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But was there a reason someone had left a brick lying on the snow just outside the mouth of the alley?
“From the construction site three blocks over,” Muriel said, seeing me studying the brick.
“But what’s it doing here?” I asked.
She looked at the brick for a few long moments.
“My car’s this way,” she said.
I was glad when we reached her car, and even gladder that she waited until she’d seen me start my car and drive off.
But I hadn’t gone more than a few blocks before I began to suspect that a car was following me. A car with oddly distinctive headlights. Two sets of headlights, one on top of the other, with the bottom set slightly farther apart. And there was something on the inside of each top headlight that made it seem as if the car was looking at me cross-eyed. And frowning.
Maybe I’d been listening to the boys too much. Lately they’d developed very strong automotive likes and dislikes, based mainly on their impressions of the cars’ faces, as they called the headlights and front-end decorations. Some cars looked as if they were smiling, others frowning. Some were sad, some happy. Josh was particularly fond of Corvettes, and Jamie thought most Audis looked mean. Once he’d burst into tears because a “mean car” was following us.
Was a mean car following me now? All I could see was those odd double headlights. Could be just a coincidence—there weren’t that many streets in Caerphilly.
I took a leisurely detour through a residential neighborhood. The distinctive headlights never turned off, and never got any closer, even when I idled for a couple of minutes in front of a house well known for having some of the most over-the-top holiday lights in town.
Before moving on, I pulled out my phone. And then hesitated. Should I call the police?
I called Randall instead.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Are you still at the show house?” I asked.
“For another minute or two. What do you need?”
“Could you stay there a few minutes longer? I think someone’s following me. I’d call the police, but maybe everything that’s happened lately has just got me jumpy. I don’t want to look like a nervous idiot.”
“What can I do?”
“Get in your truck, but don’t leave yet. I’ll drive by the house in a few minutes. If there’s someone following me—”
“I’ll get the license, call 9-1-1, and follow both of you till the police get there.”
I felt better already. I took off again, and the headlights that had been stationary the whole time I’d pretended to enjoy the light show continued to follow me.
I cruised slowly past the show house. It was completely dark, but I spotted Randall sitting in his truck.
I went up a couple of blocks, then went around a block. Just as I was about to make a left turn to go past the show house again, the car behind me suddenly speeded up. It passed me, then turned sharply so it blocked the whole street. The driver’s door popped open and a man jumped out and ran back toward my car.
I clicked the button to make sure all four doors were locked and then put the car in reverse and began slowly backing up as I picked up my cell phone to dial 9-1-1.
The man ran up to my window and banged on it, hard. Startled, I slammed on the brakes.
“Where is she?” he yelled. “I know you know.”
“Meg, help’s on the way,” Debbie A
“He’s not following me anymore,” I said. “He’s banging on my car.”
“I’ll kill that bitch when I find her!” the man was shouting.
I turned my cell phone toward my window and took a picture of the angry red face pressed against it. But while I was still figuring out how to e-mail it to the police, the man suddenly flew backwards away from my window and landed in a snowdrift. Randall now stood just outside my window. I could hear sirens in the distance.
“Don’t move,” Randall shouted to the man. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Randall Shiffley’s here,” I said to Debbie A
The angry man was trying to struggle up.
Just then a police cruiser pulled up. Vern Shiffley, Randall’s cousin, jumped out just in time to see the man lurch to his feet and aim a punch at Randall. Randall dodged neatly. Vern wasn’t as lucky, but maybe it wasn’t entirely a bad thing that my stalker had just opened himself up to a charge of assaulting a police officer.
Another cruiser pulled up and Aida Butler hopped out. By the time Chief Burke pulled up, she and Vern had the stalker handcuffed in the back of Aida’s patrol car and Vern was holding a handful of snow on his injured eye.
“Are you all right?” the chief asked me.
“I’m fine,” I said.
The chief strode over to Aida’s patrol car and stood looking down at my stalker.
“Mr. Granger,” he said. “What’s the meaning of this?”
Someone known to the chief. I decided that was a good thing.
“She knows where my wife is,” Granger said.
I controlled my impulse to protest that I didn’t even know who his wife was, much less where she was.
“And what if she does?” the chief asked. “You do realize that you’d be violating the protective order if you followed her to find your wife, don’t you?”
Granger shut his mouth as if determined not to say anything else.
“Take him down to the station,” the chief said.
“I didn’t go near the bitch,” Granger protested. “I don’t even know where she is.”
“No, but you just assaulted a law enforcement officer while he was engaged in performing his duties,” the chief said.
He waved to Aida, who got in and started up her patrol car. As she drove off, the chief walked back over to me.
“You willing to press charges against this clown?” he asked.
“Gladly,” I said. “Though I’d really rather wait till tomorrow to do it, if it’s all the same.”
“Tomorrow will be soon enough,” he said. “You want an escort home?”
I shook my head. I had the feeling Mr. Granger, whoever he might be, was the only person after me tonight.
Not that I wasn’t glad when I got home and saw the house still brightly lit. And when Michael came out onto the porch to meet me.
“What took you so long?” he asked. “I was just about to call the police to have them check the ditches.”
“We had a little excitement.” I followed him and told him about Mr. Granger, while he went through the downstairs, performing his nightly ritual of shutting off lights and checking doors and windows.
“Quick thinking,” he said, when I’d finished my tale. “But who is this Granger character, and why would he think you know anything about his wife?”
“No idea,” I said. “I’ll ask the chief tomorrow.”
Though I had a feeling it would have something to do with the Caerphilly Women’s Shelter. A good thing Granger hadn’t been following me earlier in the day.
“Has the excitement given you an appetite?” Michael asked. “Want to join me in the kitchen?”
He never ate much before a show. He claimed it wasn’t due to nerves but part of a deliberate plan to keep himself sharp for the performance. Whatever the reason, he was always starving afterward and ready to pig out.
“I won’t eat much, but I’ll keep you company,” I said.
“Busy day tomorrow?”
“Two more days till we open,” I said. “So yes. Remind me again why I ever agreed to do this.”
“To protect this,” he said, waving a hand around in a gesture that took in not just the foyer where we were standing but the surrounding rooms. “It was the price we had to pay to keep your mother from insisting on having the show house here. Having all those crazy designers invading our space, redoing rooms we’ve finally got looking the way we like them, letting hordes of strangers tramp through our home—madness!”
“Not to mention the possibility that we might have had a murder in our own master bedroom instead of someone else’s,” I said.