“We have to stop him,” I said, rushing toward the front door. We got outside, hopped into Ryder’s mother’s Mercedes and he put the car in gear. By now it had gotten dark and all the holiday displays in all the front yards were illuminated. Ryder started to back out but stopped with a start. He hadn’t seen that the street was clogged with cars because they had all turned out their headlights so they could see the lights of Candy Cane Lane.
He finally was able to pull out, but now we were part of the procession of slow-moving cars. I tried Barry’s cell and got his voice mail. I began leaving a message, but it was so convoluted that it didn’t make sense even to me. I took a deep breath and called Detective Heather. I got her voice mail, too. I cut to the chase with her message and just gave her the facts that I thought William was the killer and that he was on his way to the airport, and I bet he had the afghan. I had no idea if she would believe me.
“Adele is going to have to keep him from leaving,” I said as I called her cell.
I heard Dinah snort from the backseat. I admitted it was going to be a challenge.
I got Adele in the car. She cut me off before I’d even finished hello. “Pink, just tell Mrs. Shedd I’m dropping William off at American Airlines and then I’ll come back to the bookstore and straighten everything out about the books. I cut her off and told her I had to tell her something very important and that she should just listen and say nothing.
“Pink, if it’s some of your detec—”
“Hush,” I yelled at her. “I said just listen. You’re not going to be happy with what I’m going to ask you to do. I need you to keep William from getting on the plane.” She made a sputtering sound, but I quieted her again. I told her he wasn’t going to Miami. I took a deep breath and told her that he had killed Bradley and I could prove it. I heard her gasp and then tell me I was nuts.
I told her to check his ticket and she’d see that he wasn’t really going to Miami.
“You’re ridiculous and I’m not going to do anything,” Adele said. I made one more attempt to get through to her.
“I know you don’t want to believe me because he’s your boyfriend and what I told you is a total shock. I hate that it’s true, but it is. I always thought you were too good for him, anyway.” She didn’t say anything else, and when we hung up, I figured the last thing she’d said still stood. She was in total denial and was going to let him leave.
By now Ryder had gotten out of the clog of cars and hit the gas as we headed for the freeway. The freeway wasn’t moving, but Ryder said not to worry, he knew all the short-cuts.
I tried Barry again, thinking we were never going to make it in time. Ryder did know every back road. We went up steep streets and along the paved part of Mulholland before getting onto Sepulveda as it paralleled the freeway. I was leaning forward, willing the SUV to go faster. Ryder was a typical young adult male driver. He wove through traffic like he was braiding a ribbon. I finally closed my eyes and hoped for the best.
“Hey, MP, here we are,” he said, finally pulling up to the white curb in front of American Airlines. I got out and he started to follow me, but the recording playing over a loudspeaker reminded us it was for loading and unloading only. Dinah came around to the front seat and said she’d park the car.
We looked in through the glass door at the line waiting to check in, but there was no Adele or William in sight. We took the elevator up a level to the area just outside the restricted zone on the slim chance William was up there.
There was just a small area before the first checkpoint for last good-byes. I didn’t see Adele at first. She was hidden behind a post. When I checked the screening area, William was just putting his shoes, jacket and carry-on in plastic bins to go through the X-ray machine. He took off the vampire scarf around his neck and added it to one of the bins. Ryder was right behind me with his video camera going. What was he going to call this YouTube piece —“Murderer Escapes”?
What could I do? It only took a moment to realize the answer was nothing. If I made some kind of fuss, the only one who’d get detained would be me. All I could do was watch him go. He was pushing the bins with his stuff onto the conveyer belt and the TSA guy said something to him and pointed. William nodded and reached into his pockets. As he pulled his hand out, he looked down and his face registered surprise as his hand came up.
Suddenly it was like everything went into slow motion. The TSA guy pointed at William’s hand and yelled, “Gun,” just as I saw it. All the people waiting in line screamed and dove for the floor as another TSA guy jumped over the row of metal tables and tackled William, before two uniformed officers ran from their station and joined the fray.
“Is it over yet?” Adele said, stepping from behind the post.
As they led William away, he caught sight of Adele and his usually placid face twisted in a grimace. “You,” he spit out in anger. “I should have known that you’d ruin everything. The only thing you were good for was pushing the Koo Koo books.” He grunted at her. “You and your ridiculous clothes, you’re nothing but a big—”
Before he could finish, I stepped in. “Shut up,” I shouted at him. “You should have been grateful to have a girlfriend like Adele. She’s one of a kind and special. You’re not good enough to kiss the hem of her colorful clothes.”
William snarled at all of us before being led away.
A SHORT TIME LATER, DINAH, RYDER, ADELE AND I were sitting on the curb outside the terminal. The message about the area being set aside for loading and unloading kept playing, but we didn’t care. We all needed to regroup.
“Did you really mean all that, Pink?” Adele said, leaning against my side.
I had to ask myself the same question. Yes, I did mean it, particularly the part about her being one of kind. Nobody could argue with that.
“I didn’t want to listen to you, Pink,” Adele said. “But when I went to get his carry-on out of the backseat, I finally checked his ticket and saw that he was only changing planes in Miami for one to Geneva. His passport was there, too. When I realized everything he’d said to me was probably a lie, I got angry.”
“How’d you plant the gun on him?” I asked.
“It isn’t real,” she said, reminding me of the kid who’d brought the cap gun to story time and how I’d made her stick it in her car. “I found it under the seat of the car. I made a big deal of saying good-bye to him and insisted on him taking the vampire scarf I made for him. I had wrapped the gun in it and when I tried to stuff the scarf in his pocket, put the gun in instead. Then I said it was better to put the scarf around his neck. I was so smooth, he didn’t know what was going on,” she said, beginning to turn back into the Adele we all knew and were annoyed by.
A black Crown Victoria pulled up as we were sitting there and Detective Heather got out.
“You came,” I said, surprised. “How’d you find us?”
“I just followed the ruckus,” she said, rolling her eyes.
They wouldn’t have been able to hold William for long since the gun was a toy, but Detective Heather was able to look in his carry-on and found the afghan. There were traces of blood and no doubt tests would confirm it was Bradley’s. She figured the knife was probably hidden someplace at William’s, which she’d find when she got a search warrant.
We all had to go back to the station to give our statements. To my surprise Detective Heather even mumbled a thank-you for what my friends and I had done to stop him. That was as far as she went, though. She didn’t mention that me and my friends basically solved the whole thing for her.
Then Detective Heather did something else, which totally surprised me. She didn’t say anything in explanation, but she let me watch her question William. I suppose it was her way of showing off what she could do.
I didn’t get to sit in one of those rooms with the window that looks like a mirror on one side like you see on TV. I had to watch on a grainy monitor with a bunch of her colleagues just outside the interview room.
I thought for sure William would clam up and ask for a lawyer as soon as she read him his Miranda rights. But no, William insisted it was all a misunderstanding and he was sure once she understood everything, she’d let him go. Detective Heather never did get a chance to show off her skill at interrogating. In fact, she barely got a word in. William insisted he wasn’t like the others who invested money with Bradley. “I wasn’t after fancy cars or mansions. I was going to use the profit to devote myself full time to the Koo Koo book series and the legacy I would be creating.
“Bradley Perkins not only stole my money, he stole my dream,” William said, looking Detective Heather right
