A Shot to Die For Read online

  Rachel called almost immediately after I’d hung up with Dad. “Are you okay, Mom?” She sounded worried. “We were just watching the news. You should have told me when you called.”

  “I’m fine, sweetheart. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  I heard Barry’s voice in the background. And then a female voice. Not Rachel’s. Soft. Muffled. Rachel spoke. “Mom, you don’t mind if I spend the night at Dad’s, do you? They—he said he’d make sure my bike is locked up. I’ll ride it back tomorrow.”

  Rachel keeps clothes and an extra toothbrush at Barry’s, so it wasn’t an inconvenience. And given what happened today, it probably wasn’t a bad idea.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “You’re sure it’s okay?”

  I assured her and hung up, wondering who the female voice belonged to. Barry has been a member of the girlfriend-of-the-month club for years. He’d been seeing a divorcee with two young kids last winter, but that was six months ago. He’d probably been through six new ones since then.

  I was just about to turn out the light when the phone trilled again. I thought about letting it go—this was beginning to remind me of one of those public television telethons—but I grabbed it in case someone was offering me a pledge.

  It was Susan Siler, my closest friend. “Tell me that wasn’t you on the news.”

  “No can do.”

  “Oh, God, Ellie. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Rachel wasn’t with you, was she?” Susan gets right to the core issues.

  “No, thank God.”

  “What happened?” I went through it for a third time.

  “Do they think it’s the same guy as last April?”

  “If they do, they’re not saying.”

  “How come you just happened to be there?”

  “I was coming back from Lake Geneva.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “About what? That it was a copycat attack, or that I was coming back from Lake Geneva?”

  “Well…both, I guess. But there were other people at the rest stop. Why were you the one in the middle?”

  “I wasn’t the only one. Some other guy let her borrow his cell phone. I was just making small talk.”

  “Where’s the guy with the cell phone?”

  “I don’t know. He left before it happened. They’re trying to find him.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” she asked.

  “Give me that cryptic ‘hmmm.’”

  “Was I doing that?”

  “You were. And I know what you were thinking.”

  “What?”

  “You’re deploring the loss of life and the escalating amount of violence in society, but you’re too idealistic to admit it.”

  “That sounds like your agenda.” I didn’t contradict her. “So what happens now?”

  “The cops will try to track him and bring him in. The sniper, that is.”

  “You won’t be—helping them, or anything?”

  This was the second time someone close to me had asked. “No.”

  There was a relieved silence. “Did you see him?”

  “The sniper? No. The pickup was too far away. And I was looking at Daria when it happened. By the time I turned around, the truck had taken off.” I yawned. “Susan, I’m beat. How ’bout we continue this over coffee tomorrow morning?”

  “I’m working.” Susan works in an art gallery three days a week. She paused, then made a small worried sound. “Ellie, does he know that?”

  “Does who know what?”

  “The sniper. You said you didn’t see him. But…does he know you didn’t?”

  “How would I know? And why does—?” I cut myself off. If the sniper thought I’d seen him—even though I hadn’t—it wouldn’t be difficult to identify me from the news reports. Maybe even find out where I lived.

  No. That wasn’t going to happen. “Susan, I’m going to sleep.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  But I didn’t. I lay awake most of the night, rescreening the murder at the rest stop. I’d assumed a sniper wouldn’t revisit a place or a person he’d already hit. It would be too dangerous. If he did pop up again, he’d strike a new target, wouldn’t he? Isn’t that one of the reasons it’s so difficult to track them? Still, that didn’t stop the Greek chorus of family and friends wailing through my head. I thrashed under the sheet until it was hot and wrinkled and the edges had come away from the mattress.

  There was another reason I couldn’t sleep, the same reason I hadn’t been sleeping well for weeks. David Linden, my lover who lives in Philadelphia, wasn’t. At least not for the time being. Last winter he’d become involved with another woman. She professed her love, wheedled a large chunk of money out of him, then dumped him. Both David and his uncle had been victims of her scheme.

  Once he realized how she’d manipulated him, he begged me to forgive him. I did, in a way, and over the next few months we tried to make peace. We spoke on the phone regularly. He’d even flown in last spring, and we met for dinner at one of those trendy new restaurants that serve American cuisine like some exotic newly discovered fare. We chatted about inconsequential things, skirting the real subject on our plates. After dinner he went back to the Four Seasons, and I drove home alone.

  We’d have to talk, but for now something was holding me back from a full-fledged reconciliation. Alone, in the small hours of the night, I could admit what it was. David and I were fundamentally different people. We’d met while uncovering long-held secrets that involved both our families. We’d connected because—well—I was never quite sure why we connected. That we were attracted to one another was undeniable. And at the time the ties between our families seemed to suggest a relationship was inevitable. But there had been problems from the start, problems I’d been afraid to confront because of what we might discover about each other. Who knew where a conversation about trust and betrayal would lead?

  An hour later, with sleep still eluding me, I got up to check the locks on the doors and windows. Thirty minutes later I checked again. After the third round, I decided the silent house was laughing at me, so I did what any other lonely, dysfunctional woman would do in my position. I polished off the rest of the wine.

  ***

  I fell into an exhausted sleep around five and woke up a few hours later, haunted by a dream about shotguns that unfurled like the tongues of snakes. Feeling thick and slow and cranky, I threw on a T-shirt and shorts and went downstairs to make coffee. In the kitchen the message light on my answering machine was blinking. Probably a reporter. I ignored it and took my coffee out to the tiny patch of planks I call a deck.

  The backyard was a rich carpet of summer. The grass was soft and green, the brown scrubby days of August a long way off. My peonies, columbines, and irises were flourishing, but the miracle of the season was my climbing June rosebush. I’d bought it four years ago, and it had been dormant ever since. I’d been ready to replace it with clematis vines when it suddenly burst into bloom. Now dozens of healthy pink blossoms were threaded through the trellis. I gazed at them, sipping my coffee and imagining myself in an English walled garden.

  The familiar clank of a loose suspension broke my reverie. I walked around to the front of the house just as a red Dodge Ram pulled into the driveway. A dark, slender man whose hair and mustache were more gray than black slid from behind the wheel.

  “Good morning, Fouad,” I said.

  Fouad Al Hamra emigrated from Syria almost forty years ago. He’s been my landscaper since Barry and I were married. After my divorce, he took pity on me and has been trying to help me acquire a green thumb. More important, though, Fouad is my friend. He risked his life two years ago to save mine.

  “Ellie.” His dark eyes were wide and worried. “You are safe?”

  I nodded.

  He wore grass-stained painter’s pants, and his shoes were caked with mud, but he carried himself with his usual grace. “It�
��s a bad business, these attacks.” He shook his head. “How did you come to be there?”

  I explained.

  He listened quietly. When I had finished, he murmured, more to himself than me, I thought, “What is the English expression? ‘There but for the grace of God go I’?”

  I nodded. Fouad’s Muslim, and I’m Jewish, but he has a spiritual bent that is decidedly ecumenical. As for me, I’m not sure whether God does exist, but I’m not willing to put money on it either way. “What does the Koran say about fate?”

  “Fate?” His brow furrowed. “The concept is very different in Islam.”

  “How so?”

  “We do not use the word ‘fate.’ The Sunnah, which is like your Talmud, says that Allah prevails everywhere. Not a leaf stirs without His Will. And since Allah has power over every thing, He must know and determine everything. The concept is known as ‘al-qada’ wa al-qadar’.…”

  “So there is no free will?”

  “Not exactly. The freedom we have is granted to us by Allah and we should use it to submit to Him freely and willingly.”

  “Hold on. Either there is free will or there isn’t.”

  “We believe there is a destiny to everything, Ellie.” His eyes twinkled. “Even if we must nudge it along now and then.”

  He crossed the tiny yard to my vegetable plot. We’d built it last month, edging the sides with railroad ties. We’d turned the earth, enhanced it with manure, and planted radishes, cucumbers, and beans. The next day, in a frenzy of optimism, I’d added tomatoes. I’d been monitoring the seedlings, watching them sprout and thicken and marveling at the wonders of nature.

  Now Fouad examined them. “You have not been watering.” I felt like I’d been scolded.

  “I have. But yesterday, I didn’t get a chance, and well, you know.…”

  He went back to the pickup. Rummaging around in the bed, he pulled out a yellow sprinkler that had seen better days, brought it over, and attached it to my hose. He nodded at me to turn on the water. A few jets spurted out sideways, but most of the spray landed on the plants. I could have sworn they bent gratefully toward the water. He nodded again and surveyed the rest of the yard. Either it met with his approval, or he had something else on his mind. He turned to me.

  “How is Rachel?”

  I told him about her crisis of leisure. He smiled but again I could see an anxious look embedded in it. “What’s wrong, Fouad?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Then he folded his arms. “Ahmed.” His voice was tight.

  Fouad’s son was about to start his senior year at Johns Hopkins. A premed student, he’d been interested in neurosurgery, although Fouad said that changed whenever he started a new rotation. He was an excellent student and was already being courted by several prestigious medical schools.

  “What about him?”

  “He wants to go to Iraq.”

  “Iraq?” I felt a chill. “Why?”

  Fouad reached into his back pocket for a small pruner and squatted down beside the columbine. He didn’t move, and the pruner dangled from his fingers. “You know Ahmed’s mother, Hayat, is Iraqi,” he said at last.

  “Of course.”

  “We met here in America. Well—since the war, Ahmed has been—voicing strong opinions about the situation.”

  “He’s not alone.”

  “But in Ahmed’s case, it’s more—extreme. He feels he should be over there.” Fouad straightened up. “He says Iraqi blood flows through his veins, and it is time he did something for his ‘countrymen.’”

  I bit my lip. I could understand Ahmed’s need to prove himself. To define himself as separate from his parents. But the thought of a child going to a place a shade short of anarchy was every parent’s nightmare. “What does he want to do?”

  “He met a girl, the daughter of an Iraqi expatriate. She is also a premed student. They want to work in a hospital together.”

  A girlfriend yet. “Have you met her?”

  He shook his head. “Hayat is not comfortable with the idea. For all her American ways, she is very traditional when it comes to her children’s lives.”

  “What are you saying? That she wants an arranged marriage for Ahmed?”

  Fouad shrugged.

  “Oh boy.” I studied the columbine. How much of Ahmed’s desire to go to Iraq was genuine, I wondered, and how much was wrapped up in his girlfriend? He was twenty-one, an age when children often do the opposite of what their parents expect. Pursuing a relationship over his parents’ tacit, or not so tacit, objections—even fleeing to Iraq because of it—sounded like the sort of rebellion a son might wage.

  At the same time, though, working in a hospital wasn’t, intrinsically, a bad thing. It was altruistic. Idealistic. The kind of goal you’d join the Peace Corps for. And a hospital is supposed to be a safe harbor. Theoretically. “How long does he want to stay?”

  “A year.” He ran his hand over his head. “I’m afraid, Ellie…for his—their—safety.” Fouad looked as if his heart was about to break.

  I shook my head. “No. You’re afraid they won’t come back.”

  It took him a while to answer. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “What does Hayat say?”

  “She and I have not” —he paused— “come to an agreement. She still has family there.”

  “Who might persuade him to stay permanently.”

  He pressed his lips together.

  Suddenly I felt relieved that Rachel was still a teenager. “What about this girlfriend’s parents?”

  “We do not know them.”

  “Well, why don’t you—”

  A horn beeped, and a shiny white SUV pulled up to the curb. The driver was a woman with long, blond hair. Two tow-headed kids peeked out of the back. Rachel opened the passenger door, jumped out, and went to the back of the car. The woman got out, too, and raised the hatch. She was wearing a lime green tank top and white shorts, which revealed a lot of smooth, tanned skin. Together they extracted Rachel’s bike and set it on the ground. They were about the same height, and from the back, with the woman’s straight blond hair and Rachel’s blond curls, they could have been mother and daughter, even sisters. My dark hair pressed down on my head like a weight.

  Rachel wheeled the bike halfway up the driveway, then turned to wave. The woman smiled, waved back, then climbed back into her car. As she drove away, the two little kids waved frantically through the window. Rachel waited until they were out of sight, then walked her bike into the garage. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, sweetie.” I gave her a hug. “Who was that?”

  Was I imagining it, or did I see a guilty expression cross her face? “Julia. And her kids.”

  It took a moment to connect the dots. Julia Hauldren was the woman Barry had been dating last winter. Six months ago. This had to be an all-time record for him. “Why did she bring you home?”

  Rachel shrugged. “It was on her way. She lives a couple of blocks away.”

  I remembered. Susan had told me she lived nearby. But that prompted more questions. Had she spent the night at Barry’s along with Rachel? Or had she come to his place that morning? I couldn’t see Barry tolerating two little rugrats running around his condo—neither child looked older than eight. Then again, beautiful women can make men do all sorts of strange things. And Julia was clearly beautiful.

  Rachel waved to Fouad and went inside. I turned around, but he was bent over the columbine, removing the extraneous plants. I squatted down to help, hoping to finish our conversation, but he went silent. I knew better than to force him to talk. I started pulling up chickweed, thinking about Fouad’s son and Barry’s girlfriend and how difficult it was to embrace change. Within seconds a layer of dirt had collected under my fingernails. I should put on gloves.

  I was on my way to the garage when the phone trilled. A moment later Rachel called through the window. “Mom, phone for you. Detective Milanovich.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I picked up the phone in the kitchen
. “Hello, Detective.”

  “Ms. Foreman? That your daughter who answered the phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds like a nice kid.”

  “She is.” What did he want?

  He cleared his throat. “Got a couple of questions for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know anyone by the name of Flynn?”

  “Flynn? No. I don’t think so. Why?”

  He was quiet.

  “Was that Daria’s last name?”

  “Yep.”

  “Daria Flynn.” I repeated it softly. “I don’t recognize it. How did you identify her?”

  “Her mother called the Lake Geneva Police after she saw the news. They lived together. The daughter didn’t come home that night. Didn’t call either.…” His voice trailed off.

  I closed my eyes, unable to imagine the pain of learning that your child has been killed.

  “Ms. Foreman, I know you said you didn’t know her. But I keep wondering—didn’t you say you were making a film up there?”

  “Yes. I told you about the video for the Lodge.”

  “You ever go to any fancy restaurants during your breaks?”

  “Fancy restaurants?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t have much of an expense account. Burger King and McDonald’s are more my style. Why?”

  “The Flynn girl worked at a place called the Grandview.”

  “The Grandview? Isn’t that in the Geneva Inn?”

  “That’s the one.”

  The Geneva Inn was the only hotel actually situated on the shores of Lake Geneva. Most of the shoreline was privately owned. The town elders—in an effort to preserve the lake if you listened to some, or keep it exclusive if you listened to others—had restricted the number of boat slips available to property owners. With only one slip per twenty feet of shore, it made no sense for a resort to build; they’d have precious little water access. But the Geneva Inn was an elegant bed-and-breakfast with a spectacular view of the lake. It also housed a five-star restaurant that drew customers from as far away as Chicago and Milwaukee. Boat slips weren’t a priority.