Christmas at Timberwoods - Fern Michaels [19]
“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.
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.
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.
Angry tears streamed down her cheeks as she swallowed three or four without water, coughing. Eventually she