Blind Pursuit

38

Annie was rearranging her display of gift baskets, not out of necessity but simply to take her mind off Erin, when the shop door jingled open at two-fifteen.

She turned, and a sudden smile dimpled her cheeks. “Jeez, Harold, look at you. You’re a mess.”

Gund paused in the doorway, gazing down at himself. His pants, badly rumpled, were soiled from knees to cuffs with blotches of tan desert dust.

He blinked as if embarrassed. “Yes… well… there was some damage to the chassis. I had to crawl under the van to check it out.”

“We’d better get you cleaned up or you’ll scare away the clientele.”

Briskly she rummaged in a drawer behind the counter until she found a large brush useful for cleaning clothes and smocks dirtied by potting soil.

“So what was the estimate?” she asked as she stepped to the middle of the room.

“Twelve hundred dollars.”

She let out a low whistle. “That’s a bundle.”

“My insurance will pay for it.”

She stooped and began brushing his pants with quick, vigorous strokes. “Was it the other driver’s fault?”

“Yeah. He cut me off.”

His answer was clipped, his posture stiff. Apparently he found her close contact uncomfortable. Funny for a man in his forties to be so shy.

Well, this would take only a minute. To distract him, she said, “If the other guy’s to blame, he should pay.”

“He hasn’t got any insurance.”

“Not even liability? Isn’t that illegal in Arizona?”

“He’s from out of state. A snowbird.”

Annie frowned. Snowbirds were part-year residents, fleeing harsh northern winters. If this negligent motorist could afford to maintain two homes, he ought to be able to reimburse Harold out of pocket.

She was about to say as much when she noticed the belt.

A western-style belt, black leather with a snakeskin overlay and a brass buckle. Harold wore it often, nearly every day, but she’d never gotten a close look at it before.

The overlay was studded with small turquoise beads.

One of the beads was missing.

Her hand opened reflexively, and she dropped the brush.

“Oops. Clumsy me.” The words were spoken by someone far away, someone who would remain composed in any crisis, someone like her sister. “Think I’m done, anyhow.”

Gund took a quick step back, as if anxious to distance himself from her.

She replaced the brush in the drawer. Her mind was frozen. When she opened her mouth, she had no idea what she was about to say.

“Gotta use the powder room for a sec. Hold down the fort, will you?”

He nodded. His face seemed slightly flushed, and his eyes wouldn’t meet hers.

Did he realize she’d been staring at the belt? No, that wasn’t it. He was… aroused. Bending near his waist, stroking his trousers, inadvertently she had turned him on.

The thought left her feeling unclean. In the small bathroom at the rear of the shop, she washed her hands unnecessarily.

Then she unclasped her purse and removed the creased square of tissue. Nesting within its folds was the turquoise from Erin’s apartment.

She held up the stone to the light. It might very well match those on Gund’s belt.

Eyes shut, she pictured Gund in Erin’s bathroom, leaning against the counter, reaching for the top shelf of the medicine cabinet, where the Tegretol was kept. His waist rubbing against the countertop’s Formica edge, the loose turquoise bead coming free and dropping, unnoticed, to the floor…

“No,” she whispered. “It can’t be him. Just can’t be.”

But what if it was?

She sat on the closed lid of the commode, staring blankly at the stone in her hand, which gazed back like an unwinking eye. She asked herself how much she really knew about Harold Gund.

She’d hired him six months ago, when he responded to a help-wanted sign in the shop window. She almost hadn’t taken him on; a flower shop seemed a peculiar place for a large, burly man, and a dead-end job at little better than minimum wage was hardly ideal for someone his age.

But Harold had explained his circumstances, quietly and sincerely. For twenty years he had worked as a custodian at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Last September his wife had died; she remembered him fumbling in his wallet for her photo and showing it to her. Miriam had been her name.

They’d had no children. All they’d shared was each other. Now she was gone, and as autumn yielded to winter, Harold had found that he couldn’t face another season of bleakness and cold.

He’d applied for a custodial position at the University of Arizona, then had come southwest with an assurance that the job was his. Through a bureaucratic bungle someone else had been hired before he’d arrived. Now he was stuck in an unfamiliar city with no employment.

The story was almost too affecting to be true. But she hadn’t doubted him. He seemed incapable of duplicity, with his round, smooth face, his sad blue eyes, his large belly overspilling his belt. Though he was years older than she, he conveyed a pleasantly boyish quality, and an instant sense of familiarity, as if he were an amalgam of two old-time movie actors she liked-the face of Ernest Borgnine and the voice of Aldo Ray.

His University of Wisconsin reference had checked out. And his van, although old, was serviceable; it would be useful when he made local deliveries. Annie, feeling a stab of sympathy, had taken a chance on him. After all, she’d reasoned, he couldn’t be worse than her previous assistant, a frizzy-haired nineteen-year-old named Beth whose chief talent had been devising excuses for showing up late and leaving early.

As it turned out, Harold had proved to be punctilious and diligent, the most reliable employee she could have asked for.

But although she’d worked at his side six days a week for half a year, she actually did not know him at all. He was like one of those good neighbors she occasionally read about, the person described by everyone as quiet and considerate and well mannered, until the day a cache of dismembered bodies was discovered in the crawl space under his house.

Bodies. She shivered.

Then she got hold of herself. As usual, she was becoming all emotional, letting her imagination run rampant, jumping to wild conclusions. She had nothing to go on except a turquoise bead, and such gems were commonplace in Arizona.

Besides, the whole idea was crazy. To suspect Harold-sweet Harold who made lovely bouquets of long-stem roses and worked overtime without pay and consoled her over Erin’s disappearance-to suspect him as a kidnapper, a psycho…

Then she remembered how her porch light had been activated in the early hours of the night before last. The footsteps she’d heard, the chortling rumble of an engine.

Harold’s van sounded like that.

Had he deposited the letter? Had it been his footsteps on gravel, his van pulling away?

No way. Impossible.

Still, she had to be sure.

He had seemed nervous about taking a long lunch break today. And something about that accident just didn’t add up. And when she mentioned the dirt on his pants, he’d seemed flustered, hadn’t he? Almost… guilty?

She wondered if he had really taken the van for an estimate, or if he had gone someplace else.

There ought to be a way to find out. Another minute of hectic, feverish thought guided her to a plan.

Before leaving the bathroom, she flushed the toilet and ran the faucet again, for realism.

In the front of the shop, Harold was on a stepladder, hanging a basket of green camellia on a ceiling hook to replace an identical item sold earlier today.

“Looks good,” Annie said, studying the plant from below. “Maybe spread the leaves a little more on this side.”

He did so.

“Perfect. Which auto-body shop gave you the estimate, by the way?”

“Metzger’s, at Grant and Campbell.” He glanced down at her, and she wondered if it was only her imagination that caught a glint of suspicion in his eyes. “Why?”

“Just curious. I know a good place if you need a second opinion.” A pause, then casually: “You know, I never did get lunch. Think I’ll run next door and grab a sandwich.”

Gund made some kind of acknowledgment, which she barely heard, and then she was out the door, breathing hard. The effort of maintaining a neutral facade had exhausted her.

On her way to the delicatessen, she circled around to the rear of Gund’s van and memorized the license number. The tires, she noticed, were streaked with desert dust.

At the back of the deli, there was a pay phone. A battered copy of the Yellow Pages was set on a shelf below. She looked up Metzger’s, dropped a quarter in the slot, and dialed.

As the phone rang on the other end of the line, she drew a deep, soothing breath and tried to calm her frantic heart.

“Metzger’s,” a female voice answered.

“Good afternoon.” She kept her tone cool and professional. “This is Barbara Allen, calling from Allstate Insurance. I’d like to confirm an estimate for one of our clients, Harold Gund, policy number seven-six-two-three-eight.” The five digits came out of nowhere; insurance people always gave the policy number, and she didn’t expect the receptionist to check. “The vehicle in question is a Chevrolet Astro van, license plate…” She recited the memorized number.

“Hold, please.”

Silence. Annie clutched the hard plastic shell of the handset and tasted a sour flavor at the back of her mouth.

Click, and the receptionist was back. “Sorry, but we have no record of any estimate on that vehicle.”

Her heart slammed into overdrive. “It was my understanding”-she fought to betray no reaction other than mild consternation-“that our insured party, Mr. Gund, took his van to Metzger’s for inspection earlier this afternoon. He’s informed us that Metzger’s provided an estimate of twelve hundred dollars.”

“Well, we have no record of that.”

“I see. There must be some mix-up, then. Thank you.”

Even after she had replaced the handset on the plungers, Annie kept her hand on it, as if afraid to let go.

No record.

He hadn’t gone to Metzger’s.

Hadn’t gotten an estimate.

Then what had he been doing? And where?

Briefly she considered calling Walker. No, waste of time; she had nothing, really. Nothing specific, nothing tangible.

For the time being, she was on her own.

Okay, then.

Erin had sent an SOS. A distress signal. A cry for help.

Annie would do her best to answer it.

Tonight.