Patterson, James - Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Martha pushed her wet nose at my hand until I swung my feet out of bed. I pulled on some of Cat’s clothes—a faded pair of jeans and a coral-colored blouse with a deep ruffled neckline. Not my color and definitely not my style.

I ran a comb through my hair, brushed my teeth, and stepped out into the living room.

The CSU techs were still digging bullets out of the walls, so I made coffee and toast for everyone and asked pointed questions that yielded the basic facts.

Twelve 9mm shots had been fired, evenly distributed through the living room and spare bedroom, one through the kids’ small, high window. The bullets and spent cases had been bagged and tagged, the holes had been photographed, and the forensic team was wrapping up. In an hour, the whole kit and caboodle would be sent to the lab.

“You doing okay, Lieutenant?” asked one of the techs, a tall thirty-ish guy with big hazel eyes and a toothy smile.

I looked around at the destruction, the glass and plaster dust over everything.

“No. I’m not. This makes me sick,” I said. “I’ve got to sweep up, get the windows fixed, do something about this . . . this mess.”

“I’m Artie, by the way,” the tech said, stretching out his hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking it.

“My uncle Chris has a Disaster Master franchise. You want me to call him? He can get this place cleaned up, like, pronto. I mean, you’ll go to the head of the line, Lieutenant. You’re one of us.”

I thanked Artie and took him up on his offer. Then I grabbed my handbag and took Martha out the back way. I fed Miss Piggy, then circled around to the patrol car in the driveway and ducked my head to window level.

“Noonan, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Still on duty?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be here for a while. The whole squad is watching out for you, Lieutenant. The chief and all of us. This really stinks.”

“I appreciate the concern.”

And I did. Harsh daylight only made the shooting more real. Someone had driven down this sweet suburban street, raking Cat’s house with automatic gunfire.

I was unnerved, and until I got my composure back, I had to get away from here. I jingled my car keys so that Martha flattened her ears and nearly wagged her tail off.

“We need groceries,” I said to her. “What do you say we take the Bonneville on a shakedown cruise?”

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 114

MARTHA JUMPED ONTO THE bench-style front seat of the “big gold boat.” I strapped in and turned the key. The engine caught on the second try, and I pointed the Bonneville’s aristocratic nose toward town.

I was going to the gourmet grocer on Main Street, but as I made my way along the crosshatched streets of Cat’s neighborhood, I became gradually aware of a blue Taurus sedan in my rearview mirror. It seemed to be deliberately lagging behind me but keeping up all the same.

That creepy feeling of being watched tickled my spine again.

Was I being tailed?

Or was I in such a state I just kept seeing myself as a pop-up figure in a shooting gallery?

I took Magnolia across the highway and onto Main, where I whizzed past all the little shops: the Music Hut, the Moon News, the Feed and Fuel store. I wanted to convince myself that I was just being skittish, but damn—if I lost that Taurus for a block or two, it was behind me at the next turn.

“Hang on tight. We’re going for a ride,” I said to Martha, who was smiling broadly into the wind.

Toward the end of Main, I hooked a right onto Route 92, Half Moon Bay’s umbilical cord to the rest of California.

Traffic was going fast on this winding two-laner, and I merged into a bumper-to-bumper chain of cars going fifty in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour zone. The double yellow line went the distance—a full five miles of no-passing lane as 92 crossed the reservoir and linked up with the freeway.

I drove on, dimly aware of the hillside of scrubby trees and chaparral on my left and the twenty-foot drop a few feet from the right side of my car. Three cars behind, the blue sedan kept me in sight.

I wasn’t crazy. I had a tail.

Was it a scare tactic?

Or was the shooter inside that car, waiting for an opportunity for a clear hit?

The end of 92 intersected with Skyline, and at the near right-hand corner was a rest stop with five picnic tables and a gravel parking lot.

I didn’t signal for a turn, just hauled right on my steering wheel. I wanted to get off the road, let that Taurus pass me so that I could see his face, get his plate number. Get out of his sights.

But instead of gripping the road as my Explorer would have done, the Bonneville fishtailed across the gravel, sending me back out onto 92, across the double yellow line and into the stream of oncoming traffic.

The Taurus must have passed me, but I never saw it.

I was hanging on to the wheel of my spinning car when the lights on the dashboard freaked out.

My power steering and brakes were gone, the alternator was dead, the engine was heating up, and I was skidding around in the middle of the roadway.

I pumped the brakes, and a black pickup truck swerved to avoid creaming me broadside. The driver leaned on his horn and yelled obscenities out his window, but I was so glad he’d missed me, I wanted to kiss him.

By the time I skidded to a stop on the roadside, a cloud of dust billowed around me and I couldn’t see beyond the windshield.

I got out of the Bonneville and leaned against it. My legs were rubbery and my hands shaking.

For now, the chase was over.

But I knew it wasn’t really over.

Someone had me in his crosshairs, and I had no idea who it was or why.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 115

I PHONED THE MAN in the Moon Garage on my cell phone and got Keith’s answering machine.

“Keith, I’m in a little jam. It’s Lindsay. Please pick up.”

When Keith answered, I gave him my coordinates. Twenty minutes felt like an hour before he pulled up in his jouncing tow truck. He hooked up the Bonneville for her ignominious return home, and I climbed up into the passenger side of the cab.

“It’s a luxury car, Lindsay,” Keith chastised me. “You’re not supposed to do loop-de-loops with this thing. It’s more than twenty years old, for God’s sake.”

“I know, I know.”

Long silence.

“Nice blouse.”

“Thank you.”

“No, really,” he said, making me laugh. “You should wear more stuff like that.”

Back at the garage, Keith flipped open the Bonneville’s hood.

“Ha. Your fan belt snapped,” he said.

“Ha. I know that.”

“Did you know that in a pinch you could fix this with a length of panty hose?”

“Yes, I did. But, strange as it may seem, I didn’t have any tights in my roadside emergency kit.”

“I have an idea. Why don’t I buy this car back from you? Give you a hundred bucks more than you paid me.”

“I’ll think about it. No.”

Keith laughed and said he’d drive me home and I had to accept his offer. Since he was going to find out anyway, I told Keith what I hadn’t told my girlfriends, hadn’t even told Joe yet.

I told him about the gunfire the night before.

“And now you think someone’s following you? Why don’t you go home, Lindsay? Seriously.”

“Because I can’t turn this murder case loose. Not now. Especially since someone threw a dozen rounds at my sister’s house.”

Keith gave me a sorry look, tugged on the bill of his Giants cap, handily negotiated the turns in the road.

“Anyone ever call you stubborn?”

“Sure. It’s considered a good trait in a cop.”