That woman's dangerous, I thought, not smiling as I stared her in the eye. She maneuvered around my stopped car with another apologetic wave.
That's when it hit me like a plank to the skull.
She's the one in the picture at the storage unit. The person I thought might be Verna Mae's friend or sister. The one I'd seen before someone burned the place to the ground.
Okay. I could go find out about B.J. or I could talk to her. I liked the idea of talking to her a whole lot better, considering B.J. had muscles and maybe owned a gun that killed a few people.
My turn to play follow the leader, and she was easy to follow—seemingly as clueless to my pursuit of her as she was to minor details like double yellow lines.
We were heading toward the NASA area, but turned off at Pearwood, a small town with acreage lots where home owners could walk out the front door and feed their horses. A woman had been abducted and murdered in these parts about five years ago. I shivered a little, remembering all the publicity, the face of her devastated husband, who, in the end, turned out to be the one who killed her.
This was ranchland with dirt roads, plenty of fields and lots of trees. An easy place to hide a body. Better check in with Jeff, I decided, keeping a reasonable distance from the van on the narrow two-lane road.
But it was DeShay who took my call. "Jeff's got his hands dirty right now. You don't want the details. Can I give him a message?"
"Tell him I'm in Pearwood. I'm following a woman who works for the church. I plan to ask her a few questions when she stops, presumably at her home."
I heard DeShay relay this information and then I heard Jeff in the background say, "Shit."
"Does that response adequately convey his feelings?" DeShay said.
"Tell him it's just some ditsy lady," I said. "I want to ask her about—wait. She's pulling into a driveway. We turned off FM 2005 onto Bluebonnet Road. The house is about a half mile on the right. Tell him I have now checked in with the courtesy call he always seems to want when I'm out late on a case."
"I'll relay the first part, but not the last. He's holding one big-ass bloody knife right now. You take care out there, Abby." DeShay disconnected.
I folded my phone shut, slowed to a near crawl and waited for the van lights in the driveway up ahead to go out. I then sped up and a few seconds later pulled into the driveway. I started to get out, but another car came barreling down the road toward the house. I got back into the Camry and locked my doors, realizing I'd been concentrating so hard on tailing the van, I again hadn't paid much attention to anyone following me. Stupid idiot. When the car sped on down the road into the blackness beyond without even slowing down, I breathed a sigh of relief.
This little scare, however, reminded me to take my .38 from the glove compartment. I was in a strange place about to meet with someone who probably wouldn't be too happy to know I'd followed her home.
The house was a one-story log cabin—though not really a cabin. It was big, at least a couple thousand square feet. Could a nurse's aide afford a place like this? Then it dawned on me that this might be a shutin parishioner's home. Awkward to knock on the door and say, "Hi. I'm a PI who's been hanging around the church asking annoying questions. You want to talk to me?"
The house had a porch along the front with a wheelchair ramp, so I figured I was right, this wasn't Olive's house. Now what?
Light flowed from a side window, illuminating a small garden. No drapes pulled yet. Maybe I could take a peek inside before I knocked on the door.
I slipped from behind the wheel and eased my door shut so as not to alert anyone in the house. Gun at my side, I quietly made my way toward the garden. The little plot was bordered by stones and I had to step over them. My feet sank into newly laid pinebark mulch and the smell wafted up around me. I nearly sneezed but held it in. Flattening against the logs, I looked in the window.
It was a living room, but very open, sparsely furnished, with wood floors. I moved closer to get a better look after I spotted Olive talking to a woman standing with the aid of a walker—one of those kind with a basket and wheels. The woman was tall and thin, with dishwater blond hair drawn back in a ponytail. She was looking down. I spied a wheelchair in a corner.
Olive was visiting a handicapped parishioner after all. Maybe I should wait until—
But then Olive walked away, out of my sight, and that's when the woman with the walker looked straight at the window.
I gasped. Not a quiet gasp, either.
24
Still blinking in disbelief, I heard a sound behind me—heard too late. Someone grabbed my wrist and twisted the gun from my hand. It fell with a thud near my right foot.
I felt steel against my temple.
"Very bad move coming here," the man whispered. I recognized the voice from the storage unit. "You say one word and you're dead."
I nodded my agreement, my thoughts leaving the woman I'd just recognized as I shifted into survival mode. I wasn't sure I'd be spared again, but this guy didn't want the women in the house to hear, so I at least had a few minutes left. If he was going to kill me, it wouldn't happen near the house.
This time he snapped regular cuffs on my wrists and said, "Where are your car keys?"
"In the ignition," I said.
"Perfect. Now move."
But he didn't shove or push, just laid a hand on my shoulder to steer me around the garden. When I stumbled once on the stones, he caught me before I fell. I looked at the man.
B.J.
He said, "Keep going," his hand resting on my back as we moved forward into the woods. We weren't going to my car as I expected.
His touch on my back reminded me of the caress when he'd left me in that storage unit, the way he stared at me in the church. His obvious attraction made me sick right now, but it had served me well to this point and I'd use it if I had to.
I thought about running—for about a tenth of a second. Unfortunately for me, he obviously knew this place. I didn't. Added to that, my heart was thumping and I was wearing bracelets. Escape would be about as easy as digging a ditch in the ocean.
I risked a glance back at the house after intentionally tripping to get that look.
B.J. said, "You're a klutz, just like her."
Her? Sara Rankin? The woman with the walker? The woman I'd recognized?
"Yeah, that's me. Klutzy kidnap victim," I said as he helped me up.
"Real funny," he mumbled.
Would Sara help me? Could she help me? Not a promising prospect.
Turned out, the road leading to the cabin looped around after it passed the house. A short trek through the woods on a well-worn path and we reached B.J.'s car parked on a curve. This was the car that had sped by after I came along behind the van. Oh, yeah. I'd been followed again. Jeez. I could probably screw up a two-car funeral.
Funeral. Don't think about that, Abby.
He'd chosen black for his newest Lexus—and it was brand-new, paper still on the floorboards and thin plastic covering the leather seats. After he'd cuffed me to the seat belt and activated the child safety locks, he took out his cell phone.
After a few seconds he said, "Olive? There's a car in your driveway. The keys are in the ignition. You need to put that car in the garage. Now."
A short pause, then he said, "Because Pastor Rankin would—"
Olive interrupted, speaking loudly—though I couldn't catch the words, just her frantic tone.
"Olive, shut up. Give her some pills or one of those shots. Anything. Then hide that car."