Shades of Deception

by Piper Dow

  Grabbing their bags, they stood as the bus swayed into the station. They moved quickly down the aisle to the door, past several people just beginning to rise or gather belongings, and reached the sidewalk moments after the bus had come to a complete stop. Kelly looked around the station at the signs hanging just above the milling crowd, scouting the ATM. It was over in the corner near the bathrooms, but there was a line of several people waiting to use it. She shook her head and headed for the ticket counter.

  “We’ll get round-trip tickets, they’re good for any trip and will be easier than trying to get tickets later. Just don’t lose it,” she said as she stepped into line.

  Wayne didn’t reply. Kelly turned her head to make sure he was still with her. She couldn’t believe the number of people taking the bus this early in the morning. They only had four minutes before their bus was scheduled to take off, they couldn’t afford to get separated. Wayne jerked his head at the desk to indicate that the window was open. They moved forward and in less than a minute had two tickets in hand.

  Reading the signs overhead again, Kelly and Wayne sprinted toward the fourth bus platform and climbed the stairs to the bus. “You’re going to Bridgeville, right?” Kelly asked the driver. At his silent nod, they passed him their tickets, waited until he punched them, and moved back to sit in seats at the back of the bus. Settling into the seat, Kelly pulled out her Theater Makeup textbook and leaned back, preparing to read.

  “You brought schoolwork?” Wayne asked, incredulous.

  “What?” Kelly looked at him, surprised. “Of course I brought schoolwork. It’s a two-and-a-half hour ride, and I have to get this done this week. What else should I do? What are you going to do?”

  Wayne shook his head in mock disgust at her. “What any sane person would do. Sleep.”

  He reclined his chair the few inches it would go, stretched his legs out into the aisle, crossed his arms across his belly, and closed his eyes.

  Kelly smirked. “Okay, fine. But when you’re pulling D’s in class again, you can’t blame it on this little adventure.” She consulted the syllabus she had clipped to the front page of the textbook and turned to the next assigned reading.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The bus lumbered to a stop at a posted bus stop in front of a coffee shop. Kelly and Wayne filed off the bus with their bags slung over shoulders. Wayne had actually managed to fall asleep during the ride, but Kelly hadn’t gotten far in her reading. She was too distracted by the people boarding and unboarding in each town on the way. One mother had boarded with a toddler firmly in hand. They sat in the middle of the bus, but the toddler kept turning around to look at the other people on the bus.

  “Look, Mommy! A suitcase!” she said, pointing at a businessman’s briefcase. A few seconds later she had spotted Wayne’s backpack. “Mommy - Backpack! Like Dora’s!” Her high-pitched voice sounded like Minnie Mouse to Kelly. The mom seemed very patient with her daughter, though she smiled apologetically to the businessman and threw a quick smile back toward Kelly and Wayne.

  Kelly mused whether they were heading to daycare, or whether they were off running errands. Her curiosity was satisfied by one of the mother’s whispered comments. “Yes, you can watch Dora when we get to Nana and Papa’s house. Can you turn and sit here in the seat next to Mommy, like a big girl?”

  The little girl turned and sat, though that request had to be repeated several times before they got off the bus in the next town.

  Now, Kelly settled her messenger bag firmly on her shoulder. She knew the way to Sam’s apartment, although Sam had borrowed a friend’s car to pick her up when she had visited over the summer. It would take longer than she liked to walk there, but it was manageable.

  Wayne tugged her sleeve as she took a step down the sidewalk. “Sorry, Kel, I have to grab a coffee first. Come on, it won’t take long,” he said, tugging her into the coffee shop.

  As Wayne stepped up to the counter to order, Kelly browsed the bulletin board near the door. This was no chain restaurant - it had a warm, cozy feel to it. Several patrons sat on stools gathered around small tables on one side of the entry, while the counter and bakery case were on the other side. A man leaned back in an overstuffed chair, a newspaper held open in front of him so that Kelly could not see his face. One hand snuck out to pick up his coffee cup from a small table to the side of the chair. One wall held a high bar with tall stools, upon which sat a few students in front of laptops. Kelly turned back to the counter where Wayne waited for the server to finish making his coffee - he had ordered something with whipped milk and caramel. A red piece of paper tacked to the bulletin board caught her eye. It was advertising guitar lessons in a private home. A business card next to the red paper had a line drawing of a bicycle on it. It was a shop offering bicycle rentals. She reached forward and pulled the card from the board.

  “Can you tell me where this shop is?” Kelly held the business card out to the woman behind the counter. Receiving directions to a shop two blocks away, Kelly nodded and thanked her. She pulled out a pen and wrote the address on her palm, then stuck the card back on the bulletin board.

  Wayne took his coffee from the teen who had been adding the caramel, smiled at her and tucked a dollar in the tip cup on the counter before turning and nodding at Kelly. “All set?” he asked. He smiled as she rolled her eyes, then held the door open for her to pass through in front of him.

  Kelly suggested a detour to see if the bike shop had bicycles to rent for a reasonable price before heading to Sam’s apartment. Nodding and sipping his too-hot coffee, Wayne fell into step beside her. The morning was crisp but not cold. The walk to the shop took just minutes. There were bicycles lined up in a bike rack in front of the store, ranging from basic transportation to those specialized for racing and mountain trails. In short time, Kelly and Wayne had each picked out a basic bicycle. Kelly used her bank card to rent the bikes for the day, inwardly grimacing a little at the steep deposit. “That part you get back when you bring the bikes back,” the cashier explained. “You know, in the same shape.” Kelly declined to rent the helmets the cashier recommended. “I’m not wearing something that’s been on 100 other people’s heads,” she shuddered. “Ick.”

  Throwing a leg over the back of the bike, Wayne pushed off. Kelly followed suit. She felt a sense of satisfaction, both that she didn’t have to walk the three and a half miles to Sam’s apartment, and that she had found such a convenient, affordable solution. Problem-solving in the real world, her mom liked to say, takes both a bit of common sense and also a bit of thinking outside the box. Using just one without the other usually turned in less than wonderful solutions. They rode easily, cresting a few hills breathing a little harder than normal but gliding down the far sides to catch their breaths. Pulling up in front of the tenement, Kelly put one foot down on the street and leaned the bike so that she could look around.

  The apartment was on the first floor of a three-story building. The neighborhood was scattered with these sort of homes as well as single-family homes, each with a lawn and parking area. Sam’s apartment had a flower garden in the front yard and hydrangea bushes under the windows. The hydrangea flower heads had all turned a coppery color now, but Kelly remembered them being blue during the summer. Sam loved tending the flowers - she had helped Mom at home when she was younger, and Kelly knew she had worked out a deal with her landlord that knocked a little off her rent for keeping the gardens presentable.

  Looking up and down the street, Kelly couldn’t see anyone outside. She and Wayne wheeled the bikes toward the driveway and leaned them against a light post near the end of the walkway leading to the door. Kelly found the key Sam had shown her hidden under one of the flower pots near the patio and unlocked the door of the apartment. She pushed open the door quietly and carefully, motioning for Wayne to be quiet.

  “We need to go carefully right from the door, okay? We need to notice everything because we don’t know what might be important. In fact,” she took out her cell phone
and opened the camera app, “I’m going to get photos of everything before we touch anything.”

  Wayne nodded, glancing around outside. As Kelly snapped a few pictures of the dining area, she moved into the room, making room for Wayne to step inside and close the door.

  The dining room was really just a portion of the open floor planned apartment between the living room and kitchen. The square table was pushed against the wall, and three chairs were placed around its sides. The fourth chair sat beside the door holding a small stack of folded blankets. Kelly knew the roommates preferred to keep the thermostat a little low in the cooler months to save on the heating bill. She recognized two of the blankets as throws Sam had taken from home.

  The kitchen was to the right of the dining room. It was small, but large enough for a couple of college students who didn’t do a lot of big home-made meals. It was u-shaped, with the kitchen sink along the far wall underneath a window that looked out over the hydrangea bushes. During the summer, Kelly had been able to smell the flowers through the open window as she washed the dishes. The stove was on the wall shared by the bathroom, with the refrigerator on the wall that faced the front porch. A short hallway on the wall between the kitchen dining area led to the bathroom and the two girls’ bedrooms.

  The living room area was on the other side of the room. A couch sat with it’s back toward the dining area, it’s upholstery sporting large yellow flowers on a cream background. A low coffee table was in front of the couch. A pair of wing-backed chairs sat on the other side of the room, flanking a window that looked out over a short picket fence and into the neighbor’s driveway. A small end table sat between the two chairs, supporting a stack of books and a pile of index-sized note cards. Kelly recognized one of the books in the stack as one that Sam had brought home on her last visit at the beginning of school. An old cabinet TV set sat on the floor in front of a large picture window that looked out on the porch. Kelly knew that most of the furniture had come with the apartment and had likely been cast off decades earlier, but aside from looking dated, the apartment had a warm feeling about it.

  She snapped a few more pictures as they moved into the room, making sure to get close-ups of the items on the table, the few dishes left in the dish drainer on the counter, and the message board on the wall near the telephone in the kitchen. She opened the fridge and snapped a photo of the contents, a small frown hovering over her lips as she did so.

  “Wayne, look at this,” she said. She wasn’t surprised, after reading the posts in Sam’s journal, but it was still unsettling to see the emptiness of the refrigerator.

  Wayne came up behind her and peeked over her shoulder. He pointed at a take-out container on the bottom shelf. “That’s not right. Take more pictures,” he said, pulling the styrofoam box out of the fridge and putting it onto the counter. Written on the top of the container in ballpoint pen were the letters “MK.”

  Kelly hadn’t even noticed them. She took a photo of the box with the cover on, and Wayne flipped the container open. Inside was half of a pita-roll sandwich, lettuce, chicken, and shredded cheese spilling out from the cut end. Wayne picked up a piece of the shredded lettuce and put it in his mouth.

  “Still kind of crunchy,” he said. “Which means it can’t be that old. Definitely not three or four days old, which it would have to be if it was here when Sam freaked and headed home.”

  Kelly and Wayne stared at each other. Kelly looked around the house again, listening intently. She couldn’t hear anything other than an occasional vehicle passing on the street out front. Holding her finger to her lips, she moved quietly toward the bedroom doors.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Grabbing the door handle of Sam’s bedroom door, Kelly turned it slowly and quietly. She eased the door open a few inches and peeked inside, then opened it more. There was no one in Sam’s room. They turned to look at the other bedroom door. Wayne grabbed the knob and quietly opened that door, mimicking Kelly’s movements of minutes before.

  There was no one in that room, either, but that was where the similarities between the two rooms ended. Where Sam’s room was neat and orderly, much like the rest of the apartment, Jill’s room looked like her dirty hamper had been tossed all over the place. A couple of used glasses sat on the top of the dresser, along with some crumpled napkins, an apple core, several books, a shoe, and a jewelry box, as well as a shallow dish filled with earrings that hadn’t made it back into the jewelry box. The bed was unmade and missing a bottom sheet entirely. A waste paper basket near the bed was overflowing with crumpled paper and old take-out Styrofoam coffee cups. A shelf in front of the window was covered with several bumpy, spiky cactus and two rows of pill bottles. The room had a stale odor of old food and dirty clothes, mixed with something else that Kelly couldn’t put a name to but found equally unpleasant.

  “Whoa,” said Wayne. “Who knew Jill was such a pig?”

  Kelly shook her head, putting her finger to her lips quickly. There was still the bathroom to check to see if someone was in the apartment. She moved quickly and quietly to the final door in the hall and repeated the slow, quiet knob turn. The bathroom was empty, but Kelly was positive it had been used that morning. The lid to the toilet was up. A dirty hand towel was tossed carelessly on the edge of the vanity. A bath towel had been dropped and left on the floor in a crumpled heap, and a small puddle still on the floor was evidence that someone had stepped out of the shower onto the tile floor without using a bath mat.

  “Someone was definitely here this morning, for the water to still be on the floor,” she said, taking photos of the room. “Dad said Sam thinks Jill was killed - so either Jill was here and left this mess, and Sam was wrong, or Sam was right, and someone else has been staying in the apartment while Sam’s been in a hospital two hours away.”

  “Kelly! Oh my word, you have to come see this!” Wayne said. He motioned frantically for Kelly to follow him back into the smelly room and walked over to the closet door. “I was wondering what she was keeping in the closet since so many of her clothes are all over the floor. Either she was using the closet for something else, or she has more clothes than you and Sam combined.”

  He threw open the closet door, flipping the light switch on the wall as he did so. He pointed at a couple of cardboard boxes that said they held computer paper. “Who needs reams of computer paper? Hurry up and take some photos, OK? We definitely don’t want to hang around here too long.”

  Kelly reached a hand forward, lifted the lid of the top box and gasped, fumbling the cover and dropping it. “Oh my God, are those hands? Wayne, those are hands!” She picked up the lid again, revealing the contents of the box. Inside were several sealed plastic bags of what certainly looked like mummified hands, as well as similar bags with what looked like dried brown balls of skin.

  Kelly raised her phone again and snapped a couple of photos before carefully replacing the lid. They shut the light off and closed the closet door, careful to make sure it didn’t look as though anything had been disturbed. Stepping backward, Kelly decided they’d better take a peek through the rest of the room before leaving. She turned to the dresser and opened each drawer, snapping a photo of the contents before touching anything. In the topmost drawer, she found a carton of plastic bags used to package jewelry in next to a digital scale. Aside from unfolded clothes and a drawer full of half-empty liquor bottles, she found nothing remarkable in the rest of the dresser. She took photos of the shelf in front of the window, with a close up of the label-less pill bottles. Kelly hesitated, then took the lids off the two front bottles on the shelf, took photos of the pills inside, and replaced the covers, trying to put the bottles back precisely where they had been.

  The drawer of the bedside table held an assortment of old pens, a phone charger, a maroon notebook with a pen tucked inside that Jill had apparently been using as a journal, and a framed photo of Jill and Sam, taken their first year as roommates at the college dorm. Kelly hesitated a fraction of a second before grabbing the notebook
and closing the drawer. She stuffed the notebook into the messenger bag still slung over her shoulder.

  “I don’t know - it might give us nothing, but you’re right, I don’t want to hang around here too long, and maybe there is something in there that will explain, well, some of this, at least,” she said in response to Wayne’s raised eyebrow.

  Wayne nodded, then walked to the door of the room. “Can we please get going? Seriously, Kel, we need to not be here.”

  Kelly followed him out, turning to look over the room again before closing the door. She performed the same routine in Sam’s bedroom, taking photos of every drawer, but found nothing unusual. Sam was neat, liked her things just so, and kept her closets and drawers tidy and organized. It had been brutal for Kelly to share a room with her when they were younger.

  Wayne had gone back into the main room. “Kelly! Kelly!” His insistent whisper was just loud enough for her to hear.

  Darting to the door of Sam’s bedroom, Kelly saw Wayne flattened against the wall, peeking out the window. He glanced at her quickly before turning his attention back to the window.

  “Someone just pulled up out front,” he whispered. “It’s a guy. He’s messing with the trunk. Kelly, what are we going to do?”

  Kelly reached over quickly and pulled the bathroom door closed. “Lock the door, Wayne,” she hissed at him. “It was locked when we got here. Where’s your bag?”

  Wayne’s hands trembled as he turned the lock in the center of the doorknob, trying not to make noise. He grabbed his bag, which he had dropped inside the door when they first came in. He half-walked, half-slunk behind the couch, trying to stay out of view from the window. He reached Kelly’s side and the two slipped back into Sam’s room and closed the bedroom door.

  “Should we hide in her closet?” Wayne asked. “Just in case he checks in here?”

  Kelly nodded. She had been thinking the same thing. Suddenly, though, she held clenched hands to her forehead. “Wayne, the bikes! We left them leaning against the lamp post! He’ll see them!”