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My instincts told me that wasn’t a very good idea, however. It was one thing to crack an impersonal corporation’s security, and quite another to get into files that had sensitive information about people’s friends and neighbors.
Only as a last resort,I told myself.
“I don’t think we’ll need to go that far,” I told Danny. “I can just give Josie Woodrow a call.”
His brows lifted. “If you ask her for Kimberly’s address, it’s going to be all over town in fifteen minutes,” he warned me.
In most cases, I would have said he was right. This time, however, I thought I might be able to swear Josie to secrecy. After all, she’d managed to keep my parents’ purchase of the Bigelow mansion a secret until my mother was able to call and tell me the exciting news herself.
“I’ll make sure she keeps it to herself,” I promised, then began to dig my cell phone out of my purse.
At that very moment, however, the store phone rang. Most of the time, I would have let an after-hours call like that roll over into voicemail. My spider-sense was tingling, though, and so I reached over at once and picked it up.
“Once in a Blue Moon,” I said. “How can I help you?”
“Hi,” came an unfamiliar woman’s voice. “This is Kimberly Parker. I think we need to talk.”
15
Purple Haze
My mouth dropped open,and Danny shot me a concerned look. “How did you know I was the one who’d called?” I blurted out.
“The receptionist at my office wrote down your number,” Kimberly replied. “She said it seemed as though you were calling about something important, and so she passed it on to me.” Something that sounded as though it might have been a sigh came through the speaker on the phone’s handset. “I don’t want to talk on the phone. Can you come over? My house is at 28 East Cedar Street.”
“Sure,” I said right away. “I was just locking up the store. I can be there in a couple of minutes.”
“Good,” Kimberly said, followed by a dial tone, indicating she’d hung up almost immediately.
I replaced the handset in the receiver. Danny was watching me, brows still drawn together in a frown.
“She wants me to come over,” I told him, and he tilted his head, obviously nonplussed by this development.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“It’ll be fine,” I said, even as I inwardly hoped that it would actually be all right. Just as much to reassure myself as Danny, I added, “It’s not as though Kimberly Parker is a stone-cold killer like Eugene Dershowitz or Boden Marsh. I doubt she’s going to meet me at the door with a pickaxe.”
“You hope,” Danny returned, followed immediately by, “I’m coming with you.”
While I found myself heartened by his offer, I felt compelled to say, “That’s very kind of you, Danny, but how much help do you think you’re going to be if things really do go sideways?”
“Well….” he began, then let the word trail off as he seemed to realize he couldn’t exactly physically intervene if my conversation with Kimberly took a horrible wrong turn. “I can be moral support, right?”
I supposed that was true. And I had to admit it might make me feel better to have him there with me, even though I’d be on my own if some kind of physical altercation were to occur. “All right,” I said after a brief hesitation. “Kimberly’s house is on Cedar Street. Number twenty-eight. Can you meet me there?”
“On it,” he said, and promptly disappeared.
That seemed to be my cue to leave. Since it was only a little after five, I figured it was safe enough to leave Archie for the time being. I realized then that I hadn’t even gotten the chance to show him the photo of himself from the yearbook. Too much coming at me all at once this afternoon, and it had totally slipped my mind.
Well, I’d show the image to him once I got back to my apartment. I put the idea in my head as a positive affirmation, letting the universe know I fully expected to return safely home once I had finished my interview with Kimberly Parker.
After all, she wasn’treallydangerous…was she?
A tremor of unease went through me, but I did my best to ignore it as I went out back, locked the door to the rear entrance of the shop, and got in my Volkswagen Beetle. Kimberly’s house wasn’t too far, and if I hadn’t been in a hurry, I might have gone ahead and walked. Right now, though, time was of the essence, and so there wasn’t any real question of making the short trip on foot.
A few minutes later, I pulled up in front of the house. It was a small bungalow-style cottage, really not that different from Hazel’s place — or dozens of other homes in Globe, for that matter. The siding had been painted a soft yellow, and white framed the windows, although the red front door offered an unexpected pop of color. The garden was neat and tidy, with autumn flowers blooming in beds on either side of the herringbone-brick front walk.
All in all, it looked very unlike the sort of house where a murderer would live.
