Cheryl Bradshaw - Black Diamond Death

It wasn’t long before my thoughts turned to Gabrielle. Three years had passed since her death, but to me it seemed like yesterday that we sat together at a café and reminisced about our lives. She remained as vivid to me as the day she died and sometimes I imagined I would open my front door to find her standing in the doorway ready to spend the day together again.

A car turned up the street. I slid down in my seat and watched it pass and then turn around and come back again. It slowed to a snail’s pace when it reached Parker’s house. I took out my binoculars and sized up the vehicle and its passenger, but it was too dark to see much. He gave the house a long, hard stare and then drove two houses down and parked.

A couple minutes went by and his car door opened. A roundish rolly polly man braced himself against the car and lifted his body out. The man was dressed all in black and wore a long trench coat and a beanie cap on his head. He walked up to Parker’s front door and looked over his shoulder. When the coast was clear he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small white envelope and then leaned into the doorway and shoved it into the door jam and then hustled back to his car. I took out my camera and zoomed in on his license plate and snapped a photo before he sped away.

My first instinct was to pilfer the envelope and look inside, but Parker could be home at any moment so if I wanted take a peek I needed to act fast. I dashed to the door and reached for the envelope which was left unsealed. Inside was a small index card with words scrawled across the front in bold black marker, LEAVE HER ALONE OR ELSE .

Another car turned at the bottom of the street and headed up the hill toward me. I pressed the card back into the envelope and crammed it into the door jam and then hunched over and started to run, but it was too late. Parker’s garage door opened and a car drove inside. I flattened my body on the ground and assumed an army crawl position and took cover behind the pine trees.

It only took a few minutes for my clothes to become saturated from the snow that melted beneath me, and my body cried out for warmth of any kind, but I couldn’t move––not yet. The garage door went down and a single light illuminated from a room inside the house followed by another, and I had a clear view of Parker who paced back and forth in front of an undraped window. He was engaged in a conversation on his cell phone and a smile was plastered across his face. Every now and then he stopped and laughed. I pulled my binoculars from my coat pocket to get a better view. Parker was much skinnier than I imagined, too skinny for my taste, and the way his hand flicked when he talked exposed an air of confidence, like someone who reeked of money.

A few minutes later he pressed a button on his cell phone and turned his back toward the window. I sprinted for my car and got half way there when I felt it. The cold, hard ice collided with my gluteus maximus and I slid bum first down the hill. Pain shot through me like an ice pick and set off explosive fireworks inside my body. In my haste to escape I had forgotten all about the condition of the road. The pain overwhelmed me, but I managed to stand and I limped my way back to the safety of my car.

I had my hands on the steering wheel and my key in the ignition when Parker’s front porch light turned on. Clad in a pair of striped flannels and a cotton shirt, he opened the door. The envelope dropped to the ground. He didn’t seem to notice it at first when he crouched down to retrieve the newspaper. But then his eyes fixated on it and he picked it up and turned it over in his hand. He threw the newspaper into the house and then reached inside the envelope and extracted the index card. Parker stared at it for a moment and then took a step backward into the house and flipped a switch and the entire front yard lit up. It wouldn’t take long for him to see the prints I made in the snow. In his bare feet, he took a few steps further and focused his attention on the footsteps that went up the driveway. He scratched his forehead and then turned back toward the house. Right before he reached the door he spotted my size seven footprints in the snow and followed them across the lawn. He didn’t make it far before his bare feet reacted to the cold and he turned back toward the house. I didn’t wait for him to return.

CHAPTER 15

The next day the afternoon sun struggled to shine through the clouds that served as a blockade against it. I sat on Parker’s street and waited. Parker’s car, a Porsche 911 that resembled the color of a canary, came as no surprise to me. All flash and flare and probably paid for in full with his daddy’s money. It was parked out front which meant it had already been out to play that day.

After some time my stomach indicated its discontent. I removed the lid off my bowl of brown rice and broccoli and reached for my water on the passenger seat and took a sip. It would have served as a healthy lunch would it not have been for the bag of chocolate chip cookies I had in my bag for dessert.

I glanced at my watch. Three hours had passed and there was no sign of Parker or the pudgy man in black. With my book read, my food gone, and Parker’s car still asleep in the driveway I took my leave. I didn’t have long before he would fly out again.

CHAPTER 16

Nick answered the door clad in a black apron and gave me a complete 360.

“What do you think, is it me?”

“Lose the clothes and keep the apron,” I said.

He grabbed me by the waist and lifted me inside.

“Not so tight,” I said.

“Why?”

I set Lord Berkeley down and undid my jeans. I shimmied them down a few inches and revealed the outcome of my haphazard attempt at fleeing the scene the night before.

Nick pointed a pair of tongs at me.

“You’ve got some explaining to do.”

The bruises had taken on a nice purplish-blue effect which reminded me a of New Zealand sunset––almost.

Lord Berkeley smelled the aroma of beef and made his way to the kitchen. He sat about a foot away from Nick’s feet and stared and waited.

Nick cocked his thumb and trigger finger and aimed straight at him.

“Pow!”

Lord Berkeley fell to the ground. He tilted his head to the side and closed his eyes and gave up the ghost. He remained still for a few dramatic moments until Nick gave him the okay signal and then sprung back to life to claim his treat, a pint-sized bone of beef.

“I should leave him with you more often,” I said.

“Out with it then,” Nick said. “I want to know about those bruises.”

“Last night I staked out Charlotte’s ex-boyfriends place.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t home at first so I waited,” I said. “And this guy pulls up with an envelope which he shoved into the door jam and then he left.”

“That’s strange.”

“I thought so too so I checked it out.”

He smiled.

“Couldn’t leave it alone, could you,” he said.

“Of course not. But Charlotte’s ex came home before I made it back to my car,” I said.

“Let me guess. He saw you on his property and beat you on the butt with his snow shovel.”

I laughed.

“I was making my getaway and that’s when this happened,” I said, and pointed at the bruises.

Nick added some spices to the steaks and flipped them over.

“You run into something?”

“I fell, on solid ice,” I said.

I raised both palms upward.

“This is what I get for all my hard work and effort,” I said.

“Ouch, you’re missing some skin on those hands. He see you?”

“I managed to get out in time.”

“And the envelope, I’m guessing you opened it.”

I nodded.

“There was a note inside,” I said.