Read Christmas At Timberwoods Online
Authors: Fern Michaels
Christmas At Timberwoods (5 page)
She watched with clinical interest as the water gushed into the bathtub. The strong, almost suffocating scent of Givaudan wafted into the bedroom in a cloud of steam. Angela swiftly calculated how long it would take to flood the upstairs and ruin the downstairs ceiling, then stuffed a washcloth into the overflow drain and turned the water on full force, then did the same thing with the sink. Next she moved to the sinks and showers in the other two upstairs bathrooms and blocked them. Before she could regret her actions, she turned back to her room and collected her purse and jacket.
Shortly after noon, Heather Andrews tapped on Felex Lassiter’s office door before storming in. “Lex, I guess you know I’m going to hang for this.”
Lex lifted his blond head. He had been reading through the file folders on his desk and quickly closed the one on top. “What?”
“For this,” Heather said in exasperation. “This was my morning off. When I came in, I learned about this new bomb scare. Lex, I never wrote out that report on Angela Steinhart for Harold. She was so damned cagey. But now I think she was trying to warn me—about herself!”
“You think. You don’t know that.” Lex rose and walked over to her.
“Look, I didn’t take the time to draw her out. Now how am I going to tell him about it? I’m gonna swing for this one. Did you know the whole mall is crawling with security? And state cops? Eric Summers finally had to bring in the local police, too.”
“Sit down, Heather. Take it easy. It isn’t as bad as you think.” Lex’s protective instincts kicked in. He put his arm around her and led her to a comfortable chair.
“The hell it isn’t! Oh, why should I care, anyway?” She sat down and buried her face in her hands. “If I get fired, I can collect unemployment—but—Felex, I should have written out that report. Not just for Harold. For Eric and the rest of those poor people who are wasting their energy trying to track down a bomb and find the person who made the threat. I have a very good idea who it is.”
“Maybe. And maybe not,” Felex emphasized. “You only know what the girl told you and you said yourself she wasn’t very specific.”
Heather squeezed her shaking hands together to control her nervousness. “I’ve been through this before, remember? I know what goes into checking out these threats. From what I hear, this one is different.”
“Right,” Lex encouraged. “I didn’t come forward with what little I knew about Angela because I thought it was your place. Secondly, things just don’t fit. The note says seventy-two hours, but Angela was asking questions about the peak of holiday shopping. If it was Angela who sent the threat, wouldn’t she have offered details to back up her story to you about her visions?”
“Who the hell knows? Crazy people don’t think rationally.”
“Do you think she’s crazy?”
“No,” Heather said slowly. “I didn’t then, and I still don’t. Maybe
troubled
is a better word, really troubled. I don’t know exactly what I saw in her eyes. Nothing you could put into an official memo. But it was still my decision to keep it to myself.”
troubled
is a better word, really troubled. I don’t know exactly what I saw in her eyes. Nothing you could put into an official memo. But it was still my decision to keep it to myself.”
“You shared it with me, right?”
“That’s not going to get me any points with upper level management.”
“Look, we’ll square it with Eric Summers. Okay? I’ll have him come up here and we can both talk to him.”
Heather managed a grateful smile and touched his hand. “Yes, Lex. Please.”
Eric Summers brought the walkie-talkie to his lips and spoke softly. “Summers here. Give me the head count.”
“Are you ready?” a voice asked. “We’re up to 276,543. Alderman’s has a two-day sale going on. This mall is jammed. You can’t move. But no mad bombers. So far.”
“They don’t wear identifying T-shirts,” Eric snapped.
“Roger that. We did nab four pickpockets. They’re on the way back to the chief’s office right now.”
“Are you sure of the count?” Eric asked sharply, getting back to the original topic of conversation.
“Positive. I double-checked it and Manners verified it. Wait till Monday. I just saw the flyer for Skyer’s. They’re having the same sort of sale, and you know what happens when Skyer’s says ‘half price.’ ”
Eric quickly calculated the timing of the sale with the seventy-two-hour deadline of the bomb threat. He shivered. Only a lunatic would conceive of destroying a complex like Timberwoods Mall, he acknowledged. It was a monument to human construction skills. Millions of square feet of shops, food stands, indoor waterfalls, living trees, and exotic plants. There was a Japanese lotus garden with a fishpond, a German beer garden, a Parisian bonbon shop, an Italian villa—all of it sheltered beneath a single gigantic roof. Movie houses, restaurants, and auditoriums, housed within a climatically controlled atmosphere. It was spring all year round in here. People came from around the state and beyond to shop at the famous Timberwoods Mall.
A lot of lives were at stake.
The beep of the walkie-talkie interrupted Summers’s horrified thoughts; he answered tersely. “Summers.”
“Conrad on the promenade. A-okay. Listen, Baumgarten just squawked my box and said he was pulling me off the upper level and assigning me to the Christmas parade on Friday. Thought you should know.”
“No problem. Out.”
Jesus, another problem. He’d totally forgotten about the parade. He counted on his fingers. Friday. Seventy-two hours away. He pressed a button on the gizmo and asked for last year’s attendance figures for the parade. “And give me the estimated head count during the Skyer’s half-price sale as well.”
Seventy-two hours. The best that could be hoped for was that it would pass without incident. In the meantime, everything had to be checked out. All those innocent people. Would Dolph Richards close the mall? Would Skyer’s go along with the shutdown? They were the biggest and loudest of all the stores. Summers knew in his gut that it would be business as usual.
The black box squawked again. Grateful for a reprieve from his thoughts, he answered and listened intently.
Felex Lassiter wanted him in his office right away. Some new information.
Eric paced Lassiter’s office, his coffee-brown eyes coming to rest again and again on Heather. “Do you or don’t you think that this Steinhart kid is the one who sent this bomb threat? Could she be responsible for the first two letters as well? They’re all similar—words and letters cut from newspapers and magazines.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. Yes, I think she’s connected somehow . . . but I don’t know how. Look, if you could have seen her you would have felt sorry for her, too. And she’s twenty, by the way. Not that much of a kid.” Heather hesitated. “She does know the mall inside and out, and not as a shopper. She designed several of our Christmas displays this year.”
“On her own, or did she work with a team?” Summers asked.
“Sometimes with a team. Our tech crew animated the figures. But yes, she was often alone and sometimes on different levels after hours.”
“Animated displays—that would make it easy to use a mechanical trigger,” Summers mused. “I want a list of each display that she created, how it was built, and materials she used, if you can get it.”
Lex nodded. “I’ll handle that.”
Heather continued. “There’s more. She hinted that she’s frightened of being put away. She says her mother thinks she should be. But I’m sorry to say I almost agree with her.”
“All right. So you do think she’s involved.” Summers fired off his words with machine-gun rapidity. His pleasant face was set in serious lines, his brows drawn together in concentration. He turned to Lex, who was standing near the window, his back turned to them. “What about you, Lassiter? What do you think? Did you see the Steinhart girl?”
“No. Heather came to me almost immediately afterward, though. And ease up—badgering Heather isn’t going to solve your problem. She’s already explained why she didn’t immediately file a report with Baumgarten.”
Leaning on the corner of Lassiter’s desk, Summers looked at Heather again. Making no apology, he said, “You have a home address on this kid, I assume.”
Heather nodded. Her pretty face revealed her inner anguish. If only she had reported to Baumgarten, or at least to Eric himself. She was largely responsible for the havoc being created out there in the mall. Why, oh why had she taken the morning off? Then again, would she have had the courage to stand up at Baumgarten’s meeting and say what she knew? Could she have let everyone know how she’d failed in the job?
“I want the two of you to go out there to talk to Angela. And to her parents. She must trust you, Heather, if she came to you first. If she didn’t send the letters, maybe she knows who did and she’s feeling guilty about it. And Lassiter, that Joe College smile of yours would charm the stars out of the sky. Besides, Heather will need a backup.”
“I can’t,” Heather protested. “I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“It’s too late for that now.” Eric overrode her objections. “You’re in it, like it or not! I’ll get things moving on this side. It’s not going to be easy to tell Baumgarten. Take your choice—Baumgarten or Angela.”
Defeated, Heather slumped in her chair. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.
“Did you bring her address?”
“It’s on my smart phone, along with directions.”
“Good.” Lex unlocked the car door and watched her slide into the passenger seat. He wished to hell he could do something to ease her worry, but his hands were tied. At least for now. Maybe later, after the interview, he’d take her out, buy her a drink and a nice supper. She deserved that. She deserved a lot, and from now on he was going to do his damnedest to see to it that she got it.
“I don’t like this one bit,” Heather complained as he turned the key in the ignition of his SUV.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.” He smiled at her. “Where does she live?”
“Clove Hills. Do you know where that is?”
“Doesn’t everyone? As my mother used to say,
‘That’s where the elite meet to eat.’ Did you know that Dolph Richards lives in Clove Hills?”
“Who cares? Lex, what are we going to do after we’ve talked to Angela?”
“That’s up to Eric Summers.” His eyes on the road, he was silent for a moment. Then, “I don’t know, Heather,” he said honestly. “I really don’t know.”
Chapter 3
Angela parked her Porsche at the curb and walked into the house, glancing over her shoulder at the various trucks lining the driveway. A plumber, an electrician, and a van with
SUMPY PUMPY
painted on its side.
SUMPY PUMPY
painted on its side.
Her watch told her that six and a half hours had passed since she jammed the overflows and left the water running. She closed the door behind her and waded through the several inches of water flooding the kitchen floor. Ignoring the workmen, who stared at her, she climbed the back stairway. The strange, childish anger that had driven her to do it hadn’t gone away.
She had really done a number on her mother this time. This would set her back a bundle and keep her home for a while redecorating. She felt a moment of remorse, then laughed at herself. Maybe she shouldn’t have jammed all the upstairs overflows.
She ran to her room, sat down at her computer desk, flipped open her laptop, and waited for it to boot up. A triumphant expression on her face, she typed furiously for several minutes, checked her spelling, then printed it out. Ripping the paper out of the printer, she read what she had written:
As a concerned citizen of Woodridge, I’m warning you that an explosion will happen at Timberwoods Mall during the height of the Christmas season. Thousands of people could be killed. You’ve got to do something to stop it.
—One who knows
“That should give them something to think about,” Angela muttered. She was going to send it directly to the mayor. Via snail mail. Much harder to trace than e-mail.
Yikes,
she thought worriedly—she had touched the paper. She crumpled the first copy and stuck it in her purse to burn later, then printed out another copy and handled it with tissues. She’d use a self-stick envelope that didn’t need licking, even though her fingerprints or DNA weren’t in data banks.
Yikes,
she thought worriedly—she had touched the paper. She crumpled the first copy and stuck it in her purse to burn later, then printed out another copy and handled it with tissues. She’d use a self-stick envelope that didn’t need licking, even though her fingerprints or DNA weren’t in data banks.
Would he call in a bomb squad? He couldn’t afford to ignore the letter, but would he force the mall to close? The management at Timberwoods would have to believe the mayor if they didn’t believe her. She knew she had frightened Heather Andrews, but she also knew that she hadn’t told her enough. Why would Heather think Angela could see into the future? Talking in that disjointed way hadn’t helped. Angela had been too vague.
A thought struck her. She had to be extremely careful. If they discovered in some other way who had sent the mayor the letter, they would descend on her immediately. They’d say she was mentally unstable. Manic depressive, at the very least. Lots of artists were. Or schizo. She had creative company there, too. Didn’t matter. A diagnosis that fit—and would be reimbursed by their gold-plated health insurance—would be just what her mother would need to put her away.
Another thought hit her like a blow. They could accuse her of planning the explosion. They’d say she belonged to a subversive group or something. Her head buzzed. Her thinking apparatus seemed to have short-circuited. “Why me?” she moaned. “What did I ever do to deserve this?”
She stuck a couple of fingers into a niche at the back of the desk and pulled out an amber vial of pills, barely looking at the prescription brand. Tranquilizers of some kind, different ones in the same bottle.
Do not operate heavy machinery after taking,
the label said. What a joke.
Do not operate heavy machinery after taking,
the label said. What a joke.
Angry tears streamed down her cheeks as she swallowed three or four without water, coughing. Eventually she crumpled the second copy of her warning letter into a ball and dropped it into the metal trash can. There was no way she could send that letter to the mayor—or to anyone else for that matter. She was too close to the edge as it was. It would be just the ammunition her mother needed before Sylvia had the men in white coats come to get her. She scrabbled in her desk drawer for a matchbox from a restaurant she’d liked, lit one, touched it to the edge of the paper, and watched it burn. Just as the last curls of ash flamed red before cooling to black, she thought of the first copy and tossed it in, too. Then she deleted the letter from her hard drive.
It was no use. No one could escape the inevitable, and that meant the people at the shopping mall, too. Somewhere in her gut, Angela knew that what she had envisioned was not a freak act of nature. Somebody had to be making plans to blow up the mall. Maybe, just maybe, if she hung around Timberwoods and kept her eyes open, she could find out who it was. She had a reason to be there—the displays. Animated figures lost beads and buttons and needed touching up. She wouldn’t actually work on them. Just pretend to be checking. No law against that.
Breaking the burned match in an onyx ashtray, she hopped up from her chair and pulled a Vuitton suitcase from the huge walk-in closet. Without thought to color or coordination, she pulled a mass of clothes from the scented hangers and tossed them into the depths of the softsided suitcase covered in intertwined
L
’s and
V
’s. Scooping up a handful of little plastic cases and jars, she dumped them into a plastic pouch and buckled the suitcase. She would check into the nearest hotel and decide what to do next.
L
’s and
V
’s. Scooping up a handful of little plastic cases and jars, she dumped them into a plastic pouch and buckled the suitcase. She would check into the nearest hotel and decide what to do next.
A timid knock sounded at the door and Irma, the old housekeeper, poked her head around the corner. “Miss Angela, we have to go to a motel for a while. I talked to the plumber and the electrician and they said we can’t stay here. Your mother asked me to pack a bag and she’ll pick it up. She wants to know where you’re going to stay. She’s upset over this . . . this . . .”
“Is she? Tell her I’ll let her know where I’m staying when I decide.”
“Miss Angela, I told her one of the pipes in the bathroom broke. I didn’t tell her . . .”
“You didn’t tell her it was me who flooded the house? I appreciate you covering for me, but it wasn’t necessary. I’m sure my mother knows what happened. I’ll own up to it. Don’t worry about it. Thanks anyway, Irma.”
“And, Miss Angela,” the elderly housekeeper continued, “there’s a man and a lady downstairs to see you.”
“Me? Who are they?” She snapped to attention.
“I don’t really know, Miss Angela. With all the confusion and your mother not here . . .”
“Thank you, Irma. I’ll be right down.”
Angela’s hands were shaking. She needed something to calm her. In her mother’s bathroom there were more tranquilizers. That would do it.
Biting her lower lip, Angela walked down the stairs, her boots squishing on the water-sodden carpet. In the foyer she saw a tall, good-looking blond man with his back to her. Obviously not an insurance adjuster. He was with pretty, dark-haired Heather Andrews from Timberwoods Mall.
“Angela, this is Felex Lassiter,” Heather intoned gently when she saw Angela. She pasted a friendly smile on her lips but had a haunted look in her eyes. “We’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. Okay? Is there somewhere we could go that would be out of the way?” She glanced at the crew of electricians parading through the foyer.
Angela nodded, heading for the den. She wondered briefly if the water had reached her father’s private sanctuary at the far side of the house. She smiled as she sloshed into the room and plopped down on the nearest chair. The tranquilizers hadn’t really had a chance to work yet, but just knowing she had taken them seemed to calm her.
Lex addressed the girl. His voice was pleasant and contradicted his frown. “Looks like the plumbing’s on the fritz.”
“Yes. I accidentally left the water running upstairs,” Angela said calmly.
“You accidentally left the water running?”
“Uh-huh,” Angela answered with a smile.
Heather looked down at her new pair of plain but expensive pumps, and grimaced. It would cost Angela’s parents a double fortune just to replace the carpeting, to say nothing of the damage to the wiring. But then they had that kind of money. She didn’t. Heather considered the cost of her shoes and sighed.
“Angela, we want to talk to you about your visit to my office yesterday,” she said quietly. “I want you to tell Mr. Lassiter what you told me, word for word.”
“Why?”
“Because you came to me—you seemed to have a lot on your mind, but I didn’t really give you a chance to go into it.”
“What did I say? I don’t exactly remember.”
Heather and Felex exchanged a look. Was Angela faking it or being truthful? Felex gave her a very slight nod to go on.
“Angela, you said that you had predicted some bad accidents in the past. And that—that something might happen at Timberwoods. Sooner rather than later. If you’re telling the truth, then perhaps we can help.”
“It’s too late. What do I have to do to make you understand? Nothing is going to change what I saw in my dream.”
“What dream?” Felex asked quietly.
Angela smiled in an odd way. “Wrong word. Not a dream. It was a nightmare.”
“When was that?” Heather asked.
Angela shrugged. “A few days ago. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, you can’t do anything. There’s no stopping it. It’s going to happen. Period.”
The effect of the pills in her empty stomach was dulling her senses.
“Maybe it isn’t too late,” Lex said. “I want to help if I can.”
Angela felt herself responding to the man’s genuine concern. Then, discounting it as another effect of the pills she’d hastily swallowed, she sighed. “You won’t listen. I already saw it. When I see it, that’s sure to be the end. You can’t change what I see. I don’t know why I went to the mall offices yesterday. I just had this need to tell someone, to get somebody to listen to me. I felt I had to try. Well, I’m not trying anymore. I’m never going to try again. I can’t change anything.”
Lex sat quietly, listening to the tone of Angela’s voice. The slight sing-song quality alerted him. “Are you—did you take any medication, Angela?”
“Just some tranquilizers. I’m jittery, I need something. What business is it of yours, anyway?”
“Angela,” Lex said softly, ignoring the girl’s defiance. “Ms. Andrews has given me a rough idea of what you told her. I’d like to hear more. Just from you.”
“Well, forget it. I don’t want to go over it again. It was bad enough when I went home and fell asleep and had the horrible vision.”
“I’m sorry. I wish there was something Heather or I could have done to keep you from having a nightmare like that. We didn’t know,” he sympathized.
Heather’s eyes flew to Lex. He wasn’t going to let her off this easily, was he?
Lex continued to speak, his voice soft and soothing. “But how did you know it was Timberwoods Mall in this vision of yours?”
“Because I was there. I was standing outside and all of a sudden there was an explosion and then another. Buildings collapsed. First one and then another!” Her voice rose in hysteria and even the tranquilizers couldn’t calm her down. “And fire,” she continued. “Thick black smoke. Flying glass. People were trapped in the stores. The exits were blocked. Children vanished and their parents were searching for them in a red mist. I tried closing my eyes, but all I could see was blood and fire . . . and no way out!” Her voice rose to a wail.
“Easy does it.” Lex reached out and took Angela by the shoulders. He held her steady, could feel her quaking and trembling.
But now that Angela had started, she couldn’t stop. “People were trapped under mountains of stone and rubble. Everyone was screaming. I couldn’t see to get to the trapped ones because of the fire, but I knew they were there. I could hear their screams . . .”
“Angela, Angela, hush, it’s all right.” Lex looked over Angela’s head to Heather, who was sitting quietly with a stricken expression on her face. The girl’s words were vivid, her panic was genuine. Heather believed her.
Angela calmed, wavering for a brief moment, indecision written on her face, a plea in her eyes. Then it was gone. “Come on, I did my good deed by telling you, and now that’s it. Get out of here. I’m out of it. I don’t care if you believe me. Why should you be different from the rest of them? Close the damn mall or let it blow up.” She broke out of Lassiter’s grip. “I have to get out of here before my mother shows up. All this water and the ruined carpet are going to cause her to blow. I don’t want to be around, if you know what I mean.”
“No, wait a minute. We’ve received a letter—a bomb threat. We have to know—did you send it? Did you?” Lex shook her a little, instinctively trying to break through her agitated withdrawal.
“Let go of me! I didn’t send anybody anything!” Suddenly Angela was grateful she had burned both copies of her letter to the mayor. There was no way they were going to pin this on her. No way! She had already said too much. “Let me go!” She pulled away and ran out of the room.
Heather looked at Lex, her face worried. “She’s so different from when I saw her.”
“How so?”
“She’s like a child—an angry, frightened child. Not herself somehow . . .” Heather’s voice trailed off.
“How well do you know her?” Felex asked.
Heather shrugged. “Not at all, really. I don’t know why I said that.”
“I’ll take it for a valid observation.”
“Lex, I can’t help believing her.”
“I do, too. Stoned on tranquilizers and she told it like she was there, had actually seen it happen. She’s so damn scared she doesn’t know what to do. That hardness—it’s all part of her cover. She couldn’t handle it without the front.”
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