Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

almost two years, and it was almost a relief to have it finally happen.
    “It was Bill, wasn’t it?” she asked.
    “We think so.”
    “I know he wants to kill me,” Sue said slowly. “I knew he would do it. I even went to the King County Journal editor back in February and told him that if I ended up dead, Bill would be behind it.”
    Cloyd Steiger told Sue that the Seattle Homicide Unit had reason to believe that a plot was in place to accomplish her murder. But it wasn’t just her death a contract called for.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Your sister is on the list, too,” Steiger said quietly, waiting for that news to sink in before he went on.
    “My sister?”
    “Your sister…and your daughter, Jenny—”
    “Not my daughter!”
    Sue had been afraid that Bill might hurt her dog, and even that he might do something to her sister because he knew how much Carol meant to her.
    “I knew he’d look for a way to get under my skin, and hurt me the most,” Sue said, almost to herself. “And I realize he’s angry enough to just do away with me—but I never dreamed that he would want the kids dead!”
    “I want you to find your kids, tell them to pack what they need for a couple of days, and leave here,” Steiger said. “Get a hotel—a motel. Stay with friends or relatives. But you have to get away from your house.”
    Sue was stunned. She still couldn’t comprehend that Bill would hurt their children. She simply could not visualize that Bill would do anything to either Jenny or Scott. She wondered if Cloyd Steiger had gotten some kind of garbled message.
    He shook his head. “All three of you,” he repeated. “You can’t tell anyone but your sister. Don’t tell your children. Make up some excuse about why you have to get out of here, but we can’t take a chance that your kids might tell someone.”
    Steiger told Sue that he was working with someone who had instigated an investigation into a murder-for-hire plot, but he couldn’t tell her who it was. He had only found out himself hours before, and although they were working as fast as they could, his team didn’t know all the facts yet. They knew of a couple of people who might be involved, but there was the possibility that the person who wanted her family dead had hired additional people.
    As soon as the Seattle detective left her house, Sue called her daughter. Jenny was out with friends, and when Sue reached her and told her that it would be better if she didn’t come home for a few days, that it would be a good idea if she stayed at her best friend’s house, her daughter thought she had gone nuts.
    “But it was safer for her to stay away from us,” Sue said. “I let her think I was acting wacko; it would keep her from asking me questions I couldn’t answer.”
    Scott didn’t know what was wrong, but he quickly caught his mother’s fear. He didn’t resist when she told him they had to leave their house right away.
    Both Scott and Jenny had been angry with Sue most of the summer, still halfway loyal to their father and sorry for him because he was in jail. Now she was once again interrupting their attempts to have fun. But she was adamant when she told Jenny not to come home and Scott to cancel his plans with his friends.
    Sue, Scott, and their Great Dane, Goliath, were in their car in no time. She called John Compatore on her cell phone, and he told her to drive to someplace out in public like the nearby strip mall or a theater while he called to verify that Cloyd Steiger actually was a Homicide detective with the Seattle Police Department. Someone had been stalking both Sue and her attorney, and neither accepted strangers at face value. Sue’s instincts told her to trust Steiger, but she no longer believed in her own perception.
    In her car, Sue called her sister and told her with code words that they were all in danger, and needed to leave their homes. Scott was sitting next to Sue when she did that, and she couldn’t come right out and tell Carol what was wrong. Luckily, the two sisters understood each other so well that Carol caught on right away.
    They discussed getting on a plane. But where would they go? Maybe, they debated, they should go in different directions, to throw off anyone who might be following them. Sue’s adrenaline was coursing through her veins and the darkness beyond the lights of the mall seemed to hide watching eyes.
    Compatore called to say that Cloyd Steiger was who he said he was, and that was