Top Producer

by Laura Wolfe

  An image of the repositioned family photo in my living room flashed in my mind. Even with my locks changed and the security system installed, Jacqueline could find a way to break into my condo. She could make a call to the security company pretending to be me. She could lift a master key from the maintenance man. Is that how she’d done it with Kevin? And Peter?

  The explosion of thoughts made it impossible to focus, kept me trapped inside my head. Jacqueline had been using me all along. She had built an invisible cage around me. I’d let her do it. Now I’d have to be the one to stop her. I wouldn’t dispute the complaints. I wouldn’t deny the allegations to Damon. I wouldn’t warn my parents or Emma about Jacqueline’s challenges to my character and integrity. It wasn’t worth the risk of having them think any part of those lies could be true. Those complaints could never be filed. And I certainly wasn’t going to wait around for her to murder me and make it look like an allergic reaction or a suicide. I’d finish this with Jacqueline directly. No one else needed to be involved.

  44

  I wrapped up the breakfast with Justin as quickly as possible and exited through the front door of the Pancake House. A jogger jumped to the side a moment before colliding with me, the narrow miss triggering something in my brain. Think outside the box. The pieces turned over in my head, details coming together, fitting into each other to form a clear plan. My body shook with something between anger and fear as I realized there was only one way to get myself out of the grave Jacqueline had dug for me. She’d left me no choice. It was kill or be killed.

  Jacqueline had described her morning run so many times I knew the route by heart. She left her house before sunrise at exactly 4:45 a.m., running through the darkness and traversing the nearby neighborhoods and the zoo. Then she followed the lakeshore path, taking a shortcut down the first alley between Armitage and Lincoln Avenue on the loop back to her townhome.

  I didn’t drive back to the office to submit the offer like I’d promised Justin. That could wait until the afternoon when I knew Jacqueline would be at the sales center. Instead, I drove directly to the alley and scoped it out. The narrow pathway would be my opportunity, hidden from view, with no traffic light cameras to trace the accident back to me.

  I thought back to the day my Hyundai had been towed to the nightmarish lot beneath the city, remembering the words of the foul man who’d charged me $500. If you ever need a cheap car, give me a call. I slunk into a nearby ATM and withdrew as much as was allowed, a thousand dollars in cash from my checking account, hoping the camera didn’t pick up the layer of sweat forming on my upper lip. I placed two envelopes stuffed with hundred-dollar bills into my bag before slipping back into my car.

  My fingers brushed against the leather seat. I couldn’t execute my plan in the BMW. It was too conspicuous. My body on autopilot, I drove to an industrial site off Clybourn Avenue and parked behind two construction trailers. I’d passed the abandoned site almost daily for the last year. The dilapidated warehouse teetered on steel stilts, sad and empty. The rusting trailers had been camped in the same spot for as far back as I could remember.

  I strode down Clybourn on foot, waiting until I was several blocks away from the site before raising my hand to hail a cab. Even with the stack of cash, my purse felt light, having left my cell phone under the front seat of my car. No one would be able to track my movements if it ever came to that.

  “Where to?” the unshaven cabby asked in a thick middle eastern accent.

  “The city tow lot. The one off Lower Wacker.”

  “Car got towed?”

  “Yep. Second time this year.”

  The cabby shook his head and grunted, commiserating with me. A few minutes later, we descended the dark tunnel into the center of the earth. Wisps of steam floated up from the sewer grates and reflected off the dim yellow lights that lit the path to the tow lot. Down, farther and farther, we went—no way to turn back. I passed the cabby forty bucks and told him to keep the change.

  I recognized the overweight guy in the dirty overalls who sat in the booth. He glanced up from his computer screen when I slammed the cab door, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and wisps of smoke curling around his head.

  “License plate number,” he said.

  “Actually, I’m looking to buy a car. Something cheap.”

  The guy stared at me like I was a carnival freak. His eyes traveled from the collar of the pink blouse that peeked through my wool coat, to my pressed pants, and shiny black boots.

  “It’s for my cousin. He just got his driver’s license.” I’d been rehearsing the story in my head during the cab ride.

  He held up his hand, signaling for me to stop talking. “I’ve got a clunker over there. Guy couldn’t make the payment. She runs pretty good though. Five hundred bucks.”

  Minutes later, I paid the guy in cash and rattled through the gate in a 1992 Buick LaSabre. The car was a piece of junk. It was tan with splotches of rust and a drooping rear fender, but it ran, and it wouldn’t need to go very far.

  My torso tipped forward in the deep seat, muscles clenched, as I drove the Buick back to the abandoned site on Clybourn, ignoring its lurches and sputtering, and parking it behind my car. I switched cars and zoomed back to my condo; the smooth power of my BMW more noticeable than ever. So far, everything had gone according to plan. I’d come back for the clunker before sunrise.

  ◆◆◆

  At 4:45 on Monday morning, I waited, crouching inside the Buick a half-block down from Jacqueline’s townhome. I dug my toes into my shoes and forced myself to breathe. Jacqueline’s shadowy silhouette bounded down her front steps and bobbed away from me across Lincoln Avenue. As soon as she was out of sight, I slipped from the beat-up Buick and darted across the darkened sidewalk up to her front door, glancing behind me to make sure no one was watching. My hands were sweating inside my leather driving gloves as I clutched the key attached to the silver cow keychain she’d given me months earlier, the one I’d used so many times to open her front door for painters and workers. She’d viewed me as a servant. Nothing more.

  My fingers shaking, the key rattled against the lock before slipping into place. The door creaked open with a turn of the handle. I entered her townhome, pulling the solid door closed behind me. The dim hallway reflected in the glow of distant streetlights and smelled of lemon-scented cleaner. I inched forward, following the path to her home office and cringing with every squeak of my sneakers against the polished floor. Beyond the cut-glass French doors at the end of the long hallway, Jacqueline’s workspace sat orderly and clean. Her laptop lay open on top of her sprawling desk, and her briefcase was propped against the far wall.

  I leaped toward the briefcase and yanked open the clasp. The bag was filled with a stack of several folders, all labeled with addresses of properties. I pulled them out and flipped through them one by one, cursing my gloved fingers as the pages slipped from my hand. Switching tactics, I spread the folders out in front of me. As I squinted through the darkness, the words sharpened into focus. Each folder contained listing sheets for a different property. No complaints. I continued rummaging through her bag, opening compartments and unzipping side pockets, until the corner of a manila folder poked out from a narrow interior pocket, separate from the others. This file was missing a label.

  My body quivered with adrenaline and dread as I threw open the folder, revealing the complaints and police report. She’d rewritten them. Just as before, my name was printed in black ink under the Respondent box. Behind the first form, were two more complaints to the Board of Realtors, and another complaint to the IDFPR with a sticky note in Jacqueline’s precise handwriting to CC the police department. A second sticky note clung to the next page with a reminder to call Natalia regarding stalking charges. The complaints all displayed the same date—January 5th—five days after CBR would announce the winner of Chicago’s Top Producer Award.

  I threw my head back and snorted, relief flooding through me. Jacqueline hadn’t subm
itted them yet. From the look of it, no one else had seen them. Maeve’s signature space was blank. She hadn’t told Maeve about the missing escrow funds, or the surly office manager would have confronted me by now. Just as I’d suspected, my mentor was waiting to destroy me until after she won Top Producer. I shoved the unlabeled folder into my bag, returned the rest of her folders to her briefcase, and closed the clasp. My motive for killing Jacqueline was about to disappear.

  Next, I logged into her computer, carefully pecking the keys with my gloved finger. She’d given me her password once when I’d forgotten my laptop at home. Realtor#1. I could have guessed that one anyway. My fingers fumbled across the keyboard, typing in a search for documents labeled “Complaint,” “IDFPR,” “Board of Realtors,” “Police Report,” and “Mara.” The first four searches returned no results, but the “Mara” search brought up a folder on her desktop labeled with my name. I double-clicked it and stared at the contents.

  A photo of me kissing the guy at Drumbar appeared on the screen. Next to it, a thumbnail of a video, the still frame a picture of Julia’s condo and me leaving through the front door holding a white metal box. I deleted them both. Several scanned documents dotted the remainder of the screen. I double-clicked on the top one. The Board of Realtor's complaint concerning 1907 N. Mohawk popped up. I clicked on the next one, the IDFPR complaint claiming I’d stolen valuable jewelry from Julia’s condo. The next one, another Board of Realtor's complaint describing how I’d forged a check from Greystone’s escrow account. My heart pounded, my breath caught in my throat. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. I clicked on the folder with my name and deleted that, too. I scrolled to the Recycle Bin icon and emptied the virtual trash, eliminating the evidence.

  I scanned Jacqueline’s sent emails but found nothing related to her false claims against me. She hadn’t sent them to anyone yet. I double-clicked on her “videos” folder, and thirty or so thumbnails appeared on the screen. It took a minute, but I found a second copy of the one of me holding the white box in front of Julia’s condo. I selected the video, deleted it, and emptied the trash again.

  The photo and video still existed on Jacqueline’s phone, but there’d be no way to get to them. She always had her phone with her, even when she ran. Anyway, the photos and videos meant nothing without the complaints to explain them. As I powered off her laptop, I remembered my disturbing finding from a few months earlier—the keys.

  My hand grasped the handle of Jacqueline’s bottom desk drawer. It slid open with a metallic clatter, a mound of keys connected to labeled tags glinting through the shadows. My fingers sifted through them as my heart squeezed to a halt. I spotted a familiar string of numbers floating on the top of the pile. 1630. It was my address, the key to my condo. Just as I’d suspected, Jacqueline had been able to let herself in and out as she pleased. Her violation raged through me, my gut hollow and pulsing. My palm closed around the copied key, and my other hand slammed the drawer shut. I wouldn’t give the police any reason to believe I’d want to hurt her, nothing linking me to Jacqueline other than our mutually beneficial work arrangement.

  With the bag of false evidence slung over my shoulder, I strode down the hallway to the front door, where I paused in the entryway, spying down the street in both directions before locking the door behind me and scurrying along the abandoned sidewalk back to the obscurity of my clunker.

  My watch read 4:53. I’d been in and out of her townhome in eight minutes flat. My lungs released the breath they’d been holding. There was still plenty of time to execute my plan. I wondered how far Jacqueline had gotten on her run. Had she passed through the zoo yet? Had she slowed to a jog and stared enviously at Ellie the cow for the last time?

  Guiding the Buick south on Lincoln toward Armitage, I pulled into an illegal spot behind a white work van. The alley lay in clear view on the opposite side of the road. The van hid my car, but I’d be able to see my target through the windows. I crouched lower, my muscles cramping, only my eyes peering over the bottom line of the windshield. The streets stretched out before me like those in a ghost town, eerie and lifeless. Every few minutes, an occasional car whizzed past, then disappeared, returning the streets to silence. Time crept by, and I pushed away my doubts, giving myself a pep talk. This was what needed to be done. She was going to ruin me. Or kill me. I needed to save my career to save my sister’s life, to save my relationship with Damon, to save my reputation. The time to think about it had passed. Just do it, I told myself over and over again, my fingernails gouging into the tips of my cold leather gloves. If only the execs at Nike had known how I’d hijacked their tagline. There was no going back. Jacqueline hadn’t left me with any other choice.

  Every time a person rounded the corner, my heart lurched into my throat, my muscles constricting, then relaxing as I realized my mistake—three false alarms. After several agonizing minutes, a familiar outline appeared around the bend. From the steady jolt of her stride, the way she held her shoulders tall, and the reflective stripe across the front of her hot pink Athleta running jacket, I knew Jacqueline had neared the end of her route. She jogged along, absorbed in whatever music streamed through her earbuds, and turned into the alley.

  I swallowed back the bitter taste in my throat. This was it. I had one shot. I had to get it right the first time. She couldn’t survive.

  Peter’s ominous words circled in my brain: She’ll make you do bad things.

  I gripped the steering wheel. The rusty Buick crept out of its hiding spot, sputtering and lurching. I followed slowly, at first. As I neared her, my foot slammed against the gas pedal, gunning the car into the alley. Jacqueline jogged in front of me, lost in her music, oblivious. I closed my eyes as the car accelerated toward her. The front fender plowed directly into Jacqueline’s back.

  BAM!

  Her body flipped into the air, blonde ponytail swinging. Her head slammed into the brick apartment building. I gasped as the gruesome scene unfolded in slow motion. My foot hit the pedal again, and I glanced in my rearview mirror. Jacqueline’s body lay in a bloody heap next to a dumpster; her neck bent backward in an unnatural V shape. My stomach heaved. She wouldn’t live to tell. Heart thumping and afraid to breathe, I accelerated away from her mangled figure.

  I drove on, sticking to the alleyways and side streets and praying no one in the neighboring apartments happened to glance out their windows at the moment of impact. Even with a different car, there was always a chance someone could trace the accident back to me.

  It was done. I could get away with it, as long as no one had seen.

  45

  Back at the industrial site, I abandoned the clunker for good. The dent on the front fender was even worse than when I’d collected it from the tow lot. And then there was the blood, the spidery legs of crimson splattered across the hood, causing me to retch. I pulled the jug of water mixed with bleach from my car and poured it over the stains, then wiped everything down with a rag I’d brought with me. I left the Buick unlocked with the keys in the front seat. It was only a matter of time before someone stole it or hauled it back to the tow lot.

  Inside my BMW, I peeled off my gloves and blended into traffic, not letting my shoulders relax until I eased into the parking spot inside the garage of my condo building. As soon as I closed my front door behind me, I pulled the manila envelope from my bag and shredded the complaints into hundreds of tiny pieces. Wadding the scraps of paper in my unsteady hands, I stuffed Jacqueline’s lies down the garbage disposal, turned on the faucet, and flipped the switch. The motor rumbled and hummed, eating the evidence.

  I ripped off my jeans and sweatshirt and stuffed them, along with the gloves I’d been wearing, into my washing machine, pouring in extra detergent before starting the cycle. After showering under scalding water for several minutes and dressing in clean work clothes, I sat on my couch where I remained in a trance-like state for over an hour, the obscurity of the early dawn giving way to rays of sun that shone on me like a spotlight.

  At
8 a.m., I mustered the strength to stand and check my phone. I’d left it on my kitchen counter all morning to prove I hadn’t been near the scene of the accident. Finding no new messages, I drove toward the office, my hands still vibrating with the memory of the actions they’d taken. Not showing up to work would look suspicious. The hollowness in my stomach ached, but I had no appetite. It’s going to be fine, I repeated to myself. No one knows. Act normal.

  I parked on North Avenue and stumbled down the sidewalk toward Greystone. Tony stood on the corner in his usual post.

  “Hey, Mara!” He smiled at me through his yellow-brown teeth.

  “Hey, Tony,” I said, my voice sounding strange. I increased my pace, not being in the mood for small talk this morning. My arms and legs quivered.

  “Busy morning, huh?”

  “Yep. Gotta get into work.”

  “You really whacked that bitch. Whacked that bitch. Right in the back.” A smile crept across Tony’s face.

  I froze, my feet cemented to the sidewalk. My eyes locked onto him while the blood drained from my body. He laughed hysterically, spittle spraying from his mouth.

  “Don’t worry. Don’t worry,” he said between guffaws. “No one saw.”

  I lunged close to him, grabbing the collar of his coat. “Shut up. It wasn’t me,” I whispered through clenched teeth.

  “I know, I know. Yeah, yeah.” He was still laughing. “You had a different car. I saw you, though. I saw you. I sleep between those two dumpsters in the alley sometimes.”

  “You must have made a mistake,” I stared him down, my breath uneven.

  “I hated that bitch, man. Hated her. I’m not going to tell.” Tony stopped laughing and raised his hands in the air. “I promise. I’m loyal. Loyal. The only witness. Only witness. I already told the police something else.”