By the time he did, he was breathing hard.
And I was ready for him.
“If Lamar was framed for Vera Blaine’s murder, who do you think did it?” I asked.
He lit another cigarette. He blew out another stream of smoke. “You think I had something to do with it.”
“I’m talking to everyone I can. You’re one of the people who might have done it.”
“You’re right. I might have.” Reno Bob hoisted the carryall into his arms, his expression as serene as that painting of the tree and those ducks on the pond. “But if that’s true, then you got a hell of a lot of nerve coming here and talking to me.” He turned toward the parking lot. “You could be putting yourself in a lot of danger.”
Was that a nice, friendly warning?
Or a threat?
Since it was the last thing Reno Bob said to me before he got in his car and drove away, I thought about it all the way home. Even then, I still wasn’t certain, not when I got out of the car, slung my purse over my shoulder, and headed for my apartment.
I was still thinking about it when a man jumped out of the alley behind my building, grabbed me, and put a knife to my throat.
12
“You’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, Y bitch.”
The man’s words scraped against my ear. The blade of his knife nicked my skin. I felt a wet, warm drop on my neck, and I didn’t have to think twice to know what it was.
Blood.
My blood.
I would have gulped, but I was afraid if I did, my throat would end up even closer to that knife blade.
One of my attacker’s arms was around me, and he yanked me back so fast, my head snapped. “Stay out of it,” he said.
And what did I do? Well, that’s the weird thing, and I guess it means I’ve been in the private investigation business a little too long. Instead of being scared out of my mind like any normal person would be, I was busy trying to think if I’d ever heard his voice before.
I couldn’t place it, and a second after I realized it, I also knew it didn’t matter.
What did matter, see, was me getting out of this little predicament alive.
As far as I could tell, the only way to do that was to take matters into my own hands.
I am not athletic, but remember, I had once taken years of dance lessons. I liked the costumes and, of course, the spotlight, but I could never keep the routines straight, and I hated to practice. Poor Mademoiselle Adrienne, my dance instructor, had despaired of me. Yet somehow, in this the most unlikely of moments, it all came rushing back. In one quick movement (more lurch than en avant), I shot forward just enough to give myself a little momentum, then stepped back with that little ballon bounce Mademoiselle always wanted from me and never got, and slammed my foot against my attacker’s instep. He was caught off guard just long enough to loosen his hold, and when he did, I darted forward, spun around with as much pizzazz as if I was executing an allegro, slipped my purse from my shoulder, and swung. Hard.
Thank goodness for that box we’d snarfed out of the Team One picnic basket. It was nice and hard, and the one side that wasn’t rotted away had a pointy corner. The guy was wearing a ski mask so there was no way I could see his face. I could, however, watch his eyes spin when I hit him in the side of the head.
He grunted a curse, and I took off like a ballerina bat out of hell. I wasn’t dumb enough to stop and try to unlock the door into my apartment building. Instead, I raced straight ahead to the corner where my street intersected with Mayfield Road, the heart of Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood. It was a beautiful Thursday evening in the middle of the summer, and I knew the restaurants and bars up and down the street would be busy with tourists and diners. There was safety in numbers, and feeling safer in an area where bistro tables lined the sidewalks and people all around me chatted and sipped wine, I stopped long enough to look over my shoulder.
There was no sign of the man with the knife.
That was the coda of my little performance.
Mademoiselle Adrienne would have been proud.
The next morning I had a meeting with Ella at Garden View to discuss the art show set up, and I got there early. I sat at my desk, thinking about what I’d been thinking about all night: Who had I offended? I pulled out a yellow legal pad and wrote down my theories while I fingered the tiny round bandage I’d stuck on my neck to hide the nick from the attacker’s knife. Between him and Sammi, my neck looked like I worked the women’s wrestling circuit.
Did Bad Dog Raphael send the guy with the knife?
I wrote that at the top of page one.
Or was it Reno Bob, feeling a little nervous thanks to all the questions I’d asked?
That was the heading I scribbled on page two.
Did the attack outside my apartment have something to do with the box and the coin I took out of my purse the minute I got home and hid under my bed?
I wrote that on page three, then crossed out the line about where the box was hidden, just in case somebody who might be after the coin got a look at my legal pad.
Maybe Team One has a hit man on staff and the nerve to send him to snuff me out because we raided their precious picnic baskets?
Maybe not.
I tore page four from the pad, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it in the wastebasket. At the same time, I stifled a yarn.
In spite of the heroic (not to mention artistic) stand I’d taken against that knife-wielding creep, I’d spent most of the night too wired to sleep and feeling like a victim. Believe me, I didn’t like it one bit. Helpless and frightened does not look good on me. But facts are facts, and the fact is, once I was safely home, I checked three times to make sure my door was locked. I pushed my couch up against it so nobody could kick it down and get to me. I slept with one eye open. And the lights on. And the blinds shut. And the curtains closed.
The good news is that, apparently, even feeling like a victim has its upside. It made me think like a victim, and thinking like a victim, I just naturally thought about Vera Blaine.
What if Vera’s death didn’t have anything to do with Jefferson Lamar?
I wrote this at the top of a new page.
What if Lamar was just the unlucky sucker who got blamed? What if no one wanted to frame him? What if…
I chewed on the end of my pen, thinking about the right way to word my question so that it would stay clear in my head.
What if someone really just wanted Vera Blaine to die?
This was not a new thought. It had first occurred to me during the long, restless night. When I finally gave up even trying to fall asleep, I went into my kitchen, grabbed a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia (it was Quinn’s favorite, but since it didn’t look like he was going to be around to eat it any time soon, I figured I might as well), and went through the police file about Vera’s death one more time.
This time, I read her obituary carefully and found out she was the daughter of George and Natalie Blaine, that she didn’t have any siblings, that she had once been a Girl Scout, and-most important-that she was buried right there at Garden View.
Which explains why I was at the cemetery a full hour and a half before I was supposed to meet with Ella.
I flicked on my computer and looked up Vera’s burial information, found the section and grave number, printed it out so I wouldn’t forget, and headed outside. That early on a Friday morning, there weren’t any visitors around, but I heard the hum of the motors as the grounds crew cut the grass.