by Elise Sax
“No. Why?” he asked.
“Inga Mueller?” Nora asked. “Maybe your Inga Mueller is a different Inga Mueller.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Nope. There’s only one Inga Mueller in these parts. She was murdered. Drowned in a bucket of resin that she used when she made her coal jewelry.”
Inga had a boyfriend? It was hard to believe. I believed her red room before I believed a boyfriend. She wasn’t exactly a touchy-feely kind of woman, as far as I could tell.
But Shep joined us and regaled us with romantic stories about his beloved Inga. “We used to love to drive outside of town to look at the sunset. That’s where she first discovered the coal mine. We explored it together. Fascinating. You know, I think we were the only people in that mine since it was closed in the forties.”
“That mine’s dangerous,” Adele said. “That’s why they closed it. Everyone says so.”
“I worried about that, but Inga was a courageous soul. She liked to take a big bite out of life.” Shep sniffed and wiped at his eyes. “And gentle. Loving. Kind. She was a special woman. That first time we went into the coal mine, it was a magical, quiet spot. I could feel my blood pressure go down the moment I walked inside that place. But it left an even bigger mark on Inga. She found herself in that mine. Instead of seeing black rock, she saw beautiful jewelry. She was reborn.”
Faye sniffed. I felt sad too. I had only thought of Inga as a cutlery stealing, hoarding, bag lady with a sex room, but Shep painted a new picture of a wonderful, artistic woman.
Adele caught my eye, and she arched an eyebrow and smiled slightly. I understood the message. We knew the real Inga, the shackles and whips Inga. Either Shep was lying, or he was in the dark about her other life.
“What did you think of her friends? The mayor?” I asked.
“The mayor? Oh, no. Inga was simple people. She didn’t hobnob with mayors,” Shep said. He looked at me. “I spoke to the Sheriff’s Department, and they have no idea why Inga was murdered. But I’ve heard things about you, that you’re like the Sherlock Holmes of Goodnight. Do you have any idea who would have done this to Inga and why?”
I had tons of ideas. Suspects were stacking up like wood for winter. In fact, I was looking at a suspect. Shep seemed very nice, but if he really didn’t know about Inga and her sexcapades, what if he discovered her secret room one day and it put him over the edge, and he pushed her head into the bucket of resin?
He was obviously a man in love. I could imagine how he would react if he found out she was having kinky sex with other men. A man scorned could have definitely committed murder.
“It didn’t bother you that she was in that club?” I asked him.
“What club?” he asked.
“The dirty one,” Nora said. “She was in a dirty club. Are you in it too?”
It was obvious that Shep had no idea what she was talking about. He was confused and in the dark about Inga’s extracurricular activities. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him that the woman he loved wore latex bodysuits.
“I’m confused,” Shep said.
“It’s not important,” I said. “I promise I’ll do whatever I can do to find Inga’s killer and bring him to justice.”
His eyes filled with tears. “Thank you. I’m lonely without her.”
Shep left soon after that. As soon as he was out the door, Nora and Adele let me have it for not telling him about the sex club.
“That man killed that woman,” Adele said. “I know a murderer when I see one. He found her red room and killed her dead.”
“He probably caught her spanking another man, and he went loco,” Nora agreed. “It’s always the husband or boyfriend. I learned that on How to Get Away with Murder.”
“He was nice,” Faye said. “The way he talked about the mine. And he was lonely. I feel bad for him.”
My feelings fell someplace between Faye’s and Nora’s. Shep appeared nice, but it wouldn’t be the first time a killer appeared nice. I was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt for now, but I added him to the ever-growing suspect list.
“I’m tired,” I said. “So much creepiness. Everyone is doing something gross, but I’m the one with a bad reputation. It’s not fair.”
Faye gave me a side hug. “It’s not fair,” she agreed. “We need to do something to clear your reputation.”
“I need to find the killer and shine a light on the creepiness,” I said. “Get the spotlight off me and back on the creeps where it belongs.”
Faye drove me home in Nora’s food truck. I waved goodbye to my friends and walked through the gate. Boone was waiting for me in the courtyard.
“So,” he said. “Today I discovered that everyone in Goodnight has seen you naked except for me.”
I took a step back. “Oh. You found out, huh? I was meaning to tell you, but I didn’t know how.”
“English would have been good. You could have told me in English.”
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to do it,” I whined. My voice sounded like a 1980s Valley Girl.
“Life isn’t fair. I get it,” Boone said. “I must have bad karma.”
“No, it’s not that. It was a technological glitch.”
Boone ran a hand through his hair. “Romance is torture, Matilda. I’m getting a doozy case of blue balls. After your video, no other man in Goodnight has blue balls. I’m the only one. Me. And I’m hearing things about your breasts that…well, it’s not helping my blue balls.”
“I’m sorry about your blue balls,” I said, honestly. “It was an accident. I don’t want you to have blue balls.”
Boone took my hands in his. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to speed up this courting business. Double-time. Triple-time. Then, I’m going to bang your brains out.”
I wanted him to bang my brains out, but I still had the sex club stink on me, and I didn’t want any banging tonight.
“Do we have a deal?” Boone asked.
“Yes,” I said, shaking his hand. “Expedited courting with banging. Are you going to be on top? I like being on the bottom.”
“We’re going to do every position possible,” he said, his voice deep and gravely.
“I’m not very limber,” I warned him.
“It’s going to be good,” he assured me. I believed him. Boone was all kinds of man and when he kissed me, my body temperature rose ten degrees, and my insides melted.
“We’ll have to get rid of Tilly for the night when that happens.”
“I’ll send her to a spa for a couple nights in Albuquerque,” he promised.
“Two nights? Not one? That’s ambitious.”
“My balls are really blue, Matilda.”
He kissed me good night, and I went inside. Tilly was snoring in the living room. There was no sign of the dogs. Normally, they greeted me when I entered the house, begging for a bone and a walk.
“Abbott? Costello?” I called in a whisper. “Where are you?”
Nothing. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I walked through the house, looking for them. They weren’t in the living room, the pantry, or the kitchen. Nothing was out of place in the house. Nothing disturbed.
Still, I knew there was something wrong. On my way to my bedroom, I finally heard them. They were whimpering and scratching at the bathroom door. Did Tilly lock them in?
“I’m coming,” I whispered.
As I took a step toward the bathroom, I heard a noise in my bedroom, behind me. Someone was in my house. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be in my house was in my house. My heart raced, and my fight or flight response kicked in.
But my fight or flight response was stupid. My fight instinct was bigger than my flight instinct. Instead of running out of the house to get help from Boone, I picked up a kitchen knife and walked slowly to my bedroom.
The door was half open. I held the knife out in front of me with one hand and pushed the door open with the other.
“Hello, Matilda.”
I tried to scream
but it came out as a strangled sound, not enough to alert anyone that I was in trouble. As I tried to scream, I dropped the knife in fear.
And surprise.
The mayor was standing in my bedroom, and he was pointing a gun right at me.
Chapter 12
I made a move to retrieve my knife, but the mayor waved his gun at me. “Nuh uh,” he warned. “No knife. Don’t worry. I won’t shoot you, as long as you answer my questions and tell me the truth.”
“I can do that,” I said. My voice wobbled, and my hands shook. Even if he wasn’t going to shoot me, there were other ways to hurt me. Ways that I didn’t want to think about.
“Mimi told me that you’ve joined our family.”
I hated that word for the sex club. They weren’t a family. Since I didn’t have a family, I had long fantasized about having one. It wouldn’t be like the sex club. It would be like Nora, Faye, and Adele. It would be like Silas, Jack, and Boone. And it would even be like Klee. It would be nothing like Mimi and the mayor or Inga’s red room.
“I did join the club. I found it interesting,” I lied.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said, gesturing with his gun while he spoke.
“You do?”
“You want to blackmail me. You want me to call off the HPA. You want your house back and you don’t want to do the renovations.”
Boy, it was like he could read minds. That was exactly what I wanted to do.
“That’s not what I want to do,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He barked laughter. “You think you’re the only one who’s ever tried to blackmail me?”
I stopped breathing. My heart might have stopped, too. “Who else blackmailed you?” I breathed.
“Who do you think?”
I thought Inga blackmailed him. If she had, it would have tied up everything neatly with a shiny bow.
“Inga?” I asked.
The mayor touched his nose. “On the nose. You wouldn’t believe how much money I paid her in the past year.”
I had a pretty good idea. One hundred fifty thousand dollars plus however much it cost to furnish a kinky sex room.
“Why was she blackmailing you?” I asked.
He cocked his head to the side and arched an eyebrow. “The same reason you’re going to blackmail me.”
“I’m not going to blackmail you. I swear,” I said with my fingers crossed behind my back. I wanted to blackmail him. I wanted to get rid of Dick Boner and the expense of making my home historically accurate. But I didn’t want to do anything illegal. And I didn’t want to force the hand that was carrying a gun.
“I hate blackmailers,” he said.
“That’s why you killed Inga, right? You wanted to stop paying, and you didn’t want the voters to know that you get freaky?”
“It’s not fair that people like me have to hide our tastes and desires. We’re not freaks. Maybe the other, monogamous, sex in a bed, no S&M people are the real freaks. Did you ever think of that?”
No, I never thought of that. “It’s not fair,” I said, nodding my head, deciding it was better to agree with him since he had a gun. “You’ve been persecuted.”
“Exactly! Thank you. Persecuted.”
“So, you drowned Inga in a bucket of resin,” I said.
The mayor knitted his brow, as if he didn’t understand me. “No, of course I didn’t.”
“But you were angry that she was blackmailing you. After all, you introduced her to the sex club.”
“How did you know that?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I’m a good guesser. I heard that a Carlos brought her in, and I put two and two together. Were you and she an item?”
“From time to time on the down low. I gave her a new shot at life. I opened doors for her that she had never dreamed of. And how did she repay me?”
“She blackmailed you. That’s why you had to kill her. She didn’t give you a choice,” I said. I was on a roll. It was only a matter of seconds before he confessed to murder. Inga would get justice.
He squinted. “Do you have a hearing problem? I told you I didn’t kill her.”
“But the blackmail…”
“She stopped the blackmail,” he said, startling me. “She had gotten a buyer for her coal jewelry in Santa Fe, and she was going to make good money.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, but he sounded believable. There wasn’t a scent of deception anywhere on him. But since he was standing in my bedroom, pointing a gun at me, he was definitely my number one suspect. “She had a good thing going,” I continued. “Free money and lots of it. Why would she have stopped?”
“How the hell would I know?” he said, growing impatient. I didn’t blame him. He broke into my house to get answers, but he was only getting questions thrown at him. “Maybe she got religion. Maybe she preferred to be an artist than being a blackmailing dominatrix. She was making her jewelry and selling it in Santa Fe like a hotshot artist. Who cares? I was happy I didn’t have to pay anymore.”
My mind flashed to Shep Bucephelus and the story of his relationship with Inga. I pictured her first reaction to the coal mine and how her creativity took over that day. Maybe Shep and the mayor were telling the truth. Maybe she had found a new fulfilling life as an artist and in her relationship. Maybe she was giving up her blackmail and kinky ways.
“Have I answered your questions?” I asked the mayor. “It’s my bedtime. I need to get at least nine hours of sleep a night to function.”
“All right,” he said and lowered his gun to his side. With the barrel of his gun facing the floor, I took a deep breath for the first time since I walked into my bedroom. “I’ll call off the HPA and close your case. You won’t hear from us again. And I take it that I’ll never hear from you again and you’ll keep your mouth shut?”
I zipped my lips with my fingers and threw away the key. “I won’t tell a soul about your sexual preferences,” I said.
“You’ll have to leave our family, too.”
“Okay,” I said, like it was a horrible sacrifice to leave the sex club. “I promise I’ll leave and never look back.”
The mayor nodded, and he looked as relieved as I felt. “I’ll take you at your word, but if you go back on your word, I’ll come back and I’ll shoot you right here. Don’t think I won’t do it. I’ll have an alibi all ready to go, so I’m not scared of being arrested.”
He stepped toward me until he stood so close that I could smell the booze on his breath. “I could have shot you now, you know,” he whispered. “I would have gotten off scot-free. I have two upstanding citizens, prepared to swear that I was at an HPA meeting across town. You’re lucky that I’m a nice guy.”
I shivered, filled with the icy dread from the knowledge that a life can be snuffed out so easily. All it took was minimal effort from a person with bad intent to squash the dreams and future of another. It was the hardest fact to understand, and it filled me with intense sorrow and an overriding feeling of impotence.
The mayor left my house, and I released my dogs from the bathroom. They jumped on me, sniffing me to make sure I was all right. I sat on the floor and petted them. “I’m fine,” I told them. “The bad man is gone.”
For the rest of the night, they wouldn’t let me out of their sight. They hovered by me when I went to the bathroom, and when I gave them bones to calm them down, they dropped them on the floor and refused to touch them.
They didn’t calm down until I took them for a walk. For the first time in a long time, instead of looking for dead girls in the forest, I focused on Inga’s murder and my long list of suspects. Mayor Carlos Bowser, Mimi Pug, Shep Bucephelus, and the other members of the sex club could have all killed Inga.
Amos and Silas were waiting for updates from me about my investigation into Inga’s murder. I needed to talk to Silas first in order to find out what I should tell Amos. Since I didn’t know who had killed Inga, I wasn’t ready to write an article, but maybe Silas wanted a
n article about the sex club. That gave me a dilemma. If I kept the mayor’s secret, I didn’t have to worry about my house, but if the Gazette shined a light on his sex life, I had to figure he would want revenge, which included taking my house and shooting a big fat hole in my head.
When I returned from walking the dogs, I changed the sheets on my bed and scrubbed every inch of my bedroom, trying to get rid of all remnants of the mayor. Then, I took a long hot shower to get rid of all remnants of the sex club. The dogs refused to leave the bathroom while I showered, and when I got into bed to rest, the dogs jumped in with me and cuddled next to me.
“I love you too,” I told them, and they fell asleep.
I couldn’t fall asleep, but I stayed in bed until morning so that I wouldn’t wake them.
Tilly had made eggs and toast, and we were sitting at the kitchen table for breakfast. I poured a cup of coffee for Tilly and took a sip from my own cup.
“Where’s my Dick?” Tilly asked. “I got used to looking at something while I ate breakfast.”
“I texted him and told him we don’t need him anymore.”
“I don’t have a lot in my life, Matilda. Why did you take away my Dick?” Tilly asked me with her mouth full of toast.
“I can’t afford him, and the HPA is backing off, so I don’t need him anymore.”
“First they canceled All My Children and now this. Life’s a bitch,” Tilly complained.
“They canceled All My Children?”
“Where have you been? Making too many porn videos?”
I sighed. “Do you have Facebook too? Does the whole world have Facebook except for Boone?”
“What’s happening with him? You guys called it off?”
“Of course not. We’re courting.”
Tilly took a sip of her coffee. “Slowest damned courting I’ve ever seen,” she muttered.
She had a point. Boone had said pretty much the same thing.
Silas took one look at my face at work and told me to meet him in the Gazette office’s storage closet. Faced with the senior reporter, I decided to tell him everything, no matter if it could threaten my life.
