Not One Clue_ A Mystery - Lois Greiman [86]
I could no longer see Ahmad and prayed he was still coughing up his liver instead of scrambling around the bumper to yank me out of his car by my hair.
“Aalia’s hurt!” I screamed. “She may be dy—” I began, but in that instant I saw two women huddled in the light of the doorway behind Taabish. Adrenaline was flowing at a pretty good clip and blood was pounding in my ears like a tidal wave gone mad, but I was lucid enough to recognize that one of the women was Aalia.
“Ms. McMullen?” Taabish called, advancing toward me across the lawn.
I slammed the door shut, hit the locks, then shimmied back across the brake to stare through the driver’s window. Ahmad was still on all fours. Still retching. But his head didn’t really look as if it was covered with a turban anymore. It almost looked like he was blond.
I glanced at what I had thought was Aalia’s body. It didn’t appear as human as it had earlier. In fact, it looked a little like a felled tree, heavy on the top and skinny in the middle with one big lump of something at the end nearest me.
“Christina, what happens here?” Aalia called from the door. She took a few steps toward me.
“Go inside,” Taabish warned, waving her back. “The police will soon arrive.”
So he’d called 911. Good, I thought, but just then Ahmad lifted his head above his shoulders and for the first time I noticed that his face was as pale as mine.
Gathering his strength, he stumbled to his feet, raised his hands shoulder height, and wobbled sideways a little, still coughing. “I’m sorry.” His words were as slurred as a sailor’s on shore leave. “I just …” He took a moment to shake his head and lean against his bumper. “I was worried about Aalia.”
Taabish took a step closer. “Who is this man?”
“Skip …” He paused, steadied himself, bent double and coughed some more. “Stephen,” he corrected. “Stephen Vance, sir.” His trachea rattled on an inhalation. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I met Aalia at Starbucks last weekend.”
“Skip?” Aalia asked, and disengaged from the doorway.
“What do you do here in the dark of the night?” Taabish’s voice hadn’t softened any. And I saw now that he held a baseball bat in both hands.
“Aalia said …” Skip staggered again, wiped his eyes, and ricocheted off his left headlight. Mace is hell on eyesight. “She said she missed Al Mahwit so I brought her a coffee tree.” A garbled rasp rattled up his throat. “So she would feel more at home.”
Oh crap. I felt a little sick to my stomach as we all glanced at the tree that apparently was not bleeding to death on the lawn.
Taabish was the first to turn back toward Skip. “My sister by law, she is yet married in the eyes of Allah,” he said.
“I know that. I realize that, sir.” Skip coughed, wiped his mouth, and generally looked as if he were going to die. “I just thought she could use a friend. I wanted to surprise her.”
Aalia had advanced a few feet, and because I had a front-row seat, I saw that the look he shot in her general direction had very little to do with friendship and a hell of a lot to do with adoration.
I couldn’t decide if I should feel hopeful or jealous. I had always kind of wanted my own stalker, but Taabish didn’t seem to see the beauty of the situation.
“My sister by law does not need a friend in the dark hours of the night,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir. I just … I know she’s been scared and I couldn’t sleep, so I …” He glanced through the window at me as though he kind of wished he was inside the car and maybe driving peacefully through some remote area of Nebraska. “I just thought I’d come by to make sure she was okay.”
“She was okay until you invaded our privacy in the small of the night.”
“I didn’t mean to—” he began, but then he started hacking again. It took him a while to straighten enough to stare through the window at me. “Holy cow,” he rasped. “What was that stuff?”
I tried not to wince. “Mace,” I said, raising my voice to make myself heard through the window. “It’s the first time I’ve tried it.”
“Pretty effective,” he said, and made a strange gargling noise. It almost sounded like