re traveling light, aren’t you?”

“Just a change of underwear and my shaving kit.” He set the bag on the floor.

Charlie turned around and walked back toward the sofa. When he heard an odd noise behind him, he glanced over his shoulder. His eyes widened in shock when he saw the weird mask the man now wore. Charlie’s mind whirled with questions, but suddenly he recognized the mask at the same time he noticed the gun in his night visitor’s hand.

“What the hell?” Charlie got out before the guy aimed and fired.

The bullet hit Charlie’s left leg, just below the knee.

He stared at his shooter with total disbelief as he went down to the floor, his hands gripping his bleeding leg.

“Who are you? What’s going on?”

The man fired the pistol a second time, the bullet piercing Charlie’s shoulder. This man was going to kill him. He had opened the door and let some crazy person into his home. Thank God Lily and the girls weren’t here.

“Don’t do this,” Charlie said when the man hovered over him.

He aimed the gun directly at Charlie’s head and said, “Dead by midnight.”

Then he fired the fatal shot.

Maleah and Derek had agreed to split the day guarding Lorie, even though Derek wasn’t officially a Powell agent. At this point, neither of them believed Lorie was in imminent danger since both of the other known victims had been killed at night, probably sometime around midnight. Derek had driven to Treasures with Lorie that morning and promised to stay in the background as much as possible so as not to arouse her customers’ curiosity.

“Gossip is one of the favorite pastimes in small towns,” Lorie had told them. “And since the first day I returned to Dunmore, I’ve headed the list of favorite gossip topics. I don’t want to give the busybodies, especially the WCM ladies, anything to speculate about. And tongues are bound to wag when they see you hanging around the shop all morning.”

Even though it wasn’t quite one o’clock and she wasn’t due to relieve Derek until two, Maleah scooped up her shoulder holster, wallet, Powell ID badge, and car keys from the top of the dresser in her bedroom. Plans had changed.

After racing down the back staircase, she set the alarm, exited through the back door, and locked it behind her. Once settled into her GMC Yukon Denali and headed downtown to Main Street, she slipped on the Bluetooth earpiece and hit Mike Birkett’s number. He answered on the fourth ring.

“Maleah?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“What’s up? Is Lorie all right?”

“Lorie’s fine and I want to keep her that way.”

“Something’s happened.”

“Oh, yeah, you could say that.” She kept her gaze glued to the view through the windshield. Too many wrecks occurred when people were distracted by talking on their cell phones. She didn’t want to become another statistic. “I just got off the phone with Sanders, Griff Powell’s number-two man. The agency has been keeping close tabs on any reports of foul play involving the list of people involved with making the one and only adult film Lorie was in. It seems that another cast member has been murdered.”

“Does Lorie know?”

“I’m on my way to Treasures as we speak to give her the bad news. Sanders received the information about fifteen minutes ago and contacted me immediately. A guy by the name of Charles Wong was found shot several times, the fatal bullet right to the head. Sanders personally called the police chief in Blythe, Arizona, the little border town where Wong lived, and managed to get some info that wasn’t released to the press. It seems that Wong had been stripped naked and was wearing a mask.”

“Son of a bitch. It has to be the same perp. It’s the same MO.”

“I agree. That makes three victims that we know of, three actors who appeared in Midnight Masquerade, one killed each month since the first of the year. Sanders is going to contact Nicole Powell’s old friend, Special Agent Josh Freidman, at the Bureau and share what info we have. We seem to definitely have a serial killer on our hands and we’re going to need all the help we can get to find and stop him before he kills again.”

“Before he gets to Lorie,” Mike said.

“Yeah, before he gets to Lorie.”

“Is Derek with you?” Mike asked.

“He’s at Treasures with Lorie.”

“I’ll meet y’all there. See you in about ten minutes.”

Shontee Thomas twirled around and around on the podium, the full skirt of the satin bridal gown she wore swishing against the tulle netting beneath. She had never been this happy in her entire thirty years on earth. At long last, everything was coming together in the best way possible. In exactly two months, she would marry the most wonderful man in the whole world, Anthony Trice Johnson. They had met a year ago, introduced by mutual friends at the Atlanta nightclub Tony owned. Their relationship had started off on the fast track from the first date, which had ended at Tony’s apartment, in his bedroom, in his bed. At the time, she had been working as a waitress six days a week at a local restaurant and taking night classes to become a masseuse. A real ladies’ and gentlemen’s spa masseuse, not a hooker using the term “masseuse” as a cover for her real occupation.