The Coffee Shoppe Killer

by Rod Kackley

  And he’s sharing it with me; Mary Eileen thought as she moved back toward him so that they were bare shoulder to bare shoulder and naked thigh to thigh.

  “Read one to me,” she asked with a whisper.

  The way to get on with a girl

  Is to drift like a man in the mist,

  Happy enough to be caught,

  Happy enough to be dismissed.

  Glad to be out of her way,

  Glad to rejoin her in bed,

  Equally grieved or gay

  To learn that she’s living or dead.

  “Ha! Now that’s funny,” Mary Eileen said as she reached across Sean, rubbing her breasts over his chest to reach the drink she’d left on the wooden nightstand. She stayed in that position as he read:

  To think

  I must be alone:

  To love

  We must be together.

  I think I love you

  When I’m alone

  More than I think of you

  When we’re together.

  I cannot think

  Without loving

  Or love

  Without thinking.

  Alone I love

  To think of us together:

  Together I think

  I’d love to be alone.

  Their lips met. Sean and Mary Eileen were alone, naked together, and she knew they were in love. She might have had two bad romances, but this one was just right.

  Mary Eileen awoke with a shudder the next morning. She’d had a violent dream, filled with devils and demons; certainly not the soft, romantic dream Mary Eileen thought she had a right to expect.

  The dream was so shattering to her mood; Mary Eileen was afraid to glance to her right to see if Sean was sleeping beside her. Finally, she got the courage to open one eye.

  He was gone. Mary Eileen's heart froze.

  “Hey, good morning,” Sean said as he came into the bedroom. He carried two cups of coffee and was balancing a plate of fruit and bagels.

  “I was wondering when you’d get up,” he said.

  “I didn’t have to wonder about you getting up,” Mary Eileen said with a smile as she reached over and softly touched him. “You could have carried a bagel on this thing.”

  Sean laughed and set the plate between them, put the coffees on the nightstand and settled back into the bed with Mary Eileen.

  They played with the butter, cream cheese and bagels like teenagers who had just discovered how much fun one could have while naked with a member of the opposite sex.

  Once, when he got up to use the bathroom, Mary Eileen had taken a quick peek at his phone. Funny, there was a text message to Sean that was just “?” He had answered “Close.”

  After she’d asked, he’d quickly explained that a publisher wanted him to write a book about his experiences in Ireland, “It would be literary fiction, the story of one man and the IRA,” Sean said. “They want to know when I will get started, when I will be ready. I am close to a decision.”

  An author in her bed, and an Irish author at that. Mary Eileen was thrilled.

  She certainly didn’t feel like a woman in her thirties who’d lived through two terrible love affairs that had ended tragically.

  No, Mary Eileen felt like she had begun a renaissance, a new life, with someone who was not only incredibly attractive and a beautiful lover; but a person who could quickly become her best —and only — friend.

  Seventeen

  Christina told her that she “looked radiant” when she walked into the Coffee Shoppe, and that is just how Mary Eileen felt. Again this morning, she’d awakened with Sean in her bed. They’d had breakfast together, showered together, and made love — just a quickie — before he bounded down the stairs and she waved goodbye as he hopped on his motorcycle and rode away.

  They’d been a couple for three months, and it seemed to get better every day. But this day was exceptional.

  The night before Mary Eileen had pressed Sean about the book he was writing.

  “You’re doing something that millions of people dream about, Sean. You are writing a book.”

  “It’s not that big of a deal,” Sean replied, his Irish brogue a little heavier than usual. He was feeling sleepy, but doing his best to stay awake by concentrating on the luxurious sheet wrapped around his naked body. “You must spend a fortune on these sheets,” Sean had mentioned after their third night together. She’d laughed and led him by the hand down the hall to her linen closet. Mary Eileen opened the door as if she were showing off the wizard behind the curtain. Comforters, pillowcases, sheets, shams and more filled the linen cabinet “no less than $500 per set,” she proudly proclaimed.

  “Of course, it’s a big deal," Mary Eileen said, returning Sean's attention to the matter at hand, which was her need to know more about what he was doing.

  “It’s not the kind of thing most people will read.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not a murder mystery or a Harry Potter knock-off; it’s about literature. It's to be a book about books."

  “Intelligent people will read it. I will read it.”

  “Oh, I am sure you will, my love. You will be one of the few, just as you are one of the few who understands Sean Patrick Flynn.”

  “So tell me more. What are you going to write? What kind of literature?”

  “The literature of life and love, death and guilt.”

  Mary Eileen, despite herself, pulled back from her lover. Not far, but she certainly flinched.

  Sean looked at her with questioning eyes and a slight, wry smile. He lifted an eyebrow.

  “Are you all right, my pet? You looked quite pale for a moment.”

  “What do you mean?” Mary Eileen responded quickly, perhaps too quickly.

  “You looked shocked and like you might be ill.”

  “No, I am fine. Tell me more.”

  Sean paused and caught his breath. He had trouble focusing on such an erudite explanation while holding Mary Eileen's nude body. Her hand running up and down his thigh didn't help his concentration.

  But as any good professor would, Sean prepared himself to address his class.

  “From Dante’s Inferno to Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, and in modern times, Portnoy’s Complaint, the great authors and minds have written about life and love, death, and guilt.”

  “What did they say?”

  “I believe they have all described the relationship between life, love, death and guilt as a guiding force that shapes who we are and who we become,” Sean said.

  Mary Eileen didn’t pull back, but her eyes told Sean she was drifting away.

  He touched her bare shoulder.

  “Think about us, Mary Eileen Sullivan. We are both Irish Catholic. ‘Our guilt becomes our shame, our lacerating shame,’ Edna O’Brien wrote. ‘When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.’”

  Mary Eileen was stunned. It was like Sean had slapped her across the face, not in a vicious way, or even a punishing way. It was more like an emotional alarm clock was ringing in her ears.

  “Have you never felt guilt?” Sean whispered. “Is there anything you are afraid to tell me?”

  Mary Eileen didn’t respond. She had heard, but she was not listening.

  “Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious,” Mary Eileen muttered, not quite a whisper, but Sean still had to strain to listen.

  She gripped his hand, and he hers.

  “I have felt guilty. Haven’t we all?”

  “Of course we have,” Sean said.

  They waited. Each expecting, hoping, the other would speak next. Finally, Sean began.

  “I left the scene of a traffic accident, once,” Sean said after taking a deep breath.

  “That’s not so terrible,” Mary Eileen said with a little laugh. “What was it; a fender bender in a parking lot?”

  Sean paused again to gather himself. Mary Eileen looked up expec
tantly and saw Sean close his eyes.

  “No, it was not in a parking lot,” he said in a whisper. “I was driving late one night from Dublin to Belfast.”

  “Along the Irish Sea? I remember those roads.”

  “I had been drinking. A woman was with me. Another car was coming at us; I swerved, the other car left the road and hit a tree,” Sean said. “We stopped, I stopped, I could have gotten out to make sure the people in that other vehicle were all right. But I didn't."

  Mary Eileen felt the muscles of his forearm twitch as she tightened his grip she hoped reassuringly.

  “I didn’t get out,” Sean continued. “We drove off. Next morning, listening to the BBC, we found out they were dead; the two people in the car that hit the tree."

  “Oh my God,” Mary Eileen said. “But they might have been killed instantly. There was probably nothing you could have done.”

  “But what if they were not dead? What if I could have gotten them some help? It is guilt that I live with,” Sean said. “Do you hate me now?”

  Mary Eileen's gaze never wavered from his eyes. She said, “There is nothing you should be afraid to tell me, Sean, my love. Your heart is an open book to me. I have bared my body, my heart and my soul without fear, without shame. You should feel that you can do the same, always.”

  She snuggled against him as Sean put his strong arm around her breasts and held her tight, her back feeling fresh and comfortable against his chest.

  They fell asleep like that, each reassured by the others’ proximity and nudity. Sean and Mary Eileen were a couple, closer than either had ever been to another.

  A quick, strong breeze from the open window across the room and the sound of fluttering and flapping curtains roused Sean. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and ever so gently slid out from underneath Mary Eileen. While he flexed his fingers and moved his arm to ease the tingle from the blood flowing again, he watched Mary Eileen’s breasts rise and fall slowing and softly as she slept. He had not awakened her. She was peaceful, as she should be, Sean thought.

  As slowly and gently as he had slid out from under Mary Eileen, Sean eased out of bed, barely lifting the comforter and white sheet for fear of waking his love.

  He took his smartphone off the night table and padded carefully out of the bedroom, down the hall, over the brown, bamboo wooden floor, slowly turned the door knob of the bathroom, flicked on the light and touched the home key of his phone.

  While he waited the millisecond it would take to open the smartphone app he needed; Sean opened the medicine cabinet over the sink. Paxil, Prozac, and other drugs he recognized as SNRI’s and SSRI’s for treating anxiety and depression filled the cabinet.

  Seeing the message app had opened, Sean gently closed the medicine cabinet and returned his attention to the smartphone.

  Sean scrolled through the messages before finding the “?” message he had received a few days ago.

  “Closer,” he texted.

  Eighteen

  “Mary Eileen Sullivan, look at you,” she said to her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her skin was radiant. Her eyes glowed and sparkled.

  Mary Eileen had never felt this good. Of all the men in her life, Sean Patrick Flynn was the exception.

  And now their relationship was taking another step forward. Mary Eileen and Sean were going on a trip together, a vacation, back to their homeland, Ireland. And most importantly, they were going as a couple.

  “We leave out of Detroit Metro at 8:15 am Friday,” Sean had told her the night before.

  It was all so spontaneous. That made it even better.

  Mary Eileen was so excited the night after Sean told her of their vacation she stayed up until nearly 3 a.m. packing. She had a couple of days before she would catch the flight with Sean, but why wait?

  The next morning her excitement grew to a point where she landed on a plateau of complete happiness. Mary Eileen could feel Sean’s hands on her back even though he was hundreds of miles away. His aroma was everywhere in her little apartment.

  The sun was up and shining through her kitchen window. She was doing the breakfast dishes when a cloud passed over the sun, and her kitchen went dark for a sliver of a second.

  It happened so quickly that Mary Eileen caught her breath. Was it going to storm?

  She caught her breath as the water suddenly stopped flowing through the kitchen faucet. Then a second later it started again.

  She never thought of herself as being a superstitious woman, but Mary Eileen had to wonder aloud, “What does this all mean?”

  Her smartphone buzzed on the tile counter to her left. She quickly dried her hands while looking at the name on the phone to see who was calling before she picked it up.

  “Shit,” she said to herself.

  It was Christina. Something was wrong at the Coffee Shoppe.

  Her right hand moved toward the phone and then stopped.

  “Why would I want to come down from this high?” Mary Eileen said to herself.

  It was probably nothing. Just a late delivery or a problem with one of the machines. Whatever the snafu was, it all seemed so trivial now.

  Mary Eileen would deal with it later.

  First, she wanted a shower. She wanted to be naked with the water running over her, pretending her hands were Sean’s hands. The Coffee Shoppe could wait. It was going to be a good day for Christina, too. Mary Eileen was going to tell her about the vacation, tell her she was going to be in charge, and the best part was that Christina was going to get the business. They had already signed the papers. If everything went as Mary Eileen expected, she would never return to little St. Isidore. There was no reason she and Sean couldn’t build a life together in Ireland.

  Meanwhile, downstairs, Christina was panicking. Customers stood in three lines, four deep, at the counter as the employees looked at each other with shrugged shoulders and raised eyebrows.

  What could they do? There was no water. Christina had heard what sounded like water rushing in the cellar below. She had run downstairs only to find the water had stopped completely.

  Over the sound of a dozen different conversations, customers and employees heard the unmistakable sound of Christina running up the rickety wooden steps.

  She ran into the Coffee Shoppe, skidding on wet shoes over the polished hardwood floor. When Christina slid to a stop, she grabbed her smartphone and pounded out a text message to Mary Eileen.

  One word: FLOOD!

  Mary Eileen heard the chime tone on her phone signaling a text message from Christina had come in, just as she stood naked outside her shower stall turning the faucet handles back and forth wondering what was wrong with the water.

  She was only a few moments away from being knocked off her plateau of happiness.

  Now, Mary Eileen grabbed her phone and saw Christina’s text. A cold shudder moved through her body, and she immediately started sweating.

  Mary Eileen had felt a little nauseous earlier. Now she was ready to vomit. And she did but choked it back and swallowed hard.

  “Plumbers?” She texted to Christina.

  “On the way,” Christina replied.

  Mary Eileen had to sit down. She flipped the lid down and sat on the toilet, weighing her options.

  Sean was waiting for her, or soon would be, at Detroit Metro Airport. If the plumbers found the body parts of David and Hans in the cellar, she would run. But until they found something, there was no reason to change her plans, Mary Eileen decided.

  It would be better to be cool, calm, and collected.

  “Let’s go downstairs and see what is going on,” she said to herself. Mary Eileen was confident that even though this was a stressful situation she had pushed the big chunks of concrete containing the parts and pieces of her ex and her former far enough back so that they could not be seen.

  Mary Eileen didn't want to raise any suspicions by running off like a mad woman. After all, Joy and Amanda already thought she had killed David. They hadn't asked about Hans yet, but that was
only a matter of time.

  However, if the plumbers did find something, Mary Eileen wanted to be ready.

  Just in case, she packed an extra bag and put both suitcases by the front door, so she could just reach in and grab them on the fly.

  If worst came to worst, Mary Eileen knew she had to run. Then she would have to reinvent herself all over again.

  But there was no need to do either until she knew for sure.

  Nineteen

  Mary Eileen was nervous. She was scared. On the inside, she was falling apart. But outwardly, no one would have been able to detect the slightest tremor. But Mary Eileen was deathly afraid the plumbers below would find death in the cellar under the Coffee Shoppe.

  Her worst fears were realized when she heard first one man and then another cry out.

  Their screams echoed from under her feet. The sound of their voices bounced and slammed from rock wall to concrete ceiling and then come roaring out of the cellar door.

  The men below were panicked. Working in proximity to all manner of sewers, sludge, and human waste as they did daily, these plumbers thought they had seen it all. With their discovery today, they had.

  The men had frozen in place when the beams of their flashlights had spotted the first rock, if that is what it was, a cement stone with a human’s leg sticking out. And then there was another, this time they got closer and found a hand sticking out of a hunk of cement. The last and final rock with the back of a human head visible is what did it.

  Their cell phones wouldn’t work in the cellar. They had to run upstairs, nearly knocking down a couple of Coffee Shoppe customers to get outside where they could breathe fresh air before vomiting on the sidewalk.

  None of the customers knew what the plumbers had seen.

  Mary Eileen knew what they had found. She hadn’t done a good enough job covering the body parts with cement.

  She also knew what had to happen next. She tapped the ride-sharing app on her smartphone. She was ready to go.

  Mary Eileen walked quickly back upstairs, avoiding contact with the customers who were still reeling from the fleeing plumbers. Mary Eileen marched. She didn’t run. Mary Eileen did not want to set off any alarms of suspicion before she had too. But still she didn’t hesitate to shove a couple of people out of her way.