Chasing Venus Read Free

…
    She wished for the fearlessness
she’d enjoyed as a girl.   In those
days she was scared of nothing and no one.   Since then, two decades of life had intervened.   Philip had intervened, wreaking havoc
with the confidence that used to fill her.
    Behind her a car door
opened.   She heard the beep-beep-beep of the ignition when the
key is left in, then voices, and static, like radio on a bad frequency.   A flashlight beam lit up the grass ahead
of her.
    “Miss!” a man’s voice
shouted.   “Stop!”
    She paused—she
was almost on all fours, she’d been scrambling so hard—and glanced behind
her.  
    It was a cop, late
forties or so, with a thick build, a wide lined face, and a flashlight in his
hand.   He was standing in front of a
black-and-white with both doors open.   “Are you all right?”
    Now she understood the
static sound: it was the police radio.   She let herself drop onto the grassy bank, cool against her skin, and
watched the cop make his laborious way up the incline.   When he got closer, she could see that
his badge read HELMS.   “Are you all
right?” he repeated.
    She nodded, for a
second couldn’t find her voice.   Then, “I’m fine.”
    He motioned at the
hill.   “Why’d you come up here?”
    “I thought I was being
followed.”   She relayed the
story.   Behind Helms, down the hill,
his fellow deputy exited the cruiser.   He was white, too, roughly the same age, height, and build as his
partner but with a gut that sagged over his belt.
    Helms offered her a
hand and hoisted her to her feet.   He motioned toward the road.   “Let’s talk down there.”
    She followed without
protest.   Once at the base of the
hill she could read Helms’s partner’s badge: PINCUS.
    Helms slid a notebook
from his back pocket.   “Did you see
the license plate?”
    “No.”   How embarrassing she hadn’t even thought
to look.   But the car had sped off
so fast she might not have been able to read it even if she had.
    He eyed her.   “You realize that was us behind you just
now.”
    “Yes, but there was
that guy alongside me.   Did you see
him?”
    “In a maroon sedan, you
told me.”
    “Yes.   At least the first guy was.   I’m not sure about the second.   I couldn’t see that well because it got
so dark.”   Helms didn’t say anything
and she got the idea he didn’t believe her.   “I’m not making this up,” she added.
    Helms regarded her a
second longer then flipped his notebook open and jotted a few lines.   Then he returned it to his pocket.   “I have a piece of advice for you, Ms.
Rowell.”
    “I know.   I shouldn’t be out running at this …
”   She paused.   “You know my name?”
    “You’re that mystery writer
from out of town who rents the old Marsden place.”
    Pincus spoke for the first time.   “You live
there alone.”
    He didn’t need to
remind her.   Nor did she care to
remember how that came to be—how Philip left her once he finished the
medical training she’d helped pay for, how he’d traded her in for a woman
doctor “soul mate,” how she’d moved to this remote town to get the lower rent
she could afford on her tiny advances.
    She looked at Helms and
a frightening idea took root in her mind.   “Is there a reason you’re keeping an eye on me?”
    His gaze skittered
away.   Then, “We’ve been asked to be
on the alert where you’re concerned.”
    “Because of the murders
of those writers,” Pincus added.
    Helms shot Pincus a look that said Zip
it .   Then he turned his eyes
again toward Annie.   “It’s a routine
alert given to law-enforcement agencies that have known mystery writers in
their jurisdiction.”
    It might be routine to
him.   It wasn’t to her.
    “We’ll drive you home,”
Helms went on.   He opened the
cruiser’s rear door and stood beside it.   “And my advice is you shouldn’t be out alone at this hour.   You need to be more careful.”
    Truer words were never
spoken.   She