Zach paced in the waiting room in the emergency room. No one was telling him anything and he thought he’d jump out of his skin. People hurried by, but not one of them stopped.
Grace had come in the ambulance with Dolores and now returned to him with two cups of coffee. He wasn’t sure the brew would help him, but he took it to have something in his hands. “What have you heard?”
Her long face told him everything.
“She’s alive and doing okay. She lost the baby. I’m sorry Zach.”
He sipped the black liquid his senses numbed except for the coffee searing down his throat. This changed a lot of things between him and Dolores. Guilt traipsed through him as he thought for the better. “What was it?”
“A girl. She was three months along,” Grace said settling into an orange plastic chair.
“Three months? Are you serious?”
She nodded. “Why is that significant?”
Zach shook his head. This was between him and Dolores. She’d lied once again. The baby wasn’t his. Couldn’t have been. They’d been together only a month ago. A month he’d been rethinking his life. All in vain because his suppositions were based on a lie.
The last lie she would ever tell him.
With his coffee drained, he threw his empty cup across the room. Grace stood then approached him with wide eyes. “Zach, she’ll be okay. She can still have more children.”
“Yeah?”
None of them would be his. His streak of bringing no children into the world would be intact.
He shrugged off her hand. “I’m going home. Call me with any updates.”
“You’re leaving?”
Turning he looked into her horrified face. “No reason to stay.”
He left Grace blinking at him.
Grace watched Zach stride out of the waiting room. Her disbelief paralyzed her. Just because Dolores had lost her baby was no reason to abandon her at this point. Anger catapulted her in his direction.
“Zach.”
He turned, his face flushed with rage. A muscle worked in his jaw.
“It isn’t her fault.”
“I didn’t say it was.” He put a hand on her arm. “Look, Grace you’re in the middle of something you don’t understand. Just let me go.”
She touched him back even though she knew it would cost her. “Explain it to me, then. Maybe it will help Dolores.”
Colors swirled and Grace’s hormones went on overdrive. She dropped her hand. The feeling died away.
“You mean that she’ll be out of danger as you seem to think she is in?” he asked.
His frown communicated his doubt.
“She is in trouble. She’s going to be killed.”
His face remained impassive and Grace wasn’t sure if her gamble would pay off. She wanted to shake him and though he’d given her a hard time, she didn’t really think he was this cold. He must care about Dolores some or he wouldn’t have slept with her.
“Killed? By whom? I’ll have him arrested.”
“Zach, I don’t know. Maybe you’re the guy. You seemed pretty pissed at her.” Most of her didn’t believe this.
He stiffened and rose to his full height. She was not going to be intimidated. “I wouldn’t lay a hand on Dolores or any other woman for that matter.”
He stalked away towards his car.
“I heard you have a temper.”
His footsteps paused, then kept going. He unlocked his vehicle.
“Yes, I do. That’s a known fact around here. So what?”
“Maybe she’s pushed you too far this time?” Grace said.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Humor me.”
He rolled his eyes. “I have somewhere to be. In bed. Alone and asleep.”
She grabbed the car door not wanting to touch him anymore. Her casual hand on his arm had drained her. “Just listen. Besides, you need to drive me home.”
He waved his hand at his passenger’s seat. “Get in. But I’ll only listen until we get to your apartment.”
“Fine.”
She scrambled around the car then, when she had her seatbelt hooked, she looked at him. “What if Dolores were killed tomorrow? Bullet through the head. Who would you suspect?”
Zach’s gaze traveled over her as he turned the key. “You probably.”
“But why?”
“Murder seems to follow you.”
She bit her lip. He wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t know about the murders she’d prevented. “What else?”
“That’s it I guess.”
“That wouldn’t hold up in court. I could have a lawyer spring me in an hour. Especially if I had an alibi. What’s my motive?”
“The usual. Money.”
“Does Dolores have some? I don’t even know.”
Stopped at a light he turned a surprised gaze at her. “You don’t know who she is?”
“No, I’m from Pennsy remember?”
“She’s a trust fund lady. Rolling in the dough. Or was.” The last part he said quietly.
The car started moving again. “Okay, scratch that since I didn’t know that.”
“But I didn’t know that you didn’t know,” he said.
“Say you find that out. What else would be my motive?”
“Don’t know after that. Depending on what happened could be a crime of passion.”
She turned in her seat to gaze at him. She could only see a bit of his face from the dash lights. His expression was unreadable. “I don’t have a temper. Or not much of one.”
“Then tell me, what is your motive?”
“I don’t have one so you can eliminate me as a suspect.”
“Then how do you know she’s going to get killed?”
Grace ran a hand over her pony tail. “Will you play this my way for a bit more, please?”
He waved his hand. “Go ahead. Who’s my next suspect?”
“You.”
“Me? And what’s my motive?”
“Dolores lied to you about something important. Maybe the father of this baby.”
She’d struck home. A pained expression crossed his face. She could see it in the dashboard lights. “Wouldn’t I be relieved?”
“This could be the last straw. She’s lied to you many times before this.”
“Yes, she has, but I’m not as mad as I could be. She’s made me madder and I haven’t killed her. I walked in on her and her lover. My partner at the time.”
“Ouch.”
“Yep.”
“And you didn’t kill her then? Okay scratch you off the list. Then the father of her baby.”
“If the baby is gone, he has no motive. If he wanted to get rid of her and the baby he could have done that.”
“Does she have any enemies?”
“Besides all of her ex-lovers.”
“Can you get me a list of them?” she asked.
“You are not snooping into innocent people’s lives because of some murder that didn’t happen.”
He pulled in the driveway then pulled his emergency brake.
“What about that guy who was here? Maybe it’s one of her ex-lovers stalking her.”
“Long shot. She hasn’t mentioned anything.”
“Would she to you?”
“Yes. Look. Lock your doors and don’t come out in a robe anymore. And stop thinking that Dolores is going to get killed.”
Grace remained silent as she closed his car door. He backed out and gave her one last glance before he drove away.
“But we only have two days to stop the murder.”
Zach tossed around in bed. When the clock read three he pulled himself out of it. Turning on his computer, he decided to surf a little for information on Grace Harmony.
He found clippings that said her father died under suspicious circumstances. “Hmm.”
But Grace was only seven when it happened.
She didn’t have any parking tickets or moving violations that he’d found when he’d done this earlier. What could be written in the newspaper could be more telling.
He found the stories about her last residence and what happened there. The mother of her alleged boyfriend was killed. Grace had been initially a suspect, but had an airtight alibi.
“So why does death follow her?”
Despite looking Zach found no other murders in her past. But he did find several articles about how she stopped a potential murder.
In four articles she was at the right place at the right time.
Sipping coffee Zach leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen. “Now, how could that happen?”
He shook his head remembering that she said she knew Dolores was in danger. That Dolores’ corpse had told her.
“No, you’re going loony from lack of sleep.”
He shut down the computer and headed to the shower. And of course he thought of the odd blonde that was now dominating his thoughts. His hard on was thinking of her, too.
She’d looked particularly delicious in the robe. The sweatpants and t-shirt she’d thrown on to take Dolores to the hospital didn’t exactly hide her figure.
“Stop. She’s a murder suspect.”
He leaned against the cold tile, letting the warm water rush over him. Being attracted to a suspect, even a minor one, had never happened to him before this.
“Why now?”
Maybe it was time for retirement, but what would he do? Take up golf. “Don’t have the temperament.”
His phone rang yanking him out of his reverie.
He took his tools from the trunk of the rental car. He’d thought about an SUV, but with a car he could hide things.
The abandoned building stood before him a sentinel from another age and time. No one would miss it. No one would care and he could watch the flames for a little while.
Located on the outskirts of Mill Hall, no one would notice the fire for a few hours. Maybe the whole building would go before anyone noticed.
He smiled at that thought.
He smiled at the check in his pocket.
He smiled again at the idea he could watch the flames this time.
With his tools in hand he set about doing the only job he’d ever loved.
Zach stood looking at the remains of an old warehouse outside of town. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Same as the apartment. A faulty stove. Started in the break room,” Ed Bauer said.
“Too much of a coincidence.”
“You’re telling me. That’s why you’re here. I’ve asked to bring you in officially. Got the okay.”
“Good. I hate slinking around,” said Zach.
But he wasn’t sure what he could do. He hadn’t heard about any new firebugs.
“At least on the surface, the buildings weren’t owned by the same person. Once we dig deeper we may find out differently.”
“I can do that.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Grace dialed Mark’s number with trepidation. She usually reached out to him, but some part of this situation made her feel odd. She didn’t like it and wished to shake it so she just called him.
A recording of his voice assaulted her ears.
“Mark, call me when you get in. Anytime.”
She dropped the phone on her rumpled sheets then plopped herself down on the bed. “Ugh.”
Now she understood why Dolores wasn’t pregnant when she’d worked on her. She expected her landlord would be in the hospital a day or two. “Which means, she gets killed the day she gets out of the hospital.”
The sense of urgency rushed through Grace. Her phone rang and she jumped out of her skin.
“Mark?”
“It’s me.”
“I know why Dolores wasn’t pregnant. She lost the baby tonight.”
“You weren’t on that call the first time?”
She leaned back onto her pillow. “No, I’ve been working days. Not swing shift.”
“Well, problem solved. How about that guy?”
“I don’t think he was the father of her baby.”
“So that means?”
“That this weird attraction I have for him is okay. Though I may piss off my landlord.”
“Not good, Gracie. Tread lightly. Don’t you still have to solve this murder to be?”
“Yes. And it’s only two days away. I’m not sure where to go next.”
“Right to the source. Ask this lady who the father of her baby was.”
“It’s not something you can bring up in polite conversation. ‘Nice weather, By the way, who knocked you up?’”
Mark laughed. “Lady you are not subtle.”
“That’s why you love me.”
Silence. A heavy one.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Mark? That sounded serious.”
“Gracie, I do love you.”
A cold hand squeezed her spine. “Like a friend?”
“No, Gracie. I really love you.”
“Oh, Mark. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
He snorted. “Guess you don’t feel that way about me.”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. It isn’t like you. Look I gotta go.”
The dial tone danced in her ear.
Mark had given her something she didn’t want to think about.