by Meli Raine
She gives me a wistful smile. “I think a lot of what happens next depends on you.”
“Me? Why me?”
“That drug lord is looking for a virgin. You said you’re still one, right?”
I nod slowly. “You know,” I admit, “Chase brought it up last night.”
She snorts. “How romantic!”
I just shake my head now. “Yeah, I know. He said out of the goodness of his heart, he’d be willing to help me with this little obstacle.” Now we really are laughing. “But seriously, I don’t think virginity is going to stop someone who thinks that he owns me!” My eyes lock with my sister’s. “And the only person who can help me is Chase.”
“If Chase is the only person who can help you,” she says, standing slowly, brushing the dirt off her legs, “then you’re in big trouble. Because somebody who’s not here can’t do anything to help you.”
I stand and follow her as she reaches for the doorknob. I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say.
She turns the knob. It’s locked. I fish around in the pocket of my pants and find the key. Once we’re inside, the reality starts to sink in. There is no Jeff sitting in the living room, watching some stupid sports show. There is no Jeff in the kitchen, bitching about how I ate all the bacon. There is no Jeff, sneaking Heather in so they can bang each other in his bedroom. There is no Jeff. Anywhere, ever again.
There is, however, a big mess. The police were thorough. Drawers are left opened, stuff is hanging out, papers have been rifled through. Magazines are tossed on the floor. All the pictures are crooked. It’s not like Jeff and I had a lot of stuff, but what we do have—I mean, what I do have—is in chaos.
“Holy hell!” Marissa says. “They really did search the place!”
My eyes feel like I’m an owl. “No kidding.” Even the little drawer in the coffee table is hanging open.
“I called the police department,” Marissa says.
“When? Why?” I ask.
“You fell asleep in the car when we were on our way back. I talked to that Detective Knowles guy. He says that the police have already been here, checked everything out, and we’re free to do whatever we need to do.”
Clearly they’ve been here. I frown. “What does he mean?”
She looks at me, serious. “Well, with Mom dead and Jeff dead, someone has to take care of the house, the belongings...”
“But we rented.” And then it sinks in. It hits me. “We have to clear all this stuff out! We don’t own anything except...”
“Yeah,” Marissa says. “Except your stuff and Jeff’s stuff, and whatever’s left over of Mom’s.”
We sigh in unison. She walks into the kitchen and looks around, searching.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
“The coffee maker.”
“Oh, Jeff moved it. It’s here in the cabinet.” I point to it and show her. For whatever reason, the cops closed the kitchen cabinet doors.
She starts making coffee, the activity comforting. Once the machine is bubbling, she reaches under the sink and pulls out the cleaning caddy.
“You’re going to clean the house?”
“I might,” she says. “It depends on what we find. But I figure we could at least have it out on the counter.”
“What are we supposed to do, Marissa?” I’m confused. I’m missing Chase. I’m overwhelmed, and then I realize, I’m supposed to be at the police department right now, aren’t I?
She looks at me, and it’s as if she read my mind. “You’re supposed to be with that detective. Remember how he said to come straight to the department?”
“Yeah,” I mutter. I feel antsy inside, like my blood is filled with bubbles. I don’t want to be here. I certainly don’t want to go to the bar if that’s where Jeff was killed. But I really don’t want to go to the police department.
Marissa and I realize that we have no way of getting back into town. Morty dropped us off, and Jeff’s car isn’t here. It must be back at the bar.
We go out to the garage and find a couple of bikes that we haven’t seen in years. Mine is still broken and mangled back at Chase’s shack. Jeff’s bike is buried under an old kiddie pool and a big tarp. It’s dusty and rusty, but Marissa finds some WD-40 and pretty soon she’s making circles in the dirt around the front of the house.
I’m not so lucky. All we can find is an old banana bike from when I was seven.
“Come on,” I say to Marissa. “I can’t show up at the police department riding a little kid’s bike. They’ll think I’m nuts. They’ll... they’ll arrest me for... stupidity!”
She laughs. “We’ll trade off, and I’ll take that dinky little thing right before we get into town.”
I honk the horn. It sounds like a dead duck. “We need Jeff’s tool kit.”
The garage has been gone over by the cops, too. A big blue metal toolbox is tipped on its side, the tools scattered around it. An old Big Wheel plastic bike is next to it and I have to move it first. When I pick it up and hand it to Marissa, she frowns.
“What’s in here?”
“Nothing. It’s a toy.”
“No, Allie,” she says, pulling it out into the sunlight. “There’s something here.”
I’m impatient. The cops are waiting for me. “I don’t care. I just need the tools to fix the bike.” Why is she fixated on the stupid riding toy?
Marissa hands me a wrench and some pliers. She gives the plastic ride-on toy the hairy eyeball, but she sets it aside. In ten minutes, I fix the bike. But it’s still a little kid’s banana bike.
“All right,” I say. It’s only three miles into town, so I’m not that worried. My body still aches from my bike accident just last week, but I’ll survive. “Let’s go.”
We sling our purses over our shoulders and climb on the bikes. I’m glad Marissa’s helping me. She plans to go to the courthouse and the town hall, to find out exactly what we need to do next. Technically we’re Jeff’s next of kin and yet technically we’re not. He told us a long time ago that his parents were dead and he had no siblings. Marissa’s going to find out what that all means for us.
We get to the edge of town. As promised, Marissa gives me the better bike. I ride it up to the police station. The building is brick and boring, and about as comforting as a dead armadillo on the road.
I slide the front tire of the bike into the bike rack and brush myself off. Sweat covers my hairline, my chest, my back. Pretty much every part of my body. I don’t care.
A motorcycle engine revs in the distance, and I turn quickly, hoping to see Chase. No. It’s Chuck Jorgensen, riding down the middle of the road. His bike has no muffler. The sound, as he passes by me, forces me to cover my ears. I can feel the vibration even when he’s gone so far away that I can’t see him.
Jerk.
I walk into the police department and march up to the reception desk.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Excuse me,” I say.
An old woman with slack wrinkles around her mouth, that pull down and make her look like a Saint Bernard, doesn’t even bother to look at me. “Yeah?”
“I’m here to see Detective Knowles.”
“What for?”
“I’m here about Jeff Wakefield’s death.”
Her head pops up and her eyes narrow as she looks me up and down. “You Allison Boden?”
I jerk a little at the sound of my full name. “Yes.”
She nudges her head to the right. “Down the hall, second door left.”
I follow her directions. The hallway is lit with fluorescent lights that blink and twitch. It’s like something out of a Hollywood movie set. The hallway smells like cigarettes, iron metal shavings and pee.
The door she directed me to has the words Detective Knowles written in black Sharpie on a piece of paper that is taped to the door. I knock.
“Come in!” says a loud, firm man’s voice.
I reach for the doorknob, turn it, and realize that there’s an electric current
running between me and the world. It feels nothing like the one between me and Chase.
I step into a room where there’s no overhead fluorescent light. Instead, the detective has a small desk light with a yellow incandescent bulb. It gives the room a warm feel, even with painted grey cement block walls and black linoleum streaked with turquoise.
He points to a seat in front of his desk and says nothing. As I sit down he says, “I assume you’re Allie.”
I nod.
He looks me over. “You look like the girl in my son’s yearbook.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I say nothing.
“I’m sure you understand why you’re here, Allison.”
“My name’s Allie.”
“What’s your full name?”
“What?”
“State your full name.”
All the skin on my body starts to creep. “Allison Cassidy Boden,” I say.
“Date of birth?”
What’s this all about, I wonder? “Um, excuse me Detective Knowles, am I under arrest?”
He sighs. His hands splay flat across stacks of scattered paper along the big, battered metal desk. “No, Allie, you’re not under arrest. But I do have some basic questions I have to ask.”
“Oh,” I say. I give him my birth date.
He just nods. “And your address is the same as Wakefield’s?”
“Yes.”
He finishes filling out some papers, and then turns them over and looks at me. “Where were you?”
“Where was I... when?”
“Just now. Yesterday. Last night.”
“Oh, uh, well... I was in Los Angeles, visiting my sister.”
“You do that often?”
A cord of fear shoots through me.
“No...?” My voice turns up like a question. He looks like his son, Sam, thick and dark with bushy eyebrows. His cheekbones are wide and his eyes are almond-shaped. If I weren’t so scared of him, I’d probably find him a kindly man.
He licks his lips and then rolls them together. He’s thinking. “Did you have any reason to...not get along with Mr. Wakefield?”
I answer very carefully. “He’s my stepfather. Um, no. Other than the usual.”
“What do you consider to be ‘the usual’, Miss Boden?”
Now we’ve gone from Allison, to Allie, to Miss Boden. “Um, I don’t know. You know, he would get mad at me for eating all the food in the house. Or get upset because I forgot to fill the gas tank when I borrowed the car. That kind of stuff.”
“Did he ever threaten you?”
How am I supposed to answer that? “Um, what do you mean?”
He leans back in his chair and folds his arms over his chest. He’s wearing a white men’s dress shirt, a loose tie and a jacket. Sweat stains are under the jacket’s arms and I wonder why he bothers. In this kind of heat, in Southern California August, you have to be a little crazy to wear a suit jacket.
He looks me up and down again. This is not the same look that men normally give me, and it’s nothing like the looks that Chase gives me.
Something new occurs to me. “Detective Knowles, should I have a lawyer?”
My question is innocent, but it triggers something intense in his eyes. “Do you want a lawyer? Do you feel like you need a lawyer?”
I stutter. “I... I don’t know! Uh, I just thought I would ask.”
“Because,” he cuts me off. “I can Mirandize you right now.”
“Mirandize? What’s that?”
“Allie, let me cut to the chase. Did you kill Jeff Wakefield?”
“What?” My hands go numb. My tongue feels like it’s five times bigger than it really is. The room suddenly flickers, and everything that’s black turns white. “What? I wouldn’t kill Jeff!”
“We have witnesses who say otherwise.”
“You have witnesses who what?” I wish Marissa were here. I wish Chase were here. But most of all, I wish Mom were here. I stand up so fast that I make the chair I was sitting in fall over.
The crash brings three people to the door. Detective Knowles waves them away. They wander off slowly.
“Why did you... Why do... I can’t... I don’t understand! How did Jeff die?”
“Why don’t you tell me how Jeff Wakefield died?”
“I don’t know!” I’m screaming now, my voice hysterical, and I can hear it in my ears. It’s scratching, like claws against my eardrums. “I don’t know, I left town yesterday! I—I got into a fight with Jeff at the bar, and...” I halt, my own words echoing in the tiny enclosed room.
“And what did you do then, Allie?” We’re back to Allie.
“Chase was there...”
“Chase Halloway?”
“You know him?” I look at the detective with a wary eye. I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to say or not say, but my mind has turned into ten thousand snakes, all hissing in my head.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“We know that he was in the bar yesterday,” is all the detective will say to me.
“Well, Chase... uh... took me on his bike, and... helped me to get to my sister... in LA.” The words come up with giant breaths between them, as if I can’t speak properly. As if I’m having an asthma attack, or something like that. “I spent the night at my sister’s apartment.”
“Do you have any witnesses other than your sister who will attest to that?”
A flash of red hair fills my mind. “Morty, her roommate?” Everything I say comes out as a question. I guess it’s because I’m asking questions like, Are you going to believe me?
He’s scribbling now. “And Morty’s name is...” Angus, I think, biting my lips so I won’t giggle.
“I don’t know his last name, but I can get that information from my sister.” I actually do know his last name, and I feel a little sick for lying to the detective, but right now I don’t know who to trust.
“Good, because we’ll need it.”
“Why would you think I killed Jeff?”
“We have witnesses who will attest to the fact that you threatened his life.”
“I what? Me? Me?” I’m pointing now to my own chest. And then I gesture to my body. “Me? I can’t... I can barely kill spiders!”
He snorts, and then his face goes slack. “So, you didn’t say to Mr. Wakefield yesterday that you wish he were dead?”
I close my eyes, my jaw open, and my hand goes to my forehead. The tip of my tongue presses against the back of my top row of teeth. “I... that was just...” I sigh. “I was frustrated.”
“Frustrated enough to kill him?”
“No. Look, Detective Knowles, Chase and I stopped at a gas station to get food and go to the bathroom on the way to LA. Marissa was out... I was there with her in LA. She has roommates who will tell you that I was there.”
These words are coming out of my mouth, and I’m explaining this to him. And yet, the fact that I even have to say these words is appalling. I’m making my own alibi. I’m defending myself against the accusation that I’m Jeff’s murderer.
Is this what Jeff felt like when people accused him of killing Mom? A stab of sympathy for him hits me. I don’t want to feel it.
Something’s changed in Detective Knowles’ eyes. He’s giving me a different kind of look. It’s almost like he wants to believe me. It’s almost like I’ve made my case. Almost.
“Okay Allie, here’s the deal. We’re considering you a person of interest.”
“Does that mean I’m under arrest?”
“No.” His eyes narrow. “Not yet. But you stay in town. You can’t go anywhere until this is settled.”
“You know there were an awful lot of people who wanted Jeff dead,” I say.
“Like who?”
I open my mouth to say it, and realize I have to be careful. “Jeff had a lot of people who didn’t like him,” is all I can admit.
He gives me a hard look. “I’d like you to come back tomorrow, so that we can talk further about all these people who did not
like Jeff Wakefield.”
I nod, the motion hard and tight, and stagger out of his office.
The woman at the reception desk ignores me as much as I ignore her, and then I’m outside in the blinding sun, frantically searching for Jeff’s crappy bike.
Marissa comes around the corner, pushing my yellow banana bike. A sheaf of paper is under her arm.
“How’d it go?” she asks me.
I shake my head tightly.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go to the bar.”
“The bar?” I’m freaked out. I feel like my body is filled with vibrating marbles. “Why would we go to the bar?”
“Because that’s where Jeff’s car is. We need a car to get around for the next few days while we figure all this out,” she explains.
I blow out a long, deep breath. She’s making sense. I know she’s right. “Okay,” I say. “Then let’s go.”
* * *
“Creature of habit,” Marissa says with a sarcastic sigh, as she reaches under the driver’s seat of Jeff’s red Camaro and finds the spare key attached to the underside of the seat. The masking tape Jeff used is the same color as the seat.
“Mom taught him that,” I say, remembering.
Marissa looks up, like she’s talking to heaven, and says, “Thanks, Mom.” A chill runs down my spine. I can almost hear Mom say, You’re welcome.
Oh, if only.
The bar’s closed, yellow police Do Not Cross tape is everywhere, covering all the doorways, front and back. We’re lucky. The car is sitting there behind the bar, and it dawns on me that maybe we should have asked the police department if we could borrow the car.
Marissa can read the look on my face. “I already called,” she says. “They say it’s fine, they already checked it for evidence. Besides,” she says. “The way that they killed Jeff was so... simple.”
“Simple?”
We’ve already thrown our bikes into the back of the car, and she turns on the engine. The low rumble of the machine doing its work is soothing.
“Someone came up to him late last night and shot him, point blank, at the base of the skull.”
