Shelter in Place (Page 31)

Killing Hilda Barclay, who’d cradled her dying husband of forty-seven years in her arms during the attack, meant traveling to Tampa, where Hilda had moved to be closer to her daughter. But Patricia considered the time and expense worth it.

She thoroughly resented the press Hilda generated, especially after Hilda created a scholarship for underprivileged youths in her husband’s name.

Underprivileged, my ass, Patricia thought. Freeloaders and assholes coddled by whiny liberal do-gooders.

Plus her target gave her ten days away from the nasty Maine winter—and her will-they-ever-just-die grandparents.

She did her research, of course, before she kissed her annoyingly long-lived grandparents goodbye, and headed off on what everyone agreed was a well-deserved vacation.

Maybe they’d both die in their sleep before she got back, and the equally detestable cat her grandmother spoiled like a baby would eat their eyeballs.

A girl had to have her dreams.

She loved Florida, and that surprised her. She loved the sun and the palm trees, the blue of the sky and the water. As she studied the view from her hotel suite—why not splurge?—and took pictures to send home, she imagined living there.

She might consider it, if it wasn’t for all the old people.

And Jews.

She’d consider it anyway.

In any case, she found it ridiculously simple to stalk Hilda and case the two-bedroom bungalow she lived in—on the same block as her daughter’s family.

Within three days, she concluded she had Hilda’s daily routine down pat. The old bat lived a simple life. She liked to garden, had several bird feeders she kept stocked, and rode a three-wheeled bike around the neighborhood like some wrinkled toddler.

On the fourth day, with ideas of tragic gardening or biking accidents in the hopper, Patricia cruised by as Hilda filled a bird feeder built to replicate a restaurant—complete with flower-boxed windows and a sign proclaiming FOOD FOR FEATHERS.

She pulled over, patted her short black wig, adjusted her amber-lensed sunglasses, then got out of the car.

“Excuse me? Ma’am?”

Hilda, spry and wiry in her floppy-brimmed hat, turned. “Can I help you?”

“I hope this isn’t too odd, but can you tell me where you got that adorable birdhouse? My mother would just love it.”

“Oh.” With a laugh, Hilda gestured Patricia closer. “Is she a bird lover?”

“Big-time. Gosh, it’s even cuter up close. Is it one of a kind?”

“It’s local work, but the shop that carries them has others like it. The Bird House.”

She proceeded to give Patricia detailed directions, which Patricia dutifully tapped into her phone. “This is great.”

“I think I saw you drive by yesterday.”

Patricia’s smile froze for a bare instant. “You probably did. My parents are just getting settled into a house a few blocks away. I’m running errands for them. They just couldn’t take the winters in Saint Paul anymore.”

“I hear that. I escaped the winters in Maine.”

“Then you’d know,” Patricia said with a laugh. “If I can find something like this, it would be a great housewarming gift for Mom.”

“My favorite is in the back, so I can see it from the kitchen window. It’s an English cottage.”

“You’re kidding me!” Inspired, Patricia lifted her hands. “My mother was raised in an English cottage in the Lake District. She moved to the States as a young teenager. An English cottage bird feeder—she’d just love that.”

“They can nest in it, too. Come on back, I’ll show you.”

“Oh, you’re so kind. If it’s not too much trouble?”

“Happy to.” As they walked, Hilda waved to a man who came out of the house next door. “Hi there, Pete.”

“Morning, Hilda. I’m heading out on a grocery run. You need anything?”

“I’m good, thanks. Your parents will love it here,” she added as they rounded the side of the house.

“I hope so. I’m going to miss them like crazy, but I hope so.”

Can’t kill her now, Patricia thought. Car’s out front, stupid neighbor. “Oh, what a beautiful lanai. I bet you can swim year-round.”

“And do,” Hilda confirmed. “Every morning before breakfast.”

Patricia smiled. “That’s why you’re in such wonderful shape.”

She oohed and aahed over the ridiculous bird feeder, complimented the garden, the lanai plants and pots, and thanked the soon-to-be dead woman profusely.

She didn’t follow the directions to the Bird House, but hit a Walmart for a toaster and an extension cord.

Promptly at seven-fifteen the next morning, Hilda walked out of the house, onto the lanai, shed a blue terry-cloth robe, and slipped into the pool in her simple chocolate-brown tank suit.

While she did her smooth, easy laps, Patricia stepped onto the lanai through its unlocked screen door, plugged the extension cord into the wall socket on the back of the house, and tossed the toaster into the pool.

She watched Hilda’s body flop as the water flashed. Watched it float, facedown, as she unplugged the cord, used the pool net to scoop out the toaster.

They’d figure it out—probably—but why give them any help? She stuck the murder weapons into her backpack and, dressed in her running capris, a tank, and a ball cap, jogged three blocks to her rental car.

She tossed the toaster in a Dumpster behind a restaurant, dumped the extension cord a couple miles away in the parking lot of a strip mall.

That done, she stuffed her auburn wig back in her pack, went back to her hotel to enjoy a hearty room-service breakfast of a spinach omelette, turkey bacon, berries, and fresh orange juice.

She wondered who’d find Hilda floating. Her daughter? One of the grandkids? Good neighbor Pete?

Maybe she’d keep an eye on the local papers.

But for the moment, she decided—without irony—to spend the rest of the day by the hotel pool.

* * *

Her grandparents failed to accommodate her by dying in their sleep. She settled for indulging herself with dreams of various methods of killing them. Actually killing them had to wait, but her father obliged her by getting hammered before getting behind the wheel of his Ford pickup.

He took a mother of two and her teenage son with him when he crossed the center line and plowed into their compact, but those were the breaks to Patricia’s mind.

Now she could cross another off her list.

She’d crossed Frederick Mosebly off the list on a balmy summer night—pre-Hilda—with an explosive device she’d stuck under the driver’s seat of his unlocked car.

That check mark especially pleased her as Mosebly had some minor local success with a self-published book he’d written about the DownEast Mall. And more, it was the first time she’d built a bomb.

She thought she had a knack for it.

She checked off her third for the year—had to spread them out awhile longer—by bumping into him in a crowded bar and jabbing him with a syringe of botulinum toxin. It seemed poetic as Dr. David Wu—who’d been having predinner drinks with his wife and another couple at the upscale restaurant and had been credited with having saved lives on that fateful night—was a cosmetic surgeon.

Patricia figured since he made a living (a rich one) injecting people with Botox, he could die being injected with the same basic substance.

She disposed of the syringe on the way home, and slipped quietly into the house.