Shelter in Place (Page 32)

For a moment, a sweet, sweet moment, she thought her prayers had been answered.

Her grandmother lay on the floor of the foyer. Moaning, so … still breathing, but that could be remedied.

On another moan, her grandmother turned her head. “Patti, Patti. (God, she hated that nickname.) Thank God. I—I fell. I hit my head. I think, oh, oh, I think I broke my hip.”

Could be finished, Patricia thought. She just had to put a hand over the old bitch’s mouth, pinch her nose closed, and—

“Agnes! I can’t find the remote! Where did you…”

Her grandfather shuffled out of the first-floor master suite, brow furrowed in annoyance over his bifocals.

He saw his wife, let out a cry, and Patricia acted fast.

“Oh my God, Gram!” She lunged forward, dropped to her knees, gripped her grandmother’s hand.

“I fell. I fell.”

“It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.” She yanked her phone out of her purse, hit nine-one-one. “I need an ambulance!” She rattled off the address, careful to put a good shake into her voice. “My grandmother fell. Hurry, please hurry. Grandpa, get Gram a blanket. She’s shivering. Get the throw off the sofa. I think she’s in shock. Hold on, Gram. I’m right here.”

So the night wouldn’t be a lucky twofer, Patricia thought as she gently, so gently, stroked her grandmother’s cheek. But a broken hip (hopefully!) and an eighty-three-year-old woman had lots of potential.

Patricia hid her bitter disappointment when Agnes recovered. And she earned the admiration of the medical staff, the aides, and the neighbors with every performance of devoted caregiving.

She used the time to persuade her grandparents to not only give her power of attorney—the lawyers agreed—but to put her name on every account—checking, investments, the main residence, and the vacation home/investment property they owned on Cape May.

As she’d inherit her grandmother’s jewelry anyway, she took some pieces now and again and converted them into cash on drives to Augusta or Bangor—and once on a weekend holiday (at the urging of the doctors)—to Bar Harbor.

She converted some of the cash into good fake identification, and used that to open a small bank account—and to rent a safe-deposit box in a bank in Rochester, New Hampshire.

Between the jewelry, the regular skimming, the sale of the vacation home her grandparents were too stupid to know they signed off on, she had more than three million dollars in the box, along with four fake IDs, including passports and credit cards.

She kept a cool hundred thousand in cash with other essentials in a run-for-the-hills bag in the top of her closet, and had started a second bag.

As neither of her grandparents used the steps any longer, she had the entire second floor to herself. She installed police locks on her master suite, and the guest suite she used as a workshop.

If the weekly housekeeper found it odd the second floor was off-limits, she said nothing. She was paid well, and it meant less work.

As the next anniversary of the DownEast Mall approached, Patricia made plans. Lots of plans.

And crossed a couple more off the list.

* * *

Seleena McMullen rode the approach to July 22 on her blog and on her talk show. It gave her a chance to hype the updated edition of her book.

She didn’t quibble over the fact that the tragedy had made her career. As a matter of routine, every time a lunatic shot up a public place, she served as a talking head on cable TV.

She did the circuit every couple of years and raked in decent speaking fees. She’d copped a gig as executive producer on a well-received documentary about the shooting and, when things were really cooking, snagged a small guest shot on Law & Order: SVU.

It ebbed and flowed, she could admit that; every anniversary she pumped it up, and she’d be front and center.

She had staff, an agent, a hot boyfriend—after a brief marriage and a messy divorce. Still, the divorce and the hot boyfriend had bumped up the ratings and clicks.

They’d go through the roof with the lineup she had for the anniversary week.

She had the cop who’d taken out Hobart. Admittedly, Seleena had to pressure the mayor to pressure the cop’s captain to pressure the cop, but she had her. She couldn’t get the once teenage hero, now the cop’s partner, and that stuck in her throat.

Portland PD had given her a choice, one or the other, not both. She’d gone with the female cop, the first on scene, and let the other go.

She had a woman who’d been in the theater and nearly died—and lived with facial scarring and brain trauma. She’d booked the geek who’d saved a store full of people by barricading them in a back room, some other victims, an EMT, one of the ER doctors from that night.

But the shining jewel? The sister of the shooter, the baby sister of the ringleader.

She had Patricia Jane Hobart.

Even with that, and that was huge as Hobart’s sister had never, to date, given a formal interview, Seleena stalked around her office fuming.

She wanted the damn hat trick. The cop, Hobart’s sister, and Simone Knox—the nine-one-one caller who’d first alerted the police so McVee took Hobart out.

The bitch wouldn’t even take her calls. Had actually had some asshole lawyer send her a cease and desist when she’d tracked Simone down at an art gallery in New York.

A public event, Seleena thought now. And she’d had a perfect—First fucking Amendment right—to stick a mic in her face.

She didn’t appreciate being kicked out of the gallery for doing her job.

She’d written a blistering editorial on the treatment she’d received, and on the bitch herself. And would have printed it, too, if her ex—before he found out about the boyfriend and became her ex—hadn’t convinced her it would make her look like the bitch.

She hated knowing he’d had that right.

Well, she could play that nine-one-one call, and would. She could toss Simone Knox’s name around and maybe insinuate that, as a somewhat celebrated artist, Miss Knox no longer wanted an association with the tragedy of DownEast Mall.

“Work on that,” she murmured. “Work on how to say it. Throwing shade at her, but keeping the high road, the sympathy road.”

She wrenched open her door, shouted: “Marlie! Where the hell is my macchiato?”

“Luca should be back with it any minute.”

“For Christ’s sake. Find out where Simone Knox is, and where she’s going to be next week.”

“Oh, Ms. McMullen, the lawyer—”

Seleena whirled around, making the mousy Marlie jump back a step. “Did I ask you what the fuck? Just find out. I want to know where she is when I interview Patricia Hobart and the cop who killed her brother. And I want then and now pictures of her. Move your ass, Marlie.”

Seleena slapped the door closed.

“We’ll see who wins this round,” she muttered.

* * *

Simone won. She spent the weeks surrounding the anniversary traveling in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada. She did sketches, took photos of the desert, the canyons, the people, imagined translating those colors, textures, shapes, those faces and forms, into art with clay.

She basked in the solitude, reveled in exploring a land as different to her eye from the east coast of Maine as Mars was from Venus. With no one to answer to but her own whims, she stopped when and where she liked, stayed as long as it suited her.

When she finally headed east, she detoured north through Wyoming, into Montana, where she bought more sketchbooks, and gave in to an impulse for cowboy boots.