Chapter 11

Carl had a big, black SUV, the kind you see on the TV detective shows. A good thing, because the back cargo area was packed with equipment--a satellite dish, car batteries, several black metal boxes with a lot of dials and lights, a tool kit, and assorted handheld instruments. When Carl said he could get us into the building, I believed him. I just hadn't expected an all-out alien attack. I suppose he wanted to be prepared for anything.

The five of us were piled in the van, headed north on I-95. Carl took a left on International Speedway Drive, named in honor of the Daytona 500 car race, and a right into the government complex that housed the Medical Examiner's office. We'd worked out a cover story before we left New Smyrna Beach.

Penny Sue and Ruthie's car broke down, and they were waiting for help, when some sinister looking men pulled up behind them offering aid. The men tried to force Penny Sue and Ruthie into their van, but the two broke away and ran to the government complex. When they reached the lawn in front of the Examiner's office, Ruthie collapsed. She supposedly had asthma. To make the story look real, they both smeared dirt on their clothes before we left our condo parking lot. Penny Sue even put a couple of twigs in her hair.

Guthrie and I were dressed in black so we could hide in the darkness before sneaking in the building to find Alice. Guthrie owned a black tee shirt with FBI stamped on the back that I wore. Since the staff might recognize Guthrie, if we happened to be caught, I could pretend I was arresting him. Penny Sue groused that it wouldn't be an issue if we'd just let her bring the liquid taser, but Ruthie insisted there would be no shooting. Carl told us not to worry. If we were caught we should put our hands over our ears and hightail it back to the SUV. He could disable the medical staff with sound waves. That was the point of the dish. Having a genius friend sure comes in handy.

For the most part we were silent for the entire trip, each of us mentally rehearsing our part in the charade about to unfold. Carl parked at the intersection of a cross street close to the Medical Examiner's lot. We piled out of the van and headed to our marks, as they say in the theater, while Carl opened the rear window and positioned the satellite dish.

Guthrie and I pressed ourselves against a chain link fence on the side of the building, close to the door, as Ruthie curled up in a fetal position on the ground about fifty yards away. With everyone in place, Carl gave us the high sign, and Penny Sue went into action.

"HELP! HELP! We need a doctor," she hollered, banging on the door. "HELP! My friend is dying!" She banged so hard I was surprised the glass didn't shatter. "MURDER! HELP!"

Well, the girl did have a unique style, as her drama teacher said, because her performance drew the entire staff. The burly doctor who'd kicked Guthrie out of the building earlier in the day opened the door, the rest of the staff huddled behind him. Before he could get a word out, Penny Sue grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the building screaming, "My friend is dying! Our car broke down and some men tried to kidnap us. She has asthma. She collapsed. You've got to help!" Ruthie was heaving loudly and twitching. Someone said, "I'll call 9-1-1," and Penny Sue screamed, "No, the men are following, you have to come out and protect us."

A slight bald guy in a lab coat pushed past the big doctor and raced toward Ruthie. "Come on," he yelled. "This isn't Central Park. I'm not going to stand around like a wuss and watch someone die!" That's all it took for the entire group to rush to Ruthie's aid. As the bald doctor examined Ruthie, Penny Sue was blubbering hysterically and hanging from the neck of the big guy. The others formed a barricade facing outward, as if on the lookout for the kidnappers. The moment the staff left the building, Guthrie snagged the door before it shut and we both slipped through.

He pointed to double doors directly ahead. "You check the cooler. I'll check the offices down this hall." He hooked his thumb to the right. "Hurry."

Hurry was an unnecessary command. I flew through the doors whispering, "Alice, it's Leigh. Are you in here? Alice. Alice." She wasn't in sight. The place was dimly lit, cold, and creepily sterile. I stopped in the center of the room and gazed at a bank of lockers. Lockers--the kind they store bodies in. Dead bodies--one of them was probably Abby. Mangled and dissected bodies. A wave of nausea swept over me, and I swallowed my gorge trying to summon the nerve to open a locker. Surely Alice hadn't crawled in one of those. Still, she was pretty gutsy and might do it in a pinch.

I clenched my teeth and tiptoed toward the bottom locker on the left, when a metal door suddenly hit my leg. Yeow! I must have jumped halfway across the room as a scene from Night of the Living Dead flashed through my mind. Frozen in place, I watched a skinny leg extend from a compartment below a countertop. Then another leg, and hands. Old hands. Glory, it was Alice! I rushed to help her to her feet.

"Well, it sure took you long enough," she gripped, straightening her shirt indignantly.

"Sh-h," I whispered and guided her to the reception area. Guthrie was headed our way shaking his head. The sight of Alice put a spring in his step and in an instant he was hustling us out of the door and across the parking lot toward the SUV. It wasn't a minute too soon. Ruthie was sitting up, and the tall doctor had pulled free of Penny Sue's grasp. "I'll call the police," he said, clearly eager to get away from Penny Sue and her screeching. At that moment, Carl jogged toward the group calling, "Mom, I've been so worried!" Everyone stopped what they were doing, except two women who moved to block Carl's path.

"No, it's okay," Ruthie said weakly. "That's my son. We called him when the car broke down and left a message on his voice mail."

Carl picked Ruthie up and gave her a bear hug. "I was so worried. I found your car and have been riding around searching for you. You should have stayed with the car." He set Ruthie down and turned to Penny Sue. "Are you all right?"

She grinned thinly. "Yes, I'm just shook-up. It's a long story. These nice people helped us."

"I should still call the police," the burly doctor said sternly.

"Call the police?" Carl asked incredulously.

"Some men in a van tried to kidnap us," Ruthie told him.

"There was no van close to your car," Carl replied.

"We got away and ran." Ruthie turned to Burly. "Don't call the police. I just want to go home. We didn't see their license plate or anything--it was dark and we were so scared."

The slight doctor who vowed he wasn't a wuss patted Ruthie on the shoulder. "Take care of yourself. You should probably buy some pepper spray."

"Thank you all for helping my mother." Carl herded Ruthie and Penny Sue toward the SUV. "And I promise they'll buy pepper spray. In fact, I'll buy it for them myself."

They piled into the SUV, and we took off slowly. "Wow Ruthie, that was, like, an academy award-winning performance," Guthrie said.

"Carl wasn't bad, either," Penny Sue added with true admiration. "He almost had me believing he was Ruthie's son."

"When you play war games, you learn to think on the fly. I heard the comment about calling the police and figured I'd better intervene."

"How in the world could you hear that comment?" Ruthie asked.

"The dish," Carl replied. "It can pick up and send sounds. Hey, Guthrie, can you reach the dish and pull it back so I can put up the back window?"

"Sure, man, no problemo."

Alice was sandwiched between Guthrie and me in the backseat, her arms crossed across her belly. I assumed it was because she was cold. Wrong. "Well, doesn't anyone want to hear about my day?" she asked tersely, pulling a manila folder out the bottom of her shirt.

Guthrie's eyes were saucers. "Wow, is that what I think it is?"

Alice grinned smugly. "Part of Abby's file that I found on a counter. I haven't had a chance to look at it, but I heard a lot while I was hiding under the counter."

"Well, don't keep us in suspense," Penny Sue said.

Alice leaned back and rolled her shoulders. She was clearly playing her part for all it was worth. "Like Guthrie and I heard earlier, Duffy died from compression asphyxiation. The tox report arrived and proved there wasn't enough snake venom in his body to kill him. The poor fellow was suffocated by the weight of the books." She hugged the folder to her chest and took a deep breath. "They also got Abby's report. The heart attack was caused by an overdose of nicotine."

"Nicotine?" I echoed.

Guthrie scooted forward excitedly. "I noticed Abby was wearing a patch on her arm when she came to tell Kevin she was going to debate him. It must have been a nicotine patch! I'll bet she went to the bathroom to sneak a cigarette. Maybe she was having a panic attack and thought a cigarette would calm her nerves. She could have smoked two or three, which was probably enough to cause an overdose."

Alice smirked at Guthrie. "Exactly what I think. Nicotine poisoning proves that Kevin had nothing to do with her death. And, since I know New Jersey won't insist on extradition, Kevin should be released tomorrow morning."

I looked askance at Alice. "You know they won't insist on extradition?"

"How can you be sure?" Ruthie chimed in.

"I have sources," Alice said.

Penny Sue turned around to face us. "Which was it, the Italians or Russians?" she asked Alice.

Alice arched a brow. "Both."

Carl dropped us off at Penny Sue's condo. Everyone was exhausted, so there was no offer of coffee or a liqueur. Even Guthrie immediately headed up the hill to his condo, mouthing a weak "good night" over his shoulder. We went straight inside Penny Sue's unit, set the alarm, and checked Lu Nee 2's status next door. We'd left the lights on in my condo, and Lu Nee's control panel showed no intruders during our absence. Alice tossed her folder on the dining room table, declaring she was too tired to deal with it. The withering look she flashed in our direction said we'd better not touch it, either. No problem. We were too worn out to think about anything other than making up Penny Sue's pull-out sofa bed, which we did in record time. A half hour later we were settled in our beds, make-up and all, and drifting off to Never Never Land.

I felt like my head had barely hit the pillow when an Alert Intruder sounded from Lu Nee's control panel. I was the first to locate the box with the tiny television screen on the kitchen counter. Next door, Lu Nee was buzzing and screeching, Halt! as its head rotated to scan the room. The scan picked up two young men standing beside the stack of boxes in my dining area. Still groggy, I couldn't remember how to stop the scan and zoom in on the perpetrators. Penny Sue and Ruthie were leaning over my shoulder, yet they couldn't remember how to stop the scan either. It was good old Penny Sue who found the intercom button and yelled into the box, "The police are on their way!" Meanwhile, Ruthie gathered her wits and hit the panic button on Penny Sue's alarm. A deafening blare filled our condo and sent the burglars on the run. Lu Nee 2 caught their backsides as two slender males, probably in their teens or early twenties, scurried out the sliding glass door. The pole for the track, my security system, was lying in the middle of the floor. This time they'd succeeded in jimmying the door.

Penny Sue raced to the linen closet for the taser as Alice pounded down the hall with her long barreled pistol. Ruthie flipped on the deck spotlights just as a loud knock sounded at the front door. "Sheriff!" a male voice shouted. It was Tommy, Heather Brooks' young partner. "Is everyone all right?" he asked excitedly. We said we were and that it was the unit next door that had been burglarized. We motioned to the sliding glass doors that led to the deck, where Heather stood surveying the scene. It was one of those foggy beach nights when the humidity hugged everything like a wet blanket.

"A car was waiting again," Heather said. She glanced at Penny Sue holding the taser, and Alice with the pistol, and grinned. "They got away. No shooting tonight, ladies."

Alice stuffed the pistol in the pocket of her velour robe and headed back in the house. "Damn, then I'm going back to bed."

Heather motioned to my condo, where Lu Nee 2 was still screeching Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! Salty dew was streaming down the glass doors. Heather shrugged. "The likelihood of lifting fingerprints from this mess is slim to none. Come on, Leigh, let's do a walk-through to see if anything was stolen."

I punched the button on Lu Nee's head to silence it. "I don't believe they had time to get much. Lu Nee 2 went off immediately, and Ruthie pushed Penny Sue's panic button a moment later. I saw two young men head for the boxes stacked against the wall, but the robot's head kept swiveling, so I couldn't see if they took anything. By the time Lu Nee's camera went full circle, they were headed out the door. I believe their hands were empty, but I couldn't swear to it."

"What's in the boxes?" Heather asked.

"Books and a laptop computer."

"Are they valuable?"

"Some of the books could be; they're pretty old," Ruthie answered. "They belonged to Dr. Abigail Johnston. She willed them to Kevin, who was her former research partner."

Heather stroked her bottom lip, thinking. "You're talking about the lady who died at the library? She willed her books to the man who's now sitting in jail as a person of interest?"

Ruthie's eyes flashed. "Yes, but Kevin had nothing to do with Abby's death. He'll probably be released in the morning--"

I was standing behind Heather, facing Ruthie. I shook my head to shut her up. The last thing we needed was for Ruthie to say something that connected us to the Medical Examiner and the file Alice stole. Fortunately, Ruthie got the point.

"He'll probably be released tomorrow," Ruthie continued, "because his lawyer met with Woody this afternoon."

Heather studied Ruthie. She was a terrible liar, and her normally pale skin was red as a beet. Heather apparently chose to ignore the obvious. "Do you have an inventory of the books, so you can tell if anything is missing?"

"Kevin and I started one," Ruthie said, "but didn't get very far. The books we logged are all on the top, so it should be easy to determine if any of them are missing."

I jumped in. "And the thieves didn't have time to dig through the boxes before the alarm went off. We should be able to determine if anything was taken pretty quickly."

Heather checked her watch. "Tomorrow's soon enough. I've pulled another double shift and I'm beat. Will you be available tomorrow afternoon?"

"I'm sure we can make arrangements," I said. I was scheduled to work, but felt sure Terry would give me the afternoon off.

"Good. Leigh, did you think about an alarm system of your own?" Heather asked, giving Lu Nee 2 a distasteful look.

"Yes," Penny Sue fired back. "One's being installed tomorrow."

Heather nodded approval. "It's pretty strange that someone would try to break into your condo two nights in a row."

"God's truth. Especially since there isn't anything valuable here," Penny Sue said flippantly.

Nothing valuable? The nerve! If I'd been holding the taser, I would have shot her in the butt. Tommy saw my reaction and stepped away. Heather picked up the cue to leave.