C oming around the front of the house, I yelled for Jed to stop. He was halfway across the front lawn, and he glanced at me over his shoulder, his face wild with fear.
“Fucking cop!” he screamed.
LeAnn Grimes stood just around the corner, holding a broom. Moments later, my legs were tripped out from beneath me, and I was lying on my back in the grass, staring at a formation of clouds. Buster began barking, and I heard fabric being torn.
“Get away from me!” LeAnn screamed.
I lifted my head. Buster had grabbed the hem of her dress and was shredding it.
“Make him stop!” LeAnn yelled to me.
I pulled myself to my feet, my head spinning. Jed sat in a beat-up Firebird parked at the curb in front of my Legend. He was desperately trying to get the car started, only the engine refused to turn over. Each time he twisted the key, he jerked his head in my direction and shot me a crazed look.
I walked toward the Firebird with my palms out in a neutral pose. Jed didn’t appear to be armed, nor did I see any guns lying on the passenger seat. The tourists had returned, watching now with mouths agape.
When I was a few yards from the car, Jed got the engine started, and backed up into my Legend. I winced at the sounds of crunching steel and shattering headlights. Throwing the Firebird into drive, Jed plowed into the tourist’s rental van, parked in front of him. The rental bucked into the air, but didn’t move. Jed did another backward thrust and again smashed my car. It was enough to make me cry.
The Firebird’s right front tire let out a mournful hiss and the car sank into the ground. Now we were both without wheels.
Reaching the curb, I grabbed the Firebird’s passenger door with my free hand. If I could get Jed out of the car without hurting him, so much the better. Something heavy fell on my back, and I realized there was a person on top of me.
“Run, Jed, run!” Heather yelled.
Heather was holding on to me with all her might. My legs buckled and my body started to spin from her weight.
“Get off me,” I said angrily.
“Leave my husband alone,” Heather said.
“I said off!”
“Run, Jed!”
Reaching behind me, I grabbed one of Heather’s ankles, and gave it a healthy pull. She came off my back and fell on her rump on the lawn.
I chased Jed down the street. I wasn’t going to catch him-he was half my age, and probably twice as fast-but I wanted to see where he was going.
Two blocks later, I got my answer. Jed turned off the street and darted between two houses. I was ten seconds behind him, and as I ran between the houses, I saw that both had “For Sale” signs on the front lawn. No one was living in them.
I came to a tall fence with a latched gate. I unlatched it, and cautiously entered a backyard that led to a swamp thick with trees and dense vegetation. Jed’s footprints ran into the middle of the swamp, then disappeared.
I stood perfectly still and listened. There was no sound coming from the swamp, save for a squirrel’s frantic chirping. I sensed that Jed was close by, but that didn’t mean I was going to blindly follow him. This was the neighborhood he’d grown up in, and I had no idea what he might have hidden back there.
“Jed? Are you there?” I called out.
I heard a swishing of leaves, followed by a branch being broken.
“You set me up!” Jed shouted back.
“I didn’t set you up,” I said. “I don’t know how those things got there.”
“Fucking liar! You’re no better than the rest of them.”
“The rest of who?”
“The cops!”
I started to reply, only my words were cut off by a loud thwap! A steel-tipped arrow was sticking in the fence three feet from my head, its colorful tail vibrating.
I walked backward through the gate opening and shut it behind me. I learned long ago that heroes were dead people who got buildings named after them, while smart people lived to fight another day. Buster appeared in the street, holding a large piece of LeAnn Grimes’s yellow dress in his mouth.
The front door of LeAnn Grimes’s house was locked, and I banged on it loudly with my fist.
“Let me in,” I said.
“Go away,” Heather said through the door.
“I’ll kick it down.”
The door opened, and I entered with Buster. Heather stood in the foyer, an ice pack on her neck, eyes red from crying. I followed her into the living room where LeAnn sat on the couch in a bathrobe. Seeing Buster, she cowered in fear.
“Keep that monster away from me!”
“Did he bite you?”
“No, but he destroyed my dress.”
“You’re lucky.”
Buster still had her torn dress in his mouth. I clicked my fingers and my dog lay down. I took the shredded garment from him, and tossed it into LeAnn’s lap. Then I pointed at the empty spot on the couch.
“Sit next to your mother-in-law,” I told Heather.
Heather dutifully obeyed. The two women shifted their gazes to the floor, and said nothing. Women were the most logical creatures on the planet, except when it came to men. Then they acted as crazy as everyone else.
“Are either of you hurt?” I asked.
LeAnn shook her head.
Heather said, “I’m okay.”
“What the two of you just did was really stupid,” I said.
Neither woman replied.
“I’m here to help, in case you didn’t know it,” I said.
Again, nothing.
“I think Jed is innocent, but I can’t do much if you won’t level with me.”
They looked up in unison, the expression on their faces identical. They didn’t trust me, but they wanted to.
“Tell me why Jed ran away,” I said. “If he didn’t know how that cell phone and pair of underwear got in the garbage, then he should be willing to talk to the police.”
LeAnn laughed under her breath.
“Why is that funny?” I asked.
“The police are not our friends,” LeAnn said. “That’s why my husband hired you.”
“I’m not above the law,” I said. “I have to call the police, and tell them that I found Piper Stone’s cell phone in your garbage pail. Before I do that, I want you to tell me what happened this morning when Jed met with Stone.”
This request was met with silence. I crossed my arms and waited.
“I wasn’t here,” Heather finally said.
LeAnn redid the knot in her bathrobe before replying. “It was about nine. I was pulling weeds in the front when a black BMW drove up with Stone behind the wheel. Jed came out of the house, and they left in her car.”
“Did you see her again?” I asked.
“No,” LeAnn said. “Jed came back fifteen minutes later. He was very upset, and had been crying. I asked him what was wrong, and he shook his head, and went inside the house.”
“Did Stone drop him off?”
“No, he was on foot.”
“Do you remember anything else? Anything at all?”
LeAnn shook her head.
“Please stay here,” I said.
I went into the kitchen and rifled the pantry. Finding a plastic Ziploc bag, I put it over my hand, went outside, and removed Stone’s cell phone and the pair of underwear from the garbage can without contaminating them any further. My gut told me that Jed hadn’t put them there, only the evidence was saying otherwise. It was one more piece to a puzzle that I still couldn’t put together.
I called 911 on my cell phone.