Down and Dirty

by Taylor Holloway

  I believed it. Theresa was as much of a workaholic as Jenna or Oliver. Although I knew it was shaking the foundations of Theresa’s faith in my father, she was maybe the only person who could help us if the only records were really in my father’s desk safe.

  Theresa walked off with her chocolate bar without another word, and I followed a few minutes later. I scratched off my lottery ticket in the parking lot and realized I’d won five dollars. Feeling like the world was looking up, I went back inside, cashed ticket, and used the proceeds to buy two more.

  Both tickets were losers. I hoped it wasn’t an omen.

  33

  Jenna

  My mom couldn’t call while I was on my fictional ‘cruise’ but she could email. And she did. Prolifically. I read over her latest message from a chilly park bench while Harley lay in a pool of sunshine and enjoyed the cold.

  Dear Jenna,

  I hope you’re enjoying your trip! I’m so proud of you for finally taking a real vacation. You deserve it. Sometimes you work yourself much too hard.

  Bob and I checked on your apartment today. Everything was fine. I did throw out the pizza that was sitting on your kitchen island. Did you not like the look of it or something? It was strange that it was just sitting there.

  I remembered yesterday that the anniversary of Nana’s death is next week. Can you believe she’s been gone for almost nine years? I thought I’d always remember the exact day that she died. But now the date seems to sneak up on me.

  Your Nana never left the country, did you know that? She went to Niagara Falls once, but she didn’t even cross the border into Canada. According to her, the rest of the world didn’t have anything to offer. Everything she needed was right here in the USA.She was very patriotic.

  And she would be so proud of you. When you, me, and Nana moved to New Jersey, I wasn’t sure what would happen. All I knew was that I had a job offer, and with a baby and a mother to support, we didn’t have a lot of options. It did seem to work out though, didn’t it? You went to college and got a great job. Nana would be so proud of you.

  Nicholas seems like a very nice man. I’m not sure what Nana would think of him being in your apartment after dark without a chaperone though. She’d tell you to keep a nickel between your knees. I’m just telling you to be safe and have a nice time. Maybe he’ll be the one?

  This email is getting way too long now, and I need to go to the grocery store, but write me back when you get a chance! And bring me back some rum from Jamaica.

  Love you,

  Mom

  Not being able to call my mom made me antsy. It hadn’t even been a week yet, but I was already missing the sound of her voice. Nicholas might pity me for growing up poor, but I pitied him for not having a family like mine. You really don’t need much if you have love.

  Nicholas told me that Oliver and Theresa were like family to him. He didn’t even think of his mother as family, because he didn’t remember her at all. The thought of anyone being able to walk away from Nicholas made me angry and sad. He deserved to have a proper mother. Clearly his father was a total scumbag. It must have been the influence of people like Oliver that saved Nicholas from following in his father’s scummy footsteps.

  I was thinking about Oliver when my phone rang with a call from an unknown number. Nicholas probably wouldn’t think it was safe to answer it, but he wasn’t around. I just had a feeling it would be Oliver.

  “Jenna?” Oliver snapped as I said hello, “why are you answering this number? It’s much too dangerous.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Then why are you calling it?” I replied tartly.

  I heard him sigh through the phone.

  “I’m calling it because you haven’t been to your apartment in days. I have no idea how to contact you or Nicholas.”

  “We aren’t very good at this whole ‘living underground’ thing, are we?” I asked him.

  “I’m sure that Nicholas could teach us both a thing or two,” Oliver replied. I could practically hear the smirk in his voice.

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “Lying low,” he replied as if that was an activity I should be familiar with. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get the records. I looked into the accounts that Nicholas told me about. There’s definitely revenue being misallocated. I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced that there was a weapons program until I got home and realized that someone had been in my apartment. The Skylark goon squad wasn’t smart enough to realize that I’d left a webcam running on my computer while I went to Atlanta. It picked them up and I saw the footage when I got home. So naturally I immediately got out of Dodge.”

  I couldn’t remember the last time someone had said the phrase “get out of Dodge”. Nevertheless, I would have been spooked too if I’d seen a recording of people going through my stuff.

  “I got fired,” I told him unhappily, “Did you know about that?”

  This time I definitely heard him laugh. I scowled into the phone as I waited for him to stop.

  “Yes, I did,” he replied. “Theresa told me. I tried to recruit her to our cause. She wasn’t interested.”

  “Nicholas is working on her right now,” I replied, “I don’t know if she’ll really help us, but he seems to think she will.”

  Oliver’s reply was slow in coming.

  “Maybe that will work,” he said, “I hope so. Because I’m all out of ideas.”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I can,” I told him, “How should we contact each other from now on?”

  “We need to stop using these phones,” Oliver replied. “Be sure you dump yours. I’ll do the same. I’ll meet you tomorrow. Then we can coordinate better and exchange new numbers.”

  “Ok,” I agreed, “I hope one of us will have good news for you tomorrow.”

  After I hung up with Oliver, I dropped my cellphone in the trashcan and walked Harley back to the hotel. Nicholas and I were experimenting with taking off the cone of shame for short periods, and I could tell that Harley was enjoying the respite. She’d been a lot warmer to me since I picked her up from the veterinarian. Maybe she thought I’d sprung her from dog jail or something.

  “Ready to go see Nicholas?” I asked her, and she wagged her tail happily when I said his name. She looked around excitedly like he might be in the immediate vicinity. “Let’s go find out if we have to move to Alaska or get to go back to our real lives. Are you excited?”

  Harley was excited, but just to see Nicholas. We really weren’t that different, Harley and me. We both just wanted to be with Nicholas all the time.

  34

  Nicholas

  Jenna and I were eating a late lunch in the hotel bar when we saw it on the local news playing on the many screens lining the walls.

  “We’ve got some breaking news. A police manhunt is currently underway for Philadelphia resident Oliver Miller, a former Durant Industries executive accused of murdering two people this afternoon,” a frowning newscaster announced.

  Across the table, Jenna reached out to clutch blindly for my hand. We both stared riveted to the screen.

  “Philadelphia Police Chief Eloise Parker said that a neighbor of the first victim, sixty-one-year-old Theresa Rimini was found by a neighbor who was alerted by the sound of gunfire. Parker said the bodies of Rimini and a male victim were found in Rimini’s apartment only moments after closed circuit security footage revealed Oliver Miller exiting the door and leaving down the elevator. Police have identified the second victim but are withholding his identity until notification of the next of kin. Miller has been missing for several days from his position at Durant Industries and according to a written statement from the company, may have suffered a psychotic break. He was fired after not reporting into work for several days this week after exhibiting erratic behavior on a business trip. Rimini was also an employee at Durant Industries. Police said that Miller is considered armed and dangerous. If you see him, call 911 immediately and do not approach him.�
�

  The newscaster then awkwardly pivoted from displaying the Durant Industries corporate portraits of Theresa and Oliver into a weather report. Jenna and I exchanged a stunned look. Jenna’s green eyes were quickly filling up with tears and I knew that there was nothing I could do to make it better. Sensing our tension, Harley popped her head up and looked from one of us to the other with obvious doggy confusion. I didn’t have anything with which to comfort them.

  “Theresa’s dead?” Jenna said in a small, halting voice, “But you just saw her…”

  I wasn’t able to reply. Even stronger than the shock and disbelief, a feeling of guilt unlike anything I’d ever felt before had overtaken me completely. Even breathing was difficult.

  I pulled away from Jenna’s hand and stood up abruptly. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. All I could think about was getting into the open air where I could catch my breath.

  “I need to clear my head,” I told her, leaving both Jenna and Harley at the table and walking out the front door without so much as a backward glance. Even so, I could feel Jenna’s eyes on me as I went, and I heard Harley whine. I couldn’t be in their comforting presence at the moment. I didn’t deserve it.

  In the bright, unforgiving light of the cool January afternoon, I walked around the block. Then I walked around the block again. And again. I quickly lost count of the number of times I’d circled the same block. I was just moving to move. And moving was helping.

  There were two things I knew with total and complete certainty. The first was that Oliver did not murder Theresa. He may have been in her apartment, but he couldn’t have murdered her. Not only did he have no motive to hurt Theresa, but Oliver didn’t have that sort of violence in him. The second was that Skylark absolutely did murder Theresa.

  The threat of Skylark had always been more of a frightening abstraction than an absolute fact to me. Yes, I knew that they were terrifying military contractors that ran special-ops type missions when they weren’t actively brokering chemical weapons sales, but I’d never been witness to their methods until now. Other than the sounds of boots in a darkened hallway, I’d never had to face them.

  Theresa had, and now she was dead. For Theresa’s sake, I prayed that my father hadn’t been in any way involved in alerting Skylark to Theresa’s betrayal of Durant Industries. She’d loved him. He may not have loved her back, or at least not the way she wished he did, but if he was the one who was directly responsible for her death, it would be the ultimate cruel twist of fate.

  Theresa was no shrinking violet. For as long as I’d known her, she had always been a tough, self-sufficient woman. She was also prepared, packing, and wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. The news about the second body in her apartment hadn’t escaped me. I hoped she’d shot and killed Ryan Quin with her hidden pistol, although that was probably wishful thinking. In reality, we were back at square one. And Theresa had died with Richard never knowing how she felt about him.

  And all of this mess was my fault. It was all due to my selfishness. I’d involved Jenna, ruined her successful career and driven her underground. I’d involved Oliver, and now the grandfather of four had been accused of murder and become the target of a police manhunt. Worst of all, I’d involved Theresa, and now she’d paid with her life. Theresa didn’t have any family that I knew about. She’d had a sister that died of breast cancer many years ago, and it was sickening to think that she wouldn’t even have many people besides work acquaintances at her funeral.

  As I walked around the block for the umpteenth time, I considered running away. It wouldn’t be logistically difficult to simply walk away. If I just kept on walking in the direction I was going I would arrive at a station and could eventually get on a train. I could take the train to the airport. Then I could get on a flight to anywhere and disappear again. Of the original stockpile of cash my father had given me, I still had over sixty-thousand dollars. It was more than enough money to hide me a second time. I would need to pick a different alias than Lewis Cassidy, which would be a pain in the ass, but if I kept it Jenna might find me.

  I wondered what would happen to Jenna if I disappeared and returned to hiding. She’d sit down in the lobby for a long time. She might still be sitting there, poking dejectedly at her salad. Eventually, however, she’d return to the room with Harley. They’d wait and wait for me to come back. When it became clear that I wasn’t returning, they would mourn for a while. But Jenna would get over me eventually.

  Harley would quickly learn to love Jenna just as much as I did. They had warmed to each other considerably over the past week. Jenna would take good care of her. After a few months, Harley wouldn’t miss me anymore. Dogs are in the moment. They don’t mourn like humans do.

  Jenna would be ok too. She was resourceful and smart. She’d climbed the corporate ladder once and she’d do it again. She’d figure out a way to return to her real life, too. She’d probably call my father and tell him that she had no proof, that I’d disappeared, and that she wanted to make a deal. He wouldn’t believe her at first, but it would be in his interests to resolve the situation without arousing further suspicion from the police. He’d negotiate an agreement with Skylark for Jenna to go back home.

  Jenna would be furious at and disgusted by me forever. She would probably look for me, but not too hard. She’d give up and forget about me. After all, I wasn’t really worth looking for. Eventually she’d meet, fall in love with, and marry someone else. Hopefully that someone would be worthy of her.

  The idea of Jenna with someone else burrowed into my mind like a parasite that gnawed and festered the longer I entertained the disturbing possibility. Jenna had taken everything that had happened since she found me in stride, and with more poise and courage than I had any right to hope for. Other than my word and the accounting records she’d found, Jenna didn’t even have any proof that the chemical weapons program was real. Fantasizing about her getting over me with someone new when she’d been nothing but good to me made me feel positively ill. Leaving her would be throwing away my life’s greatest opportunity for happiness.

  Leaving would also negatively affect others. Oliver would be framed for Theresa’s murder. He’d either disappear like me or be apprehended. But if caught, he’d never survive to go to trial. Skylark would tie off that loose end. Nothing that my father could do—even if he wanted to—would be sufficient to save Oliver. His family would never know the truth. His daughters would think their father randomly went crazy and murdered two people. They’d probably always wonder what had really happened, not really believing the story they were told.

  By the time I made my decision about what to do, the sun had set, and the temperature had dropped to below freezing. I’d been walking for hours. The numbness had begun to subside, and my feet were very sore in my stiff, new shoes. But even though it was a difficult path, and I was tired, my feet took me exactly where I needed to go.

  35

  Jenna

  Nicholas came back to the hotel room long after I’d laid down to sleep. It might have been after midnight, although I’d quit looking at the clock a long time ago. He snuggled up next to me and pressed his front flat against my back, wrapping his arms tightly around me and drawing me into him. I heard him sigh against my shoulder and felt his body relax, bit by bit. Our breathing slowly synched up until it felt like we were one body instead of two. I was only half awake, but his smell and his strength suffused through my senses with a comforting and reassuring feeling. Finally, I was able to fall asleep.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that we talked about Theresa. I’d avoided bringing it up as long as I could, be we needed to plan.

  “Oliver didn’t do it,” I said obviously. We were sharing a very unromantic breakfast of stale room service toast and underwhelming coffee.

  “They haven’t found him yet,” Nicholas answered, adding, “I checked the news while you were in the shower. They have no idea where he is. The city-wide manhunt looks fairly intense. They’re going door to
door in his neighborhood.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked miserably, “We have no way to get the records. If the only copy is in Richard’s safe, there’s no chance. Unless you want to try breaking into Durant Industries or something, I have no idea what to do.”

  Nicholas looked as lost as I felt. He brushed my still-damp hair back from my forehead with a gentle hand. I leaned into his touch and grabbed his hand against my cheek.

  “I don’t know either,” he admitted. “We have no way of knowing if Theresa ever got the records. Presumably even if she did, Skylark has them again now.”

  “Do you think we should go meet Oliver tonight?” I asked. We’d arranged to meet Oliver at a busy local wine bar. “Do you think he’ll even come?”

  Nicholas shook his head.

  “I have no idea. It’s risky for Oliver to go anywhere now. He might not show.”

  “I can’t believe he’s being framed for Theresa’s murder,” I told Nicholas, “It’s so perverse. Oliver would never hurt anyone.”

  Nicholas might be getting depressed, but I was getting angry. The idea that Skylark could so effortlessly murder someone and then cover it up and frame somebody was frightening. The world wasn’t supposed to work this way. There were laws against this sort of behavior, and they weren’t above them. In fact, something about that had been bothering me.

  “Didn’t Oliver used to work for Senator Ellis?” I asked Nicholas. He looked at me in confusion and nodded.

  “Why didn’t you or Oliver go to the Senator when you learned about the chemical weapons? Wouldn’t a Senator’s support be valuable in this situation? He has connections, right?”

  Nicholas laughed a bitter little laugh.

  “I wish,” he said with a shake of his head. “Senator Ellis is a complete tool. Oliver was his loyal chief of staff for fifteen years and then Ellis fired Oliver after scapegoating him over something stupid. Ellis is basically a Durant family pet. We’ve been bankrolling his Super Pac for so long that I don’t think he even fundraises anymore.”