Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 3 Read online

  Ben wrapped his shoes in hand towels and tied garbage bags around them. He’d start inside. Maybe switch closets or something. He’d have to get into Chad’s apartment to get the original journals, since he’d seen no evidence they even noticed the missing pages from the copies. Later. Right now, he needed to get done and gone. If it snowed…

  Upstairs, he grabbed all of the clothes from Kari’s closet and laid them on Willow’s bed. Arms full of Willow’s clothes, he hurried to Kari’s closet and hung them on the rod, but before he could return to Willow’s room, he heard Willow’s voice. “You get the carrots; I’ll go find mother’s old scarves.”

  Ben’s eyes darted to look for a place to hide. If she came into this room—he started for Willow’s room but decided against it. He dashed down the hall, slipped quietly into the craft room, and crouched in the closet. To his alarm, the craft room door opened and seconds later, he met Willow’s terrified eyes. She tried to scream, but he lunged for her clamping his hand over her mouth.

  “Do not make a sound,” he growled. “I have a gun; I will use it.”

  He prepared for the adrenaline as the fear in her eyes sent it coursing through her veins. She’d be a fighter, and he couldn’t kill her. Now what?

  She bit his hand and shoved him away from her. Illogically, he noted her unexpected strength as he fell against a chair. In a movie, that chair would break, his mind insisted, and hurt less.

  Before he could react, Willow raced from the room, screaming for Chad. Before he could get to his feet, a shot rang out, splintering wood and sending Ben diving for cover. Seconds later, Chad burst through the doorway, shocked to see Willow holding a man in a ski mask flattened on the floor at gunpoint.

  “Do something with this thing before I kill him,” she threatened. To the man she sent a furious look and a swift kick to the head, “If you are the coward who killed my dog—”

  “Shhh, Willow. We got him. It’s over. We got him.”

  Solari calmly pulled the SIM card from his disposable phone and exited the bathroom stall, dumping the card in the garbage can near the door. Thirty blocks away, near the projects, his driver took the phone, hurried down the steps to the subway platform, and returned empty handed. An hour later, they found the trees near Willow’s farm, and while Solari flipped through paperwork, José climbed the slight incline to the rim of trees, found Ben’s phone, gun, and case, and returned to the car.

  “Got it, Mr. Solari.”

  “Give me the phone. You can sell the gun in six months, but make sure it’s wiped down.”

  “Yes sir.” José paused. “What about Ben? Will he keep quiet?”

  “I’ve taken care of Ben.”

  José swallowed. “Yes sir. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interfere, sir.”

  His eyes met his driver’s in the rearview mirror. “You’re a good man, José. Loyal. I don’t forget that.”

  “It’s just that—” José glanced at the mirror again. He wasn’t sure he should talk. What if he should have said something sooner?

  “What, José?”

  “Well, Ben. He’s a coward and he didn’t like the job.”

  “I know.”

  With one last hard swallow, José asked the obvious question. “Will he talk before he can’t?”

  “I’ve taken care of it José. He won’t have time. They’ll transfer him to Brunswick and once they do, he’s out of our hair.”

  “I see, sir. Very good.”

  Solari watched as José’s face relaxed. He whizzed around the turns of the highway and onto the main stretch to Rockland. The man’s loyalty was commendable, but his concern couldn’t be bought. “José?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ben spoke only four words. “I want my lawyer.” Accepting a pen, he wrote the name and number of Rockland’s premiere high-profile criminal attorney.

  “You can’t afford her.”

  Silently, Ben tapped the name and crossed his arms. Each of the officers tried to question him, but not one extracted any answers. Resigned, Chief Varney called Brunswick and arranged for his transport. “Chad, can you drive him over?”

  “But the—” Chad began. The look on the Chief’s face silenced him. If anyone could get Ben to talk on the way, maybe Chad could. “I’ll get changed.”

  Before dark, Chad and Ben whizzed along the highway to Brunswick. “You know, I don’t get it. Who is Willow to you anyway?” All along the road, Chad asked questions that his prisoner never answered.

  Ten miles from the Brunswick turnoff, Chad rounded a corner, and a car zoomed into the road before he could brake. Glass flew, metal twisted and the airbag exploded in Chad’s face. He thought he heard the car door open, felt the cold even more keenly, but blackness overcame him.

  Frigid air whipped through the vehicle and Chad stirred, feeling stiff, groggy, and disoriented. His hand felt for his face but couldn’t find it. How strange. Every minute that passed helped drag him into consciousness, and pain exploded exponentially as he opened his eyes, trying to clear his mind. Cold. So cold.

  He reached for his radio. “Hey who’s there? I’ve been hit. Hello?”

  He listened to Joe, still semi-confused. “Joe, I’m not following you.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I know I need an ambulance.” He listened. “Huh? I don’t know about the other driver.” After a request for location, Chad forced his eyes open again. “A car just passed. I think the accident spun me off the road onto a side road or into a field or something.”

  The radio dropped from his hands and he didn’t even try to retrieve it. The cold numbed not only his fingers and nose but also his ability to think. Why was he on this road again? Where was Willow? He’d been with Willow hadn’t he? Carrots?

  Sirens woke him fifteen minutes later. They passed him twice before he managed to find the lights and flash them on their next try. He tried to stay conscious but the cold, his muddled mind, and the pounding in his head worked havoc with his lucidity.

  A VW Beetle with a huge Chinese food box on top pulled up to the Solari’s house. The driver jogged up to the step with two brown bags of food in hand. Lynne called out to her husband as she answered the door, “Steve, did you order Chinese?”

  “Yes, I got hungry.”

  “It’s paid for, Mrs. Solari. Have a good night.”

  “How’d you know my name,” Lynne demanded.

  “The credit card receipt. I assumed. I’m sorry.”

  Lynne carried the bags into the kitchen and dished up plates for both of them. Handing Steve his she whined, “I thought we were going to The Oakes.”

  “Sorry, I’ve got a bunch of calls to make, and I’m starving. I’ll take you tomorrow.” He glanced at his plate. “No fortune cookies?”

  “You hate fortune cookies.”

  “I’m broadening my horizons.”

  With a shrug, Lynne handed him her cookie and retreated to the kitchen for another. Solari cracked the cookie and read the fortune. ‘Dangers are averted by wise precautions.’ A satisfied smile crept over his features.

  As Lynne returned, he bit into his cookie and made a face. “I think I’ll try to broaden next time. This is great mu shu though.”

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Willow walked back from Fairbury with a light heart and steps as light as one can have when shod in double socks and snow boots. It was over. During the past few hours, speculation had grown all over town as to why the man had been quietly terrorizing her. The popular theory was that he became obsessed with her after reading the article in the Chronicle. This made little sense to Willow, her mind couldn’t conceive why someone would mess with her mind in order to show loyalty.

  However, as she tramped along the road, breathing the first fresh air she’d really enjoyed in weeks, Willow’s mind was on the dozen things she could do again. Milk the goat, feed the chi—well, no she couldn’t feed the chickens. She needed to order chicks. The greenh
ouse. She could plant her first greenhouse crops. She could go for walks along the creek. “Lord, life is wonderful again.”

  As much as she dreaded coming home to a dark empty house, the realization that there was nothing to fear, no reason to worry, and that Chad was free from the need to sleep in her mother’s room. She’d have time to fix it up for him after the wedding. After the wedding. Her heart stopped and she sucked in frigid air at that thought. She was going to have a wedding.

  The house was hardly warmer than outdoors. Willow methodically built fires in all of the stoves, put soup from the icebox on to warm, and mixed cornbread. Chad would be hungry when he got back from taking the man to Brunswick. She’d have hot food waiting, the animals tended, and his stuff ready to go home. Home. Willow smiled. He’d probably like that for a change.

  The walk to the barn felt wonderful. Cleaning stalls, feeding animals, and even straining the milk was a familiar rhythm that she’d missed more than she realized. By the time she entered the house again, she felt nice and tired. She hadn’t felt that wonderful ‘hard work tired’ feeling in far too long.

  After dinner, Willow felt nearly giddy with the options of things to do. The full impact of how affected she’d been by the recent intrusions into her life hit her hard when she climbed the stairs and saw her mother’s clothes on her bed. The familiar panic rushed to her chest followed quickly by the equally familiar anger, but this time she smiled. It wouldn’t happen again. And, now she knew what she’d do that night.

  Once her clothes hung in their normal places on the pole, Willow removed every article of her mother’s clothing from the hangers and folded them, smoothing each piece with care. She carried a pile of the pieces not worth donating to the craft room. She’d turn them into rags or strips for rugs. Some would likely be burned, but she’d decide on that later. However, she did manage to come up with two small stacks of clean clothes for Cheri’s homeless shelter.

  As Willow wrapped the clothing in muslin and sewed it shut, she remembered Cheri’s animated discussion of the needs of her church’s homeless shelter. The ex-prostitutes who needed less revealing clothing and the cold women who wore summer pants in winter because it was all they had and needed basic articles like jeans, t-shirts, flannel shirts, and sweaters, surely these things would help someone. A few favorite wool sweaters sat in a pile on her dresser. Those, she couldn’t bear to give away. Her mother’s favorite dress now hung in the back of her closet. The homeless didn’t need it, and she couldn’t part with it.

  Once the clothes were gone from Kari’s closet, Willow glanced around the room with a critical eye. Her mother’s red and white quilt seemed masculine enough. The headboard and footboard would need to stay, as would the end tables. The framed pressed flowers had to go. They were too feminine. With loving care, she took the frames from the wall and carried them to the spare room.

  Next, she carried all of her mother’s favorite books downstairs to the library. Chad had no need for Mother’s favorites in “his room.” Willow sucked in her breath at the thought. Her mother’s room would soon be Chad’s—really be his. Could she stand to make many more changes? He’d probably want different paint. Straw colored walls were probably too feminine. Each change felt as if she wiped her mother’s fingerprints from the room—their home. Her breath came in short gasps as she struggled against the panic that welled in her. Maybe it was too soon to bring someone else into her home. Maybe she wasn’t ready for marriage.

  The clock downstairs chimed eight o’ clock. She took a deep breath and forced herself to continue to strip the room of personal possessions. Willow moved her mother’s Bible to her own bed table. She’d start using it at night and keep her Bible down by the couch. A glance at the pen made her smile. She’d found one with pressed flowers encased in acrylic and ordered it for her mother’s stocking two years earlier. That pen went into Willow’s “treasure drawer.”

  Handkerchiefs went into a pile in the trunk in the craft room. She’d make something from them someday. Mother was fanatical about having plenty of handkerchiefs. They each had a small drawer packed with them, and the moment they grew thin, Mother burned them and made more. Willow knew, without a doubt, that she’d never be able to use them.

  From the closet, Willow pulled the files and her mother’s stationary. She ran her hand over the box wondering where it should go. Though she needed to familiarize herself more with the contents, she wasn’t ready to deal with what might be inside. With an air of resignation, Willow carried the box to the spare room, piled it on the top shelf, and shoved it to the back corner. There was time enough to deal with the box and its contents.

  By the time she finished emptying her mother’s room of all personal property, the clock chimed nine. It had been hours since Chad left Fairbury with her intruder. What was taking so long? Was he talking now? Did they have information that he needed for her for some reason? Would he mind if she called? Of course, he wouldn’t. She felt silly at the thought.

  His phone rang. Voice mail picked up and she left a message letting him know his bag was ready and dinner was waiting if he was hungry. A dozen or two times over the next hour, she stared at her phone, waiting for some message. Chad never waited more than an hour to return her calls.

  The battery dipped lower and lower, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn off the phone. That little screen felt like the only connection she had to Chad, and as the night grew longer and colder, she grew more concerned. At last, the phone had one bar left. With an air of resignation, she pulled on her jacket, zipped it tight, and shoved her feet in her boots. The wind howled around her as she fought her way to the barn and flipped on the lights. The charger in hand, she hurried back to the house and flipped on the circuit breaker. Willow stood in the center of her living room spinning slowly, trying to remember where the outlets were.

  At eleven o’clock, she climbed upstairs, grabbed her blankets and pillow, and stumbled back to the living room. Each call went to voice mail, and each time, her voice sounded a little more frantic. Her head pounded with the frustration of not knowing who to call or where. She didn’t know the number of the police station. It wasn’t an emergency so she couldn’t dial 9-1-1. No one, whose numbers she knew, would have the answers she sought and it drove her crazy.

  As she tried to sleep, her mother’s voice echoed through her memory. We often leave prayer as a last resort when it seems like it should be our first response. But I think that when we’ve exhausted all of our options, then we’re ready to fully trust and listen. Our ideas are no longer whirling through our minds, confusing us when we really just need to rest in the only One who can do anything about anything anyway.

  “How right you were, Mother,” she whispered.

  From somewhere nearby, a cell phone rang. Solari’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the nearly empty boxes of food. Leroy must have planted it in there. Thankfully, Lynne was upstairs doing her nightly beauty regimen. He’d slipped. As much as Steve wanted to blame this on his man, he knew it was his own fault. Leroy was thorough, and he should have checked.

  Steve dug the zip locked bag out of the bottom of the rice box grabbed a fresh pair of kitchen gloves. He’d talked her into disposable latex gloves years earlier, and it benefited him well at times like this. The missed call was from Willow. He listened. She’d packed his bag and made dinner. What did that mean?

  Lynne’s voice called to him from the stairs. Steve pulled the gloves from his hands and shoved them and the phone in his pocket. “What?”

  “You comin’ to bed?”

  “Not now, I’ve got a pile of work. I may have to go down to the office. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Twenty minutes later, Steve drove to Marshfield and entered a small warehouse at edge of town. While he contacted Leroy, he listened to the next message. “It’s me. Rest stop. Forty minutes. The phone has to go back.”

  The phone rang once more as he waited for Leroy to pick it up. Solari punched the voicemail button and listened as Will
ow’s concerned voice came over the line. “Going to sleep on the couch. I don’t know who to call to ask about you. I can’t lose any more people in my life. Please call.”

  He ran a dozen scenarios through his mind, trying to find one that appealed to him. If there was some way for him to let her know how to call, who to call…

  Headlights flashed across his hood followed by the sound of a car door slamming shut. A rap on his window signaled Leroy’s arrival. Steve rolled it down asking, “You got a mustache with you?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Wear it and add some bulk to you. Take this into the Fairbury police. Tell them you saw some kids playing with it and they took off. Drop it on the ground before you go in so it looks like you found it in the snow.”

  “Right. Anything else?”

  He hesitated. It was just over two weeks to the ball. Just enough time for her to quit being jumpy. Maybe this’d work a different way. He passed a locker key through the window. “No. Madison street station. Number thirty-seven.”

  “Thanks Mr. Solari.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  Leroy took the phone and drove to Fairbury, avoiding vehicles. Thankfully, it was late. The beat cops in Fairbury quit at nine or he’d have a hard time selling Steve’s story. Outside the police station, Leroy wrapped a towel around each arm and stuffed them in his jacket. Another towel went around his waist and then he stuffed his shirttail back into his jeans.

  “Hey, anyone in here?”

  A mustached officer leaned back in a chair, his neck craning to see. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, man, these kids were out there on the corner goofin’ ‘round and I guess they thought I was a cop or sumpin’ cause they saw my lights and took off. One of ‘em dropped this. I thought I should bring it in. Not good out there in the snow.”