by Bill Alive
“So why kill Ed, then?” Mark said, still all light, as if they were debating whether to take a toll road. “Wouldn’t he have kept his wife away from Roger?”
Mrs. Turcot blinked again. She was like an app that kept freezing, too much to process.
“Ed was threatening Roger. Putting us all in danger,” she said. Her voice was so cold, a monotone. “Kelsey never would have worked the whole plan out on his own. I told myself I was acting in Roger’s best interests. It was spiritual warfare. Roger had to survive, to lead the Church after the coming chastisement … But the truth was, it was really my own self-will. That’s why I never gave Roger any children. My own body was selfish. I wanted him all to myself. And then when Vanessa was really going to move in … Yvette at least knew her place, but that woman…”
Her eyes glittered. Her voice had warmed at last.
“What about Olivia?” I blurted. “Did you kill her too?”
She looked taken aback. “Olivia?” she said. “That girl was her own worst enemy.”
She said it so easily, with such automatic dismissal, that it was almost as bad as if she had killed her.
Except, not really. And it began to sink in that this frumpy middle-aged woman had just calmly confessed to murder. In her own gift store.
Mark said, “You do realize what you’re saying?”
Mrs. Turcot reached under the counter.
I tensed, in a flash of panic that she’d yank out a gun.
But she slipped out a photo.
I didn’t want to look.
It was her wedding. Mrs. Turcot looked super young, early twenties, clinging to Roger with a giddy grin. Roger had more muscle and more hair, and such brazen confidence that he was almost handsome.
The real Mrs. Turcot, Present-Day Mrs. Turcot, aged and wrecked by more than the years, bent over the photo with a fondness that burned. She stroked a bony finger across young Roger’s grin.
It was too much, it was overacting … and then I knew that she was acting, simulating feelings that couldn’t possibly have survived.
Nothing about this woman was real. Her real self had been AWOL for decades.
Which is what you’d expect from a murderer.
The entrance door clanged. An old woman bustled in, with a lacey black doily pinned to her large head. I have seen some strange headgear in my time, but that was a first.
“Hello, dear!” she bellowed. “I’ve got a baptism coming up, the baby of the cousin of the uncle of my niece’s old roommate. They’re not very devout, but I want to plant some seeds. Do you still have those gorgeous old holy cards with lace?”
Mrs. Turcot’s face crinkled into a smile, each separate muscle pulled carefully into place like a marionette. “Of course,” she said, and swept around the counter as if we’d left ten minutes ago.
“We’ll be back,” Mark said.
She was already showing the woman a holy card display.
Mark stiffened, then marched out. But instead of going to the car, he started pacing in the parking lot.
“So … she confessed,” I said. “It’s done.”
“It’s not done till she confesses to the cops,” he snapped.
He stopped pacing and dialed Gwen.
“Why would she confess to us but not the cops?”
But Mark was frowning. “Damn, I got her voicemail. Hey Gwen, this is Mark. Just got a murder confession. Call me back.”
He jammed the phone back into his pocket. He was jumpy, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Mark, what’s the deal?”
“Let me think!” he snapped, and he strode away.
I kept up, but we walked in silence, down an alley and out onto Main Street. We marched up and down the whole length of the street, two or three times, and the whole time, Mark was muttering impatient bits I couldn’t catch.
The light began to gray into early fall evening, drabbing whatever charms poor Main Street had left. I don’t know why our Main Street always gets me so depressed. I thought, You just caught a murderer, man! You should feel on top of the world! Or at least smugly victorious!
But Mrs. Turcot had chilled me to the bone. I was starting to wonder whether catching murderers was worth having to deal with them.
We finally circled back to the store. And Mark cursed.
They were closed. Mrs. Turcot was gone.
“Damn it!” Mark said. “I shouldn’t have left her!”
He dialed Gwen again. “Damn! She’s still not picking up!”
“Dude, it’s okay,” I said, “Mrs. Turcot’s not going anywhere. There’s no one left to kill. She’s got Roger all to herself.”
But even as I said it, I realized…
“Theodore,” Mark said. “Crap.”
Chapter 39
Mark dialed Theodore. “Pick up, pick up,” he urged.
Nothing.
“Call his wife!” I said. “Louise!”
“I don’t have her cell,” Mark said. “Come on.”
We raced for Thunder.
As Mark fought through Back Mosby rush hour, Gwen called back.
“Gwen!” he said. “Yes, it’s Mrs. Turcot. Just now. Right in her store, Pete was there too … Because she’s obsessed with Roger, Gwen, and he is very much not obsessed with her. She made Kelsey kill Vanessa and then she kicked out Yvette … Yvette, she’s another ‘group’ member, she was living in their house … because Yvette talked to us, Gwen! Damn it, ask Pete!”
He thumbed the phone to speakerphone and slammed it in a cup holder between the seats.
“Uh, hi Gwen,” I said.
“…should have told Yvette to come to us,” Gwen crackled.
“Yvette’s fine!” Mark said. “She’s on our couch!”
“On your couch?” Gwen said.
There was an awkward silence.
“She’s watching Donna Reed,” I put in.
It didn’t help. “You left a murder suspect alone in your house?” Gwen said. “In a murder by poison?”
“Crap!” I said. “We’re going to have to throw all those groceries out!”
“No way,” Mark said. “I know that girl’s no murderer.”
“You said she had rock-hard shields!” I said.
“Pete, that’s like fifty bucks of groceries!”
“Mr. Falcon,” Gwen interrupted. “Are you absolutely certain that Mrs. Turcot confessed to ‘goading’ Kelsey to those murders?”
Mark hesitated.
“Mark!” I said.
“She did,” Mark said, “she just…”
“What?” Gwen said.
“There’s something wrong with her. Like she wasn’t all there.”
“Great,” Gwen said. “If she’s mentally incompetent, we’ll never get a conviction. Defense can say there’s no proof she was an actual accomplice. Maybe she just imagined things, cracked under leading questions.”
Mark flared up. “I don’t think you should be lecturing anyone on interrogation techniques.”
“I’m sure the judge will be swooning at your overwhelming credentials.”
“And here we go,” Mark said. “It always comes back to the creds. Which one of us just got a confession, Sergeant?”
“It’s not worth much if the woman’s delusional!”
“So that’s it? You’ve pre-decided?” Mark said. “You’re not even going to check up on her?”
“I will certainly stop by, Mr. Falcon. I was going to anyway.”
“When? Now?”
“Not right this second. We’re short staffed today and there’s a huge pileup on the highway.”
Mark groaned. “I don’t believe this.”
“I can’t drop everything to interrogate some woman who sounds imbalanced and who, at worst, abetted a violent crime. If Kelsey was her hit man, he’s dead, and she’s not going to assault anyone herself.”
“So you say.”
“Some of us have actually studied these things.”
Mark growled. He pulled into a drivewa
y that I guessed had to be Theodore’s, and cut the engine.
“Mr. Falcon?” Gwen said. “Where are you? What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mark said. “Not nearly as important as directing traffic.”
He hung up.
I flinched. I couldn’t imagine hanging up on Gwen. Ever.
Mark leaned his forehead on the steering wheel, forcing himself to take slow breaths.
I let myself out of the car. He seemed to need a minute.
Outside, thick storm clouds were brooding in a sky that was nearly dark. The chilly air had that tense pre-storm tingle, and the skin of my arms crawled. Although, yes, that probably wasn’t just from the weather.
Theodore’s place was tiny. A tiny starter house, a tiny yard, and even the white picket fence had undersized posts. A scuffed toddler tricycle had been ditched at the porch steps, and other aging plastic toys littered the brown grass.
It all felt … prosaic. Mediocre. Nothing too real could ever happen to these people. Definitely not murder.
Mark slammed out of the car. He didn’t look much relaxed by his time-out.
He stormed to the front door, banged three times, and stewed.
“Hey, um,” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t forget to smile.”
“What?”
“Dude, if Theodore’s not home, we’re two random dudes at night, and it’ll be Louise alone with a kid.”
Mark sighed, then forced a smile.
“Never mind! Drop it!” I said, averting my eyes. “Stick with your natural scowl.”
“Theodore had better be here, safe and sound,” Mark grumbled. “Or a scowl’s going to be the least of his wife’s problems.”
The door opened. Louise.
To my surprise, she gave us both a welcoming smile. Her super-cute little girl was pawing at her leg. Louise laughed down at her kid, hoisted her up, and gave us a friendly, conspiratorial shrug, like, what can you do? Her smile beamed even brighter.
To my further surprise, I realized that although Louise was definitely overweight, her smile shared a lot of the same sparkle as her super-hot sister Jivanta. In fact, although I couldn’t be sure, I thought Louise’s might even be warmer … maybe more accepting?
I’d only ever seen Louise from a distance, and only when she was freaking out or sad. Up close, her dark eyes and full lips had a pretty shine.
But as soon as I thought that, I mentally backed away. I started noting all the little flabs and wrinkles and sags, the bulge of her belly over too-tight jeans that were squeezing gargantuan thighs…
Like I was afraid to get caught.
Wait, did I always do this? Squash any attraction if the woman was Officially Disqualified?
For the first time ever, I wondered what my life might be like if I tried to focus on how most people might have bits that were beautiful. My first thought was … overwhelm. There’s a lot of people.
Meanwhile, Louise had greeted us, but before Mark could answer, she had gone thoughtful. “Wait, we’ve met,” she said, and her voice was rich and luxurious like Jivanta’s, with the same gorgeous Indian accent.
I wondered how her parents had settled on “Louise”.
“You were at the funeral,” she said. “No … you were at the wedding. At the bell tower.”
Her face clouded. The kid squirmed in her arms. She bent to let the kid toddle away on some critical mission.
Mark said, “Yes, I don’t think we’ve officially met.” He had almost smoothed into Client Mode, but I could sense the strain beneath his smile. “I’m Mark Falcon. This is Pete Villette—”
“Oh,” Louise said. She closed up, gave me a guarded look. “Jivanta told me about you.”
I flushed. Long story.
Mark said quickly, “But we’re also friends of Theodore’s.”
“Really?” Louise said, doubtful.
“Work friends. I know it’s after business hours, but is he in? I tried to call him—”
“Oh, he’s terrible about answering his phone,” she said, visibly relaxing. This detail seemed to validate that we had to be for real and actually know her husband. “He barely picks up for me. Says he hates the phone, he can’t see people’s faces.”
I blurted, “Didn’t he call Roger about Yvette?”
Mark snapped me a scowl. I realized that accusing her husband might not be super reassuring. Not to mention that this might not be the sort of incident that Theodore would have shared with his wife.
But Louise said, “Oh, he told you about that? Wasn’t that crazy? And that girl looked so sweet and unassuming. And then Roger wouldn’t even believe him at first, he got so angry. I could hear him yelling over the phone.”
Something tugged at my leg. The kid. She was staring up at me with wide, solemn eyes, and her pudgy fist was holding up an old lace holy card.
Louise crouched beside her. “Oh, you have something for Mr. Pete?”
The kid nodded.
I took the card. Gingerly. I didn’t know why, but I had some resistance to touching it, like it might be off-gassing some emotional cancer.
Mark stiffened and edged away.
The front of the card was an old-school painting, like an original Little Golden Book, except in this case, it was a nun. She had rosy cheeks, a perfect 1950s housewife face, and also, a bloody wreath of thorns stabbing into her head.
Okay, maybe that explained the weird feeling.
I flipped to the back. A long prayer droned in tiny print.
O pure and chaste St. Rose of Lima, thou who were not afraid to do violence unto thine own flesh when threatened by the loss of thy virginity, by those who would have forced thee to an unholy marriage bed, defiled by lust…
“Where’d you get this?” Mark asked Louise sharply.
Before she could answer, I realized another reason the thing was creeping me out.
“Don’t you remember?” I said. “Her kid was clutching this lacy thing in her hand. At the bell tower.”
The kid, excited, pointed at the card and said, “Bell! Bell!” Except she couldn’t say the “L”, it was more like, “Bayuh! Bayuh!”
“That’s right,” Louise said, surprised. She seemed a bit miffed that a strange man (me) had noted her daughter so carefully back at the bell tower, but she got over it. “She found the card there, she was playing with it just before I found … you know. I’ve tried to throw it out, but she gets so upset.”
I kept reading the back. “Oh my gosh! This nun messed up her own face?”
Louise made a wry smile. “Oh, Theodore was telling me about that. I guess she wanted to be a nun, but this was like the sixteenth century, and she was pretty, and her family was going to force her to get married. So she smeared her face with pepper. Serious blisters.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said.
Mark was wincing, like the story was really bothering him. But Louise just kept chatting.
“I know, right? I mean, I guess, back then, it could have been the better option. Depending on the guy. It’s not like she could get a divorce. But still.”
I read the rest, and wished I hadn’t. “This prayer makes self-mutilation sound like the go-to strategy.”
“Yeah, that old language, not my thing either,” she said. She shrugged. “But it’s not like they really meant it.”
Mark said, “Louise, I hate to insist, but we really need to check in with Theodore.”
“Oh, he’s out. I’m sorry. He had to go over to Roger’s.”
Mark blanched. “You’re sure?”
“Of course,” Louise said. “I just heard him on the phone with Mrs. Turcot.”
Chapter 40
Mark was roaring Thunder so fast across town I was sure some cop would catch us. Speaking of cops…
“Shouldn’t we call Gwen?” I said, as we screeched another turn.
“I’m done calling Gwen,” Mark said. He pried out his phone and powered it off. “Turn yours off too,” he told me. “
We don’t need another surprise call.”
I did it, but my fingers were shaking. “What are we going to do?” I said.
“Depends.”
Somehow we dodged all the patrol cars, and he finally slowed when we hit Mrs. Turcot’s road. It was twisty and wooded, a lone mountain road with houses dropped in as an afterthought.
On the last bend before their place, he crunched Thunder off onto the gravel shoulder and parked beneath the dark trees.
“Why are we parking out here?” I said.
He got out and started walking.
This last stretch of road up to Mrs. Turcot’s house was narrow, with maybe six inches of gravel shoulder beside the trees and poison ivy. I’d never walked on one of these fast country roads, and the night made it even more dangerous, with zero visibility for any car that might come whipping around the bend at highway speed. I felt like I was walking on train tracks. And the brooding forest pressed in hard on either side, grudging and resentful of this concrete gash.
The walk took much longer than I expected.
But we finally made it. I scuttled off the road onto the Turcot’s gravel driveway and uncoiled with relief.
For like, one second.
Then I realized that Mark had no intention of knocking on the front door. He had avoided the security light blaring off the front porch, and he was sneaking around to the shadows at the house’s side.
I also recognized the shabby minivan in the driveway. Theodore’s.
“Mark!” I whispered. He didn’t stop, so I pushed after him into the long unmowed grass. I glanced at the house, and now I was seeing it wrong, from a burglar’s angle, distorted and sideways from the dark yard.
My heart was racing. Any second, one of those windows could explode with light and angry shouts, and we’d be screwed.
Mark had crept to a glass sliding door in the concrete foundation wall. The long house was built into a hill that sloped down in the back, which meant these doors would open into the basement.
As I tried to sneak up, a light blared on.
Bile and panic lurched up my throat. I gasped and froze, but Mark yanked me close in to the wall.
“Just an automatic light,” he hissed. “Relax.”
“We can’t break in!” I whispered. “That’s Theodore’s car, can’t we just go knock?”
