A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5) (14 page)

“I know.”

The next time the phone rang, Nick answered. “We’re still alive, Grandma.” Then he hung up on her.

However, after a day of constant calls, Mama had succeeded in planting a seed of doubt inside my head. Was I taking the events of the last week too lightly? While the boys cleared the table, I expressed my concerns to Zack. “What if I am putting the kids and myself at risk?”

“If you feel that way, you should take Ira up on his offer.”

“No one else on the street is moving out.” Then again, no one else was swatted. Why would someone swat us? We weren’t celebrities or gamers, and unless the boys were keeping something from me, a bully hadn’t targeted either of them.

I took hold of Zack’s hands. “Tell me the truth. Do you believe I’m doing the right thing by staying?”

He drew me into his arms, placed his index finger under my chin, and tilted my head up until our eyes met. “I think you need to do what you feel is best for you and the boys. If that means staying, I’m going to be right beside you.”

“You and Sig?”

“Me and Sig.”

I thought for a moment. “My gut tells me something odd is going on. It’s all too coincidental, but I don’t believe we’re in any danger.”

“No Spidey tingles?”

“None.”

“Then go with your gut and forget about Flora’s paranoia.”

~*~

When the call goes out for human cloning volunteers, I plan to be first in line. As a single parent of two teenagers, I desperately need a clone, especially on the weekends when my schedule is so jam-packed that I keep a to-do list to juggle my to-do lists.

This weekend was no exception. On Saturday Nick had a JV soccer game scheduled at ten; Alex’s varsity soccer game began at one. Luckily, the first was a home game, and the second was located in the adjacent town of Cranford. This allowed me just enough time to run to the supermarket between games. My other errands, including a trip to Home Depot for a toilet flushing repair kit and to the AT&T store for cell phones, would have to wait until later that afternoon.

That left leaf raking for Sunday, rain or shine because if the leaves weren’t piled at the curb before the scheduled pickup on Monday, I’d have to bag them and haul them to the conservation center myself. And that was not a chore I cared to add to my to-do list.

True to his word, Zack refused to let me out of his sight, accompanying me throughout the day on Saturday. “Don’t you have your own errands to run?” I asked as I froze my patootie off sitting on the soccer field aluminum bleachers.

“They can wait until during the week when you’re at work.”

“So you’re playing bodyguard today?”

“Precisely.”

“Packing heat?” I whispered softly enough that none of the other parents heard me. Zack went all stony-faced on me. “Okay, I get it. Don’t ask; don’t tell.”

“Precisely.”

“New Jersey has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Concealed weapons permits are nearly impossible to obtain.” I mentally placed another checkmark in the Zack as Government Agent column, then added under my breath, “Unless you work for an alphabet agency.”

He shook his head and laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“I’m stubborn, remember? You said so yourself.”

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and drew me closer to him. “I also remember telling you I’m far more stubborn.”

“Touché.”

After watching Nick’s team beat Plainfield two-zip, Zack and I headed to ShopRite. Mama called while we stood at the end of a very long checkout line.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single parent with too many tasks to juggle in too short an amount of time will invariably land in the checkout line where everyone in front of her is either writing a check or counting out dozens of pennies that they then proceed to drop all over the conveyer belt and floor.

In certain situations one can either go postal or put a twenty-first century spin on Jane Austen. I chose the latter, heaving a huge sigh before answering my phone. “Hello, Mama. I’m still very much alive.”

“Of course you are, dear. You answered the phone.”

Her voice was devoid of petulance, and she didn’t hang up immediately after verifying that my heart continued to beat inside my chest. This was certainly a welcome departure from her last three-dozen phone calls. She’d either finally given in, or she wanted something. My money was on the latter.

“I need you to do me a favor,” she continued.

TEN

Bingo!
Did I know Mama? You bet. “What sort of favor, Mama?”

“I don’t remember if I filled Catherine the Great’s food and water bowls before we left this morning. Would you be a dear and run over to the condo to check for me? We won’t be home until late this evening.”

Great! One more item added to my already too long to-do list. “Where are you, Mama?”

“Atlantic City.”

At the end of October Mama and Lawrence certainly weren’t sunning themselves on the sand or wading in the ocean. The background noise told me everything I needed to know. “A casino, Mama?”

“Don’t worry, dear. Lawrence isn’t Karl. We’re only going to play the nickel slots, and we’ve set a strict limit. No more than a hundred dollars each. Then we’ll have dinner and take in a show.”

I stared at the sweat beads forming on the packages of frozen spinach in my shopping cart. Two hundred dollars would buy two hundred boxes of store brand frozen veggies, enough to feed my family for months. Lawrence and Mama had never once offered to pay for a meal, much less bring in a pizza. Instead, they constantly dropped by unannounced and mooched off me, even though Mama knew full well the precarious state of my finances.

In addition, they’d allowed Ira to foot the bill for their wedding and honeymoon, as well as their condo. A vision of an old wine commercial swam in my head but with Lawrence taking the place of the actor who asked,
How do you think I got so rich?

“I don’t have time now, Mama. I’ll run over later this afternoon.”

“But Catherine the Great might be hungry and thirsty!”

“She’ll survive a few hours.”

“Really, Anastasia, I ask so little.”

I responded by hanging up on her. A moment later my phone rang again. I glanced at the display and let the call go to voicemail, even if it meant Mama might worry I’d been gunned down on the supermarket checkout line.

“Everything okay?” asked Zack as he unloaded the contents of our cart onto the conveyor belt.

I frowned at the bags of Halloween candy he grabbed next, wondering how many of the kids who rang my doorbell Monday night would offer a thank-you. Most of them didn’t even live in the neighborhood and few bothered with costumes—another reason I hated Halloween. “Hardly.”

He raised both eyebrows. “Care to elaborate?”

I sighed. “Let’s just say everything is status quo in Anastasia World.”

“Meaning?”

“Mama needs a favor—for a change.” And I was transforming into a first-class curmudgeon.

~*~

Another soccer game and the purchase of cell phones kept us busy the remainder of the afternoon. My eyes nearly bulged out of my head when the sales clerk tallied up the invoice for the three phones and the monthly plan. “It’s practically a mortgage payment!”

Thanks to a summer moonlighting job, I’d recently paid off some major credit card debt I’d inherited from Dead Louse of a Spouse. Now I’d once again be carrying a balance and paying an exorbitant interest rate, but what choice did I have?

I reluctantly signed the cell phone plan agreement, then began to dig around in my purse for my wallet. Zack stayed my hand and waved his iPhone over the scanner. “No,” I said. “I can’t let you do that. Not all three phones.”

“Too bad. It’s already done.”

“I’m going to pay you back.”

“Someday.”

“As soon as I can.”

“We’ll discuss it when you’ve climbed your way out of that financial hole Karl dropkicked you into.”

Karl. Every time I thought of him and what he’d done to me and our kids, I seethed. Exactly when did the anger stage of grief dissipate? I kept waiting, but I only seemed to grow angrier as time passed.

However, without Karl’s treachery, I wouldn’t now have Zack in my life. Maybe every black cloud does have a silver lining. Tears sprang to my eyes. If I’d let him, I had no doubt Zack would pay off all my debts. Not that I’d ever take advantage of his generosity in that way. I fully intended to pay him back, no matter how long it took me. I squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”

~*~

We sat in silence for most of the short ride home from the AT&T store. Zack kept his eyes on the road while I stared out the side passenger window. Finally he said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re conflicted.”

Okay, so maybe he could read my mind. I turned to him. “Go on, Dr. Freud.”

“You don’t want to become dependent on me or anyone else to solve your problems because putting your total trust in a man is what got you into this situation in the first place.”

“And yet I’ve allowed just that, both with you and Ira.” I sighed. “I’m a damned hypocrite.”

“No, you’re a good person thrust into difficult circumstances. There’s nothing wrong with accepting help in order to survive.”

“Survival is one thing, Zack; cell phones are quite another.”

“Cell phones are a necessity these days, especially for someone who’s morphed into Westfield’s own version of Jessica Fletcher. Hell, I know law enforcement personnel who come across fewer dead bodies than you do.”

I raised both eyebrows. “Exactly how many people in law enforcement do you know?”

“Enough. And it has nothing to do with you thinking I’m a spy. So let’s not even go there. Instead, consider where you’d be if you didn’t have a working cell phone the day Ricardo abducted you.”

My cell phone had saved my life that day. If my battery had died while I was bouncing around in the locked trunk of Ricardo’s Mercedes, I’d now be decomposing in an unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere. “We certainly wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”

“Damn straight. If it helps to ease your conscience, consider the fact that I’m doing this as much for me as I am for you.”

“How so?”

“I need the peace of mind of knowing that you and the boys are safe and that you have a way of getting help if you’re not.”

I stared at him, realizing we’d become a family, maybe not a traditional one, but a family all the same. “Did you ever expect your life would change so dramatically when you called about the apartment I had for rent?”

Zack laughed. “Life certainly works in mysterious ways, but since I now can’t imagine life without you, please stop dwelling on the cost of the phones.”

“I’ll try.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand as we turned onto our street. “Try hard.”

Instead of answering, I pointed out the window. “Speaking of dead bodies, there’s a car parked in Carmen’s driveway, and the crime scene tape is down. I think that’s her daughter Lupe’s car. I should offer my condolences.”

Zack continued down the street and pulled into my driveway. “Not by yourself. I’ll go with you just in case you’re wrong about the car.”

Given that a police cruiser still sat at either end of the block, I thought Zack was being over-cautious, but I didn’t argue. We stepped out of his Boxster and walked back down the street to Carmen’s house.

The temperature had dipped at least fifteen degrees from earlier in the day, and the wind had picked up. The carved pumpkins that dotted the steps and porches of houses we passed had transformed from grinning and grimacing jack-o-lanterns into grotesque, deformed monsters, thanks to the squirrels that feasted on them. The few leaves that had valiantly remained clinging to branches now rained down upon us and joined the ones crunching under our feet. I glanced up at the leaden sky, covered in a skeleton of bare oaks and maples, and shivered from both the cold and the death around me—both physical and metaphysical.

Lupe answered the door when I knocked, took one look at me, and threw herself into my arms. “Oh, Anastasia!” She then burst into tears.

As a teenager Carmen’s daughter Lupe often babysat for Alex and Nick when they were toddlers. Now a professional businesswoman with children of her own, she often asked one of my boys to babysit her kids.

I may have come across a plethora of murdered bodies recently, but none of them had been my own mother. I couldn’t imagine Lupe’s grief. I held onto her for several minutes until she’d cried herself dry. Then I guided her to a chair in the living room.

“Why would someone want to do such a horrible thing to Mami?” she asked as she swiped away at her wet cheeks. “Why couldn’t he just take her jewelry and leave?”

I had no explanation for such a senseless crime other than the one Detective Spader had suggested, but I didn’t think voicing that possibility would ease Lupe’s anguish. So I simply shook my head.