Murder Feels Awful

by Bill Alive

  Mark was on full alert, his eyes gleaming. He said lightly, “I didn’t realize Lindsay had moved in with her sister.”

  “Oh yeah, for months. That’s where she went first, before she got back on her feet. She was very vulnerable—”

  “To drugs?” Mark said.

  Crowley’s eyes sparked with anger.

  “I’m sorry to have to ask,” Mark said. “But it’s possible that Waterbury had a deeper relationship with Lindsay than flight instructor. There’s a chance that the airport was being used for drug-related activity, and both murders were connected.”

  Crowley’s eyes popped wide. “What?” he snapped. He cursed, then covered his face with his hands.

  “The evidence is still circumstantial,” Mark said. “If you could assure us that Lindsay wasn’t that kind of person—”

  Crowley cleared his throat and raised his head. “Sorry, guys. I know it’s Friday, but I really need to get back to the office. Let me process this a bit, okay? We’ll be in touch.”

  He backed out fast and drove away.

  “Shit,” Mark said.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t look so great for Lindsay,” I said. “Why didn’t Sibyl tell us that Lindsay had moved in with her?”

  “Sibyl’s never struck me as particularly forthright,” Mark said.

  “We’ve got to talk to her again,” I said.

  Just then, a black Lamborghini whipped around the privacy trees and screeched into the driveway. Mark and I had to jump aside to dodge being hit.

  In the front seat, Fidelio and Sibyl stared at us with shock and dismay.

  Chapter 27

  “What are you doing here?” I blurted at the gaping couple.

  Mark rubbed his eyebrows.

  “What are you doing here?” Sibyl barked, as she stumbled out. “I’m here to see my nephew.”

  “You were waiting for Crowley to leave?”

  She leered. “Daddy dearest thinks I’m a bad influence.”

  At the front door, Mackenzie crossed his arms. “And that’s his decision,” he said firmly.

  Fidelio said cheerily, “Hiya, Ramsey!”

  Mackenzie didn’t look at him.

  Sibyl marched to the door. “So these two stupid strangers can grill my nephew, that’s okay, but his own aunt—”

  “They’re just leaving,” Mackenzie said. “Like you.”

  “You bastard,” Sibyl said. “You cowardly bastard.”

  Mackenzie’s eyes thinned to slits, and his jaw clenched. “Me? You can’t even face one day without liquoring up. Or worse.”

  Sibyl flamed and opened her mouth to retaliate, but Mark cut in. “I tell you what, why don’t we just take a quick walk? Just Sibyl and us. Fidelio, you can stay and plead your case.”

  She whipped on us with a venomous glare. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  Mark knit his brows, concentrating.

  Then his face cleared. “Listen, Sibyl, aren’t you sick of everyone always thinking Lindsay was the good one?”

  Sibyl’s face opened with surprise. Her eyes cleared, as if she were seeing us for the first time.

  “Just a walk around the block,” Mark said. “Five minutes.”

  She eyed the sky. “Watch us get caught in the rain,” she muttered, but she huffed off, and we hurried to catch up.

  “I don’t know what you can possibly want to talk about,” she grumbled, power walking down the street with more speed than I’d expected. “I already told you everything.”

  “Did you?” Mark said. “I don’t think you mentioned that Lindsay lived with you for a few months.”

  “I didn’t? So what? It’s no secret.”

  “Okay. But for months?”

  “She’s my fricking sister and she was getting a divorce! And there was that whole mess with social services.”

  “Social services?” Mark said sharply. “Like Child Protective Services?”

  “Nothing came of it! Lindsay was fricking perfect, remember?” Sibyl said. “It was just a bunch of phone calls, those people will hassle anyone. I think some teacher was like, ‘Oh, Vincent isn’t all sunshine and unicorns anymore! Maybe there’s problems at home!’ Uh, yeah, there’s problems, his parents are fucking getting a divorce! Lindsay was getting incredibly stressed, not just with that but with everything, and so yes, she crashed at my place. I’m not a completely horrible person.”

  “Of course not.” Mark smiled, with at least a plausible simulation of warmth. “And that’s how you met Fidelio?” he said casually. “When he came to meet Lindsay at your place?”

  “They were just friends!” Sibyl snapped. “That’s all they ever were!”

  Mark raised his eyebrows. “That’s not how Waterbury saw it.”

  “Who the hell is Waterbury? Oh, that old flight teacher guy?” She snorted. “I know he just crashed and everything, and it’s really sad, but the sick truth is that the old bastard probably wanted Lindsay for himself.”

  “Possibly. She was in good shape for her forties.”

  “As opposed to me, right?” Sibyl snarled.

  “I didn’t—”

  “Which one of us fucking gets Fidelio naked in bed? Any night she wants?”

  I squirmed, and Mark’s eyes flickered, as if even the most raving lunatic clients didn’t usually hit these lows. But with calm focus, he asked, “So why wasn’t Fidelio in bed the night before Waterbury crashed?”

  I managed to hide my surprise (I think). I couldn’t tell whether Mark had vibed this or was taking a gamble.

  Either way, it worked. Sibyl looked surprised and scared.

  “He was in bed, you bastard. He was with me all night.”

  “Are you sure?” Mark said quietly.

  “He’s my husband, do I have to spell out every gory detail?”

  Mark scrutinized her. “Sibyl, come on. You were passed out. He could have been anywhere.”

  Her eyes were ferocious, but her lip was quivering.

  Mark lowered his voice even more. “Just like the night before Lindsay died.”

  “Are you spying on me?” Sibyl yelled. We’d walked around the corner by now, and some of these houses had porches with elderly residents permanently installed. As her voice rose, gray heads swiveled toward us. “Or has he been running his fat mouth? I’m his wife, you understand? I’m his fucking wife!”

  “It wasn’t us, it was the cops,” Mark said, with even deeper calm. “A neighbor saw him.”

  “Whose neighbor?”

  “Lindsay’s,” Mark said gently. “That’s where he was. Till way past midnight.”

  “That bastard!” she shrieked. “That bastard!”

  The porch people were staring openly now. My cheeks burned with embarrassment.

  But Sibyl steamrolled on. “That’s what she meant by that damn text. I’m so stupid! Here he is blathering about blackmail—”

  “What text?” I blurted. “What blackmail?”

  Mark snapped me an angry glance, and I had the sudden thought, Will you EVER stop interrupting suspects? It wasn’t Mark’s voice or anything, it was more like a feeling that bubbled up out of nowhere and got translated into English in my own voice.

  Yes, it creeped me out.

  I liked Mark and all, but I didn’t want him inside my head.

  Plus, there was that little issue of his head exploding if he tried too hard to blast his thoughts.

  I eyed him carefully, but he had already refocused on Sibyl. His big head seemed smooth and safe and utterly uninterested in rupturing an artery.

  I wasn’t even sure he’d meant to blast me, or that he’d noticed after he had. Maybe Vivian didn’t have all the details straight on this one? Or maybe Mark and I were growing such a connection that he could slip mental notes through my mental mail slot with way less energy than normal?

  Ugh. That could mean a future of one-way mental radio, all Mark, all the time. Not just for me, but for anyone he got close to. God help his future kids…

  The only brig
ht side of this friend-connection theory was that it would still normally be too dangerous for Mark to start Jedi mind blasting anyone he felt like. Without a special connection, he’d need 1.21 gigawatts or whatever to get inside your head.

  On the other hand … was this gross head invasion how he experienced everyone else? All the time?

  No wonder he’d been a hermit.

  Meanwhile, Sibyl had pulled out her phone, and she was cursing and tearing up as she swiped the screen.

  “He’s been griping that some old asshole was blackmailing him,” she said. “I thought it was just some stupid drug thing from before we got married. I’m such a dumb bitch, I didn’t think … here it is …”

  She wiped her eyes and read us her last text from Lindsay. “Hey sis, need to talk, something to show you, rather not send it, please call.”

  She covered her face.

  Mark’s mask of Investigator Cool vanished. “What do you think it was?” he said eagerly. “Why didn’t you tell the cops about this?”

  “Because I was passed out!” she groaned. “I missed my only sister’s last plea for help the night before she crashed because I was drunk out of my mind! You want to volunteer that info to some hardass bitch?”

  “But what did Lindsay mean?” Mark insisted. “It could be the key to the whole murder! Both of them!”

  “It was probably a selfie with Fidelio naked,” Sibyl said.

  I opened my mouth to protest, but this time Mark shot me such an angry glance that he didn’t need any mind blast superpowers.

  Sibyl’s face was blotching red. “I’ll kill him,” she muttered.

  “We’ve got to find the proof, though,” Mark said cautiously. “Would it be on her laptop?”

  This practical problem seemed to divert her rage a bit. She furrowed her meaty brows in thought. “She didn’t have a laptop. All she had was a phone, and she barely knew how to use that.”

  “Shoot, the cops’ll have her phone,” Mark said. “It would have been on her body.”

  “No, I remember,” I said. “One of those articles said the cops found hardly any personal effects on her. Just keys or something.”

  Sibyl frowned. “Half the time the damn thing ran out of battery when she was out. She was terrible about charging it, wouldn’t do it until it was already dead and she was trying to get out the door in the morning.”

  “So she might have left it charging in her apartment,” Mark said.

  “Unless that’s what the break-in was about?” I said. “Destroying the phone?”

  Sibyl hadn’t heard about the break-in to Lindsay’s apartment, and when we explained it, she grimaced. “Fidelio was out that night too. Before I was barely buzzed. Bastard.”

  “He is kind of gone a lot,” I said.

  Sibyl started to rage again, cursing Fidelio in profanity so exotic that hard-bitten locals were peeking out from behind their scuffed doors all down the street. She accused him of everything short of murder, including sexual deviances I hadn’t ever heard of and didn’t plan to look up. When she came to how he’d destroyed the evidence, Mark gently interposed.

  “Destroying the phone might not have been enough,” he said. “Most of these phones sync phones and files automatically to the cloud.”

  “Awesome!” I said. “We just have to guess the password!”

  Mark glowered. “One does not simply ‘guess the password’. It’s not like some stupid Bond movie where out of an infinite number of possibilities, he gets it in three tries. Before the bomb goes off. I hate those scenes.”

  “Okay, okay, sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize passwords were a trigger.”

  “It’s everywhere!” he insisted. “Even in The Incredibles, which is otherwise brilliant, the supervillian’s password is one word. This is a system that can take over the world—”

  “Shut up!” Sibyl barked. Her face was scrunched with concentration. “Shut up shut up shut up!”

  “What, did she tell you her password?” Mark said.

  “Yes! I told you, she was a complete computer illiterate! Calvin had set up her phone, her email, everything, and when she left him she wanted to at least change her passwords. It took us like all afternoon. Shit, I must have helped her type it twenty times, and I can’t remember the damn thing.”

  She jabbed at her phone, and I saw she was trying to sign into Lindsay’s email.

  “What are you trying?” Mark said. “Did it have any numbers or symbols?”

  “No, no, it was three or four stupid words, just normal words. Or maybe a name in there? It was something like ‘never fish a gun’, but I remember she was trying to be fancy. Damn. If I’d known it would ever matter…”

  We were nearing the last corner before Mackenzie’s house. “It’ll come back to you,” Mark said. “I’m going to text you so you have my number.” He didn’t mention that the Linux guys had already gotten us not only Sibyl’s landline for her new house but also the personal cells for both her and her husband. “Call me when you remember it,” he said, “and I’ll help you go through all the sites she might have used. We can do this, we can find what she wanted to show you.”

  “I don’t need to find anything,” she said. “I’ll get it straight from him.” She marched around the corner.

  “Wait!” Mark said.

  At Mackenzie’s porch, Fidelio looked like he had thawed the old man at least a little, talking up at him from the bottom step with big gestures. Behind them, Vincent lurked behind the screen door, staring and trapped.

  Sibyl bellowed down the block. “Lindsay told me everything, you bastard! She texted me the photo before she died!”

  Her father winced with humiliation. Vincent looked scared, and darted out of sight.

  But Fidelio looked bewildered, as if her bluff had missed the mark. “What the hell are you talking about?” he called.

  “Quit yelling!” yelled Mackenzie. “Get your white trash asses out of my driveway!”

  Sibyl stormed right up to her father’s face. “I came here to see my nephew!” she screeched up at him. “I have a legal right!”

  “Then go spend your mother’s money on a lawyer, if you haven’t drunk it all away,” he said coldly. “Now get off my property, you damn slut.”

  Sibyl’s face blotched red, and though she grimaced with rage, her eyes spurted. She looked shocked and hurt, as if even for her and her father, this was a new low.

  She spat one last curse, then slammed into her driver’s seat. Fidelio had to sprint to hop in before she screeched away. As they tore past, she was lambasting Fidelio, and he looked mad.

  Then they were gone.

  Mackenzie muttered, “I could kill that kid,” then slammed his own door.

  I literally shivered. Mark and I were both standing in the street (no sidewalk, of course), and I turned toward him, saying, “I know she’s a major screwup, but he’s her father. Can you imagine? Your own father calling you…”

  Mark looked hunched and miserable.

  “…oh yeah,” I said. “You okay?”

  “That woman is so unhappy,” he said quietly.

  “Dude, you really have to start shielding.”

  “I can’t! How do you think I got all those guesses right? She was vibing like crazy.”

  “I wish you could just read her mind and get that password. How are we going to figure that out?”

  “Maybe she’s right,” he said. “Maybe we can skip the password and get the evidence straight from Samson.”

  “How?”

  He smiled.

  Chapter 28

  “A stakeout?” I shouted. “How long is that going to take?”

  I was only shouting conversationally, by the way. Thunder was roaring as usual as we drove up the mountain towards the Samson mansion.

  “If we knew, it wouldn’t be a stakeout,” Mark said.

  We hit a pothole, and Thunder groused with an especially loud croak. “Are we hoping to surprise them?” I shouted. “Because if we’re going to d
o a lot of stakeouts, we might have to fix the muffler!”

  “We’ll be fine,” Mark grunted. But he did ease up on the gas.

  We checked the Samson driveway, but the Lamborghini was still out. It occurred to me that if Fidelio had already dropped off Sibyl and she were there, she would have heard us coming literally a mile away. But no one came cursing to a window, and anyway, we’d come straight over from Mackenzie’s after they drove off.

  Mark drove back down the mountain a bit and backed into a driveway with a good view of the road and a FOR SALE sign.

  “Are you sure we can park here?” I said. “What if the owner comes?”

  “What’s he going to do?” Mark said. “Kill us?”

  I squirmed.

  We waited.

  At first, we reviewed the case. Fidelio was looking like the prime suspect. He had the flight experience to tamper with Lindsay’s glider, and they seemed to have a history that Sibyl didn’t know about. What if they’d had an all-out secret affair? If Sibyl had found out, she’d have divorced him, costing him all her millions. What if, on that last night, Lindsay had threatened to expose him?

  Then there was Waterbury. He could have seen even more of their relationship than he’d told us. With a struggling airport business, he had the perfect motive to threaten to tell Sibyl and thus blackmail Fidelio right out of his new millions.

  Fidelio could have killed Lindsay to keep her quiet, and then when Waterbury leaned on him, he could have killed him too.

  Of course, Fidelio didn’t seem like a killer. But he’d clearly had no trouble conning little old ladies out of their life savings. Not exactly a sterling character reference.

  On the other hand, what if the secret had nothing to do with some stupid affair with Lindsay? Sibyl had dropped a casual reference to Fidelio being mixed up with drugs. If the airport rumors were true, it could be that Lindsay, Waterbury and Fidelio had all gotten in too deep, and Fidelio had wanted the others dead.