11th hour

Chapter 37

It was after eleven when I got home. I was hoping for some quiet time with a half-pint of ice cream, just me and Martha and Baby made three.

I put my key in the lock, but the front door was open. I went inside, saw lights on in the living room. The TV was on too. Heyyy. Joe wasn’t supposed to be home for a day or two.

How great was this?

“Joe?” I called out.

Martha galloped into the foyer, and a person in loose clothing came up behind my dog. The figure was backlit, in silhouette, and was definitely not my husband. I started and had my hand on my gun before it clicked.

The woman with the long red hair and cute glasses was Karen Triebel, Martha’s “nanny,” and as far as I knew, she wasn’t even a little bit dangerous. Still, my heart was pounding as if I’d walked in on an armed robbery in progress.

My fear reaction was quickly followed by mortification.

I’d forgotten to call Karen to say I was going to be late. I apologized now, thanked her for hanging in.

“We watched a movie,” Karen said, then added to Martha, “Didn’t we, big girl? And I baked a potato,” she said to me. “And finished off the ice cream. I hope that’s okay.”

“Sure,” I said. “Of course. I’m sorry that I lost track of the time.”

“Martha has a real crush on Tom Cruise,” she said.

I walked Karen out to her car, stood on the sidewalk until I couldn’t see her taillights anymore, then I went back upstairs to my dog.

The phone was ringing when I got inside.

I looked at the caller ID and saw it was my sister, Catherine, who lives a little way down the coast in Half Moon Bay.

I’m four years older than Cat; we’ve both been divorced, and she has two girls. She’s been coaching me on the care of my child onboard, name to be determined, sex unknown to me and Joe.

I grabbed the receiver off the hook, took Joe’s big chair in the living room, and put my hand on my tummy; Martha circled, then collapsed onto my feet.

“Linds, why don’t you call me back? I get worried.”

“I just walked in,” I told her.

“Joe is still out of town?”

“He’ll be back tomorrow, I think.”

“You sound like the walking dead.”

“Thank you. That’s how I feel, if the walking dead feel anything.”

“Yeah, well, pregnancy does that. It also makes you feel like you’ve lost about fifty IQ points, as I recall.”

I laughed, and my sister prodded me to tell her about my two active cases. I held a few things back, but I gave her the basic rundown on the heads found at the Ellsworth compound. And I told Cat about the triple homicide that had kept me working late tonight, first at the scene, then at the Hall, then at the morgue, and finally at the forensics lab until a half hour ago.

“The guy is some kinda vigilante,” I told Cat. “I guess he doesn’t trust the cops will bring in the bad guys so he figures he’s the man to do the job.”

“Lindsay. You’re saying he’s armed and dangerous. And you’re trying to bring him down. Why won’t he go after you?”

“I’ll be fine, Cat, really.”

“Bull. You can’t know that.”

Cat was now beginning her lectures on the value of rest, on how I could burn out, on how my workload wasn’t good for the baby. I couldn’t argue with her. I just had to take it.

Then a call-waiting signal beeped in my ear. I checked the caller ID, and if I hadn’t been trying to get away from my sister, I never would have taken the call from Jason Blayney.

I told Cat I had an urgent call, said good-bye, and then put on a frosty voice for the crime reporter from the San Francisco Post.