The Midnight Hour Read online

  “She’s gonna kill me!” Paul darted into the room, running for his mother, comic terror all over his face.

  “Who?” Jackie wrapped her arms around Paul as he leaped the last few feet into her embrace.

  “Jessica! She’s gonna kill me! She’s gonna tear my head off and feed my insides to the worms! She’s gonna rip out my heart! Don’t let her kill me, don’t let her kill me!”

  Paul’s tendency to overdramatize was well-known within the family. Marino, however, looked startled.

  “Mom, help!” It was Jessica, from the other room.

  Courtney echoed the cry. “Help! Help!”

  “What did you do?” Jackie’s voice, as she addressed her son, was resigned.

  “All I did was kick that stupid old ball. . ..”

  The rest of Paul’s confession was lost to Grace as she hurried into the family room to assist Jessica.

  Jessica and Courtney were down on their knees. Both were holding up opposite ends of the sofa’s tailored kick skirt and were peering into the darkness beneath. Half of a clear plastic sphere lay on its back in the middle of the oriental carpet. The other half was facedown near the wall.

  “Oh, dear,” Grace said, comprehending in an instant what had happened.

  “Godzilla’s under the couch.” Jessica’s voice was urgent. “Mom, get down there by Courtney. Don’t let him get past you. Here he comes!”

  It was a screech. Courtney screamed, too, and threw herself back away from the couch as, apparently, the hamster headed in her direction. Her end of the kick skirt dropped.

  “He’s getting away! He’s getting away! Mom, grab him! There he goes!”

  Jessica sprang to her feet just as a small, furry ball of gold-and-white lightning scurried from beneath the couch right in front of Grace’s navy leather-shod toes, heading as fast as it could go toward the bookshelves that lined the far wall. Unable to stop herself, Grace jumped back.

  “Oh, gosh, I hate doing this! Jess, he doesn’t bite, does he?” Despite her wail of protest, Grace, who liked Godzilla fine in his cage but wasn’t crazy about him out of it, recovered her nerve, swooped and snatched—and missed. The hamster continued his hell-bent-for-leather flight toward freedom.

  “Get him, Mom! Get him!”

  With Jessica’s screams for encouragement, bent almost double, Grace scrambled after the rodent, grabbing at the speedy little creature who eluded her half a dozen times by dodging beneath and behind an end table, a wooden rocker, and a green ceramic planter holding a silk potted plant.

  “I’ll catch it, Aunt Grace!” Hands outstretched, Courtney came to her assistance, lunging for the hamster as it darted from behind the planter. There was a thunk as her head made solid contact with the edge of a bookcase. She fell back with a cry, one hand clapped to the top of her head.

  “Head him off, Mom! I’ll get him! Herd him toward me!”

  Jessica was beside her now, at knee level really, grabbing for the hamster to the accompaniment of Courtney’s whimpers, which in the heat of the moment went ignored. Jess missed, and Godzilla turned in Grace’s direction once again, prompting Jessica’s shrieked instructions.

  “Oh, Jess, I hate doing this!” Grace moaned, but followed her daughter’s orders nonetheless and thrust both hands downward to block the rodent’s path to safety behind the bookcases. Instead of turning back toward Jessica as it was supposed to, however, the thing kept coming. Grace screwed up her courage and grabbed it, snatching it up into the air, holding the warm, squirming little body cupped between her two hands, careful not to hurt it. Then it bit her.

  “Mom, you got him! You got him! You dropped him!”

  “He bit me!” Grace thrust her wounded index finger into her mouth, and glared after the absconding creature.

  “Mom, you let him go! Grab him, Courtney! Mom, you had him! How could you let him go?”

  “He bit me!”

  “He only has little tiny teeth, they don’t hurt! He’s bitten me lots of times! Paul, stop!”

  This last was shrieked at the top of Jessica’s lungs, in response to the emergence of her cousin at the forefront of the chase—armed with an upside-down saucepan, which he promptly slammed down on top of Godzilla.

  The hamster squealed once, then fell silent.

  “Paul, no! You hurt him! Get out of the way! You little . . .” Jessica thrust Paul aside. The force of her push sent him teetering wildly toward the big-screen TV against the far wall, but to Grace’s relief he managed not to crash through it. Jessica, meanwhile, dropped to her knees beside the overturned saucepan. Despite Jessica’s fury, the fact remained that, however crude his method, Paul had gotten his man, er, hamster—dead or alive.

  Grace winced at the thought.

  Jessica gently lifted one edge of the pan a little way up from the carpet and peered beneath it. Then she slammed the pan down again.

  “Get me the exercise ball, Courtney.”

  From this Grace deduced that Godzilla was alive. Courtney scrambled for the exercise ball and handed both halves to Jessica. Jessica glanced around, dismissing both her cousins with evil looks.

  “Mom, when I tell you, lift the pan.”

  Grace moved to Jessica’s side, hunkered down, and placed both hands on the pan’s cool aluminum bottom.

  “Now!” Jessica said, and Grace lifted the pan. Jessica dropped half the exercise ball over Godzilla, who was looking stunned. Then she scooped him up in it and screwed the other half onto the base. She had him.

  “Is he hurt?” Paul asked.

  Jessica glared at her cousin. Before she could say anything, Grace intervened, putting an arm around his shoulders.

  “I don’t think so. Jess, go put Godzilla back in his cage. Jackie, didn’t you bring McDonald’s? Let’s feed these kids, shall we?”

  She glanced up to find her sister and Marino both standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the family room. One hand clapped to her mouth, bent almost double, Jackie was convulsed with laughter. Marino, more reserved, was still grinning from ear to ear.

  Chapter

  16

  STRAIGHTENING, Grace became immediately conscious of the fact that she had a run in her pantyhose. Not just a run, but a ladder, that started with a large hole in her right knee and descended in a series of smaller, interconnecting holes to her ankle. Almost an entire calf’s worth of pale bare skin showed through the rips in the silky, dark blue nylon. To add insult to injury, her face was flushed, her hair mussed, and she was perspiring.

  Not to mention that her index finger was bleeding. And it throbbed.

  Not exactly the kind of dignified image she wanted to convey to Marino.

  “Poor baby,” Jessica crooned to Godzilla, brushing past her mother and the pair in the doorway and heading toward the stairs, the hamster in his exercise ball held carefully in her hands.

  “I don’t see why you don’t get that child a real pet,” Jackie said, half under her breath so Jessica would not hear. “That thing is disgusting. It looks like a rat without a tail.”

  “Godzilla is a real pet,” Grace said, taking a deep mental breath and responding with measured calm. Glancing around for Courtney, she shooed both children in front of her. “Let’s go into the kitchen, children. Jax, if you’re planning to feed these two, you’d better be doing it. The food you brought is getting cold. Detective Marino, I’m sorry to keep you waiting so long. I just need to talk to you for one minute.”

  “No problem,” he said. He wasn’t grinning any longer, but there was laughter in his eyes. “I always wondered about the most efficient method of catching an escaping hamster. Now I know: drop a pot over it. If you don’t miss and turn it into road pizza, you’ve got it. I’ll remember that.”

  Although Grace did not say oh, shut up as she would have liked, her eyes said it for her.

  “All right, kids, let’s eat.” Jackie moved back into the kitchen, with Marino following in her wake. Grace and the children brought up the rear.

  While Jac
kie set out her children’s meals, Grace grabbed a paper towel from the roll near the sink, wet it, wrung it out, and wrapped it around her injured finger. She then took Marino out onto the porch. It was the only place where she felt (fairly) safe from interruption.

  “Your sister live nearby?” Marino asked as the screened door swung shut behind him.

  “In Whitehall.”

  The city of Columbus was actually a loose conglomeration of smaller cities, each with its own identity. Bexley, Worthington, and Upper Arlington were the wealthy districts. Whitehall was one of the working-class ones nearby, with small, mostly one-story houses crowded close together. The joke was: Whitehall was where Bexley’s household help lived.

  “Oh?” Marino’s eyebrows went up as he recognized the significance of the address. Grace chose not to elaborate on her sister’s life. That Jackie had chosen not to finish college, had made a bad marriage and compounded it by having two children while still in her twenties, whom she loved but couldn’t afford, was no business of this man.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Jessica.”

  Grace stood by the porch rail, glancing away from him for a moment as he waited just beyond the door. It was coming on twilight now. Shadows in shades of lavender and gray stole across the front yard, robbing shapes of crispness and colors of clarity. The scent of autumn was everywhere. A cool gust of wind rattled the remaining gold-and-crimson leaves on the big oaks and elms and beeches, sending some half a dozen spiraling toward earth. Deep purple clouds were piling up on the western horizon, promising rain before morning. The air felt like rain, heavy and moist. At the far end of the porch, the swing moved gently back and forth on its chain, as though an invisible occupant gently propelled it. The wind chimes that hung behind the swing, an oxidized copper whimsy of a long-tailed rooster with five slender metal tubes dangling from its toes, tinkled melodiously. The still-green leaves of the ancient snowball bush beside the steps rustled in harmony. A green Ford Explorer drove down the street, lights on, turning left into the Taylor’s driveway at the bend in the road and then disappearing behind the bank of tall junipers that separated their yard from the Welch’s.

  “She thinks someone followed her home from school today.” Grace crossed her arms over her chest and looked him square in the eye. “She says none of the kids will talk to her at school. They know she was caught with marijuana in her possession and not charged. She thinks they think the reason she wasn’t charged is that she’s cooperating with the police in a drug investigation.”

  “So they think she’s cooperating with us, do they?” He stood with his feet slightly apart, his hands thrust into the front pockets of his jeans. He looked altogether too casual, sounded altogether too casual, for Grace’s peace of mind.

  “Yes, they do,” she said curtly. “And, not being totally stupid, I realize that you wheedled the names of her friends out of her when you were here before. I want you to know that I know that. I also want you to know that I feel you are endangering her by using her in that way, and I won’t have it.”

  “Telling me the names of her friends is pretty innocuous, don’t you think? She just mentioned a few of them in passing conversation, like she would to anybody. I checked out the kids she named, by the way. She’s running with some pretty hard-core druggies, but she’s not one of them—yet.”

  “Oh, God.” Grace lifted a hand to her throat. “Listen, I don’t want her to be a part of this. She’s a good kid. She really is. She just . . . wants to be cool right now. It’s a phase. I’ve talked to her. I’ve grounded her. I think she understands how dangerous this whole scene is. I want you to leave her out of it, too. I want you to leave her alone.”

  “Your Honor, you are the one who called me today. I was totally leaving your daughter out of it.”

  “She thinks someone followed her home from school.” Grace’s hand fell away from her throat to cross over her chest again. “That scares me. Is there enough of a drug scene at Hebron for this to be real? Could she possibly have become a target because someone thought she was telling on them?”

  He shrugged. “Anything’s possible, but I don’t see why someone would think that. I wouldn’t expect Jessica to be marked as a snitch simply because she wasn’t arrested for possession. A lot of times kids will be let go with a warning to them and their parents for a first-time offense if the amount involved is small. Is your daughter truthful? Is she imaginative?”

  “Do you mean, could she be lying about somebody following her home? She wasn’t. I can tell when she’s genuinely disturbed by something, and she was disturbed by this. Could she have imagined it? Possibly. What concerns me is that maybe she didn’t.”

  He studied her in silence for a moment. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I’d be almost willing to bet that she imagined it. She’s probably reading too much into the fact that the kids are being mean to her at school.”

  That was a possibility, of course. A good possibility. But Grace could not shake the uneasiness that had gripped her ever since Jessica had told her that somebody had followed her home. Call it intuition, call it sixth sense, call it anything you like, but she just felt that something was wrong.

  But what could she say? What, really, did she expect him to do? Write a note for her daughter to show to her friends stating that Jessica was not cooperating with the police, so let her alone?

  Get real.

  “If you should hear something, find out something, about her being in danger . . .”

  “Believe me, we would protect her, and you would be informed.”

  Grace supposed she would have to be satisfied with that.

  “Thank you.” She said it almost grudgingly.

  “No problem.” Then he moved, heading toward the porch steps. “I’d better be going. It’s getting late. If you have any more concerns, call me.”

  “I will,” Grace said in such a grim tone that he laughed.

  When he was gone, backing his car down the driveway and heading east toward Eastland Boulevard, she turned and went back into the house.

  Jackie was alone in the kitchen. From the sound of the TV, which had not been on when she had stepped onto the porch, Grace deduced that Courtney and Paul were in the family room. There was no sign of Jessica. In the wake of her cousins’ invasion, Grace was not surprised that she had elected to stay in her room.

  “Where’d you find the handsome cop?” Jackie asked with a teasing look when she saw that Grace was alone.

  Conscious of an aching need to share her growing worries with somebody, Grace started to confess exactly who Marino was, how she had come to know him, and why he had been present at the house this evening. Then, with a look at her sister, she decided against it. Jackie had enough problems of her own. She didn’t need anything more to worry about, and she would worry about her niece. She loved Jessica, just as Grace loved Paul and Courtney, noisy and boisterous though they were. Besides, Grace didn’t want to tell Jessica’s loving aunt anything too negative about Jessica. Such as the fact that she’d snuck out in the middle of the night, gotten drunk, and been caught buying marijuana.

  For Jessica’s sake. Because Grace couldn’t bear anyone, even her own sister, thinking badly of Jessica.

  And, if she was honest, also because Jackie thought she, Grace, was such a good mother. Grace didn’t want to spoil her sister’s image of her, illusory though it might be.

  “He’s not a friend. He’s a police officer whom I wanted to question about a case and couldn’t get hold of during business hours. He answered a couple of questions, and then he left,” Grace said, heading for the stairs. Her explanation was true enough, after all. She just had neglected to mention that the case involved Jessica. “There’s roast and potatoes and carrots in the Crock-Pot, and dinner rolls from the bakery in the bread box. If you’ll set it out on the table, I’ll change clothes and fetch Jessica, and we can eat.”

  Chapter

  17

  WHEN GRACE came back downstairs, clad in
an ancient OSU-gray sweatsuit with socks on her feet, Jessica was in the kitchen and the food was on the table. The three of them ate together comfortably, as close relatives who see each other a great deal are comfortable together, sharing tidbits about each other’s day. Grace talked about some of the more interesting aspects of the cases that had appeared before her, Jackie described the antics of her children and those at the day-care center where she worked, and Jessica chatted about her schoolwork and the state of Godzilla’s health. Grace noticed that Jessica, too, said nothing to Jackie about the trouble she’d gotten into or the kids not speaking to her at school or her feeling that someone had followed her home. Her daughter’s reticence made her feel that she had done the right thing in keeping their troubles to herself.

  When supper was over, Jessica helped clear the table. After Jackie and the kids left, Grace and Jessica went for a run, as they did several times a week after supper.

  It was full dark by this time. There were few street lights in Bexley, and the ones that existed were only on the corners of the busier intersections. Once off Spring Hill Lane, which had no sidewalks, they kept to the sidewalks whenever possible. Cars and vans and an occasional motorcycle were parked along the sides of the streets. The sky was covered with a heavy dark blanket of clouds that completely blocked any glimpse of the moon or stars. Except for an occasional dog-walker and one prepubescent boy frantically pedaling his bicycle in the opposite direction in what Grace assumed was a race against the clock to get home, there was no one else out.

  Still, Grace could not forget Jessica’s feeling that someone had followed her home that day, or that she herself had chased an intruder the preceding week. She did not feel as comfortable as she usually did on their runs. She was plagued by an almost compulsive need to glance behind bushes, parked cars, and trash receptacles for someone who might be hiding and watching them. It was stupid, she knew, and she took care not to infect Jessica with her own anxiety.

  But stupid or not, she could not dismiss it entirely from her mind.