by Reagan Davis
Gosh, it really does sound bad when I say it out loud in one sentence.
“You deserve a couple of days away, to decompress, have some fun, see your buddies, play some golf, and process everything that’s been happening.”
One last push; I put one hand on my chest and the other on his arm.
“I think it would be unhealthy if you didn’t go,” I say softly.
“I’ll think about it,” he says.
Chapter 29
Wednesday, September 25th
When I wake up, Adam is loading his golf clubs into his car. I’m relieved he decided to go on his golf retreat.
Before I leave for work, I put a bottle of pinot grigio in the fridge, so it will be chilled when I get home from work. I can’t wait to have the house to myself. My big plans include movies, wine, popcorn with extra butter, and finishing Hannah’s cowl.
Connie and I work together until lunchtime when she leaves for another mystery appointment, then it’s just Harlow and me in the store for the rest of the afternoon.
I package online orders and chat with the local charity knitting guild who come by the store on Wednesdays to knit, discuss future charity knitting projects, and sometimes order yarn for upcoming projects. This month they're working on “knitted knockers” for the Knitted Knockers organization. Knitted Knockers are prosthetic breast inserts that cancer survivors put in their bras after a mastectomy. They’re always in demand at local hospitals and cancer support groups. Connie gives the charity guild a discount on the yarn they purchase for charity knitting.
The store usually closes at 6 p.m., but at 5:30 p.m. Harlow and I are the only ones here, so I gather up the online orders I packaged and close early, so I can drop them off at the post office before it closes.
I give Harlow his dinner, hide a few kitty treats in his favourite napping spots, assure him that Connie will be home soon, then lock the door behind me on the way out.
I join the short line at the post office right behind Tamara who’s mailing a care package to their daughter, Rachel. Tamara tells me that she and April are going out for dinner and a movie tonight. She invites me to join them, but I decline because I’d rather not be the third wheel on their night out, and I’m looking forward to getting home to my empty house.
Tamara drops off her package, we wish each other a good night when she passes me on her way out, then I drop off the on-line orders and leave.
I drove to work this morning. I need to go back to Knitorious to pick up my car. As I walk past Ho Lee Chow, my tummy rumbles, so I stop and look at the menu in their window and contemplate adding a combo number seven to my evening plans.
I’m perusing the menu when I hear someone call my name.
“Hey Megan! It’s nice to see you again. Your curly hair gave you away,” a strange man says as he walks toward me.
He’s standing next to me now, and he’s not at all familiar. I’m sure I’ve never met him.
“Hi!” I say, “I’m sorry, have we met?”
“You don’t remember me? You’re breaking my heart, Megan.”
He clutches his chest dramatically.
“I was your cab driver the other night,” he says, pointing to a taxi parked on the side of the road.
Precious Cargo Cab Company is painted on the side of the car and printed on the roof light. I shake my head. He must have the wrong Megan.
“You flagged me down just off Mountain Road? Really late Friday night...or I guess it was really early Saturday morning. You’re even prettier in the daylight, by the way.”
I'm still shaking my head, but my interest piques when he mentions Mountain Road and Friday night.
“You said you were at a house party and had a few too many drinks to drive. You were walking home, but when you saw me you flagged me down. You don’t remember any of it? You must’ve had more to drink than I thought.”
“Where did you drop me off?” I ask.
“At home. You live above the knitting store, right? I dropped you off out front.”
I confirm that he means Knitorious, even though it’s the only knitting store in town. He asks again if I live above it, but I don’t answer him.
“I was kind of hoping we’d run into each other again,” he says. “I was wondering if maybe I could get your number? We got along so well in the cab, but I’m not allowed to ask for a number from a customer. Now that you’re not in my cab, you’re not technically a customer anymore.”
I’m thinking about what he’s saying and twirling my ring.
He nods toward my ring. “Is that a wedding ring? I looked for a ring when I drove you home and you weren’t wearing one, so I assumed you’re single. I’m sorry if I got it wrong.”
“Did you happen to notice if I was wearing any other jewelry?” I ask.
“I don’t think so.” He shakes his head. “Or if you were, I didn’t notice. Why? Did you lose something that night? I didn’t find any jewelry when I cleaned out the cab after my shift. Sometimes I find an earring or a broken necklace or something, but nothing after my shift on Friday night.”
He pauses for a moment.
“Is getting your number out of the question, or what?”
I don’t give him my number. Instead I ask him for his number and name, and he happily gives me both. He has to go; he’s in a hurry to pick up an order from Ho Lee Chow and deliver it to a customer. He says he hopes to hear from me soon and disappears into the restaurant.
He’ll hear from someone soon, that’s for sure.
I use my phone to take a couple of photos of his cab, being sure to get both the license plate number and the cab number.
I dial Eric’s number and start walking briskly toward my car. He’s not answering. Where is he? I text him the photos of the cab, the driver’s name and number, and highlights of what the cab driver said about our alleged interaction on Friday night.
I was neither at a house party, nor intoxicated on Friday night or Saturday morning, and I was never in a cab. Unbeknownst to the driver, it wasn’t me in the back of his cab on Friday night. It was Fred and Paul’s killer.
I walk faster, twirling my ring as I close the distance between me and my car. When I turn into the driveway beside Knitorious, I sprint across the parking lot to my car, and lock myself safely inside.
Now what do I do?
Should I call April? No, this investigation shouldn’t upend anyone’s life more than it already has, and I don’t want to interrupt her and Tamara’s night out. Between raising two kids, running a business, and the hectic pace of their lives, date nights are few and far between, and require a lot of planning and scheduling. I’m all too familiar with the consequences of ignoring the required maintenance of your marriage.
Should I call Connie? No, Connie is with Archie tonight, and I’m not convinced she’s being completely honest about the mystery appointments she’s had lately. I don’t want to do anything that would cause her to worry or stress if it might impact her health.
Should I call Adam? What good would that do? He’s four hours away from Harmony Lake and it’s late in the day, so he’s probably finished golfing and had a few drinks with his buddies by now.
Maybe I should call Kelly? No. If I’m right, calling Kelly could put both of us at risk, so I cross that option off my mental list of potential next moves.
Why hasn’t Eric called me back? I decide to drive home, put on my pyjamas, then decide what to do next. Hopefully, in the meantime, I’ll hear from Eric.
I plug my phone into the console, so I don’t miss his call or text, start the car, and steer it toward home.
At home, I lock the front door behind me and double check that I have my phone and didn’t leave it in the car. Phone in hand, I put my tote bag on the bench by the door and head toward the kitchen.
I gasp.
I feel my heart and stomach switch places.
“What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
Chapter 30
Stephanie Murphy is sitting
at my kitchen table. She’s facing me, and there’s a gun on the table in front of her. Her hair is in a bun, and she’s wearing leather gloves. The expression on her face is blank. Her eyes are empty and soulless.
I move the hand that’s holding my phone to behind my back.
“Hi Megan. I let myself in using the spare key you keep under the mat at the back door.”
She points to the table in front of her. “Put your phone here, please. I know it’s in your left hand behind your back.”
I move slowly toward the table. Stephanie grips the handle of the gun while, slowly and gently, I put my phone on the table, face up. I take a few steps backwards without taking my eyes off Stephanie and the gun.
“That’s far enough,” she says.
“How did you know about the spare key under the mat?” I ask.
“You’re so predictably suburban, Megan. It was literally the second place I looked,” she replies, rolling her eyes and smiling smugly at her own resourcefulness.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“To plant some evidence that will leave no doubt you killed Paul and Fred, then kill you... Or more accurately, help you put yourself out of your misery.”
“Adam will be back soon,” I lie.
She shakes her head. “Not according to the GPS tracker I have on his car.”
Without breaking eye contact with me, she reaches into a pocket, retrieves her phone, and places it on the table in front of her. Then with one hand on the handle of the gun, she uses her teeth to remove the glove from her other hand and unlock her phone.
“He’s over three hours away at a golf resort. We both know he won’t be back tonight,” she says.
She lets go of the gun to put her glove back on, but keeps it close to her, and doesn’t let go of it long enough for me to do anything, like run out of the house or snatch the gun away from her. I need to distract her while I think of a way to get out of here. I have to keep her talking.
“Where’s Kelly? Won’t she wonder where you are?” I ask.
Please don’t tell me you’ve hurt Kelly or that she’s in on this with you.
“Don’t worry about Kelly. She’s sound asleep and won’t wake up until tomorrow morning. I’m getting better at dosing the sleeping medication, so she sleeps deeply enough and long enough not to notice I’m gone but doesn’t wake up groggy and suspicious.”
“You drug your sister?”
“Only sometimes”—she shrugs—“like tonight, so I can visit you, and Friday night when I had to sneak out to...take care of Fred. Other than that, just here and there to help her sleep without waking up in the night to cry over her loser of a husband. What a waste of tears.”
She obviously hated Paul.
“I also drugged Fred the night I visited Paul. And tonight, I’m going to drug you, except you won’t wake up.”
She smiles.
She’s a psychopath. I have to figure a way out of this.
“Your phone will give you away. If the police check it, they’ll know you were here. If you leave now, I won’t say anything. If anyone asks, I’ll say you came by to pick something up for Kelly.”
I know she won’t take me up on it, but I need to prolong this conversation as long as possible while I plan my escape.
“It’s a burner and I’ll dispose of it as soon as I leave.”
Of course, it is.
“Like down a sewer grate or something?”
Ding!
Before she can answer me, my phone dings and we both look at the screen. It’s a text.
Eric: Call me.
I take a step forward, and Stephanie shakes her head and points the gun at me.
Brrrrring! Brrrrring! My phone lights up. Now Eric is calling me, and I’ve never ever wanted to answer a phone call so much in my life.
With one hand still pointing the gun at me, Stephanie reaches out with the other gloved hand and presses the power button until the phone is turned off.
“I kind of understand why you killed Paul. He was using the photos he stole from Kelly to blackmail people and might expose your affair, but why would you kill Fred? He’s your husband. He loved you, he told me at Paul’s celebration of life.”
“You’re partially right. I didn’t want my affair with Adam to become any more public than absolutely necessary, and Paul stealing the photos from Kelly was the final straw. The real reason he had to go was to save my sister. He was a loser, and he sucked her dry financially over and over again, yet she insisted she loved him, and refused to leave him. He just kept dragging her down with him. He knew she was too good for him, that’s why he kept such a close eye on her phone and her email. He was afraid she’d realize she could do better and leave him.”
“So, you went to see Paul to kill him?” I clarify.
Using yarn and a knitting needle that just happen to be at the crime scene, before sunset, with his wife right downstairs doesn’t seem well planned to me.
“No. I never planned to kill anyone. When Fred found out about Adam and me, we decided there could be no more secrets. We both had to come clean about everything if we were going to stay together and make it work. That’s when Fred told me that he loaned Paul money to pay off his latest gambling debt and stop a lien from being placed on the building where they live and where my sister’s salon is located.”
The tone of her voice is getting angrier as she speaks.
“If they lost that building, she would have lost her home and her business. I was furious. To make it worse, Fred told me about Paul’s plan to pay us back by robbing my sister’s business and selling her equipment to some buyer he lined up. He said Kelly wouldn’t lose any money because the equipment was insured.”
She shakes her head, and I think I see tears welling up in her eyes.
“Fred seemed OK with this, which made me more furious. That evening, after I helped Fred fall asleep, I left my phone at home and drove to Harmony Lake. My plan was to tell my sister about Paul’s latest gambling debt, Fred’s loan to stop the foreclosure of the building, and her husband’s plan to steal from her and her business.”
Her eyes are definitely watery. She stops for a few breaths. If she wasn’t planning to kill anyone, why did she leave her phone at home?
“Would you like a glass of water?” I ask.
Maybe I can throw the glass at her head and run away. She shakes her head.
“When I got to the salon, the back door was propped open with a rock. I went inside, but Kelly was busy with a customer and didn’t notice me. I decided to wait upstairs. It never occurred to me that he would be there. He’s part of so many clubs, committees, and organizations that Kelly says he’s out almost every evening. But when I opened the door, there he was, standing in the kitchen in his undershirt pouring a giant bowl of cereal. I felt sick just looking at him. I confronted him. I told him I knew about the gambling, the near-foreclosure, and the robbery plan. He was smug and arrogant.”
My eyes are still locked with Stephanie's, but in my peripheral vision, through the window behind her, I see movement. Like there’s a large animal in the bushes. The largest animal we usually get in our backyard is a squirrel. I blink in an attempt to reset my vision in case my eyes are playing tricks on me.
“He held up his phone to show me the photos. He admitted he’d stolen them from Kelly’s phone. He told me that if I said anything, he’d make sure the photos and texts would arrive in the inboxes of every lawyer, at every law firm in the country. Then he said he wanted twenty thousand dollars to keep quiet. He gave me until midnight to transfer the money into his account. He told me to leave or he’d start posting the photos to social media sites right then. He turned the TV on and sat at the table to eat his cereal.”
She’s talking like she’s in a trance. There’s no more emotion, and her tone of voice is eerily even and calm. She’s looking right into my eyes, but I’m not sure if she sees me, or the events she’s reliving. She still has one hand on the gun.
“I started t
o leave, but part way down the stairs, I decided to threaten to have him charged with extortion and harassment. So, I turned around and went back to the apartment. The TV was blaring. He didn’t hear me open the door. He was sitting at the table with his back to me. I could hear him slurping his cereal. I saw an opportunity. There was yarn and knitting needles right in front of me. I grabbed the yarn which was already in a big loop. I wrapped it around my hands and put one of the knitting needles in my mouth. Then I sneaked up behind him, put the loop of yarn around his neck, and tightened it as much as I could. It wasn’t tight enough, so I used the knitting needle as a garrote to tighten the yarn more. He tried to pull the yarn away from his neck, and he was kicking his feet, but then he stopped. I let his head fall forward into the bowl of cereal. I thought he was dead, but I wasn’t sure. I hoped he was dead. I didn’t hang around to make sure. I pulled the needle out of the yarn and left the same way I came in.”
She blinks a few times quickly and seems to come back to the here and now. She uses a gloved hand to wipe her eyes.
“When you think about it, I kind of did you and Adam a favour by killing Paul. If he had made those photos public, it would have ruined all of our lives.”
I hope she isn’t expecting me to thank her.
Stephanie pulls a pill bottle from her jacket pocket and puts it on the table with the gun and my phone.
“I’d really like a glass of wine. Would you like some wine?” I ask.
I don’t want wine. I want the bottle to use as a weapon so I can separate Stephanie from her gun long enough to get away.
“No thank you, but you go ahead. You’ll be having some wine soon anyway,” she says smiling, and shaking the pill bottle.
Slowly, I walk to the cupboard to get a glass. A broken piece of glass might make a good back-up weapon if my wine bottle idea doesn’t work. I swallow hard, nervous about turning my back on Stephanie long enough to retrieve the wine bottle from the fridge.
