Red Heather

by Aly Noble

  “Sweet dreams, ladies,” he remarked flatly. He looked down at me. “See you soon.”

  There was a sharp rap at the door that made Estelle instinctively whip around and, in that instant, Price took the chance and made his escape out the back door. I stared at the open door while Estelle assessed the newly vacant space in front of us and then went to open the door for the police when they knocked again. I vaguely listened to them, almost afraid to look away from the back door hanging ajar until the conversation came to the living room.

  “He just ran out—you’ll lose him if you don’t hurry!” Estelle was badgering the cops, censoring what she really wanted to say in hopes to gain their full assistance. My brain was filling in every empty beat in which she would’ve inserted an expletive were this an ordinary conversation.

  I glanced over my shoulder stonily as I heard the heavy footsteps stop behind me. I almost groaned, but avoided making a sound—these cops were the same ones I’d talked to about Carla two weeks ago. The same ones who had disregarded the truth of the incident entirely because it didn’t look like a murder anymore. While it was true that this was how the scene had appeared the second time, I still felt some amount of ire toward them for the shared glances of doubt and the complete lack of consideration for alternative possibilities.

  Holbrook shined a flashlight at me. I squinted.

  “Oh. Ms. James,” Lancer said with realization, and something in his tone told me this little search was already over. They turned to Estelle. “She’s the intruder, ma’am?”

  “What? No!” she spat impatiently. “Like I said, he just ran out, and you’re losing him as we speak!”

  Lancer narrowed his eyes a little and nodded for Holbrook to go into the backyard and look around. The flashlight beam left my face, and Estelle went to flip a light switch instead. The room lit up, and I saw the blood on the carpet nearby where Price had been lying just minutes ago. I wished Estelle had shot him.

  “Ms., uh…”

  “Montecarlo,” Estelle enunciated pointedly.

  “Yes. Ms. Montecarlo, you were the one who called 911 a couple weeks ago when Ms. James was looking for your mutual coworker—is that correct?”

  Estelle’s eyes narrowed a little. “…Yes. Why do you ask?”

  Lancer didn’t answer her question and instead glanced toward the back door as Holbrook returned. “What’d you find?” he asked without much interest.

  “No one’s out there,” Holbrook confirmed, looking as if he expected us to take comfort in his report. I felt the opposite of comfort. “Nothing left behind either.”

  “Hm,” Lancer hummed, but it didn’t sound contemplative. “Well, that’s good at least.”

  “Um, excuse me?” Estelle asked as I stood carefully, swallowing a mouthful of blood. “That’s good? You let some psycho who broke into my house and tried to kill my friend get away, and that’s good? Do you want a gold star?”

  “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down,” Lancer said sternly. Estelle did so, but unwillingly. She still had much more to say, and that was clear to everyone in attendance. He looked to his partner as he dug out a notepad and a pocket-sized pen. “Check around the house for a point of entry.”

  After Holbrook left to search the house, Lancer took down our testimony, appearing to be humoring us for the most part—or covering his ass in the case that something actually happened. When we got to the part where I was grabbed, he looked at me. “He hurt you?” he asked.

  “He put a knife in my mouth and it cut a little, but that’s really it,” I said quietly, my mouth tasting like metal.

  “Why your mouth?” he asked.

  Because he mentioned lopping my jaw off once. “I’m not the one to ask.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  Yes. “No. It was too dark to see him.”

  “I saw him,” Estelle interjected, and I felt my stomach drop. Halfway through losing her temper, she snapped, “Tall, blue eyes, and his name is Connor Price.”

  Goddammit, Estelle.

  Lancer stopped writing. “Connor Price? Like the Connor Price who killed himself out in Arizona a few years ago?”

  “Clearly, he didn’t, Officer,” she snapped. “He—”

  “Ms. Montecarlo, your claim is lacking and your attitude isn’t helping,” he condescended. “Connor Price is dead and buried. And I think it’s real immature what you and your friend here have been doing.”

  I looked at him incredulously. “Excuse me?”

  “Causing a stir over nothing is taking our time away from important issues—”

  “Like what—whether Sara next door stepped on her old neighbor’s daffodil sprouts again because she didn’t invite her to her Labor Day cookout?” Estelle remarked. “Please. Don’t let us get in the way of that ongoing investigation.”

  “I think we’re done here,” Lancer muttered, his face the color of beets as he stuffed his pad and pen away and turned to call for Holbrook, only to find that his partner had returned and was holding a rock. “What’s that?”

  “It was on the bathroom floor,” Holbrook said, weighing it in his palm. “Looks like someone threw it from outside and the glass was cleared out around the edge of the window. It’s all over the floor.”

  Lancer frowned at the rock and then at us. “I’ll take a look. Stay with these two,” he grumbled to Holbrook as he went to the master bathroom.

  Holbrook gave us a nervous smile as we waited silently, frowning when he looked at my mouth. “Might wanna get that stitched up,” he suggested. Genius.

  Lancer returned as he was finishing a note on his pad, putting it away again before regarding us. “It appears that a window was broken to make an entry point, but there’s little evidence that someone actually came in apart from some dirt on the floor. Nothing knocked over or out of place, but we’ll call it in.” He seemed to be purposefully disregarding what Estelle had said about Price. Lancer looked at me. “Any idea why he would have broken in and attacked you?”

  We stared at each other for a beat longer than necessary, at which point I said, “No. No, I don’t.”

  “Hm,” he hummed again, but nodded. “All right. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “That’s fine,” Estelle said tersely, just seeming fed up now.

  He gave her a look, but said nothing. Lancer and Holbrook stepped back outside to use the radio in the cruiser and Estelle glared in their wake, stomping into the kitchen and shooting a look at the back door before latching the lock that Holbrook had carelessly left unattended. “Small town cops are a fucking joke,” she muttered before sharply asking me, “Coffee?”

  I almost agreed and then remembered the open cut in my mouth. “Maybe not. Thanks though.”

  She frowned a little as she looked at my face, and I figured I must look frightful. “You should get your neighbor to look at that tomorrow,” she advised. “That’ll get annoying if you just wait for it to heal up.”

  “I know,” I sighed, walking out to the kitchen with her.

  She grimaced as she scooped ground coffee into a filter. “I should’ve shot the bastard,” she mumbled.

  “I wouldn’t have been mad if you had,” I admitted, frowning at the memory of the cops’ faces when Estelle had tried to tell them the truth—something I’d already known would serve no purpose. It was just something else to see it actually fall through.

  She smirked a little at that. “It’s a lot. All of it. If I didn't know what to do before, I definitely don’t now.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what there is to do. At least right now. Just wait, I guess.”

  “I meant in the bigger scheme of things,” she murmured. “Ultimately. What do we do?”

  My head shook of its own accord as the officers came back in and found us in the kitchen. “A detective from Traverse City is on his way out,” Lancer said, sounding almost apologetic. “It was the fastest response we could get. That’s the downside of being in a town this size.”


  “If you ladies want to get some rest, we’re happy to stay up—he’ll be an hour and a half at least,” Holbrook added, also looking rather sorry.

  “I’m not really in a sleeping mood,” Estelle admitted, and I noticed then just how shaken up she was. “Miri?”

  I shook my head. “I’m good.”

  Lancer nodded, not surprised. “I’d be shocked if you took us up on it after your confrontation tonight.” I couldn’t tell if he was just playing to our story or if he actually believed it in some capacity now. The latter seemed a little too good to be true.

  The rest of the night passed uneventfully. Estelle begrudgingly parted out mugs of coffee to the lingering officers, the detective from Traverse City showed up at around four-thirty, and—by the time he was done with the bathroom—it was nearly six, and Lancer and Holbrook saw no point in sticking around to guard us now that it was morning. The two seemed to still be operating under the illusion that bad stuff only happened at nighttime, which seemed insane to me at this point.

  When we were watching them leave, I heard a weird choking sound come from beside me—I turned to see Estelle on the verge of tears. “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head tightly at first and then—a few moments later—she drew a slow, shaky breath and murmured, “I’m sorry.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure this was the real Estelle. “Um… For what?”

  She gave me a harsh look with glassy, reddened eyes. “You know damn well what!”

  Okay, so maybe it was the real Estelle. “I seriously don’t. Fill me in.”

  She grumbled something unintelligible before explaining sharply, “You told me to stay by the couch. And it makes sense now for me to have stayed by the couch. You told me to go ahead and call the police and I didn’t and you…” She couldn’t go on. She just gestured vaguely toward my face.

  “Is it that bad?” I asked, running my tongue carefully over the cut in my mouth.

  The look she gave me was deadly, but she also looked like she was trying not to laugh. “I hate you.”

  “Clearly,” I remarked, and that was when she finally broke into a reluctant smirk. I looked down the hallway before walking to her bedroom, peeking into the bathroom for the first time since my shower the evening before. The window was shattered and cleared out, and I saw the dirt Holbrook had mentioned dotting the fuzzy “robin’s egg blue" toilet lid cover and the white tile floor. There were also remnants of what may have been fingerprinting dust on the sink and the window frame.

  I felt Estelle join me and sigh a little at her damaged bathroom space. “What do you think?” she asked me quietly.

  Only half-jokingly, I said, “I think you should’ve shot him.”

  Chapter 23

  I’d started to wonder if it was a good idea to just drop in at the exact moment the door to the Roberts’ home opened, and Rose was revealed on the other side, Axil in one arm.

  “Miri,” she noted in surprise. “Is everything okay?”

  “Kind of,” I said, uncomfortable now that I’d become self-aware. “I have a bit of a weird favor to ask.”

  Humor quirked the corners of her mouth. “How weird?”

  I’d reopened my cut when I’d eaten later in the morning and swallowed blood as a result. Suddenly I felt anxious that my teeth may be stained with it and I self-consciously moved my hand to cover my mouth. “Well… Is there any way you could stitch up a cut in my mouth? I’ll pay you or owe you or whatever… I just can’t afford a hospital visit for this.”

  Rose’s eyes widened a little. “Sure. Come in,” she urged me, and I walked past her into the house. As I took in the simple but homey furnishings, I realized I’d never actually been inside their house before. Why hadn’t I gone for a house like this instead?

  “I appreciate it,” I said somberly. “I’m sorry for dropping in on you like this. I should’ve called.”

  “Please. You know you’re welcome here,” she said with affectionate dismissal, going to a port-a-crib in the living room and laying Axil down amongst stuffed animals and teething toys. “Grab a chair from the table. You said it’s inside your mouth?”

  I nodded. “Yes. The inside of my cheek to be exact.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” she said with some relief. “Hold on just a second.”

  “No problem,” I replied, glancing around. “Bethaline?”

  “Still in bed,” Rose answered from the hall before she was out of earshot. I glanced around the dining area and listened to Axil’s gurgling and cooing from the living room while I waited. She returned within minutes, toting a white box and a few plastic packages that she set on the table. Rose yanked a chair up to sit in front of me, her bubble of personal space nonexistent now that she was in nurse mode. “Open, please.”

  I did as she asked and she swore quietly. “What did you do?”

  I closed my mouth before I got sassy. “We’re not doing the dentist thing where you ask me questions while your hands are in my mouth, okay?”

  She smirked, but the concern on her face remained apparent. “Okay, then—before you open again—what happened?”

  I considered the pros and cons of telling her until I decided some version of the story would come out anyway and likely be circulated through the smallish town by three o’clock that afternoon. “I’ve been staying at Estelle Montecarlo’s—not sure if you know her—for a couple of weeks now and someone broke in last night. Or I guess really early this morning.”

  “Someone broke into her house?” she repeated in shock, adding afterward, “I know her a little, but I didn’t know you two were friends.”

  Blood started filling my mouth again, and I suggested, “How about I tell you the whole story after surgery—is that all right?”

  “Sure,” she said, and there must have been blood on my teeth as I’d feared earlier because she went to get me a paper cup to spit in. Rose tore open one of the plastic packages and pulled a strand of thick, waxy thread free of the wrapping. I glanced away when she moved to the box, which I safely assumed contained the needle. I saw her threading it in the corner of my eye as she explained, “I’m using some of my husband’s work supplies—this stuff will just dissolve on its own after a while.”

  “I so owe you,” I murmured appreciatively despite the bit of dread I felt at soon having a needle probing the cut in my mouth.

  “No, you don’t,” she murmured as she encouraged me to open my mouth again and angled my head back to use the overhead light. I felt Rose dab a bit of gel along the edges of the open wound after swabbing the blood away, allowing the numbing agent—as I soon found out—to work its magic before maneuvering the surgical needle to start weaving the sutures. “It’s kind of my job, you know.”

  I tried to relax as much as possible while she worked and, while the procedure was short, it gave me time to think. How much would I tell her? What would be enough to be sure she stayed on her toes and kept her children—particularly the one that could wander autonomously—close? What was crossing the line of what she would believe?

  I thought back to how she’d explained away my story about the man who I now knew to be Connor Price attacking me after I hit him with my car. Granted, that one had been less believable, but caution felt like a smart choice.

  “One more,” she murmured, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or me. She finished the last stitch and withdrew her hands from my mouth. When I closed it, my lips felt dry and unpleasantly stretched. “How’s it feel?”

  “Numb, honestly,” I admitted, prodding my cheek experimentally with the tip of my tongue, “which is an improvement. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, setting her tools down and leaning forward in her seat. “Do you want anything to drink or do you just want to go into what happened?”

  “I’m all right, thanks,” I replied. With that said, I started filling her in on what had happened the night before, from hearing the window break in the bathroom to when the detective had left the scene.
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  By the end, Rose looked pale. “That just doesn’t happen here,” she said softly, running a hand through her hair. "Did you know the guy?"

  I hesitated briefly before answering, "I didn't see his face, so I have no idea. Given Grendling's size, it's probable."

  She bit her lip before asking with an edge to her tone, “This doesn’t have any connection with your coworker that passed a couple of weeks ago, does it?”

  This was a surprise. The police report had dictated that it was an accidental death—that she’d fallen and hit her head. I figured the coroner’s report would have mirrored that. Was there a rumor going around that this wasn’t the case? Or was she just covering all her bases?

  I debated what I should say before deciding honesty was the best policy—especially when it was the truth about something this dangerous. “Yeah. The police report says she fell and hit her head because that's what they decided happened, but… Well, there was no reason for her to be out there unless she was trying to get away from someone,” I said. “Obviously, I didn’t see it happen, so I’m just telling you what I believe to be true. At the same time though, the police didn’t see it happen either—they just kind of decided.”

  “Jesus,” Rose sighed shakily. “My gut instinct is to tell you to go to the police, but…”

  “I know. They almost didn’t take our break-in claim seriously last night until they actually went and looked at the bathroom where he broke in.”

  “What assholes,” Rose remarked. “Which officers were they?”

  “Lancer and Holbrook,” I answered.

  She frowned. “Holbrook, I don’t recognize. He must be new,” she reasoned before declaring, “Lancer’s a jerk though. He pulled me over one time for speeding on Cherry Hill down by the grocery—I was going like five over and, well, the problem with small town cops like him is that they overkill the little stuff for lack of anything better to do and they underestimate the big stuff for lack of desire for anything to do.”