"What? How do you know this?"
"It doesn't matter. Are you at the hospital?"
"Yeah. I'm in the cafeteria."
"Go upstairs. Now. And call the police."
"I'm going," he said.
"Call me back," I said. "Okay if he uses this number?" I asked the young woman, who was staring saucer-eyed at the phone.
"Sure," she said. "Maybe we should call the police, too? This is just… What's going on?"
"Wait until he calls back," I asked.
"This is crazy. I can't believe this is happening in Snug Harbor. Who is Ted, anyway?" the young man asked, fumbling with the knots at my ankles as his girlfriend freed my hands
"My ex-husband."
"And who's Kirsten?" the young woman asked.
"My ex-husband's girlfriend." The two exchanged looks. "It's a long story," I said. "I'll explain it once he calls back."
"Right," the young woman said. "I'm Sasha, by the way, and this is Mike."
"Max Sayers," I said.
"Great to meet you," she said. "What can we do to help you while we wait for your ex-husband to call back?"
"Maybe help me get the glass out of my arm?"
"Let me get this knot undone first," Mike said, still struggling with the bonds at my feet."
"I'll help," Sasha offered.
"Thanks," I told them.
As the two worked on the knot, a few people drifted up.
"Is this some kind of movie set or something? What happened here?" asked an older man with a Pomeranian.
"Kidnapping," I said. "And murder."
"Murder? That woman you called about?"
"Among other things." I didn't mention my own breaking and entering. Was it breaking and entering if you walked into an unlocked office? I wondered.
"Does this have something to do with the selectman they found on the beach?" the man asked.
"Yes," I said. "Would someone mind calling the police? We're waiting for a call on Sasha's phone."
"Oh. Duh. Of course," Mike said, pulling his own phone out of his back pocket and dialing 911.
"Yeah," he said when someone answered. "We're outside of this office called…"
"Dempsey Development," I supplied.
"Dempsey Development. Some lady named Max just fell out of a glass door; she was all tied up, and apparently someone's trying to kill her ex-husband's girlfriend." Silence. "No, this isn't a joke," he said. "I'm serious. Get someone over here please; and maybe an ambulance, too. She's hurt." Silence again, and then he said, "Thanks. I know it sounds weird, but it's just that kind of day. Yeah. Thanks. We'll just wait here then, right?" He hung up a moment later, just as Sasha's phone rang.
She picked it up and put it on speaker phone. "Ted?" she asked.
"It's me," he said, his voice ragged. "You were right. He was in here with her, trying... trying to kill Kirsten."
"What did you do?"
"I hit him," he said. "Knocked him out. The cops are on their way, but... but Kirsten's okay. Thank you," he said, his voice ragged. "How did you know?"
"He told me," I said, suddenly feeling weak. "I'll explain it all later." As I spoke, there was the sound of a siren. I let my head drop to the sidewalk and closed my eyes just as the paramedics hurried over to me. Kirsten was safe. Scooter Dempsey was soon going to be in custody.
And now I knew Agatha had signed the bookstore over to her sister.
It had been one heck of a morning.
Even though my wounds were superficial, the EMTs insisted I go to the emergency room anyway. The police, of course, had lots of questions about how I had ended up in the middle of an alley in a pile of glass, bound hand and foot with inside information on an upcoming murder. I promised to fill them in on everything once I got the rest of the glass out of my forearm, stopped bleeding everywhere, and had access to Ibuprofen.
I was in the emergency room getting bandaged up and preparing for an X-ray to make sure I hadn't broken anything on the way down to the pavement when Ted burst into my little cubicle.
"Are you family?" asked the nurse who was dressing my wounds.
"I'm her ex-husband," he said. "The police told me you were here... are you okay?"
"You're not supposed to be in here," the nurse said. "Only family."
"He's family," I said, again feeling that twist in my heart. We might be divorced, but we had raised two children together. Not everything ended just because a marriage did.
"Are you okay?" he asked again, and there was genuine concern on his face.
"I am," I said.
"What happened?"
"I overheard Scooter and Agatha talking about their plans for the bookstore. Scooter found me... then he tied me up and then went to kill Kirsten," I said. "He was planning to burn the bookshop down later, probably with me in it."
"What? Why? Didn't you know him as a kid?"
"I did. It's a long story. Is Kirsten okay?"
"She is," he said. "Thank you so much for calling. If you hadn't..." He shivered. "He was there when I got there, with the pillow over her face. If I'd been a minute or two later, it would have been too late."
Thank goodness for Mike and Sasha, I thought.
"She came to earlier, by the way," he said. "They think she'll make a full recovery."
"Thank goodness. Did they arrest him?"
"They did," Ted said, sitting down on one of the plastic chairs. The nurse, while quietly attending to my wounds, had perked up her ears. "How did you know he killed Cal Parker and attacked Kirsten?"
"I read her book," I said. "It was all in there. She used Scooter as a model for
