Miz Scarlet and the Vanishing Visitor (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery)

Miz Scarlet and the Vanishing Visitor:

  A Scarlet Wilson Mystery

  By Sara M. Barton

  Copyright Sara M. Barton 2013

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Chapter One --

  A flash of red. A thud as hands hit the outside of the passenger side window. Bloody hands. Suddenly there were terrified eyes and a gaping black hole of a mouth coming at me. A young girl screamed, a sound that pierced the night, slicing through the calm backdrop of ocean waves and seagulls like a discordant song, and I felt my soul shiver with foreboding.

  “Help me!” A balled-up fist pounded on the glass, leaving a smeared red hand print on my nice, clean window. “Help me! He’s going to kill me!”

  One minute, I was lost in a daydream, wandering through the memory of my lovely weekend with Kenny at the Jersey Shore, and the next, a writhing body clung to my silver hatchback, clutching my open moon roof for dear life, even as I lifted my foot from the brake and rolled forward past the red, red stop sign. I should have stopped. Why didn’t I stop? The shock of seeing that unexpected apparition stunned me, and I automatically put my foot on the accelerator, suddenly feeling that rising panic. Flee! Get the hell out of here!

  Even as I instinctively gave the Ford Focus some gas, the desperate girl threw her legs onto the hood of the car, still not relinquishing her Vulcan death grip.

  “What are you doing?” I hollered, all too aware that she was at risk of rolling off the slippery front fender, towards the wheels. I jammed on the brakes, trying not to shake her off my car even as I frantically tried to shake off my fear. And that’s when I turned and looked beyond her, in time to see hell’s fury across the road, heading this way. Hands raised, he seemed to summon a wild maelstrom of invisible energy from the sea as he crossed the pavement, drawing it to him like a supernatural force of malevolent anger. As he bellowed, I thought I saw its raw power find outlet through his hands, deadly hands. He was dressed in black, tattooed skin covered in a patchwork of ink drawings. What was that shiny thing he was gripping as he strode towards the girl?

  “Please!” she cried, more of a sob than anything else. In that one moment, I had to make a decision. Did I pop the lock, let her in, and drive away from the maniac pursuing her, or did I leave her here, to face her assailant in a death match of “Survival of the Fittest”? This wasn’t reality TV. She barely weighed a hundred pounds, judging from the black tank top and blue shorts that clung to her shivering stick-like limbs, interrupted only by a fanny pack. He had a good hundred pounds on her, biceps that looked like they could easily squeeze the life out of her, and a face so contorted by rage that he seemed like a Maori warrior doing a Haka war dance.

  You might think it’s an easy choice -- after all, don’t I have a moral obligation to rescue the tiny girl from a huge man wielding the rather large knife in his right hand? As he rapidly closed the distance between us, I considered my dilemma. Calculating the seconds it would take her to grab the door handle, open it, and get into the passenger seat, I realized there wasn’t enough time. He would surely kill her before she was in my car, and then he might decide to kill me, too. And that’s when I knew what I had to do. As she jumped off the hood and flipped her agile self around the side of the car in the hopes of gaining entry, I gave her enough time to clear it, and when I was certain that her feet were out of the path of the tires, I put the pedal to the metal. Time to see if the vehicle really could do zero to sixty in 8.7 seconds.

  “No! Don’t leave me! Please!” she wailed as I gunned the engine and the Ford Focus took off.

  I had no intention of leaving the girl behind. Instead, I did the only thing I could think of to stop her murderous pursuer. I steered right into him, heard the horrible sound of flesh against bumper as they connected, and cringed. The look of shock upon his face said it all. I threw the transmission into reverse, even as he flew into the air and skidded across the pavement onto the sidewalk twenty feet away. Backing up ten feet, I slammed on the brakes, popped the lock, reached over and opened the door, waiting for the beleaguered teen to scurry in. Her fanny hit the seat with a thump, and even as she pulled the door closed and I locked it, he was back on his feet and rushing us. The rage in those cold eyes chilled me to the bone. There was no mistaking his intent. And now I was on his naughty list for Christmas.

  Before you ask, the answer is no. I didn’t ram him again. I’m not a cold-blooded crazy person. My only desire was to get the girl away from him, so I backed up. Even as I grasped the steering wheel with my left hand and looked over my right shoulder, aiming for the middle of Barnegat Lane, I fed the engine the fuel it needed. The car wobbled across the pavement like a drunken seagull as my hand shook and I prayed for a clear road, with no summer tourists suddenly entering the lane. I managed to maneuver a good fifty feet before I did a rather sloppy V-turn across the breadth of the pavement, shifted into forward, and tore away. Even as I risked a glance in the rear view mirror, I could see the limping man still giving chase. That was one determined bastard.

  At Bergen Avenue, I turned left and cut over to Ocean Avenue. I had every intention of following Route 35 back to Bridge Avenue. There I knew I would find the Bay Head Police Station. I had seen it earlier in the day, when I stopped at Mueller’s Bakery for blueberry scones, banana nut muffins, and jelly donuts. Breakfast. That seemed forever and a day ago. I had wandered through town on foot, enjoying the chance to explore. How I wish I had paid better attention to my surroundings. I was still too enamored of Kenny, and the feel of his hands on my skin was still imprinted on my brain, displacing common sense. How far was I from the police station?

  “Oh, my God!” said the quivering figure in the bucket seat. “He’s after us!”

  “What?”

  “That’s him, in the pickup truck!”

  “Are you sure?” I know it was an idiotic thing to say, but I was hoping she was overreacting.

  “Yes, yes! I’m positive! What are we going to do? If he catches me, he’s going to kill me!” Her voice rose up an octave, emphasizing her conviction of his lethal intent.

  Twilight. Dark enough to need headlights. Light enough to still see the road without them. Think, Miz Scarlet. He’s gaining on you. What do you do?

  “Red light!” the teen screamed at me, as a white Volvo station wagon scooted into the intersection at Johnson Street, followed by a green Hyundai that seemed to form the head of a rather long conga line of traffic. No time to waste. It was now or never. No guts, no glory. Either that or no brains. Instinctively, I did the math and made my split-second decision.

  “Screw it!” I growled, accelerating. I had barely enough room to squeeze through the two cars before the gap closed, cutting off the pickup. I heard the first squeal of brakes as a chain reaction of metal-to-metal took place. Thump! Thump-thump-thump! Bam!

  “Oh, my God! You just ran a red light!” That was really the least of my problems. Judging from the calamitous scene in my rearview mirror, there were at least three bumpers locked into a twisted Alexander Calder sculpture in the middle of Bergen Avenue.

  “I’m pretty sure the cops won’t care as long as I deliver you in one piece.”

  “Police?”

  “Yes, police. That’s where I’m taking you. You need help.”

  “I...I do need help.” That tiny voice faded away as the seriousness of her predicament hit her. “I’m in deep trouble.”

  Was tha
t a confession...an admission of guilt...or just the uttered plea of a terrified teenager covered in sticky red liquid? “Are you injured? Did he cut you?”

  I risked a quick look at my passenger. She seemed nervous, but I didn’t see blood gushing from a main artery.

  “No. No. He killed Mozzie, though.” Water poured out of her eyes, splashing down those unlined cheeks.

  “What? Who’s Mozzie?

  “My dog.”

  “He killed your dog?” I’m a dog person. With Huckleberry and January, I’ve probably hiked close to a hundred miles in the last six months alone. Anybody tried to harm either of them, I’d probably use my bare hands to tear the miscreant from limb to limb. “Bastard! Why?”

  “Um....” Long pause. Hesitation.

  Oh, crap! What did she do to make the guy so angry? Call me suspicious. I am. After teaching for a couple of decades, you get to the point where you realize teenagers sometimes exercise really bad judgment.

  “I took his laptop.”

  “You stole his computer?” I was now waiting in a six-car line for the light to change on Bridge Street, and as I glanced sideways at the girl, I could see a furtive look come over her face.

  “I had to! Richie wouldn’t give me my money!”

  “You stole his computer because he stole your money?”

  “No, he wouldn’t pay me!”

  “He owed you money?” I flipped my blinker on and eased forward, stuck behind a Town and Country van loaded with a family from Pennsylvania. Boogie boards on the top, bikes on the back. A video was playing on the miniscule screen. It looked like “Shrek”.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Let me clue you in, in case you don’t speak teen. Any time someone under the age of twenty-one gives you grunts, groans, mumbles, or moans, pay attention. You’re either being jerked around or you’re about to get dragged through hormone-laced hell.

  “For what?”

  “Huh?”

  “Spit it out!” I commanded in my best teacher voice. “Why did he owe you money? What did you do for him?”

  “I delivered the package to him. Paolo said when I got to Point Pleasant, Richie would pay me. But he didn’t.”

  “What did you do with the laptop?”

  “I threw it in the bushes outside the house.”

  I slowed as I came up on the turn for the Bay Head Police Department. Even as I waited for the chance to turn in, I could hear the sound of sirens in the distance. My eye caught sight of a sign and my frazzled brain commanded me to pay attention. That’s when I read the words printed there.

  “The police department is temporarily located in Point Pleasant? You have got to be kidding me!”

  Hurricane Sandy washed out the local constabulary. What a time to find this out. Where was 704 Howe Street? And how was I going to find it at this time of night, when my mind was racing a mile a minute? I could use my Tom-Tom, but how would I explain all this to the cops?

  “I have to call Kenny,” I said out loud, even as I made up my mind. I knew he was on his way back to Princeton, back to his own home, the one he shared with his late wife.

  “Who’s Kenny?” the waif next to me asked.

  “My boyfriend.” Those words still sounded strange to me. Boyfriend...at my age? I pulled off the road to make the call, but even as I did, it occurred to me that maybe Richie wasn’t a guy to leave well enough alone. If he got himself out of that tangled mess of fenders, he could be trolling the main drag in search of us. I took a right at West Lake Avenue, and then a right onto Willow Drive. Passing Holly Avenue, I continued on until I found a quiet spot to pull over and found his number in my contacts list.

  “Hey, babe. What’s up? You missed me already?”

  “Kenny!” Relief flooded over me as I heard that strong, comforting voice. “I have a problem!”

  Exactly four minutes later, Kenny was explaining to me in great detail why my problem was a hell of a lot bigger than I thought.

  “What was in the package you delivered,” he demanded of my passenger, via speaker phone.

  “I don’t know,” she insisted. “Paolo just asked me to bring it to Richie. And he said he’d give me a hundred bucks if I got it there before five today.”

  “Where did you meet Paolo?” I wanted to know.

  “Dover, at a metaphysical healing center.”

  “So, what aren’t you telling us?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The guy wouldn’t kill your dog for nothing,” Kenny shot back. “What did you take out of the package?”

  “I swear I didn’t....”

  “Cut the crap,” said the former assistant director of the Princeton University Department of Public Safety. “What did you take out of the package?”

  “A sample.”

  “Of what?”

  “Um,” she mumbled evasively.

  “Um what?”

  “Organic soap.”